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Research Article | Open | Published: 19 December 2017
HISEA: HIerarchical SEed Aligner for PacBio data
Nilesh Khiste1 &
Lucian Ilie1
The next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques have been around for over a decade. Many of their fundamental applications rely on the ability to compute good genome assemblies. As the technology evolves, the assembly algorithms and tools have to continuously adjust and improve. The currently dominant technology of Illumina produces reads that are too short to bridge many repeats, setting limits on what can be successfully assembled. The emerging SMRT (Single Molecule, Real-Time) sequencing technique from Pacific Biosciences produces uniform coverage and long reads of length up to sixty thousand base pairs, enabling significantly better genome assemblies. However, SMRT reads are much more expensive and have a much higher error rate than Illumina’s – around 10-15% – mostly due to indels. New algorithms are very much needed to take advantage of the long reads while mitigating the effect of high error rate and lowering the required coverage.
An essential step in assembling SMRT data is the detection of alignments, or overlaps, between reads. High error rate and very long reads make this a much more challenging problem than for Illumina data. We present a new pairwise read aligner, or overlapper, HISEA (Hierarchical SEed Aligner) for SMRT sequencing data. HISEA uses a novel two-step k-mer search, employing consistent clustering, k-mer filtering, and read alignment extension.
We compare HISEA against several state-of-the-art programs – BLASR, DALIGNER, GraphMap, MHAP, and Minimap – on real datasets from five organisms. We compare their sensitivity, precision, specificity, F1-score, as well as time and memory usage. We also introduce a new, more precise, evaluation method. Finally, we compare the two leading programs, MHAP and HISEA, for their genome assembly performance in the Canu pipeline.
Our algorithm has the best alignment detection sensitivity among all programs for SMRT data, significantly higher than the current best. The currently best assembler for SMRT data is the Canu program which uses the MHAP aligner in its pipeline. We have incorporated our new HISEA aligner in the Canu pipeline and benchmarked it against the best pipeline for multiple datasets at two relevant coverage levels: 30x and 50x. Our assemblies are better than those using MHAP for both coverage levels. Moreover, Canu+HISEA assemblies for 30x coverage are comparable with Canu+MHAP assemblies for 50x coverage, while being faster and cheaper.
The HISEA algorithm produces alignments with highest sensitivity compared with the current state-of-the-art algorithms. Integrated in the Canu pipeline, currently the best for assembling PacBio data, it produces better assemblies than Canu+MHAP.
De novo genome assembly is the problem of reconstructing the entire genome of an organism from sequencing reads without using a reference genome. The high throughput NGS technologies produce short reads, of few hundred base pairs, which are much smaller than most of the repeated regions in microbial and eukaryotic genomes. The repeated regions that are longer than read length pose serious challenges to the genome assembly algorithm. This imbalance of read versus repeat length increases the complexity and processing requirements of the assembly algorithm. This is the reason many assemblies using NGS data are fragmented and incomplete [1], and often not useful for downstream analysis.
The advent of SMRT sequencing technology from Pacific Biosciences has encouraged researchers to look into the genome assembly problem from a fresh perspective. The long reads spanning across many repeated regions enable the production of significantly better assemblies. The SMRT technology is also less biased [2] than previous NGS technologies. However, two important drawbacks of SMRT sequencing are high error rate, of 10-15%, and high cost. For comparison, the dominant technology of Illumina has up to 100 times lower error rate and is over 100 times cheaper in terms of cost per Gbp [3]. On the positive side, it has been found that the errors are random and it is possible to correct them algorithmically [4] by increasing the coverage of sequencing data. Thus, SMRT sequencing makes it possible to produce more continuous and higher quality genome assemblies than what has been achieved with previous technologies.
In most of the published SMRT genome assembly pipelines [5–7], a critical step is finding all-vs-all raw read alignments. The outcome of this step can have a large impact on the processing of subsequent steps and the overall outcome of the assembly pipeline. It is therefore essential to use a highly sensitive aligner. We present a new long read aligner, HISEA, which is much more sensitive than all existing ones. We compared the sensitivity of our aligner with BLASR [8], DALIGNER [9], GraphMap [10], MHAP [11], and MiniMap [5]. Note that we use the terms “alignment” and “overlap” interchangeably.
The comparatively high cost of SMRT sequencing has prevented its widespread use. It is very expensive to sequence large genomes with high coverage using SMRT technology, therefore it is still beyond the reach of many research labs. Recently, Koren et al. [6] showed that their Canu assembler can generate assemblies using only 20x coverage that are comparable with 150x coverage hybrid assemblies generated with SPAdes [12]. It has also shown that it can achieve maximum assembly continuity around 50x coverage. As indicated by Koren et al. [6], Canu pipeline is currently the best. It uses the MHAP aligner [11] and therefore we incorporated HISEA in this assembly pipeline, in place of MHAP. We have compared the two pipelines, Canu+MHAP and Canu+HISEA for five organisms, E.coli, S.cerevisiae, C.elegans, A.thaliana, and D.melanogaster at two coverage levels: 30x and 50x. The pipeline using HISEA is shown to produce better assemblies for both coverage levels. Moreover, the Canu+HISEA assemblies for 30x coverage are comparable with those of Canu+MHAP for 50x coverage.
Our HISEA software is implemented in C++ and OpenMP and its source code is freely available. It can be used as a stand alone aligner or as an all-vs-all read aligner in other assembly pipelines. We have tested it in the Canu [6] assembly pipeline and the modified pipeline source code is also freely available for download.
The HISEA algorithm
Let Σ={A,C,G,T} be the DNA alphabet; Σ ∗ is the set of all DNA sequences, that is, all finite strings over Σ. Our setup assumes two sets of reads: the set of reference reads, R={r 1,r 2,...,r n }⊂Σ ∗, and the set of query reads, Q={q 1,q 2,...,q m }⊂Σ ∗. A k-mer is a string of length k over Σ.
Storing reads and hashing the reference set
Each read r i is encoded using 2 bits per nucleotide and stored as an array of unsigned 64-bit integers, that is, as blocks of 32 nucleotides. The reverse complement of r is stored in the same array and it starts at the next unsigned 64-bit integer. A precomputed 16-bit reverse complement array of all possible values is used to quickly compute the reverse complement of reads.
All k-mers that occur in reads of R are quickly computed using bitwise operations and bit masking and stored in a hash table using double hashing technique. In the hash table, each entry stores the value of the k-mer and a pointer to another hash table which stores the set of read ids r j , and positions within r j , where this k-mer occurs. Any k-mer which occurs more than MAX_KMER_COUNT times is ignored. The MAX_KMER_COUNT is a user configurable parameter with a default value of 10000. Similarly, k-mers appearing in low count can be ignored. These k-mers do not impact the alignment and ignoring them speeds up the alignment process. The default value for low count k-mers is 2 and it can be controlled by a user configurable parameter.
Searching the query set
The k-mers occurring in the query read set Q are not stored; they are quickly computed as needed using bit operations. Then they are efficiently searched for in the hash table built for the set R. Every time a matching k-mer is found in the hash table, the corresponding reference read id and its position is recorded. Note that the reads in the query set are only searched in forward direction.
Clustering and filtering
For a given query q∈Q and a reference read r∈R, the reference read direction and all matching k-mer positions are stored in the previous step. For a pair of reads (q, r), further processing is considered either in forward or reverse direction of r. The decision is taken based on the read direction of r which has higher number of matching k-mers.
The next step is to perform clustering of all the matching k-mers. Clustering is an essential step in identifying the best alignment out of multiple possible alignments. Our algorithm reports only the best alignment between a pair of reads. Figure 1 shows an example of all k-mer matches between read q and read r before and after clustering. The example shown here is one simple case; in reality many complex cases are possible where clustering is essential. The initial matches can have contradictory information, such as the ones in Fig. 1 a, and the clustering phase involves collecting together consistent matches. A consistent set of k-mer matches is defined as a set of all k-mer matches arranged in ascending order of their positions and are equidistant from neighboring k-mer matches within defined threshold. The threshold is governed by a global parameter m a x S h i f t. The parameter m a x S h i f t is a user configurable parameter that accommodates the indel errors during k-mer matching, clustering and extension algorithms. The default value of this parameter has been experimentally determined to be 0.2 (or 20%). Figure 1 b shows the set of k-mers as divided into three consistent groups. It can be seen from the diagram that the rightmost cluster of k-mers is expected to produce the best alignment.
All k-mer matches between reads q and r before (a) and after (b) clustering
Algorithm 2.1 gives the details of the clustering algorithm. The input to the algorithm is an array V which contains all k-mer matches for a pair of reads (q, r). The input k-mer matches in V are sorted beforehand, first by query read positions and then by reference read positions. If the clustering algorithm fails to produce any meaningful clusters, we reverse the sort order i.e. first sort by reference read positions and then by query read positions and retry the algorithm. The algorithm uses two global parameters, k m e r S i z e and m a x S h i f t. The parameter k m e r S i z e is the size of the k-mers used for the initial hashing. The parameter m a x S h i f t is defined previously. The output of the clustering algorithm is a set of matches, C l u s t e r A r r a y, segregated in groups such that each group has a consistent set of k-mers. Note that the first two values in C l u s t e r A r r a y store the left and right k-mer positions in V for that cluster. The third and fourth values are the number of matching bps and k-mer hit counts respectively.
From the output of Algorithm 2.1, the cluster with the maximum number of matching base pairs is selected for further processing. The expected number of k-mer matches is estimated with the help of k-mer bounds in read q and read r; see Fig. 2. The leftmost and rightmost query k-mers start and end at positions q L and q R , respectively. Similarly, the corresponding positions in the reference read are r L and r R . The alignment length is L=r R +q u e r y S i z e−q R . The number of k-mer hits in the overlapping region is approximated as a binomial distribution with probability p=(1−e)2k and L trials. Overlaps that have fewer k-mer matches than three standard deviations below the mean, that is, less than $\mu - 3\sigma = Lp - 3\sqrt {Lp(1-p)}$, are eliminated as having too low similarity. This procedure is employed several times during different steps of the algorithm and will be referred to as the μ−3σ criterion.
Computing the alignment. The dark grey region contains all k-mer matches and is extended by the light grey ones using k ′-mer matches
Computing alignments
The alignment between the two given reads starts as the shortest interval that contains all k-mer matches, shown in dark grey in Fig. 2. This region is extended using a smaller seed, that is, using k ′-mer matches, for some k ′<k. The default values are k=16 and k ′=12. These values have been determined experimentally to produce reasonably good results for most datasets. Note that MHAP uses 16-mers as well.
The first step is to compute the maximum bounds of the alignment considering the maximum amount of allowable indels in the overlapping region. This is given by the user configurable parameter m a x S h i f t we mentioned above. As an example, for the situation depicted in Fig. 2, we set the maximum bounds for read q and read r as (q u e r y S t a r t,q u e r y S i z e) and (0,r e f E n d) respectively (see Fig. 2) where:
$$\begin{array}{rcl} {queryStart} &=& q_{L} - (1+{maxShift})r_{L}\\ {refEnd} &=& r_{R} + (1+{maxShift})({querySize} - q_{R}) \end{array} $$
Then, all k ′-mer matches within these bounds are computed as done previously for k-mers. These matches are used to extend the alignment we have computed so far; in Fig. 2, the dark grey region is extended by the light grey ones on both sides. Each k ′-mer match is added if together with the ones already added they satisfy the μ−3σ criterion described above. The structure of the extension step is given in Algorithm 2.2. The input bounds are either (q L ,r L ) or (q R ,r R ). The extension is performed as long as k ′-mer matches exist that satisfy the μ−3σ criterion.
Finally, all the k ′-mers within the initial region – dark grey colour in Fig. 2 – are computed. Note also that the process is now guided by the original k-mers and therefore the clustering step is not required. The μ−3σ criterion is applied once more to the total number of k ′-mer matches for the entire overlap (light and dark grey); if the condition is satisfied, then the reads are considered to be overlapping and the alignment is reported.
Note that HISEA computes only the alignment boundaries, not the actual alignments. The same is true for other programs, such as MHAP [11], Minimap [5], and GraphMap [10]. Once identified, the alignments can be computed by dynamic programming; we avoid this step as it is very time consuming and not necessary for assembly, which is the goal of HISEA.
Alignment evaluation procedures
The EstimateROC utility estimates the sensitivity, specificity, and precision for the alignments reported. The original EstimateROC utility of Berlin et al. [11] relies heavily on BLASR mappings for the verification of reported alignments. This is not the most accurate procedure since BLASR can make errors. Ideally, each alignment needs to be verified against the optimally computed alignment using the Smith-Waterman dynamic programming algorithm [13]. We modified the functions estimating sensitivity, specificity, and precision accordingly.
The modified function ComputeDP first computes an optimal alignment, A opt, between two reads using Smith-Waterman dynamic programming algorithm; it ensures that this is a good alignment. Then, assuming the program reported an alignment, A rep, for these two reads, it compares the length, direction, and bounds of the alignment reported by the program with those of the optimal alignment. This is essential since the program could report a very different alignment between the same reads and that should not be considered correct. The use of an optimal alignment algorithm increases the accuracy of evaluation.
The three functions used for evaluation, EstimateSensitivity, EstimateSpecificity, and EstimatePrecision are modified to correspond with our new ComputeDP function. The details are given in pseudo code below; see Algorithms 3.3-3.6.
Note that our evaluation is more accurate than the one of Berlin et al. [11] and all programs exhibit an decline in performance. The Results section contains a comparison of several evaluation procedures.
All the datasets have been downloaded from Pacific Biosciences DevNet Datasets (https://github.com/PacificBiosciences/DevNet/wiki/Datasets). The datasets used for this evaluation are given in Table 1. Details are provided in the Additional file 1.
Table 1 SMRT datasets used in for evaluation
The tests were performed on a DELL PowerEdge R620 computer with 12 cores Intel Xeon at 2.0 GHz and 256 GB of RAM, running Linux Red Hat, CentOS 6.3.
Competing programs
We evaluated the performance of HISEA against the currently best programs for PacBio read alignment: BLASR [8], DALIGNER [9], GraphMap [10], MHAP [11], and Minimap [5]. We then assessed the performance of HISEA for assembling PacBio data by including HISEA in the Canu assembly pipeline [6] and comparing it with the Canu assembly using MHAP as the aligner.
The programs were run according to their own developers’ suggestions or better, as follows. Minimap and DALIGNER were run as suggested by the developers. BLASR was run according to what the MHAP paper claimed to be the best choice of parameters. This is clearly better than the default parameters of BLASR. GraphMap was run with default parameters as the only choice in overlapping mode. MHAP was run with default parameters, except the number of hashes, which was set to 1256, instead of the default 512, for increased sensitivity. Minimap was run with window size 5 (default is 10), as recommended by the designers. HISEA was run with default parameters.
The Additional file 1 contains all the details concerning the versions used, download websites, and command lines.
Alignment comparison
The first tests we performed, as done also by Berlin et al. [11], use subdatasets of 1Gbp randomly sampled from the initial datasets; for the two smallest genomes, E.coli and S.cerevisiae, full datasets are used since they are close to 1Gbp with the given coverage. The sensitivity, specificity, and precision values for all five programs are given in Table 2. They were computed using the EstimateSensitivity, EstimateSpecificity, and EstimatePrecision procedures that we described in the Methods section.
Table 2 Comparison for the 1Gbp datasets (coverage levels in parentheses)
Similarly to MHAP [11] evaluation parameters for EstimateROC, we use minimum alignment length 2000 bps and 50,000 trials. The other mandatory inputs to EstimateROC are the reference genome, the reads and the mapping of the reads to the reference. The mapping of the reads to the reference is computed using the BLASR program.
HISEA has clearly the highest sensitivity, over 16% higher, on the average, than the second best program, MHAP. The specificity is high for all programs. Minimap has the highest specificity but low sensitivity. BLASR has the highest precision but, again, low sensitivity. HISEA is second for precision, not far from BLASR. To better compare the performance with respect to sensitivity and precision, we have computed the F 1-scores, also shown in Table 2. The F 1-score for HISEA is much higher than all the other programs, with DALIGNER and MHAP following 18% and 19% behind. Next are BLASR and Minimap and last comes GraphMap with a very low score.
The time and memory comparison for the same 1Gbp datasets is presented in Table 3. Minimap and GraphMap are clearly the fastest and BLASR the slowest. HISEA is in the middle, behind MHAP and DALINER. Space-wise, Minimap is again the best, followed closely by BLASR, and at some distance by HISEA and GraphMap. MHAP and DALIGNER used the most memory. MHAP is implemented in JAVA which generally requires more memory. The java command-line parameter -Xmx is used to set the maximum heap size for MHAP stand alone invocation. The default maximum java heap size depends on the platform and the amount of memory in the system. For our systems, the default was not sufficient to perform the tests. We set -Xmx parameter to 200G which was sufficient for all tests but it does not capture true overlapper memory for MHAP. The reported memory usage for MHAP consists of the overlapper memory and the memory required for Java Virtual Machine environment.
Table 3 Time and memory comparison for the 1Gbp datasets
Sensitivity variations
As we have described above, we use a more precise evaluation compared to the one of Berlin et al. [11]. As a result the programs exhibit a decrease in sensitivity. It is therefore interesting to compare our procedure with the one of Berlin et al. [11]. In Table 4, four ways of evaluating the sensitivity are compared. In our evaluation we check for precise bounds of the alignment; this is given in the rows labelled as “bounds” in the table. We can relax this condition by checking only the length of the alignment; labelled as “length” in the table, this is the closest to the procedure of Berlin et al.. Finally, the weakest check we can have is simply for the “presence” of an alignment between the reads. While there are differences among all these sensitivity modes, HISEA remains clearly the first, followed by DALIGNER and MHAP, and then at some distance by the other three programs. It is interesting to note the very high sensitivity of DALIGNER in the “presence” only scenario.
Table 4 Comparison of several types of sensitivity computations on the 1Gbp datasets
MHAP sketch size and Minimap minimizers
Both MHAP and Minimap can have their parameters adjust to improve sensitivity. We investigate here this effect.
MHAP uses a technique called MinHash [14] in order to compute the overlaps. MinHash reduces a string to a set of fingerprints, called sketch. It is clear that using a larger sketch increases the sensitivity at the cost of speed decrease. Given the excellent speed of MHAP, it is worth investigating the effect of this parameter. Note that we already tested sketch size 1256 instead of the default 512, for improved sensitivity. Table 5 shows the results for sketch size increased with increments of 512 from 1256 to 3816. The sensitivity increases slightly but never comes close to that of HISEA. Also, precision decreases and so the F 1-score increases very little (or decreases dramatically, as it happens for C.elegans). Also, the running time increases up to 10 times when changing sketch size from 1256 to 3816. Overall, increasing the sketch size is clearly not improving the performance of MHAP.
Table 5 Testing larger sketch sizes for MHAP. Starting with the value we have used for testing, 1256, the sketch size is increased with increments of 512 up to 3816
Similarly, the sensitivity of Minimap can be increased by using more minimizers. A minimizer is the smallest k-mer in a window of w consecutive k-mers. The default value is w=10 but the recommended value by the designers for all-vs-all PacBio read self-mapping is w=5 and this is what we used in our tests. We have investigated the effect of increasing the number of minimizers by decreasing w. The results are presented in Table 6. The improvement is more significant for Minimap but it starts from lower values. The improved performance is still far from the top programs.
Table 6 Testing higher number of minimizers for Minimap. Starting with the value we have used for testing, w=5, we increase the number of minimizers by decreasing w all the way to the smallest value w=1. Note that the results for the first column (w=5) appear also in Table 2. They are repeated here for comparison convenience
Sensitivity vs overlap size
It is easier to find long overlaps with correct bounds compared to short overlaps. We have plotted in Fig. 3 the aligners’ sensitivity as a function of overlap length. The sensitivity increases with the overlap length for all aligners except DALIGNER. The sensitivity of HISEA remains very high for both short and long overlaps and it improves with longer overlap lengths. MHAP shows a similar trend but its sensitivity for short overlaps is low. BLASR, Minimap, and GraphMap seem to have been optimized for more recent chemistry; note the very low performance on the oldest chemistry P4C2 datasets.
Sensitivity as a function of mean overlap length
HISEA vs MHAP
Since sensitivity is the most important parameter, as long as the difference in precision is not too large, we compare for the remaining tests only the top two programs, HISEA and MHAP. It turns out that the way MHAP is run within the Canu assembly pipeline is different from running it in stand alone mode. Therefore, we are comparing again the sensitivity, specificity and precision of the alignment produced by the two programs, this time while run in the pipeline mode.
We consider the same datasets as above but with higher coverage: 30x and 50x. As mentioned by Koren et al. [6], Canu+MHAP pipeline reaches the best assemblies around 50x coverage. Our goal is to produce similar quality assemblies with only 30x coverage. The 30x and 50x coverage datasets were sampled using the utility fastqSample available from the Canu pipeline [6].
The alignments computed by MHAP and HISEA while run in the Canu pipeline were extracted and analyzed as above. The results are shown in Table 7. HISEA has better sensitivity, precision, and F 1 score in all tests with very large differences for the 50x coverage datasets. The specificity of both programs is very high for all tests, with HISEA edging ahead for 30x coverage and MHAP for 50x.
Table 7 Sensitivity, specificity, precision, and F 1-score for HISEA and MHAP program output within the Canu pipeline
Assembly comparison
We have integrated the HISEA program in the Canu assembly pipeline, which is currently the best. Our alignment output is similar to the M4 format used by BLASR and MHAP programsFootnote 1. HISEA can also be integrated in other assembly pipelines, e.g., Miniasm [5] and Falcon [7], by converting HISEA output to the format required by these pipelines.
We have assembled the 30x and 50x coverage datasets that we tested above for quality of alignments. The assemblies produced by the two pipelines, Canu+MHAP and Canu+HISEA, have been evaluated using a modified version of our LASER program [15], which is a fast implementation of QUAST [16] using E-MEM [17]. The recent versions of QUAST use E-MEM [17] for speed improvement but LASER [15] has several other modifications that make it still faster.
LASER/QUAST compute many parameters for each assembly and the most important ones are presented in Table 8: the number of contigs, NG50, the maximum contig size, the fraction of the genome covered by the assembly, the identity with the reference, and the number of breakpoints (inversions, relocations, and translocations). The Canu+HISEA pipeline has better values in 80% of the tests for the number of contigs, NG50, max contig size, and genome fraction. Generally, the NG50 value for the Canu+HISEA assemblies is much larger than that of the Canu+MHAP ones. Canu+MHAP has fewer breakpoints more often than Canu+HISEA but the difference is usually small. Both pipelines have high identity with the reference. Overall, the assemblies computed by the Canu+HISEA pipeline are better. Moreover, the assemblies computed by Canu+HISEA for 30x coverage are comparable with those produced by Canu+MHAP for 50x coverage. MUMmer plots of all Canu+HISEA assemblies are included in the Additional file 1.
Table 8 Pipeline assembly comparison; Canu assembler is used with MHAP and HISEA as read aligners
The MHAP program is very fast and it makes the Canu+MHAP pipeline faster, as seen from the time values shown in Table 9. However, as noticed above, similar assemblies are produced by Canu+HISEA for 30x coverage, and those are always faster than those by Canu+MHAP for 50x coverage. The memory consumption is always much lower for the Canu+HISEA pipeline. Note that in Table 9 the times are reported as wall clock times, since CPU times for the fraction used by the overlapping programs are not available. Also, only the peak memory used by the entire assembly pipeline is available.
Table 9 Assembly time and space comparison; the time is wall clock time in hours, the space is in GB
The java command-line parameter -Xmx is used to set the maximum heap size during MHAP invocation from the pipeline. The value of parameter -Xmx is set by corMhapMemory pipeline parameter which is user configurable. For this evaluation, the value of parameter corMhapMemory is set to 200 Gb for all datasets. The peak memory in each case is reported as 210 Gb. Similar configuration for Canu+HISEA pipeline uses much smaller memory footprint (less than 100 Gb) for all datasets.
The Canu+MHAP pipeline requires more memory in all cases, as seen from the space values shown in Table 9. The peak memory of this pipeline can be reduced by setting a smaller value for corMhapMemory. However, it impacts the overall assembly runtime. Similar behavior is expected in modified Canu+HISEA pipeline. To ensure unbiased evaluation, all parameter values are identical for both pipelines.
The newly introduced HISEA program has been thoroughly tested against several state-of-the-art programs and shown to perform better. HISEA has higher sensitivity, precision, and F1-score. Two competing programs, MHAP and Minimap, have parameters that can be tuned for a trade-off between speed and sensitivity. We pushed both to the limit of their sensitivity and that is still clearly lower than the sensitivity of HISEA. Since we introduced a new, more precise, evaluation of sensitivity, we compared also the programs with respect to the old method of computing sensitivity, as well as two other natural ways. HISEA has the highest sensitivity with respect to all four sensitivity modes. The closest competitor is MHAP and we compared the two programs further, from the point of view of genome assembly. HISEA is significantly more sensitive and produces better genome assemblies in the Canu pipeline.
Pacific Biosciences SMRT technology is a relatively new sequencing method that produces long but noisy reads. The aligners developed for previous sequencing methods do not perform well on this type of data. Our new HISEA algorithm for computing read alignments has introduced several new ideas, such as clustering of k-mer matches, estimating and filtering of matches based on error rate, and techniques for extending the alignments with shorter k-mer matches.
The HISEA algorithm currently produces alignments with highest sensitivity and comparable specificity with other algorithms. Integrated in the Canu pipeline [6], currently the best for assembling PacBio data, it produces better assemblies than Canu+MHAP. Moreover, the assemblies of Canu+HISEA at lower coverage, 30x, are comparable with those of Canu+MHAP at 50x coverage, while being faster and cheaper. We plan to modify HISEA in the future to work also with Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology [18]. The source code of the HISEA aligner and Canu+HISEA assembly pipeline are freely available from: https://github.com/lucian-ilie/HISEA and https://github.com/lucian-ilie/Canu_HISEA, respectively.
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Performance evaluation has been performed on our Shadowfax cluster, which is part of the Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET: www.sharcnet.ca) and Compute/Calcul Canada.
L.I. has been partially supported by a Discovery Grant and a Research Tools and Instruments Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). N.K. has been partially supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) in Science and Technology.
The source code of the HISEA aligner and Canu+HISEA assembly pipeline are freely available from: https://github.com/lucian-ilie/HISEA and https://github.com/lucian-ilie/Canu_HISEA, respectively.
Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, LondonOntario, N6A 5B7, Canada
Nilesh Khiste
& Lucian Ilie
Search for Nilesh Khiste in:
Search for Lucian Ilie in:
L.I. proposed the problem and the hierarchical seed approach. N.K. and L.I. designed the HISEA algorithm. N.K implemented the HISEA algorithm, installed the competing programs and performed all tests and comparisons. N.K. wrote the manuscript that was reviewed by L.I. Both authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Correspondence to Lucian Ilie.
Additional file 1
The additional material contains information concerning downloading the datasets, the versions used for each competing program, download websites, and command lines. (PDF 412 kb)
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
PacBio sequencing
Read aligner
Read overlapper
Sequence analysis (methods)
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Barriers to adherence with tuberculosis contact investigation in six provinces of Vietnam: a nested case–control study
Gregory James Fox1, 2Email author,
Le Phuong Loan1,
Nguyen Viet Nhung3,
Nguyen Thi Loi1,
Dinh Ngoc Sy3,
Warwick John Britton2, 4 and
Guy Barrington Marks1, 5
BMC Infectious Diseases201515:103
© Fox et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015
Received: 26 September 2014
Close contacts of patients with tuberculosis (TB) have a substantial risk of developing the disease, particularly during the first year after exposure. Household contact investigation has recently been recommended as a strategy to enhance case detection in high-burden countries. However the barriers to its implementation in these settings remain poorly understood.
A nested case–control study was conducted in Vietnam within the context of a large cluster randomised controlled trial of active screening for TB in household contacts of patients with pulmonary TB. The study population comprised contacts (and their index patients) from 12 Districts in six provinces throughout the country. Cases were contacts (and their index patients) that did not attend the scheduled screening appointment. Controls were those who did attend. We assessed relevant knowledge, attitudes and practices in cases and controls.
The acceptability of contact investigation was high among both cases (n = 109) and controls (n = 194). Both cases (47%) and controls (36%) commonly reported discrimination against people with TB. Cases were less likely than controls to understand that sharing sleeping quarters with a TB patient increased their risk of disease (OR 0.46, 0.27 – 0.78) or recognise TB as an infectious disease (OR 0.65, 0.39 – 1.08). A higher proportion of cases than controls held the mistaken traditional belief that a non-infectious form of TB caused the disease (OR 1.69, 1.02 – 2.78).
The knowledge, attitudes and practices of contacts and TB patients influence their ongoing participation in contact investigation. TB case detection policies in high-prevalence settings can be strengthened by systematically evaluating and addressing locally important barriers to attendance.
Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12610000600044.
Contact tracing
Infectious Disease Contact Tracing
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) control remains a major global public health challenge, with most of the 9 million people affected each year living in resource-limited countries [1]. Despite the widespread availability of effective therapies for TB, the global average decline in incidence has been only 2% annually. It is estimated that, each year, three million new cases of TB remain undiagnosed [1]. Actively screening high-risk groups for TB could increase the proportion of infectious cases that are diagnosed and treated and, thereby, reduce ongoing transmission of TB in the community [2,3]. Household contacts of patients with TB have a higher risk of developing TB than the general population. A recent meta-analysis of published contact investigation studies showed that, overall, 3.1% (95% CI 2.2-4.4%) of household contacts had TB disease at the time their infectious household member was diagnosed [4]. The study also showed high rates of incident TB over the four years following enrolment, suggesting that serial screening of contacts is a high yield strategy. Evidence from community-based studies also points towards a possible impact upon the burden of TB in high-prevalence settings [5].
Over the past decade, WHO recommended screening for TB in high-risk groups including household contacts [6], child contacts under 5 years [7] and contacts who are HIV infected [8]. National Tuberculosis Programs in high-prevalence settings have sought to apply these policies in their local contexts [9]. However, they have faced substantial challenges in bridging the gap between screening policies and practice [10]. In particular, convincing asymptomatic contacts to attend screening appointments has been difficult. Understanding the barriers to screening from the perspective of patients and their contacts is critical to the development of effective contact investigation strategies [11-13].
This study aimed to characterise knowledge about TB and perceived barriers to participation in contact investigation among household contacts of adult patients with pulmonary TB managed within the Vietnam National Tuberculosis Program.
Vietnam is a south-east Asian country with a persistently high prevalence tuberculosis (209 prevalent cases of TB per 100 000 population), despite having achieved good treatment outcomes for over a decade [1]. Consequently, enhanced case finding strategies, such as contact investigation, are a priority for Vietnam. The National TB Program has recently adopted a policy of routine symptom screening and preventive therapy for child contacts. However screening of adult contacts is not performed routinely [14].
We conducted a nested case–control study between September 2010 and July 2012 at District TB clinics participating in a larger randomised controlled trial (RCT) of contact investigation that is being undertaken in 8 Provinces throughout Vietnam [15]. District TB units are the primary location of TB diagnosis and treatment for the National TB Program, with chest radiography available at most sites. In the main RCT, which is described elsewhere [15], 70 District TB units were randomised to be either the intervention or control group. Over 10,000 contacts of patients with smear positive pulmonary TB were recruited in each group. In the intervention Districts, ‘index’ TB patients were asked to bring all household contacts to their local District TB unit for screening four times in two years: at the time of the patient’s initial diagnosis, then after six, 12 and 24 months.
District TB units that were randomised to the intervention group were eligible for inclusion in the case–control study if they had demonstrated their capacity to recruit contacts during the early phase of the RCT. This was defined as recruiting at least 50% of eligible index patients, based upon case notification data. This approach was chosen to ensure that health system-related factors alone did not drive the non-attendance of contacts. Based on this criterion, 12 of 36 intervention Districts from the six of the eight provinces in the main study were selected. The study population for the present case–control study comprised all contacts within these 12 Districts that had been enrolled in the main study before 30th September 2011. Within this study population, cases were those who did not attend their scheduled six-month follow-up visit (that is, the first scheduled review after enrolment into the main study) and controls were selected at random from among those who did attend this appointment.
Questionnaire development and data collection
Contacts were interviewed by District TB clinic staff, using a structured questionnaire (Additional file 1), to ask about their knowledge and attitudes relating to contact investigation. The ‘index’ patients of enrolled contacts also completed a questionnaire. All questionnaires were manually checked for completeness and consistency by study staff, and 10% of contacts were randomly re-interviewed by Provincial staff to verify the accuracy of responses.
Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about TB were measured using a questionnaire that was administered to all selected cases and controls (and their index patients).
The questionnaire was developed based upon a review of the literature, and three focus group discussions including 26 household contacts and their index patients and health care workers involved in a pilot contact investigation study [16]. Discussion themes were identified by a search of relevant literature and consultation with local physicians. Recordings from the discussions were transcribed, coded and analyzed according to the grounded theory method [17]. The final questionnaire was based on themes arising from the discussions, as well as themes identified in published literature relating to knowledge about TB, attitudes towards contact investigation, and compliance with TB screening.
Qualitative interviews were recorded digitally, transcribed and translated into English before coding and analysis.
Questionnaire responses were independently entered twice using EpiData 3.1 [18]. Groups of contacts were compared using generalized estimating equations (GEE), with clustering at the level of the index patient. Effects were estimated as odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Model covariate selection in multivariate analysis was based upon quasi-likelihood under the independence model criteria (QIC) using reverse covariate selection. Data were analyzed using SAS (v9.3, SAS Institute, Cary, NC). Variables with <10% of missing values were imputed using multiple imputation [19], and those with a higher proportion of missing values were excluded.
We estimated that 136 cases and an equal number of controls would yield 80% power to detect a 40% difference in the prevalence of positive responses between cases and controls as significant (at the 5% level).
Ethics approval and consent
This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sydney, and the Institutional Review Board of the National Lung Hospital, Hanoi, and was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration. Study participants provided written informed consent. The main RCT within which this study was nested (the ACT2 study) has been registered in the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12610000600044.
Participant demographics
Among 812 eligible contacts participating in the main RCT in the 12 intervention Districts, all 109 ‘non-attenders’ (cases) and 194 selected ‘attenders’ (controls) agreed to participate in this study (Figure 1). In addition, the 162 index patients of these contacts agreed to complete a questionnaire.
Consort diagram of study recruitment.
The median age of contact participants was 35 years (interquartile range, IQR, 18 – 50) among cases and 33 years (IQR 20–49) among controls (Table 1) and 60% and 58%, respectively, were female. More cases than controls had previously been treated for TB, although the 95% confidence interval crossed the null (OR 1.36, 0.41 -4.47). Cases were less likely than controls to be from the south of the country than the north (OR 0.43, 0.21 -0.88). The majority of contacts traveled to the clinic by motorbike (84% among cases and 83% among controls). The proportion living more than 10 km from the District TB Unit was similar in cases (28%) and controls (27%).
Demographic characteristics of participating household contacts
Controls*
Median age, years (IQR)
Region of Vietnam
Prior TB history
Relationship to TB patient
Other relative
Highest education level#
No schooling
Primary (grades 1–5)
Secondary (grades 6)
High school (grades 7+)
Current occupation¶
Full time employee
Part time employee
Monthly income**
<$25 / month
$25 to $250 / month
> $250 / month
*’Cases’ were contacts that did not attend their scheduled appointment. +’Controls’ were contacts that attended their scheduled appointment. #Educational level provided by 104/109 cases and 190/194 controls. ¶ 89/94 cases and 156 /194 controls stated their occupation. **81/109 cases and 137/194 controls stated their monthly income.
Contacts’ attitudes and knowledge about TB and TB screening
There was strong acceptance of TB contact investigation in both groups, with 83% of cases and 88% of controls believing the program to be beneficial (Table 2). Both groups appreciated the increased risk of TB among contacts (70% and 69% respectively), and recognized that TB can severely affect their health (83% and 89% respectively). A perception of discrimination against TB in the community was more common among cases than controls (47% versus 36%, OR 1.55, 0.95 – 2.51, adjusted for region and prior TB). Cases were less likely to understand that TB was caused by an infectious organism (adjusted OR 0.65, 0.39 – 1.08), and were less likely to perceive that sharing a bedroom increased the risk of transmission (adjusted OR 0.46, 0.27 – 0.78). A higher proportion of cases also held a mistaken traditional belief that a non-infectious ‘exhaustible’ form of TB [20] could cause the disease (adjusted OR 1.69, 1.02 – 2.78). Overall, 98% of cases and 97% of controls correctly believed that smoking tobacco was associated with an increased risk of developing TB, however a high proportion incorrectly attributed infection to sharing of utensils (cases 74%, controls 80%) or clothing or towels (61% and 55% respectively). Only 11% and 6% of cases and controls, respectively, believed that Vietnamese traditional medicines alone could cure TB, while most viewed Western medicines as curative (93% in both groups).
Perceptions of tuberculosis and tuberculosis screening among contacts
Non-attendee responses (cases)
Attendee responses (controls)
Odds of non-attendance
ORadj
95% CI
Contact attitudes towards TB
Perceive discrimination against TB from outside the family
(0.95 -2.51)
Believe that own risk of TB as being higher than the general population
Believe TB screening is beneficial for their family
Knowledge and attitudes about TB
TB can be transmitted by
Sharing utensils
Sleeping in the same bedroom
Sharing towels, clothes etc.
Hugging or kissing
Sharing the same toilet
Having sexual intercourse
TB is caused by*
An infectious organism
Living in an unhygienic environment
Inheriting the disease from your parents
A form of ‘exhausted TB’ which is not transmissible
The following people have a higher risk of developing TB*
Tobacco and bong smokers
People with weakened immune systems such as diabetes
People with poor nutrition
Treatment and cure of TB*
TB can be completely cured if a person takes treatment
Traditional medicine can cure TB
Western medicine can cure TB
(0.51 -38.82)
TB can severely affect your health
ORadj – Adjusted odds ratio. CI – Confidence interval. n – number of responses. Adj = adjusted for region and prior TB status. *102 case subjects and 194 control subjects responded.
Factors affecting attendance at follow-up
When asked about barriers to attending screening 41% of cases identified the distance between the clinic and their house as a barrier to participation (Table 3). 43% of cases found difficulties taking time off work or study to attend the appointment. Significantly more cases than controls believed that once the index patient was screened then there was no need for screening (adjusted OR 2.30, 1.25 -4.24). 70% of cases reported forgetting their scheduled appointment.
Explanations by cases for non-attendance at follow-up
Case responses*
The distance from my house to the clinic is too far
I am worried about harmful effects of X-ray
I prefer to be examined in a private clinic instead
I am worried about discrimination from other people towards myself and my family
The patient in my house recovered, so follow-up screening is not necessary
I initially forgot the scheduled appointment
The initial screening was negative, so I did not see the need for further screening
It was time consuming, and difficult to get time off work or study
+The denominator for individual questions differs slightly for each question, based on the number of valid responses. *Indicates an affirmative response.
The index patients of cases were more likely than patients of controls to believe that specific risk groups, namely pregnant women (OR 3.43, 1.53 – 7.70) and people with immune impairment (OR 4.8, 1.37 – 16.83) were more likely to develop TB (Additional file 2: Table S1). The perceptions of stigma, and benefits of screening, were similar in index patients of cases and contacts.
This case–control study, nested within a RCT of serial contact investigation in 70 Districts throughout Vietnam, characterised the knowledge and attitudes of participants towards TB and contact investigation. A substantial proportion of contacts and index patients identified discrimination against people with TB as an important issue, while most believed that screening contacts for TB was beneficial. Cases were less likely to understand TB as an infectious disease, and misunderstandings about the biology of disease and transmission were common.
For the long-term ambition of global TB elimination to be realized [21], new strategies are needed to substantially enhance case-finding and thereby reduce transmission in the community. Consequently, recent WHO policies have provided a framework for the expansion of TB screening in a range of high-risk populations, including household contacts [6,22]. However, if enhanced case-finding strategies are to be successful, international recommendations must be adapted successfully to local clinical contexts [23]. Consequently, it is important that before ‘scaling up’ new screening programs, National TB programs and local health services should consider how local attitudes towards TB screening are likely to influence their success.
This study has identified a number of important misconceptions about the natural history of TB that are likely to affect attendance. One third of cases believed that they were no longer at risk once the TB patient in their household had completed treatment, and one quarter believed an initial negative test was sufficient to exclude subsequent disease. This reflects a lack of understanding about the nature of latent tuberculous infection, which can frequently lead to tuberculosis months or years after the initial exposure [4]. This is likely to reduce motivation to attend serial screening for disease. For contact investigation programs to achieve high rates of re-screening, participants must be educated about their ongoing risk of disease. This finding emphasizes the importance of National TB Programs delivering clear and accurate information to contacts about their ongoing risk of reactivation in the several years after exposure, at the time of initial screening.
Many contacts were also confused about the way in which TB is transmitted. Over one third of contacts who did not attend their appointment did not believe TB was transmissible. Over 70% of contacts incorrectly believed that sharing utensils or other common property could transmit TB. While these beliefs could heighten their perception of risk and motivate their desire to participate in screening, fear of contagiousness may also lead to discrimination against people with TB and increase their sense of alienation from society. Simple educational interventions to explain the airborne nature of TB transmission can be incorporated into screening programs to combat this misperception.
Importantly, over half of all contacts hold the traditional Vietnamese belief that an ‘exhausted’ form of TB is non-infectious, as previously described [20]. In our focus groups some participants described this form of disease as indicating an intrinsic weakness within a family. This idea, although not biologically accurate, is understandable given the observed household clustering and known genetic risk factors for TB. These attitudes and beliefs may further exacerbate a sense of alienation among affected individuals. It is not surprising that this notion was more common among those who did not attend contact screening than among those who did attend.
Importantly, we found that 45% of Districts required contacts to travel more than 500 m from the District clinic to access external radiology facilities. This is likely to prolong each screening encounter. Similar difficulties accessing clinical services have also been shown to reduce treatment compliance in patients treated for active TB in other settings [24-26]. As over one quarter of contacts in our study lived over 10 km from the screening clinic, consideration should to be given to a more decentralised approach to screening, particularly in rural areas. Another common barrier to attendance was difficulty remembering appointment dates and times. Innovative strategies, such as scheduled mobile phone based prompts using SMS, or written follow-up reminders could provide a simple and effective solution to address this difficulty. Hence, both practical and psychosocial barriers to attendance need to be addressed by the health service, as local contact investigation strategies are developed and scaled-up in Vietnam.
Observations from this study are highly relevant to other comparable high-burden settings where contact investigation is to be implemented. National TB Programs considering implementing or scaling up contact investigation programs may benefit from conducting similar research to identify locally-relevant barriers to implementation. Surveying participants during the early stages of a newly introduced contact investigation program can provide helpful information for health managers, in order to modify screening processes, improve accessibility, refine health promotion materials and focus National TB Program staff training.
A potential limitation of this study was that contacts selected for the study had already enrolled in the main contact investigation study. For both ethical and practical reasons, it is difficult to evaluate the opinions of subjects who are unwilling to enroll in a study. While selection bias may have underestimated the prevalence of perceived barriers to accessing screening among contacts, it is likely to bias effect estimates towards the null. Nonetheless, we identified barriers using both qualitative methods (focus groups) and quantitative approaches in 12 Districts, in 6 provinces, nested within our main study. Consequently, it is likely that these represent important factors common to many potential participants in contact investigation. Hence, our results have been useful in developing resources to improve participation in the main study, and will enhance the expansion of contact investigation in Vietnam.
This study has demonstrated that contacts and patients in Vietnam commonly perceive prejudice against TB, although most participants did not feel this directly affected them. By identifying some important misunderstandings about TB transmission and pathogenesis, we have identified factors that, if addressed, may improve participation and retention in contact investigation programs.
In conclusion, contact investigation is a promising intervention for improving TB case detection. It benefits both individuals and the community. By evaluating the experience of contact investigation from a range of perspectives, TB programs can better understand the way in which their policies operate in practice. These insights can improve the way in which health care is delivered in order to improve the experience of screening participants and strengthen TB control.
TB:
RCT:
The study was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (APP ID 632781). GJF was supported by NHMRC Postgraduate Award (APP ID 571220) and CJ Martin Early Career Fellowship (APP ID 1054107).
Dr Paul Mason and Dr Thu Anh of the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research contributed to reviewing the manuscript.
Additional file 1: Questionnaire for tuberculosis patients and their household contacts.
Additional file 2: Table S1. Knowledge and attitudes among index patients.
GJF, LPL and GBM conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. NVN DNS and WJB participated in its design and coordination and contributed to the manuscript. NTL participated in its coordination and implementation and contributed to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, University of Sydney, 431 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, Sydney, 2037, Australia
Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, Australia
National Lung Hospital, 463 Hoang Hoa Tham Street, Ba Dinh, Hanoi, Vietnam
Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology, University of Sydney, Missenden Road Camperdown, Sydney, 2050, Australia
South Western Sydney Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia
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Home Page Essays The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Essay
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Essay
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to make us aware of the
pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. The story starts off
on a beautiful summer day in a small town. The author describes the day as very
euphoric but strikes a contrast between the atmosphere of the town and the
atmosphere of the people gathered in the square. The atmosphere is subdued,
where the children are “gathered around quietly.”
The black box is the central theme or idea in the story. It symbolizes at
first some type of mystery, but as we read the ending we realize that it is
synonymous with doom. Someone’s fate lies in an inanimate object, the black
box. We do not always enjoy change, even if it might prove beneficial to us.
The box is symbolic of our loathing of change; it is old and splintered showing
that we cling to what is familiar rather than change and it also symbolizes the
traditions of the community. No one in the little town questions the origin of
the black box, but accept it as an intrical part of their lives. There is always
discussion of people getting a new box, but no one ever really goes
through with it. “Everuy year, after the lottery, Mr.Summers began talking
again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade
off without anything’s being done”.
We will write a custom essay on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson specifically for you
The lottery itself is symbolic of the paradox of the human psyche between
compassion on one hand and the thirst for violence and cruelty on the other.
An example of this is when the children are enjoying a break from school,
playing and being children, and suddenly they are being joined by “rational”
adults in stoning a mother to death. It appears that tradition has blinded these
people in an irrational way, making them unable to think of a reason why this
possibly should not be happening.
When forced with the possibility of death, human nature in all its
complexity, comes down to one instinctive urge, that of survival. When Tessie
was in no danger she was gossiping with the other ladies and even encouraged
her husband to go and pick a piece of paper. When Tessie wins the lottery; she
pleads for another chance and screams for mercy. She demands that her
daughters take their chances as well, which is indicative of regression
toward our basic instinct of survival.
The pieces of paper that are lifted away by the breeze is not only symbolic
of the ease with which life can be taken but is also symbolic of vast civilizations
that were doomed to eventual failure for believing in and acting on tradition
and not living according to the word of God. We see that even as Tessie is
being stoned to death does she not question the reasoning behind the lottery,
but why it should be her that has to die.
The story also has some symbolic relevance to when it was written in 1948.
This was a time where a lot of countries were rebuilding there nations due to the
destruction they undertook in World War II. These nations were restructuring
how they handled world problems, and how they ran there own countries.
There was a lot of change after the war; people were not the same because
so many had been affected by it. I think that this story tries to capture some of
that. One example in the book was, “There had been , also, a ritual salute,
which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person
who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until
now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person
approaching.” I feel that this shows that she interpreted the story to what
was going on in the world around her, and how the world was changing so much.
Traditions that people used to feel very strong about were starting to be broken
down by the change in time, and world around them.
READ: Mental Health Specialist Essay
As much as The Lottery symbolizes tradition the driving force through
out the story is sacrifice. The author of the, The Lottery used foreshadowing
and an astounding plot to present a tale about a melancholy sacrifice.
Sacrifice plays a large role in the acute community. It instills a form of
obedience and loyalty towards the morbid tradition. Although tradition changes
over time ; the villagers over all concept of sacrifice is never lost.
Jackson the author of The Lottery uses sacrifice to build an extremely
original plot. Jackson wrote the story as if it were a favorable lottery to through
off the readers consistency and twist the plot. Through out the story the author
leaves helpful hints to make the theme apparent. For example when Jackson
wrote ” Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of rock and the other
boys started to follow his example”, and “eventually made a great pile of stones
in the corner of the square.” This sign of foreshadowing show’s what method
of sacrifice is to be used within the short story.
The town had no other choice than to mastermind the lottery.
In The Lottery Old Man Warner said” Listen to those young folk, nothing’s good
enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in
caves, nobody work any more, live like that for a while.” This quotes intent was
to show how much harder it was for the community to strive while living in caves.
Also while living in caves the public civilization at the time was in ruin. They had
come up with the idea to use a theory brought upon by other communities
around them. Their approach to the theory was to eliminate one individual
annually ;so that their crops would come in. They chose this method of
sacrifice in order to yield themselves from the responsibility and burden
of murder.
Even though the towns lottery has lost all traditional value the sacrificing
has held steadfast. As it says in The Lottery ” although the villagers had
forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remember to use
the rocks.” This quote means that even though their tradition has gone off
course they will always hold to their beliefs about sacrifice. To summarize they
held true to their beliefs because of apprehension. So tradition has
subconsciously made the community unaware of their horrible actions.
The citizens of the village are not afraid of change. They are afraid of
what change will bring. The present community has never known a year
without the lottery or depleted crops. They fear if they if they disband from the
traditional sacrifice their crops will fail. Also their warm safe homes will fade
away and the dampened caves that have become so fictional to them will
appear to be realistic problems.
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Commentary Essays (50) , Ethical Essays (41) , Resilience Essays (16) , Single Parent Essays (9) , Life Changing Experience Essays (8)
Topic: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Essay
Critical essay "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson In "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to make us aware of the pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. The story starts off on a beautiful summer day in a small town. The author describes the day as very euphoric but strikes a contrast between the atmosphere of the town and the atmosphere of the people gathered in the square. The atmosphere is subdued, where the children are "gathered around quietly." The bl
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Canon back to 'Made in Japan'
Robot-run digital camera plant is company's first Japanese mass production site in 10 years
September 09, 2017 03:38 JST
Canon's single-lens reflex cameras. (Photo by Shinya Sawai)
TOKYO -- Canon will build a new digital camera plant in southwestern Japan as part of an effort to bring back production from abroad, the company said Friday.
Many manufacturers have shifted production out of Japan to capitalize on cheaper labor abroad and in the face of a strong yen, which erodes the profitability of exports from the country. Advanced automation technology is seen as key to moving production back home.
The new plant, to be situated in Takanabe, Miyazaki Prefecture, will require an investment of about 23 billion yen ($213 million). Construction is scheduled to begin next August, with a targeted opening a year later.
Canon CEO and Chairman Fujio Mitarai, center, at the signing ceremony of the new plant in Miyazaki.
The facility, largely automated with robots and artificial intelligence, will make single-lens reflex and mirrorless digital cameras. This is the company's first mass production facility to be built in Japan in 10 years or so.
"We had been honing production technologies so we could return [to Japan] in the future," CEO and Chairman Fujio Mitarai said in a press conference Friday evening in Miyazaki, highlighting the company's decade-long automation efforts finally coming to fruition.
Canon positions an Oita Prefecture plant, which Mitarai calls "the brain," as the hub of automation. More than 70% of the processes there are estimated to be handled by robots. The company plans to apply the technological expertise nurtured there to other facilities in Nagasaki Prefecture and elsewhere. The new Miyazaki plant will boast a more complete version of automated facilities.
Many Japanese manufacturers are now focusing on bolstering production at home, as rising labor costs in other parts of Asia make producing abroad less attractive. Even amid the headwind of a strong yen, domestic output supported by robots and AI could yield adequate profits.
In an interview with The Nikkei, Mitarai said the main purpose of shifting production back to Japan is to maintain employment.
"It is vital to enhance production technologies in order to survive the wide swings of foreign exchange rates," he said, noting that the company now makes around 40% of digital-camera models in automated facilities and seeks to expand this to all models by around 2020.
Canon currently makes 64-65% of its cameras in Japan, and the new plant will raise the figure to around 70% Mitari indicated, adding that the remaining 30% are entry-level models. The electronics company had previously made high-end models in Japan, and the mid-range varieties are now coming back home. "The technologies we have now enable us to generate enough profit even when the forex rate is 100 yen per dollar," he said.
Manufacturers around the world are taking similar steps. Sportswear maker Adidas, for instance, is building cutting-edge automated plants in the U.S. and its home country of Germany to move some production from Asia.
Because of the high level of precision required, digital cameras is a segment that has generally lagged in automating production. Canon appears to be the only manufacturer that widely employs mechanized processes.
(Nikkei)
Lucio Tan tightens control over Philippine Airlines amid succession talks
Indonesia seeks lead in global modest-fashion industry
Young Muslims are injecting new glamour into modest wear
India aborts moon mission launch citing technical glitch
Canon adding new camera plant as production returns to Japan
Japan's Nidec to sell factory automation robots
'Made in Japan' resurges as Asia labor costs grow
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My Latest for Lowy: “On the Contemporary China-Wilhelmine Germany Analogy, part 1: Similarities”
Posted on March 12, 2014 by Robert E Kelly
There is so much analogizing of contemporary China to Wilhelmine Germany (here’s yet another one), that I thought a longer treatment would be in order. I wrote this originally for the Lowy Institute, whose blog I write for. I like this post, as I feel like it takes a widely thrown-around, yet poorly elaborated meme and fleshes it out. Part 2 will go up in a week or so. And yes, I know that the German flag in the pic is the modern one of the FRG, not the old black-white-red. But I couldn’t find the two of them together…
Here’s that essay:
“Contemporary China is frequently analogized to pre-1914 Wilhelmine Germany. A host of commentators have made this comparison in the past few years: Walter Russell Mead, Martin Wolf, Edward Luttwak, and Joseph Nye, and a little further afield, Gideon Rachman, and Victor David Hansen. Similarly, it is often suggested in these analogies that East Asia today is like Europe before WWI; one famous formulation has it that ‘Asia’s future will be Europe’s past.’
So in this and my next post, I want to examine the China-Germany analogy in some detail. In brief, I think the comparisons are enticing, particularly because it is hard to find a good analogy of a ‘peaceful rise,’ as China, until recently at least, seemed to be pursuing. That is, we use Germany 1914 as an analogy in part, because we can’t find others that seem to China fit well, and we routinely use analogical reasoning in social science to improve our understanding. But I also think the contrasts are stark enough that the predictive value of the analogy is weak. Ideally, this would be pursued more seriously as a full-blown research paper, so to any graduate students reading, this is a nice IR project with an Asian empirical focus.
Here are the four major variables that seem to drive the analogy:
1. Both are encircled.
Germany in 1914 bordered eight countries. To be sure, several of them – such as Denmark or Luxembourg – were weak, but further afield were France, Russia, Italy, and Britain. When I studied in Germany in the 1990s, my history professor at the time referred to this as the ‘iron circle’ (Eisener Kreis). Germany was sealed in, with hostile, or at best suspicious, states all around it. Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were weak, collapsing allies at best, whose great power status depended much on German insistence that were in fact still great powers.
China today too is encased by hostile and semi-hostile states. For all its power, China today, like Germany then, has few friends on its periphery; indeed it has few friends at all. It borders fourteen other states directly, with maritime proximity to four others. Like Germany, many of these states are weak, such as Mongolia or Kyrgyzstan. But then there’s Russia, India, Japan, plus South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. That is an extraordinarily tough roster should those states coalesce into a counter-Chinese balancing coalition. Indeed, if there is one thing I hear repeatedly from my Chinese grad students, it is not that China will dominate Asia in a ‘neo-tribute system,’ per Japanese and American fears, but that China is encircled and harried by foreigners.
2. Both are growing fast.
Thucydides’ famous explanation for the Peloponnesian War was Athens’ rapid growth and the fear that inspired in the Aegean (1.23). Both Germany and China are similar.
Wilhelmine Germany was growing more rapidly and intensively than its neighbors in the decades after German unification (1871). That industrialization was also in the heavy industry, chemical, and scientific sectors that feed directly into German hard power. By 1900 is reasonable to guess that Germany would have won a one-on-one conflict with any power on the continent. And ultimately even America was required to defeat it in the war.
China too is growing rapidly, and not just in erratic spurts like boom-and-bust emerging markets, but in a sustained manner over decades now. Its modernization is the most remarkable story in the history of development. Even its reduced current 7-8% growth is five times Japan’s GDP expansion rate and three times America’s. We often hear that countries like the BRICS, Turkey, Indonesia and so on, are the ‘powers of tomorrow.’ But unlike the vague potential of these other states, China is a major power now. It is pulling away from the rest. Asia is already bipolar and tilting toward unipolarity, and the international system as a whole will be bipolar soon too, as China catches up to the US. Indeed, it is now arguably a category error to include China with the other BRICS.
3. Nationalism and Grievance
German nationalism clearly played a role in both sparking WWI and convincing many neighbors that WWI was not a ‘European civil war,’ but a German bid for regional hegemony. (This debate is captured in the ‘Fischer controversy.’) The extreme character of Wilhelmine nationalism is famously captured in films and novels as the Blue Angel and All Quiet on the Western Front. The Kaiser had notoriously declared that Germany needed ‘its place in the sun,’ and Mitteuropa hegemony was bandied about as a German WWI war aim.
China too has grown increasingly nationalist and driven by perceived grievance. The end of the Cold War and the repression of Tiananmen Square ended communism as a legitimating ideology of the regime. In its place has arisen Han nationalism bolstered by ‘patriotic education,’ plus a victimization ideology built around the ‘century of humiliation’ of China by Japan and the West. Chinese power, under the leadership of the party, is to reverse that.
4. Growth of Military Power
This is probably the most obvious parallel to many. Germany went from division in 1870 to nearly conquering the continent in less than fifty years. Two massive conflicts in which Germany was effectively gang-tackled by enormous anti-German coalitions were needed to finally break German military power – and China is so much larger than Germany ever was.
China too is a rapidly growing military power. It has more soldiers under arms than any other state (around 2.3 million). It is the second largest defense spender after the US. Its navy plans to deploy aircraft carriers as well as operate beyond the ‘first island chain’ and into the Indian Ocean. It is widely thought that China’s tough line in the South China Sea and with Japan over its air defense identification zone are the result of military muscle flexing. So central is this emerging challenge to US dominance in the western Pacific, that the US Congress requires an annual report from the US Defense Department on China’s military (2013 version here).
The predictive question from these similarities is thus, will China launch a break-out conflict to fracture encirclement as Germany did? I don’t think so, because there are enough strong contrasts, elucidated in my next post, which badly damage the analogy’s predictive power.
In brief, I see three contrasts that aren’t often mentioned in the currently fashionable Germany = China essays:
A) Culture – China may be so different from Germany in mores and habits that that undermines the analogy. Specifically, it is often argued that China has a cultural predilection for defense, thereby invalidating the German 1914 offensive analogy.
B) Learning – It is often said that China has learned from Wilhelmine Germany, and the USSR, not to rise as a belligerent and provoke an encircling coalition as they both did.
C) Nuclear Weapons – There has been no inter-great power war since 1945, many believe, because of the powerful deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. So Germany 1914-style aggression is extraordinarily unlikely, not just by China, but by any power.
Part 2 is here.
This entry was posted in China, Europe, International Relations Theory, Political Theory by Robert E Kelly. Bookmark the permalink.
17 thoughts on “My Latest for Lowy: “On the Contemporary China-Wilhelmine Germany Analogy, part 1: Similarities””
Andrew Logie on March 13, 2014 at 1:57 am said:
Thanks for this post: useful to this European who is now less familiar with European history than East Asian!
On a personal blog-commentor level, I do not believe that China will seek to aggressively expand further than consolidating what it regards as its traditional territory (which ironically – or not – was largely carved out by the Manchu Qing), i.e. Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. Where things might become potentially more hazy, is Mongolia and northern Korea, but only under something like WWIII circumstances (i.e. if everything was reshaping itself) and once it has at least regained Taiwan.
Otherwise, there aren’t many directions in which China could expand ala continental European powers, because it is already so expansive. And, although it has a very large population, it still has enough space within its territory.
Chinese nationalism (as far as I know) is only strongly directed against Japan (as the West is too far way), and perhaps a little India and Vietnam. It could serve for a brief war against Japan, but not really in the name of territorial aggrandizement.
Also perhaps, aside from nuclear weapons, in the current era mega-states can get by much better with economic imperialism – the globalization argument – and this seems to be China’s preference.
Both separately and slightly related: I wonder if Russia’s actions in Crimea may set a precedent for how China could react towards a North Korea meltdown (IF it ever happens). In analysis there are probably more differences than similarities – they lack the ethnic and historical claims for a start – but the actual operation and boldness to act.
Robert E Kelly on March 13, 2014 at 2:54 pm said:
That’s very good, and I think you should write that up more fully – China as a regionally limited revisionist. My sense is that that is also true. I think hawks would reply that as China’s power grows though, so will it’s appetites. The US is dominant in the Western Hemisphere, but is not content to stay there – getting involved in the Middle East and Asia a lot too.
Nelson on March 15, 2014 at 1:04 am said:
I liked your post, it’s a classic political science analysis based on the Western traditions of balance of power that makes the analogy in detail.
I also recently saw another American political scientist making the argument that in East Asia the foreign policy tradition was for China to dominate (I think it was David Kang). And that in East Asia the likelier outcome is for China to dominate and the surrounding countries to quietly acquiesce. A return to the old China-centered world order.
I personally think that David Kang’s reading of eastern Asian history is right except for 2 countries. Mongolia and Japan are two countries that historically refused to play ball with imperial China’s hierarchical world order. Thus these two countries have a strong possibility of sticking with Western concepts of equality of sovereign states. (In which case your analogy really works well.)
I guess the future will tell, whether we continue with the Western international system or countries in eastern Asia start to revert to the older China-centered international system.
Robert E Kelly on March 15, 2014 at 10:46 am said:
Lowy has already published part 2: http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/03/13/Comparing-China-and-the-Kaisers-Germany-Differences.aspx
I know Dave Kang pretty well and the China book. The problem is that China and its neighbors today may be so different that the old forms of informal Sinic authority don’t work. Specifically, Asians have drunk in Hegel deep. They are statists and nationalists, and frequently that nationalism has a sharp race element. All that tells me that China’s neighbors are far more likely to resist Chinese hegemony today than in the past.
Nelson on March 15, 2014 at 11:18 pm said:
I just read your part 2 and I completely agree with your 3rd point in particular: nuclear weapons. I also want to agree with you on your comment above: that Asians may be too nationalistic to accept Chinese hegemony quietly. I certainly hope that’s the case in SE Asia. (Since S Korea seems to be courting ties with China, S Korea might be betting on both China and US, and switch to whoever is stronger when the time comes.)
On another topic I’m not too sure if I agree completely with the peaceful China thesis that you and Kang seem to agree on.
For this my reference is Ming China’s sudden transformation from an inward looking war-averting founder, Emperor Hongwu (1368-1398), to an outward looking conquest oriented 3rd Emperor, Emperor Yongle (1402-1424). The idea that Han China was always peace-loving is just, er, wrong.
The problem with the Chinese imperial system or the current Communist political dictatorship is that their decision making process is opaque and we can’t tell when they will change policy.
Deng Xiaoping declared “peaceful rise” to be Chinese policy and they have maintained that since 1979. But the earlier policy of Mao Zedong was foreign interventionism (definitely N Korea, India, Vietnam, possibly Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang) and we can’t tell if (or when in the case of South China Sea) they might revert to that.
Robert E Kelly on March 16, 2014 at 9:30 am said:
Alastair Iain Johnston says the same in his book Cultural Realism – basically that China is not different than anyone else. When they had the offensive advantage, they warred. But I still think the question of how much imperial China’s legacy affects today post-communist, neo-nationalist China is open. They are so different.
Keith Law on March 16, 2014 at 10:55 pm said:
This was a very useful and interesting post. I feel that the most important divergence is in the cultural differences between the 2 societies, in particular I do not get the impression that China has the near worship of all things military that pervaded Wilhelmine Germany, especially amonst the upper strata.
I certainly can see regional tensions being ratchetted up over resources in the South China Sea
Robert E Kelly on March 17, 2014 at 12:32 pm said:
Thanks. Yes, I think that is right. That’s a good insight, and I say something similar in part 2: http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/03/13/Comparing-China-and-the-Kaisers-Germany-Differences.aspx
Pingback: The Contemporary China–Wilhelmine Germany Analogy, part 2: Differences | Robert Kelly — Asian Security Blog
A.I.Schmelzer on April 15, 2014 at 11:07 pm said:
Recent Russian actions may change the situation here.
Due to blowback over the Crimean situation, Russia will align with China more strongly, which will create certain synergies for China and allow it to focus its energies away from its most militarily powerfull neighbour.
Secondly, one should not overlook that Russia, working in tridem with Vietnam and India, did its own competing “mini containment” of China. This was especially usefull for Vietnam, since it allowed Vietnam to somewhat align with the USA without appearing pro American.
While decision making in Hanoi is pretty opaque, it is not unreasonable to assume that the willingness of Hanoi to be part of a anti Chinese coalition is predicated on the existence of a modicum of tension between Moscow and Beijing. It is also possible that closer Russian/Chinese cooperation may result in a generous treaty for Hanoi (with Russia adding some resource sweeteners for Beijing).
This would remove a potential thorn in the side for Beijing, lift a huge weight of Hanoi, and allow Moscow to be peacemaker while retaining influence in Vietnam, without having to abandon a treaty ally.
Resource concessions from Russia to China will propably happen anyway, meaning that this kind of deal has considerable “win win” characteristics for all involved parties.
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Modelling Future Changes in Surface Ozone: a Parameterized Approach
Submitter: Bergmann, D., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Chuang, C., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Area of Research: Aerosol Processes
Working Group(s): Aerosol Life Cycle
Journal Reference: Wild O, AM Fiore, DT Shindell, RM Doherty, WJ Collins, FJ Dentener, MG Schultz, S Gong, IA MacKenzie, G Zeng, P Hess, DJ Bergmann, S Szopa, JE Jonson, TJ Keating, and A Zuber. 2012. "Modelling future changes in surface ozone: a parameterized approach." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 12(4), 10.5194/acp-12-2037-2012.
Sensitivity of regional surface O3 in 2050 to the atmospheric CH4 abundance under each of the RCP scenarios. Circles mark the ensemble mean surface O3 response under each scenario, and curves show how this would change under different levels of CH4. Dashed lines mark CH4 and surface O3 for year 2000.
Increases in anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors are believed to make a substantial contribution to the rising levels of surface ozone (O3) observed at many long-term measurement stations over past decades. As a strong oxidant detrimental to human health and damaging to plant growth and crop yields, surface O3 contributes to poor air quality and to economic and environmental damage. Understanding the reasons for its growth presents a considerable challenge, as the balance of natural and anthropogenic, regional and global changes contributing to its growth varies greatly over the globe and remains poorly characterized. It remains unclear how regional emission controls aimed at reducing surface O3 may be offset by global “background” O3 increases, by changes in the abundance of longer-lived O3 precursors such as methane (CH4), or by changes in chemical processing or transport driven by future shifts in climate. This study explores the contribution of changes in anthropogenic O3 precursor emissions to changes in the regional and global abundance of surface O3. It describes a simple approach to quantify surface O3 changes based on regional precursor emission changes derived from global chemical transport model simulations from a recent model intercomparison. This is applied to past and future emission scenarios to explore the range of surface O3 responses expected over different parts of the world and to provide a source attribution for these changes.
Under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), the task force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (HTAP) was established to develop a fuller understanding of the transport of a range of key air pollutants over intercontinental scales. A series of multi-model intercomparison experiments was coordinated by HTAP to provide a consistent quantification of intercontinental source-receptor relationships between major industrialised regions. Among those models was the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's IMPACT model (Dan Bergmann, supported at that time by DOE's ASP program). All global and regional models of atmospheric chemistry and transport were run with 2001 meteorological conditions and with best estimates of natural and anthropogenic emissions and a specified atmospheric abundance of CH4 (1760 ppb), and these provided monthly mean distributions of O3 and aerosol and their precursors for the year. A simulation with 20% reduced atmospheric concentrations of CH4 was performed to determine the impacts of CH4 abundance on O3 in each model, and this was followed by a further series of runs with 20% reductions in annual anthropogenic emissions of the main O3 precursors, nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), individually and together, over each of the four main continental scale regions of interest in turn. For the present study, an additional set of four runs were defined with 20% global emission reductions for each precursor so that the effects of emission changes outside the four HTAP regions, the Rest-of-World response, can be considered.
In this study we use model results from the HTAP intercomparisons to quantify the impact of a realistic range of changes in anthropogenic precursor emissions on surface O3 on a global, regional, and sub-regional basis. The approach involves scaling surface O3 responses derived from 20% emission reductions by the fractional emission change for a given emission scenario over each region for each precursor.
This study describes a simple parameterization for estimating regional surface O3 changes based on changes in regional anthropogenic emissions of NOx, CO, and VOCs and in global CH4 abundance using results from 14 independent global chemical transport models that contributed results to the HTAP model intercomparison. The approach successfully reproduces regional O3 changes through the year compared with full model simulations from a range of different models under conditions where precursor emissions do not deviate too greatly (typically ±60 %) from those of the present day. While not replacing the need for full model simulations, the approach allows the effects of different emission scenarios to be explored and thus allows identification of scenarios of particular interest for further study. The study reveals the increasing importance of limiting atmospheric methane growth as emissions of other precursors are controlled, but highlights differences in modeled ozone responses to methane changes of as much as a factor of two, indicating that this remains a major uncertainty in current models.
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Home / Projects/Reports / Crane Co. Financial Analysis
Crane Co. Financial Analysis
Projects/Reports 226 Views
Crane Co. Financial Analysis – Introduction
Crane Co. is an engineered manufacturing products manufacturer. Crane Co. has four main units, comprising Fluid Handling, Payment and Merchandising Technologies, Aerospace and Electronics, and Engineered Materials. Crane Co.’s target customers are chemical, power, oil and gas, aerospace and defense, as well as a wide array of wide-ranging industrial companies.
“The Fluid Handling segment provides engineered fluid handling equipment, including Process Valves and Related Products, Commercial Valves and Other Products. Process Valves and Related Products includes on/off valves and related products for various applications in the chemical, oil and gas, power and general industrial end markets globally” (Crane Co. – Fluid Handling).
“The Payment & Merchandising Technologies segment includes Crane Payment Innovations (CPI) and Merchandising Systems. The Company’s CPI provides payment acceptance products to various markets, including retail self-checkout, vending, casino gaming, government lotteries, parking, transit fare collection, payment kiosks, and banking. Products for these markets include coin acceptors and dispensers, coin hoppers, coin recyclers, bill validators, bill recyclers and cashless systems” (Crane Co. – Payment & Merchandising Technologies).
“The Aerospace & Electronics segment supplies various components and systems, including original equipment and aftermarket parts, primarily for the commercial aerospace and military aerospace, and defense markets. Its brands include Hydro-Aire, ELDEC, Lear Romec, P.L. Porter, Keltec, Interpoint, Signal Technology, Merrimac Industries, and Polyflon.
Products include a range of custom designed, engineered products used in landing systems, sensing and utility systems, fluid management, seat actuation, power and microelectronic applications and microwave systems. Its products are sold directly to aircraft manufacturers, commercial Tier 1 integrators,(companies which make products specifically for an aircraft manufacturer) defense and space prime contractors, airlines, government agencies, including the United States Department of Defense, foreign allied defense organizations, aircraft seat manufacturers and aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) organizations” (Crane Co. – Aerospace & Electronics).
“The Engineered Materials segment manufactures fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) panels and coils, primarily for use in the manufacturing of recreational vehicles (RVs), truck bodies, truck trailers, with additional applications in commercial and industrial buildings. Engineered Materials segment sells its products directly to RV, trailer, and truck manufacturers, and it uses distributors and retailers to serve the commercial and industrial construction markets” (Crane Co. – Engineered Materials).
The company employs over eleven thousand employees in twenty-six countries. Crane Co.’s main manufacturing plants are spread over in America, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. Its main consumer markets are in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Middle East as well as continental Europe.
Formerly known as R. T. Crane Brass and Bell Foundry, the company was founded on July 4, 1855, by its creator Richard Teller Crane in Chicago. The founder, R. T. Crane, was very passionate about the significance of business moral principles and standards, the confidence and benevolence they stimulate amongst company workers and clients, and the competitive advantage of taking the high road.
His sentiments continue to drive Crane Co.’s business values and serve as a point of reference by which the company measures its performance to date. From the start, the founder pledged to run the company “in the strictest honesty and fairness; to avoid all deception and trickery; to deal fairly with both customers and competitors; to be liberal and just towards employees and to put my whole mind upon the business” (Crane Co.- History).
Additionally, the founder “committed to place the comfort, health, and safety of the company workers foremost in his mind, and for that, he earned their respect and admiration. These guiding principles propagated by the founder have formed the bedrock of the company’s culture and have helped the business through times of peace and prosperity as well as through war, social unrest, and economic instability (Crane Co.- History).”
Through the years, the company has grown from small business to become a leading global manufacturer. Additionally, the company has undergone numerous structural changes mainly driven by the many acquisitions that the company has undertaken.
The Company reports its fiscal outcomes in harmony with U.S. accepted accounting principles (GAAP). On the other hand, management considers that “non-GAAP financial processes, which exclude specific non-recurring items, present additional useful comparisons between current results and results in prior operating periods, providing investors with a more unobstructed view of the underlying trends of the business. Management also uses these non-GAAP financial measures in making commercial, operating, planning and compensation decisions and in evaluating the Company’s performance (Crane Co.- History).”
In the recent past, Crane Co. has announced its intention to acquire Boston based Crane & Co. Inc. (“Crane Currency”) at an estimated $800 Million. Founded in 1801, Crane Currency is a forerunner in “advanced micro-optic security technology and a fully integrated supplier of secure and highly engineered banknotes for central banks all over the world (Crane Co.- History).” The purchase price represents approximately 8.5 times Crane Currency’s estimated 2017 adjusted EBITDA of $94 million.
While making the announcement, current President and Chief Executive Officer of Crane Co. Mr. Max Mitchell said “We are extremely excited to announce this transaction, which will be Crane Co.’s second largest ever, and brings together two companies with nearly 380 years of combined history. Crane Currency is the fastest growing, fully integrated global currency provider in the growing global banknote supply and security industry. Making it part of Crane Co. is a logical extension of our expanding presence in the currency and payment markets. Our combined businesses will be able to offer end-to-end currency and security solutions, from substrate manufacturing and banknote design and printing to micro-optics and banknote validation (Crane Co.- About Us). ”
According to the Crane Co.’s President and C.E.O., the planned acquisition meets all of Crane Co.’s strategic and financial criteria for acquirements and provides the company with a path to a more than 10% adjusted annual growth for the next couple of years.
The acquisition of Crane Currency is subject to regulatory endorsements and normal acquisition conditions. “Crane Co. intends to finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand and additional debt. Commitments are in place to cover 100 percent of the financing needs in order to facilitate the closing of the transaction, which is expected to take place early in the first quarter of 2018 (Crane Co.- About Us).”
The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) classifies Crane Co. with code 333249, while the Standard Industrial System (SIC) classifies Crane Co. with code 3999. Additionally, the International Standard Industrial System (ISIC) classifies Crane Co. with the code 2829, which a classification reserved for companies that manufacture specialized purpose machinery (NAICS).
The 333249 as defined by the NAICS is granted to companies primarily “engage in the manufacture of industrial machinery except agricultural and farm-type; construction and mining machinery; food manufacturing-type machinery; semiconductor making machinery; sawmill, woodworking, and papermaking machinery; and printing machinery and equipment” (NAICS)
Products, Markets, and Customers
Crane Co. manufactures a wide range of products for various markets and customers. The company’s product range is used in almost all parts of the globe, and the customers range from government institutions, manufacturing plants, to individual consumers. It is said that “you cannot run a railroad or build a dam, operate a paper mill or lay a sewer, dig an oil well or heat a hospital, or launch a battleship or even take a shower without using one of the more than 40,000-odd products that are made by Crane Co” (Crane Co. – About Us). The observation sums up the company’s product range. Crane Co.’s products are present in almost all areas of infrastructure development. The company’s products are manufactured in the four main units that specialize in different product segments.
The fluid handling segment manufactures liquid handling equipment, mainly consisting of various types of valves and related products. Manufacturing factories and service centers for these products are spread across America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. “Its brands include Stockham, Wask, Viking Johnson, IAT, Hattersley, NABIC, Sperryn, Wade, Rhodes, and Brownall. Manufacturing locations are located in the United Kingdom, and China, with additional sales offices in continental Europe and the Middle East and distribution facilities located throughout Canada.
Other Products includes pumps and related products for water and wastewater applications in the industrial, municipal, commercial, and military markets, primarily in the United States. Products are sold under the trade names Deming, Weinman, Burks, and Barnes. Facilities are located in the United States, Canada, and China” (Crane Co. – Fluid Handling)
The payment and merchandising technologies segment provide payment solutions to various markets. The planned acquisition of Crane Currency is expected to boost this unit and lead to enhanced revenues for Crane Co. Current product line includes “a range of vending equipment that dispenses food, snack, and hot and cold beverages. Other solutions include vending management software, cashless payment products, and wireless connectivity to enable its customers to operate their businesses. Primary customers include vending operators and food and beverage companies, primarily in the United States and Europe. Facilities are located in the United States and the United Kingdom” (Crane Co. – Payment & Merchandising Technologies)
Another critical segment of Crane Co.’s product line is the aerospace and electronics unit. This section manufactures products mainly for the commercial and military airspace machinery in addition to defense technology products. “Products include a range of custom designed, engineered products used in landing systems, sensing and utility systems, fluid management, seat actuation, power and microelectronic applications and microwave systems. Its products are sold directly to aircraft manufacturers, commercial Tier 1 integrators defense and space prime contractors, airlines, government agencies, including the United States Department of Defense, foreign allied defense organizations, aircraft seat manufacturers and aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) organizations. Facilities are located in the United States, Taiwan, and France” (Crane Co. – Aerospace & Electronics).
The last segment of Crane Co.’s product manufacturing units is the engineered materials unit. “The Engineered Materials segment manufactures fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) panels and coils, primarily for use in the manufacturing of recreational vehicles (RVs), truck bodies, truck trailers, with additional applications in commercial and industrial buildings. Engineered Materials segment sells its products directly to RV, trailer, and truck manufacturers, and it uses distributors and retailers to serve the commercial and industrial construction markets. Manufacturing facilities are located in the United States” (Crane Co. – Engineered Materials)
From the Crane Co.’s wide range of products, the company has positioned itself as a global leader in industrial, and technology solutions. The vast and ever-increasing manufacturing and industrial sector across the globe provides Crane Co. with a guaranteed market for its products. It is however critical that the company continues to invest in innovation of new and market-driven products so as to remain competitive.
Concentration Structure
Globally, the typical Industrial Machinery and Equipment industry is made up of companies that manufacture power and hand tools, small-scale machinery, and other industrial components. Crane Co. falls into this category of businesses. Highly industrialized regions that include North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia provide the main market for products manufactured by these companies.
The average revenue for industrial machinery and equipment manufacturers experienced a 12.7 percent drop in the year 2016. The decline resulted from suspended investment decisions by customers from outlet sectors like construction and energy.
Typical Operating Cost Structure
The conventional operating cost structure for the NAICS Code 333249 – Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing is best described by analyzing a review of a vertical common-size income statement for the last three years. As is common with firms that are in the manufacturing sector, the cost of goods is the primary business cost.
From the gathered data, gross profit has been increasing in the last three years. The figures indicate profit margins of 34.77 percent in 2014, 34.81 percent in 2015, and 36.02 percent in 2016. Relative to cost of goods, operating costs have been shifting parallel to the cost of goods sold. In 2014, the operating costs were at 23.93 percent, 2015, 21.20 percent, and 28.73 percent in 2016. All other expenses for the three-year period have remained mostly unchanged at less than 1 percent of the net sales for each year.
As seen in the data, profit before tax has been mostly inconsistent at 9.64 percent in 2014, 12.28 percent in 2015, and 5.97 percent in 2016. The up and down shift is mainly attributed to increased taxation form the government on large enterprises created by the adoption of a new taxation policy.
Typical Asset Structure
The standard operating cost structure for the NAICS Code 333249 – Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing is best described by analyzing a review of a vertical common-size income statement for the last three years. The norm in the industry is that a majority share of the total company assets comprises of the trade receivables, the inventory, as well as the fixed assets.
From the available data, the trade receivables remained increased slightly in 2015 as compared to 2014 and declined somewhat in 2016 as compared to 2015. In 2014, the gross receivables stood at 12.05 percent. In 2015, the total receivables increased slightly to 12.06 percent and then decreased to 11.78 percent in 2016. An almost similar trend is observed in the inventories. In 2014, the stocks represented 10.71 percent of total assets. In 2015, the inventories rose slightly to 11.29 percent and then declined to 9.99 percent if total assets in 2016. Inverse to this, data shows an increasing trend in cash and equivalents at 10.04 percent, 10.89 percent, and 14.88 percent of total assets in 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively.
Net fixed assets, less construction in progress, have fluctuated with a relatively small margin from 8.41 percent, to 8.27 percent, and 8.14 percent for the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 in that order. Net tangible assets make up comparatively small fraction of total assets; however, a relatively substantial downward drift is observed with net intangibles making 44.77 percent, 44.50 percent, and 41.75 percent for the years 2014, 2015, and 2015 respectively.
Long-term debts make up a comparatively small percentage of total liabilities with figures indicating a 21.71 percent, 22.31 percent, and 21.74 percent representation of total liabilities in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. On the other hand, accounts payable represent 6.63 percent, 6.69 percent, and 6.51 percent of total liabilities in the years 2014, 205, and 2016 respectively. The difference between the total assets and the total liabilities represents the total equity, which stands at 30.71 percent in 2014, 34.15 percent in 2015, and 33.07 percent in 2016.
External Influences
Several external factors continue to affect the mechanical and industrial parts manufacturing sector. A broad analysis of these factors reveals that the industry has been positively impacted in the recent past. The positive impact has, in turn, led to the growth of the sector in both developed and developing countries.
The introduction of regulations to limit environmental by most nations as well as the backing of clean energy sources have positively impacted the industry’s growth, especially in developed countries. The growth has been the result of an increased demand for industrial products needed to develop the clean energy solutions. Additionally, the rapid global population and economic growth experienced in the last few decades has increased the demand for energy and freshwater sources. The increase in demand for energy and clean water has, in turn, generated an increased demand for mechanical and industrial products used in the exploration, production, and distribution of energy and fresh water, consequently leading to a growth of the mechanical and industrial parts manufacturing sector.
Major Competitor
Among other, Dover Corporation is a significant competitor of Crane Co. in the mechanical and industrial products manufacturing sector. Like Crane Co., Dover Corporation has four main product segments.
The Energy segment of Dover Corporation deals “provides customers with solutions and services that ensure the safe and efficient exploration, production and processing of fuels globally. The unit focuses mainly on bearings, compression components, as well as automation markets” (Dover Corporation). The Engineered Systems segment of Dover Corporation is a “market leader in the design, manufacture, and servicing of critical equipment and components that serve the fast moving consumer goods market, digital textile printing, vehicle servicing, environmental solutions as well as industrial end markets” (Dover Corporation). The third segment of Dover Corporation’s product line is the Fluids unit. The fluids unit focuses “on the safe handling of critical fluids across the retail fueling, chemical, hygienic, oil & gas and industrial end-markets” (Dover Corporation). The final unit of the company’s product line is the Refrigeration and Food Equipment segment. The unit is a leading market provider of “innovative and energy efficient equipment and systems serving the commercial Refrigeration and Food Equipment end markets” (Dover Corporation).
Dover Corporation attributes its success in the global market to its ability to combine its global presence with operational agility. The company, which has been operation for approximately 60 years, employs close to 29,000 workers, who have been trained and nurtured to take an ownership mindset and to collaborate with customers to achieve success for the company. With its headquarters in Downers Grove, Illinois, Dover Corporation trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the name “DOV.”
The company’s revenue has been on an up and down shift in the last three years. Available figures indicate that Dover Corporation has revenues of $7,752,758, $6,956,311, and $6,794,342 for the periods of 2014, 2015, 2016 respectively. The company’s return on average equity has experienced similar upward and downward shifts. The company reported a return on average equity of 17.1 percent in 2014, 23.7 percent in 2015, and 13.7 percent in 2017. During the same three-year period, the Dover Corporation’s net profit margin was 7.49 percent, 12.50 percent, and 10.0 percent for 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively.
Areas of Significant Change, Development, or Growth
According to a study published by the Global Markets Insights, the industrial machinery market is set to reach an estimated $771.59 Billion by the year 2024 (Global Market Insights Inc.). Although the industry seems to have reached its maturity stage, changes brought about by government regulations across the globe have led to a renewed growth pattern.
Growth in both the global population and economic stability has led to an increased demand for environmentally friendly energy as well as clean water. This need for clean energy and water has stirred industrial machinery sector growth, especially in the developing nations (Misthal et al.). This demand has, in turn, spurred an increase in industrial machinery and industrial machinery parts. As such, manufacturing companies are witnessing a growth in terms of market and sales. One of the fastest growing demand creators is the Heating Ventilation, Air Conditioning (HV AC) sector. Climate change has resulted in warmer temperatures across the globe, and as such, the demand for HV AC equipment is on the rise.
In recent times, more and more companies in the industrial machinery sector are shifting their manufacturing operations from high operational cost regions like the United States and Europe to the lower-cost areas like China, Brazil, and India. Additionally, regulatory support in terms of tax reliefs is influencing the movement.
As a result of the changing consumer lifestyles, more people are opting for packed foods. This will ultimately push the demand for food processing and preservation machinery and consequently affect the industrial machinery manufacturing sector positively.
Corporate Mission and Goals
Crane Co. engages in the manufacture of engineered industrial products. Crane Co. operates four segments including Fluid Handling, Payment and Merchandising Technologies, Aerospace and Electronics, and Engineered Systems.
The company “employees share a proud 150-year-plus history of doing business the right way, treating people fairly, dealing honestly and ethically with customers, suppliers, and shareholders, and working hard to meet or exceed the expectations of customers. They also share a fascinating history of innovation dating from the early years of the Industrial Revolution to the current era of technology-driven product development and improvement” (Crane Co. – About Us). To date, the company is guided by the business principles of the founder which he established more than a hundred and fifty years ago.
Additionally, the company is dedicated to the highest degree of business ethics. Within that context, Crane Co.’s objective is to enhance Economic Value Added (EVA) by continuously transitioning to become a more integrated operating company. Crane Co. endeavors to “create value for all our stakeholders with a highly disciplined approach to materially strengthening our businesses through successful implementation of the Crane Business System, through strategic linkages among our businesses, and through utilization of strong free cash flow for strategic acquisitions” (Crane Co. – About Us).
Using the Crane Business System, Crane Co. “builds global networks of people and solutions with reliable quality, delivery, and cost that generate profitable organic growth across the globe.” The company utilizes the Crane Business System to “evaluate and reward people, create annual plans, implement strategy deployment processes, visually manage results in factories and offices, and link value streams. (Crane Co.- Crane Business System)”
Crane Co. Ratio Analysis
Liquidity Analysis
The liquidity analysis helps to determine a company’s liquidity ratio. The quick ratio is a reflection of a company’s ability to meet its obligations without necessarily having to offload inventories from its current assets (Elmerraji). A company with a very high liquidity level is not attractive to investors. In the same manner, a company with very low liquidity levels is also not attractive to investors.
Very high liquidity levels suggest that the company has very few fixed assets and inventories, which ultimately means the company is a high-risk business. On the other hand, very low liquidity levels mean that the business has cash flow problems and may not be able to cater for operational costs. The ideal liquidity level therefore is one that is neither too high, nor too low in relation to the company’s fixed assets.
According to available data, Crane Co.’s quick ratio stands at 0.18 against Dover Corporation’s ratio of 0.18. The higher the liquidity ratio, the better a company is doing liquidity wise. As such, in comparison to its competitor, Cover Corporation, Crane Co. share the same liquidity ratio thus they are operating at the same liquidity level.
When compared to the average industry quick ratio of 3.26, then Crane Co.’s ratio is significantly lower. This difference means that there are more companies within the industry with much higher liquidity levels.
Long-Term Debt Analysis
The long-term debt analysis is the ratio between total long-term debts or liabilities in compared to a company’s assets (Elmerraji). As per the provided data, the overall long-term debt for Crane Co. stands at 13.87 while that of Dover Corporation stands at 13.65. The analysis reveals that Crane Co. has utilized more borrowed resources to acquire assets as compared to Dover Corporation.
The average industry ration is 12.94 percent meaning that Crane Co.’s debt to equity ratio is slightly higher as compared to other companies in the industrial manufacturing industry. However, this higher long-term debt to equity ratio can be explained by Crane Co.’s high fraction of total long-term assets.
The profitability analysis ratio is a reflection of a company’s overall efficiency and performance(Elmerraji). The profitability analysis is a vital feature of a company’s fiscal report that potential investors look before deciding to invest in a company. Crane Co.’s profitability analysis reveals that the company is operating at a 36.02 percent profit level. On the other hand, Dover Corporation is running at a slightly higher profit level of 36.38 percent.
The profitability analysis for the industry stands at 36.39, which is slightly higher than both Crane Co. and Dover Corporation. The difference is minimal, and as such, Crane Co. and Dover Corporation can be said to be doing relatively well based on industry averages.
Investor Analysis
Investors use the investor analysis index to determine the attractiveness of a company. The analysis helps investors to decide which company has potential for growth and where they are likely to recover their investments faster (Elmerraji). In determining the best company to invest in, investors more often than not refer to the price/earnings ratio.
The price/earnings ratio for Crane Co stands at has shifted significantly in the last three years. The ratio has grown from 18.42 in 2014, to 12.41 in 2015, and by 2016, it stood at 34.84. In the same period, the price/earnings ratio for Dover Corporation has steadily grown from a low of 15.94 in 2014, to 16.49 in 2015, and finally to 23.06 in 2016. From the data, both companies have made tremendous growth and quite attractive to investors.
The industry average for the industry stands at 28.62. As such, Crane Co. with 34.84 is likely to attract more investors as compared to other companies in the industry. With a price/earnings ratio as high as that of Crane Co. any company is bound to attract new investors.
Founded in 1855, Crane Co. is a well-known global manufacturer of industrial machinery. The North America Industry Classification System classifies the company under code 33249.
An analysis of the company’s accounting information reveals the company’s financial well-being. The company realized a working capital of $2.925 Billion, $2.740 Billion, and $ 2.748 Billion in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. The data reveals that Crane Co.’s working capital is slightly lower in 2016 as compared to 2014. From the analysis, it is evident that Crane Co. has a more moderate working capital than Dover Corporation. The working capital for the industry presents a descending drift.
A further look at Crane Co.’s data reveals that its price/earnings ratio is marginally higher than that of the industry. This shows that although the company does not have a vast working capital like other industry companies, it is run efficiently and is thus able to achieve a high price/earnings ratio. An investor willing to invest in this industry would be better placed to invest in Crane Co. instead of the other industry players.
Crane Co. – About Us. “Crane Co. – About Us.” Craneco.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Crane Co. – Aerospace & Electronics. “Crane Co. – Aerospace & Electronics.” Craneco.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Crane Co. – Engineered Materials. “Crane Co. – Engineered Materials.” Craneco.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Crane Co. – Fluid Handling. “Crane Co. – Fluid Handling.” Craneco.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Crane Co. – Payment & Merchandising Technologies. “Crane Co. – Payment & Merchandising Technologies.” Craneco.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Dover Corporation. “Redefining What’s Possible | Dover Corporation.” Dovercorporation.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Elmerraji, Jonas. “Analyze Investments Quickly with Ratios.” Investopedia. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Global Market Insights Inc. “Industrial Machinery Market Size Worth $771.5Bn By 2024: Global Market Insights Inc..” Globe Newswire News Room. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
Misthal, Barry et al. “2017 Industrial Manufacturing Trends.” Strategyand.pwc.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
NAICS. “Industry Statistics Portal: NAICS.” Census.gov. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Dec. 2017.
EXHIBIT ONE- CRANE CO. VERTICAL COMMON SIZE BALANCE SHEET
BALANCE SHEET 2016 2015 2014
Cash 14.88% 10.89% 10.04%
Marketable Securities 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Gross Receivables 11.78% 12.06% 12.05%
Less: Allowance for Bad Debts 0.21% 0.14% 0.14%
Net Trade Receivables 11.56% 11.92% 11.91%
Inventories 9.99% 11.29% 10.71%
Prepaid Expenses 0.53% 0.61% 0.59%
Other Current Assets 1.43% 1.35% 1.39%
Total Current Assets 38.39% 36.07% 34.64%
Long-Term Assets:
Net Tangible (Fixed) Assets (other than construction in progress) 8.14% 8.27% 8.41%
Construction in Progress 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Intangible Assets 41.75% 44.50% 44.77%
Investments 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Other Nonoperating Assets 3.65% 3.26% 3.67%
Other Operating Assets 8.07% 7.90% 8.51%
Total Long-Term Assets 61.61% 63.93% 65.36%
Total Assets 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
Accounts Payable 6.51% 6.69% 6.63%
Short Term Loans 0.00% 1.49% 2.92%
Current Maturity of L.t. Debt 2.07% 2.25% 2.29%
Other Current Liabilities 6.61% 6.74% 6.71%
Total Current Liabilities 15.19% 17.17% 18.55%
Long-Term Liabilities:
Long-term Debt 21.74% 22.31% 21.71%
Reserves 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Deferred Liabilities 1.24% 1.50% 1.34%
Noncontrolling Interest 0.35% 0.34% 0.31%
Redeemable Preferred 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Other Long-term Liabilities 28.40% 24.53% 27.38%
Total Long-term Liabilities 51.73% 48.69% 50.74%
Total Liabilities 66.92% 65.85% 69.29%
Preferred Equity 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Common Equity-incl. Ret. Ern. 33.07% 34.15% 30.71%
Total Equity 33.07% 34.15% 30.71%
Total Liabilities and Equity 99.99% 100.00% 100.00%
EXHIBIT TWO- CRANE CO. VERTICAL COMMON SIZE INCOME STATEMENT
INCOME STATEMENT 2016 2015 2014
– ———- ———- ———-
Net Sales 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
Less: Cost of Goods Sold 63.98% 65.19% 65.23%
Gross Profit 36.02% 34.81% 34.77%
Other Operating Revenue 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Less: Operating Expenses 28.73% 21.20% 23.93%
Operating Income 7.29% 13.61% 10.84%
Less: Interest Expense 1.33% 1.37% 1.34%
(no capitalized interest)
Other Income (Expenses) 0.01% 0.04% 0.14%
Unusual or Infreq. Item;
Gain (Loss) 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Equity in Earnings of Assoc.;
Profit (Loss) 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Income before Taxes 5.97% 12.28% 9.64%
Less: Taxes Related to Operations 1.47% 3.91% 3.01%
N.I. before Noncontr. Inc 4.51% 8.38% 6.63%
Noncontrolling income (loss) -0.04% -0.04% -0.03%
N.I. before Nonrecurring Items 4.47% 8.34% 6.60%
Oper. of Discontinued Segment;
Income (Loss) 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Disposal of Discont. Segment;
Extraordinary Item;
Cum. Effect of Acct Change;
Net Income (Loss) 4.47% 8.34% 6.60%
EXHIBIT THREE- NAICS CODE 33249 VERTICAL COMMON SIZE BALANCE SHEET
Cash & Equivalents 13.1 9.2 9.1
Trade Receivables 28.0 28.9 29.2
Inventory 24.0 29.6 30.9
All Other Current Assets 2.8 4.2 2.6
Total Current Assets 67.8 72.0 71.9
Fixed Assets 19.8 16.1 18.3
Intangibles 8.5 7.2 5.6
Other Non-Current Assets 3.9 4.7 4.2
Total Assets 100.0 100.0 100.0
Notes Payable-Short Term 4.6 6.8 8.5
Cur. Mat. LTD 1.7 1.5 1.1
Trade Payables 14.4 13.2 12.1
Income Taxes Payable 0.2 0.2 0.2
Other Current Liabilities 14.5 15.4 17.1
Total Current Liabilities 35.4 37.2 39.1
Long Term Debt 8.4 11.7 8.6
Deferred Taxes 0.4 0.4 0.4
Other Non-Current Liabilities 9.5 4.6 7.3
Net Worth 46.3 46.1 44.4
Total Liabilities and Net Worth 100.0 100.0 100.0
EXHIBIT FOUR-NAICS CODE 333249-VERTICAL SIZE INCOME STATEMENT
INCOME DATA
Net Sales 100.0 100.0 100.0
Gross Profit 24.8 24.4 27.6
Operating Expenses 17.8 17.6 20.2
Operating Profit 7.0 6.8 7.4
Other Expenses (net) 0.4 -0.1 0.4
Profit Before Taxes 6.6 6.9 7.0
EXHIBIT FIVE-CRANE CO. FINANCIAL RATIOS- 2014-2016
LIQUIDITY 2016 2015 2014
Days’ Sales in Receivables 53.62 53.59 51.89
Accounts Receivable Turnover 6.82 6.70 14.07
A/R Turnover in Days 53.53 54.49 25.94
Days’ Sales in Inventory 71.10 77.02 70.72
Inventory Turnover 4.89 4.78 10.32
Inventory Turnover in Days 74.67 76.29 35.36
Operating Cycle 128.20 130.78 61.30
Working Capital 795 631 555
Current Ratio 2.53 2.10 1.87
Acid Test 1.74 1.33 1.18
Cash Ratio 0.98 0.63 0.54
Sales to Working Capital 3.85 4.62 10.54
Cash Flow/Cur. Mat. of Debt & NP 4.48 1.84 1.47
LONG-TERM DEBT-PAYING ABILITY 2016 2015 2014
Times Interest Earned 5.50 9.95 8.19
Fixed Charge Coverage 4.65 8.28 6.78
Debt Ratio 66.92% 65.85% 69.29%
Debt/Equity 202.35% 192.86% 225.61%
Debt to Tangible Net Worth -770.90% -635.85% -492.99%
Cash Flow/Total Debt 13.87% 10.43% 11.04%
PROFITABILITY 2016 2015 2014
Net Profit Margin 4.51% 8.38% 6.63%
Total Asset Turnover 0.81 0.81 1.70
Return on Assets 3.66% 6.76% 11.24%
Operating Income Margin 7.29% 13.61% 10.84%
Operating Asset Turnover 1.52 1.56 3.29
Return on Operating Assets 11.08% 21.17% 35.63%
Sales to Fixed Assets 9.90 9.68 20.15
Return on Investment 5.34% 9.15% 15.72%
Return on Total Equity 10.80% 20.77% 36.42%
Return on Common Equity 10.80% 20.77% 36.42%
Gross Profit Margin 36.02% 34.81% 34.77%
INVESTOR ANALYSIS 2016 2015 2014
Degree of Financial Leverage 1.22 1.11 1.14
Earnings per Share 2.07 3.89 3.23
Price/Earnings Ratio 34.84 12.41 18.42
Percentage of Earnings Retained 37.13% 66.46% 61.71%
Dividend Payout 63.77% 33.93% 39.01%
Dividend Yield 1.83% 2.73% 2.12%
Book Value per Share 19.23 19.61 18.23
Materiality of Options #DIV/0! #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
Oper. Cash Flow per Share 5.36 3.90 4.43
Oper. Cash Flow/Cash Dividends 4.12 2.99 3.57
Year-end Market Price 72.12 48.27 59.49
EXHIBIT SIX- DOVER CORPORATION FINANCIAL RATIOS 2014-2016
Working Capital 648,873 1,051,828 795,120
Net Profit Margin 7.49% 8.57% 10.04%
Operating Income Margin 10.52% 13.24% 15.68%
EXHIBIT SEVEN INDUSTRY RATIOS-2014-2016
Days Sales in Receivables 54 50 49
Accounts Receivable Turnover 6.8 7.3 7.4
A/R Turnover in Days 54 50 49
Days’ Sales Inventory 76 72 91
Inventory Turnover 4.8 5.1 4
Inventory Turnover in Days 76 72 91
Operating Cycle 1330 122 140
Working Capital 285064 15117996 1760310
Current Ratio 2.1 1.9 2.1
Acid Test 1.1 1.0 0.9
Cash Ratio N/A N/A N/A
Sales to Working Capital 5.0 6.6 5.6
Cash Flow/Cur. Mat. Of Debt & NP 5.3 6.3 7.3
Long Term Debt Paying Ability
Times Interest Earned 12.7 2.7 23.6
Fixed Charge Coverage N/A N/A N/A
Debt Ratio 56.52 62.96 60
Debt/Equity 130 170 150
Debt to Tangible Net Worth N/A N/A N/A
Cash Flow/ Total Debt N/A N/A N/A
Net Profit Margin 1.9 3.1 5.5
Total Asset Turnover 1.6 1.9 1.9
Return on Assets 3.1 2.4 5.8
Operating Income Margin N/A N/A N/A
Operating Asset Turnover N/A N/A N/A
Return on Operating Assets N/A N/A N/A
Sales to Fixed Assets 8.3 12.4 11.3
Return on Investment N/A N/A N/A
Return on Total Equity 16.8 9.4 16.3
Return on Common Equity N/A N/A N/A
Gross Profit Margin 24.8 24.4 27.6
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Dog the Bounty Hunter’s Son is Hospitalized With Torn ACL Just Weeks After His Wife Died from Cancer
World-famous bounty hunter Duane `Dog’ Chapman got further bad news as his son Leland was left hospitalized while on the family’s first manhunt since the tragic death of his wife, Beth Chapman.
Leland, born to Dog’s first wife La Fonda Sue Darnall, is accustomed to pursuing a diverse slate of fugitives across the U.S. with his dad, but according to AL.com, he was badly injured on Tuesday after taking down a suspect in Colorado.
The capture was caught on camera while the pair filmed the family’s new show, “Dog’s Most Wanted.” The injury comes just two weeks after Dog tragically lost his wife Beth to cancer at age 51.
Leland and his father were chasing a domestic violence suspect when the injury occurred.
In an ET interview, Leland explained he was already hobbled by a previous knee surgery and wasn’t planning to do any running, but by happenstance became the only one on the team within striking distance of the suspect. He tore his ACL trying to kick open a gate.
A spokesperson for the Chapmans confirmed to news outlets that the father-and-son team were seeking fugitive Edward Morales. Morales was reportedly wanted for skipping a hearing after pleading guilty to harassment in June.
The outlaw was eventually taken into custody but the family’s spokesperson revealed Leland, who lives in Athens, Alabama, will require surgery for his torn ACL in a hospital in Athens, AL. The surgery will require Leland to be out of action for up to six weeks.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law
Dog’s Most Wanted
Duane "Dog" Chapman
Edward Morales
La Fonda Sue Darnall
tragic death
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← Met Office mobile weather app wins top industry award
First ‘Heat-Health’ alert of the summer →
The Spectator: How accurate is the Met Office?
Posted on 11 July, 2013 by Met Office Press Office
In an article which appeared in the Spectator online today, Rupert Darwall makes a sustained attack on climate scientists and specifically on the Met Office.
His main point seems to be that the Met Office gets weather forecasts wrong. To answer that, you can see our accuracy figures online and these are regularly updated to reflect our recent performance.
At the time of writing this blog, the Met Office is beating all of its forecast accuracy targets. As an example, 87.7% of our next day maximum temperature forecasts are accurate to within 2C. The target is 80%.
The Met Office is consistently recognised by the World Meteorological Organization as one of the top two most accurate operational forecasters in the world.
No forecaster can be accurate 100% of the time and we don’t claim to be, but we are at the forefront of weather and climate science and are continuing our world class research to ensure the UK stays a leader in this field.
In the article, Rupert Darwell gives a few examples of forecast errors to back up his claims – these all refer to our long-range (three month) outlooks. This is a challenging area of forecasting and the Met Office has always been clear that these long-range forecasts are part of our ongoing research and development. We acknowledge that the public favour our short-range forecasts, which they download in their millions on iPhone, Android and now Kindle apps.
With time, continued research will hopefully yield similar improvements in our long-range outlooks as we have seen over time in our short-range forecasts. As an example of that progression, our four day forecast is as accurate today as our one day forecast was 30 years ago.
The article also talks about the Met Office ‘bracing’ the UK for a ‘decade of soggy summers’.
This is a misrepresentation of the science, as the statement refers to media reporting following a press conference hosted by the Met Office. The conference came at the end of a science workshop attended by experts from across UK academia to look at the potential causes behind the UK’s recent spell of unusual seasons.
During that press conference, scientists talked to the media about some of the latest research discussed at the meeting. This included research from the University of Reading which looked at long-term temperature patterns in the Atlantic which may impact weather patterns over Europe – potentially influencing a higher frequency of wet summers for a given period of time.
Scientists were clear to say this was early research and they were not issuing a forecast, but some parts of the media reported it that way. We issued a blog in reaction to this, to make clear that there was no expectation every summer would be wet for a decade – but The Spectator article makes the same claim again, despite all of this publicly available information to the contrary.
Apparently, “the Met Office has decided that global warming means colder summers in Britain”. This is news to the Met Office, which has been very careful to say that more research needs to be done to understand what impacts changes in our climate (such as reduced Arctic sea ice) could have on UK climate. Again, this seems to be a misinterpretation of our position.
The Met Office has already discussed the issue related to Doug Keenan, which you can also read about on our blog. You can also see a discussion paper we published on the issues he raises.
On global temperatures, you can look at our HadCRUT4 pages – which show 2010 and 2005 are respectively the first and second warmest years on record, with all the supporting data available online. You can also look at a report from the WMO released last week.
There are many other points to address in the lengthy Spectator article, too numerous to detail in this blog.
However, as a final point, Rupert Darwall says: “At the very least, the Met Office has a duty of care to the rest of us: to be balanced and objective, to admit when they’ve got it wrong, not to indulge in speculation and to tell us what they don’t know.”
The Met Office recognises this duty of care and takes it very seriously, which is why our impartial advice is based only on evidence from world class research. Our scientists have and will continue to report those findings as they are, without censorship, to enable people to make informed decisions.
The Met Office is very proud of its science and scientists. Indeed last year the Met Office published 267 peer reviewed scientific papers in academic journals and is widely recognised as one of the best geosciences institutes in the world.
This entry was posted in Met Office News and tagged climate science, ed davey, julia slingo, Met Office, rupert darwall, spectator, what's wrong with the met office, who does the met office get it so wrong. Bookmark the permalink.
17 Responses to The Spectator: How accurate is the Met Office?
Vicky Ingram (@vickyingram) says:
I wrote my own blog on this earlier, referring back to your previous posts. http://vickyingram.weebly.com/1/post/2013/07/the-highs-and-lows-of-meteorology.html
I don’t mind people having opinions and sharing them (that is after all the point of the blogosphere), but repeating an erroneous statement is just poor journalism.
Owen Cox (@owenncox) says:
Hear, hear
bwmesser says:
That’s journalists for you!
Perhaps if you released an app that the public could freely download and which displayed in more detail how you manage to achieve this 87.7% accuracy you state. I don’t doubt the stats are correct but I’m sure it would reassure members of the public and sceptics alike that you were being fully transparent. As far as I can see the 119 sites you monitor are part of the free DataPoint web service you maintain – so all you need now is just a keen entrepreneur to pick up the development – you could call it ‘Keeping an eye on the Met Office’ !
The +/- 2C does seem a little bit generous especially when this could mean the difference between a snow event when the temperatures get down to freezing…
nuwurld says:
Dear Met, again we have a scenario whereby a published document states a complaint about ‘long range’ forecasting, and your response is to state that your ‘next day’ is the most accurate in the world!
As you know I agree with Mr Darwell in many respects. However, I am pleased that recently the Met has acknowledged the trend towards harsher winters and changeable summer predictions. I applaud that progress. This will prove to be true.
On the negative side, the Met is still predicting long term warming due to ‘anthropological greenhouse gases’ as shown in this public statement,
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2009/science-community-statement
Now, I’ve spent some time scrolling through all those signatures. I have the names and the universities. So I can google the links. What do I find.
MOST OF THE SIGNATORIES ON THE LIST ARE FUNDED FOR CLIMATE RELATED RESEARCH
Now, I don’t want to ‘mess’ with people’s careers, but, with respect, those involved in that listing are largely ‘not’ impartial. Their views are being used by you, the Met, to influence policy and trade. Your long term climate predictions and those of the IPCC are based on false physics. The outcome of this is crippling to our failing economy, lining the pockets of the few and sentencing our populace to a grim and ill predicted climatic and financial future.
After this year the full effects of solar reduction and the impotence of any so called ‘greenhouse gases’ to ‘trap’ radiation will become clear. The tropospheric thermal gradient is set by gravity, as you know. The gradient is dT/dh= -g/Cp, as you know. Radiation within the atmosphere, like any radiative exchange will entropically serve to ‘try’ to reduce the gradient to zero. To ‘try’ to produce equilibrium. It could never ‘produce’ the lapse rate we observe in reality. The lapse rate is a logical consequence of the atmospheres gravitational containment. All gravitationally bound atmospheres become adiabatic and follow predictable temperature/pressure gradients in equilibrium with the input flux (solar) and any internal heat production (nuclear, gravitational tidal, or gravitational collapse).
The Earth’s effective surface temperature is the result of the effects of gravity on the ‘mass’ of atmosphere in near hydrostatic suspension above, in equilibrium with the respective ‘energy source’. 99.99% of that is solar.
John Benton says:
Yet more squirming from the Met Office. when you make so many contradictory forecasts (it’s akin to a bookie laying off some of his bets just in case) then of course its possible going to be possible to fish one out of the pond (irrespective of how obscure) to support some claim or other. Regrettably however this is just a con trick because the Met Office’s widely publicised statements/forecasts have turned out to be nothing short of embarrassing.
Martin Chuter says:
And believe it or not, there are weather companies out there that surpass the UK Met Office in terms of accuracy of next day ambient, above 92.5%. Meteorological Services (facebook.com/metservices) being one of them 😉
Dave Rankine says:
Just read the Spectator article. Climate scientist have all but ruined real science. Its almost like a cult or a religion. Anyone involved in Climategate should of lost their jobs and credentials. Instead you all pat yourselves on the back and give each other awards. You vilify any who point out error in your methods. Only problem is the temperatures have flat lined for the last 15 years and ALL of the computer models have failed. Instead of rethinking your methods you double down and increase your rhetoric.
wottsupwiththatblog says:
Reblogged this on Wotts Up With That Blog and commented:
I had a brief exchange with Rubert Darwall on Twitter today. He’s written an article in the Spectator heavily criticising the Met Office and climate scientists, and which repeats a number of the standard (but largely incorrect) arguments against global warming and climate change. I think it is a very poor article and has made me wonder if I shouldn’t propose what one might call Wott’s law, which is if you invoke Karl Popper in order to win a scientific argument, you then lose the argument by default. I was going to write a post about this Spectator article, but instead thought I would simply reblog this Met Office News Blog post which does an excellent job of rebutting what Rupert Darwall has written.
uniqueidentity2 says:
Of course! Its a conspiracy! They’ve just got climate experts in to discuss climate change.
What next? People paid to do Physics discussing the Large Hadron Collider? Who else should discuss it? Perhaps they should ask your to present your one paragraph summation of how Earths climate operates?
If the climate change scientists are just motivated by money and this is all a scam, why don’t they work for the trillion dollar oil industry exposing the global science conspiracy??
There is no “climategate”.
Look, uniqueidintity2, the issue is that ‘natural variability’ has never been resolved. The signatories on the list ‘exclude’ many groups of pure and applied physicists, engineers and geologists who are best equipped to discuss in an ‘unbiased’ fashion whether recent changes in climate are anomalous.
In reality many faithful scientists are unaware of potential damage that climatology is doing to the scientific method.
Funding for many ‘studies’ have been provided for the ‘primary reason’ that ‘Global Warming’ is ‘anthropological’. Which without ‘equal’ funding in ‘natural variability’, has ‘no merit’.
The repeatability of ‘Wood’s 1909 greenhouse experiment’ shows that back radiation and the nonsense of the ‘greenhouse effect’ as being ‘radiatively driven’ is fiction.
Make a simple bolometer yourself. Either from a makeshift reflective dish or buy a cheap parabolic reflector online. Place a thermistor at the focus and point it at clear blue sky. The ‘greenhouse effect’ says 330W-m^2 of downwelling radiation ‘exists’ on average, more than ‘double’ the averaged solar flux. All you will do is cool the thermistor. The ‘bigger and better’ the parabolic dish the ‘cooler’ the focus becomes. So focussing more of the 330Wm^2 of ‘POWERFUL DOWNWELLING GREENHOUSE GAS RADIATION’ only increases the optical ability of the warmer ‘focal point’ to lose heat to the cooler. All it does is ‘indicate’ instrumentally the temperature of the source. For clear blue sky, that will be between -18 and -50 degC depending upon humidity.
It doesn’t matter how big you make the parabolic dish, adding all those 330W-m^2 produces NO HEAT. All you can achieve is a two way radiative coupling between the warmer surface and the much cooler upper troposphere across the relevant optical depth. Clouds, being more dense are less cold occurring across a lower optical depth.
Just like the 200 year old Pictet experiment ‘the reflection of cold’. You cannot exploit the ‘greenhouse effect’s’ mythical 330W-m^2 .
The calculated flux from a 255K(-18degC) approximation of a black body is ‘entropically’ unavailable to an approximation of one at 288K (15degC)
Now, after trying that, say goodbye to your thermistor and point the parabolic reflector toward the Sun. The ‘greenhouse effect’ considers the Sun to ONLY deliver 168W-m^2 on average, half the calculated ‘greenhouse effect back radiation’. However, at 288K, the downgrade of 5600K to 288K thermalised is entropically available. The re condensation optically of the solar flux illustrates reality. You ‘can’ produce thousands of degrees from the flux that the ‘greenhouse effect’ model ‘suggests’ is impotent. Bringing back together the diverged rays from the Sun to a more compact region of cooler space provides a repeatable and undeniable, entropically available energy source. The spectral distribution is that of the emitting body, less atmospheric absorption, scattering and reflection. Just don’t get your fingers in the way!
AT WHICH POINT DO YOU THINK 330W’ DOWNWELLING, UNAVAILABLE FOR WORK, NONSENSE, CAN BE USED IN A FLUX BALANCE TO COMPETE WITH 168W OF REAL, ENTROPICALLY AVAILABLE SOLAR ENERGY.
Then the ‘greenhouse effect’ requires a fake and entropically unavailable for ‘work or power’, ‘back radiation fudge’ to compensate for incorrect physics!
The ‘best’ reconstruct available by condensing the radiation from a 255K (-18) black body is 255K.
No single photon from a thermalised emitter can have properties of a higher temperature source.
CLIMATE SCIENCE HAS FORGOTTEN BASIC PHYSICS.
You ‘cannot’ simply add together ‘calculated’ fluxes without referring to entropy. Heat travels as a statistical certainty, entropically, in the form of energy available for work down a thermal gradient.
I’m using this directly against the ‘greenhouse’ model as simple Stefan Boltzmann links the fluxes and temperatures used.
If there where any single experiment to demonstrate that Trenburth’s ‘ calculated 330W-m^2 was available and physically significant there would be no doubt, (or energy crises, just recirculate it, if you don’t catch it this time get it the next time round, or the next etc).
If physicist at CERN, where using an inappropriate and false model to discuss Hadrons whilst saying they where ‘all due to man’ and ‘destroying the world’, and then signed a petition to continue their careers whilst stinging the world for an unachievable change of lifestyle, I would protest in a similar manner.
clivebest says:
For me the only “mistake” the MET office made was to convince the UK government to commit itself to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 based on a worst case scenario for AGW. They should instead have recommended a wait and see policy. Climate sensitivity now looks to be lower than predicted (Otto et al. etc.) so we actually had far more time to get it right. Instead it looks like the climate change act 2008 will end up being the world’ largest “foreign aid” donation costing £400billion to UK consumers and taxpayers and bankrupting the country – all to reduce global temperatures by ~0.01 deg.C in 2050.
This is because the climate change targets have railroaded us down a wind and biofuel path which any electrical engineer will tell you is doomed to fail. In the long run it has to be nuclear to replace crucial coal and gas capacity. Renewables are technologies of a pre-industrial society.
It is still not too late for the MET office who should now recommend amending the climate change act in order to set more rational targets. It takes a brave man or woman to say they were wrong.
jeez says:
87.7% of our next day maximum temperature forecasts are accurate to within 2C.
How much better or worse is that than just guessing that tomorrow’s maximum temperature will be the same as today’s plus or minus 2C? I can tell you, not much better.
rogertil says:
Exactly my response ! I’d like to be able to find some historical records that could prove or disprove this idea. That would be science 🙂
Steve Wintersgill says:
A quick browse of HaCEt daily data for this year, predicting tomorrow will be the same temperature as today gives us the following accuracies:
January: 83.9%
February: 89.3%
March: 80.6%
April: 83.3%
May: 83.9%
Got a little bit bored there, but it would seem that the “old farmers’ forecast” easily surpasses the stringent Met Office targets, which begs the question who set the targets and how were they allowed to get away with such lax targets?
Perhaps 87.7% is not so impressive after all…
Dave Britton says:
You can find full verification of our forecast targets here
Philip Richens (@PhilipRichens) says:
You say, “His main point seems to be that the Met Office gets weather forecasts wrong. To answer that, you can see our accuracy figures online and these are regularly updated to reflect our recent performance.”
On the contrary, his main point seems to be that “for some time, the Met Office’s longer range forecasts have served a political purpose”. I think your response to Rupert Darwell’s article would do better if it addressed this criticism, rather than focusing on the Met Office weather forecasts – which I have no doubt are very accurate.
Ruby Payne says:
From my own experience of local weather forecasts, the Met Office are right about 50% of the time. Today is an example. No rain is forecasted at all today, yet it has been raining on and off for most of the day. The roads are wet, and it is actually raining now. For the local weather forecast for Yaxley in Cambs. I do not exaggerate when I say I have made a point of seeing how many days the Met Office are accurate about predicting for this local area, and it is about 50%. No more than guesswork. National trends might be a lot more accurate, forecasting local weather appears to be anything but a science.
We have Met Office meteorologists on site for the Royal International Air Tattoo @airtattoo to ensure pilots and ev… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 59 minutes ago
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Nursing Shortages in Alaska
Image of Alaskan mountains by arthur chapman via Flickr
Alaska has added more than 11,000 health care jobs in the last decade. But they’re still seeing a shortage of nurses, especially in specialized areas like operating room nursing, according to a story by KTVA.
There are an abundance of Alaskans who are qualified to take entry-level positions in nursing. The director of the University of Alaska – Anchorage’s School of Nursing, Barbara Berner, says that her school alone graduates about 200 new nurses per year, while the estimated need for nurses in the state is 130 nurses per year.
So there is both a shortage (for some of the most specialized areas) and a surplus (for entry-level positions), at the same time. Berner says that she’s also hearing that many institutions are not requiring as many traveling nurses from out of state to do basic nursing care, as they had in the past.
Across the state, including at Alaska Regional Hospital, experienced specialty nurses are in short supply, and it’s necessary to draw people up from the Lower 48, which doesn’t always work out.
“I would say for every 10 nurses we recruit from out of state we are able to keep one,” Kaminski said.
Students who are finishing specialized graduate programs are getting picked up much more quickly.
“People with particular specialties often have jobs before they even leave the graduate program because there is such a need in the state,” said Berner.
And to help ease the shortage of operating room nurses, a cross-training program is being piloted in Anchorage.
“We take nurses who have a couple years of nursing experience, who are eager to go into perioperative nursing settings and we pair them up with a preceptor one on one to go through the program; in the end they are trained to be perioperative nursing nurses,” said Kaminski.
It’s hoped innovative training like this will mean hospitals and other facilities can retain the qualified nurses they have and continue to hire from in the state.
April 20, 2012 • Categories: Nurse Employers,Nursing News,Travel Nursing
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Angel episodes, Angel Season 1
Air date February 8, 2000
Written by Marti Noxon
David Greenwalt
Directed by David Greenwalt
"Expecting" next
"I've Got You Under My Skin"
David Boreanaz Angel
Charisma Carpenter Cordelia
Alexis Denisof Wesley
Special Guest Starring
Bai Ling Jhiera
Guest Starring
Colby French Tay
Heather Stephens Shari
Sean Gunn Mars
Co Starring
Tracey Costello Laura
André L. Roberson Diego
P.J. Marino Peter Wilkers
Honor Bliss Girl
Chris Durand Demon Henchman #1
Alison Simpson Demon Girl #1
Lucas Dudley Security Guard
"She" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Angel and the thirteenth episode overall. Written by Marti Noxon and directed by David Greenwalt, it was originally broadcast on February 8, 2000 on the WB network.
Angel joins forces with Jhiera, a demon princess, who arrives in Los Angeles to save the enslaved women from her dimension. The men of her land are fierce warriors who see their women as second class and want to control them by performing a sort of lobotomy when they come of age. There is a showdown at a health spa where Jhiera is keeping her fleeing followers.
At a party in Cordelia Chase's beautiful new apartment, Wesley participates with unselfconscious enjoyment, but when Cordelia's friend asks Angel to dance, a mental flash of the wackiness that could ensue prevents him from saying yes. Angel mopes into retreat in the kitchen, where he finds he can converse comfortably with his silent friend, phantom Dennis, who offers him a cold beverage. Meanwhile, a man standing watch at an ice factory has just popped open and taken a sip from his own cold one, when he hears spooky voices crying from inside the coffin-sized crate he's guarding. Believing there is someone alive and suffering inside, he breaks open the box, then stands staring in shock at its contents.
In the office the next morning, Cordelia informs Angel that he wasn't any fun at the party and that Wes was "cooler." Oblivious, Wesley checks the office fridge for leftover canapés. Realizing his friend is short on cash, Angel offers Wesley a staff position at Angel Investigations, a move which Cordelia heartily approves—once Angel reassures her that hiring the formerly rogue demon hunter will not entail a cut in her own paycheck. However, Cordelia's enthusiasm turns to agony as she suddenly receives a graphic vision of a man being burned alive from the inside. With no sewer access to the Jericho Ice Factory, Wesley's first job is to drive Angel to the scene indicated by Cordelia's vision. Inside the facility, Angel finds the incinerated corpse as well as the crate he was guarding, now containing only ice. Hearing a noise from another section of the factory, Angel discovers the presence of a humanoid demon named Tae, who reveals that he is from another dimension, sent to bring back the vicious demon, a "vessel of pure rage," which has escaped from his realm into an unsuspecting L.A.
Angel begins his search for more information by breaking into Wilkers' office and pulling the ice factory files. Jimmying open the desk's top drawer, Angel finds an envelope containing an invoice for Jericho Ice (which he pockets) and a large amount of cash (which he doesn't). Apparently not realizing he is being observed, Angel is surprised by the sudden appearance of an exotic-looking female demon who, belying her small size, effortlessly knocks him out of the way with a powerful blow that scorches his arm. Receiving a call on her cell phone, the demon hardly spares Angel another glance before leaving in haste, pulling up the hood and wrapping her calf-length cardigan around her before she climbs into her vehicle. Recovering quickly enough to give chase, Angel calls Cordelia on a bad cell phone connection and describes the demon's appearance so she and Wesley can begin their research. Angel follows the attractive demon to an art gallery but she makes him and sets museum security after him. As cover, Angel removes his black coat and begins to lecture about one of the paintings to a group of people who stand rapt. After the security guards move past, Angel sees his quarry head toward the back of the building. Wrapping up his presentation to the appreciative applause of his unsuspecting audience, Angel follows.
In a storage room at the back of the gallery, the demon stands staring into space, then turns when Angel comes in behind her. Realizing he is a vampire (a human would have remained unconscious for hours from the force of her blow), she impatiently, imperiously, orders him to leave, but clearly has no attention to spare to forcibly eject him. At that moment, wind and lightening and thunder spring from nowhere, and there is a disturbance in the air near the room's back wall. A swirling portal forms, the shrieking coming from it seeming to draw rapidly closer. A naked humanoid girl drops out of the portal and hits the floor hard. As Angel pulls over a tarp to cover her, he gets a brief but clear glimpse of the girl's smooth forehead and of the raised ridges running along her upper spine. At that moment, Tae and his all-male team break into the room armed with daggers that look like mini-sickles. The female demon and Angel battle furiously, but Tae abducts the newly arrived girl and drives away with her. Looking helplessly after the speeding vehicle, Angel asks the female demon what will happen to the girl and learns that she will be "unmade." The male demons take the frightened girl to their base where, without further ado, they use a special clamping tool to cut out the raised ridges extending down from the girl's nape to between her shoulder blades. Gone breathless with fear, the girl screams in agony at the first cut.
Back at Angel's apartment, he brings his wary guest a bandage for the shallow cut on her arm while she drapes her cardigan over a railing and takes a look around. In response to her challenge that vampires are known killers, Angel tells her he was cursed, then evades her skeptical theory that he's been "cursed to help people," focusing the inquiry on her situation instead. The exotically beautiful demon accepts Angel's invitation to tell her story and introduces herself as Jhiera, a princess from the Oden Tal dimension, dedicated to helping other female refugees escape her home world to the relative safety of L.A. Jhiera tells Angel that for the women of Oden Tal, the personality is located in an area of the body called the "ko," the source of their desires and passions. At this, Jhiera turns her back to Angel and shows him the raised ridges running for several inches along her spine. Angel, who found Jhiera attractive at first sight, is now deeply aroused by her nearness and bends his head closer to her vulnerable neck. Resisting his own desires, he listens as Jhiera tells him that the men of her dimension control the women by cutting out the ko, thus removing their "physical and sexual power," their volition. "We give up dreaming," she tells him bleakly. Feeling herself at the center of his intense predator's focus, Jhiera begins to circle Angel as she explains that young women of Oden Tal must learn to control the raw power of their maturing ko, to which men of this world respond involuntarily. She tells him of her own struggle, with the help of the frozen water, to contain the "heat under her skin." Jhiera proceeds to demonstrate her power to arouse them both, as well as her iron control of that power. Angel, fighting on several levels for self-control, moves a few steps away and asks pointedly about the incinerated corpse at the ice factory, and about the other four men crisped to death over the past year. Jhiera grows defensive of her manifesto and starts to storm off, but Angel blocks her path. Her power flashes to the surface and they are almost irresistibly drawn to each other—a connection lethal to Angel—until Jhiera damps the intensity of her radiant heat. Telling him again to stay out of her way, she escapes, leaving him wrung out, barely able to stand.
While Angel and Jhiera fight Tae's team at the gallery, Wesley continues his research and discovers that the men of this demon species are called the Vigories of Oden Tal. Reading from an ancient volume, he tells Cordelia that the Vigories are said to be fierce warriors, and "the women live enslaved to them." Also learning that the Vigories are herbivores and must eat half their weight in partially rotted vegetation each day, Cordelia and Wesley leave the office to go looking for compost. They find Tae's team headquartered in a large plant nursery and overhear a briefing about their plans to capture Princess Jhiera, cut her and take her back to Oden Tal to signal the end of all rebellion. Jhiera, meanwhile, returns to the sanctuary she has created at the Palm Ridge Spa, where the other young women are being kept, rendered safe by lying in whirlpool tubs filled with ice. Jhiera informs the spa's proprietor, Mars, that this sanctuary has been compromised and the girls must be moved to another, safer location. However, unaware that Tae is right on her tail, Jhiera tells Mars they will leave the following day. In the meantime, unable to raise their boss by cell phone, Cordelia and Wesley barely escape detection at the Vigories' base and return to Angel's apartment both to locate him and seek his help. They find him, apparently unharmed and unconcerned, just emerging from the shower. Upon hearing their report that Tae's group plans an assault on an undisclosed location that recently started receiving large shipments of ice, Angel remembers the address listed on the invoice he lifted from Wilkers' office. Grimly determined to get there first, Angel gathers his team and heads to the Palm Ridge Spa.
Arriving at the spa, Angel leaves Cordelia and Wesley (who falls down getting out of the car) to act as lookouts. Angel brushes past Mars and, finding Jhiera with the still-somnolent girls, tells her that Tae is closer behind than she thinks. At that moment, Cordelia frantically rushes in to report Tae's approach. While Cordelia and Wesley are still rousing the girls and trying to get them moving toward the back exit, Tae and his team burst in. Cordy and Wes continue with the evacuation, while Jhiera and Angel engage Tae and his men in battle. The two demons manage to hold their own until Wesley and Cordelia, returning to the fight after securing the girls, are suddenly taken hostage. When presented with Tae's ultimatum to hand over the refugees or see the humans die, Jhiera, hardly hesitating, says, "Then they die." As she wheels for the exit, Cordelia and Wesley seize the initiative and break away from their captors, who seem momentarily stunned at the failure of their ploy. Outside, Jhiera makes her way towards the cab of the truck loaded with crates of ice-packed refugee girls. She is just steps away from freedom when two of the Vigories grab her from behind and restrain her for Tae, making sure that her ko is exposed. Jhiera's nemesis holds up the cutting tool and prepares to mutilate the Princess of Oden Tal to bring her under immediate control. Appearing out of nowhere, Angel grabs Tae in a headlock and, giving him couple of demonstrative squeezes, threatens to snap their leader's neck unless the Vigories holding Jhiera release her. As soon as they do, Angel tells Jhiera to get the girls to safety. Giving Angel a slight nod, she climbs into the cab of the truck and drives away. As soon as Jhiera is out of sight, Angel releases Tae and tells him to go back to Oden Tal, morphing into vamp face to let the Vigories know he can make good on his promise of mayhem if they continue their war in this dimension.
The next day, Angel arrives in the office first and squeezes a bag of whole coffee beans to test Cordelia's theory that he can effectively grind the coffee with his "vampire strength." The bag bursts, scattering coffee beans everywhere, just as Cordelia and Wesley come in the front door. Wesley immediately slips and falls, then starts to sweep the beans up with his bare hands, apologizing distractedly for making a mess. In what appears to be a natural segue for him, Wesley also apologizes, as he carefully regains his feet, for being taken hostage by Tae's men. Angel tries to reassure his friend and compliments him on a job well done, which prompts Wesley, in turn, to express his sincere regard for Angel. Cordelia is just teasing Wesley for turning groveling into an art, when Jhiera walks in. Cordelia opens verbal fire on the warrior demon, asking if they can offer her anything, such as a couple of hostages to kill. Angel firmly shows Jhiera into his office and closes the door. After ascertaining that the other women are safe, away from the city, Angel again tells Jhiera that he'll stop her if she crosses the line and endangers people of his world while trying to protect people from hers. The sexual and political tension thick between them, Jhiera looks at Angel, then agrees with his terms. She hesitates, clearly torn, clearly having found a "desirable mate," and Angel grows even more breathless. With the harsh discipline of an abnegation as rigid and as necessary as Angel's, Jhiera turns toward the door, away from the object of her desire. As she walks away from him, Angel sees what he has already inescapably sensed—Jhiera's ko glows red hot. Raging desire at war with self-preservation, Angel stands desperately immobile until She is out of range.
In this episode, Wesley becomes an official member of Angel Investigations.
Peter Wilkers, burned to death by a female Vigorie Demon
1 Human
Writer Tim Minear had originally put the dance David Boreanaz performs in his imagination into "Sense & Sensitivity" but removed it on Joss Whedon's request; "Plus," Minear says, "we wanted to save it until it was just right. Here's this guy who looks like this, and he's a complete social retard. I think we've had a lot of success playing that aspect of the character."
The end credits feature additional footage of Wesley and Angel's dancing skills.
Bai Ling, who played Jhiera, said of her character "[she's] so cool. She seduced Angel, and yet she's very dangerous and independent. She's got all those things that a modern woman wants, yet she's a princess. She has her own duty to do good things for the people in her land. She's got all this complexity and beauty." She also said that the character was considered for a return "after that episode aired, David called me. They were so pleased by it, they wanted me to come back. I'd very much like to go back to Angel, because we all had a great time, and they loved the character. I don't know what the schedule is; I guess they're still working on it, so we're gonna talk about it when it is ready. I'm looking forward to contributing something."
This is the second guest appearance for Sean Gunn, who played Lucas in "Hero".
Pop Culture References
Carrie: Cordelia asks whether the attractive "hottie" demon "Carries" Angel when they first meet. Carrie's main power is telekenesis, which Jhiera also exhibits when threatened.
Édouard Manet: Going under cover as a museum guide, Angel gives a professional exegesis on one of this French painter's most famous works, which he refers to as "La Musique".
Charles Baudelaire: Angel implies that Angelus is the eponymous demon of the poem "Le Vampire", published by this French poet in Les Fleurs du mal in 1857.
Neiman Marcus: Cordelia's wish fulfillment dreams feature high-end department stores having going-out-of-business sales.
Nancy Mitford: On the hunt for "the world's biggest compost heap" at the plant nursery with Cordelia, Wesley is distracted by a flower he calls Nancy's Petticoat.
German: Die Frauen des Oden Tals (The women of Oden Tal)
French: Guerre des sexes (War of the sexes)
60 Channels - "Light Years On"
Extreme Music Library - "Pure Roots"
Supreme Beings of Leisure- "Strangelove Addiction"
Morphic Field - "In Time"
Christophe Beck and Robert J. Kral - original score
Jhiera's mission is an allusion to ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because women in some societies undergo the procedure to make them marriageable. Women on and off screen are having the source of sexual arousal removed to 'control' their behavior and ultimately them. When they first meet, Jhiera is skeptical that Angel will understand or even care about her mission because he is a man. The source of his sexual pleasure is not being removed by his culture.
Cordelia - I was so glad you came. You know how parties are? You're always worried that no one's gonna suck the energy out of the room like a giant black hole of boring despair. But, there you were in the clinch!
Wesley - Perhaps we need a plan.
Angel - Here's the plan. We go in, I start hittin' people hard in the face. See where it takes us.
Cordelia - Wow. Groveling isn't just a way of life for you, it's an art.
Retrieved from "https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/She?oldid=192620"
Angel Season 1
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Carmakers are trying to steer past patent wars in bid for integrating Silicon Valley tech
Automakers have ramped up their patent applications as they compete to roll out crash avoidance systems, on-board Wi-Fi and cars that can drive themselves
AP Photo/Frank Augstein
Susan Decker and Ryan Beene
FP Tech Desk
As automakers turn their vehicles into app-laden computers on wheels, there’s one habit they don’t want to acquire from Silicon Valley: fighting over patents in court.
Manufacturers from BMW AG to Hyundai Motor Co. to Ford Motor Co. are trying to learn from the smartphone wars, which cost technology companies hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees, as they prepare to revolutionize their vehicles.
“No sane automaker wants to repeat these wars, where the lawyers were the only winners,” said William Coughlin, chief executive officer of Ford Global Technologies, Ford’s intellectual property arm.
Automakers have ramped up their patent applications as they compete to roll out crash avoidance systems, on-board Wi-Fi and cars that can drive themselves. To avoid court battles over who gets paid and how much, competitors are banding together to jointly license technology, use non-proprietary software and buying or challenging patents that might be used in lawsuits against them.
Both Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford were among the top 21 recipients of U.S. patents last year, with 1,540 and 1,530, putting them in company with Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to figures compiled by the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
GM targets 2019 for U.S. launch of self-driving vehicles
BlackBerry, Qualcomm to expand collaboration in connected-car technology
Toyota’s recent patents cover ways to keep a vehicle in the proper lane and respond correctly at a traffic signal; Ford won rights to sensors that gather data from other vehicles and a system to measure customer satisfaction by expressions or statements made while driving.
The smartphone wars that began in 2010 were sparked by a clash of the phone and computer industries and pitted iPhone-maker Apple against manufacturers of phones that ran on Android, the operating system owned by Google. Microsoft Corp. also got swept in when it demanded royalties on phones that used Android.
Technology companies frequently resolve patent disputes — others have been over computer memory, networking and video cards — in court. But the big automakers tend to settle their fights more informally or let suppliers duke it out.
Google’s self-driving Lexus car drives along street during a demonstration at Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. AP Photo/Tony Avelar
One way is by joining with other companies to share technologies. Many of the groups that are attracting automakers as members were created by Silicon Valley companies to limit the number of lawsuits filed by licensing firms known as patent assertion entities — or by the pejorative term “troll.”
Ford, Honda Motor Co., Hyundai, Tesla Inc. and Volkswagen AG are members of the LOT Network, a non-profit consortium in which companies pledge to continue to make their patents available to all members even if they sell them to another firm. Daimler AG, Ford, and Toyota are among those belonging to Unified Patents, which challenges patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ford also is a member of RPX Corp., a risk management service that buys up patents and challenges patents that already have been issued.
Last week, BMW became the latest automaker to enter a licensing deal, agreeing to pay a per-car fee to gain access to a “pool” of patents related to wireless industry standards from companies including Qualcomm, Ericsson AB, Sony Corp. and eight others.
Pricing Patents
“They see every day there is litigation and they don’t want that,” said Kasim Alfalahi, head of Avanci LLC, a Dallas-based group that operates the patent pool. “They say, ‘We have looked at this, we have studied this and we would like to avoid it.’ ”
Figuring out the proper royalty rates for use of industry standard technology has led to global fights among technology companies, the most prominent being Apple and Qualcomm’s three-continent combat over what patent fees Qualcomm collects from each iPhone.
Automakers “look at the fights right now, and they understand that a lot of it has to deal with the pricing and expectations,” said Alfalahi, who was Ericsson’s top intellectual property counsel before starting Avanci.
Another way carmakers are cutting costs is by using non-patented technology.
‘Wild West’
Open Invention Network, which buys and cross licenses patents related to the open source Linux operating system, has signed up companies such as General Motors Co. and Daimler, giving them free access so they can then build their own individual applications for on-board systems to monitor traffic patterns, help cars avoid crashes or perform other functions akin to a computer or smartphone.
Keith Bergelt, the network’s CEO, said the battle between Apple and phones that used Google’s Android operating system “created a culture that brought out the worst in many companies.”
The automotive industry hasn’t been completely immune to litigation. When it comes to self-driving vehicles, it’s still somewhat of a “Wild West,” with companies all over the country doing research and hoping to come up with the next big thing. That’s already spawned a nasty fight, with Alphabet’s Waymo claiming Uber Technologies Inc. stole trade secrets for the laser-based sensors known as Lidar.
Thousands of cars now run Apple and Google’s operating systems for infotainment through their dashboard touchscreens in the form of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Ford and BMW are integrating the Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo into their dashboards.
A big chunk of the lawsuits against tech companies were an outgrowth of the dot-com bust, during which sharks picked up patents from bankrupt internet companies and then demanded royalties from companies that were still in business. Companies like Delphi Automotive Plc have expressed concern that the same thing may happen to companies that don’t succeed in the autonomous car market, said Bruce Rubinger, founder of Global Prior Art, which conducts research on the validity of patents.
The automakers and suppliers have been investing in technology companies, so they will own rights to some of the research no matter what happens with the company, Rubinger said.
The relatively slow pace of change in the auto industry can help it avoid some legal problems. In the technology industry, new products are introduced every 18 months, but it can take four years or more for a new feature to go from the design stage to the showroom floor.
“Car manufacturing is different from that perspective — it’s not like smartphones where you can just outsource it,” said Shawn Ambwani, co-founder of Unified Patents. “There are very few players who get into the market. Market share doesn’t change dramatically every five years.”
And the auto industry will be able to draw on the legacy of the technology industry’s patent cases. Court rulings make it easier to invalidate patents and lower the amount of damages that can be awarded. Legislation also created a new procedure at the U.S. patent office that’s been embraced by Silicon Valley for its reputation as a “death squad” for patents.
So far there have been few lawsuits over the new cars, though Ford’s Coughlin said they will come because “everybody wants to protect their investments.” Still, he said, he’s not expecting a lot of patent litigation “unless somebody is acting unreasonably.”
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Home Awards Social Communications appointed by The National Lottery and First Ark Group
Social Communications appointed by The National Lottery and First Ark Group
MANCHESTER-HEADQUARTERED Social Communications has been appointed to deliver a major video project on behalf of The National Lottery, and to lead on external PR and communications requirements for the First Ark Group, of which the core business is the housing association, Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT).
The £2million turnover agency will draw upon its integrated expertise and disciplines across PR, design, marketing communications and digital, to respond to two distinct briefs which have been set out by each client.
The National Lottery has appointed Social Communications to produce, film and edit, six pilot-promotional videos focussing on prominent athletes who have benefitted from National Lottery funding returning to their home towns in North East England. Each athlete will draw attention to other National Lottery funded causes in their local area, helping to raise awareness of the £39 billon that has been invested to date in more than 535,000 good causes since The National Lottery began 25 years ago.
For the First Ark Group, Social Communications will focus its PR expertise on promoting the good work being delivered across neighbourhoods and managed by its group member, Knowsley Housing Trust, plus delivering relevant human interest stories. The brief also encompasses delivering communications support and guidance for other members of the First Ark Group.
Agency founder and Group MD John Quinton-Barber, said: “Telling powerful stories is our lifeblood, so to have our video capabilities recognised by a major national brand is a real defining moment for this agency. We’re incredibly proud that The National Lottery has appointed our team following a very competitive tender process involving multiple national agencies.
“Additionally, our business’s foundations are built upon PR expertise in UK housing and infrastructure. It’s fantastic to see First Ark Group recognising our sector specialisms and the strength of work that we deliver for housing clients across the country. We’re looking forward to working with both organisations.”
A complete communications agency, five-year-old Social Communications’ client roster covers both public and private sectors and is drawn from housing, property, construction, education, rail, planning and major infrastructure.
Its current headcount is 33-strong, across its Manchester, Leeds and Bristol offices with the consultancy ranking #11 in Prolific North’s top 50 PR agencies 2018 power list.
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Philip Ghayour - 8th February 2019
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Home News Carvajal joins Habanero team from NetEnt
Carvajal joins Habanero team from NetEnt
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Online slots and table games provider Habanero has appointed Carlos Carvajal as its new service and operations manager as it continues to expand its European operations.
Carvajal joins the developer from Netent, where for the last four years he worked as product manager, having also previously held positions at William Hill and Betfair.
Arcangelo Lonoce, European head of business development at Habanero, said: “We are delighted to welcome Carlos to the team and know he will quickly become a major asset.
“This is another appointment which demonstrates our drive to recruit the best possible talent out there as we continue to grow Habanero as a brand.”
Carvajal (pictured) added: “I’m really happy to be joining Habanero. It’s a very exciting career move for me and I can’t wait to get started. Habanero have established themselves as one of the leading slots and tables games providers, and I’m looking forward to being involved with them at such an exciting time.”
At Habanero, Carvajal will work with existing and prospective clients on the product side of the business, while also supporting Habanero’s continuing expansion into regulated European markets.
Carlos Carvajal
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Had An Awesome Time Hangin’ With My Retro Collector Friends From Colexions.com
My buddy and fellow Retro Gaming fanatic Corey Buckner has put together a great community of fellow minded collectors over at colexions.com. Well, not only has he put together a great site to show off your own collection and geek out over fellow collectors treasures, he also hosts a monthly “Show And Tell” on Google Hangouts. What it is is a group of us collectors having a great time, showing off our stuff and talking about retro gaming and what ever else might come to mind. This was the third monthly get together and boy did we get to see some amazing stuff. We represented five different countries and three different continents but the distances just made the conversation better. It’s really cool to be able to meet like this. We had Corey Buckner (of course) from just outside Chicago and indie game developer Gary Brafford in West Virginia and lifespiller79 from…um sorry man, Texas (I think), all three in the U.S. of A, We had Gabo representing Argentina, Mark in the U.K, Paul in Australia and little ol’ me up here in Canada. Everyone pulled out all the stops and showed some real stunners from our collections. Checkout last Saturday’s get together below:
Tags: 16 bit, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 32 bit, 70's, 80's, arcade, Asteroids, Astrocade, atari, Atari Jaguar, berzerk, Black Sabbath, Calgary, Canada, cartridge, castlevania, CD32, cheat, cheezy, classic, classic gaming, classic video games, Coleco, colexions.com, collection, commodore, computers, console, crash, Donkey Kong, Edmonton, electronics, emulator, Frogger, fun, Funny, Galaxians, game gear, game genie, Gaming, Geezer, handheld, history, hobbies, humor, humour, IBM, intellivision, Jaguar, Kempster, Konami, Lee Kempster, live, Maganvox Odyssey, master system, Mega CD, Mega Drive, Ms. Pacman, multiplayer, museum, Namco, NEC, NES, nhl, Nintendo, old, pac-man, pacman, Parker Brothers, PC Engine, pinball, pioneers, Podcast, pop culture, Primal Rage, retro, scramble, Sega, Sega CD, show, SMS, snes, Space Invaders, Star Trek, Star Wars, Super Mario, Super Nintendo, Tempest 2000, Tetris, Turbo GrafX, TurboDuo, turbografx, TV, vector, Vectrex, Vic 20, Video, video games, Videogames, Wii, Wizard of Wor, Wolfenstein, youtube, Zaxxon
Categories : 16 bit, 1970's, 1980’s, 1980s, 1990s, 32 bit, 70's, 80's, arcade, Asteroids, Astrocade, atari, Atari Jaguar, Berzerk, Black Sabbath, Calgary, Canada, cartridge, castlevania, CD32, cheat, cheezy, classic, classic gaming, classic video games, Coleco, collection, commodore, computers, console, crash, Donkey Kong, Edmonton, electronics, emulator, Frogger, fun, Funny, Galaxians, game gear, game genie, Gaming, Geezer, handheld, history, hobbies, humor, humour, IBM, intellivision, Jaguar, Kempster, Konami, Lee Kempster, live, Maganvox Odyssey, master system, Mega CD, Mega Drive, Ms. Pacman, multiplayer, museum, Namco, NEC, NES, nhl, Nintendo, old, pac-man, pacman, Parker Brothers, PC Engine, pinball, pioneers, Podcast, pop culture, Primal Rage, retro, Scramble, Sega, Sega CD, show, SMS, SNES, Space Invaders, Star Trek, Star Wars, Super Mario, Super Nintendo, Tempest 2000, Tetris, Turbo GrafX, TurboDuo, turbografx, TV, vector, Vectrex, Vic 20, VIC-20, Video, video games, Videogames, Wii, Wizard of Wor, Wolfenstein, Youtube, Zaxxon
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This made me laugh, both now and back when it was current!
Tags: cheat, classic, classic gaming, classic video games, game genie, Nintendo, Sega, video games, Videogames
Categories : cheat, classic, classic gaming, classic video games, game genie, Nintendo, Sega, video games, Videogames
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Text It To Me
The pigeon finds a hot dog!
Willems, Mo, author, illustrator.
New York : Hyperion Books for Children, [2004]
1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 24 cm
Pigeon learns about sharing when a curious duckling keeps asking questions about the hot dog Pigeon has found.
Program Information:
AR 1.0 0.5.
Accelerated Reader LG 1 .5.
Reading Counts K-2 1 1.
Pigeons -- Juvenile fiction.
Ducks -- Juvenile fiction.
Sharing -- Juvenile fiction.
Pigeons -- Fiction.
Ducks -- Fiction.
Sharing -- Fiction.
Picture books for children.
Picture books.
Humorous fiction.
Juvenile works.
Contributor biographical information http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1309/2003050908-b.html
Publisher description http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0912/2003050908-d.html
MARC view
Available:*
Willamina Public Library
E WILL
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+ PRESCHOOL - WILLEMS
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J PICTURE BOOK - WILLEMS
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E/K WIL
McMinnville Public Library
Willems
Monmouth Public Library
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E WILLEMS
Salem Main Library
JP Willems
Sheridan Public Library
J Grey (Willems)
Silver Falls Library
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West Salem Branch Library
JP Wil
Woodburn Public Library
When Pigeon finds a delicious hot dog, he can hardly wait to shove the entire thing in his beak. But . . . then a very sly and hungry duckling enters the scene and wants a bite. Who will be the more clever bird?
In this hilarious follow-up to the acclaimed Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Mo Willems has created another avian adventure that encourages children to share even their most prized processed foods.
Mo Willems is a six-time Emmy Award-winning writer and animator for Sesame Street and the head writer of Cartoon Network's Code Name: Kids Next Door. The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! is the companion to Mo's first children's book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! He is also the author of Time to Pee!.
Mo Willems was born on February 11, 1968. After graduating from New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, he spent a year traveling around the world drawing a cartoon every day, which were published in the book You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons. For nine seasons, he worked as a writer and animator for PBS' Sesame Street, where he received 6 Emmy Awards for his writing. During this time, he also served as a weekly commentator for BBC Radio and created two animated series, Nickelodeon's The Off-Beats and Cartoon Network's Sheep in the Big City.
While working as head writer for Cartoon Network's Codename: Kids Next Door, he began writing and drawing books for children. He received three Caldecott Honor Awards for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! in 2004; Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale in 2005; and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity in 2008. He also created the Elephant and Piggie series for Easy Readers, which were awarded the Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal in 2008 and 2009.
His drawings, wire sculptures, and ceramics have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums across the nation. Occasionally he serves as the Radio Cartoonist for NPR's All Things Considered. He voices and produces animated cartoons based on his books with Weston Woods studios. The animated Knuffle Bunny was awarded Best Film during the New York International Children's Film Festival in 2008 and received the Andrew Carnegie Medal in 2007. His title Happy Pig Day made Publisher's Weekly Best Seller List for 2011. In 2012 his title Goldilocks and The Three Dinosaurs made The New York Times Best Seller List. In 2013 his titles: That is Not a Good Idea!, Let's Go for a Drive! and I'm a Frog! made the New York Times Best Seller List. In 2014 The Pigeons Need a Bath! and Waiting Is Not Easy! made the New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Sure, he couldn't drive the bus, but will he have more success with a hot dog? The pigeon is back in this animated version of the book (Hyperion, 2004) by Mo Willems. In a twist, the hot dog is knocked from the end-papers by the bus driver from Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (Hyperion, 2003; Weston Woods, 2009). Then the pigeon discovers it. What rapture! What bliss! What's that small voice? Yes, it's a duckling with many questions about hot dogs. The pigeon is caught between avarice and guilt, but settles on sharing. This hilarious yet simple story is done up in a splendiferous and rollicking fashion with simple yet fun animation and background colors and music that reflect every change in the pigeon's mood. The pigeon is enthusiastically voiced by Willems, while the duckling's part is performed by his daughter Trixie. A nice bonus is a 13-minute "Behind the Scenes" segment with Pete List, the director and animator, who explains the process of making an animated film. Students involved in their own short animation projects will find this a valuable resource. Subtitles are optional. This production will tickle viewers both young and old.-Teresa Bateman, Brigadoon Elementary School, Federal Way, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, the hero was subordinate to an unseen person who withheld bus-driving permission; here he has the dominant role and must placate his own pesky interloper, as he bargains with a duckling over a discarded hot dog. The tale, conveyed in the same pleasing emotive dialogue and gestures, opens with the pigeon's thrilled discovery of the title snack: "Oooooh! A hot dog!/ Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!" Suddenly, a smaller yellow bird enters from the lower right corner and asks, in rounded lower-case letters, "Is that a `hot dog'?" "Not a hot dog; my hot dog," the pigeon sniffs, but his reply gives the duckling a rhetorical advantage. "What do they taste like?" it wonders aloud. The pigeon knows the duckling's disingenuous game, but his suspicious, hooded eyes and frowning beak suggest uncertainty. The trickster, meanwhile, regards the pigeon through flirtatious blue eyes and coyly tilts its teardrop shaped beak. The pigeon glares at the audience ("Can you believe this guy!?!"), shouts "That's it!" in bold two-inch-tall caps and throws an eight-stage temper tantrum before splitting the wiener in half. "Hmmmm, needs mustard," says the duck. Through voice bubbles, body language, and expressive sizes and shapes of type, Willems crafts a comical give-and-take between the characters. He sketches both iconic birds in decisive crayony lines and tints the pages with smooth pastel hues. Readers of all ages won't be able to resist miming the sly conversation in this satisfying sequel. Ages 2-6. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool, Primary) He's baaack! The impetuous pigeon from Willems's Caldecott Honor-winning Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (rev. 7/03) sets his sights here not on a joy ride but on something just as thrilling (for a pigeon): a discarded hot dog. Just as the goggle-eyed scavenger is about to devour this ""taste sensation"" in a bun, he's interrupted by a little duckling who ""scooty scoot scoots"" onto the page and asks innocently, ""Is that a 'hot dog'?"" The pigeon's irritated expression says it all: that duckling (a younger child/sibling stand-in) is horning in on his territory--""Not a hot dog; my hot dog."" The hot-headed pigeon humorously wrestles with a minor moral dilemma (to share or not to share) that will immediately resonate with the listening audience. In the end, the not-as-naive-as-he-appears duckling gets what he wants (half the hot dog and the pigeon's respect) while allowing the pigeon to save face--a triumph no matter which bird you identify with. Cartoonist Willems is as adept at depicting the daily dramas in a child's life as he is in using subtle changes in line to convey shifting emotions. The book's clean, minimalist design lets the duckling/pigeon performance take center stage, and the dialogue between the two is played for maximum laughs. Maybe the pigeon's shtick isn't as original this time around, but he's such an engaging character that it's still a treat to see him again. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
The determined pigeon of the Caldecott Honor-winning Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (2003) returns in a more subdued performance that will nevertheless appeal to fans of the first. The pigeon is about to eat the hot dog he's found, when a sly, persevering, small yellow duckling "scooty scoot scoots" up with a series of questions and comments. Willems again expertly captures the personality and emotions of the droll pigeon ("not a hot dog; my hot dog") and the "guest star" duckling, who manages to trick the pigeon into giving him what he wants, taking notes about the taste of a hot dog. "Each morsel is a joy! A celebration in a bun!" says Pigeon. "Does it taste like chicken?" asks the winsome duck. Another tantrum ensues, but the hot dog is split and shared. Duckling tops off his triumph with a complaint that gives him the final word, "Hmm . . . needs mustard." Some readers may feel this tale could also use a bit more mustard, but children who already love the pigeon will be satisfied. (Picture book. 2-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
PreS. In this follow-up to Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus BKL S 1 03, the wheedling pigeon with the short fuse meets his match. Oooooh! A hot dog! he cries, as he zooms in for a landing on the first page. Before he can enjoy his scavenged treat, though, a little duckling scuttles over and begins asking numerous questions: Is that a \lquote hot dog'? What do they taste like? The pigeon loses his temper in a wing-flapping rant before the duckling innocently suggests that they share the dog, thus sparing the pigeon the frustration of having to explain the taste. Share it they do, but the pigeon knows he has been had: You know, you're pretty smart for a duckling. Once again, Willems uses artistic minimalism (each page shows only the birds and the hot dog, rendered in basic lines) and spare, hilarious dialogue to convey surprisingly realistic emotions. Preschoolers who recognized themselves in the tantrum-throwing pigeon of the previous title will also see themselves in the calm, shrewd duckling that knows just how to get his way. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2004 Booklist
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Revealed: Harvard cheating scandal which could see over 100 students thrown out of elite college was discovered because of a TYPO
Health Technology News
By Hugo Gye
PUBLISHED:18:42 EST, 14 September 2012| UPDATED:18:42 EST, 14 September 2012
The Harvard cheating scandal which has rocked the world-famous university and cast doubt on more than 100 students began with a minor typing error, it has been revealed.
125 undergraduates are currently being investigated over allegations they collaborated on a take-home exam paper for a course entitled ‘Introduction to Congress’.
And a leaked letter from the professor who uncovered the cheating reveals the similarities between different students’ answers which he believes cannot have been the result of coincidence.
The tell-tale signs included obscure political references, phrases repeated word-for-word, and an extra space inserted into the number ‘22,500’.
Harvard: The elite Ivy League college has been hit by a mass cheating scandal
Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor of government, wrote to the university administration on May 14 detailing his plagiarism concerns in a letter recently obtained by the Harvard Crimson.
He initially cast suspicion on 13 of the 279 students taking the ‘Introduction to Congress’ course – but when the university looked in to the allegations, they found 125 possible incidents of cheating.
Two of those allegedly implicated are the captains of the university basketball team, one of whom has withdrawn from college for the year while the other is expected to follow suit.
Members of the football team have also been named as among the alleged culprits – but Mr Platt originally told officials that he was particularly concerned about some of the college’s baseball players.
Revelation: The alleged cheating was uncovered by assistant professor of government Matthew B. Platt
Some of the evidence marshalled by the professor involved a number of students answering questions with the same correct but unexpected response.
A question about the increasing power of the parties in the House of Representatives elicited references from many students to Congressman Henry Clay and the 1910 Cannon Revolt, which Mr Platt described in his letter as ‘somewhat obscure’ answers.
Several exam papers also shared exact phrases – for example, many students referred to ‘Freddie Mac’s stealth lobbying campaign’.
And two different students mistyped the number ‘22,500’ as ’22, 500′, the extra space suggesting both answers drew on a common source.
Furthermore, Mr Platt wrote, when it came to a bonus question on the exam, ‘all the answers use the same (incorrect) reading of the course material in arguments that are identically structured’.
The students implicated in the scandal are facing charges of academic dishonesty that could bring a one-year suspension from school.
‘These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behaviour that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends,’ President Drew Faust said when the cheating scandal was uncovered last month.
Each student whose work is in question has been called to appear before a subcommittee of the Harvard College Administrative Board, which reviews issues of academic integrity.
Possible punishments range from an admonition, a sort of warning for a first offense, to being forced to withdraw from Harvard for a year.
Recent Harvard graduate Eric Kester argued in a book published earlier this year that the extreme pressure to ‘be the next Mark Zuckerberg’ drove students to plagiarism, and said that he had frequently witnessed cheating while he was an undergraduate
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203548/Harvard-cheating-scandal-discovered-typo.html#ixzz26YZvGZwJ
Tags: Cheating Drew Gilpin Faust Freddie Mac Harvard Harvard University Ivy League Mark Zuckerberg Student
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COLITIS, Intestinal Bowel Disease greatly helped by Urolithin A
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2016 Mazda 3 Hatchback Models
i Sport
2.0-liter Inline-4 Gas
i Touring
i Grand Touring
s Grand Touring
s Touring
See all Trims and Specs
2016 Mazda3 Review: If This Is The Anti-Hot Hatch, Why Is It So Fun To Drive?
by Michael Hines
Mazda has made a calculated decision to keep the five-door Mazda3 out of the hot hatch wars. Its top engine, a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter four-cylinder, makes just 184 horsepower and 185 lb-ft of torque. Though the Mazda3 has a curb weight of just 2,865 pounds its 0-60 mph time is an atrocious 7.4 seconds. Although the 3 looks great it doesn't feature any aero elements or other aesthetic/actual performance bits. This car is in many ways the anti-hot hatch, and that’s exactly how Mazda wants it.
Mazda knows it can’t rely on tuned models to bring in the big bucks. The real money for the automaker is in higher trim levels and optional extras. That’s why it sees a new Speed3 as “childish,” and why you shouldn’t hold your breath for the new CX-9’s turbocharged SkyActiv four-cylinder, which makes 250 hp and 310 lb-ft of torque, to find its way into the 3. While the Mazda3 isn’t getting hotter anytime soon you shouldn’t ignore it altogether. There’s some fun to be had with this hatchback. We’d know, as we got to play around with one for a week, and it was equipped with a six-speed manual. When we drove the Mazda6 we sang the car’s praises but lamented the unavailability of a manual in Grand Touring guise.
The six-speed automatic wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary and left us wondering what the manual option offered. The 3 offers a manual on the Grand Touring trim, which lets you get a side of fun with your entry-level luxury. The difference was night and day, although keep in mind that it’s a relative change. The Mazda3 is still an affordable hatchback after all. But the manual does make city driving and passing situations a bit more fun. Our only knock on it is that you have to let off the clutch pedal a surprising amount before it’ll fully engage. That small complaint aside, the Mazda3 five-door is a joy to drive. You won't mistake it for a track-focused hot hatch but it offers a surprising amount of fun given its roots as a budget car.
The fully independent front and rear suspension isn’t tuned for performance yet holds its own through the corners. The four-wheel disc brakes provide good stopping power if you ever let things get out of hand as we did on one spirited drive through San Francisco. Mazda certainly stuck to its "Driving Matters" mantra when designing this car. But at its core the 3 is a mass market daily driver, and in that regard it checks most of the necessary boxes. We averaged 26 mpg on the highway and 16.1 mpg in the city. That’s down considerably from the 26/35/29 mpg split Mazda has given the car. The SkyActiv engine is capable of much more, which makes us wonder if we just needed to put more miles on our tester to up the average.
The Mazda3 five-door offers 20.2 cubic feet of storage space with the rear seats up and 47.1 cubic feet of storage space with the back seats folded. Those numbers are pretty crappy when compared to the competition. Hopefully an increase in storage space is in order when the next-gen 3 hatch debuts. Rear headroom is pretty good but rear legroom sits solidly at "OK," at least for someone standing six feet tall. While Mazda’s interior space could be better, its cabin design is top notch. The leather-trimmed sport seats are nice for the segment and the 7-inch touchscreen and commander wheel are a solid combo. However, we’d axe the goofy faux plastic carbon fiber panels found on the door and steering wheel.
Mazda’s Kodo design language is one of the industry’s best and has helped make the 3 one of most striking cars in the five-door hatchback segment. Long, flowing lines give it an elegant look and, when combined with the Soul Red paint the Mazda3 looks faster than it is. Our tester came in at $26,580. That kind of money buys you a Ford Focus ST or a Volkswagen Golf GTI. We’d rather have both of those cars than a Grand Touring Mazda3 five-door. Here it's all about the lower trim levels. An entry-level Sport model with a manual starts at $18,545 and offers the same great looks and interior design, albeit with a less powerful 155-hp 2.0-liter engine.
It’ll be interesting to see how Mazda moves the five-door three upmarket. The easy way out would be to drop the CX-9’s engine into it and add all-wheel drive. That would make the conversation about whether or not to shell out $27,000 (or more) for the car much more interesting. Until then, the five-door Mazda3 will remain the anti-hot hatch that's best bought on a budget. Given its sales success (it's the brand's second best selling model after the CX-5 crossover) that's not such a bad thing. Photos by Nathan Filbrandt.
Check other Mazda Mazda 3 Styles
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Mazda 3 Hatchback News
Mazda's Turbocharged SkyActiv Engine Will Fit In The 3 And 6
Now Mazda has NO excuse not to build faster versions.
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Some of these cars make your daily look like crap. Some don't.
This Mazda Rips Around A Rally Track Like Nobody's Business
Forget skydiving, just do this for thrills.
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Job Title: Pediatricians
Location(s): Multiple positions in New York & Westchester Counties (New York City & Yorktown, NY) (NYC & NYC Suburbs)
Contact Email: mdrecruitment@cmmedical.com
CareMount Medical, P.C. is the largest independent multi-specialty group in New York State with over 600 providers and 640,000 patients. We are physician owned and physician managed. We are currently seeking pediatricians to join our practices in New York City and Yorktown Heights, NY. There is ample opportunity for the qualified candidate to quickly establish a busy practice. The system wide team is currently comprised of over 50 pediatricians and is fully supported with pediatric focused nurses and advanced practitioners.
Advantages of Practicing at CareMount:
• Physician-centric and physician focused
• Multiple colleagues within the same specialty for support in clinical care
• Shared EMS with all colleagues for coordinated patient care
• Prompt lab and radiology support
• Shared equipment and access to high end surgical platforms
• Prompt patient referrals to other sub-specialists in the medical group
• Walk-in Urgent Care Centers for emergency visits and referrals
• Attract and retain stellar employees
• Non-clinical income
• Competitive health insurance/benefits
• Tuition reimbursement
• Strong support in malpractice; technology, including a shared EMR; billing; administration; human resources; allowing more time for patient care
• Marketing support for on-boarding announcements and ongoing PR, content, and community opportunities
• Physician lecture series across all specialties for “in-house” CME
• Provide more value to the community through reinvestment in the group
• Affiliations with prestigious organizations: Massachusetts General Hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Physician Benefits Summary:
• Health/Dental/Vision Insurance
• Life & AD&D Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• 401K
• Medical Professional Liability Insurance
• Umbrella Coverage
• Paid Time Off/Holidays
• Corporate Discount Program
For more information please call or email:
Meghan Tooley
Physician Recruiting Coordinator
CareMount Medical, PC
mdrecruitment@cmmedical.com
CareMount Medical, P.C. is the largest independent multispecialty medical group in New York State, providing comprehensive medical care of the highest quality to over 640,000 patients in more than 45 locations throughout Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, and Ulster counties and New York City. Founded in 1946 as Mount Kisco Medical Group, CareMount has grown to over 600 physicians and advanced practice professionals representing more than 40 different medical specialties. CareMount is affiliated with world-class organizations including Massachusetts General Hospital, Mount Sinai Health System, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. CareMount offers on-site laboratory and radiology services, endoscopy and infusion suites, and operates eight urgent-care centers. Our physicians are frequently recognized as best doctors in respected publications and have been featured in lists including New York Magazine’s “Best Doctors,” Westchester and Hudson Valley Magazine’s “Top Doctors” as well as in Castle Connolly Medical’s “Top Doctors.” For additional information about CareMount Medical and its specialties, please visit: www.caremountmedical.com.
CareMount Medical is a registered service mark of CareMount Medical P.C.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. CareMount is an EO employer – M/F/Veteran/Disability
Internal Number: Pediatricians
About CareMount Medical
CareMount Medical is the largest, independent multi-specialty medical group in New York State. CareMount Medical provides the highest quality medical care in over 40 different locations throughout Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia and Ulster counties. We provide medical care to over 500,000 patients in 43 different locations.Founded in 1946, CareMount Medical has grown to 560 physicians representing 43 different medical specialties with major campuses in:Mount KiscoCarmelKatonahKingstonFishkillJefferson ValleyPoughkeepsieRhinebeck
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Massachusetts Legislature
Ex-Mass. Senator Brian Joyce Found Dead In Westport HomeFormer Massachusetts Sen. Brian Joyce has been found dead at his home in Westport. No foul play is suspected, authorities said.
Massachusetts Has A $1B Surplus; Why No Hurry To Spend It?Massachusetts has more than $1 billion surplus on Beacon Hill.
Accountant Accused Of Helping Ex-State Senator Defraud IRSJohn H. Nardozzi, of Waltham, was the accountant for former state Sen. Brian Joyce, who was charged last month with accepting up to $1 million in bribes and kickbacks.
Former Sen. Brian Joyce Arrested, 'Violated The Public's Trust'Former Massachusetts Sen. Brian Joyce is facing numerous federal charges including racketeering, extortion, fraud, and money laundering.
Senate Probe To Focus On Whether Rosenberg Violated Any RuleRosenberg's husband, Bryon Hefner, has been accused by several men of sexual assault.
Massachusetts Lawmakers May Tackle Tough Issues In Fall SessionThe August recess is over for Massachusetts legislators and lawmakers have a long list of issues on the docket when they get back to work.
Massachusetts Governor Tries Again For An August Tax HolidayMassachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is giving an August sales tax holiday one last try.
Massachusetts Lawmakers Consider Automatic Voter RegistrationMassachusetts residents could have their voter registration information automatically updated whenever they renew their drivers' licenses or interact with other state agencies.
Mass. Legislative Session Ends With Round Of Finger-PointingWhen Republican Gov. Charlie Baker begins filing legislation in the new session next year, Senate President Stan Rosenberg wants half of the bills filed in the Senate and half filed in the House.
No Deal Reached On Bill To Limit Non-Compete ClausesStart-up companies in Massachusetts have complained that it's tough to get qualified workers because they're tied up in non-compete agreements with bigger companies.
New Ride-Sharing Regulations, Energy Bill Passed As Legislature Closes SessionRacing against a midnight deadline, House and Senate negotiators reached agreement late Sunday on major bills including the first regulations in Massachusetts on the popular ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft.
Mass. Lawmakers Unanimously Approve Pay Equity BillMen and women would move closer to equal pay in the workplace under a bill that has landed on Republican Gov. Charlie Baker's desk.
Mass. Legislature Rushing To Wrap Up Several Bills On Session’s Final DayOne of the most closely watched bills would overhaul the state's gun laws and another would make changes to the state's domestic violence laws.
Mass. GOP Loses Ground On Beacon HillMassachusetts Republicans will hold even fewer seats in the state Legislature in the next two-year session.
They Did It.....And Will Regret It....Snake Eyes!!! Well kids......it happened. The Great and General Court of Massachusetts approved it, our ill-advised Governor signed it and now it's happening. The corrupt Commonwealth of Massachusetts is all set to build some gambling casinos and at least one parlor....love that term "parlor'...for slot machines. No surprises here I guess.
Apollo 11: 'The Eagle Has Landed'
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Published on April 15th, 2015 | by drkkr
In a world full of conversations or should i say clutter, how does it feel to run an election campaign. Todays political marketing game is all about visible positive communication and influence the mind of the people. Today almost every possible and unthinkable strategies are practiced in every election. Look at every single country which has gone through elections recently.
One must agree Barack Obama and team pionered the digital media communication with the voters 8 years ago. USA is in the brink of an election season. This time Hillary Clinton has just launched her campaign http://hillaryclinton.com/ .
This Sunday The official logo was launched “I’m running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.-H.It’s a sans-serif blue “H” overlaid with a red arrow pointing to the right. On the surface, the logo’s simple and bold. It’s a red, white, and blue representation of the letter H, with the crossbar transforming into an arrow. The colours suggest American ideals, and the arrow implies progress.
What experts say :
“It’s an effective piece of graphic design, because it encompasses the idea of her name and the idea of movement,” Glaser (Creator of I LOVE NY Logo) said. “That’s the stated objective of the logo, and it embraces what the campaign wants to say.”
“People like curves, and this has no curves,” says behavioral scientist Susan Weinschenk “It’s a stark, corporate, hard-edged logo.” Nike, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola tend to be pretty curvy. Most political campaigns’ logos do the same: think of the Obama design, for example, from 2008.
“The palette alludes to flag colors without relying on the expected stars and stripes imagery. Clever and strong,” said Landor Associates creative director Richard Westendorf, calling it “extremely progressive and modern.”
But online has made enormous noise about this logo.”Certainly, you couldn’t go far on Twitter (even before Clinton tweeted her announcement), without an opinion or thought on her new campaign (there were over 3 million views of her announcement tweets in one hour, and 750,000 Facebook video views so far by Sunday evening) “reports fox news.
This is the second logo after the GAP logo which has attracted lot of conversations which is positive and Negative. Some how this logo is compared with few other logos too. 2016 will give you a clear insight of the outcome of this identity. What is your opinion about this logo ??!!
Can Education and Experience Change an Individual : →
Learn from The Big Fall: →
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The hornets on Lion Rock
On 07/08/2014 11/04/2017 By bridgbIn Humour, Travels
Sigiriya, the sign and the nests
As an aside, the title sounds like it could be an episode of Game of Thrones. Alas though, brothers, this be not a tale of elaborate deceit and twincest, tis simply a tale of the hornets on Lion Rock.
Yesterday we left the cool mountain air and Perahera madness of Kandy for the scorching plains, home to Sri Lanka’s ancient cities. The itinerary was Kandy -> Dambulla -> Sigiriya -> Anuradhapura, or A-rad as it will henceforth be known. Our driver suggested we change our itinerary, visiting Sigiriya first, then Dambulla. Yep, fine, no worries, why? “Sigiriya very dangerous, 12 o’clock after,” he told us seriously. Yep, ok, heat stroke, hot, maybe crowds, why? “Many wasp attack.” Wasp? That was chalked up to the mountain of what is and has been lost in translation.
It took us about two and a half hours to go the 90-odd kms from Kandy to Sigiriya. There’s a few theories about the history of Sigirya but nothing concrete. Archeologists say it was most likely a meditation spot but locals maintain it was a palace or a fort. A rock fort. Sigiriya is most commonly known as the rock fort of Sri Lanka.
Something I’ve noticed, and I’m not sure if it’s the Bundaberg showing, is my cavalier attitude towards things that people in other countries tell me to watch out for. African sun? No worries, mate, I’m from ‘Straya. Second degree burns and superficial pride wounds ensued. Snakes? Mate, we had a red-bellied black the length of your ute in the back yard the other day, now THAT would make you run like a rat up a drain pipe. I swear I even get more of an accent. The wasp warning was no exception. My scorn grew at the Sigiriya ticket booth, when we were told we could only proceed to the summit at our own risk. They recommended coming back at the Lion’s Paws. Mate, if I’m gunna pay 3900 rupees, I’m gunna bloody well go to the top of the bloody rock.
So we did. Joined by a British/Aussie couple, we climbed countless stairs to the Lion’s Paws, about halfway up. People lingered, posed with the paws, and the more cautious collected apiaries costumes from the First Aid shed before making the summit climb.
How we laughed! Those paranoid tourists sweating in their modified raincoats! Signs warned us to be quiet but we simply mocked the scale of the hornet illustrations. Then, we climbed the narrow iron stairs, bolted into the rock face. About 100m up, we saw them. They clung to the rock, five or six, each one the size of a human child, their surfaces shimmering with the movement of a million wings. The nests. The line of summit-bound tourists hushed as they saw them. I began calculating the reaction of a hundred tourists on a narrow stairway when faced with a swarm of angry hornets. Humbled, I tiptoed past and triple-checked my flash was off when snapping a few pics.
To summarise, thus far Sri Lanka has left me humbled. Not in a Buddhist-enlightenment kind of way, more like when they say watch out for hornets, they’re not fucking kidding.
AustralianHornetsLion RockMisadventuresSigiryaSri LankatravelTravel writingWasps
First impressions of Colombo
Insular travel: why I don’t like resorts
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rectangles instead of characters in jtextarea
Moshe Zuisman
I have a simple panel with text area (actually - licence agreement).
All text is English
But on shine (Redhat 7) instead of text rectangles are displayed.
I do not see any difference at this machine from point of view of localesm or installed fonts or environment.
What can be areason for such behaviour?
Where are you reading the text from? Is it a text file? How are you reading it? What is the file's encoding? We need lots more details before we can help, please.
Are you still using RedHat 7? Isn't that severely out of date?
Campbell Ritchie wrote: Are you still using RedHat 7? Isn't that severely out of date?
No, RHEL 7 is the current production release. RHEL 8 just came into Beta within about the last month.
Rectangles in a GUI display are an indication that the font being used to display the text data does not have graphics (glyphs) defined for those characters. The most common cause of this is that the wrong code page being used by the displaying program.
Unfortunarely, one scrollable textarea looks pretty much like another, so we can't tell what app is giving you trouble.
When it comes to destroying a civilization, gas chambers cannot hold a candle to echo chambers.
Campbell Ritchie wrote: Welcome to the Ranch
Hi. Source is txt file in ANSI encoding.Pure English text.
It happens at our installation program - written on Java (8) with GUI on swing (actually we use improved version of IzPack installer).
It happen on one of our customers site.
sincerely - I can not find any difference in environment, installed locales ore something else between their machine and our RH7 machines at which it works with no problem...
OK, this is a Swing app. A very good possibility is that the app is requesting a font that is not installed on the client's system. The actual mechanism for obtaining a font to render in Java/Linux is by building a font definition that outlines the properties of the desired font, including name, point size, style, and so forth. The font manager will then rummage through the set of installed fonts to find what it considers the best match. For example, an app that asks for Microsoft Arial font on a Linux system might actually end up using the Linux FreeSans font, since it's a sans-serif font that resembles Arial. A different machine might actually have a downloaded set of the Microsoft FreeType fonts, which includes the Arial and Times New Roman fonts. Linux can handle FreeType.
So apparently the best match for the font on this particular machine wasn't a very good match.
Tim Holloway wrote: . . . RHEL 7 is the current production release. . . .
RHEL, is it? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! And I thought that meant ordinary red hat, which has been superseded by Fedora.
What's ANSI encoding? From this SO post, it would appear to be Windows‑1252. I am surprised that you are getting everything appearing as a square; most fonts should be able to display such text. I still think we need more information, please. As you know, Java® Strings use UTF‑16. That changed slightly with Java11, but I think they still behave as if they used UTF‑16.
Campbell Ritchie wrote:
Yes - it is Windows‑1252.
Which more info could be helpfull?
Is there some way to trace - how font manager choose a font to display my frame?
You can set a font for any text on Swing.
The Great Schism happened over a decade ago. The last "pure" Red Hat Linux release was Red Hat 7. I still have the discs. Up to that point, you could buy Red Hat for under $100 at your friendly neighborhood computer store. After that, they switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and reset the release numbers (which admittedly got confusing). RHEL ran about $450 per-machine license. Fedora spun off, and became the hobby/test version of the Red Hat world, although I'm not sure if the Fedora Foundation is actually owned by Red Hat. Also spun off at that time were several free versions of RHEL, of which I think only CentOS remains. And CentOS was actually acquired by Red Hat Inc., about a year or so ago - but it's still free.
It's really quite incredible that Red Hat is one of the most profitable software companies around despite the fact that you can obtain most of their products (but not the support) for nothing. This breaks all the things that economic experts and ideologues "know" about how humans are supposed to respond to free stuff. Obviously that support is valued quite highly. And as a shareholder, I'm cackling all the way to the bank. I'm really going to hate it when IBM takes it over.
Back to our regularly-scheduled program:
I've seen this sort of weirdness before. Most common fonts have the basic ASCII character glyphs in them, but some of the symbolic fonts don't, and thus they display even plain English text as all boxes. Or, it's possible that the original text isn't actually ASCII and somehow the Arabic version of the content was presented using a font that doesn't have Arabic characters. Mis-matches between straight ASCII, UniCode and UTF-8 are more likely to display at least some readable text.
The only way to really know is to build a copy of the app that displays what font is being pulled in there and have them run that.
Tim Holloway wrote: . . . Red Hat is one of the most profitable software companies around despite the fact that you can obtain most of their products (but not the support) for nothing. . . .
Yes, it is all paid for by the support; I don't think I have paid a penny for Linux in the twelve years I have been using it.
I think I spent about $4.50 back around 1994 when I picked up a CD at a Ham Radio convention. Bought the "Dr. Linux" book, which had a Red Hat 2 disc in the back pocket. At the end I was paying $65 for RH6. RHEL was too expensive, though, so these days I run free distros. I don't need Enterprise support - I am Enterprise support.
I have paid for books too.
Tim Holloway wrote:
Ok. 10x. I will check if this file was not somehow corrupted when they copied install kit to their site. I will also try to prepare for them test binary that will query and print which font was finally used by panel.
about the read() in the FileReader class...
Which JScrollPane ?
GridBagLayout gridwidth, fill and anchor
Handling Japanes Fonts
Arabic unicode characters in HTML
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Token Symbol : MSM
Total Token Supply : 70,000,000
Crowdsale : Pre-sale
Token Price : 1 MSM = 0.00033 ETH
Hard Cap : 10,000 ETH
Soft Cap : 2500 ETH
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Pre ICO Starts : 2018-07-25
Pre ICO Ends : 2018-08-20
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Museums Chain - ICO Details
About Museums Chain: Museums Chain is a blockchain-based virtual museum platform for everyone to see museums around the world and to discover the world’s heritage. Teachers, students of all ages, families, young people, employees of the museum and others learn more quickly and retain more information by living an experience rather than just reading about Museums.The interest in the development of virtual museums is nowadays rising rapidly. During the last decades there have been numerous efforts concerning the 3D digitization of cultural heritage and the development of virtual museums, digital libraries.The 3D virtual spaces and modern technology are more and more used especially in the development of applications in e-learning and edutainment by cultural organisations and museums. The abilities, the restrictions and the limits of technology in this area have not yet been explored and defined, as the advantages that virtual reality offers constantly increase. The virtual museum is a sub-category of 3D virtual spaces and it is usually a replica of a real museum.We aim to preserve and immortalize the history and culture of a place or event. We hope that our project will trigger historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interests among the visitors. Why Choose Museums Chain ? See the Museums around the World. While it’s hard to beat the experience of seeing a seminal piece of fine art or important historical artifact with your own two eyes, one could easily spend a lifetime traveling the world in search of all of them. Fortunately, Museums Chain will make it possible-easy, even-to visit most of the world’s most famous museums from the comfort of your own home. Museums Chain Marketplace. Find the perfect souvenirs from your trip to the Museums Chain. Also, Museums Chain is the perfect place for buying and selling 3D artifacts, 3D historical objects. Shopping for historical, cultural products and services. This new alternative marketplace allows people to both earn and spend money in a museums. Monthly Income for Museums Chain Token Holders. We will distribute 40% of profits to our Token Holders. The dividends will be issued in Museums Chain token (MSM). Team Tokens (MSM) will be Locked for 24 Months. We are setting long term goals. Museums Chain team tokens (MSM) will be locked for 24 months (only team members) — No Market Manipulation. Museums are good for business. The museum as an institution tells the story of man the world over and how humanity has survived in its environment over the years. It houses things created by nature and by man and in our modern society it houses the cultural soul of the nation. (It holds the cultural wealth of the nation in trust for all generations and by its function and unique position, it has become the cultural conscience of the nation.)A museum is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance.For example , The Louvre recorded a sharp increase in visitor attendance from January to December 2017, with 8.1 million visitors. The Louvre houses masterpiece artworks like Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, the ‘Venus de Milo’ sculpture of Aphrodite, and what is considered to be the finest diamond in the world, the ‘Regent’. The National Museum of China in Beijing comes in at number two, with 7.6 million visitors in 2014. However, around the world, museum visitation is relatively steady. The world’s top 20 museums recorded more than 108 million visitors last year. Museums Chain will be issuing an ERC20 token called a Museums Chain Token (MSM). MSM tokens are based on the Ethereum platform and are ERC20 compliant.70,000,000 total tokens will be generated. No additional tokens will be created. Unsold tokens will be burned. MSM Tokens will be fully transferable, exchangeable and will be listed on exchanges. The Pre-sale price is $0,15 per token. But during the ICO, MSM token is available at a price of $0.20 USD per coin. There is a 40% bonus period on all purchases for the first 7 days of the pre-sale round. Purchases during the next 7 days of the pre-sale receive a 30% bonus.The minimum investment for the token sale is $50. 71.4% of MSM Tokens (49,980,000) will be available for purchase during the Token Sale. Exchange rate: 1 ETH = 3,000 Museums Chain Tokens (MSM) -this may change with ETH exchange rates. Museums Chain will only accept ETH. Consumers can use MSM Tokens to buy digital products and services. The proceeds from the token sale will be used for the development, marketing, promotion, and growth of the decentralized museum ecosystem. Our funds distribution will be divided into three groups: a)Development b)Marketing c)Partnership
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Concept, Design and Research was finalized..
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Encoding Model Of The Tibetan Script In The Ucs
THL Toolbox > Fonts & Related Issues > Tibetan Scripts, Fonts & Related Issues > Encoding Model of the Tibetan Script
Contributor(s): Christopher Fynn
Anyone who needs to work with Tibetan or Dzongkha data on modern computer systems should have a basic grasp of how the Tibetan script is encoded in the Unicode Standard or UCS (Universal Character Set). Understanding the encoding model used for Tibetan characters is particularly important for those who need to create Tibetan web content, those writing software applications to handle Tibetan text, those want to create "smart" OpenType or AAT fonts for Tibetan, or those who want to understand how UCS Tibetan data is collated.
Regular & Combining Consonants
Vertically combined conjuncts of consonants and vowels occur frequently in Tibetan script text. However whether or not two neighboring characters should stack vertically or be written left to right, one following the next, cannot always be determined simply by applying contextual or grammatical rules. For this reason, as well as the frequency and complexity of these vertical conjuncts in Tibetan text, a model which is radically different from that adopted for Devanagari and other Indic scripts was adopted when the Tibetan script was encoded in the UCS.
The model adopted for encoding Tibetan is an explicitly stacking model based on Tibetan orthography or the layout of Tibetan glyphs - not on the rules of Tibetan grammar. In the UCS two complete sets of consonants are encoded as separate characters: one set of headline consonant characters (U+0F40-U+0F6A), to be used for single consonants or for the consonant occurring in the topmost position of any conjunct stack; and a second a set of combining consonant characters 1 (U+0F90 –U+0FBC) to be used for all additional consonants which occur in a stack. Characters for Tibetan vowels, usually written as marks combining with or dependant on consonants or consonant stacks, are encoded between these two sets of consonants (U+0F71-U+0FB1) in the UCS.
See: Table of Tibetan Characters in the UCS or: Unicode chart of Tibetan Characters
Character Order
Conjunct stacks are usually encoded in the order which the parts are written, first the character for the consonant in the topmost or headline position, followed by characters for any combining consonants and then by the character(s) for any vowel(s):
Figure 1: Characters in the combination sgru
In this way it is possible to represent even very long stacks found in some religious texts:
Figure 2: Characters in the stack t+th+d+dh+n+ra
After the final below base letter has been written or entered, vowels or marks occurring above a base glyph are normally written or entered from the top of the first consonant upwards:
Figure 3: Order of characters in the combination hr'iM
Figure 4: Order of characters in the combination rdoe
Reordering of Characters
Normalization processes may affect the order of Tibetan characters in a string 2 . In the Unicode Standard many characters have been assigned a series of property values for various purposes. In particular all combining characters have been assigned a canonical combining class value (CCCV). When a string is normalized, combining characters are re-ordered according to their canonical combining class value: those with a greater value being reordered after those with a smaller value. Characters with a CCCV of 0 are not re-ordered.
Certain Tibetan characters seem to have been assigned misappropriate values by the Unicode Technical Committee and, due to a strict policy of maintaining stability of the Standard, the UTC will not change these values.
In particular this means:
The character U+0F39 TSA 'PHRU which would normally be written or entered immediately after the consonant with which it combines may get reordered after a vowel since it has a CCCV of 216 which is greater than the CCCVs assigned to vowels. As TSA 'PHRU is normally written before any vowel, and the shape and position of vowels may depend on whether a TSA 'PHRU has been added to the base consonant, it should have had a CCCV less than that of any combining vowel.
In stacks with more than one vowel, the below base vowel U+0F74 VOWEL U – which would normally be written or entered before any above base vowel – may get reordered after them since this character has a CCCV of 132 while above base vowels have a CCCV of 130. The below base U+0F71 TIBETAN VOWEL SIGN AA has a CCV of 129 and so is not effected in this way.
Anyone creating character to glyph lookups in fonts or sorting and string matching routines for Tibetan characters need to take into consideration the repercussions of such reordering and where necessary handle these in a way transparent to end users.
Syllables & Encoding
The basic unit of meaning or morpheme in Tibetan & Dzongkha is the tsheg bar usually referred to as a “syllable” in English books on Tibetan. Words consist of one or more these syllables.
Figure 5: Parts of the Tibetan syllable bsgrubs
Each syllable contains a root letter (ming zhi) and may additionally have any/or all of the following parts: prefix, head letter, sub-fixed letter, vowel sign, suffix, and post-suffix. Syllables are normally delimited by a tsheg or another punctuation character. There are normally no inter-word spaces in Tibetan.
Figure 6: Unicode characters in the Tibetan syllable bsgrubs
The base or root glyph in a Tibetan stack talked about when OpenType rendering for Tibetan should not be confused with the base or root letter (ming zhi) in a Tibetan syllable (tsheg bar).
U+0F0C Non breaking Tsheg
The properties defined for the normal TSHEG character (U+0F0B) in the Unicode Standard mean that text-processing applications may wrap a line after any occurrence of this character. In other words this character provides a line breaking opportunity. Sometimes, as in the case of a tsheg occurring after the letter nga and before a shad, it is desirable to suppress this behavior. In these cases, the non-breaking tsheg (U+0F0C) (inappropriately named "delimiter tsheg") may be used.
U+0F6A Fixed form Ra
The character FIXED FORM RA (U+0F6A) is used in place of RA (U+0F62) where it is necessary to override the normal contextual shaping of RA:
Figure 7: Shaping of Ra (0f62) and Fixed-form Ra (0F6A) when followed by combining sub-joined Tha
In dbu can script is not necessary to use FIXED FORM RA in combinations like RNYA in order to keep a full form ra mgo - since in dbu-can the normal contextual shaping of U+0F6A RA when followed by subjoined NYA is to retain its full form. Similarly when using a It should be noted that different styles of Tibetan script have different shaping rules:
Although they may occasionally indicate a lexical difference in Sanskrit words, the default behaviour of collation and text-matching algorithms should be to treat U+0F62 and U+0F6A as equivalent.
U+0FBA, U+0FBC, U+0FBD: Fixed form sub-joined WA, YA & RA
Similarly there are fixed form variants of the sub-joined consonant WA YA and RA. These should be used only where it is necessary to override normal contextual shaping behavior:
It is important to realize that 0FAD 0FB1 and 0FB2 should not always be rendered in short form. WA YA and RA occurring mid-stack are often normally written in their full form.
Fixed form characters are only required for certain Sanskrit combinations transcribed in Tibetan script and should be used where different letter forms appear in the original Sanskrit.
The default behavior of collation and text-matching algorithms should be to treat the characters U+0FAD / U+0FBA; U+0FB1/ U+0FBB and U+0FB2 / U+0FBC as equivalent.
U+0FC6 Tibetan Symbol padma gdan
This is an unusual combining symbol character - it may be used to combine with letters or other symbols.
This character would normally be entered after the sequence with which it combines:
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Effect of Gang Injunctions on Crime
Objective: Assess the effect of civil gang injunctions on crime.
Methods: Data include crimes reported to the Los Angeles Police Department from 1988 to 2014 and the timing and geography of the safety zones that the injunctions create, from the first injunction in 1993 to the 46th injunction in 2013, the most recent during our study period. Because the courts activate the injunctions at different timepoints, we can compare the affected geography before and after the imposition of the injunction contrasted with comparison areas. We conduct separate analyses examining the average short-term impact and average long-term impact. The Rampart scandal and its investigation (1998-2000) caused the interruption of three injunctions creating a natural experiment. We use a series of difference-in-difference analyses to identify the effect of gang injunctions, including various methods for addressing spatial and temporal correlation.
Results: Injunctions appear to reduce total crime by an estimated 5% in the short-term and as much as 18% in the long-term, with larger effects for assaults, 19% in the short-term and 35% in the long-term. Analyses of interrupted injunctions yielded estimates of similar magnitude and provide further support of a crime reduction effect. We found no evidence that gang injunctions are associated with displacing crime to nearby areas.
Conclusions: Injunctions represent a powerful place-based intervention strategy for police and prosecutors. Courts have recently subjected gang injunctions to closer scrutiny. Los Angeles is not litigating new injunctions and is shrinking the list of enjoined individuals. Our analysis indicates that gang injunctions appear to have contributed to crime reductions in Los Angeles and may still have an important role.
Key words: gangs, gang injunctions, difference-in-difference, spatial-temporal model
2018-3.0-Ridgeway_Effect of Gang Injunctions on crime_3.2018.pdf
The Effect of Alcohol Regulation on Violence Against Women: Evidence from India
Do Schools Cause Crime in Neighborhoods? Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Growth of Charter Schools in Philadelphia
Effect of Rail Transit on Crime: A Study of Los Angeles from 1988-2014
Also in Working Papers
An Algorithmic Approach to Forecasting Rare Violent Events: An Illustration Based in IPV Perpetration∗
After the Gun: Examining Police and Intimate Partner Violence Following Incidents Involving a Firearm
Assumption Lean Regression
Probation and Parole
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Campaign 2016, Commentary, Intelligence, International, Russia, WikiLeaks
Top Ten Questions About the Mueller Report
Daniel Lazare examines some of the missing pieces in the special counsel’s 448-page tome on Russian interference.
By Daniel Lazare
In January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a report about Russian interference co-signed by three other agencies — the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the CIA — that was so evidence-free that even The New York Times said it was “unlikely to change the minds of skeptics who … remember the intelligence agencies’ faulty assessments on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016,” the report stated. “We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump. … We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release U.S. victim data….”
That was it. No back-up, no substantiation, no analysis other than to point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton were on bad terms and that Russia hoped for better from Trump. Moreover, the report included a bizarre seven-page attack on RT, the Moscow-backed news outlet formerly known as Russia Today, for “highlight[ing] criticism of alleged U.S. shortcomings” by asserting, among other things, “that the U.S. two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’” If Clapper & Co. couldn’t tell the difference between a news agency from a hostile intelligence service — or between legitimate criticism and a foreign attack — then what good was their judgment regarding other Russian government activities?
Putin and Trump: Impugned by intel. (President of Russia)
But with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s 448-page tome on Russian interference, surely we’ve turned a corner, right?
Wrong. Mueller’s door-stopper of a report may be chockfull of facts, but it’s also filled with the non sequiturs, loose threads and self-serving arguments that we’ve come to expect from official Washington. It’s good on collusion, pointing out that reports of a Trump-Russia conspiracy remain unsubstantiated despite desperate Democratic efforts to spin it otherwise.
But it’s lousy on interference, regurgitating the standard intelligence-community line that Russia “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Simultaneously, it is remarkably incurious about how the scandal began, who propelled it along, and how it all snowballed into a mega-Watergate.
With that in mind, here are 10 questions that the report should answer but doesn’t.
No. 1: Was it Bernie in a Speedo?
Stretch: “Trillions of posts.” (YouTube)
In its discussion of the Internet Research Agency, the alleged St. Petersburg troll farm that supposedly used social media to interfere in the 2016 election, the report quotes congressional testimony by Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch stating that the company had linked the Internet Research Agency to 470 phony accounts that “collectively made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017” that may have “reached as many as 126 million persons.”
This sounds alarming. But that’s not all Stretch said. He also testified that American Facebook users received a total of 33 trillion posts over the same period, a figure more than 400 million times greater. With a typical user receiving roughly 220 posts per day, he estimated that 29 million people may have come across one IRA item over more than two years and that each recipient may have then passed along to three or four others – hence the figure of 126 million. (See Gareth Porter, “33 Trillion More Reasons Why The New York Times Gets It Wrong on Russia-gate,” Nov. 2, 2018.)
What might that item have been? Could it have been a cartoon of a muscle-bound Bernie Sanders in a Speedo? A picture of Jesus arm-wrestling with a pro-Hillary Satan? Why doesn’t the report mention the strange and inept material the Internet Research Agency put out or the less sensational figures issued by Facebook? Is it because Mueller wants to perpetuate the myth of massive Russian interference – the kind of interference, by the way, in which the U.S. engages with other countries around the clock?
No. 2: Partial Accounting?
The report says that 3,814 Twitter accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency may also have reached 1.4 million users. This also sounds scary. But what the report doesn’t say is that while the Internet Research Agency allegedly posted 176,000 tweets during the 10-week presidential campaign, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the one billion election-related messages that Americans tweeted overall. Why not cite that number too?
(rawpixel.com/ Pexels)
No. 3: Just Another Clickbait Operation?
The report notes that only 8.4 percent of IRA tweets were election-related. If so, what does Mueller think the other 91.6 percent were about? Could it be that IRA was not an intelligence agency after all, but, as it’s been argued, a “clickbait” operation aimed at drumming up business?
No. 4: Under-Cover Hoopla?
The report discusses Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Internet Research Agency, saying that “IRA employees, claiming to be U.S. social activists and administrators of Facebook groups, recruited U.S. persons to hold signs (including one in front of the white House) that read ‘Happy 55thBirthday Dear Boss,’ as an homage to Prigozhin (whose 55thbirthday was on June 1, 2016).” What kind of intelligence operation calls attention to itself in such a flamboyant manner? Is this yet more evidence that the Internet Research Agency was something entirely different?
Prigozhin: Birthday boy. (YouTube)
No. 5: Investigation by News Clip?
Although last summer’s indictment of the Internet Research Agency was silent on the question of Russian involvement in Prigozhin’s alleged activities, the Mueller report argues that his Kremlin links are strong after all. The evidence: a New York Times article, “Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian Oligarch Indicted by US., Is Known as ‘Putin’s Cook.’” After nearly two years, is this all that 19 attorneys and 40 FBI agents working for Mueller could come up with – a newspaper clip?
No. 6: Another Source on GRU Hack?
“By no later than April 12, 2016,” the report continues, “the GRU gained access to the DCCC [i.e. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] computer network using the credential stolen from a DCCC employee who had been successfully spearphished the day before.” How does team Mueller know what the GRU was up to when the Democratic National Committee refused to grant the FBI access to its computers? Does he have another source he’s not telling us about?
No. 7: More on Mifsud?
The report’s discussion of Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud is strikingly incomplete. After all, it was Mifsud who got Russia-gate rolling by telling President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, over breakfast at a London hotel that Russia had “dirt” on Hilary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” It was this tip, which Papadopoulos relayed to top Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, that prompted the formal FBI investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” when word reached Washington.
Mifsud: Major figure minimized. (Flickr)
This makes Mifsud an important guy. Yet the report says little about him other than he “maintained various Russian contacts while living in London” and that one such contact was a former employee of the Internet Research Agency. Yet abundant evidence suggests that Mifsud in fact enjoyed extensive ties to Western intelligence.
Stephan Roh, a Swiss-German lawyer who hired him as a consultant, writes in a self-published book that Mifsud has “only one master: the Western Political, Diplomatic, and Intelligence World, his only home, of which he is still deeply dependent.” Photographs have surfaced of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and with Claire Smith, a top British intelligence official with whom he taught a course for Italian military and law-enforcement personnel at a private institute in Rome that Roh partly owns.
British and Russian intelligence agents normally do not team up in such a manner. So why doesn’t Mueller mention such links? The report also notes that Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to an attractive young woman named Olga Polonskaya, whom he falsely billed as Putin’s niece and who offered to help set up a meeting between Trump and the Russian president.
But why would Mifsud go to such lengths? Isn’t Mueller curious as to whether he was trying to lead Papadopoulos into a trap? Or is this another avenue he doesn’t want to go down in order to maintain a narrative about evil Russians targeting a hapless west?
The report doesn’t mention Downer by name and also doesn’t mention Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 agent whose 35-page “golden showers” dossier on Trump’s alleged Russia links created a media frenzy. It also doesn’t mention that The Washington Post reported that the “golden showers” section was written by a Clinton operative. Since Steele is as crucial to the story as Mifsud or Downer, shouldn’t we know more about him as well – who recruited him, who provided him advice along the way, who fed him information?
No. 8: Something Missing on Millian?
Sergei Millian: Steele source. (YouTube)
On the other hand, the report devotes two pages to Sergei Millian, the Belarus-American who may also have tried to lure Papadopoulos into a trap by offering to “share with you a disruptive technology that might be instrumental in your political work for the campaign.” But it fails to mention that Millian was simultaneously a source for the Steele Dossier. A connection like this fairly cries out for an investigation. Yet Mueller is apparently uninterested – why?
No. 9: Failure to Inform on Sater?
Felix Sater: More than a mobster. (YouTube)
Mueller likewise neglects to mention that Felix Sater, the Russian-American mobster pushing Trump Tower Moscow, was an FBI informant and that Henry Oknyansky, a Russian expatriate who tried to interest the Trump campaign in still more dirt on Clinton, was as well. Why the reticence?
No. 10: Eavesdropping on Next Administration?
After President Barack Obama slapped sanctions on Russia for alleged election interference in December 2016, the report says: “Members of the intelligence community were surprised by Russia’s decision not to retaliate. When analyzing Russia’s response, they became aware of [future National Security Adviser Michael] Flynn’s discussions of sanctions with [Russian ambassador Sergey] Kislyak.”
How did intelligence agents become aware of such discussions? Were they listening in? Is Mueller at all concerned that intelligence agencies were apparently eavesdropping on an incoming presidential administration?
One could go on – about the report’s dubious attempts to paint WikiLeaks as an arm of the GRU (see my story, “The ‘Guccifer 2.0’ Gaps in Mueller’s Full Report,” April 18, 2019), about the thin evidence the report marshals in its effort to brand Paul Manafort’s associate Konstantin Kilimnik a Russia spy (volume one, p. 133), about the FBI’s attempt to use the defunct Logan Act — a two-century old law banning private diplomacy that has been dormant since 1852 — to launch an investigation into Flynn (volume two, p. 37), and so on.
But the point should be clear. The Mueller report is an exercise in disinformation. It generates more questions than answers about what may well have been an effort to sabotage U.S.-Russian relations and cripple the White House.
“I can’t do anything with Russia,” Trump complained after two months in office. “There’s things I’d like to do with Russia, with trade, with ISIS, they’re all over me with this.” Did it occur to Mueller that this is just the sort of policy paralysis that a phony Russia-gate scandal was designed to achieve?
Daniel Lazare is the author of “The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy” (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nationto Le Monde Diplomatiqueand blogs about the Constitution and related matters at Daniellazare.com.
Tags: CIA Daniel Lazare DNC FBI Guccifer 2.0 Hillary Clinton Robert Mueller Vladimir Putin
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28 comments for “Top Ten Questions About the Mueller Report”
Why didn’t Mueller investigate the Steele Dossier?
Mueller, the former director of the FBI was not put in place to question the basis of the FBI Investigation that was manufactured by his friend and successor Comey. He was put in place to validate the Investigation. If possible it was hoped that he could manufacture proof of Obstruction of Justice by Trump. There was never a basis for collusion. Trump was correct when he stated that ” It’s Bullshit. It’s suppose to make me look bad and someone else look good”. It was the American people after all that provided the only proof of the outcome of such collusion and what grey haired granny or Iron Belt loser was going to say Putin made him do it. Trump got leveraged from the git go. He thought that because there was no collusion, he was innocent. Silly man.We are all born with Original Sin. Hopefully our God or at least our sect and/or Political Party can purify our souls and deliver us from evil. Sorry, but it really is that simple. Catholic Nuns beat this knowledge into me. This message will self destruct in 30 seconds.
“When they say they have ‘high confidence’, that means they don’t have any evidence!”
— Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director
NSA Whistleblower Bill Binney: Intelligence Agencies Have Become American “Praetorian Guard”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/15/nsa_whistleblower_bill_binney_intel_agencies_are_lying_to_the_public_and_the_president.html
Actually it is a bit more complicated than that. Binney said the NSA had only “medium” confidence, and since they are the only agency that would have had solid evidence had a Russian hack occurred, they are the only agency that really mattered. Binney said “medium”confidence meant they didn’t have squat.
Early Hyacinth
Bingo! The mainstream media never raises this important point, probably at least in part because they haven’t even read the report.
Robert Emmett
Particularly enjoyed this question from the article: “If Clapper & Co. couldn’t tell the difference between a news agency from a hostile intelligence service – or between legitimate criticism and a foreign attack – then what good is their judgment regarding other Russian government activities?”
Gasbag Clapper and his hand-picked cronies started pumping out that phony baloney. Inflate the threat, conflate the cause, why the Mule could even pin the tale on Santy Klaus. But his pin was dull and the gas stayed lit, ‘til a quantum of fools believed it’s legit. Now the gas has dispersed (silent but deadly), the bag’s deflated. But the false believers still won’t be sated. Or convinced! When the guilty are all self-inter-dicted, who will be left to see them convicted?
It’s still hard to decide if this entire enterprise was born of malicious malfeasance or stark raving dumbfuckery. Maybe some from each calum(ny)?
AnneR
What the Mueller “investigation” and its succeeding evidence-free report were, I think at least in part, intended to do was to hobble all and any Strumpet efforts to engage with Russia, all and any (remote, I know) chances of Crumple bringing “back home” US troops from the perpetual war zones. And as a bonus, Mueller provided a deflection from Killary’s grotesqueness (like, in many ways, to the Strumpet’s), from the Demrats going along with the immoral and unethical tax handout to the 1 – 20% ers (including, of course, themselves), from the fact that the overwhelming majority of Demrats are as bellicose, greedy, as much a part of the ruling aristocracy and as eager to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid (if not eliminate them), as pro-welfare-state for the MIC as any Republirat. And the Demrats are really chummy (word intended) with the Deep State – which only shows what arseholes they really are.
There are a Hell of a lot of Americans who want to believe nonsense that fits their prejudices. Hence the flourishing conspiracy fictions of our time.
Mark M Giese
Realist wrote:
“Mueller’s paid services of the last two years were and remain nothing more than a political device intended to extricate Donald Trump from the presidency of the United States.”
Wholly ineffectual.
Mueller wasn’t needed at all compared to:
http://davidswanson.org/the-20-surest-paths-to-impeachment/
Some of the dumbest words to have been spoken by Democrats:
“Impeach Trump? Let’s wait for the Mueller Report.”
Typingperson
Top notch, Mr. Lazare.
Excellent questions.
Mueller is a fixer. What he did with 9/11 and other cases that earlier posters have cited.
Now a,bi-partisan fixer, which shows how bankrupt the Dems have become.
He tried to square the circle on this one. Provides some meat for the crazy Dem collusionists, while keeping his a** semi-clean. Deniability.
It’s also worth pointing out the that the Internet Research Agency social media campaign that is supposed to have influenced the election in Trump’s favor began in January 2015 — 5 months before Trump declared his candidacy — and continued until August 2017 — 9 months after the election.
That seems like an odd strategy for helping Trump in the election, even if all the posts had been pro-Trump and/or anti-Clinton, which they weren’t.
But hey, I’m no “intelligence” official, so what do I know?
Yep. Cuz it was just Internet marketing. Not Russia meddling in election. So obvious.
Funny how us regular folks get that.
Well now Trump has gone and done it, talking with Putin again without sticking a finger in his eye to hold those baddies to account for their unspeakably devious interference in our reliable and uncorrupted elections.
What is it about the word “hoax” those barking clowns at CNN and so on don’t understand?
Electacountable
Squirrel……… if the masses weren’t woke by paying off overleveraged mortgages held by the banks while allowing the banks to still collect on them…. then nothing will.
Exactly ,more questions than answers.Hopefully Barr will get to the bottom of it.
John Neal Spangler
Is this report the equivalent of perjury? The whole part blaming Russia is BS. UK and Ukraine interfered in the elections. Mueller should be prosecuted for this piece of crap.
Except possibly for Mr. Barr, anyone with the power to make your suggestion a reality is undoubtedly totally on board with Mueller’s confabulations. It proved impossible for Mueller to frame Trump, but nobody in Washington will object to yet another tar and feathering of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation. In fact, in their sick minds, the unending stream of false narratives justifies continuing (nay, expanding!) their insane bellicose foreign policy and the American public is just too broke, too propagandized and too traumatized by daily events on the American Street to invest any sympathy in the quest for world peace and social justice. They never make the connection between the heinous actions of our government and the periodic blow-back that the media uses to whip up the next round of fury.
worldblee
All are good questions–and all will remain unanswered by Mueller!
Excellent article. But I think a lot of us could come up with ten different questions about the Mueller Report. Maybe in book form.
By the way, I still have questions for Mueller about his prosecution of Pan Am 103. And Noriega. And the anthrax letters. And 9/11.
You forgot about the FBI showing up at Sen. Wellstone’s plane crash site and saying no foul play
The man could have been a scriptwriter for Hollywood spy thrillers had he not chosen to write fiction for the Deep State as a career.
Mifsud is an MI6 asset. Sater is an FBI asset. Henry Oknyansky (one of his three names) is an FBI asset.
When are the bozos in Washington going to recognize that this was a US/UK intelligence op, a psyop that most likely was conducted without the approval of the government itself. At the center of all this is the queen bee of incompetence and evil herself – Three Names.
This is just the beginning of the out of control surveillance state.
It wouldn’t surprise my in the slightest that Obama went along with Brennan & Clappers’ stupid action. He always worked to please our spooks.
for “highlight[ing] criticism of alleged U.S. shortcomings” — Criticizing shortcomings in your country is seen as a negative by totalitarian governments. That is NOT a negative in a healthy democracy. I rarely see this point being made.
Drew Hunkins
Why didn’t Mueller’s team interview Assange, Murray or Binney? (rhetorical)
Mueller was respecting their privacy. (snark)
Short answer: Because Mueller’s investigation was never intended to be a search for the truth.
Mueller’s paid services of the last two years were and remain nothing more than a political device intended to extricate Donald Trump from the presidency of the United States. In spite of much data conflation into fantastical false narratives remaining within the document, e.g., the totally unsubstantiated claims that Russia hacked the DNC’s, Podesta’s, and Hillary’s servers, fed that info to Wikileaks and ran an extensive and quite effective smear campaign against Clinton in the digital social media, Mueller still didn’t have any evidence of criminal collusion between Trump and Putin that might serve as a basis for Congressional or legal actions.
If he had, you would have seen it up in lights and President Pence would have awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his unstinting service to save the republic. But being a career lawyer in the employ of the Deep State for most of his adult life, Uber-Spook Mueller realised that it was simply logically and ethically (the latter critical to his public credibility and fiduciary responsibilities) impossible to make that case with the pittance of lame evidence in his possession. Had he tried to force the issue, his true motives and role in this caper would have been exposed, his reputation ruined (even among the hard core apparatchiks) and he would have opened himself up to personal charges of misconduct.
This was the same instinct for self-preservation that kicked in when Comey reopened the investigation of the Clinton servers just a handful of weeks before the election, and then quickly closed it again after he could claim due diligence and the complete absence of any alleged favoritism towards Mrs. Clinton. These charlatans are all as transparent as pure borosilicate window glass. It’s just that the public has the collective attention span of a gold fish. If RT had made the same analysis as I just did, they wouldn’t be guilty of political propaganda and meddling in America’s democracy, they’d be telling the simple truth… and doing the U.S. a big favor to expose the real villains always busy making our lives less than ideal.
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The Genuine Works of Hippocrates
By Hippocrates
Edited by: Charles Darwin Adams (trans.)
New York Dover 1868
Digital Hippocrates Collection Table of Contents
On Ancient Medicine
On Airs, Waters, and Places
The Book of Prognostics
On Regimen in Acute Diseases
Of the Epidemics
BOOK III
On Injuries of the Head
On the Surgery
On Fractures
Part 31a
On the Articulations
Mochlicus or Instruments of Reduction
SECTION II
SECTION III
SECTION VI
SECTION VII
On Ulcers
On Fistulae
On Hemorrhoids
On the Sacred Disease
This electronic edition is funded by the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. This text has been proofread to a high degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using Data Entry.
(Medical Information Disclaimer: It is not the intention of NLM to provide specific medical advice but rather to provide users with information to better understand their health and their diagnosed disorders. Specific medical advice will not be provided, and NLM urges you to consult with a qualified physician for diagnosis and for answers to your personal questions.)
[p. 229]to dislocation there; of nerves (ligaments?) and muscles around joints, or connected with joints, such as are frequently moved in using the member are the most yielding to extension, in the same manner as well-dressed hides yield the most. With regard, then, to the matter on hand, the jaw-bone is rarely dislocated, but is frequently slackened (partially displaced?) in gaping, in the same manner as many other derangements of muscles and tendons arise. Dislocation is particularly recognized by these symptoms: the lower jaw protrudes forward, there is displacement to the opposite side, the coronoid process appears more prominent than natural on the upper jaw, and the patient cannot shut his lower jaw but with difficulty. The mode of reduction which will apply in such cases is obvious: one person must secure the patient's head, and another, taking hold of the lower jaw with his fingers within and without at the chin, while the patient gapes as much as he can, first moves the lower jaw about for a time, pushing it to this side and that with the hand, and directing the patient himself to relax the jaw, to move it about, and yield as much as possible; then all of a sudden the operator must open the mouth, while he attends at the same time to three positions: for the lower jaw is to be moved from the place to which it is dislocated to its natural position; it is to be pushed backward, and along with these the jaws are to be brought together and kept shut. This is the method of reduction, and it cannot be performed in any other way. A short treatment suffices, a waxed compress is to be laid on, and bound with a loose bandage. It is safer to operate with the patient laid on his back, and his head supported on a leather cushion well filled, so that it may yield as little as possible, but some person must hold the patient's head.
When the jaw is dislocated on both sides, the treatment is the same. The patients are less able to shut the mouth than in the former variety; and the jaw protrudes farther in this case, but is not distorted; the absence of distortion may be recognized by comparing the corresponding rows of the teeth in the upper and lower jaws. In such cases reduction should be performed as quickly as possible; the method of reduction has been described
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The Lost Summer
Williams, Kathryn, 1981-
"For the past nine years, Helena Waite has been returning to summer camp at Southpoint. Every year the camp and its familiar routines, landmarks, and people have welcomed her back like a long-lost family member. But this year she is returning not as a camper, but as a counselor, while her best friend, Katie Bell remains behind. All too quickly, Helena discovers that the innocent world of campfires, sing-alongs, and field days have been pushed aside for late night pranks on the boys' camp, skinny dipping in the lake, and stolen kisses in the hayloft. As she struggles to define herself in this new world, Helena begins to lose sight of what made camp special and the friendships that have sustained her for so many years."-- Publisher's description.
Published: New York : Disney Hyperion Books, [2011]
Characteristics: 1 online resource (161 p.)
Read more reviews of The Lost Summer at iDreamBooks.com
Riceyy Jul 31, 2011
This book began as what seemed like a novel for preteens and then suddenly some not so G-rated topics were introduced. Not a very good book in terms of substance and characters. The message that was attempted in this novel was meaningful though, it just was not portrayed well. An okay summer read but it was more depressing and disconcerting than light, sweet and meaningful all at once.
Ruggles, Lucy
Interpersonal Relations — Juvenile Fiction.
Self-perception — Juvenile Fiction.
Camps — Juvenile Fiction.
Friendship — Fiction.
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Published: [New York] : HarperCollins e-books, [2007].
Read more reviews of Eye of the Needle at iDreamBooks.com
ALB126 May 25, 2017
Great plot, well-written, descriptive character development, suspenseful and not at all like the movie. One of the best World War II spy novels I have ever read. Highly recommended!
wiltonsugiyama May 03, 2017
OK, this is one of the most suspenseful books I have ever read. End of. Almost ignored some clear air turbulence off the coast of Ireland so engrossed was I. Belatedly screamed, to keep up appearances.
sgcf Mar 26, 2017
Not the sort of book I normally read, but an escapist page turner that I quite enjoyed. As always, managed to learn a bit more about the world in the process.
YuriyKa Jan 31, 2017
Great plot tied to real events during World War II.
Well-written characters. Page-turner!
UglyPeg Mar 28, 2015
Can't say enough good things about this novel. It was not an easy book to read, but every page was packed with suspense and action. It was hard to get anything done until this book was finished. This is absolutely one of the best books I have read.
wilqser Jul 24, 2013
Easily one the best World War II spy novels I have ever read. It has lots of suspense, intrigue, violence and action. The book grabs your interest from the very first page. Excellent descriptive writing. A recommended read!
nipper Feb 27, 2012
didn't read...
lindakettle Jan 26, 2012
Really exciting. I couldn`t put it down, read it all night.
jpozenel Nov 05, 2011
I read the book when it first came out and really liked it. Saw it was available as an ebook, so I thought I'd re-read it to see if it was really as good as I remembered it to be.
It was better than I remembered. Great book!
RichardPaul Jul 25, 2011
Eye of the Needle ---- by Ken Follett c - 2000/read earlier printing c - ?. ---- Excellent! ---- a real page turner w/high action and deception. ---- Enjoy! ---- RichardPaul
cpurvis Mar 14, 2010
It is 1944 and weeks before D-Day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phoney armada of ships and planes. Their plan would be scuppered if an enemy agent found out... and then, Hitler's prize agent, “The Needle”, does just that. Hunted by MI5, he leads a murderous trail across Britain to a waiting U-Boat. But he hasn't planned for a storm-battered island, and the remarkable young woman who lives there.
Stone, Zachary
Myles, Symon
Ross, Bernard L.
Martinsen, Martin
Follet, Ken
World War, 1939-1945 — Great Britain — Fiction.
Germans — Great Britain — Fiction.
Espionage, German — Fiction.
Married Women — Fiction.
Scotland — Fiction.
Islands — Fiction.
Spy Stories.
War Stories.
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10-13-2016 | Prediabetes | News
Microvascular dysfunction evident in prediabetes
medwireNews: Analysis of the Maastricht study reveals microvascular dysfunction in the eyes and skin of people with prediabetes.
The findings extend the “ticking clock hypothesis” to prediabetes, confirming that vascular dysfunction is detectable well before the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, say Coen Stehouwer (Maastricht University Medical Center, the Netherlands) and co-researchers.
The team assessed the study participants’ retinas and skin “as these are unique sites enabling direct and reproducible assessment of microvascular function”.
They found that average flicker light-induced retinal arteriolar dilation was 3.4% among 1269 participants with normal blood glucose levels, but was reduced to 3.0% in 335 with prediabetes and still further, to 2.3%, in 609 participants with Type 2 diabetes. All three groups had similar baseline arteriolar diameters.
The differences in retinal microvascular function were significant after accounting for variables including age, gender, body mass index, lipid levels, medication use, cardiovascular disease and retinopathy.
Likewise, despite no between-group differences in baseline skin blood flow, the heat-induced hyperaemic response was an average of 1234.9% in normoglycaemic participants, compared with 1108.7% in those with prediabetes and 936.7% in those with diabetes. Again, the differences were significant after accounting for confounders – although attenuated, the association between glycaemic status and microvascular dysfunction remained significant.
Both microvascular endpoints were associated with levels of glycated haemoglobin and fasting plasma glucose, and skin hyperaemic response was also associated with 2-hour post-load glucose levels, the researchers note in Circulation.
“Taken together, these data support the concept that generalized microvascular dysfunction occurs prior to the diagnosis of [Type 2 diabetes] and may play a role in disorders that are (in part) of microvascular origin and that may occur early in the course of [Type 2 diabetes] and indeed in prediabetes, notably retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy, heart failure, stroke, and cognitive decline”, they write.
The team concludes: “These findings suggest that both early hyperglycemia and microvascular dysfunction should be considered as potential targets of intervention.”
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2016
Retinopathy rotated-square
Cardiovascular outcomes rotated-square
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Blockchain Tailor-Made for Better Consumer Experience
Loyalty programs are often hampered by low redemption rates that become a liability to businesses. Blockchain can smooth transactions while also boosting brand affinity.
A while back, Brian Shniderman, partner and leader of Deloitte Consulting LLP’s U.S. Payments practice and a very frequent flier, was exiting an airplane while traveling on business. As he approached the cabin door, an airline representative presented him with a very special experience: a lift across the tarmac in a luxury sports car to his rental.
“I don’t know what kind of segmentation they did, but I’m a car guy, and they got that one right,” Shniderman says. “It was a random moment of surprise and delight, and I shared it with everyone.”
Pleased as he was, Shniderman couldn’t help but wonder how things might have been different if the airline were using blockchain to manage its loyalty rewards. The distributed ledger technology’s real-time capabilities could have immediately logged the miles from Shniderman’s just-completed flight—which put him over a million-mile mark—before the plane landed. An in-flight update to the airline’s car rental partner—through which Shniderman also earns points—could have earned him the keys to a luxury upgrade in celebration of the milestone. Although he was already impressed, such a demonstration would have made his loyalty feel more valued.
Few technologies have captured the imagination of business leaders like blockchain, which has been touted as a revolutionary business tool that will disrupt everything from clinical trials and patient record-keeping in health care to back-office functions in the oil and gas industry. In Deloitte Consulting LLP’s 2018 Global Blockchain survey,¹ 74 percent of respondents report their organizations see a compelling business case for blockchain, and nearly 40 percent say their companies will invest more than $5 million in the technology next year.
“Blockchain is at an inflection point, with momentum shifting from exploring the technology’s potential to building practical business applications,” says Linda Pawczuk, principal and blockchain leader for the Americas at Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Though executives see blockchain’s potential in areas like supply chain management—cited by 53 percent of survey respondents—it seems almost tailor-made for loyalty management. The secure distributed ledger that records and facilitates transactions across a digitized, interlinked network can ease many of the friction points that hamper loyalty reward redemption. Over blockchain’s decentralized system, redemptions can be made in real time, eliminating long delays as transactions are run through clearinghouses or multiple systems. Partners can set individual value and reward parameters for points so consumers don’t have to calculate reward-point ratios from program to program. The potential result is a simpler, more transparent redemption path for consumers and providers.
According to Colloquy’s 2017 Loyalty Census, there are more than 3.8 billion individual loyalty memberships in the United States. However, more than half (54 percent) are inactive. While the programs have significant consumer appeal, they don’t seem to be encouraging loyalty.
“Participating in a loyalty program is not the same as being loyal,” says Rich de Moll, blockchain specialist executive at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “If someone redeems points that are 10 years removed from the transaction that earned them, that’s not much of a connection between the reward and the behavior.”
Meanwhile, 28 percent of consumers left a program without redeeming a single reward, according to the Colloquy Loyalty Census. Among the top reasons consumers cited for leaving a program were: taking too long to earn rewards or points (cited by 57 percent of consumers) and not providing rewards or offers of relevance (53 percent).
While blockchain may not be a cure for all that ails loyalty programs, it could alleviate some of these issues, particularly in cases where rewards are spread globally or across multiple brands or partners. Adopting such a program could benefit both the brand and the bottom line.
The Practicalities of Blockchain for Loyalty
For all the attention it’s getting, blockchain remains a mystery for many top-level business executives. In Deloitte’s blockchain survey, 44 percent of U.S. respondents believe the technology is overhyped. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and a lack of education about this technology. Executives get too focused on cryptocurrency,” says Shniderman. “The big names that catch their attention are a bit of a distraction from these practical solutions.”
Because of the diverse, layered, and disconnected systems that house many loyalty programs, reward redemption can be confusing and complicated for consumers. The process becomes even more convoluted when programs involve multiple partners, as several systems are required to reconcile different point values. The process can be costly and time-consuming.
As a result, consumers often hoard rewards, neglect to use them when they’re available, or fail to learn the true value of the points they have accumulated across all their programs, Shniderman says. As highlighted in the Colloquy study, more than half of surveyed consumers leave programs because it’s too difficult to redeem rewards. With automated systems that can execute transactions as soon as conditions are met, blockchain can make redemption simpler and faster.
The business case for encouraging loyalty redemption, meanwhile, is simple: Companies are required to report unused rewards as balance sheet liabilities. Clearing them from the books paints a rosier financial picture.
“Loyalty points are often hoarded or unused for long periods of time,” Shniderman says. “They sit on the books as a liability for the issuer. And what good is it doing them? They’re not increasing company use or encouraging more net promoters. It’s better that they be used.”
The Added Potential Benefit of Blockchain
Beyond smoothing transactions to increase redemption rates, blockchain’s real-time capabilities can tie loyalty programs to rewards that ultimately build brand affinity. If, as Colloquy reports, more than half of consumers are leaving loyalty programs because of irrelevant offers and rewards, perhaps blockchain—combined with predictive analytics and social data mining—could provide a solution.
“Using contextual data—which we’re all supplying through our mobile devices—blockchain-enabled programs can extend offers that can be relevant to consumers nearly in real time,” Shniderman says. “Don’t think of the future of loyalty with this kind of technology as a way to do business more efficiently. It’s a way to do things differently, to facilitate experiences for the customers you want.
“The ability to increase redemption is interesting," he continues. "The real power of blockchain, however, is that it can increase both revenue and loyalty by matching the right customer with the right offer at the right time.”
—by Aaron Baar, writer, Deloitte Insights
1. The survey was commissioned by Deloitte Consulting LLP and conducted online between March 26 and April 5, 2018. The survey polled a sample of 1,053 senior executives in seven countries (Canada, China, France, Germany, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States) at companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue. Respondents had at least a broad understanding of blockchain and were familiar with and able to comment on their organizations’ blockchain investment plans. CIOs and CTOs represented 26 percent of respondents.
“Banding Together on Blockchain”
“Next Steps for Blockchain: Commercialize and Coordinate”
“A Federated Approach to Tackling Blockchain”
This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the “Deloitte” name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms. Copyright © 2019 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
Previous Enterprises Slow to Adapt Strategies for Industry 4.0 Next 2019 Insurance Sector Outlook
Blockchain is building momentum among business leaders across sectors, with use cases that offer strategic benefits and maturing opportunities for transformation. The airline industry is starting to get on board by considering blockchain’s potential to reinvent core operations and resolve supply chain issues.
Emerging Disruptors Lead the Way on Blockchain
Companies with business models based on blockchain may operate more nimbly, move more quickly, and vary in other considerable ways from more established enterprises, according to respondents to Deloitte’s 2019 global blockchain survey.
Blockchain Gets Down to Business
Many executives are increasingly confident about new and evolving use cases for blockchain and are determining how to implement the technology to serve specific organizational purposes, according to respondents to Deloitte’s 2019 global blockchain survey.
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Risk & Compliance Journal
Deloitte Risk management, strategy and analysis from Deloitte
How to Be Boardroom Ready
Safeguard Business 4.0 With Integrated Analytics
Compliance Brief: Vexing Anti-corruption Challenges
Reboot SOX Compliance With a Modernized Approach
GDPR, CCPA Reshape Customer Privacy Strategies
AI Ethics Come Into Focus as the Workplace Evolves
5 Tips for Future Tax Pros
Board Practices Report: Diversity Is on the Upswing
CISOs, CIOs on Creating a Cybersecurity Culture
Risk management, strategy and analysis from Deloitte CONTENT FROM OUR SPONSOR Please note: The Wall Street Journal News Department was not involved in the creation of the content below.
GDPR: Protecting Data Privacy in a Data-driven World
Demonstrating that an organization has a handle on GDPR and related processes is critical to retain the confidence of employees and customers.
Nicky Holt
As organizations work through the impacts of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a range of questions are emerging on the applicability of the new privacy law and what to do―and not to do―to adequately protect confidential and personal data, sometimes referred to as personally identifiable information. Nicky Holt, a principal with Deloitte Tax LLP and leader of the Global Employer Services business for Deloitte Global Tax & Legal, discusses the applicability of GDPR and what organizations can do to comply with the rules and safeguard against noncompliance.
Q: Which organizations are affected by GDPR, and what are some misperceptions about the law?
Holt: Generally, any organization that holds data about any European Union (EU) resident is expected to comply with GDPR. This new law is the biggest shake-up in data protection that we’ve seen in 20 years, globally. It covers just about all aspects of personal data and brings with it greater accountability, transparency, and consumer control.
One big misconception is that GDPR applies only to organizations within the EU, which is not the case. Rather, GDPR has broad territorial reach and applies to all organizations processing the personal data of ‘data subjects,’ who are EU residents, regardless of an organization’s location. GDPR follows the data instead of being strictly territorial.
The term ‘data subjects’ can be somewhat confusing under the law. The term ‘personal data’ is defined in the GDPR as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.’ However, there is not a specific set of information, or data fields, that define a data subject. It can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, cookies, medical information, or a computer IP address. There’s more to it than meets the eye with regard to personal data and identifiers within the scope of GDPR.
Finally, there seems to be a bit of a myth that to be compliant with GDPR, organizations must store their data in Europe. That’s not the case, although some organizations are opting to do so, thinking that the optics of storing data in Europe make it safer from a compliance perspective.
Q: What are the rules on data retention?
Holt: Data retention policies generally cover what information is appropriate for organizations to keep, and how the data should be stored to maintain the privacy of the individual. GDPR, however, requires organizations to be more purposeful in considering what documents must be destroyed, and the most secure and safe way of doing so.
The GDPR legislation suggests that organizations affected by GDPR update their policies on how much data is stored, and for how long they hold on to it. If an organization is found to be storing data for longer than necessary, it may be subject to GDPR-related fines. In general, fines can amount to up to four percent of an organization’s annual global revenue or €20 million, whichever is greater.
Q: What are organizations expected to do if there is data breach?
Holt: Under the GDPR regime, organizations that suffer a breach involving Europeans’ personal information must file a report with the appropriate regulator within 72 hours of learning of the breach. It’s also important to note that under GDPR, affected individuals have more rights than before. For example, in the U.K. they can file complaints with the Information Commissioner’s Office if they believe their personal data has been misused or not properly secured.
Q: What can organizations do to protect personal and confidential information, and safeguard against the risk of running afoul of GDPR?
Holt: Organizations should consider looking closely at processes and systems, and do so through a privacy lens. Being able to demonstrate that your organization has a handle on processes is critical, as is consistently revisiting and reinforcing messaging throughout the organization on enhanced processes, which can help reinforce the importance of GDPR compliance. Organizations also can benefit from making GDPR a regular agenda item for board discussions. Having the board focused on GDPR in their oversight role helps to further promote compliance.
Employee training is another important element of GDPR compliance. Security measures in an organization are only as good as the weakest link. Finding a way to get messaging across and to the deepest levels of the organization is critical. We’ve been conducting trainings ranging from FAQs, e-learnings, and hands-on learnings to help organizations’ executives and staff understand the applicability and compliance aspects of GDPR.
Q: Besides penalties, what are other risks to noncompliance with GDPR?
Holt: While the financial penalties of noncompliance are high, organizations should not underestimate brand and reputational risk. If individuals think their data is not safe, it often causes fear and concern. That can lead to a lack of trust, which can have a long-lasting, damaging impact on an organization’s brand and reputation. Planning for long-term, sustainable GDPR compliance can help organizations gain a competitive edge by earning trust that personal and confidential information will be protected. In a digital, data-driven world that trust can go a long way.
―by Christine Kraft, senior manager, Global Tax & Legal Strategy
EU GDPR: After the Deadline, What Comes Next?
A Customer-focused Approach to GDPR
Using Cloud in the GDPR Era
Making Data Risk a Top Priority
Tech Industry Outlook for 2019
Questions? Write to DeloitteRiskEditor
Follow us on Twitter @DeloitteRiskFin
Previous Driving Strategy With Analytics: Elizabeth Ward, CFO, MassMutual Next On the Board’s Agenda: Crisis Resilience
Search Risk & Compliance Journal
Many consumers are demonstrating more concern about how their personal information is collected and used. C-suite executives need to work together to ensure their companies are using the data responsibly.
Cybersecurity teams can look forward to automation and technology advances that, if deployed effectively, can free them up from repetitive tasks, making room for higher value assignments. Likewise, C-suites and boards can benefit if the cybersecurity function uses AI, robotic process automation, and other advanced technologies to provide more insightful business and risk analysis to help inform decision making. This is the first story in a two-part series exploring the future of work. Coming on Tuesday: “AI Ethics Come Into Focus as the Workplace Evolves.”
Life sciences and health care leaders understand that cybersecurity threats pose a significant risk to their organizations. In new research from Deloitte, cyber teams and senior executives discuss ways to bring C-suites and boards into the cybersecurity conversation to help them respond effectively to threats related to safety, reputation, and the business.
Twitter CFO Ned Segal on Purpose and Resiliency
Ned Segal, CFO of Twitter, discusses how he uses the company’s clarity of purpose to drive his actions and decisions and motivate his finance team. Segal also shares his views on transparent communication, disruptive technologies, and resilience as a leadership quality, with Mike Kearney, a partner with Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, Deloitte & Touche LLP.
SOX mandates have been around for nearly two decades, so compliance should be well in hand, right? Not necessarily: Changing market dynamics and regulatory updates have made stable processes a moving target and continued SOX compliance remains a challenging undertaking for some. Modernizing SOX compliance can help get the job done with a higher degree of quality and fewer resources.
The Role of Culture in Preparing the Workforce for Digital Transformation
As critical as technology is to digital transformation, so too is winning the hearts and minds of employees during the process. Lack of alignment between digital transformation goals and employee values can slow down technology adoption, damage employee morale, and hurt market competitiveness. Carey Oven and Nancy Albinson, both with Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, Deloitte & Touche LLP, discuss ways to address challenges that could derail a digital transformation.
Deloitte’s Insights for C-suite executives and board members provide information and resources to help address the challenges of managing risk for both value creation and protection, as well as increasing compliance requirements.
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Tag Archives: Biology
Heavy Petting: how nerve endings in your skin make petting awesome.
February 1, 2013 Tommy Belknap
Petting. Your dog loves it. You love it. Which makes you watching your dog love it… a little weird. But the truth is, from humans to cats and dogs and beyond, social mammals adore being gently stroked down their bodies. Whether that body is furry or covered in the finest patina of hair, the results are the same.
California Institute of Technology researchers happened upon the reason for this phenomenon while studying a specific type of neuron commonly found in hairy or furry mammals’ skin. These cells had been discovered in 2007, but their usefulness to their possessors was not yet known.
The solution was to genetically modify mice so that these particular nerve cells would light up when stimulated. The researchers then used a microscope to see which type of stimulus would ring the bell, so to speak:
They tried various types of stimuli to see if they could get the cells to light up. For example, the scientists recorded each time they stroked the hindfoot of the mouse with an artist’s paintbrush. In this way, they could see if the touch was responsible for the nerve signal. Gentle stroking, but not poking or pinching with a tweezer, elicited a response, Anderson and his colleagues report online today in Nature.
Of course however pleasing and even amorous petting can be, science is not often romantic, and neurology even less so. To wit, the solution for determining whether the soft petting actually did feel good was – you guessed it – more genetic modification, rigorous testing and a healthy dose of drug abuse.
The researchers this time modified the mice so that an injection of a chemical would elicit the same response from the nerves as petting. Wow. Give me a shot of that.
So they put the mice in a three-chambered box. In one chamber, they’re shooting up and listening to the Velvet Underground. In the opposite chamber, diddley-shit and Pat Boone.
Guess what? After a few weeks of conditioning, the mice preferred the petting den. Whether this proves that mice prefer petting or have addictive personalities remains an open question in my mind.
BiologynervesNeurologySexskin
Your heart and a worm’s butt: besties?
January 10, 2013 Tommy Belknap
You know, when you think about it – I mean, really think about it – there is… really nothing obvious about the connection between a worm’s pooper and your ticker. But things are not always as they seem.
In science, they rarely are. For example, having grown up on the notion that bones are made of calcium, we could be forgiven for thinking that this is where calcium’s usefulness in the body ends. That is not the case, however. Calcium is one of the most ubiquitous signaling chemicals in the body, facilitating everything from flexing your muscles to that squirt of endocrine reward you get for having worked out in the first place.
Calcium also governs the proper beating of your heart. Researchers are not yet aware of the mechanism by which calcium regulates how the heart works, but researchers at the U of R may be a step closer to an answer. And they got there by studying the digestive systems of worms.
Because the worm’s digestive system basically works as a series of muscle contractions pushing the food through the system, they wondered what was causing the muscles to move in such an organized wave. They wondered what made the muscles contract so rhythmically:
The team’s analysis revealed that a molecule called a microRNA is required for the entire waste removal process to run smoothly. microRNA-786 is present in the two most posterior intestinal cells of worms and tags these cells as the pacemakers or leaders. These pacemakers dictate when and where the primary calcium spike occurs, activating the movement of waste through the worm’s body. When the team removed microRNA-786 from worms the process went awry; the calcium wave started in the wrong place and the waste cycle was irregular and longer than normal.
So the presence of a single molecule of microRNA in a worm’s butt is what makes him crap real good. It is what creates a chain of command that allows the muscles to work as a team. And some similar type of “teamwork gene” might be present in human hearts as well. Or at least, studying the relationship between microRNA-786 and the pacemaker cells may reveal other clues to the heart’s regulation.
Or maybe they just create the world’s most efficient laxative. I think that avoiding a “waste cycle” that is “irregular and longer than normal” is a goal we all share. Here’s to science!
BiologyHealthHeart
History, Rochester, VIDEO
On the Fourth Day of Christmas, a present for Rochester and Mayor Richards
December 21, 2012 Jillian Seaton 1 Comment
Ever notice that whoever wrote the “12 Days of Christmas” song had a severe bird fetish? At least six of these 12 days of true love gift giving are bird related, and possibly more. History has debated that the fifth day’s gift of “five golden rings” actually referred to ring-necked pheasants, not fancy finger jewelry. So! There we have it. The first seven days of the 12 Days of Christmas are birds, equaling a grand total of 28 birds from your true love.
Um, thanks?
Culturally, we may not typically celebrate 12 days of Christmas anymore, but Rochester is certainly on board with Day 4, albeit perhaps unintentionally. Day 4 is another commonly misinterpreted verse to the 12 Days song, with many singing “four calling birds” when in fact, it is actually “four colly birds.” Okay, well that’s all fine and good, but what the heck is a colly bird? According to our good friends at Wikipedia, colly bird is the old-fashioned term for a black bird. Merry Christmas, Rochester, indeed!
The crows are back in town, and they’re back with a vengeance. Earlier in the year, the city put forth extensive creative and technological efforts to disperse crows from downtown areas, however, the colder weather has brought them back, much to the city’s chagrin. Earlier this week, wildlife biologists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture began their most recent attempts to chase the overwhelming amount of crows out of Washington Square Park, which, on Sunday’s count, clocked in with over 25,000 crows.
The USDA has been working through the night using non-harmful techniques such as spotlights and pyrotechnics to rid the crows, however, these colly birds aren’t leaving without a fight. Several crows have flown away or moved to other trees while others have barely budged. Back in February, we reported that crows have an uncanny sense of memory – perhaps they’re calling our bluff?
According to USDA wildlife biologist Mark Carrara, these things take time and will decrease gradually, comparing the techniques to pet training, which may not be such a far-fetched comparison. For whatever reason, these crows do seem to believe they’ve found a home in Rochester. Perhaps Rochester should be more selective when choosing its “true love” next year, or at least one that blesses us with better gifts. In the meantime, happy eleven months of the fourth day of Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
BiologyRochester Crows
Better wine through genomics: Rochester boffins discover wine grape bacteria
December 11, 2012 Tommy Belknap
As world populations continue to climb and food sources become more and more crucial to protect from all threats, it is good to know that someone’s taking the wine seriously.
Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in cooperation with an international team of boffins, have isolated the genomic structure of bacteria which are commonly found hosted in Riesling wine grape vines. They have also discovered another bacteria commonly found populating sugarcane crops. The information for these two pests has been submitted to the GenBank: a National Institutes of Health database of genomic structures. From there, other researchers can use the RIT team’s research to further their own studies:
“We assembled millions of short DNA sequences into long sequences and made biological sense out of them,” Gan says. “Having the near complete genetic information from a bacteria will bring us to a new level of research.”
“We can tease out information based on the genome of the organism that live inside the plant,” Hudson adds. “The question is, why are these bacteria living in the plants? Are they destroying the plants or are they providing a benefit? Are they providing nutrients that are helping the plant grow, like plant hormones, phosphorous or nitrogen? Is it a mutualistic relationship where the plant and bacteria are both benefiting?”
One researcher is Professor Andre Hudson, whose work with protein folding structures in algae has been previously reported on by DFE.
The research into these two pests goes well beyond applications to wine or sugar cane. The Methylobacterium and Novosphingobium bacteria studied in grape vines, for example, is a pest that feeds on the xylem inside plants. Xylem is the vascular system of a plant, allowing nutrients and waste to pass through the plant as necessary. Understanding the nature of this bacteria may unlock secrets that help grow a wide variety of other crops more efficiently.
BiologygenomicsRochester Institute of TechnologyWine
Who doesn’t like eating lobster? Not lobsters, that’s for sure. Lobster cannibalism:
December 4, 2012 Jillian Seaton 4 Comments
One of my favorite parts about visiting my soon-to-be in laws is the food. Yes, my future mother-in-law is an excellent cook, but the best part is that they live in Maine, and you know what that means: lobsters on the cheap! And really, who can resist a nice lobster dinner? Not many people, and apparently not the lobsters, either.
Cannibal lobsters? Yes, it’s a little weird, a little gross, and completely true. Noah Oppenheim, a graduate student studying at the University of Maine, caught this little gem on film. For those of you who don’t have the stomach to watch your food eating your – er – food, the video depicts adult lobsters grabbing and scarfing down adolescent lobsters. That’s one way to deal with obnoxious teenage angst!
Although lobsters in captivity have been known to occasionally snap and eat their own kind, scientists in Maine say Oppenheim’s video is the first direct evidence that lobsters practice cannibalism in the wild. It’s not yet determined if this change in appetite is due to warmer water temperatures or a decrease in typical lobster predators, but fear not. Lobsters are not expected to eat themselves into extinction and Maine’s lobster boom will most likely return next summer. And hey, if you’re really lucky, you might even find a smaller lobster inside your lobster – now that’s what I call a 2-for-1 dinner!
By the way, don’t be shy! Check out our other great posts on cannibalism! Get a whole fist full!
BiologyCannibalismCrustaceanlobster
Onions are so good for you, they’ll make you cry
November 21, 2012 Jillian Seaton
Sometimes, there’s nothing better than a good cry. This is especially true when chopping onions, although not for the emotional release. The component in that pungent misty stuff in onions that irritates the heck out of our eyes is scientifically known as lachrymatory factor, appropriately derived from the Latin word lacrima, which means “tear”. Interestingly enough, lachrymatory factor is actually doing us a a few excellent health favors, possibly even protecting us against cancer. Doesn’t seem like such a terrible chore now, does it?
Onions are naturally rich in two health-benefiting compounds: flavonoids and sulfur-containing compounds. Flavonoids are typically found at high concentrations in the skin and outer layers of onions with yellow, brown, red, or purple coloring. These compounds are also potential antioxidants that could protect us against heart disease, cancer, and aging. The sulfur-containing compounds are where onions give us their taste, odor, and – you guessed it – misty tear gas. So what does this mean?
When an onion is cut, sulfur compounds are released into the air. These compounds are broken down into an unstable intermediate and can then either turn into lachrymatory factor or spontaneously turn into thiosulfinate. This thiosulfinate is not only responsible for the onion’s distinct odor and flavor, but also converts into other sulfur-containing compounds with potential health benefits including anti-inflammation, anti-blood clotting, anti-cancer, anti-asthma, and lowering cholesterol levels. Sounds great to me, and I don’t even like onions!
Maybe you do enjoy onions in your favorite Thanksgiving recipes but you don’t particularly enjoy crying – who could blame you? Never fear; scientists have been working on bringing tear-free onions to the general market since 2008. Tear-free onions were originally developed by Crop & Food Research of New Zealand and House Foods Corporation of Japan. These onions look and taste like regular onions but have lowered activity of lachrymatory-factor synthase through genetic modification and thus do not make your eyes water upon chopping or crushing, but still increase the production of beneficial thiosulfinate – which means none of the tears with all of the health benefits!
Unfortunately, commercializing genetically modified foods is no simple task, so it will probably be a few more years before we find tear-free onions in the Wegman’s produce section. However, the largest share of the liquids and therefore, of the phosphates that make us cry are found in the tips of the bulb – the northern and southern hemispheres, you might say. To avoid getting too much juice out into the air and minimize the crying, try not to cut into the poles too much. This is why classical French technique only has you cut into the poles once, as demonstrated here for a tear-free Thanksgiving feast preparation:
In the meantime, keep chopping your onions with the knowledge that through your tears come wonderful health benefits! And hey, while you’re at it, check out our Turkey Day Turkeys playlist and tell us which “turkeys” you think we should add!
BiologyChemistryonionsTasty T-Day Science
Durand, Sodus… China? The world-wide algae problem.
July 17, 2012 Tommy Belknap
Nature.com reports today that China is experiencing what they believe is the first-ever “brown tide,” or large algae bloom of brown algae. This bloom is threatening fisheries along China’s very long coast. So just in case you thought Sodus’s problem was just a quirk of the current season, you should be aware that in fact the “brown tide” is affecting three separate countries’ shorelines.
To be clear: nothing about the brown tide is similar to the Upstate area’s problems, genetically speaking. Not only are the species of algae different, the “blue-green algae” currently plaguing Sodus Bay’s waters is in fact a bacteria, not an algae. But in every case, additional run-off from fertilizer and other substrates are contributing to the issue:
In the past few decades, China’s rapid pace of population growth and agriculture development has led to more nutrients being discharged into the sea — in the form of sewage, animal manure and fertilizers. That excess has caused massive algal blooms since the 1990s, especially at the Yangtze estuary. Those blooms have had a red or green hue, known as red or green tides, because of the pigments of the algal species responsible.
“The recent brown-tide outbreaks may be the latest manifestation of increasing nutrient loads in China’s coastal waters,” says Gobler.
Not discussed in this article: what role a modest increase in oceanic temperatures might be playing.
AlgaeBiologySodusSodus Bay
Rochester, Science
Blue-green algae on Sodus Bay: how an RIT discovery may prevent future blooms
June 18, 2012 Tommy Belknap
Algae is back in Sodus Bay. Blue-green algae, to be exact. Only, to be exact, blue-green algae isn’t algae at all…
Confused, yet? Blue-green algae is actually an organism known as cyanobacteria. Being bacteria, it is technically an animal rather than a plant. However, cyanobacteria are capable of photosynthesis, much like algae are. Cyanobacteria populates just about every ecosystem on Earth, from deep seas to freshwater to land.
In freshwater bodies, cyanobacteria blooms will cause waters to turn pea green, and in still areas, will rise to the surface as the trademark blue-green scum that gives them their name. The above-linked article includes someone quoted as saying, “I don’t think anybody wanted to go in the water anyway because it was like pea soup.” This would be another symptom, rather than a secondary consideration, of blue-green algae blooms. “Blooms,” by the way, are large infestations of cyanobacteria which are typically caused by the introduction of nitrogen and phosphorus into the water. Officials in Sodus will probably be looking into fertilizer run-off as a culprit, but changes in currents and seasonal variations are probably also a factor.
Research conducted at RIT in partnership with the University of Alberta, Canada, may yield a low-impact solution for such infestations in the future. Professor Andre Hudson and his team has identified a critical juncture in the photosynthesis process in algae, cyanobacteria and other autotrophs that, if properly exploited, could neutralize such infestations without harming other species within the ecosystem. DFE covered this discovery a while back. But new developments have emerged in the discovery of a specific practical solution.
The key to this new solution is lysine, a common protein that is critical to the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process of converting sunlight to digestible energy, as all plants do. Dr. Hudson discovered a means of blocking the production of lysine, which would disrupt the whole process of photosynthesis and effectively starve the targeted organism.
Dr. Hudson says that the team has discovered and begun to test a couple of different chemicals to see if they will effectively short-circuit the photosynthetic process in this way. Once one working chemical is found – and found to not interfere with other organisms in the same ecosystem – the next step would be to find a business that wants to buy into the new technology. However, testing chemicals for their interaction with other organisms is a long-term process and even if the chemicals they’ve discovered yield a successful solution, that solution may be four to five years in coming.
In the meanwhile, its worth noting that while swimming through cyanobacteria would be an indubitably icky process, the toxicity of cyanobacteria is actually quite rare. Science is still not entirely certain why one bloom is toxic and the majority aren’t, but one theory suggests that different species of cyanobacteria produce different chemicals. Some blooms have been reported to have killed cows, most are completely harmless. Regardless, there is currently no study of the Sodus Bay blue-green algae bloom that says its at all toxic.
BiologyBlue-green algaecyanobacteriaHealthSodus
Wine Science: the legacy of Dr. Konstantin Frank and Finger Lakes wines
May 21, 2012 Melody Flammger
Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Vinifera Wine Cellars is celebrating its 50th anniversary on July 1st of this year. Not only is this a landmark milestone for the winery, but also for New York Wines as a whole. It was Dr. Konstantin Frank who perfected the grafting of vinifera grapes onto native rootstock in order for European grapes to be grown in New York State.
Prior to the perfection of these grafting techniques (where the root-stock of native grapes are fused to the vines of traditional European wine grapes), New York wineries primarily used the native grape types in their wines. While many of the wineries still use these native grape types today, they did not have the reputation of their European comrades. By growing grape types which Europeans and other wine regions were familiar with, New York was finally able to compete on a level playing field and build the reputation they have today.
European wine grapes (vinifera) are susceptible to a parasite which is native to the United States called phylloxera. This small green insect devours the leaves and roots and ultimately kills the vines. The native grapes are resistant to the pest and were thus easier to cultivate. The first way to circumvent the phylloxera was to make French/American hybrids. Wines made from these hybrids won awards but these vines were not as popular as the ones made from vinifera, and in the Finger Lakes the need was to also create more winter-hardy roots to tolerate the cold temperatures common in this area.
By perfecting the grafting technique in the 1950s, Dr. Frank was able to improve the quality of the grapes and thus the wine. One of the keys to his success was the hilling of the dirt around the graft to protect the vine where the European grape vine and resistant root-stock came together at the graft. As a result of this technique, it is possible to grow vinifera grape types in the Finger Lakes. One of these types is Riesling, for which the Finger Lakes have developed their reputation for award-winning wines.
Dr. Frank was a scientist and ran his winery almost as an experiment station of his own. He planted every type of grape he could find because he wanted to know what worked and what didn’t. This led to an amazing collection. Dr. Frank even brought the rkatsiteli (ar-kat-si-TEL-lee) grape to New York. The grape is rarely planted anywhere other than Russia.
Even with Dr. Frank’s work, it has been an interesting Spring already, and the weather could make for some challenges in the wine industry. Most of the effect is going to be seen in the orchards, where the fruit yields have already been hit badly. This may not be the greatest year for fruit wines. In the vineyards, however, at most 10% of the grapes are gone. The most important thing is the fruit set. If the buds were not frozen, then there wouldn’t be any damage to the crops. However, if they did freeze we may see uneven ripening and some decreased yields. There’s no way to know for sure at the moment because the vines are still in the budding process. What a year for a 50th anniversary!
BiologyHistoryWine
You may be wired to be a slacker. But good news: your bladder will wait
May 10, 2012 Tommy Belknap
News today out of Vanderbilt University is that your lack of motivation may not, contrary to what your father or your high school principal may have told you, have anything to do with your dead ass. In fact, it appears that the difference between the slacker and the go-getter may be wired into your brain.
By using PET scans, the researchers at Vanderbilt discovered that three key areas of the brain responsible for reward and motivation were flooded with the “reward neurotransmitter” dopamine. On the other hand, slackers appeared to have the same flood in completely different areas of the brain. This is a significant find, as the assumption to this point was that a given neurotransmitter would affect the brain in a single given way, which does not appear to be at all like these findings.
And if you’re wondering whether your bladder will wait for you while you’re in the midst of yet another snooze during the day, well. There’s good news for you on that front: researchers Hitoshi Okamura and Osamu Ogawa at Kyoto University in Japan studied the urination patterns in mice and discovered that, beyond simply the ability to “hold it,” there is a circadian rhythm to going wee-wee.
The researchers studied a specific protein called connexin43, which is responsible for making bladder muscles more sensitive to neural signals. The more sensitive those muscles are, the more likely you are to have to pee. And by studying the release of this protein in mice over time, they discovered that mice are more likely to have to drain the lizard at night. Since mice are nocturnal, we can conclude that you’re probably going to be able to hold off on squeezing the weasel (or for you ladies, her-inating) through your most restful times. So sleep easy!
BiologyNeurotransmittersSlackerUrinating
How alcohol slows your reflexes down: the science of DWI
April 13, 2012 Bianca Meyers 1 Comment
Rochester has seen a rash of DWIs making headlines lately and as a result, it seems like a good time to review the science behind alcohol’s influence on the nervous system. Sure it is well-known that alcohol is a depressant and can be deadly if an intoxicated person gets behind the wheel, but did you know that slower reaction times are the result of an overload of a part of your brain?
“Alcohol slows down the central nervous system,” said Karen Pelc, coordinator of IMPACT, a Substance and Drug Education & Prevention Program at Rochester Institute of Technology. “When individuals drink too much too quickly it can cause the heart, breathing and brain function to stop.”
Interestingly, researchers have found that the brain’s frontal lobes are greatly affected by alcohol intoxication. The primary functions of the frontal lobe include the ability to distinguish and choose between good and bad actions and the ability to recognize impending consequences resulting from those actions. Both of these functions are altered once alcohol reaches the brain because it slows down communication between the neurons sending signals to your body. This fact can explain why many DWI incidents involve drivers unaware that their actions are dangerous and merit consequences.
Furthermore, alcohol increases gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) activity which controls the time it takes a person to respond to a certain situation. In the case of drunk driving this is a major issue because as GABA activity increases, brain activity slows down. The driver will not be able to make a quick enough decision to avoid an accident, hence why our society is told not to drink and drive.
The way alcohol affects the nervous system is not something you would typically think about while enjoying an alcoholic beverage, but it’s important in understanding why those intoxicated act the way they do. DWIs are not taken lightly in today’s society, so before you decide to drive home after throwing back a few beers, you may want to take a moment to think about the effects those beers will have on the way your body functions.
alcoholBiologyHealthreflexesRITjourno
Is the Internet altering our attention spans? (I’ll keep this short)
March 12, 2012 Tommy Belknap
Give a chimpanzee a simple tool, such as a hammer, and observe how his brain processes its use. At first, EEG patterns show the chimp is processing the tool as a separate object from his body. But slowly, over time, as he or she becomes more familiar with the tool, scientists have observed that in fact the chimp begins to recognise the tool – on a neurological level – as an extension of his own body.
This is but one illustration in Nicholas Carr’s newest book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains , used to demonstrate the way brains change and evolve constantly throughout our lives. The old maxim that we get but one brain and one collection of neurons for our entire lives is laid bare and the wonder of a constantly-changing, constantly-adapting brain is revealed. This is a concept known among the neuroscience community as neuroplasticity, and it’s a concept we will be returning to quite a bit on DragonFlyEye this week.
There is, as the title of this article suggests, a down side to all this constant evolution: as we sharpen our minds for the things we need to be able to do, this sharpening comes at an expense to those processes our brains perceive as having become less important. Mr. Carr suggests that the always-on, always-connected nature of the Internet is creating a species reliant on the Internet for knowledge, rather than on our individual capacity to learn and retain knowledge.
Carr further states that this shifting of processing priority is making us impatient and our attention spans shorter. There is ample evidence that, at the very least, what Carr observes is happening, though whether he’s correctly identified the cause is another matter. For example, those of us old enough to remember not having cell phones are also old enough to appreciate that we no longer rely on our memories to store phone numbers, now that our phones do it for us. And as for retaining knowledge or having the patience to read long works? Well, there’s even an Internet running joke about how we obtain our information, “Here, let me Google that for you.”
The book reads something like a water-colour painting: each chapter is like another stroke of a different primary colour. Starting at another edge of our history, he draws his brush toward his central thesis in ever-deepening colour, with a new observation from our history. I would not have imagined that Plato’s Republic would bear on the modern Internet, yet one of its more important dialogues plays directly into the concept of this knowledge-store transfer away from individuals. In this case, Plato refers to books versus spoken-word recount. This perhaps is a nod to the enduring struggle of man over his inventions, rather than the novel rewiring of the brain Mr. Carr is discussing.
One interesting story concerns the dawn of “artificial intelligence” and our first trip to the Uncanny Valley in the form of a simple program that scientists once enthused would replace psychotherapy. This time, a program which simply takes the user’s input “I feel sad today,” and translates it into “why do you feel sad today?” suddenly has the scientific community in an uproar.
Mr. Carr will be giving the keynote address at Roberts Wesleyan College’s upcoming Biennial Academic Conference. DragonFlyEye.Net has been asked to cover the event, which will include a live-tweeting of his address and extensive coverage on this site of the concepts and meaning of this bold new understanding of neuroscience throughout the week. Keep an eye on the Neurplasticity tag on this site and the #nickcarr hash tag on Twitter for more information!
Buy the book?
&lt;A HREF=”http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=ss_ssw&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fdragnet09-20%2F8003%2Ff93d7ad8-bf38-4ebd-a3ed-daec598f9f93&amp;Operation=NoScript”&gt;Amazon.com Widgets&lt;/A&gt;
BiologyNeuroplasticityPsychology
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English sentences with put in context,
Did your mom put Muscle Milk in your bottles?
Her supposed date on that night that led her off to be gang raped turned out to be a false online profile that Jackie herself had put together.
put (verb)
To place something somewhere.
To bring or set into a certain relation, state or condition.
To exercise a put option.
To express something in a certain manner.
To throw a heavy iron ball, as a sport.
To stee...
To steer; to direct one's course; to go.
To play a card or a hand in the game called put.
To attach or attribute; to assign.
To lay down; to give up; to surrender.
To set before one for judgment, acceptance, or rejection; to bring to the attention.
To incite; to entice; to urge; to constrain; to oblige.
To convey coal in the mine, as for example from the working to the tramway.
put (noun)
A right to sell something at a predetermined price.
A contract to sell a security at a set price on or before a certain date.
The act of putting; an action; a movement; a thrust; a push.
An old card game.
An idiot; a foolish person; a duffer.
A prostitute.
'Put, It's the verbal Planking' Put: is a growing trend where people just say 'Put' at random times, places, and in sentences where it doesn't normally belong. Just like 'Planking' It is meant to be confusing and silly. Originally it was used by itself randomly to confuse people, but it can also replace any word in a sentence, it can be a declaration or exclamation, it can even take the place of a curse word. People will often upload pictures of themselves writing PUT in public places. Video's have emerged of people saying Put in clever places.
source: Urban Dictionary
Mostly she seems extremely nervous every time they put her on camera
I know it sucks to put in the effort to make friends if you're shy.
I'd personally have more effort put into making the game a fresh experience with things like Forge, new weapons and abilities then put into competitive balance.
The Ugandans, with encouragement from religious leaders both in Uganda and the USA, are trying to pass a law that would see not only gay people put to death, but effectively anyone who didn't report them.
Which sometimes gets people put in prison.
But I have friends who are ruining their life with gaming or with drinking or whatever and people put a lot of pressure on them to stop.
To put on/go to concerts/comedians/other performances.
If you put your hands near the windows and feel a cold breeze, the plastic will actually block it.
It was fair, but the way he put it in a sentence got him downvotes.
phil got all pissed off the way kim was celebrating and just put it in overdrive.
Put a level 1 male Diglett on GTS, put moon Strawberri in the message.
Different manufacturers take that chip and put it on a card with a custom cooler.
If you're concerned get some epoxy solarez, put a dab on, and pull/tighten a plastic sheet over it until to flatten until it dries.
Gets a bit repetitive and the author put the chapter summaries on YouTube so there's that.
Puts a lot of emphasis on the industry, making a package, working independent and so on.
To find someone who loves me for me and to have a decent job to put food on the table for my family.
Its also still the best example of FF that genuinely seems like FF because of the effort put in to make it seem realistic esp the semi-improvised dialogue.
So I made an executive decision, put my pants all the way on, and get out of there as fast as I can without drawing attention to myself.
Just put him in normal shaman decks, and enjoy him as a war golem that draws you 4 cards that happen to be murlocs.
They just laughed at me and told me to never put my hands on a woman.
I think I put this out here selfishly to find that this isn't that uncommon.
Some things I did share with her seemed to really put her off.
blues put there highlights on youtube, handy because they're so rarely on the box.
Yes I've been bulking for a while, put on a good amount of muscle mass, and now I'm just getting rid of all a lot of the fat I accumulated, of course I want to be maintaining as much muscle mass as I can in the process.
I found it very interesting that although they obviously put the weapon their as an icon for their freedom and the fight they had to put up to get it, it is still pretty much advertisement for Avtomat Kalasjnikov... On an official national flag of an actual country... You have to admit that that's a bit special.
Never put your CCW in your purse.
The kind of people who get the death penalty are sometimes the kind of people who shoot up drugs, and it's hard to actually put in an IV for them, whether you're trained or not.
put me in coach im ready im rly good at drawing deformed anime characters
Almost made me believe you put your human on the internet, while secretly you're just dog.
If you really try hard and put all your effort into it, you can do it.
Sorry, I probably should have put a question mark since I wasn't sure what you meant.
I've got one, and it's fun out of the box what you put it up against things it can handle.
I put everything in the sdb except for the books which I read to my Kyrii and those treasure chests, which I threw away.
Its nice of her to put her hair up.
I had to sprint out the door for a party last night due to a miscommunication...still had time to put on Shiro's Glowstick of Destiny (lid wash), Master of Whispers (inner corner and wing) and He Loves His Hammer (liner) and the Red In My Ledger gloss (which creates a very nice bright pink stain when it dries).
Well you shouldn't fear too much about what you put into your body unless it's a serious issue, but less soda is always good.
The environment is so great and I love seeing the dedication people put into their costume.
cormier was all state is louisiana at football and ran a 4.5 40. i think if you put them both through the nfl combine cormier beats him in every category
I plan on putting up a Helioptile, so let me know what you'll put out and I can send it.
Because the American men I've known who've expressed interest in such arrangements are grade-A douchebags who are - to not put too fine a point on it - interested in owning a sex slave.
Put their divisional games only get a week and they certainly dont go undefeated every year in the ACC.
He put it on Vimeo.
Your bank puts your money into stock markets in the first place.
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Home Eco Friendly Guide Q#13: How Does A Super-Volcano Blow-up To Cover An Entire Continent With Ash?
Q#13: How Does A Super-Volcano Blow-up To Cover An Entire Continent With Ash?
How is it possible? How can a blow-up of super-volcanoes spread to cover entire continents with ash!? Wind and the initial force of the eruption are not enough to carry the ash over such long distances! An examination of prehistoric eruptions has unveiled the mysteries of all these queries.
It is not possible to make a direct study of such a phenomenon. Super-volcanoes are classified as volcanoes that spew out more than a trillion tonnes of material when they erupt. This amount is equivalent to 30 Krakatoas.
So Peter Baines from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Stephen Sparks from the University of Bristol, UK, used geological records of ash volume and magma chamber size to estimate the energy of past blasts and model the plumes they would have generated. From this they deduced that the Earth’s rotation fans ash out into a giant spinning cloud up to 6000 kilometres wide within one day. “It is a bit like a hurricane, but on a much larger scale,” Sparks says.
Via: New Scientist
Q#13: How Does A Super-Volcano Blow-up To Cover An Entire Continent With Ash? was last modified: June 24th, 2014 by DrPrem Jagyasi
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BWSSB IS TAKING ACTION ON APARTMENTS WHICH HAVE MORE THAN 20 UNITS
AuthorecopackindiaPosted on December 2, 2016 Categories1Tagsapartments with B katha is illegal, Apartments with more than 20 houses, BWSSB IS TAKING ACTION ON APARTMENTS WHICH HAVE MORE THAN 20 UNITS AND DOES NOT HAVE SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS and THE BESCOM MUST TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION AGAINST THE ILLEGAL AND UNAUTHORISED BUILDINGS , have been penalized by BWSSB for not having installed STPs, illegal and unauthorised construction, illegal apartments, Over 3 800 apartments, Penalty from BWSSB, stp units, which have more than 20 dwelling units, which was mandated through a Government Order (GO) in January. The penalties cross Rs. 1.69 crore and will continue each month until a functional STP is installed.
BWSSB IS TAKING ACTION ON APARTMENTS WHICH HAVE MORE THAN 20 UNITS AND DOES NOT HAVE SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS and THE BESCOM MUST TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION AGAINST THE ILLEGAL AND UNAUTHORISED BUILDINGS AND ITS OWNERS
Over 3, 800 apartments, which have more than 20 dwelling units, have been penalized by BWSSB for not having installed STPs, which was mandated through a Government Order (GO) in January. The penalties cross Rs. 1.69 crore and will continue each month until a functional STP is installed.
While the number of buildings may not drastically increase further — as officials are still verifying the number of dwelling units in smaller apartment complexes —
BWSSB has also started issuing notices to apartments where installed STPs are not functioning.
The fines complement the drives against houses (built after 2011 and on plots of 30 ft X 40 ft or above) which have not installed rainwater harvesting systems. Since July, around Rs. 70 lakh have been collected as fines from over 3,500 houses.
On January 19, in a gazette notification, the Department of Forest, Ecology ad Environment had noted the flow the raw sewage into storm water drains and lakes of the city, and had made mandatory reuse of sewage water at the source. BWSSB was to implement the order, while other civic agencies were to sanction projects only if STPs are part of the design plan.
However, since the penalising started, objections are pouring in from various apartment associations.
Some have stated and argued that The order is impractical. There is a constraint of space to build an STP which requires 20 ft X 50 ft space. How will you find this space in existing apartments? Moreover, the entire plumbing has to be redone to reuse the water. Financing STP and maintaining it is also a challenge.
In such a case, who will treat the sewage let out by these apartments and at whose cost?
In fact, Apartments have not been permitted to be constructed in sites measuring 20 feet X 30 feet or 30 feet X 40 feet or 40 feet X 60 feet and apartments are permitted in 50 feet X 80 feet with 1.75 FAR or 2.00 FAR allowing or permitting them to construct only 7,000 sft or 8,000 sft, where, 20 apartments cannot be constructed. 8 to 12 or 16 apartments of 1 bhk or 2 bhk can be built on 50 feet X 80 feet and there are over 24 apartments, discharging approximately about 12,000 litres of domestic sewage into communal drains, which are designed to take only 2,000 litres to 4,000 litres and the honest tax paying and law abiding citizens money is spent to treat or to facilitiate the sewerage fro the violators or illegal buildings.
Severe penal action must be initiated against all the illegal or unauthorized buildings to stop the sewage to be let out in communal sewage and illegal drawing of power from the bescom lines, which interrupt the supply to the legitimate building owners.
BESCOM, must also initiate measures to penalize the illegal and unauthorized buildings, for which the power connection is provided. The power connection is provided on the legitimate approved building plan and the actual construction is twice the approved plan, the illegal buildings or house owners draw more power from the BESCOM, thus disrupting the regular power supply.
5 thoughts on “BWSSB IS TAKING ACTION ON APARTMENTS WHICH HAVE MORE THAN 20 UNITS”
Swaminathan Venkataraman says:
Any more Update? According to the latest info., from a limited circle, on behalf of some old apartment complexes the dispute has already been taken to court, for adjudication !
ecopackindia says:
We are not even aware of the fact that it is pending before the court. There is no update from the BWSSB either. But, BWSSB does not have authority to mandate the commissioning of STP units in such small projects. Let us wait for the adjudication.
Our experience:
More than 50% to 75% of such 20+ apartments have abnormal deviations and as such there is no space left anywhere and none of them will ever spend anymore on such deviations. At the same time, the Government cannot have a Massive STP facility to treat such high volume domestic discharge and the untreated (under treated) sewage is drained in the nearby streams or rivers like vrushabavathi.
Anyway, the subject matter is before the honourable court, let the court adjudicate.
Some of the observations, which as read and understood by one, seem to favor or justify the steps taken against the old apartment complexes for not having a STP facility in-house. Yours being a law firm, suggest to have re-look into them , in order to come to a rightful conclusion as to where the blame factually and actually lies. For doing so, recommend to mindfully go through and incisively consider the merit / substance of the viewpoints as shared on the website of ‘citizen matters’ @ http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/4202-the-apartment-law-you-must-know?utm_source=copy
Here is an UPdate- a significant development /right move , in the desired direction :
http://praja.in/en/blog/murali772/2016/09/06/practicality-enforcing-revised-bwssb-stp-norms-existing-apartment-complexe
It is temporarily stopped.
BWSSB WITHHOLDS THE PENALTY FOR NON IMPLEMENTATION OF IT S ORDERS ON STP
Seeks clarifications from government based on feedback from citizens
BENGALURU: Spelling relief for residents of smaller buildings (20-50 units), the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has put on hold penalties for failing to install Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs). It has sought clarifications from the government about certain clauses, including whether the rules are applicable for existing properties, as retrospective implementation has met with stiff opposition.
BWSSB officials said 3,729 notices had been issued between August and December last year. But following consultations with residents, the board has forwarded their concerns to the Urban Development Department seeking directions on 10 points.
“We have asked if this new rule is applicable to existing properties or new ones, as several residents have voiced their inability to install STPs in existing buildings. This is because they have no setback area to accommodate an STP. The other concerns are about utilisation of the treated water. For using this water for flushing, separate pipelines will have to be laid. Some don’t have gardens where the treated water can be used,” said a BWSSB official.
Some of the 3,729 property-owners who were penalised have already paid up. There is confusion about what till happen to this money if the government offers relief to buildings with 20-50 units.
“We again approached the Chief Minister’s office this week requesting the government to stop retrospective implementation of the rule. Some citizens have gone to court,” said M.S. Shankar, Karnataka Convenor, Apartment Owners Associations.
Mahendra Jain, Additional Chief Secretary, Urban Development Department said the government will take a decision soon.
STPs mandatory for
Residential projects with more than 20 dwelling units
Commercial projects with over 2,000 sqm built-up area
Educational institutions with over 5,000 sqm built-up area
Townships, area development projects of 10 acres and above
Penalty for non-compliance
Residential projects: 25% of water and sanitary bill for first three months and then 50% till STP is installed
Commercial projects: 50% of water and sanitary bill till STP is installed
3,729 notices issued until December 2016
← DO NOT BUY PROPERTIES WHICH HAVE BENAMI TAG-EVEN IF HAS CHANGED MANY HANDS AND THE PRESENT OWNER IS CLEAN AND TITLES ARE CLEAR – A PRESS REPORT – AN ADVICE
JUDGEMENT RESERVED FOR AKRAMA →
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Monday, June 25 13:00 - 14:30
ICT4I40 Workshop S1: ICT4I40
Room: Cedro Hall I
Chair: Luiz Affonso Guedes (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
A Customer Feedback Platform for Vehicle Manufacturing in Industry 4.0
Marianne Silva, Elton de Souza Vieira and Ivanovitch Silva (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Diego Silva (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Paolo Ferrari, Stefano Rinaldi and Dhiego Fernandes Carvalho (University of Brescia, Italy)
Analysis of Security Requirements in Federated Cloud Slicing Ecosystems: A Case Study of the NECOS Platform
Marcilio Lemos (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Felipe Sampaio Dantas Silva (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte & Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Augusto J. Venancio Neto (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil & Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro, Portugal)
ICTS4eHealth Workshop S1: ICTS4eHealth
Room: Jacarandá Hall
An Evolutionary Methodology for Estimating Blood Glucose Levels from Interstitial Glucose Measurements and Their Derivatives
Antonio Della Cioppa (University of Salerno, Italy); Ernesto Tarantino (Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking, ICAR-CNR, Italy); Ivanoe De Falco (CNR, Italy); Umberto Scafuri (Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking, ICAR-CNR, Italy); Angela Giugliano (University of Salerno, Italy); Tomas Koutny (University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic); Michal Krcma (Diabetology Center, Pilsen Hospital University, Czech Republic)
An e-Health Study Case Environment Enhanced by the Utilization of a Quality of Context Paradigm
Débora Nazário (Santa Catarina State University (UDESC), Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil); Douglas D J Macedo (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Deep Neural Network Hyper-Parameter Setting for Classification of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Episodes
Ivanoe De Falco (CNR, Italy); Giuseppe De Pietro (Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking (ICAR-CNR), Italy); Giovanna Sannino (Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking National Research Council of Italy, Italy); Umberto Scafuri and Ernesto Tarantino (ICAR - CNR, Italy); Antonio Della Cioppa (University of Salerno, Italy); Giuseppe Trunfio (DADU - University of Sassari, Italy)
WoCCES Workshop S1: WoCCES
Room: Cedro Hall IV
A Guidance System for Blind and Visually Impaired People via Hybrid Data Fusion
Walter Charles Sousa Seiffert Simões (UFAM - Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil); Luciano Silva and Vandermi Silva (Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil); Vicente F. Lucena, Jr. (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Comparison of Path-Following Algorithms for Loiter Paths of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Daniel Xavier (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil); Natassya Barlate Floro Silva (Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR), Brazil); Kalinka Branco (USP - University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Chair: Ivanovitch Silva (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
Latency Evaluation for MQTT and WebSocket Protocols: An Industry 4.0 Perspective
Diego Silva (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Guilherme Oliveira and Ivanovitch Silva (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil); Paolo Ferrari and Emiliano Sisinni (University of Brescia, Italy)
WGW4IIoT: Wireless Gateway for Industrial IoT
Carlos Resende, Manuel Monteiro, João Oliveira and Waldir Moreira (Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, Portugal); Armando Cavaleiro, Rui Silva and Ricardo Carvalho (Bresimar Automação, S.A., Portugal)
Multimodal Dynamic Journey Planning
Kalliopi Giannakopoulou (Computer Technology Institute and Press Diophantus & University of Patras, Greece); Andreas Paraskevopoulos and Christos Zaroliagis (University of Patras, Greece)
Improving QoS in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks Using a Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithm
Henrique Lacerda (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Hilson Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco & Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Pernambuco, Brazil); Abel Silva-Filho (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Recommendations of a Laboratory Infrastructure for Simulation of Telemedicine Services
Berglind Smaradottir, Rune Fensli and Carl Moe (University of Agder, Norway)
An Interoperable eHealth Reference Architecture for Primary Care
Wendy Oude-Nijeweme d'Hollosy (University of Twente, The Netherlands); Lex Van Velsen (Roessingh Research and Development, The Netherlands); Alexander Henket (Nictiz & HL7 Netherlands, The Netherlands); Hermie Hermens (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Low Cost Hardware and Software Platform for Multichannel Surface Electromyography
Isac Alencar Rodrigues da Silva (UFS, Brazil); Elder Cleiton Barreto Francisco dos Santos, Elton Moreira Carvalho and Daniel Oliveira Dantas (Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil)
Fog Computing in Healthcare: A Review
Cícero A. Silva and Gibeon S. Aquino Jr. (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
Understanding Psycholinguistic Behavior of Predominant Drunk Texters in Social Media
Suman Kalyan Maity (Northwestern University, USA); Ankan Mullick (Microsoft, India); Surjya Ghosh and Anil Kumar (IIT Kharagpur, India); Sunny Dhamnani (Adobe System, India); Sudhanshu Bahety (Salesforce, USA); Animesh Mukherjee (IIT Kharagpur, India)
MOCS Workshop S1: MOCS
Room: Cedro Hall III
Renewable Mobility in Smart Cities: Cloud-Based Services
Damianos Gavalas (University of the Aegean, Greece); Kalliopi Giannakopoulou (Computer Technology Institute and Press Diophantus & University of Patras, Greece); Vlasios Kasapakis (University of the Aegean, Greece); Dionysios Kehagias (Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Greece); Charalampos Konstantopoulos (University of Piraeus, Greece); Spyros C. Kontogiannis (University of Ioannina, Greece); Damianos Kypriadis (University of Piraeus, Greece); Grammati Pantziou (University of West Attica & Computer Technology Institute and Press Diophantus, Greece); Andreas Paraskevopoulos and Christos Zaroliagis (University of Patras, Greece)
An Innovative Osmotic Computing Framework for Self Adapting City Traffic in Autonomous Vehicle Environment
Basilio Filocamo (University of Alcalà, Spain); Antonino Galletta and Maria Fazio (University of Messina, Italy); Javier Alonso Ruiz and Miguel Angel Sotelo (University of Alcala, Spain); Massimo Villari (University of Messina, Italy)
KNOWLEDGE OBSERVATORIES AND THE PROMOTION OF INTELLIGENT TERRITORIES: The Case of the Network of Expertise and Innovation of the Tecnological Park of Itaipu
Denilson Sell (Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC), Brazil); Alessandra Batista (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Jose Todesco (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Carlos Roberto De Rolt (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - UDESC, Brazil); Biamca Costa Amorim (UDESC, Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil); Maria Angelica Jung Marques (Itaipu Technological Park (ITP), Italy)
Osmotic Computing: Software Defined Membranes Meet Private/Federated Blockchains
Massimo Villari, Antonino Galletta and Antonio Celesti (University of Messina, Italy); Lorenzo Carnevale (University of Messina & IRCSS Centro Neurolesi Bonino Pulejo, Italy); Maria Fazio (University of Messina, Italy)
PEDISWESA Workshop S1: Performance of Network systems
Session Chair: J. Ben Othman
Room: Cedro Hall II
Chair: Jalel Ben-Othman (CentraleSupélec & University of Paris 13, France)
Optimal and Heuristic Decision Strategies for Load Balancing and User Association on HetNets
Alexandre Hirata, Eduardo Candido Xavier and Juliana Freitag Borin (University of Campinas, Brazil)
Caching as a Service for 5G Networks: A Matching Game Approach for CaaS Resource Allocation
Bouchaib Assila, Mr (ENSIAS, University Mohammed V of Rabat & Supportek, Morocco); Abdellatif Kobbane (ENSIAS, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco); Jalel Ben-Othman (CentraleSupélec & University of Paris 13, France); Mohammed El Koutbi (ENSIAS, Morocco)
Fault Tolerant Traffic Engineering in Software-defined WAN
Younghee Park, Kunal Goswami, Keyur Golani and Kalgi Bhatt (San Jose State University, USA)
Failure Detection in MANETs Based on Geographical Repartition of Nodes
Haroun Benkaouha (LSI Laboratory & USTHB University, Algeria); Abdelkrim Abdelli (USTHB University- Algiers, Algeria); Jalel Ben-Othman (CentraleSupélec & University of Paris 13, France); Lynda Mokdad (Université de Paris 12 & Laboratoire LACL, France)
WoCCES Workshop S2: WoCCESS
MARIO: A Cognitive Radio Primary User Arrivals Data Generator
Rogers S. Cristo and Guilherme Marcel Dias Santana (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil); Diana Pamela Moya Osorio (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil); Kalinka Branco (USP - University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Tellus - Greenhouse Irrigation Automation System
Luciano Silva (Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil); Elpidio Junior (UFAM, Brazil); Kayque Carneiro, Johthema Matos, Raimundo Barreto and Anacilia Vieira (Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil)
ICT4I40 Workshop S3: Panel
Analysis of a NoSQL Graph DBMS for a Hospital Social Network
Antonio Celesti, Alina Buzachis, Antonino Galletta, Giacomo Fiumara, Maria Fazio and Massimo Villari (University of Messina, Italy)
A New Clustering-based Thresholding Method for Human Skin Segmentation Using HSV Color Space
Rafael Divino Ferreira Feitosa (Federal University of Goiás & Federal Institute Goiano, Brazil); Anderson Soares (Federal University of Goiás, Brazil); Lucas Pereyra (University of São Paulo & Ribeirão Preto Medical School, Brazil)
Functional Diversity Applied to the False Positive Reduction in Breast Tissues Based on Digital Mammography
William Torres (Federal University of Piauí, Brazil); Antônio Oseas, Alcilene Dalília and Francisco Airton Silva (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil)
Towards Osmotic Computing: Future Prospect for the Health Information Technology (HIT) Systems of ISASI-CNR (ME)
Alina Buzachis (University of Messina, Italy); Giuseppe Massimo Bernava, Mario Busà and Giovanni Pioggia (ISASI-CNR Messina, Italy); Massimo Villari (University of Messina, Italy)
Using Fuzzy Neural Networks for Improving the Prediction of Children with Autism Through Mobile Devices
Paulo Vitor Campos Souza (Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais & Faculdade UNA de Betim, Brazil); Augusto Junio Guimarães (Faculdade Una de Betim, Brazil)
Cost-Effective Strategies for Provisioning NoSQL Storage Services in Support for Industry 4.0
Isam Mashhour Al Jawarneh (University of Bologna & CIRI ICT, Italy); Paolo Bellavista and Francesco Casimiro (University of Bologna, Italy); Antonio Corradi (University of Bologna & CIRI ICT, Italy); Luca Foschini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Evaluating the Tools to Analyze the Data from the ParticipACT Brazil Project: A Test with Elasticseach Tools Ecosystem with Twitter Data
Eliza Gomes (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Daniel Penz (State University of Santa Catarina & Consultant, Brazil); Viviane Gomes (State University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Carlos Roberto De Rolt (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - UDESC, Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil)
PEDISWESA Workshop S2: Performance and security of complex systems
Session chair A. Kobbane
Chair: Abdellatif Kobbane (ENSIAS, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco)
Smart Disaster Detection and Response System for Smart Cities
Azzedine Boukerche and Rodolfo W. L. Coutinho (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Enhancing Coverage for Secure Communications over VANET
Hacene Fouchal (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France)
An Investigation on WannaCry Ransomware and Its Detection
M Satheesh Kumar (National Engineering College & Affiliated to Anna University, India); Jalel Ben-Othman (CentraleSupélec & University of Paris 13, France); Srinivasagan G. (National Engineering College, India)
Pocket Guard -- IoT-ready, Low-cost Personal Belongings Monitoring
Christian Pepino and Guilherme Dias (UTFPR Curitiba, Brazil); Daniel F Pigatto (Federal University of Technology - Parana (UTFPR), Brazil)
Navigation Phases Platform: Towards Green Computing for UAVs
Mariana Rodrigues (ICMC/USP, Brazil); Daniel F Pigatto (Federal University of Technology - Parana (UTFPR), Brazil); Kalinka Branco (USP - University of São Paulo, Brazil)
An Internet of Things-based House Monitoring System
Douglas Korgut and Daniel F Pigatto (Federal University of Technology - Parana (UTFPR), Brazil)
Smart Forests: Fire Detection Service
Guilherme Borba Neumann, Vitor Almeida and Markus Endler (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Room: Praimar Natal Hotel & Convention
Tuesday, June 26 13:00 - 13:30
K1: Keynote #1
Autonomic Communications in Software-Driven Networks
Prof. Torsten Braun, Department of Computer Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Autonomic communications aims to provide quality-of-service in networks using self-management mechanisms. Autonomic communications inherits many characteristics from autonomic computing, in particular, when communication systems are running as specialized applications in software-driven networks, i.e. networks based on software-defined networking and network function virtualization. We focus on network self-management as well as on-going research projects and standardization activities on different perspectives of self-management of networks. We further elaborate issues of automatic service testing, integration, and deployment in the context of virtualized network functions. Another important purpose of Autonomic Communications is to automate network performance optimization by analyzing real-time network data. Therefore, we discuss the importance of applying machine learning approaches to implement network self-management and optimization. Moreover, secure communication must be guaranteed for any autonomic operations.
S1: 5G I
Chair: Luca Foschini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Users-Fogs Association Within a Cache Context in 5G Networks Coalition Game Model
Amine Abouaomar (ENSIAS, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco & Université de Sherbrooke, Canada); Mouna Elmachkour (ENSIAS, University Mohammed V of Rabat, Morocco); Abdellatif Kobbane (ENSIAS, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco); Hamidou Tembine (New York University, USA); Marwane Ayaida (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France)
Parallel Polar Encoding in 5G Communication
Yang Guo (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Shaolin Xie (Alibaba US Inc., USA); Zijun Liu and Lei Yang (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Multi-User Preemptive Scheduling for Critical Low Latency Communications in 5G Networks
Ali Esswie (Nokia Bell Labs, Denmark); Klaus Pedersen (Nokia - Bell Labs, Denmark)
Tail Latency Optimized Resource Allocation in Fog-based 5G Networks
Shaowen Zheng (Institute of Information Engineering，Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Zhenxiang Gao (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Xu Shan (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Information Engineering, P.R. China); Weihua Zhou and Yongming Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Sparse Detection for Spatial Modulation in Multiple Access Channels
Yuliang Tu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China); Gui Lin (ShangHai JiaoTong University, P.R. China); Qibo Qin (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China); Hong Wen (UESTC, P.R. China)
S2: IoT I
Chair: Shie-Yuan Wang (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
Evaluating Container-Based Virtualization Overhead on the General-Purpose IoT Platform
Wagner Marques (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil); Paulo Souza (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Fábio Diniz Rossi (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Farroupilha, Brazil); Guilherme da Cunha Rodrigues (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Sul Rio Grandense - IFSUL, Brazil); Rodrigo N. Calheiros (Western Sydney University, Australia); Marcelo Conterato (PUCRS, Brazil); Tiago Ferreto (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil)
Reducing Multi-Hop Communication Latency of Schedule-Based Asynchronous Duty Cycle Mechanisms Through Low-Resolution Synchronization
André Saraiva (Universidade Federal Fluminense & Instituto de Computação, Brazil); Diego Passos, Celio Albuquerque and Ricardo C Carrano (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
Increasing LoRaWAN Application-Layer Message Delivery Success Rates
Shie-Yuan Wang and Tzu-Yang Chen (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
IoT Device Programmable Language Customization for Home Automation
Francisco Rodrigo P. da Ponte (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Joaquim Celestino Júnior (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil); Ahmed Patel (Computer Networks and Security Laboratory (LARCES) State University of Ceara (UECE), Brazil & Faculty of Computer Science & Information System, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
S3: Security I
Chair: Christos Douligeris (University of Piraeus, Greece)
Query-Aware User Privacy Protection for LBS over Query-Feature-based Attacks
Mingming Guo, Kianoosh G. Boroojeni and Niki Pissinou (Florida International University, USA); Kia Makki (Technological University of America (TUA), USA); Jerry Miller (Florida International University & Applied Research Center (ARC), USA); Sitharama Iyengar (Florida International University, USA)
Pseudo Downlink Channel Scheme for Eavesdroppers to Work Against Two-way Training DCE in Non-reciprocal MIMO Channel
Keke Hu, Ying Wang, Wang Zhongfang, Shunliang Zhang and Yongming Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Secure Transmission Against Pilot Contamination: A Cooperative Scheme with Multiple Antennas
Renyong Wu, Shenglan Yuan and Chao Yuan (Hunan University, P.R. China)
Security and Privacy in Extensible Distributed Coordination
Edson Floriano (UnB, Brazil); Eduardo Adilio Pelinson Alchieri (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil); Diego F Aranha (Aarhus University, Denmark & University of Campinas, Brazil); Priscila Solis (Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil)
Blockchain-based Mutual Authentication Security Protocol for Distributed RFID Systems
Siye Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, P.R. China); Shaoyi Zhu (IIE, CAS, P.R. China); Yanfang Zhang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
S4: Vehicular Networks I
Chair: Eduardo Cerqueira (Federal University of Para & UCLA & UFPA & UCLA, Brazil)
Driver Authentication in VANETs Based on Intra-Vehicular Sensor Data
Paulo Henrique Rettore (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); André Campolina (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil & University of Ottawa, Canada); Artur Luis de Souza (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Guilherme Maia (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); Leandro Aparecido Villas (UNICAMP, Brazil); Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
GMOA: Streaming Delivery in Infrastructure-Based Vehicular Networks
Cristiano M. Silva (Universidade Federal de São João Del-Rei, Brazil); Leonardo Pereira (Universidade Federal de São João Del Rei, Brazil); Mateus Luciano, Larissa Mariz, Bruna Ramos and Cristiano Pitangui (Universidade Federal de São João Del-Rei, Brazil); Luiz H. A. Correia (Federal University of Lavras, Brazil)
Improving the Communication of Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks Through Clusterization
Joaquim Celestino Júnior (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Bruno Lima (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Yacine Ghamri-Doudane (University of la Rochelle, France); Carlos Henrique Quevedo (Universidade Estadual do Ceará - UECE, Brazil); Humberto Marques (Ceará State University, Brazil); Diego Moreira (State University of Ceará, Brazil)
A Mobility Prediction Based Beacon Rate Adaptation Scheme in VANETs
Fei Li and Chuanhe Huang (Wuhan University, P.R. China)
S5: SDN I
Chair: Kuochen Wang (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
B-Cache: a Behavior-Level Caching Framework for the Programmable Data Plane
Cheng Zhang, Jun Bi and Yu Zhou (Tsinghua University, P.R. China); Keyao Zhang (Tsinghua University & Netarchlab, P.R. China); Zijun Ma (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
An Application-aware QoS Routing Algorithm for SDN-based IoT Networking
Guo-Cin Deng and Kuochen Wang (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
ECTCP: An Explicit Centralized Congestion Avoidance for TCP in SDN-based Data Center
Jiannan Bao, Jingyu Wang, Qi Qi and Liao Jianxin (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China)
PhantomSFC: A Fully Virtualized and Agnostic Service Function Chaining Architecture
Matheus Castanho (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Cristina Dominicini (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Espírito Santo, Brazil); Rodolfo S Villaca (Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES), Brazil); Magnos Martinello (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Moises R. N. Ribeiro (Federal Universty of Espirito Santo, Brazil)
S10 : AI I
Chair: Augusto J. Venancio Neto (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil & Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro, Portugal)
Scalable Fogbed for Fog Computing Emulation
Antonio Coutinho (Federal University of Bahia & State University of Feira de Santana, Brazil); Fabíola Greve and Cassio Vinicius Serafim Prazeres (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil); Heitor Rodrigues (State University of Feira de Santana, Brazil)
Energy-efficient Offloading Policy for Resource Allocation in Distributed Mobile Edge Computing
Chang Wang and Chongwu Dong (Sun Yat-sen University, P.R. China); Jinghui Qin (Sun Yat-Sen University, P.R. China); Xiaoxing Yang (Sun Yat-sen University, P.R. China); Wushao Wen (Sun Yat-Sen University, P.R. China)
MOMMA: A Flexible Architecture Based on Fog Computing for Mobility Management
Edivaldo Valentini (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo, Brazil); Douglas Lieira (Instituto Federal de São Paulo, Brazil); Luis Hideo V. Nakamura (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo & IFSP, Brazil); Rodolfo Meneguette (Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, Brazil)
A Fog Model for Dynamic Load Flow Analysis in Smart Grids
Maycon Peixoto and Eric Bernardes (UFBA, Brazil); Dionisio Leite Filho (UFMS, Brazil); Bruno Guazzelli and Bruno Tardiole Kuehne (UNIFEI, Brazil)
S6: IoT II
Chair: Marcos A. M. Vieira (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
A Virtual Prototype Semihosting Approach for Early Simulation of Cyber-Physical Systems
Bruno Prado (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Daniel Oliveira Dantas (Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil); Kalil A Bispo, Thiago Fontes, Gabriel Santana and Rafael Silva (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil)
SPES Methodology and MARTE Constraints in Architectural Design
Fabiola Ribeiro (Federal Institute Goiano, Brazil); Charles Steinmetz (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Achim Rettberg (Carl von Ossietzky Universitt Oldenburg, Germany); Carlos E Pereira (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Michel Soares (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil)
Market Design for IoT Data and Services the Emergent 21Th Century Commodities
Luiz Guilherme Pitta and Markus Endler (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Context Interoperability for IoT Through an Edge-centric Context Sharing Architecture
Everton de Matos (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Ramão Tiago Tiburski and Leonardo Amaral (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Fabiano Hessel (PUCRS, Brazil)
An Efficient Approach for Device Identification and Traffic Classification in IoT Ecosystems
Matias R. P. Santos (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil); Danielo G. Gomes (Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Brazil); Rossana Maria de Castro Andrade (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil); Arthur de Castro Callado (Federal University of Ceara, Brazil)
S7: Security II
Chair: Stefano Chessa (Universita' di Pisa, Italy)
Comprehensive Behavior Profiling Model for Malware Classification
Jianguo Jiang, Qilei Yin, Zhixin Shi and Meimei Li (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Using Intel SGX to Protect Authentication Credentials in an Untrusted Operating System
Rafael Condé (Federal University of Paraná - UFPR, Brazil); Carlos A Maziero (Federal University of Parana State - UFPR, Brazil); Newton Carlos Will (Federal University of Technology - Parana, Brazil)
Using NFV and Reinforcement Learning for Anomalies Detection and Mitigation in SDN
Lauren Sampaio and Pedro Faustini (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Anderson da Silva (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil); Lisandro Z Granville (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Alberto E. Schaeffer-Filho (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil)
High Threat Alarms Mining for Effective Security Management: Modeling, Experiment and Application
Yongwei Meng (Xi'an Jiaotong University, P.R. China); Tao Qin (Xi'an Jiaotong Uinversity, P.R. China); Yukun Liu and Chao He (Xi'an Jiaotong University, P.R. China)
S8: Cloud Computing I
Cognitive Management of Bandwidth Allocation Models with Case-Based Reasoning - Evidences Towards Dynamic BAM Reconfiguration
Eliseu Oliveira (Salvador University, Brazil); Rafael Freitas Reale (Federal University of Bahia / Federal Institute of Bahia & Salvador University, Brazil); Joberto Sergio Barbosa Martins (Salvador University - UNIFACS - Brazil & HTW - Germany, Brazil)
RM-KVStore: New MXNet KVStore to Accelerate Transfer Performance with RDMA
Lv Baocai (NUDT, P.R. China); Bing Liu, Fang Liu, Nong Xiao and Zhiguang Chen (National University of Defense Technology, P.R. China)
Performance of Data Mining, Media, and Financial Applications Under Private Cloud Conditions
Dalvan Griebler, Adriano Vogel and Carlos Maron (PUCRS, Brazil); Anderson Maliszewski (UFRGS, Brazil); Claudio Schepke (Universidade Federal do Pampa, Brazil); Luiz G. Fernandes (PUCRS, Brazil)
Multi-agent Communication with Attentional and Recurrent Message Integration
Zhaoqing Peng (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Libo Zhang (Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Tiejian Luo (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
S9: Computing Applications I
Chair: Massimo Villari (University of Messina, Italy)
An Unikernels Provisioning Architecture for OpenStack
Luis Knob (PUCRS & Instituto Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Bruno Xavier (PUCRS, Brazil); Tiago Ferreto (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil)
Dependability Evaluation of a Blockchain-as-a-Service Environment
Carlos Melo (UFPE, Brazil); Jamilson Dantas (University Federal of Pernambuci & UFPE, Brazil); Danilo Oliveira (Federal University of Penambuco, Brazil); Iure Fé (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Rubens S. Matos, Jr. (Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Sergipe, Brazil); Paulo Maciel (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Objective Reduction on Many-Objective Traffic Lights Signaling Optimization
Saulo Matos (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Jonatas Cezar Vieira Santos and Leonardo Matos (Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil); Andre Britto (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil)
Analysis of Mobile-Live-Users of a Large CDN
Antonio A Rocha (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil); Daniel Vasconcelos Corrêa da Silva (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil); Pedro Braconnot Velloso (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil); Guilherme Domingues (State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
S11: Security III
Chair: Charles Christian Miers (Santa Catarina State University, Brazil)
MPP: A Join-dividing Method for Multi-table Privacy Preservation
Weiqing Huang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Jianfeng Xia (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Min Yu (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Chao Liu (Institude of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
FROG: A Packet Hop Count Based DDoS Countermeasure in NDN
Yoshimichi Nakatsuka (University of California, Irvine, USA); Janaka Wijekoon (Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology); Hiroaki Nishi (Keio University, Japan)
The Evolution of Bashlite and Mirai IoT Botnets
Artur Henrique Marzano Gonzaga, David A A Oliveira and Osvaldo Fonseca (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Elverton Fazzion (UFSJ, Brazil); Cristine Hoepers, Klaus Steding-Jessen and Marcelo Chaves (Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC dot br), Brazil); Italo Cunha, Dorgival Guedes and Wagner Meira, Jr. (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Usable and Secure Cloud-based Biometric Authentication Solution for IoT Devices
Chalee Vorakulpipat (National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, Thailand); Takeshi Takahashi (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan); Ekkachan Rattanalerdnusorn (NECTEC, Thailand); Phithak Thaenkaew (Thammasat University & National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, Thailand); Daisuke Inoue (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan)
SSL/TLS Security Exploration Through X.509 Certificate's Life Cycle Measurement
Peipei Fu, Zhen Li and Gang Xiong (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Zigang Cao (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Cyber Security，University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Cuicui Kang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
S12: Wireless Networks I
Chair: Rodolfo W. L. Coutinho (University of Ottawa, Canada)
MSHCS-MAC: A MAC Protocol for Multi-hop Cognitive Radio Networks Based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing Approach
Nhat Pham and Kiwoong Kwon (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea); Daeyoung Kim (KAIST, Korea)
Multi-Factor Dynamic Channel Assignment Approach for Wi-Fi Networks
Laura Michaella Batista Ribeiro (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil); Eduardo Souto (Universidade Federal do Amazonas - UFAM, Brazil); Leandro Buss Becker (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Wireless Channel Assignment in Smart Home
Francisco Rodrigo P. da Ponte (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Kílvia Letícia de A. Almeida (Universidade Estadual do Ceara, Brazil); Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Joaquim Celestino Júnior (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Walisson Pereira (Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú, Brazil); Nelson L. S. da Fonseca (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
Towards an Accurate Bandwidth Estimation Tool for 802.11N Wireless Networks
Diego Azevedo (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Michel S. Bonfim (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco & Universidade Federal do Ceara, Brazil); Leonidas Lima (Federal University of Pernambuco & Federal Institute of Paraíba, Brazil); Stenio Fernandes (Element AI, Canada)
A Novel RSSI-based Algorithm for Detect and Bypass Routing Holes in Wireless Sensor Networks
Moyses M. Lima (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil); Horacio Oliveira (Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil); Richard W. Pazzi (University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada)
S13: Services and Protocols I
Chair: Vinícius Fernandes Mota (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil)
A Comparative Analysis of Bloom Filter-based Routing Protocols for Information-Centric Networks
Ali Marandi and Torsten Ingo Braun (University of Bern, Switzerland); Kavé Salamatian (LISTIC PolyTech, Université de Savoie Chambery Annecy, France); Nikolaos Thomos (University of Essex, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
QUIC and TCP: A Performance Evaluation
Késsia Nepomuceno (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil); Igor Nogueira (Research Fellow, Brazil); Rafael Roque Aschoff (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Pernambuco (IFPE), Brazil); Daniel Bezerra (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil); Maria Ito, Wesley Melo and Djamel Hadj Sadok (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Géza Szabó (Ericsson Research, Hungary)
mTSL: Making mTCP Stack Transparent to Network Applications
Dong Liu, Xiaohui Luo and Fengyuan Ren (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
On the Use of a Measurement Correlation Service for Measurement Federations
Jéferson Nobre (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Leandro Lisboa Penz (Arista Networks, Ireland); Muriel Franco (University of Zurich, Switzerland); Lisandro Z Granville (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
S14: SDN II
Chair: Denis Lima Rosário (Federal University of Para, Brazil)
Handover Initiation Comparison in Virtualised SDN-based Flow Mobility Management
Flávio Meneses (Instituto de Telecomunicações & Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); Carlos Guimarães (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Portugal); Daniel Corujo (Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro & Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); Rui L Aguiar (University of Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal)
Update Cost-Aware Cache Replacement for Wildcard Rules in Software-Defined Networking
Zixuan Ding, Xinxin Fan, Jinping Yu and Jingping Bi (Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
ETArch-SG - A SDN-based Architecture to Support the Communication Requirements of Future Smart Grids
Alex Dias (Federal University of Uberlandia, Brazil); Flavio de Oliveira Silva (Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil); Pedro Frosi Rosa (Federal University of Uberlandia & Faculty of Computing, Brazil); Rui L Aguiar (University of Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal)
Does OpenFlow Really Decouple the Data Plane from the Control Plane?
Thiago Moratori and Alex Borges Vieira (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Michele Nogueira (Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Brazil); Daniel Fernandes Macedo (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
S15: Data and Contents
Chair: Clayson Celes (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Unfolding the Mutual Relation Between Timeliness and Scalability in Cloud Monitoring
Guilherme da Cunha Rodrigues (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Sul Rio Grandense - IFSUL, Brazil); Rodrigo N. Calheiros (Western Sydney University, Australia); Gléderson L. Santos (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul & Sul-Rio-Grandense Federal Institute (IFSUL), Brazil); Vinícius Tavares Guimarães (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Sul-rio-grandense & Campus Charqueadas, Brazil); Lisandro Z Granville and Liane Margarida Rockenbach Tarouco (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Rajkumar Buyya (University of Melbourne, Australia)
A Crowdsensing Campaign and Data Analytics for Assisting Urban Mobility Pattern Determination
Marcelo Buosi (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Carlos Roberto De Rolt (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - UDESC, Brazil); Marco Cilloni (University of Bologna, Italy); Antonio Corradi (University of Bologna & CIRI ICT, Italy); Julio da Silva Dias (UDESC, Brazil); Luca Foschini, Rebecca Montanari and Piero Zito (University of Bologna, Italy)
Slicing Virtualized EPC-based 5G Core Network for Content Delivery
Marsa Rayani (Concordia University, Canada); Diala Naboulsi (École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada); Roch Glitho (Concordia University, Canada); Halima Elbiaze (University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada)
A Method to Verify Data Integrity in Graph Databases
Fabio Miranda Reina (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Hylson Vescovi Netto (Institute Federal Catarinense, Brazil); Luciana Rech (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Aldelir Fernando Luiz (Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
BGCC: a Bloom Filter-based Grouped-Chunk Caching Approach for Information-Centric Networking
Jiang Zhi, Jun Li and Haibo Wu (Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Analysis of Gap Filling Algorithms to Smart Surveillance Environment
Maycon Peixoto (UFBA, Brazil); Dionisio Leite Filho (UFMS, Brazil); Bruno Guazzelli and Bruno Tardiole Kuehne (UNIFEI, Brazil); Gabriel Lecomte (UFBA, Brazil); Igo Romero Souza (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil); Matheus Barbosa (Federal University of Bahia & UFBA, Brazil)
Wednesday, June 27 13:30 - 14:30
Creating Autonomous Vehicle Systems
Prof. Jean-Luc Gaudiot, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California
In this technical overview of autonomous vehicles, weshare our practical experiences designing autonomous vehicle systems. Autonomous vehicle systems are complex, consisting of three major subsystems: algorithms for localization, perception, and planning and control; client systems, such as the robotics operating system and hardware platform; and the cloud platform, which includes data storage, simulation, high-definition (HD) mapping, and deep learning model training. The algorithm subsystem extracts meaningful information from sensor raw data to understand its environment and make decisions about its actions. The client subsystem integrates these algorithms to meet real-time and reliability requirements. The cloud platform provides offline computing and storage capabilities for autonomous vehicles. Using the cloud platform, we are able to test new algorithms and update the HD map - plus, train better recognition, tracking, and decision models.
S16: 5G II
Chair: Susana Sargento (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
FDDS-MAC: Enhancing Spectrum Usage on Full-Duplex Communications in 5G Mobile Wireless Networks
Lucas Guimarães and Jacir Luiz Bordim (University of Brasilia, Brazil)
Affinity-Based User Clustering for Efficient Edge Caching in Content-Centric Cellular Networks
Adriana Viriato Ribeiro and Leobino Nascimento Sampaio (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil); Artur Ziviani (LNCC, Brazil)
Low-complexity User Scheduling and Power Allocation for Downlink Multicarrier NOMA with Imperfect CSI
Qian Cheng (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & University of Chinese Academy of Sciences); Dan Wang (Institution of Information Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Xiaona Li, Wang Zhongfang and Yongming Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Catalog-Driven Services in a 5G SDN/NFV Self-Managed Environment
Nuno Henriques (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Susana Sargento (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); Pedro Neves (Altice Labs, Portugal); Manuel Gil Pérez and Gregorio Martinez Perez (University of Murcia, Spain); Giacomo Bernini (Nextworks, Italy); Qi Wang (University of the West of Scotland, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Jose Maria Alcaraz Calero (University of the West of Scotland & School of Engineering and Computing, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Konstantinos Koutsopoulos (Creative Systems Engineering, Greece)
S17: IoT III
Statistical Energy Neutrality in IoT Hybrid Energy-Harvesting Networks
Soledad Escolar (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain); Antonio Caruso (University of Salento, Italy); Stefano Chessa (Universita' di Pisa, Italy); Xavier del Toro (UCLM, Spain); Félix J. Villanueva and Juan Carlos López (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain)
Deklaer: An Ontology-Driven Framework for Generating IoT Applications Using ContextNet
Vitor Almeida, Guilherme Borba Neumann and Markus Endler (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Francisco Silva (Universidade Federal do Maranhão, Brazil)
Performance-Aware Energy-Efficient Processes Grouping for Embedded Platforms
Paulo Souza (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Wagner Marques (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil); Fábio Diniz Rossi (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Farroupilha, Brazil); Marcelo Conterato (PUCRS, Brazil); Tiago Ferreto (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil)
IMMS: IoT Management and Monitoring System
João Monte, Vinícius Fraga and Andrea Ribeiro (UFPE, Brazil); Djamel Hadj Sadok (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Judith Kelner (UFPE, Brazil)
Towards a Hybrid Storage Architecture for IoT
Braulio L. D. C. Junior (UFS - Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Douglas D J Macedo (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Diego Kreutz (Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA), Brazil); Edward David Moreno (UFS - Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil)
S18: Cloud Computingt II
A Semiautomatic Superpixel Based Approach to Cup-to-Disc Ratio Measurement
Elineide Santos and Luís Santos (Federal University of Piauí, Brazil); Rodrigo Veras (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil); Marcos Frazão and Daniel Leite (Federal University of Piauí, Brazil)
Combining ABCD Rule, Texture Features and Transfer Learning in Automatic Diagnosis of Melanoma
Nayara Moura (Federal University of Piauí, Brazil); Rodrigo Veras and Kelson R T Aires (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil); Vinicius Machado (UFPI - Federal University of Piauí - Brazil, Brazil); Romuere R. V. e Silva (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil); Flávio Araújo (Federal University of Piauí, Brazil); Maíla Claro (Federal University of Piaui, Brazil)
Evaluating, Estimating, and Improving Network Performance in Container-based Clouds
Cassiano Rista (Pontifical University Catholic of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil); Marcelo Teixeira (Federal University of Technology - Parana, Brazil); Dalvan Griebler and Luiz G. Fernandes (PUCRS, Brazil)
Koordinator: A Service Approach for Replicating Docker Containers in Kubernetes
Hylson Vescovi Netto (Institute Federal Catarinense, Brazil); Aldelir Fernando Luiz (Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Miguel Correia (INESC-ID & Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal); Luciana Rech (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Caio Pereira Oliveira (UFSC, Brazil)
S19: SDN III
SDN-Based Architecture for Providing QoS to High Performance Distributed Applications
Alexandre Oliveira and Bruno Martins (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Marcelo Ferreira Moreno (Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Alex Borges Vieira (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Antonio Tadeu A. Gomes and Artur Ziviani (LNCC, Brazil)
SDN4Moodle: An SDN-based Toolset to Enhance QoS of Moodle Platform
Anderson Marcondes (Santa Catarina Sate University, Brazil); Charles Christian Miers (Santa Catarina State University, Brazil); Mauricio Pillon (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina & UDESC, Brazil); Guilherme Koslovski (Santa Catarina State University, Brazil)
Evaluation of Cache for Bandwidth Optimization in ICN Through Software-Defined Networks
Erick Nascimento (Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), Brazil); Douglas D J Macedo (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Edward David Moreno (UFS - Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Luis Carlos Erpen De Bona (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil); Miriam A M Capretz (University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Dynamic Link Aggregation in Software Defined Networking
Ronaldo Resende Rocha Junior (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Marcos A. M. Vieira and Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
S20: Optical Networks
Chair: Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
QoS Guaranteed Batch Scheduling for Optical Switches Based on Unequal Weight Sequence
Yan Guan (Tianjin University, P.R. China); Bin Wu (Tian jin University, P.R. China); Zhipeng Zhao and Boyu Li (Tianjin University, P.R. China); Shu Fu (Chongqing University, P.R. China)
Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation with Multi-ONU Customer Support for Ethernet Passive Optical Networks
Oscar Ciceri, Carlos A. Astudillo and Nelson L. S. da Fonseca (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
Energy-Efficient VPON Formation and Wavelength Dimensioning in Cloud-Fog RAN over TWDM-PON
Rodrigo Tinini (University of São Paulo, Brazil); Daniel M. Batista (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil); Gustavo Bittencourt Figueiredo (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Circuit Reallocation Strategy Aware of the Physical Layer Effects for Elastic Optical Networks
Selles Araújo (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil); André Soares (Federal University of Piaui, Brazil); Alexandre Fontinele and Divanilson R. Campelo (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil); José dos Reis Jr (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil); Ênio Barbosa (Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil)
S21: Image Processing
Chair: Joahannes B. D. da Costa (University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil)
Improving Feature Point Detection in High Dynamic Range Images
Welerson Melo, Jusley Tavares, Daniel Oliveira Dantas and Beatriz Andrade (Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil)
Disparity Map Adjustment: a Post-Processing Technique
Gabriel Vieira (Federal Institute Goiano, Brazil); Fabrizzio A. A. M. N. Soares (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil); Gustavo Laureano (Federal University of Goiás, Brazil); Rafael Parreira (University of Goiás, Brazil); Julio Cesar Ferreira (Goiano Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, Brazil); Rogerio Salvini (Universidade Federal de Goias, Brazil)
Tensorial Lucas-Kanade: An Optical Flow Estimator Based on Tensorial Color Representation and Tensorial Algebra
Fernanda Tamy Ishii (State University of Maringá & CodeIT Solutions, Brazil); Franklin Flores (State University of Maringá, Brazil); Leticia Rittner (Unicamp, Brazil)
Tear Film Classification Using Phylogenetic Diversity Indexes as Texture Descriptor
Luana Cruz, José Araújo, Johnatan Souza, Jefferson de Sousa, João Almeida, Geraldo Junior, Aristófanes Silva and Anselmo de Paiva (Federal University of Maranhão, Brazil)
S22: Security IV
Tuning the Winternitz Hash-Based Digital Signature Scheme
Lucas Perin, Gustavo Zambonin, Douglas Martins and Ricardo Custodio (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Jean Martina (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Achieving Data Dissemination with Security Using FIWARE and Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX)
Dalton C. G. Valadares (Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG) & Instituto Federal de Pernambuco (IFPE), Brazil); Matteus Sthefano Leite da Silva (Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil); Andrey Brito (Federal University of Campina Grande & Distributed Systems Laboratory, Brazil); Ewerton Monteiro Salvador (Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil)
An Authentication Scheme Using Identity-based Encryption & Blockchain
Beini Zhou (Peking University, P.R. China); Hui Li (Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, P.R. China); Li Xu (PeKing University, P.R. China)
Non-Authentication Based Checkpoint Fault-tolerant Vulnerability in Spark Streaming
Yazhen Tian, Qingni Shen and Ziyao Zhu (Peking University, P.R. China); Yahui Yang (School of Software and Microeclectronics, Peking University, P.R. China); Zhonghai Wu (School of Software & Microelectronics, P.R. China)
S23: Wireless Networks II
Chair: Laura Michaella Batista Ribeiro (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Redundant Packet Scheduling by Uncorrelated Paths in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks
Benevid Felix (UFPR, Brazil); Igor Steuck (Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil); Aldri Santos (Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Brazil); Stefano Secci (Cnam, France); Michele Nogueira (Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Brazil)
Algorithms for BPRN Coloring of a Digraph
Francisco Gomes (State University of Ceara, Brazil); Leonardo Ferreira da Costa (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Leonardo Rocha (State University of Ceara, Brazil); Gerardo Viana (Universidade Estadual do Ceará & UECE, Brazil); Fabio Dias (Universidade Federal do Ceará & UFC, Brazil)
Real-Time Underwater Computing System
Hussain Albarakati and Reda Ammar (University of Connecticut, USA); Raafat Elfouly (Rhode Island College, USA)
SM3-MAC: a Multichannel Collision-Free MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Gilson Miranda, Jr (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Luiz H. A. Correia (Federal University of Lavras, Brazil)
S24: Vehicular Networks II
TruMan: Trust Management for Vehicular Networks
Renan Greca and Luiz Carlos Pessoa Albini (Federal University of Parana, Brazil)
Content Distribution Optimization Algorithms in Vehicular Networks
Joana Conde (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); Carlos Senna (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Susana Sargento (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Multi-technology Vs Single-technology Architecture for Network Coding in VANETs
Christian Gomes (Universidade de Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Miguel Luís (Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Portugal); Susana Sargento (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); André Zúquete (University of Aveiro, Dep. of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics & IEETA, Portugal); Rui Lopes (Universidade de Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal)
TRUSTed: A Distributed System for Information Management and Knowledge Distribution in VANETs
Ademar Takeo Akabane and Roger Immich (University of Campinas, Brazil); Richard W. Pazzi (University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil); Leandro Aparecido Villas (UNICAMP, Brazil)
S25: Fog Computing
Chair: Djamel Hadj Sadok (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
IORE: A Flexible and Distributed I/O Performance Evaluation Tool for Hyperscale Storage Systems
Eduardo C Inacio (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil)
Characterizing User Behavior on Web Mapping Systems Using Real-world Data
Vinicius G Braga (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil); Sand Correa (Universidade Federal de Goias (UFG), Brazil); Vagner Sacramento (Federal University of Goias & UFG, Brazil); Kleber V Cardoso (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil)
A Failure Detector for Ambient Assisted Living
Airton Jesus, Jr. and Tarcísio Rocha (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Edward David Moreno (UFS - Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil)
Revenue Maximization with Deadline in Viral Marketing
Li Yu (Renmin University of China, P.R. China)
Game Theoretic Modeling of Interaction Problems in Datacenter Network Environments
Jun Gong (CETC Information Science Academy, P.R. China); Jianxin Liao (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China); Zilu Kang (CETC Information Science Academy, P.R. China)
Sentiment Analysis of Medical Comments Based on Character Vector Convolutional Neural Networks
Qiao Pan, Hang Li, Dehua Chen and Kaiqi Sun (Donghua University, P.R. China)
S26: Security V
Chair: Antonio A Rocha (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil)
NPM: An Anti-attacking Analysis Model of the MTD System Based on Martingale Theory
Xin Yang (Peking University, P.R. China); Hui Li (Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, P.R. China); Han Wang (Peking University, P.R. China)
Secret Sharing Schemes with Hidden Sets
Rick Lopes de Souza (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Ricardo Custodio (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Martin Vigil (Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany); Daniel Panario (Carleton University, Canada); Lucia Moura (University of Ottawa, Canada); Florian Caullery (DarkMatter, United Arab Emirates)
R-TSCH: Proactive Jamming Attack Protection for IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH Networks
Dimitrios Zorbas (Tyndall National Institute, Ireland); Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou and Christos Douligeris (University of Piraeus, Greece)
Personalized Privacy-Preserving with High Performance: (α,ε)-Anonymity
Jianfeng Xia (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Min Yu, Ying Yang and Hao Jin (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
S27: Wireless Networks III
Multi-objective Optimization for Distributed Collaborative Beamforming in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks
Geng Sun, Yanheng Liu, Guojun Shen and Aimin Wang (Jilin University, P.R. China); Ying Zhang (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Victor C.M. Leung (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Error Probability Analysis of Nyquist-I Pulses in Intersymbol and Cochannel Interference
Jaime Aranda Cubillo (University of Chile, Chile); Cesar Azurdia (Universidad de Chile, Chile); Samuel Montejo-Sánchez (Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile); Iván Jirón (Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile); Richard Demo Demo Souza (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Optimal Uplink Channel Estimation Algorithm for OFDM Based MmWave Massive MIMO Systems
Moufida Hajjaj (SUP'COM, Tunisia); Ameni Mejri (National Engineering School of Tunis & SYS'COM Laboratory, Tunisia); Ridha R. Bouallegue, B. (Ecole Supérieure des Communications de Tunis, Tunisia); Salem Hasnaoui (National School of Engineering of Tunis, Tunisia)
Energy-Efficient Fragmentation-Avoidance Uplink Packet Scheduler for SC-FDMA-Based Systems
Fernando Pereira, Carlos A. Astudillo and Nelson L. S. da Fonseca (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
S28: Services and Protocols II
Chair: Luiz H. A. Correia (Federal University of Lavras, Brazil)
On Efficient and Social-Aware Object Allocation in Named Data Networks Using Matching Theory
Mahsa Ehsanpour, Siavash Bayat and Ali Mohammad Afshin Hemmatyar (Sharif University of Technology, Iran)
Ballistic Skip Graph: A Skip Graph-Style Constant-Degree Structured Overlay
Yusuke Aoki, Masaaki Ohnishi and Kazuyuki Shudo (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
LaFFT: Length-Aware FFT Based Fingerprinting for Encrypted Network Traffic Classification
Chang Liu (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Zigang Cao (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Cyber Security，University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Zhen Li and Gang Xiong (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Management Framework for Future Internet Service Providers
Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Francisco Rodrigo P. da Ponte (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Eduardo Cerqueira (Federal University of Para & UCLA & UFPA & UCLA, Brazil); Luiz F. Bittencourt (University of Campinas, Brazil); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil); Mario Gerla (University of California at Los Angeles, USA)
S29: Computing Applications II
Chair: Alex Borges Vieira (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil)
A Broker-guided Trust Calculation Model for Mobile Devices of D2D Communications
Jie Yuan and Li Xiaoyong (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China)
Accurate Available Bandwidth Estimation Robust Against Traffic Differentiation in Operational MVNO Networks
Takashi Oshiba (NEC Corporation, Japan)
Proactive Autonomic Semantic Engine to User Experience-Aware Service Provision
Madalena Pereira da Silva (University of the Planalto Catarinense, Brazil); Felipe Volpato (Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFC), Brazil); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil)
Electrocardiogram Fiducial Points Detection for Health Care Systems
Diego Moreira (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Levy Chaves (State University of Ceara, Brazil); Bruno Lima (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Kílvia Letícia de A. Almeida (Universidade Estadual do Ceara, Brazil); Thelmo P. de Araujo (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Joaquim Celestino Júnior (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Augusto J. Venancio Neto (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil & Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro, Portugal)
S30: Social Networks I
Chair: Heitor S Ramos (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
A Social-Based Approach to Mobile Edge Computing
Dimitri Belli (University of Pisa, Italy); Stefano Chessa (Universita' di Pisa, Italy); Luca Foschini (University of Bologna, Italy); Michele Girolami (ISTI-CNR, Italy)
RWAC: A Self-contained Read and Write Access Control Scheme for Group Collaboration
Jinmiao Wang and Bo Lang (Beihang University, P.R. China); Ruijin Zhu (China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center, P.R. China)
Social Pre-caching of Location-dependent Objects in Vehicular Information-Centric Ad-hoc Networks
Felipe Modesto and Azzedine Boukerche (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Room: Spaço Guinza Recepções e Eventos. Via Costeira, 04, Ponta Negra, Natal/RN
Thursday, June 28 13:30 - 14:30
Cybersecurity in a Maritime Supply Chain Environment: Issues and Modelling
Prof. Christos Douligeris, University of Piraeus Greece
Due to the progressive reliance of the industrial sector on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the interconnection of heterogeneous ICT systems among ports to share and transfer data, the impact of a coordinated physical attack, a deliberate disruption of critical automation (cyber) systems or even a combined scenario including both kinds of attacks, could have tremendous consequences for the port and its vicinity.
To enhance the security awareness of maritime supply chains infrastructures, this lecture will present a process-oriented model of port supply chain security concepts. The model reflects the ports' critical infrastructures security particularities and presents best practices to improve their cyber-physical systems' sustainability and resilience. This is illustrated via a real-life attack scenario taken as a use case to show how security vulnerabilities and weaknesses can be exploited by adversaries to launch a coordinated cyber - physical attack.
The attack scenario use case is part of the SAURON EU project, that introduces a multidimensional yet installation-specific Situational Awareness (SA) model that enables port operators and authorities to anticipate and withstand cyber, physical and combined security threats to their freight and cargo business and to enhance the safety of their employees, visitors and passengers.
S31: Security VI
Chair: Joberto Sergio Barbosa Martins (Salvador University - UNIFACS - Brazil & HTW - Germany, Brazil)
A VM Placement Based Approach to Proactively Mitigate Co-Resident Attacks in Cloud
Fabiao Miao, Liming Wang and Zailong Wu (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
PSDEM: A Feasible De-Obfuscation Method for Malicious PowerShell Detection
Chao Liu (Institude of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Bin Xia, Min Yu and Yunzheng Liu (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Packet Padding for Improving Privacy in Consumer IoT
Antonio J Pinheiro, Jeandro M Bezerra and Divanilson R. Campelo (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil)
Enabling Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection Through Model Generalization
Eduardo Viegas and Altair O. Santin (Pontifical Catholic University of Parana (PUCPR), Brazil); Luiz E. S. Oliveira (Federal University of Parana, Brazil); Vilmar Abreu (PUCPR, Brazil)
A Study on Pseudo CRS Signal Jamming Attacks in LTE Network
Xiaona Li and Wang Zhongfang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
S32: Wireless Networks IV
Chair: Ademar Takeo Akabane (University of Campinas, Brazil)
Experimental Evaluation of the Coexistence of IEEE 802.11 EDCA and DCF Mechanisms
José Betiol, Júnior (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Jim Lau (Federal University Santa Catarina, Brazil); Luciana Rech (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil); Francisco Vasques (University of Porto, Portugal); Ricardo Moraes (University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil)
Confidentiality-Aware Decision on Handoffs Under Uncertain Heterogeneous Wireless Networks
Alisson Puska (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil); Michele Nogueira and Aldri Santos (Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Brazil)
A Feasibility Study of Watchdogs on Opportunistic Mobile Networks
Diogo Soares, Bruno Matthaus, Edjair S. Mota and Celso Barbosa Carvalho (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Ultra Reliable Communication for Robot Mobility Enabled by SDN Splitting of WiFi Functions
Víctor García (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Rafael Silva Guimaraes (Federal Institute of Espirito Santo - Campus Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Brazil); Ricardo Mello (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil); Pedro Baptista (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Moises R. N. Ribeiro (Federal Universty of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Magnos Martinello (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil); Valerio Frascolla (Intel Deutschland Gmbh, Germany)
S33: Cloud Computing III
Chair: Fung Po Tso (Loughborough University, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
REPO: A Microservices Elastic Management System for Cost Reduction in the Cloud
Alex Magalhaes (University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil); Luciana Rech (University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Ricardo Moraes (University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil); Francisco Vasques (University of Porto, Portugal)
CNN Based Indoor Localization Using RSS Time-Series
Mai Ibrahim and Marwan Torki (Alexandria University, Egypt); Mustafa ElNainay (Alexandria University & Virginia Tech, Egypt)
On Evaluating the Influence of User's Music Listening Habits on Cache Replacement Policies
Stéfani Pires (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil); Adriana Ribeiro and Antonio Souza (UFBA, Brazil); Allan Freitas (IFBA, Brazil); Leobino Nascimento Sampaio (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Affinity Aware-Scheduling of Live Migration of Virtual Machines Under Maintenance Scenarios
Anis Yazidi (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway)
An Energy-aware Task Scheduler Based in Ownership Fairness Applied to Federated Grids
Cássio Forte and Aleardo Manacero (São Paulo State University - UNESP, Brazil); Renata Spolon Lobato (UNESP – São Paulo State University, Brazil); Roberta Spolon (UNESP - State University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Slicing of Network Resources in Future Internet Service Providers Based on Daytime
Rafael L. Gomes (State University of Ceará (UECE) & University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Francisco Rodrigo P. da Ponte (State University of Ceará, Brazil); Arthur Urbano (Universidade Estadual do Ceará, Brazil); Luiz F. Bittencourt (University of Campinas, Brazil); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
S34: SDN IV
A Network Slicing Component for LTE Uplink Transmission
Pedro Rezende (Institute of Computing - University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
An SFC-enabled Approach for Processing SSL/TLS Encrypted Traffic in Future Enterprise Networks
Vitor A Cunha (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Márcio Carvalho (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Daniel Corujo (Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro & Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal); João Paulo Barraca (University of Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Diogo Gomes (Universidade de Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Alberto E. Schaeffer-Filho (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil); Carlos Raniery Paula Dos Santos (Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil); Lisandro Z Granville (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Rui L Aguiar (University of Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal)
Proactive Mitigation to Table-Overflow in Software-Defined Networking
Jianfeng Xu (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Liming Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Chen Song (Institute of Information Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Zhen Xu (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
EFM: Improving DCNs Throughput Using the Transmission Rates of Elephant Flows
André Luiz Beltrami (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil); Fábio Verdi (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil)
Using Probabilistic Data Structures for Monitoring of Multi-tenant P4-based Networks
Regis Martins and Fabio Verdi (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil); Rodolfo S Villaca (Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES), Brazil); Luis Garcia (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil)
CNOR: A Non-Overlapping Wildcard Rule Caching System for Software-Defined Networks
ChunLin Yang (Tsinghua University, P.R. China); Yong Jiang (Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, P.R. China); Yang Liu (Tsinghua University, P.R. China); Lei Wang (Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
S35: AI II
M2-FoT: a Proposal for Monitoring and Management of Fog of Things Platforms
Nilson Sousa (UFBA, Brazil); Cassio Vinicius Serafim Prazeres (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Towards Osmotic Computing: The First Osmotic Application
Alina Buzachis and Antonino Galletta (University of Messina, Italy); Lorenzo Carnevale (University of Messina & IRCSS Centro Neurolesi Bonino Pulejo, Italy); Massimo Villari (University of Messina, Italy)
A High-Performance Round-Robin Regular Expression Matching Architecture Based on FPGA
Jia Jia Yang (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences & Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Lei Jiang, Xu Bai, Huailiang Peng and Qiong Dai (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China)
Proactive Virtual Machine Migration in Fog Environments
Diogo Goncalves (University of Campinas, Brazil); Karima Velasquez and Marilia Curado (University of Coimbra, Portugal); Luiz F. Bittencourt (University of Campinas, Brazil); Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (State University of Campinas, Brazil)
S36: Vehicular Networks III
Chair: Guto Leoni (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Data Dissemination Based on Complex Networks' Metrics for Distributed Traffic Management Systems
Joahannes B. D. da Costa (University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Denis Lima Rosário (Federal University of Para, Brazil); Allan M. de Souza and Leandro Aparecido Villas (UNICAMP, Brazil); Eduardo Cerqueira (Federal University of Para & UCLA & UFPA & UCLA, Brazil)
On the Temporal Analysis of Vehicular Networks
Clayson Celes and Azzedine Boukerche (University of Ottawa, Canada); Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Feedback-Based Content Poisoning Mitigation in Named Data Networking
Wenjing Cui (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences & University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Yang Li and Yonghui Xin (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China); Chang Liu (University of Chinese Academy of Science, P.R. China)
Reducing the Variability in Routing Decisions in Wireless Mesh Networks
Bruno dos Santos Silva, Diego Passos and Celio Albuquerque (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
Energy Efficient Task Assignment in Virtualized Wireless Sensor Networks
Vahid Maleki Raee (Concordia University, Canada); Diala Naboulsi (École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada); Roch Glitho (Concordia University, Canada)
S37: Social Networks II
Enriching Traffic Information with a Spatiotemporal Model Based on Social Media
Bruno P. Santos and Paulo Henrique Rettore (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); Heitor S Ramos and Luiz F. M. Vieira (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
An Experimental Evaluation of the NeuroMessenger: A Collaborative Tool to Improve the Empathy of Text Interactions
Breno Santos (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil); Methanias Colaço Júnior (UFS, Brazil); Janisson Gois de Souza (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil)
ShareFile: Sharing Content Through Device-to-Device Communication
Daniel Reis (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil); Theo Lins (Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil); Jose Nogueira (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Vinícius Fernandes Mota (Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil)
Forecasting Over-The-Top Bandwidth Consumption Applied to Network Operators
Tiago Oliveira (University of Aveiro & Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal); Adriano Fiorese (Santa Catarina State University, Brazil); Susana Sargento (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Event Detection in Social Media Through Phase Transition of Bigram Entropy
Pedro H Barros (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Isadora Cardoso and Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); Heitor S Ramos (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
S39: Vehicular Networks and Cloud
Space and Time Matter: An Analysis About Route Selection in Mobility Traces
Augusto Cesar Domingues, Fabrício Aguiar Silva and Antonio A.F. Loureiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
A Novel Location-Based Content Distribution Protocol for Named Data Vehicular Networks
Rodolfo W. L. Coutinho, Azzedine Boukerche and Xiangshen Yu (University of Ottawa, Canada)
S-BULMA: An Efficient Spark-based Approach for Map-Matching Bus Trajectories
Demetrio G Mestre (Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG) & State University of Paraíba (UEPB), Brazil); Tiago Brasileiro Araújo, Andreza Queiroz, Veruska Santos, Carlos Pires and Thiago Nóbrega (Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Brazil)
A Cloudlet-based Mobile Computing Model to Enable Resource and Energy Efficient Offloading
Shichao Guan and Azzedine Boukerche (University of Ottawa, Canada)
S40: Services and Protocols III
Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for Home and Soho Wireless Networks
Julio Cesar Guimaraes (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Henrique Moura (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais & UFMG, Brazil); Jonas Borges (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Marcos A. M. Vieira (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); Luiz F. M. Vieira and Daniel Fernandes Macedo (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Modeling the Availability of an E-Health System Integrated with Edge Fog and Cloud Infrastructures
Matheus Felipe Ferreira da Silva Lisboa Tigre (Universidade de Pernambuco, Brazil); Guto Leoni (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Theo Lynn (Dublin City University, Ireland); Djamel Hadj Sadok (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Judith Kelner (UFPE, Brazil); Patricia Takako Endo (University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Characterizing I/O and Storage Activity on the K Computer for Post-Processing Purpose
Eduardo C Inacio (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil); Jorji Nonaka (RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Japan); Kenji Ono (Kyushu University, Japan); Mario A R Dantas (UFJF, Brazil); Fumiyoshi Shoji (RIKEN AICS, Japan)
Communication Architecture for Smart Grid Applications
Michael Emmanuel, Winston K.G. Seah and Ramesh Rayudu (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
S41: IoT IV
Scalability of Real-Time IoT-based Applications for Smart Cities
Ivan Zyrianoff and Fabrizio Borelli (Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil); Gabriela Biondi and Alexandre Heideker (Federal University of ABC, Brazil); Carlos Kamienski (Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil)
IoT-Based Architecture for Data Analytics of Arboviruses in Smart Cities
Priscylla Tavares (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil); Emanuel B. Rodrigues (Federal University of Ceará & Group of Computer Networks, Software Engineering and Systems, Brazil)
COPPER: Increasing Underwater Sensor Network Performance Through Nodes Cooperation
Lucas S Cerqueira and Alex Borges Vieira (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Luiz F. M. Vieira (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil); Marcos A. M. Vieira (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil); José Augusto Miranda Nacif (Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil)
A Mobility Management Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Jianjun Wen and Waltenegus Dargie (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany)
Tensor Coding for Three-Hop MIMO Relay Systems
Danilo Rocha (Federal University of Ceará & Laboratoire I3S, Brazil); Gérard Favier (I3S, CNRS, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France); Alexandre Fernandes (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil)
A Fast Converging Mechanism for Load Balancing Among SDN Multiple Controllers
Yan-Ting Chen (NCTU, Taiwan); Chi-Yu Li and Kuochen Wang (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
Automatically Generated Simulations for Predicting Software-Defined Networking Performance
Felipe A Lopes (Federal University of Pernambuco & Federal Institute of Alagoas, Brazil); Rafael Souza (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil); Stenio Fernandes (Element AI, Canada)
Profiling Service Function Chaining Behavior for NFV Orchestration
Alexandre Heideker (Federal University of ABC, Brazil); Ivan Zyrianoff (Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil); Carlos Kamienski (Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil)
Dynamic Network Function Chain Composition for Mitigating Network Latency
Wajdi Hajji (Loughborough University, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Thiago Augusto Lopes Genez (University of Bern, Switzerland); Fung Po Tso (Loughborough University, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Lin Cui (Jinan University, P.R. China); Iain Phillips (Loughborough University, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
An SDN-based Framework for Managing Internet Exchange Points
Luis Cunha Martins, Italo Cunha and Dorgival Guedes (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
S43: Wireless Networks V
Relay Selection Methods for Cooperative OFDM Systems with Nonlinear Power Amplifiers
Syllas Magalhães (Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil); Alexandre Fernandes and Lívia Christinie Teles (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil)
Power Allocation Methods for OFDM Systems with Nonlinear Power Amplifier
Lívia Christinie Teles and Alexandre Fernandes (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil); Syllas Magalhães (Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil)
Performance Issues in a Low Cost Multi-Channel Multi-Interface Wireless Mesh Network
Marcos Antônio Filho (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará (IFCE), Brazil); Matheus Ribeiro and Ivyson Lucas Lima Silva (IFCE Aracati, Brazil); Aldri Santos (Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Brazil); Carina Teixeira De Oliveira (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará (IFCE), Brazil); Reinaldo Bezerra Braga (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará (IFCE) & Laboratory of Computer Network in Aracati (LAR-A), Brazil)
Modest BBR: Enabling Better Fairness for BBR Congestion Control
Yuxiang Zhang and Lin Cui (Jinan University, P.R. China); Fung Po Tso (Loughborough University, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
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Philomath Education
Edioms Research and Innovation Centre (E-RIC) is a benchmark in research, career and innovation services within African and beyond. We publish a wide range of academic books and journals with cutting-edge research in topical areas across
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We welcome submission of original research articles for publication in the Journal of Integrative Humanism. This is a multidisciplinary academic journal that publishes well-researched articles that approach topical issues bothering humanity from an integrativist perspective, taking cognizance of the many dimensionalities of reality. In addition to providing an intellectual platform for far-reaching engagement in the fields of art and humanities, Journal of Integrative Humanism offers a reference frame for cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in these fields.
We publish biannually and featured articles will include topics in Philosophy, Religion, Linguistics, Theater/Media Studies, Oceanography, Political Science, Social Change, Health, Education, Science and Technology. Papers can be conceptual in nature or based on empirical studies. We also welcome well-thought out mini and full literature reviews, case studies, and practice articles.
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through the belt of timber beyond until they reached an open prairie like field, which was in possession of large rebel cavalry forces. General Walcutt halted here just long enough to correct his line, caution his skirmishers and supports to be prepared for a cavalry dash, and then they emerged into the open field and made for the rebels, who, throwing away the best chance that can be desired by an intrepid cavalry, fled in confusion. General Walcutt followed rapidly, capturing many horses, equipments, &c. When beyond Griswoldville the rebels, who were commanded by General Wheeler in person, took different roads; and as I had some knowledge of Wheeler's way of maneuvering- which is not formidable in the dash of arms, but sometimes successful by great activity and circumspection-I ordered General Woods to have General Walcutt's command rallied and take a defensive position near the open field mentioned above. The position selected was in the edge of the timber and along a slight rise in the ground, at the base of which a kind of marshy swamp formed a natural obstruction to the approach; the right and left of the position was pretty well secured by swamps, &c. Light breast-works, built of rails, were put up to cover our men, and a section of artillery of Captain Arndt's (First Michigan) battery was ordered there. These preparations were considered sufficient to meet any of General Wheeler's reconnaissances, which he might undertake after finding out that he was no longer pressed, but had to stand a more severe trial. In the afternoon the rebel commander brought forward four brigades of infantry and a battery of artillery, supported by a strong cavalry force, to dislodge General Walcutt from his position. For several hours their attempts were repeated with the greatest impetuosity. Their artillery threw a terrific fire into the frail works of Walcutt, while their columns of infantry marched in heroic style to within fifty yards of our line. It was all in vain! Walcutt and his brave brigade proved that superior skill, coolness, and valor made up for the great disparity in numbers. When night came the enemy retired, leaving over 300 dead on the battle-field and a number of wounded, who were taken care of by our medical corps; also a number of prisoners were taken. Our loss was comparatively light. The brave General Walcutt was wounded by a piece of shell during the fight, and Colonel Catterson assumed the command of the brigade.
During these operations at Griswoldville the division of General Hazen had passed behind General Woods and taken a defensive position in his support two miles south of Gordon. General Smith entered Gordon and General Corse passed by Clinton. A portion of General Woods' command during the day was employed in destroying the railroad track from Griswoldville to within three miles of Gordon, and General Smith, immediately after his arrival, put his men to work to meet General Woods' parties. General Smith finished the work of destruction in the next two days.
General Hazen advanced on the 23rd within seven miles of Irwinton, and Woods intrenched a line south of Gordon commanding all the approaches from the west and south. Both divisions marched the following day to Irwinton. At last, on November 24, General Corse's division and the brigade of Second Division (Colonel Jones) arrived with all the trains at Gordon, relieving us of a great deal of anxiety. These officers the highest credit for their faithful execution of orders under difficulties almost insurmountable. They brought a train of many hundred wagons fifty miles and over roads whose condition beggars all description. General Corse encamped for the night in the position
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subsequently across to the Carolina shore with a section of Battery I, First New York Artillery. He took up a strong position on the 19th in advance of Izard's house, and made several demonstrations and reconnaissances toward Clydesdale Creek and the Union causeway road from Savannah to Hardeeville. The enemy opposed these movements in strong force. The nature of the country for miles back (being rice plantations crossed by dikes and canals) effectually prevented anything beyond a menace. These threatening movement, however, undoubtedly hastened the evacuation of Savannah. In the meantime our main line was pushed toward the enemy's works, and preparations for assault made by close reconnaissances, construction of light bridges, and experiments with balks of the pontoon train and fascines of straw and cane for bridging canals. Strong field-works were constructed for the heavy guns and for the field guns, some of them masked on the road within 150 yards of the enemy's line. These preparations were completed on the 20th. The assailable points in our front were very few; almost every foot was covered deep by artificial ponds from the irrigating canals, behind which and upon the approaches were strong earthworks for artillery, connected throughout by rifle-pits well constructed. The confidence of the troops in carrying these works war, however, perfect and earnest.
During the day of the 20th the fire from the enemy's works and gunboats was unusually heavy and continuous. Reports from Carman's brigade indicated that large columns were crossing to the Carolina shore, either to cover their only line of communication or preparatory to a final evacuation of the city. In the night General Geary reported to me that the movements across the river were apparently still going on. Division commanders were instructed to keep on the alert and press their pickets closer to the rebel works, but the enemy, intending to abandon his heavy guns, kept up a fire until the moment of quitting their defenses. At 3. 30 o'clock on the morning of the 21st Geary reported that Barnum's brigade was in the rebel main line. Orders were sent him and General Ward to advance the picket-lines and follow with their division into the city. By 6 a. m. Geary's division without opposition had entered the city. Patrols were sent out to preserve order. Two regiments were ordered to occupy Fort Jackson and other works below the city. General Geary was temporarily assigned to the command of the post and his division placed within the city. The retreating rebels had disconnected the pontoon bridge to Hutchinson's Island and set fire to that connecting with the Carolina shore. The ram Savannah still lay of Screven's Ferry, two miles or so away and occasionally fired a shot toward the town. She was evidently covering the removal of supplies up the causeway road. There were no means of reaching her, and our guns, though well served, plainly did her no damage. At night she was destroyed, as had been all the other rebel public vessels they day previous.
The troops of the corps while in front of the rebel works suffered a number of casualties. Among those killed was Lieutenant C. A. Aherets, One hundred and thirty-fourth New York Volunteers, assistant to Lieutenant-Colonel Asmussen, inspector-General of the corps, an excellent and faithful young officer. Among the severely wounded was Colonel John H. Ketcham, One hundred and fiftieth New York Volunteers, an officer of superior intelligence and worth. Major Wright, Twenty-ninth Ohio Volunteers, an excellent officer, also received a painful wound.
14 R R-VOL XLIV
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Hartford-area group makes push for ‘New England’ NWSL expansion team
A conceptual rendering of the stadium. (Design not final. Rendering courtesy Stantec.)
United States women’s national team World Cup and Olympic winner Kristine Lilly, and Mohegan Sun Sports, are part of a group aiming to bring a National Women’s Soccer League team to the Hartford area for the 2020 season. The team, which would use “New England” in the name in an aim to capture the attention of the entire region, would be owned by local real estate investor Mark Greenberg.
Thom Meredith, ‘the backstage star of American soccer’ for decades, is also involved in the group, which has been working toward being granted an expansion franchise since mid-2018. Greenberg would be the sole equity holder in the team, based on current plans.
The entire article is accessible only to members of The Equalizer Extra. Already a member? Awesome! Please sign in below. If not, you can sign up below.
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Lesson 5 - Sustainability Thinking #5: Systems Thinking
First Steps in Making the Business Case for Sustainability
Sistema Universitario de Colorado
Curso 1 de 4 en Become a Sustainable Business Change Agent Programa Especializado
The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand. After completing the specialization, you will be able to: * Discuss the threats and opportunities that major global trends such as climate change present to businesses; * Identify ways a company can improve its environmental and social performance; * Evaluate and compare companies’ sustainability activities and products; * Develop a business case for implementing sustainability investments; * Identify key criteria of green businesses and product design; * Be a change agent in your organization; * Understand emerging topics in sustainable business, including those in the public policy space. We're very excited about offering this MOOC specialization and hope it gives you the first step toward learning about and taking action to make the places you work and the products you buy more sustainable. Sustainable business changes daily with new products, innovations and ideas, so you will be important in keeping the class current. We look forward to learning from you as you take this green journey! ______
Absolutely great! Engaging and practical advice on how to make a sustainable business case with calculations.
Very informative and practical. Look forward in more details in the follow up course.
Sustainable Thinking
The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand. We begin our journey to being a change agent by introducing sustainability thinking. Sustainable business requires a new way of seeing and thinking about how business operates. By beginning to think sustainably you will be better able to identify ways that your company can improve and explain those changes to decision makers. We will look at 6 ways of thinking related to sustainability: • Life-Cycle Thinking • Long-Term Thinking • Circular Thinking • Resilience Thinking • Systems Thinking • Context Thinking
Sustainability Thinking Intro (Start Here)1:26
Lesson 1 - Sustainability Thinking #1: Life Cycle Thinking7:40
Lesson 2 - Sustainability Thinking #2: Circular Thinking6:49
Lesson 3 - Sustainability Thinking #3: Long Term Thinking7:37
Lesson 4 - Sustainability Thinking #4: Resilience7:44
Lesson 5 - Sustainability Thinking #5: Systems Thinking7:10
Sustainability Thinking #6: Context-Based Thinking8:44
Assignment Intro: About the B-Lab Assessment - Oxana Trotsenko7:11
John Byrd
Hi, I'm John Byrd, and
this is the fifth of six short video lectures about sustainability thinking.
In this video, I want to talk about systems thinking.
Often we think about cause and effect.
The notion is, if you keep doing something we're going to get the same effect.
We increase the cause, we got a response from the effect.
Move the cause get the effect and so it goes.
This is sort of a linear way of thinking.
Maybe we do this because it's how we're programmed to operate as human beings.
But unfortunately, the world is very rarely linear.
Instead, it's complex, it's dynamic, it's nonlinear and
constantly adapting and changing.
It's really quite messy.
If we think and make decisions based on simple linear cause and
effect models, we're likely to be surprised in a bad way pretty often.
This is how unintended consequences arise.
We have a simple model that leaves out a lot of the complexity of the real world.
Systems thinking tries to identify connections and
drivers beyond a simple model.
A systems model will still leave out a lot of things, but
it'll be a lot closer, almost always, than a simple linear model.
And if we're lucky and smart, it'll include the most important factors and
that will allow us to make some reasonable forecasts.
Of course, overtime, the world will change and adapt and
our system model will be less accurate and will need some sort of twiking.
Systems thinking, or systems theory, can be incredibly complicated.
I'm going to try to keep it very simple, no equations,
no calculations, we'll walk through a system models together.
I hope that it will give you enough of an introduction so that you might be
able to apply simple systems thinking to the issues you're examining.
Let's suppose a small company has developed a product that suddenly becomes
very, very popular.
So sales have increased and the company is having trouble fulfilling all these sales.
A simple solution to this problem is to simply have employees work overtime.
Paying employees a premium to work overtime
will reduce profit a little bit but the company accepts that extra costs because
they're still making a profit on every sale.
This sample model says, if sales increase have employees work overtime and
make more profit.
If sales increase more, have people work more overtime and
earning more profits and on, and on and on.
Now, let's apply a little bit system sinking to this problem.
Let's begin to think about the effects of overtime on the company.
Imagine that we have a container, like a bathtub, and
that container reflects our employee's ability to handle overtime work.
At the start, the container's full, because initially employees can handle
the extra work and they probably enjoy earning some extra money.
Overtime, however, working those extra hours becomes more and more difficult.
So the ability of employees to handle the extra work is going down.
Our bathtub of water represents the employee's ability to handle work, and
now the water level's going down.
If we keep demanding more and more overtime work,
we drain the employees of their energy.
And their ability and their enthusiasm for working overtime.
Well, think about this for a second.
Imagine that you're in a situation and
instead of working 40 hours a week, you're being asked to work 50 or 55 hours a week.
Let's make a list of what could happen.
Fatigue sets in and people begin to make mistakes.
These mistakes can cause accidents.
So safety becomes an issue.
Mistakes can cause more waste or for product quality to go down.
Fatigue can mean that it takes longer to complete a task
which changes the product's cost structure.
Overusing the machines means that they're not maintained properly.
When they start to break down, lose their calibration, or their precision.
Employees may need to rest or have things to do other than work.
So they begin to call in sick.
If employees become very stressed they may look for different jobs.
We don't want our employees to look like this.
All of these possibilities, in private, productivity and profitability will go
down, if we exceed to ability of employees to handle the extra work.
If sales growth is so high, that
it is likely to exceed the ability of the employees to adapt to this new situation.
Then, we need to go back and think about hiring more people and
expanding our production facilities.
There's some point beyond which relaying on employees working overtime
is detrimental to the employees and to our company and to is profitability.
A simple model would never have suggest it.
That there was a breaking point.
Remember, that model just said to increase production we just use more and
more overtime.
Our systems model shows that relying on overtime has limits, and
exceeding those limits can cause problems.
Our systems model cannot tell us how much overtime is too much.
We don't know if it's 5 hours of overtime a week, or 10 hours, or 15 hours.
But what it does tell us?
Is that we need to talk to the employees.
We're working overtime to make sure they're doing okay.
Remember back to our lecture long time thinking, one
of our conclusion was that being fair or nice was almost always a winning strategy.
Exploiting employees.
We're taking advantage of them or stressing them out, might benefit
the company in the short term but has a long term strategy it almost always fails.
Our systems model shows us what this type of failure looks like, if we want to have
a respected and enduring company We have to treat our employees fairly.
That means not asking them not to work more than they're able to.
Some overtime now and then is fine but too much results in serious costs for
If we were using a simple linear model, these costs might be surprises.
We might call them unintended consequences.
But by thinking more broadly, more system wide, we can begin to figure out
what some of these consequences are and avoid the bad ones.
Systems thinking gives us a way to begin to identify connections and
the drivers of outcomes.
So we need to think system-wide and we need to look for
the important relationships of the decisions that we're trying to make.
Next, we're going to talk about context.
That will be the last of these sustainability thinking lectures.
And I think it's going to be the most important.
And hopefully, it will be the most interesting for you.
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Lane County Rallies to protect refugees. Photo: Matt McRae.
Jan. 29 rally at the federal courthouse downtown
Slant by EW StaffPosted on 02/02/2017
• EW attended the Sunday, Jan. 29, rally at the federal courthouse downtown, a response to President Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. refugee program for those seeking asylum from a list of seven Muslim nations. (Apparently Muslim is no longer a religious designation but a political one, which begs the question about the so-call Christians now in the White House.) Such a protest, which saw estimated crowds of 1,000 or more, is a right and proper democratic response to such xenophobic, unconstitutional nonsense, and it feels good to gather and vent. With all due concern, however, let us not ignore the more frightening development this weekend: the elevation of Breitbart News co-founder and avowed white nationalist Steve Bannon to a permanent position in the National Security Council, and the demotion of intelligence officials such as the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to an invitation-only status. This is a move perfected by Benito Mussolini: create a “shock event” to distract the opposition from a much deeper and more permanent change at the top. And it worked, as seen by the fact that the disastrous installment of Bannon was a story relegated to the bottom of page 4 in the Jan. 30 edition of the The Register-Guard. The breakneck speed at which the Trump circus is moving is so disarming and anxiety inducing that we might miss the fact that we are rapidly going fascist, if we aren’t already there. What’s next?
• The Celebration of Life that packed the huge auditorium of the Willamette Christian Center on Jan. 31 would have made Dr. Edwin Leon Coleman II so proud. Terrific jazz played by his sons Callan Coleman and Edwin Coleman III and other local musicians who were his colleagues. Loving tributes from friends and family, including an unplanned Skype call from his brother in the Philippines. A pervasive story that this was a remarkable man who died at age 84, a retired English professor from the UO, a fine musician, an Air Force veteran, a Duck sports fan and track official, a father who deeply loved his family, and a lifelong fighter for fairness and social justice. The service also quietly celebrated his wife, Charmaine Coleman, who was at his side singing, raising the boys and making life better for so many others. To quote an old friend of the Colemans looking over the mostly white crowd honoring a black man, “He really was the crossroads of Eugene.”
• The dedication to public education in this community is heartening in the face of blasts against it across the country. For instance, good candidates are lining up to fill vacancies on the 4-J school board in the May 16 election. Mary Leighton, well known for her professional leadership of the Network Charter School, is running to succeed Beth Gerot. We hear rumors that Prof. Jerry Rosiek of the UO College of Education will run. He’s known for his opposition to excessive standardized testing. Jennifer Geller’s position will also be open. These are at-large elections for volunteer, thankless, time-sucking jobs that are so critical to our democracy.
• What does it tell us about Oregon that we have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and Lane County is one of the worst? Seven percent of our children are not vaccinated for a complex set of reasons, including religion. The City Club of Eugene considered whether this is a public health crisis Jan. 27 with speakers Dr. Pat Luedtke, senior Lane County public health officer; Nurse Practitioner Tricia Schraffner, from Churchill and North Eugene high schools; and Dr. Paul Slovik, expert on risk assessment. “Community immunity” is the key phrase. As Slovik asked, do we have a moral responsibility to ourselves and our community to get vaccinations, including flu shots?
• Good news: Eugene is considering becoming a sanctuary city, despite Trump’s threats to cut federal funding. It’s a no-brainer to not use local power for deporting undocumented immigrants anyway, since local law enforcement is not constitutionally empowered to do the work of federal agencies. Also on the good news front: As the Trump administration poses threats to our national efforts on climate change, the Eugene City Council voted on a resolution saying the city opposes oil-by-rail through and within the city and wants environmental and health assessments done before state, regional or federal agencies approve any new oil transfer and storage permits. Here’s to the hope that as Trump plunges the nation (and the world) into chaos, we promote human rights and environmental sanity at the local level and slowly stem the tide of anger and confusion.
Slant 2 weeks ago
• Fireworks celebrations are a blast, and between Art and the Vineyard, the Creswell Fourth of July Parade and Springfield’s Light of Liberty, there will … Continue reading →
• We wrote last winter that the future of Janelle McCoy as executive director of the troubled Oregon Bach Festival was “unclear” (EW Feb. 21). … Continue reading →
• The Clean Energy Jobs Bill passed the House in the Oregon Legislature after hours of debate June 17. It heads for the Senate next, … Continue reading →
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Britain to ‘stay in EU until 2020’ as delay of a YEAR planned for Brexit
European Council chief Donald Tusk is to propose EU leaders agree to offer the UK a year-long "flexible" Brexit extension of Article 50 beyond April 12 until March 31, 2020.
Britain will have the option of leaving the EU earlier if the UK parliament ratifies the EU Withdrawal Agreement – but could remain for another 361 days.
It comes as May has penned her own letter to Tusk asking for a shorter extension until June 30.
The Prime Minister proposed the delay as she tries to find consensus to pass a divorce deal through the House of Commons.
May has this week been courting Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party after MPs have repeatedly failed to agree on how Britian should exit the EU.
The UK is still set to leave the EU on April 12 – two weeks later than the original withdrawal date – and remains set to crash out without a deal.
'BREXTENSION': Theresa May is set to be offered a deal to delay Brexit unil March 31, 2020 (Pic: EPA)
In her letter to Tusk, May said: "It is frustrating that we have not yet brought this process to a successful and orderly conclusion.
"The United Kingdom Government remains strongly committed to doing so, and will continue to act as a constructive and responsible Member State of the European Union in accordance with the duty of sincere cooperation throughout this unique period."
Mrs May said if ongoing talks with Labour do not lead to a "single unified approach soon" then the Government would instead look to establish a "consensus" on options on a future relationship that could be put to the Commons.
She added: "The Government stands ready to abide by the decision of the House, if the Opposition will commit to doing the same."
STICK WITH EU: European Council boss Donald Tusk is set to offer a 'flextension' (Pic: GETTY) Related Articles
POWERBROKER: Jeremy Corbyn may make-or-break Theresa May's deal on Brexit (Pic: EPA)
“It is frustrating that we have not yet brought this process to a successful and orderly conclusion.”
Top-level talks aimed at finding a way out of the Brexit deadlock will continue between the Government and Labour on Friday.
The discussions are taking place as May faces an upcoming week of hectic diplomacy as she battles to keep her EU withdrawal agenda on track.
As Government talks with Labour on EU withdrawal went into another day, the issue of a new Brexit referendum continued to be a focus of attention.
Ministers have considered the possibility of giving MPs a vote on holding a referendum on a deal as part of the talks with Labour, the Daily Telegraph reported.
It is understood the Government could set out proposals to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a letter on Friday.
FURY: Britain remains bitterly divided over Brexit since the referendum in June, 2016 (Pic: EPA)
Talks between the Government and Labour lasted four-and-a-half hours on Thursday.
David Lidington, effectively the deputy prime minister, led the Government's negotiating team with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, Chief Whip Julian Smith, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Theresa May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
On the other side of the table were shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey along with senior Labour officials.
Labour's victor with a reduced majority and vote share in the Newport West by-election, Ruth Jones, said she is against a no-deal exit from the EU.
LAST GASP: Theresa May will be hoping for a deal with the EU before April 12 (Pic: PA)
May faced a continued challenge to her authority from Parliament as the House of Lords debated a Bill aimed at extending the Brexit process in a bid to avoid a no-deal scenario.
The remaining stages of the European Union Withdrawal (No.5) Bill will be considered by peers on Monday, threatening a new political headache for Read More – Source
Brazils Bolsonaro claims Holocaust remarks had no historical context after Israeli backlash
The Rolls-Royce Cullinan is the worlds most luxurious and expensive SUV
Forty Tory MPs ‘prepared to call for May to go’
Duma committee approves proposal for return of smoking rooms in Russian airports
Putin says he will run for next term in 2018
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Tag: artist
Sound Off: BEYONCÉ PREGNANT WITH TWINS!
Published on February 1, 2017 February 1, 2017 by ChaoticCriticLeave a comment
Yes, I am that person that had to run to my blog to share my excitement of Beyoncé being pregnant with not ONE, but TWO babies! QUEEN BEY IS HAVING TWINS! Now, if you’re not a loyal member of the Bey Hive than something like this would just be, “oh, another celebrity pregnancy.” BUT THIS IS BEYONCÉ!
Continue reading “Sound Off: BEYONCÉ PREGNANT WITH TWINS!” →
Categories Life•Tags artist, Beyoncé, beyonce pregnancy, jay z, music, performer, queen bey, sound off, Super Bowl, the carters, twin pregnancy
Video Review: Sia, ‘Elastic Heart’
Published on January 9, 2015 January 10, 2015 by ChaoticCritic5 Comments
Sia has released another visual from her album, 1000 Forms of Fear (click HERE to read album review), to the track ‘Elastic Heart.’ Before watching I was interested to see if the video would take the same interpretive dance route that ‘Chandelier’ took and I was right. As Sia is not in the video herself, she uses her videos to bring the songs to life. The track on the album did feature The Weeknd, but for the video it’s Sia singing alone.
The video began with a cage which reminded me of a wrestling match. Inside there were the two stars of the video, Shia LaBeouf and the same star of ‘Chandelier’ (click HERE for that review), Maddie Ziegler. The two are in nude attire which would cause for skepticism from certain viewers as Shia is 28 and Maddie is 12. Looking past that and sticking to the video there is a lot of thought behind it.
The cage itself becomes symbolic in the end of the video. It is seen as a bubble that a father and daughter are caught in when the relationship between the two is diabolical. It’s unhealthy and the little girl frights and fights as he tries to get closer and soothe her. As he gets closer she gets animalistic and tries to bite him. When reading more about Sia she discussed that she believed her father had Multiple Personality Disorder. That animalistic behavior was a result of that and her father continuously tried to calm her as she continued to fight him.
Mid video the tables turn and he tries to escape only she lays and calms. He thinks its safe enough to approach her yet she snaps yet again. She calms once more and eventually escapes the cage. Her father looks around to find himself alone and then she slips back in to try and save him. He had tried to get out once before, as mentioned, but he stayed for her. As she comes in and sits on his back that’s symbolic of her being the constant weight on his shoulders, but once she realized that she tries to get him out. She has found a way to get herself out, now she wants to help in.
Once she climbs down she takes his hand to walk out the cage, but and tries to pull him out, but he’s stuck. Looking past Shia might not being able to get through the bars it’s symbolic in her winning the battle and him being stuck within. The end of the video and the silence of her screams as she tries to pull him out and watching him limply stare into space was heart wrenching. He realized it was too late and her face knew it was too, but as she still wanted to try he knew his fate.
The video makes it seem as she’s the one that’s crazy, but it’s really her defense mechanism to him. She has to act a certain way to deal with all that he comes with.
Lyrically and musically the song is amazing. The lyrics explain why she cannot be broken down and how her heart is pretty much indestructible. Sia has a powerful voice, but as she murmurs in certain spots and keeps her voice low it puts emphasis on not only the words, but the overall emotion as well.
This video goes beyond the displays of a father/daughter relationship. It’s a symbol of any dysfunctional relationship where two people feel trapped and as one tries to help and the other continuously fights. The great thing about a video such as this is that it gives the viewer a chance to not only enter the world of the artist, but enter another world of their own. One viewer may take away something that another viewer may not. It’s all about perspective and videos that give that are pure art and is a job well done by the artist. Another visual slam dunk for Sia. As visual albums seem to be some type of a trend, this album could really be turned into a motion picture. Visually it would be absolutely amazing.
Despite what critics have said such as the video displaying pedophilia, the video is absolutely beautiful to me as I see the symbolism. Sia has countered those claims by explaining that Shia and Maddie are the only two she felt could execute her vision. Sia has already performed this song on Late Night With Seth Meyers back in June of last year and she will be performing the song again on January 17th on Saturday Night Live with Maddie taking the lead.
Check out the video below and feel free to leave your thoughts.
Categories Music•Tags art, artist, expression, late night with seth meyers, music blog, music blogger, music review, saturday night live, sia, sia 1000 forms of fear, sia elastic heart, sia the weeknd elastic heart, singer, songwriter, the weeknd, video review
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Free Books / Crafts / Modern Shop Practice /
Core Boxes. Cylinder
This section is from the book "Modern Shop Practice", by Howard Monroe Raymond. Also available from Amazon: Modern Shop Practice.
The main core box for the cylinder is made in the same way as has been already described for Fig. 227.
Steam Chest
The steam-chest core box is shown in Fig. 249, in which P is a side view, one side of the box being removed to show the valve seat v, and the core prints x, z, and y, which form recesses in the core into which the upper ends of the two steam-inlet cores and the central exhaust-passage core are placed. Q is an end view of the box with one end removed, and R is a view looking into the box from above.
Exhaust Passage
For the core forming the exhaust passage, two half-core boxes, one right and one left will be necessary. One-half of this box is illustrated at S, Fig. 260, as also a sectional view at T. The dotted lines show the manner in which the passage is widened to retain the full size of the opening throughout.
Fig. 250. Exhaust Port Con Box.
Inlet Postages
Only one core box will be needed for the two steam ports. Three views of the box are given in Fig. 251. At G one aide is removed, giving a side view of the construction of the box. 17 shows a cross-section through G with the end u removed, and F is a view from above. The core is swept off on the upper side for the length of cc, and the bar ee as well as the end u must he movable so that the core can be taken from the box. Both ends of the core change from circular into straight parts just at the entering of the cylinder and at the entering of the steam chest.
Facility Of Construction
The entire set of patterns is simple and easy of construction if carefully made drawings are furnished to work from; the time and labor required depending entirely upon the size of the cylinder. Separated Steam Chest. In some slide-valve cylinders, the steam chest is cast separate and bolted to the cylinder, thus affording free access to the valve seat v and a better opportunity for finishing and fitting. In this case, the main cylinder core and the two steam-inlet cores are made together in the same box, as illustrated in Fig. 252, in which one side of the core box is cut away to a depth of one-half of the length of the steam-port openings, or to the line cc, which must be just one-half of the inside width of the box, as shown at H and at F, Fig. 251. The part which has been cut away is replaced by the three blocks a, a, and b, which are shaped to give the required size and form to the steam-port cores. These blocks are fastened by dowels, loosely, to the main part of the core box, and, after the core has been rammed up, the whole box and core is turned over on its face and the main part of the box is lifted off, after which the two loose blocks a and a can be drawn away endwise and the block b can also be lifted out with ease.
prev: Engine Cylinder. Type Of Pattern
next: Gear Wheels
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Codes and Policies
Child Safety Policy
Fee Concession Policy
After School Schedule
Inter-Class
Inter-School
Illustrious Alumni
Children's Academy, Thakur complex
Today, the Children's Academy Group of Schools comprises of three huge educational institutions in the suburbs. The first school was established at Bachani Nagar, Malad East. This was followed by a branch at Ashok Nagar, Kandivali East, and then a third institution at Thakur complex, Kandivali East.
This was the last branch envisioned and planned by the founder of the Children's Academy Group of Schools, Mr. V. V. Bhat. An educationist to the core, Mr. Bhat wanted his unique educational pattern to reach out to the widest populace, and it was towards this end that he envisaged this school in the then upcoming Asha Nagar area. However, Mr. Bhat passed away in August 2001. Though he could see the plans of his third school passed through the authorities, he could not see the great heights to which the school has reached today.
The Thakur complex arm of the Children's Academy Group of Schools is the youngest of the three schools, but it is by no means behind its luminous siblings in any manner. A look at our achievements section will tell you of the numerous accolades that this school has gained over the years. Today, the school is ranked among the best schools at the citywide and the statewide level, which is not a modest achievement by any standards.
One of the strongest points of Children's Academy, Thakur complex, is that it is quick to implement changes and constantly keeps improving its methodologies. Teachers' training is a standard in all the branches of Children's Academy, and this branch of the school pays a lot of emphasis in this regard as well. As our educational modes change frequently, the school spares no effort in keeping the teachers abreast of the new methods.
The infrastructure used by Children's Academy, Thakur complex, is often used as a benchmark by new schools that are planning their own infrastructure. Fully multimedia-equipped classrooms, state of the art laboratories, two air-conditioned auditoria, and such other features make learning an enriching experience. Children's Academy, Thakur complex, is often chosen as the host school for several interschool competitions, as it is one of the few schools in the suburbs that can host events of a high magnitude.In 2012 , the school received an accolade that they have been ardently striving for over these recent years. The school got its affiliation from the prestigious ICSE council fulfilling all the difficult parameters set by the stringent ICSE Board.
Children's Academy, Thakur complex, has consistently proved that schooling is not just about academics. The school constantly finds itself not just in the front pages of newspapers but also on the last pages, that is, in the sports sections. The school truly believes in all-round development of the students, which is why the students can excel in almost every co-curricular and extra-curricular activity that they participate in.
Despite that, we can only say that for Children's Academy, Thakur complex, the journey has only just begun. With the help of our teaching and administrative staff, our students and their parents, we have a long way to go.
Students of Children’s Academy, Thakur Complex felicita [Read More]
Desh Apnayen Award, 2018-19 [Read More]
R.S.F.I Skating Competition [Read More]
All India FIDE Rating Chess Tournament [Read More]
AISM Interschool Volleyball Tournament [Read More]
NELTAS ECAT 2017-18 [Read More]
SSC 2017-18 examination results [Read More]
Cognium Cstem Derby car and glider competition. [Read More]
MBHS Volleyball Tournament [Read More]
Ms.Shravanee Bags Place In Skating [Read More]
No. 1 School in the parameter ‘Value for Money’ in the [Read More]
Girls U/16 Volleyball Team winners [Read More]
Winners of Anuvrat Singing Competition – National Level [Read More]
Winners at LOGIQIDS [Read More]
Winners at Namaste India - Dance Competition [Read More]
Winners at CASCADE Interschool Competition [Read More]
Anuvrat Singing Competition - State Level Winners [Read More]
Copyright © 2017 Children's Academy
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Brandblusser | Article about Brandblusser by The Free Dictionary
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Brandblusser
(redirected from Brandblusser)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus.
fire extinguisher:
see fire fightingfire fighting,
the use of strategy, personnel, and apparatus to extinguish, to confine, or to escape from fire. Fire-Fighting Strategy
Fire fighting strategy involves the following basic procedures: arriving at the scene of the fire as rapidly as possible;
a device for stopping fires by means of fire-extinguishing substances. It is carried to the location where it is to be used and is operated manually.
A fire extinguisher consists of a cylindrical vessel with a volume of 1–100 cubic decimeters, a release valve, and a nozzle for forming a stream of the fire-extinguishing substance, which is usually forced out of the vessel by excess pressure within the vessel. The pressure can be maintained continuously (in fire extinguishers of the pressurized type), or it can be generated when the extinguisher is operated. Pressurized fire extinguishers are filled either with the fire-extinguishing substance alone or with a propellant (such as air or nitrogen) as well. In the second type the pressure may be generated by a propellant contained in a flask or as a result of chemical reaction of substances that are components of the fire-extinguishing material.
Among the substances used as fire-extinguishing materials are carbonic acid (carbon dioxide), chemical foams and mechanically produced aerated foams, halogenated hydrocarbons (ethyl bromide or Freon), powders, and water. The carbon dioxide in a fire extinguisher is in the liquid state; it leaves the extinguisher through a diffusing nozzle as a jet that consists of a gaseous phase and a solid phase (snow). Chemical foams are formed in a fire extinguisher as the result of a reaction between an alkaline solution (based on NaHCO3) and an acid solution (based on H2SO4) that takes place when the solutions are mixed before entering the nozzle. The foam ratio—that is, the ratio of the volume of foam to the volume of solution—is 4–6. Mechanically produced aerated foams are obtained by passing a 5–6-percent aqueous solution of a surface-active agent through the nozzle. The solution is broken down into small droplets in the atomizer of the nozzle. The stream of droplets is mixed with the air that is ejected into the nozzle, thus forming a foam with a foam ration of 6–8. In nozzles of the mesh type, foam is produced from bubbles that are generated on the mesh by blowing; the foam ratio in this case is 50–70. The jet of foam is 3–6 m long. Upon passing through the nozzle, the halogenated hydrocarbons form a stream of the aerosol type consisting of finely dispersed drops; powders produce a cloud-forming stream.
The uses of fire extinguishers depend on such properties as extinguishing capacity, the corrosive activity, toxicity, and electric conductivity of the fire-extinguishing substance, capacity, and ability to withstand vibrational loads.
The design of a fire extinguisher depends on the type of the fire-extinguishing substance and the means used to expel the substance. The steel gas cylinders of carbon dioxide fire extinguishers are built for operating pressures of 15 meganewtons per sq m (MN/m2), or 150 kilograms-force per sq cm (kgf/cm2). In all other fire extinguishers the pressure does not exceed 2 MN/m2. The vessels of small fire extinguishers that use powders can be made of plastic.
Fire extinguishers are checked throughout their period of use (beginning with the time of charging) for strength of the vessel and operability. Inspection intervals and procedures are determined in the specifications.
O. M. KURBATSKII
[′fīr ik‚stiŋ·gwish·ər]
(engineering)
Any of various portable devices used to extinguish a fire by the ejection of a fire-inhibiting substance, such as water, carbon dioxide, gas, or chemical foam.
A portable device, for immediate and temporary use in putting out a fire: class A: used on fires involving ordinary combustible materials (such as wood, cloth, paper, rubber, and many plastics), which require the cooling effects of water or certain dry chemical coatings to retard combustion; class B: used on fires involving liquids, gases, greases, etc., extinguished most readily by excluding air or inhibiting the release of combustible vapors; class C: used on fires in live electrical equipment; class D: used on fires involving certain combustible metals, such as magnesium, sodium, etc., requiring a heat-absorbing extinguishing medium not reactive with the burning metals.
<a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Brandblusser">fire extinguisher</a>
1,1,2-trichloro-1,2,2-trifluoroethane
blowout plug
Bromine Br
bromochloromethane
bromotrifluoroethylene
carbon dioxide fire extinguisher
chemical fire extinguisher
crash switch
dichlorofluoromethane
dinosaur pen
dry-chemical fire extinguisher
dry-powder fire extinguisher
branching ratio
branching theory
branchiocranium
branchiomere
branchiomeric musculature
Branchiomycosis
Branchiopoda
branchiostegite
Branchiostoma
Branchiotremata
branchite
Branchiura
Branco, Elisa
Brancovan, Constantine
Brancovic, Djordje
Brancusi
Brand, Ethan
Brand, Mona
Brand, Sebastian
Brand, Sir John Henry
Brand, Stewart
Brand, Vance Devoe
Brandão, Raul
Brandeis, Louis D.
Brandenburg, Nikolai
Brandenburg, Nikolai Efimovich
Brandenburgskii, Iakov
Brandenburgskii, Iakov Natanovich
brandering
Brandes, Georg
Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen
Brandimante
brandishing
Brandler, Heinrich
Brandon University
Brandon, Charles
Brandon, Saint
brandrith
Brandt, Fedor
Brandt, Fedor Fedorovich
Brandt, Roman
Brand-Melde-Zentrale
brand-name
brand-name drug
brand-names
brand-newly
brand-newness
Brand-Person Relationship
brand-spanking new
brandade
brandades
brandalism
Brandatories
Brande
Brande International Music Workshop Orchestra
Branded Active Benefit
Branded by fire
Branded by the One
Branded Customer Service
branded IP
Brandeis Asian American Students Association
Brandeis Black Student Organization
Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio
Brandeis Emergency Medical Corps
Brandeis Hillel Day School
Brandeis Institute for International Judges
Brandeis Jewish Education Program
Brandeis Louis Dembitz
Brandeis Muslim Student Association
Brandeis Official Readers' Guild
Brandeis Orthodox Organization
Brandeis Society for Creative Fantasy
Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine
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Hemorrhagic Fevers | Article about Hemorrhagic Fevers by The Free Dictionary
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Hemorrhagic+Fevers
Hemorrhagic Fevers
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial.
Related to Hemorrhagic Fevers: Lassa fever, Marburg virus, yellow fever, Naegleria
a group of natural-focus viral diseases transmitted from animals to man. Hemorrhagic fevers have common clinical symptoms—elevated temperature (fever), and subcutaneous and internal hemorrhages. Several kinds are distinguished according to the pathogen and the way in which the infection is spread.
Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (hemorrhagic nephrosonephritis) occurs in Europe and Asia in the form of epidemics and sporadic (isolated) cases. The mechanism of transmission is not wholly clear. However, one possibility is that the disease is transmitted by gamasid ticks. Natural foci can be formed in different landscapes (forest, steppe, or tundra). Several species of mouselike rodents are reservoirs of the infection. The incubation period is 11-24 days.
Crimean hemorrhagic fever occurs in the form of sporadic cases in the southern steppe regions of the USSR (the Crimea, Taman’ Peninsula, Rostov Oblast in the RSFSR, southern Kazakhstan, Uzbek SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Turkmen SSR, and Tadzhik SSR) as well as in Bulgaria—that is, wherever ixodid ticks (Hyalomma) are prevalent. The disease spreads in the spring and summer. Its incubation period is two to seven days. The pathogen remains in the patient’s blood throughout the febrile period. The blood serum of a convalescent possesses specific antiviral properties.
Omsk hemorrhagic fever develops in people living in Siberian villages situated near lakes, in hunters and members of their families, and in the Barabinsk Steppe (in nonvacci-nated individuals). Outbreaks associated with epizootics among game animals occur in the fall and winter. Ixodid ticks (Dermacentor) are the carriers of the disease, which has an incubation period of three to seven days. The virus is found in man throughout the febrile period.
Tickborne Indian fever (Kyasanur Forest disease) is caused by a virus similar to the pathogen of Omsk hemorrhagic fever. Sporadic cases occur in the spring and summer. The incubation period is four to eight days. The virus is isolated from sick persons, monkeys, several species of forest rodents and birds, and from ixodid and gamasid ticks.
Argentine or Bolivian hemorrhagic fever occurs mainly in agricultural workers and members of their families when corn is harvested. The virus is isolated from persons, field rodents, and gamasid ticks (Haemophysalis) that infest them. The incubation period is two to 11 days.
Mosquito fevers, which occur in some countries of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, are similar to hemorrhagic fevers. However, they differ from them slightly in the course of the disease. In all probability, they are also transmitted to man from animals, but the natural reservoirs of the infection have not yet been discovered. The pathogen (virus) is transmitted by mosquitoes. Mosquito fever virus is isolated from sick persons (in the early stages of the disease) and from mosquitoes.
Hemorrhagic fevers generally have an acute onset: chills, fever (in cases of Omsk, Indian, and sometimes mosquito fevers), headache, and pronounced weakness. Hemorrhages (nasal, gastric, intestinal, uterine, renal, cavitary, from the gums, subcutaneous) or hemorrhagic rashes appear on the skin and mucous membranes. Changes take place in the blood (leukopenia and, in hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, leukocytosis) and in the internal organs. (Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome results in kidney lesions, which are manifested by sharp pain in the small of the back and sometimes, because of changes in the renal tubules, by cessation of urination.) There may also be changes in the nervous system. (Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and Crimean, Argentine, and mosquito fevers often result in collapse and shock.) Those recovering from the disease are permanently immune to it.
Symptomatic treatment involves maintenance of cardiac activity and control of bleeding. In Argentine and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, dehydration must be controlled by injection of large amounts of normal blood plasma and electrolytes and hormonal preparations, such as corticosteroids. In cases of Crimean hemorrhagic fever, administration of specific serum is beneficial.
Preventive measures include eradication of ticks and rodents and use of insect repellents (acaricides). The specific vaccine used against Omsk hemorrhagic fever results in prolonged and stable immunity.
Smorodintsev, A. A., L. I. Kazbintsev, and V. G. Chudakov. Virusnye gemorragicheskie likhoradki. Leningrad, 1963.
Ugriumov, B. L. Klinika gemorragicheskikh likhoradok. Kiev, 1961. (Bibliography.)
Mnogotomnoe rukovodstvo po mikrobiologii, klinike i epidemiologii infektsionnykh boleznei, vol. 8. Edited by N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov. Moscow, 1966. Chapters 11 and 13.
<a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Hemorrhagic+Fevers">Hemorrhagic Fevers</a>
arboviral encephalitides
Chumakov, Mikhail
Chumakov, Mikhail Petrovich
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
Exotic viral diseases
Gajdusek, Daniel Carleton
Geographic Pathology
hemorrhagic fever virus
Ixodidae
Kyasanur Forest virus
Surveillance and laboratory detection system of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in Iran.
Seroepidemiology of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in one-humped camels (Camelus dromedarius) population in Northeast of Iran
Sexual and transovarian transmission of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in Hyalomma truncatum ticks.
Knowledge and attitudes of the rural population and veterinary and health personnel concerning Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever in western Iran in 2012
Early serodiagnosis of acute human Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus infections by novel capture assays.
Subclinical infections with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, Turkey
Imported Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever cases in Istanbul.
The role of heparan sulphate in pathogenesis of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever disease
Experimental vector incompetence of a soft tick, Ornithodoros sonrai (Acari: Argasidae), for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus.
Molecular epidemiology of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus genome isolated from ticks of Hamadan province of Iran
Given the capacity of the method to code for up to 32 genetic targets, we are expanding the hemorrhagic fever panel to include additional viruses (dengue and South American hemorrhagic fever viruses) and are exploring the inclusion of bacterial and parasitic agents that may result in similar clinical signs and symptoms and, thus, have to be considered in differential diagnosis.
MassTag polymerase chain reaction for differential diagnosis of viral hemorrhagic fevers
Epidemiology of dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever.
Ophthalmic complications of dengue
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), an acute viral disease in humans, is characterized by extensive ecchymoses, bleeding, and hepatic dysfunction and is associated with a 30% case-fatality ratio (1 3).
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Mauritania
To the Editor: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus, genus Nairovirus, family Bunyviridae, is transmitted to mammals and birds by ticks.
Human Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Senegal
In 2002 and 2003, a total of 19 persons in Turkey had suspected cases of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) or a similar viral infection.
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in Turkey
hemomonochorial placenta
Hémon, Louis
Hemonius
hemoparasite
hemopathology
hemopathy
hemoperitoneum
hemopexin
hemophilic bacteria
hemophilioid disease
Hemophilus
hemophobia
hemopoiesis
hemopoietic tissue
hemopoietin
hemoporphyrin
Hemoproteins
hemorrhagic colitis
Hemorrhagic Diathesis
hemorrhagic measles
hemorrhagic pericarditis
hemorrhagic pleuritis
hemorrhagic septicemia
hemorrhagic unit
hemorrhoid
hemorrhoidectomy
hemosalpinx
hemosiderin
hemosiderosis
hemostat
hemostatic
Hemotoxins
hemotrichorial placenta
hemotrophe
Hemp Binder
Hemp Combine-Harvester
Hemp Cutter
Hemp Nettle, Common
hemp-core cable
hemorrhagic enterotoxemia
hemorrhagic familial angiomatosis
hemorrhagic familial nephritis
Hemorrhagic fever virus, crimean-congo
Hemorrhagic Fever with Kidney Syndrome
Hemorrhagic Fever with Nephrotic Syndrome
hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome
Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome Virus
Hemorrhagic fever, crimean
Hemorrhagic fever, ebola
Hemorrhagic fevers, viral
hemorrhagic filariasis
hemorrhagic foal enteritis
hemorrhagic follicle
Hemorrhagic Functional Ovarian Cyst
hemorrhagic gangrene
hemorrhagic gastritis
hemorrhagic gingivitis
hemorrhagic glaucoma
hemorrhagic infarct
hemorrhagic iritis
hemorrhagic jaundice
hemorrhagic lung
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Dr Gillian Harrison
Position: Research Fellow
Areas of expertise: sustainable mobility; transport policy; low carbon transitions; electro-mobility; automobility; ethics and equity; system dynamics modelling; policy appraisal; data analysis
Email: G.Harrison@leeds.ac.uk
Location: Room LG.01, Institute for Transport Studies (34-40 University Road)
Website: New Fuels, New Rules? | Twitter | LinkedIn | Researchgate | ORCID
I am an experienced transport policy researcher, with a committed professional interest in low carbon vehicle technologies and sustainable mobility. My specialisms include system dynamics modelling, data analysis, electric vehicles, automobility, emissions, policy appraisal and social equity.
I have six years of business experience in environmental management, project and data co-ordination (in the UK water industry), hold a MSc/PhD in low carbon technologies (modelling, policy and ethics of low carbon vehicles) and spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher for the European Commission, Joint Research Centre in electro-mobility modelling and policy advice. In this role, I was responsible for the development and application of the EC-JRC Powertrain Technology Transition Market Agent Model (PTTMAM), a state-of-the-art system dynamics model representing all 28 EU member states. During this time I contributed to five European research projects and to the development of the Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Directive. Since April 2017, I have been employed as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Transport Studies, supporting EU Horizon 2020 and UK funded projects on automated & connected vehicles and mobile phone travel apps.
I have published papers in numerous peer-reviewed journals, presented at a variety of international conferences, organised interdisciplinary workshops and mini-conferences, and acted as a reviewer for both international journals and conferences. More recently I have gained experience in lecturing and PhD supervision. I am a member of the European Association of Transport, sitting on a programme committee for their annual European Transport Conference and the System Dynamics Society, acting as secretary to their Transportation Special Interest Group.
2017-Present, Research Fellow (University of Leeds, Institute for Transport Studies)
2016-2018, Expert Consultant (European Commission, Joint Research Centre)
2013-2016, Post-Doctoral Grantholder (European Commission, Joint Research Centre)
2011-2013, Assistant Tutor in Engineering Ethics (University of Leeds)
2003-2009, Environmental Advisor / Programme Co-ordinator / Data Analyst (Yorkshire Water)
KARMA (Alan Turing Institute): September 2018 - Present
Developing applications of New and Emerging Data Forms (NEDF) in the understanding of mobility behavior and the impact of transport policy schemes on energy, environment and health. Includes management and analysis of mobile phone data from a dedicated app and the development of a system dynamics model.
AUTOPILOT (H2020): May 2018 - Present
Data analysis and support to evaluation of pilot projects, quality of life impacts, and legal aspects of the AUTOPILOT project, which brings Internet of Things into the automotive world to transform connected and autonomous vehicles. Includes the development of a system dynamics model.
www.autopilot-project.eu H2020 Grant Number 731993 (Innovation Action)
Smarter Travel Solutions (Innovate UK): May - August 2018
Development of a system dynamics model of the uptake and evolution of a mobile phone ‘app’ for transport planning and ticketing within West Yorkshire.
TrACE (H2020): June - August 2018
Advice on the business plan development, knowledge transfer training needs, and customised research tools for a proposed ‘Transport Analytics Centre of Excellence’ based in Cyprus.
H2020 Grant Number 763568 (Coordination and Support Action)
EMPOWER (H2020): February 2018 - May 2018
Data analysis of new generation data from a mobile phone travel app designed to positively incentivise the shift away from conventionally fuelled vehicles.
www.empowerproject.eu H2020 Grant Number 636249 (Research & Innovation Action)
HABITS (ESRC): April 2017 - February 2018
Research and administrative tasks including sourcing, preparing and analysis of data, model development and stakeholder engagement to generate transport and health related policy insights, utilising new generation ‘track and trace’ data.
www.habitsdata.org
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>
MSc/PhD in Low Carbon Technologies
PG Cert in Water and Environmental Management
MChem in Chemistry with Forensic and Pharmaceutical Science
System Dynamics Society
European Association of Transport
2017 - 2018: Co-supervision to successful completion (replaced supervisor who left ITS)
PhD, Institute for Transport Studies: D.Soysouvanh: “Freight transport in least developed landlocked countries: a case study of Laos PDR”
Lecturing
2018 - Present: Support to module in System Dynamics (part of MSc in Transport Studies)
2011 - 2013: Assistant tutor on undergraduate modules in Engineering Ethics (various seminars including Weapons Development, Sustainability, Risk Management, Research Ethics, and Engineering Ethics)
Research groups and institutes
Spatial Modelling and Dynamics
<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/research-opportunities">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>
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Franklin County, Kansas
Pick a county Kansas State Total Allen County, Kansas Anderson County, Kansas Atchison County, Kansas Barber County, Kansas Barton County, Kansas Bourbon County, Kansas Brown County, Kansas Butler County, Kansas Chase County, Kansas Chautauqua County, Kansas Cherokee County, Kansas Cheyenne County, Kansas Clark County, Kansas Clay County, Kansas Cloud County, Kansas Coffey County, Kansas Comanche County, Kansas Cowley County, Kansas Crawford County, Kansas Decatur County, Kansas Dickinson County, Kansas Doniphan County, Kansas Douglas County, Kansas Edwards County, Kansas Elk County, Kansas Ellis County, Kansas Ellsworth County, Kansas Finney County, Kansas Ford County, Kansas Franklin County, Kansas Geary County, Kansas Gove County, Kansas Graham County, Kansas Grant County, Kansas Gray County, Kansas Greeley County, Kansas Greenwood County, Kansas Hamilton County, Kansas Harper County, Kansas Harvey County, Kansas Haskell County, Kansas Hodgeman County, Kansas Jackson County, Kansas Jefferson County, Kansas Jewell County, Kansas Johnson County, Kansas Kearny County, Kansas Kingman County, Kansas Kiowa County, Kansas Labette County, Kansas Lane County, Kansas Leavenworth County, Kansas Lincoln County, Kansas Linn County, Kansas Logan County, Kansas Lyon County, Kansas McPherson County, Kansas Marion County, Kansas Marshall County, Kansas Meade County, Kansas Miami County, Kansas Mitchell County, Kansas Montgomery County, Kansas Morris County, Kansas Morton County, Kansas Nemaha County, Kansas Neosho County, Kansas Ness County, Kansas Norton County, Kansas Osage County, Kansas Osborne County, Kansas Ottawa County, Kansas Pawnee County, Kansas Phillips County, Kansas Pottawatomie County, Kansas Pratt County, Kansas Rawlins County, Kansas Reno County, Kansas Republic County, Kansas Rice County, Kansas Riley County, Kansas Rooks County, Kansas Rush County, Kansas Russell County, Kansas Saline County, Kansas Scott County, Kansas Sedgwick County, Kansas Seward County, Kansas Shawnee County, Kansas Sheridan County, Kansas Sherman County, Kansas Smith County, Kansas Stafford County, Kansas Stanton County, Kansas Stevens County, Kansas Sumner County, Kansas Thomas County, Kansas Trego County, Kansas Wabaunsee County, Kansas Wallace County, Kansas Washington County, Kansas Wichita County, Kansas Wilson County, Kansas Woodson County, Kansas Wyandotte County, Kansas Kansas NRCS
Pick a district 1st District of Kansas (Rep. Roger Marshall) 2nd District of Kansas (Rep. Lynn Jenkins) 3rd District of Kansas (Rep. Kevin Yoder) 4th District of Kansas (Rep. Ron Estes)
Commodity subsidies in Franklin County, Kansas totaled $49.1 million from 1995-2017.
Total Direct Payments $16,921,101
Loan Deficiency Payments $9,531,182
Production Flexibility Contracts $9,103,829
Mkt. Loss Asst. - Commodity Crops $4,783,273
Total Counter Cyclical Payments $1,729,607
Total Agricultural Risk Coverage $1,530,494
Average Crop Revenue Election Program (ACRE) $1,331,463
Oilseed Program $972,840
Total Dairy Program $884,039
Total Price Loss Coverage $714,557
Marketing Loan Gains $639,078
Deficiency Payments $493,544
Market Loss Assistance - Non-commodity $311,699
Total Livestock Indemnity Program $76,807
Misc. Farm - Subsidies $51,664
Total Commodity Certificates $30,090
Total Lamb Payments $9,325
Wool And Mohair Programs $6,597
Total Ldp-like Grazing Payments $5,774
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Set-Asides
Set of standards needed for e-grants
Federal agencies that want to receive grant applications from the public electronically should agree on a set of common data elements and develop one common user interface, according to a report issued this month.
In its final report to the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, a Transportation Department-led group developing an electronic grants system said constantly changing data standards "impeded'' the development of shared systems for processing and managing grants, while agencies were developing their own World Wide Web interfaces "without regard for the impact on their customers.'' A complete prototype of a U.S. Electronic Grants System was scheduled for completion next year, but officials need another $3.1 million to complete it.
Year 2000 brings benefits to CIOs
The Year 2000 problem may have caused havoc and cost billions of dollars to fix, but it also may have taught federal chief information officers how to better handle future information technology problems, according to Kathy Adams, co-chairwoman of the CIO Council's Year 2000 Committee.
The biggest benefit for CIOs and the council has been building confidence that they can solve large problems, Adams told an audience at the FOSE show in Washington, D.C., last week. According to CIO Council members, more confidence will pay off in addressing capital planning, and recruiting and retention of federal IT professionals.
Information security is the most immediate of the problems facing federal IT professionals. "Cybersecurity is the next battleground for CIOs," said John Gilligan, co-chairman of the CIO Council's Security Committee.
The Year 2000 problem also has forced CIOs to clean house and to learn how their IT architecture was put together - something few, if any, federal IT professionals knew. CIOs also learned the benefits of having good management practices within their departments and of having contingency plans to ensure the delivery of services to citizens, Adams said.
CIOs release piracy guidelines
A committee for the CIO Council released model guidelines today that will help agencies comply with last year's presidential executive order on computer software piracy.
The executive order, signed by President Clinton Sept. 30, 1998, set forth the government's policy against using, acquiring and distributing software illegally. The order requires federal agencies to establish procedures for managing software, such as audits and employee education programs, to ensure the legal and proper use of software. It also calls for copyright compliance by federal contractors and recipients of federal financial aid.
The model guidelines set forth by the CIO Council's Outreach Committee offer samples of policies covering software management, use and acquisition that agencies can adopt to comply with the executive order. The guidelines also discuss the role of the chief information officer, recordkeeping approaches and training, said Alan Balutis, the deputy CIO at the Commerce Department.
For example, the guidelines assign CIOs the overall responsibility for implementing agencies' software management policies. For recordkeeping, the guidelines establish and maintain a recordkeeping system for software licenses and invoices.
The CIO Council is expected to adopt the guidelines next month, Balutis said.
Y2K fixes may take more money
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate's Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, said last week that thoroughly fixing the millennium bug may take more money because time is limited.
Congress last year earmarked a total of $3.25 billion for civilian agencies and the Defense Department to tap if needed for Year 2000 fixes. According to federal budget documents, civilian agencies have spent more than half of the $2.25 billion in emergency Year 2000 money that Congress set aside last year; the money was designated for use until the end of fiscal 2001. Congress also gave DOD $1 billion. President Clinton has requested no additional emergency Year 2000 money.
"My own experience with the federal government tells me, yeah, there will be a need for more emergency funding," Bennett said.
He said Congress should be careful not to let agencies fund pet projects under the guise of fixing Year 2000 problems, but he also said Congress should not prevent agencies from obtaining more money if they truly need it.
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Books & Lit
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Back to: Books & Lit
Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me SoKingdom Coming
Women Without Superstition
Women Without Superstition: The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
By Annie Laurie Gaylor
The first anthology of women freethinkers, featuring more than 50 activists and writers critical of religion. Includes biographical sketches, selected writings, 51 photographs, and full index.
Includes excerpts of: Mary Wollstonecraft, Anne Royall, Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau, Lydia Maria Child, Ernestine L. Rose, Margaret Fuller, Emma Martin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy N. Colman, George Eliot, Susan B. Anthony, Ella E. Gibson, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lois Waisbrooker, Elmina D. Slenker, Lillie Devereux Blake, Ouida, Marilla Ricker, Annie Besant, Susan H. Wixon, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Helen Gardener, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Josephine K. Henry, Etta Semple, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Zona Gale, Margaret Sanger, Marian Sherman, Dora Russell, Meridel Le Sueur, Margaret Knight, Barbara Smoker, Queen Silver, Vashti McCollum, Ruth Hurmence Green, Catherine Fahringer, Anne Nicol Gaylor, Meg Bowman, Barbara G. Walker, Sherry Matulis, Kay Nolte Smith, Sonia Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, Taslima Nasrin.
Also includes biographical sketches of 39 additional freethinking women such as Ayn Rand, George Sand, Lucy Parsons, Florence Nightingale, and Jane Addams.
Published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Hardcover, 696 pages.
Sales price without tax $25.00
Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So
In these critical days when fundamentalists are trying to unite church and state, it behooves thoughtful women and men to "know thine enemy." Lucidly argued, concise and thorough, Woe to the Women documents the bible's punitive, antediluvian rules and attitudes toward women.
It exposes the bible's harmful stereotypes about women as sin-inciting temptresses and their treatment as male property. This exposé examines biblical teachings about women's "nature," prostitution, sexual assault and incest, so-called uncleanliness, marriage, motherhood, divorce and adultery, grooming, abortion, and homosexuality, as well as "macho" standards for men.
Woe to the Women — The Bible Tells Me So is a timely warning that the bible is a handbook for the subjugation of women, and that the only true barrier standing between it and women is a secular government.
Delightfully illustrated by Alma Cuebas, it contains a valuable compendium of more than 200 sexist verses. Woe to the Women—The Bible Tells Me So is an essential guide for the reader who is too busy (or too non-masochistic) to study the bible.
Hardcover, 264 pages.
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station
This handy publication with photographs throughout commemorates the 28-year tenure as president of FFRF's founder, Anne Gaylor. A must-have for any freethinker, this gracefully readable book contains Gaylor's classic writings.
She succinctly demolishes the Ten Commandments ("What's Wrong with the Ten Commandments"), the myth of a loving Jesus ("Was Jesus a Horse Thief?"), the bible's sanction of slavery ("Slavery: 'A Trust from God' "), and documents "Hitler's Religion."
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station offers affectionate profiles of freethinking pioneers such as Robert G. Ingersoll and Margaret Sanger, and goes after religious sacred cows, such as bible-belt journalism, Christian funerals, and the death penalty.
A personal and appealing introduction to nonbelief, reason-based ethics and timely state/church issues by one of the nation's leading freethought activists. A bonus: Anne's memorable expose of her experience on the "Phil Donahue Show" in the late 1970s ("Shrill! Abrasive! Acerbic! Inflammatory!").
Paperback, 80 pages.
Pansy Freethinker Pin
Pretty emblem of freethought in blue tones.
Buy 2 for $10! Discount applied in shopping cart.
FFRF is a not-for-profit charitable organization, not a retail business. We strive to make purchases easy and worry-free. Our “Make it Right” policy means that if you are not 100% satisfied with our products, just CONTACT US or call 608-256-8900 and we will work with you. Also, contact us regarding discounts on large orders, special requests, and costs for UPS or overnight delivery. We typically process orders within 24 hours.
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TIFF '11: Day One
Noel Murray and Scott Tobias
Director/Country/Time: George Clooney/USA/98 min.
Cast: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood
Program: Gala
Headline: Newsflash… Politics is a dirty business
Noel’s Take: The Ides Of March isn’t quite The Candidate; more like The Campaign Manager. Director-star George Clooney’s adaptation of Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North features Ryan Gosling as an idealistic political consultant who believes he’s found a real “change candidate” (played by Clooney), but soon discovers that even doing what’s right in politics requires so much compromise that it’s impossible to stay ethically pure. Clooney has assembled a terrific cast here (including Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gosling's mentor, Paul Giamatti as the manager of a rival campaign, Marisa Tomei as a pesky reporter, and Evan Rachel Wood as a sexy intern with a power fetish and a political pedigree of her own); and The Ides Of March goes down easily, with a sophisticated bustle and a strong third act twist to test the hero’s mettle. But it all feels a bit inconsequential—perhaps by design. This is a political drama that’s not about big issues (though Clooney's character gives a lot of stump speeches that seem designed to paint him as a Democrat’s dream candidate) but is instead about matters of trust, fidelity, and the perniciousness of rumor. And though that’s probably a lot closer to what real politics is like, as drama it’s pretty slight. Had The Ides Of March been more like the work David Mamet or Aaron Sorkin—two writers capable of turning the language of powerful men into a weird, catchy music—then the movie might’ve had some real pop. As it is, it’s slick and respectable, and delivering old news.
Director/Country/Time: Andrey Zvyagintsev/Russia/109 min.
Cast: Nadezhda Markina, Andrey Smirnov, Elena Lyadova
Program: Contemporary World Cinema
Headline: Daddy’s Dyin’, Who’s Got The Will?
Scott’s Take: The eponymous character in Elena operates in an agonizing middle ground between the upper and lower classes, and between equal partner and live-in maid. Played by Nadezhda Markina in a performance suggests a woman both emotionally vulnerable and tough as a pack mule, she’s the second wife to a wealthy, paternalistic man (Andrey Smirnov), but they don’t share a bed and her devotion to him looks a lot like subservience. Meanwhile, she travels a great distance regularly to see her fuck-up son and his family, which includes a fuck-up teenage grandson who needs money to buy his way out of the army. When Elena’s husband has a heart attack, she encourages him to patch up his relationship with his estranged, manipulative daughter (Elena Lyadova), but the reunion goes so well that he decides to give her all his money. Andrey Zvyagintsev brought his auspicious debut The Return to the festival in ‘04—his follow-up, 2007’s The Banishment, was less kindly received—and he displays exceptional command over this brittle drama. His widescreen compositions are elegant and crisp, and through Elena’s torn allegiances, he digs deep into matters of family and inheritance and how much we owe to the people we love. Much like The Return, Elena plays out straightforwardly until taking a couple of sharp, surprising turns at the very end. The audience was baffled—the first question at the public screening I attended was basically, “WTF?!”—but the ambiguous note felt right.
From Up On Poppy Hill
Director/Country/Time: Goro Miyazaki/Japan/91 min.
Headline: The son of an anime legend begins to live up to his legacy
Noel’s Take: With From Up On Poppy Hill, Goro Miyazaki makes a Ghibli film more in the tradition of Only Yesterday and Whisper Of The Heart than his fantasy-minded debut Tales Of Earthsea. Set at a seaside high school in 1963, From Up On Poppy Hill follows an earnest teenage girl named Umi as she develops a crush on a headstrong classmate, Shun, who’s fighting to save the clubhouse he loves (and that’s been a part of the school for decades). Adapting a graphic novel by Tetsuro Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi, Miyazaki focuses on the ramifications of a country in transition from the ancient to the modern. Miyazaki evokes the charm of creaky old wooden floors and shows his hero and heroine standing up for longstanding cultural traditions in the face of a society eager to show a new face to the world for the 1964 Olympics. It’s all very lovely and sweet, and while this story would be just as engaging in live action, Miyazaki's animation clears away the extraneous detail, recreating the world of 50 years ago with the emotional richness of a family snapshot.
Director/Country/Time: Aki Kaurismäki/France/93 min.
Cast: André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Program: Masters
Headline: The Port Of Being Earnest
Scott’s Take: With some exceptions—most notably, 1990’s The Match Factory Girl, an utterly chilling, Medea-like story of revenge (and not coincidentally my favorite of his by far)—Aki Kaurismäki has been making the same movie for three decades plus. (Lovable underclass characters, eclectic soundtrack, mild political overtones, crazy hair, etc.) When it premiered at Cannes, Le Havre won him more praise than anything of his since The Man Without A Past, but to my mind this is middle-of-the-road, feeding the hot-button topic of illegal immigration through the Kaurismäki-o-matic. The wisp of a plot involves a shoeshine man (André Wilms) in a French port city in Normandy who harbors an African boy illegally until he can secure him passage to England, where his mother awaits. Kaurismäki turns the portside setting into an enchanting place, humble in appearance but big in spirit, with the proprietors of the local bar, bakery, and fruit stand warmly supporting a common cause. He shows a less delicate touch in handling the politics of immigration, reducing the African boy to a mere totem among his usual cast of quirky eccentrics. Minor pleasures abound, but Kauismäki’s vision isn’t deep enough to survive so many variations.
The Last Gladiators
Director/Country/Time: Alex Gibney/USA/94 min.
Program: Real to Reel
Headline: The Goon Squad
Scott’s Take: At last year’s festival, I saw (and mostly liked) Alex Gibney’s Client 9: The Rise And Fall Of Eliot Spitzer, a slickly packaged but compelling mix of sex, politics, and conspiracy theory. In the 12 months since, Gibney has completed the ESPN doc Catching Hell (about Steve Bartman), My Trip To Al Qaeda, Magic Trip, and now The Last Gladiators, a look at the last generation of NHL hockey enforcers. He should consider slowing down a bit. The Last Gladiators should be a much stronger documentary than it turns out to be: “Hockey goons” play a fascinating role in the game, dishing out (and absorbing) punishment for their teammates while leading relatively short and physically taxing careers. And Gibney has a terrific subject in Chris “Knuckles” Nilan, a former Montreal Canadiens bruiser whose violent, destructive tendencies were not limited to the ice. But the film is sloppy and diffuse, poorly servicing several other thinly sketched subjects while failing to provide context about the NHL’s position on enforcers and the rule changes that led to their demise. Using a troubled character like Nilan as a guide to the world of goonery is a smart move conceptually—and pays off whenever Nilan and his family testify about his triumphs and personal demons— but there’s too much rough around that diamond.
Director/Country/Time: Wim Wenders/Germany & France/103 min.
Headline: Making the “D” in “3D” stand for “dance”
Noel’s Take: Prior to the death of choreographer Pina Bausch, she and director Wim Wenders had been collaborating on a performance film, to be shot in 3D. I wish they’d have had a chance to make that film, if only because I’m unfamiliar with Bausch’s work (and am largely dance-ignorant in general, outside of what I see on So You Think You Can Dance), and thus would’ve liked to have seen how her work looked under ordinary circumstances. As it is, Wenders, working in collaboration with Bausch’s troupe, breaks up the longer dance routines with interviews about the choreographer’s spiritual, aesthetic, and personal influence. The interviews are nice, but a little drippy, and they effectively prevent the dances from developing the way I’m sure they were intended. (Though again, I don’t know how they’re actually supposed to look.) All of that said, Pina is still a marvel, with Wenders making at-times-visionary use of the 3D technology, treating the frame like a stage with multiple planes of action. And Bausch’s work is as original as advertised, with staging that involves the addition of obstacles to the dancefloor: dirt, say, or a huge rock, or pouring water. One of Wenders’ best ideas in Pina is to engage in a bit of turnabout, staging some shorter dances outdoors, in locations where nature flows and it’s the dancers who are in the way.
Director/Country/Time: Jens Lien/Norway/88 min.
Cast: Asmund Hoeg, Sven Nordin, Sonja Richter
Headline: You ain’t no punk you punk
Noel’s Take: Unlike his absurdist comedy The Bothersome Man, director Jens Lien’s Sons Of Norway is a relatively straightforward period piece, set in 1978 among a family of committed leftists. Unable to rebel in the usual way in a household where the grown-ups are inclined to chant “Smash The Patriarchy!” over Christmas dinner, young Asmund Hoeg cuts his hair short, rips up his clothes, and joins a punk band. Hoeg is prompted to act out by the death of his sainted mother, and the subsequent emotional breakdown of his architect father. But that impulse to tear apart everything begins to seem futile when he encounters the neatly attired right-wing things who beat up immigrants and other weird-looking people on a daily basis. Worse, his heartbroken dad keeps trying to horn in on this whole punk scene himself. Sons Of Norway is visually dynamic and full of vivid detail, and Lien does a fine job of tying what could've been an insular, personal story to the notion of a larger social responsibility, and the idea that (as Hoeg’s mother puts it) “Even if we sometimes do bad things, that doesn’t mean we’re evil.” But the movie is too episodic—there’s an interlude at a nudist camp for example that's thematically on-point but not all that key to the plot—and too short. A lot happens ton the hero in a short period of time, and then Sons Of Norway just… ends. It provides a good buzz while it lasts, though, propelled forward by a soundtrack full of Sex Pistols and a cameo appearance by the film’s producer, a Mr. Jonathan Rotten.
This Is Not A Film
Director/Country/Time: Jafar Panahi and Mojitaba Mirtahmasb/Iran/75 min.
Headline: The Letter of the Law
Scott’s Take: In late 2010, the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold, Offside) was convicted of “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” The sentence handed down was severe: Six years in jail, and 20-year bans on making films and leaving the country. Smuggled to Cannes back in May, This Is Not A Film documents a day in the life of the director as he’s stuck in his apartment under house arrest, awaiting the outcome of his appeal. It’s a doodle of a (non)movie, with scenes of Panahi chatting his lawyer, feeding his daughter’s pet iguana, and talking about the filmmaking process with his cameraman/collaborator, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. Some of this material dips into the mundane, but the film comes to life when Panahi acts out scenes from a rejected script using tape outlines on the rug, then shows clips from previous films like The Circle, The Mirror, and Crimson Gold to demonstrate how actors and the filmmaking process is what really brings screenplays to life. This Is Not A Film is pleasing mainly just as a message-in-a-bottle from a restless, persecuted artist—that is, until the amazing closing shot, which brings the volatility of post-Green Revolution Iran home with unforgettable force.
Director/Country/Time: Lynne Ramsay/UK/112 min.
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: A mother pays the price for the sins of her child
Noel’s Take: Early in Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel We Need To Talk About Kevin, Tilda Swinton pushes a shopping cart through a grocery store while a Muzak version of “What Child Is This?” plays. It’s a poignant choice of music, both because the Christmas cheeriness is falling on deaf ears for Swinton—who’s suffering through a deep post-traumatic shock—and because the song is asking a question that Swinton has been asking herself for 16 years. In her first movie since 2002’s magnificent Morvern Callar, Ramsay continues her fascination with textures, at times reducing her lead character’s world to impressionistic fragments: her hands, a wall, splashes of paint, et cetera. Much of the first hour of Kevin consists of the heroine stumbling around her house and workplace in a stupor, thinking back over her life in flashes. Where did it all go wrong? Was it when she gave birth to her son: a little creep who’s treated her with obstinacy and disdain since he was a toddler? Or was it even earlier, when a romantic European adventure led her into the arms of the disengaged buffoon she’d marry (played by John C. Reilly)? So long as Ramsay sticks with Swinton and her frustration at being saddled with a monster through (maybe) no fault of her own, We Need To Talk About Kevin is genuinely gripping and disturbing. But the fact that Kevin is a monster—whose public act of violence sets the movie in motion—lets the audience off the hook to a large extent. Every parent knows how it feels to have a fleeting moment of disgust with their children, and every parent knows the worry that somehow their action (or inaction) will end up sticking society with a useless, possibly destructive beast. But not so many parents have an actual Kevin: so hateful, so obnoxious. Which means that We Need To Talk About Kevin feels kind of meaningless, aside from the masterful style—which, honestly, is meaning enough most of the time.
Scott’s Take: Written as a series of confessional letters from wife to late husband in the aftermath of their teenage son’s Columbine-like killing spree, Shriver’s novel is a masterpiece of maternal ambivalence—less shocking for its violence than for its narrator’s frank misgivings about being a parent. Rather than choke her movie with voiceover, Ramsay’s adaptation boldly takes the opposite tack, externalizing the mother’s anger and trauma in a red-spattered horrorshow that’s less subtle yet marvelously expressive, especially when she’s free-associating between different time periods, with one literally bleeding into another. Where We Need To Talk About Kevin goes awry is Kevin himself, whose domestic interactions with his mother mainly involve him giving the Kubrick glower from The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. It’s important to book and film that Kevin be a monster from the get-go, but seeing that actually realized on screen feels unnatural and reductive, and robs the film of a more nuanced understanding of how much responsibility the mother bears for her child’s rampage. Still, Ramsay nails the very real connection between the two of them: Kevin is only his true self around his mother, and his mother, in turn, shares to some degree his withering assessment of human life. I had a tentative reaction to Ramsay’s Morvern Callar at first before thinking it one of the last decade’s best films; I suspect this might play better over time, too.
Tomorrow: Werner Herzog visits Death Row, Pedro Almodóvar dabbles in horror, and Marjane Satrapi ventures into live-action.
Recent from Noel Murray and Scott Tobias
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2013 November 16 Texas Art Signature Auction - DallasAuction #5147
PORFIRIO SALINAS (American, 1910-1973). Country Scene with Bluebonnets and Tree. Oil on canvas. 9-1/2 x 12 inches (24.1 ...
Owner's willingness to entertain and respond to Offers has not yet been verified.
PORFIRIO SALINAS (American, 1910-1973)
Country Scene with Bluebonnets and Tree
9-1/2 x 12 inches (24.1 x 30.5 cm)
Signed lower left: Porfirio Salinas
Porfirio Salinas was born at Bastrop, Texas, in 1911. The son of tenant farmers, he
was one of the first Mexican-American artists to gain national fame. Although the
family soon moved to San Antonio-where his father became a railroad worker-
Salinas often returned to the Bastrop area to visit his grandmother and to sketch.
He began assisting Robert William Wood in the latter's studio about 1925. Salinas
accompanied Wood and Jose Arpa-with whom Wood was then studying-on plein
air sketching trips in the hills surrounding San Antonio.
In 1926, Arpa founded a plein air painting school near Bandera, Texas, where he
was assisted by his nephew and fellow artist, Xavier Gonzalez. It is likely Salinas
was part of the Bandera School, and was probably exposed to the entries in the San
Antonio Competitive Exhibitions held at the Witte Museum annually from 1927
through 1929. The initial exhibition focusing on Texas wildflowers, with its $6,000
in prize monies offered by Luling, Texas, oilman Edgar B. Davis, firmly chiseled in
the budding artist's mind the obsession of Texans with their native flora. (After Julian
Onderdonk, no Texas artist is more identified with Texas bluebonnets.) By 1930,
Salinas began to paint on his own in an Impressionistic style using fairly heavy
impasto to depict the Texas landscape, genre scenes from around San Antonio, and
Mexican bullfights.
Married in 1942 and drafted into the U.S. Army the following year for World War
II service, Salinas used his talents to create paintings for officers and officer's clubs
during his service. By the late 1940s, and largely through the efforts of colorful
Austin art dealer Dewey Bradford, Salinas's career began to soar. When Lyndon
B. Johnson became Vice-President of the United States in 1961, followed by his
elevation to the Presidency due to the assassination of President Kennedy, Salinas's
paintings were featured prominently, first in the vice-president's residence, then in
The White House. President Johnson spoke frequently about his favorite painter,
and the demand for Salinas's paintings increased. Fittingly, Salinas died only a few
months after President Johnson in 1973.
Condition Report*: Unlined canvas. Scattered light pin point accretions in the sky region. Otherwise no apparent condition issues. Framed Dimensions 16.5 X 13.5 Inches
You helped me navigate unchartered territory and I do appreciate all of the work you put in to it. You are appreciated!
Jamie W.,
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1960 - Contemporary
Modern / avant-garde: 19th - 20th centuries
17th - 18th centuries
Ancient - Classical - Medieval
Can you separate the artist from the art?
A museum acknowledges an artist it features was a serial sexual abuser. Why is it so rare for the art world to put work in this kind of context? Read this article entitled Can you separate the artist from the art?
Dropping the upper age limit reflects an art world that's gone through big changes in the last two decades, and it ensures a much stronger line-up this yearRead this article entitled Turner Prize 2017: inclusion of over-50s reflects reality of artists’ careers today
We are all baffled by the Stoke MP's appointment to the V&A – and that is the only sane responseRead this article entitled Tristram Hunt’s new job at the V&A should make us all feel depressed
Dumbed-down ‘accessible’ writing is just as bad as obscurantist art-speak
When the art critic Robert Hughes died in 2012, someone from the Times turned up on Channel 4 News to sing his praises. The journalist burbled on for a few flailing, hapless minutes and you were left wondering whether she’d actually ever read him.Read this article entitled Dumbed-down ‘accessible’ writing is just as bad as obscurantist art-speak
The Tricycle were right over the UK Jewish Film Festival
An arts organisation for once takes an ethical stand and are unjustly pilloried for it.Read this article entitled The Tricycle were right over the UK Jewish Film Festival
What makes art art? And why gaming may not make the grade
Every now and then, you’ll come across an article which puts a case for something or other being taken seriously as an ‘art form’.Read this article entitled What makes art art? And why gaming may not make the grade
It has become too easy of late to be rude about Alain de Botton.Read this article entitled Why Alain de Botton is a moron
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Dwilight (Moderators: Victor C, Gabanus family) »
Sanguis Astroism
Pages: 1 ... 274 275 [276] Go Down
Author Topic: Sanguis Astroism (Read 276815 times)
Anaris
BM Dev Team
Re: Sanguis Astroism
Timothy Collett
"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do. Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'" ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan
Eduardo Almighty
Give it time.
I'll close your temples, and you can't stop me.
Sounds like Erik before a yellow message
Now with the Skovgaard Family... and it's gone.
Serpentis again!
Quote from: Anaris on October 19, 2014, 05:20:07 PM
Then they should all leave, and start a competing religion en masse.
Well, I've had plans for it for years, but I just haven't had time. Sorry.
That doesn't give you license to abuse game mechanics.
That's a political struggle. That's frustrating, and ugly, but as far as the rules are concerned, fine. There's a fundamental difference between that and abusing the mechanics of a priest to deliberately deconvert believers.
You can call [email protected]#$ all you want, but that's exactly what I'm telling you.
If your character does not believe in the teachings of the religion he is a priest of, then he is no longer truly a priest of that religion, and should simply leave it.
Almost every priest action is a pointless deconvert action. ALWAYS.
There is no "deconvert"-named button. There is only influence follower buttons. And there is plenty of reason to influence followers against an enemy nation that houses a competing church. Now, if that happens to deconvert the region, that's just because of how [email protected]#$ing pointless the priest game is. Alaster opposes ESA, which is housed in Luria Nova. That's the [email protected]#$ing irony of it. I could be Alaster's most loyal follower, and conduct precisely the same acts as I do as his opposer.
Piousness is independant of whatever lame gamey shennenigans the guild leaders have. Players are not to be hostages to whatever clowns abuse of the ridiculous guild mechanics religions use.
And every single antecedent has backed up the IR of choosing one's class, regardless of how stupid the contexts were. To decide otherwise now, to overwrite the IRs on such an arbitrary basis, would completely contradict all precedents. A ton of characters became priests for the sole purpose of being immune to expulsion all while abusing of this protection. Their right to remain priests has always been defended and all titan complaints against them has always failed.
D`Este
« Reply #4133: October 20, 2014, 12:13:34 AM »
Honestly, you could remove "Influence followers" from priests, and it wouldn't be a nerf. Heck, it'd be a boon. That action sucks at everything else than sabotaging your own religion. The more "advanced" you get access to, the worse it gets.
A senior priest with 100 oratory fame can't cause more harm to a region than what it can naturally recover by itself at TC. He can't fix a region any more quickly than a newbie courtier who just started out. He can't increase or decrease sympathy any more than a newbie diplomat. The deaths from his mobs will likely go unnoticed and will undo themselves within days.
It's an awful ability.
By the way, Alaster is dead, so SA is now somewhat "unsurped". It can now return on its slow path to death.
Current family: Sussex. Old family: Octavius.
Quote from: Antonine on October 20, 2014, 07:14:42 PM
This is complete nonsense. I can say first hand that influence followers can be an extremely powerful weapon (and occasional regional maintenance tool) when used correctly. It's really good at lowering enemy realm control, for example. And if you can't find something useful to do with that then the problem is with you rather than the mechanic not doing anything.
That being said, reducing the number of followers lost by using it wouldn't hurt.
My experience is always the same with these abilities. Zero impact, huge cost. Every time. Different characters (all top skills in oratory), different continents, targets in different starting condition, always the same result. Always. I used to think it was powerful and feared enemy priests, but that's before I became experienced at playing a priest myself.
I used it... unh... three times. Too hard to get followers these days to lose a lot of them to have a boost. But for your "purposes", hell yeah! The easiest way to lose followers...
It's like years of work to convert them, then you use one option... they've gone.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2014, 02:35:22 AM by Eduardo Almighty »
Quote from: Eduardo Almighty on October 21, 2014, 02:32:45 AM
I've used them in regions with large populations, over 95% following, large temples, top oratory skill and as an elder of the faith. Mobs would cause somewhat more deaths than in less-optimal situations, but otherwise no priest action did visible or lasting damage. So even if you'd get these followers, it wouldn't be any stronger than what you've seen yourself.
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Swimming Canada nominates 22 athletes to Team Canada for Rio
July 15, 2016 JADIRI GAMER1
Swimming Canada nominates 22 athletes to Team Canada for Rio 2016 Paralympic Games
Fandom Fare - Swimming Canada
Canadian Paralympic Committee - July 14, 2016 - OTTAWA - Swimming Canada and the Canadian Paralympic Committee are proud to announce the 22 swimmers nominated for selection to Team Canada for the Rio Paralympic Games this September.
Para-swimming was the most productive sport for Canada at the 2012 Games in London, with 16 medals. This year, Benoit Huot of Longueuil, Que., a 19-time Paralympic medallist, returns for a fifth Games while world record holder Aurélie Rivard of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., a silver medallist in London, leads the charge on the women's side.
''Congratulations to our nominees from para-swimming, who have put in so many miles of training and continue to do so relentlessly,'' said Team Canada Chef de Mission Chantal Petitclerc. ''The depth in this sport keeps getting stronger at every Games and our Canadians seem to always keep pace.''
Six other Canadians with Paralympic Games experience are Isaac Bouckley of Oshawa, Ont., Devin Gotell of Antigonish, N.S. Morgan Bird of Calgary, Sarah Mehain of Vernon, B.C., Katarina Roxon of Kippens, N.L., and Nathan Stein of Maple Ridge, B.C.
The 14 other athletes are all making their Paralympic Games debut, 13 of whom competed at the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games. Danielle Dorris, 13, of Moncton, N.B. is a national team rookie and the youngest-ever swimmer to make the team.
"Swimming Canada is excited by both the veterans who have returned to the team and the number of rookies," said Team Leader James Hood, Swimming Canada's senior manager, high performance Para-swimming programs. "Our veterans will continue to build on Canada's great legacy in the Paralympic movement. For the first timers, these Games will be their launching pad from 2016 to becoming our future leaders for Tokyo 2020."
The Paralympic Games are set for Sept. 7 to 18, 2016, with the swimming events scheduled to take place from Sept. 8 to 17.
The Honorable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, presented each athlete, coach and staff member their Paralympic ring, continuing a proud tradition of Swimming Canada.
"The pool in Rio is calling your names and you have the resolve of Team Canada - 35 million strong - behind you on the way to the podium,'' said Minister Qualtrough. ''On behalf of the Government of Canada, I would like to commend the work done by Swimming Canada to prepare our athletes for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games."
Athlete and coach biographies are available at Paralympic.ca/athletes. Bios and high resolution photos can be downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/hy8jvhm
The athletes nominated to the Canadian Paralympic Team are as follows:
Men's Para-swimming
Isaac Bouckley (Oshawa, Ont.)*
Nathan Clement (West Vancouver, B.C.)
Jonathan Dieleman (Telkwa, B.C.)
Alec Elliot (Kitchener, Ont.)
Devin Gotell (Antigonish, N.S.)*
Benoit Huot (Longueuil, Que.)*
James Leroux (Repentigny, Que.)
Gordie Michie (St. Thomas, Ont.)
Tyler Mrak (Surrey, B.C.)
Nathan Stein (Male Ridge, B.C.)*
Nicolas Guy-Turbide (Quebec City, Que.)
Women's Para-swimming
Morgan Bird (Calgary, Alta.)*
Tammy Cunnington (Red Deer, Alta.)
Danielle Dorris (Moncton, N.B.)
Sabrina Duchesne (St-Augustin, Que.)
Nydia Langill (Mississauga, Ont.)
Sarah Mehain (Vernon, B.C.)*
Aurélie Rivard (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que.)*
Tess Routliffe (Caledon, Ont.)
Katarina Roxon (Kippens, N.L.)*
Samantha Ryan (Saskatoon, Sask.)
Abi Tripp (Kingston, Ont.)
*Denotes previous Paralympic Games experience
The nominated team will be supported by head coach Craig McCord (Vancouver, B.C.) and coaches France Latendresse (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que.), Vince Mikuska (Chilliwack, B.C.) and Mike Thompson (Montreal, Que.).
About Swimming Canada:www.swimming.ca
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Tag: hippocrates health institute
Review: Lecture and Seminar With Dr Doug Graham and the Dublin Vegan group
Last year, we had a number of attendees from Ireland at UK Fruitfest. Greg Xavier was not only at Fruitfest but also ended up at Woodstock Fruit Festival.
A while later he mentioned that he had given a talk to the Dublin Vegan Group that he helped to run. They were often having as many as 100 people turn up at their talks.
We arranged to put on something special in collaboration.
I spoke to Dr Doug Graham about it and almost miraculously he had a gap in his schedule for that weekend. A few days later he was heading to Chicago to work for 3 weeks with a top NBA prospect.
Greg picked us up in Dublin and we headed to the lecture theatre. It was the Jonathan Swift lecture theatre at Trinity College Dublin. This was a prestigious venue indeed. Founded in 1592, Trinity College is not only the oldest surviving college in Ireland is also seen as the most prestigious. It is seen as one of the 7 ancient universities of Britain and Ireland and one of the most elite institutions in Europe.
As you can see in the picture it was a room designed perfectly for a lecture and no microphones where necessary.
In advance, Doug told me he was going to do his “psychic act”.
I won’t tell you exactly what that turned out to be, in case you see him do it in the future, but it was an interesting way to put a presentation together.
He spoke for over an hour and the audience was wrapped in attention. He was running and jumping around all over the rooms, taking questions left, right and centre and taking people out of the audience for demonstrations.
At the end, as we were leaving the attendees were hungry for more information and kept asking questions.
Many were excited for the seminar the next day and some were looking forward to the fruit festival.
That night, we got back to the flat and Doug started answering emails. I went out to try to find some fruit and eventually had to take 2 taxis to a 24 hour Spar. The fruit I found wasn’t great but we hadn’t eaten anything since 12pm.
As I walked around that night I felt inspired and elated. It felt really great to have shared this message with so many people and made me feel like I was living in line with my purpose. Dublin is a spectacular city. We were right by the river where brand new state of the art buildings stand tall beside the river’s edge.
The seminar the next day….
….was mostly Doug teaching, but I had to work on Fruit festival stuff so I did not have too much time to participate. Doug did a brilliant food demo that really wowed the audience.
Later that night, we were hosted by the owner of Cornucopia, Ireland’s oldest vegan restaurant. The manager, Deirdra, was an incredible person. Very funny and young at heart. She was full of enthusiasm about what she was doing and that was infectious.
She told us her story of leaving Dublin as a student radical to go and live in Boston where she eventually ended up working at the Hippocrates health institute with Anne Wigmore.
She had eventually come back to Ireland to start this new restaurant with her partner who unfortunately died of cancer. She has since built it into a very successful restaurant which was absolutely packed and had a queue out of the door the whole time we were there.
We left early the next morning and were sorry to leave. The trip had been a success in my eyes and made me yearn for more travel and adventure sharing the message of fruit and health.
Who knows where we will end up next.
Stay fruity,
1 Comment on Review: Lecture and Seminar With Dr Doug Graham and the Dublin Vegan group/ 801010, ann wigmore, anne wigmore, cornucopia, cornucopia restaurant, doug graham, dr doug graham, dr douglas graham, dublin vegan group, fruit festival, fruitarian, greg xavier, hippocrates, hippocrates health institute, plantbased, plantbased ireland, raw food, raw vegan, the 801010 diet, trinity college, uk fruitfest, vegan, vegan dublin
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Home About Explore Search
Little Tiny Frogs
with Brad Wardell
Timmaigh
April 11, 2014 1:09:34 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
So anyone seen this? I think it was pretty good and i recommend it - although 9,5 rating on IMDB is IMHO bit too much...
Anyway it has some great acting, especially by Matthew McCounaghey, great script and while it can be basically looked upon as a standard crimi-drama, it has potentially some other, deeper meaning, since it sports certain references to the lovecraftian cosmic horror genre... i wonder if this is meant to be build upon further over the potential next seasons, since they are supposed to have completely new characters/setting...or this was just one off thing
Oh, and it has absolutely stunning opening theme, both the visual part and the theme music. Fucking love that song.
rpanic
Reply #1 April 11, 2014 1:18:40 PM
from Elemental Forums
It was a pretty awesome series.
ElanaAhova
Reply #2 April 12, 2014 9:31:44 AM
When I was a child many moons ago, I saw a magazine called "True Detective." At the store, it was always hidden within the "tabloids." I never read any of THOSE. But True Detective, yes! I blew off the series thinking it was a TV version of the magazine. Hope they do a revival, it looks awesome!
TheBirthdayParty
I enjoyed the series. I think Woody Harrelson was also good. His role was acted more subtlety, but just as good. McConaughey just had the more interesting role.
I think the series took inspiration specifically from The King in Yellow, not just cthulu and associated mythos.
More discussion, but SPOILERS(highlight text to see):
I was disappointed they didn't bring more of the mythos of the King in Yellow into it. They wrapped things up with a simple, paraphrasing here, "some bayou voodoo shit." There was all these reference to the King in Yellow. Carcosa, the name itself, and then cryptic references to his powers. But it was just a serial killer. At the very end there is an image McConaughey see's in the 'temple' of the killer, a swirling cloudy cyclone taking up the entire screen. Its only there for a few seconds, he makes a quick reference to it at the end. Yet that's it really, of anything mystical/uncanny/etc. They could have done a lot more. If there is going to be more mystical aspects in their next season they should have at least made more subtle references. The series as it stands now seems like the writer(s)/producer/creator just thought the King in Yellow was a great collection of stories and wanted to put some references in. Which takes you out of a story instead of making it more interesting/giving it depth.
oops. ignore.
from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
I agree that the "cosmic horror" thing could have been developed further, but i have hopes this will happen in the following seasons...that really these were meant just to be first subtle signs...
i read IMDB forums and somebody suggested that the next season could take place in Massachusets (the setting for lot of Lovecraftian stories) - now i guess i would like that...
Reply #6 May 27, 2014 3:04:11 AM
Read this review of the 'True Detective' somewhere and found it to be so apt:
"A compelling jumble of philosophy, imagery, murder and wigs, True Detective is the first great new show of 2014 and a welcome addition to the television landscape."
Very welcome indeed.
Metal Mayhem – 4th May 2019
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Metal Mayhem - 23rd March 2019
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Copyright © 2019 Stardock. All rights reserved.
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Madison, James
Graham, John (126)
Madison, James (23)
Madison, James (126)
Graham, John (23)
Jefferson Presidency (73)
Madison Presidency (74)
post-Madison Presidency (2)
Documents filtered by: Correspondent="Graham, John" AND Correspondent="Madison, James"
Results 11-20 of 149 sorted by date (ascending)
11To James Madison from John Graham, 10 May 1803 (Madison Papers)
A Stranger to the President & almost unknown to yourself, I fear, that I might possibly expose...
12From James Madison to John Graham, 17 October 1803 (Madison Papers)
Your letter of May 10 was received during the absence of the President as well as myself from the...
13To James Madison from John Graham, 23 March 1804 (Abstract) (Madison Papers)
23 March 1804, Lisbon. “In obedience to the wishes of Mr Pinckney I remained in Madrid a few...
14To James Madison from John Graham, 3 May 1805 (Madison Papers)
As I have been detained in Kentucky longer than I had expected, it becomes proper me, to state to...
Finding that Mr Coburn of this State has been very strongly recommended to the President as one...
16To James Madison from John Graham (Abstract), 23 June 1805 (Madison Papers)
23 June 1805, New Orleans. “I have the Honor to inclose so many of the ‘Acts passed at the first...
17To James Madison from John Graham, 2 September 1805 (Abstract) (Madison Papers)
§ From John Graham. 2 September 1805, New Orleans . “A White Man by the Name of Le Grand, who is...
§ From John Graham. 8 September 1805, New Orleans . “I have now the Honor to inclose a Copy of...
19To James Madison from John Graham, 9 September 1805 (Madison Papers)
I had the Honor to write you by the last Post to let you know that a White Man had been taken up...
20To James Madison from John Graham, 16 September 1805 (Abstract) (Madison Papers)
§ From John Graham. 16 September 1805, New Orleans . “I had the Honor to forward to you by the...
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Documents filtered by: Recipient="Adams, Abigail Smith" AND Recipient="Adams, Abigail Smith" AND Period="Jefferson Presidency"
From John Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, 10 March 1801
Berlin 10. March 1801.
My dear Mother.
I am almost asham’d to acknowledge how long it has been since I wrote you last, and can only hope you will consider my numerous letters to my brother, most of which I intended as much for you as for him, to be a sufficient apology—I have not received a line from you or from my father since last June, though I think it impossible but that you should have written more than once—My last letter to my father was of November 25.
My mind has deeply shared in all the anxieties, the disappointments and afflictions both of a public and private nature, which have befallen you, crowded into so small a space of time—The loss of my brother Charles—The illness of my father—and the manner in which his country rewarded a life of labours devoted to their service, were all events which I knew must call forth the fortitude and energy of his soul and of your’s.—The death of my brother affected me greatly—I first learnt it by a letter from my kind friend Mr: Murray, who had seen it mentioned in a newspaper—Two days after it was confirmed in a letter I received from my brother Thomas—The illness of my father and the result of the election I was informed of at the same time, by the English and German newspapers—Five weeks have since elapsed during which I have not had a single line from America.—Mr: Murray my constant and valuable correspondent has informed me very lately that he had seen in a New-York paper a paragraph stating my father’s having recovered from his fever, which it was a great consolation to me to hear from any quarter, and which I hope will soon be made certain to me by more direct intelligence—The issue of the election I could not suppose would be an object of indifference to him; but I know he had always been impressed fully with the sentiment, that every man who serves the public, must look upon the injustice of men, so far as it concerns himself, in the same light, as upon the ills of nature; the shocks that flesh is heir to,—a fever, or a clap of thunder—which are neither to be denied for real evils, nor to be complained of as avoidable—Political disappointment is perhaps one of the occasions in human life which requires the greatest portion of philosophy; and although philosophy has very little power to asswage the keenness of our feelings, she has at least the power to silence the voice of complaint—To be relieved from the labours and responsibility of such a station as that of an American President, is a great consolation for all the pain of being removed from it, and will I hope have its full weight as such.
What the influence of the change in our Administration, upon the reputation and fortunes, of our Country may be, I do not think it necessary to enquire, and am altogether unable to foresee. For the past alone my father has any thing on this score to answer—For the future, the whole responsibility rests upon the people themselves—If they find themselves after an experience of their new system [. . .] more prosperous than they have been under the old, the pure and generous spirit of patriotism, will rejoyce in their prosperity, and forget their injustice—But if the principle’s, to which they have thought proper to transfer their trust, should prove delusive, and bring upon them, the miseries of broken public faith, of disunion, or of War, deeply will their sufferings be lamented by the pure and virtuous friend of his Country, but he will find comfort in the reflection that he had done all in his power to ward off those calamities; and that the people could not have exposed themselves to their effects, but by first abandoning him.
I have hitherto for the last four years written seldom to my father, because I knew that all my public correspondence would be laid before him—For the future however (while I remain in Europe) I shall write oftener, to inform him of the principal political events which may occur. I say while I remain in Europe, because I am in expectation of my recall, immediately upon the new President’s coming into office—He will doubtless have nothing personal against me; but my mission here has been one of the most powerful objections made against the policy of his predecessor, and I presume therefore will be one of the first objects that he will think it expedient to reform.—The use and advantage of having some public character in the North of Europe, is indeed at this time more immediate, and nearer the surface of evidence than it has been at any former period since I have resided here; but those who deem’d the mission inexpedient at first, will probably find motives, if not reasons, equally strong for thinking it so still.
The North of Europe, and the views, interests, and relations of the several states it contains, are indeed becoming an object of no small concern to our commerce—Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia, while I write this are upon the brink of War with Great-Britain, upon one common point of issue, but each separately guided by purposes of its own, and each pledging to the contest a different stake. If this quarrel should really break out, The United-States will be the only maritime nation remaining neutral, and their navigation will be needed by all the hostile parties to carry a trade alike necessary for all, but which none will be allowed to transport in their own vessels—Our navigation to and from the Baltic therefore must acquire a great and rapid extension; and as the carrying trade of Sweden and Denmark must in the nature of things be suspended, our vessels will be no less in demand for the commerce of the mediterranean.—It is possible that this state of things, and the events resulting from it, will convince some of our keen-eyed and large-soul’d politicians, that Treaties of commerce with Russia and the Sublime Porte, made two years ago, would not have been such a useless waste of public money, nor such a proof of absurd policy, as their comprehensive minds represented it—A most profound and ingenious statesman, I remember, has urged in a printed pamphlet, the recommendation of these measures by the late President, as a proof of his incapacity.
That the War will kindle into a blaze, is not however certain—Great-Britain, who would make but little account of the resentments of Sweden and Denmark, cannot look with so much indifference upon those of Prussia and of Russia—She has talk’d very loud and bluster’d very much about her rights, and her essential interests, and her determination to resist any combination against them, but I suspect when it comes to the putting of the match to the powder-barrel, she will flinch; or, that she will bribe off the great parties to the league; at the expence of the small ones, if she can; but that she will at any rate bribe them off—Unless it should already be too late.
Of English news I need not tell you—That part of Europe, and its occurrences are tolerably well known in our country, and you must hear from it more accurately and sooner by direct communication than I could inform you, thus distant from it—The change of Ministry, and the king’s illness, are the two most important late events, of which the consequences are yet covered by the veil of Time
In France the career of the first Consul’s prosperity continues, and Fortune is as profuse of her favours to him as ever—That he is an extraordinary man, there can at this day be no doubt; but whether his niche in the temple of Fame, will be in a line with Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne, or with Hannibal, Pompey and Charles the twelfth of Sweden, no mortal I believe can foretell—It is only certain that he will not stand in that of Alfred, Gustavus-Wasa and Washington—He has not yet entirely kicked away the ladder of Jacobinism, which so well served his Ambition, because he is not yet perfectly secure of his footing, at the pernicious height where he has ascended; but he is no longer as after the Peace of Campo Formio, the common-place declaimer against Emperors and kings—In the name of the french people, he takes the sceptred despots by the hand, and as he looks at the gold and jewels of their crowns, feels a mysterious sympathetic itching play around his own temples—Yet if the crown were offered him to-morrow, he would refuse it as Caesar and Cromwell did before.
I am just at the bottom of my paper, and have yet said nothing to you about ourselves—My own health, since the beginning of the Winter has been good—Louisa’s better upon the whole than any former winter since she came to Berlin, but still very feeble and delicate—She desires her dutiful remembrance to you and to my father—The season, since the middle of December has been unusually gay and splendid in the courtly circles, owing to the presence of a Russian Grand-Duchess upon a visit—But I have been a great measure exempted from attendance at the house of feasting, by the call to one which we are told by the highest wisdom, is better.
I am in all duty and affection, your Son
MHi: Adams Papers.
Adams, Abigail Smith
“From John Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, 10 March 1801,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-0916. [This is an Early Access document from The Adams Papers. It is not an authoritative final version.]
From Abigail Smith Adams to John Quincy Adams [29 January 1801]
From John Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams [14 April 1801]
All correspondence between Abigail Smith Adams and John Quincy Adams
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Board index ‹ General Discussion ‹ General
Hundreds quarantined for measles in 2 CA universities.
For discussion and debate about anything. (Not a roleplay related forum; out-of-character commentary only.)
Telconi
Postmaster of the Fleet
by Telconi » Mon May 20, 2019 1:28 am
The Free Joy State wrote:
Telconi wrote:
But those laws only effect those who knowingly transmit the disease. Anti-Vaxxer folks aren't doing that AFAIK.
If they knowingly don't have their child vaccinated -- despite their child being medically fit for vaccination -- and their child gets ill with the disease they didn't vaccinate for, and they then take their ill child outside (to the park, to school, to one of the disease parties that anti-vaxxers still hold), that would be knowing transmission to unknowing parties.
But that wasn't the comparison I was making. It was more about the individual -- the person with an STI, the parent who doesn't wish to be vaccinated -- may have medical autonomy (different rules should apply with children, who precedent shows have a right to be protected from their parents' decisions), but there is also legal precedent for them having a duty to protect other people from things that may cause them medical harm.
Only if they knew they had a serious infectious disease.
There's a legal precedent that you must protect people from acts that *will* cause medical harm, for certain.
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Duhon
by Duhon » Mon May 20, 2019 1:31 am
The Free Joy State wrote: There is an interesting comparison there.
People cannot be forcibly treated (and I would be concerned about compelled treatment of competent adults, due to the issues that presents with body autonomy), however they can be prosecuted in some places if they intentionally transmit an STI.
I stress I am not actually in favour of criminal prosecution and removal of children from non-vaccinating parents (though I am in favour of supervision orders to compel parents to vaccinate, if there's no medical reason -- for serious diseases like measles and polio), and I would prefer for such an approach to be augmented by greater public education to tackle misinformation so that, over time, such measures hardly needs to be used.
But the presence of laws that allow people to be prosecuted for deliberately transmitting an STI does suggest that it would not be out of order for anti-vaccination parents to be encouraged to consider the wider good (of children too young to be vaccinated, the pregnant, the immunocompromised, the elderly).
For a certain value of "unknowingly transmitting" -- that is, they made themselves ignorant, yet demand freedom of movement for themselves, whether they be vectors or not.
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... id=1205275
by The Free Joy State » Mon May 20, 2019 1:33 am
The Free Joy State wrote: If they knowingly don't have their child vaccinated -- despite their child being medically fit for vaccination -- and their child gets ill with the disease they didn't vaccinate for, and they then take their ill child outside (to the park, to school, to one of the disease parties that anti-vaxxers still hold), that would be knowing transmission to unknowing parties.
Measles, mumps, polio, etc. are known to be serious diseases with potentially deadly effects.
Children can be protected from Jehovah's Witness parents who don't wish to let them have a blood transfusion. It makes sense to protect children from parents who won't let them be vaccinated against diseases that can cause encephalitis and death.
An STI isn't certain to kill; but it is certain to be unpleasant, highly infectious and (with some exceptions) largely avoidable with correct care. Measles isn't certain to kill; but it will be unpleasant, highly infectious and (with some exceptions) largely avoidable with correct care. They seem comparable enough to me.
Scomagia wrote:
Duhon wrote:
Clearly fines don't work on people who've set themselves on infecting as many as possible.
Come now, you're lying. That is not their goal and you know it. It's really pathetic how it's not enough for some of the people in this thread to be right about vaccinations, they have to be downright hateful and shitty. Newsflash: opposing anti-vaxxers doesn't mean you have to lie about them or talk about putting them in Gulag or any of the other bullshit that comes up in these threads.
If they are ready to pay fines to resume the semblance of normal lives despite their potential as vectors, then fines aren't enough of a deterrent. Quarantining them (or "putting them in Gulag" as you put) won't work either, after you reach a certain number of people, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Chernoslavia wrote:
... what insane logic is this? "Vaccines don't prevent infection in every case, therefore ditch vaccines and YOLO like before"?
Bear in mind that, in the case of measles, "before" meant a disease so common someone once quipped that catching it was as inevitable as death and taxes. You're saying a few deaths for the sake of bodily autonomy... is acceptable.
Nice strawman.
You're the one denying the effectiveness of vaccines, Chern, or am I wrong in reading your very words?
The Greater Ohio Valley
by The Greater Ohio Valley » Mon May 20, 2019 2:53 am
The Greater Ohio Valley wrote: I sense that you’d very likely change your tune really quick if there was another Spanish flu-level pandemic that killed hundreds of millions of people and the governments of the world mandated vaccination programs to stop it.
Why would you rather die along with hundreds of millions of others and allow the further spread of the pandemic instead of getting the vaccine that would prevent you and billions of others from dying and stop the spread of the pandemic?
Last edited by The Greater Ohio Valley on Mon May 20, 2019 2:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Highever
by Highever » Mon May 20, 2019 2:55 am
The Greater Ohio Valley wrote:
Why would you rather die along with hundreds of millions of others instead of getting the vaccine that would prevent from dying?
Even hundreds of millions is probably a lowball number if something of the scale of the 1918 pandemic were to occur in the modern day.
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Dante Alighieri wrote: There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery
Charlie Chaplin wrote: Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.
Highever wrote:
The Greater Ohio Valley wrote: Why would you rather die along with hundreds of millions of others instead of getting the vaccine that would prevent from dying?
I’m just throwing an estimate out there based on the 3-5% killed during 1918-19. I’m a bit dubious that an IRL disease could steamroll humanity more than that unless it’s some sort Plague Inc. level specifically evolved super disease.
Highever wrote: Even hundreds of millions is probably a lowball number if something of the scale of the 1918 pandemic were to occur in the modern day.
It has more to do with how interconnected the world is now and the ease of travel there is. It would spread far quicker than it did then and far more would be infected in a shorter span of time, especially in urban areas of South Korea, China, or India.
Greater vakolicci haven
by Greater vakolicci haven » Mon May 20, 2019 3:22 am
With me, it's a lack of concern for whether I live or die, and my belief that a massive global-level tragedy is necessary for the continued survival of the human race.
Greater vakolicci haven wrote:
The Greater Ohio Valley wrote: Why would you rather die along with hundreds of millions of others and allow the further spread of the pandemic instead of getting the vaccine that would prevent you and billions of others from dying and stop the spread of the pandemic?
You may have a death wish, but billions don't. Don't pass it on to us.
Thermodolia
by Thermodolia » Mon May 20, 2019 6:17 am
Thermodolia wrote: Actually it does. As it puts you at higher risk of catching a deadly disease
No it’s not a fallacy. You are pretty much an anti-vaxxer. You use the same language, terminology, and you refuse to believe that being unvaccinated is harmful.
You’re just mad I called you out on your bullshit
The FBI and CIA thanks you. Don’t worry I’m sure ADX Florence has something to entertain you
What? You think that only you can make outlandish claims? Have you seen what I’ve advocated?
1. No it doesn't, being infected and coming into contact with others does.
Which vaccines help prevent. How hard is this?
2. It is very much a fallacy. Or does this mean I can accuse all leftists of being Communists just because they make the same talking points for healthcare and other things?
Communists are leftists though. A leftist is one on the far left. And no it’s not the same because you are literally questioning vaccines.
''Ur just mad bro!'' Geez could you get anymore desperate?
Well you are.
3. Lol is the big bad socialist guy gonna report me to the popos now? Gee, I'm sooo scared! Yeah, pick a number and get in line.
What, you think that socialists don’t like authority like the police?
4. What outlandish claims have I made? I'm not the one thinking they can point guns at people's heads and force them to get vaccinated.
That vaccines don’t work for one, that unvaccinated people don’t cause harm, and that there’s nothing wrong with being anti-vaxx.
I’m not saying that I’d point a gun at people’s head. You said that. I said that those who refuse mandatory vaccination orders will be sent to jail.
My comment is in response to your call for an uprising against the government due to mandatory vaccinations
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Thermodolia wrote:
I don’t give a fuck about what they feel
Cool, just don't bitch and call them terrorists when you meet armed resistance.
See this is what I mean by outlandish claims. And if you want a war I’ll give you one. The full might of the state vs a terrorist group. I wonder who will win.
Ah “libertarians” always destroying the thing they love the most because of their own stupidity.
by The Greater Ohio Valley » Mon May 20, 2019 7:36 pm
Greater vakolicci haven wrote: With me, it's a lack of concern for whether I live or die, and my belief that a massive global-level tragedy is necessary for the continued survival of the human race.
Hurtful Thoughts
by Hurtful Thoughts » Mon May 20, 2019 8:27 pm
When did the anti-vax movement become the Thanos initiative?
Last edited by Hurtful Thoughts on Mon May 20, 2019 8:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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The Black Forrest
by The Black Forrest » Mon May 20, 2019 8:54 pm
Ok Thanos.
*I am a master proofreader after I click Submit.
* There is actually a War on Christmas. But Christmas started it, with it's unparalleled aggression against the Thanksgiving Holiday, and now Christmas has seized much Lebensraum in November, and are pushing into October. The rest of us seek to repel these invaders, and push them back to the status quo ante bellum Black Friday border. -Trotskylvania
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Gormwood
by Gormwood » Mon May 20, 2019 8:58 pm
Anti-vaxxers target communities battling measles
MONSEY, N.Y. — In a suburban shopping center an hour north of New York City, hundreds of mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in a sex-partitioned ballroom to hear leaders of the national anti-vaccine movement.
Sustained applause greeted Del Bigtree, a former television-producer-turned-activist who often wears a yellow star , similar to those required of Jews in Nazi Germany, to show solidarity with parents ordered to keep unvaccinated children at home.
Bigtree described the purported dangers of childhood vaccines in phrases that also conjured the Nazis.
“They have turned our children into the largest human experiment in history — all of history,” he said.
The turnout last week in this suburb hard hit by measles helps explain why New York has become ground zero in one of this country’s largest and longest-lasting measles outbreaks in nearly 30 years. Even in a religious community grappling with more than 700 cases in Rockland County and New York City since last fall — among them, children on oxygen in intensive-care units — anxious and confused parents said they came because they are afraid of vaccines and seeking guidance about what to do.
Ethan, a 36-year-old father of six from Queens who declined to give his last name, said he attended the event out of “a genuine concern” for his family, driven by his wife’s research into vaccines. She had read “a lot of literature” and watched Bigtree’s film, which accuses the government of covering up a purported link between the measles vaccine and autism — a tie repeatedly disproved by studies around the world involving hundreds of thousands of children.
As a result, Ethan said, measles frightened him far less than what Bigtree and others described as the toxic substances in vaccines.
“I love doctors,” Ethan said, but they have “blind obedience” to the vaccine schedule. “God gave us a wonderful, beautiful body that heals itself.”
State and national health officials say groups such as Bigtree’s are directly responsible for the measles outbreaks that struck Orthodox communities here and in New York City this year. Through an aggressive social media campaign, pamphleteering and traveling road shows that pop up in receptive and often insular communities, officials say, the anti-vaccine movement has produced pockets of unvaccinated children where the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease can catch fire.
The groups’ claims are flatly contradicted by science, but their rhetoric has sent vaccination rates plummeting across the country, including among Eastern European immigrants outside Portland, Ore., the Somali community in Minnesota and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, and here in Rockland County — all groups that have experienced recent outbreaks.
“This is a national movement of people who are nothing but charlatans, conspiracy theorists and people . . . spreading misinformation,” said Rockland County Executive Ed Day. “The type of propaganda they spread is a danger to the health and safety of children within our community and around the world.”
In many ways, vaccines are a victim of their own success. Years ago, people were intimately familiar with the suffering caused by diseases such as polio, whooping cough and measles. Today, they’ve been virtually eliminated — along with the memory of their terrible effects.
As a result, generations of parents have grown up “more likely to be scared of the vaccine than the disease,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s very easy to appeal to those fears.”
The modern anti-vaccine movement began about 40 years ago in response to legitimate concerns about the side effects of a pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine. But it has metastasized into something far darker in the echo chamber of Facebook chat rooms, WhatsApp and YouTube — especially against a backdrop of rising suspicion of elites, including drugmakers, doctors and public health officials.
Anti-vaccine activists have a rhetorical advantage: They speak with absolute certainty about frightening cases of so-called vaccine injuries based on changes parents say they observe in their children after getting shots.
Scientists and researchers, by contrast, rarely speak in absolutes. They say vaccines save countless lives, but like all medicines, have side effects — albeit rare ones. And they sometimes challenge what parents think they have seen with their own eyes by explaining that health problems such as autism often become apparent around the same time children are receiving multiple shots — even though there is no causal connection.
A reaction spurs a movement
The modern anti-vaccine movement began in 1980 with a heartbreak that propelled a Virginia mother into activism.
Several hours after her eldest son — then 2½ — got his fourth shot to prevent diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus, Barbara Loe Fisher said she found him staring straight ahead as if he couldn’t see her. “When I called out his name, his eyelids fluttered, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his head fell to his shoulder,” she recalled.
Fisher has written on her website that her son suffered a convulsion, collapse and brain inflammation and grew up with multiple learning disabilities. After seeing a television special on possible dangers of the DPT vaccine, Fisher suspected a link to the vaccine.
At the time, the pertussis component of the vaccine was made with many more proteins than other childhood vaccines, and had a significant risk of side effects, including fever and in some cases, seizures. (The problem was corrected in newer versions of the vaccine.)
Fisher became a national advocate, warning parents about possible risks and working with Congress to craft legislation creating a vaccine compensation program and an improved vaccine monitoring system — one of several safety systems still in use.
Today, the National Vaccine Information Center in Sterling, Va., which she founded, is considered one of the most effective lobbyists for parental choice, combating efforts in New York and other states to make it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children.
“We don’t tell people what to do,” Fisher said in a recent interview. “We support informed voluntary medical decisions that people make. We do not tell people to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.”
A discredited study's impact
In 1998, the Lancet, a respected British medical journal, published a paper that would cause the anti-vaccine movement to explode. The paper, by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield and other authors, claimed to have found a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism in eight children.
The paper was later found to be fraudulent. Wakefield’s fellow authors issued a retraction. So did the Lancet after an investigation by British medical authorities. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license after a panel concluded that he had financial and ethical conflicts of interest and had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly.”
But the damage was done. MMR vaccination rates plunged in Britain, Ireland, the United States and other countries at a time of rising concern about autism diagnoses.
To many parents, Wakefield’s thesis seemed believable because symptoms of autism first appear when children are about 12 months old — the same age they receive their first MMR vaccine, said Alison Singer, a New York City mother with a severely autistic daughter.
“Up until Wakefield, no one had really put the two together,” said Singer, who now heads the Autism Science Foundation, which supports research into the condition’s causes.
Twenty-one studies since that Lancet study have found no relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. The latest and largest, from Denmark, involved 657,461 Danish children born between 1999 and 2010.
In the intervening years, researchers have implicated genetic and environmental factors in autism, such as older fathers and infections during pregnancy. Scientists now believe that more than 100 genes affect an individual’s risk for autism, said Josh Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
“About 15 to 20 percent of people with diagnoses of autism can now be told by their doctors why they have it,” Gordon said.
Despite all the subsequent research, Wakefield’s discredited ideas have become firmly entrenched in anti-vaccine mythology.
“Once you put a scary thought in someone’s head, it’s very hard to get it out,” Singer said.
The notion that vaccines are implicated in autism and a host of other medical conditions is now championed by an increasingly organized anti-vaccine movement that includes at least a dozen national organizations and hundreds of Facebook groups, many of them private. Many cast themselves as promoting individual and parental rights and fighting government overreach — a cause that resonates with individuals across the political spectrum.
High-profile leaders such as Bigtree, founder of Informed Consent Action Network in Austin, and environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, crisscross the country railing against vaccine dangers and advocating for parental choice.
Bigtree, the son of a minister, is a charismatic speaker who draws large crowds at wellness conferences and state legislative hearings. A former daytime television producer for “The Doctors,” he said he became a vaccine safety advocate after hearing from so many aggrieved parents after partnering with Wakefield on a movie about Wakefield’s theories.
“The moment we began expanding the vaccination program, our health has been declining in our children,” Bigtree said recently on a weekly live show he distributes on Facebook and YouTube. For his HighWire show, he has about 140,000 Facebook followers and 44,000 YouTube subscribers.
Kennedy’s interest in vaccines grew out of his advocacy work on environmental pollutants. He accuses drugmakers of colluding with the health establishment to cover up vaccines’ alleged role in rising rates of a gamut of chronic diseases and even teen suicide — claims rejected by the American Academy of Pediatrics and virtually every leading health and science organization in the world.
In January 2017, Kennedy stunned the medical establishment by announcing that then-President-elect Trump had asked him to lead a commission looking at vaccines and autism — a subject Trump had mentioned repeatedly on the campaign trail.
But the White House never went forward with the commission. And last month, when U.S. measles cases reached a record high, Trump urged parents to “get the shots” for their children.
In an extraordinary public rebuke this month, three members of Kennedy’s family — including his brother, a former congressman, and his sister, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland — accused Kennedy of being “part of a misinformation campaign that’s having heartbreaking — and deadly — consequences.”
“We love Bobby. . . . We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment,” they wrote. “However, on vaccines he is wrong.”
'One-way propaganda'
Most Americans continue to support immunizations, as evidenced by high national vaccination rates, but there are worrisome trends: The percentage of children younger than 2 who haven’t received any vaccinations, for instance, has quadrupled since 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And in more than a dozen hot spots across the country, including the Seattle and Portland areas, which have had measles outbreaks, immunization rates have plunged as an increasing number of parents receive nonmedical exemptions to avoid having to give their children the shots, according to a study last year.
The link between places with low vaccination rates and measles outbreaks is clear: In some of Williamsburg’s yeshivas, for instance, up to 22 percent of children did not receive the MMR vaccine for religious reasons during the 2017-2018 school year, according to New York state data.
Anti-vaccine activists encourage that trend by arguing that the vaccine is potentially more dangerous than the disease.
At the Monsey forum, Rabbi Hillel Handler called resistance to measles shots a brave act. The virus, which once killed several hundred Americans every year, “is not a serious disease,” he said, asserting that those who battle it in childhood grow up stronger.
Public health officials are trying to fight back. They note that children who have recovered from measles are more susceptible to infections and are at risk for serious complications.
In the Brooklyn neighborhoods at the heart of the New York City outbreak, nurse practitioner Blima Marcus holds regular meetings with small groups of ultra-Orthodox women in their homes, spending hours answering their questions. As a member of the same Orthodox community, Marcus says it is easier for her to gain their trust.
Often, she said, the women are surprised by the scientific studies she brings that disprove links between the measles vaccine and autism. Afterward, some tell her they feel they’ve been “really misled.”
“These are insular women who are trying to do the best for their children,” Marcus said. “At the end of the day, I feel the majority of people who don’t vaccinate are the victims of a one-way propaganda machine.”
Anti-vaxxers gathering at the site of a measles outbreak. It's like scavengers flying over the dying.
Last edited by Gormwood on Mon May 20, 2019 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Most Hated Individual On NSG. It's a badge of honor.
Bloodthirsty savages who call for violence against the Right while simultaneously being unarmed defenseless sissies who will get slaughtered by the gun-toting Right in a civil war.
by Duhon » Mon May 20, 2019 9:33 pm
Duhon wrote: Arrest them. They might actually bring with them disease vectors, inanimate and otherwise. These malevolently stupid fuckwits.
by Hurtful Thoughts » Mon May 20, 2019 10:29 pm
Gormwood wrote: Anti-vaxxers target communities battling measles
In an extraordinary public rebuke this month, three members of Kennedy’s family — including his brother, a former congressman, and his sister, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland — accused Kennedy of being “part of a misinformation ­campaign that’s having heartbreaking — and deadly — consequences.”
Ahem:
Ravennog wrote:
Hurtful Thoughts wrote: ... wth?
Therm... no...
Anti-vaccination support groups and social events... they're a thing... and it totally undermines herd-immunity by creating a herd with 0% vaccinations and then spreading it around to other communities like some form of sapient weaponized biological terrorist cell.
Which is why cattle-brokers are forced to kill their entire herd when that happens.
Anti-vaxxer group and social events?
DISEASES 100
Me, Durhon, and Gorm are agreeing on something.
Consider that for a second.
Last edited by Hurtful Thoughts on Mon May 20, 2019 10:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
by Thermodolia » Thu May 23, 2019 3:31 pm
Those with Measles could be banned from flying in five US states
Personally I think we need a national ban and a restriction on people coming into the US with Measles like we did with Ebola
DARGLED
by DARGLED » Thu May 23, 2019 3:55 pm
Get yourself and your children vaccinated or be quarantined permanently. That is how it should be. You do not have the right to endanger the lives of others.
EDIT: Andrew Wakefield should be executed for having started this antivax madness.
Last edited by DARGLED on Thu May 23, 2019 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Farnhamia
by Farnhamia » Thu May 23, 2019 4:17 pm
DARGLED wrote: Get yourself and your children vaccinated or be quarantined permanently. That is how it should be. You do not have the right to endanger the lives of others.
No advocating death now, you wouldn't want to screw up your nice clean record.
Freedom ... or cake. ~ Ashmoria (RIP)
Make Earth Great Again: Stop Continental Drift!
And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water ...
"Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody." RIP Don Rickles
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. ~ Carl Schurz
<Sigh> NSG...where even the atheists are Augustinians. ~ The Archregimancy
Now the foot is on the other hand ~ Kannap
RIP Dyakovo
Aclion
by Aclion » Thu May 23, 2019 4:19 pm
Thermodolia wrote: Those with Measles could be banned from flying in five US states
No, we can't stop people spreading pandemics. It's racist... or something.
A free society rests on four boxes: The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box.
XKI: Recruiter, TITO Knight
TEP: WA Executive Staff member
Forest: Cartographer
Oatland: Caesar, Cartographer
It is the citizen's duty to understand which box to use, and when.
by Hurtful Thoughts » Thu May 23, 2019 6:47 pm
Aclion wrote:
Well, if they're on the no-fly list... does this mean we gotta confiscate their guns, too?
Last edited by Hurtful Thoughts on Thu May 23, 2019 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Chernoslavia
Corporate Bordello
by Chernoslavia » Thu May 23, 2019 7:32 pm
1. Never said they did.
2. And so are liberals. Just because some fucking British guy somewhere has far-left ideals that doesn't just make liberals over here right wing. And I haven't questioned vaccines, I've questioned Duhon's false claim that it will guarantee to prevent measles and I haven't used that as an argument against being vaccinated.
3. Good, at least you don't pretend to be in support of individual freedom like other socialists do.
4. Then good thing I never said vaccines don't work, or anything about being anti-vax. And no being unvaccinated alone doesn't put anyone in danger.
What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or if during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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Car Forums / General
How To Change Your Car's Filters
Edmunds.com Posts: 10,059
May 2015 edited May 2015 in General
How to Change Your Car's Filters article on Edmunds.com
thecardoc3 Posts: 5,017
One has to love how clearly some articles got right to the heart of the problem. This section spells it out as clear as can be.
The chief purpose of Edmunds.com is to empower the consumer. Don't let them stick it to you. Learn to say no — there's no law against it. Just say "Thanks, I'll look into it," and go home after the oil change and perform this procedure yourself — if, in fact, it really needs to be done.
But lets combine that with at least one other point. This comment from the article.
A clogged air or fuel filter can cause poor performance, poor fuel mileage and reduced engine life.
A clogged air filter has NO EFFECT on fuel economy, now maybe back in the seventies with carbureted cars there was a shred of truth to that comment, but not since we started having computers that measured airflow and from that calculated the required fuel and had a feedback correction just in case the base injector pulse-width failed to deliver the exact amount of fuel that was required. For years articles like this were written solely to create a problem in order that the author could then be recognized as a contributor towards the solution. Meanwhile it was common to find glaring errors that proved the author wasn't really as skilled as they presented themselves to be, but all they had to do was criticize a shop or techs and they were anointed as an authority on the subject.
Oh, and the problem? Trash journalism like that has contributed towards the shortage of skilled technicians that you need the shops to have. Articles like this one tried to make it wrong to advise a customer about their vehicle's needs. The conflicts that arose from it made it wrong for the tech to not advise what a vehicles needs were, and also wrong if he or she did. That amounts to an impossible situation that further eroded what little satisfaction techs could get from really striving to do the job right. The career was tough enough when it came to dealing with the physical and mental demands on top of the wage and benefit issues as well as the average working conditions, but they also had to deal with being treated as if they were liars and thieves. That was a lot to have to bear and the result really is you shouldn't wonder why its hard to find qualified technicians today, you really should wonder why you find any. Techs could be perfect and get everything right, and still be wrong thanks to the attitudes and perceptions caused by articles like the above one.
lawrencetyle Posts: 6
How often should I change my air filters?
Check your owners manual, the service interval will be in the maintenance section. Now if you run the vehicle in dusty conditions, you "might" need to replace it more often, but that is pretty uncommon.
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Ticketmaster helps AFL members snap up tickets
AFL fans are very much in love with their game if the recent AFL finals onsales and membership tallies are anything to go by.
Throughout the AFL finals, Ticketmaster has facilitated four massive onsales at Domain Stadium for the two Perth sides, West Coast and Fremantle.
Finishing one and two on the ladder, the Dockers and the Eagles earned the right to play their first finals in Western Australia. First up wins for the two sides meant both clubs were eligible for home preliminary finals, which were both played at Domain Stadium.
The onsales for all four finals were hugely successful with members and fans of all competing clubs snapping up tickets very quickly. Domain Stadium seats more than 43, 00 spectators, so the onsales always have extremely high demand and a large amount of traffic hitting Ticketmaster’s website, contact centre, outlets and stadium box office.
When a major onsale such as an AFL final occurs, you want Ticketmaster on your side. Ticketmaster’s website is superior to any other ticketing site in Australia and New Zealand and can handle up to 200,000 concurrent browsers and up to 2400 transactions. The sites effortlessly fulfilled the demand for tickets for the finals.
Ticketmaster has extensive experience facilitating major on sales in multiple markets and with the same technology that services major onsales in larger markets such as the USA and United Kingdom, Ticketmaster is the best choice for promoters, venues and events. Importantly, even when major onsales are occurring, the events of our other clients can still be accessed seamlessly.
Members of the competing clubs were granted first access to tickets for the AFL finals, which highlights the importance of being a member of your AFL Club.
The loyalty of AFL fans has not abated with the league and its 18 Clubs announcing a record combined membership in 2015.
The official tally at the end of the membership period was 836,136, which represents 31,656 more members than 2014 and a 3.93% jump.
We have always known AFL fans are a loyal bunch, but the consistent increases in membership year-on-year are solid proof that fans are committed to supporting their Clubs on and off the field by providing much needed financial assistance for their team.
Ticketmaster’s advanced database and CRM platform, Archtics, is used by the AFL and all 18 AFL Clubs. The platform is an efficient and user-friendly product that is utilised by all 18 AFL Clubs to renew current members, sign new members and communicate with members throughout the year.
In 2015, 12 of the AFL’s 18 Clubs set new membership records and 15 Clubs increased their membership from 2014. The biggest winner in terms of membership growth was Sydney, with a whopping 21.71% lift on their 2014 membership, taking their tally to 48,836.
Membership is critical to the AFL and its Clubs. The financial support provided by members is what assists Clubs to be successful off the field, which greatly benefits on field performance. Australian AFL fans appear to be very aware of this and it seems the AFL’s ‘call to arms’ for supporters to get on board as members is being heeded.
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Clark Atlanta University
Clark Atlanta University News
Analysis: Which college volleyball program grossed the most in Georgia
By Local Labs News Service | Apr 22, 2019
Kennesaw State University, Georgia State University and Georgia Southern University top the list of highest grossing college volleyball programs in Georgia in 2016
5.8 percent of Clark Atlanta University students played sports on university teams in 2016-2017
By Local Labs News Service | Mar 21, 2019
In 2016-2017, 5.8 percentage of Clark Atlanta University students participated in collegiate sports, according to data made available by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
Analysis: Which college football program grossed the most in Georgia
University of Georgia, Georgia State University and Georgia Southern University top the list of highest grossing college football programs in Georgia in 2016
Analysis: Which college baseball program grossed the most in Georgia
By Local Labs News Service | Mar 4, 2019
Mercer University, Georgia State University and Georgia Southern University top the list of highest grossing college baseball programs in Georgia in 2016
Analysis: Which college softball program grossed the most in Georgia
Mercer University, Georgia Southern University and Georgia State University top the list of highest grossing college softball programs in Georgia in 2016
By Local Labs News Service | Dec 31, 2018
Argosy University-Atlanta, Chamberlain University-Georgia and Shorter University-College of Adult & Professional Programs enrolled the most in-state students of all four-year Georgia schools, according to a Higher Education Tribune analysis of fall 2017 d
By Local Labs News Service | Nov 12, 2018
Georgia Christian University, Emory University and Savannah College of Art and Design enrolled the fewest in-state students of all four-year Georgia schools, according to a Higher Education Tribune analysis of fall 2017 data.
State institution: These 4-year U.S. schools attract the fewest in-state students
By Local Labs News Service | Oct 30, 2018
Georgia Christian University, Emory University and South University-Savannah Online enrolled the fewest in-state students of all four-year schools in the U.S., according to a Higher Education Tribune analysis of fall 2017 data.
58 percent of applicants to Clark Atlanta University were admitted for fall 2017
At Clark Atlanta University, 95 percent of undergraduate students are traditional students - age 24 or younger - and 72 percent are female, according to the latest disclosure from the U.S. Department of Education.
Cost of college went down for all students at Clark Atlanta University
By Local Labs News Service | Jul 8, 2018
Tuition and fees fell 2.3 percent for 2017-18 at Clark Atlanta University, according to the latest disclosure from the U.S. Department of Education.
Graduates earn 718 degrees, certificates from Clark Atlanta University
By Local Labs News Service | Jun 23, 2018
About 21.4 percent of the 718 degrees and certificates handed out by the Clark Atlanta University in 2016-17 were to students in Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services programs, making them the most popular programs that year, acc
The price of education: Which Georgia schools charge the highest in-state tuition?
By Local Labs News Service | May 30, 2018
Georgia residents pay the highest in-state tuition at Emory University, Cambridge Institute of Allied Health & Technology and Emory University-Oxford College, according to a Higher Education Tribune analysis of federal data.
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GAMING TREND
Treading water — Sea of Solitude review
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Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition Complete comes to PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, on July 30th
This remaster is bananas! Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD rolls to consoles this October
Full list of games coming to Ubisoft’s subscription service, Uplay+, revealed
The old king is dead, long live the king with Court of Ashes
Amplitude Impressions — Harmonix brings new life to a classic
By Eric Van Allen
Amplitude can be considered a cult classic among rhythm fans, a crazy game involving shooting down notes and gems to clear tracks of music and slowly piece together a song as it progresses. After a failed Kickstarter, Sony saw fit to give them a well-deserved second shot at releasing their new Amplitude title on PS4, and the results are truly amazing.
The game plays just like it used to, with easy beats and notes giving way to many tracks full of complex sequences. Completing phrases to clear the tracks, and gem phrases to earn power-ups, is crucial to keeping the track from falling apart. With only four buttons and the left stick or d-pad for controls, it’s easy for newcomers to pick up and play Amplitude.
The concept for the game is quite interesting. Doctors, attempting to find a way to induce synesthesia, accidentally put a patient into a coma. The game is representative of you delving into her subconscious to wake her up, and the synesthesia elements are portrayed in both the colors of the tracks, and the titles and lyrics of each song.
Sometimes it’s easier to get the drums and bass playing before moving to more difficult tracks.
PR and Communications lead Nick Chester said that the game’s soundtrack is like a concept album. Harmonix is working inhouse with composers and musicians to create an original soundtrack for the game.
Singleplayer was fantastic, but Harmonix also showed off a build of their multiplayer portion as well. Up to four players compete for score and are open to move to any track they want while playing the song. Tracks are first come, first serve; other players can play them, but if they weren’t the first onto the track, they won’t get points for clearing it. To combat this, power-ups can be used to disrupt other players or outright steal from them.
Completing gem phrases still give power-ups, but several new ones appear in multiplayer, including the time-slowing Sedate, the confusion-inducing Disrupt, and a power-up that forces all players out of a track, Eject, making the user the new king supreme of that track. Multiply serves the same purpose of boosting your score, and Clear allows you to steal the points for clearing a track, even mid-phrase.
The game starts out easy, but the difficulty quickly ramps up as you scale up the level of play.
Amplitude is back, and wow, is it fun. Throughout most of my time at Playstation Experience, I was trying to find time to squeak in another round of multiplayer. The game is fun for anyone to pick up and play, and the higher difficulties will pose a great challenge to those rhythm buffs who like to 100 percent every track.
Look f0r Amplitude in 2015, coming to both the PS3 and PS4.
Related Articles: Amplitude, PSX
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Sony Moves SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME Release Date Up a Couple Days
Movie Spider-Man: Far From HomeSonyMarvelMCUIndependence DayImage Safe about 2 months ago by Tommy Williams
Are you excited for Spider-Man: Far From Home? If you’re like me, your answer is, “yes, but I don’t care until I see Endgame next week!” Well, that’s all well and good and I don’t blame you. However, a new reason to get excited for Far From Home is that it will be in theaters sooner than expected.
Although the film was slated to release on July 5, it turns out that the date has moved to July 2. The change probably came as a means to help capitalize on Independence Day. I really don’t mind as that just means I get to see it sooner.
Marvel has been keeping a tight lid on some details about Far From Home including where in the MCU timeline it takes place. The reason is to prevent revealing anything from Avengers: Endgame which is the Marvel event of the year.
Peter Parker returns in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the next chapter of the Spider-Man: Homecoming series! Our friendly neighborhood Super Hero decides to join his best friends Ned, MJ, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation. However, Peter’s plan to leave super heroics behind for a few weeks are quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent!
Far From Home also stars Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, Jacob Batalon, Michael Keaton, J.B. Smoove, Samuel L. Jackson, and Numan Acar.
Jon Watts is directing the film from a script written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna. Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters July 5th, 2019.
Are you going to catch Far From Home on an earlier date now?
Via: /Film
Marvel Has a Countdown Clock for SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
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When I'm not writing for GameTyrant or GeekTyrant, I enjoy playing games and running my YouTube channel Poor Man Pedals for guitarists. For official inquiries, please email me: tommywilliams@geektyrant.com || @tyguitaxe
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Nokia XL Hands-On: A Lumia-Flavoured Android Phablet on a Budget
Filed to: nokiaFiled to: nokia
As well as the 4-inch X phones, Nokia's testing the Android waters with an entry-level phablet, the Nokia XL. Is this the first truly-affordable big-screen phone for emerging markets?
Set to be priced at roughly $150 when it launches in Q2, it certainly looks that way. Measuring 141.3 x 77.7 x 10.8mm and weighing 190g, it's equipped with a 5-inch IPS LCD, 800 x 480. At a screen this size, it's not very sharp, but its bright and boldly coloured. 4GB of storage space is built in, with microSD cards up to 32GB supported
From the outside, it looks like a Lumia phone, thanks to multiple polycarbonate case options. Though large, it's not very heavy, and sits quite comfortably in the hand. On the rear is a 5MP camera, a slight improvement on the Nokia X's 3MP sensor, though it too suffers from washed-out images and a lack of filter and effect options.
Running Nokia's own take on Android courtesy of the Android Open Source Project, this is a Lumia in all but name. A heavily-modified version of Android is onboard here, with Windows Phone-like app tiles and live updating information on the homescreen. Notifications and recent app history sits in a "Fastlane" pane, accessed from a right-to-left swipe on homescreens, while a down swipe accesses connectivity options, and the ability to switch on the fly between dual SIM cards.
The 8225 Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz Dual Core processor is onboard, and belies the budget nature of the phone. Even simple tasks such as re-arranging homescreen tiles felt sluggish, and it's telling that Nokia hadn't preloaded any intensive 3D gaming apps onto the demo handset I was allowed to play with.
The Nokia Store is onboard for app purchases as Google Play is not supported here. It has reportedly hundreds of thousands of apps already, though will not have quite the breadth of content offered by Google's own store. Standard Android APKs can be sideloaded though, as well as third-party app stores being supported, so at least there's plenty of options on offer to get the content you want, if you're ready to do a little bit of extra work in getting it.
The phablet market usually commands a premium, so at the very least Nokia is making a bold statement for its intentions with Android in emerging markets: they may not be highly spec'd, but all bases, including oversized handsets, will be covered.
Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the news in a different timezone—so check them out if you need another Giz fix.
Elon Musk's Neuralink Says It's Created Brain-Reading 'Threads,' Surgical Robot That Inserts Them
Scientists Find a New Kind of Cell That Helps Heal the Heart
Ed Cara
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Fair or Foul: If You Giveth, Can You Taketh Away?
By Walt Ciechanowski
February 6th, 2012 | GMing Advice | Printer Friendly
If you’ve been GMing for any length of time then you’ve probably allowed your characters to have something you soon regretted. Sometimes it’s handing a low-level character the +5 Holy Avenger, sometimes it’s letting the investigative psychic have the mind-reading power, and sometimes it’s letting the military characters acquire a lance of the most powerful mecha on the battlefield.
When such things happen, it can be difficult to “take it back” without hurting feelings or impacting the campaign. In some cases, the rules work against you; the PC’s new power was a legitimate XP purchase, the uber-weapon was lying in a treasure trove of a published adventure, or the war machines were legitimate salvage.
I think in theory, most GMs would say “if it is ruining the fun, get rid of it,” but this is easier said than done. Is it worth the aggravation and hurt feelings? Is it easier to try and work around it, even if it means cutting your campaign much shorter than you’d intended?
I’ve found that, as I’ve grown with experience, I can catch these things early and nip them in the bud with minimal fuss. The player is usually content so long as she doesn’t feel weakened by the taking; she gets her XP back, she’s offered something else of equivalent, but less game-breaking, value, or all the PCs take the same hit, equalizing the loss.
There are still times, though, when a player gets to keep something for several adventures before I realize it’s an issue (or I’ve stopped trying to work around it, which also isn’t fair to the player). By this point, the player has become attached to the new power and she has a paper trail of adventures to back her argument. Unless she can see how her power made those adventures less fun, then she’s going to have a difficult time wondering why you think it’s a problem.
So, fair or foul? If a PC acquires something that is problematic, should you take it away? Do the circumstances of the acquisition or the timing of the proposed taking matter? If you did take something away, how did it affect the rest of your campaign?
This post is brought to you by our wonderful patron Bill Carter, supporting us since August 2016! Thanks for helping us keep the stew fires going!
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Walt Ciechanowski
Walt’s been a game master ever since he accidentally picked up the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set in 1982. He became a freelance RPG writer in 2005 and is currently the Victoriana Line Developer for Cubicle 7. Walt lives in Springfield, PA with his wife Helena and their three children, Leianna, Stephen, and Zoe.
27 Responses to Fair or Foul: If You Giveth, Can You Taketh Away?
Necrognomicon on February 6, 2012 at 2:25 am
“Unless she can see how her power made those adventures less fun, then she’s going to have a difficult time wondering why you think it’s a problem.”
If the players are still having fun, I don’t see the problem. While you (the DM) may think that the PCs missed out on something really cool due to the item/power, I’m sure you’ve run games where everything was ‘balanced’ but the PCs still managed to skip/thwart whatever it is you thought was really cool.
There’s no guarantee that *not* having the power/item would make it *more* fun, just as there’s never a guarantee that every player will agree with you on what constitutes ‘fun’ in the adventure (or RPGs in general, for that matter).
Whatever it was in those sessions that the players enjoyed (roleplay, tabletalk, solving a problem in a novel way) wouldn’t necessarily happen in the parallel Earth-B version of your game.
It’s only a problem (in my experience and opinion) if the item impinges upon the other players’ enjoyment of the game, and usually they’ll let the DM know if that’s the case.
I agree that working around it is unfair to the player. You are likely making it *less* fun if you do that, since you are not letting the player make any use of their new toy.
If the all the players are having fun:
Don’t work it out, work it in.
Lord Karick on February 6, 2012 at 5:34 am
@Necrognomicon –
I was about to reply, but then I saw that Necrognomicon had made my point anyway. The 0th law of gaming if you will: Are they having fun. All other laws are subservient to that one.
Where it gets tricky is when you honestly believe that the magic twinky is spoiling the fun. I don’t envy the GM in that position 🙂
Walt Ciechanowski on February 6, 2012 at 5:55 am
@Necrognomicon – Thanks for the comment! I agree that it’s less of a problem if the group as a whole is having fun.
I should have made it clear that by “fun,” I’m also referring to “Player A’s fun at the expense of the other Players’ fun.”
Razjah on February 6, 2012 at 6:11 am
I would talk to the whole group. Ask them if the +5 holy avenger is really game breaking. If it becomes a big deal, ask the player is a temporary solution would work. The solution? One of the simplest tricks- it gets stolen and the party goes and a quest for revenge. Hopefully this new adventure will balance out the other PCs before giving back the awesome new toy an in game bully stole.
danroth on February 6, 2012 at 6:41 am
It could work out if you manage to have it break somehow, or lose some of its power magically (maybe an enemy can cast dispel magic, or something like that). If you want the brute force method, you could just throw really tough monsters at them and hope they die (I don’t endorse this). I like @Razjah‘s idea, too
Thammorn on February 6, 2012 at 6:51 am
I had a player in a Traveller20 game who built a small robot, which proceeded to hog gametime at the expense of other players (This was not the first time this player had become a “timehog” problem.). After a couple of players complained to me, I arranged for the ‘bot to sacrifice itself in order to say the party’s ship (and its pilot, one of the more vocal opponents coincidentally). The ‘bot went out in glory and the player, while sorry he lost his pet, took consolation that he died in a good cause. For some reason (DM Fiat), he nwas never able to get the parts to rebuild it…
DireBadger on February 6, 2012 at 7:16 am
If the “Thing” is out of hand, the owner might not necessarily notice or agree. Even if the other players don’t mind, the GM might have concerns, and GM fun matters too.
That said, just because the Thing can change the dynamic of a game doesn’t mean it’s bad and needs to be taken out back and shot. A power or item that bends plots can also be used to enable plots at a higher scale of play because of it’s power.
For example, in my Vampire campaign, one of the PCs has learnt a ritual to look back in time to see what happened before. This is a pretty hefty thing, because mystery-solving is important in my game. The player appreciates this, and understands this one power shouldn’t be allowed to easily shortcut entire mystery plots, but on the other hand I’m not going to take it away entirely.
Fortunately for me, the player agrees on it’s power, so we’ve reached a good compromise: to use the ritual, you must be at the place whose history you want to view, and you must know the specific time you wish to view. So it can’t do all the detective work, because you still need to learn when and where to look with it. I also gave it a significant casting time (2 hours), which matters because vampires need to be home before the sunrise turns them into pumpkins.
I like this solution because I don’t have to take away the essential nature of the Cool Thing, but it doesn’t disrupt the game quite as much because using it is more limited, and the limits give the other players a chance to get involved in the detective work as well.
Mike Matkin on February 6, 2012 at 7:39 am
There’s always the Tolkien route: turns out that the item or power in question is a source of great evil and must be destroyed or renounced, leading to an extraordinary quest.
Clawfoot on February 6, 2012 at 7:53 am
Yes, I have both given and taken away. When I first started my current D&D 4e campaign, I made a lot of mistakes due to my inexperience with the game. One of the “house rules” I made when the players were all still 1st level was that I changed the cleric’s “Turn Undead” power from a Channel Divinity (encounter power) to its own at-will power. At the time, it seemed appropriate, but I soon learned to deeply regret it. It was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made as a GM, as it unbalanced the party to a ridiculous degree. Eventually, the cleric had an at-will (now minor action, thanks to a Feat) power that was more powerful than any other character’s daily powers.
It wouldn’t normally be a huge deal, I’d just limit the number of undead the party faced, but we’re playing through all of the official D&D modules (H1: Keep on the Shadowfell through to E3: Prince of Undeath). See that last title there? Yeah, the whole run is chock full of undead. Plus, the cleric took another feat that allows his Turn Undead to also affect elementals (demons).
I spoke to the player about my concerns, and asked if she’d be upset if we reset the power to what it was supposed to be to begin with, and she was extremely reluctant to change it back. So I compromised. I allowed the power to stay the same in the natural world and in the Feywild, but on any other plane of existance (the Shadowfell, the Abyss, etc.), the character would be limited to using it as many times a day as his Wisdom modifier.
At one point (before nerfing the power), she wanted to take the Feat that made Turn Undead also affect dragons, and I actually put my foot down on that one. I don’t normally restrict which Feats players can take, but the ranger of the party had a Dragonslaying bow and a history of hunting and killing dragons. Dragons was his “thing,” and I really didn’t want this already overpowered cleric to start flinging dragons around like they were made of tissue paper.
I explained it to the player, and she agreed. We also agreed that Pelor (her character’s patron) didn’t really have anything against dragons as a whole, so wouldn’t grant his clerics that power. Yes, there are evil dragons, but there are also evil halflings, and he wouldn’t grant someone a “Turn Dragon” power any more than he would grant “Turn Halfling.”
So yes, I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve tried to fix them. I still think the cleric is overpowered, but it’s manageable now, and the other players aren’t feeling quite so outclassed.
@danroth – Woot! Someone liked my idea.
Back on topic:
@Mike Matkin -This may be better than my idea. Everyone wants to take down Sauron. Now you can be Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf and do it with style and less grumbling about empty bellies.
@Razjah – I think what I like best about it is that it gets the PC to give up the overpowered whatever by being a hero, rather than as a punishment. Plus, as a GM, it makes it look like I had it planned that way all along. Three cheers for the perception of infallibility!
Roxysteve on February 6, 2012 at 9:27 am
Oh yes, I’ve done this. I made my GM chops running classic BRP Call of Cthulhu, a system and milieu that tends to “buffer” bad GM handouts mainly by the short lifespans of the characters, so when I started running Delta Green as a D20 Call of Cthulhu game I naturally let some of my generous habits out for a bit.
In the words of the inimitable Spleen: BIG MISTAKE!
So far the only thing that has saved my bacon is that the group as a whole is a very good, tightly-knit one that seems to understand that munchkinism at the expense of the others isn’t a good thing, coupled with the fact that any secret grant of goodies is kept tightly to the chest of these paranoia-obsessed players (well, it *is* Delta Green).
I think there’s a lot to be said for the old White Box D&D idea that powerful items have their own ego and agendas (an idea right out of the Eternal Champion stories). The Holy Avenger will naturally cause it’s owner much inconvenience as it precipitates disaster in the pursuit of its own agenda, whatever that is. Easy enough to administer – simply tell the player that the price for any item’s huge bonus/special power is that the player must act on occasional notes passed or the device will steadily become less and less magical as it begins to sulk.
Some chance to sacrifice the item to the good of the party – with the consequences of not doing so being hard – is GM gold.
@Mike Matkin – Like it, but then there’s always gonna be a Boromir…
@Roxysteve – Sulking magic items… I’m not sure that it something I want to GM. I prefer less powerful magic items, but ones that can always do something with no baggage.
But then again, I hate the idea of a +N magic item.
To bring this on topic: I think circumstance can play a huge role in an item. If the players are 6th level and go out of their way to take down a huge ancient red dragon through a lot of prep work and a huge amount of luck. They can find a +1 Vorpal Sword. I think some very powerful gear is a great reward for doing something that is insanely dangerous.
Kurt "Telas" Schneider on February 6, 2012 at 10:22 am
I’ve reneged on a deal, but I talked to the player about it, and we agreed that it was overpowering. So we put together a plan to have it disappeared such that it didn’t disrupt the game too much.
The key is to talk to the player about it. Tell him or her that the Macguffin of Doom is overpowered, and is sucking everyone else’s fun out of the game.
And if your players don’t trust you to do the right thing, then perhaps you should find out why they don’t…
jbeard565 on February 6, 2012 at 10:24 am
Of course I had this problem a few times when I first started DM’ing back in the AD&D 2.0 days. So when my BIG campaign got going, I made sure to have an environment where I could reasonably remove any problem items from the party, and they would more or less expect it to happen.
In this case, the party regularly encountered thieves, or were overpowered (temporarily) by other thugs or big bad Necromancers or what have you. Each of these moments gives you an opportunity to have some NPC run off with a powerful item or two (which is then sold on the black market), and at the same time builds up a list of evil NPC’s that the players will be happy to catch up with later.
Having the item sold off on the black market, means that it is essentially lost forever to the player, if it’s too big a problem — else you can have it recoverable when the party has reached a more appropriate level.
In either event, you’ve gained more gris for the story mill, and developed some NPCs to fill out the world with.
IcebergTitanic on February 6, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I had the exact scenario in one of my early D&D games described there. A low-level paladin got a limited wish, and wanted a +5 Holy Avenger. Having already dug the hole of giving WAY too much of a reward to a low-level character, I just ran with it.
As expected, the sword was way too powerful.
So word soon got out about a ‘noob with a really fancy sword, and the PC’s found themselves being hounded by thieves, other religious organizations, and the Paladin’s own church, all wanting to get their hands on the sword. In the end, the Paladin ended up giving it to the church in exchange for quite a bit of prestige and some nice, level-appropriate gear.
But what I liked about it was that the choice wasn’t just taken from the PC. The player could have continued trying to keep the weapon, but they were finding themselves more and more hampered by outside interference, and by parties that he couldn’t justify using the sword against! In the end, sacrificing the sword became the Player’s decision, rather than GM fiat.
evil on February 6, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Lots of great responses…. I usually take the approach Roxysteve mentioned; make the item sentient. Not only can this work in your favor by offering opinions, red herrings, and other information to your players, but it can also be a great way to get players on side storylines.
I’m all for taking away what I’ve given, but to quote Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: Bust a deal and spin the wheel! Go for it if you accept the consequences.
Roxysteve on February 6, 2012 at 4:30 pm
@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – Yes, but I think there are often graceful ways of reneging on a deal that can make that painful conversation (in which no-one will win) perhaps less necessary, especially if the problem is an insanely overpowered magical item.
The player might not even realize the “sulking +5 sorry +4 sorry +3 Sword of Smitery” is being subtly nerfed back into a more reasonable form if it is done right.
Of course, if you can come up with a quest in which the end is to plunge said sword into a rock so the future King of Lancre can pull it out years from now to demonstrate his fitness to rule, so much the better. No player worth their salt would resist the urge to be in on such a meta-world moment.
But if the game-buster is less a material adjunct and more a character tweak, then you are in a tougher position, I agree.
I love Walt’s articles. It always seems there’s a story behind them that would be worth hearing. Walt’s games seem to me those in which a high-level sorcerer might ask to raise a tower and a cohort of non-human creatures one week and be granted that power, only for Walt to sit clutching his head and moaning as he was witness to the utter destruction of the curtain wall of Helm’s Deep (the maps of which took him days to draw and index) a few games later.
Tomcollective on February 6, 2012 at 10:15 pm
An old friend and I have a saying:
Game balance is 10 more orks on the table.
I agree with the general spirit of the suggestions. You can take away in game, without making the player aware you’re taking away.
Star Wars D6, a system I always quite liked, had a huge problem with Jedi being hugely overpowered when compared to any other party members, or any THING else in the game. So the characters, just playing the game, were overpowered. I did the only thing I could, I would make them to spend their force points. In other words, I would make their life hell. (Best example: demolishing a building with said Jedi still in it.)
Think of it this way, if a player has a game breaking item or power, match the game to the new item or power. Yeah, there will still be mooks and easy kills, but the stuff that comes out of the woodwork should now require the player use this new item or power in order to deal with it. Even better, if you can create something more badass than your player’s new badass item or power. Best, if this thing requires the player to sacrifice problematic item or power in order to save the town/kingdom/world.
And remember, if you don’t get at least one “HOLY CRAP!” from your players, you’re not doing your job. You’re the GM. You are God. Whatever your players can do, you can do better. Make them work, and you can get away with anything.
Silveressa on February 7, 2012 at 3:25 am
Another aspect of the fun many people over look is the GM’s fun factor. Sometimes giving an upgrade to the PC/party can not only imbalance the game, but impact the amount of fun the campaign is for the GM to continue running.
Just like players, if the Gm isn’t having fun doing the campaign, her (or his) frustration/lack of enthusiasm will bleed over to the players and can run a campaign into the ground inside of a few sessions.
Increasing the difficulty of encounters to balance out the newly acquired uber item/s is usually easily enough done (I.E Toms 10 more orcs on the table)but it can alter the feeling of an adventure drastically into something the Gm never intended and doesn’t find fun/interesting to run.
For example when increasing the challenge level of a low to mid range encounter, you quickly go from an isolated group of ragtag bandits comprised of the survivors of a fire at the local orphanage a few months ago; to a surprisingly adept and well equipped mercenary squad that realistically would be waylaying the merchant caravans of the main trade routes rather then harassing a small back water hamlet.
However, depending on the item/s in question the Gm can also potentially add an unforeseen flaw or side effect to it that makes the item less unbalancing and likely to only be used in the most dire of circumstances rather then every possible encounter.
For example a magical undead slaying sword may have the heretofore unknown side effect of attracting all of the undead in a 10 mile radius for the next 48 hours after it’s been used in combat.
Something more high tech like a lance of mecha could have a huge upkeep cost in hard to find parts, (caused by the factory that produces them recently being destroyed during the groups next adventure?)or a little known design flaw that requires frequent replacement of servo joints due to hydraulic over pressure under combat conditions.
When it comes to things less tangible (like psi abilities or newly acquired super powers) adding in unforeseen flaws can become more tricky, in which case it’s usually best discussing with the character how their ability x is unbalancing the game by removing the challenge of many encounters or making it impossible for the rest of the party to effectively contribute to the scenes.
Most players I’ve dealt with when offered an alternative, (or alteration to the ability to give it some drawbacks or hindrances) will usually go along with the change rather then risk the others players losing interest in the campaign or no longer wishing to game with them.
When faced with the possibility of no game at all, many players are willing to make surprising sacrifices to keep a failing campaign alive or ensure their character is still welcome at the table.
Once the player agrees to the change, the ability in question can then manifest an unforeseen side effect or undergo a mysterious change (Caused by illness or a villains machinations in game to keep with continuity and make the transition less of a campaign upset.
Tsenn on February 7, 2012 at 4:05 am
I like what IcebergTitanic did. I also agree with Tomcollective, but on the condition that the new challenges aren’t solely about the new thing.
I once gave a Star Wars crew a 0.1 hyperdrive. It was a great advantage in helping defend against the new galactic threat, but it also helped get them in trouble faster than ever before!
Talking with the player is almost always the best way to go. Be prepared to offer a compromise, substitute, or extra moment of awesome.
mythusmage on February 7, 2012 at 10:32 pm
There are two things to remember here; one is that the story never ends; second, that complications always arise. And if your players get the impression you’re out to get them, agree with them. But play honestly and avoid metagaming.
Let your villains have a stab at the maguffin, but limit what they do to what they can reasonably do. No using GM knowledge to give your baddie an edge. And if your players out smart you, then they out smart you and win the day.
TheHydraDM on February 8, 2012 at 6:17 am
I’m reminded of the core wealth mechanic of 1st edition (and by extension many MMORPGs that copied it) – give the player a ton of stuff, and find a way to keep it flowing from their hands and back into the faceless NPC coffers of the world at roughly the rate it arrived. Class training costs are an obvious example of handing out money that doesn’t actually amount to money, but I’m reminded of a certain character’s magic shield falling from his arm and rolling down an irretrievably deep crevice when he tripped in a certain cavern. Or when some rather snazzy swords, including a Holy Avenger, were transported to another plane and transformed back into plain old unenchanted iron in Gygax’s own AD&D game.
As long as you throw more stuff at the players I think it’s fair to give and take in equal measure, and a lot of the taking is best done in the context of the story, not of taking a player aside and going “you know what, this item is too damaging to the gameplay”.
Sarlax on February 8, 2012 at 12:23 pm
I think there are two things you can giveth: Rulings and resources. They can blend together. Use tact when correcting them. Of course, the goal is fun.*
If you gave a player a favorable ruling on some question, or created a house-rule, I think you’re on pretty good ground to amend it, but it’s important to discuss the amendment with the player. The discussion should actually be two-way. See if there’s a better ruling that you can both live with. That discussion keeps the player involved, which will usually reduce or eliminate the tension that would otherwise arise from a fiat ruling.
If you’ve given the player an in-game resource, discussions are often appropriate, so the abuse advice would apply. However, I think taking a resource should be achieved in a reasonable in-game manner. If you don’t like the +5 Holy Avenger being in the same, you should find a reason to get rid of it that doesn’t look like a hack. Maybe have the PC seen using it publicly. In the next session, the PC has to deal with thieves, etc. who want the sword and can probably get it. I would try not to be heavy handed, and take the resource in a way that gives the player choices. In the sword example, the player might hide the sword until he’s high enough level to defend it, or sell it off, or donate it to a more powerful hero, or just take his chances.
A tricky thing may be when a ruling results in unbalanced resource, since you need to correct both.
*On fun: If the players are having fun, then the ruling or resource doesn’t need to be changed. But the GM is a player too. If he’s created rule or resource which is fun for everyone else but gives him a headache, it’s got to be fixed. The players might love having a time machine, but it’s probably a pain for the GM.
Items like Holy Avengers especially are a double-edged sword both literally and figuratively:
Besides just making them more of a target to the big bads, one way to deal with items that aren’t practical to make evil or sentient is to make the former owner a Paladin of a *different* Good deity.
While their church would never attack nor deny help to a Good party, the common followers of a religion aren’t always so altruistic. The party might subsequently encounter cold shoulders, higher prices at shops, inns with ‘no vacancy but room in the barn’, etc. While this obviously doesn’t present quite the problem an evil or sentient item does, it can lead to some interesting choices from the PCs.
E-l337 on February 9, 2012 at 4:19 pm
As anyone who’s played d20 Future knows, bringing a mecha to a gunfight can be pretty unfair – especially if you’ve allowed one of your PCs to have their own large-sized variant, despite several drawbacks.
Does it make fights easier? Oh, indefinitely. Was it a mistake in allowing that player to use it, however? That I would disagree on, because I think it can actually make for some very interesting situations.
I have ‘taken away’ this mecha on a few occasions. Either an area is too small for it to operate in effectively, or in another case, the PCs were using it to power something else. It made for some very exciting action once the pilot was separated – and nearly died on a few occasions as well.
But what about magic items? Okay. Say you give out a +5 Holy Avenger a few levels too early, and it’s making gameplay unbalanced. “Curse” the weapon. Have someone steal it. I am of the opinion that removal of the item permanently is a huge no-no – it should in fact be used to further the story in some way, while adding for an extra bit of excitement.
Don’t think of it as having to earn your item again. Think of it as having to prove your worthiness in owning the item in question.
That’s how I like to look at it, anyway.
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Gold Forex
Thousands gather to watch Burj Khalifa lit up with Canadian flag colours in Dubai
The flag-inspired projection on the world’s tallest building was seen for over one minute
Published: July 02, 2019 07:48 Ashfaq Ahmed, Associate Editor - Online
National flag of Canada is displayed on Burj Khalifa on the occasion of Canada's National Day. Image Credit: Virendra Saklani/Gulf News
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People espcially Canadian cheered with joy as the Canadian flag colours with trademark maple leave wrapped the world’s tallest building in Dubai at 8.25pm. The flag-inspired projection could be seen for more than one minute and ten seconds.
Meanwhile, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Monday sent a message of congratulations to Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, on the occasion of Canada Day, which is marked on July 1.
Similar greetings were sent to the Governor General by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.
Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid and Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed also congratulated Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
Image Credit: Virendra Saklani/Gulf News
In an earlier statement, Ambassador of Canada Masud Husain said: “As my three years as Canada’s Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates draw to a close, I can think of no greater validation of both our missions’ efforts to build links between our countries than to see our flag projected sky-high on the Burj Khalifa,” Masud Husain, Ambassador of Canada to the UAE said in an statement on the occasion."
“It is all the more fitting that it should happen during the Year of Tolerance. Let this moment inspire Canadians, Emiratis and all UAE residents, and let it remind them that the future belongs to societies which welcome and include all, no matter their ethnicity, culture or religion,” he added.
Marcy Grossman, Consul General of Canada in Dubai, said that entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation are increasingly Canada’s international calling cards, and nowhere is that better represented than in the significant contribution of Canadians to the building of the Burj Khalifa.
“As we turn our attention to Expo 2020 Dubai, you can expect to see more great things from Canada,” Grossman added.
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Ronnie James Dio/Niji Entertainment
You may know David Rock Feinstein as the current guitarist/vocalist for the New York Heavy Metal legends The Rods but he was also a member of Elf with his cousin Ronnie James Dio. Feinstein has been on the music scene for close to forty years, playing on Elf’s debut album, releasing seven albums in the ’80s with The Rods and one record under the band name Feinstein but it’s his family affiliation with Dio that most fans knwo about. BITTEN BY THE BEAST is Feinstein’s second solo record (the first was 2004’s THIRD WISH by the band Feinstein) and the main draw is the final studio recording of Ronnie James Dio on vocals. This record has been a two year labor of love for Feinstein who plays all the instruments except the drums, cut all the vocals except for the Dio led ‘Metal Will Never Die’ and was the producer. The album has been released on Niji Entertainment (Wendy Dio’s company) and not only features Ronnie James Dio on ‘Metal Will Never Die’ but a full Rods reunion with Carl Canedy (bass) and Garry Bordonaro (drums) also playing on the track.
“I am Metal and I will never die….” A very prophetic and eerie line in ‘Metal Will Never Die’. Like I mentioned, the draw here was the last studio recording of the late Ronnie James Dio on ‘Metal Will Never Die’…..honestly, this is the only reason why I bought the album. ‘Metal Will Never Die’ is a slow, doomy Sabbath style song that fits Ronnie perfectly…..always the consumate professional, Dio puts in a solid vocal performance. Listen closely after the opening guitar intro and as Dio starts singing, the rhythm section gets into a groove that has touches of the underlying rhythm parts of the Black Sabbath classic ‘Heaven & Hell’. As I mentioned, Carl Canedy and Garry Bordonaro of The Rods join Feinstein and Dio on this song and that also leads us into the ineveitable Rods reunion, I heard there’s an album being worked on right now! Obviously, this song is going to get BITTEN BY THE BEAST the most mileage in the press and it should, it’s the best song on the album. I’ve heard a couple of interviews with Feinstein about the production and mixing of this song, and of the album, and Ronnie was also involved in the mixing process.
Now that we have the Dio portion of the album out of the way, how does the rest of the album stack up? The rest of BITTEN BY THE BEAST is a meat & potatoes, old school ’80s Metal feast that features your basic guitar, bass , drums and vocals all primed to Rock. Feinstein vocals are very raspy and gritty and at times I hear a but of Brian Johnson (AC/DC) and Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) in his delivery. There really isn’t a set style to all the songs but more of a wide range of styles that include straight Heavy Metal on tracks like ‘Smoke On The Horizon’, ‘Evil In Me’, ‘Kill The Demon’, ‘Break Down The Walls’ and’Give Me Mercy’, to a southern Blues Rock boogie groove on ‘Rocks Boogie’ that sounds like ZZ Top mixed with AC/DC, to Power Metal on ‘Run For Your Life’, to a ’70s sludge on ‘Gambler Gambler’. This entire record is based on one thing…..the guitar. Every single song has killer riffs and solid solos, they may be basic guitar parts compared to the intricate stylings of current day Metal guitarists but Feinstein does a solid job of putting the riffs out there and in your face. What draws me in is the old school Metal sound, it all sounds dated and you can hear the influences on some songs: ‘Evil In Me’ and ‘Kill The Demon’ have that Dio sound, ‘Break Down The Walls’ has Judas Priest written all over it and the Black Sabbath influence on ‘Metal Will Never Die’ is obvious.
I’m an old school metalhead so I enjoyed BITTEN BY THE BEAST. The songs may sound dated but they are well done and definitely in your face. The songs are catchy,powerful and well written and performed, that’s all you can really ask for in a true Heavy Metal record. The obvious reason to buy this album is ‘Metal Will Never Die’ with the late Ronnie James Dio on vocals but I think that song also overshadows what is a pretty solid album. I’m not taking away from the Ronnie song, it’s an integral part of the album, but if people buy this and don’t go beyond to the other songs then it’s a waste. Take that one song off the album and you still have a solid Metal album that’s worth checking out.
‘Smoke On The Horizon’, ‘Break Down The Walls’, ‘Metal Will Never Die’
By rhodeislandrock Posted in Album Reviews Tagged AOR, Black Metal, Classic Rock, David 'Rock' Feinstein, Death Metal, Dio, Glam, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Melodic Rock, Metal, Music, NWOBHM, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Rock, Ronnie James Dio, The Rods, Thrash, Thrash Metal
One comment on “David Rock Feinstein – Bitten By The Beast (2010)”
Rob Rockitt
I haven’t picked this one up yet, but I am anxious to hear this one. I did hear the track with Dio, and I like that one pretty well.
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Has Type A made its way into your TMR?
If dairy producers thought their corn silage quality was top notch when they packed it away after the 2015 harvest, they may want to check again. Since Alltech’s North America Harvest Analysis in December, additional testing through the Alltech 37+® mycotoxin analysis program is now indicating Type A Trichothecene mycotoxins are on the rise.
According to Dr. Max Hawkins, Alltech Mycotoxin Management team nutritionist, Type A Trichothecenes, predominantly known as the T-2 group, have shown an increase in levels present from 33.18 parts per billion (ppb) in September to 86.38 ppb in February. Type A Trichothecenes have been present in 46 percent of all samples of corn silage that have been submitted to the 37+ program.
“The levels are higher than in years past, and exactly why that may be is difficult to identify. There may be many causes,” said Hawkins.
Type A Trichothecenes are formed from Fusarium molds. Fusariums require moisture levels at or above 70 percent humidity as well as oxygen and a temperature range that can include cool days and nights to cool nights and hot days. Corn plants stressed from insect damage or birds, plant disease, wind and hail are always a concern for mold proliferation. Corn silages that are drier, poorly packed and allow greater oxygen penetration are also at a greater risk.
The ingestion of Type A Trichothecenes can impact dry matter intake, weight gain, milk production, transition issues, haemorrhages, estrus, conception rates, embryo survival and mortality.
The Alltech 37+ mycotoxin analysis tested 239 total corn silage samples from Sept.1, 2015 to March 8, 2016. The average sample contained 5.28 mycotoxins. Type B Trichothecenes and Fusaric acid were present in more than 90 percent of the samples, while fumonisins have been found in over 70 percent of the samples. The levels of these mycotoxin groups have remained relatively constant at a moderate-to-high risk since harvest. Type A Trichothecene toxins, however, have shown a steady increase since 2016.
“The increasing level of Type A Trichothecenes, along with the steadily higher level of Type B Trichothecenes and Fusaric acid, creates a combination of mycotoxins that can easily increase the risk of corn silage that is being included in to the TMR,” said Hawkins.
Hawkins suggests testing grains and feed for moisture, mold count, yeast count and mycotoxins. Ensure corn silage is properly stored and implement good face management practices and feeding conditions. When all possible preventative measures have been taken, the use of a mycotoxin mitigating substance (or a sequestering agent) in the feed can help reduce or prevent the negative effects mycotoxins have on the animal and additionally improve rumen function, gut health and integrity. The most effective agents are those that can help combat the risk of multiple mycotoxin contamination.
“If mycotoxins are an issue, your herd will be the first to signal,” said Hawkins. “If animals are not performing to their potential or unexplained symptoms persist, you may want to consider your corn silage quality.”
The latest data from the Alltech 37+® mycotoxin anaylsis program indicates that Type A Trichothecenes, predominantly known as the T-2 group, are on the rise. Type A Trichothecenes’ levels have increased from 33.18 parts per billion (ppb) in September to 86.38 ppb in February.
For the latest information on mycotoxin-related news and research, analytical testing through the Alltech 37+® mycotoxin analysis program and complete field-to-feed out management solutions, visit Knowmycotoxins.com.
About Alltech:
Founded in 1980 by Irish entrepreneur and scientist Dr. Pearse Lyons, Alltech improves the health and performance of people, animals and plants through nutrition and scientific innovation, particularly yeast-based technology, nutrigenomics and algae. With nearly 100 manufacturing sites globally, Alltech is the leading producer and processor of yeast and organic trace minerals, and its flagship algae production facility in Kentucky is one of only two of its kind in the world.
The company’s guiding ACE principle seeks to develop solutions that are safe for the Animal, Consumer and the Environment and is actively supported by more than 4,700 team members worldwide.
Alltech is the only privately-held company among the top five animal health companies in the world. This is a source of competitive advantage, which allows Alltech to adapt quickly to emerging customer needs and to stay focused on advanced innovation and long-term objectives. Headquartered just outside of Lexington, Kentucky, USA, Alltech has a strong presence in all regions of the world.
For further information, visit www.alltech.com/news.
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La Crosse Seed Recognized for Cover Crop Leadership by Receiving an Iowa Water Quality Initiative Award Previous
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Tarik Cohen makes history on 61 yard, video game-like punt return
Former North Carolina star A&T does everything wrong on return and still comes up with a history-making touchdown.
Tarik Cohen’s magical NFL rookie season just hit another milestone on Saturday.
The former North Carolina A&T star and Chicago Bears running back lit up the San Francisco 49ers for a 61-yard punt return that accomplished something no rookie has done in 50 years.
Cohen’s “straight outta Madden” punt return score made him the first rookie since Gale Sayers to score on a punt in addition to throwing for a touchdown, rushing for a touchdown and catching for a touchdown in the same season.
This is why you DO NOT kick to @TarikCohen.
Absolutely ridiculous. #DaBears pic.twitter.com/UahwkjI02F
— NFL (@NFL) December 3, 2017
The diminutive running back started the season with a bang, setting a team record for all-purpose yards in a debut with 158. In October, Cohen hit tight end Heath Miller for a touchdown pass.
On the year Cohen has rushed for 262 yards and two touchdowns. He’s been used heavily as a receiver, catching 35 touchdown passes in his first 11 games. He entered the day ranked in the top ten of all-purpose yards in the league.
Not bad for a guy that A&T coach Rod Broadway told probably wouldn’t be an every-down back.
Related Items:Chicago Bears, featured, North Carolina A&T, Tarik Cohen
Top MEAC QBs 2019: Whoever plays for NCAT
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Full prescribing information including boxed warning with medication guide
Science of BOTOX® Cosmetic
Verifying Authenticity
Dosage & Administration
In your practice
Allergan & You
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Three indications.
One Name.
BOTOX® Cosmetic is the only FDA-approved treatment for the temporary improvement in the appearance of moderate to severe forehead lines, lateral canthal lines, and glabellar lines in adults.1
Actual patient treated for moderate to severe forehead, crow's feet
and glabellar lines. Results may vary.
Learn everything you need to know about
BOTOX® Cosmetic,
including the results
from pivotal clinical studies.
Actual patient treated for moderate to severe crow's feet
Find detailed instructions on how to correctly
prepare and administer BOTOX® Cosmetic.
Unlock the full potential of your partnership
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Have questions about Allergan products,
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payments, or orders?
Call Customer Service at 1-800-377-7790.
1. BOTOX® Cosmetic Prescribing Information, October 2017.
BOTOX® Cosmetic (onabotulinumtoxinA) IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION, INCLUDING BOXED WARNING
WARNING: DISTANT SPREAD OF TOXIN EFFECT: Postmarketing reports indicate that the effects of BOTOX® Cosmetic and all botulinum toxin products may spread from the area of injection to produce symptoms consistent with botulinum toxin effects. These may include asthenia, generalized muscle weakness, diplopia, ptosis, dysphagia, dysphonia, dysarthria, urinary incontinence and breathing difficulties. These symptoms have been reported hours to weeks after injection. Swallowing and breathing difficulties can be life threatening and there have been reports of death. The risk of symptoms is probably greatest in children treated for spasticity but symptoms can also occur in adults treated for spasticity and other conditions, particularly in those patients who have an underlying condition that would predispose them to these symptoms. In unapproved uses, including spasticity in children, and in approved indications, cases of spread of effect have been reported at doses comparable to those used to treat cervical dystonia and upper limb spasticity and at lower doses.
WARNING: DISTANT SPREAD OF TOXIN EFFECT: Postmarketing reports indicate that the effects of BOTOX® Cosmetic and all botulinum toxin products may spread from the area of injection to produce symptoms consistent with botulinum toxin effects. These may include asthenia, generalized muscle weakness, diplopia, ptosis, dysphagia, dysphonia, dysarthria, urinary incontinence and breathing difficulties. These symptoms have been reported hours to weeks after injection. Swallowing and breathing difficulties can be life threatening and there have been reports of death. The risk of symptoms is probably greatest in children treated for spasticity but symptoms can also occur in adults treated for spasticity and other conditions, particularly in those patients who have an underlying condition that would predispose them to these symptoms. In unapproved uses, including spasticity in children, and in approved indications, cases of spread of effect have been reported at doses comparable to those used to treat cervical dystonia and spasticity and at lower doses.
BOTOX® Cosmetic (onabotulinumtoxinA) is indicated in adult patients for the temporary improvement in the appearance of:
moderate to severe glabellar lines associated with corrugator and/or procerus muscle activity
moderate to severe lateral canthal lines associated with orbicularis oculi activity
moderate to severe forehead lines associated with frontalis activity
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (continued)
BOTOX® Cosmetic is contraindicated in the presence of infection at the proposed injection site(s) and in individuals with known hypersensitivity to any botulinum toxin preparation or to any of the components in the formulation.
Lack of Interchangeability between Botulinum Toxin Products
The potency Units of BOTOX® Cosmetic are specific to the preparation and assay method utilized. They are not interchangeable with other preparations of botulinum toxin products and, therefore, units of biological activity of BOTOX® Cosmetic cannot be compared to nor converted into units of any other botulinum toxin products assessed with any other specific assay method.
Spread of Toxin Effect
Please refer to Boxed Warning for Distant Spread of Toxin Effect.
No definitive serious adverse event reports of distant spread of toxin effect associated with dermatologic use of BOTOX® Cosmetic at the labeled dose of 20 Units (for glabellar lines), 24 Units (for lateral canthal lines), 40 Units (for forehead lines with glabellar lines), 44 Units (for simultaneous treatment of lateral canthal lines and glabellar lines), and 64 Units (for simultaneous treatment of lateral canthal lines, glabellar lines, and forehead lines) have been reported.
Serious Adverse Reactions With Unapproved Use
Serious adverse reactions, including excessive weakness, dysphagia, and aspiration pneumonia, with some adverse reactions associated with fatal outcomes, have been reported in patients who received BOTOX® injections for unapproved uses. In these cases, the adverse reactions were not necessarily related to distant spread of toxin, but may have resulted from the administration of BOTOX® to the site of injection and/or adjacent structures. In several of the cases, patients had pre-existing dysphagia or other significant disabilities. There is insufficient information to identify factors associated with an increased risk for adverse reactions associated with the unapproved uses of BOTOX®. The safety and effectiveness of BOTOX® for unapproved uses have not been established.
Hypersensitivity Reactions
Serious and/or immediate hypersensitivity reactions have been reported. These reactions include anaphylaxis, serum sickness, urticaria, soft-tissue edema, and dyspnea. If such reactions occur, further injection of BOTOX® Cosmetic should be discontinued and appropriate medical therapy immediately instituted. One fatal case of anaphylaxis has been reported in which lidocaine was used as the diluent and, consequently, the causal agent cannot be reliably determined.
There have been reports following administration of BOTOX® of adverse events involving the cardiovascular system, including arrhythmia and myocardial infarction, some with fatal outcomes. Some of these patients had risk factors including pre-existing cardiovascular disease. Use caution when administering to patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease.
Increased Risk of Clinically Significant Effects with Pre-existing Neuromuscular Disorders
Individuals with peripheral motor neuropathic diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or neuromuscular junction disorders (eg, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome) should be monitored when given botulinum toxin. Patients with neuromuscular disorders may be at increased risk of clinically significant effects including generalized muscle weakness, diplopia, ptosis, dysphonia, dysarthria, severe dysphagia, and respiratory compromise from onabotulinumtoxinA (see Warnings and Precautions).
Dysphagia and Breathing Difficulties
Treatment with BOTOX® and other botulinum toxin products can result in swallowing or breathing difficulties. Patients with pre-existing swallowing or breathing difficulties may be more susceptible to these complications. In most cases, this is a consequence of weakening of muscles in the area of injection that are involved in breathing or oropharyngeal muscles that control swallowing or breathing (see Boxed Warning).
Pre-existing Conditions at the Injection Site
Caution should be used when BOTOX® Cosmetic treatment is used in the presence of inflammation at the proposed injection site(s) or when excessive weakness or atrophy is present in the target muscle(s).
Human Albumin and Transmission of Viral Diseases
This product contains albumin, a derivative of human blood. Based on effective donor screening and product manufacturing processes, it carries an extremely remote risk for transmission of viral diseases and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). There is a theoretical risk for transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), but if that risk actually exists, the risk of transmission would also be considered extremely remote. No cases of transmission of viral diseases, CJD or vCJD have ever been identified for licensed albumin or albumin contained in other licensed products.
ADVERSE REACTIONS
The most frequently reported adverse reaction following injection of BOTOX® Cosmetic for glabellar lines was eyelid ptosis (3%).
The most frequently reported adverse reaction following injection of BOTOX® Cosmetic for lateral canthal lines was eyelid edema (1%).
The most frequently reported adverse reactions following injection of BOTOX® Cosmetic for forehead lines with glabellar lines were headache (9%), brow ptosis (2%) and eyelid ptosis (2%).
Co-administration of BOTOX® Cosmetic and aminoglycosides or other agents interfering with neuromuscular transmission (eg, curare-like compounds) should only be performed with caution as the effect of the toxin may be potentiated. Use of anticholinergic drugs after administration of BOTOX® Cosmetic may potentiate systemic anticholinergic effects.
The effect of administering different botulinum neurotoxin products at the same time or within several months of each other is unknown. Excessive neuromuscular weakness may be exacerbated by administration of another botulinum toxin prior to the resolution of the effects of a previously administered botulinum toxin.
Excessive weakness may also be exaggerated by administration of a muscle relaxant before or after administration of BOTOX® Cosmetic.
USE IN SPECIFIC POPULATIONS
There are no studies or adequate data from postmarketing surveillance on the developmental risk associated with use of BOTOX® Cosmetic in pregnant women. There are no data on the presence of BOTOX® Cosmetic in human or animal milk, the effects on the breastfed child, or the effects on milk production.
Please see BOTOX® Cosmetic Full Prescribing Information including Boxed Warning and Medication Guide.
© 2019 Allergan. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
BCT62385-v10 06/19
The information on this site is intended for US medical professionals only. The information on this site is not intended as a substitute for professional medical training.
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Vitamin B12 Toxicity Level
Nervous Tics in Children
Vitamins That Cause Calming
Facts on Vitamin B
Causes of Ankle and Lower Leg Swelling
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Vitamin B Complex & Mood Disorders
By Lacretia Hardy
More than 21 million Americans are affected each year by depression and similar mood disorders, according to Mental Health America. Registered dietitian Susan Bowerman reports that certain B vitamins can combat depression and enhance mood. These nutrients, including folate and vitamin B12, can be found in foods or in vitamin form. If you are experiencing depression, consult with a mental health professional for treatment and guidance.
Vitamin B Complex and Mental Functions
Vitamin B complex has been clearly linked to neurological development and mental functions in human beings. According to Psychopharmacology magazine, research proves that this vitamin complex, constituted of eight different vitamins, is helpful in improving mood and memory, especially long-term memory.
Effects of Vitamin B Deficiency
We all know that eating a healthy and nutritious diet is important, but not everyone eats a balanced diet on a regular basis. A poor diet can certainly lead to vitamin deficiencies, but sometimes, vitamin deficiencies can occur even if you eat a balanced diet. This happens when the vitamins you are eat reach your intestines but do not get absorbed. Chronic disorders that affect the bowels, such as Crohn's disease and celiac disease, could lead to this reduced absorption or non-absorption of nutrients. Chronic deficiency of vitamins B6, B12 and other B vitamins may lead to depression and other mood disorders. Other effects include fatigue, irritability, sleep disturbances, dementia, agitation, nervousness and hallucinations.
Vitamin B Complex and Mood Disorders
Vitamin B complex deficiencies can lead to mood disorders and depression, but that does not in any way imply that vitamin B complex should be considered a treatment for all mood disorders. Supplementation with vitamin B complex alone will help, but you will only experience significant improvement if you have been suffering from mood disorders due to a vitamin B deficiency and not any other cause.
Avoiding Mood Disorders From Vitamin B Deficiency
There are simple things you can do to avoid developing a vitamin B-complex deficiency. Eat a balanced diet with plenty of animal products like meat, fish and poultry, or, if you are a vegetarian, opt for fortified cereals and other foods. You may also supplement your diet with high-quality vitamins, but be careful not to overdose. Overuse of certain vitamins can be equally as harmful as vitamin deficiency. Consult with a health-care professional if you have questions about managing your mood disorder with nutrition.
Journal of Psychopharmacology: "Treatment of Depression: Time to Consider Folic Acid and Vitamin B12"; C. Bolander-Gouaille; 2005
Mental Health America: Ranking America's Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across the States
Lacretia Hardy is a health coach and has been a published writer since 1992. Her work has appeared in several publications, including "Patient In Charge," and on various websites. Hardy holds a Bachelor of Science in health science, as well as certificates in food and nutrition education and holistic health counseling.
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Difference Between Hives & Shingles
Can You Get Rid of Hives With Green Tea?
Herbal Remedies for Hives
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Epsom Salt for Hives
By Kimberli Nalven ; Updated July 27, 2017
Experts at Mayo Clinic suggest soaking skin in an Epsom salt solution can sooth skin irritations like swimmer's itch or hives by reducing the itch and inflammation associated with the outbreak. The Epsom salts are dissolved in warm water and the affected area is submerged and soaked in the liquid. Chronic hives that occur from an underlying health issue can not be treated or cured by either internal or external Epsom salt treatment.
Epsom salt or magnesium sulfate is, according to Drugs.com, sometimes referred to as a drug because of its medicinal uses. However, the substance is a naturally occurring mineral found in nature. Hives are small round bumps that may appear in reddish batches on nearly any part of the body. Mayo Clinic experts indicate that while topical treatments like Epsom salts can relieve random hive outbreaks, chronic hives need professional diagnosis and treatment.
Hives are the immune system's reaction to an irritation to the body. The irritation triggers a reddish inflammation of the skin when histamines and other chemicals are released into the bloodstream. The reaction causes small blood vessels to leak and produce the patches. Mayo Clinic further explains that chronic hives are a sign of more complicated health issues that need a doctor's care. An occasional hive outbreak can be treated topically with Epsom salts or baking soda.
DoubleCheckMD verifies that side effects from using Epsom salt externally as a soak are rare and limited to actually causing hives themselves or further escalating the existing skin reaction. If either occurs, you should discontinue use immediately. Epsom salts taken internally show no clinical signs of curing or reducing the signs of skin hives. Because high levels of magnesium sulfate in the body can be toxic, Epsom salts should only be taken as prescribed, when used internally.
Cautions/Interactions
Drugs.com cautions consumers that Epsom salts do interact harmfully with some other drugs. If you are taking digoxin, a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, a tetracycline antibiotic, nitrofurantoin or penicillamine you should consult your physician before using Epsom salts. In addition, consult your pharmacist about any over-the-counter medications, vitamins, minerals or herbs you are taking before using Epsom salts medicinally, to prevent harmful interactions.
Epsom salts can be administered in a few different ways, according to DoubleCheckMD. They can be injected intravenously, diluted in water and drunk, diluted in water and used as an anal enema or mixed in a bath for external soaking. In all instances, the mixtures should be made only according to specific doctor or packaging dosage instructions. Always consult your physician before beginning an Epsom salt regimen.
Drugs: Epsom Salt
DoubleCheckMD: Epsom Salt for Hives
Mayo Clinic: Chronic Hives (urticaria)
Kimberli Nalven has been writing for more than 15 years and freelancing for over 10 years. She's experienced in the fields of computer and cellular phone technology, integrated medicine and health and fitness. She writes a monthly column for a local paper and posts daily Internet content in the area of elementary-years parenting.
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Scholarly Achievement Award
Thomas A. Mahoney Mentoring Award
Innovative Teaching Award
Best Student Convention Paper Award
Early Career Achievement Award
Herbert Heneman Jr. Career Achievement Award
Ralph Alexander Best Dissertation Award
SHRM Foundation Dissertation Grants Award
International HRM Scholarly Research Award
Distinguished Human Resource Executive Award
Best Convention Paper Award
Employee Participation And Ownership Award
The award is given to executives who have distinguished themselves throughout their careers in the field of human resources management.
In support of the HR Division’s goal of increasing member involvement and its international reach, we strongly encourage nominations from as diverse a population as possible.
Contribution to HR practice. The executive should not only be recognized for a distinguished career and contribution to his/her organization, but should be respected in the broader community of HR professionals for advancing the field through effective leadership.
Contribution to HR research. The candidate should be someone who has actively supported research in HR either through institutional collaboration or personal involvement within his/her organization.
Contribution to HR education. The candidate should be someone who has consistently supported education, training, and continuous learning in the field of HR. This might include involvement in professional organizations, academic institutions, and/or corporate learning.
Nominations for this award should adhere to the following procedures:
Only senior level HR executives may be nominated for the award.
Nominations may be submitted by any member of the HR Division.
To nominate an individual, please provide a copy of the nominee’s CV (or equivalent) and a 2-page letter outlining the nominee’s contributions. Additional information will not be considered. Nominees need not be informed that they are candidates for this award.
Winners will be expected to attend the Academy of Management Meeting to present an 8 to 12 minute invited address to the Division.
Nominations for this award are currently closed.
View Past Awards
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Cafe Prices, Menu for You
iso-22000-haccp-food-safety
Compare Your Favorite Food Options
Cook Out Menu Prices
Cook Out is a fast food restaurant chain with locations mostly in the Southern region of the United States. The restaurant serves American fast food favorites such as grilled hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, barbecue, and milkshakes. The restaurant prides itself in serving quality, fresh food. The hamburgers are never frozen and are cooked “outdoor style” on the grill. The meals are made to order and the staff ensures it is made just the way its customers like. The store is open for lunch, dinner, and even to satisfy late night cravings.
The chain features double drive thru restaurants at most locations. In addition to the unique double drive thru concept, the restaurants feature beautiful dining rooms as well as outdoor patios. The restaurant’s mission statement is “to serve customers the highest quality food in the least amount of time in a professional well run way, overall to be the best in the quick service fast casual business.” It is this commitment to high quality food and customer satisfaction that has led to the restaurant’s expansion. The establishment continues to grow and focus on customer service and food quality.
Cook-Out Trays
Includes 2 Sides or Double Up & Drink
Hamburger Regular $4.99
Barbecue Regular $4.99
Hot Dogs 2 Pc. $4.99
Big Double Burger $4.99
Quesadilla - Chicken or Beef $4.99
Chicken Regular $4.99
Cajun Chicken $4.99
Spicy Chicken $4.99
BBQ Char-Grilled Chicken $4.99
Chicken Strips 3 Pc. $4.99
Homemade Char-Grilled Hamburgers
Hamburger Small $1.39
Hamburger Big Double $2.99
Hamburger Huge $3.39
Cook Out Style Small $2.24
Cook Out Style Regular $3.64
Cook Out Style Big Double $3.84
Cook Out Style Huge $4.24
Out West Style Small $2.14
Out West Style Regular $3.54
Out West Style Big Double $3.74
Out West Style Huge $4.14
Steak Style Small $2.04
Steak Style Regular $3.44
Steak Style Big Double $3.64
Steak Style Huge $4.04
Cheddar Style Small $2.38
Cheddar Style Regular $3.78
Cheddar Style Big Double $3.98
Cheddar Style Huge $4.38
Char-Grilled Chicken Breast
Original Style $3.39
Barbecue Style $3.39
Cajun Style $3.39
Club Style $3.99
Cheddar Style $3.99
Crispy Spicy Chicken Breast Fillet
Regular Spicy Style $3.39
Cheese Style $3.79
Homemade Style Chicken Strips
Chicken Strips with Sauce 3 Pc. $3.39
Chicken Strip Sandwich $3.39
Chicken Strips Club $3.99
Chicken Nuggets 5 Pc. $0.99
Quesadilla - Chicken or Beef 2 Pc. $2.99
Chopped Pork BBQ
BBQ Sandwich $2.99
BBQ Plate $3.99
Char-Grilled Hot Dogs
Hot Dog $0.99
Cook Out Style $1.85
Mexi Style $1.99
Bacon Cheddar $1.99
Hot Dog with Cheddar Cheese $1.39
Hot Dog with Chilli $1.45
Corn Dog $0.99
Cheese Dog $0.99
Mustard Relish Hot Dog $0.99
BLT Sandwich $0.99
Bacon Ranch Wrap $0.99
Crispy Chicken Cajun Wrap $1.79
Crispy Chicken Ranch Wrap $1.79
Crispy Chicken Honey Mustard Wrap $1.79
Hushpuppies 12 Pc. $0.99
French Fries Regular $0.99
French Fries Large $1.69
Cook Out Fries with Cheese $1.39
Cook Out Fries with Chilli $1.45
Cook Out Fries with Cheese & Chilli $1.85
Onion Rings $1.99
Fancy Milkshakes
Milkshake $2.79
Floats & Cheesecakes
Coke Float $1.79
Cheerwine Float $1.79
Cheesecake (N. Y. Style) Slice $1.99
Fresh Brewed Tea (Sweet or Unsweetened) Large $0.99
Fresh Brewed Tea (Sweet or Unsweetened) Huge $1.79
Fountain Drinks Regular $1.39
Fountain Drinks Large $1.79
Fountain Drinks Huge $1.99
The first restaurant was opened by Morris Reaves in the 1980s on Randleman Road in Greensboro, North Carolina. Morris Reaves is the current owner of the company. Jeremey Reaves, Morris’ son, is currently the Chief Executive Officer. By 1998, the first location soon expanded to ten other locations in the Raleigh/Durham area in North Carolina. The establishment continued to experience tremendous success, which led to its expansion into the Charlotte Metro-Area. The chain has progressively built a reputation for quality food and customer service. As a result of this reputation, the restaurant has established a loyal customer base in the Southeast.
The first restaurant outside of the state of North Carolina was opened on July 30, 2010 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Two other locations were opened that same year in Clemson and Orangeburg, South Carolina. The restaurant continued to grow and new locations were opened in Columbia, South Carolina; Blacksburg, Virginia; Radford, Virginia; Lynchburg, Virginia; and Harrisonburg, Virginia. A few locations were also eventually opened in Georgia. The chain has further expanded throughout the states of North Carolina and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland.
The establishment is constantly growing and locations are constantly opening in various areas in the Southeast region of the United States. Along with restaurant expansion, the establishment is always looking for outstanding, talented, dedicated and quality staff to grow with the company. The establishment strongly believes that quality service means friendly service and is always developing its staff accordingly to promote its success. Aside from the delicious and fresh food, the restaurant focuses tremendously on its customers and the service they receive. Customers love the pleasant service.
The words “Welcome to Cook Out, may I take your order please?” have been spoken for over 26 years. The establishment has developed its business by focusing on three building blocks. These building blocks are customer, quality, and service. These three building blocks lead to the restaurant’s success and keeps customers coming back for more. The restaurant will also feature an online store which is scheduled to open soon. The store will feature various Cook Out products, such as apparel, hats, and other goods. The establishment has been very successful over the years and has positioned itself as one of the top selections in the fast food market.
The menu consists American fast food favorites such as char-grilled burgers, hot dogs, chicken, Lexington style barbecue, Cook Out trays, side orders, milkshakes, floats, and cheesecake. The burgers are priced between $1 and $4. The burger section includes Cook Out Style, Out West Style, Cheddar Style, and Steak Style burgers. The hot dogs are priced between $1 and $2. The hot dog section includes the Cook Out Style Dog, Bacon Cheddar Dog, Slaw Dog, Mexi Dog, and Cheese Dog.
The Chicken section features Char-Grilled sandwiches are priced at $4 and $4. The chicken sandwiches include Original Style, BBQ Style, Cajun Style, Club Style, Cheddar Style, Spicy Chicken Breast Fillet, Cheese Style, Chicken Strips, Chicken Strip Sandwich, and Chicken Strip Club Sandwich. The restaurant also serves quesadillas priced between $2 and $3. The barbecue is priced between $3 and $4. This barbecue either comes in the homemade slaw and Texas Pete sandwich or the Lexington style barbecue plate.
The Cook Out Tray section is priced between $4 and $5. These options include the Big Double Burger, Cajun Chicken, Spicy Chicken, Two Hotdogs, and Chicken or Beef Quesadilla. These options come with two choices of side items. Side Orders include Fries, Hushpuppies, Onion Rings, 5 piece chicken nuggets, Homemade Chili, Homemade Slaw, Chicken Wraps, Bacon Ranch Wrap, Fried Okra, and Quesadillas. The Floats and Cheesecake are priced between $1 and $2. The milkshakes are priced between $2 and $3, and come in a variety of flavors such as Vanilla, Strawberry, Hershey’s Chocolate, and Fresh Banana.
The restaurant is open for lunch, dinner and later hours to satisfy late night cravings. There is no need for reservations as this is a casual fast food restaurant. Customers have the option of dining in or ordering take-out. The staff is friendly and the restaurants are clean and tasteful. The food is delicious and tasty and customers love the food. The pricing is reasonable. The burgers and the milkshakes are definite favorites and are highly recommended. The spicy chicken sandwich and the hot dogs are also recommended. Although this establishment may not be the healthiest option, it is the place to go if you are looking for tasty, fresh fast food.
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Baja Fresh Mexican Grill is a casual Tex Mex restaurant with locations in the United States as well as other...
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Home IDF Translated The IDF returned fire toward Syrian gun position by shooting at our...
The IDF returned fire toward Syrian gun position by shooting at our troops
אזור הגבול עם סוריה, צילום ארכיון
The post was destroyed in a fire of our forces. At the event there were no casualties and no damage. Last registered another incident in the area after an army patrol opened fire at
מחבר: מערכת אתר צה”ל
IDF troops responded today (Mon) fire machine gun position in Syriac Tel fares in the southern Golan Heights, this response from Syria toward space military tour operating in the area. At the event there were no casualties and no damage. Fire destroyed a Syrian post accurate as a result of IDF response.
This is the second incident in the same area during the past 24 hours, after that last hit a volley toward the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, a military patrol in the area. Not
Casualties but damage was caused to the vehicle.
The Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya’alon (bogey), said today that “we see the shooting hardware last night and this morning because the IDF force Syria in Israel territory. Subsequently responded in accordance with the policy set by the Government: any violation of Israeli sovereignty and on the side.
Directorate, are immediately in the fire when sources identify them. We see the
The Syrian regime responsible for violating sovereignty. Don’t let the Syrian army or any other party to violate Israel’s sovereignty by firing into our territory. “
The Mayor addressed the spring champion stars gave the security in Syria and at the Herzliya Conference that Syria should not be treated as a State, but כ’מדינת
Assad “rebel ו’מדינת”, stretching across about two-thirds of the land inhabited in Syria.
The Golan border there is a succession of rebel enclaves leads to fighting everyday. 11 among 17 border crossings in Syria by the insurgents, allowing to move refugees, weapons and Jihad. “
Six prominent ג’יהדיסטיים groups operating Syria today. The fact that there are already 10,000 radicals in Syria, equipped with advanced weapons, giving impetus to the jungle in ways impossible to overstate its importance. Ultimately, the chances of
Syria caught many years of bloodletting and interoperability, “added the top charge.
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In response to the steep track performed towards the Gaza Strip,...
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Anderson on Kohli: Frustration of Losing Badly Shows
Englands most successful bowler James Anderson has hinted that Virat Kohli is successful on Indian pitches because they hide his inadequacies namely, playing the moving, away going ball badly as pitches here do not support speed and movement. If one were to take this forward logically, isnt Anderson himself successful only where the ball moves and comes off the pitch with venom? To each his own, one can say. Anderson has been trained in the British school of movement where balls sway off the pitch at great speed when fast bowlers are plying their trade. Kohli has been trained on flat pitches that make the ball come on to the bat slowly, giving the batsman time to play. Both schools are as different from each other as chalk and cheese and there is no point complaining. Hence, both the exponents of cricket have tailored their games accordingly.
If Virat became Andersons bunny back in England due to pitches that helped Anderson, he took his revenge by treating Anderson with disdain on pitches that helped him in India. This is not to say Virat is successful only in India or Anderson only in England. Their records over their career spans are there for all to see. Great talents adjust their game by factoring in the conditions and the pitches. Over a period of time, they are successful in all conditions and on all surfaces. Otherwise, Anderson could not have taken those many wickets or Kohli would not have scored so many runs across all formats. If Anderson had come to India thinking he would carry on with his supposed advantage of having Kohli in his bag, he has little understanding of how the game is played in India and how Kohli has moved forward from what he was back in England. Is not a player allowed a series where he is off colour? All geniuses have a period when they seem to grapple with the ordinary and fail. England back in 2014 was a learning experience for Kohli. He failed there but learnt a lot. Kohli circa 2016 is a different player who is several notches above any other player on the circuit. Hence, Anderson cribbing about Indian pitches hiding his flaws is just the frustration of a player from the losing side. Arent Indian pitches highlighting Andersons flaws for that matter? Kohli has over 600 runs in the present series to prove it. Anderson, on the other hand, has taken a total of 4 wickets in as many Test matches. Struggling in India, are we Mr. Anderson?
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First Semi-Final: Expect A Cracker Of A Match
Rohit Sharma: In Sublime Form
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Salman as Rio Squad Ambassador Might Create the Right Buzz
Like any other issue, Salman Khanâs appointment as brand ambassador of the Indian contingent for the Rio Olympics has many dimensions. Sport in India, apart from cricket and to a much lesser extent soccer and hockey, does not capture the imagination of the common man. When we talk about events in the Olympics, the interest level plummets further. This is the result of uninspiring sports policy down the years and below par results in most Olympic disciplines. India is caught in the chicken and egg syndrome â what comes first, sporting infrastructure or results?
Athletes yearn for better gear, world-class training facilities, better equipment, better coaches, better accommodation, better food (many reports prove that officials make money by giving sub-standard food to athletes and still India hopes for medals!) and reasonable allowances (officials get more than athletes) abroad. Year after year, we come back empty handed and are told that the spirit is in participating, winning or losing does not matter. Dreams die and others do not dare to dream.
In this scenario, is there any harm in appointing one of the most popular Hindi film stars of recent times to focus attention on the Indian Olympic squad? Popular Bollywood stars have the power to draw immediate attention to any issue. Popular actors have been used for social messaging, like pulse polio vaccination and having toilets in every home, to name just two such schemes. Then, no one said that a doctor should have been used for polio vaccination message or a sweeper for the toilet one. The purpose of any message is to draw maximum attention of the target group. In that sense, Salman Khan would at least create a buzz for the contingent amongst the youth.
His appointment is being castigated for two main reasons: one, sportspersons are cribbing that since sport is involved, a past legend could have been used. But is there any sportsperson from Olympic disciplines who matches the drawing power of Salman Khan? Milkha Singh has been most vocal, but despite the movie on his exploits, he does not even have 10 percent of the charisma Salman possesses to convey the message to the youth. After all, the purpose of the brand ambassador is to rivet attention on the contingent, isnât it?
That brings us to the second and more serious objection. It is being said that despite now âbeing human,â Salman Khan is guilty of many misdemeanors in the past â like hunting endangered species, possessing unlicensed firearms, âkillingâ a pavement dweller in a rash driving case â and is hence not the perfect role model for the youth. Salman is defending himself in court in all these cases and has even got the benefit of the doubt in the hit and run case. And it is not about Salman Khan and he is not promoting his next film at public or state expense. He is merely being the medium to tell the countryâs youth that their team is participating in the Rio Olympics and they should support it. When Salman will say this, the youth will at least pause to listen. If this message goes down well and if it manages to make a few thousand youngsters take up Olympic sports in a serious way, Salman would have done his work.
The IPL has shown how Bollywood participation took cricket up by a few notches (although some say turned it into a circus) and made an untested and untried product one of the most valued sporting brands in the world within two years. If the same can be done for other disciplines, it will make for a larger participation in sporting activities. If the âbig, bad Bollywoodâ can contribute to this in a positive way, why keep calling it âbad?â
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Pragya Thakur, Sakshi Maharaj And The Power Of The Curse
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innie_darling —
innie_darling
therapeutic thump
i like your moxie, sassafras!
Quick Like a Bunny (Sherlock/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) (PG-13, gen)
Hi, everybody!
The idea for this story popped into my head as I was finishing up my Irene Adler fic, but I didn't think I'd really write it. Two days later, I had it drafted. Big thanks to my lovely betas, octette and kate_lear, for willingly wading into this insanity. Thanks also to endgame, whose post on the flat's layout proved tremendously helpful.
It's rated PG-13 for language, and it's gen, despite the machinations of Mrs. Hudson - Sherlock is asexual, John is straight. But it's still a love story.
This story features the American cast of QEftSG:
From left to right: Kyan (grooming), Ted (food & wine), Carson (fashion), Jai (culture), and Thom (interior design).
I know there was a British version, but for the purposes of this story, there's nothing weird about these five crossing the Atlantic, okay?
"Quick Like a Bunny"
John had his hands full with the shopping - Sherlock had texted him no less than six times with more items that were required at the flat immediately - so he couldn't even open the small umbrella he'd had tucked under one arm. Rainwater dripped unpleasantly down the back of his shirt and squelched in his shoes. The hallway and steps shone with a thin film of water, but it only highlighted their essential dinginess. Still, it was home, and he breathed out in relief when he finally got to his own door.
That calm lasted only a few seconds when he saw what Sherlock - who'd apparently swanned off for one of his marathon showers - had done to the place. He put the shopping away briskly, anger making him efficient, and strode over to the bathroom door. "Sherlock," he bellowed through it, "Mrs. Hudson is going to kill you." He heard a vague noise of assent and rested his fists and forehead against the door; he did not have the money to keep funding Sherlock's fits of boredom or genius, and Mrs. Hudson deserved better, no matter what strings Sherlock had pulled in Florida. "And I," he proclaimed, "am going to help."
"Sherloooock!" Mrs. Hudson wailed when she saw the neat row of bullet holes perforating the seam between ceiling and wall. John figured she hadn't yet seen the mess that used to be a serviceable hardwood floor over in the corner. Sherlock continued peering at something iridescent through his microscope and paid her no mind. She must have realised she didn't have his full attention (or, indeed, more than a fraction of a percent), because she turned to John to deliver her next words. "It's no good saying it's coming out of his rent, is it? Because he'll pay or not, but I can't keep hiring workers to come round and fix things. They all know me, did you know that? I've seen pictures of their grandkids, we've all got so friendly, being that I practically have a standing appointment with them." She shook her head, sadly, and John had a brief moment of panic at the gleam in her eye, as if he and Sherlock - God, strike that - he or Sherlock was supposed to provide her with "grandkids" of her own so she could keep up.
"I'm very sorry," he said, lamely, but he meant it.
She patted his cheek. "I know, love. It's this one here who needs to mend his ways." She took one last look around and blew out a despairing breath. "I honestly don't know what's to be done."
Her footsteps on the stairs weren't quite as quick as they'd been a year ago, and John listened to them diminish into the distance. "She's going to do something drastic," he said, more to himself than anything.
Of course Sherlock looked up from his specimen then. "Brilliant deduction, John," he said, and whisked the slide away.
Good to know he was getting the hang of this deduction lark. Bang on the money, he was.
He might have been sleepy, but he was still a soldier, and on top of that, being the flatmate of one of the most dangerous and oddly-wired men in London ensured that John was never completely off-guard. Still, five men and a person of indeterminate gender with a portable video camera on his doorstep made him take a step back.
All five of the men were smiling at him, gleaming sets of American teeth; it was like shark week right there in his flat. He rubbed at his twinging shoulder and asked, "Can I help you?"
"He's even cuter in person than he was in the photo!" said the one with short brown hair and a square jaw, who looked disconcertingly like the hero of an animated movie.
"And you were definitely cute in the photo," assured another, the one that John had thought, from his glasses and demeanour, would be the most sensible of the lot; there went that faint hope.
"And look! He's even conveniently pocket-sized!" said the blond, and John straightened his spine in indignation.
He pretended he wasn't in his ancient RAMC t-shirt and frankly ratty cotton pyjama bottoms and that his bedhead could have been designed by Frank Gehry. He was a doctor. He was a soldier. He was partner to the world's only consulting detective. Dignity. And anyway, one of them was shorter than him. "Can I help you?" he asked again, a touch of frost in his tone.
"We're here to help you, actually," said the one with the curls that would have been Sherlockian, only they were a lighter brown and more neatly tamed. "And lordy, does this place need it."
"What, seriously?" John asked and Becky, the cameraperson, nodded sympathetically at him. "You're here to fix me?" He needed a cup of tea. No, he thought, watching burly, anonymous men trample all over his flat, setting up cameras in strategic locations, he needed a vat of tea.
Ted, the "food guy," anticipated him and filled the kettle and set it to boil. "We're not going to fix you. Just give you a boost, because it looks like, living conditions aside, you're totally fine."
"What do you mean, 'living conditions'?" John asked suspiciously. Some gingernuts would not go amiss. If only he knew which packet was uncontaminated.
Thom, the "design expert," rolled his eyes so hard that John blinked his own in sympathy. He was starting to suspect that Thom was a bit of a drama queen. Thom pointedly moved some beakers and the microscope out of the way before leaning across the table to capture one of John's hands in his own. "You are the only thing in this place that does not need fixing." He actually looked like he meant it, which was rather nice in a terribly insulting way. Suddenly John regretted his "spectacularly ignorant" line in that damned blog post. "Pumpkin, you're a catch, and this place just isn't you."
He was a grown man, and not anyone's pumpkin. Still, no doubt Thom meant well. "No," he said evenly. "This place is us, my flatmate and me. And you can't change anything, because we only rent - it's Mrs. Hudson's -"
"Oh, she's the one who signed you up for this," said the little one, Jai, from the corner where he'd been browsing through their record collection. "She told us all about you – the camera loves her – and she's down for whatever."
Mrs. Hudson had let these people into the flat with the orders to turn him into a metrosexual? Right. Then it was every man for himself.
"Usually it's the straight guy who contacts us," said Carson, lounging artfully in Sherlock's chair. John, sitting forward in his own, tried to listen while keeping track of Thom, who still looked outright horrified, as he wandered around the flat. Thom picked up the skull and seemed to pray for guidance; his eye caught Carson's and he gestured at it, saying, "I mean . . ."
"Honey," Carson said, nodding I know at Thom and tapping John on the knee to get his attention back. "We work toward a specific event - a work party, an exhibition, a family picnic. Something like that. And then we get a sense of how I should dress you, how Kyan should groom you, et cetera, et cetera, okay? But since it was your landlady - she is such a doll, by the way - who asked us to help you out, we don't know what your event is."
John was nodding sort of vaguely when he realised he could only see three of them. Oh, God, he'd left Ted to his own devices in the kitchen, where Sherlock conducted his most delicate experiments and there was biological matter in the fridge. "Um, dinner," he said, stumbling in his haste to get to the kitchen.
Ted turned around from one of the cupboards with a welcoming smile; John was relieved to see that he hadn't yet been in any of the dangerous ones. "Dinner? For you and your girlfriend?"
"No girlfriend right now, actually," John said, trying not to picture how gorgeous Sarah had looked when she'd let him down gently. A pair of strong hands descended on his shoulders and he glanced round in surprise, only to see Thom looking sympathetically at him. "I, um, it's hard for me to schedule things because of my flatmate's work - I help out with his work, and there's no set timings for it, so it's probably best if we don't plan an 'event.'"
He got the feeling that there were a lot of significant glances going over the top of his head at that, but he told himself that he didn't care what they made of the truth. Also, Christ, but it was cold in the flat, and he needed a hot shower and a warm jumper straightaway. "So, what about dinner with the flatmate?" Ted asked, and there was a chorus of approving murmurs at that suggestion - the other three had joined them, Kyan evidently coming from the bathroom, judging from the shampoo bottles he held and the disapproving look on his face. "What does he like to eat? Any special dietary requirements?"
John couldn't help laughing. "If you figure that out," he said, "let me know. All I've seen him voluntarily consume is tea, coffee, biscuits, and cheese. Though he does like to steal my spring rolls, for what purposes I cannot imagine." He shrugged out of Thom's rather comforting grasp, plucked his shampoo out of Kyan's hands, and said firmly, "I'm going to shower. The door does not lock, but that does not mean that anyone is welcome to join me."
He'd got as far as brushing past the lot of them when the front door slammed open. There stood Sherlock, cold, damp, and triumphant, holding a box that John was sure he would not want to know the contents of. "John," was all he said before he realised they had company, but he recovered in an instant and pinned each of the five men and poor Becky with a contemptuous, assessing gaze, then stalked off to his bedroom without another word. They had just started to recover when his bedroom door opened and he stalked past all of them in his dressing gown and stole the shampoo from John's hand on his way to the bathroom.
John sighed, and heard the six of them chorus, "Ohhh," sounding suddenly enlightened about his lot in life.
He took himself off to Mrs. Hudson's while Sherlock did his best to use up all of the hot water. If he was clever about it, he could possibly get her feeling abashed enough to offer up her own shower while he got some answers about what on earth she'd been thinking to sign him up for this group's services. He had an inkling that Sarah was trying to find him some nice, dimwitted girl who would never utter a word of complaint at the number of dates he broke to save Sherlock's sorry hide, but Mrs. Hudson's motivations were murkier. She firmly believed he was the "nice boy" Sherlock needed, so what was she doing matchmaking?
From the fresh pot of tea and the plate of scones with jam and cream, he guessed she was feeling sufficiently guilty to give him all sorts of answers. "John, dear," she began hesitantly, and that turned the shame back on him. Had he ever given her cause to look so cautious in speaking to him? She was an elderly lady who'd opened her home to him and his mad flatmate both, and she shouldn't be scared to speak to him, at least.
He deliberately moved slowly and took a seat so she would stop cowering in the corner. "Yes, Mrs. Hudson?" he asked, pouring them each a cup of her deliciously fragrant tea.
He was rewarded by seeing her smile and settle into the chair across from his. "I hope they're not - upsetting you too much," she said. "It's just that -"
"They'll redo the flat at no cost to you," John finished with sudden clarity. "Rather clever of you, really." He reached out to steal a scone.
She relaxed all the way then. "Aren't they gorgeous?" She held up her hand. "I know - you're happy with Sherlock, but still." She giggled like the schoolgirl she'd once been. "It's nice to have seven lovely men running around instead of just the two."
He was clearly never going to be able to disabuse her of the notion that he swung that way, or that Sherlock had ever had feelings more tender than John is not quite as painfully dense or boring as the rest of humanity. He can stay and fetch my tea. He stuffed the scone in his mouth and tried to lose himself in doughy bliss.
That wasn't quite fair of him, he supposed. He knew quite well that Sherlock counted him as his only friend; he had only to look at the tension in Sherlock's lanky frame, stretched taut and brittle on the couch, and contrast it with the indolence he was used to being the sole audience for. At the very least, Sherlock liked him, and liked him tremendously.
Though the chill in his voice was enough to make John doubt that he was feeling anywhere close to fond at the present moment. "At some point, doubtless, you will be explaining why we seem to have acquired six nosy new flatmates?" Sherlock sniped.
John opened his mouth to defend himself, then reconsidered. "I told you Mrs. Hudson was going to do something drastic," he said simply.
Sherlock's eyes widened. A direct hit. "Do you honestly mean to tell me -" was as far as his retort got before the sound of the team tromping up the stairs to the flat became audible. Sherlock blew out an aggravated breath. "Never mind." He rolled off the couch and stomped into his bedroom in spectacularly bad humour.
"How was your lunch?" John asked to forestall any questions from their side.
"Ted always knows where to go," Carson assured him. "How about you? You ready for your big day?"
"Why not," John said, bracing himself. But they were gentle with him, thoughtful even, and he found himself genuinely enjoying the company.
Thom was first. "If you could only keep one thing about this place, what would it be?" he asked, with a wild gleam in his eye that made John wonder if he was considering arson as the best way to start fresh with the flat.
He didn't realise his gaze had darted to the table positioned between the two living room windows until Thom followed his line of sight, swivelling at the hips to do so. "What's important about it?" Thom prodded.
"I don't know," John said, flushing unaccountably. "We sometimes read the paper there on Sunday mornings, or I'll have tea while he's working. You know."
"Mm-hmm," Thom said, evidently used to musing aloud and gesturing madly. "Got it. Go - Kyan's been waiting all day to get his hands in your hair." Thom swatted his backside, steering him toward the bathroom.
There was no point protesting, and once he got this over with he could mimic Sherlock and take five minutes to lie on his bed and pretend he was alone in the flat. Kyan grabbed him five feet from the bathroom door. "John," he said, tone so sombre that John rather expected him to announce that Lestrade was on his way over due to a triple murder in Lambeth, "tell me about your daily hair regime."
Regimen, John wanted to correct, but Kyan had either mastered the perfect deadpan, or, far more likely, he was simply utterly serious about grooming. "I, uh, wash it most days, never less than every other day, dry it -" he was embarrassed to find himself gesturing to indicate a vigourous rub with a towel; that Becky made it easy to forget that she was there, filming everything "- and, when I remember, put in some of this stuff." He rooted through the medicine cabinet until he found the tube of goop Harry had bought him. It was too expensive to use every day, and he honestly often forgot it was there. He sniffed at it, wondering if it had gone off. Could hair product go off?
Kyan had a pained look on his face, but he was nodding like he'd sworn to keep mum until John had unburdened his soul of all its ugly secrets. "And how do you feel about this length and this cut?" Suddenly his fingers were buried in John's hair. "Because you've got a really nicely-shaped head and could go short with your hair, but I've gotta say, between you and your flatmate, I bet you've inspired all kinds of hair-pulling fantasies."
"Ah," John said, determined not to blush at the memories of Natalia, whose aggression he'd happily matched and who'd never left him without a satisfying ache in his scalp from her enthusiasm for his exertions. "Right. Um, I'm fine with it as is." Too short, and he'd feel like a soldier once more, uncertain whether he'd ever see his home again.
All he got was another nod and a lecture on exfoliating and moisturising, not one word of which penetrated. He really did need a nap.
But his bed, he saw when he finally made it to his room, was covered in the contents of his wardrobe, every last thing from pants and socks to his one suit and good belt. Only his dress uniform hadn't been touched, which was a mercy, because he rather liked Carson, who was lounging on top of the piles of clothes and clearly waiting for an audience; John recognised the signs from living with Sherlock.
"Can't I just have a nap?" he asked plaintively.
"Only if I can watch you sleep," Carson said, not missing a beat. "No, come on, it's my turn to play doctor with the doctor, and this actually shouldn't take very long."
John brightened a bit; Carson looked like he could run on at the mouth endlessly, but if he hadn't much to say, that was all to the good, surely? He knew he might not be the most fashionable man around, but Sherlock and his swishy coat had a way of eclipsing everybody.
"It's all wrong," Carson said simply, bursting John's bubble. "Well, the sweaters anyway. And the shirts. The jeans are good. The pants are fine. But the only top I'd even let you out of the house in is this one." The striped jumper John had always been rather fond of was in Carson's hands, being displayed like a flag. "The rest of these -" he indicated the rather massive pile of thick woollen jumpers "- honey, you're young and you're hot. Don't dress to impress the denture set."
"I -" John started, then considered how much he really wanted to say in front of the cameras. Sod it, they already had his entire pants drawer on film. "I got used to the heat in Afghanistan, and I've had a hard time adjusting since I've been back."
Carson considered him for a long moment, his eyes surprisingly kind. "I know a couple of ways to generate heat, and one of them we can even do in front of the camera. Jai and Ted still need to talk to you, but then we're going shopping."
"Nap?" John pleaded.
"Change, then talk to Jai and Ted," Carson said inexorably, and John sighed his assent. He turned his back and changed into the striped jumper and the rather tight pair of jeans Carson had tossed him, determined not to wonder how his arse rated on Carson's scale. He trudged downstairs, tired enough that he needed to grip the railing as he went.
Jai, small and quick, caught him first. "Tell me about this record collection and that music stand over there," he invited, curled up in one of the chairs.
"Anything you've heard of is mine, the rest is Sherlock's. He plays the violin."
"Oh, he's a musician?" Jai asked, getting even perkier.
"Not professionally," he said around a yawn. Especially considering that it was anybody's guess whether, on any given occasion, Sherlock would actually play music or just those discordant series of notes that he claimed accelerated his cognitive processes. "Though he could be. I mean, he's good enough."
Jai smiled like John had just offered a highly confidential revelation. "Have you told him that?"
John laughed. "The last thing Sherlock suffers from is a lack of self-confidence," he said, standing when he saw Ted beckoning from the kitchen. "Are we done?"
"Yes," Jai said, though he looked a little too cat-with-cream-on-its-whiskers for John's comfort. "Go right ahead."
Ted grabbed him before Becky could regroup and follow him to the kitchen. "I didn't let any of the cameras see what's inside your fridge. Or your kitchen cabinets," Ted said under his breath. "There are things that no amount of brain bleach will ever clear away."
"Sorry," John offered. "Sherlock - he performs a lot of experiments for his work, and he does like to work from home when possible."
"So the kitchen is pretty much his territory, then?" Ted asked, a little louder for Becky's camera. John nodded thoughtfully. "Does he cook?"
Rather than laugh in the man's face, John contented himself with a simple, "No."
"Do you?"
"I can, though I haven't, properly, not since I moved in here. Nothing fancy, mind, just simple meals."
"So it's a lot of take-out usually?"
"He doesn't eat all that much, honestly. He thinks eating's a waste of time. And he gets bored easily, so it's not like I can figure out what he likes and then stock up, because odds are he won't touch it again, no matter how much he's enjoyed it previously."
Ted had the oddest look on his face. Slowly, he said, like one hesitant to repeat another's blasphemy in case the lightning strikes weren't fussy about who the real sinner was, "A waste of time?"
John shrugged, having no answer for the man. "Though if you wanted me to cook something for that dinner, I'd be happy to give it a go." Ted didn't say anything, but John wondered if he had some kind of silent-alarm trigger in his pocket because before he could get out another word, the other four men surrounded him and were tossing jackets at the two of them.
John barely had time to tie his shoes before Becky was herding them out to the waiting van, and then they were whisked away.
John drifted awake to find himself still in the car, pleasantly warm and surrounded by the five men discussing some client. He checked his watch discreetly and found he'd managed forty-five minutes of decent sleep. London traffic was no joke, and he had no idea where they were headed anyway, so he closed his eyes again and listened to the voices swirling around him.
"He's so clearly in love with him," Jai was saying. "You should have seen his face when he was all, 'oh, Sherlock could be a professional musician!' It was the. cutest. thing. ever. You guys, we have to help him land his man."
John nearly bit through his tongue in shock. That was him they were discussing, thinking that he wanted Sherlock as a lover. He couldn't even begin to imagine what that would be like. He felt his body tense as he waited to hear more.
"I don't think so," Ted said. "He sounds like he's just used to taking care of his roommate, like a permanent babysitter."
There was enough truth in that to make him squirm on the inside. He didn't want to be just Sherlock's keeper, but there was no denying that Sherlock seemed to require - or at least strongly prefer - that there be some buffer between himself and the rest of the world, and if it looked and talked and acted like John, then that was the best and simplest solution. Better him than drugs, John thought.
"Their landlady thinks they're already doing it, remember?" Kyan said, and John kept himself from scowling only through sheer effort. Mrs. Hudson would have thrown them a bloody parade if it meant her flat would be redone; he had no doubt she'd played up a "star-crossed lovers" angle for the chats she had to have for the cameras.
"I don't know. I think he loves him, but not like that," Thom said. "The real question is, what does Sherlock think?"
"That's where it all could get very messy," Carson chimed in, just as the car finally pulled up. "I've got John, and we'll see the rest of you back at Baker Street."
John mimed waking up and Carson, twisted around from his front-seat perch, smiled indulgently at him. "Quick like a bunny," he chirped, and took John's hand to lead him into some overpriced store.
Carson had clearly called ahead and pulled certain pieces to create the towering pile of stuff John was expected to try on. Between the size of that stack and the fixed grins of the staff, John felt like he should bow or apologise or something.
Carson didn't say a word before dragging John to the fitting room. It was disconcerting not to have price tags on anything he was trying on; even more alarming was the fact that Carson and Becky seemed to think it no problem to come into the room with him. He did his best to ignore the unblinking black eye of the camera and tried to listen to what Carson was saying.
"Feel this," Carson murmured, stroking the jumper - and John's chest beneath it - in a way that was too frankly appreciative to be resented. "Almost as soft as your hair. This is cashmere. Learn it, live it, love it. It will keep you warm but won't hide your gorgeous bod." John willed himself not to flush that unattractive pink he always went when embarrassed; judging from the eyeful he got of himself as Carson swivelled him by his hips toward the mirror, he was failing spectacularly. "And do you see what this colour is doing for you? You need to stop with the bland, oatmeal-y clumps of wool and get some nice sleek sweaters in cornflower blue and celery green, these bright, clean colours that work with your skin tone and those eyes of yours."
John's eyes widened involuntarily when he saw the armsful of clothes that Carson and some of the shop assistants were carrying to the register and Carson laughed, pinched his cheek, and told him he was just precious.
The hotel room was oddly featureless, an almost completely anonymous space. Had Sherlock not been lying on one of the twin beds in his habitual prayer pose, long black coat and an angry pink flush on his cheek, the entire place would have been beige. It wasn't until he saw Sherlock that John realised he must have missed a battle royale; nothing less would have budged Sherlock from 221B. Or possibly -
"Good, John. You're quite correct; Mrs. Hudson offered to waive our rent for next month if I would leave her merry band of helper elves to their business."
The woman had no shame, at least not since Sherlock and his magic bullets had forced her hand. With a flash of gratitude, John saw small suitcases at the foot of each bed. Sherlock's was open, a selection of his crisp shirts and an extra black suit visible. He wondered who had packed the bag, and what Sherlock had deduced from the contents. "What do you think of them?" he asked.
"Boring. They choose to define themselves solely by sexual orientation."
"But they're good at what they do -"
"Three of them are competent," Sherlock interrupted. "And soon I will be able to delete all five of them from my brain." Sherlock's eyes suddenly shot open. "They had better not have touched my skull."
Crimes that required Sherlock's reasoning force to solve didn't occur on any kind of set schedule, so even though John texted Lestrade to beg him to keep Sherlock occupied for the hour the team needed to go through all of their improvements with him, help was not forthcoming.
He followed Sherlock up the seventeen steps to their flat and found himself getting a faceful of that rough swishy coat as Sherlock had ground to a halt just inside the doorway. John peeked around him to see what was going on.
The flat had been completely transformed. Thom was standing by the sliding doors that separated the kitchen from the living room, looking endearingly anxious. "So I scrubbed everything first and found out that your fireplace has some really gorgeous deep-red glazed tiles, so I picked up that colour for the rest of the living room. The wallpaper was vintage - Nureyev - and I bought the same design again, since that's where so much of the character of the room comes from."
John nodded, amazed at how different, how much warmer, the flat felt. Sherlock didn't look quite as excited. "Where are my files?" he asked, voice dropping down to a dangerous growl.
"Here," Thom said, looking particularly smirky; John would bet that Sherlock had been more than usually abrasive with the man at some point. Clear filing drawers mounted on wheels rolled forward with a gentle motion, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed against his will.
Without the clutter of Sherlock's beloved folders and newspaper clippings and general papery mess, the flat seemed more like a home and less like a laboratory. There were soft, thick, woven blankets adorning the arms of the new extra-long couches, and new paint on the walls of the bedrooms. He knew Thom was watching him, so he trailed his fingers along everything he admired and didn't stop the smile that bubbled up when he saw the table between the windows had been kept just as it was.
Sherlock remained pointedly silent, even when he walked into his bedroom and saw the skull resting on his bed like he was a child drawn by Edward Gorey and that was his demented version of a teddy bear. It was only Thom's revelation that he had soundproofed and expanded the small room that might once have been intended as a nursery that got Sherlock to clasp his hands together and say, "Oh!" like it was Christmas morning.
For that alone, John would have offered his thanks. He hugged Thom, got a smacking kiss on the cheek, and left Sherlock happily conversing with the skull about what experiment to run on the soundproofing first.
Ted's ideas about what and how to cook for Sherlock were rather brilliant in theory, even if they were based on the premise that Sherlock was nothing but an overgrown child. If they worked, John would happily cut fresh fruits and vegetables into unusual shapes, disguise one food as another, and serve everything in interesting patterns until Sherlock stopped looking all gaunt and fascinating and started looking healthily slim.
He nearly dropped the shiny lacquered dishware Ted had purchased when he heard Sherlock's frustrated groan, never a good sign. At least he knew that Sherlock couldn't have got hold of his gun, now locked in Mrs. Hudson's wall safe; Thom's new decor wouldn't suffer so grievously so quickly. "No!" Sherlock shouted, and John set the dishes down and raced for Sherlock's room.
There was a minor pile-up at his doorway; it seemed that the whole team had heard Sherlock's aggravation and either wanted to watch the explosion or save Jai, his current target. "It is none of your concern," Sherlock snapped, expression lightening fractionally when he saw John, which at least meant that he saw him as an ally still.
"Not good," Sherlock said, pointing at Jai, as if he were confiding in John.
"What happened?" John asked.
Jai said, still more bewildered than offended, "I was just trying to explain how tonight's event could be an opportunity for both of you to discuss where your relationship is, and where you want it to go."
"By which he means that we should be shagging before the night is through," Sherlock translated - accurately, to judge by Jai's suddenly guilty face. "Despite the fact that you are heterosexual and more importantly not interested in me in the carnal sense and that I am asexual and uninterested in fucking anybody at all."
"But -"
"Spare me the protestations," Sherlock snapped. "It's not a waste, I won't 'change my mind' when 'the right one comes along,' and I'm not repressed or frightened. I am simply uninterested."
"But you do love John," Thom said, and John was relieved to hear that tone - neither idle curiosity nor perverse satisfaction - because it meant Sherlock would answer honestly.
"Love and sex are separate issues. I can love someone without wishing to express it sexually." He loomed deliberately over Jai, who looked like he wanted to curl into a ball until he was left alone. "In other words, I do not feel the need to wag my genitals around any time I wish to express an emotion." Sherlock evidently didn't see the comprehension he expected on Jai's face; he sighed in aggravation and continued. "Would you be turned on by a lover who felt the urge to push his nose at you?"
John got a brief flash of Sherlock nosing at the soft underside of his jaw, pink mouth trailing damply behind, or nosing at his hip, hot breath steaming against skin, moving dumbly and gracefully like an animal, acting on instinct alone; from the looks of them, the team were imagining much the same thing. It didn't matter that none of them desired Sherlock, just that the images were sensual, undeniably arousing to men accustomed to thinking of sex as a necessity of life.
Sherlock took one look at the lot of them and blew out a disgusted breath. "Evidently that was a poor example. Try elbow. Just as it would baffle you to have a lover who tried to stick his elbow all over you, so am I by the idea that I would have to use my penis to demonstrate the depth of my feeling for someone."
The beep that broke the silence startled John almost as much as Sherlock's small smile. "Ah, Lestrade. Impeccable timing for once."
John was trying to listen to Carson explain zhuzhing and watch Kyan demonstrating the proper application of hair product. He was trying not to wonder what Lestrade's text had said.
He could hear Sherlock racing around the flat, steps a little slower than usual, most likely due to the new configurations of new furniture, and stood, ready to accompany him as always.
"There's no reason for you to come, John," Sherlock called out, like it honestly made no difference to him. John sat back down on his bed, trying not to let the rejection sting. He couldn't speak, and he heard Sherlock's footsteps charging up the stairs to his bedroom. "Did you hear me?" Sherlock asked. "Lestrade's finally caught the runaway arsonist, and there are a few other crimes I'd like to discuss with the man."
Sherlock was pulling on his gloves as he spoke, so he had an excuse not to look John in the eye; still, though, John knew what that careful lack of eye contact meant and his heart lightened. "You're not going to be running around London after some nutter, then?"
"Not without you," Sherlock answered, eyes snapping up to John's, then turned abruptly to leave, his coat flaring dramatically behind him.
"Now that's an exit," Carson said, and Kyan just whistled.
Sherlock poked his head into the flat, curiosity still his most salient characteristic, but only stepped inside when John waved him in. "I thought they'd bought you new clothes," he said, unwinding his scarf and tucking it under the coat's collar, looking for all of the cameras mounted in discreet corners.
John looked down at his striped jumper and shrugged. "I went with an old favourite," he said, not bothering to confirm the presence of new jumpers, new jeans, and a crisp charcoal-grey suit in his closet. "That's rather the theme of the evening."
"Is it?" Sherlock's voice was less inquisitive than wary.
"Mmm," John said, just remembering to turn on the iPod, resting in a dock, that Jai had loaded with the best that Sherlock's record collection had to offer.
"Beethoven, symphony number seven, second movement," Sherlock said as the haunting strains began. "I played -" he began before cutting himself off and looking hard at John.
"Dinner's ready, so have a seat." John went into the kitchen to fetch their meals.
"What is this?" Sherlock asked, looking down at the large bento box John had placed in front of him.
"You're going to have to play detective to find out," John said, smiling. He was going to take full credit for the idea to disguise the foods by serving them in formations that weren't common in British cookery, though Ted got points for finding recipes simple enough for John to attempt and flexible enough to withstand some fiddling.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the first compartment, surprising John by taking the mission seriously. "This looks like a muffin," he finally said, braving an uncertain glance up, as if he suspected he was missing the point.
"Try splitting it instead of just tapping it with your fork," John suggested, grinning at the look of surprise that flashed across Sherlock's face when he saw what was inside. "It's a macaroni-and-cheese casserole made in a muffin tin. You like cheese," he reminded Sherlock, who took several bites and set about trying to deduce the contents of the next compartment.
"These flowers have a peculiarly meaty smell." The tip of his tongue darted out to gain more data. "They're sausage! Sliced finely and arranged to look like blossoms on top of these -" he paused again to take another taste "- roasted potatoes turned inside out." Sherlock shovelled in a big, hearty bite, then looked down, seeming abashed. "This must have taken hours and a lot of patience."
"Nope. Hands of a surgeon," John joked, raising them as if he were surrendering.
He wasn't expecting Sherlock to catch them in his own and inspect them. "No more tremors," Sherlock said, looking almost shy as his eyes locked on John's and then away again.
"I'm too busy to shake these days," John said lightly, pulling away gently. He ate his broccoli trees and the shredded carrot-and-apple salad that looked like confetti swept along a honey-mustard river.
Sherlock was dawdling over his meal, though it seemed more because he was fascinated by it than bored with this mundane bodily function. He took each bite slowly, examining it and letting it linger in his mouth. John finished what was in his box, then rose to get dessert. Sherlock was fond of both chocolate and pistachios.
Sherlock stayed silent as John set the dessert plates down; John stayed easy under his gaze as he sat back in his chair, content to let the music speak for him, here in this lovely and familiar new space. John looked across the table at his prickly, brilliant best friend and thought that the smile breaking across Sherlock's face was really rather a wonderful thing.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As always, I'd love to hear what you think.
Tags: crossover, fic, filmfic, filmishfic, sherlock holmes
lillyankh
FUCK YEAH BADASS ASEXUAL SHERLOCK!
Ahem, I mean, brilliant concept, brilliant fic, loved it! xx
FUCK YEAH THAT'S THE REACTION I WANTED!
(AO3)
(Project Gutenberg)
(NYPL)
(GFY)
(Sherlock Remix)
(Cumberholmes)
(nannyjohn)
arrested development, better off ted, birthday, bookfic, books, brooklyn, buffy, cabin pressure, captain america, chuck, community, crossover, episode thoughts, fic, filmfic, filmishfic, firefly, in progress, lj, martin freeman, middleman, mini-innie, miss fisher's murder mysteries, movies, nano 2007, new girl, on writing, otp, prompts, pushing daisies, rapture, real_life, selfie, sherlock holmes, sherlock remix, sunshine state, supernatural, supernatural_fic_my, the good wife, the losers, the mindy project, the musketeers, theater, to the ends of the earth, to write, tv, veronica mars, vids, white collar, yuletide, …
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Is MSNBC Starting to Edge out Joy Reid? Her Sunday Schedule Pushed Back for a Soccer Game? UPDATE: 10/23/2017 …Happily, Joy is busier than ever!!!
Posted on May 21, 2017 by insightanalytical
Update: Joy is subbing for practically everyone and in an interview she stated that she really enjoys seeing how all the shows work. She is appearing on Meet the Press occasionally, and recently went to the Virgin Islands to report on the hurricane disaster there. She continues to report on the Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
GO JOY!!!
By InsightAnalytical-GRL
OK, maybe I’m just being hypersensitive about how MSNBC is shoving out a lot of people who are deemed as being “too far left” for the taste of Andrew Lack. (very interesting Lack bio at Comcast.com corporate: Andrew Lack.) We are in the dark about the fate of Lawrence O’Donnell but the purge started a long while back when Melissa Harris Perry blew the whistle on the network. God forbid that a show is devoted to a serious round table dealing with current issues involving the issue of Black America. Rev. Al’s Politics Nation has been reduced to early A.M. on Sunday. And the list goes on
Joy Reid had her own show during the afternoons that was axed around the time that Alex Wagner’s NOW , the Cycle, Ronan Farrow Daily and The Ed Show were cancelled in February 2015. The Reid Report was struggling with low ratings as was the whole lineup.
Reid stayed on with the network, filling in and covering the 2016 campaign and became more visible and a real stalwart. She was rewarded with her weekend AM Joy program which is a top destination for thinking people. (Of course, she COULD have been given the slot have Greta Van Susteren was given but…) Her show is delivering great ratings and Joy has been writing books and as well as essays at sites like the Daily Beast…so, she’s blossoming as a media star. See her outdated MSNBC bio here: Joy Reid outdated biography MSNBC.
So, why is MSNBC shoving Joy’s show around as the Trump scandals heat up? Joy has been a leader in questioning the whole lot of GOP lackeys, and has been ahead of the pack in questioning the role of VP Mike Pence and his knowledge of Gen. Mike Flynn’s lies. She has been steadily calling out the entire bunch over at the Daily Beast, Her latest scathing salvo dated May 20, 2017 is entitled Donald Trump Knows Just How Bad the Russia Investigation Can Get
My favorite quotation from this piece is classic Joy:
“(We are asked to believe Mike Pence, the head of the transition team, heard this confession and the warnings about Flynn from the then-acting attorney general with his index fingers stuck firmly in his little lamb ears.)”
BUT…as Joy Reid’s audience grows, could this be a bit too much for MSNBC?
Today, Joy’s show is being pushed back 2 hours because there is a Premier League soccer match that MUST be shown in her regular Sunday time slot. ?????
Now, checking the NBCSN schedule, I can see that, yes, other games are being dropped onto other NBC outlets. CNBC, Esquire, USA, Bravo, SyFy, E!, Oxygen, Telemundo and NBC Universo are ALL showing games at the same time, 10 AM ET. NBCSport.com/tv-lisings
Now, I’m a huge soccer fan…was one before it became more popular. I had season tickets for the Cosmos at the midfield line just behind the players’ family section at the old Giants Stadium, where I saw all the greats. Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s I was writing letters and calling Don Imus to lobby for coverage because the media was blacking out most coverage. For example, while 34,000 of us were watching a game in the rain, the only news was that baseball had been rained out. I can say that my letter to the New York Times was published and Imus reported the score of that game! So, my sports activism worked!
So, now, as someone more devoted to political activism, I have to call into question what’s going on at MSNBC…and today, specifically, the decision to push Joy Reid back 2 hours so a Hull-Tottenham match is aired instead of the best discussion of current politics.
Really, MSNBC????
I’ll be revisiting the Lack influence at some point since his bio discusses his former life at Bloomberg…..
Filed under: Current Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged: Al Sharpton, Alex Wagner NOW, AM Joy, Andrew Lack, Black America, Brao, CNBC, Cosmos soccer club, Don Imus, Donald Trump, E!, Edquire, Gen. Mike Flynn, Greta Van Susteren, Joy Reid, Lawrence O'Donnell, Melissa Harris Perry, Mike Pence, MSNBC, NBC Universo, NBCSN, New York Times, old Giants Stadium, Oxygen, Politics Nation, Premier League Soccer, Ronan Farrow Daily, SYFy, Telemundo, The Cycle, The Daily Beast, The Ed SHow, The Reid Report | 2 Comments »
The Scanner-Politics 1/15/09 (40 Musical Obama Supporters Slide-Show; Barbie at 50 [French]; Women and the World; “Obama-Cola The Great National Temperance Beverage”; Tina Brown; WLS Chicago–the Governor Sells Furniture)
Posted on January 15, 2009 by insightanalytical
Yesterday’s post, Hip-Hop Inaugural Events Start TONIGHT (1/14/09)…Ludicras Co-Hosting “Urban Ball” , presented a rundown on the hip-hop events being held leading up to and including Inauguration Day. Although it dates back to June ’08, today’s nugget gives more insight into the “culture” coming to Washington…and I don’t see much of Jackie-O in this, either.
Here’s the blurb from a site called “Gigwise” which describes a slide show of 40 musical Obama supporters. Note the obligatory dig at the “old folks”…If there’s one hallmark of the Obama campaign and probably his Presidency, it’s the utter LACK OF RESPECT shown to women, older people, gays, etc. etc. Everyone is fair game to this crowd, if they’re not enthralled by the “magic” of Obama!
40 Music Stars Who Endorse Barack Obama!
We unveil his army of dedicated celebrity supporters…
Failed Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton could only muster up golden-oldies like Barbara Streisand and Sir Elton John to support her campaign, while Barack Obama is very much the man of the musical world with a whole legion of fervent and highly-influential followers. Here we run down the army of musicians who just love Obama…
Go see who we’re supposed to be excited about…
While we’re on the subject of “old,” especially OLD WOMEN, why not celebrate the 50th birthday of Barbie? I got wind of this via an email I receive from France-Amerique, Le Journal Français des États-Unis. (I’m failing miserably at trying to keep up my French.)
Barbie fête ses 50 ans
Pas une ride, pas un cheveu gris et pas un kilo en trop. Le temps ne semble pas avoir d’effet sur Barbie. Cinquante ans après sa création, la poupée vedette de l’Américain Mattel est plus radieuse que jamais puisqu’elle fête son anniversaire en s’offrant une nouvelle garde-robe.
Barbie fait des envieuses. A 50 ans, la poupée mannequin est encore pulpeuse et au top. Toujours à la pointe de la mode, ses gardes robes et sa plastique parfaite ont fait rêver des générations de jeunes filles et sans doute de petits garçons. Les plus grands noms de la haute couture comme Armani, Dior, Gauthier ou encore Versace l’ont déjà habillé.
You get the gist…time hasn’t affected her, she’s radiant, and she’s been dressed by the likes of Armani, Dior, and Versace.
I bet she’s an Obama supporter!!
A hat tip to Stray Dogs that Amble In in for this piece on women and what they could mean for the world (and how they’re being blocked) as well as some really cool buttons!!! The piece is entitled “It is Not about Hillary Anymore, It is about NOT Hillary”
So, this morning I opened up my “news” from The Confluence. (No thanks on the Yahoo reports from AP fellas.) I got to thinking…. ya know, it’s true… for me…. IT’S JUST NOT ABOUT HILLARY ANY MORE.
No. It is not about Hillary anymore. It is about NOT Hillary. What her absence from the position of POTUS means to me, and the rest of our god-forsaken world. A world so in need of healing and peace.
Do check out both the piece at the Confluence in case you missed it, as well as Stray Dog’s own piece….and check out those buttons which feature the % of women serving as governors or senators. Shocking!
On another serious note, here’s a story that was found by Grail Guardian. This piece is from a site called Rage Against the Washing Machine/Home of the Boxer Shorts Rebellion. Blogger Leilla writes from Beverly Hills, California (Click on “User Info” to read her rather interesting profile).
Excerpt from the piece recommend by GG:
Obama-Cola “The Great National Temperance Beverage”
The National Temperance Beverage
Obama-Cola
By JENNIFER MATSUI
In 2004, American voters were offered a choice between two presidential candidates in an elaborately staged “taste test” based on consumer preference for one brand of Cola over the other. More recently, voters were faced with yet another soft drink challenge, but this time it was based on the dominant brand’s ill-advised attempt in 1985 to “mess with success” and re-launch its product under a “new” label. Unlike the Bush/Kerry campaign that pitted competing (but otherwise identical) corporate interests against one another, election 2008 more closely resembled an internal struggle within a single corporate entity.
This time around, GW played the unenviable villain role of the Coca Cola exec responsible for his company’s disastrous decision to tamper with the formula and packaging of a beloved, much touted brand of carbolic soda, while Barak Obama played the dissenting marketing genius who comes to the rescue and restores the poisonous product back to its original flavor. Having put the genie, so to speak, back into the bottle, the whiz kid replaces the despised and disgraced CEO much to the relief of customers and shareholders alike. In this fictionalized retelling of the story, the youthful upstart’s deceptively bold campaign to oust his former boss is launched with the support of his enthusiastic and idealistic marketing team, most of whom were eventually given the pink slip once the new CEO settled into his upper floor suite. McCain’s minor role as hired mouthpiece attempting damage control for the outgoing CEO was a comical and insignificant aside to bigger picture premise of an arrogant and deluded leader being challenged by a charismatic and visionary upstart. Never mind that the “visionary” envisioned nothing more radical than a return to the recent past of putting the requisite amount of high fructose corn syrup in aluminum cans.
Have you checked out The Daily Beast, the site that was launched in October by former Vanity Fair and The New Yorker editor Tina Brown? (She also had an enjoyable show on MSNBC before it was sold to Obama, Inc.
It’s definitely worth a look-see. It’s a really sharp site with news, culture, etc. all presented posted in a really “active” way. Lots of diverse sources and opinions, too. Take a look…it’s a lot more fun that Arianna’s Huffing and Puffing site!!! (Warning: Occasionally a little heavy on the “boobs” that the Brits like so much, but overall, the insouciance of the site is really a breath of fresh air….)
Finally, Chicago Correspondent Leslie comes through with another gem from the local media…in this case, something that was posted on the blog of WLS hosts Don Wade and Roma. Priceless!!
Don Wade & Roma’s Blog WLS
Can’t Pass Up a Deal Like This!
Filed under: Current Politics | Tagged: Barack Obama, Barbara Streisand, Barbie, Don Wade and Roma, France-Amerique Le Journal des Etats-Unis, Gigwise.com, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Hillary Clinton, MSNBC, percentage of women governors, percentage of women in Senate, Rage Against the Washing Machine, Sir Elton John, Stray Dogs that Amble In Part IV, The Confluence, The Daily Beast, The New Yorker, Tina Brown, Vanity Fair, WLS Chicago | 10 Comments »
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Home » News » Our Vendors: Pilar Ferreir – Ocas, São Paulo, Brazil
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Our Vendors: Pilar Ferreir – Ocas, São Paulo, Brazil
7 January 2015 by INSP
Since Pilar Ferreir started selling Brazilian street paper Ocas in São Paulo, she has gone from cleaning mansions to writing novels and performing poetry and can now provide for her family.
“I was eight years old when I started to get into writing,” recalls Pilar, who grew up working alongside her mother, cleaning properties in some of Brazil’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.
“I read Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves and decided to write a story. My mother’s boss came into my room, saw my papers on the floor and said that I was writing too much.
“She tore everything up, said ‘get to work, blackie, you’re aiming too high’. This phrase has haunted me all my life. Today, every time I take part in a literary project, a recital, I remember this. It was complete nonsense.”
As Pilar landed her first paid cleaning job at 14, education was never an option for her. It wasn’t until she enrolled in a basic education course for deprived adults that she got some college experience, but finding secure employment remained a battle. Money was always running out and she was eventually evicted from her home.
One day, after leaving yet another unsuccessful job interview, Pilar broke down in the doorway of the Museum of Art of São Paulo and cried. Suddenly, she spotted a man with a bundle of magazines under his arm.
“I saw him selling magazines so I went over and asked him how I could get a job like that,” recalls the 44-year-old. “He told me about the street paper and I said to him, ‘but I don’t live on the streets’. He replied: ‘But soon you will’. And he was right. I no longer had any money in my purse and I hadn’t even realised it.”
Together they went to the Ocas office, where Pilar received her orange vest and a pack of ten magazines. It was a Monday morning. On Wednesday she went back for more. “There were periods where I didn’t stop working until one in the morning,” says Pilar. “I had to make the most of the people coming out of the cinema and theatre. Selling the magazine, I meet artists, actors, singers and lots of very nice people. I show them my poems. They often give me free tickets for shows, invitations to plays. All of this keeps me going.”
Writing has remained her greatest passion. Following the publication of her poems in Ocas, she published a book, Unacademic Words. “I didn’t go to university, but living on the streets inspired me to write it,” she says.
After eight years of selling Ocas, Pilar managed to rent the house that she lives in today, with her children. “Ocas has turned my life around,” she says. “We have money to eat and pay the bills, which is the most important thing. I hope that one day I can buy my own place.
“Did you know INSP works with over 120 street papers around the world? You can help celebrate thousands of vendors, like Pilar, by signing up to our Thunderclap social media campaign during #VendorWeek 2015.
#ourvendors, Ocas, Vendor Week, vendors
Donate to support INSP's work
Everything we do is only possible because of donations from people like you.
Vesna Avramović: The lessons I have learned from Liceulice
In this letter, Liceulice vendor Vesna Avramović tells a very personal story. She describes the personal changes that working as a vendor have brought into her life. She used to lack the confidence to communicate, was prone to anxiety attacks and was also afraid of all sorts of rejection. In time, these tensions lessened, and she started to find joy in her life and work.
Vendor City Guide: Prague
The Big Issue has been reaching out to vendors across the street paper network to get the inside scoop on the cities they know best. Here, Nový Prostor vendor Slavko talks about Prague in the Czech Republic.
Vendor City Guide: Cardiff
The Big Issue has been reaching out to vendors across the street paper network to get the inside scoop on the cities they know best. Here, Maurice Richards, a Big Issue vendor in Wales, talks about Cardiff.
Thoughts of a truly European vendor
Janko is a Nový Prostor vendor currently based in Prague, Czech Republic. He has over eight years’ experience of being a magazine vendor and he has worked in various European countries during this time. Here, he talks about what his life as a vendor is like and explains why striving for good fortune and having hopes for the future are important in life.
Our vendors: Rooster Tinch (Toledo Streets, Toledo, USA)
In a twist on the long-running vendor profile feature, Claire McKenna tells us more about Toledo Streets vendor Rooster Tinch. Claire is a Toledo Streets vendor and program manager who has become close to Rooster since he started working as a vendor in early 2018. Here, she talks about how Rooster has become part of the Toledo Streets family and a valued and successful team member – and shares the maxims that he lives by.
Glasgow pays tribute to much-loved Big Issue vendor Paul Kelly
After news of his death broke early last week, tributes began to pour in for popular Big Issue vendor Paul Kelly. Today at his pitch, outside Sainsbury’s supermarket on the city’s main shopping street Buchanan Street, where flowers, messages and mementos had sprung up in his absence, a crowd of people joined friends, colleagues, and others who had been touched by his character and presence, for a vigil in his memory.
Stress on the streets
All of us experience some degree of stress in our everyday lives. For those who are homeless, however, stress can be a debilitating and chronic issue. Street Roots talked to a number of individuals about their experiences of life on the streets and about the impact that stress has had on their lives. This is especially pertinent as delegates at this year’s ongoing Global Street Paper Summit talk about dealing with conflict and vendor welfare.
Our vendors: Sascha (Asphalt, Hannover, Germany)
Asphalt vendor Sascha talks about his struggles with his mental health, his childhood, his love of movies and his penchant for creating movie themed podcasts. Asphalt is based in Hannover, the city hosting this year’s Global Street Paper Summit.
A day out with Draussenseiter vendor Lothar
At the end of January, when there was still snow in Cologne, Draussenseiter vendor Lothar was equipped with an analogue camera and asked to record a day in his life. He liked the idea and started documenting straight away. Here you can see the selection of photos Lothar captured, along with his comments.
Our vendors: Reghina (Asphalt, Hannover, Germany)
Originally from Romania, Reghina (55) is now an Asphalt vendor in Hannover, the host of this year’s Global Street Paper Summit. Here she speaks about being the subject of discrimination in her home country, moving with her kids to the Czech Republic, and then herself to Germany, and finding a kind of friendship with her customers.
#INSP2019, Asphalt and Hannover: Learning about Summit hosts from its vendors
A group of #INSP2019 delegates were lucky enough to learn about Hannover’s homelessness situation from host street paper, Asphalt, and one of its vendors, Thomas. Delegates visited the Asphalt office, learning about its processes and were given a tour of social spots important to those living on the streets of Hannover.
Vendor City Guide: Hannover
As street paper delegates arrive in Hannover for the 2019 INSP Summit, and embark on a walking tour of the city, Thomas, a vendor of Hannover’s street paper Asphalt, gives his insider tips to where to go and what to do.
The love that grows by being shared
Bojana Ivanov Ljubomirov and Petar Jugovic are Liceulice vendors who have found happiness together. They were already working as magazine vendors when they met each other, and they have gone from strength to strength since joining forces to sell the magazine together. Not only are they growing in confidence; they are also building a life together and sharing their joy with others.
Vendor City Guide: Perth
Street paper vendors have been giving the inside scoop on the cities they know best. Here, The Big Issue Australia vendor Malcolm talks about Perth.
Each person is unique
Isabelle Raymond, a L’itinéraire vendor based in Montréal, has always been sensitive to the differences between people. As a child, she recalls trying to educate her classmates when they made fun of students at a nearby school for children with special needs. When her sister was born with several health needs, and later diagnosed with intellectual disabilities, Isabelle gained privileged insights into what life is like for someone with special needs.
Our vendors: Joseph Capozzi (Real Change, Seattle, USA)
Real Change vendor Joseph was delighted to find community, support and hope when he moved into the new shelter housed at Seattle’s King County Jail. The new shelter initially proved divisive, with some – including Real Change Founding Director Tim Harris – voicing concern about the optics of housing people experiencing homelessness in a jail. For Joseph, the shelter has been a much-needed sanctuary. He explains how staying at the shelter has changed his life for the better.
©2019 INSP
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Focus, Manage to Lead, People Matters
How to contract and govern for success with each team member.
May 1, 2012 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment
Click for a PDF slide deck on how to Contract & Govern for success.
One of a leader’s most important jobs is to get and stay clear about what it is that s/he is counting on from each team member. Once the leader is clear, the message must be communicated to each team member. Often, leaders fail to engage in a rich communication along these lines, apparently because they assume that team members are somehow supposed to figure out for themselves exactly what is expected.
The steps presented in the slides available by clicking the above icon and in the following text make explicit a conversation that otherwise plays-out inside of the heads of those involved. When the conversation is explicit the leader and team member get on the same page and dramatically increase the odds of high-performance and fulfilled expectations.
The leader first gets clear about what is needed from each person on the team. For each team member, the leader sets up a one-on-one conversation to relate exactly what the team is counting on from him/her. The leader should be certain that what is said is really what is wanted and that s/he thinks the person is able to do what it is the group requires; and then ask the person to repeat back what they were told to be sure s/he has it right; and then ask to verify s/he really does want to do it and that s/he believes s/he has the ability do it.
Once there is agreement between the leader and the team member on what, want, and ability, then there is essentially a verbal contract for the team member to do what is asked. The leader then must ensure that the team member has the resources (such as: time, training, people, money, texts, and advisers) needed for success.
Finally, the leader must make it worth the team members while to succeed such as by providing praise, a bonus, a promotion, or a trip upon successful completion.
Get clear about who is to do what.
Tell each person what the team counts on him/her to do; do not assume that just because the leader said it that s/he “gets it.
Ask him/her to repeat back what was heard to verify it is what is intended.
Express confidence that s/he can do what is asked.
Verify that s/he too believes s/he can do what is asked. There is no point in asking someone to do something s/he does not believe s/he can do. Paraphrasing Henry Ford: “if they think they can or if they think they can’t…they are probably right!”
Tell him/her that you really want him/her to do what you ask.
Verify that s/he indeed wants to do it. People often want to do something other than what they like doing and what they are good at doing because they think others value something other than what they are good at and like doing. The leader’s job is to make clear that what the team member is good at and likes doing is indeed what is wanted.
Write down what has been agreed to in a performance plan complete with what you will track to know how things are going and to know when what is to be done is indeed done.
• Provide resources necessary to ensure success, such as:
• Make it worth their while to succeed; such as:
Resume enhancement
The following graphic presents a way to visualize the steps outlined:
Supervisor-Team Member Contracting
Remember that delegation is not the same thing as abdication and that the number-one reason things go wrong is lack of management attention. The wise leader checks-in from time to time to be sure front-line action is proceeding as expected. Go out of the way to make it clear that you are on his/her team and that your only interest is success. Give something tangible to manifest your commitment such as your best thinking in the form of notes or drawings, key insights or ideas and invite your direct report to internalize your input and take it further as though it were their own.
Govern:
Leaders should set regular (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly) time to talk for 90-minutes one-on-one with each direct report. Schedule in a time-slot that is easy to keep; e.g., 7:30 am every other Monday. Keep the time more often than not. Reschedule if necessary but commit to it. It is OK if takes less time than scheduled. Any savings will be much welcome found-time. Have no other agenda and do not meet over lunch; though lunches together are good to have. The team member prepares and presents to the leader in up to one hour:
Last period’s priorities and progress with metrics to support claims of progress; the leader’s mindset is to ask: how is it going; how do you know?
List and talk through the top three to five, but no more, priority items fully to cover: what is going on and how it is going. The leader should go out of his/her way to be supportive, on the same team as the direct report and to help by providing resources, training, head start, access to other people, etc.
Agree on top items, next steps, what is to be done next and what the leader will do to help.
The leader also prepares and presents to the team member in less than 15 minutes:
His/her top three to five priorities to be kept honest; to let the team member in on something special and on what the leader is doing for the good of the team; and it is good for the leader to consolidate and share such information.
The leader discusses points raised until it is certain that they are clear and then solicits input and advice.The leader commits to follow up to keep the team member aware of what the leader is doing as desired.
The leader commits to follow up to keep the team member aware of what the leader is doing as desired.
The following presents a way to visualize the steps outlined above:
One-on-One Meetings between Manager and Team Member are key to governing for success.
Failure to follow the governing steps above is a recipe for calamity!
Note: The content in this post is from the Get Aligned chapter in Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World.
accountabilityassignmentscheck-ingoalsgovernanceleadershipleading peoplemanagementrole of leadersupervisionteam successteamworkweekly check-in
Next post University of Massachusetts 2012 Bateman Scholar in Residence Public LecturePrevious postUMass Commonwealth Honors College Awards Presentation Dinner Speaker
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All's Well that Ends Registered?
This book serves as a reference tool for all those who require information regarding the substantive law rules concerning new forms of non-marital registered relationships in the countries researched, as well as for those interested in the private international law aspects of these relationships.
Ian Curry-Sumner
Reeks:
European Family Law
boek | verschenen | 1e editie
oktober 2005 | xxvi + 600 blz.
Reekskorting -€ 13,80
Als u intekent op de reeks, wordt elke nieuwe titel uit de reeks u automatisch toegestuurd. U mag een reeks vrijblijvend schriftelijk opzeggen na ontvangst van min. 2 opeenvolgende uitgaven.
Awarded with the Prize of the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law 2008
Since 1989, Europe has witnessed an exponential increase in the number of so-called “registered partnership” schemes introduced alongside marriage. The diversity of registration schemes has created numerous problems in cases involving an international or cross-border element. This book focuses on these new registration schemes and is divided into two main parts. The first part is dedicated to the analysis and comparison of the substantive law rules of Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). On the basis of this comparison, it is concluded that although these registration schemes appear to be dissimilar, they all fulfil a common function. This conclusion serves as the starting point for the second part, which examines the private international law rules applicable to such relationships. Unification of these rules is deemed to be not only desirable, but also feasible.
This book serves as a reference tool for all those who require information regarding the substantive law rules in the countries researched, as well as for those interested in the private international law aspects of these new forms of non-marital registered relationships.
De individuele hoofdstukken zijn (nog) niet beschikbaar.
Over de reeks
‘... the European Family Law Series [plays] an important role in informing lawyers across Europe and beyond about developments in other jurisdictions, and in continually assessing the potential for hamonisation in the field.’
Brian Sloan in Rabels Zeitschrift 74 (2010)
The European Family Law series is dedicated to the harmonisation and unification of family and succession law in Europe. The series includes comparative legal studies and materials as well as studies on the effects of international and European law making within the national legal systems in Europe.
The series is published under the auspices of the Organising Committee of the Commission on European Family Law:
- Professor Katharina Boele-Woelki (The Netherlands),
- Professor Frédérique Ferrand (France),
- Professor Cristina González Beilfuss (Spain),
- Professor Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg (Sweden),
- Professor Nigel Lowe (United Kingdom),
- Professor Dieter Martiny (Germany) and
- Associate Professor Velina Todorova (Bulgaria).
Meer over deze reeks
Ook interessant voor u:
Divided Parents, Shared Children
Natalie Nikolina
Debates in Family Law around the Globe at the Dawn of the 21st Century
Katharina Boele-Woelki
Juxtaposing Legal Systems and the Principles of European Family Law: Divorce and Maintenance
Esin Örücü, Jane Mair
Plurality and Diversity of Family Relations in Europe
Katharina Boele-Woelki, Dieter Martiny
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Gage Skidmore
Politics /19 Oct 2018
M.H. Burton 10.19.18
Who’s the Biggest Liar in Washington?
No, it’s not Donald Trump. He’s a bush leaguer, a mouthy upstart when it comes to political prevarication. The major league political liars are in the Congress, many of them on the Republican side of the aisle. No, it’s not Paul Ryan either. He’s more the guru of incomprehensible bafflegab than outright lying. The King of Washington Liars is Mitch McConnell. He’s been telling the same stale old fibs for decades, so he’s well practiced at it. He uncorked another big one just the other day. Remember the highest achievement of the current Republican Congress? The massive tax cut for corporations and the filthy rich? The tax cut that was going to pay for itself by supercharging the economy? The economy got supercharged alright, so supercharged that inflation is starting to rear its ugly head.
But something else got supercharged too. The Federal Budget deficit. It rose 17% in FY 2018, $113 billion dollars in a single year. Dear Old Mitch said his signature tax cut wouldn’t cost a penny. That by the end of FY 2019 the deficit would be down by $140 billion. That estimate has now been revised to up by $419 billion. Up to over a trillion dollars. A slight miscalculation? Maybe a rounding error? Mitch has the ready answer, the same tired old answer he’s been flogging for years. Entitlements most foul! Once again they’re wrecking the budget and must be stopped! But what did all those nasty entitlements do in FY 2018? Not much. The cost of government aside from the military grew by 3.0%, roughly the same pace as inflation. Meanwhile $230 billion in tax cuts poured into the pockets of the rich, and the coffers of corporations that used much of it to buy back shares of their own stock and boost their prices.
It’s the same old Republican song and dance we’ve been hearing for years. Run up the deficit then use it to bash social welfare programs and any other government operations they don’t like to “balance the budget.” As if Republicans have ever, at least since the days of Reagan, been interested in balancing the budget. The party who’s Bush and Trump administrations combined to create 80% of the current deficit. And as if Mitch’s load of stale bullshit isn’t already noxious enough he calls the problem he and his party created “bipartisan.” The man who once said his “job number one is get rid of Obama” wants bipartisan action? The man who has rammed every program through on a party line vote. The man who has done everything he can think of to keep the Democrats in the dark until he can cut their heads off. The man who only last week was crowing over his success in putting a partisan Republican on the Supreme Court via a 50 to 48 party line vote…now extends the hand of bipartisan friendship to the Democrats. I hope they bite it off!
Now that’s Major League lying! Compare it to Trump’s babyish babbling on the same issue. “I had to take care of our military.” What? Did they hold a gun to your head Mister President? Or did you think you were in Thailand and a coup was brewing? “We had to do things we had to do.” That really nails it down, doesn’t it? “Hurricanes and fires and the tremendous forest fires all over…” and “very big numbers, tremendous numbers.” Sounds more like an unprepared 5th grader’s book report than a decent lie. But not to worry folks “we’re going to start bringing numbers down.” Now that at least sounds a bit more like Mitch!
No, Donald old boy, you’re just not in Mitch’s league. You’ll never be half the liar he is. You may lead him on sheer volume, but you’ll never be able to beat him when it comes to the sustained boldness and aggressiveness of his untruths. Mitch is the King of Liars. The Prince of Prevarication. The Maestro of Mendacity. A triple threat. He’s got it all!
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Home Recent News
Messiane talk to invernessgigs
Messiane catch a few words with invernessGiGs prior to their debut at the Ironworks as part of the Easter Showcase on the 7th of April.
Messiane is Dean Kernaghan (Vocals), Finn Creaney (Guitar), Matt Cooper (Bass) and Laurence Johnson (Drums).
Tell us something we don’t know about you guys?
Well first thoughts on question one would be we are four incredibly weird fuckers, wacky but cute, we’ve also created our own sport! It is called “YOBE!” more of that to come…lol if you know Finn then what do you not know about him…he has become a twitter fiend spewing abuse like Frankie Boyle. Continuously writing and producing his own music to the point of iNsAnItY. Dean, not a singer by trade…but naturally insane enough to flip out on stage and belt notes that make you bleed. A songwriter himself still learning and honing his voice and production. Along with Finn a fanatic pioneer of the infamous “YOBE!” and just plain weird.
Matt, Mr Reliable bass player, since joining he has become a natural part of the weird, generous person throughout and somehow always evades doorknobs!! Must be because he was a jedi a couple of centuries ago! Jedi blood don’t die!! how do you kill 2 birds with 1 stone…Laurence Johnson that’s how! he has been making some mad dubstep at college in Alness and at home. Fantastically gifted young drummer and gentle giant…the final edition to the band in 2011 and has filled MESSIANE perfectly!
How does it feel to be playing the showcase for the first time?
We all feel very privileged to be given such a desirable opportunity considering our gig inexperience and the amount of other talented bands out there competing for our slot. This is a very big moment for us, the most important thing is to keep this great momentum that we’ve built in practise, studio work, online and gigs going. We have been wanting to play in the Ironworks for years and its a bit of a dream come true… finally.
If someone has not seen you guys play before, how would you encourage them to come and see your set?
If you are a fan of bands like Pantera, bands that give you that electric energy show 150% balls to the wall pure fun, that’s what we are…the most fun we ever have is when we are rocking and that translates into the music…the speed and energy….its just what its all about! Its the entertaining atmosphere that grabs you and doesn’t let go, that’s what got us hooked on metal. Maybe you don’t like metal…maybe we can change your mind!
Which one of the other acts, on the bill, would you most like to see and why?
Well we would obviously like to see Zombie Militia, a band we have not yet seen but heard so much about. For a metal outfit up north they are certainly one of the driving forces. We have heard some good vibes about Them and Us too.
Who are your one’s to watch from the local scene at the moment?
With all honesty, us. In and out of Messiane we have been song writing intensely over the past two years, developing such a fantastic amount of original music. We aspire to gig as much as possible, that is our goal and through that be at the top of our game!
What does 2012 hold for you guys?
Already having released an E.P this year we want to continue writing both in MESSIANE and outwith, keep getting gigs as much as possible *hint hint* and rocking the shit outta the metal scene up north and hopefully with the other local bands, recharge the Metal scene in Inverness.
Have you got anything else to plug?
You can keep in touch with us through the following:
http://soundcloud.com/deankernaghan/syphon-project
http://soundcloud.com/loreo/marvin
http://soundcloud.com/finn-creaney/yellow-box
Twitters
http://twitter.com/#!/finncreaney
http://twitter.com/#!/_MESSIANE_
Tickets for the Easter Showcase are available via www.IronworksVenue.com,
You can check out all our other Easter Showcase news here.
Previous articleResurrection for Nova
Next articleWhat’s that Hue and Cry at the Ironworks?
XPONorth, 3rd and 4th July – Review
Woodzstock, June – Review
Ant Collesso, The Roov and more to play IGigs Presents at Inverness Gala
Woodzstock 2019 – IMAGES
GUN, Idlewild and more announced for ‘the last’ Loopallu
The LaFontaines and Miracle Glass Company for Kaiser Chiefs gig
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Browsing Faculty Publications by Title
Institute for Christian Studies
Faculty Research and Publications
All of ICSIRCommunitiesTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisherThis CollectionTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisher
Featured Collections / Local Links
PerspectiveICS Masters ThesesICS Doctoral ThesesICS Faculty PublicationsICS FLN BibliographyTheses Canada PortalCPRSE Reports
Babel, Pentecost, Glossalia and Philoxenia: No Language is Foreign to God
Seerveld, Calvin; Institute for Christian Studies (North American Christian Foreign Language Association, 2001)
Canonic Art: Pregnant Dilemmas in the Theory and Practice of Anton Raphael Mengs
Seerveld, Calvin; Institute for Christian Studies (Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1984)
Christian Institutions Without Pillars
Sweetman, Robert; Institute for Christian Studies (Christian Courier, 2016-04-25)
Christian Schooling: A Spiritual Act of Worship
Blomberg, Doug; Institute for Christian Studies (Christian Educators Journal Association, 2010-02)
Contra-Diction: Adorno's Philosophy of Discourse
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Sills, Chip; Jensen, George H.; Institute for Christian Studies (Heinemann, Boyton/CookPortsmouth, N.H., 1992)
Creational Man / Eschatological Woman: a Future for Theology
Ansell, Nicholas; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2006-05-26)
Critical Transformations: Macrostructures, Religion, and Critique
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto, Canada (SAGE Publications Ltd., 2013-11)
Can critical research on religion offer both an ideology critique and a critical retrieval of religious import? This essay suggests that it can, offering a programmatic sketch for a full-fledged critique of religion—a critique both aimed at religion and inspired by religion in a self-critical fashion. The sketch weds elements of a robustly normative critique of Western society with insights derived from the Frankfurt School. First the essay maps three societal macrostructures that organize much of contemporary social life—civil society, proprietary economy, and administrative state. Then it discusses solidarity, resourcefulness, and justice as societal principles that can sustain a critique of societal macrostructures. Next it identifies normative deficiencies within and between these macrostructures. On the basis of this architectonic critique, the essay then provides an account of religion in its critical and utopian roles. It concludes by envisioning a normative and emancipatory transformation of society as a whole.
Cross-Pressured Authenticity: Charles Taylor on the Contemporary Challenges to Religious Identity in a Secular Age
Kuipers, Ronald A.; Institute for Christian Studies (Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, 2016)
Cultural Paths and Aesthetic Signs: A Critical Hermeneutics of Aesthetic Validity
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Institute for Christian Studies (Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 2003)
Contemporary philosophical stances toward ‘artistic truth’ derive from Kant’s aesthetics. Whereas philosophers who share Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic validity discount art’s capacity for truth, philosophers who share Hegel’s critique of Kant render artistic truth inaccessible. This essay proposes a critical hermeneutic account of aesthetic validity that supports a non-esoteric notion of artistic truth. Using Gadamer and Adorno to read Kant through Hegelian eyes, I reconstruct the aesthetic dimension from three polarities in modern Western societies. Then I describe aesthetic validity as an horizon of imaginative cogency governing the exploration, presentation and creative interpretation of aesthetic signs. The essay argues that aesthetic processes, so construed, are crucial to cultural pathfinding, and that aesthetic validity-claims in art talk contribute significantly to this pursuit. Aesthetic validity, cultural orientation and art talk constitute the hermeneutical matrix from which questions of artistic truth emerge.
The Development of Curriculum With Relation to the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea
Blomberg, D. G.; University of Sydney (1978)
This thesis is concerned primarily with the philosophical foundations, and particularly the epistemological foundations, of a Christian approach to the school curriculum: we will construct a theoretical model of knowledge which may fruitfully inform the selection of goals and the establishment of criteria for the obedient progress of Christian education.
A Different Tenor: Songs of Love and Sorrow--Re-Engaging the Social Ethics of Music
Smick, Rebekah; Zuidervaart, Lambert; Toronto School of Theology; Royal Conservatory of Music; Institute for Christian Studies (University of Toronto Press, 2011)
The question of how music relates to our existence as ethical beings has not always elicited the same response. For much of the twentieth century, the relation between music and ethics was addressed from the angle of music's autonomy. Music was fenced off from society so that it might better fulfill its own internal demands. Thus, in answer to the question whether music has, or should have, an ethical dimension, the predominating philosophical answer of the twentieth century was solidly negative. The article that follows, a response to this negative point of view, reproduces a panel discussion that took place in April 2010 during a conference entitled "Songs of Love and Sorrow: Re-Engaging the Social Ethics of Music." Co-organized by the Institute for Christian Studies, the Toronto School of Theology, and the Royal Conservatory of Music, the conference attempted to bring to the musical arts a concern to re-evaluate the social significance of artistic experience and practice. Though not argued like an essay, the article highlights significant themes about the relationship of music to ethics, including the innately social character of music, its possible effect on our behaviour, the potential social content of sound itself, the positive social effect of music's ambiguity, the need to break down the barriers between music practitioners and interpreters, the role communities might play in sponsoring the work of musicians, and the possible compatibility between music's formal requirements and its potential for social engagement.
Dooyeweerd's Conception of Truth: Exposition and Critique
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Institute for Christian Studies (Association for Reformational Philosophy, 2008)
A transformed idea of truth is central to the project of reformational philosophy. This essay lays groundwork for such an idea by proposing a critical retrieval of Herman Dooyeweerd's conception of truth. First it summarizes relevant passages in Dooyeweerd's New Critique. Then it demonstrates several problems in his conception: he misconstrues religious truth, misconceives its relation to theoretical truth, and overlooks central questions of epistemology and truth theory. By addressing these problems, reformational philosophers can find new ways to think about truth that retain the holism, normativity, and radicalness of Dooyeweerd’s conception.
Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Institute for Christian Studies (2003-11-21)
Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom [Rev. version]
Exempla and the Promotion of Religious Identity: Gerard of Frachet's Vitae Fratrum
Sweetman, Robert; Goering, Joseph; Guardiani, Francesco; Silano, Giulio; Institute for Christian Studies (LEGASNew York, 2008)
This paper will examine the pedagogy of the exemplary vignette as a means of "mass" identity formation within the Dominican Order and among its far flung supporters. In the process, I make the case that Cistercian Conrad of Eberbach's earlier Exordium Magnum provided a model for a Dominican "memory" and the identity that shared memory was to ensure.
Existence, Nomic Conditions, and God: Issues in Henk Hart's Ontology
Faith as the Art of the Possible: Invigorating Religious Tradition in an Amnesiac Society
Kuipers, Ronald A.; Institute for Christian Studies (The Other Journal, 2008-03-31)
Good Cities or Cities for the Good? Radical Augustinians, Societal Structures, and Normative Critique
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Smith, James K. A.; Olthuis, James H.; Institute for Christian Studies (Baker Academic, a division of Baker PublishingGrand Rapids, Mich., 2005)
The Great Turning Point: Religion and Rationality in Dooyeweerd's Transcendental Critique
Zuidervaart, Lambert; Institute for Christian Studies (Society of Christian Philosophers, 2004-01)
Hugo Meynell objects to the apparent fideism and anti-foundationalism of Herman Dooyeweerd's philosophy. In response, my essay explicates the historical setting and logical structure to Dooyeweerd's "transcendental critique of theoretical thought." His transcendental critique seeks to uncover the "religious root" of philosophy and of other academic disciplines. Given Dooyeweerd's notion of religion and his account of theoretical thought, I show that Meynell's criticisms are misplaced. Yet they point toward fundamental problems in Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique. Some problems pertain to the logic of Dooyeweerd’s argument, and others to his notion of religion. I explain these problems and indicate how they should be addressed.
Haunting Conceptual Boundaries: Miracles in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas understands our creaturely being under two contiguous categories: nature and grace, or the natural and the supernatural. In this two-fold understanding of the creaturely whole, miracle names a reality that haunts the boundary between. Is the result seamless harmony? Or seismic activity?
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Government ready to bring Italian builder back for Melamchi, minister says
Water Supply Minister Bina Magar has said that the government would welcome the Italian builder of the Melamchi Water Supply Project if it agreed to follow the due procedure
Chandan Kumar Mandal
Published at : February 23, 2019
Updated at : February 23, 2019 08:50
Water Supply Minister Bina Magar has said that the government would welcome the Italian builder of the Melamchi Water Supply Project if it agreed to follow the due procedure.
Speaking in Parliament on Friday, Magar said that her ministry had kept the option of bringing back the Cooperativa Muratori e Cementisti di Ravenna (CMC) open to complete the project.
The national pride project is currently stalled after the government terminated the contract with the CMC on February 7 following a series of failed negotiations to bring the builder back.
“Since the ongoing dispute around the Melamchi project started, we have tried our best to resolve the matter immediately. The government would have no problem bringing back the CMC if it followed the procedure and act as per the contract,” the minister told lawmakers.
Parliamentarians lambasted the minister for not handling the Melamchi dispute properly, which has only delayed the project. Lawmakers asked the minister when exactly the residents of Kathmandu Valley would get to consume water from the Melamchi river in Sidhupalchok.
Lawmaker Rajendra Kumar KC criticised the government for not supplying the water to the Valley residents within the given deadline. The people should know the reasons why the CMC left the project in the first place, he demanded.
Addressing the concerns of parliamentarians, Magar said the government had considered two measures for
dealing with the Melamchi dispute so that the decade-old project would be completed at the earliest.
“If the CMC returns, then we can pay the local contractors and complete the remaining works on time. Therefore, we have continued the discussion to bring it back,” added minister Magar.
She however informed the lawmakers that the government was prepared even if the situation of hiring local contractors arises in the event of the CMC not returning.
Lawmakers also questioned the minister for the reason behind transferring secretary Gajendra Kumar Thakur, who had accused her of trying hard to bring back the CMC—a decision that would add massive financial burden to the country.
Sharing the opinion of transferred secretary Thakur, Nepali Congress lawmaker Gagan Thapa said: “In media reports, the secretary charged the minister with paying the CMC extra. The minister had said he demanded a cut from the CMC. One of them is surely wrong. The guilty should be punished.”
Magar, however, said: “My formulae were to get back the CMC, complete the works and deliver water to the Valley residents. He didn’t work as per that plan so he was transferred. I have no knowledge of any financial transactions,” the minister told the federal parliament.
Chandan Kumar Mandal is the environment and migration reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering labour migration and governance, as well as climate change, natural disasters, and wildlife. Before joining the Post, Mandal was a reporter for Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists, producing video reports and documentaries for its TV magazines.
At a half-century-old Sanskrit college, there is a will, but there is no money
Dealy in final verdict from top court makes it difficult for tax office to recover Sumargi’s unpaid taxes
After widespread criticism, Kathmandu Metropolitan City revises smart parking fees in New Road
Teachers and officials of prison schools call for better study environment in jails
Kantipur Television marks 16th anniversary
Riverside squatters in Thapathali spend sleepless nights
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by Chris F October 31, 2018 Number of comments0
Jersey Shore Breweries: Belford Brewing Review
Belford Brewing is among the closest ones to my home, and I’ve been there many times, however I never wrote a full review until now. The brewery opened in the Belford Junction of Middletown NJ in the summer of 2014, and since then (there were only 5 beers available first time I went there) it grew both in production and in space.
Atlantic City Events Reviews
Gameacon 2018 Review: Gaming Enthusiasts Gather in Atlantic City
The Ocean Resorts Casino in Atlantic City hosted Gameacon 2018 for the first time, after a few years at another AC resort. Between October 19-21 Gameacon attracted to the Jersey Shore a mix of gaming enthusiasts, indie developers, vendors, interactive game providers and more! The convention floor was shared by four different attractions: The gaming “arena”, the VR games, the indie developers and the vendors.
Atlantic City Food & Drinks Reviews
Jersey Shore Breweries: Garden State Beer Company Review
On my Atlantic City trip yesterday, I also visited the Garden State Beer Company, which is on the White Horse Pike just off the Parkway exit 40. So it’s a convenient stop when you’re going in or out of AC. I was impressed by the size of the tasting room, which is huge, maybe one of the largest I’ve seen at a New Jersey microbrewery.
Jersey Shore Breweries: Hidden Sands Brewing Review
This weekend I decided to go further down South and explore more Jersey Shore breweries. On a trip to Atlantic City, I found the Hidden Sands Brewing Co which is indeed kind of hidden in Egg Harbor, but it’s right off exit 37 on the Parkway or a very small detour if you’re heading back on the AC Expressway. Hidden Sands has a nice tasting room, cozy and not too big, a friendly bar area with a TV to watch your favorite game.
Food & Drinks Red Bank Reviews
Jersey Shore Breweries: Red Tank Brewing Review
Red Bank’s first microbrewery opened in mid-October 2018, and we had the pleasure of visiting it on the very first day. Located on Monmouth St next to Jamian’s, Red Tank Brewing could become both a social spot and a must-go destination for beer connoisseurs. It has a big bar and plenty of table seating for almost 100 people. It also has the advantage of being with a few minutes of lots of take-out eateries, so beer drinkers can bring some food (knowing that New Jersey breweries are barred from serving food).
by Chris F September 25, 2018 1
Food & Drinks Reviews
NJ Craft Breweries Hit Back at New ABC Restrictions
UPDATE: ABC suspended its restrictive “special ruling”! As some of you may already know, on September 24 the NJ Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Director Dave Rible issued a “Special Ruling Authorizing Certain Activities By Holders of Limited Brewery Licenses”. This put a lot of restrictions on events conducted by microbreweries.
by Chris F September 5, 2018 4
A Review of the Romanian Craft Beer Scene in 2018
A look at the young Romanian craft beer scene. We review some of the best local beers with a focus on IPA’s and also mention a few of the cool places where you can get them. Just a short introduction to Romanian craft beers.
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HONEST PEOPLE – CD
Categories: CDs, Specials
John’s 50th studio album, ‘Honest People’. Co-produced with award-winning producer, Matt Fell, it is an album that showcases their joint quest for perfection in their craft, with each song soaring to reach its full potential. As usual with Williamson, the album is full of songs about real people, places and moments. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry and others will simply make you feel proud of this great land and to be Australian.
For signed copies of Honest People and Hey True Blue – The Autobiography check out John’s signed Book and Cd Bundle FIND OUT MORE >
Keep Walking
Song For Luke and Mel
What You Wish For
Will She Marry Me
Call Me Blue
Interval (Instrumental)
It’s All About Love
Grandpa’s Cricket
Girt By Sea
Honest People
Clouds 0ver Tamworth
Warner Music Australia
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The Beverage Industry & Beverage Container Deposits
Comprehensive recycling programs are one of the best mechanisms for helping the environment. However, instead of expanding these programs, some critics instead support mandatory deposit programs or “bottle bills.” When it comes to bottle bills, however, three decades of data and practical experience have undeniably demonstrated that imposing mandatory deposits on beverage containers is a poor way to increase recycling and address solid waste issues.
Mandatory deposit programs, more commonly known as “bottle bills,” share several common elements:
Impose a mandatory, pre-paid fee on certain beverage containers
Force consumers to drive containers to designated locations to reclaim their fee
Require retailers or redemption centers to take back returned containers
Require significant new infrastructure (equipment, staff and facilities) to manage beverage containers separately from other products and packaging
Eleven states have enacted forced deposit programs – all but one of which was implemented prior to 1987. In fact, in 2002, the nation’s only municipal deposit ordinance was repealed in Columbia, Missouri. These deposit programs were all established to help reduce beverage container litter. In recent years, however, deposits also have been advertised as a way to increase beverage container recycling.
The Drawbacks of Mandatory Deposits
Deposit systems simply don’t work as advertised. They are a misguided policy choice because they:
Cost much more than comprehensive recycling or litter control programs, which accomplish the same goals
Penalize and hinder more efficient recycling programs
Are inconvenient, particularly compared to curbside recycling programs
Do little to help the environment as they target such a small part of the waste stream
Create new environmental burdens from increased fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions to return and collect containers
Impose a hidden, regressive tax on consumers in the form of higher prices
Deposits and Recycling
Beverage bottles and cans have always been a valuable and significant component of recycling programs. The earliest recycling of metals and glass grew out of market-based scrap companies that purchased materials from businesses and consumers. With markets for materials and voluntary participation, recycling programs were economically viable and sustainable.
These principles hold true today, but the economic incentive to recycle has increased as many communities and businesses face much higher waste disposal costs than ever before. The interest in capturing the value of the commodities and diverting waste from disposal led to the establishment of curbside recycling programs in the 1980s, providing collection of recyclables in the same way trash was collected.
Comprehensive recycling programs, like curbside collection, provide an easy and effective way for consumers to recycle their household waste, including beverage bottles and cans.
Yet, some argue that these convenient and effective voluntary programs don’t go far enough. Data shows these deposit programs are costly, inconvenient and compete with more successful voluntary recycling efforts.
Comprehensive Recycling Works
Comprehensive recycling programs provide systems through which households can easily recycle a wide range of materials. Through these programs, households can recycle through curbside pickup or, in smaller communities, drop-off programs. These programs often include an educational component to encourage and build participation.
We know that comprehensive recycling programs are the best way to capture waste conveniently, efficiently and equitably. These programs have expanded rapidly and are extremely popular with citizens and businesses alike for one good reason—they work.
Taxing Beverages
Some states and communities have implemented taxes on nonalcoholic beverages as a way to raise government revenue and fund various programs. But taxing beverages, or any food item, is a poor way for governments to increase revenue, especially in tough economic times.
Voters in Maine soundly rejected a recent attempt to tax beverages to fund state programs. By a 64 to 36 margin in the November 2008 election, Mainers declared that they were “fed up with taxes” and rolled back a tax enacted by the Legislature months earlier. Maine residents understood that beverage taxes are:
Unpopular – The public views beverage taxes as a tax on food. Even if the taxes are imposed directly on businesses, surveys show that 95 percent of consumers believe they will ultimately bear the burden of beverage taxes, passed on to them by producers and retailers.
Regressive – Beverage taxes hurt low-income consumers significantly more than others because it raises the price of groceries, which is most harmful to those on fixed incomes. As a result, those least able to afford beverage taxes bear the greatest burden.
Unfair – Beverage manufacturers and bottlers already pay their fair share of business and other taxes, generating more than $55 billion in revenue annually for federal, state and local governments.
Anti-business – Beverage taxes raise the cost of doing business, not just for beverage companies, but for their suppliers and retail customers as well. Higher costs reduce reinvestment and job growth – a critical consideration given that the beverage industry directly or indirectly supports nearly 3 million American jobs and $112 billion in wages and salaries.
Today only Arkansas, Washington, West Virginia and the city of Chicago retain discriminatory taxes against beverages. In recent years, the trend has been to repeal or reduce these taxes. In fact, since 1990, 10 states and communities have repealed discriminatory taxes on soft drinks.
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P.O. Box 24351 Knoxville, Tn 37933
Preston Park Living
Jonathon Miller Architects
WindRiver
Wildwood Cabinetry
A quiet, lakeside community with the personality of a progressive estate.
Tucked behind a beautiful brick wall and lush landscaping, a neat little neighborhood is cropping up. It’s called Preston Park, and it’s getting a lot of attention lately. No, it doesn’t have million dollar homes or a revolutionary retail space. It’s just a quiet street off Choto Road with what will be a total of 21 homes.
What makes Preston Park so unique has to do with the details. Unlike other neighborhoods where the only way to distinguish your house from the neighbors’ is by the cars parked in the driveway, Preston Park has nothing but all-original floor plans. These Mountain Craftsman Style homes were specially designed by local architect Jonathan Miller. The floorplans vary between 3000-3500 square feet, almost all of them have a master on the main level, and they were each designed to be truly “liveable” homes. Of course, the handful of lake access lots and plans for a neighborhood walking trail, pier and gazebo overlooking Ft. Loudon Lake are also making a big splash with potential homeowners.
Let’s be honest, when you are looking at new homes, it’s easy to let the heart take over. Most of us don’t think about a garage door being too short for a SUV or being able to hear every word your mother-in-law says about you in the next room—or worse yet, vice versa. And you probably won’t even consider how you’ll manage to get sheets of plywood up in the attic so you can use it for storage. These are all things typically discovered after closing.
The good news is that Joseph A. Houck, the builder behind Preston Park, has already thought of all of these things, and just about everything else. And he knows that most of these details are subtle. He knows that most people don’t stop to think about all that is right with a house, but one wrong thing, well, that leaves a lasting impression.
“From the crawl space to the attic, I want to make sure everything is finished.”
“From the crawl space to the attic, I want to make sure everything is finished,” Joe explains as he stands sock-footed in the kitchen of a recently finished Preston Park home. Even the garages have painted floors, wall organization systems and pristine baseboards—and the best part is that with the maintenance-free lawns, it won’t become cluttered with lawn tools and equipment.
Standing there, talking to Joe, it is easy to forget that this house isn’t his actual home. But maybe that’s because he builds every home as if were he were going to live there. He came to Knoxville over eight years ago, and with his experiences of remodeling offices and Victorian homes while growing up in Ohio, he began working for John Testerman. To this day, he considers his time learning from Testerman to be priceless.
“I put a lot into the front end of the home,” says Joe. “We really go above and beyond with the foundation and framing.” The framer he uses has framed countless Cracker Barrels and other commercial buildings all over the country and knows how to make a structure solid. “You won’t feel the floor shake when people are walking through the house, and you also won’t have to worry about the structure 10 years or more down the road.”
It’s true, you won’t see special floor joists or the blown-in insulation between your walls, but you probably will appreciate a peaceful, quiet, energy-efficient home. Joe uses a recirculating water line so you won’t have to wait for hot water, no matter how far away you are from the water heater. The gas hot water heaters he uses are very efficient with little recovery time. He also uses gas heat on the lower levels and electric heat pumps upstairs—all of these are from Vasey HVAC. This is more energy efficient and will result in lower utility bills, which is increasingly important to everyone.
He also chose energy efficient, lo-E windows by Pella Windows. “They block out most UV rays, which can also be a lifesaver for your furniture,” he adds. “On the exterior, they are made from aluminum, so you don’t have to worry about rot or peeling paint.” Of course, this is all very nice, but what stands out the most about these windows are the beautiful wood on the interior.
Joe used a siding material with a 50 year warranty from James Hardie Company. “They worked with us on the installation, it is a great product that really reduces the need for painting,” says Joe. And for beautiful, lasting driveways and sidewalks, he chose pavers from Hardscapes. Yet another little detail that sets Preston Park apart.
“Joe is successful because of his hard work and excellent finished product, … He is honest and fair, and delivers a well-built home in a timely fashion.”
While Joe obviously knows a thing or two about building materials, he also knows how to make a house feel more like a home: call Molly Bland-Watts of Molly Bland Interiors. “I really put a lot of faith and trust in Molly. She makes choices that appeal to the general public, but without ever being boring. She knows how to be different without being extreme.”
The respect is mutual. “Joe is successful because of his hard work and excellent finished product,” says Molly. “He is honest and fair, and delivers a well-built home in a timely fashion.”
Walking through the furnished Preston Park home just before the Parade of Homes, it becomes obvious that Joe, Molly, and the architect, Jonathon, make a great team.
The architectural details set the tone—inside and out—as a modern, Appalachian inspired twist on the craftsman style. “Jonathon really brings a unique style and look to his homes,” says Joe. “He is every open and easy to work with.”
Vernacular such as simple dormers and large wooden beams speak to the Craftsman period. The rich, earthy colored exteriors with inviting, rich wooden doors have a truly handcrafted feel.
“It was important to me to carry the American craftsman theme indoors, but not to eliminate potential buyers with more traditional taste,” says Molly. “A soft, warm color palette in the khaki family was chosen throughout both floors of the house.”
In the foyer, the simplicity of the décor sets the tone for the easy to love and live in home. Molly chose handmade soumak rugs in tones of chocolate brown for the foyer and study. Opposite of the study is a formal dining room, complete with craftsman style wainscoting.
Tucked under the iron-banister staircase, a surprisingly large powder room with handpainted mural work by Robin Surber continues the earthy color palette.
The kitchen is open to a breakfast nook as well as a large living space with a stone fireplace to create a truly liveable area. The dark wooden mouldings and trim tie the spaces together. Coordinating large, detailed cabinets, granite countertops, and island with a bar, all from Dixie Kitchens, make it an inviting, workable space. With an on-site shop for customization and designers that are committed to creating a space that looks and feels “right”, Dixie Kitchens creates a unique style to fit every client. Joe worked with Juda Brown at Ferguson for all of the stainless steel Kitchen Aid appliances as well as the Delta fixtures throughout the home. Molly chose a slate tile backsplash in the autumn color palette of brown, persimmon, grey green and gold.
“Soft washed chenille fabrics along with leathers were selected for the furnishings complementing the casual living concept,” adds Molly. “The art displayed in the house ranges from arts and craft prints, original oil paintings and pottery pieces along with antique artifacts.”
“As a family builder, it is really gratifying to know that you have provided someone with a great, liveable house, … And that they have put their faith and confidence in me. There really is a strong bond and level of trust that you develop with the homeowners.”
The laundry room and master bedroom are also on the main level. The master bath boasts a large, tiled shower and a luxurious Whirlpool tub and a fabulous, room-sized closet immediately off the bath. Joe used 84 Lumber for all of his building supplies, including the lumber for the extensive closet shelving.
On the main floor, the ceilings are 10 feet with 8 foot interior doors—a far cry from the standard 6’8” doors that most of us are accustomed to seeing. Two piece mouldings and door casings 4 1/2 inches wide are all proof that nothing is standard in these homes.
Joe also worked with Bill Reed at FTG Home Theatre Systems for wiring throughout the home. Every phone jack is prewired with two lines, which enables the homeowner to use just about anything. They also installed a stereo system in four rooms, prewired another room for surround sound, and installed a security system. They truly have thought of just about everything.
“This is really a house that anyone can enjoy—from a retired couple to a young working family. As a builder, it is really gratifying to know that you have provided someone with a great, liveable house,” says Joe. “And that they have put their faith and confidence in me. There really is a strong bond and level of trust that you develop with the homeowners.”
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Our Wedding Rings Give Us Amnesia: On Empathizing with Singles
Jasmine Holmes7 May 2017Relationships
As a homeschooler, there are a few facets of the traditional schooling experience that I wonder about. Like lockers — those seemed fun. Also, drama club — I think I would have liked that. Do kids burst into song in the middle of the hallways, High School Musical style? Are there freshmen who are as awful as the chicks in Mean Girls?
The musical part may be a stretch, but I know enough about human nature to know that we do enjoy our cliques. And though I never quite experienced the AV geeks, the cheerleaders, and the science nerds cloistering in their separate corners, I have seen adult versions of these lines being drawn in the sand. The clearest delineation often happens between married women and single women.
Mrs. Know-It-All
I will never forget my wedding day.
Some aspects have already faded over two years’ time, but the big moments remain. I remember getting ready down the hall from Phillip and hearing his laughter echoing through the building. My bridesmaids were doing my hair and makeup with nary a trial run, and I was being taped into my beautiful dream dress. I remember laughing with my dad in the foyer before walking down the aisle to The Gentle Waltz. I remember I laughed hysterically before the kiss because Phillip literally growled at me.
What I don’t remember amid all of those precious, precious moments, was my pastor laying the mantle of perfection upon my shoulders, and pronouncing that, from that day forward, I would have every last bit of my crap together. And yet, as I look around the landscape of singleness and married life, it’s hard to miss the hint of condescension that often accompanies a wedding ring: those poor single girls do need to get their lives together so that they can reach higher consciousness like we married few.
The Ultimate Status Symbol
As a single, the messages that I got were quite mixed. On the one hand, everyone knows the Sunday school answers that we give to the unmarried: marriage is a gift of God, not based on our merit or our timing, but on his grace and his plan for our life and our sanctification. It is not a brownie point in some cosmic reward system, but just one of many ways that we can bring glory to God.
The Apostle Paul was not married. And, in fact, he said that the unmarried had a unique advantage in serving the Lord (1 Corinthians 7). Jesus never got married — clearly, his focus was on his eternal Bride, the Church, and not on the earthly illustration of that relationship. So, while marriage paints a picture of Christ and his Bride, singles, too, take part in that picture, because the church is Christ’s Bride.
The Pressure Is On
However, we have become quite adept at talking out of both sides of our mouths. On the one hand, marriage is just one way we can bring glory to God. On the other, it is something that we earn by preparing for it, being “ready” for it, and pursuing it.
If a young woman gets past a certain age and still isn’t married, we start to wonder if she spent too much time investing in her career and not enough time in her homemaking skills. If a young man gets too old without putting a ring on it, we start to question his seriousness about serving the church and putting some single woman out of her misery. People who were once all too aware of the pressure of being a single, but once married, forget what it was like to feel like a pawn. Our wedding rings give us amnesia.
In our amnesia, we forget what it was like to wait for marriage without obviously waiting for marriage. We don’t remember trying to pursue God wholeheartedly while also trying to understand what it’s like to pursue a relationship. We don’t recall the frustration of “getting to know you” turning into something serious, and then crashing and burning for all to see.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Marriage did not change my status as a sinner in need of a Savior — it only changed my context.” quote=”Marriage did not change my status as a sinner in need of a Savior — it only changed my context.”]
Instead of enthusiastic supporters, too many married people either become parents or the peanut gallery. We want to advise, cajole, and lecture or simply offer commentary like sports announcers critiquing our favorite team. “She just needs to find contentment in Christ,” as if it were something we had always done easily.
It’s a vicious cycle: single is belittled by married people and hates it; single becomes a married person and enjoys being in the in-crowd and therefore belittles the other singles.
We’ve got to stop.
As I look back on my wedding day, I don’t recall my pastor elevating me from my lowly status as a single girl to wife, like a humble serf being knighted and offered a seat at the round table. In fact, I quite remember him promising us in counseling sessions both before and after marriage that my sin issues would get a lot “worse” when put under the magnifying glass of the most intimate relationship I had ever experienced — and worse, still, before they got better.
Marriage did not change my status as a sinner in need of a Savior — it only changed my context.
Married women: we have much to learn from our single sisters in Christ. They have insights to offer on our wifehood that we are often too jaded to see and perspective on our motherhood that we might be too uptight to catch. They are not the subordinate or the other, but our sisters in the Lord. Sympathy is not enough. In fact, it’s a bit condescending (“Bless your poor little heart!”). Cultivate a heart of empathy. It’s the difference between standing on the sidelines shouting, “You can do it! Work harder!” and realizing that we’re all in the battle together, helping each other along. Yes, there are battles that we’ve already fought in marriage, but that is not the only battleground that matters.
And single women: you don’t need to be put in your place. We’re all in the same place, on our knees before the Cross. Don’t miss out on the beauty of diverse relationships. It may take a bit of a thicker skin to wait for the married people in your life to “get” this, but your relationships with them are valuable. Don’t count them out just because they need a few reminders now and then. The deciding factor in our status isn’t whether or not we have been chosen by Mr. Right, but in the fact that we were chosen by God.
‹ The Time I Was Called a Feminist: How We Use Labels as Weapons
The Danger in Mothering for the Masses: On Millennial Mamas and Social Media ›
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chemalot and chemalot_knime: Command line programs as workflow tools for drug discovery
Man-Ling Lee1Email authorView ORCID ID profile,
Ignacio Aliagas1,
Jianwen A. Feng2,
Thomas Gabriel3,
T. J. O’Donnell4,
Benjamin D. Sellers1,
Bernd Wiswedel3 and
Alberto Gobbi1Email author
Journal of Cheminformatics20179:38
Analyzing files containing chemical information is at the core of cheminformatics. Each analysis may require a unique workflow. This paper describes the chemalot and chemalot_knime open source packages. Chemalot is a set of command line programs with a wide range of functionalities for cheminformatics. The chemalot_knime package allows command line programs that read and write SD files from stdin and to stdout to be wrapped into KNIME nodes. The combination of chemalot and chemalot_knime not only facilitates the compilation and maintenance of sequences of command line programs but also allows KNIME workflows to take advantage of the compute power of a LINUX cluster.
Use of the command line programs is demonstrated in three different workflow examples: (1) A workflow to create a data file with project-relevant data for structure–activity or property analysis and other type of investigations, (2) The creation of a quantitative structure–property-relationship model using the command line programs via KNIME nodes, and (3) The analysis of strain energy in small molecule ligand conformations from the Protein Data Bank database.
The chemalot and chemalot_knime packages provide lightweight and powerful tools for many tasks in cheminformatics. They are easily integrated with other open source and commercial command line tools and can be combined to build new and even more powerful tools. The chemalot_knime package facilitates the generation and maintenance of user-defined command line workflows, taking advantage of the graphical design capabilities in KNIME.
Graphical abstract
Example KNIME workflow with chemalot nodes and the corresponding command line pipe
Command line program
Substructure identification
Property calculation
QSPR model
Conformation analysis
Strain energy analysis
Dynamic KNIME node generation
In the fields of computational chemistry and cheminformatics, data management and analysis require the sequential application of multiple methods and algorithms. For example, in a hierarchical docking workflow, two-dimensional molecular structures may first be converted into a set of three-dimensional models using a conformer generation tool. The conformers may then be pre-screened with a fast pharmacophore matching tool to remove conformers that will not be able to make the required interactions. The reduced set of conformers may subsequently be docked to a protein structure and scored with more resource-intensive, but more accurate methods. To keep up with project teams’ demand, a flexible development environment that allows the quick assembly of cheminformatics and structure-based design modules has become indispensable for prototyping, developing, and deploying computational workflows. Example workflow platforms include UNIX shell scripting with pipes [1], open source visual workflow tools such as KNIME [2] and ORANGE [3], as well as commercial applications such as Pipeline Pilot [4]. The power of each tool depends on the strength and robustness of the available modules and the flexibility and ease with which the modules can be combined and extended.
This paper introduces chemalot, a set of command line programs for cheminformatics and structure-based design developed at Genentech that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. These command line programs extend a set of previously released command line programs from the Autocorrelator package [5] and include published programs for database access and diversity analysis [6, 7]. The full list of command line programs is given in Fig. 1. They provide diverse functionalities such as data manipulation and filtering, database access, property calculation, model building and 3D structure analysis. The programs take advantage of integration with other software such as R [8], Gaussian [9], and OpenEye toolkits [10]. The tasks performed by the command line programs can be as simple as renaming data fields in the input file or as complex as performing a 3D conformational analysis. Most of chemalot command line programs read and write Structure Data (SD) files [11]. These programs can be combined with each other and with command line programs from open source or commercial cheminformatics packages [10–14] to create complex UNIX pipelines. In addition, a small number of the chemalot command line programs read and write tab-delimited files to better handle spreadsheet data.
List of command line programs available in the chemalot package. For a short description of each command line tool the reader is referred to the GitHub website
Implementing workflows using UNIX scripts and pipes of command line programs is very lightweight while still powerful. The UNIX infrastructure supports scheduled execution with cron [15] as well as distributed execution on high performance computing clusters with tools like LSF [16] and PBS [17]. The sdfMultiplexer program allows for the parallel execution of workflows over multiple cores or compute nodes by seamlessly splitting the input stream and combining the output streams. Parallelization with sdfMultiplexer is only possible for workflows in which a computation is independently applied to each record. These features make the UNIX platform and command line programs ideal building blocks for simple and complex cheminformatics workflows.
On the other hand, UNIX scripts and pipes are hard to debug compared to workflows developed in graphical workflow tools such as KNIME, ORANGE, and Pipeline Pilot. For this reason, KNIME and Pipeline Pilot have become very popular as they provide a powerful set of modules as well as a graphical user interface for developing workflows. A useful feature of these visual programming environments is that workflows can be executed one module at a time. This enables inspection of the output of each module and thus debugging is greatly simplified. However, there are some downsides to using visual workflow environments. The execution of a workflow may incur a significant start-up cost because the execution environment needs to be initialized. When executing on multiple nodes in a cluster the initialization needs to happen on each node. While the environment can be pre-started on each node, when no workflows are executing, the resources may be reserved and unavailable for other computations.
To leverage the benefits of the lightweight execution of command line programs in UNIX pipes and the debugging power of graphical workflow software, we have implemented a framework within the open source KNIME Analytics Platform that exposes command line programs as KNIME nodes. By using the DynamicNodeFactory class in the KNIME API, the framework can generate KNIME nodes from a simple XML configuration. Thus, given a command line program that reads and writes SD files, the creation of a new chemalot_knime node in KNIME takes only 5 lines in the XML file. Since the standard KNIME nodes only handle data in KNIME table format, two data format conversion nodes were implemented. They allow the integration of command line tools with other nodes available in KNIME, thus providing access to high performance computing clusters from within KNIME workflows. This also allows the integration with cheminformatics nodes from other open source packages such as the RDKit [18], CDK [19] and Vernalis [20] KNIME nodes. The chemalot_knime nodes not only output the processed data; they also compile an executable UNIX command corresponding to the given node sequence. Since the chemalot_knime nodes use UNIX pipes and do not rely on the workflow environment, the command can be copied and pasted into a UNIX shell script and executed in any UNIX computing environment, thus avoiding the startup costs mentioned previously.
We first provide a conceptional overview of the implementation of the chemalot command line programs by describing three representative programs and the KNIME framework for the dynamic node generation. Then, we will showcase three example workflows and their use at Genentech: (1) the creation of “project reports” visualized with Vortex [21], (2) the creation of statistical prediction models using the Random Forest machine learning method [22, 23], and (3) the implementation of a method to estimate the strain of 3D conformations of small molecules.
The command line programs are available in the chemalot package on GitHub [24] under the Apache Open Source license. The chemalot_knime node framework is available in the chemalot_knime package on GitHub [25] under the GNU General Public License version 3. Most of the command line tools require a license for the commercial OEChem library and additional commercial software is required for specific commands.
The goal of this section is to give the reader an understanding of the program design concept. Besides descriptions of the implementation details, this section also describes the context in which the command line programs presented in this section can be used.
Command line programs
Most of the command line programs read and write molecular structures and associated data, e.g. names, properties, and activity data, in SD format. This format was chosen because its widespread use enables the integration with other open source and commercial command line programs. A few chemalot programs read and write other formats such as tab-separated and Gaussian formats to enable integration with other software packages.
The command line programs can be divided into two groups, Java programs and scripts. Molecule structure related and database dependent algorithms are mostly implemented as Java programs. The Java version of the commercial OpenEye OEChem toolkit [10] is used to perform cheminformatics algorithms such as substructure matching and to navigate the molecular structural graph as well as to parse SD files. Scripts frequently combine other command line programs in order to perform a common sequence of computations or to implement novel methods. A detailed description of how to use each program can be accessed by executing each program with the “-h” option. To showcase the distinction of Java programs and scripts, we will discuss three command line programs in more detail below: sdfStructureTagger, sdfMMConfAnalysis, and sdfCalcProps.
sdfStructureTagger: a Java program example
Drug discovery teams classify compounds into chemical series defined by a common core or scaffold. In reporting applications, the given series names are displayed along with the chemical structure to facilitate communication with non-chemists or to analyze structure activity relationship (SAR) trends within a series. Scaffolds can be specific substructures or more generic definitions, e.g. multiple scaffolds with similar attachment vectors.
The program sdfStructureTagger is used to “tag” compounds based on chemical scaffolds which the user defines using the SMARTS language [26]. By “tagging”, we mean to add a data field to the SD output stream that classifies a compound as a member of a given series. Examples could be “Azaindole” or “PhenylAmide Series”. A tab-delimited file with SMARTS, tag name, and tag set name is required as input. The tag set name allows a user to create sets of SMARTS, e.g. groups of main and sub series scaffold definitions in a single file. Each sdfStructureTagger execution can only use one set and the SMARTS are applied to an input molecule in the given order. If a molecule matches a SMARTS scaffold definition, the associated tag name is added to the molecule’s metadata in the SD file. Depending on the specification, the tag of the first matching SMARTS, all matching SMARTS, or both are added to the SD file. The order dependent application of the SMARTS and the output of the first match enable the user to assign input molecules into desired compound series without having to compile complex SMARTS. Having multiple SMARTS with the same tag name or placing the SMARTS in appropriate order are effective alternatives.
The sdfStructureTagger command line program is implemented in Java and uses the OEChem API for SD file parsing and substructure matching. The Apache Commons CLI library [27] is used to parse the command line options. The Java program is wrapped in a small C-shell script that sets the correct environment settings before the program execution. The Java code is separated into two classes, SDFStructureTagger.java and StructureTagger.java. SDFStructureTagger.java contains code to parse the command line parameter values as well as the content of the SMARTS and SD file. Its task is to pass each input molecule object to a StructureTagger instance. StructureTagger.java encapsulates the structure matching code. Most of the Java-based command line programs in the package [28] adopt a similar separation of the command line parsing and the algorithmic code. This facilitates the reuse of the code for other applications e.g. web services.
sdfMMConfAnalysis: a workflow script example
The internal potential (strain) energy of a drug molecule is a key component of the binding affinity for a drug to a protein. It constitutes the unfavorable increase in energy of small molecule in solution when adopting the conformation in the binding site. No interactions with the protein are taken into account. The sdfMMConfAnalysis program follows a procedure similar to that first described by Boström et al. [29]. Given a crystallographic binding conformation or a three dimensional computational binding hypothesis, the program identifies the global minimum conformation, the local minimum closest to the input conformation as well as four intermediate conformations between the input and the local minimum. The relative energies of these conformations and their distance from the input conformation allow an estimation of the strain of the input conformation. All energies are computed with the MMFF94S [30] force field as implemented in SZYBKI [31] using the Sheffield solvation model [32]. The four conformations intermediate between the input and the local minimum are obtained by minimizing the input employing an additional flat bottom potential with flat bottom radius of 0.2, 0.6, 1.0 or 1.4 Å to constrain their deviation from the input conformation. These intermediate constrained minima together with the local minimum provide information about the height and slope of the potential energy surface around the input conformation (Fig. 2). A global minimum search is performed by enumerating the accessible conformations with OMEGA, sampling additional OH and NH rotors with sdfTorsionScanner, minimizing them with SZYBKI, and selecting the lowest energy conformation as the global minimum. If the minimized OMEGA conformational ensemble includes conformations that are Pareto optimal [33] with regards to low energy and small RMSD to the constrained minimized and global minimum conformations, they are also retained. The output file contains the input conformation, conformations from the four constrained minimizations, the local minimum, and the global minimum as well as any additional Pareto optimal local minima. All output structures are aligned to the input structure using sdfAlign that aligns structures by minimizing the RMSD. The energy profile and some of the conformations identified, starting from the crystallographic conformation of the sulfonamide ligand in the 4WPF structure [34], are shown in Fig. 2.
Conformational analysis of the sulfonamide ligand in the 4WPF PDB crystal structure performed with sdfMMConfAnalysis. a Profile of conformations returned. RMSD values on the x axis are relative to the input conformation. Energies on the y axis are relative to the global minimum. b Three conformations from the conformation analysis. The input conformation is in black, the constraint minimum at 0.3 Å from the input is in blue and the Pareto minimum at 0.8 Å from the input is shown in pink
SdfMMConfAnalysis is implemented as a Perl script which wraps a set of command line tools and commercial applications. A diagram of the workflow is given in Fig. 3. Perl scripting is only used to parse the command line options and execute the sequence of piped programs, shown as rectangular boxes. To speed up the calculation, the minimization of the conformational ensemble generated by OMEGA can be parallelized. This is accomplished by executing the piped set of command line programs, highlighted by the dotted box in Fig. 3, using sdfMultiplexer. Even though up to 500 minimizations are performed for a full conformational analysis, on average the workflow takes about 20 s when executed on an 8 core computer.
Conformational analysis workflow as implemented in sdfMMConfAnalysis. Depending on the command line options, the programs in the dotted box are executed in parallel using sdfMultiplexer
sdfCalcProps: a workflow assembler program
The previous section shows that command line programs can be combined to create a new program that executes a predefined workflow. In this section, we describe the sdfCalcProps program that dynamically creates a workflow depending on the properties requested by the user. This task can be complicated as the calculation of one property might depend on other properties. For example, the familiar Rule of Five (RO5) model evaluates drug likeness of a molecule based on its number of hydrogen bond donors (NH + OH), acceptors (N + O), molecular weight (MW), and cLogP [35]. The dependencies result in a hierarchy of properties that requires calculators to be executed in a specific order. In this example, NH + OH, N + O, MW, and cLogP have to be computed before RO5 can be calculated. As the number of properties increases, tracking the dependencies hardcoded in a script would become unmanageable. For this reason, we devised a simple format to encode the dependencies in an XML file.
Figure 4 shows an XML snippet describing the MW and RO5 properties. Each property element describes how a program should be executed to create appropriate output(s). For a higher level property such as RO5, its dependencies are specified in the “requiredCalculators” field. Outputs from the “requiredCalculators” may be retained in the resulting output file by specifying “keepRequiredCalculators”. Many properties like MW, N + O and NH + OH are calculated using the same calculator (i.e. “OEProps”), but with different arguments. To ensure that the calculator is only called once, these properties are assigned the same “progAggregateID”.
Property elements describing the MW and RO5 calculators in the sdfCalcProps XML configuration file
When executing the sdfCalcProps program with a list of requested properties, sdfCalcProps determines the dependencies and creates a set of Calculator-Java objects for each property and its dependent properties. Calculator objects for properties having the same “progAggregateID” are merged, i.e. they are replaced with a single Calculator object. A recursive sorting places calculators with no dependencies at the beginning of the execution in order to avoid duplicate calculations. The pseudo code in Fig. 5 describes the recursive sorting algorithm. The sorted list of calculators is used to create a shell script that executes the calculators in the correct order.
Pseudo code describing how dependencies are resolved by sdfCalcProps
Abstracting “property calculators” from the actual command line programs as well as separating the property calculator descriptions in an XML file from the compilation of command line text provides flexibility and facilitates the addition of new property calculators. The XML file describes the dependencies for all models used at Genentech, therefore sdfCalcProps can be considered as a “warehouse” of prediction models.
chemalot_knime nodes
The chemalot_knime nodes allow the execution of any command line program that reads and writes SD files from within the KNIME Analytics Platform. The nodes are connected with each other via a custom KNIME port type, i.e. SDFCmdPortObject. Each chemalot_knime node can be executed on its own. In this case the associated command line program is started remotely via secure shell (ssh) and the contents of the input is sent as SD file to the standard input of the command line program. The node then captures the standard output of the program via ssh and makes it available on the output port of the node. The SDFCmdPortObject not only transfers data in SD file format, but also transfers the user configured command line options of all preceding nodes. This allows for a second execution mode with better performance in which a single “piped” UNIX command line is assembled from all nodes, but only executed at the end of the chemalot_knime node sequence. The corresponding command line text can be retrieved via the KNIME port view or via a KNIME flow variable and can be used in a shell script.
Most chemalot_knime nodes are created using KNIME’s dynamic node creation framework [36]. The framework is used to generate chemalot_knime nodes from an XML file. Figure 6a shows the definition for the sdfStructureTagger node. The specification contains information (1) for organizing the node in the KNIME Node Repository (label and Subfolder attributes), (2) for help text generation (help element), (3) for indication of input and output port existence (ports element), and (4) for command text generation (IO and default elements). Figure 6b shows the corresponding configuration dialog. All program options except for the IO options are entered into the text box. Having a single text box greatly reduces the time needed to transfer program options from shell scripts. The “?” icon provides access to the help text of the given command line program.
Example chemalot_knime node configuration. a XML snippet showing the definition of the sdfStructureTagger node and b the corresponding Command Configuration dialog generated by the dynamic node creation framework
The sdfStructureTagger node has input and output SDFCmdPortObject ports and is therefore classified as a Processor node. The other two node types are Generator and Consumer nodes which have only output or only input SDFCmdPortObject ports, respectively. Generator nodes always constitute the start of a pipe and have an additional tab for specifying the ssh settings in their configuration dialog (Fig. 7). The “Remote Directory” input allows the user to specify an execution directory for all nodes in the sequence. File names specified as command line arguments are relative to the “Remote Directory”. The “Execute in each node” checkbox allows the user to defer the execution of the command line programs to the terminal Consumer node. If it is unchecked, the commands in the sequence are executed in parallel and, the data is transferred only at the beginning and end of the sequence. This provides the highest performance. If “Execute in each node” is checked, debugging the commands is simplified by enabling the inspection of the output and standard error of each node independently.
SSH settings tab in the configuration dialog of the chemalot_knime node
Additionally the chemalot_knime package provides two converter nodes that convert data in SD file format to the KNIME table format and vice versa. This enables integration between chemalot_knime nodes and standard KNIME nodes (cf. Fig. 8). We have also implemented the “SDF Concatenate” node to allow concatenation of multiple inputs.
Example KNIME workflow showing the conversion and concatenation nodes
The applications presented in this section demonstrate how the command line programs have been successfully used to support therapeutic project teams in various aspects of drug discovery at Genentech. The selected applications are essential tools for the day-to-day work of project team members. The “Results and discussion” section concludes with a summary of how command line programs enabled project teams at Denali Therapeutics to access data before the deployment of the research informatics infrastructure.
Project Vortex sessions
Therapeutic project teams must be able to easily retrieve all relevant project data from a database and then be able to analyze and mine the data to make informed decisions. Instead of implementing a full-featured database application that includes both the data export and data mining user interface, we adopted a component-based approach: a set of chemalot command line programs serves as the backend for data export and processing while Vortex [21], a powerful, chemistry-aware commercial spreadsheet and plotting tool, serves as the frontend for data analysis. The interface between the backend and frontend is an SD file that can also be shared with research partners, whether they use Vortex or other visualization software (e.g. Spotfire [37] or DataWarrior [38]). Use of the SD file data format also provides the agility to integrate with other data analysis applications.
Figure 9 shows an example command line pipe for generating such an SD file. Data are exported from the database using the AEREAExporter program. This command line program has a companion open source web application, AEREA [39], which provides graphical user interfaces for creating search queries and report templates. Search queries and report templates saved in AEREA can be executed from the AEREAExporter program and serve as instructions to retrieve the compounds of interest and data fields specified in the report templates. Thus, AEREAExporter and AEREA enable computational chemists with no knowledge of SQL or the data model to retrieve data from a database for automated processing. The subsequent programs of the example command line pipe perform the following actions:
An example command line pipe for compiling an SD file
sdfStructureTagger assigns series names to compounds
sdfRGroupExtractor generates R-Groups of interest
sdfCalcProps calculates physiochemical properties
sdfGroovy calculates ligand efficiencies with a custom Groovy script [40]
sdfSelectivityCalculator computes off-target selectivity
sdfTabMerger adds data from an externally generated tab-delimited file into the SD file.
Piping these command lines provides a certain degree of parallelization because the programs are started simultaneously and process data whenever data are available. The processing time could be further reduced by executing a pipe fragment within sdfMultiplexer that can span multiple threads to parallelize the execution. However, sdfMultiplexer can only be used to parallelize command sequences in which each record is processed independently of the others and for which the input and output order is irrelevant.
The number of project Vortex sessions and their content depends on the need of the given project team. At Genentech, it is the computational chemist’s responsibility to create and maintain the customized Vortex spreadsheets for the project in close interaction with other project team members. The diversity of the command line programs enables the computational chemists to customize the data processing workflows, and thus to provide Vortex spreadsheets that enable analysis from different perspectives. A default Vortex spreadsheet contains compound registration and availability information, aggregated assay results, computed values, such as target selectivity and cell shifts, calculated properties, and possibly includes links to metabolite identification reports, certificates of testing and crystal structures.
Other Vortex spreadsheets combine data exported from DEGAS [41], a “compound idea and synthesis tracking” application with a report of registered compounds. This combined view of “virtual” and existing compounds allows project teams to quickly assess compound ideas based on the experimental results of the registered compounds in the same spreadsheet. Depending on the project team needs, Vortex spreadsheets are generated on a daily or even on an hourly basis using a UNIX computing cluster. The latest exports are easily downloaded from a shared network location via a custom Genentech menu in Vortex.
The Vortex spreadsheets enable the project team to conduct hypothesis-driven drug discovery. Hypotheses evolve in the course of a project’s life and for this reason, the sequence of chemalot command line programs for a project is routinely being adjusted; new assays are added and existing models are changed. Testing and debugging piped command line programs in UNIX can be tedious, especially if the sequence is complex. With the chemalot_knime framework, this can be facilitated by converting the piped programs to a KNIME workflow (Additional file 1: Figure S1) and by using the KNIME Analytics Platform as an editor.
Quantitative structure–property-relationship (QSPR) model creation
The command line programs and KNIME framework are used at Genentech to create, validate and apply QSPR models for properties important to lead optimization such as metabolic stability [42], permeability [43] and solubility. Here, we present an example KNIME workflow to show how command line programs are used to construct a QSPR model to predict solubility (Fig. 10). The workflow is greatly simplified for clarity and therefore the model should not be used without stringent validation. A dataset with 1763 measured thermodynamic solubility measurements was downloaded from CHEMBL [44, 45]. The workflow first calculates the log10 of the experimental solubility and separates the input file into training and testing sets. In the second step, the descriptors are calculated with sdfCalcProps and the model is built with sdfRRandomForestCreator. The predicted solubility values are converted into a KNIME table and then passed to a KNIME plotting tool to display the experimental versus predicted values. The third sequence uses sdfRModelPredictor to apply the model created previously to the test set. Internally, sdfRRandomForestCreator and sdfRModelPredictor convert the input SD file to tab format and then create models and make predictions using the randomforest package in R [8, 22, 23]. To facilitate the reproduction of this example, the data and the KNIME workflow are available in Additional files 2 and 3, respectively.
Example QSPR model creation and validation. The KNIME workflow demonstrates the use of the chemalot_knime nodes. It splits the content of the input file into training and test sets, creates a simplified solubility model, and tests the model using the test set. The scatter plots on the right show predicted (cDemoSol) versus experimental log Solubility (logSol) for the training and test sets
At Genentech, predicted drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK) properties, e.g. liver microsome clearance, are automatically computed and stored in the database for both registered compounds and compound ideas. To allow users to check the model’s prospective performance, especially for new chemical series, we have implemented web applications using KNIME that apply the models to compounds synthesized after the model creation. The integration of the command line programs in KNIME enables us to leverage the KNIME WebPortal user interface while running the model predictions on our high-performance computing cluster via the chemalot_knime nodes.
In our final example we demonstrate the use of the sdfMMConfAnalysis program to compute the strain energy of a large number of small molecule protein ligands from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) [46]. Figure 11 shows the distribution of the strain energy for 416 different small molecule conformations retrieved from the PDB database (PDB identifiers are given in the Additional file 4). All small molecule structures with less than 2 Å resolution were exported from the in-house copy of the PDB database stored in PROASIS [47] using sdfExport. The structures were filtered by molecular weight (<500) and number of rotatable bonds (<7) and by removing structures that did not pass our compound screening filters [48]. Finally known metal counter-ions were removed with sdwash [49]. sdfMMConfAnalysis was used to analyze the strain energy for each conformation resulting in multiple conformations with energies for each input as described under “implementation”. For the nine thresholds on the x axis in Fig. 11 (0.2–1), the lowest energy conformation with at most that RMSD distance was retained for each input conformation. For example, if minimized conformers are allowed to deviate by at most 0.4 Å from the input conformation, the median energy relative to the global minimum is 1.42 kcal/mol. 75% of the structures from the PDB have a strain energy of less than 4.25 kcal/mol when they are allowed to relax at most 0.4 Å.
Distribution of strain energies for 416 structures from the PDB. The ∆E is computed relative to the global minimum conformation as described in the sdfMMConfAnalysis section above. Each box and whisker in the plot represents the same 416 small molecule conformations that were allowed to relax at most the MaxRMSD [Å] amount from the input. The central horizontal line shows the median of the values in each box. The ends of the box show the first quartile and third quartile of the values. The whiskers correspond to the highest or lowest point that is not an outlier. Outliers are defined as those points that are outside the median ± 1.5 times the interquartile range
In estimating the strain energy, a certain amount of relaxation from the crystallographic conformation must be allowed for two reasons: The crystallographic conformation is a model optimized to the electron density. The atom positions have associated uncertainties that depend on the resolution of the crystal structure and on the local electron density around the ligand. Secondly, the MMFF94S force field with Sheffield solvation model was used to compute all energies and the force field contains errors. In reviewing the conformations computed for the 416 conformations from the PDB, we decided to use a 0.4 Å RMSD relaxation as a default threshold to estimate the strain energy. 0.4 Å relaxation allows for only a relatively small movement of the atoms as can be seen in Fig. 2. Given this threshold, docking conformations can be filtered or flagged if they exceed a threshold of 4 kcal/mol with a maximum relaxation of 0.4 Å as they are unlikely to have high binding affinity.
The strain energy analysis computed with sdfMMConfAnalysis is regularly used by both computational and medicinal chemists for evaluating strain in new crystal structures and in evaluating new compound designs or docking poses. To facilitate its use, the command line workflow is wrapped as a web service and integrated into the MOE modeling application that is used by all medicinal chemists at Genentech [50].
The three applications presented above and many other command line applications have been in use at Genentech for many years with high impact on small molecule drug discovery projects. The chemalot package was deployed at Denali in mid-2015 and has enabled their computational chemists to support project teams before the deployment of a cloud-based informatics solution. Data files from various contract research organizations (CROs) were easily consolidated for SAR analysis in Vortex. The process of file consolidation, data binning, scaffold matching, molecule clustering, and property calculation was extremely efficient. Command line programs were also used to assess the properties and diversity of the small molecule high-throughput screening (HTS) library from CROs as part of the CRO selection process. Clustering and comparing multiple libraries whose size ranges from 250,000 to 850,000 molecules can be time consuming. With the natural parallel processing of command line pipes plus the divide and conquer feature of sdfMultiplexer.pl, it took a few hours of computing time to process multiple libraries. The results of comparing HTS collections from multiple CROs enabled the project team to make data driven decisions. The chemalot programs are now part of the Denali computational chemistry platform on the Amazon cloud.
Command line programs can be used for small daily tasks as well as for large distributed computation on a cluster. The chemalot package provides a set of command line programs to many important tasks in chemical informatics. The programs can be easily combined using UNIX pipes to build more complex methods such as the strain energy workflow. The chemalot package extends the autocorrelator and Aestel packages and integrates well with other open source and commercial command line programs.
These packages have been used at Genentech and Denali, a large company and a small startup company, to perform basic and complex cheminformatics tasks that range from merging of structural and numerical data, selecting diverse sets of compounds from a library and, creating machine learning models to performing 3D analyses such as the computation of ligand strain and quantum mechanical torsion scans [51]. At Denali, the command line programs were particularly useful at the start-up stage of the company in 2015 before the deployment of a cloud-based informatics solution. They remain the tools of choice for compute-intensive tasks, such as evaluation of HTS libraries. At Genentech, command line tools are ubiquitous as they are used by computational chemists to generate Vortex spreadsheets for project teams and pharmacokinetic QSPR models for chemical idea evaluations.
The development of complex workflows using piped UNIX command-line programs can be cumbersome. Through the use of automatically generated chemalot_knime nodes, the development of command line pipelines can be significantly simplified. Only five lines of XML configuration are needed to create a chemalot_knime node that encapsulates any UNIX command line program that reads and writes SD files on stdin and stdout. The command line programs can be executed sequentially. The output SD file can be inspected visually in the KNIME user interface and the standard error output can be inspected for each node. Once the workflow has been developed, the chemalot_knime nodes can be executed as single workflow on UNIX, outside of the KNIME environment to optimize performance. Furthermore, conversion nodes enable the integration with other KNIME nodes to leverage the best of these two worlds.
This paper introduces the chemalot and chemalot_knime open source packages and demonstrates their use in two drug discovery organizations. It is our hope that other scientists find these tools useful.
CRO:
contract research organization
DMPK:
drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics
HTS:
MM:
MW:
PDB:
Protein Data Bank
QSPR:
quantitative structure–property-relationship
RMSD:
root mean square deviation
RO5:
rule of five
SD:
structure data
SAR:
structure–activity-relationship
ssh:
XML:
extensible markup language
AG, BS, JF and ML developed most of the command line programs. ML, AG, TG and BW implemented the chemalot_knime package. TO implemented sdfCFP. AG, BS, JF and ML wrote the initial manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
The authors thank the anonymous internal reviewers at the Genentech for valuable feedback and suggestions on the manuscript and program code. We also thank Tamara Kale for reviewing the legal aspects of the open source release. We thank Michael Berthold, Jeff Blaney, Daniel Ortwine, and Nick Skelton for support and feedback, as well as Matthew Lardy for the release of the autocorrelator package. Additionally, we thank Clyde Jones, Elena Kochetkova, Jim Fitzgerald, Nevin Cheung, and Slaton Lipscomb for setup and maintenance of the UNIX and KNIME server environment.
Thomas Gabriel and Bernd Wiswedel work at KNIME.com, the company that develops the open source KNIME Analytics Platform and markets commercial extensions. TJ O’Donnell is the owner of gNova Scientific software developing cheminformatics software and consulting as cheminformatics specialist.
Project name: chemalot and chemalot_knime.
Project home page: https://github.com/chemalot/chemalot/. https://github.com/chemalot/chemalot_knime/.
Operating system(s): Platform independent (tested on Linux and Mac), chemalot_knime runs within the KNIME Analytics Platform.
Programming language: Java, (csh, perl and python wrappers around the java programs).
Other requirements: Java 1.8 or higher; Command line programs from the autocorrelator open source project; OEChem Toolkit 2015 (commercial license required). A few command line programs require additional license (see online documentation).
License: chemalot: Apache License. chemalot_knime: GNU General Public License version 3.
Any restrictions to use: see “Other requirements” and online documentation.
13321_2017_228_MOESM1_ESM.pdf Additional file 1. Contains a screenshot of the KNIME workflow corresponding to the example command line pipe shown in Fig. 9 and a list with brief description of each command line program.
13321_2017_228_MOESM2_ESM.sdf Additional file 2. Contains the structures and data used to create and validate the solubility QSPR model in Fig. 10.
13321_2017_228_MOESM3_ESM.txt Additional file 3. Contains the KNIME workflow shown in Fig. 10.
13321_2017_228_MOESM4_ESM.knwf Additional file 4. Contains the PDB identifiers used to create Fig. 11.
Discovery Chemistry, Genentech Inc., 1 DNA Way, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA
Denali Therapeutics, 151 Oyster Point Blvd, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA
KNIME.com AG, Technoparkstrasse 1, 8005 Zurich, Switzerland
gNova Scientific Software, San Diego, CA 92103, USA
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Laboratory assessment of the status of Her-2/neu protein and oncogene in breast cancer specimens: comparison of immunohistochemistry assay with fluorescence in situ hybridisation assays
S Wang1,
M H Saboorian1,
E Frenkel2,
L Hynan3,
S T Gokaslan,
R Ashfaq1
1Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, TX 75235-9072, USA
2Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
3Academic Computing Services, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Dr Ashfaq email: ashfaq.raheela{at}pathology.swmed.edu
Aim—To evaluate the clinical usefulness of three commercially available assays for Her-2/neu oncogene and protein measurements. The Her-2/neu protein is overexpressed, mostly as a result of gene amplification, in 20–30% of human breast cancers, and has been shown to have prognostic and predictive value for treatment with chemotherapy or the new monoclonal antibody, Herceptin.
Methods—An immunohistochemistry (IHC) assay using the Dako polyclonal antibody A0485, which measures the Her-2/neu protein, was compared with two new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) assays—INFORM™ and PathVysion™, in a cohort of 52 formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded breast tissues. These tissues were selected randomly from 84 consecutive infiltrating breast cancer specimens, which were first stratified according to the Her-2/neu protein levels as measured by IHC.
Results—The two FISH assays achieved a 98% concordance rate: 14 specimens (27%) showed Her-2/neu gene amplification and 37 specimens (71%) showed no Her-2/neu gene amplification. The PathVysion assay had certain advantages over the INFORM assay. In contrast, the IHC assay detected Her-2/neu overexpression in a high percentage of cases, including 13 high positive specimens (25%) and 13 medium positive specimens (25%). Although 10 of these 13 IHC high positive specimens showed gene amplification by FISH, nine of 13 IHC medium positive specimens showed no gene amplification. Statistical analyses showed that the differences between IHC and FISH assays were primarily in the specimens with medium positive IHC, but negative FISH results.
Conclusions—Because of the increasing importance of the Her-2/neu oncogene and oncoprotein in the clinical management of patients with breast cancer, the accurate and consistent evaluation of Her-2/neu status is crucial. This study suggests that the best approach is to combine both IHC and FISH assays; that is, to use the IHC assay as a triage step, followed by the PathVysion FISH assay to analyse the IHC medium and high positive cases.
Her-2/neu
fluorescence in situ hybridisation
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jcp.53.5.374
Alterations in proto-oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes have been reported in human breast cancer. The Her-2/neu oncogene, also known as erbB-2, encodes one of the epithelial growth factor (EGF) receptors on the cell membrane, the functions of which include the stimulation of mammary epithelial cell proliferation.12 The Her-2/neu oncogene is overexpressed in 25–30% of breast cancers.3–5 In over 90% of these cases, Her-2/neu oncogene overexpression is attributed to Her-2/neu gene amplification; that is, an increase in the number of gene copies in the cell,3,6,7 which results in raised concentrations of the corresponding mRNA and, ultimately, the Her2/neu oncoprotein. Other mechanisms, such as transcription activation, might be involved in the remaining cases.
Assessment of Her-2/neu status has gained increasing importance in the clinical management of patients with breast cancer. Her-2/neu overexpression/amplification in node positive cases is linked to poor prognosis; that is, shortened disease free interval and shorter survival time, and a similar linkage might also exist in node negative cases.3,4,8–11 Her-2/neu overexpression/amplification appears to be a significant predictor for the response to therapeutic agents.5,12,13 In addition, a humanised monoclonal antibody to the Her-2/neu protein, Herceptin (trastuzumab), has been shown to be an efficacious adjuvant therapeutic agent for patients with breast cancer who overexpress the Her-2/neu gene.14–16
Because it is a complex and unique issue, the assessment of Her-2/neu status is an excellent opportunity for pathologists to integrate cutting edge knowledge of molecular pathology into daily practice, and represents a formidable challenge to provide consistent and reliable information to clinicians. First, the evaluation of Her-2/neu status requires technically difficult quantitative assays. Her-2/neu alterations in breast cancer cause quantitative changes—overexpression of the protein as a result of gene amplification in most cases, as opposed to the qualitative changes (mutations or deletions) found for most other oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes. Second, status can be assessed either by measuring the concentration of Her-2/neu, which is directly involved in the pathogenesis of breast cancer, or gene amplification, which is thought to be the cause of Her-2/neu overexpression in most patients. Although various blotting assays, such as Southern blotting (which measures gene copy number), northern blotting (which measures mRNA values), or western blotting (which measures protein concentrations), have been used, these assays require large amounts of fresh tissue, and are thus not practical for most clinical settings. For routine formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded breast tissue specimens, two types of assays are currently used—immunohistochemistry (IHC) to measure the Her-2/neu protein and fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) to measure Her-2/neu gene amplification (copy number). To date, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three Her-2/neu assays for specific clinical applications. An IHC assay, HercepTestTM, using the Dako polyclonal antibody A0485, was approved as an aid to the assessment of patients in whom Herceptin treatment is being considered. Two FISH assays were also approved as adjunct tests—INFORMTM for the prediction of recurrence in patients with primary invasive, node negative breast carcinoma, and PathVysionTM for patients with stage II, node positive breast cancer, in particular for the response to adjuvant cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy. For the critical evaluation of the usefulness of Her-2/neu tests in a clinical laboratory, we compared, for the first time, three commercially available assays—one IHC assay (using the widely used antibody A0485) and the two FISH assays, INFORM and PathVysion.
SPECIMEN SELECTION AND PROCESSING
Specimens were obtained from consecutive mastectomies and breast core biopsies that were performed at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas between August 1998 and January 1999. All specimens were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin and paraffin wax embedded. After microscopic diagnosis of infiltrating breast carcinoma, one representative tissue block from each patient was subjected to assessment of Her-2/neu status.
The primary polyclonal anti-Her-2/neu antibody, A0485, was purchased from Dako Corporation (Carpenteria, California, USA). Buffers, blocking solutions, biotinylated polyvalent secondary antibodies, streptavidin–biotin complex reagents, chromagen, and haematoxylin counter stain were used as supplied in the Level 2 USA Ultrastreptavidin Multispecies Detection System (Signet Laboratories, Dedham, Massachusetts, USA). Antigen retrieval citra buffer was obtained from BioGenex (San Ramon, California, USA). Optimal dilutions of primary antibody (A0485) were predetermined as 1/3500, using positive and negative Her-2 expressing breast cancer specimens. A known positive control section was included in each run to ensure proper staining.
All IHC staining was performed at room temperature on an automated BioTek solutions TechMate™ 1000 immunostainer (Ventana BioTek Systems, Tucson, Arizona, USA). Paraffin wax sections were cut at 3 μm on a rotary microtome, mounted on positively charged POP100 capillary gap glass slides (Ventana BioTek Systems), and air dried overnight. Sections were then deparaffinised in xylene and ethanol. Sections were quenched with fresh 3% hydrogen peroxide to inhibit endogenous tissue peroxidase activity for 10 minutes and rinsed with deionised water. Sections were then placed in 200 ml antigen retrieval citra buffer, pH 6.8, then brought up to the boil, after which 50 ml of deionised water was added. The buffer was again boiled for five minutes. The slides were allowed to cool for 20 minutes and subsequently rinsed thoroughly in deionised water and then buffer. Sections were incubated in unlabelled blocking serum solution for five to 10 minutes and then incubated for 25 minutes with either primary antibody at a dilution of 1/3500 in buffer, or with buffer alone, as a negative reagent control. Subsequently, sections were washed in buffer, and then incubated first with biotinylated secondary antibody solution for 25 minutes and then horseradish peroxidase conjugated streptavidin–biotin complex for 15 minutes. Sections were washed in buffer, and then incubated with two changes, for five minutes each, of a freshly prepared mixture of diaminobenzidine (DAB) and H2O2 in buffer, followed by washing in buffer and then deionised water. Sections were then counter stained with haematoxylin, dehydrated in a graded series of ethanol and xylene, and covered with coverslips. Slides were viewed under the light microscope and photographed on a Nikon ECLIPSE E600 microscope (Nikon Instruments, Melville, New York, USA) with Quipps genetic workstation imaging software (Vysis Inc, Downers Grove, Illinois, USA). Positive reactions with DAB were identified as a dark brown reaction product on the cell membrane and the specimens were graded as negative, low, medium, and high positive, based on both the percentage of positively stained cells and the staining intensity (table 1). The specimens with high or medium IHC positivity were considered to have Her-2/neu overexpression, compatible with FDA approved criteria for Herceptin treatment.
Criteria for Her-2/neu immunohistochemical assays
For the INFORM assay, the commercial kit was purchased from Oncor Inc (Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA), which was subsequently acquired by Ventana Medical Systems (Tucson, Arizona, USA). The FISH assay was performed according to the manufacturer's recommended protocol after the laboratory received proficiency certification for performing the INFORM assay. Formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded 4 μm thick tissue sections were dried overnight in a 65°C (±2°C) oven and then deparaffinised in xylene, followed by two changes of 100% ethanol. Sections were incubated in pretreatment solution (30%) for 15 minutes at 43°C (±2°C) and digested in protein digesting enzyme solution for 40 minutes at 37°C (±2°C). The slides were denatured in a 75°C water bath for eight minutes. The Her-2/neu unique sequence probe was warmed at 37°C for five minutes before application. A 10 μl aliquot of the probe solution was pipetted on to the target tissue which was covered with a glass coverslip. The slides were hybridised at 37°C for 12–16 hours in a humidified chamber. After removal of the coverslip, the sections were washed using a post-hybridization wash (20× saline sodium citrate (SSC) and formamide). Detection was then performed by indirect labelling of fluorescein tagged avidin, which binds to the DNA probe. The remainder of the genomic DNA, which was not bound by the DNA probe, was then stained with an interacting fluorescent counter stain (DAPI in antifade). Excitement of fluorescein and DAPI by light from a mercury arc lamp with appropriate filters in an epifluorescence microscope resulted in the emission of green and blue light for the Her-2/neu sequence and general genomic DNA, respectively. Specimens were evaluated with the Nikon ECLIPSE E600 microscope (Nikon Instruments, Melville, New York, USA) with Quipps genetic workstation imaging software (Vysis) under oil immersion at ×100 magnification using the recommended filters. In each specimen, at least 40 cells were counted for Her-2/neu gene signals. The specimens with a mean fluorescence signal number of 4 or less for each cell were considered to be non-amplified, whereas those with a signal number of greater than 4 were considered to be amplified (table 2). Control slides supplied by Oncor were used as controls in each run of the assay.
Criteria for Her-2/neu fluorescence in situ hybridisation assays
For the PathVysion assay, the Her-2 DNA probe kit and the paraffin wax pretreatment reagent kit were purchased from Vysis. The FISH assay was performed according to the manufacturer's recommended protocol and after the laboratory received proficiency certification for performing the PathVysion assay. Briefly, formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded tissues were cut into 4 μm thick sections that were subsequently deparaffinised. Pretreatment, enzyme digestion, and fixation of the slides were performed. The slides were then denatured at 72°C (±1°C) for five minutes. After a buffer wash, 10 μl of a mixture of two directly labelled probes—the Her-2/neu specific sequence probe (LSI HER-2/neu SpectrumOrange) and a probe for the α satellite sequence at chromosome 17 (CEP 17 SpectrumGreen)—were added to the tissue sections and hybridisation was carried out at 37°C for 14–18 hours. The slides were then washed in a post-hybridisation wash, counter stained with DAPI, and covered with a coverslip. In each specimen, at least 60 cells were counted for both Her-2/neu gene and chromosome 17 centromere signals with a Nikon ECLIPSE E600 microscope (Nikon Instruments) with Quipps genetic workstation imaging software (Vysis) under oil immersion at ×100 magnification using the recommended filters. The result is reported as the ratio of the average copy number of the Her-2/neu gene to that of the chromosome 17 centromere (CEP 17). Specimens with a signal ratio of less than 2.0 were designated as non-amplified and 2.0 or greater as amplified (table 2). Her-2/neu gene amplified and non-amplified tissues obtained from Vysis were used as controls.
For each specimen, two cytotechnologists independently analysed the data, using the respective manufacturer's recommended criteria. If a specimen received a score of 3.5 to 4.5 on the INFORM assay or 1.8 to 2.2 on the PathVysion assay, the assay was rescored. The pathologist then reviewed the case and finalised the diagnosis.
Statistical analyses were conducted on the 52 specimens that were subjected to all three Her-2/neu assays. First, the three assays were grouped in a pairwise system so that any two of the three could be compared with each other. Cramer's V and λ were calculated for the three pairwise associations. Cramer's V is a χ2 based measure of association between two nominal variables and reduces to a π coefficient when each nominal variable is dichotomous. Symmetric λ, a proportional reduction in error measure, provides a relative degree of association; λ is considered more informative than the χ2 based measures because ratio comparisons can be performed between pairs of measures. Second, Cochran Q tests were performed to evaluate further whether these three assays make significantly different decisions; that is, generate different data. The Cochran Q test is a non-parametric test that examines whether k matched data sets differ significantly among themselves. Although the two FISH assays were already dichotomous—gene amplified versus non-amplified—the IHC data were not, they contained negative, low, medium, and high positive. Consequently, the IHC data were dichotomised in two possible group arrangements. In grouping 1, high and medium positive results were placed in one subgroup, with low positive and negative in the other subgroup. In grouping 2, only high positive results were placed in one subgroup, with the other subgroup containing medium positive, low positive, and negative results.
STUDY DESIGN AND SPECIMEN SELECTION
In the first step of this comparison study of IHC and FISH assays for Her-2/neu status, 84 consecutive specimens of invasive breast carcinoma from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas between August 1998 and January 1999 were submitted for IHC analysis. In the second step, the specimens were stratified, based on the IHC assay determined Her-2/neu protein values, into four groups: high positive (23 specimens, 27% total), medium positive (24 specimens, 29% total), low positive (14 specimens, 17% total), and negative (23 specimens, 27% total). In an effort to control the size of the study, a subset of 52 specimens was selected randomly from each group for the subsequent two FISH assays.
IHC AND FISH ASSAYS FOR HER-2/NEU STATUS
Table 3 shows the results from all three Her-2/neu assays. Based on the criteria of the IHC assay (table 1), the selected 52 specimens contained variable amounts of Her-2/neu protein, and comprised 13 high positive specimens (25%), 13 medium positive specimens (25%), nine low positive specimens (17%), and 17 negative specimens (33%) (fig 1). The percentage of Her-2/neu positive specimens, including high and medium positive specimens, was 50%.
Comparison of IHC with two FISH (INFORM™ and PathVysion™) assays
Photomicrograph of the three assays. Representative cases are shown as follows: (A) Immunohistochemistry (IHC) negative and fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH; INFORM™ and PathVysion™) non-amplified; (B) IHC low positive and FISH (INFORM and PathVysion) non-amplified; (C) IHC medium positive and FISH (INFORM and PathVysion) amplified; (D) IHC high positive and FISH (INFORM and PathVysion) amplified; (E) IHC medium positive and FISH (INFORM and PathVysion) non-amplified.
However, subsequent FISH assays of the same specimens revealed rather different data for Her-2/neu gene amplification (table 4). Of the 52 cases, 14 specimens (27%) were positive for Her-2/neu gene amplification by both INFORM and PathVysion, 37 specimens (71%) negative by both INFORM and PathVysion, and one specimen (2%) positive by INFORM, but negative by PathVysion. The percentage of cases with Her-2/neu gene amplification, 27%, is consistent with most previously published reports. It is also important to note that the two FISH assays have a highly significant association—51 of the 52 cases (98%) gave the same results by both FISH assays. The only specimen showing disagreement between the FISH assays appeared to be a borderline case, with the raw scores of 1.50 by PathVysion and borderline 4.38 by INFORM.
Comparison of two fluorescence in situ hybridisation assays: INFORM™ and PathVysion™
Interestingly, comparison of the IHC and FISH assays reveals that FISH (INFORM and PathVysion) negative cases can be further divided into three (6% total) IHC high positive cases, nine (17% total) IHC medium positive cases, eight (15% total) IHC low positive cases, and 17 (33%) IHC negative cases (table 3). In other words, 12 (23% total) of 26 (50% total) IHC high or medium positive cases showed no gene amplification by both FISH assays (fig 1E).
Statistical analyses first compared any two of the three assays in a pairwise fashion. All three pairwise associations by Cramer's V and λ calculation were found to be significant (table 5). Although these results indicate that the three assays are significantly related to one another, there seems to be a quantitative difference between IHC and the two FISH assays. The use of λ analysis revealed that the association between the two FISH assays was three times higher than the association between IHC and either one of the two FISH assays, suggesting that the results of the two FISH assays were more closely associated with each other than those of IHC and one of the two FISH assays.
Statistical comparison of the three Her-2/neu assays in pairs
To investigate further the relation between the three assays, the Cochran Q test was used. This test revealed that the difference among the three sets of matched assays (IHC, INFORM, or PathVysion) was significant in grouping 1, which separated the cases by IHC determined Her-2/neu protein levels into one subgroup of high and medium positive and the other subgroup of low positive and negative. In contrast, there was no significant difference in grouping 2, which separated the cases by Her-2/neu protein levels into one subgroup of high positive and the other subgroup of medium positive, low positive, and negative (table 6). The only variable between groupings 1 and 2 was the Her-2/neu medium positive cases, which in grouping 1 were in the same subgroup as the high positives, but in grouping 2 were in the other subgroup with low positives and negatives. This analysis highlights the importance of such Her-2/neu medium positive cases because grouping 1 resulted in non-equivalent assessment of Her-2/neu status across the three assays, whereas grouping 2 resulted in equivalent assessment of Her-2/neu status.
Statistical comparison of the three Her-2/neu assays as a group
In our study, we evaluated the clinical usefulness of three Her-2/neu assays side by side in 52 infiltrating breast carcinoma specimens. To our knowledge, this is the first study to compare the IHC assay using the Dako polyclonal antibody, A0485, with the two FDA approved FISH assays, INFORM and PathVysion. Statistical analyses of our results revealed that all three assays are related to each other, supporting the validity of these tests. However, we encountered some issues that might have important implications in future assessment of Her-2/neu status for the clinical management of breast cancer, as well as in understanding the mechanism of Her-2/neu gene expression.
IHC assays are simple and inexpensive to perform in a clinical laboratory setting. However, because IHC evaluates the amounts of Her-2/neu protein in individual cells, there are many variables that could potentially complicate the interpretation of results. For example, because Her-2/neu is expressed in normal epithelial cells, there is the problem of background staining. In addition, because the protein is unstable, variations in tissue fixation and processing could affect the final results of the assay. Moreover, laboratories use numerous anti-Her-2/neu antibodies, either polyclonal, such as the widely used A0485, or monoclonal, which all have varying sensitivities and specificities.17 Perhaps the most important factor is that an arbitrary scoring system needs to be assigned for Her-2/neu protein levels, which in reality cover a continuous spectrum. In fact, different scoring systems have been used. Our recent pilot study and our current study used graded values, including high, medium, and low positive and negative,18 whereas HercepTest used 3+, 2+, 1+, and negative. However, other studies have used strong positive (2+), weak positive (1+), and absent (0),19 or a positive versus negative system, where “positive” was defined as the relative difference in cytoplasmic membrane staining between tumour cells and normal epithelial cells.20 Therefore, it is inevitable that some interlaboratory discrepancies may exist for at least some of the cases, especially medium or low positive ones. This type of inconsistency could cause difficulties in clinical management, such as deciding whether to give Herceptin treatment.
In contrast, FISH assays are a new genetics based technology and have been used predominantly in research and cytogenetics laboratories. FISH assays are time consuming and more expensive because individual cells need to be evaluated one at a time, unlike IHC, in which an area of tumour cells is evaluated collectively. FISH also requires special equipment, such as a fluorescence microscope, and laboratory personnel training. However, the FISH assay might be intrinsically more reproducible and consistent. DNA is very stable, thus much less susceptible to variations in tissue fixation processing. Moreover, because the definition of positivity is based on distinct signals in a cell, which represent chromosomal regions containing the amplified Her-2/neu gene, it is less arbitrary and subjective than the IHC grading scale. In our study, the FISH assays, INFORM and PathVysion, had a concordance of 98%—identical results were seen in 51 of 52 cases, with disagreement in only one case (2%). If such consistency can be reproduced in other laboratories, FISH assays could prove to be truly valuable in clinical practice. Of these two FISH assays, PathVysion has two distinct advantages over INFORM. One is that the use of direct probe labelling in PathVysion significantly reduces non-specific cellular staining, which is commonly seen as a result of the indirect labelling used in the INFORM assay. The other advantage is that PathVysion uses an internal control probe for the chromosome 17 centromere region to differentiate specific Her-2/neu gene amplification from chromosome 17 polysomy (fig 1).
Perhaps the most intriguing finding of our study was the significantly different results seen for the IHC and FISH assays. When IHC high and medium positive cases are considered to have Her-2/neu overexpression, compatible with FDA recommended criteria for Herceptin treatment, 26 of the 52 cases (50% of total) are found to overexpress this oncoprotein. These 26 cases comprise 13 (25% of total) high positive cases and 13 (25% total) medium positive cases, and these results are significantly higher than 25–30% of Her-2/neu overexpression cases in many published reports.3–5 In contrast, only 14 cases (27% of total) showed Her-2/neu gene amplification by both FISH assays. Because IHC and FISH assays measure related, but distinct targets—protein concentrations versus gene copies—it is expected that they might show some disagreement, particularly in cases with high concentrations of the Her-2/neu protein without concurrent gene amplification. However, most published reports found this disagreement in less than 10% of specimens, or in as few as 3% of the Her-2/neu overexpressing cases.21 Furthermore, statistical analysis by the Cochran Q test revealed that the IHC medium positive but FISH negative cases were the main subgroup contributing to the disagreement. We cannot rule out the possibility that these cases truly overexpress Her-2/neu protein without gene amplification, because the number of cases is relatively small and there are no independent definitive assays to measure Her-2/neu protein concentrations and gene copies in individual cells. However, other factors are more likely to have played crucial roles. As discussed above, the IHC assay is intrinsically more variable, particularly in specimen processing and antigen retrieval. Another possibility is that because FISH assays use 4 signals in each nucleus as positive for gene amplification, or a ratio of 2, some of the cases with low gene amplification might not have been scored as amplified, thus underestimating gene amplification. Alternatively, polysomy 17, with a corresponding increase in Her2/neu gene copies does not qualify for Her2/neu gene amplification based on FISH criteria, but it could still potentially cause Her2/neu gene overexpression.
Two recent studies highlighted the complexity of using the IHC assay for the assessment of Her-2/neu status. Both studies used the same Dako polyclonal anti-Her2 antibody, but yielded dramatically different results. A study at the Mayo Clinic showed that 60% of 117 breast cancer cases in a Mayo Clinic intramural cohort overexpressed Her-2/neu, with values of 2+ or 3+, (similar to medium or high positive values in our study), and 57% of 1142 breast cancer cases in an extramural cohort had values of 2+ or 3+ Her-2/neu.22 These results are comparable with 50% of high and medium positive cases in our study. In the same Mayo Clinic study, the Dako HercepTest kit containing the same A0485 antibody detected a similar high percentage of Her2/neu overexpression, whereas a different monoclonal anti-Her2 antibody, CB11, detected only 26% of the cases overexpressing Her-2/neu, thus suggesting that the specificity of the primary antibody might be a key factor. Independently, Jacobs et al reported rather different results in a comparison study of the IHC assay using the Dako A0485 antibody and the INFORM FISH assay.23 In the study of 100 consecutive invasive breast cancers, 23% and 26% of the interpretable cases showed Her-2/neu protein overexpression and Her-2/neu gene amplification, respectively, with 91% concordance. However, the study used a novel scoring system for the IHC assay, as reported previously20; that is, a 0 to 4+ scale that defined cases as overexpressing the Her-2/neu protein if the specimen showed an absolute score of 3+ to 4+ in tumour cells or if the difference between the score of the tumour cells and the score of the surrounding normal epithelial cells was 2+ or greater. This 0 to 4+ scale is different from the 0 to 3+ scale used in the evaluation of eligibility for Herceptin treatment, which is recommended by the manufacturer of A0495, Dako Corporation. It appears that such subtraction is useful only when there is a problem with background staining, although this report did not specifically discuss how many cases were subjected to subtraction.
Another important, albeit controversial, factor with regard to the choice of assay for the evaluation of Her-2/neu status is the cost for each assay. IHC using a commercially available antibody, such as Dako A0485, is probably the least expensive test; IHC in a kit form, such as the Dako HercepTest, is in the middle range; and FISH assays are more expensive. Although the cost should be a long term concern, the most important task for the laboratory service is to provide consistent and reliable information on Her-2/neu status. When taking into account the rapidly increasing importance of such molecular biomarkers as the Her-2/neu oncogene/oncoprotein, the related high cost of Herceptin or other treatments, and the potential clinical benefits, the cost differential between Her-2/neu assays23 should not be an important factor, especially at the current stage when the clinical application and correlation of these assays is just beginning to be evaluated extensively. In fact, our experience showed that with good initial training and additional equipment, a pathology laboratory could perform FISH assays very efficiently and reliably.
In summary, our study evaluated the clinical usefulness of the three Her-2/neu assays. In agreement with other reports,21–23 we confirmed the validity of these assays, but also demonstrated that numerous factors might affect the final results. It is evident that the assessment of Her-2/neu status should use widely available reagents and a standardised scoring system to ensure accuracy of measurement and interlaboratory consistency. In addition, clinical correlation is crucially needed with regard to which assay provides best prognostic and predictive value. Because these assays evaluate Her-2/neu status by measuring distinct, but related, targets and the FDA has approved these assays for different clinical applications, we believe the best approach at the present time is to divide the evaluation of Her-2/neu status into two steps. In the first step, IHC with Dako A0485 antibody is used as an initial triage assay. In the second step, PathVysion FISH assay is used to analyse the IHC high or medium positive cases so that corroboration between IHC and FISH may be achieved. While the Her-2/neu assays are being perfected, such a combinatorial strategy should provide comprehensive and valuable information on both Her-2/neu protein concentrations and gene amplification to help clinicians make crucial management decisions.
Note added in proof: Some recent studies of breast cancer specimens also showed a high percentage of 2+ IHC staining for Her-2/neu protein using Dako's Hercep Test24 or Dako's polyclonal antibody and some other antibodies.25
We acknowledge the invaluable technical assistance of F Saliger and S Thomas, division of cytopathology, Parkland Memorial Hospital who performed the fluorescence in situ hybridisation assays. We thank the immunohistochemistry laboratory at the University of Southwestern Medical Center for performing the immunohistochemistry assay. We also thank T Dixon for the preparation of this manuscript. Presented in part at the 89th annual meeting of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 25–31, 2000.
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