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Great Moments in World Douchebag History Released: December 19, 2012 TAGS: Short stories, collection, humor, “fictional history” You’ve all heard of the genre “historical fiction,” but Joe Micik is delving into “fictional history.” From Alexander the Great to Attila the Hun, douchebags have ruled the world. Some were bigger asshats than others, but all made their mark on the globe in more ways than one might think. Joe looks back throughout thousands of years of world history and picks a few dozen of the greatest moments in the evolution of the douchebag that we know and detest today, all the way up until modern times. Believe it or not, many of the annoying things that you see douchey guys doing in the 21st Century date back centuries, or even millennia. No Jersey Shore cast members were verbally accosted during the making of this collection. Great Moments in World Douchebag History: Copyright 2012, Joe Micik Price: Reader sets the price Available on: Smashwords	216,092
My name is Ann, I am 14 years old, and for as long as I can remember my country has been at war. I was born in October of 1997; we entered Afghanistan in October of 2001. I was a few weeks away from turning four, and my memories of that time are few and hazy. For all intents and purposes, I have lived my life in this fight. In fact, I cannot remember a time when there were not stories about increasing troop casualties, cannot imagine a political debate where “What to do in Iraq and Afghanistan” wasn’t at least mentioned. Never before in history At the same time, though, my childhood was, scarily, pretty disattached from the wars. While there have, of course, been many kids who’ve grown up during wars (my mother, for example, lost an older brother in Vietnam when she was just five), I believe that the experience of my generation is unique. Never before in history have we had this kind of a war: a long, drawn-out conflict where the casualties gradually accumulate and there are no battles, just guerilla warfare and drone strikes. Never before has America been in a war where, instead of pulling together and doing everything possible to support our troops, we lowered taxes on the rich and ignored the war in most of our political discussions. This time around, we do not have drives for old clothes, and there are no “decisive battles” or even a clear definition of “victory.” Damage is done To my generation, therefore, America’s wars have become a sort of fuzzy reality, taking up the kind of background space that is normally reserved for things like the European debt crisis and the Mexican drug cartels- something big, something important, but also complicated and a little hard to understand; something that is wildly controversial yet requires a real depth of understanding to have an informed opinion on. Since “having an informed opinion” means doing some research, most of my teenage peers don’t know that much, and since there is little coverage in the mainstream media (compare that to the Vietnam protests or rah-rah patriotism WWII videos; regardless of your opinion of those points of view, at least you knew that something was going on). We have little opportunity to learn more, and frankly, this terrifies me. Yes, we have pulled out from Iraq, and the end is in sight in Afghanistan, but the damage has already been done. Imagine a world without war? I have lain awake at night, sometimes, trying to conceive of what my world would be like without war in it. Honestly, I can’t picture it. I would imagine that it would be wonderful — that I would no longer have to wonder if every camoflauged officer I see in the airport will make it back home, that there will no longer be the heartrending pictures of mothers and fathers crying over caskets draped with American flags, that I will no longer feel that horrible pull at my heart when I see the children rush into a returning soldier’s arms and wonder how many other little girls and boys have had their childhoods blown up in one roadside bomb. But while I can imagine, I can’t know what it would be like, because that is not how I’ve grown up. Instead, I have heard of video games like COD and Black Ops, where my classmates glory in their “kill streaks” and “juggernaut suits.” I have, for as far back as memory goes, commemorated 9/11 with my parents looking sad, and horrible YouTube videos of things that only happen in movies: planes crashing, people falling down like feathers from 90th-story windows, an entire city blanketed in ash. I know to wear slip-ons to the airport, because you have to take them off when you go through security (“Wait- you mean you didn’t always have to? But then what did you do? You mean you just went through the scanners with them on?”). I know that we are maybe losing this thing called the War on Terror, except nobody really knows what it is. I also know about IEDs, and rocket-propelled grenades, and drone strikes. I know about the Taliban, and Bin Laden, and Al Quada — names that in any other context could be toy brands, car manufacturers, friends. I know too much, and yet not enough, because while I can tell you the names of all of our weapons, I’m not really sure how we got into this conflict in the first place. I can tell you about casualty numbers, and truck bombings, and what flower you wear on Veteran’s Day, but I can’t say how to get out without causing even more damage. And while I know that I don’t know, most of my peers don’t either. What will we be like? Mostly, though, I worry about how my generation will act when we grow up. Having seen the images of explosions and legless men and women, having watched the mushroom cloud of a truck bombing and learned all about grenades, will my peers know that this is not okay? Since nobody in politics seems to think this is important, since lowering taxes on the wealthy, denying women the right to control their own bodies, and forcing LGBT people back into second-class citizenship is more of a priority right now, will my generation think that war is no big deal? Since only 1% of our country is actually fighting, since most Americans don’t know any active servicemembers, will we simply write off their contributions and sacrifices? Will our experiences affect how we feel about Iran or Syria? One day, will it change our votes? I have no idea the answers to these questions, but they are what keep me up at night. I am the next generation, and I am afraid for our future.	187,689
Cardiac Output Measurement at the Conclusion of Cardiopulmonary Bypass Cardiac output, the amount of blood pumped by the heart in one minute, will be measured in pediatric patients undergoing surgery involving cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Cardiac output will be measured after cardiopulmonary bypass using a device that employs ultrasound dilution technology. At times, cardiac output will be measured during a procedure called modified ultrafiltration (MUF). The ultrasound dilution cardiac output measurements will be validated or compared with cardiac output measurements made using other FDA approved techniques and devices. \|Study Design:\|\|Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study Intervention Model: Single Group Assignment Masking: Open Label Primary Purpose: Diagnostic \|Official Title:\|\|Ultrasound Dilution Cardiac Output at the Conclusion of Cardiopulmonary Bypass in Pediatric Patients\| - Cardiac output after cardiopulmonary bypass [ Time Frame: Less than 10 minutes ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]Cardiac output will be measured in pediatric patients after undergoing surgery involving cardiopulmonary bypass \|Study Start Date:\|\|April 2010\| \|Study Completion Date:\|\|August 2011\| \|Primary Completion Date:\|\|December 2010 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)\| Experimental: Pediatric cardiac output (CO) after CPB Cardiac output measurements made in pediatric patients after cardiopulmonary bypass. Device: HCE101 Cardiopulmonary Support Monitor Measurement of cardiac output using ultrasound dilution technology. Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01103908 \|United States, Ohio\| \|Nationwide Children's Hospital\| \|Columbus, Ohio, United States, 43205\| \|Principal Investigator:\|\|Nikolai Krivitski, PhD, DSc\|\|Transonic Systems Inc.\| \|Principal Investigator:\|\|Alistair Phillips, MD\|\|Nationwide Children's Hospital\|	270,766
How do you read your tea leaves? The cup is divided into three parts. The rim designates the present; the side, events not far distant; and the bottom the distant future. The nearer the symbols appear to the handle the nearer to fulfillment will be the events foretold. What is tea leaf reading called? Tasseography (also known as tasseomancy) is the art of identifying symbols and interpreting messages found in the shapes and configurations of tea leaves. Where does reading tea leaves come from? Tea leaf reading, also known as tasseography, is said to have origins in Asia, the Middle East, and Ancient Greece, with Middle Eastern cultures typically using coffee. However, modern tea leaf reading began in the 17th century, when tea was introduced from China to Europe. Does Reading Terminal Market have bathrooms? Reading Terminal Market This bathroom is way cleaner than you’d think. It’s in the back of the building — follow the green signs — and has a long line of shiny stalls (no wait time, even at lunch), plus automatic sinks and powerful hand dryers.	59,088
Is ceremonial cacao a psychedelic? Cacao is psychoactive due to the various effects it has on our brain chemistry and mood, but it is not considered a psychedelic. Ceremonial cacao does contain theobromine and other compounds that can have mild mood-enhancing and heart-opening effects. The effects of ceremonial cacao are often described as gentle, calming, and conducive to introspection, meditation, or spiritual practices. It can enhance one’s sense of connection with oneself and others, but it typically does not produce the profound altered states of consciousness associated with traditional psychedelics. As with any plant medicine or substance, it is crucial to approach ceremonial cacao with respect and mindfulness. Pay attention to your body’s response and sensitivity to it. If you have any concerns or medical conditions, it’s best to consult with a healthcare professional before incorporating ceremonial cacao into your practice.	228,524
Welcome to the Genes Reunited community boards! - The Genes Reunited community is made up of millions of people with similar interests. Discover your family history and make life long friends along the way. - You will find a close knit but welcoming group of keen genealogists all prepared to offer advice and help to new members. - And it's not all serious business. The boards are often a place to relax and be entertained by all kinds of subjects. - The Genes community will go out of their way to help you, so don’t be shy about asking for help. Single word search New Scottish Census Do you have Scottish ancestors? Perhaps you do and you just didn't know! Search our brand new Scottish census records today and discover if you have Scottish roots. - New posts - No new posts - Thread closed - Stickied, new posts - Stickied, no new posts 'PRACTICAL FAMILY HISTORY' MAGAZINE \|Profile\|\|Posted by\|\|Options\|\|Post Date\| \|Llamedos\|\|Report\|\|24 Oct 2005 15:41\| I have 90 family history magazines collected since 1997. From very first issue of 'Practical Family History' - Number 1 - through to number 79.......plus 11 other Family History magazines. Also Family Tree Maker programmes - previous versions 4.4 and 7.5 Although earlier progs, they are useful for your first system, and if you want to buy a later issue - then all your info is saved in the latter form! Any member interested - Dave [Hornsea area, East Yorks]. NO RESPONSE UP TO 18TH NOV 05......SURELY, SOMEONE OUT THER WOULD WELCOME 101 FAMILY HISTORY MAGS..........GIVING TO THE BINMAN IN 7 DAYS!	23,293
The Free Trade Union (FTU) on Monday reported an overall increase in industrial action by its local branches last year with 136 total strikes in the first 11 months of 2013, up 35 percent from all of 2012, when there were 101 strikes by its members. This increase does not include the 241 strikes by FTU members in December during nationwide strikes, which culminated in police shooting dead five workers and wounding more than 40 on January 3. Chea Mony, president of the FTU, said the heightened industrial unrest among his workers was a result of the rising cost of living. “There were a lot of strikes and protests increased because of inflation, so the workers had to demand more salary,” he said. “Also the factory workers are forced to work overtime.” In order to reduce industrial action, Mr. Mony suggested that the government and factory owners should stop intimidating and firing union activists, and instead deal with the root causes of labor strikes: low salary and mandatory overtime. Dave Welsh, Cambodia country director for the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, said that the increase in labor strikes was a direct result of failures by the government to resolve industrial disputes and implement labor laws within the factories. “[The garment industry] certainly has a high occurrence of industrial action but the causal effect of that is that [the sector] has one of the weakest applications of labor laws and weakest applications of collective bargaining and strong rates of intimidation against union organizers,” Mr. Welsh said. “So if [factories] backed down on those issues they would probably see a lower rate of strikes,” he added. The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), which represents more than 400 garment and footwear factories in the country, reported 131 strikes in the first 11 months of 2013, resulting in 826,000 days of lost labor. Ken Loo, secretary-general of GMAC, said that GMAC believed that every strike conducted by unions last year was illegal. “The point is that the number of strikes is not the concern, the concern is the number of illegal strikes,” he said. “The unions have never respected the law. They have always flouted the law.” “It has nothing to do with employers disrespecting the law first, or employers refusing to meet to negotiate, that is beside the point,” Mr. Loo said. “The point is that…regardless of their reason, [unions must] strike properly through procedures.” Prak Chanthoeun, head of the labor conflict department at the Ministry of Labor, said that in order to cut down on strikes next year, the government would educate workers to accept its offer of a $100 base minimum wage. “About the salary, the government has already organized this for all the workers so they need to understand it clearly,” Mr. Chanthoeun said. The six nongovernment aligned unions who led strikes and demonstrations last month have already rejected the $100 per month offer, and have promised further strikes if the government and GMAC refuse to meet for new negotiations. (Additional reporting by Colin Meyn) © 2014, All rights reserved.	12,814
Advocates for both global AIDS and women’s health and rights are circulating two letters, each of which seeks to influence the Obama Administration’s pick for the next Global AIDS Coordinator. Though they differ on both the structure of AIDS leadership and the timing of the appointment, both groups agree on the need for new leadership for global AIDS policies. The first letter, circulated by Results, an anti-poverty and global health organization, urges Obama to appoint a coordinator within 30 days of inauguration. This letter was submitted last week to the Obama transition team, with 20 signatories. Apart from the call for a quick appointment, another concern driving this letter is the issue of where the "base of power" for U.S. Global AIDS Policy should rest in the next Administration. The first US global AIDS Act established the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) at the Department of State and gave the new Coordinator decision-making authority over all funding for AIDS, whether it flowed through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Health and Human Services (HHS) or the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Talk of folding OGAC into a revamped development agency–USAID 2.0, so to speak– has these advocates concerned. According to Matthew Kavanaugh, Global Campaigns Coordinator at Results: Appreciate our work? Rewire is a non-profit independent media publication. Your tax-deductible contribution helps support our research, reporting, and analysis. There has been talk about subsuming the Global AIDS Coordinator role under USAID or possibly of waiting for months before appointing a permanent Global AIDS Coordinator—whomever that might be. We think both of these would be the wrong direction to take PEPFAR. Instead we need to build on PEPFAR’s huge successes, especially as compared to many other aid programs, as well as prioritizing fixing the big problems with prevention and systems—all of which requires a powerful Global AIDS Coordinator with a direct line to and trust of John Fawcett, Global Legislative Director of Results further notes that: In the broader context of foreign aid reform, several prominent development groups have recommended that Obama appoint (and have the Senate confirm) a USAID Administrator, and then name that person interim Global AIDS Coordinator. While we support calls for the elevation of foreign assistance, this particular recommendation handicaps AIDS leadership at a critical moment, just when we need…bold new plans to prevent 12 million new infections, treat 4 million, care for 12 million, and fix the things that Lantos-Hyde failed to address. The second letter, issued jointly by the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which was submitted to the transition team on December 23rd with 49 signatories on and can now be found on Change.gov, focuses more directly on the vision and philosophy of the next AIDS Ambassador, rather than the timing of the appointment, but also is driven by concerns about the agency. According to Bill Smith, Vice President for Public Policy at SIECUS: We are seeking to elevate the voice of advocates and implementers who believe we cannot continue under the existing leadership of the US global HIV/AIDS response. There are several key shortcomings in the PEPFAR reauthorization, particularly in the area of prevention, which require someone who can oversee the changes needed ranging from clarification of guidance to implementation of evidence-based programs. An effective response to the current global HIV/AIDS epidemic requires an understanding of the social and economic factors which drive the epidemic and a solid grounding in public health and human rights frameworks. We have learned many valuable lessons during the first five years of implementation and now is the time to act on that knowledge by appointing someone who can guide the U.S. response to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic with visionary leadership. We are therefore calling on the President-elect to appoint a Global AIDS Coordinator who can lead the transition from a disease-specific, medical model to one which embraces, and can carry out, a broader vision. Smith also notes that a key difference in the two letters is the concern about OGAC’s "location." The letter circulated by RESULT focuses on securing a “permanent” and independent Global AIDS Coordinator and speaks to the possibility that OGAC would be restructured to fall under the head of USAID. It addresses the concern that this shift from an independent office, with ambassador-level leadership would make it difficult to leverage cooperation from agencies/offices such as CDC, HHS etc as OGAC would no longer wield a higher political rank. The IWHC/SIECUS effort seeks to ensure that OGAC operates within a broader development framework, with greater coordination, cooperation, and integration of programs that must simultaneously address both immediate medical and public health problems as well as the root causes of the spread of HIV infections. An example would be the more effective coordination at the country level of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care with other reproductive health and family planning services, and with programs to promote basic education, eliminate child marriage, and address gender-based violence. The full text of each letter can be found below. Reality Check will update you on next steps. The text of the letter being circulated by Results: Dear President-Elect Obama: We are writing to urge you to affirm the United States’ continued leadership on HIV/AIDS by appointing a permanent Global AIDS Coordinator within 30 days of assuming the Presidency. A strong, independent Coordinator role has been critical to providing focused leadership on the AIDS crisis and achieving tremendous results to date. We are grateful for your support of global health while in the Senate, and for your pledge to double foreign assistance, including $50 billion for HIV/AIDS. Led by Senator Joe Biden, the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-293) was a major bipartisan achievement. While the Lantos-Hyde Act charts a path forward, now is not the time to put our global AIDS program on auto-pilot. The Global AIDS Coordinator in the Obama administration will be immediately responsible for developing a new five-year global AIDS strategy that will shape our response to the epidemic well into the next decade. Our shared goals are ambitious: 12 million new infections prevented, with a renewed emphasis on the evidence-based approaches and the needs of women and girls; care for 12 million people affected by AIDS, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children; four million people supported on treatment though bilateral and multilateral funding; 140,000 new health care professionals trained and retained; and improved efforts to fight co-morbidity associated with tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition among people living with HIV/AIDS. The realization of these goals will require more than competent administration. It will demand vision and leadership to usher in a new era of bold U.S. action on the global AIDS epidemic. We support calls to elevate the priority of global development within your administration. We look forward to working with you to support a strategy to reform foreign aid to make the Millennium Develop Goals truly America’s goals. However, more effective, better coordinated assistance must be pursued without diminishing focused leadership on AIDS or prematurely consolidating roles and responsibilities. We urge you to reaffirm our commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS by prioritizing the appointment of a Global AIDS Coordinator within the first month of your Administration. Sincerely….. The text of the letter being circulated by IWCH and SIECUS: Dear President-Elect Obama: As advocates engaged in the work of ensuring the most effective and appropriate global HIV/AIDS response that the United States can offer, we call upon you to appoint a new Global AIDS Coordinator within 30 days of assuming the Presidency. We have reached a critical moment in the history of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic as this next phase of PEPFAR is set into motion through the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-293). In order to fulfill the mission laid out therein, and to lead the response from an emergency approach to one of sustainability, new leadership is required. From the outset, PEPFAR has been guided by a disease-specific medical model in lieu of a broader human rights framework and public health approach which is needed to more effectively address the epidemic. While excellence in medical care and services are a fundamental element in the global HIV/AIDS response, the new strategies undertaken by the Coordinator will have more impact if they are guided by a keen insight into the social complexities which drive the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We cannot treat our way out of the gender inequalities, social and economic disparities and stigma and discrimination which fuel this global pandemic. The inherent strategy steering the U.S. response to global HIV/AIDS must embrace all of these aspects– medical, social science, public health and human rights– to create and oversee PEPFAR-funded programs around the world. A new Coordinator that upholds the highest standards of prevention, care and treatment, relying on strategies and protocols that are evidence-based, to accurately respond to the needs of those who are most affected will make more headway than has been achieved in the past. Ending the epidemic requires going beyond the medical model currently driving the U.S. global HIV/AIDS response, which means appointing a new Global AIDS Coordinator who can provide that strategic vision from the top. Sincerely,	70,989
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the version of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act approved last week by the U.S. Senate, ensuring President Obama will soon sign into law a measure he supports that promises to help smaller businesses—and, he hopes, improve his re-election prospects with voters worried about job creation, given more than three straight years of unemployment rates above 8%. By a 380-to-41 vote, the House approved HR 3606, which supporters say will encourage businesses to create jobs by lowering hurdles to going public and complying with the laws governing public companies, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Among its provisions, the JOBS Act exempts companies from the full reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404(b) for their first five years after going public, or until they reach $1 billion in revenue—a provision nicknamed the “on ramp” for initial public offerings. That provision alone should save companies up to $2 million a year—and be of particular benefit to biopharma companies by allowing them to spend more of their money on disease research, according to the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), among groups supporting the bill. “This legislation incentivizes and encourages capital formation for small, emerging biotechnology companies, speeding the development of new cures and treatments for patients living with debilitating diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, and HIV/AIDS,” BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood said in a statement soon after the JOBS Act’s passage. BIO also cited a recent survey by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) showing a 41% decrease by venture capital firms in the amount of money they invested in biopharmaceutical companies over the past three years. The survey also showed 40% of respondents forecasting they would further decrease their investment in the sector over the next three years. "The JOBS Act will help revitalize an IPO market that has suffered in recent years under the weight of market volatility and one-size-fits-all regulation,” Paul Maeder, general partner at Highland Capital Partners and chair of the NVCA, said in a statement after the bill’s passage. “The passage of this legislation sends a strong and welcome signal to our most promising companies that the U.S. capital markets system is open for business." But Christopher C. Cain, a partner with Foley & Lardner, told GEN the JOBS Act is less designed to thaw the chilly VC market than to give biopharma startups access to alternative funding sources. “One of the things I read online that I think was very catchy was that it is moving investments and startups out of the 1%, those wealthy individuals and venture capital firms that have the financial wherewithal to make these investments, and making these startups available to those outside the 1%. It is meant to provide a more diverse base which can include unaccredited investors in certain circumstances, to make non-venture capital funding more of an option where it is now,” Cain said. “Now, if you can’t find friends and family or a superangel network, often a VC or VC firms are the only way to raise money.” The JOBS Act will expand the eligibility requirements of SEC Regulation A by raising the limit on how much companies conducting direct public offerings can raise, from the current $5 million to $50 million. Regulation A offerings would be exempt from state securities laws, provided that the securities sold are offered or sold through a broker-dealer, offered or sold on a national securities exchange, or sold to a qualified purchaser as defined by the SEC. The measure will also increase the limit that requires private companies to register with the SEC, from the current 500 shareholders to 2,000 shareholders. Another component of the JOBS Act requires the SEC to revise Rule 506 of SEC Regulation D, by removing the current ban on general solicitation or advertisements, including social media, in private placements of securities, provided that all purchasers in the private placement are “accredited investors.” The revision is designed to allow greater exposure to investments for a wider range of potential investors. The JOBS Act is intended to encourage “crowdfunding” by exempting from SEC registration rules any transactions to offer or sell crowdfunded securities by businesses raising up to $1 million within a 12-month period—or up to $2 million if the company provides audited financials within that 12-month period. The crowdfunding provision includes an amendment added to the bill in the Senate (S. Amdt. 1884) by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Scot Brown (R-MA) on a 64–35 vote. The amendment requires operators of crowdfunding portals to register with the SEC and promise to deliver information on investments they offer without promoting them, while limiting through scalable investment caps how much investors can invest based on their income—a maximum of 2% of investors’ annual gross income for individuals earning up to $40,000 a year; up to 5% for investors earning up to $100,000 a year; and a cap of 10% for those earning above $100,000. The Merkley-Brown amendment also: - Requires publicly audited financials for companies seeking over $500,000. - Establishes a three-week waiting period after funding closes but before funds are received, giving authorities time to uncover potential fraud. - Requires disclosure of capital-raising fees. Crowdfunding by itself is less likely to aid biopharma startups than startups in other industries since most such companies require multiple millions of dollars to conduct research and carry out clinical trials. “If you’re a biotech startup and even if you provide audited financial statements [and thus can raise] $2 million, for a very IP-intensive, clinical-trial intensive company, that may be helpful as part of several raises or a multi-stage raise that you have to do, but it’s not going to be the panacea fix-all. But I don’t think it was meant to be,” Cain said. “For the biotech company, it’s going to be less used, but it’s still useful in the sense that it may be a good ramp-up,” Cain added. “If they can purposefully use the $1 million or the $2 million, if they can get that, moving them closer down the path toward commercial fruition or closer to clinical trials or they get more patent applications in, it may push them to the stage where a venture capital or a sophisticated angel network is willing to invest a larger sum. So I think it still has value in that regard.” - Christopher C. Cain, partner, Foley & Lardner LLP – Interview by GEN, March 20.	145,422
Six very large data sets of plants, birds and butterflies collected over the past 20 to 40 years in Britain have been used to compare the fate of the three groups. The bird information, summarised in The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland and The New Atlas of Breeding Birds of Britain and Ireland covers the periods 1968-1971 and 1988-1991 respectively (Note 3). Comprehensive data on all 201 native breeding bird species in Britain and Ireland were available for analysis, showing that the extent of the distribution of 56% of native bird species had decreased in the twenty-year period. This compares to 71% decline in butterfly species (over about 20 years) and 28% of plant species (over about 40 years). The fact that these losses are found in butterflies and plants, as well as birds, shows how all-embracing have been the impacts of human activities on wildlife. Reflecting upon these figures, Jeremy Greenwood of the BTO said: "We have excellent information about the changes in distribution and numbers of birds in Britain and Ireland, and the information globally is better than for any other group of animals or plants. There has been a concern that information for birds might not be representative. This analysis shows that the extinction rates of birds do not over-estimate the seriousness of the global extinction crisis." "As with so much of our knowledge of Britain's birds, this study could not have been undertaken without the survey work carried out by thousands of volunteer birdwatchers. It is on their efforts that so much conservation action continues to rest." "Sadly, many of the birdwatchers who contributed to the first Breeding Atlas, which covered the period 1968 to 1972, are no longer with us. It is wonderful that their records can still be used to show that birds are good indicators of global extinction rates. The BTO needs to recruit new volunteers to monitor bird numbers and uphold their legacy." Page: 1 Related biology news :1 Contact: Graham Appleton British Trust for Ornithology . New evidence of radiation risk in childhood leukaemia2 . Oldest evidence for processing of wild cereals: starch grains from barley, wheat, on grinding stone3 . Earliest evidence of hereditary genetic disorder discovered by Hebrew University researchers4 . Study finds first evidence COX-2 enzymes can regulate DNA damage5 . Researchers find evidence that sea turtles navigate with magnetic maps6 . Researchers report definitive evidence that HIV-AIDS is not from oral polio vaccine7 . Oldest known evidence of cat taming found in Cyprus, researchers report in Science8 . New evidence points to pollution as main cause of much coral reef destruction9 . New evidence suggests that monkey thought extinct still exists10 . Earliest evidence of humans affecting aquatic ecology in Canada, United States11 . Study finds evidence for global methane release about 600 million years ago	62,863
in this issue Chemical Week Magazine :: Business & Finance :: United States/Americas EPA proposes lower renewable fuel standard mandate 6:52 AM MST \| November 22, 2013 \| â€”Rebecca Coons EPAâ€™s 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) proposal lowers the amount of biofuels refiners are mandated to blend into fuels for the first time in the programâ€™s history. The agency says increased biofuels production mixed with declined overall fuel consumption has saturated the nationâ€™s fuel supply with ethanol. EPAâ€™s proposal calls for 15.0â€“15.2 billion gallons of biofuels be blended into the US fuel supply, down from the 16.55 billion gallons mandated be used in 2013. â€śNearly all gasoline sold in the US is now E10, which is fuel with up to 10%... This information is only available to Chemical Week subscribers. Forgot your user ID or password? Not an IHS Chemical Week member yet? Here's why you should be: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee	57,753
Asked in Microsoft WindowsiMovie What software makes scrolling text on video? Asked in Web Design and Publishing, HTML How do you create a scrolling text box using HTML? Asked in Languages and Cultures What is the official language of the website Yate? Yate is a free and open source communications software that can handle video, instant messaging, and voice. Yate makes it easy to mix telephony functions with text-based protocol such as HTML. This makes it easy to write the protocol in any programming language. Yate's official website features text about the software written in all English. Asked in Video Editing Understanding Video Editing Software? Video editing software comes in all shapes and sizes, focusing on everyone from the amateur to professional video editor. Video editing software allows you to manipulate recorded videos with special text, graphics and effects. The creative applications are endless with video editing software. Most software packages for personal use allow you to save your videos in a format that is accepted by video sharing sites, such as Youtube. The price of video software varies greatly, depending on its features. Asked in HTML How do you add scrolling text to HTML page? I love using this code: <marquee>Enter scrolling text here</marquee> Put this code underneath the <body> tag: <html> <body> <marquee>Enter scrolling text here</marquee> </body> </html> Want to change the colour of the text? <font face="arial" color="colour you want" size="8"> place that between <body> and <Marquee> <html> <body> <font face="arial" color="colour you want" size="8"> <marquee>Enter scrolling text here</marquee> </body> </html> Asked in HTML How do you make HTML banners? If you mean a scrolling text banner, then you can use the Marquee tag. It is not a popular tag among web designers because scrolling text can look very tacky and get annoying. Not all browsers support the Marquee tag. It is one of Microsoft's tags, designed for Explorer. Here is a simple example of how to use it. <Marquee>This will give you scrolling text, in some browsers</Marquee> What is the definition of multimedia software? Multimedia software is software that can play and view all sorts of media, such as Music, Videos, Pictures, etc. Examples: VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player. 1 enables the creation and editing of multimedia documents. 2programs that include image, video, and audio editing software, animation software, and other specialty software required to produce computer games, animations, and movies. 3software that allows users to combine text, graphics, audio, video, and animation in an interactive application and that often is used for computer-based training and web-based presentations. 4el software multimedia 5catergory (group) of software that instructs computers how to handle words, pictures (still & video), and sounds into slide shows - i.e. microsoft powerpoint. 6any software program that includes sound, pictures, graphics, video, text, and hypertext. 7image, video, and audio editing software. animations and movies What are difference between system software and application software? What is a good POS machine with software for a restaurant? Asked in Digital Cameras, Computers, Technology What software application is most appropriate for creating slideshows using text charts photographs clip art and video? Asked in Computers What software will let a person use voip on their computer? Is there any software to convert Tamil voice to Tamil text? Popular software programs such as WordPerfect and Microsoft Word are? Asked in Windows Movie Maker How do you add pictures to a video clip in movie maker? Asked in Windows Movie Maker Why can't you type a lot of text in Windows Movie Maker? Asked in Software and Applications (non-game) What kind of computer software assists the disabled? Computer software that assists disabled persons is known as "Accessibility Software." This sort of software can help visually impaired persons read, by synthesising on-screen text into audio. This is known as text-to-speech. Other software may enlarge text on the screen, or provide on-screen magnification.	157,909
We are such a talented lot; it is our right to get the best governance too. So, let us all throw garbage on the roads and check the potency of the Indian Government in cleaning up. Not only on roads but on roadsides, VIP areas and near VIP buildings as well. Let us give an opportunity to our honourable Government to utilise its resources fully and prove to the Indians that they are capable of cleaning the garbage from the roads. Let us check how well it manages the land pollution. Having garbage on our person is something that is a shameful act for us – the educated elites. Our government has given us the right to freedom so we must feel free in our expression. If we feel disgraced, if we feel let down, we have the full right to protect our rights and change what does not fit into our scheme of convenience. If you think it that way, then mind it, shame on you. Our culture is the richest culture in the world. Our IT professionals hold the ‘A Class’ status across the globe. While on one hand we talk about going Wi-Fi, on the other, we fail to inculcate basic values of cleanliness and hygiene which are inherent in our culture. We believe in working for MNCs; but we don’t conform to the international standards. This not only reflects in our work, but also our lifestyle which includes simple things like how to behave while walking on the road. We hold our noses when we see the garbage; but do we care to differentiate between biodegradables and non-biodegradables? We talk of food security but what about our responsibility towards the society? We talk of technology-the underground metros, high capacity vehicles; but will they transform a landscape filled with waste? Would it not make the irony more striking? We see people cleaning up roads during a religious festival but this is limited to that time only. Why does our pride not hold us back then, is it because suddenly clearing the litter becomes a service to God? What about our service towards the nation? Open your eyes and see. The world is hurtling forward at a roaring speed and we must do something in order to protect our own ethics. I have made a New Year resolution to not throw garbage on the roads. But do we really have to wait for a new year to help ourselves? Every day is a new morning. Have a new day resolution for life – you willll not throw garbage on the road. It is time to buck up our belts and pull up our socks because there is a lot to do. Let us prove to those in the First World Countries that we Indians have our own class and that our pride in ourselves is not misplaced. The way we are and the way we live should be enough reason for us to stand tall with our collars up.	94,519
Timeline: MAG through the years 05:00 AM, Mar 24, 2013 1910: Frank van der Lancken, Claude Bragdon and George Herdle formed the Rochester Art League, and the Rochester Art Club held the city’s first municipal art exhibition. 1912: Emily Sibley Watson, daughter of Western Union investor Hiram Sibley, donates $200,000 (the equivalent of $4.75 million today) to University of Rochester for the city’s first art museum as a memorial to her son, James Averell. 1913: Memorial Art Gallery opens on the UR’s former Prince Street campus. Watson commissions William Ordway Partridge to make a life-size marble sculpture with a relief portrait of Averell in its base, and the Watson and Sibley families donate several works of art to the museum, including Jonas Lie’s “Morning on the River.” 1914: Eastman Kodak Co.’s first color Kodachrome two-color process was revealed publicly in a MAG exhibit. 1919: MAG holds its first controversial exhibit, a group of George Bellows’ paintings that included some World War I paintings of the German occupation of Belgium that many people, including Mayor James Cutler, thought were too explicit. UR President Rush Rhees refused to take them down. 1922: George Herdle dies of Hodgkins lymphoma. His daughter, Gertrude, is named his replacement. 1923: James Sibley Watson, son of Emily Sibley Watson, gives the first of what would eventually be almost 200 works of art to the museum. 1925: Ground broken for MAG’s first addition, which opened to great fanfare a year later. 1939: MAG sponsored a series of lectures that put World War II in context for Rochesterians. 1940: MAG Women’s Council formed. 1941: MAG hosts its first Van Gogh exhibit, on loan from the Netherlands government. 1942: As part of the war effort, the UR’s Institute of Optics used MAG’s kiln for top-secret work for the military. 1944: MAG trained volunteers for the first time in art therapy. 1951: MAG acquires 100 ancient works that were part of the collection of Frederic Grinnell Morgan, who was a U.S. diplomat in Cairo at the turn of the century. 1956: Clothesline Festival is born. 1961: MAG holds its first class to train volunteer docents. 1964: Wendell Castle’s Music Rack, the first piece to use what has become his signature style, was part of Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition. 1966: After two expansion plans put on hold, MAG breaks ground to build a new wing and utilize Cutler Union for its workshop space. 1969: MAG charges admission for the first time. 1972: “Art Without Limit,” which featured conceptual art pieces by artists such as Dan Flavin and Dennis Oppenheim, proved too modern for many visitors. 1975: Charles Rand Penney Foundation gives one of the biggest gifts to date, 380 contemporary art pieces of the 1960s and 1970s. 1987: MAG opens third addition. 1979: MAG forms Averell Council, a young professionals group. 1993: MAG receives surprise $1.6 million bequest from the estate of Helen and Lillian Dege, who received a small inheritance from their parents’ grocery chain, lived frugally and managed to grow it into millions. 1996: MAG launched its first website (now located at mag.rochester.edu). 1999: MAG sees large crowds for the run of a visiting Maxfield Parrish exhibit. 2004: MAG introduced its first Rochester Biennial Exhibit. 2008: MAG opens a long-term exhibit of Wendell Castle works. 2007: Georgia O’Keefe exhibit also proves a crowd favorite. 2009: Several major collection pieces were reinstalled thanks to renovations made available through gift campaigns. 2010: MAG announces plans for a new Centennial Sculpture Park, which will be completed at the end of April. 2013: MAG’s centennial celebration includes several exhibits showcasing its different collection.	206,892
US special forces in Afghanistan have suspended training for about 1,000 Afghan police recruits to carry out checks on existing members, the military said Sunday, after a surge in insider attacks on NATO. There has been a sharp rise in so-called “green-on-blue” attacks recently, in which members of the Afghan security forces turn their weapons on their Western allies, sometimes their military trainers. There have been more than 30 such incidents this year, claiming the lives of 45 coalition troops — about 14 percent of the overall death toll in the war for 2012. “Current partnered operations have and will continue, even as we temporarily suspend training of about 1,000 new ALP (Afghan Local Police) recruits while re-vetting current members,” a spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Thomas Collins, said. The ALP is a US-sponsored police force with around 30,000 members, recruited to fight Taliban insurgents in remote areas of the Afghan countryside.	53,344
Date of Award Leaves are commonly recognized as the main photosynthetic organ of the plant. Chloroplasts within leaves capture the energy from sunlight and use it to transform this energy into food for the plant. Leaves also aid plants in gas exchange and transpiration which allows water to be drawn upwards through the plant as it evaporates from a leaf's, surface (Campbell and Reece, 2005). In many plants, however, leaves have also evolved other functions that allow plants to live in water, provide protection, or even allow them to asexually reproduce (Table 1). Hodge, Jillian J., "Biomechanical and morphological changes in leaf abscission zones during the ontogeny of Kalanchoe pinnatum." (2010). Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. Paper 83.	112,543
Der Penis ist bekanntermaßen der Mercedes unter den Geschlechtsorganen, um so verwunderlicher, dass er in einem patriarchischen Blog wie diesem bisher zu …äh… kurz kam. Gerade behandelt eine aktuelle Studie die Frage, wie Penisgröße und Attraktivität zusammenhängen: Compelling evidence from many animal taxa indicates that male genitalia are often under postcopulatory sexual selection for characteristics that increase a male’s relative fertilization success. There could, however, also be direct precopulatory female mate choice based on male genital traits. Before clothing, the nonretractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates. This observation has generated suggestions that human penis size partly evolved because of female choice. Here we show, based upon female assessment of digitally projected life-size, computer-generated images, that penis size interacts with body shape and height to determine male sexual attractiveness. Positive linear selection was detected for penis size, but the marginal increase in attractiveness eventually declined with greater penis size (i.e., quadratic selection). Penis size had a stronger effect on attractiveness in taller men than in shorter men. There was a similar increase in the positive effect of penis size on attractiveness with a more masculine body shape (i.e., greater shoulder-to-hip ratio). Surprisingly, larger penis size and greater height had almost equivalent positive effects on male attractiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans. More broadly, our results show that precopulatory sexual selection can play a role in the evolution of genital traits. Also ein gewisser Zusammenhang zwischen Penisgröße und Attraktivität, allerdings insbesondere im Rahmen eines Gesamtpakets. Um so besser der Rest des Körpers, um so mehr wirkt auch ein großer Penis. Allerdings wurde er hier auch im schlaffen Zustand betrachtet Discussion We found that ﬂaccid penis size had a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on male attractiveness. Males with a larger penis were rated as being relatively more attractive. This relationship is nonlinear, however, indicating that the proportional increase in attractiveness begins to decrease after a size of∼7.6 cm (Fig. 2), which is an under-average penis size based on a large-scale survey of Italian men (39). Although we detected quadratic selection on penis size, any potential peak (i.e., the most attractive penis size) appears to fall outside the range used in our study. A preference for a larger-than-average penis is qualitatively consistent with some previous studies (30–32), but our results differ in showing that the most attractive size appears to lie more than 2 SDs from the mean (i.e., no evidence for stabilizing sexual selection, in contrast to refs. 30–32). Our results are further supported by the analysis of response time. We found a signiﬁcantly positive, albeit small, correlation between penis size and response time. This ﬁnding is consistent with a pattern in adults whereby attractive stimuli are viewed for a longer periods (40). A tendency to view attractive stimuli for longer is a generalized phenomenon that starts in infancy (41, 42). (…) The effect of penis size on attractiveness varied with both height and body shape (Fig. 3B). After controlling for the shoulder-to-hip ratio, larger penis size had a greater effect on attractiveness for taller men. This result could be because perceived penis size was smaller when assessed relative to the height of a taller man; or because of general discrimination against short men irrespective of the value of other traits, so that even a larger penis did little to increase their net attractiveness. A similar relationship between penis size and shoulder-to-hip ratio was also detected (Fig. 3A). Wäre interessant, wie es bei steifen Penis aussieht. Allerdings geht es ja hier auch nur um Attraktivität, was ja in diesem Bereich nicht alles ist. The media equate a man’s penis size with his power and masculinity. Views about penis size were assessed in an Internet survey of 52,031 heterosexual men and women. Most men (66%) rated their penis as average, 22% as large, and 12% as small. Self-reported penis size was correlated positively with height and negatively with body fat level. Whereas 85% of women were satisﬁed with their partner’s penis size, only 55% of men were satisﬁed with their penis size, 45% wanted to be larger, and 0.2% wanted to be smaller. Satisfaction did not vary across age groups from 18 to 65. Men reporting a larger-than-average penis rated their appearance most favorably, suggesting a possible conﬁdence effect of perceived large penis size. Da sind auch erst einmal konkrete Daten zur Penisgröße genannt: Combining the means and standard deviations reported by these researchers, we calculated that the mean erect penis length was 5.3 in. (13.5 cm), with 68% of men measuring between 4.6 and 6.0 in. (11.7 cm and 15.2 cm), 13.5% between 3.8 and 4.5 in. (9.7 cm and 11.4 cm), and 13.5% between 6.1 and 6.8 in. (15.5 cm and 17.3 cm); only about 2.5% of men possessed a penis over 6.9 in. (17.5 cm) long, and 2.5% were under 3.7 in. (9.4 cm) long. Mit einem Penis von 13,5 cm ist man also im guten Durchschnitt, it 17,5 cm schon im deutlich oberen Bereich. Interessant auch Geoffrey Miller über die Entwicklung des Penis durch sexuelle Selektion in „The Mating Mind„: Continuous sexual receptivity and concealed ovulation gave our female ancestors an unprecedented opportunity for testing males as sexual partners, while running a lower risk per copulation of unwanted pregnancy than any other primate did. Sex during menstruation, pregnancy, and breast-feeding would also have given ample opportunity for judging potential long-term lovers by their copulatory skills. In species that do not use copulatory thrusting, especially insects, penises evolve more obvious tactile stimulators: nubs, spikes, ridges, curls, barbs, hooks, and flagella. Male insects often try to push each other off during copulation, so copulatory thrusting would risk disengagement. Better to lock the genitals together and have internal flagella to excite the female. With primates, it is not so common for male rivals to swarm over females knocking each other off. This allows couples a bit more copulatory leisure, with more complex movements favoring simpler penis designs. The human penis is especially streamlined because ancestral females apparently favored whole-body copulatory movement over the flagellar vibrations favored by female insects. Perhaps whole-body copulatory movements, requiring much more energy than waving a couple of vibrators on the end of the glans, were better indicators of physical fitness. It is not clear whether many middle-aged men do actually have heart attacks during vigorous sex with mistresses, but this plausible risk reveals the energetic costs of human copulation, and one way that female demands for tactile stimulation separate the healthy from the unhealthy. The loss of the baculum (penis bone) also reveals female choice for tactile stimulation. Since male human penises become erect with blood rather than muscle and bone, this gives them more flexibility, and permits a greater range of copulatory positions. Although bonobos also enjoy face-to-face copulation, their positional variety pales in comparison to the Kama sutra. Human penises evolved as tactile stimulators for use in copulatory courtship. Further research may clarify whether penises and copulatory courtship evolved mostly as fitness indicators or just as sexually selected entertainment. Female hominids may not have preferred thicker, longer, more flexible penises per se. They may simply have liked orgasms, and larger penises led to better orgasms by permitting more varied, exciting, and intimate copulatory positions. This rather contradicts the view of the penis as a symbol of male domination. If we were a species in which males dominated the sexual system, we would have one-inch penises like dominant gorillas. The large male penis is a product of female choice in evolution. If it were not, males would never have bothered to evolve such a large, floppy, blood-hungry organ. Ancestral females made males evolve such penises because they liked them. Hier wird der Penis seiner Unterdrückungsfunktion beraubt und als Ergebnis der weiblichen Wahl dargestellt. Weibliche Wahl hätte demnach den Penis in seine heutige Form gebracht. Und hier eine weitere Studie: Abstract OBJECTIVE: A great deal of men consider that the size of the penis is directly proportional to its sexual power. Some men, who are worried that their penis is too small, wish to be considered for surgical lengthening or thickening procedures. The argumentation for this chiefly points in the direction of women. However, have women actually been asked about the extent to which they consider the size of the penis to be of importance from a sexual point of view? Or asked what they think about ideas surrounding the size of the penis in relation with actual sexual functioning? PATIENTS AND METHODS: To address these questions, 375 sexually active women who had recently given birth at the University Hospital Groningen were asked a number of questions about sexual functioning and the importance they attach to the size of their partner’s penis. RESULTS: A total of 170 questionnaires were returned (response rate 45%); 20% of the women found the length of the penis important and 1% very important; 55% and 22% of the women found the length of the penis unimportant and totally unimportant, respectively. Opinions about the girth of the penis followed the same trend. Length was less important than girth: 21% and 32%, respectively. The women who found the girth of the penis important had the same opinion about the length of the penis (correlation 0.71, p=-0.001). Median division into two subgroups (girth important/unimportant; t-test) did not reveal any significant differences in relation with demographic data. Correlation analysis did not reveal any significant correlation between sexual functioning (measured with the NSF) and opinions about the girth of the penis. CONCLUSION: Although clearly in the minority, a nevertheless considerable percentage of the women respondents attached substantial importance to the size of the male sexual organ. Demnach kommt es eher auf den Umfang an als auf die Länge. Eine weitere Studie betont ebenfalls die Bedeutung des Umfangs: Does the size of the male penis, in terms of length or width, make a difference in female sexual satisfaction? To study the effect of penis width vs. length on female sexual satisfaction, 50 sexually active female undergraduate students were asked which felt better, i. e., was penis width or length more important for their sexual satisfaction. None reported they did not know, or that width and length were equally satisfying. A large majority, 45 of 50, reported width was more important (p < .001). Implications are discussed, including the fact that the data seem to contradict Masters and Johnson about penis size having no physiological effect on female sexual satisfaction. Auch hier also ein deutlicher Sieg für den Umfang. Allerdings dürfte es auch hier so sein, dass ganz kleine Längen das eigentlich Problem darstellen, und es erst danach auf die weiteren Umstände ankommt.	212,855
Category archives: "" For most people the term ‘industrial revolution’ conjures up images of belching steam engines and grim Victorian factories. In truth the industrialisation of the modern world happened in several phases, beginning with steam power at the end of the 18th century, through to mainstream use of electricity a hundred years later, and then the computer revolution of the 1980s when everything mechanical and analogue turned digital. We are now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological. Thanks to advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and the internet of things (IoT) our societies and economies are evolving again. Just as businesses of 150 years ago had to adapt to electricity enabling mass production, today’s enterprises face the challenge of embracing what has been dubbed Industry 4.0 - using smart technologies and data to drive intelligent action in the physical world. Knowing when and how to incorporate these new technologies into your business model isn’t easy, and supporting companies to adapt to Industry 4.0 is a priority for Callaghan Innovation in its role as New Zealand’s innovation agency. As part of this it has joined forces with EMA and the Manufacturers’ Network to lead the USA Manufacturing Trek – a mission of Kiwi firms heading to the Internet of Manufacturing Conference in Chicago on June 6-7, and to get an exclusive look inside factories at the cutting edge of IoT in industry, such as CNC machine tool maker Haas Automation. New Zealand companies are at the early stages of adopting Industry 4.0, Mike Burgess, senior policy analyst at EMA, says. “Our members need to know what the manufacturing plant of the future looks like, what skills will be required, and what training they will need to develop for their workforces to adapt,” he says. “There’s only so much you can learn from surfing websites. Nothing beats hands-on experience, talking to industry experts face-to-face and seeing how companies have implemented the new technologies.” Philip Benson, operations manager at bronze alloys manufacturer AW Fraser, plans to head to Chicago to learn more about the practical applications of IoT. “For us it’s about a smart factory – using technology to gather, process and utilise information more efficiently. “This is nothing new. Industry 4.0 is an evolution, rather than a revolution.” Doing intelligent things with data in real time is creating whole new business models, says Nathan Stantiall, Callaghan Innovation’s business innovation adviser for manufacturing. “An example is ‘servitisation’ – not selling the widget itself, but getting other forms of revenue from it,” Nathan says. Aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce services its clients under a ‘power by the hour’ model, he says. Airlines do not own the engines, but pay for use and maintenance based on flying time. Meanwhile R-R utilises IoT technologies to collect and analyse huge volumes of data that enable it and the airlines to operate more efficiently. While Germany is the leading proponent of Industry 4.0, it’s important for Kiwi companies to see how it’s being done in America, Nathan says. There it’s known as Industrial IoT or Internet of Manufacturing, with a focus beyond the factory. “For example, your database might be connected to your customer or supplier’s database, so they get full visibility of stock and know exactly when to order,” Nathan says. Firms ask him when they should implement Industrial IoT. “There is no right answer, but they should be starting now and experimenting with simple connections and data collection,” he says. The USA Manufacturing Trek runs from 4-8 June. For more information contact us on email@example.com This article was first published in the April issue of the EMA Business Plus magazine.Leave a Comment Callaghan Innovation has been letting businesses see for themselves if robotics could help improve productivity and efficiency, letting their human staff focus on higher-value work. But don’t take our word for it, let Baxter explain for himself. Tell us a bit about yourself? Sure, I am an industrial, collaborative robot. I’m designed to do simple industrial jobs such as loading, sorting and handling of materials. I can do these jobs working right next to people, because I can sense when someone moves close to me and I can measure how much force I am applying to something and stop if it’s too high. I was created by Rethink Robotics in 2012. I am 1.8m tall, 140kg and can be wheeled about anywhere. I have a younger brother called Sawyer. What do you like best about your job? I like a challenge! Unlike my cousins who require the environment around them to be very precise, I can adapt to things. For example, I can pick up items that aren’t precisely aligned, then re-orient and place them correctly. I can also see stuff around me, which means I can recognise parts - important when you are trying to sort apples from oranges. I also love working! When my human coworkers need rests, I just carry on, in fact when they go home at the end of the day I carry on then too! Don’t worry though, I’m not going to take over, I need my human coworkers to work on higher value things around the factory. I’m good at adapting to a new job quickly too, just wheel me in, I’m easy to programme and away I go, no safety cages and no complex jigs and fixtures. What do you think are places where you might be better suited to work than a person? Why? I just love the repetitive stuff! My human coworkers get bored more easily but I can keep up with repetitive jobs like loading material into machines that can be quite dangerous such as presses and guillotines. My skills mean I don’t put my fingers where they shouldn’t go. I can also handle hot, cold, fragile, sharp and sticky stuff humans don’t like touching. I’m good at counting and inspecting stuff too. For a business thinking about robotic technologies, what is your advice about where they should start? I would recommend the Better by Lean business workshop run by Callaghan Innovation which helps you review your business processes and management systems to improve productivity, reduce waste and enhance customer experience. In my experience, businesses that automate well do so when their processes are already “lean”. Start thinking about automation opportunities in your business: Which processes could be good candidates for automation, which of these would be suitable to test? Engage with potentially affected employees. Many businesses have found that they redeploy any affected staff to other higher value activities. Build a business case to show how automation supports your business needs. Think about the benefits, and what challenges could be overcome. Consider how will you measure whether automation has been valuable and develop a strategy for re-deploying your existing human resources. Determine the operations model. Ask whether you have right staff and infrastructure to assess for new automation opportunities and support the automation, both hardware and software. Identify your automation partners, who best fits with your needs and your business and understand what you are paying for. Finally, have a strong implementation plan. Determine how long the pilot should be if you have one and what are the stages after this? Who is your hero in the robot world? ‘Data’ from Star Trek What’s next for you? In the longer term, one of my creators Jim Lawton from Rethink Robotics says there are a couple of things that will help my friends and I be more useful in the future. The first is increased dexterity, such as being able to thread a needle or unwrap a package. Secondly, teaching machines to learn algorithms that can see the bigger picture, for example, if an algorithm is trained to recognise dogs, we can do that with a high level of accuracy. But if we are shown a picture of a family playing frisbee with their dog on the beach, we will be clueless about anything else besides the dog. As a consequence of these improvements, we will be able to access vast databases, recognise people, machines and parts, be able to derive insights and act on them. In the short term, I better see which Callaghan Innovation customer I am meeting next!Leave a Comment	307,179
Blog 53: Do you need to shampoo more often during summer?• Posted on April 04 2018 Hair fall, scalp irritation & itching are some of the most common hair problems during summer. The humidity coupled with summer heat triggers profuse sweating that often work as the primary reason for hair problems & hair fall. During summer, excess perspiration added with the oils produced on the scalp provides a great base for pollution & grime to stick on to, thus making scalp & hair dirty & sticky much quickly. Moreover, a good amount of salt comes out to the surface of scalp with sweat. This salt has corrosive action that weakens the hair roots, adding to hair fall. So, removing the sweat mixed salt quickly from the scalp is important. Another common hair problem during summer is smelly hair. Accumulation of sweat on the scalp provides a perfect environment for growth of fungal & bacterial infections, which is the primary reason of unpleasant hair odor. Keeping your scalp & hair clean & dry can help you get rid of this problem. Key to minimize summer time hair problems So, as it comes, to minimize the summer time hair problems, keeping the scalp & hair clean & dry is essential. Washing your hair properly with a proper shampoo at proper intervals can be highly effective in keeping the common summer time hair problems at bay. However, there are few things to consider before deciding how often you should use a shampoo during summer. Depending on how profusely you sweat daily & how much time you spend outdoors or the hairstyle you normally don while outside, you might need to wash your hair daily or on alternate days or may be twice a week. People living in cities, certainly needs to wash their hair more frequently due to higher environmental pollution compared to the people living in suburban areas. At the same time, if you stay mostly indoors in an air conditioned environment, your hair is less likely to get dirty. Tied hair certainly attracts less dirt than untied hair. How frequently you should shampoo So, there are no one-size-fits-all theory about how frequently you need to shampoo during summer. If you normally wash your hair 2 times a week, during summer making it 3 times a week can certainly help. However, you have to make sure that every time you wash your hair, you give it enough time to get completely dry. Clean scalp & hair is the key to problem free hair & shampooing as quickly as your scalp or hair gets dirty should be the norm. However, when you are needed to wash your hair frequently, it is important that you use a shampoo that is mild enough to not to reap off the necessary oils, making the hair, dry & brittle. While not shampooing your hair at proper intervals during summer can take a toll on your hair health, using a harsh shampoo regularly can do even more harm. So, choose a shampoo that is mild, infused with natural, hair nourishing ingredients & free from soap. Honey Shampoo & Spa conditioning Shampoo from the Shine & Silk range of Keya Seth are best suited for even regular hair wash during summer. If you have dandruff, you can opt for Shine & Silk Dandruff Removal Shampoo from the range for regular use. How to Style Your L... Hairstyles can surely boost your personality when done right... and dying your hair is one of those easiest ways! Moreover, Burgundy is one of the ...Read More Stop the Spread of ... It’s been over 2 years that the entire humanity is fighting the outbreak of the menacing Coronavirus. Over the last 2 years, the virus has mutated ...Read More Why Is Orange Your ... Although winter is one of the most looked-for seasons in India, it is pretty much nightmarish to many! The Indian skin that is mostly used to its...Read More	180,309
Anyone that paid attention to this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) you would have been once again impressed with the continued advances in technology. You would have seen things like bendable glass to a twenty inch tablet running a full version of Windows 8 with UltraHighDefinition (4K) resolution. Not familiar with 4K resolution? Higher end videography equipment have recorded 4K content for quite some time now, and it was only natural that we would start to see display technology catch up. So what is 4K? It refers to the horizontal resolution of a captured video, or a display device. Simply put, around 4,000 pixels are recorded or displayed on the horizontal axis of a 4K device. In comparison a TV with a 1080p resolution has around 1,080 pixels on its horizontal axis. This means a 4K display would have approximately four times the resolution than a similar 1080p unit. There were a number of 4K TVs announced at CES, and in fact prior to this show Sony already had their flagship TV, the 84 inch 4K TV model XBR-84X900, on the market. This TV is simply amazing, and if you ever have a chance to check it out take it. Not only is this TVs screen the most realistic screen to date, this TV has a feature set that will certainly impress anyone. This TV is of course a smart TV, and being a Sony can connect to Sony’s Entertainment Network. The TV also comes with two speakers that mount to the side. Each speaker provides a simulated 5.1 surround sound experience powered by 50 watts of power. The XBR-84X900 is a 3D capable TV using passive glasses, and with 4K resolution 3D becomes more amazing than ever. If you’re a gamer this TV is SimulView compatible, allowing you to play multiplayer games where each player has their own full screen experience, rather than the traditional split-screen format. So I have to admit when I first read about 4K TVs I was skeptical given I wasn’t aware of any existing 4K content. Sony has taken this into consideration. They have a collection of ten movies that have been mastered to 4K resolution. In addition, with the help of the XCA8-4K chip, the Sony XBR-84X900 TV will convert HD and lower resolution content to 4K resolution. I think the biggest obstacle for the average consumer will be the $24,999 price tag of this TV, but as with any new technology you pay for getting the latest and greatest. Once again this TV is simply breathtaking, and if you can afford it go for it. Magnolia Home Theater is currently selling the Sony XBR-84X900, and if you want to see a TV that will truly impress your friends and family come check it out. As I said before, there were a number of 4K TVs announced at CES, and I fully expect this resolution to slowly work its way into being the next resolution in display technology. There should be many new options to come, and I would anticipate that available 4K content will catch up as more 4K display devices are put to the market.	213,232
A federal appeals court has rejected claims by a black educators' group that Las Vegas school officials intentionally segregated students. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last month upheld a lower-court decision dismissing the suit the Las Vegas Alliance of Black Educators had brought against the Clark County school board. The suit, filed in 1989, alleged that district officials intentionally discriminated against black students by building several new schools in predominantly white sections of the Las Vegas Valley while building none on the city's heavily black west side. (See Education Week, Oct. 14, 1992.) The court, however, held that the plaintiffs failed to show such decisions were made with discriminatory intent. It cited last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Dekalb County, Ga., case holding that school segregation is not unconstitutional if it is caused strictly by housing patterns. The appellate court also rejected claims that the district had engaged in discrimination because many school staffs are overwhelmingly white and many schools lack black administrators. Such statistics do not prove segregation in a district with a population that is 10 percent black, the court held. The Los Angeles school board last week overwhelmingly approved a pay agreement with its teachers' union, ending months of tense relations between the groups and heading off a teachers' strike that was to have begun May 7. (See Education Week, May 5, 1993.) The pact, which restores 2 percent of a 12 percent teacher-pay cut, is expected to cost the district $36 million this year. After school officials unexpectedly received a $35 million reimbursement for desegregation costs from the state late last month, a superior-court judge lifted a restraining order that barred the board from approving the plan until it could prove it could pay for it. Speaker of the Assembly Willie L. Brown Jr. persuaded state officials to release the funds, according to Shel Erlich, a spokesman for the district. Mr. Brown, who brokered the agreement between the district and the union, had promised to help the schools find new funds to pay for the plan. Superintendent Sid Thompson indicated last month that the schools' financial troubles may not be over when he announced that the district still faces an estimated $143 million shortfall in the current fiscal year. Pennsylvania's Independent Regulatory Review Commission has approved the regulations for the state's controversial outcome-based education reform. The commission, which must clear all state regulations, voted unanimously in favor of the measure last week. Its approval, however, may not be the last hurdle the reforms need to clear. Although the state Senate has supported the reform, the House has voted to block the initiative and may continue to do so. The long-awaited reforms, which emphasize mastery of learning outcomes rather than course requisites, have been in the works for three years. State education officials had hoped to begin implementation last fall, but a loose coalition of opponents successfully lobbied state lawmakers to slow the process. Their efforts also prompted Gov. Robert P. Casey and key legislators to revise the outcomes. (See Education Week, April 14, 1993.)	173,276
Directions: Simply click the preview image above to download this cover page as a printable PDF file. We have also uploaded the same picture in a jpeg format to allow for advanced editing. Browse each page in the coloring book below. Each show contemporary examples of the fruit and would be great discussion starters with the children. Don’t miss our nine lesson plans based on this same passage - Click here to download the 11 page book as one PDF file This coloring book attempts to illustrated the bible teaching for kids using contemporary scenes related to Galatians 5:22-23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Print out this Coloring Page about Love for your kids. It shows two boys on the playground with arms around the shoulders. This highlights the spiritual fruit of love and good relationships. As children mature spiritually, they are more able to show the character of Jesus in their relationships. Like all these sheets, you have our permission to copy them for school, home, or church. Our writers have created a Love Bible lesson that can be used with this sheet. This joy coloring page shows a young family rejoicing together while the mother holds a new baby. This illustration will help kids to understand the meaning of joy and look forward to the greatest joy when we experience the presence of Christ in Heaven. As kids grow spiritually, they can better appreciate the real joys in life. PDF and jpeg image downloads available. You might also enjoy the Joy Bible lesson that goes with this illustration. The next in this series is this peace coloring page. It shows a young girl watching a thunderstorm outside her window. This highlights the real impact that God’s Peace can have in practical situations. As kids grow spiritually, they have new courage to face the scary times in life. Children will better understand how the Bible relates to their life. Don’t miss our peace Bible lesson that corresponds with this printable. This patience coloring page shows two sisters playing with blocks. The older sister is demonstrating patience in allowing the younger sibling to play along, even if she breaks down the structures. This is a quality we can identify and encourage in children as they progress in spiritual maturity. This picture would be a helpful discussion starter for kids about the topic of patience. Kara Jenkins has written a simple patience Bible lesson to accompany his sheet. For the kindness coloring pages, Many decided to create two different options. One picture has a boy sharing a slice of cake. The other shows a boy being kind to a younger girl (maybe sister) who has hurt her leg. In both illustrations you can see that kindness means thinking of other people’s needs and wants before your own. For children, this is an excellent sign of spiritual growth in their lives. They begin to think of the interests of others. Bible lesson plan about kindness coming soon. Here is our goodness coloring page. The goal in this illustration is to show a real situation where a child could demonstrate the spiritual quality of goodness. This picture has a boy giving away his ice cream to comfort another child who has dropped their own. This kind of sympathy and good action is evidence of spiritual growth in the life of a young person. Use this page to start conversations about other ways to show goodness. Here is the Goodness Bible lesson that goes with the sheet. This faithfulness coloring page depicts a concept that can be difficult for kids to understand. As we grow spiritually we take on more of the character of Jesus. In this illustration, a girl is sharing her material blessings (toys) with another child who does not have much. This demonstrates she is has integrity with her possessions, avoiding a greedy attitude. The child is faithful to use what God has given her in ways that bring honor to God. We also have a Faithfulness Bible lesson that goes with this sheet. The gentleness coloring page shows a young girl carefully holding a baby bird. This image would be a great conversation piece about what it means to be gentle in our actions, words, and attitudes. You could share stories about Jesus when he showed gentleness to others. This is a personality trait that God builds into our lives through the Spirit as we grow in maturing. Being gentle is a quality we all would love to see grow in the hearts of children. You may also like our free Bible lesson on Gentleness to accompany this coloring sheet. This self-control coloring page illustrates in a contemporary setting what it means for a child to demonstrate self-control. The scene is a store with children shopping alongside their parents. One child is throwing a fit while the other shows restraint. This type of self-control is evidence of God’s grace and spiritual growth in their lives. We also have uploaded a lesson plan about self-control.	85,906
From the minute I jolted out of my mother’s car two hours before the summit began, I was shocked to already see hundreds of selected women from around the world. They were anxiously waiting to enter the Walter E. Convention Center in Washington, D.C. It was at that moment I realized that this was going to be a highly stimulating and game changing day, not only for me, but also for every woman in America. June 14th marked the first ever United State of Women Summit hosted by the White House; a three day convention dedicated to celebrating not only how far women have come, but also how far we need to go. Leaders from the White House, heads of corporations, and Hollywood stars graced the stage to speak on the popular (and quite surprising) issues women still face today. Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Kerry Washington, and even Warren Buffet were amongst many in attendance, publically declaring their stance on feminism. They spoke about how they were making a difference in their respective fields to further women equality across the world. From disturbing rape statistics to economic empowerment, it seemed as if no one issue faced by women went unnoticed. President Obama said it best, “our country is not all about the Benjamins, it’s about the Tubmans too. We need all our young people to know that that Clara Barton and Lucretia Mott and Sojourner Truth and Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Height, those aren’t just for Women’s History Month. They’re the authors of our history, women who shaped their destiny.” Inside the summit walls, a handful of exhibitors stood outside the main hall. Planned Parenthood, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, and Women’s Media Center, were amongst many vendors that advocated for the advancement of women. This event proved that women can and will make a powerful difference in the future. As First Lady Michelle Obama states, “The work always continues… We can never be complacent and think we’ve arrived as women…” If you missed this game-changing event, here are my top quotes from a few of the most influential women in attendance at the United State of Women Summit: “If you don’t take accountability of your own time, other people will gobble it up.” – First Lady, Michelle Obama “People won’t remember what other people say about you, but they’ll always remember what you do.” – First Lady, Michelle Obama “Spend more time about what’s going on with the world…” – Television Producer and Writer, Shonda Rhimes “We need to learn how to take advantage of all the money in America that’s already there”- Former President of Entertainment of Telemundo, Nelly Galan “It’s not the title you have, it is what you do with the title you have” – Administrator of Small Business Administration, Maria Contreras Sweet	35,425
Choose my instruction rather than silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold. For wisdom is far more valuable than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with it. I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment. I know where to discover knowledge and discernment. All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech. Common sense and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine. Because of me, kings reign, and rulers make just decrees. Rulers lead with my help, and nobles make righteous judgments. I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me. I have riches and honor, as well as enduring wealth and justice. My gifts are better than gold, even the purest gold, my wages better than sterling silver! I walk in righteousness, in paths of justice. Those who love me inherit wealth. I will fill their treasuries. Proverbs 8:10-21 (NLT) We are always in need of wisdom — wisdom to say the right things at the right time, to do what is right on this side of history, to pause and stay quiet, to listen and consider. We need wisdom to choose between what’s good and what’s best, to know how to walk with integrity in our workplaces, in our parenting, in our friendships. We need wisdom to love others well, to treat others with kindness, to know how to live as Jesus did. James 1:5 assures that if we ask for it from God, He will give it to us generously. And our Proverbs passage today tells us that with wisdom, we will gain discernment, good judgment, and knowledge — everything we are desperate for today. As we seek to find truth and clarity, direction and vision this year, let’s come before God and ask Him for the wisdom we need to navigate our lives and our world, to love ourselves and our neighbors well, and to “walk in righteousness and in paths of justice.”Leave a Comment	222,632
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more Panama City Pilot The Panama City Pilot was inaugurated on May 30, 1907, under the editorship of George M. West. One of the founders of Panama City, West was born in New York and worked for the railroad in Wisconsin, where he was eventually admitted to the state bar. He later acquired a winter home on St. Johns Bay in Florida’s Panhandle. Under West’s direction, the Panama City Pilot sought to promote the economic development of this growing area. In 1908, the Atlanta and St. Andrews Bay Railroad, which linked Atlanta to ports and tourist destinations along the white sand beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast, passed through Panama City, connecting the town to both Tallahassee and Pensacola. In 1909, the year Panama City became a municipality, West was married for a third time at the age of 63. His bride, Lillian Carlisle West, was 24 and would become the Pilot’s publisher, manager and editor in 1917 as her husband’s health declined. She continued to serve as managing editor from his death in 1926 through 1937, when she retired. Mrs. West also managed the St. Andrews Bay News, acquired in 1916, and the Lynn Haven Free Press, acquired in 1926. Provided by: University of Florida	25,392
Design of a Deep Learning Based Pothole Detection System. Walaga N, Priscilla Edith MetadataShow full item record With an increasing number of potholes on the roads that take a while before they are repaired, their adverse effects like accidents, traffic jam, flooding during the rainy season and damage to motor vehicles keep affecting road users. However automating the process of the location and detection of these potholes can cut down the amount of time it takes for these potholes to be repaired from when they are first located. This report therefore presents the Design of a Deep Learning Based Pothole Detection System which involves a deep analysis on the use of machine learning and Convolutional Neural Networks in computer vision and object detection. This study will involve training a machine learning model with pothole dataset and later developing a model that can detect the presence of these potholes on the roads. Data collection was done by taking pictures in form of videos of different roads inside a moving vehicle by use of a mobile phone placed on a car windscreen. A total of 836 images was collected, the images were resized and labelled by drawing bounding boxes around the potholes in the images. The images were then converted to a format compatible with the training algorithm, the COCO dataset format. For training the EfficientDet algorithm was used which is a high accuracy, high efficiency algorithm with each layer images go through different kinds of optimization till the box layer. Model training using the effcientdet algorithm was successful and a machine learning model that detects potholes with an Average Precision of 0.52515274 was developed. A pothole dataset of 836 images was collected and is stored in a database.	65,483
Tamarind processing and marketing- Option for livelihood improvement The Bastar region is endowed with plenty of non timber forest produce. Tribal farmers collect and trade it mostly in raw form. Primary processing and value addition activities have potential of improving livelihood. Its collective marketing and little primary processing can significantly improve family income. The farmers were organized in groups for taking up this activity in cluster Pedawada of district Bastar through NAIP support under the subproject “Improving rural livelihood security through sustainable integrated farming system model and allied enterprises in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh”. The tamarind was clearly the choice of community in view of availability in large quantity in cluster. The trade of tamarind after collection is entirely in the hands of middlemen at present. Currently, large quantity of tamarind is collected by community and immediately sold to middlemen as raw tamarind pods at very low price of Rs 7 per kg. In this process entire profit goes to middlemen. In view of this, it is decided to start primary processing and trade of tamarind through groups which excludes middlemen. The process of collection, procurement, and processing was assigned to different groups. These groups organize entire chain of activities with the help of villagers, distributing profit to all the stakeholders. Four male groups for procurement of tamarind pods, and two women groups for processing were formed, involving 60 families. The matured pods were collected by all villagers and were purchased at mandi rates, which is always Rs 1.0 higher than the rates given by middlemen. Thus, collectors were benefited by addition of value at collector level. After procurement of raw pods the male group sold it to women group by adding Rs 1.0 as their profit, which otherwise goes to outsider middlemen. The women group thus acquired raw material at the cost of Rs 8.0/ kg for processing. The raw pods were distributed by group to any farm family interested in dehulling and deseeding of tamarind. They were paid Rs 2.0 per kg of raw tamarind for this processing. This helped in creating employment at village itself for a period of about 4 months. One women can process 20 kg tamarind per day and thus earned Rs 40/ day. The processed material is returned backed to group who pack it in 15 kg bags for marketing. It was sold at the rate of Rs 25-30/ kg of flesh and Rs 4/kg of seeds. Training and marketing support for this activity was provided by consortia partner Sanjivani. Direct marketing was also done by the groups. The processed material was stored in cold storage and marketed when the price was higher. This added further value of Rs 2.0/ kg of processed tamarind. On an average each family of collection group obtained Rs 8200. The procurement group earned profit of Rs 48000 per group by sale to processing group. The two processing groups processed 1700q of tamarind and earned a profit of Rs 27000 per group. Rs 3.4 lac is distributed to 92 families involved in processing and 4350 man days of employment is generated. Procurement and processing starts from February and lasts up to mid June. The profit sharing mechanism and management of seed money fund was decided by group. With the help of project support the groups could procure only 30% of the available tamarind in project villages. This indicated that there is still more possibility of generating income and employment by this activity. It is proposed to replicate this model in Tahakapal, Turangur and Turenar clusters where groups are formed. In order to further add the value in form of paste, sauce, and candy a support of Rs 14.5 lac is provided by Jila Panchayat for formation of 10 groups. This will help in further increase in profitability in this trade. (Source: NAIP, ICAR, New Delhi)	240,837
Editor’s note: Benjy Weinberger is the engineering site lead for foursquare’s San Francisco office. He previously worked on infrastructure and revenue engineering at Twitter, and before that on search and ad engineering at Google for eight years. Microsoft recently announced that it’s taking a huge $6.2 Billion writedown over the failed aQuantive acquisition. This news, and the scrutiny of Facebook’s business model following their IPO drama, show that, in online advertising, it’s all about the targeting. As this Reuters analysis explains, there’s so much online advertising space that merely putting billboards up all over the internet is no longer a lucrative business. Meanwhile, Google AdWords remains phenomenally successful, generating over $36B in revenue in 2011. The key difference? targeting. Google’s sophisticated ad-targeting algorithms greatly increase the relevance to the user, and therefore the likelihood of the user clicking on an ad. This is what makes AdWords so much more effective than banner ads. So why isn’t everyone just improving their targeting? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Ad targeting is a difficult artificial intelligence (AI) problem, and while you may not agree that it’s a worthy one, it does require a lot of technical heavy lifting. Here’s why: A targeting algorithm take everything you know about the impression – search keywords, location, demographics, previous user activity, time of day, the previous CTR (clickthrough rate) of the ad and so on – and uses that to choose from among millions of candidate ads the one to show. And it has to do this in a fraction of a second. This is not a trivial problem. Can you think, offhand, how you’d do it? If so, I’d like to talk to you about a Data Scientist role at foursquare… Ad targeting is a relevance problem somewhat similar to web search: given a huge repository of information, and whatever we know about what the user is looking for, find the most relevant information and return it. While the algorithms are not the same, and indeed Google has two entirely separate divisions solving each problem, both for technical and ethical reasons, the difficulty is similar. Basically, to even begin to tackle ad targeting, you need top-notch data scientists with PhDs in Machine Learning, Information Retrieval or other AI fields. If you’ve spent any time at all at a startup you know how hard it is to hire these people. Even once you have an algorithm, it’s not much use without data. The more you know about the user, the more precise your algorithm can be. This is not just for the obvious reason that you need something to target by, but also because you need to train your algorithm. Machine Learning algorithms are so-called because they adapt through an iterative process: you feed them a set of training data, along with the expected results, and they slowly increase their precision, in a manner analogous to human learning. The kind of data you can gather depends largely on the consumer service you provide: Google knows a lot about your current intent, via your search keywords. Facebook knows a lot about your context, via your social activity. So far, intent appears to be more valuable than context when it comes to ad targeting. But the holy grail is to have both, which partly explains Google+. For precise targeting you need a lot of data, particularly about current intent, and this is hard to come by for any but the most successful services. Assuming you have the algorithms and the data, you still have the problem of how to apply them efficiently. You can’t let your user wait around while you laboriously figure out which ads to show. Ads systems are typically expected to return a result within a few hundred milliseconds. It takes very large, very complex distributed systems to pull this off. Google’s SmartASS system, for example, is one of the best-engineered systems I’ve ever encountered. Systems of this sophistication are hard to build. The Virtuous Trinity All too often, online advertising is a zero-sum game. The more intrusive display ads are to the user, the more benefit the advertiser perceives. And in a CPI (cost-per-impression) paradigm, the ad publisher is firmly on the side of the advertiser. But with strong targeting and CPC (cost-per-click) billing, a virtuous trinity emerges: the more relevant an ad is, the happier the user is, and the more likely to click on the ad. This gets the advertiser more engagement, and the ad publisher (who gets paid per click) more money. All three participants are incentivized by better targeting, and all share in the created value. Creating this virtuous trinity, rather than spamming the web with banner ads, is how to truly succeed in online advertising. To get ad targeting right you need a combination of cutting-edge algorithms, sophisticated systems and mountains of relevant data. Putting all these in place requires a world-class engineering team, the right product, and a lot of users. Not many companies have all these assets. Microsoft does though, which makes this recent news somewhat perplexing. I guess that just having the ability to do something isn’t enough. Whether you actually get out there and do it or not is the $6.2B question.	171,463
Twitter is the fastest growing and one of the hottest social networks on the Internet. For businesses, its power is unprecedented, but knowing how to use it for business is not necessarily obvious. Twitter has now reached the place were business people can no longer ignore it. Worldwide, traffic to Twitter reached 10 million users in February 2009, up an amazing 700% from the same time the previous year. Until then, it was regarded as sort of a cool consumer novelty with no real business application. Today, Twitter has over 200 million users and is now averaging more than 460,000 new accounts being added every day. That’s 15 million new accounts per month! During 2010, there was an average of 50 million tweets (messages) per day. In 2011, that number has already grown to over 140 million per day. That’s one billion tweets a week! What you may not know though is that Twitter can really help businesses get closer to consumers and yes, even sell more products and services. The fact that 33% of active Twitter users have household income of over $100,000 per year, makes it an ideal website to use to promote your business. Twitter is a constant stream of communication. It allows you to post updates (called tweets) as often as you want. When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets. The problem with Twitter is that since it is so different than other Social Network websites most people have a hard time trying to figure out how to use it. The first post on Twitter by new users is most often, “I just joined Twitter.” The second post on Twitter by new users is most often, “What do I do NOW!” The suggestions in this article should help retail jewelers get past that “What do I do now” phase and start using Twitter as an important tool in reaching new prospects and staying in contact with existing customers. Setting Up Your Profile When you first join Twitter you need to set-up a user name. This user name will display on all the tweets you make. Your user name is also how people will find you and relate to you. If at a later time you want to change your user name, you can. Everyone following you will still be connected to you and you will not loose any information you have on your account. Twitter is one of the few Social Networking websites where you can join as a person or as a business. You can join setting up your account as you, an individual. Plus there is nothing in their Terms of Service at this time that prohibits you from setting up an account in the name of your store. In order to fill out your profile, log into Twitter and then click on your username at the top right of the screen. In the drop down menu select ‘Settings’. On the page that appears click on the ‘Profile’ tab. If you are using Twitter as a person, identify some attributes like your real name, your location, your website address and your biography. Be certain to fill them all out. Your location and your website (limited to just 1) will help potential customers find you and your biography will help them get to know you better. Because you are a person communicating with other people on Twitter, you should add something personal like “a mom” or “a dad” or “father of three”. Those kinds of things actually add a little more personableness to your biography. You do have to keep your biography fairly short. You are limited to 160 characters. If you are a man it is especially important to add some family information such as “happily married” or number of children or grandchildren. As a jeweler you will want to follow potential customers in your area which are primarily women. Adding family details to your profile will help you from becoming labeled as a stalker. You also want to have a recent photograph of yourself. This helps people see you as a real person and helps them get to know you better. To add a picture click on the ‘Picture’ tab in the settings. Then click on ‘Browse’ and search through your hard drive and select the picture you want to use. Click ‘Save’ and that’s it. If you plan to use Twitter as your business, add your store name to your Profile and write a short description about your store for the ‘Bio’ section. You also want to be sure to add your city and state to your ‘Location’ as this will help you get ranked for Local Searches. For your profile picture upload a picture of the front of your store, your logo, or a favorite piece of jewelry. Personalize Your Theme Twitter allows you to change the look of the pages on your account. Go to your Settings and select the ‘Design’ tab. Here you can select a different Theme, upload a new background picture, and/or change the colors of the background, text, links, sidebar, and borders. Changing the look and feel of your pages from the default Twitter Theme helps you to stand out from the rest and makes you look more professional. One of the first things you will notice about Twitter is your tweet can only be 140 characters long. This is one of the biggest reasons that kept me from becoming more involved with Twitter sooner. How in the world can you say anything in 140 characters or less? That’s only 15 to 20 words - a mere sentence (for me even less than a sentence). Frequency of Post Social Networking is not Set and Forget. You need to stay fresh. Social Networking is like big grocery stores - There’s a Sell by Date on every message - And It’s Today! If you create a Social Network page about your store and then only up-date it once a week or a couple times a month it will not be effective. There is no such thing as an ideal number of tweets per day or week. You are only posting too often if all your posts are about you selling your jewelry. The content of your tweet (the quality) is more important than the quantity of tweets you make. The more often you create new tweets the greater the chance that your followers will see your content. People log onto Twitter at different times during the day and on different days of the week. You need to be posting at various times so that you have the opportunity to be in your Follower’s Feed when they are online logged in to Twitter. If you have 10 new pieces of information about jewelry to post, instead of posting them all at the same time, spread them out over a couple of days at different time intervals. If you post them all at once, everyone online at the time will see them. However, if someone logs in 3 or 4 hours later, they may never see what you wrote as the content has been pushed down by more current posts. If you spread it out over several days at different time intervals you will reach more people. The chance is greater that they will be online when one of the pictures are posted. Content of Tweets Mix It Up! If every one of your tweets is simply a notification that you are having a special event, you will find some of your best customers reacting, but little else. It’s okay to talk about your events, but real engagement comes much faster when you mix your content up giving people a variety of information they are interested in. If you post relevant, interesting information about jewelry - the more the merrier. Inform your followers how to care for their jewelry and how to build their jewelry wardrobe. Tell stories about gemstones and the history of jewelry. Make it interesting to your followers and they will look forward to reading all your new tweets. Also link to informational articles about jewelry such as jewelry fashion trends, jewelry news, etc. If all your post are about ‘Buy My Jewelry’ people will tire of reading them and either ignore them or un-follow you. The content you create should include information on Gemstones, Diamonds, Precious Metals, Jewelry Care, Jewelry History, Jewelry News, and Jewelry Trends in addition to the information you share about your store. In addition, when you add pictures or videos to your Facebook page, link to them from Twitter. Use those pictures to create a video slide show to post on YouTube then tell all your Twitter followers by linking to the video. When you write a Blog post, create a link to it from Twitter so all your followers can read your information. \|< Prev\|\|Next >\|	177,212
News Background: Pentagon Seeks Functioning Booost-Phase System by 2010 Editor's Note: In order to place the APS boost-phase study in context, APS News asked James Riordon to find out what the current and projected plans of the Department of Defense are for boost-phase missile defense. His report follows. The Boost Defense Segment (BDS) of the Ballistic Missile Defense System is intended to defeat missiles in the initial, 3 to 5 minute, powered phase of a launch. The ability to intercept a missile in the boost phase could potentially destroy a missile regardless of its range or intended target, and would provide missile defense for the US and its allies around the world. According to Department of Defense (DOD) documents, "When possible, for the global coverage and protection against more lethal payloads it can provide, a capability to intercept a missile near its launch point is always preferable to attempting to intercept that same missile closer to its target." Missile Defense Agency (MDA) documents often define BDS capabilities in terms of reducing the "safe havens" of potentially threatening states. A safe haven is the region from which a nation could launch a missile that is outside the range of interception by a boost-phase defense system. According to DOD documents, a comprehensive, space-based BDS could theoretically eliminate safe havens entirely. Initial annual funding for the BDS stood at $600 million in fiscal year 2002 (compared to the total missile defense budget of more than $9 billion), and is planned to rise steadily to $2.275 billion in 2007. MDA plans call for a functioning BDS system to be in place by 2010. Two types of BDS concepts are currently in development: kinetic energy interceptors, and directed energy systems. Boost phase kinetic energy interceptors are rocket-propelled kill vehicles that collide with ballistic missiles. After the launch of a threatening missile is confirmed (this can take about a minute) the interceptor must be fired within seconds. Moreover, the bright exhaust plume-several times larger than the target itself-can obscure the target as the interceptor approaches. The first realistic tests of kinetic energy BDS systems are scheduled for 2008-2009. The BDS systems currently being studied consist of lasers mounted aboard aircraft or satellites. Lasers are only practical for missile defense during the initial phase of a missile trajectory because they are intended to compromise the integrity of the comparatively delicate booster while it is pressurized. Long range ballistic warheads are hardened to withstand reentry, so, ballistic missiles are typically not vulnerable to laser heating during later stages of their trajectories. According to DOD officials, lasers have successfully destroyed missiles in a number of tests to date. In the early 1980's, the Airborne Laser Laboratory's carbon dioxide laser, mounted in a KC-135 military aircraft, shot down five AIM9-B Sidewinder air-to-air missiles during proof of concept flights. There was also a successful test in June 2000 using the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) to shoot down a Russian- made Katyusha rocket at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico In August and September of 2000, the THEL shot down four more Katyushas. The prototype Airborne Laser (ABL) is a high-energy, chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) system mounted in a highly modified Boeing 747 airplane. The ABL aircraft is designed to operate above the clouds where it can acquire and track ballistic missiles during boost phase flight. The first ABL aircraft completed its maiden flight over western Kansas on July 18, 2002. The ABL is scheduled to conduct a realistic lethality demonstration, by shooting down a ballistic missile, in 2005. Shortly thereafter, the ABL is anticipated to be available for deployment in emergency situations, although the final BDS will not be in place until 2010. A proof-of-concept Space Based Laser (SBL) experiment is planned for 2012. BDS systems comprise a portion of the layered ballistic missile defense program, along with mid-course and terminal-course kinetic energy defense systems. According to DOD officials, the boost phase interceptor development is currently on track. Schedules for the three efforts are independent, say officials, and delays in mid-course or terminal programs are not expected to affect BDS development. ©1995 - 2016, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed. Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette	260,496
Harvesting the AUTOGRAFT chips couldn't be easier. After thousands of cases and watching this process take place, as well as understanding the importance of these formed boner chips, this method emulates the action applied by the tech, first assist or PA-C. The device MUST work quickly and effectively. The device works with 2 easy steps that can be repeated the duration of the case. Step 1: After the surgeon takes a 'bite' from the lamina or bone source, the Kerrison(tm) is pointed toward the tech, usually blindly. The tech would grab the shaft of the Kerrison(tm), and direct the mouth of the Kerrison(tm) with the chip into the opening of the Hensler Bone Collector (HBC). Step 2: Once inserted fully, it is rapidly removed. The bone chip is stored in the container. The Kerrison(tm) is cleaned off and the process is repeated. FEATURES of the HBC: - Tested to be effective in any size Kerrison. - Nearly 100% effective in capturing the bone, even in the most 'stuck' positions. - Device features a redundant system that if the bone isn't captured on the way it, it will be captured on the way out, as it's retracted from the surgeon. - Harvests the GOLD standard source for fusion: AUTOGRAFT. - Mixes perfectly with Hensler Bone Press graft, Bone mill graft, or any bone substitute, extended or biologic to integrate LIVE and clinically proven osteoinductive and osteoconductive graft for the fusion matrix.	178,405
World War I was one of the very first wars that had a global effect on the whole world. According to the book about WWI, The Guns of August, A shocking 32 countries took part in it. In the very first stages of WWI, the U.S stayed neutral, and had good reasons for doing so, too. However, the U.S eventually became entangled in the conflict anyway. Three leading causes forced the U.S to join WWI. The first reason was the sinking of the ship Lusitania. The second conflict was the sending of the Zimmerman Telegram. The final cause was that German U-Boats sank several merchant ships. Due to these three leading causes, the U.S was no longer neutral in World War I. Why did the US get involved in World War I? The U.S. declared war on April 6th, 1917, while President Wilson had been attempting to create peace between Germany and Britain; the country had desperately tried to stay neutral with the problems accruing with these two. After the continuous attacks against American ships, and propaganda by German U-boats, Germany kept attempting to get Mexico to declare war on the U.S. and stop American supplies from getting to Britain. For this reason the U.S saw itself being pushed to get involved. However, the U.S was not as neutral as the country claimed to be. Many leaders in White House leaned towards the Allies, this included Wilson. One of the most significant examples of this is the U.S trade with the Allied countries. When the war broke out, U.S trade with Britain and France skyrocketed. The U.S traded with Allies a considerable amount than it did with Germany. Trade with Germany fell to less than 1% than it previously did.4. The U.S traded with the Allies massive amounts of munitions and went to great extents to do so. The U.S sent many of their trades with ships that contained innocent civilians in attempt to cover up their intentions. When Germany shot down ships that contained munitions the innocent Americans were killed. This set an uproar within the country and blamed Germany. However, they did not keep in mind that the U.S government were using civilian lives as a shield for goods. Even though Wilson denied it, it was obvious the U.S supported the Allies. By risking innocent lives for the stake of trading with the Allies, this proves that the U.S was not as neutral as the country claimed to be. The economic reasons as to why the U.S. entered WWI boiled down to the investments in Great Britain and in France. If Great Britain and France lost the war, they would not be able to repay their debt to the United States. “The U.S. economy could have potentially collapsed if debts were not paid back. France and Great Britain were using loans from the U.S. to pay for their war. Also, they were purchasing vast amounts of arms from the United States, all of which on credit” (“Why Did the U.S. Enter World War I”). In July 28, 1914 to November 11,1918 World War 1 took place where over 17 million lives were lost and over 20 million wounded soldiers. This war was between Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States against Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The main cause of World War 1 was militarism where many European countries kept increasing their size of their army and navy without a war going on. To begin, During the Great War, the U.S. was in an economic slump, and the war was a means of jumping out of this recession. The U.S. merchants began trading arms with the Allies, especially Britain. To stop this, Germany initiated the Unrestricted Submarine Warfare policy. Unrestricted submarine warfare meant that whenever German U-boats saw ships or vehicles which were not under the control of the Central Powers or were believed to carry goods for the Allies, they destroyed them. There were a variety of underlying causes in World War I. They were militarism, alliances, nationalism, and a mix of imperialism. Before the war Nations started to build up their arms (DBQ: What Were the Underlying Causes of World War 1, 2010, Doc 7) making a competition for dominance, and alliances are formed making powerful armies. Nations produced propaganda infuriating the citizens and giving the pride in their nation which led to nationalism. This unknown fact of American being neutral or not, ultimately lead to the United States needing to enter World War I. Although the United States President at the time, Woodrow Wilson, explained the reasoning for the U.S. entering WWI was because of Germany’s submarine warfare, the violence toll that Germany took on America relates back to the concealed matter of the nation of the United States actually being neutral throughout the time before war When President Wilson requested that Congress declare war on Germany, America was not ready to mobilize our troops for war. The United States had just begun to pull itself out of recession and were not ready for a war economically. Some Americans wanted to see the fall of Germany, but did not support sending our soldiers across the ocean. Despite all this, Wilson continued to push for American contribution in the war effort. Eventually, Wilson’s tactics won over and we were able to send large amounts of reinforcements into the war. It took months before the United States was able to deploy troops to Europe. It took all of Wilson’s efforts to get the United States into World War One. Without these reforms we may never have joined the Great War. The United States didn’t enter the war until 1917 because of their policy of isolationism, but they entered because Germany sunk a British ship that had 128 American passengers on board, Germany sent Mexico a telegram trying to form an alliance, and America had loaned the allied powers lots of money and didn’t want to lose it if they lost. The United States also changed their foreign policy from isolationism to involved in world America had tried hard not to get involved in European affairs and conflicts, but with our growing connections it became hard. Businessmen saw the opportunities and profitable advancements of Europe, which brought a large number of American 's overseas. Great Britain was a major trade partner with the U.S, so we were indirectly involved in their war. The Germans started sinking any British ships that came into view of their Unterseeboots, even if they were passenger or fishing vessels. When Yesterday, February 3rd, 1917,The American cargo ship, Housatonic , a German U-boat sank. In response, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany the same day. The attack on Housatonic is the first time in history that a submerged submarine had successfully sunk another ship. Aboard the Union vessel, two officers and three men were killed while the crew took to the boats or climbed into the rigging to await rescue. The reason as to what led to the sinking is unknown at this time. There was opposition in the United State against intervention in World War II. The war was too far removed from America’s national interests to justify intervention. There was little popular domestic support for intervention in a war in Europe that involved its most powerful industrialized nations. There were many first generation immigrants in the U.S. who were from most of the nations involved, particularly Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy. American entry into World War II would cause a major conflict of national loyalties for those immigrants coming from nations with whom the US would be at war, specifically Germans and Italians. The Causes of the First World War Carmen There were quite a few causes of the first world war (WW1). The long-term causes were the militarism, alliance system, imperialism and nationalism- MAIN. The short-term cause was the fact that Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. I personally think the most significant cause to WW1 is the alliance system and here, I will justify why I think like this. I think the most significant cause of WW1 was the alliance system. In the early 1900’s European countries began competing and with that they were also building strong army’s and navy’s. After a while, the United States got involved and were in need of the people’s support. It took convincing but once people got on board with the idea of going to war, war fever in the United States was at an all-time high. The United Nations had not yet been established which meant conflicts were not getting resolved. This was unlike anything the U.S. had done before.	140,857
Interested in obtaining your GED in Almond WI? The General Education Development examination is for adults who do not have their high school diploma. The certificate that you receive upon passing the Wisconsin GED examination is accepted as an equivalent credential to a high school diploma by employers and colleges across the United States. The General Education Development examination tests basic subjects that students learn about in high school. Subjects reviewed in GED classes include reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. These are the subject areas that make up the General Education Development examination in Wisconsin. Many GED classes in Almond WI are offered at: - Almond Public Libraries - Almond Education Centers - Almond Universities - Almond Community Colleges	278,807
The answer is a big yes and no. As Mark Twain said, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” It is not exactly a case of “lying,” but rather a case of putting a spin on what the numbers mean. The two articles from Forbes Magazine presented below are excellent examples. In “ Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower ?” a May, 2012 article, Rick Ungar makes the case that it is Barack Obama. He includes a graph that shows the annualized growth in federal spending since 1982. It is pretty clear that Republicans have been the party of big government with the largest increases coming from Reagan and Bush II. The smallest increases have been under Democrats Clinton and Obama. In his September 3, 2012 Oped piece, Michael Strain states, “Yep, Obama’s a Big Spender…Just Like His Predecessors. ” He also included graphs. His graphs show spending and deficit as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both graphs show huge increases by George W. Bush and small declines under Obama, but Strain states “Like his immediate predecessor, he has dramatically increased the size of the federal debt.” It might be just as easy to make the argument that Obama is reducing the cost. One can do a lot in interpreting percentages. Neither of the Forbes articles took into consideration that GDP and revenues were both low from historical levels. A June article by FactCheck.org – Obama’s Spending: ‘Inferno’ or Not? -provides a more balanced look at the issue of debt and spending and takes the recession into account. The article is pretty well summed up in the statement, “So if current spending is an “inferno,” it’s one that Bush (and Congress) is mostly responsible for starting. But it’s also true that Obama has done little to put it out.” Obviously, a more robust economy would make all these numbers (percentages) look smaller. More revenue and larger GDP would change these numbers to a much more favorable outlook. It is also obvious that increased income i.e., higher taxes are also going to be necessary to bring the debt down and it is imperative that the national debt be reduced in absolute numbers, not just as a percentage of GDP. The chart from FactCheck, included here does show, again, that, beginning with Ronald Reagan, the cost of government has historically grown much more under Republican presidents than under Democrats. Alan Greenspan noted the following calamity in his 2005 article, Surviving Black Monday , in American Heritage Magazine, “Huge government deficits under Reagan had caused the national debt to the public to almost triple, from just over $700 billion at the start of his presidency to more than $2 trillion at the end of fiscal year 1988.” One has to wonder where the outcry was over this, at the time, huge increase in debt. Where was the outcry when Bush I and Bush II increased the debt. While Democrats have been accused of tax and spend, the Republicans have cut taxes and spent even more. Far from being the “smaller government” party, they have been responsible for the most growth in government. The Economist’s July 25 article “Spot the socialists ” makes the case very well pointing out that “ Public sector employment has contracted under Barack Obama, as it did under Ronald Reagan; the real “big government” types were the two Bushes.” Perhaps it is better to look at what the political parties have done rather than judge them on what they say they are going to do. You be the judge. If you are not tired of reading yet, you might enjoy CNN Moneys article, “Did Obama really make government bigger? ” Even the conservative Heritage Foundation acknowledges that much of the increase falls on congress.	260,451
A new study is out showing that homeowners hopelessly behind on their mortgage payments will walk away from their mortgages if they see a neighbor doing the same thing. What other “profile tendencies” do strategic defaulters show? Three college professors offer a unique look. The three academics — Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales — have published a groundbreaking study on not only who opts to walk away from a mortgage, but why. The study, entitled Moral and Social Constraints to Strategic Default on Mortgages (published in June 2009 by the National Bureau of Economic Research) sets out to discover the conditions that force homeowners to default on a home loan. The study found the following: - When the value of a mortgage exceeds the value of the house, homeowners begin to show a willingness to default on their mortgage even if they can afford the loan, and especially when home values have fallen by 15% or more. - Homeowners rarely default if the negative equity in their home is 10% or less. But once that reaches 15%, the tendency to walk away from a mortgage increases significantly. Nearly one in five individuals would strategically default if the house was worth 50% less than their mortgage balance. - 25% or more of recent mortgage defaults could be considered "strategic," rather than an inability to make monthly payments (meaning the homeowner voluntarily walks away from the mortgage). - Homeowners who consider it immoral to default are 77% less likely to declare their intention to do so, while people who know someone who defaulted are 82% more likely to declare their intention to do so. “The willingness to default increases nonlinearly with the proportion of foreclosures in the same ZIP code,” the paper states.	301,565
When is my child old enough to attend? \|If your child was born\|\|Can attend 3yo\|\|Can attend 4yo\| \|May 1 2012 – Apr 30 2013\|\|2017\| \|Feb 1 2013 – Jan 31 2014\|\|2017\| \|May 1 2013 – Apr 30 2014\|\|2018\| \|Feb 1 2014 – Jan 31 2015\|\|2018\| \|May 1 2014 – Apr 30 2015\|\|2019\| \|Feb 1 2015 – Jan 31 2016\|\|2019\| \|May 1 2015 – Apr 30 2016\|\|2020\| \|Feb 1 2016 – Jan 31 2017\|\|2020\| \|May 1 2016 – Apr 30 2017\|\|2021\| \|Feb 1 2017 – Jan 31 2018\|\|2021\| How to gauge your child’s readiness It is very important to consider when your child is likely to gain the most benefit from starting school, as this will help you determine when your child’s kindergarten experience should commence. Once a child starts 3 year old kinder, their education journey has commenced with an expectation of moving into 4 year old kinder the following year and then school the year after. Although every child’s development is unique, observation and research suggest that children who turn 3 between January and April can benefit significantly from waiting a year and starting kinder the year they turn 4. You know your child best. However, to help make an informed decision about when to start your child’s education journey, you can: - Discuss your options with people whose judgement you trust such as your Maternal and Child Health Nurse, kindergarten educators, school teachers (especially foundation and prep) and other parents. - Attend kindergarten information sessions. - Read up on kinder readiness. - Both 3 and 4 year old programs can have children ranging from 3, 4 and 5 years old in attendance. - Your child must be at school in the year that they turn 6 years of age, this is the compulsory school starting age. - Access to a second year of either 3 or 4 year old kinder is only available under limited circumstances and should not be assumed as an automatic entitlement. What if I decide to wait another year? There are other options to consider if you decide to wait a year. Play group, occasional care and family day care are available in the Bayside area and provide opportunities to develop your child’s readiness for kinder.	241,933
PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwire - Dec 6, 2012) - MolecularMD, based in Portland, OR, has formed a collaborative research agreement with Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (Ventana), a member of the Roche Group, in support of the PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog) study, building upon the ongoing link between research and diagnostic development. The PTEN gene is a major positive and negative regulator, respectively, of the PI3-kinase pathway, which regulates growth, survival, and proliferation. This key signaling component is one of the most frequently mutated proteins in human cancers, resulting in unregulated activation of PI3K signaling and providing irrefutable genetic evidence of the central role of this pathway in tumor growth. The objective of this study is to determine the correlation between methods for detecting PTEN gene copy number and protein biomarker expression using in-situ hybridization (ISH) methods for gene detection, PTEN Sanger Sequencing for mutational analysis and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods for protein staining. Brightfield ISH and Sanger Sequencing methods will be compared for detecting gene copy number. These ISH results will be compared to the levels of expression of the PTEN protein detected by immunohistochemistry. The expected result will be an understanding of the analytical validity of Brightfield ISH methods, compared to Sanger Sequencing, and IHC methods for determination of PTEN status. "MolecularMD's collaboration with Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. links the strengths and innovations of our respective companies to support the shared goal of validating new diagnostic solutions for translational and clinical cancer research," stated Dan Snyder, President and COO. MolecularMD Corporation develops and commercializes specialty molecular diagnostics for oncology applications. Its tests are designed to allow appropriate selection, monitoring and management of patients treated with molecularly-targeted cancer therapies. MolecularMD incorporates gold-standard and innovative technologies in providing its partners with the highest quality results. Assays are designed to meet clinical trial needs, and MolecularMD has appropriate systems and standards in place to enable development of companion diagnostic tests in conjunction with partners' novel anticancer agents. A private company based in Portland, Oregon, MolecularMD was founded by Brian Druker, director of the Knight Cancer Center at Oregon Health & Science University, and Sheridan G. Snyder, entrepreneur and founder of Genzyme Corporation.	136,027
Martin.Wilck at Fujitsu-Siemens.com Thu Oct 24 09:36:50 CDT 2002 Am Don, 2002-10-24 um 15.43 schrieb Dustin Navea: > Another potential problem popped into my head though, > and that is: > what if someone edits the initscript to where wine > runs as root (or someone compromises the server and > does it), If the system is already compromised it is too late anyway. Some intruder who can change init scripts already has root rights and probably wouldn't bother with wine. If sysadmin himself changes the init script to run wine as root it is his own fault (he could as well have their apache or bind run as root, also a bad idea for both). > or what if someone just changes the > owner/group on the file (like a word doc), and then > tries to run it with wine, what happens then? Unless wine has some suid capabilities (which it shouldn't) this has no impact - wine runs in the account of the user who opens the file (runs word). Martin Wilck Phone: +49 5251 8 15113 Fujitsu Siemens Computers Fax: +49 5251 8 20409 Heinz-Nixdorf-Ring 1 mailto:Martin.Wilck at Fujitsu-Siemens.com D-33106 Paderborn http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/primergy More information about the wine-devel	215,150
Types of RabbitsThere are literally hundreds of types of rabbits in the world today. The main categories or traits include: There are three main types of fur categorized by length. Normal fur types have multiple layers of fur to provide warmth and protection from rain and weather. Rex fur types are caused by a recessive gene that prevents the coarse outer guard hairs from growing. The result is a super-soft velvet like fur. Wool breeds have been developed because their hair perpetually grows. The fur can be collected by grooming or sheering live animals and then spun into yarn. Wool breeds need to be constantly groomed. Mature rabbits can weigh anywhere between 1.5 pounds all the way to 30 pounds. For simplicity they are usually categorized as either large, medium, or small (dwarf). Rabbits raised as pets have a range of body types. This includes slender and petite, to thick and broad, to extra long and big. Ears also come in many shapes and sizes. They can range from petite, short, and pointy to large thick, and wide. Within this range there are two categories commonly known as lop (ears hang downward) or normal (ears are pointed up). Colors are complex traits controlled by many genes providing almost limitless combination's. Colors of rabbits are classified by either a solid color or a change in colors down the length of the hair. Color of the fur is also sometimes coupled with the color of their eyes (white rabbits can either be a ruby-eyed white or a blue-eyed white). Names for some of these variations are listed below. To add more variation to the mix there are three categories of color patterns. Generally colors are either solid (same color covering the entire rabbit) or broken (meaning white mixed with splashes of color(s)). The third category includes distinct color patterns that define a particular breed, like the Dutch type of rabbits. In addition to these categories the fur can have a satin finish that makes it unusually shiny. Colors include but are not limited to: White (blue or ruby eyed), black, blue, sable point, Siamese sable, tortoise, agouti, chinchilla, opal, orange, chocolate, lilac, smoke pearl, squirrel, frosted pearl, chestnut, red, golden, fawn, steel.	105,774
View Full Version : Almost convinced... 05-01-2009, 09:38 AM Hello everyone, this is my first post (I JUST registered). I am quite new to the idea of Animal Rights and veg*nism. I am not a vegan; after finally learning about the horrors of the factory farms system and doing some serious reading & thinking about just how much right we have to use animals for our own purposes I gave up meat, eggs, & dairy and am working on discovering & eliminating the stuff with animal products or tested on animals elsewhere in my life. We would (obviously) all agree animal welfare is a crucial issue in today's society; however, I am not yet convinced it should always take top precedence. For example, and this is purely hypothetical(I don't even golf): suppose I am going to buy a pair of golf clubs. I can buy them from Company A which uses absolutely no animal products in their product or manufacturing process, but pays their workers poorly, treats them poorly, and has a horrible environmental record. Company B pays close attention to providing excellent working conditions, pay, & benefits, as well as is vigilant about their influence on the environment. However, there is animal products in both their production process & final product. (Again, this is all purely hypothetical). In this case, would the most ethical choice still be Company A? This is the issue I am wrestling with. I would really like anyone's thoughts; is this a valid point? or am I looking at this the wrong way? Has anyone else had this same dilemma? I realize this problem would only arise in an incredibly small number of cases; still, I am not going to go all the way and label myself a vegan unless I am actually going to be a vegan. Thanks for any thoughts! And Happy Friday. 05-01-2009, 10:37 AM Spooter, one thing (among many!) that I :heart: about VRF is that the people here are open to debate and consideration of many sides of an issue. I don't think anyone draws a hard and fast vegan/not vegan line. Many (most?) of us care about environmental and humans rights issues as well as animal rights. I find it quite convenient that very often, all three concerns tend to align. As you say, examples such as your hypothetical one are rather rare. As for "going all the way"- remember that while, of course, going vegan may be the most direct and efficient way of eliminating animal cruelty, any contribution you can make has a positive effect. If your heart and mind are genuinely committed to veganism, fear not adopting the label. We're all human and we all make mistakes and move on. That being said, here's a real dilemma that I face and have been wanting input on, so if you don't mind my hijacking your thread, I'll put it out there for consideration, so you can at least have a real example to illustrate your point: There are several Mexican restaurants in town. Some of them are small, authentic, family-owned establishments. I don't speak Spanish and therefore find it difficult to ascertain whether or not the beans or tortillas contain lard, for example. When I eat at these places, I accept that my food may not be 100% vegan. Alternatively, a chain fast-food Mexican restaurant has moved into town. They clearly distinguish the vegetarian options from the vegan options. But they're a chain. And not very authentic. So which is better? Your query also reminds me of this post (http://www.veganrepresent.com/forums/showpost.php?p=324343&postcount=1823). If you go to the thread (http://www.plantbasedpeople.com/showthread.php?p=324343#post324343), you can see the responses (page 122). And finally, welcome to VRF! :sunny: 05-01-2009, 11:44 AM I don't have time to spend researching how a company treats its workers for every small purchase I make, but if the tag says "leather," I know there was cruelty involved in making it, and avoid it. Simple as that. I noticed you used the phrase "uses animal products" but talked about treating workers poorly, rather than "using cheap labor" and "abusing animals." This makes me think you might be a troll. We've all heard the "but what about human rights" or "more important causes" argument and it's flawed; you can support both. In any case, I wouldn't knowingly buy from either of those companies. If I were informed about what was going on I would find an alternative to both. 05-01-2009, 12:02 PM I wouldn't buy from either company. If I couldn't find a vegan and ethical alternative, I probably wouldn't make the purchase. This really only holds for major purchases that I could do without (like your example of golf clubs - not an essential item to own unless you're a professional golfer). There are some purchases that are even more major where I haven't had the ability to avoid either unveganness or cruelty to humans. And that really just hurts, but I don't know that there's a way around it in the world we live in. For smaller things like food and clothes, I think it's usually much easier to know if something is vegan than if it was produced by mistreated workers. So I always obviously err on the side of veganness when it comes to those products and then I avoid companies when/if I find out they mistreat their workers. I think most people here strive to succeed in both areas. I'd probably go buy a set of used golf clubs, then you have the whole reuse/recycle thing going. that way you're not re-hurting animals OR people involved in production, and you're using less resources. Probably not the point you were looking for, though. 05-01-2009, 12:45 PM The questions you have are questions that will probably continue to come up as you go about your life, whether you consider yourself vegan or not. If you're trying to be an overall ethical person, there are always tough choices. Starting by giving up animal products is one giant step towards ensuring that your choices are at least likely to be more positive, but it's not a guarantee. There's often no way (or not enough time) to figure out exactly what impact your purchase will have on the world, so you do the best you can. Whatever you choose will depend on your own set of values and ethics. Many people are vegan out of concern for animals, with other considerations being less important. Others are motivated by concerns for the environment, their own health, or human rights. Many vegans have concern for all those areas. My point is, these are decisions you will untimately have to make for yourself. However, I wouldn't let it get in the way of considering yourself vegan or not. If you're avoiding animal products and animal testing, that pretty much fits the definition. Anything else you choose to consider (fair-trade, sweatshops, environmental impact) is just really delicious icing on the cake! There are actually a number of threads here about some of the things you seem to be concerned with, like human rights, sweatshops, fair-trade, environmental issues, used leather/wool, and so on. You might enjoy reading those and seeing how other people face these issues. There are no easy answers... unless of course you just decide not to think about them! 05-04-2009, 10:23 AM The longer I am vegan, the more knowledgable I become, and make more and more ethical choices, not only for the animals, but for the environment. I call myself vegan even though I know I probably use some form of animal product or another in my personal care products, but it is unintentional, based on my lack of knowledge on the subject, and if I read something like a tip from someone about a product, I usually test it out and then switch to the ethical choice. As an example, I have stopped using disposable tampons and pads after reading the cloth pad/menstraul cup thread here. I plan on switching my fiance's disposable razors for a good one that you just replace the blades, not throw out the plastic. Every little bit helps. I plan to continue to wean off of using anything that has or could harm someone or the environment, or an animal. And I am proud of myself for doing that. :) 05-06-2009, 11:44 AM Thanks for all the thoughts everyone- that local vs. surely vegan is a great example of the issues I have been turning over in my mind since I came to learn about our treatment of animals and the philosophy behind why we should do things differently. I appreciate the thoughts. Wow first post and already called a troll, off to a bad start! 05-06-2009, 11:57 AM Don't let it deter you, there is a lot of good advice and many reasons to stick around here! :) 05-06-2009, 01:13 PM Well, golf clubs, unless you are a professional golfer, are not an essential item. If those were the ONLY two choices, I'd probably just do without. But usually you can either buy used (not adding to environmental damage and not contributing to the company) or maybe freecycle them. It amounts to about the same thing. You have to figure out which you are most comfortable with. :) Veganism is not about being perfect, but about avoiding products that exploit animals (including humans) and their products. It's about living your best to reduce suffering. If you are doing this (and it sounds like you are), I wouldn't worry about being perfect before calling yourself vegan. If someone asks if your shoes are leather (for example), just explain that you are using up what you had before you became vegan and once those wear out you'll get some non leather ones. Welcome to VRF! :) 05-06-2009, 07:52 PM Wow first post and already called a troll, off to a bad start! Hey there Spooter. As you can imagine, sometimes a troll sneaks in and attempts to taunt us so some members are suspicious. Sorry about that, it was a mistake. You're off to a fine start so no worries. Welcome. :) Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2014 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.	267,656
The lifeblood of Barnstable Town, Massachusetts companies doing business in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The Internet. In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly reliant on our access to the web. The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your business in Barnstable Town, Massachusetts need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The Internet point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit? Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the net? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Barnstable Town? Do remote places depend upon you? What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The net. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your company is imperative. Many providers toss out terms such as: … be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs. Workers for most companies in Barnstable Town have some need to access the net during the course of their job. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons. Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more. High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically. Are you performing backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important. Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have. Depending on your location, high-speed organization Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Barnstable Town, Massachusetts that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think. If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability. Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places? If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it. For one office or a small company with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient. Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10? You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed. With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the web you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed. Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Barnstable Town, Massachusetts, circuits do go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage? Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms. A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some protection, there is also some risk. Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails. To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Barnstable Town, Massachusetts. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected. The cost of dependable access to The net pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following: Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are business that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled? Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Dispense and receive data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software organization is running. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and talk to your system? It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers. Your company is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Basically, you are out of organization. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear? You clearly have many options. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. Essentially: A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability. If you have a midsized company in Barnstable Town, Massachusetts, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area. The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Having several providers would afford extra protection. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible. To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections. The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming. We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost. You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.	75,122
\|Brain: Inferior olivary nucleus\| \|The medulla, showing the olivary bodies lying adjacent to the pyramids.\| \|Transverse section of medulla oblongata below the middle of the olive.\| \|Gray's\|\|subject #187 781\| In anatomy, the olivary bodies or simply olives (Latin oliva and olivae, singular and plural, respectively) are a pair of prominent oval structures in the medulla oblongata, the lower portion of the brainstem. They contain the olivary nuclei. The olivary body is located on the anterior surface of the medulla lateral to the pyramid, from which it is separated by the antero-lateral sulcus and the fibers of the hypoglossal nerve. It measures about 1.25 cm. in length, and between its upper end and the pons there is a slight depression to which the roots of the facial nerve are attached. The external arcuate fibers wind across the lower part of the pyramid and olive and enter the inferior peduncle. The olivary nuclei consist of the inferior olivary nucleus, the dorsal and medial accessory olivary nuclei, and the superior olivary nucleus. Inferior olivary nucleusEdit The inferior olivary nucleus is the largest, and is situated within the olive. It consists of a gray folded lamina arranged in the form of an incomplete capsule, opening medially by an aperture called the hilum. Emerging from the hilum are numerous fibers which collectively constitute the peduncle of the olive. The axons, also known as olivocerebellar fibers, leave the olivary nucleus, exit through the hilum, and decussate with those from the opposite olive in the raphé. Then, as internal arcuate fibers they pass partly through and partly around the opposite olive and enter the inferior peduncle to be distributed to the cerebellar hemisphere of the opposite side from which they arise. The fibers are smaller than the internal arcuate fibers connected with the median lemniscus. Fibers passing in the opposite direction from the cerebellum to the olivary nucleus are often described but their existence is doubtful. Much uncertainty also exists in regard to the connections of the olive and the spinal cord. Important connections between the cerebrum and the olive of the same side exist but the exact pathway is unknown. Many collaterals from the reticular formation and from the pyramids enter the inferior olivary nucleus. Removal of one cerebellar hemisphere is followed by atrophy of the opposite olivary nucleus. Accessory olivary nucleiEdit The medial accessory olivary nucleus lies between the inferior olivary nucleus and the pyramid, and forms a curved lamina, the concavity of which is directed laterally. The fibers of the hypoglossal nerve, as they traverse the medulla, pass between the medial accessory and the inferior olivary nuclei. The dorsal accessory olivary nucleus is the smallest, and appears on transverse section as a curved lamina behind the inferior olivary nucleus. Superior olivary nucleusEdit - Gray's s187 (primary source for article) - BrainInfo at the University of Washington hier-696 - inferior olive - University of Wisconsin on Inferior olivary nucleus This article was originally based on an entry from a public domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. As such, some of the information contained herein may be outdated. Please edit the article if this is the case, and feel free to remove this notice when it is no longer relevant. Brain: rhombencephalon (hindbrain) Individual differences \| Methods \| Statistics \| Clinical \| Educational \| Industrial \| Professional items \| World psychology \| Biological: Behavioural genetics · Evolutionary psychology · Neuroanatomy · Neurochemistry · Neuroendocrinology · Neuroscience · Psychoneuroimmunology · Physiological Psychology · Psychopharmacology (Index, Outline)	170,704
lower extremity is taken to a point of tension in the posterior muscles and held there. The patient is asked to push the leg against the shoulder for about six seconds, and then after relaxing, a new motion barrier is found at a greater angle of flexion of the hip. After a few seconds this is repeated, usually three times to achieve a state of enhanced stretch of the muscles and a new barrier to motion at a greater range of joint motion. As with all muscle energy procedures, the resistance need not be more than about 25% of muscle force. Tips: Most useful in chronic contracture where direct work on the muscle may be too uncomfortable. Least useful in acute muscle strains as it may be too painful. Extra considerations: See the earlier section on principles of muscle energy technique. 30.11 • Muscle energy technique thigh supine The operator is holding the patient's foot against the table and the patient is asked to push against the hand either into flexion of the knee or extension as necessary for the case. The other hand is stabilizing the knee. As in most muscle energy techniques, the force applied by the patient is about 25% of muscle action, and the position is held for about 6 seconds, repeated usually three times with short rest periods between. Tips: Most useful in small, light subjects where the operator can resist easily. Least useful in large or strong subjects where it may be difficult to keep a true isometric contraction controlled. Extra considerations: See earlier section on muscle energy technique. Was this article helpful? Tired Having Back Pains All The Time, But You Choose To Ignore It? Every year millions of people see their lives and favorite activities limited by back pain. They forego activities they once loved because of it and in some cases may not even be able to perform their job as well as they once could due to back pain.	83,553
Patients with celiac disease had an elevated risk of neuropathy, reported researchers in JAMA Neurology. The World Health Organization added five new hepatitis C drugs to its Model List of Essential Medicines, a signal for drug makers to lower their prices. Eosinophilic esophagitis costs are as high as $1.4 billion per year in the U.S., according to a study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Is a stool sample the next fingerprint? Researchers were able to identify greater than 80% of individuals based on gut microbes, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The FDA granted fast track status to Merck's experimental cancer drug evofosfamide for advanced pancreatic cancer, reported Reuters. GastroBreak is a weekly guide of what's new and interesting on the Web for gastroenterologists and other healthcare professionals with an interest in gastroenterology, powered by the MedPage Today community. Have a tip? Send it to us: email@example.com.	148,254
Saturdays and Sundays are very special days for the child in this story. On Saturdays, she visits Grandma and Grandpa, who come from a European-American background, and on Sundays -- los domingos -- she visits Abuelito y Abuelita, who are Mexican-American. While the two sets of grandparents are different in many ways, they also have a great deal in common -- in particular, their love for their granddaughter. While we follow our narrator to the circus and the pier, share stories from her grandparents' pasts, and celebrate her birthday, the depth and joy of both cultures are conveyed in Spanish and English. This affirmation of both heritages will speak to all children who want to know more about their own families and ethnic backgrounds. Alma Flor Ada, an authority on multicultural and bilingual education, is the recipient of the 2012 Virginia Hamilton Literary Award. She is the author of numerous award-winning books for young readers, including Dancing Home with Gabriel Zubizarreta, My Name Is María Isabel, Under the Royal Palms (Pura Belpré Medal), Where the Flame Trees Bloom, and The Gold Coin (Christopher Award Medal). She lives in California, and you can visit her at AlmaFlorAda.com. Have a question about this product? Ask us here.	85,729
As a populist wave of discontent with top-down education mandates continues to sweep the country, more than 25,000 concerned citizens have coalesced behind an Education Declaration to Rebuild America. A Declaration With Broad Support Released last week by the Education Opportunity Network, in conjunction with the Opportunity to Learn Campaign and the Institute for America’s Future, the Declaration received widespread attention from national and local outlets. Reporting from her blog at The Washington Post, Valerie Strauss wrote, “The document offers a progressive approach to school reform that includes ensuring that teachers are properly trained and respected, that opportunities to learn for all students are paramount and that learning must be ‘engaging and relevant.’” The Chicago grassroots parent activist group PURE said the Declaration “demonstrates that the message of true education progressives is becoming clearer and more unified.” At the progressive blog site Daily Kos, long-time classroom teacher Kenneth Bernstein wrote, “Increasingly people are coming together to oppose what has been the thrust of educational policy, and to try to reclaim and reinvigorate public education.” Bernstein called the Declaration “an important step in that direction.” From the website of the Tucson Citizen, local blogger called the Declaration “an answer to the conservative ‘education reform’ movement,” and the document “signals the growing strength of progressive educators at a time when the public is growing skeptical of the endless high-stakes testing.” At The Huffington Post, Richard Eskow said the Declaration was an answer to “the Wall Street crowd” that “wants us to think of education in terms of means – which usually means finding ways to spend less – rather than ends. But when it comes to education, the ‘ends’ are our children.” Eskow, who is affiliated with one of the sponsors of the Declaration, noted, “A lot of well-intentioned people get taken in by cynical agendas like this, especially when the other side isn’t being heard. That’s where the “Declaration” comes in. It says that ‘Education is a public good.’ A public good is something that is, or should be, available to all without exception, like clean air, drinkable water, and the national defense.” Despite the waning of the school year, the Declaration comes at an opportune time. America’s Education Spring Rolls On As The Nation’s John Nichols recently said on MSNBC, what is transpiring in the nation’s public schools “is a mess.” In Michigan, supporters of public education will rally on June 19 to “reject the corporate, profit-motivated takeover of public schools, massive school closures, and meaningless high-stakes testing.” The fight for public education is flaring in rural areas as well – at least in Tennessee, where families and students are fighting school cuts and consolidations. These protests against education mandates are not going away. At the website for The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, there is a running timeline with the latest news on the movement, and new links are added every week. A Positive Way Forward The Education Declaration to Rebuild America comes at a time when lawmakers in Washington, D.C. continue to fret over education legislation – the rewriting of No Child Left Behind – that will likely go nowhere and please no one. Writing at The National Journal, Kevin Welner – the director of the National Education Policy Center and a signatory of the Declaration, wrote, “Perhaps our senators haven’t yet noticed, but their constituents don’t much care for No Child Left Behind. Perhaps they haven’t noticed all the protests against excessive testing and school closings.” Noting that the Declaration he signed had “in just one day … garnered more than 10,000 signatures,” Welner concluded, “Let’s hope that during the summer recess [the senators] have a chance to speak with parents, students and teachers – people who will ask the fundamental question: Why continue failed policies?” There is a more positive way forward. Sign the Education Declaration to Rebuild America and help advance that.	94,871
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon inaugurates world's first anti-corruption academy 2 September 2010 - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today inaugurated the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna. Addressing the inaugural conference, Mr. Ban said: "The launch of the International Anti-Corruption Academy is a milestone in the efforts of the international community to fight corruption. It has great potential to advance the goals of the landmark United Nations Convention against Corruption." Mr. Ban added that while too often in the past corruption was perceived as a fact of life, today attitudes are changing. "Across the world, intolerance of corruption is growing. The establishment of this Academy responds not only to this increasing sense of outrage and injustice, but also to an urgent need to train the experts we need to conquer this global menace." Noting that traditional methods are proving no match for new types of corruption, especially financial crimes, Mr. Ban said that the Academy will nurture a new generation of leaders in the public and private sectors - a global network of talented, like-minded professionals; while its curriculum and activities will complement the technical assistance provided in those areas by the UNODC, guardian of the Convention. "Although we have come to understand more about the causes and effects of corruption, combating it has proved difficult. One major handicap is that we don't know how to measure it - a crucial need in our fight against an unseen foe. The best we can do right now is to gauge public perception of corruption. But gauging perception is like measuring smoke rather than seeing the fire," added Mr. Ban "The creation of a precise body of knowledge about a poorly researched and little-understood subject will shed more light on murky deals. If we can calculate inflation and GDP, it should not be beyond our abilities to develop an effective and scientific measure for corruption," he said. "As knowledge deepens and spreads, it will create the conditions for change, enabling Governments and other stakeholders to make evidence-based policies. Knowledge will also empower communities to become part of the solution rather than mere victims of corruption. Armed with know-how, citizens can claim their rights and shape their own destinies," said Mr. Ban. The Academy will offer tailor-made programmes, including courses for practitioners from developing countries. Students will be able to pursue academic degrees while exchanging ideas and networking on campus. The Academy is the product of collaboration between Austria, UNODC and the European Anti-Fraud Office. The Austrian Government has provided state-of-the-art premises in Laxenburg, near Vienna, to house the Academy, which will become an international organization in 2011. It is the world's first educational institution dedicated to fighting corruption. It will train policymakers in Governments, the private sector and civil society, as well as professionals such as judges, investigators, prosecutors, police officers, regulators and academics from all over the world. After his address in Vienna's historic Hofburg Palace, which was attended by some 1,000 participants from 90 countries, Mr. Ban visited the campus, where the first courses were already taking place. Your No Counts (UNODC anti-corruption campaign)	132,958
Guide to rsnapshot and incremental backups on Linux rsnapshot is a backup tool written in Perl that utilizes rsync as its back-end. rsnapshot allows users to create customized incremental backup solutions. This article will discuss the following: the benefits of an incremental backup solution, rsnapshot's installation, its configuration, and usage examples. 2. Back-it up! I was recently discussing with a colleague the benefits of backing up your data. My colleague was telling me how one of her customers had recently lost a rather lengthy article that they had been working on. I decided that this may be a good chance to experiment with my netbook and rsnapshot. For this tutorial, I'll assume you have have 2 pieces of hardware: your host computer, and your destination equipment. I'll be using an external hard drive for the majority of this post. However, I will briefly cover usage for backing up files over a LAN. Backing up your data should not be the question to ask but rather how should I backup my stuff? What's the best way? Well there are many different backup pathways you can take, including block level (dd, partimage), partition level (RAID and all its variations), file level (rsyncand its children applications). I'll discuss two types of backups in the context of file-based backups. Normal backups, or full backups, are self explanatory. Normal backups are one way of backing up ALL your files every time you perform a backup. One issue with utilizing a multiple normal backup scheme is that a normal backup takes up a considerable amount of space. For example, if you perform a full backup of a 250gig hard drive at 20% capacity, everyday for just one week (assuming that the amount of data does not fluctuate) will mean that you already have used 350gigs for only one week's worth of backups. As you can see, that is not feasible in the long run. The other method that I prefer is the incremental backup method. An incremental backup consists of one full backup and then performing additional backups. These additional backups will only backup files that have changed since the last backup. Instead of backing up your entire hard drive, only the specific files that have changed since the last backup are backed up. As you can probably imagine this is a much more efficient process. One tool that does this on nix is rsnapshot. 3. What is rsnapshot? rsnapshot, as mentioned earlier, is an incremental backup utility. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a seven day rotation backup scheme using rsnapshot. Essentially, rsnapshot will create 1 full backup and then subsequent backups will backup only files that have changed. The true power of rsnapshot is its ability to utilize hard-links between each backup. Each backup will appear to be a full backup. In reality each new backup consists of newly created or updated files. rsnapshot can be used over a LAN and can also be ran from cron. In this tutorial, I'll show both usage examples. Installation of rsnapshot is pretty straightforward, simply run the following command: On Debian (or Ubuntu): apt-get install rsnapshot yum install rsnapshot pacman -S rsnapshot Now let's configure rsnapshot. Take a look at /etc, if /etc/rsnapshot.conf.default exists you need to copy it to /etc/rsnapshot.conf. If the .default file does not exist, then create a backup of the regular .conf. This is useful in the case you need to reference it later on. Open up rsnapshot.conf and start editing it to your needs. rsnapshot's configuration file is well commented. This makes configuring it much easier. I would start by uncommenting all the applications within the "External Program Dependencies" section of the configuration file. For starters, uncomment the following lines: You may need to change the location of rsnapshot-diff, if rsnapshot doesn't locate it. To make sure you are referencing the correct binary issue: Now you need to decide how exactly to design your backup scheme. Once you have settled on a scheme, you need to edit the "interval" lines located under "Backup Intervals". rsnapshot can do hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups. My system does a seven day backup scheme, but you can decide here what you would like to do. One example could be creating a backup that runs every six hours, everyday of the week. This is up to you. I'll use my setup as an example. See the screenshot below: The other two lines that you need to uncomment are the snapshot_root (located at the beginning of the script) and backup (located under "BACKUP POINTS/SCRIPTS"). snapshot_root $destination/ #specifies where your backups are stored backup $source/ $hastens #backup specifies what you what to backup, you can backup #from multiple locations just specify multiple backup lines The backup line consists of three parts. These three parts include the declaration "backup", the source location, and the hastened. Each component MUST be separated by a tab and directories must end with / or rsnapshot will not properly. Two more features worth noting is the logging functionality and the ability to use rsync's include/exclude files. Uncomment the following three lines (and amend accordingly): verbose 5 #How much information should the #actual backup relay to you? loglevel 5 #How must information #should be stored in the log file? logfile $log_file_destination #Where should the logfile be stored? As you probably noticed from reading the comments in the .conf file, verbosity ranges from 1-5, with5 being most verbose. I would enable this at first to see if everything is running okay. This level of control is helpful. If you run into any issues, you have the ability to perform some debugging. As mentioned earlier, you can also use rsync include and exclude files and below is an example exclude file. #not to backup alongside ~ Include files are similar in nature. Instead of '-' use '+' to denote data that you want to include. If you decide that you would like to use include or exclude files take a look at the include_file/exclude_file lines. Here is my section of the rsnapshot.conf noting these options. If you have been following along up to this point rsnapshot is pretty much configured. If you want to run anything before or after rsnapshot finishes take a look at the cmd_preexec and cmd_postexec lines. You can uncomment these lines and specify scripts to run prior to or after the completion of a backup if needed. If not, you're finished editing your config file. Now run the following command: That command runs rsnapshot and tells it to perform sanity check on rsnapshot.conf. If everything went okay, then you should get the following output: "Syntax OK." If not read the output it gives you and edit rsnapshot.conf as needed. 6. Usage Examples I'll discuss three forms of using rsnapshot. These forms include locally, remotely, and its automation (through cron).Usage doesn't necessary differ between local or remote execution. Rather, I'll point out the differences in configuration files 6.1. Using rsnapshot Locally For local backup the two important lines are: backup $source/ $hostname/ You can specify multiple backup sources, by just creating multiple lines referring to each directory you want to backup. To actually run a backup issue the following command: You can also use hourly, weekly, and monthly as options. Each command will create a backup directory according to the specified operation. If I browse to my backup location, I will see the following: [some_user@hostname backupdir]# ls daily.0 daily.1 log The output above shows that I have two backups of a my seven day backup scheme created. 6.2. Remote Backup To utilize rsnapshot's remote backup capabilities simply specify the remote location as your backup source (To enable remote backup, ssh is going to have to be enabled for the server. Key based authentication will be your best option here): Once you have specified a remote source as a location to backup simply run rsnapshot. Example below: 6.3. Automation with Cron If you have any experience with cronthen adding an entry with snapshot merely consists of adding the specific command e.g. "rsnapshot hourly" and the relevant syntax on cron. Here are some examples: 20 23 * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily # daily backup is ran at 11:20 pm 05 23 * * 7 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly # weekly backup is ran at 11:05 pm # on Sunday It is recommended that you schedule larger backups before smaller backups (as shown above) to prevent conflicts with rotations between backups. In addition, it is recommended to create a gap between the larger backups and smaller backups to avoid conflicts between each job. 6.4. Other uses of rsnapshot rsnapshot comes with several other useful features. For example, you can run the following command: to see how much disk space it is using (du must be uncommented in /etc/rsnapshot.conf). Screenshot below: You can run the following to compare the changes between backups: rsnapshot diff daily.0 daily1 You should see output similar to the screenshot below: See the rsnapshot's man page for additional functionality. If you get any issues about Lchown run the following command: perl -MCPAN -e 'install QC(Lchown)' After successfully completing this tutorial you should now have a high quality backup scheme in place. For additional documentation check out rsnapshot's man page, and its homepage located here. It contains an excellent how-to, which is available in several formats. Additionally, I would recommend checking out other backup programs, these include rsync (back end to rsnapshot), rdiff-backup, partimage, and dd.	45,088
PhD student Aleksandra Medić, a STREAMLINE team member, is currently on staff exchange at the Neuroscience and Mental Health Innovation Institute, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, UK. She is learning how to generate cortical organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patients with 22q11.2 microdeletion. In the next three months, she will also be trained how to analyze the samples from 60-days-old organoids. This will allow us to better understand the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders caused by 22q11.2 microdeletion. Cryosectioning of 60 days old organoids on cryostat, device that maintains low temperature of -20°C and cuts frozen samples of organoids in 12µm thin sections. Sections are than mounted on glass slides and are prepared for immunofluorescent staining.	40,230
Present perfect aspect – tips and activities Tips and ideas from Kerry Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield on teaching the present perfect aspect. When teaching the present perfect, or explaining the present perfect, it is often easiest to focus on the use of the present perfect than the meaning. This is especially true for the first time students encounter it (usually associated with the use of talking about experiences). However, sooner or later you will be looking at different uses of the present perfect, and more often than not its relation with the past tense. This is where often things get tricky, partly because of the potentially misleading word PRESENT in present perfect. It could be worthwhile to focus the students’ attention first on the PERFECT and then the PRESENT. Doing this, rather the other way around, will make explanations of the uses of the present perfect easier. An easy way of explaining perfect is to use the word before. But since the past simple is also technically before the present, this does not cover all the uses of the perfect aspect. Another technical term is in retrospect, for which looking back is easier. So the present perfect is before the present, or looking back from the present. A frustrated teacher once asked “How many activities can you make for the present perfect?” Since the present perfect is used to talk about experiences, the possibility for activities is as endless as that of experiences that human beings can have. Have you ever… questionnaires are good for restricted personalised practice. Group the questions around a particular theme. Here are some examples: - Cinema experiences Have you ever met a movie star? Have you cried in a cinema? Have you left the cinema before the movie ended? etc. - Computer experiences Have you ever been in a video conference? Have you ever had a computer virus? Have you ever used an Internet chat? etc. - Health experiences Have you ever spent a night in hospital? Have you ever broken a bone? Have you ever had an operation? etc. - School experiences Have you ever cheated on an exam? Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? Have you ever played truant? Have you ever copied homework from someone else? etc. These can be done by students in pairs, or organised into a larger survey, with students having different questions and reporting back their findings. In either case students can be encouraged to ask follow up questions (when, who, with…) which will prompt the switch from present perfect to past simple. That tricky use of the present perfect to “talk about an action that happened in the past but that has relevance now” can be practised with a variety of drills. Here is one, for example. Write the following on the board. - Because I’ve seen it a hundred times! - Because I’ve read it! - Because I’ve finished my work! - Because I’ve never met him! Tell the students they must respond to one of your prompts with an expression from the board. Call on individual students and ask questions which will elicit one of the answers. - Why don’t you want to see Mission Impossible 2? - Why don’t you have your book today? - Why are you sitting there doing nothing? - Why don’t you ask him out? You can make your own prompts and answers like this, or you can just make the questions and challenge the students to come up with their own (perhaps more creative) answers beginning with the sentence stem: - Because I’ve … - Because I haven’t.. - Show the sign The choice of the words FOR and SINCE are often confused by students when using the present perfect. A game can be made out of these choices. Ask the students to make two “signs” that they can hold up (these can be a simple piece of paper folded over). Tell them to write FOR on one sign, and SINCE on the other. When you call out a time expression, they must hold up the right sign. Write on the board “I have been in English class…” and proceed to call out the following times: 2002, last week, two weeks, a minute, hours, ages, when I was a child etc. Students hold up the right sign. A traditional exercise often used in coursebooks is that of a person’s lifeline. It will look something like this: - 1971 – Harry is born in London. - 1976 – Harry and his family move to Kuwait. - 1988 – Harry finishes school and starts working for an Cleanoil, an American oil company. - 1996 – Harry is promoted to manager at Cleanoil. - 1997 – Harry meets Amina. - 2000 – Harry and Amina get married. - 2001 – Harry Jr. is born. Make sentences about Harry’s life up to now. Use the words. Teachers can make their own examples, with their own lives. Then encourage the students to do a similar activity with their own lives as examples. One activity that is frequently used to practice the words ALREADY, YET, STILL with the present perfect is a travel itinerary. The following is a very simplified example: The Martin family are on holiday in North America. Here are their travel plans: - Monday – am Niagara Falls, Canada. pm Fly to New York City. - Tuesday – New York City - Wednesday pm.– Arrive in Washington - Thursday - Washington - Friday– am Fly to Boston It’s Wednesday morning. Are the sentences true or false? - The Martin family have already been to Washington. - The Martin family have not yet been to Boston. - The Martin family have visited New York City. You can use places that are more familiar to your students (towns and sites around their country, being visited by a bus tour of British pensioners for example). The following is an activity based on something I once saw at a drama improv workshop. It can be used to illustrate the recent ongoing aspect of the present perfect continuous. Ask a student to leave the room. Write one of the following sentences on the board. Explain that the student outside promised not to do this activity, but that the class has discovered that he/she has been doing it again. The class must confront the student with this fact, but without saying exactly what it is. That is, they must not say the key words of the sentence. The student must guess what it is he is being accused of. - We saw the empty bottle. - Your friends from the bar told us. - We can smell it on your breath. - You aren’t walking straight. - Your eyes are red. - You’ve been eating chocolate again! - You’ve been talking on the phone again! - You’ve been playing computer games again! - You’ve been watching television again! - You’ve been talking to your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend again! - Guess what she’s been doing A very creative activity suggested by Penny Ur* to practise the present perfect can be equally used to practise the present perfect continuous. Go through old newspapers and find pictures of people doing things, or visibly showing emotions. Show the students the picture and ask them to speculate as to what the person has been doing. If your class is new to the structure, write up the following stem on the board to help them: As students call out suggestions, ask why. Who can guess the news story? *Penny Ur, Grammar Practice Activities: Cambridge University PressAnchor Point:bottom	271,222
NovAtel has been granted a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) for definition work on Galileo, the proposed European satellite navigation system . The $126,700 contract calls for NovAtel to provide input to ESA on signal validation and receiver development requirements. The company will also review draft Galileo signal specifications and provide feedback on receiver performance, development requirements and cost implications. Working directly with ESA technical management, NovAtel expects that the study will be complete during the next six to eight months. Jointly initiated by the European Union and ESA, the Galileo project aims to launch a series of Medium Earth Orbit satellites in three orbital planes at 20,000 km monitored by a network of ground control stations, to provide world navigation services.	133,412
Upon entering the foyer of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, one could not help but to notice the following expression of commitment displayed on the wall: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” This statement, taken from the sixth chapter and eighth verse of the book of Micah in the Bible, declares a fundamental piece of wisdom that must be understood in order to be a successful lawyer. One must live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. The question then becomes: how? Campbell Law School’s vision declares, in part, that it aims to develop attorneys “who view the practice of law as a calling to serve others and to create a more just society.” In accordance with this most noble and worthy goal, Campbell Law School has time and time again demonstrated a commitment to developing attorneys who embody the ideal of the “servant-leader.” In keeping up with this Campbell tradition, Campbell Law Dean J. Rich Leonard announced the creation of three full-time employment opportunities for recent graduates in September of 2015. These opportunities would collectively be called the Wallace Fellowship Program. Campbell Law has three fellows: the Wallace Advocacy Fellow, the Wallace Leadership Fellow, and the Wallace Public Service Fellow. These three fellowships are named in honor of Campbell University Chancellor and former President Dr. Jerry M. Wallace. Fellows are selected annually from the graduating class, and Chancellor Wallace is deeply involved in the selection process. An ordained Baptist minister and a Rockingham, North Carolina native, Dr. Jerry Wallace joined Campbell in 1970 as an adjunct sociology professor while serving as a pastor of Elizabethtown Baptist Church. He began teaching full time at Campbell in 1975 and went on to serve as chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, director of graduate studies, and vice president for academic affairs and provost. In May of 2003, following the retirement of longtime president Dr. Norman Adrian Wiggins, Dr. Wallace was named Campbell University’s fourth president. After serving as president for 12 years, he eventually stepped down from the position on June 30, 2015 before serving as the current Chancellor. Today, as chancellor, Dr. Wallace advises President Creed and other senior leaders on university initiatives. In an interview for this article, Chancellor Wallace described the Wallace Fellowship program as an opportunity to further educate recent graduates on how to become leaders in both their personal andtheir professional lives. To this end, the Wallace Fellowship seeks to further cultivate recent graduates into “servant-leaders,” which Chancellor Wallace describes as “those who believe that you must serve before you can lead.” Chancellor Wallace further explained how the Wallace Fellowship program meets the needs of today’s legal market: “We are in need of a new leadership model that will change things for the better of humanity. There are many opportunities in the legal community. We need individuals who will go beyond just being leaders, but will truly seek to help other people.” The Wallace Fellowship program enables recent graduates to further expand upon the notion of “servant-leadership” within the context of understanding one’s own “calling.” When asked to explain this concept of one’s “calling,” Chancellor Wallace noted that a calling manifests itself in various ways. “It can be a passion to do something. It is compelling, persuading. Each person has a sense of it, even if they cannot fully articulate it. In a spiritual sense, you feel that God is leading you to do something for His glory.” Chancellor Wallace explained that in order to be successful as a Wallace Fellow, one must be fully committed to spending the next year exploring the notion of “servant-leadership,” be committed to being both teachable and open to learning through doing, and one must be willing to curiously ask themselves: what motivates my life? The Fellowship creates a space for fellows to develop an awareness of the things that they do daily, helping them to see what opportunities for service are out there, and to be courageous and confident enough to tackle these challenges. In remarking about the ideal “servant-leader,” Chancellor Wallace could not help but to recount fond memories of his dear friend, Dr. Norman Adrian Wiggins. “He was a moral person. Very bright, compassionate. He had a gift for encouraging people to be their best, but the wisdom to know how to give them the space that they needed to grow and to perform,” Chancellor Wallace explained. “Part of being a ‘servant-leader’ is surrounding yourself with good, smart, moral people. Dr. Wiggins did just that. He surrounded himself with intelligent people with good hearts, and he taught others how to lead together as a team.” Chancellor Wallace went on to reveal how in his own life, Dr. Wiggins had been a great inspiration and encouragement to him. The Wallace Fellowship program seeks to build upon Campbell Law School as an “opportunity school,” Chancellor Wallace explained, “We make the very finest lawyers. We find in students their abilities and develop them. Ability and courage development; we respond to what’s there.” The Wallace Fellowship program is a very unique occasion that offers recent Campbell Law graduates who have passed the North Carolina Bar Exam the opportunity to spend one year working beside various accomplished “servant-leaders” within the Campbell Law community, including Dean J. Rich Leonard, members of Campbell Law’s faculty, and Chancellor Wallace himself. The three positions within the Wallace Fellowship program cover a wide variety of substantive areas. The Wallace Advocacy Fellow plays an integral role in managing the law school’s internal and external advocacy program. With the newly upgraded G. Eugene Boyce Center of Advocacy, Campbell Law’s advocacy program is expanding the educational opportunities for students and practicing lawyers, including continuing legal education programs. To facilitate these endeavors, the Advocacy Fellow is involved in researching, developing, designing, and publicizing CLE programs on evidence and modern trial advocacy techniques for practicing lawyers in the region. The Advocacy Fellow also assists advocacy-related publications by supporting advocacy faculty who are engaged in writing evidence and advocacy law-related law review articles, journal entries, bar publications, and op-ed pieces. The Advocacy Fellow is also engaged in updating the trial advocacy curriculum by drafting exercises, exhibits, hypothetical questions, and model answers on a variety of areas of law for use in Campbell Law’s required trial advocacy course. As Campbell Law School has continuously expanded the breadth of competitive advocacy experiences for students, the advocacy program now includes both national and international experiential lawyering opportunities. Consequently, the Advocacy Fellow is involved in recruiting, training, and coaching competitive advocacy teams while working with and supporting team coaches. The Advocacy Fellow assists in further building the advocacy program’s brief writing resources for competitive moot court teams. The Wallace Leadership Fellow works under the direction of Dean J. Rich Leonard. The Fellow is involved in a myriad of development and alumni matters on the dean’s agenda, reaching out to prospective partners in ongoing development efforts, crafting new initiatives, and working with the Board of Directors of our newly-formed Alumni Society. In the summer of 2019, the Wallace Leadership Fellow traveled to Ghana, Africa as part of the Law School’s pilot program studying International Human Rights Law. He accompanied students and faculty as they traveled through Ghana acting as a faculty liaison between students and faculty members assisting them in a wide variety of areas. The Wallace Public Service Fellow works under the supervision of the Director of Student Life and Pro Bono Opportunities. We have dramatically expanded the reach of the law school into the community with more than ten distinct and well-defined pro bono projects. This Fellow assists administratively with running our existing programs, organizing the necessary training, participating in the various field activities, and helping our students in the design of new projects. In addition to supporting the pro bono program, the Public Service Fellow also assists with Student Life activities and initiatives. Notable major events include the Everett Gala, Iredell Banquet, Family Day, and the CPILSA Silent Auction. Prior experience with event planning is helpful, but not required. Through mentorship, guided reflection, and hands-on experience, the Wallace Fellowship program meets the needs of today’s demanding legal market by further producing thoughtful and courageous lawyers who are willing to place service to others – and the betterment of humanity – above all else.	29,239
Two Tibetan Buddhist monks are returning to Queenstown this week to practise a colourful Tibetan cultural art form. They will construct a `Medicine Buddha’ sand mandala from fine grains of sand during nine days at the Queenstown Arts Centre on Stanley Street, following a public opening ceremony tomorrow (Thursday) at 6pm. The North Island-based monks - who visited town last year to ceremonially bless a new local store, The Outpost - have chosen the Medicine Buddha as “it promotes healing for all through love, compassion and wisdom” in today’s challenging times, event coordinator Kaari Schlebach says. The public are invited to watch the mandala being constructed from 10am till 4pm each day from June 10 till 18. There’ll also be daily half-hour meditations at 9.30am and 4.30pm. Entry is free, though donations are also welcome towards the running of the event. Schlebach is also looking for volunteers to help out, including providing meals for the monks. The mandala will be ceremonially dissolved on June 19 at 2pm. Most of the blessed sand will be offered to attendees, with the rest carried in a procession through town and offered to the lake. The event’s Facebook page is ‘Medicine Buddha Mandala in Queenstown’.	264,659
People use many acronyms on Instagram. One of the most widely used acronyms is SMN. You must be wondering, “What does SMN mean in Instagram?” SMN stands for “Shoot Me Now.” This guide will help you know about the meaning of SMN and why people use it on Instagram. It can be frustrating when we have a lot to say but not enough time to say it. Acronyms are a great way to cut down on time and effort. An acronym is a type of abbreviation. We combine the first letters of the other words to form a new word, which is then pronounced as a whole. In the same way, as abbreviations speed up communication, acronyms do the same. Despite the similarities between the two, there are some notable distinctions. Acronyms are shorthand for words that don’t need the creation of new words. In initialisms, we combine the first letter to form a new word. But instead of saying the letters together, you speak them one at a time. These abbreviations are frequently used in ordinary speech and messaging. But what exactly are they referring to, and how can we know? Here’s a fast reference to help you stay on top of things and have better conversations. On Instagram, the Acronym “SMN” is commonly referred to as “Shoot Me Now.” What is the General Use of Abbreviations? Abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms are all abbreviated in this manual. Keep the use of acronyms to a least. We should use abbreviations when they are well-known to the broader readership. You need to use them in a particular section or across the review or improve the readability. It’s only appropriate to use an abbreviation if it comprises more than three words. In the ‘Abstract, ‘We should specify the main text and Authors’ conclusions sections. We can use any abbreviations these parts at the beginning.’ You should include the meanings of any abbreviations used in graphs and tables at the end of each row or column. You might want to clarify abbreviations in each lengthy study or publication section. As a rule, write the name first and then abbreviate it immediately afterward in brackets. As an example, the abbreviation World Health Organization (WHO) may be helpful. Abbreviations must adhere to standard formatting guidelines. When writing for Cochrane, certain terminology, such as statistical ones, are frequently shortened. What is SMN on Instagram? WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok users frequently use “Shoot Me Now.” They use it as the most prevalent definition for the SMN acronym. The famous Acronym “SMN” stands for “Shoot me now.” Both “please kill me” and “shoot me now” are idiomatic expressions. They are commonly used to convey that you would rather die than do something. Examples of SMN: People use SMN on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Twitter very often. It has become a hashtag for them. Here are some of the examples of SMN: - Mathew: SMN, I’ll not work with that company anymore. - Jones: SMN, I’m not going to my grandma’s house. - Dutch: I was at Uncle Harry’s, and he was telling me his life story… can someone just SMN? - Joe: My Father was bragging about how he went to school every day… SMN, please anyone? - Chris: SMN, I’m so done with my friends! Are there any Synonyms for SMN on Instagram? There are many synonyms of SMN that people use on Instagram. Most people misjudge SMN as SNM, “Say no more.” Here are some of the famous Synonyms of SMN “Shoot Me Now.” - Servicio Meteorologico Nacional - Smoky Mountain News - Santa Maria Novella - Statement of Medical Necessity - Survival Motor Neuron Synonyms for the Word Shoot: Are there any Advantages of Acronyms? The reality is that abbreviations have their advantages. As a first benefit, they reduce the amount of time and space required to write. They can be handy when you need to repeat a word or phrase multiple times. Even when we shorten a word, our readers will still see it in its entirety. It is an additional benefit. It’s easy to say “department” instead of “dept.” when reading aloud. For example, the use of acronyms does not fall within this category (SMN stands for Shoot me Now). Using the acronym “TTYL” instead of the full phrase “talk to you later” in the text. It was once supposed to encourage the acceptance of poor writing and spelling. Some scholars say that the receiver’s ability to decipher an abbreviation indicates that they are familiar with the word it refers to. At the same time, many others say the opposite. These acronyms are common in text messaging and social media. It is highly unlikely that you would erroneously use them in a professional document. The advantages and disadvantages of abbreviations are now clear to you. We encourage you to use them, but be cautious not overdo them. Q1: What is the meaning of WSP in a text? A: What does WSP stand for in the world of acronyms? The slang word “what’s up?” is the complete version of the acronym WSP, according to Cyber Definitions. We use it to inquire about someone’s current situation or emotional state. It is a common SMS or social media greeting. Q2: What does “WYA” mean from a man’s point of view? A: As a general rule, the abbreviation WYA asks, “Where are you?” This phrase refers to a person asking another person where they are and implies that they would want to meet up or participate in an activity. Q3: What does SNM mean? A: It is customary to use “speak no more” when referring to a situation. You’d say this when someone tells you anything and you don’t want any more information. For some reason, some people don’t want to hear what happens next in a terrible situation. Alternatively, you may have already grasped the person’s stance and don’t need further explanation. In this article, we have briefly explained the common acronym that people use on Social media. Instagram is one of the most popular places where people use the Acronym “SMM.” Users use it to express the feeling that they are annoyed by something. We hope this article was of help to you and answered your question. Stay tuned for more informative articles.	100,487
Convert inches to nanometers inches definitionThe Inch is a British measure of length equal to a 1/12 of a foot or 2.54 centimeters. nanometers definitionThe Nanometer is a metric unit of length equal to a 1/10,000,000 of a centimeter. Please enter inches value in the first input field, and you'll see the result value in nanometers in the second field. See also: Convert nanometers to inches	145,098
Air void characterization in fresh cement paste through ultrasonic attenuation using an immersion procedure Darraugh, Natalie Ainsworth MetadataShow full item record The most prevalent method for the prevention of freeze-thaw and salt scaling damage in cement based materials is through the entrainment of air voids using air entraining chemical admixtures (AEA's). However, the common field methods for measuring air content in fresh concrete cannot distinguish between entrained and entrapped air voids, and the actual air content in the hardened concrete can vary from that determined by these tests due to a variety of factors such as workability, placing operations, consolidation efforts, and environmental conditions. Previous research has shown the ability of ultrasonic attenuation to distinguish between entrained and entrapped air voids in hardened cement paste, providing a foundation for an inversion procedure to calculate the size and volume content of the two scatterer sizes. While additional challenges are present with measurements in fresh paste, the use of an immersion setup can overcome the limitations of cement paste containment vessels and provide a means to measure air content from batching to placement. An immersion apparatus to monitor ultrasonic wave attributes including attenuation in fresh cement paste is designed and built. Results comparing air entrained and non-air entrained cement pastes are presented. Ultrasonic wave attributes are studied as a function of time and level of chemical air entrainer. Finally, recommendations are made to improve the accuracy of the immersion apparatus in order to develop an in situ, quality control procedure to quantify the air content of fresh cement paste from batching to placement.	229,050
In this episode of Red Man Laughing we argue strongly for the need for a statement of facts in Canada as it pertains to Indigenous Peoples in this country. In this first half of the show, Ryan lays out the argument that if we are going to move forward in this country, we cannot do so by ignoring the truth, we are having wildly different conversations about the real roots of Canada. In the second half of the show, we replay an excerpt from Canadaland’s political podcast, Commons. In this episode of Commons, Ryan and co-host, Hadiya Roderique, are joined by Anishinaabe TIFF Programmer and CBC Radio Columnist, Jesse Wente, to talk about cultural appropriation and the actual effects of the wildly different understandings about the history of Canada and why that matters. Thanks to Jesse Brown, Russel Gregg and Canadaland for allowing us permission to replay this very important episode of Commons.	106,273
Stigma has been described as an attribute that is deeply discrediting and reduces the bearer from a whole and usual person to a tainted and discounted one. Stigma emerges through a dynamic social process beginning when a difference is labelled, followed by negative stereotyping because of that difference. This leads to a separation of ‘us’ from ‘them’, followed by status loss and discrimination. Stigma and discrimination can act as barriers to seeking support, engagement in care and adherence to treatment across a range of health conditions globally. Our consultants have been involved in a range of research projects on stigma and discrimination including: - Impact evaluation studies to examine the impact of HIV stigma and discrimination on the implementation of HIV prevention programmes and interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. - HIV stigma measurement. - Resource Needs Estimates to reduce HIV-related stigma and discrimination in low-and-middle-income countries. - Developing indicators among law enforcement officers and health facilities to measure progress towards the societal enabler targets of HIV. - Stigma related to gambling and gambling harms.	70,597
Love the anecdote about the engineer parent and the $30,000 science fair project. Wait 'til my kids get a "make your own magazine" project, right? Maybe I can bring in our art director and editorial staff for that one. I completely get the temptation.Who doesn't want the project to look just right? But -- as a former teacher -- I can see the downside. If we tie our kids' shoes for them every time (or just buy them velcro), will they learn to do it on their own? No way. Homework is meant to be practice. Most good teachers use it to assess if the school lessons are taking hold and if more review is needed. No way for teacher to make that assessment for your child, if the homework is done by you. Homework best practices is right up our alley here at SchoolFamily.com. Check out our complete parents and homework article archive for a good start.	77,276
By Sandie ByrneOxford Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett At the age of 15, Noël Coward was staying in an English country house and found a copy of Beasts and Super-Beasts on a table: “I took it up to my bedroom, opened it casually and was unable to go to sleep until I had finished it.” I had a similar experience at about the same age, and I agree with Coward that H. H. Munro—or “Saki,” the author of the book in question—is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later. I have the impression that Saki is not very much appreciated in the United States. Good. That means I can put into my debt many of you who are reading these words. Go and get an edition of this Edwardian master of the short story. Begin with, say, “Sredni Vashtar” or “The Lumber-Room” or “The Open Window.” Then see whether you can put the book down. The spellbinding quality of the stories is almost too easy to analyze and looks mawkish when set down in plain words, because Saki’s great gift was being able to write about children and animals. But consider: How many authors have ever been able to pull off these most difficult of tricks? Kipling, for sure, but then, Kipling would not have been able to render the languid young princes of the drawing room, such as the exquisite Clovis Sangrail, with whom Saki peopled so many a scene. The character of these lethal Narcissi is well netted in a phrase coined by Sandie Byrne, who refers to them as “feral ephebes.” If you want to incubate an author who will show lifelong sympathy for children and animals, it seems best to sequester him at an early age and then subject him to a long regime of domestic torture. This was the formula that worked so well for Kipling, as evidenced in his frightening autobiographical story, “Baa Baa, Black Sheep,” and it is almost uncanny to see how closely Saki’s early life followed the same course. Abandoned to the care of cold and neurotic aunts in England while his father performed colonial duties in India, he and his siblings had to learn how to do without affection, and how to resist and outpoint adult callousness and stupidity. But without those terrible women—and the villains in Saki’s gem-like tales are almost always female—we might not have had the most-fearsome aunts in fiction, outdoing even Wodehouse’s Aunt Agatha or Wilde’s Lady Bracknell. Wodehouse happily admitted to being influenced by Saki, and it would be interesting to know to what extent Saki was himself influenced by Wilde. There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that he was, because some of his epigrams (“Beauty is only sin deep”) betray an obvious indebtedness, and one (“To lose an hotel and a cake of soap in one afternoon suggests willful carelessness”) is an almost direct appropriation from The Importance of Being Earnest. But in that epoch, Wilde’s name lay under a ban, and Saki would have been well advised to not challenge the unstated rules that underlay that prohibition. (I find the speculation about his own homosexuality pointless because there is nothing about which to speculate: he was self-evidently homosexual and, just as obviously, deeply repressed.) As is by no means uncommon in such cases, Saki was of the extreme right, and even an admirer must concede that some of his witticisms were rather labored and contrived as a consequence. Several of his less amusing stories are devoted to ridicule of the women’s suffrage movement, which was cresting during his heyday, while a persistent subtext of his work is a satirical teasing of his contemporary and bête noire, the ponderously socialistic Bernard Shaw (“Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world”). And, like another of his great contemporaries, Arthur Balfour, future author of a famous Declaration, Saki harbored a suspicion of Jews. One of his feral ephebes, Reginald, tells a duchess while chatting at the theater that what she terms “the great Anglo-Saxon empire” is, in fact, “rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem.” That same empire, and its survival, was at the center of the contradictions in Saki’s personality. Byrne’s insightful and sprightly book makes plain that his affectless poseurs and dandies may have reflected one half of the man, just as his repeated portrayals of lithe and lissome and amoral young men must have expressed his banked-down yearnings. But this other hemisphere of his character also admired wildness and risk and cruelty and warfare, and associated the concepts of empire and nation with manly virtue. This point can be reinforced by some thoughts on his choice of nom de plume. I had not known, until I read Byrne’s book, that there was any doubt about the provenance of this. She mentions almost casually that one of his obituarists claimed it was a shortened form of “Nagasaki,” which seems unintelligible in more ways than one. Enormously more probable, given Munro’s often expressed admiration for FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khayyám, is that he saw himself in the cupbearer of the Rubáiyát: And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has pour’d Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour. When You and I behind the Veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the Sea’s self should heed a pebble-cast. In a story called “The East Wing,” a lazy young male creature named Lucien Wattleskeat expresses something of the same thought—not exempting the bubble metaphor—but with more focus on the paradoxical importance of his own ephemerality: I don’t think I can risk my life to save someone I’ve never met or even heard about. You see, my life is not only wonderful and beautiful to myself, but if my life goes, nothing else really matters—to me … Eva might be snatched from the flames and live to be the grandmother of brilliant and charming men and women, but as far as I should be concerned she and they would no more exist than a vanished puff of cigarette smoke or a dissolved soda-water bubble. I think this clears up any dispute about the source of the pseudonym (which often appeared on book jackets alongside his true name), and I pause to note that Lucien Wattleskeat is a poor register of Saki’s generally brilliant and somewhat Wildean ability to devise memorable names. Like Wilde (and like Anthony Powell later on), he made good use of the atlas of Britain and Ireland to come up with surnames and titles that were at once believable and eccentric. Many of these were from his beloved West Country (Yeovil, Honiton, Cullompton), but he ranged far and wide in choosing names like Courtenay Youghal for a smoothly accomplished politician and, in a moment of sheer brilliance, Tobermory for one of his most outstanding characters, the house cat who learns to speak English (and also to eavesdrop). Of his selecting Clovis as the model par excellence of his breed of bored and elegant young men, I have heard it suggested that it was because he was so appallingly Frank. Creatures that essentially can never be tamed—felines and wolves preeminently—were Saki’s emotional favorites. In his best-known novella, The Unbearable Bassington, which contains in the figure of Comus Bassington one of the two most obviously homoerotic of his protagonists (the other being the boy-werewolf Gabriel-Ernest in the story of the same name), the hero is a man named Tom Keriway, whose daredevil nature is summed up in the echoing phrase “a man that wolves have sniffed at.” But Keriway has become sickly and nearly destitute, and morosely recalls an observation about a crippled wild crane that became domesticated in a German park: “It was lame, that was why it was tame.” When he was in his early 40s, Saki began to throw off some of the languor and ennui with which he had invested so many of his scenes and characters, and became extremely exercised about the empire that he had quite often lampooned. Perhaps as a result of his experiences in Russia and the Balkans as a correspondent for a High Tory newspaper, he emitted grave warnings about an imminent German invasion and even wrote an alarmist novel—When William Came—about how British life might feel under the Prussian heel of Kaiser Wilhelm. Its pages treat almost exclusively the outrage and dispossession that might be experienced by the humiliated gentry. (I can think of only one Saki tale that takes the side of egalitarianism or that views society from the perspective of the gutter rather than the balcony or the verandah, and that is the lovely and vindictive Morlvera, in which a couple of proletarian children witness a delicious piece of malice and spite being inflicted on a grown-up by a hideous youngster of the upper crust.) But in 1914, Saki surprised all his elite admirers. His reasons for insisting on signing up for the trenches, when he was easily old enough to evade that fate, were almost comically reactionary. Enraged by the antimilitarist left that thought socialism preferable to world war, he argued in effect that even world war was preferable to socialism. Yet he declined any offer of an officer’s commission, insisted on serving in the ranks, appeared to forget all his previous affectations about hollandaise dressing and the loving preparations of wine and cheese, and was so reduced by front-line conditions of wounds and illness that he grew a moustache to conceal the loss of most of his top teeth. He carried on writing, though chiefly about the interesting survival of wildlife in the no-man’s-land of the Western Front, and he repeatedly sought positions on the front line. In November 1916, near the village of Beaumont-Hamel on the river Somme, he found what it is quite thinkable that he had been looking for all along. On the verge of a crater, during an interval of combat, he was heard to shout “Put that bloody cigarette out!” before succumbing to the bullet of a German sniper who had been trained to look for such tell-tale signals. In that “vanished puff of cigarette smoke” or, if you prefer, his image of a dissolved bubble of effervescence, there died someone who had finally come to decide that other people were worth fighting for after all.	185,148
Using the structure of a poetry slam, Nikki Grimes' award-winning novel is a powerful exploration of self, an homage to spoken-word poetry, and an intriguing look into the life of eighteen urban teens. This anniversary edition--celebrating ten years of this wonderfully evocative work--will feature discussion questions, testimonials from teachers, and an all new introduction from the author. "All of the [students], black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Rich and complex." —Kirkus Reviews "As always, Grimes gives young people exactly what they're looking for—real characters who show them they are not alone." —School Library Journal "Readers will enjoy the lively, smart voices that talk bravely, about real issues and secret fears. A fantastic choice." —Booklist Back to top Rent Bronx Masquerade 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Nikki Grimes. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Speak. Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our tutors now.	35,293
CLINICAL GUIDE TO DEPRESSION AND BIPOLAR DISORDER CLINICAL GUIDE TO DEPRESSION AND BIPOLAR DISORDER Martin B. Keller, editor-in-chief. Clinical Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorder. Findings from the Collaborative Depression Study. Arlington (VA): American Psychiatric Publishing Inc; 2013. (218 pages) INFORMATION ON CONTENTS: Conceived in the early 1970s to study the phenomenology, diagnosis, genetics, and clinical course of depression, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Collaborative Depression Study (CDS) has influenced research and practice since its inception. Prior to the CDS, there had been no longitudinal study of this scope and clinical focus. This book summarizes key findings from the study and the related literature to provide comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge on the course and outcome of illness in mood disorders. The first chapter of the book, the Introduction, outlines the epidemiological findings underscoring the importance of the CDS, the inception of the collaborative program on the psychobiology of depression, the transformation of the CDS into an extended longitudinal study, and topics covered in the book, as well as a summary of the effect of the CDS. The second chapter, “Collaborative Depression Study Procedures and Study Design”, reviews the assessments, procedures, and study designs of the CDS. Chapters 3 and 4, titled “Dimensional Symptomatic Structure of the Long-Term Course of Unipolar Major Depressive Disorder” and “Dimensional Symptomatic Structure of the Long-Term Course of Bipolar I and Bipolar II Disorders”, put forth a dimensional method of studying the severity of symptoms in unipolar Major Depressive Disorder and bipolar disorders. Chapter 5, “Risk Factors for Suicide Attempts and Completions”, covers risk factors, with attention to the symptoms and temperament measures that were consistent for short and long term attempts and completions. Chapter 6, “Psychotic Features in Major Depressive and Manic Episodes”, describes the boundaries between psychotic mood disorders and schizophrenia, and summarizes the effects of psychotic features on manic and depressive episode prognoses. Chapter 7, “Development of Mania or Hypomania in the Course of Unipolar Major Depression”, speaks to the incidence and determinants of progression to bipolar disorder. Chapter 8, “Comorbidity of Affective and Substance Use Disorders”, analyzes the importance of the CDS to research regarding the comorbidity of affective and substance use disorders. Chapter 9, “Treatment Effectiveness and Safety in the Longitudinal Course of Mood Disorders”, highlights the CDS studies which looked into somatic treatments’ effectiveness and safety for mood disorders. Chapter 10, “Personality and Mood Disorders”, describes CDS contributions to existing knowledge regarding the relationship between depression and personality. Chapter 11, “Family History and Genetic Studies in Mood Disorders”, assesses findings when diagnoses in relatives were analyzed, including the results of a second blind reassessment six years after the first assessment. Chapter 12, “Clinical Course and Outcome of Unipolar Major Depression”, describes information on time to recovery, time to recurrence, and various predictors. Chapter 13, “Predictors of Course and Outcome of Bipolar Disorder”, shows typical phase lengths and risk factors for change, as well as symptom morbidity. Chapter 14, “Under-treatment of Major Depression”, notes the finding that about two-thirds of patients who entered the study with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) did not receive antidepressants for an adequate time (with even fewer at an adequate dose). Chapter 15, “Impact of Anxiety Severity on Mood Disorders”, demonstrate how ratings enabled the measurement of anxiety symptoms with major affective disorders. Chapter 16, “Contributions of the NIMH Collaborative Depression Study to DSM-5”, discuss key contributions, such as a spectrum view of mood disorders and the comorbidity of anxiety. An Index rounds out the volume. EDITOR’S STATEMENT: The Clinical Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorder is the culmination of over 30 years of semi-annual and annual interviews with almost 1000 patients and a series of interviews with more than 4000 first degree relatives, spouses, and mates. To date, there have been more than280 peer reviewed original articles published in leading psychiatric and general medical journals. The findings of the CDS, have led to the most meaningful changes in the field’s understanding of the clinical course and outcome of mood disorders and co-morbid conditions since the writings of Kraepelin at the end of the nineteenth century. During the 1950s and 1960s, descriptive and biological psychiatry were challenging the prevailing approach of psychodynamic psychiatry. The swirling controversy was fueled by limited clinical assessments and the lack of reliable and valid diagnostic criteria sets. The NIMH’s recommendation for intensive research focusing on nosology, genetics, and pathophysiology resulted in establishment of the biological studies and clinical studies components of the CDS. Initiated in 1977, the findings from the early data of the clinical studies component were stunning; showing the clinical course of depression was worse than what was previously known. Findings of longer durations of episodes, higher relapse and recurrence rates, and higher rates of chronicity led to the transformation of the CDS from a two year follow up into a longitudinal study with the largest sample, shortest interval interview prospective study of mood disorder in the history of psychiatry. The findings of the CDS conceptualized unipolar depression as a lifelong illness. Results showed subsyndromal symptoms as the second most common symptomatic state during follow up of unipolar and bipolar depression and are associated with significant dysfunction in 7 out of 9 domains of psychosocial functioning. The presence of residual symptoms is associated with early relapse and a worsening of future course of these disorders. The findings were essential in the development of treatment goals for both bipolar disorder and unipolar major depression. The findings of the CDS led to identification of risk factors, such as comorbid anxiety or substance use, double depression, and long duration of episodes, and improved treatments for those long suffering from mood disorders. The specific data on the timing and predictors of long term outcomes and comorbidities from the CDS inspired the motivation and design of numerous continuation and maintenance studies of depression and bipolar disorder, which led to improved treatments for those long suffering from mood disorders. The CDS data also inspired massive advocacy efforts to significantly increase funding for research on mood disorders by the NIMH, National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) and other foundations, and served as the impetus for numerous advocacy campaigns by non-profit (The National Depressive and Manic Depression Association, The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, NAMI and others) and government organizations to reduce the stigma of depression, bipolar disorder and mental illnesses which have had major success, although there is still much work to be done. The CDS data on suicide also contributed to the creation of organizations, such as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the JED foundation, and efforts by the NIMH and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMSA) to raise awareness about suicide risk and efforts to reduce this risk through public education and new research. Each chapter in the Clinical Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorder provides a summary of the findings, focusing on various aspects of the research, including the dynamic and fluctuating severity levels of symptoms of unipolar and bipolar depression, the course and outcome of the disorders, and treatment implications in relation to effectiveness, safety, and the ongoing gaps between research and practice. Genetics, psychotic symptoms, substance use, and anxiety severity were explored through the decades of research.With each chapter summarized with clinical implications, the authors provide practical and evidence-based guidelines for clinicians. Martin B. Keller January 16, 2014	307,056
Information & Resources San Diego Figure Skating Communications There are Internal and External Forces that Exert Pressure on Group Members There are three main forces that act on members to stay in Group: Kurt Lewin, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Berlin University came to the US in 1932 where he taught at Cornell University, and then at Iowa, becoming Professor of Child Psychology at the latter's Child Research Station. In 1944, with Douglas McGregor and others, Lewin founded the Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is now based at the University of Michigan. In the 1939 studies conducted by Professor Lewin, L. Lippitt, and R. White, Lewin carried out studies relating to the effects of three different leadership styles on outcomes of boys' activity groups in Iowa. Leaders in each group were asked to change their styles; however, the effects on each leadership style remained basically unchanged. Lewin's goal was to show that the democratic style achieved better results. There is the possibility of social and cultural influences on individuals undermined his findings to some extent, but nevertheless suggested the benefits of a democratic style in an American context. The studies also showed that it was possible for leaders and managers to change their styles, and they could be trained to change and improve their leadership characteristics if appropriate management styles for their situation and context were adopted. There are group dynamics that influence achieving a balance among the major parts of a writing a position paper and achieving a consensus or group decision that is acceptable to all members of the group. Sometimes there group chooses to endorse a majority and a minority positions that doesn't provide clear guidance. Rather, readers of the report are free to decide what, how, and when to act. Model of Factors Affecting Group Cohesion The forces holding a group together consist of contracts, scholarships, family expectations, etc. Other factors such as age, proximity, or eligibility requirements can also play an important role. Individual characteristics of group members include the following participation motives: There is a leadership style and behavior as individuals strive to establish a leadership relationship within their groups. The characteristics of a group varies according to the size, age, and even sex of the members constituting the group. For example: Cohesion increases performance level of interacting sports, but there is a decrease or no effect on performance for "acting together" (also known as co-acting). New coaches will inherited a portion of their team from the previous season. The previous season's leaders may graduated and/or there may have been conflicts and problems. It is extremely important for a new coach to discuss his/her plans with the team before the start of the season and then follow through by monitoring the progress during the season to build both task and social cohesion in the team. It is important to build individual satisfaction. There is a circular cause andIndividuals who are a member of a cohesion group are more likely to attend every practice session and be less likely to drop out. Such individuals are less likely to cause disruptions in group and more likely to be a positive example of following the on and off ice training rules. The positive environment supports a positive social support each individual receives from other members of the group. effect with with satisfaction and cohesiveness of the group's members! PDF Team Management Starts by Defining the Team group looks at the meaning of a team. One way to define a team is to differentiate it ... Athletic teams can be classified as either ”co-acting' like golf or track teams Team Ice Skating Sports High School Skating Clubs Training Plan for Success Aspiring To Achieve Elite Status Stand, Divided We Fall by Kaia E. Using goal setting to increase team Kurt Lewin Found that, if group members were involved in and encouraged to discuss the forces that act to oppose rather than comprising independent forces in themselves. Most members will want to stay within the behavioral norms of the principles of force field theory. Cohesion by Karlene Sugarman, PDF Management Science and Group Behavior: Work-Unit Cohesiveness taps a basic property of the small group: its "stick-togetherness" acts on members to remain in the group. Group Cohesion and Team Building by Dave Yukelson Team Building 101 by Dr. Colleen Hacker The following internet links have been gleaned from personal communications combined with information from public institutions and athletic organizations/ associations that have a web presence with information concerning team and individual sports programs: All materials are copy protected. The limited use of the materials for education purposes is allowed providing credit is given for the source of the materials.	238,599
Ride at Raspberry Ridge Farms R.R.#1, Newburgh, Ontario. K0K 2S0 (613) 378-0321 www.RaspberryRidge.com Eventing, also called combined training, is a sport which requires horse and rider to do three tests or phases: dressage which involves changing pace and direction according to a pre-determined test, cross-country jumping which tests the endurance of the horse, and stadium jumping which tests jumping accuracy and soundness. The sport requires a very fit, sensible and sound horse. to kids fun and learn pages see Daily Grooming see Mane Care and Braiding	19,880
Thursday meeting will air Delta water tunnel plans 04/02/2013 12:00 AM 04/02/2013 7:53 AM The public is invited Thursday to a meeting in Sacramento on the state's proposal to build two giant water diversion tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Bay Delta Conservation Plan proposes to divert a portion of the Sacramento River using three new intakes and fish screens near Courtland, each nearly a half-mile square. These would serve two 40-foot-diameter tunnels, built 150 feet underground and running 35 miles from the intakes to existing diversion canals near Tracy. The plumbing is projected to cost $14 billion, funded by farm and urban water ratepayers who benefit from the water, mostly between San Jose and San Diego. The plan is led by the California Department of Water Resources, which has released seven draft chapters on the plan. Thursday's meeting offers an overview of the documents and a chance for the public to ask questions. The meeting is from noon to 6 p.m. at the Red Lion Hotel Woodlake Conference Center, 500 Leisure Lane, Sacramento. Staff will be available to answer questions for the entire six-hour period. A formal presentation is from 1 to 5 p.m. The meeting will be available by live webcast at www.BayDeltaConservation Plan.com, and by conference call at (888) 369-1427, access code 8278112. The documents are available at the website in downloadable pdf format. Contact The Bee's Matt Weiser at (916) 321-1264. Follow him on Twitter @matt_weiser. Editor's Choice Videos Join the Discussion The Sacramento Bee is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere on the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.	307,696
Just saw an article at knoxnews.com that can be found here. To summarize, this former couch potato couple started to seriously walk and made their diets healthier. They made a point of walking 10,000 steps every day. The husband no longer needed a knee replacement, and was able to get rid of the blood pressure medication, while halving the cholesterol medication. 10,000 steps is around five miles. For most people dedicating an hour and forty minutes (assuming a walking speed of 3 mi/hr) every day to walking isn't practical; however, the 10,000 steps can include ordinary activities, making it much more manageable. A pedometer was suggested as a way to track the number of steps taken. For short trips, walking is an eminently feasible way to get around, not to mention being relaxing and healthy. The construction of sidewalks around busier streets can greatly encourage this most basic form of transportation. Have a wheely good holiday - The holiday season is here and with it, decorations to brighten the drab winter landscape and remind us why we celebrate. For those of us who love bikes,... 2 days ago	230,182
Some History of its Founders For its 1995 Centenary The reason for this introduction will become clear as with proceed with a story that starts in Cornwall and Norway, moves to South Australia, crosses in a general easterly direction into Victoria and then more or less north. Here the story tells of a stock route that travels across the Rivers Murray, Murrumbidgee and Lachlan, further north through Bourke in NSW and into Queensland. Just how long a journey of this nature would have taken in a wagon drawn by either bullocks is not known but we leave you to judge for yourselves. We will follow the course of a young married couple around South Australia and into Victoria and New South Wales. Among this broad spectrum of immigrants, we find two family groups from Cornwall and one man of Norwegian origin whose father had been a Norwegian sea captain. Just how they all met led us on a surprising chase around South Australia, before we could follow the young married couple out of South Australia and into the Riverina district of New South Wales, to settle at what became Gilgunnia and ultimately to the foundation of Cobar. With a strong Cornish accent, the spellings of the names were many and varied. The Woolcock surname has been tracked to spellings such as Wil(l)cock(s), Woolcock(s), even Woodcock, Woodcot, Woodcox and Willcox! It was said in some stories that Sidwell Woolcock arrived in South Australia when she was about 14 years of age and the family went to the Burra mining district. After much searching prior to presenting a Seminar talk on "Notable Cornish Women" at the Kernewek Lowender 2005 in Kadina SA, the story is quite different. We did know also that she had at least one sister Emma (b. c1830). The SA marriage record for Emma and the baptism records of her children helped to trace Sidwell. The family seems to have emigrated from one of the mining centres in Cornwall such as Illogan, though Redruth and Camborne are also possibilities. Sidwell's death certificate indicates that her father was Ephraim Woolcock, a miner from Illogan in Cornwall, and her mother Bessie nee Willoughby. These names and those of their children have been confirmed from records in Cornwall. Study of the start of the Cobar mine led to the firm conviction that Sidwell had been a bal-girl, sorting ores at a Cornish mine, before she came to South Australia. We also had one piece of sad piece of evidence that linked Sidwell with South Australia. A niece, Sidwell Trevillian, had drowned in the watertank at Sidwell's home in Gilgunnia. The NSW record has her given name as Sydwell. Tracing Sydwell resulted in finding the marriage of Sidwell Willcocks at St Barnabas Church in Clare in South Australia, with assistance from the Clare Regional History Group. It also led to a great deal more history about Emma Willcocks, aged 18, who had married John Trevillian on 1 June 1848 at the Kooringa Schoolhouse in the Burra mining district. John had moved around in South Australia for some time but had returned to some mining operations in the Armagh district near Clare. He settled there with his family, and had been farming as well. Sydwell Trevillian was one of the children of John and Emma Trevillian, making definite the family relationship with Sidwell Willcocks. The investigation also showed that John Trevillian had been of strong Wesleyan faith and had been a primemover and churchwarden of the chapel which was constructed at Armagh. Sidwell, the younger sister, must have been helping Emma with her family which by 1858 had grown to at least four children, Emma Jane being born on 19 April 1858. During this time in Armagh, Sidwell must have met Henrik Kruge who had arrived in the Clare district after his landing in Port Adelaide, some time around 1854. His father had been a Norwegian sea captain, Awuna Aaonsen Kruge, and his mother, Johanne Marie nee Reinert. Henrik had been born c1834 at Tandefjord, Norway. We have no record of his means of travel to South Australia. He could have been a crew member of a ship arriving at Port Adelaide, and had signed off from that occupation or just skipped off. He could have been about 20 years of age. Whatever route they took, about half way from the River Lachlan to Bourke they stopped to camp at a beautiful area between hills. The season had been a good one, with grass covering the valley, with many trees and a display of many varieties of wild flowers. No doubt, they had met people along the track who had told them of the much more harsh conditions of the land to the north or they had experienced it. It has been written that Sidwell was reminded of home and that could have been either Clare or Cornwall, because it would be true of both places. Furthermore, here was a place where the stockmen with their bullock wagons, their horses and their cattle would find a resting place to camp. Henry and Sidwell decided that this was to be their place of abode and they selected a site on which to build. It would be a fine place to build a wayside inn or Shanty as such places were called in pioneer Australia. Henry could see that such a place would also be fine for a blacksmith shop, a sawmill and some plumbing equipment. Sidwell would be quite capable of providing supplies to the stockmen and others who moved along the stock route to find a place to settle. Once well known, it would be a place too where people could meet, exchange yarns and stories of the places they had been. We have found no definite date for the construction of their Inn or their first residence. With the drought and the events of 1869 when copper ore was found at what is now Cobar, we can be certain that it was well before that year. It is possible that it could have been somewhere between 1861 and 1863 In July 1877, a Petition was presented to Mr James Hoskins MP from about 100 people who lived in and around Gilgunnia, having contact with Henry Kruge and his wife on business matters, or passing back and forth on their own businesses. A note on the Petition draws attention to the fact that every business person in the district had signed. The Petition sought the establishment of a recognised Post Office at Mr Kruge's Gilgunnia as this place was 105 miles from Hillston and 80miles from Cobar. Henry had held authorisation for a postal receiving office for many years before that time. The Secretary of the General Post Office in Sydney requested advice on the suggestion from the postmaster at Cobar, Hillston, Booligal and Mossgiel. It was noted that Mr Henry Kruge was considered a suitable postmaster for Gilgunnia and was qualified to take charge. He was appointed as of 1 July 1878 at a salary of £10 per year. The Post Office remained open until 31 October 1895 when it was removed to the New Gilgunnia. Meanwhile, Henry had built up a considerable range of supporting equipment to serve the community who lived around and were passing through Gilgunnia. He had a blacksmith shop with a wide range of equipment. He had a sawmill driven by a steam engine. All of these facilities were of great assistance and importance, in such matters as shoeing horses, repairing wagon and dray wheels, family transport vehicles and so on. When gold was found near Gilgunnia, all these facilities became a vital part of the mining operations. Sidwell meanwhile ran the hotel services including accommodation, meals and a store. They really were stalwart pioneers of the district. Henry became known as the Founding Father of Gilgunnia. In 1886, Henry appointed their nephew Hans J. Monkerud as manager of their store and the post office while Henry and Sidwell ran the Hotel. Henry Kruge died suddenly at his Gilgunnia on 27 February 1888, at the aged of 54 years. He was buried in the cemetery in a lovely grove of trees, near the grave of his niece Sydwell. Left: The Headstone to Henry Kruge Above: The Grave of Henry Kruge Go to the Menu List for more of the history and events at Gilbunnia.	199,898
New Delhi, April 11 (IANS) The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, on Monday visited Gandhi Smriti and paid tributes to Mahatma Gandhi who fell to an assassin’s bullets in 1948. Prince William later said Queen Elizabeth II was very fond of India and it was “enormously important” to her. The British royals arrived at Gandhi Smriti on Tees January Marg after laying a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti — the eternal flame memorial dedicated to the ‘Unknown Soldier’ — at India Gate. The Duchess and the Duke of Cambridge visited Gandhi’s memorial and paid tributes at the ‘Martyr’s Column’ — the spot where Gandhi was assassinated. The couple was accorded a traditional welcome with a stole each of handspun khadi, and were shown around the museum which houses articles related to the Father of the Nation. Gandhi Smriti director Dipanker Shri Gyan, who gave the royal couple a guided tour of the museum, said: “They told me they were surprised by his simple living; that such a man had such a simple life.” Mahatma Gandhi lived at the complex for 144 days before he was assassinated there on January 30, 1948. According to a British High Commission official, the couple asked questions about the spinning wheel that Mahatma Gandhi used and which is put on display there. They were also inquisitive about Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at the complex’s entrance, and were told it was a symbol of peace. Inscribed on the bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi, standing with a boy and a girl besides him, is his famous quote: “My life is my message.” The Duke and the Duchess also met around 30 schoolchildren, who sang ‘bhajans’ that gave the message of peace, as propagated by Gandhi. The royal couple later attended an official garden party reception at the British High Commissioner’s official residence here to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday. Prince William said India’s contribution to the Commonwealth was “enormously important” to the queen. Speaking at the reception to mark the 90th birthday of the queen, who also happens to be his grandmother, Prince William said the queen was very fond of India, the biggest country in the Commonwealth. “Tonight, we are celebrating the links between our two countries. This is the first time Catherine and I have been to India and we have been incredibly impressed to see just how much this great country is on the move, and how India’s dynamism is matched by the warmth and welcome of its diverse people,” he said. He also read out a message from the queen in which she sent best wishes to India. “I have fond memories of our previous visits to India. This event today is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the enduring friendship between our two countries, our shared culture and the business opportunities we can create together,” the queen was quoted as saying in the message. Over 1,500 guests from Delhi’s business, political and diplomatic sectors attended the function. On Sunday, the royal couple attended a welcome charity dinner hosted by the British Deputy High Commission in Mumbai. The high-profile dinner was attended by the Who’s Who of Bollywood, who rolled out the red carpet for the royal couple. Prince William and Kate are scheduled to have lunch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.	279,285
Long after a conflict, landmines remain buried underground unless someone can locate and detonate them. According to the United Nations (UN), there are more than 100 million landmines buried in 68 countries around the world. The UN estimates that more than 2,000 people are killed or injured by landmine explosions each month. A University of Missouri engineer is working to enhance the accuracy of a landmine radar system while minimizing the number of false alarms it produces. In a landmine radar system, ground-penetrating radar scans the surface for underground objects. Besides sensing landmines, the radar also has undesirable responses from clutter objects, such as scrap metal debris, plant roots and rocks. Dominic Ho, the Dowell Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering in the MU College of Engineering, is working with Army employees and private defense contractors to enhance the system, and distinguish between true positive signals that are from landmines and false positive signals that are from clutter objects and can be ignored safely. "The fewer false positives there are, the faster we can clear a mine-infected area," Ho said. "Each time there is a false positive, the military wastes time and money to investigate the positive signal. Our goal is to keep the rate of detection high, but reduce the number of false triggers." Ho studies and compares how signals are reflected from landmines and clutter objects that produce false signals. He differentiates the signals and then develops radar signature patterns that can identify an underground object. Ho's goal is to create consistent radar signature patterns for landmines so the detector will be able to discriminate between landmines and clutter objects. However, landmines can vary in shape and material making it a challenge to create consistent signature patterns. For example, landmines can be circular or square and made of plastic or metal. Plastic landmines are more of a challenge because they are light and do not create a strong signal, Ho said. Ho has researched landmine detection for nearly 10 years. His recent grant will fund research of a detector that is mounted on a vehicle-based platform. Previously, Ho researched and helped enhance a hand-held detection device that is currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research, along with advancements in radar technology, has contributed to a reduction of false alarms from a rate of 100 per 5,000 square meters five years ago to the current rate of less than four per 5,000 square meters. "We are chasing a moving target," Ho said. "People are still creating landmines. It's very important that we continue to refine our techniques and improve our detection methods." Source: University of Missouri-Columbia Explore further: New ultrasound device may add in detecting risk for heart attack, stroke	20,036
FLINT, MI--Flint, Michigan—Almost a year ago, two New York architects came to Flint with the idea of fixing up an abandoned funeral home using recycled materials. The idea was to show there are creative ways to rehab abandoned and damage houses and, eventually, to provide a space for artists. Now they’re ready to open their doors. Their first open house event will take place Friday, Aug. 23, and will feature food, tours of the house, and artwork and installations by local artists and designers. The event begins at 7 p.m. Organizers are asking for a $5 donation. The project is managed by Andrew Perkins, a recent architecture graduate from Buffalo, with support from Flint Public Art Project. Though the building has suffered over a decade of water damage, Perkins is optimistic. “These old buildings are a lot more resilient than people give them credit for. The plastic buildings of today aren’t built to last. As much as anything else, this project is a protest against today’s throw-away culture,” he said in a prepared statement. Perkins is renovating the house primarily with reused materials, salvaged by hand from to-be demolished homes, construction dumpsters, and even an old bowling alley. “I’m not so interested in preservation, but adaption – in making the best out of a compromised situation with what we have on hand. That may mean a much more patient process than knocking over and starting anew, but it also means a more ecologically sensitive and culturally enriching way of building,” he said. The work is funded through local and national arts-based grants which help supply equipment, labor, and some vital materials that can’t be salvaged, organizers said. A grant through the Ruth Mott Foundation paid for the Spencer’s Art House project to employ six students from the Metro Flint Youth Build program as deconstruction apprentices for the summer. Organizers say that “substantial progress” has already been made in clearing out and reinforcing the rotted structure, sealing the building, and creating a vision for the end product. They’re seeking another $50,000 for a new roof and to install new utilities.	282,208
Lesson 6 was all about maximum variety and the goal was to have all 4 quadrants look completely different without actually dividing the paper into 4 parts and working them seperately. This lesson was super fun for me. Besides the quadrant part, this is how I work anyway-lay something down, cover it up, repeat, add something else, cover it up, repeat...etc. I am always keeping variety in mind with regards to scale and contrast. For all of the pieces, I would put down an element and then be sure that the next element was different in some way, I also practiced bringing marks back up after I had mostly hidden them. A bunch of these ended up being postcard backgrounds at WAAR (our Wicked Awesome Artists Retreat) Number two was super pastel and bland when I picked it out of the pile of previous I definitely had fun with this lesson and have plenty more pieces that are started. I'm pretty good at remembering to vary lines, but shapes sometimes lean toward sameness. It's hard to remember to vary ALL of the bits...	146,228
View Full Version : 1/2" Copper waste pipe in shower - how to cut?? 01-16-2009, 03:27 PM I have 2" copper waste for my shower drain. It is too long (tall) for my new shower basin so I need to cut it down. How do I cut a piece of pipe that is verticle in the ground?? I can't fit the big pipe cutter in the space. Is there a drill bit or some other way to cut the pipe cleanly? 01-16-2009, 04:02 PM You possibly mean 1-1/2" rather than 1/2", and I believe showers are supposed to have 2" drain lines. In any case, a rotary tool like a Dremel might be one way to go. 01-16-2009, 08:51 PM Dremmel..had not thought of that. THanks I will give it a try.	5,710
C. The Period of Stability (276-221) 18. A GIFT OF LAND BY ANTIOCHUS I Ilion 33 (RC 10-13) ca. 274 This dossier, inscribed all together at Ilion, relates to a substantial gift of royal land to one Aristodikides of Assos by Antiochus I (on the dating and the ascription to this Antiochus, which is not certain, cf. RC, p. 64). Of Aristodikides nothing further is known, but the fact that he is designated “friend” of the king is significant. It shows that “he belonged ... to the half-military, half-political nobility of merit which grew up rapidly under the Hellenistic dynasties, and if we may draw any conclusions from the extensive land grants made to him, his place in it must have been high” (ibid.). The dossier is introduced by a covering letter to Ilion from Meleager (13), Antiochus' deputy in Asia Minor (cf. 66), and there follow three letters of Antiochus to Meleager (10-12): the first announces the initial gift to Aristodikides, the second increases it (this after an intervention by Aristodikides), and the third amends it in the light of problems encountered along the way. Meleager to the boule and the demos of the Ilians, greeting. Aristodikides of Assos has given us letters from King Antiochus, the copies of which we have written for you below. He has also himself come to us, saying that although many others address themselves to him and confer on him crowns—a fact which we ourselves know because certain embassies have come to us from the cities—he wishes, both because of the sanctuary and because of the good-will he entertains toward you, to join to your city the land given him by King Antiochus. What he thinks should be granted him by the city, then, he himself will make clear. You would do well to vote all his privileges and to inscribe the terms of the grant which he will make on a stele and to place it in the sanctuary, so that the grant may remain securely yours for all time. Farewell. King Antiochus to Meleager, greeting. We have given to Aristodikides of Assos two thousand plethra of cultivable land to join to the city of the Ilians or the Skepsians. Do you therefore give orders to convey to Aristodikides from the land adjacent to that of Gergis or Skepsis, wherever you think best, the two thousand plethra of land, and to add them to the boundaries of the (land) of the Ilians or the Skepsians. Farewell. King Antiochus to Meleager, greeting. Aristodikides of Assos has come to us, asking us to give him in the Hellespontine satrapy Petra, which formerly Meleager held, and of the land of Petra fifteen hundred plethra suitable for cultivation, and two thousand other plethra of cultivable land from that adjacent to the lot previously given to him. And we have given him both Petra, unless it has been given previously to someone else, and two thousand plethra of cultivable land besides, because he as our friend has furnished us his services with all good-will and enthusiasm. Do you therefore having made an investigation, if this Petra has not already been given to someone else, convey it with its land to Aristodikides, and from the crown land adjacent to the land formerly given to Aristodikides give orders for the surveying and conveyance to him of two thousand plethra, and that he be permitted to join (his holding) to any of the cities he wishes in our country and alliance. If the crown peasants of the region in which Petra lies wish to live in Petra for protection, we have ordered Aristodikides to allow them to live (there). Farewell. King Antiochus to Meleager, greeting. Aristodikides has come to us, saying that, because it had been assigned to Athenaios the commander of the naval base, he has not even yet received the place Petra and the land belonging to it which we previously wrote giving it to him, and he has asked that there be conveyed to him instead of the land of Petra the same number of plethra elsewhere, and that there be granted to him two thousand plethra besides, which he may join to any of the cities in our alliance he wishes, just as we wrote before. Seeing therefore that he is well-disposed and enthusiastic in our interest we are anxious to favor the man highly, and we have given our consent in this matter also. He says that his grant of the land of Petra was fifteen hundred plethra. Do you therefore give orders to survey and to convey to Aristodikides of cultivable land both the twenty-five hundred plethra and, instead of the land belonging to Petra, fifteen hundred other plethra suitable for cultivation from the crown land adjacent to that originally given him by us. (Give orders) also to permit Aristodikides to join the land to any of the cities in our alliance he wishes, just as we wrote in our earlier letter. Farewell. Land given him by King Antiochus: This issue, treated in all three letters of Antiochus, arises because there were only two categories of land (excluding perhaps some temple land), crown land and city land. Land that passed from the king must needs become part of the territory of some city or another. As an element of the original gift (10) Antiochus gave Aristodikides the choice between Skepsis and Ilion. This was then (11, 12) extended to any allied city, but Aristodikides chose to have his new land attached to the territory of Ilion Someone else: It seems extraordinary that Antiochus should not know this. Evidently only inspection on the spot could answer the question. Twenty-five hundred plethra: Either a mistake (the figure earlier in the text was 2000) or an act of generosity, perhaps as compensation for Petra. If the figure is correct, the land given to Aristodikides in all these presentations amounted to 6000 plethra (the 2000 of 10, the 2000 of 11, which seem to recur in 12, first as 2000 and then as 2500, and the 1500 of 12) or, perhaps, 8000 (if the 2000 of I I arc not the same as the 2000/2500 of 12). 19. CHREMONIDES’ DECREE Staatsverträge 476 (Syll.3 434/5) 265/4 Although it is not a war vote, this decree effectively marks the beginning of the war named after its proposer. The target was Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon, here cast in the role of enemy of the cities of Greece, who had been extending his influence and control in Greece since securing the throne of Macedon in 277/6. The instigator of this bellicose co-operation between Athens and Sparta was clearly Ptolemy II of Egypt, whose influence in Greece had been waning directly as Antigonus' increased. The attempt proved disastrous for the Spartans, who were defeated in a battle near Corinth that cost them their king, Areus, for the Athenians, who capitulated to Antigonus in 261/0 after a siege that Ptolemy's admiral Patroklos had failed to break, and for Ptolemy himself, who eventually lost his naval domination of the Aegean after a defeat at the hands of the Macedonian navy. Gods. In the archonship of Peithedemos, in the second prytany, that of (the tribe) Erechtheis, on the ninth (day) of Metageitnion, the ninth (day) of the prytany, (in) a statutory assembly. Of the prohedroi Sostratos, son of Kallistratos, of (the deme) Erchia, and his fellow prohedroi put the motion to the vote. Resolved by the demos: Chremonides, son of Eteokles, of (the deme) Aithalidai, spoke: Whereas in former times the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians and the allies of each, after making friendship and common alliance with one another, together fought many noble struggles alongside one another against those who were trying to enslave the cities, from which deeds they both won for themselves fair reputation and brought about freedom for the rest of the Greeks, and (whereas) now, when similar circumstances have overtaken all Greece on account of those who are trying to overthrow the laws and the ancestral institutions of each (of the cities), King Ptolemy, in accordance with the policy of his ancestors and his sister, shows clearly his concern for the common freedom of the Greeks, and the demos of the Athenians, having made an alliance with him, has voted to urge the rest of the Greeks toward the same policy; and, likewise, the Lacedaemonians, being friends and allies of King Ptolemy, have voted an alliance with the demos of the Athenians, along with the Eleians and Achaeans and Tegeans and Mantineians and Orchomenians and Phialians and Kaphyans and as many of the Cretans as are in the alliance of the Lacedaemonians and Areus and the other allies, and have sent ambassadors from the synhedroi to the demos (of the Athenians), and their ambassadors having arrived, make clear the zealous concern which the Lacedaemonians and Areus and the rest of the allies have toward the demos of the Athenians, and bring with them the agreement about the alliance; (and) in order that, a state of common concord having come to exist among the Greeks, the Greeks may be, along with King Ptolemy and with each other, eager contenders against those who have wronged the cities and violated their treaties with them, and may for the future with mutual good-will save the cities; with good fortune, be it resolved by the demos: that the friendship and alliance of the Athenians with the Lacedaemonians and the Kings of the Lacedaemonians, and the Eleians and Achaeans and Tegeans and Mantineians and Orchomenians and Phialians and Kaphyans and as many of the Cretans as are in the alliance of the Lacedaemonians and Areus and the rest of the allies, be valid for all [time, the one which] the ambassadors bring with them; and that [the] secretary of the prytany have (it) inscribed on a bronze stele and [set up] on the Acropolis, by the temple of Athena Polias; and that [the] magistrates [swear] to the ambassadors who have come [from them the oath] about the alliance, according to [ancestral custom]; and to send [the] ambassadors [who have been] elected by the demos to receive the oaths [from] the [rest of the Greeks]; and further, that [the demos immediately] elect [two] synhedroi [from among] all [the Athenians] who shall deliberate [about the common] good with Areus and the synhedroi [sent by the allies]; and that [those in charge] of public administration distribute to those chosen (as synhedroi) provisions for as long as they shall be away [whatever] the demos shall decide [when electing them]; and to Praise [the ephors] of the Lacedaemonians and Areus and the allies, [and to crown them] with a gold crown in accordance with the law; [and further, to praise the] ambassadors who have come from them, Theom [. . . of Lacedae]mon and Argeios son of Kleinias of Elis, [and to crown] each of them with a gold crown, in accordance with [the law, on account of their zealous concern] and the good-will which they bear toward [the rest of the allies] and the demos of the Athenians; and that [each of them] be entitled to receive [other] benefits from the boule [and the demos, if they seem] to deserve [any]; and to invite them [also to receive hospitality] tomorrow [in the prytaneion], and that the secretary of the prytany have inscribed [this decree also and the agreement] upon a [stone] stele and have it set up on the Acropolis, and that those in charge of [public administration] allocate [the expense for the inscription and erection] of the stele, [whatever it] may be. The following were elected synhedroi: Kallippos of (the deme) Eleusis, [and- - - ]. The treaty and alliance [of the Lacedaemonians and the allies] of the Lacedaemonians with [the Athenians and the allies] of the Athenians, [to be valid] for all [time]: [Each (of the parties)], being [free] and autonomous, [is to have its own territory, using its own political institutions in accordance with] ancestral tradition. If anyone [comes with war as their object against the land] of the Athenians or [is overthrowing] the laws, [or comes with war as their object against] the allies of the Athenians, [the Lacedaemonians and the allies] of the Lacedaemonians [shall come to the rescue in full strength to the best of their ability. If] anyone comes with war as their object [against the land of the Lacedaemonians], or is overthrowing [the] laws, [or comes with war as their object against the allies] of the Lacedaemonians, [the Athenians and the allies of the Athenians shall come to the rescue in full strength to the best of their ability.] - - - The (following) Athenians swear the oath to the Lacedaemonians [and to those from each] city: the strategoi and the [boule of 600 and the] archons and the phylarchs and the taxiarchs [and the hipparchs]. “I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, Ares, Athena Areia, [Poseidon, Demeter] that I shall remain in the alliance that has been made; [to those abiding by this oath] may many good things befall, to those not, the opposite.” (Of the Lacedaemonians] (the following) swear the same oath to the Athenians: the [kings and the ephors (and)] the gerontes. And the magistrates [are to swear the same oath also in the other] cities. If [it seems preferable to the Lacedaemonians and) the allies and the Athenians (to add something) or to remove something in respect to (the terms of) the alliance, [then whatever is decided upon by both] will be in accord with the oath. (The cities are) to have [the agreement] inscribed [upon) stelai and have (them) set up in a sanctuary wherever they wish. His sister: Arsinoe (Philadelphos), daughter of Ptolemy I and sister of Ptolemy II, was also the second wife of the latter, the first having been Arsinoe, daughter of Lysimachus. Areus: son of Acrotatus, king of Sparta from 309 to 265/4. He died in battle against Antigonus at the Isthmus in the first year of the war. Synhedroi: i.e., from the council of the states in the Spartan alliance; cf. further on in the inscription. 20. ANTIOCHUS I AND THE IONIAN LEAGUE Erythrai 504 (OGIS 222) 268-262 This inscription (from Klazomenai) contains resolutions of the Ionian League about the cult of Antiochus I. His birthday is to be celebrated, as was Alexander's, and a sacred precinct is to be established as the seat of his and his son's worship by the League. Besides the obvious fact that the Ionian cities are seeking to please Antiochus in this increasingly standard way, one may note that they count upon him to support established democracies. In this respect the Seleucids were the heirs of the policy of Antigonus toward the Greek cities. (For the origins of the various restorations, see the notes to Erythrai 504.) - - - (on) the fourth (of the month ... ) in order that we may celebrate the [day on which King Antiochus] was born with [all] reverence [and] thankfulness: (be it resolved also) to give to [each] of those who [take part in the festivities] as much as is given for the [procession and sacrifice (in honor) of] Alexander. And in order that [King Antiochus and] Queen Stratonike 56 may know [what has been decreed by the koinon of the] Ionians in respect to the honors, (be it resolved) [to choose immediately from among ... "I two (men) from each city who have [before this time] served as ambassadors to King [Antiochus, and for these] to deliver [to the king] this decree [from the koinon] of the Ionian cities [... and for them to accomplish whatever good] they may be able to for the koinon [of the cities]. And let the ambassadors [call upon] King [Antiochus] to take [every] care for the [Ionian] cities [in order that (the cities) being free and [being] democracies, may [with concord] continue to conduct their own internal political affairs according to (their) ancestral [laws]. And [let] the ambassadors [make clear] to him that [by doing this] he will be responsible for [many] good things for the cities [and at the same time he will be following the] policy of his ancestors." [And let the ambassadors] call upon King Antiochus to indicate [the place which may to him] seem to be [the finest], in which the sacred precinct [of the kings shall be consecrated] and the festival [shall be] celebrated. (And be it further resolved), [when] the embassies [have returned], for the city [in which they perform (?) the] sacrifice of the Alexandreia" [to summon all the demoi] who share in the [sacrifice, in order that, according to the decision] of the synhedrion, they may deliberate [about... and the sacrifices] and about the rest of the matters, how [they will come to pass and at what] times they should be carried out. [And when the] decree [has been ratified] for the synhedroi (there) present from the cities to perform a sacrifice to all the gods and goddesses and to Kings Antiochus [and Antiochus] 60 and Queen Stratonike, and to sacrifice victims free from blemish, and for the synhedroi and everyone else in the city to wear garlands; and for the priests and priestesses to open the temples and burn incense, praying that the resolutions may be of benefit to Kings Antiochus and Antiochus and to Queen Stratonike and to , fall] those sharing in the honors. And (be it further resolved) to have this decree inscribed on a stele, and (with it) the names and patronymics of the synhedroi who have come from the cities, and placed in the sacred precinct by the altar of the kings; and that the demoi in the individual cities have this decree inscribed, and (with it) the names and patronymics of the synhedroi, [and set up in whatever place] may seem most conspicuous. Stratonike: the daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes. She had been married to Seleucus I before he gave her in marriage to his son Antiochus. To choose immediately from among ...: Or, “from among the synhedroi”. Policy of his ancestors: This conventional reference need to refer to no more than Antiochus' father, but it might be taken to include Antigonus as well. Sacrifice of the Alexandreia: The chief rite in the League cult of Alexander. Kings Antiochus and Antiochus: The name of' Antiochus (son of Antiochus I and co-regent with his father and soon to become Antiochus II) was mistakenly omitted here. 21. PTOLEMY II AND MILETOS Milet I 3 139 (incl. RC 14) ca. 262 This inscription from Miletos contains three elements: (A) a letter from Ptolemy II to the city thanking it for its support; (B) a decree of Miletos instructing the council to have Ptolemy's communication and envoy brought before a meeting of the assembly; (C) a proposal of one Peithenous (who was stephanephoros at Miletos in 261/0) adopted at that meeting of the assembly. The troubles which Miletos endured in support of Ptolemy are probably the same as are reflected in the list of Milesian stephanephoroi (Milet I 3 123). From 266/5 through 263/2 this eponymous magistracy was held by Apollo himself: the situation was such that no one else could be found to take on the position. This is the period of the Chremonidean War, to which the military activity referred to in Peithenous' decree (including an attack by sea--presumably by the Macedonian navy) would thus belong. These events at Miletos may accordingly be seen as having taken place not long before the decisive defeat inflicted upon Ptolemy's fleet by Antigonus Gonatas in the battle of Kos (258?). A. (RC 14) King Ptolemy to the boule and the demos of the Milesians, greeting. I have in former times shown all zeal on behalf of your city, both giving land and exercising care in all other matters, as was proper because I saw that our father was kindly disposed toward the city and was responsible for many benefits for you and relieved you of harsh and oppressive taxes and tolls which certain of the kings had imposed. Now also, as you have guarded fittingly your city and your friendship and alliance with us--for my son and Kallikrates and the other friends who are with you have written me what a demonstration you have made of your good-will toward us--we consequently praise you highly and shall try to requite your people through benefactions, and we call upon you for the future to maintain the same policy toward us so that, this being the case, we may exercise even more care for your city. We have ordered Hegestratos to address you at greater length on these subjects and to give you our greeting. Farewell. Resolved by the boule and demos; proposal of the epistatai; Eparneinon, son of Hestiaios, spoke: that the secretary of the boule is to bring before the assembly on the fourth day from the end of this month the letter which Hegestratos brought from King Ptolemy and to have it read to the demos, and also the epistatai are to bring Hegestratos before the assembly, and that the demos, having heard (Hegestratos and the letters) is to take counsel for what seems to be best. Resolved by the demos; proposal of the epistatai; Peithenous son of Tharsagoras spoke: (concerning) the other matters (let it be) as the boule has decreed; whereas, when the demos had even previously chosen friendship and alliance with the god and savior Ptolemy, it happened that the city became prosperous and renowned and that the demos was judged worthy of many great goods, for which reasons the demos honored him with the greatest and most noble honors, and (whereas) his son, King Ptolemy, having succeeded to the throne, and having renewed the friendship and alliance with the city, has shown all zeal in promoting the interests of all the Milesians, giving land and arranging the peace for the demos and being responsible for other good things as well for the city, and now, when many great wars overtook us by land and sea and the enemy attacked our city by sea, the king, having learned that the city had stood honorably by its friendship and alliance with him, dispatched letters and the ambassador Hegestratos and praises the demos for its policy and promises to take all care for the city and to requite it even more with benefactions and calls upon the demos to maintain its friendship toward him for the future as well, and (whereas) the ambassador Hegestratos made similar declarations about the good-will which the king holds toward the city; be it resolved by the demos to praise King Ptolemy, because in all circumstances he has the same policy about what is of benefit to the city; and, in order that for the future as well the demos may make manifest its zeal in the interest of his [son] and himself, to call upon the citizens to take the oath to maintain for all time the friendship and alliance which exist between the city and King Ptolemy and his descendants; and for the ephebes, when, after [finishing their training] and completing the prescribed requirements, they leave the gymnasium, to swear to abide by the ratified decisions of the demos and to maintain the friendship and alliance with King Ptolemy and his descendants; and, in order that both the policy of the king toward the city and the good-will of the demos toward the king may be remembered for all time, to have this decree and the letter (of the king) inscribed on a stone stele and to have it set up in the sanctuary of Apollo beside the statue of Ptolemy the god and savior; and for the teichopoioi to let a contract for the preparation of the stele and the inscription of the decree and the letter, and for those chosen to be in charge of the defense of the city to provide the expense from the wall-maintenance fund; and for the ambassadors previously chosen by the demos to deliver the decree to the king. Resolved by the demos to have the decree inscribed on a whitened tablet. Giving land: See Milet I 3.122- 1 Kings had imposed: Cf. 14. My son: This individual is probably to be identified with the “son Ptolemy” who appears in papyri as co-ruler with Ptolemy II between 267 and 259, and with the son of Ptolemy who revolted from his father at Ephesos in 259 (?) (Athenaeus 593; Trogus, Prologues 26). Kallikrates: son of Boiskos of Samos; he was active in the Aegean in Ptolemy's service in the 270's and 260's. God and savior: Ptolemy I Soter. 22. LETTER OF ANTIOCHUS II TO ERYTHRAI Erythrai 31 (RC 15; OGIS 223) after 261 (?) It is not altogether certain whether the author of this letter is Antiochus I or II. On balance, the flattering tone of the letter (and the similar character of the gestures made by Erythrai) accord better with the beginning of a reign. It is, moreover, less likely to have been Antiochus 1, always at war, who remitted the Gallic war tax than his son, who will have been particularly anxious at the outset of his reign to secure the loyalty of important Greek cities (RC, p. 81; see, however, Habicht, Gottmenschentum2 96-99, where the letter is assigned to Antiochus I and seen in connection with 20). (The aim of the Gallic fund itself may have been either to meet actual war costs or to pay the Gauls to leave Antiochus and those places subject to him in peace.) After the king's letter was inscribed a decree of the Erythraians; of this little survives, as of the Erythraian decree (Erythrai 30) referred to by Antiochus at the beginning. King Antiochus to the boule and the demos of the Erythraians, greeting. Tharsynon and Pythes and Bottas, your envoys, delivered to us the decree by which you voted the honors and the crown with which you crowned us, and gave us likewise the gold intended as a gift of friendship. Having discoursed on the good-will which you have always held toward our house and on the gratitude which the people entertain toward all their benefactors, and likewise on the esteem in which the city has been held under the former kings, they asked with all earnestness and zeal that we should be friendly to you and should aid in advancing the city's interests in all that pertains to glory and honor. We have then accepted in a friendly spirit the honors and the crown and likewise the gift, and we praise you for being grateful in all things--for you seem generally to pursue this policy. We have therefore from the beginning continued to entertain good-will toward you, seeing that you act sincerely and honestly in all matters, and we are now even more attracted to you, recognizing your nobility from many other things and to no small extent from the decree which has been delivered to us and from what was said by the embassy. And since Tharsynon and Pythes and Bottas have shown that under Alexander and Antigonus your city was autonomous and free from tribute, while our ancestors were always zealous on its behalf; since we see that their judgment was just, and since we ourselves wish not to lag behind in conferring benefits, we shall help you to maintain your autonomy and we grant you exemption not only from other tribute but even from [the] contributions [to] the Gallic fund. You shall have also [... and] any other benefit which we may think of or [you ask for]. We call upon you also, remembering that [we have always] tried earnestly - - - good-will as is just and - - - consistent with your previous actions - - - that you will remember suitably [those by whom] you have been benefited. [More about these matters and] and the other questions which we discussed your envoys [will report to you], whom [we praise] both for their [other conduct and] especially for the concern they have shown [for the interests of the demos]. Farewell. 23. EUMENES I AND HIS MERCENARIES Staatsverträge 481 (OGIS 266) 263-241 At some point in his reign (perhaps more likely near the beginning than the end) Eumenes was faced with a mercenaries' revolt that evidently lasted for four months. The following inscription, found at Pergamon, contains the concessions made by Eumenes to bring an end to the trouble and the oaths sworn by Eumenes and the soldiers. Requests which Eumenes son of Philetairos granted to [the] soldiers [in] Philetairea. and to those in Attaleia. To pay as the cash value of the grain (allowance) four drachmas the medimnos, and of the wine (allowance) four drachmas the metretes. Concerning the year: that it be reckoned as having ten months, and he will not observe an intercalary (month). Concerning those who have rendered the full number (of campaigns) and who are not in service: That they receive the pay for the time they have served. Concerning the affairs of orphans: that the next of kin take them over, or the one to whom (the decedent) has left (them). Concerning taxes: that the freedom from taxes in the 44th year shall obtain. If anyone goes out of the service or asks to be dismissed, let him be released, removing his own belongings free of impost. Concerning the pay which was agreed for the four months: that the agreed amount be given, and let it not be reckoned as part of the (regular) pay. Concerning the “poplar-corps”: that they receive the grain for the period for which (they were granted) also the garland. Let him inscribe the oath and the agreement on four stone stelae, and let him set them up, one in Pergamon in the sanctuary of Athena, one in Gryneion, one in Delos, one in Mitylene in the (sanctuary) of Asklepios. The oath sworn by Paramonos and the commanders and the soldiers under them in Philetairea-under-Ida and Polylaos and the commanders and soldiers under him in Attaleia and Attinas (the) hipparch and the cavalrymen under him and Holoichos and the Trallians under him: “I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, Poseidon, Demeter, Ares, Athena Areia, and the Tauropolos, and all the other gods and goddesses. I settle with Eumenes, son of Philetairos, from the best motives, and I shall bear good-will toward him and his offspring, and I shall not plot against Eumenes, son of Philetairos, nor shall I take up arms against him nor shall I desert Eumenes, but I shall fight on his behalf and on behalf of his state as long as I am alive and until I die. And I shall provide other service with good-will and without hesitation, with all zeal to the best of my ability; and if I perceive anyone plotting against Eumenes, son of Philetairos, or otherwise acting against him or his state, I shall not allow (him) to the best of my ability, and I shall, immediately or as quickly as I am able, announce the one doing any of these things to Eumenes, son of Philetairos, or to whoever I consider will most quickly reveal it to him. And I shall preserve, if I take anything over from him, either city or garrison or ships or money or anything else that may be handed over to me, and I shall return (it) correctly and justly to Eumenes son of Philetairos or to whomever he may command, provided he does what has been agreed. I shall not accept letters from the enemy, and I shall not receive an ambassador nor myself send (such) to them; and if anyone brings (letters) to me, I shall take them, sealed, and I shall lead the one who brought them as quickly as I am able to Eumenes son of Philetairos, or I shall take (them) and lead (him) to whoever I consider will most quickly reveal (the matter) to him. And I shall not deal fraudulently regarding this oath by any means or pretext whatsoever. And I release Eumenes the son of Attalus from the oath, and also those who swore with him, when the matters agreed upon have been carried out. And may it be well for me and mine if I keep my oath and remain in good-will towards Eumenes son of Philetairos, but if I should break the oath or transgress any of the agreements, may I and my line be accursed. Oath of Eumenes: I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, Poseidon, Apollo, Demeter, Ares, Athena Areia, and the Tauropolos, and all the other gods and goddesses. I shall maintain good-will towards Paramonos and the commanders and the others under pay in the command in Philetaireia-under-Ida, those under the orders of Paramonos, and towards Arkes, and towards the garrisons under him, and towards Philonides and towards those serving without pay who have joined in swearing the oath and towards all that is theirs and towards Polylaos and the commanders and all other soldiers placed under his command in Attaleia, infantry and cavalry and Trallians, as long as they campaign with us; and I shall not plot, nor shall anyone else on my account, nor shall I betray them or [anything of] what is theirs to any enemy, [neither those in charge (?)] of them nor those chosen by the rank and file, in any way or under any pretext whatsoever, nor shall I carry [arms] against (them), nor - - - Intercalary month: The reference is to the military year of ten months for which the mercenaries were engaged. 44th year: The Seleucid era was used by Eumenes; year 44 = 269/8; the freedom from taxes was granted originally by Philetairos. Poplar-corps: Soldiers awarded a garland of poplar. Eumenes the son of Attalus: This is likely Eumenes' cousin, son of his father's brother. It has been suggested that he was taken prisoner by the soldiers and a promise exacted from him on oath. 24. BERENIKE'S JOURNEY TO SYRIA P. Cair. Zen. II 59251 252 Part of the agreement between Ptolemy II and Antiochus II that ended the Second Syrian War (259-253) was the marriage of the latter to Ptolemy's daughter Berenike, thus displacing Antiochus' first queen, Laodike, and preparing the dynastic rivalry in the Seleucid house that erupted into the Third Syrian War on the death of Antiochus. Ptolemy accompanied his daughter as far as Pelusium, the eastern edge of Egypt, and the dioiketes Apollonios escorted her, with an undoubtedly large retinue and her enormous dowry, as far as the Syrian border between Ptolemaic and Seleucid possessions. During the return journey, Artemidoros, the private physician of the finance minister, writes as follows to Zenon with various requests. On Apollonios' agent Zenon, who appears in many papyri in this volume, see M. Rostovtzeff, A Large Estate in Egypt (Madison 1922); Cl. Préaux, Les Grecs en Égypte d’après les archives de Zénon (Bruxelles 1947); Cl. Orrieux, Les papyrus de Zénon (1983). Artemidoros to Zenon, greeting. If you are well, it would be excellent. I too am well, and Apollonios is in good health, and other things are satisfactory. As I write to you, we have just arrived in Sidon after accompanying the queen as far as the border, and I expect to be with you soon. You will please me by taking care of yourself so that you may be well and by writing to me if you want anything that I can do for you. And please buy me, so that I may get them when I arrive, three metretai of the best honey and 600 artabas of barley for the animals, paying the price of these things from the sesame and kroton; and please take care of the house in Philadelphia so that I may find it roofed when I arrive. Try also as best you can to keep watch on the oxen and the pigs and the geese and the rest of the livestock there, for in this way I shall have a better supply of provisions. And take care that the crops are harvested in some manner, and if any outlay is necessary, do not hesitate to pay what is necessary. Farewell. Year 33, intercalary Peritios 6. (Address) to Zenon. To Philadelphia. (Docket) Year 33, Phamenoth 6. Artemidoros. The translation is in the main that of Sel.Pap. 93. Sidon was the most northern of the major port cities of the Ptolemaic province of Syria and Phoenicia. 25. CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT A SALE OF LAND BY ANTIOCHUS II TO THE DIVORCED QUEEN LAODIKE RC 18-20 (OGIS 225 +) 254/3 This dossier, from the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma, containing a letter of Antiochus II and two letters of subordinate Seleucid officials, deals with the sale of a tract of land in Asia Minor to his recently divorced wife Laodike. At the time preparations were being made for the dynastic marriage of Antiochus to Berenike, daughter of Ptolemy II of Egypt (see 24). The price paid, 30 talents, is minimal for land estimated at 15,000 ha (cf. RC, p. 96), but the effect of the sale was to remove the property from the royal domain and turn it into privately owned land in the territory of a city (cf. 18). A gift would have been potentially revocable by the king. The extensive publicity to be given the transaction seems also to have been aimed at guaranteeing Laodike's ownership of the property. The dossier as inscribed begins with what remains of the covering letter (19) of Metrophanes, who was governor of the Hellespontine satrapy, in which the land was located, or dioiketes of the kingdom (Bengtson, Strategie II, 103). This was addressed to the hyparch of the district. Then came the royal letter (18) and the required survey report (20) of the hyparch. Lost is the letter of the oikonomos referred to in the hyparch's report, which originally stood before the others. [ - - - the copy of the edict written] by him [ - I and to the other [ - - - to place] the stelae in [the designated cities. Do you] then in accordance with the letter of the [king] place the contract and give orders to have the deed of sale and the survey inscribed on two stone stelae, and of these to set up the one in Ephesos in the sanctuary of Artemis and the other in Didyma in the sanctuary of Apollo, and to supply from the royal treasury the money required for this. Let it be your care that the stelae be erected as soon as possible, and when it is done write to us also. We have written to Timoxenos the archivist to file the deed of sale and the survey in the royal records at Sardes, as the king has directed. [Year 59,] Daisios. King Antiochus to Metrophanes, greeting. We have sold to Laodike (the village) Pannoukome and the manor-house and the land belonging to the village, bounded by the land of Zelia and by that of Kyzikos and by the old road which used to run above Pannoukome, but which has been plowed up [by the] neighboring farmers so that they might take the place for themselves--the present Pan[noukome] was formed afterward--and any hamlets there may be in this land, and the folk who live there with their households and all their property, and with the income of [the] fifty-ninth year, at (a price of) thirty talents of silver--so also any of the folk of this village who have moved away into other places--on the terms that she will pay no taxes to the royal treasury and that she will have the right to join the land to any city she wishes; in the same way also any who buy or receive it from her will have the same right and will join it to whatever city they wish unless Laodike has already joined it to a city, in which case they will own the land as part of the territory (of the city) to which it has been joined by Laodike. We have given orders to make payment in the treasury at. . in three installments, the first in the month Audnaios in the sixtieth year, the second in Xandikos, the third in the following three months. Give orders to convey to Arrhidaios, the manager of Laodike's property, the village and the manor-house and the land belonging to it and the folk with their households and all their property, and to have the sale entered in the royal records in Sardes, and inscribed on five stelae; (give orders) to erect the first in Ilion in the sanctuary of Athena, another in the sanctuary at Samothrace, another in Ephesos in the sanctuary of Artemis, the fourth in Didyma in the sanctuary of Apollo, and the fifth in Sardes in the sanctuary of Artemis; and (give orders) to survey the land immediately and to mark it with boundary stones, and [to inscribe] the boundaries of the land also on the stelae [just mentioned. Farewell. Year 59], the fifth of Dios. [The copy of] the [survey. ---] Pannou[kome and the manor-house and the land belonging to it and the] peasants [who live there, and there has been conveyed] to Arrhidaios the manager of Laodike's property by [ ... ] krates the hyparch, the village and the manor-house and the [land] belonging to it, according to the written order of Nikomachos the oikonomos to which were subjoined that from Metrophanes and that from the king which had been written to him, according to which it was necessary to make the survey: from the east, from the land of Zelia by land of Kyzikos, the ancient royal road which runs to Pannoukome above the village and the manor-house this was pointed out by Menekrates the son of Bacchios of Pythokome, it having been plowed up by the (peasants) living next to the place; from this to the altar of Zeus which lies above the manor-house and which is, like the tomb, on the right of the road; from the tomb the royal road itself which leads through the Eupannese to the river Aisepos. [The] land has been marked with stelae according to the boundaries as pointed out. Daisios: May, 253. All their property: The royal peasants were attached to the land. When the property became privately owned and attached to a city, their position would be that of non-citizen residents of the city. Audnaios in the sixtieth year: December, 253. Xandikos: March, 252. Dios: October, 254. 26. PTOLEMY III EUERGETES: THE ADOULIS INSCRIPTION OGIS 54 ca. 246 This inscription, the text of which survives thanks to the copy made of it at Adoulis on the Arabian Gulf by the sixth-century monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, commemorates the campaign made by Ptolemy III at the opening of his reign. His opponent was Seleucus II, who had himself just come to the throne. The conflict, the Third Syrian War, is known also as the Laodikean war, after Laodike, whom Antiochus II had set aside in order to marry Berenike, daughter of Ptolemy II (cf. 24-25). After the death of Antiochus II, Laodike's son succeeded him as Seleucus II, and she forthwith saw to the murder of Berenike and her infant son at Antioch. Ptolemy, too late to save his sister (cf. 27), immediately undertook a march into the Asian heartland of the Seleucid realm. This campaign is referred to also by Jerome in his commentary on the Book of Daniel (11.8): “and he (Ptolemy) came with a great army, and entered into the province of the king of the north, i.e., Seleucus called Callinicus, who was reigning in Syria with his mother Laodice, and dealt masterfully with them and obtained so much as to take Syria and Cilicia and the upper parts across the Euphrates, and almost all Asia. And when he heard that a rebellion was afoot in Egypt, plundering the kingdom of Seleucus he took. 40,000 talents of silver and costly vases, and 2,500 images of the gods, among which were those Cambyses had carried away to Persia when Egypt was taken.” (Cf. also Bevan, House of Ptolemy 192 f f .). Great King Ptolemy, son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe the Brother and Sister Gods, the children of King Ptolemy and Queen Berenike the Savior Gods, descendant on the paternal side of Herakles the son of Zeus, on the maternal of Dionysos the son of Zeus, having inherited from his father the kingdom of Egypt and Libya and Syria and Phoenicia and Cyprus and Lycia and Caria and the Cyclades islands led a campaign into Asia with infantry and cavalry and fleet and Troglodytic and Ethiopian elephants, which he and his father were the first to hunt from these lands and, bringing them back into Egypt, to fit out for military service. Having become master of all the land this side of the Euphrates and of Cilicia and Pamphylia and Ionia and the Hellespont and Thrace and of all the forces and Indian elephants in these lands, and having made subject all the princes in the (various) regions, he crossed the Euphrates river and after subjecting to himself Mesopotamia and Babylonia and Sousiane and Persis and Media and all the rest of the land up to Bactriane and having sought out all the temple belongings that had been carried out of Egypt by the Persians and having brought them back with the rest of the treasure from the (various) regions he sent (his) forces to Egypt through the canals that had been dug ---. Brother-and Sister Gods: Ptolemy 11 Philadelphos and Arsinoe, his wife and (half-)sister. Savior Gods: Ptolemy I Soter and Berenike. Dionysos son of Zeus: The line is counted as descended from Herakles, son of Zeus, through Hyllos. The latter was the son of Herakles and Deianeira, the daughter of Dionysos and Althaia. Libya: This refers primarily to Cyrene. Syria: I.e., Coele-Syria. Lycia: The southern shore of Asia Minor, with the exception of Pamphylia and Cilicia, was under Ptolemaic control. Cyclades: Cf. Syll.3 390 on Ptolemaic control of the Aegean islands. Euphrates and Cilicia: See the passage of Jerome quoted above. Pamphylia: Cf. Polybius 5.34 for Pamphylia under Ptolemaic control early in the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator. Ionia: Cf. Polybius 5.35 for Ephesos (and Samos) in the reign of Philopator, also 5.34. Hellespont: Cf. Polybius 5.34. Indian elephants: The Seleucids employed Indian elephants. On the Ptolemaic elephant-corps cf. 101. Bactriane: On the eastern expedition, cf. the passage of Jerome quoted above. According to Justin (27. 1), Ptolemy, “unless he had been recalled to Egypt by a domestic rebellion, would have taken over the entire kingdom of Seleucus.” Cf. Polyaenus 8.50 for the statement that Ptolemy succeeded by a ruse in gaining power from the Tauros to India without a fight, and Jerome (loc.cit.) for the report that Ptolemy handed over the provinces across the Euphrates to Xanthippos to govern. Brought them back: Cf. Jerome (quoted above) and the Canopus decree of 239/8 (136). It may be noted that the first two Ptolemies are also credited in Egyptian inscriptions with the same accomplishment. 27. REPORT ON THE THIRD SYRIAN WAR This much-discussed papyrus contains a report, damaged in many places, of military operations by the Ptolemaic armed forces against those of the Seleucid Queen Laodike in the early part of the Third Syrian War (cf. 25), as Ptolemy III, who is himself the writer here, advanced to support the claims of his sister Berenike. Ptolemy reports that Berenike had, while one of Ptolemy's officers was conquering some Seleucid city, given orders for some 1500 talents of silver in Soloi to be captured and brought to Seleukia, which they succeeded in doing, with the help of the people of Soloi. The Seleucid strategos, trying to escape across the Tauros to Ephesos, was beheaded by the natives. Ptolemy then arrived in Seleukia to a tumultuous welcome, but left soon for Antioch, where a similar greeting met him, and where he found Berenike. This passage has aroused much controversy, because ancient authors assert that Berenike was dead when Ptolemy arrived in Antioch; the present passage is rather enigmatic: Berenike may well have been dead, which would explain why she was not active in this welcoming scene; or perhaps the king was trying to conceal her death from his readers, in order to use her as a living weapon for political propaganda in Asia, which he in fact did. The restorations are in places conjectural and the translation not entirely certain. - - - and asking him [to do] nothing in violation of the treaty or hostile, he said that the [benevolence] on our part and [that of our sister (?)] would be evident [to them for the future], and after this, [giving] his right hand [to them and] putting Epigenes in charge of the [citadel and handing] the city [over to him], at daybreak - - - At the same time Pythagoras [and Aristokles, with five (?)] ships, when our sister sent orders to them, … and sailing along the coast to Cilician Soloi, they took up the money collected there and transported it to Seleukia, it being 1500 talents [of silver, which] Aribazos, the strategos in Cilicia was planning to send to Ephesos to Laodike, but since the Soleians and the soldiers there agreed with one another and with the strong assistance of Pythagoras and Aristokles . . ., and since they were all brave men, it happened that the money was captured and the city and citadel came into our hands. But after Aribazos had escaped and was approaching the pass of the Tauros, some of the natives in the area cut off his head and brought it to Antioch. [But] when we. . affairs on the [ships], at the beginning of the first watch, we embarked onto as many ships as the harbor in Seleukia would hold and sailed along the coast to the fort called Posideon and anchored about the eighth hour of the day. From there, early the next morning we weighed anchor and arrived at Seleukia. The priests and the magistrates and the other citizens and the commanders and the soldiers crowned themselves (with garlands) and met us on the [road] to the harbor, and [no extravagance of] good-will and [friendship toward us was lacking.] [And when we arrived] in the city, [the private individuals asked us to sacrifice the] victims offered [on the altars] they had built [by their houses] and [the sacred heralds] announced the honors in the Emporion. This day [we spent in the city], but on the next... [and embarking on the ships ] all those who had [sailed with us and the] soldiers (corrected to: satraps) from there and the generals [and the other] commanders, as many as were not stationed in the city and the [citadel with the] garrison... Afterwards, [we arrived] at Antioch. [And there] we saw such a preparation (for our arrival) and so [great a mass of the populace] that we were astonished. For the satraps and other commanders and the soldiers and the priests and the colleges of magistrates and all the young men from the gymnasium and the rest of the crowd, crowned (with garlands), [came to meet] us outside the gate, and they led all the sacrificial victims to the road in front [of the gate], and some welcomed us with their hands while others [greeted us] with applause and applause - - - (15 lines lost or damaged). For discussion see M. Holleaux, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire grecques III 281-310, with bibliographical additions by L. Robert; subsequent discussions add little. The best text is W.Chr. 1, but a number of the somewhat conjectural restorations of Holleaux, especially in column III, have been translated in brackets as representing in all probability the correct sense. Numerous problems exist in the text but cannot be discussed here; some have been decided without explanation, others avoided as too uncertain. Aribazos: Representing the "legitimate" Seleucid government and Laodike. Posideon: A harbor at the mouth of the Orontes river. On the phenomenon of private altars and offerings in conjunction with civic cults (as in 16) see the remarks of L. Robert in Essays Welles (New Haven 1966) 175-211. 28. DELPHI, SMYRNA, AND SELEUCUS II OGIS 228 242 (?) This and 29 emanate from the time of the Third Syrian War (246-241) and provide an insight into the situation of Seleucus II in Asia Minor, and especially into the attitude of the city of Smyrna and its actions on his behalf. In gratitude for its strenuous support Seleucus wrote to "the kings and the dynasts and the cities and the leagues" (29), asking them to confirm as sacred and inviolable Smyrna and its sanctuary of Aphrodite Stratonikis. The present inscription (found at Delphi) contains the favorable response accorded the request by the Delphians. Gods. [Resolved by the] city of the Delphians: Whereas King Seleucus, son of King [Antioch]us, having sent a letter to the city, requests that the temple of Aphrodite Stratonikis and the city of the Smyrnaeans be sacred and inviolable (and whereas) he himself, having obeyed the oracle of the god" and having done what he requests of the city, has granted to the Smyrnaeans that their city and land should be free and not subject to tribute, and guarantees to them their existing land and promises to return their fatherland;" and (whereas) the Smyrnaeans, having sent as ambassadors Hermodoros and Demetrios, ask that the things granted to them be inscribed in the temple, as the king requests, be it resolved by the city of the Delphians, that the temple of Aphrodite Stratonikis and the city of the Smyrnaeans is to be sacred and inviolable, just as the king has sent (to ask) [and] the city of the Smyrnaeans requests. And it has been enjoined upon the theoroi announcing the Pythia" to praise King Seleucus for these things and for his piety and for his having acted in accordance with the oracle of the god, and to sacrifice to Aphrodite. (Resolved also) for the city to have this decree inscribed in the sanctuary of the god, and the letter on the wall of the magistrates' building. Oracle of the god: It was in response to an oracle of Apollo that a temple was dedicated to Aphrodite Stratonikis: cf. Tacitus, Annals 3.63. Fatherland: The Smyrnaeans had apparently been driven from their city and forced to settle elsewhere. This is, curiously, not among the troubles they refer to in 29. Pythia: During Seleucus' reign the Pythian games were held in 246, 242, 238, 234, 230, and 226 (he may have been dead by this time in 226, however). The ones mentioned here seem best taken as being those of 242 (cf. 29). 29. MAGNESIA, SMYRNA, AND SELEUCUS II Staatsverträge 492 (OGIS 229) soon after 242 (?) The opening phases of the Third Syrian War were marked by successes on the part of Ptolemy III (see 26). When Seleucus II crossed the Tauros mountains in 246 to meet the invader in Seleukis, trouble arose at Magnesia-by-Sipylos, where the soldiers (at least) revolted from Seleucus. This led immediately to war between Magnesia and Smyrna, which remained steadfast in its loyalty to the Seleucid cause and which for a time got much the worst of the fighting. A cessation of hostilities was arranged by the time Seleucus again crossed over into Seleukis (242?), and this was followed by a more permanent (and quite favorable for Smyrna and Seleucus) reconciliation by which Magnesia was effectively absorbed into Smyrna. The inscription contains three separate, but closely related in time and substance, elements. (A) is a decree of Smyrna dealing with the negotiations between the city and the soldiers at Magnesia. (B) is the text of the agreement negotiated between them, according to which those at Magnesia became citizens of Smyrna. (C) is the decree of Smyrna by which the city absorbed also the fortress at Old Magnesia and the forces there. As remarkable as the vigorous efforts of Smyrna on Seleucus' behalf is the authority he evidently gave the city to act independently in his interest. Resolved by the demos, proposal of the strategoi. Whereas previously, at the time when King Seleucus crossed over into Seleukis, when many and great perils beset our city and territory, the demos maintained its good-will and friendship toward him, not terrified at the attack of the enemy nor caring about the destruction of its property, but reckoning everything to be secondary to standing by its policy and to supporting his state to the best of its ability, as has been its way from the beginning; wherefore King Seleucus too, being disposed piously toward the gods and lovingly toward his parents, being magnanimous and knowing how to return gratitude to those who benefit him, honored our city, both on account of the good-will of the demos and the zeal which it evinced for his state and on account of the fact that his father the god Antiochus and the mother of his father the goddess Stratonike are established among us and honored with substantial honors by the people in common and by each of the citizens individually, and he confirmed for the demos its autonomy and democracy, and he wrote to the kings and the dynasts and the cities and the leagues, asking that the temple of Aphrodite Stratonikis be (recognized as) inviolable and our city (as) sacred and inviolable. And now, when the king had crossed over into Seleukis, the strategoi, anxious for affairs to remain in a state beneficial to the king, sent to the katoikoi in Magnesia and to the cavalry and infantry in open camp and dispatched from among themselves Dionysios to call upon them to maintain forever the friendship and the alliance with King Seleucus, promising that, if they preserved his state and had the same enemy and friend, they would have from the demos and from King Seleucus all kindness and noble things and that gratitude worthy of their policy would be returned to them. Those in Magnesia, being called upon and being themselves eager to maintain the friendship and the alliance with the king and to preserve his state for him, zealously accepted what was asked by the strategoi and promised to hold the same policy toward our demos in all matters of benefit to King Seleucus, and they have dispatched to us envoys, from the katoikoi Potamon and [Hi]erokles, from those in open camp Damon and Apolloniketes, to speak with us and to convey the agreement by which they ask that the (treaty of) friendship be concluded with them; and the envoys, brought before the demos, have discoursed on all matters, in accordance with what was written in the agreement; with good fortune, be it resolved to conclude the (treaty) of friendship with those in Magnesia on all terms of benefit to King Seleucus, and to appoint three envoys (to go) with them, who shall convey the agreement that the demos may decide, and who shall speak about what is written in it and call upon them to accept and to carry out what is written in the agreement; and if those in Magnesia accept (it), let the envoys who shall have been appointed administer to them the oath written in the agreement; and when those in Magnesia have accepted these things and have sealed the agreement and sworn the oath and the envoys have returned, 'let all the rest of the things written in the agreement be carried out, and let this decree be inscribed according to the law; and let it be inscribed [on] stelae on which also the agreement shall be inscribed. And let the epimenioi of the boule invite the envoys who have come from Magnesia to be received as guests in the prytaneion. And let Kallinos the treasurer give to the envoys appointed (the) travel-allowance (specified) by [law] for as many days as the demos assigns. Five days were assigned; appointed as ambassadors were Phanodemos son of Mik[ion], Dionysios son of Dionytas, Parmeniskos son of Pytheas. In the priesthood of Hegesias, the stephanephorate of Pythodoros, the month Lenaion; with good fortune: On the following terms the Smyrnaeans (on the one side) and (on the other) the katoikoi in Magnesia, both the cavalry and the infantry in the city, and [those] in open camp and the other inhabitants concluded the (treaty of) friendship, and the Smyrnaeans gave citizenship to the katoikoi in Magnesia, the cavalry and infantry in the city, and to those in open camp and to the (others who] live in the city, on the condition that those in Magnesia preserve with all zeal for all time for King Seleucus the alliance and good-will toward the affairs of King Seleucus, and that they return to King Seleucus as much as they have received from King Seleucus, after guarding (it) to the extent of their ability. They shall be citizens with the Smyrnaeans according to the laws of the city, without faction and reckoning the same as enemy and friend as the Smyrnaeans. Those in Magnesia shall swear to the Smyrnaeans and the Smyrnaeans to those in Magnesia, each of them the oath written below in the agreement. When the oaths have been carried out, let all the accusations that arose in the course of the war be done away with, and let it not be possible for either side to bring accusations about what happened during the war either through a court case or in any other way at all; otherwise, let every accusation brought be invalid. Citizenship in Smyrna, on equal terms and the same as for the other citizens, is to be given to the katoikoi in Magnesia, the cavalry and infantry in the city, and to those in open camp. Citizenship is likewise to be given to the others [who] live in Magnesia, as many as may be free and Greeks. Let those who are secretaries of the (military) divisions deliver to the demos the registers of the cavalry and infantry in Magnesia, both those in the city and those in open camp, and (let) the men appointed by the katoikoi in Magnesia (deliver to the demos) the list of the other inhabitants. When the secretaries provide the registers and the appointed men the list of the other inhabitants, let the exetastai have them swear on oath at the metroon over freshly sacrificed victims, [the] secretaries that they have from the best motive brought the list of the katoikoi really with them, cavalry and infantry, [both those] drawn up [in the city and those in] open camp; the men who bring the list of the [other inhabitants, that they have from the best motive brought the list of those who] live in Magnesia and who are really free and Greeks. Let [the] exetastai hand over the [lists] that have been brought to the record-keeper of the boule and the demos, and let him deposit (them) in the public archive. Let the exetastai assign all the names that have been brought to tribes by lot and enter them in the allotment-lists, I I I and let those entered in the allotment-lists share in everything in which the other citizens share. Let the enrolled citizens use the laws of the Smyrnaeans in contract and injury cases involving Smyrnaeans, even in Magnesia. And let them accept also in Magnesia the coin of the city as legal. And let those in Magnesia receive the magistrate whom the demos may send to have control of the keys and to be in charge of the protection of the city and to preserve the city for King Seleucus. And let the Smyrnaeans provide for lodging to those of the ones from Magnesia who are building houses as many beds as the demos may decide, for six months from the time the agreement is sealed; let the treasurer of the sacred revenues, with the strategoi, lease the houses and provide the expense from the revenues of the city. The katoikoi of Magnesia, both the cavalry and the infantry in the city, and those in open camp, and the others who are being enrolled in the state are to swear the following oath: “I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, Ares, Athena Areia and the Tauropolos, and the Sipylene Mother, and Apollo in Pandoi, and all the other gods and goddesses, and the fortune of King Seleucus: I shall abide by the agreements which I conclude with the Smyrnaeans for all time; and I shall preserve the alliance and good-will toward King Seleucus and the city of the Smyrnaeans; and I shall preserve what I have received from King Seleucus to the extent of my ability and shall return (it) to King Seleucus; and I shall transgress nothing of what is in the agreement, nor shall I change for the worse the things written in it, in any way or on any pretext whatsoever; and I shall be a citizen, with concord and without faction, according to the laws of the Smyrnaeans and the decrees of the demos, and I shall join in preserving the autonomy and the democracy, and the other things which have been granted to the Smyrnaeans by King Seleucus, with all zeal and at all times, and I shall not wrong any one of them, nor shall I allow another (to do so), to the extent of my ability; and if I perceive anyone plotting against the city, or the territories of the city, or seeking to subvert the democracy or the isonomia, I shall reveal (this) to the demos of the Smyrnaeans and shall go to its aid, contending with all zeal, and shall not desert it, to the extent of my ability. May it be well for me if I abide by this oath, but if I break it may there be ruin for myself and for the family sprung from me.” The Smyrnaeans are to swear to those from Magnesia the following oath: “I swear by Zeus, Ge, Helios, Ares, Athena Areia, and the Tauropolos, and the Sipylene Mother, and Aphrodite Stratonikis, and all the other gods and goddesses: I shall abide for all time by the treaty which we have concluded with the katoikoi [in] Magnesia, the cavalry and infantry in the city, and those in open camp and the others who are being enrolled in the state, transgressing nothing of what is in the agreement nor changing for the worse the things written in it, by no device and on no pretext whatsoever. And I shall bear good-will both toward King Seleucus and toward the katoikoi in Magnesia, those in the city and those in open camp, and (toward) the others who live [in] Magnesia, as many as are free and Greeks, and I shall make them all citizens, (them) and their descendants, on equal terms and the same as for the other citizens, and assigning them by lot to tribes I shall enter them in the one each may draw by lot, and I shall not wrong any one of them nor shall I allow another (to do so), to the extent of my ability. And if I perceive anyone plotting against them or their descendants or their property, I shall reveal this as quickly as I can, and shall lend support with zeal. And I shall give them the right to share in the magistracies and the other public affairs of the city in which also the other citizens share. May it be well for me if I abide by this oath, but if I do not may there be ruin for myself and the family sprung from me.” Let the Smyrnaeans and those from Magnesia appoint men, [each of them as many as] each may reckon to be sufficient, to administer the oath to the peoples of those in Smyrna and of those in Magnesia. [Let them administer the oath after announcing] on the previous day that those in the city are to be present for the completion of the oath specified in the agreement. Let those appointed from Magnesia administer [the oath written above] to the Smyrnaeans, and those from Smyrna to those in Magnesia. In Smyrna let [the treasurer Kal]linos provide the victims for the oath-swearing from what the demos may decree, in Magnesia the treasurers to whom the people may assign the task. And let the Smyrnaeans have the agreement inscribed on [white stone] stelae and set up in the sanctuary of Aphrodite Stratonikis and in Magnesia-on-the-Maeander in the sanctuary of Artemis [Leukophrye]ne, and (let) the katoikoi in Magnesia (have it inscribed and set up) in the agora by the altar of Dionysos and the statues of the kings, and in Pandoi in [the sanctuary of] Apollo, and in Gryneion in the sanctuary of Apollo. And let the record keeper of the boule and the demos have the copies of the agreement entered [in] the public archive. And let those whom the koinon of those in Magnesia may appoint seal the (copy of the) agreement which is to be given to the Smyrnaeans with their own seals and with the existing public seal, and let the strategoi and the exetastai of the Smyrnaeans seal the one to be given to Magnesia with the seal of the city and with their own. Let these matters be carried out by both peoples with good fortune. Resolved by the demos, proposal of the strategoi: whereas the demos, taking forethought for all the things of benefit to King Seleucus, formerly continued to join in strengthening his kingdom and to preserve his state insofar as it could, and endured the loss and destruction of much of its property and withstood many dangers for the sake of preserving its friendship toward King Seleucus, and now, being eager to join in preserving for him and holding together his state as far as is possible, (the demos) has concluded a (treaty of) friendship with the katoikoi in Magnesia and the cavalry and infantry soldiers in open camp and the others who live in Magnesia, in order that they might maintain the alliance and good-will of King Seleucus; reckoning it to be necessary for the city to take over also the place Old Magnesia and to make a guardpost with it, in order that, with this taken over as well, all the important affairs might remain (solid) for King Seleucus, they (the demos) sent to those living in the place and called upon them to choose friendship toward King Seleucus and to hand over the keys to the magistrate sent by the demos and to accept the guard-force which will join with them in maintaining the place for King Seleucus, promising that, if they do these things, they will have from the city all the kindnesses and noble things; those living in the place chose with all zeal friendship for King Seleucus and accepted the requests made by the demos and handed over the keys to the magistrate sent by the demos and received into the place the guard-force from the city: with good fortune, be it resolved that they are to be citizens and to have all the same things the other citizens have, and that they are to have, free from the tithe, their allotments, the two which the god and savior Antiochus, granted them and about which Alexander has written; and if the territory, which the katoikoi who were previously in Magnesia hold, is joined to our city, they are to have the three allotments as a gift and are to keep their present freedom from taxes; and as many of them as are without allotments, (resolved) for a cavalryman's allotment to be given them from the (lands) located by the place; and Timon and the infantry under Timon, who have been assigned from the phalanx to the guard-force of the place, are to have citizenship and the same freedom from taxes [which] also the others have, and they are to be in the place; and Omanes, and the Persians under Omanes, and those sent from Smyrna to guard the place--Menekles and those under him--are to have citizenship and the other kindnesses which have been decreed also for the others from Magnesia, and the demos is to take thought as to how the drink and food allowances, and as many other things as used to be given to them from the royal treasury, may be given to them from the royal treasury. (Resolved) to have this decree inscribed on the stelae which will be set up in the sanctuaries by the demos and [by those] from Magnesia; and for it to be recorded in the public archives as well. God Antiochus: Antiochus I Soter. Goddess Stratonike: The daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, married first to Seleucus I and then to his son, Antiochus (I). Established among us: I.e., have cults at Smyrna. Sacred and inviolable: Cf. 28. Katoikoi: The word applies to military settlers. Some of them were resident in Magnesia itself and some were evidently encamped nearby. It may be that a disagreement had arisen between the two groups; just below they are seen each to have sent their own envoys to Smyrna. Allotment-lists: The lists from which jurors, etc. were selected by lot. Isonomia: Literally, “equality before the law,” often a synonym for democracy. Old Magnesia: A fortress near Magnesia. God and savior Antiochus: Antiochus I; the designation is indicative of cultic honors. Alexander: A minister, or governor, of Antiochus I, perhaps identical with the brother of Seleucus' wife Laodike who supported Antiochus Hierax against Seleucus in the War of the Brothers. Three allotments: The original one plus the two granted by Antiochus I. Cavalryman’s allotment: A special favor, as this would be larger than an infantryman's. 30. DECREE OF THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE Staatsverträge 499 (Syll.3 1490) ca. 234 During the 230's a number of Peloponnesian cities joined the Achaean League upon the abdication of their pro-Macedonian tyrants (cf. Polybius 2.44.4 f. for Megalopolis, Argos, Hermione, and Phlious). That the same thing happened at Orchomenos is made most likely by the present inscription (found near Orchomenos), which contains measures taken by the Achaeans to deal with certain difficulties existing at Orchomenos when it joined the league. Orchomenos subsequently joined the Aetolian League, fell under the control of Kleomenes of Sparta in 228 (Pol. 2.46) and then of Antigonus Doson (Pol. 2.54). In 199 it re-entered the Achaean League (Livy 32.5). [ - ] transgresses [ - ] sends [ - ] if a magistrate [ - ] or a private citizen casts his vote that --- [let him owe as a fine] thirty talents sacred to Zeus [Amarios, and let it be open to anyone who so wishes] to bring a capital [charge] before the koinon [of the Achaeans. Let] the Orchomenians and the Achaeans [swear] the same [oath] as follows, in [Aigion the synhedroi (? or damiourgoi) of the Achaeans and the strat]egos and the hipparch and the nauarch, in [Orchomenos the magistrates of the Orchomenians]: “I swear by Zeus Amarios, Athena Amaria, Aphrodite, and [all the] gods (that) I shall in all respects abide by the stele and the agreement and the decree [passed by the koinon] of the Achaeans; and if anyone does not so abide, I shall prevent him to the best of my ability. To me if I keep this oath may good things befall, (to me) if I break it, the opposite.” It shall not be permitted for anyone of those who obtain a lot or a house in Or[chomenos] after they (the Orchomenians) have become Achaeans to alienate it within a period of twenty years. If there existed from the time before the Orchomenians became Achaeans any charge against Nearchos or his sons, let all such charges be null and void; and no one shall [seek a judgment against (?)] Nearchos or his sons nor shall Nearchos or any of his sons (seek a judgment) on any charges existing before the Orchomenians became Achaeans; anyone who seeks such a judgment shall pay a fine of 1000 drachmas, and the judgment shall be invalid. Concerning [the] golden (statue of) Victory from (the sanctuary of) Zeus Hoplismios, which the Methydrians deposited as security for the money which the Methydrians [who) moved to Orchomenos then divided up among themselves, and which some of them (subsequently) [brought back to Methydrion]: if they do not return the money to the Megalopolitans, even as [the] city of the Orchomenians has [granted], those who do not act justly are to be liable to prosecution. Abide by the stele: The stele commemorating the admission of Orchomenos into the League. Cf. Polybius 2.41.12; also 23.18.1 for reference to another such stele. Nearchos: In all likelihood Nearchos was a tyrant of Orchomenos who abdicated peacefully when Orchomenos joined the League. Cf. Polybius 2.41-44. Liable to prosecution: “Methydrion was one of those towns which ceased to be independent when Megalopolis was founded and instead came to form part of the territory of Megalopolis. A short time, however, before Orchomenos joined the Achaean League, the Methydrians attempted to regain their former autonomy; when the venture was initially successful, they borrowed money required for the defense of the city, giving the golden statue of Victory as security. A short while later, when the Megalopolitans had regained Methydrion, the leaders of the revolt fled to Orchomenos, which was not yet an Achaean city [as was Megalopolis from ca. 235], and there divided up among themselves the borrowed money. When the Orchomenians themselves became Achaeans, they were bound to assist the Megalopolitans in regaining their own property.” (Dittenberger).	204,423
Algae cleanup in Fushan Bay before the start of racing on Day 4 of the 2008 Olympics Greetings from Qingdao, on this the fourth day of the 2008 Sailing Olympics. On our arrival at the Media Centre today, it seemed that the Normandy Landing was being re-enacted on Fushan Bay. Immediately in front of the said Media Centre, about 70 boats were gathered netting green algae from the water. With single cylinder diesels thunking away in low revs, they cruised the bay slowly, each with a man on the deck armed with what we Kiwis would call a whitebait net. A quick count of boats in the immediate vicinity quickly reached 70, of what are described locally as traditional fishing boats, but are probably known in non-Asian circles as sampans. These are not the sort of craft you'd be taking the wife and kids away for a weekend in the Hauraki Gulf, but are very functional work boats, and which are probably reasonably seaworthy provided a port is close to hand, and the motor is running. The fleet were packed into a 300 metre circle and it looked almost possible to walk across the fleet. A scan of the horizon showed another five fleets working the coast - given that our count of 70 was accurate, and that the other fleets were a similar size - that made about 350 boats dealing to the Qingdao Green. A fleet of work boats deal to the Qingdao Green. The matter of whether there were sufficient resources available to deal with the green sea weed, was taken up at today's Media Conference. Staggeringly organisers didn't seem too worried about the situation, saying they had a fleet of around 1200 fishing boats available if required - meaning that what we were looking at through the windows, was just a quarter of the resource available. Apparently the phenomenon is expected to ease as the water temperature changes, and subject to regular sweeping it is expected to remain under control. The fleet moved back onto Fushan Bay soon after sailing finished for the day, making the most of the remaining daylight. At the same media conference, the organisers were quick to make the point that with three days of competition gone, the regatta was completely on schedule - knocking a big hole in claims in the preceding four years that non-existent winds would put paid to any sailing and the Olympics itself. A flotilla of weed-collecting boats working close inshore before racing starts on Day 4. You don't need the memory of an elephant to recall that, there was a run of five days at the start of the 2007 Louis Vuitton Cup, when racing was not possible and that a great many sailing regattas would be pleased to be in the position that the Qingdao Sailing Olympics currently enjoys. While the point was made in the usual understated Chinese way, they were tempting fate a little - with the race officer calling a postponement of an hour on racing due to unstable and light winds - the first of the regatta. The Qingdao Doctor soon arrived with wind speeds of seven to eight knots being recorded from 110 - a shift of about ten degrees from yesterday. Essentially the wind has stayed constant in strength and direction for the four days of this event. There was some interst in the Tornado class today, as several boats were out training and doing a flypast the fleets who were racing. Netherlands set out with their Code Zero jib/spinnaker rigged. Mitch Booth and Pim Nieuwenhuis gave their red Code Zero spinnaker an airing late today, appropriate going against the incoming traffic entering the Olympic harbour after the day's racing. To be fully appreciated, the sail needs to be rotated like some 3D CAD-CAM model. Only then can its jib like appearance be properly seen. Most striking feature is its straight and hard luff which sets up the fine jib like entry, exiting through a jib style leech. We are yet to see these sails in action in anger, but if the sails work as intended, and if the Qingdao Doctor remains for the majority of the racing, then it will be like a contest between a racehorse and a donkey. A regular Tornado sailing downwind off Qingdao, note the white camera mounted on the spinnaker snuffer - used for television coverage of the regatta. Quite why the 'spirit of the class' rules have not been invoked is surprising. Such rules are prescribed to prevent so called 'developments' such as this, and to prevent competitions turning into a farce, as this one surely will. Maybe there will be protests on this point once racing starts, certainly the Jury will be having an early night tonight, with just two protests lodged, instead of the 16 they heard last night.	50,216
FL DOE Officials Continue Plans to Implement Common Core Even Before Comment Period EndsNovember, 2013 Florida Department of Education officials continued the trend set by Commissioner Pam Stewart and Race to the Top coordinator Holly Edenfield stating that the Common Core standards are not expected to change significantly and that implmentation will proceed full speed ahead. This latest incident occurred during a webinar hosted by the department on October 30th, one day before the public comment was scheduled to end. The latest official to give evidence that the hearings and comment period were all just to try to appease the public was Mary Jane Tappen, K-12 Deputy Chancellor, who said on page 3 of this just released transcript: "We are moving forward with the new more rigorous standards. So, if anyone is hesitating or worried about next year, the timeline has not changed. We are moving forward and we will have new course descriptions for next year and ... new assessments." Although later in the call, Tappen admitted that there might be some changes, again, she did not seem to think they would be significant: These statements combined with the copyright issues and the 15% rule that prohibit meaningful changes in the standards without withdrawing from Common Core paint a bleak picture for Florida students, teachers, and families receiving any relief from the onerous federal and national control of the the poor quality psychosocial standards, the assessments, and the associated data collection system. If this information concerns you, consider expressing your disappointment to Governor Rick Scott at 850-488-7146 and let your legislators know that they need to support Rep. Mayfield's bill HB 25 in the House and author a companion bill in the Senate.	232,017
Body Shots is a major works by Bruno Booth, offering insight into the multidisciplinary practice of a significant Western Australian artist. Body Shots is a 4k, nine channel video installation with sound work. Each of the nine videos are nine minutes long and play on a loop. The content of the videos show candid views of the disabled body – juxtaposed with familiar landscapes and scenes. A foot that looks like no other lies on a bed of green grass, a knobbly, scarred knee rests on a sandy beach gently washed by the tide. These views link across multiple screens, forming new and unusual bodies that float in space, quietly moving and unapologetic in their existence. Disability is not a sexy adjective. The word itself conjures up images of hospitals, of concessions made and of thoughts of what could have been. As a child in the 90’s, disability was absent from the media outside of the Paralympics and the occasional human interest story. The closest thing disabled people had to counter culture role models were characters in cartoons. Mutants and the misfits in these animated worlds had super powers and were loved not in spite of their differences but because of them. It can be argued that we’ve progressed and these days there is a much more nuanced idea of what it means to have a disability. However, the word is still there and still evokes those same thoughts of pity, fear and unease. Body Shots seeks to address these issues by confronting the audience with the disabled body in extreme detail, forcing them to recognise the beauty created by such unique forms. The work is an extension of the themes the artist has been developing in their practice over the last three years. The number nine is a reference to the 9% of visual artists that identify as disabled – it is used throughout the exhibition to draw attention to this woefully low statistic. Across our population as a whole roughly 20% of Australians identify as having some form of disability. Why is there this gap in an industry that prides itself on equity and inclusion? Where are the other 11% and why is it that disabled people are under-represented in contemporary practice?	247,338
Now I know why the brown thrasher has been spending so much time in my garden. They are pretty small, but two baby thrashers are living in a nest in my variegated privet. They look like little fur balls lying on their backs. Their beaks are to the left. I'll try to take another picture when they get a bit bigger and look more like little birds. Apparently they leave the nest as early as nine days of age and I have no idea when they hatched. So I might miss them. And, according to this 2007 article in the Knoxville News Sentinel, their chances of survival are pretty low.	21,410
Heroes from anime Kimetsu no Yaiba Kimetsu no Yaiba is a manga adaptation by Koyoharu Gotoge. The author released the final chapters in 2020 while the anime episodes started to come out in 2019. The manga is set in Japan during the Taisho era. Koyoharu Gotoge has created a world where demons exist and brave exterminators confront them. What future awaits those who live in the pages of "The Blade that Slices the Demons"? The Pillars are the strongest and most skilled among all members of the Demon Slayer organization. Each Pillar represents an individual style of breathing. To take a place among the elite swordsmen, you need to train and overcome yourself daily. It is because of their skills that the Pillars are able to fight the Upper Moon and Lower Moon demons. The Ubuyashiki family - they created the Demon Slayer organization and have led it without a break from the day it was founded. The Ubuyashiki treated their subordinate fighters with gratitude and respect. Protecting people from demons is the goal for which they are ready to die. The Ubuyashiki raised their children in such a way that even at a young age they could take the lead. Former disciples of the Pillars Former disciples of the Pillars are those swordsmen who failed to join the Demon Slayer organization. They were trained by the Pillars, but did not pass the final selection and were killed by demons on Mt. Fujikasana. Wives of the Pillars The Pillar Wives are girls who have enough courage and will to keep the pace of the Pillar's life going. To match the great warriors, their wives are wise and able to stand up for themselves. They are a reliable support for their husbands. Demon Slayers are swordsmen who have passed the final selection and become members of the Demon Slayer organization. Their duty is to destroy the demons. Fighters are divided into 10 ranks and sent out on missions based on their skill level. Swordsmen have one of the breathing styles and fight with the nichirin blade. Upper Moon Demons The Upper Moon Demons are the six strongest demons under Kibutsuji Muzan. They received outstanding power due to the fact that the progenitor of demons shared the blood with them. The composition of the Upper Moons remains unchanged for a long time. Their distinguishing feature is the rank number engraved on both eyes. Lower Moon Demons Lower Moon Demons are one of the strongest demons under the direct guidance of Kibutsuji Muzan. Their abilities are connected with the power of the blood of the progenitor of demons, which he shared with them. The composition of the Lower Moons often changes at Muzan's discretion. Their distinguishing feature is the rank number engraved on one eye. Demons are creatures that exist to kill humans and destroy the Slayers. Once they were people, but other demons turned them into their own kind. They all descended from the same progenitor - Muzan Kibutsuji. Citizens are ordinary people that fill the cities and villages of Japan during the Taishō era. Most of them are unaware of the existence of demons and Slayers.	212,480
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago." Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009." rohitm918 writes "A study by Microsoft Research concludes that phishers make very little (PDF): '...low-skill jobs pay like low-skill jobs, whether the activity is legal or not.' They also find that the Gartner numbers that everyone quotes ($3.2B/year etc) are rubbish, off by a factor of 50. 'Even though it harvests "free money," phishing generates total revenue equal to the total costs incurred by the actors. Each participant earns, on average, only as much as he would have made in the opportunities he gave up elsewhere. As the total phishing effort increases the total phishing revenue declines: the harder individual phishers try the worse their collective situation gets. As a consequence, increasing effort is a sign of failure rather than of success.'" And sometimes much more quickly that you would care to know. .yosh, who's totally cool I know him textd me to say that Wizards of the Coast is totally making a My Little Pony Roleplaying Game!! OMG! Now I don't have to play with that stupid dungeons and dragons book with all the impossibly clothed women characters. Ponies 4EVA! From the site: "If it's on Butterfly Island, it's in the My Little Pony RPG core rulebook, and we expect the book to be an invaluable tool for RPG fans and game developers alike,' said Jonathan Tweet, senior game designer with Wizards of the Coast. 'Not only will this RPG appeal to current fans of My Little Pony, but it will also help core roleplayers come to appreciate the depth and possibilities in this unique fantasy world. I know I did.'" andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress."	162,796
The University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The University offers a bachelor of science (B.S.) in adult and career education (ACE). The ACE Program is designed to address the needs of working adults (or adults seeking employment) who want to complete a college degree in a customized area of study. Core coursework focuses on skills that are in high demand by today's employers—skills such as creative problem solving, critical thinking, team building, communication technology, and work-life integration. Beyond the core classes, students work with an advisor to customize a specialization to meet their career and personal goals. ACE provides a flexible, convenient, and individualized approach to education for adult students who have earned approximately 60 college credits. The online core program is delivered in accelerated eight-week courses. Advisors help students identify prior learning experiences that may qualify for college credit, including military training, non-collegiate sponsored training, proficiency exams and work experiences. Resources and support for online learning are built into the program. Special Note: ACE is an online program designed for individuals who have completed approximately 60 credit hours and meet other eligibility requirements. For further information, visit ACE (Adult Career Education) B.S. on the University's Indiana State Online website. The ACE Program can help students: Students have many sources of financial support for their studies, including financial aid, work-study programs, veterans' benefits, and special scholarships for entering freshmen and transfer students. In addition, the College of Technology offers a variety of scholarships and awards. The Graduate Catalog and Undergraduate Catalog of Indiana State University are the documents of authority for all students. The requirements given in the catalogs supersede information issued by any academic department, program, college, or school. The University reserves the right to change the requirements at any time.	192,921
“God” is mentioned a little over one hundred and thirty times in the AA Twelve-and-Twelve book, a book that lays out all the steps with in-depth commentary about the meaning of those steps. There can be little doubt that the co-founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, were deeply steeped in the 1930s orthodox Christian notion of that God. In all of the AA literature, God is always male. And “He” is portrayed as an intervener, a grace-giver, a miracle-worker, a creator, and a caring, non-judgmental patriarch. Hell and Heaven may be absent from the literature, but an activist, intervening divinity is vividly present as a kind of divine co-partner and activist healer of the recovering alcoholic and addict. Continue reading If Life is Impermanent, Why Bother? Seize the Day The reality of impermanence has always seemed a no-brainer to me. People and animals come into existence; they live out their lives; and then they die. Or, in the words of the bumper-sticker, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die” More importantly, my own experiences with memorial services, funerals, hospice, suicides, emergency rooms, psych wards, and drug and alcohol rehabs have helped me to understand the fragility of life. On the other hand, I was recently confronted with someone’s concern that, in being aware of life’s impermanence, there may be a hidden agenda to “glorify” it as a license for moral relativism, an excuse to bow out of commitments and responsibilities. After all, if nothing in this world is permanent, why bother to be loyal, to love, to be grounded in anything? The ancient carpe diem (“seize-the-day”) philosophy was certainly based on the notion that, since the world and its pleasures are finite, we should wring from life every moment of pleasure we can get. Continue reading You will, of course, change. We all know it. From ragged-edged coat, Smelling of beer and car oil, Tested every day In the blustery wind, near Old, dank harbors, To rose-odored concert-goer, Your main of hair Waving with each breath Of lush spring air, Not wild as the wolf, But tender, as the pliant,	148,661
Internet security analysts say the number of ransomware attacks ballooned by 105% in 2022 compared to 2021 — and 2021 saw a 61% increase over 2020. Experts expect those numbers to be even higher next year. It’s no longer a case of if, but when, your trucking company will be targeted. This episode of HDT Talks Trucking is sponsored by Citgo. Learn more at citgolubes.com Big fleets have the resources to at least try to ward off a cyber attack, but where does that leave smaller fleets, ones without dedicated IT staff to develop and implement security measures? To gain a clearer understanding of the significance of this threat, HDT Equipment Editor Jim Park spoke with Mark Zakos, president of DG Technologies. He’s also the chair of the ATA’s Technology & Maintenance Council’s Cyber Security Issues Task Force. In this episode, we discuss: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency C2A Security (vehicle security) Q&A: Upstream CEO on Protecting Trucks Against Cyberattacks The expert, Omar Fernandez from Hendrickson will answer your questions. The secure and easy all-access connection to your content. Bookmarked content can then be accessed anytime on all of your logged in devices! Already a member? Log In See all comments	61,828
A social revolution—and a new time zone—may very well be upon Spain. A new report from (pdf in Spanish) a governmental sub-commission has found the need for major changes on how society organizes daily life. If congress legislates accordingly, Spain’s struggling workforce may get a welcome boost. On average, Spanish workers sleep one hour fewer than their European counterparts, as well as hour fewer than what the World Health Organization recommends. As a consequence, productivity is lower, and working accidents and absenteeism are higher than the EU average. Spanish workers who are absent three hours out of the standard workday also contribute to the lagging economy. Spain has lived under Central European Time, GMT+1 time since WWII when the regime, along with many other countries, adopted the German time zone and never changed it back. To make things worse, Spain also uses the controversial daylight saving time between April and October, two hours ahead of daylight and two and a half hours for the eastern side of the country. There’s clearly a need for Spaniards to harmonize our biorhythms and work schedule with nature. But if you check the time zone for the Greenwich meridian, it matches almost perfectly with the east border of France, so why France does not suffer from similar problems? Spain underwent industrialization and urbanization in an economy that, with the exception of tourism, was highly protectionist until the country begun its globalization in the early ‘80s. Nowadays, imports of goods and services represent close to 40% of GDP while exports are close to 39%. Most of the economy is globalized while the customs of many workers are still under the old labor order. In some sectors, like retail or for professionals like lawyers, doctors and in small cities, the working hours are still from 9a.m.-2pm and 5p.m.-8pm. Many Spanish schools still have a long pause of three hours in the middle of the day. This originated in the 1940s when female participation in the labor force was very low. In the last 30 years, women’s workforce participation has passed from 3.9 million to 7.6 million today and it is clear that a longer school day is urgent, especially when children are under 12 years old and need transport. In addition to the wrong time zone and the obsolete work hours, many companies erroneously evaluate workers on the number of hours they put in rather than more qualitative criteria. Even when the hours of a company is similar to its EU peers, workers still stay late. Back in 2003, the National Commission for the Rationalization of Horary (a private association) made suggestions that Spain return to GMT time and make working hours between 7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. with a 45-60 minute break. Once the government changed, the plans were abandoned and, the government, accustomed to waiting for an EU initiative, finally attended the claims of many sectors and created the sub-commission this year, in theory, solve the problem. The hearings were attended by almost 40 people representing everyone, from the Spanish business chamber to unions, parent associations, foundations, universities and child and women rights defenders. Nuria Chinchilla, professor of IESE business school and director of the International Center for Work and Family (ICWF), spoke to the sub-commission but is cautious on whether this this reform will actually go ahead. She thinks “a similar change of course is needed as when smoking in public closed spaces was banned.” Trusting little in the system, I am much more concerned that without decisive actions and more activism, this necessary reform could be derailed in a similar way to the one of 2003. As every year, on Oct. 27, the country will reduce its two hour difference with GMT by one hour. It’s a good occasion for the Spanish government to modernize both work and school hours. Will this time Spain miss this opportunity again? We welcome your comments at email@example.com.	124,204
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article Sec. Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics Senecavirus A seroprevalence and risk factors in United States pig farms - 1Veterinary Population Medicine Department, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, United States - 2Departamento de Ciencias Veterinarias y Salud Pública, Facultad de Recursos Naturales, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Temuco, Chile - 3Unitat Mixta d'Investigació IRTA-UAB en Sanitat Animal, Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain - 4IRTA, Programa de Sanitat Animal, Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain - 5University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, United States Senecavirus A (SVA) is a non-enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA virus belonging to the Picornaviridae family. Senecavirus A is constantly associated with outbreaks of vesicular disease in pigs and has been reported in several countries since its first large-scale outbreak in 2014. Senecavirus A's clinical disease and lesions are indistinguishable from other vesicular foreign animal diseases (FAD). Therefore, an FAD investigation needs to be conducted for every SVA case. For this reason, SVA has been attributed as the cause of an alarming increase in the number of yearly FAD investigations performed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The objectives of this study were to estimate the seroprevalence of SVA antibodies in breeding and growing pig farms in the United States and to determine the farm-level risk factors associated with seropositivity. A total of 5,794 blood samples were collected from 98 and 95 breeding and growing pig farms in 17 states. A farm characteristics questionnaire was sent to all farms, to which 80% responded. The responses were used to conduct logistic regression analyses to assess the risk factors associated with SVA seropositivity. The estimated farm-level seroprevalences were 17.3% and 7.4% in breeding and growing pig farms, respectively. Breeding farms had 2.64 times higher odds of SVA seropositivity than growing pig farms. One key risk factor identified in breeding farms was the practice of rendering dead animal carcasses. However, the adoption of a higher number of farm biosecurity measures was associated with a protective effect against SVA seropositivity in breeding farms. Senecavirus A (SVA), previously known as Seneca Valley Virus (1), is a non-enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA virus belonging to the Picornaviridae family and the only member of the genus Senecavirus (2). The virus was first isolated in 2002 as a contaminant from PER.C6 cell lines, presumably introduced via fetal bovine serum or porcine trypsin during the cell cultivation process (2). Current data suggest that SVA existed in the United States (U.S.) swine population for at least three decades (3). However, the presence of SVA in pigs with vesicular lesions had not been reported until 2007 after a trailer transporting 187 market hogs from the Canadian province of Manitoba arrived at a harvest facility in Minnesota, U.S. (4). Larger multi-state SVA outbreaks of this vesicular disease in pigs were reported in Brazil in 2014 (5), in the U.S. (6, 7), and China (8) in 2015, followed by Colombia (9), Thailand (10) in 2016, Vietnam (11) in 2018, and Mexico (12) and Chile (13) in 2022. Characteristic vesicular lesions usually start developing approximately 4 days post-infection, consisting of multiple-sized vesicles on the snout, oral cavity, and feet (i.e., coronary band and interdigital space), which may lead to lameness and lethargy. Vesicles tend to rupture 5 days post-infection (14, 15) and are clinically indistinguishable from high-consequence foreign animal diseases (FAD) such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). In neonatal pigs, diarrhea and a sudden increase in pre-weaning piglet mortality have also been reported (5–7), contributing to production losses. The clinical disease and lesions caused by SVA are indistinguishable from other vesicular animal diseases: swine vesicular disease, vesicular exanthema of swine, vesicular stomatitis, and FMD. Therefore, an FAD investigation needs to be conducted by local government authorities for every SVA case. This practice, while prudent, has resulted in an increase in false alarms for FADs in the United States. The average yearly number of FAD investigations conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in all animal species in the U.S. between 2008 and 2014 was 487. This number increased almost four times between 2015 and 2020, with an average of 1,808 FAD investigations per year. Around 75% of FAD investigations were attributed to swine vesicular disease in pigs in the last 4 years of this period (16). Despite the considerable number of SVA outbreak reports in swine farms across the past few years and the associated problems, the epidemiology of this disease is poorly understood. Basic information such as prevalence and risk factor studies are scarce. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to (1) estimate the seroprevalence of SVA antibodies in breeding and growing pig farms in the U.S. and (2) determine the farm-level risk factors associated with seropositivity. Materials and methods The University of Minnesota (UMN) Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approved this study (protocol 1804-35818A). A cross-sectional study was designed and conducted to estimate the seroprevalence of SVA in U.S. pig farms. Participation in the study was voluntary. Major veterinary clinics and production systems throughout the country were invited to participate. After agreeing to participate, each production system or veterinary clinic was asked to select breeding and growing pig farms for sample collection randomly. Both participating veterinarians and, in some cases, investigators collected the study samples. Sample size calculation Number of farms To calculate the number of breeding and growing pig farms to be included in the study, the following formula was used (17): where N = number of farms to be sampled, Z = 1.96 (Z-score value for 95% confidence), p = expected true farm-level prevalence (50% was used as the default as data was not available at the time of the study), q = 0.5 (1 – p), L = precision of the estimate was set at 0.1. A total of 97 breeding and 97 growing pig farms were needed for this study, which brings to a total of 194 farms. Number of pigs sampled per farm The number of samples needed within each farm to classify the farm as either seropositive or seronegative was calculated using the following formula (18): where N = number of animals to be sampled in each farm, C = 0.95 (confidence of 95%), TP = 0.1 (assuming that the expected true within-farm prevalence was 10%). Therefore, 29 blood samples were necessary to reach a 95% confidence level that at least one positive sample would be detected when the within-farm prevalence was at least 10%, assuming perfect sensitivity and specificity. Sample collection, handling, and testing In breeding farms, sampling was performed randomly across sow parities. In the case of growing pig farms, samples were collected from 20-weeks-old or older pigs to avoid the possible detection of maternal antibodies (19). Blood samples were collected, refrigerated, and shipped to the UMN Food Centric Corridor Laboratory. Blood samples were sorted, organized, de-identified upon reception, and submitted to the UMN Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory for testing. Senecavirus A IgG presence was tested through an immunofluorescent antibody test (IFA), which was reported to have 90% and 100% diagnostic sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp), respectively (20). Briefly, NCI-H1299 (ATCC® CRL-5803™) cells were inoculated with SVA and fixed with cold acetone. Sera samples were screened for SVA-specific IgG in two dilutions (1:40 and 1:80) using PBS (Gibco). After incubating for 60–75 min, plates had the sera removed and washed with PBS. DyLight® 650 anti-pig IgG (Abcam, Cambridge, MA) was added to the wells, and plates were incubated for 60–75 min. Plates were washed with PBS and observed under fluorescence microscopy (20) by the same laboratory technician. Fluorescence observed at a sample dilution of 1:40 or 1:80 indicated that the serum sample was positive for SVA IgG antibodies. Farm characteristics questionnaire Two questionnaires—one for breeding and another for growing pig farms—were designed to capture general information such as farm type, farm size, personnel flow, animal sourcing, and other details on biosecurity measures. The survey was electronically sent to all participating veterinarians to answer on a per farm basis. Data obtained on the questionnaires were then transcribed to an electronic spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel 2016, Microsoft Corporation) for analysis. Estimating farm-level SVA seroprevalence The proportions of seropositive breeding and growing pig farms were estimated after calculating the cut-point number of positive samples needed to classify a farm as being positive. The cut-point number of positive samples was determined by maximizing herd sensitivity (HSe) and herd specificity (HSp) values (21), based on the SVA IgG IFA antibody test's Se and Sp (90% and 100%, respectively) (20). Clopper-Pearson 95% confidence intervals for the proportions of seropositive farms were also calculated. Association between farm type and SVA seropositivity A chi-square test of independence was used to determine if there was a significant association between farm type (breeding or grow-finishing pig farms) and SVA seropositivity. The odds ratio and 95% CI for SVA seropositivity between farm types were calculated using the unconditional maximum likelihood estimation method (Wald). Assessment of farm-level factors associated with seropositivity The risk factor analyses for breeding and growing-pig farms were conducted separately. Univariable logistic regressions were fit to determine the unconditional associations between all risk factors recorded in the questionnaires and the outcome (SVA farm seropositivity). Linearity between continuous variables and the outcome in the logit scale was assessed visually using scatterplots and statistically. If the relationship between the continuous variable and the outcome was not linear, continuous variables were categorized based on their median values (less than/equal to the median vs. greater than the median). Variables with multiple categories where all positive cases were within the same category or had categories with few observations and no cases (indicating a lack of substantial variability for the analysis) were either excluded from the analysis or had their observations regrouped in a new two-factor categorical variable. A new variable was created to evaluate the association between biosecurity measures and SVA-seropositivity. The list of biosecurity measures included in the survey was (1) Visitor check-in required to enter the farm, (2) Shower in/out procedures, (3) Danish bench-entry system is installed, (4) Use of farm-specific boots are required, (5) Use of farm-specific clothing is required, and (6) A downtime is required before entering the farm. Since all farms responded to either having or not having these six different biosecurity measures in place, they were categorized as having “four or less” or “five or six” biosecurity measures in place if they responded to having any combination of ≤ 4 or ≥5 biosecurity measures, respectively. Unconditional associations between each predictor variable and the outcome were tabulated. Only variables with associated p-values below 0.2 were selected for inclusion in the multivariable analysis. A backward elimination process was used to build the final multivariable logistic model. First, a maximum model was fit using all the previously screened variables. Variables were then removed one at a time, and the likelihood ratio test was used to compare the nested models until a model with a maximum likelihood was found. All statistical analyses were performed using R statistical software (22). This study involved pig farms from nine production systems, eight veterinary clinics, and two private practitioners. Thirty-six swine veterinarians contributed to this study by collecting 5,794 blood samples from 193 farms. The overall survey response rate was 80% and included data from 155 (77 breeding and 78 growing pig farms) out of 193 tested farms, including all positive breeding farms and six out of the seven positive growing-pig farms. Blood samples were collected from 193 participating farms: 98 and 95 breeding and growing pig farms located in 17 different states (Table 1). Recruitment and sample collection at all farms occurred between October 2018 and October 2019. Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the 193 United States (U.S.) pig farms participating in the study. Classification of farm status The number of positive samples needed to classify a farm as seropositive was 1. This cut-off value maximized the HSp and HSe values, which reached 100% and 94%, respectively. Changing the cut-off value to 2 or 3 did not alter HSp, but HSe decreased to 77% and 51%, respectively. The overall proportion of IFA-positive sera samples from breeding and growing pig sites was 4.6% (268/5,794). Of the 268 IFA-positive sera samples, 95.1% (255/268) were positive at the 1:80 dilution and 4.9% (13/268) were positive at the 1:40 dilution. Twenty-four out of 193 (12.4%) sampled farms had at least one seropositive serum sample. The median, mean, and standard deviation for the number of positive samples within positive farms were 6.5, 11.2, and 10.1, respectively. Overall, the proportion of IFA-positive sera samples from breeding farms was 5.9% (174/2,943). Seventeen out of 98 (17.3%, 95%CI: 10.4, 26.3%) breeding farms had at least one positive sample and were located in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas. The overall estimates of SVA farm level seroprevalence among breeding farms in different states or regions are shown in Figure 1. Among seropositive breeding farms, the median, mean, and standard deviation of the number of positive samples were 4, 10.2, and 9.8, respectively (Figure 2). The average within-farm apparent prevalence among seropositive breeding farms was 34% (95% CI: 17.8, 53.5%). Figure 1. Estimated proportions and 95% confidence intervals of SVA-seropositive breeding farms by state, region, and national estimate. Figure 2. Box and whisker plot of the number of SVA IFA-positive samples by pig farm type in the U.S. Seven out of 95 (7.4%, 95% CI: 3, 14.6%) growing pig farms had at least one positive sample and these were detected in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. The proportion of IFA-positive sera samples from growing-pig farms was 3.3% (94/2,851). The overall estimates of SVA farm level seroprevalence among growing pig farms in different states or regions are shown in Figure 3. The median, mean, and standard deviation of the number of positive samples within positive growing pig farms were 8, 13.4, and 11.3, respectively (Figure 2). The average within-farm apparent prevalence among seropositive growing pig farms was 44.7% (95% CI: 26.6, 63.8%). Figure 3. Estimated proportions and 95% confidence intervals of SVA-seropositive growing-pig farms, by state, region, and national estimate. Association between farm type and SVA seropositivity A significant association between farm type and SVA seropositivity was detected (X2 = 4.411, df = 1, p = 0.035). Breeding farms had 2.64 (95% CI: 1.04, 6.69) times higher odds of SVA seropositivity when compared to growing pig farms. Risk factors associated with SVA seropositivity After tabulation of unconditional associations between the surveyed predictors and the outcome of SVA seropositivity, six breeding and six grow-finishing pig farm predictors were selected to enter the multivariable model selection process. The results from the univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis for the breeding farms' characteristics are shown in Table 2. The final multivariable logistic regression model showed that breeding farms that reported rendering dead animal carcasses were more likely to be SVA-seropositive (OR = 9.2, CI: 2.5, 33.7), while farms that reported practicing five or six different biosecurity measures were less likely to be SVA-seropositive (OR = 0.2, CI: 0.1, 0.99). A summary of the biosecurity measures and associations is shown in Table 2. Table 2. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis of the risk factors associated with SVA seropositivity in U.S. breeding farms. It was not possible to fit a multivariable logistic regression model for the growing-pig farms due to the low number of seropositive farms. The risk factors in growing-pig farms that appeared to be positively associated with SVA-seropositivity (p < 0.2) in the univariable analysis were (1) pigs are loaded into trucks by an external pig-loading crew, and (2) More than one external crew is hired to perform jobs at the farm. Alternatively, the risk factors that appeared to be negatively associated with SVA-seropositivity (p < 0.2) were (1) people that load pigs into trucks have direct access to pigs in the barn after loading a truck, (2) all pigs in the farm are sourced by a single breeding farm, and (3) all trucks that arrive in the farm are cleaned and disinfected (Table 3). Table 3. Univariable logistic regression analysis of the risk factors associated with SVA seropositivity in U.S. growing pig farms. The present study demonstrates that SVA antibodies exist in the U.S. swine population. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first national study designed and sampled to estimate the seroprevalence of SVA. Despite the high incidence of swine-vesicular FAD investigations (16), the estimated farm level apparent seroprevalences of 17.3% (95%CI: 10.4, 26.3%) and 7.4% (95% CI: 3, 14.6%) among U.S. breeding and growing pig farms, respectively, were relatively low. These proportions change slightly when accounting for the imperfect HSe estimate of the applied methodology. Considering the calculated HSe (94%) and HSp (100%), breeding and growing pig farms had estimated true seroprevalences of 18.5% (95%CI: 11.1, 28%) and 7.8% (95%CI: 3.2, 15.5%). Although slight numerical increases are seen when comparing the apparent and true prevalence estimates, there are no significant changes due to the overlapping confidence intervals. Currently, there is scarce information on the serological response to SVA at a population level. In a recent study, SVA IgG was detected in a cohort of 60 sows from a 6,000-sow farrow-to-wean farm that underwent an SVA outbreak for up to 13 months after the outbreak, using the same IFA procedure (23). This suggests that antibodies can be detected for an extended period after exposure. Therefore, the IgG detection in this study is likely the result of naturally-infected breeding and growing pig farms, even if exposure happened a long time before sampling, as maternally derived antibodies may be undetectable after 6 weeks of age (19). It is currently unknown what may have caused the onset of large-scale SVA outbreaks after 2014–2015. The virus is likely to have been circulating within and between U.S. pig farms since at least 1988, as was shown by the sequence analysis of picorna-like viruses isolated from pigs in the U.S. (3). Conversely, another retrospective study attempted to assess the presence of SVA in Brazil through the serological testing of samples collected between 2007 and 2016 (24). The authors concluded that SVA was likely absent in the major Brazilian pig-producing states before 2014. However, the reported results must be interpreted carefully since a low number of samples were tested and collected from asymptomatic farms for other research purposes not related to vesicular diseases. Therefore, the study design likely introduced a selection bias that significantly reduced the probability of detecting SVA-exposed animals. A more comprehensive study design is needed to rule out the presence of SVA among Brazilian pig farms before 2014. It may be possible that SVA can remain present and undetected in pig populations until a formal vesicular disease investigation is conducted and SVA is ruled out. The results from this study differ significantly from the results of another seroprevalence study conducted in U.S. pig farms using samples collected in 2016 (25). The estimated farm-level seroprevalences were 75.8% in breeding farms and 42.7% in growing pig farms vs. 17.3% and 7.4% in this study. The discrepancies in the proportions reported in both studies may be explained by fundamental differences in the study designs, time periods when samples were collected, and interpretation of the serological assays. This study's source population was U.S. pig farms from major swine-producing companies and veterinary clinics, regardless of their SVA or other infectious diseases status. However, in the study by Houston et al. (25), the source population was pig farms conducting porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSv) monitoring at one Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory with no known history of SVA. It is currently unknown if the presence of other infectious diseases (e.g., PRRS) could be associated with the presence of SVA, which may have introduced potential biases. It is possible that biosecurity failures in PRRSv-positive farms are also responsible for the introduction of SVA; thus, assessing the prevalence of SVA exposure exclusively in farms monitoring for PRRSv is not appropriate. The parallel interpretation of two different serological tests with fair-to-moderate results agreement by Houston et al. (25) may have overestimated the proportion of positive farms, partially explaining the significant differences between both studies. Very little is known about how SVA transmits between farms. Senecavirus A-infected animals appear to develop a short-term viremia for up to 10 days post-infection, and shed the virus for up to 28 days post-infection in oral/nasal secretions and feces (14). While this information can help us mitigate transmission between animals on a farm, more information is needed to prevent the infection of pig farms in the first place. To shed some light on this matter, we performed a risk-factor analysis to identify what farm characteristics might be associated with SVA exposure. Implementation of biosecurity measures in breeding farms yielded a sparing effect in this study. While not surprising, it does remind the industry of the importance and needs that most modern pig farms have when adopting such preventive measures to avoid the introduction of new pathogens carried by people themselves or the boots and clothes they are wearing (26). However, rendering was another predictor in the model that was found to have a significant association with SVA seropositivity. Breeding farms that reported disposing of the carcasses of dead animals via rendering had 9.2 higher odds of being seropositive compared to farms that either compost, bury, or incinerate the dead animals. One possible causal pathway for this association is the indirect transmission of the pathogen between farms through the trucks transporting the carcasses since the truck may need to visit several farms before filling and returning to the rendering plant. Similar associations involving the disposal of dead animals via rendering have been reported in other studies, such as with the increased risk of respiratory disease outbreaks in pig farms (27), PRRSv positivity (28), porcine epidemic diarrhea positivity (Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project science page, personal communication), H5N2 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (29), and H7N2 avian influenza virus in commercial poultry farms in the United States (30). More studies are needed to understand whether other carcass disposal methods should be considered to reduce the probability of introducing SVA or any other pathogen to the farm. Due to the low number of positive observations, it was not possible to build a multivariable logistic regression model for the growing pig farms. The positive univariable associations between “external pig loading crew” and “hires more than one external crew” with the outcome of seropositivity (Table 3) highlight the potential role of people in the introduction of pathogens. As for the protective associations, it is not surprising that single-sourcing of weaned pigs and disinfecting all incoming trucks would decrease the odds of seropositivity since such measures prevent the comingling of pigs from negative and positive populations and the cross-contamination between different batches of animals, respectively. However, the statistically significant association of being at lesser odds of positivity when people had direct contact with pigs in the barn after loading pig trucks is unexpected and challenging to explain. Upon further investigating this artifact of the analysis, it was seen that the only farms where people went back into the barns and had contact with the remaining pigs were the ones that did not hire an external pig-loading crew. All farms that hired an external pig-loading crew reported that people left the farms after loading the trucks without contacting the remaining pigs. Therefore, it is likely that this association is measuring a similar effect as the association with the farms that hire external pig-loading crews. Although the current study design is not optimal for estimating within-farm prevalences, a broad range of SVA-positive sera samples was detected. The range of positive samples per positive farm was somewhat similar between the breeding and growing pig farms (Figure 2), with an average of 10.2 and 13.4 out of 30 tested samples in breeding and growing pig farms, respectively (Figure 2). As reported in the results section, the estimated within-farm prevalence yielded wide confidence intervals due to the reduced sample size per farm. However, these results may still provide helpful information for further investigations. Nevertheless, interpreting these results is rather difficult in cross-sectional studies since there is no information about the previous SVA history on tested farms. This is the first study specifically designed to estimate the seroprevalence of SVA at a national level, with a broad selection of farms from producing companies and veterinary clinics as the source population. After sampling and testing 5,794 sera samples from 98 breeding and 95 growing pig farms, it was shown that SVA antibodies are present among U.S. pig farms. Seroprevalence was higher in breeding farms than in growing pig sites. Key risk factors identified were the rendering of dead animals and access of external working crews to the farms. At the same time, the implementation of biosecurity measures seemed to have a protective effect against SVA seropositivity. These findings may be applied in pig farms to help reduce the risk of SVA exposure. Other carcass disposal methods could be considered, such as composting or incineration, or the dead-animal disposal areas should be located away from the farms, and the trucks used for carcass collection should be prohibited from coming close to the barns. Furthermore, attention should be given to biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of pathogen introduction through any incoming personnel or fomites. Although this is the first assessment of farm-level risk factors associated with SVA seropositivity, more studies need to be specifically designed to understand these associations. Data availability statement The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors upon reasonable request. The animal study was reviewed and approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States. Written informed consent was obtained from the owners for the participation of their animals in this study. JS, CV, and CC wrote the research proposal. GP and CC developed the farm-characteristics questionnaire and contacted the veterinarians for sample collection and questionnaire response. MC helped with the questionnaire preparation. GP compiled all test results and questionnaire responses and analyzed the data with JS and CC. FV contributed to the diagnostic data interpretation. GP wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. All authors read, edited, and approved the finalized manuscript. This research was funded by the National Pork Board (NPB#18-041). We thank all participating swine veterinarians, farm staffs, and swine-producing companies for participating in this project and their assistance in collecting the samples and responding to the questionnaires. We thank the UMN-VDL staff for their expertise and assistance with serology. We thank the National Pork Board for providing the funds for this study. Conflict of interest The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor EM declared a shared affiliation with the author CV at the time of review. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher. 1. Adams MJ, Lefkowitz EJ, King AMQ, Bamford DH, Breitbart M, Davison AJ, et al. Ratification vote on taxonomic proposals to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2015). Arch Virol. (2015) 160:1837–50. doi: 10.1007/s00705-015-2425-z 2. Hales LM, Knowles NJ, Reddy PS, Xu L, Hay C, Hallenbeck PL. Complete genome sequence analysis of Seneca Valley virus-001, a novel oncolytic picornavirus. J Gen Virol. (2008) 89:1265–75. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.83570-0 3. Knowles NJ, Hales LM, Jones BH, Landgraf JG, House JA, Skele KL, et al. Epidemiology of Seneca valley virus: identification and characterization of isolates from pigs in the United States. In: abstr G2. EUROPIC 2006: XIVth Meet Eur Study Group Mol Biol Picornaviruses, Saariselka, Inari, Finland. (2006). Available online at: https://www.aasv.org/SVV/SVVUS.pdf (accessed October 5, 2022). 5. Vannucci FA, Linhares DCL, Barcellos DESN, Lam HC, Collins J, Marthaler D. Identification and complete genome of Seneca valley virus in vesicular fluid and sera of pigs affected with idiopathic vesicular disease, Brazil. Transbound Emerg Dis. (2015) 62:589–93. doi: 10.1111/tbed.12410 6. Joshi LR, Mohr KA, Clement T, Hain KS, Myers B, Yaros J, et al. Detection of the emerging picornavirus senecavirus A in pigs, mice, and houseflies. J Clin Microbiol. (2016) 54:1536–45. doi: 10.1128/jcm.03390-15 7. Canning P, Canon A, Bates JL, Gerardy K, Linhares DCL, Piñeyro PE, et al. Neonatal mortality, vesicular lesions and lameness associated with senecavirus A in a US sow farm. Transbound Emerg Dis. (2016) 63:373–8. doi: 10.1111/tbed.12516 8. Wu Q, Zhao X, Bai Y, Sun B, Xie Q, Ma J. The first identification and complete genome of senecavirus A affecting pig with idiopathic vesicular disease in China. Transbound Emerg Dis. (2017) 64:1633–40. doi: 10.1111/tbed.12557 11. Arzt J, Bertram MR, Vu LT, Pauszek SJ, Hartwig EJ, Smoliga GR, et al. First detection and genome sequence of senecavirus A in Vietnam. Microbiol Resour Announc. (2019) 8:17–8. doi: 10.1128/mra.01247-18 12. CPA/SENASICA Gobierno de Mexico,. AVISE 21 Boletin Informativo de la CPA. Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico (2022). Available online at: https://dj.senasica.gob.mx/Contenido/files/2022/marzo/FEBRERO2022_ff602385-52bf-485c-a39d-00c5dd9986b3.pdf (accessed October 5, 2022). 13. Ministerio de Agricultura/Gobierno de Chile. Informar Sobre Deteccion Virus Seneca en Chile. Santiago, Chile (2022). Available online at: https://ceropapel.sag.gob.cl/validar/?key=121105740&hash=8cc10 (accessed October 5, 2022). 16. United States Department of Agriculture. Calendar Year 2020 Update: FAD Investigation Report. Riverdale, MD (2021). Available online at: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/summary-fad-investigations-cy2020.pdf (accessed October 5, 2022). 19. Gimenez-Lirola LG, Rademacher C, Linhares D, Harmon K, Rotolo M, Sun Y, et al. Serological and molecular detection of senecavirus A associated with an outbreak of swine idiopathic vesicular disease and neonatal mortality. J Clin Microbiol. (2016) 54:2082–9. doi: 10.1128/jcm.00710-16 20. Goolia M, Vannucci F, Yang M, Patnayak D, Babiuk S, Nfon CK. Validation of a competitive ELISA and a virus neutralization test for the detection and confirmation of antibodies to senecavirus A in swine sera. J Vet Diagnostic Investig. (2017) 29:250–3. doi: 10.1177/1040638716683214 21. Sergeant E. Epitools Epidemiological Calculators. Ausvet (2018). Available online at: http://epitools.ausvet.com.au (accessed October 5, 2022). 22. R Core Team. R: A Language Environment for Statistical Computing. (2022). Available online at: http://www.r-project.org/ (accessed October 5, 2022). 23. Preis G, Benjamin N, Corzo C. Detection of senecavirus A and IgG antibodies over time after an outbreak in a breeding herd: a case report. In: 2020 Allen D. Leman Swine Research Abstracts. Saint Paul, MN (2020). Available online at: https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/leman-swine-conference/home/2020/2020-research-abstracts 24. Saporiti V, Fritzen JTT, Feronato C, Leme RA, Lobato ZIP, Alfieri AF, et al. A ten years (2007–2016) retrospective serological survey for Seneca Valley virus infection in major pig producing states of Brazil. Vet Res Commun. (2017) 41:317–21. doi: 10.1007/s11259-017-9697-6 25. Houston E, Giménez-Lirola LG, Magtoto R, Mora-Díaz JC, Baum D, Piñeyro PE. Seroprevalence of Senecavirus A in sows and grower-finisher pigs in major swine producing-states in the United States. Prev Vet Med. (2019) 165:1–7. doi: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.01.012 27. Rose N, Madec F. Occurrence of respiratory disease outbreaks in fattening pigs: relation with the features of a densely and a sparsely populated pig area in France. Vet Res. (2002) 33:179–90. doi: 10.1051/vetres 28. Lambert MÈ, Arsenault J, Poljak Z, D'Allaire S. Epidemiological investigations in regard to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in Quebec, Canada. Part 2: prevalence and risk factors in breeding sites. Prev Vet Med. (2012) 104:84–93. doi: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2011.11.002 29. Garber L, Bjork K, Patyk K, Rawdon T, Antognoli M, Delgado A, et al. Factors associated with highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N2 infection on table-egg layer farms in the Midwestern United States, 2015. Avian Dis. (2016) 60:460–6. doi: 10.1637/11351-121715-Reg 30. McQuiston JH, Garber LP, Porter-Spalding BA, Hahn JW, Pierson FW, Wainwright SH, et al. Evaluation of risk factors for the spread of low pathogenicity H7N2 avian influenza virus among commercial poultry farms. J Am Vet Med Assoc. (2005) 226:767–72. doi: 10.2460/javma.2005.226.767 Keywords: senecavirus A, seroprevalence, risk factors, vesicular disease, swine Citation: Preis G, Sanhueza JM, Vilalta C, Vannucci FA, Culhane MR and Corzo CA (2022) Senecavirus A seroprevalence and risk factors in United States pig farms. Front. Vet. Sci. 9:1011975. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.1011975 Received: 04 August 2022; Accepted: 30 September 2022; Published: 20 October 2022. Edited by:Enric M. Mateu, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain Reviewed by:Tereza Cristina Cardoso, Universidade Estadual de São Paulo, Brazil Jean-Pierre Frossard, Animal and Plant Health Agency, United Kingdom Lok Raj Joshi, Ragon Institute of MGH MIT and Harvard, United States Charles K. Nfon, National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease (NCFAD), Canada Copyright © 2022 Preis, Sanhueza, Vilalta, Vannucci, Culhane and Corzo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. *Correspondence: Cesar A. Corzo, firstname.lastname@example.org †ORCID: Marie R. Culhane orcid.org/0000-0002-3547-7576	71,849
Record-setting warm temperatures in Vancouver have prompted Olympic officials to airlift in snow for the upcoming Winter Games. The enormous helicopter they're using is known as an Erickson S64 Air-Crane. It is ten pounds of excellence in a five-pound bag. Winter Olympic host city Vancouver saw its warmest January on record this year, one marked by blooming daffodils and a serious (zero inches of accumulation versus an average 6.5) lack of snow. For the past week, the S64 you see here has been working with a host of dump trucks to save British Columbia's Cypress Mountain from an onslaught of heat. As workhorse helicopters go, the Air-Crane is a badass among badasses. Originally produced by Sikorsky, its manufacturing rights were bought by the Oregon firm Erickson Air-Crane in 1992. Common uses include manly things like battling forest fires and harvesting timber (check out the video here), and the U.S. Army once operated a fleet of S64s under the designation CH-54. The S64 in use over Cypress Mountain carries a giant bucket with a 13,000-pound capacity; in the last seven days, it has dumped an average of 780 tons of snow a day on the Olympic grounds. Most of it has been brought from nearby Mount Strachan. Also, it's Erickson tradition to nickname these things. No word on what the Cypress 'chopper is dubbed, but according to Wikipedia, they get names like "Delilah" and "Elvis." Which is just about the coolest thing ever. Photo Credits: Mark Ralston/Kim Stallknech/Adrian Dennis/Getty Images, AFP	78,869
Components of the Package: Elements of Nature and Properties of Soil, Student Value Edition, 3rd Edition By Raymond Weil, Nyle C. Brady Soil Science Laboratory Manual By Del D. Dingus We're temporarily out of stock, but order now and we'll send it to you later.Back Order Loose Leaf Version ? Books a la Carte are less-expensive, loose-leaf versions of the same textbook. $102.60 \| ISBN-13: 978-0-13-505195-5	196,422
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Become an effective communicator and creative problem-solver, equipped with the skills and commercial insight you need for a career in marketing and wider managerial roles. You will learn to identify where competitive advantages lie, and develop the tools you need to respond to market opportunities. We’ll give you practically focused learning experiences and industry insight, developing you into a well-rounded marketing professional. You will study areas such as: - consumer psychology and behaviour - the interface of business with society and culture - business economics - strategic management - market research - GE Money - Arris (formerly PACE) - Enterprise Rent A Car Year one - Business Economics (core) Introduction to Accounting (core) Introduction to Finance (core) Quantitative Methods in Information Management (core) Student Self-Development (core) Operations and Information Systems Management (option) People, Work and Organisations (option) Year two - Business Law (core) Consumer Behaviour (core) Employability and Enterprise Skills (core) Integrated Marketing Communications (core) Marketing Management and Strategy (core) Marketing Research (core) Business Information Systems (option) Capital Markets, Investment and Finance (option) Company Law and Administration (option) Econometrics and Business Forecasting (option) Economics of Industry (option) Employee Relations (option) Financial Accounting (option) Financial Management (option) Fundamentals of Decision Support (option) Management Accounting (option) Management of Service Operations (option) Organisational Analysis (option) Organisational Design (option) Principles of Personal Finance (option) Resource Planning for Operations (option) The Transformation of Work (option) Year four - Applied Strategic Management (core) Corporate Marketing (core) Global Business Environment (core) International Business Strategy (core) International Marketing (core) Marketing and Entrepreneurship (core) Retail Marketing (core) Services Marketing(core) Understanding Strategic Management(core) Auditing (option) Brand Management (option) Contemporary Issues in Accounting (option) Corporate Reporting (option) Creativity and Innovation (option) Creativity in Marketing (option) Electronic Commerce (option) Enterprise and Innovation in Practice (option) Ethics in Business and Society (option) Human Resource Development (option) Human Resource Management (option) International Accounting(option) International and Comparative Employment Relations (option) International Finance (option) Managing Business in Europe (option) Organisational Change (option) Personal Financial Planning (option) Portfolio Investment Management (option) Strategic Information Systems (option) Sustainable Operations Management (option) Taxation (option) The Financial Services Sector and its Environment (option) World Class Operations (option). Please note that not all options will be available every year as they depend on student demand and staff availability. Students will be given the opportunity to state their preferences and the School of Management will do its best to accommodate these. Most modules use a mixture of formal lectures, tutorials and seminars. All modules require students to undertake independent study, supported through distance learning technologies such as our Virtual Learning Environment. Reading lists and suggested resources for independent study provide further direction for students to undertake this work, and regular contact hours and informal feedback throughout the courses provide opportunities for further guidance for learners. Assessments involve a combination of coursework assessments and formal examinations held at the end of each semester, the first-year assessments aim to measure your progress and the assessments that count towards the classification of your degree are held in the second and final years. How to apply This is the deadline for applications to be completed and sent for this course. If the university or college still has places available you can apply after this date, but your application is not guaranteed to be considered. - Course code: - Institution code: - Campus name: - Main Site - Campus code: Points of entry The following entry points are available for this course: - Year 1 The University welcomes applicants from students with a wide range of qualifications from the UK and overseas, including combinations of qualifications. To check whether your qualifications meet the entry requirements for this course, please contact the university. English language requirements for International and EU applicants: The standard University requirement is IELTS 6.0 with no sub-test less than 5.0 (or equivalent). However, if you require a Tier 4 (student) visa to study you will need to meet the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) department's requirement which is currently IELTS 6.0 with no sub-test less than 5.5. Conditional offers to international students will be made on this basis. The student satisfaction data is from students surveyed during the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of student respondents and response rates can be important in interpreting the data – it is important to note your experience may be different from theirs. This data will be based on the subject area rather than the specific course. Read more about this data on the Discover Uni website. Fees and funding \|Northern Ireland\|\|£9250\|\|Year 1\| \|Channel Islands\|\|£9250\|\|Year 1\| \|Republic of Ireland\|\|£9250\|\|Year 1\| This is a provisional fee and subject to change.	284,588
The Authentic Swing I just read Steven Pressfield's new book The Authentic Swing: Notes from the Writing of a First Novel and found it to be well worth my time. It is actually a book about writing novels and he uses the metaphor of golf to teach readers how to use the rules of that game to apply to being a good writer and finding one's voice. That said, since I have little interest in writing novels, I turned to the fascinating analogy of how golf applies to the personality. Golf is a game played by an individual where honesty, an ability to play the game alone without help (except maybe from one's caddy) and an authentic swing are necessary to succeed. I always wondered why business men were always taking clients to play golf and now I understood: it is to assess how they play the game. Are they honest or are they a cheater like Bill Clinton? Do they quit easily or do they stick with it? Do they show up on time ready to play or show up late and complain? It's a pretty smart way to get a snapshot of a potential hire's work ethic and personality without a Rorschach and given that some pre-employment screening can potentially be illegal, golf can be a useful way to see how a potential employee approaches life and possibly, your business.	226,586
When I asked my boyfriend if we were doing anything this year, I got an eye roll along with a monologue of how Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a scam created by Hallmark to get his money. And although his rant was a typical guy reaction, he did have some valid points that made me think… Why? Have you ever stopped and wondered why people spend $50 on flowers that are going to die in a few days? Or who chose February 14th to celebrate love? Or who decided that giving someone a box of chocolates means “I love you”? Probably not, but I’m going tell you anyway. Most people know the holiday got its name from a guy named St. Valentine, but nobody seems to really know the E! true story behind it. Fact: a very, very long time ago Pope Gelasius the first recast the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia as a Christian feast day to “Christianize” the pagan celebration and called it Valentine’s Day. Lupercalia is an interesting topic in itself, but to make a long story short; every February 15, Roman priests would sacrifice a goat and a dog , soak the goat hide in the dogs blood, and then walk around town and touch women with it because they believed this would make them more fertile. Then later on in the day, all the “lucky” women who were touched, would put their names in a big urn, and were picked out one-by-one, Hunger Game style, by a man. She and the man would then be paired together for the year. Now that’s romance. The mysterious part of the story is the actual identity of said St. Valentine. There were 3 saints in the history of the Catholic Church named Valentine, so nobody really knows for sure who Pope Gelasius was honoring with the holiday. But ironically enough, all three men were said to have been martyred on February 14. Most scholars believe that the Valentine in question was a Roman priest who believed very strongly in the concept of love. Legend has it that Roman Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage during the third century because he believed single men made better soldiers. Saint Valentine, being a true believer in love, disagreed with this and continued to marry young couples in secret. When the emperor found out, he had him killed, literally making him die in the name of love. Another legend has it that a man named St. Valentine was helping Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, and he was caught in the process. As the story goes, he was imprisoned while he awaited death for his crimes and during this time he fell in love with the daughter of the jail keep. Before his execution, he had supposedly written her a love letter and signed it “From your Valentine,” a quote we often found in Hallmark cards today. It wasn’t until the 1400s that written valentine cards came to be. The first known valentine was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife and it can still be seen today in the British Library in London. By the middle of the 18th century, it was common for couples to trade love letters and small tokens to show their affection. And by the 1900s, printed cards emerged. So how did we get to where we are today? Honestly… innovation. It went from being an honest gesture of love to a commercialized holiday where people are made to feel guilty if they don’t comply. I like the idea of a holiday based on true love. Love is a great thing and if you’re one of the few who’ve found it, you should celebrate it. But, if you write “I Love You” on a post it note and stick it on their favorite candy bar, it has the same effect as taking out a second mortgage on a dozen roses. It’s not about the gift, it’s about the person you’re buying it for. And let’s be real, if you love someone, you should tell them every day, not just because “every kiss begins with K”. #vdayraps	70,169
\|Manufacturer:\|\|TORRENT manufactures LICAB.\| \|Uses:\|\|The uses of LICAB include:\| Lithium is used to treat and prevent episodes of mania (frenzied, abnormally excited mood) in people with bipolar disorder (manic depressive disorder; a disease that causes episodes of depression, episodes of mania, and other abnormal moods). Lithium is in a class of medications called antimanic agents. It works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain. Lithium comes as a tablet, capsule, extended-release (long-acting) tablet, and solution (liquid) to take by mouth. The tablets, capsules, and solution are usually taken three to four times a day.The extended-release tablets are usually taken two to three times a day. Take lithium at around the same times every day. Follow the directions on your prescription label carefully, and ask your doctor or pharmacist to explain any part you do not understand. Take lithium exactly as directed. Do not take more or less of it or take it more often than prescribed by your doctor. Swallow the extended-release tablet whole; do not split, chew, or crush it. Your doctor may increase or decrease the dose of your medication during your treatment. Follow these directions carefully. Lithium may help to control your condition but will not cure it. It may take 1-3 weeks or longer for you to feel the full benefit of lithium. Continue to take lithium even if you feel well. Do not stop taking lithium without talking to your doctor. Lithium is also sometimes used to treat certain blood disorders, depression, schizophrenia (a mental illness that causes disturbed or unusual thinking, loss of interest in life, and strong or inappropriate emotions), disorders of impulse control (inability to resist the urge to perform a harmful action), and certain mental illnesses in children. Talk to your doctor about the risks of using this medication for your condition.	35,082
In this blog I'll be talking about my Haskell for Maths library - the maths behind it, how the code works, and how to use it. I thought we'd begin with something easy, (simple) graphs. Here are a couple of examples: Well actually, these are really the same graph - the cube. You see, we're not really interested in the spatial arrangement of the vertices and edges, but only in the pattern of connectivity between them. These graphs have the same vertices (the numbers 0 to 7), and you can check that the edges connect the same pairs of vertices. So a graph is defined as a pair (vs, es) where vs is a set of vertices, labelled by integers, say, and es is a set of edges - where an edge is a set of two vertices. In Haskell: data Graph a = G [a] [[a]] deriving (Eq,Ord,Show) For example (jumping ahead a little), the graph shown above is: > :load Math.Combinatorics.Graph > q 3 G [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7] [[0,1],[0,2],[0,4],[1,3],[1,5],[2,3],[2,6],[3,7],[4,5],[4,6],[5,7],[6,7]] Although we will often use integers to label the vertices, notice that the Graph data type permits us to use other types. This will turn out to be extremely useful. Okay, so whenever we define a new type of mathematical object, one of the first things we want to know is if there are any standard families of such objects. Here are a few standard graphs. (Note that from now on I usually won't label the vertices. When studying graphs, what we're really interested in is the underlying structure of vertices connected by edges. The labels on the vertices are just scaffolding.) The graph on the left is c 5, the cyclic graph on 5 vertices. c n = graph (vs,es) where vs = [1..n] es = L.insert [1,n] [[i,i+1] \| i <- [1..n-1]] Just a little note about this. For convenience, we insist that the lists of vertices and edges are always in ascending order, and that each edge (list of two vertices) is itself in ascending order. The "graph" constructor checks this for us. The middle graph above is k 5, the complete graph on 5 vertices, in which every pair of vertices is connected by an edge. k n = graph (vs,es) where vs = [1..n] es = [[i,j] \| i <- [1..n-1], j <- [i+1..n]] The graph on the right is the complete bipartite graph kb 2 3, in which each of two vertices on the left is connected to each of three vertices on the right. Here we have an example where it is useful to be able to use types other than Integer to label our vertices: kb' m n = graph (vs,es) where vs = map Left [1..m] ++ map Right [1..n] es = [ [Left i, Right j] \| i <- [1..m], j <- [1..n] ] kb m n = to1n $ kb' m n The function "to1n" converts a graph over some other type to a graph over the integers. > kb' 2 3 G [Left 1,Left 2,Right 1,Right 2,Right 3] [[Left 1,Right 1],[Left 1,Right 2],[Left 1,Right 3], [Left 2,Right 1],[Left 2,Right 2],[Left 2,Right 3]] > kb 2 3 G [1,2,3,4,5] [[1,3],[1,4],[1,5],[2,3],[2,4],[2,5]] There are a few more standard families of graphs, and some new from old constructions, defined in the Math.Combinatorics.Graph module. See the code for details. That's about all I've got time for just now. What I'm heading for is to be able to study the symmetries (automorphisms) of graphs. The code is in Math.Combinatorics.GraphAuts, if you want a sneak preview - otherwise you'll just have to wait.	131,297
If your kids are like mine, they do their homework sitting on the couch, the bedroom floor, or maybe at the kitchen table – once in a blue moon. If they sit at a desk in their room, it typically isn’t for a long time. That’s a good thing because most of these setups aren’t great ergonomically for long periods of doing work. It is a completely different ball game now that the schools are switching over to virtual classrooms due to the coronavirus. Students will be going online for extended periods of time to use Google classroom and other web portals to do assignments, watch instructional videos and virtual lectures/tours assigned by their teachers, etc. This is a different situation than getting comfy and consuming streamed media for entertainment or doing a short bout of a homework. There are several things that we can do to make sure that we improve their learning environment from an ergonomics standpoint so that we aren’t adding physical stress (musculoskeletal) to the emotional stress of this situation. These fixes may not be ergonomically perfect, but we need to work with what we have available to us. - Don’t have a laptop stand? Find some books to stack underneath your ipad or laptop to get it to a better height. (There are a couple of changes between photos. In the after photo (right), the chair seat has been elevated and the feet are supported on a shoebox. The ipad is lifted on books to help improve the viewing angle. Note that the neck, shoulders, and arms are more relaxed in the improved posture.) In the after photo (above right), the laptop has been elevated on a stand to improve the vision angle. A wireless keyboard and mouse with the laptop stand for inputting information. - Use a USB or wireless keyboard and mouse. - Don’t use the keyboard height adjusters – you want the keyboard to be somewhat flat to maintain a neutral posture at the wrist. - Keep the mouse close to the keyboard. Don’t put it in a place that you need to reach away from your body for it. - Learn the keyboard shortcuts for your apps – this reduces the physical demand on your wrist and fingers when using the mouse. - If they have an adjustable chair, set it to the right height for the surface that the keyboard is sitting on. - If their feet don’t touch the ground, find a box or some books that they can use as a foot rest. - If their back isn’t touching the back rest of the chair, use a pillow to help provide some support. - Use a timer to remind your kids to look away from the screen for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. Have them refocus on something on the other side of the room to give their eyes a break. - At least once an hour, have them get up and move around. - Encourage them to drink water while they are doing their work to stay hydrated. If your child has to use the couch, there are some small things that can be done to improve their posture. Have them sit with their feet on the floor and a pillow behind their back for improved support (below right) instead of sitting with crossed legs. Also, move the table close so they don’t have to reach (it could be a little closer in these photos.) If you have any questions about how to set up your student’s “virtual classroom”, drop me an e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org, tweet me @njergonomics, or give us a call at (732) 796-7370.	179,313
Salmon and Beef: What's Safe to Eat? Here's a look at the science behind the scares By Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, LD Amid the flurry of headlines about the food industry, it's a challenge to figure out what is safe to eat: Is mad cow disease a real threat? Does farmed salmon cause cancer? Many consumers are racing to buy organic foods to avoid potential toxins in their grocery carts. But are we overreacting, or is there really cause to shun our food supply? When it comes to two of the most recent foods called into question -- beef and salmon -- it boils down to a matter of risk vs. benefit. To help you decide whether these foods are for you, let's take a serious look at the science behind the headlines. The Salmon Scare A report in the January issue of the journal Science touched off alarm that farmed salmon contained levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs, a kind of dioxin) that could be harmful. The concern over PCBs stems from their role as a likely carcinogen in humans, based on studies in animals. In an ideal world, there would be no PCBs. But unfortunately, they exist in the air that we breathe and in many foods we eat, including chicken, butter, and both wild and farmed salmon. PCBs get into wild salmon from the other fish they eat and into farmed salmon from their feed (which contains many of these same fish). The FDA has set the safe upper limit for PCBs at 2000 parts per billion (ppb). Farmed salmon averages 27 ppb, well below that limit. The controversy has come about because another branch of the government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has set a much lower safe limit for PCBs in food -- 4.5 times lower, in fact. Keep in mind that these two agencies are charged with different functions. The EPA sets limits meant for recreationally caught fish, while the FDA's limits are intended for fish sold commercially. The FDA's higher limit is also supported by the World Health Organization and the European Union. Although the amount of PCBs found in most fish is only 1/80th of the FDA safe level, ''The farmed salmon industry is working to further reduce PCBs in fish feed while maintaining the healthful omega-3 fatty acid content,'' says Alex Trent, executive director for the industry group Salmon of the Americas. The American Heart Association maintains that eating two servings a week of oily fish (like salmon) can help healthy adults ward off sudden cardiac death, thanks to the protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids. The best source of these omega-3 fatty acids is farmed salmon, though they're also found in flaxseed, walnuts, soybeans, and oils made from these products. Many longstanding studies have documented the health benefits of a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids and their role in guarding against heart disease. More recent studies have indicated that omega-3s may even help keep your mind agile and protect against Alzheimer's disease. And salmon, like other fish, is an excellent, low-fat source of protein that many people enjoy eating. What can we conclude from this? It's a decision each of us needs to evaluate personally, of course. But for most healthy adults, the health benefits of salmon far outweigh the much smaller and less-clear risk that the PCBs found in it could cause cancer. (Children and pregnant or nursing women may be at increased risk of exposure to contaminants and should check with their doctors for advice on eating all kinds of fish.) Let's put the issue into perspective. The leading cause of death in the U.S. -- causing 950,000 deaths a year -- is cardiovascular disease. Eating two meals per week of fatty fish, such as salmon, can reduce the risk of fatal heart disease by 40%. The dangers of eating salmon, meanwhile, are unclear, largely theoretical, and based on studies in animals. The risks would appear to be much smaller than that of developing heart disease. If you are concerned about PCBs, remove the skin and dark flesh from your salmon, and cook it so that the fat drips off -- thus reducing PCBs by 20%-30%. How Safe Is Our Beef Supply? Because we eat so much beef in the U.S., it's especially important that we be confident of its safety. The CDC says that the risk of a consumer in this country contracting the human form of mad cow disease is "extremely small." In testimony presented to the Senate, CDC Director Julie Gerberding said U.S. authorities had taken adequate steps to reduce the risk. Studies have revealed that the agent responsible for mad cow infections is not found in beef muscle or in milk. The disease is spread by proteins called prions, which are found in the central nervous system tissue -- such as the brain and spinal cord -- of cattle. Prions cannot be destroyed by cooking.	143,399
If you are in delivery of an money related gain you can use for a offer to simply help with the expense of purchasing and adding a fresh boiler. The grant is part of the Warm Top scheme and might even protect the full costs. New boilers are very much more effective, 90% effective compared to older boilers which only present around 60% efficiency. Gasoline poverty is relatively new but by improving your heating system with a fresh power successful combination boiler can offer you really substantial savings. You also will be helping to save lots of the surroundings as new boilers are very good at reducing CO2 emissions. With the expense of Gas leaping it’s critical that nothing of this high priced fuel is wasted. Older boilers spend so significantly power compared to newer models. With older boilers a lot of heat is lost although flu which can be just like a chimney. With new mixture boilers this loss in heat is recycled though a second heat exchanger and turned back into useful energy, meaning hardly any is wasted. There’s more good news since from April in 2010 (2011) under the new Energy Organization Responsibility (ECO) power companies will soon be expected by law to provide discount on energy costs to probably the most prone customers. This can support about 2 million house holds over the next 4 years. So if your boiler is old you could be through money away. Your expenses will reduce quite considerably by replacing it with a contemporary condensing boiler. When you have a tiny home with only one toilet a combi boiler will soon be most suited to your needs. They are small and easily fit in a cupboard without the necessity to store water in a cylinder. You will get wall secured or ground position boilers. Bigger homes with multiple bathroom can still have one of these brilliant efficient boilers but there would be the need to store water in a cylinder. When purchasing a new boiler you’ve to consider your heat and warm water needs and where in actuality the boiler is going to be kept in addition to which form of boiler you will need the produce and product and the cost of buying and adding the unit. Oil and gas boilers take into account around 16% of co2 emissions in the UK. Because 2005 and to greatly help fight the harmful pollution emitted from domestic boilers a legislation was transferred to produce it essential for condensing boilers to be fitted, unless it’s too hard or expensive to accomplish so. A boiler installment manufacture will use a Developing Regulation Approved L1 report to establish whether it’s possible to put in a condensing boiler. Condensing boilers reduce the total amount of temperature that is missing through the flue and sometimes an A-grade boiler will convert more than 907 of the fuel it uses into heat for your home. They also generate less co2 which makes them more environmentally friendly. Installing the best boiler is extremely important. There are several forms of gasoline boilers but two of the very generally installed are combination and system boilers. Mixture boilers supply key heating and immediate hot water without the need for a tank. Combi boilers are small and relatively simple to install they are also well suited for small houses and flats with one bathroom and can be beautifully hidden behind home cabinets. One drawback is they are able to just provide hot water to 1 shower or tub at any given time that makes them less suitable for bigger homes. If that you don’t full in the group of being on benefits but still want a new pay monthly boilers there are however options available to you. Many of the top boiler installment companies present very good financing packages. You can move on the web today and check always most of the significant businesses and smaller ones if you prefer and evaluate money deals. This actually will be value your while as it appears like the costs of gasoline are going to continue up and up. Therefore do not be out of pocket, get a contemporary home heating installed ready for next winter.	305,929
Wilford WRK Gyro: The First Rotorcraft with Cyclic Pitch Control and Rigid Rotor System. Photo provided by Kenneth Fietz. Digital Photo By: Kenneth Fietz, Original Property of the U.S. Naval Historical Archives. This gyroplane is an elegant design produced in 1931. The aircraft being a single seat design in a tractor configuration with sleek simple lines and a beautifully tapered four-bladed rotor. The aircraft model identification came from the initials of E. Burke Wilford and German aero engineers Walter Rieseler and Walter Kreiser, upon whose rotor patent (1927) the ship was designed around. Unique to this rotorcraft was the preceding history with the complications of the rigid rotor system. The use of a rigid rotor was attempted very early in rotorcraft development and when these aircraft sat upon the confines of the ground most were able to achieve full rotor speed but when the aircraft started to lift off the ground the effects of dyssemetry of lift would cause the aircraft to roll and impact the ground. It was the advancement in rotor stability by Juan de la Cierva that would make rotary-wing flight practical. Cierva designed the fully articulated rotor, which relieved bending forces and allowed the blades to flap and (later) lead and lag in their position. Cierva’s designs however did not take full advantage of the rotating wing. Control of his autogiros was by conventional control surfaces already in existence on airplanes, rudder, aileron and elevator control. The notable and historic achievement of the WRK Gyro was the practical application of cyclic pitch control. This advancement allowed the aviator to directly control the pitch direction of the rotor disc. This development would improve the agility of the aircraft and later be one of the required technologies needed for the development of a practical vertical lift aircraft, the helicopter. The WRK Gyro shelved the hinged rotor used by Cierva and employed a rigid rotor system with cyclic pitch variation. The ability to vary the pitch or feather the rotor blades in the normal rotation of the blades provides the same affect as the flapping hinges on the fully articulated rotor head in the Cierva design. In this arrangement the advancing blade pitch is lowered to reduce total lift and pitch is increased on the retreating blade to increase total lift. It can be understood that the advancing blade “sees” more lift due to the additional lift from the relative lift due to the forward direction of flight of the aircraft. Similarly, the retreating blade will have less lift due to the blade moving in the opposite direction of travel of the aircraft, thereby; the retreating blade producing less lift. By varying the pitch of the advancing and retreating blades the overall affect creates an equilibrium of lift between the advancing and retreating blades. The WRK Gyro became the first aircraft to successfully fly with a rigid rotor system in 1931. The Start of Something Special Wilford's first aircraft was built with partner Vincent Burnelli and entered for the Guggenheim Safe Airplane Contest in 1927. This aircraft was particularly designed for low-speed landing. Wilford left the United States in 1928 headed for Europe where he was able to secure the rotor design patent rights of German designers Walter Rieseler and Walter Kreiser Walter Rieseler: 1890-1938 Rieseler was born in Berlin, Germany in 1890 and developed a passion for aviation at a young age. Alongside his brother Walter founded an aircraft company in 1920 at Breslau. Rieseler and his friend Walter Kreiser continued to design and experiment with many facets of aviation and on January 24, 1926 the two were awarded a patent for an autogyro. It should be noted that this patent was issued two days prior to the patent issued to Cierva in England. The following year Rieseler and Kreiser built their first autogyro with financing coming from a banker in Hamburg. The Rieseler and Kreiser autogyro was of normal design for the period but they were attempting to directly control the rotor unlike what Cierva was attempting in England. Rieseler wanted to take full advantage of the four blades swinging overhead but after the first test, which showed strong oscillations for which they could not get under control. This design flaw was enough for the banker to back out of any future funding of the project. Rieseler’s work did not go unnoticed however and both Rieseler and Kreiser were persuaded by Professor Alexander Kleimin of the Guggenheim Institute at New York to come to the United States to continue their work. In 1930 the two aircraft designers left Germany to form a partnership with E. Burke Wilford in Pennsylvania. The new company being called the Pennsylvania Aircraft Syndicate or PAS. Work progressed well for the Syndicate and on August 5th of 1931 they rolled out their first autogyro for its first flight. F.P. Brown flew the single seat aircraft and following the successful first flight began a series of modifications to the design, which included replacing the engine with a more powerful type, they shortened the fuselage length and widened the wings. The modified ship was then christened the WRK Gyro with the initials of the Syndicate members. In 1934, Rieseler decided to return to Germany and try and tackle the challenges presented with helicopter development. Walter Rieseler founded the Rieseler and Company in Berlin. Rieseler went on to design three different helicopters, two of which were flown and crashed. The final design the RIII, was not built as in January of 1938 at the young age of 47 Walter Rieseler passed away from a heart attack and the works of Rieseler fell into obscurity. To view the patent of Riesler and Kreiser see patent number 1975124. Making of A Legend: On February 27, 1929 Mr. William Devaney sold his “Twin Brook Farm” to E. Burke Wilford due to Mr. Devaney’s health. Wilford purchased the property for the purpose of designing and flight testing an aircraft he called the gyroplane. Wilford was one of several early rotorcraft pioneers testing the state-of-of-the-art in rotorcraft design just as were Cierva and Pitcairn. Naturally attempting to secure a place in the aviation industry and reap the financial rewards of their technological advances. In May of 1929, the farm was legally transferred in ownership from Wilford to the Philadelphia-Main Line Airport, Incorporated. Mr. Wilford was the president of this new corporation. Wilford began development of the property to suit his needs and began with modifying the barn into a workable hanger facility. The word PAOLI was displayed on the barn roof to identify the new airport. As this work was being carried out the gyroplane was being completed in New Jersey. December of 1930 the new aircraft was shipped to PAOLI to begin its taxi tests as “Configuration Number 1”. During the next several months Wilford’s engineers and mechanics produced a second aircraft, this second configuration being called the “WRK Gyroplane”. In August of 1931 Lt. Frank Brown took the controls for the first of nearly 200 flights in the “WRK”. This was the first successful flight of any rigid rotor design in the world. Wilford and his team would continue to fly his aircraft from PAOLI until 1932. In 1932, Wilford moved his team to a new site in Essington, Pennsylvania. The new location having formerly served as a seaplane base and World War I training center. Along with this new location came a new name for his organization and Wilford formed the Pennsylvania Aircraft Syndicate Ltd. It was at this new location where in 1934, configuration 3 suffered from a structural failure that killed the pilot. This tragic event moved Wilford to temporarily halt his gyroplane project. Details from Aero Digest, April, 1935: Pennsylvania Aircraft Syndicate, Ltd., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania â€¢ President: E. Burke Wilford. Chief Engineer: Elliott Daland. Two-place open gyroplane. Kinner R-5 engine, 155 horsepower at 1975 revolutions per minute. Span of fixed wing 27 feet 4 inches. Rotor diameter 32 feet. Length overall 21 feet 4 inches. Height overall 10 feet. Tread 67.5 inches. Wing area 110 square feet. Chord 55 inches. Rotor disc area 804 square feet. Rotor blade area 68.3 square feet. Power loading 12.8 pounds per horsepower. Wing loading 18 pounds per square foot. Rotor disc loading 2.47 pounds per square foot. Empty weight 1455 pounds. Useful load 530 pounds. Gross weight 1985 pounds. Fuel capacity 16 gallons. Oil capacity 3 gallons. Maximum speed 107 miles per hour. Cruising speed 90 miles per hour. Landing speed 30 miles per hour. Cruising range 148 miles. Fuselage: welded chrome molybdenum steel tubing, fabric covered; tandem seating arrangement. Wing: wood spars, dural ribs, fabric covered; strut-braced to fuselage; blades of rotor restrained at hub both in horizontal and vertical planes and are free to twist, or feather, only; opposite blades of the four-bladed rotor are connected rigidly together, so that as the angle of attack on one side increases, that on the opposite side decreases; blade angles controlled laterally and longitudinally by motion of control stick which also controls ailerons and elevators. Tail group: steel tubing, fabric covered; wire braced to bottom fuselage longerons. Fixed type landing gear equipped with 7.50 X 10 Goodrich tires, Autofan wheels and brakes, Fleet shock absorbers. Norma-Hoffmann and SKF bearings for rotor and plane controls. This is primarily a training and utility gyro and can be equipped with Edo twin floats. Instruments: engine tachometer, rotor tachometer, altimeter, air speed indicator, oil pressure gauge, oil temperature gauge. Also see data in February, 1932, and February, 1935, AERO DIGEST. One N2Y-1 was on board Macon in October 1933 when she flew across the continent to her new base at Moffett Field, California. Three others (#s 8600-8602) were then placed in storage at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, though one of these was converted to an experimental autogyro floatplane (the XOZ-1, Bureau # 8602) in 1935. In 1934 Macon received new XJW-1 utility planes, making the N2Y-1's essentially redundant for their original mission. One of the latter (# 8604) crashed in July 1934. The other two remained in service for a few more years, serving as utility planes with the aircraft carriers Saratoga (CV-3) and Ranger (CV-4). Photo By: Kenneth Fietz Through everything that Wilford attempted with his autogyro it never gained acceptance among the engineering community at the time but the WRK Gyro was the first rotorcraft to successfully fly not only with a rigid rotor system but also one of the first rotorcraft to fly with cyclic pitch control. The cyclic control provides the pilot a means to tilt the rotor system to provide a direct means of flight control. By tilting the rotor system the gyroplane can be directed for ascending, descending, and banked flight. By directly controlling the rotating wing or rotor system, over conventional airplane flight controls, provides for more precise control and quicker response of input- in short, a more agile aircraft. The employment of the rigid rotor system has seen some of aviation’s most impressive helicopters, the Lynx, Cheyenne and Bo-105 as examples. The rigid rotor system is mechanically a rather simple arrangement but is extremely complex from a structural point of view. In a rigid rotor system the blades are not allowed to lead/lag or flap but can be feathered (through cyclic input). Due to this rigidity of the blades the operating loads must be absorbed in bending rather than through hinges and bearings. All flapping and lead/lag forces are absorbed quite simply by blade bending in the rigid rotor system. WRK II Gyroplane Number of seats: 1 Engine: 1 x ACE Mark III rated 85hp, later modified with a 165hp Jacobs Wingspan: 7.01m Rotor Diameter: 9.14m Maximum Weight: 816kg Maximum Speed: 190km/h The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Helicopters by Giorgio Apostolo, Copyright 1984 by Bonanza Books and distributed by Crown Publishers Inc. Helicopters of the Third Reich by Steven Coates - 2002 Classic Publications Die deutsche Luftfahrt - Hubschrauber und Tragschrauber by Kyrill von Gersdorff & Kurt Knobling- 1985 Bernard & Graefe Verlag Hartmut Rieseler Dipl.Ing.Mschb. P.Lambermont "Helicopters and Autogyros of the World", 1958 Rotorcraft Flying Handbook FAA-H-8083-21, U.S. Department of Transportation Aero Digest, April 1935 Aero Digest, February 1935 Aero Digest, February 1932 Title: The aerodynamic analysis of the gyroplane rotating-wing system Author(s): Wheatley, John B Abstract: An aerodynamic analysis of the gyroplane rotating-wing system is presented herein. This system consists of a freely rotating rotor in which opposite blades are rigidly connected and allowed to rotate or feather freely about their span axis. Equations have been derived for the lift, the lift-drag ratio, the angle of attack, the feathering angles, and the rolling and pitching moments of a gyroplane rotor in terms of its basic parameters. Curves of lift-drag ratio against lift coefficient have been calculated for a typical case, showing the effect of varying the pitch angle, the solidarity, and the average blade-section drag coefficient. The analysis expresses satisfactorily the qualitative relations between the rotor characteristics and the rotor parameters. As disclosed by this investigation, the aerodynamic principles of the gyroplane are sound, and further research on this wing system is justified. NASA Center: Langley Research Center Publication Year: 1934 Document Source: CASI Online Source: View PDF File Document ID: 19930081495 Accession ID: 93R10785 Publication Information: Number of Pages = 30 Report Number: NACA-TN-492 Price Code: A03 Related Information: NACA Technical Note 492. Accessibility: Unclassified; No Copyright; Unlimited; Publicly available; Updated/Added to NTRS: 2006-11-06 A HISTORY OF THE MAIN LINE AIRPORT Roger D. Thorne Creation of the Philadelphia Main Line	200,653
Skip to comments.Stop talking about the Hispanics for a moment — what about Asian-Americans? Posted on 11/11/2012 6:21:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind Apart from some fatuous self-congratulation from Asian-American liberals, there has been very little discussion of the 73-26 Asian-American margin of support for President Obama in last Tuesday’s election. That’s slightly smaller than the highest estimate of Latino support for Obama, at 75-23. Asian-Americans are a small minority now but their numbers are growing rapidly. Most conservatives consider Asian-Americans poster-children for the American model of self-motivated success. The facts bear this out. The Pew Research Center reported last July: Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans do on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success… Asians recently passed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States. The educational credentials of these recent arrivals are striking. More than six-in-ten (61%) adults ages 25 to 64 who have come from Asia in recent years have at least a bachelors degree. This is double the share among recent non-Asian arrivals, and almost surely makes the recent Asian arrivals the most highly educated cohort of immigrants in U.S. history. Compared with the educational attainment of the population in their country of origin, recent Asian immigrants also stand out as a select group. For example, about 27% of adults ages 25 to 64 in South Korea and 25% in Japan have a bachelors degree or more.2In contrast, nearly 70% of comparably aged recent immigrants from these two countries have at least a bachelors degree. Asian-American kids occupy nearly three-quarters of the places at New York City’s exam-based high schools (including Bronx Science and Stuyvesant) although they comprise less than 12% of the student population. The main threat to the upward striving of working-class immigrant kids who study hard to get into top schools is the NAACP. The New York Times reported Oct. 15: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other groups filed a racial bias complaint with the United States Education Department. They charge that reliance on a single test for determining who gets into Bronx Science and seven other specialized high schools discriminates against young African-Americans and Latinos. Other factors, like student grades, need to be considered as well, they say. Asians “also stand out for their strong emphasis on family,” the Pew study reported. “More than half (54%) say that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life; just 34% of all American adults agree. Two-thirds of Asian-American adults (67%) say that being a good parent is one of the most important things in life; just 50% of all adults agree.” If the Republican Party can’t win the support of the immigrant group with the strongest family values and the most success in achieving the American dream, what can it say to the Hispanics, the immigrant group with the least success in achieving the American dream? I do not mean to be glib. The issue requires study. But I will venture a guess: Asian-Americans, like any other immigrant group, come here with the hope of bringing family members with them. Tough enforcement of immigration laws makes life as hard for them as it does for any other immigrant group, and frustrates their hope of reuniting families in America. The result of our present immigration laws is that we fail to keep out the illegals we don’t want, and make it harder to absorb the skilled and energetic immigrants we do want. There will be endless discussion during the next few months of Romney’s mistake in moving to the right of Rick Perry on immigration during the Republican primaries, and I will leave the detailed parsing to the professionals. I hope the professionals talk to Asian-Americans first. America is unlikely to tolerate ethnic quotas (Asians in, Hispanics out). There are plenty of bright Hispanics as well (with 25% unemployment in Spain, German firms are recruiting Spanish engineers to fill the 30,000 job openings for engineers in Germany). But there is a sensible way to encourage the kind of immigration that boosts economic growth and discourage the kind of immigration that impedes economic growth. The distinguished Canadian economist Prof. Reuven Brenner of McGill University wrote two years ago in First Things magazine: Without innovation, America faces prolonged stagnation. The outlook seems bleak. Between 1988 and 1998, manufacturing productive growth rose from less than 2 percent to more than 5 percent per annum. By 2008, it had fallen back to the 2 percent range as the great wave of innovation abated. This outcome is not inevitable, however. America has been obtaining a disproportionate flow of skilled innovators by attracting these vital few to its shores. Without their contribution, America may neither sustain the economic growth required to absorb the penurious many nor raise their standards of living. The impact of the vital few does trickle down… The problem lies in policy. American sentiment toward immigrants has swung from boomtown hospitality to churlish xenophobia in the course of the present recession… It is hard to blame opponents of immigration. Earlier this year, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that Californias estimated 2.7 million illegal residents7 percent of the states populationadd $4 billion to $6 billion in costs. Cutting off state payments for the American-born children of immigrants supposedly would save about $640 million a year. By similar estimates, Arizonas illegal immigrant population is costing the states taxpayers about $1.3 billion per year. Whether these estimates are exact or only in the ballpark, it is clear that poor migrants drain state finances under the present institutional and regulatory landscape, and the drain is substantial. …The least the United States can do is try, explicitly, to attract the vital few to its shores and, at the same time, speed up the domestic production of talent. …Congress should first increase visas for skilled immigrantsthose who would invest in their own entrepreneurial ventures in the United States in particular. Congress also should facilitate a temporary worker program, but without instantaneously bestowing on those workers the many monetary government benefits for which Americas already taxpaying citizens are eligible. For immigrants in the United States who do not have proper documentation but who have built up equity in this country, opportunities should be provided to obtain legalization if they can demonstrate good moral character. Such an earned legalization should be achievable and verifiable in an accountable manner. As Prof. Brenner observes, immigrants have made a disproportionate contribution to American economic growth in recent years. “At the height of the last tech boom in 1999, Chinese and Indian engineers were at the helm of 24 percent of the technology companies started in Silicon Valley,” he writes, adding: In 25.3 percent of [high-tech and engineering] companies, at least one key founder was foreign-born. Of all immigrant-founded companies, 26 percent had Indian founders; 7 percent had founders of British and Chinese origin; 6 percent had founders from Taiwan; Japanese and German founders each led 5 percent; 4 percent had founders from Israel; 3 percent had founders from Canada; and 2.5 percent had founders from Iran. In Massachusetts the single largest founding group was Israelis, at 17 percent. Indian entrepreneurs dominated in New Jersey, leading 47 percent of all immigrant-founded start-ups. Immigrants also represented 24.2 percent of international patent applications filed from the United States in 2006. Chinese filed the largest number of patents, followed by Indians, Canadians, and British. If we Republicans can’t persuade our most successful, entrepreneurial, family-oriented citizens to support us, we won’t be in business much longer. Asian Americans are supposed to be smart. There goes that theory. I am Norweigan American, yeah, what about us whities? RE: Asian Americans are supposed to be smart. Having a high IQ does not necessarily equate to being WISE. The Bible does distinguish between wisdom and intelligence. There are many FOOLISH intelligent people out there. RE: I am Norweigan American, yeah, what about us whities? 1) Norwegian Americans are welcome to immigrate, but they aren’t. 20 How about having more children? But...but...what about Euro-Americans? (I now refuse to check the “white” box). What about me? I’m an American, so I guess I don’t count. OMG! Stop talking about the minority and start talking about how the STOP the STUPID PARTY foisting a rino on the electorate! rinos are losers. They should be conservative. I thought for the most part that US asians were... Well if tis the muslim demographics controlling this then Alquida will win the terror war. we are doomed. We can run the next Hiram Fong. Whites don't vote as an ethnic group. They love the idea of Santa Claus and untaxed income. Among Asians the Democrat party is the party of the freebie. No need to change to any other party. Maybe we should've ran Akin or Mourdock? They did so well capturing senate seats. Have universities started curbing the intake of Norwegian Americans like they currently do to Asian-Americans (Chinese/Indian/Korean etc.)? 1) Chinese don’t vote-they don’t like jury duty. 2) Feeleepeenos are like Mexicans-poor and they like freebees. “They should be conservative. I thought for the most part that US asians were...” The several families that I know well, are all conservative. As for their American-educated kids? Don’t really know,,,,,,,,, The gals are the best! They scoff at American womyn who are in love with obama. Large Asian communities here in NE Los Angeles - came over as Hong Kong went back to China. I hear from a student that most of his classmates (Middle School) voted for O. That has to be a good % of Asians! “Asian Americans are supposed to be smart.” They are not only smart but work hard, have a strong respect for education and a strong discipline in applying themselves to whatever task the embark. Jewish-Americans are supposed to be smart. They are not only smart but work hard, have a strong respect for education and a strong discipline in applying themselves to whatever task the embark. The question is: “Why aren’t they voting for the Republicans/Conservatives who promote meritocracy, hard work, intelligence?” Well, when the prevailing attitude is Don’t worry about spending money on the Blacks, they won’t vote for us anyway...after all they are only 10% of the population. Don’t worry about spending money on the Hispanics, they won’t vote for us anyway...after all they are only 10% of the population. Don’t worry about spending money on the Asians, they won’t vote for us anyway...after all they are only 10% of the population. Don’t worry about spending money on the Gays, they won’t vote for us anyway...after all they are only 10% of the population. Don’t worry about spending money on the Poor White Trash, they won’t vote for us anyway...after all they are only 10% of the populations... ETC ETC ETC.... Add that to the CORE that would vote for a complete schmuck such as BO, Gore, Kerry and you are sitting on the sidelines. That said-- the predisposition to give Hussein 85% of their support.... point taken. How Hispanics, Asians vote- none of that matters if we tolerate massive voter fraud. Sign the petition for a recount: Visit this site. They are keeping a running account of cases of voter fraud and what to do about it: From the website: Barack Obama voter fraud 2012 Friday, November 9, 2012 - 22 Updates Posted Today and People You Can Contact! See FRIDAY UPDATES! * Is this what Barack Obama calls a ground game? All things considered, on this page and elsewhere, Mitt Romney IS our President elect. Lets do something about it! Ill be adding additional links on a regular basis and forwarding all of this information to Mitts campaign! Please send other links. Evidence of massive Obama voter fraud in Colorado! Ten counties show 104% to 140% turnout! Fraud: Some told they already voted, others brag about voting multiple times Crooked Politics: Obama Lost in Every State With Photo ID Law Philly Polling Stations Where GOP Inspectors Were Kicked Out Had 90% Voter Turnout, 99% Voted For Obama [Sounds like those Black Panthers who kicked out the GOP observers and stood guard at the polling stations were not just trying to intimidate voters! They were hiding something!] Voter Fraud Watch: Two Election Judges Replaced After Illegal Activity in Ohio - Fox News Insider Why the Polls are Wrong: Electorate is R+6 Vote fraud alert: One out of five registered Ohio voters is bogus via @BeachCity55 on Twitter: Senior parents in Florida told not to put their ballots through their reader but in a box. Senior votes in FL not counted? Data Points To A Powerful Romney Campaign And Yet You have to vote for Dems NYC poll worker tells GOP Senate candidate #IllegalElectioneering At least 70,000 report voting problems, mostly in swing states Plane crash destroys Afghanistan US military ballots, most of which are for Mitt Romney Obamas pattern of disenfranchisement of the military vote Another Stolen Election? Election data HIGHLY suspicious AND the George Soros Secretary of State Project http://goo.gl/y1ybR Yes, this is the same George Soros who owns part of the company in Spain Obama outsourced parts of the election to and who has been banned from Hungary because he tampered with elections there. We will continue to add updates! Please check back often! From Lynn Victory on Facebook: Thanks for what you are doing. My son is friends with a guy in the Romney campaign who has actually been on since 2008. He is not high up, but said that the O campaign bought high tech equipment to target county by county where the votes were needed in battle-ground states, so that they could bus in the needed votes. The guy would not say fraud, but that is fraud. Also this referral from Lynn: White House Insider on Obama Steal the Votes Strategy (Just Before the Election) these Obama boys they took it to a whole other level. Votes, donations its a lot more Putin than it is Clinton. Pay to play this country never seen it at this level. Voter fraud witnessed in Wisconsin by one of Mitts ORCA observers: via Lori Patriot on Facebook: 52 Democrats arrested for VOTER FRAUD so far VIDEO: Illegal Aliens Caught Voting and Stealing Elections In Florida In Vast Numbers In 2008, John McCain Ignored Vote Fraud to Avoid Civil Unrest Michael Savage: How Obama fixed 2012 election Massive voter fraud discovered in April Is Voter Fraud Being Committed in Ohio? (Early Voting) Pundit Press: What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote Photo of Ethiopians brought to Ohio voting stations by busload, 95% of whom did not speak English, and told to vote for Obama, straight Dem ticket Did this Dirty Trick Get Obama Re-Elected? Vote Fraud Expert: Romney Votes Not Counted in Key States Could we fix an election? Sure, they would never know it. Thousands of votes from our military troops uncounted or missing Defense Department cant put soldiers, ballots together Voter fraud in Pennsylvania - Black Panthers return, GOP inspectors thrown out Ohio fraudulent voter registration cards Ohio Residents Told They Already Voted When They Showed Up At the Polls Tuesday Poll Worker Puts Glendale Precincts Ballots on Car, Drives Away Referenced above, but with more information: Two Ohio Election Judges Removed for Allowing Unregistered Voters to Cast Ballots Democrat Admits Hes Voted FOUR Times Already Boston reports 129% voter turnout, 79% for Obama; 74% for Elizabeth Warren This one could be just a calibration issue, but not necessarily based on the programers testimony in the next link: Voting machine swaps Romney for Obama Programmer Testifies About Rigging Elections With Vote Counting VIDEO: Possible voter fraud in Pennsylvania or just voting machine malfunction? Voter Fraud Complaint Filed against Florida Democrats Ballot Re-writers Update from Allen Westhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=299196730187117&set=a.198312883608836.34844.198021666971291&type=1&theater Half the Democratic ground game is voter turnout. The other half is voter fraud. Voter Fraud: Obama Won 108% of Registered Voters in Wood County, Ohio Video: Diebold Whistleblower Speaks Out on Voter Fraud BREAKING: St. Lucie County, Florida Had 141.1% Turnout; Obama Won County Between St. Lucie and Broward Counties, we have a pretty good idea what happened in Florida. Normal voting is what, 50% turnout? It doesnt take many counties like this to affect an entire state by multiple percentage points. All of these numbers between 99% (Pennsylvania) and 141.1% (Florida) turnout in dozens of counties in swing states makes me think Team Obama was panicking a lot just before the election, with Mitt up by 7% in certain early voting polls. They overcompensated so much the fraud is impossible to hide. I think they know it, which may be one reason Axelrod is stepping down. (Sound familiar Petraeus and Benghazi?) As I told someone earlier today, this is who Obama is. This is who Chicago (the machine) is. Do we really want this to be who America is? Is this how we will define our elections from 2008 on? As Mitt says, America can do better. We must do better. We cant let the message be out there that America will let this fraud go. Want to do something about all of this? Tiffany Banks and Darin Southam forwarded me a list of people you can contact who are in the November 9, 2012 3:12 PM comment below. Did you know voters can request a recount in certain states? (Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin!) Take a look at the comment by @RightonMainSt dated November 9, 2012 11:45 PM below for instructions! Mitt will have to ask in Colorado himself. (Yes, you Mitt!) It has also been suggested that we ask Republican Secretaries of State NOT to certify the election until all questions about voter fraud are abated. Some people think this may provoke a crisis, but it cant be worse than the one we are looking at for the next four years and the impact on generations to come! America NEEDS Mitt, and Mitt won fair and square. This was not a ballot stuffing competition but an election. Lets make sure its counted that way! Thank you all. Over 7,500 people have visited this page in the first 24 hours and I hope millions will see it eventually. Please pass it on! We can do this! (Yes we can!) Photo of Ethiopians brought to Ohio voting stations by busload, 95% of whom did not speak English, and told to vote for Obama, straight Dem ticket https://www.facebook.com/lori.patriot/posts/404694619604138 Must watch videos! VIDEO-Programmer Testifies About Rigging Elections With Vote Counting VIDEO- Illegal Aliens Caught Voting and Stealing Elections In Florida In Vast Numbers VIDEO- Michael Savage: How Obama fixed the 2012 election: VIDEO- Massive voter fraud discovered in April: Whistle blower speaks out about voter fraud; http://www.youtube.com/watch? feature=player_embedded&v=k_rMpQKqZhM ___________________________________________________ We can't wait for 2014 and 2016 to regroup and figure out new strategies. By then it will be too late. The Marxist/Muslim usurper will have completed his planned distruction of America. That's what people fail to understand. We must act NOW. Start with the election. If we let the Rats get away with this massive voter fraud, we're no better than a bananna republic. We must keep digging and pounding him every day, in every way we can- phony birth certificate, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, his hidden life, records.... Agree, based on the comments on many blogs: why wasn’t it 100% for Obama? Must be some of them just like to be called muzzies, ragheads, whatever. I have my nails done at a typical Vietnamese owned salon. On my last appt, which was on election day, a young man did my nails. He bravely started talking politics to me, said he was a Christian and would have to vote for Romney. (I didn’t get if he was a registered voter or not). He also said he lived in a low-income neighborhood and couldn’t understand why some of the minorities that also lived there didn’t work. He said they all appeared strong and able-bodied, why weren’t they working? We had a nice talk and he spoke pretty clear english, much better than most of the salon employees. I left him a sizeable tip. well does that mean that asians are voting for Obama to support communism? well does that mean that asians are voting for Obama to support communism? Or is this all about race? Asians, another Dem manufactured victim group, are Democrats because the Dem Party has made itself the party of immigrants and minorities. It is almost tribal and has less to do with economics and self-interest than it has to do with tribal politics in a society that trumpets multiculturalism and diversity. Norwegian-Americans broke huge for Obama. I live in a part of the country (western Wisconsin and SE Minnesota, NE Iowa, NW Illinois) with large populations of Norwegian-Americans. I have them for in-laws. If you look at a map of the counties in the four state area that are connected, it's solid blue. A writer for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel noticed that as well. The conclusion: Norwegian-Americans love socialism. Sorry to break the news, I'm part (1%) Norwegian as well. When your goal is to take alter demographics in order to diminish the voting impact of another group - that is racist, and this is precisely what has been happening. Thank Ted Kennedy. At this point, IMHO, I think our side (and I don’t mean just whites, but those who believe in classic American principles) needs to start having as many babies as possible. Don’t worry too much about paying for them. The left doesn’t. We should also consider adopting. Obviously I would only suggest this if the children are going to be your focus, and they will be given all the love they deserve. I also think those of us who run businesses that use people from abroad should direct their hiring to those who are more likely to aspire to the America we love. Why are we talking about Asian-Americans and utilizing the term “Asian” (a diverse continent which is nearly 40% Caucasian (India, Pakistan, Middle East, Eastern Russia, Ukraine etc.)) in place of Oriental (Korean, Chinese, Japanese etc.)? I bet the numbers would be much different if the groups were segregated as they should be. No group is going to vote conservative, no matter how supposedly conservative their personal values, as long as there exists a racial spoils system in this country for every racial group except whites. Yes. Successful white liberals are also fairly conservative in their personal lives (see “Coming Apart:The State Of White America, 1960-2010) but they vote rat. Don’t worry about standing on principle, who needs two parties anyway? I wish Mitt hadn’t conceded so soon. Those who take an oath to uphold our laws are crooks who belong in prison. True, and it is also leading to a one-party system when both sides jettison principle to pander for votes. We are already headed there with such groups as “Log Cabin Republicans” and the repeated push by certain Republicans to pander yet more for the hispanic vote. Looking at the big picture, I fail to see how Tuesday's elections were anything less than a disaster for conservatism. Sure, we won a few races and ballots here and there but as a whole, Tuesday was a net loss for conservatives and conservative values. These guys (Akin/Mourdock) were definitely flawed candidates. Heck, in Missouri, Obama lost by 10 points and the state legislature became a supermajority for the R’s...and Akin lost by 10. Obama also got crushed in Indiana and Mourdock got beat as well. As far as Scott Brown goes, well, he lost in a state that Obama WON by like 30 points, so it should come as no surprise. Comparing the Brown loss to Akin/Mourdock is apples to oranges. One thing the Democrats do much better than Republicans is unify. I don’t see near the vitriol for the moderate Dems from the liberal Dems like I see for moderate R’s from conservative R’s. “Whites aren’t even supposed to recognise that we are an ethnic group” Correct. Ethnic now means “nonwhite”. It looked like to me that every where you looked, they were chomping at the bit to throw in the towel. I'd be curious to know the dates their visas were stamped and not at all surprised if these dates were during the Bush Administration while he was rolling out the red carpet to unskilled African immigrants. It would be considered “ethnic cleansing” if whites were immigrating in overwhelming numbers to any black, brown, or yellow nation and race-replacing the inhabitants. The UN would be calling for measures to stop it. Only in white nations is race-replacement—”ethnic cleansing”—acceptable, even desirable. Sounds to me like you have a choice to make. Vote democrat or lose because us filthy conservatives aren’t going away. Moderates, nothing but lying, manipulative bottom feeding scum. You must never have lurked at DU. There are constant calls for the purging of the “centrists” from the party. The DNC is a villian to the “progressives”. Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.	47,025
A junior version of the famous Perseid meteor shower thought to have originated from the remains of Halley's Comet will hit its peak over the next week, but the light of the moon may intrude on the sky show. This upcoming meteor display is known as the Orionids because the meteors seem to fan out from a region to the north of the Orion constellation's second brightest star, ruddy Betelgeuse. The annual event peaks before sunrise on Thursday (Oct. 21) but several viewing opportunities arise before then for skywatchers in North America. [ Where to look to see the Orionids ] Currently, Orion appears ahead of us in our journey around the sun, and has not completely risen above the eastern horizon until after 11 p.m. local daylight time. The constellation is at its best several hours later. At around 5 a.m. – Orion will be highest in the sky toward the south – Orionids typically produce around 20 to 30 meteors per hour under a clear, dark sky. But skywatchers beware: You will be facing a major obstacle in your attempt to observe this year’s Orionid performance. As bad luck would have it, the moon will turn full on Oct. 23. Bright moonlight outshines fainter meteors, seriously reducing the number anyone can see. The gradual build up to the full moon will hamper – if not outright prevent – dark-sky observing during the Orionid meteor shower's peak on Oct. 21. The Orionids are actually already underway, having been active only in a very weak and scattered form since about Oct. 2. But a noticeable upswing in activity is expected to begin around Oct. 17, leading up to their peak night. "Orionid meteors are normally dim and not well seen from urban locations," notes meteor expert, Robert Lunsford, adding that "it is highly suggested that you find a safe rural location to see the best Orionid activity." Damage control for 2010 With all this as a background, perhaps the best times to look this year will be during the predawn hours several mornings before the night of full moon. That’s when the constellation Orion (from where the meteors get their name) will stand high in the northeast sky. In fact, three "windows" of dark skies will be available between moonset and the first light of dawn on the mornings of Oct. 18, 19 and 20. Generally speaking, there will be about 150 minutes of completely dark skies available on the morning of the 18th.This shrinks to about 100 minutes on the 19th, and to about 50 minutes by the morning of the 20th. This skywatching table shows prime Orionid meteor shower viewing times for some select U.S. cities. In the table, all times are a.m. and are local daylight times. "Dawn" is the time when morning (astronomical) twilight begins. A "Window" is the number of minutes between the time of moonset and the start of twilight. For example: When will the sky be dark and moonless for Orionid viewing on the morning of Oct. 20 from Houston? Answer: There will be a 50-minute period of dark skies beginning at moonset (5:16 a.m.) and continuing until dawn breaks (6:06 a.m.). Perhaps up to a dozen forerunners of the main Orionid display might appear to steak by within an hour’s watch on these mornings, particularly on the 20th, the morning before the peak. It might even be worthwhile to try on Thursday morning, Oct. 21, although for most places, the moon will not set until just after the first light of dawn. In studying the orbits of many meteor swarms, astronomers have found that they correspond closely to the orbits of known comets. The Orionids are thought to result from the orbit of Halley's Comet, as some of the dust that has been shed by this famous object intersect earth’s orbit around the sun during October. There are actually two points along Halley’s path, where it comes relatively near to our orbit. Another one of these points occurs in early May causing a meteor display from the constellation Aquarius, the Water Carrier. The tiny particles that are responsible for the Orionid and Aquarid meteors are – like Halley itself – moving through space in a direction opposite to that the earth. This results in meteors that ram through our atmosphere very swiftly at 41 miles (66 km) per second. Of all the meteor displays, only the November Leonids move faster. After the peak, activity will begin to slowly descend, although most of the meteors will be squelched by the light of the moon. Rates drop back to around five per hour around Oct. 26. The last stragglers usually appear sometime around Nov. 7. It is indeed unfortunate that the Moon will likely obliterate most of the Orionids in the nights following the peak, but the viewing odds will be much better before the break of dawn on those mornings leading up to the peak. Almost certainly, you should sight at least a few of these offspring of Halley's Comet as they streak across the sky. In the absence of moonlight a single observer might see at least a couple of dozen meteors per hour on the morning of the peak, a number that sadly can not be hoped to be approached in 2010. In fact, it appears that this year, fans of the Orionids will be uttering the same lament that the old Dodger fans in Brooklyn used to: "Wait till next year!"	296,725
I read with interest the May 5 Saturday Essay on geography by Prof. David Keeling. I agree that an understanding of geography is very important in deciding our national policies. Especially our military decisions. However, he suggests, in a veiled way, that he doesn't believe our leaders understand the importance of geography in the military decision-making process. Even junior non-commissioned officers, sergeants, and staff sergeants, are made aware through professional military education that an integral ingredient of a nation's power is its geography. And understanding the geography of our friends and foes is a vital part of all military strategizing. Military commands such as Central Command, Pacific Command, Southern Command, etc., are set up so people with expertise in a geographic region can use that expertise advantageously. A notable example: prior to Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf had spent about a decade specifically concentrating on the Middle East. The Army War College, and the war colleges of the different services provide the officers rising through the ranks with intense attention to the geographies they will potentially face. In fact, the gravity of the military decision compels the military to reach even farther. The Department of Defense partners with other government agencies to incorporate the knowledge of geography with all the elements of a nation's power to provide our civilian leaders with vital decision-making weight through advice. The essay by Professor Keeling attempts to make it look like our President and/or our military entered wartime operations without an idea of the geographic implications. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thomas A. Davis Harsher sentencing for child pornography What is it going to take to protect our community's children within the criminal justice system? I was truly shocked that a former University of Toledo executive and Boy Scout scoutmaster received only four years of community control including four months in jail. What kind of justice is this? It was reported that he had thousands of pornographic images on his computer, and hundreds portrayed children in various stages of nudity, masturbation, and rape, and all we could charge him with is two counts of illegal possession? Earlier this year a Petersburg, Mich., man got 10 years in prison for possessing only 200 child pornographic images and a Findlay man got almost six years in prison for possessing 22 video clips and 599 images. Apparently those communities are serious about protecting their children. I know some in this community will say, "Well, he did lose his job." So what? These children lost an innocence that can never be replaced and he will probably find another job, hopefully in another country. Until you take the profit out of child pornography, people will continue to prey on our children and grandchildren by buying and trading this material. I can only hope others in this community will become as outraged as I was and demand that we stop coddling the criminals who use our kids for their pleasure. I would hate to think that not only would we have to check for monsters under the beds and in the closets of our children, but within the criminal justice system that is supposed to protect them. Candidate wasn't up-front with board You recently castigated the Toledo School Board for the way it handled the superintendent negotiations. It looks to me like your scorn was directed at the wrong party. If William Harner didn't want to live in Toledo and didn't want to send his child to Toledo Public Schools, he should have been up-front with the board and the community and made that representation during his interviews. Those are hot button issues that may well have turned the board toward a different candidate, and I have to believe he knew what he was doing. Had he been hired after pulling that stunt, no one would have trusted him and he would not have had any chance to succeed. Peter R. Silverman Punished for seeking quality education? Why did our illustrious school board want to punish William Harner's teenaged daughter for seeking a quality education? This teenager's situation has shown what many of us already know: Toledo students don't have access to the same kind of programs that their peers in suburbia have and that our school board is inept. Maybe we should sublet the direction for our schools to Sylvania or Ottawa Hills! Foley's teaching experience helpful When I read that John Foley, the newly proposed superintendent of the Toledo Public Schools, has experience as a teacher of severely behaviorally disabled students, my first thought was that that should stand him in good stead in dealing with the present members of the Toledo Public Schools Board of Education. Then it occurred to me that comparing these board members to such students was an insult to the students. Brian J. Harrington Holly Hill Drive TPS finally makes the correct decision Finally, the Toledo Public Schools board makes a smart, informed, correct decision. Had they bothered to think (and saved us all $50,000), they would have known John Foley was the correct and only choice months ago. Mr. Foley has been a faithful employee for more than 20 years, a member of the Toledo community, and a former teacher. Who better to help the district to the next step. Who better to get the teachers in TPS what they actually deserve - a raise. Let's take care of our own, while our own takes care of our children. Maybe Navarre can add one more hat Toledo Public Schools Board of Education is a disgrace to the taxpayers of the City of Toledo. Let me echo The Blade: misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, dysfunction, futility, inept, embarrassing, hapless, and amateurish pretty well describe this crew. Should they all resign? Absolutely! As soon as possible. Maybe Toledo's Police/Fire Chief Mike Navarre, if not too busy, could be appointed superintendent. Robert E. Sawyer Jobs in Toledo are hard to come by Why would a person who has been unemployed for the past 10 months want to stay in Toledo? Are there even any jobs out there that aren't being filled by non-Toledoans? Or as political favors? Well if you know of any, please tell me. I have a college degree, graduate credits, and an outstanding resume. What else do I need to have to get a job in my hometown? Since I became unemployed, I have sent out 68 resumes to businesses and government entities that had openings, most of which I was well overqualified for. Out of all the resumes I sent, I have had two interviews. So I ask myself, why do I continue to look in Toledo for a job? I love Toledo. I had left Toledo a few times for work, but I came back because of this city. As I go deeper and deeper in debt, I ask government officials and business in Toledo to really look at the qualifications of applicants and see that some of us want to stay in Toledo. Christopher M. Knee	258,881
Ulli Beier [1922-2011]: a Requiem for African Arts and Culture The demise of the illustrious Arts and Cultural ambassador of Africa nay Nigeria, Herr Ulli Beier has once again brought to the fore, the versatility and richness of the very much derided African culture. Ulli Beier was a German born African Arts and Culture aficionado. Together with his Austrian born wife Suzzane Wenger popularly known as Adunni Olorisa by local adherents, they settled in the south-western part of Nigeria, back in the 1950’s where they fully integrated themselves into the local norms and cultural values of the indigenous Yoruba people of south-west Nigeria. The fondness of Ulli Beier and his wife for the arts and culture of the Yoruba people could be gleaned from the extensive practical research and studies they conducted on the Yoruba people and their way(s) of life. This extensive research culminated into the investiture of his wife as a custodian of one of the Yoruba traditional deities. Ulli Beier during his life time in collaboration with Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and others cofounded the Mbari Arts and Writers club together with Mbari Mbayo cultural troupe in Ibadan and Oshogbo in South Western Nigeria respectively back then in the 1960’s, which provided a forum and platform for budding African writers, theatre arts practitioners and other arts and culture buddies to meet and share ideas. The commitment of Ulli Beier to the development of African arts and culture is instructive given his European background and judging from the hostility of Europeans and others to the fact that an African culture exists which is NOT synonymous with barbarism. The scholarly dimension, which he also brought to bear on his researches on African culture also helped to establish an empirical basis for the existence of African Arts and Culture. In an age where many young people in Africa and even African scholars are donning the toga of “Afroskepticsm” and “Eurocentrism” , the life and times of Ulli Beier is an eloquent testimony to the fact, that any developmental paradigm that does not take African culture into consideration may not guarantee success.	41,867

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