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Ask an Eye M.D.Question Topics Ask an Eye M.D. Answer Archive Please read our important medical disclaimer. Can lack of oxygen cause wet macular degeneration? I had maxillofacial surgery and went into respiratory failure. I was kept on a ventilator for about two weeks and in a drug-induced coma. Since that time I had the vision loss. There are many factors that can contribute to the development or worsening of macular degeneration. Lack of oxygen could cause loss of vision due to effects on the retina, choroid or optic nerve. However it would be unlikely to cause macular degeneration. A thorough eye and retina exam by an Eye M.D. should help to clarify the loss of vision and the presence or absence of macular degeneration. Answered by: Abdhish Bhavsar, MD Categories: Eye Diseases Have a question that hasn't been answered yet? Ask it! Answered: Aug 28, 2012 Search for Questions & Answers Meet Our Experts - Your questions are answered by more than two dozen members of the American Academy of Ophthalmology who volunteer their time with EyeSmart.
Interesting Apple security news is being reported today. Apparently some Apple devices have been hijacked via Apple's "Find My iPhone" feature. How? Likely via poorly defended iCloud accounts, i.e., iCloud accounts with weak passwords. Once you have access to iCloud, you have access to the Find My iPhone's "Lost Mode", which can be used to lock associated devices and send messages such as "Reward if found! Call this number." Or then it could be an extortion attempt. Here's an example from a German colleague's iPhone: According to the sources linked above, "Oleg Pliss" is demanding money to a PayPal account. If the iPhone user has a passcode, they can unlock their device. If they don't have a passcode set… then they have a problem. It's also worth mentioning the Find My iPhone feature includes a "Delete" option. Besides extortion, your iPhone can also be burned. And remember too that iCloud provides access to contacts and calendars. So… besides enabling a passcode, you should also be using a strong and unique password for your Apple/iCloud/iTunes account. Sure, it will be annoying to input when you want to buy an app — but that's the price you'll need to pay.
Fair Spring Nursery has an Aronia orchard. After a few years growth, fruit production is just now begining and we have made some excellent dishes: ice cream, wine, apple/aronia crisp, juice, tea, jelly, and a favorite, aronia chutney. We are members of the Mid-Atlantic Aronia Growers Association. Nature’s super fruit is Aronia The juice is nature’s highest in antioxidants (anthocyanins), this and because it tastes so good is why aronia is getting the buzz in health food circles. A popular drink in Eastern Europe, Aronia is native to our area, but new to most of our taste buds. Aronia orchards are developing around here thanks especially to the efforts of Dr. Andrew G. Ristvey and Sudeep A. Mathew, both are with University of Maryland Extension. As with other native plants this fruiting shrub is well adapted to the area, having few pests or diseases. A look at the pictures above will show the similarity to the rose or apple family. Notice the star shaped calyx at the bottom of the fruit, like an apple it is a pome but about the size of a blueberry. Quality control inspectors are busy during the 2013 aronia harvest.
- Donna A. Bucella - Terrorist Screening Center, FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation - Before The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and The House Select - Washington DC - March 25, 2004 Good afternoon Chairman Coble, Chairman Gibbons, Ranking Members and Members of both Subcommittees. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the missions and objectives of the new Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6 (HSPD-6), issued on September 16, 2003, ordered the creation of the TSC, directing its operations to begin on December 1, 2003, and we met that goal. The TSC was created to ensure that government investigators, screeners, federal agents, and state and local law enforcement officers have ready access to the information and expertise they need to respond quickly when a known or suspected terrorist is encountered here in the United States, at our borders and at our embassies. Today, I will tell you about our daily operations, including some of our successes, our future plans, and how we will safeguard civil liberties. I will provide as much information as I can in this open forum, however, I will be happy to provide additional, classified details in a closed hearing at your request. The TSC is a multi-agency Center, including participants from the FBI, Department of State, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Other agencies, including the Postal Service and Drug Enforcement Administration, have agreed to participate. Our goal is to consolidate the Government's approach to terrorism screening and provide for the appropriate and lawful use of Terrorist Information in screening processes. We will be a diverse Center, manned by experts to include intelligence analysts and law enforcement from a wide variety of agencies, and to communicate and coordinate efforts across the full spectrum of federal, state and local government agencies. Currently, the TSC is staffed by approximately 84 employees, including permanent personnel, temporary duty assignees, and contractors to staff our 24/7 operation.Since December 1, 2003, TSC has been providing key resources for screeners and law enforcement personnel. These include: (1) a single coordination point for terrorist screening data; (2) a consolidated 24/7 call center for encounter identification assistance; (3) access to a coordinated law enforcement response to federal, state and local law enforcement; (4) a formal process for tracking encounters and ensuring feedback is supplied to the appropriate entities, and (5) a process to address the misidentification issues. The TSC's initial capabilities were limited because of the need to integrate records in a way that ensured that the data about known and suspected terrorists was as accurate as possible. Each agency contributing data to the TSC is using its own database. These databases, which were created to support the mission of the individual agencies, are in many instances their case management systems, not terrorist watch lists. Despite our limited capabilities in the first week of operation, the TSC answered 56 calls, including one in which a local police department was seeking information regarding an ongoing investigation. A suspected terrorist had traveled over 1,000 miles from his home, and the department's call alerted the FBI to his activities. The police department coordinated their surveillance with the FBI investigation, resulting in solid intelligence for both local and federal law enforcement. Another call came from a West Coast police department that was investigating an individual for a state felony charge. The TSC determined the individual was a terrorism suspect in a federal investigation, and our operational component at the FBI's Counterterrorism Division put the respective investigators together. The FBI and the local investigator are now sharing case information, resulting in a coordinated approach. Again, we are linking investigations and coordinating the U.S. Government approach to screening for suspected terrorists. There are three fundamental types of inquiries: interior (within the U.S.), border (at the border/ports points of entry) and exterior (outside the border). Interior inquiries will normally be made by state and local law enforcement. Border inquiries are made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Exterior inquiries are conducted by the State Department. The process for making an internal inquiry is relatively simple. A police officer checks the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database on a routine traffic stop, and he/she is requested to call the TSC because the person stopped has similar identifying information to a known or suspected terrorist listed in the NCIC. When the officer calls TSC, through the police department's dispatch, the call center verifies the caller's identity, takes the information on the encounter and the circumstances of the encounter, and checks his name through the TSC 's database. The TSC database includes the name, date of birth and other identifying information for a known or suspected terrorist. The call center quickly researches the underlying information, including classified, sensitive information. We make a determination as to whether the encounter is the same person as the one in our database. After notifying the officer of a positive, negative or inconclusive result, we help coordinate operational support as to how the person should be handled. For example, the officer may be advised -- in appropriate and lawfully authorized circumstances -- to arrest, detain or question the individual. Simultaneously, we contact our operational component at the FBI's Counterterrorism Division known as CT Watch. CT Watch provides for the local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to respond. In some cases, officers provide valuable intelligence from a simple car stop, and in other cases, JTTF agents will respond to assist. Two cases serve to demonstrate the process: In one case, local police arrested a suspected terrorist associate on a state criminal violation. After TSC assisted in the positive identities match, the CT Watch, contacted the FBI case agent, who immediately went to the local detention facility to talk with the individual. During that interview, the individual agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Another case illustrates the intersection between local law enforcement, homeland security and counterterrorism investigations. Local police arrested an individual and while conducting the "search incident to arrest," discovered significant evidence of terrorist activities. The TSC confirmed the individual's identity and our operational component, the CT Watch, notified the case agent. Intelligence gained from the local arrest has significantly affected a long term counterterrorism case, confirming the value of bringing local law enforcement into the war on terrorism. In addition to serving local law enforcement, the TSC receives a high volume of calls from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors who are stationed on the Nation's borders. A typical CBP call involves incoming passengers on international flights. A CBP inspector will query a list of names and may receive several possible suspected terrorist hits from IBIS and NCIC. The CBP inspector will go through their National Targeting Center (NTC), where the record will be analyzed, then passed to TSC. Our process is the same as it would be for a law enforcement call, that is, to examine the underlying record which often contains all source sensitive and highly classified information on a 24/7 basis, and determine whether the individual is identical to the person in the Terrorist Screening Center Database. The TSC then appropriately passes any derogatory information on the subject, and CBP makes a determination on whether the individual will be allowed into the United States. Our consular officers are our first line of defense in keeping known and suspected terrorists out of our Homeland by denying visas to these individuals. In this regard, State Department assignees at the TSC are continuing the work previously done by the TIPOFF Office. Since December 1, 2003, when the TSC came into operation, State Department assignees and their staff at the TSC have reviewed over 54,000 security advisory opinions, which are cables from U.S. Embassies and Consulates around the globe, to determine if the visa applicants described in these cables were "true hits " with records contained in the database. Eighty of those "hits" resulted in true matches. As an example in December, a member of a terrorist organization applied for a visa at a U.S. consulate overseas. Consular officials denied the visa based on the TSC 's review of the information and confirmation that the individual was a "true hit," i.e. matched the record at the TSC. The same process applied to a senior member of a proscribed terrorist organization based overseas. His visa was also denied. In addition, 53 visas have been revoked, as a result of the State Department's careful comparison of new records entered into the terrorist database with visas that had been previously issued. Finally, since December 1, 2003, agreements between the State Department and several allies are now implemented at the TSC, resulting in over 125 possible "true hits" of known and suspected terrorists at the borders of those nations. During January, an individual known to the U.S. government as an affiliate of a terrorist organization attempted to board a flight to enter one of these nations. The individual's identity was one of several thousand consolidated from various U.S. agencies and passed to this nation. According to protocols contained in our agreement, State Department assignees at the TSC worked with their counterparts in our allied nation, and the individual was removed from the flight despite holding valid travel documents. According to a 16 September 2003 Memorandum of Understanding between Secretary Powell, Secretary Ridge, Attorney General Ashcroft, and DCI Tenet, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center's (TTIC) identities database will serve as the single source for the TSC's terrorist database, excluding purely domestic terrorism. Currently TTIC, which assembles and analyzes information from a wide range of sources to identify potential terrorists, provides the TSC with the vast majority of its information about known or suspected international terrorists. The FBI provides the TSC with information about purely domestic terrorism – that is, information that has been determined to have no link to foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, or international terrorism. The TSC consolidates this identifying information and makes it accessible for queries from federal, state, and local agencies for screening purposes. When a nomination is received at the TSC from TTIC or the FBI, it is reviewed by assignees to the TSC from participating agencies, who, in consultation with their assigning member agencies, determine how an encounter with this individual will be handled. The system is tailored to provide different feedback depending on where the encounter takes place. For example, an FBI representative who reviews a record may determine that an individual is subject to a criminal warrant and needs to be arrested by state and local law enforcement, while the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) representative may decide that the individual is not appropriate to board an aircraft. This tailoring ensures that specific guidance is provided to federal, state, and local agencies based on their legal authority. The TSC has approached the challenge to consolidate terrorists watch lists by implementing a "phased in" approach. We implemented phase one from September 16, 2003 to December 1, 2003, on the day the TSC achieved initial operating capability. During Phase One, the TSC had the ability to: (1) make the names and identifying information of terrorists, known to or suspected by the U.S. Government, accessible to federal, state and local law enforcement; (2) have a system for properly reviewing whether a known or suspected terrorist should be included in or deleted from additional screening processes; (3) administer a process to ensure that persons, who may share a name with a known or suspected terrorist, are not unduly inconvenienced in U.S. Government screening processes; and, (4) implement a system to adjust or delete outdated or incorrect information to prevent problems arising from misidentifications. Phase two occurred from December 1, 2003 to March 1, 2004 in the development of the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). The TSDB is an unclassified law enforcement sensitive database, containing identifying information of known or suspected terrorists. The TSDB allows the consolidation of disparate information, currently held by multiple agencies and used in different ways, to be brought together for a single purpose -- to help identify and detain potential terrorists to prevent future terrorist attacks. We are currently in phase three which concludes before the end of this year. The TSC will create a more dynamic database and use a single, integrated system for ensuring known or suspected terrorists' identities are promptly incorporated into all appropriate screening processes. The terrorist screening database will eventually allow private sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. Government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism. In addition, the TSC will begin to implement mechanisms for sharing terrorist screening information with additional cooperating countries and to obtain such information from these countries. The Department of State is currently working on this issue. Because our mission cuts across traditional boundaries between law enforcement, national security, and homeland defense, we have begun an aggressive outreach program. Our outreach must include members of the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, non-law enforcement/non-intelligence related government agencies, critical infrastructures, and most importantly, officers from the Nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies. We not only train our law enforcement and government agency partners; viewing outreach as a two-way process, we also seek feedback and innovative ideas from them. Safeguarding Civil Liberties We recognize that with all of these capabilities also comes the responsibility to ensure that we continue to protect our civil liberties. The TSC has absolutely no authority to conduct intelligence collection or other operations. In fact, the TSC does not collect information at all – it only receives information collected by other entities with preexisting authority to do so, each with their own policies and procedures to protect privacy rights and civil liberties. The handling and use of information, including U.S. person information, is governed by the same statutory, regulatory, and constitutional requirements as if the information was not to be included in a TSC-managed database. The TSC's primary mission is to ensure that the identities data that is already known to the U.S. Government is held in one location where it can be queried by those who need it, including federal security screeners and state and local law enforcement officers. The structures which are in place also ensure that information about U.S. persons that has been determined to be purely domestic terrorism information with no link to foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, or international terrorism does not go through the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, but instead is placed directly into the TSC by the FBI. The Attorney General has also been directed to implement procedures and safeguards with respect to information about U.S. persons, in coordination with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of Central Intelligence. We are also committed to addressing the issues and inconveniences arising from the misidentification of persons under previous watch-listing practices. Procedures are in place to review and promptly adjust or delete erroneous or outdated domestic terrorism information. The TSC works closely with TTIC regarding any international terrorism information errors, as only TTIC can make changes to the records it provides to the TSC. In addition, we are currently in the process of creating a dedicated staff specifically to address the misidentification process for the TSC. The creation of the Terrorist Screening Center marks a significant step forward in protecting America's communities and families by detecting, disrupting, or preempting terrorist threats. The TSC is already contributing to nationwide efforts to keep terrorists out of the U.S. and locate those who may already be in the country. For this unclassified hearing, I have given you only a few of our successes. We have screened over 2,000 calls since our inception, and the numbers continue to rise. State and local law enforcement officers are now assisting in the identification of known or suspected terrorists here in the U.S., have provided invaluable intelligence for pending investigation, and are now integral in the efforts of combating terrorism in the U.S. I appreciate the Joint Subcommittee's interest in the TSC's activities and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
- The Method - Practitioners/Classes and Events - The Profession Many postural habits begin in childhood, and often we aren’t really aware of our tendencies. Habit dulls the sensory awareness: if you sit a certain way long enough, your brain will stop noticing that it’s not comfortable. For instance, many computer users mouse with the arm held a long way from the body. This position creates static load - essentially, you are holding up the weight of your arm all day. A similar strain happens in the shoulders if the head is held too far forward. But the inherent strain may not be noticed until it becomes pain - by which time injury may have occurred to the connective tissue. Awareness helps you notice sooner when your postural habits tend toward strain. The Feldenkrais Method is a great asset here: you learn to sense for yourself when you are in better alignment with gravity. You learn tools for being aware of your range of comfort, so you can make appropriate changes before damage occurs. You are also introduced to optional ways of sitting, shifting weight and moving, which has multiple benefits: choices of action allow the nervous system to adapt to changing conditions, and variety of movement prevents static load. The postural training often offered by ergonomic salespeople amounts to a one- shot lecture on “proper posture,” as if you could assume the correct position and maintain it all day. Even if you could, it would just produce stiffness. Because Feldenkrais practitioners understand the dynamics of movement, they are ideally suited to introduce lasting improvement in the workplace. For example, Mary Newell ‘s firm Workplace Wellness, of Westchester, NY, implements training programs based on Feldenkrais principles. “I empower employees to be more responsible for their own well-being,” says Ms. Newell. “Participants learn principles of active sitting, use of the arms for keying, how to give relief to eyes, neck and shoulders, how to vary posture during the day to prevent static load. With fewer discomforts, employees can put their whole attention on their job, and productivity and job satisfaction increase.”
Question: Name The Parts Of A Fish You Dont Eat? February 22, 2010 Most Recent Questions by brand brand - What Is Paula Dean's Best Prime Rib You Ever Eat? - DontEat.at Alerts NYC Foursquare Users to Health-Code-Violating Restaurants - Would You Eat the Moombahpus Octopus Cupcake? - Bill Wisth Protests All-You-Can-Eat Restaurant for Cutting Him Off - Name the parts of a gumamela with picture? - For How Long Can Clam Chowder Stay In The Fridge, and Still Be Ok To Eat? - What Type Of Food Do People In Spain Eat? - After The "Sell By" Date Has Passed, How Long Is Salsa Safe To Eat? - What Did Ancient Mali Ghana and Songai Like To Eat? - What Sorts Of Food Did The Stuarts Eat?
YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar's health ministry has ordered the eviction of 82 HIV/AIDS patients from a shelter run by supporters of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi because the center is not hygienic, state media said Wednesday. An official at the facility said the patients have refused to move, setting the stage for a showdown with authorities who said they must vacate by Thursday. Local authorities last week ordered the HIV/AIDS victims to leave following a visit by the newly freed Suu Kyi, who promised to help provide badly needed medicine. Health officials inspected the shelter in July and August and found it unhygienic with patients susceptible to infections because of overcrowding, the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper said. But shelter organizers said authorities simply want to pressure them because of the visit by Suu Kyi, who was freed from more than seven years of house arrest Nov. 13. Yarzar, one of the center's staff members who uses only one name, admitted the shelter was crowded but said preventive measures were taken against the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis. Health authorities offered to relocate patients to a state-run HIV/AIDS center, but they refused to move out as their shelter not only offers medical care, food and accommodation but "warmth and affection that no other center can provide," Yarzar said. Since the patients have decided not to leave, Yarzar said he was ready to face any consequences. The shelter, which includes a small wooden house and a two-story building of wood and thatch walls, accommodates 82 patients, including young children. Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace prize for her nonviolent struggle for democracy, was first arrested in 1989. She has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years. Suu Kyi led her party, the National League for Democracy, to victory in 1990 elections, but the junta refused to recognize the results.
RE: Converting from PostgreSQL to Oracle??? - From: "Goulet, Dick" <DGoulet@xxxxxxxx> - To: <revoohc@xxxxxxxxx>, <Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> - Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 13:38:27 -0400 Chris, Text fields depend a lot on what's in them. For the most part they should convert into VARCHAR2(4000) with ease. Serial columns convert to integer or number(38)'s. Booleans have no good conversion to Oracle. The best would be a number(1) where 0 =3D FALSE & 1 =3D TRUE, = but a char(1) (T,F) would work also. You'll probably find WinSQL from Synametrix (http://www.synametrics.com/SynametricsWebApp/WinSQL.jsp) very helpful. It has an export feature that allows you to query a PostGreSQL table & then export the data to Oracle. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Hoover Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 1:30 PM To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Converting from PostgreSQL to Oracle??? Hey Everyone, I've been given a rather exciting project on which to work.=3D20 Management wants to look at migrating one of our large in house developed systems from PostgreSQL to Oracle. Does anyone know of any good sites with help on this type of conversion? Also, does anyone have any advice they can offer up? Here is what we have: ~200 Postgresql DB's running between 5 systems (all schemas are the same, 1 db per customer) DB's run from a ~100MB to ~100GB. Any advice on how to go about this? We have a lot of text, serial, and boolean columns that don't appear to map cleanly over to Oracle. What have some of you done in the past conveting these type of columns? We are looking at either 9i (which we currenly have in house), or 10g for the Oracle server version. Thanks, Chris -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
One night a clergyman was walking to church when a thief pulled a gun on him and demanded his money or his life. When he reached in his pocket to hand over his wallet, the robber saw his clerical collar and said: I see you are a priest. Never mind, you can go. The clergyman, surprised by the robbers unexpected act of piety, offered him a candy bar. The robber said, No thank you. I dont eat candy during Lent. The man had given up candy as a supposed sacrifice for Lent, but his lifestyle of stealing showed his real character! According to the writer of Proverbs, conduct is the best indicator of character. If someone says he is a godly person, his words can only be proven by consistent actions (20:11). This was true of the religious leaders in Jesus day as well. He condemned the Pharisees and exposed their sham for professing godliness but denying that profession with sin in their lives (Matt. 23:13-36). Appearances and words are deceiving; behavior is the best judge of character. This applies to all of us. As followers of Jesus, we demonstrate our love for Him by what we do, not just by what we say. May our devotion to God, because of His love for us, be revealed in our actions today. Read: Matthew 23:23-31 Good evening, Mayor, and thanks for today’s sustenance for body and soul. Reminds me of the Los Angeles mobster and hoodlum Mickey Cohen, who at one point described himself as a "Christian gangster."
© The Financial Times Ltd 2014 FT and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd. February 21, 2014 7:37 pm It began in a car shed in Chennai, the southern Indian city formerly known as Madras. The year was 2008 and AR Rahman, the most successful composer in Indian history, was looking for a site for a music conservatoire – a place where young Indians could receive the western classical training that he felt was missing in his country. The parking lot behind the family home was the only available space. Fast-forward to the present. Buoyed by the success of Slumdog Millionaire , the Danny Boyle film for which he won Academy Awards for best original score and best original song in 2009, Rahman has exchanged Bollywood for Hollywood, and his KM Music Conservatory has moved from its humble backyard origins to a purpose-built home occupying 40,000 sq ft. It now has 80 full-time students, a teaching staff from the UK, US and Russia as well as India, and academic tie-ups with advanced music colleges in London and Glasgow. Last month, a group of its students visited the Scottish city to take part in a concert of Rahman’s music. Next month, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will spend a week in Chennai giving concerts and masterclasses. Rahman’s initiative is notable not only as a philanthropic gesture (he provides most of the funding) but also as an educational model in India. Western classical music and its disciplines stand on the sidelines in a subcontinent of 1.3bn people where almost the entire music market is generated by the film industry. It is even more surprising when you consider that Rahman, who has notched up 400m album sales and has 16m followers on his Facebook page, is enjoying a new career in Tinseltown – which, by his own admission, exists on a different creative planet from both India and Europe. His current projects include Disney’s Million Dollar Arm, a biographical sports drama by Australian director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Fright Night) and The Monkeys of Bollywood, a musical film to be directed by Kevin Lima (Enchanted) with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell). Rahman, 47, may be classically trained but he makes no claims to being a classical composer. Most of his output consists of beat-based, synthesiser-modulated songs, representing a fusion of Indian influences and western pop. He has put Indian music on the international map to a degree not known since Ravi Shankar, who popularised the sitar. Western composers, popular or classical, can only dream of Rahman’s commercial reach, yet he devotes time and energy to an educational project with Chopin and Beethoven at its core, in a country where western musical tuition is scarce and expensive. He wants talented Indians to share some of the opportunities he had as a boy in a musically affluent Tamil family. His childhood influences included Italian opera, American pop and recording sessions with his father, a film composer, for whom he played keyboard. After his father’s early death, he worked as a session player for bands and orchestras and took a diploma in western classical music through a scheme run by London’s Trinity College of Music. He started composing advertising jingles in 1987 and was later invited by Mani Ratnam, one of India’s best-known directors, to create the soundtrack for Roja (Rose), a Tamil-language thriller that won three national awards in 1992. That opened his career to the lucrative Hindi film market. Rahman still performs. YouTube clips of his concerts show a serene figure sitting cross-legged centre stage, playing a hapji (a keyboard instrument with guitar frets) and surrounded by dancers, musicians and meticulously choreographed lighting. Despite clear western influences, the songs are inflected with gamakas, the fluid decorations characteristic of Indian melody. “It creates an emotion that is unparalleled,” he says. “The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.” Born RS Dileep Kumar, he changed his name to Allah-Rakha Rahman after converting to Islam, his mother’s religion, aged 23. Self-effacing and quietly charming, Rahman is the opposite of your brash movie mogul – but neither is there much of the charismatic guru about him. He usually has a business manager by his side, and seems happier talking about music production software Logic Pro X than about Bollywood, which he says “is really just Mumbai. It creates the impression that all Indian film is about glitzy girls and dancing. I don’t like it.” He describes Hollywood as “like a holiday for me. I meet people I have adored [from afar] all my life.” But he is under no illusions about the compromises involved in working there. In the past, he says, film composers would read the screenplay and come up with themes. “John Williams would play them on the piano to Steven Spielberg. It would then go to the scoring stage, to see how it sounded with an orchestra.” Today, soundtracks must follow “the demands of the number-crunchers. We have to mock up the whole orchestra on synthesiser. The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared – they’ll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.” The dictates of US film producers made Rahman determined to set up his own production company, and he already has a storyline for his first film. His love of Indian cinema stems, he says, from its capacity to cross language and ethnic barriers and the way it communicates “a spiritual elevation that gives contentment to the heart. That’s how people on $50 dollars a month are able to survive. It’s all a state of mind, whether you’re low-income or high. Money is important, sure, but the goal is to give people a sense of happiness and fulfilment.” About his nurturing of a conservatoire in Chennai he says, “I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds, instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn’t matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers – I want them to be as imaginative as they like. My aim is to expand sensibilities.” ‘Million Dollar Arm’ is on general release from May 16 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014. You may share using our article tools. 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In a speech today in New York City to the Milton Handler Antitrust Review, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy J. Muris discussed his philosophy about the appropriate content of the FTC's competition policy strategy and explained the logic of the positive agenda used to implement the strategy. "My experience in public agencies," he said, "confirms a vital, often-stated conclusion of academic researchers: no public institution achieves policy success without a coherent strategy for exercising its authority and spending its resources. A key manifestation of an agency's strategy is a positive agenda -- a statement of the measures the agency intends to pursue to accomplish its substantive aims. Without a general strategy and a positive agenda, an agency becomes a passive observer, swept along by external developments and temporary exigencies." Muris explained that a positive agenda also provides essential guidance for the agency's staff and for the business community. For the agency's staff, a positive agenda focuses effort on measures most likely to fulfill the institution's mission. For the business community and other interested parties, a clear statement of intentions reduces uncertainty and facilitates compliance with the law. The speech detailed the four general principles that Muris believes should inform the development of the FTC's competition policy strategy: - Play an active role in promoting competition as the basic principle of economic organization through strong enforcement and focused advocacy; - Focus antitrust enforcement resources on conduct that poses the greatest threat to consumer welfare; - Make full use of the agency's distinctive institutional capabilities by applying the entire range of its policy instruments to solve competition policy problems; and - Attach a high priority to improving the institutions and processes by which antitrust policy is formulated and applied. "I view antitrust law as a form of regulation that competes with other regulatory structures," he stated, "and makes direct regulation unnecessary." The United States has chosen antitrust law to provide the governing rules for competition in most sectors of the economy, Muris explained. He noted that two antitrust immunities help protect and foster regulatory growth: Noerr immunity and the state action doctrine. Each has been widely criticized. Muris then described two initiatives to address their immunities. Muris first described the Task Force he created to study Noerr and to recommend appropriate case and advocacy opportunities. The FTC's Noerr Task Force has been conducting a careful analysis of existing case law, seeking to identify opportunities to clarify the case law in a manner that promotes competition and enhances consumer welfare. The Task Force has been evaluating the feasibility and desirability of promoting a number of specific developments in the Noerr doctrine including: - Adopting an appropriately narrow view of conduct that constitutes immunized "petitioning," currently used in cases involving tariff filings and private settlements. - Making clear that the Walker Process exception to Noerr immunity extends beyond the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) context to analogous non-legislative proceedings. In Walker Process, the Supreme Court ruled that an effort to defraud the PTO does not enjoy antitrust immunity. - Recognizing fully an independent misrepresentation exception -- separate and distinct from the "sham" exception set forth in Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries. In short, material misrepresentation should not be protected. Muris next described the State Action Task Force and the history of the state action doctrine, first articulated by the Supreme Court in 1943 in Parker v. Brown. Since Parker, the scope of state action immunity has increased considerably. At times, courts have failed to consider carefully whether the anticompetitive conduct in question was envisioned by the state legislature or truly necessary to accomplish the state's objective. Other courts have granted broad immunity to quasi-official entities, including entities composed of market participants, with only a tangential connection to the state. He explained that overbroad state action immunity has significant costs. Muris said that the FTC's State Action Task Force has been conducting a careful analysis of existing state action case law, seeking to identify opportunities to direct the development of that case law in a manner that promotes competition and enhances consumer welfare. To date, the Task Force has evaluated the feasibility and desirability of promoting a number of specific developments in the state action doctrine, including the following: - Clarify the proper interpretation of the "clear articulation" requirement the first prong of the two-prong test in California Retail Liquor Dealers Association v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc. to ensure that a state truly intended to displace competition by authorizing the anticompetitive conduct at issue. - Elaborate further the standards for the "active supervision" requirement the second prong of the Midcal test to ensure that the requirement has "teeth" and will prevent private entities from restraining competition absent meaningful government oversight. Courts have not articulated a well-defined standard for active supervision. The Supreme Court has stated that a state official must engage in a "pointed re-examination" of a pricing scheme (Midcal) and must exercise "independent judgment and control" (Ticor), but has provided little concrete guidance on the standards federal courts should use to assess the state's efforts and what states should do to satisfy those standards. - Advocate a tiered approach to govern the application of the "clear articulation" and "active supervision" requirements to ensure that these tests are applied most strictly when the threat to competition and consumer welfare is greatest, and less strictly where the threat is less severe. - Consider explicit recognition of a "market participant" exception to state action immunity based on the statement in Omni Outdoor Advertising that immunity "does not necessarily obtain where the State acts not in a regulatory capacity but as a commercial participant in a given market." Muris then turned to the Commission's role of competition advocacy. He emphasized that although vigorous law enforcement is necessary to protect consumers, the Commission also can enhance consumer welfare by increasing the information available to decision makers on the likely effects of proposed policies. "Today, the FTC is acting as a vigorous advocate for competition through the publication of studies and reports, as well as participation in state and federal legislative and regulatory fora. Participation in judicial fora, as an amicus curiae, is part of our advocacy program, especially when the FTC's participation can help remove protectionist regulations, when substantial questions of antitrust law are likely to be debated, or when because of special knowledge or experience, the agency can add a different perspective to the deliberations," Muris explained. "The FTC's advocacy program provides economic analysis and other informed guidance to help policymakers better understand the impact of their decisions in creating, maintaining, or forestalling competitive markets." Muris noted that law enforcement provides the most consistent means by which the FTC influences the rules of the competitive process. Competition policy succeeds when it serves consumer interests for example, by pressing producers to offer lower prices or to improve product quality. "The true measure of our contribution to the economy," Muris stated, "is our progress in increasing consumer welfare." Muris continued by noting that public antitrust enforcement has not always achieved this objective. In some cases, the departure from a consumer-oriented focus resulted from conscious policy choices that equated the well-being of individual firms with consumer interests. In other instances, antitrust enforcement has failed to serve consumer interests owing to a basic misdiagnosis of commercial phenomena. Placing antitrust thinking in a chronological framework, Muris pointed out that the 1980s brought a "revolution" in antitrust. Antitrust finally regarded enhancing consumer welfare as the single unifying goal of competition policy, and it used a policy framework that was based on sound economics, both theoretical and empirical. The foundation of that framework was the belief, supported by modern economic research, that economics should be the guidepost for Commission actions. In addition, an approach based on enhancing consumer welfare recognizes that governmental impediments to, or exemptions from, competition can be at least as harmful to consumers as private restraints. This approach to antitrust enforcement, Muris noted, has been largely consistent at the Commission since the acceptance in the 1980s of economic analysis as the basis for antitrust analysis and decision making. In describing the Commission's enforcement program, Muris noted that it focuses closely on the transactions and kinds of practices that have been shown over time to pose the greatest threat of substantial consumer injury. The agency considers the deterrent effect of enforcement action as well as the amount of immediate consumer injury. Additionally, the Commission carefully considers its enforcement experience. The pharmaceutical and standard-setting cases highlight an area in which the agency is devoting substantial resources to identify enforcement targets, such as the nexus between intellectual property and antitrust. According to Muris, the agency has responded to the centrality of intellectual property issues in these cases and other investigations, in part, by forming an Intellectual Property Case Generation Working Group, whose responsibility is to identify and investigate widespread or significant practices that have anticompetitive effects without corresponding consumer benefits. Shifting the discussion to mergers, Muris set the stage by stating that "there is a general consensus that the practices about which we should most worry occur when competitors stop competing vigorously, making peace to benefit themselves at the expense of consumers." Horizontal mergers in which anticompetitive effects are likely are one fertile area for firms to make peace to the detriment of consumers, he explained, which is why there is a well-accepted horizontal merger policy, based on the foundations of the Department of Justice and FTC Merger Guidelines. Despite the decline in the merger wave, the FTC has a very active enforcement program in which over one half of its total competition budget is used to scrutinize horizontal mergers. Continuing the merger discussion, Muris noted that firms also make peace through a wide range of non-merger conduct such as pure price-fixing, naked output restraints or market divisions, and bans on advertising. Muris pointed out that the Commission has brought numerous cases in these areas in the last eighteen months involving physicians, trade associations, and generic drugs. Muris next touched on the category of potentially troubling single-firm conduct involving the abuse of government process. He noted that potential monopolization concerns can occur when firms misuse a self-regulatory process such as standard setting, citing American Society of Sanitary Engineering and Dell. Muris ended the merger discussion by noting that it is now widely accepted in law and economics that, in most situations, vertical restraints or vertical mergers do not harm consumers, citing Cytyc/Digene and Synopsys/Avant!. Muris next discussed the Commission's unique collection of capabilities that include expansive power to conduct studies or perform research about the economy; a broad charter to act as an advocate for competition before other government bodies; and authority to use administrative adjudication to resolve competition policy disputes. He described the agency's use of competition advocacy to address exemption and immunity issues as most prominent among its non-litigation instruments, citing the Commission's recently published generic drug study as an example of how the agency's research and analysis function can shape the policy environment. Muris also noted that the President recently announced that the Food and Drug Administration was proposing to change its rules to adopt the FTC report's major recommendation. Citing another example of the Commission's unique institutional capacities, Muris described the agency's efforts concerning competition in e-commerce. He said he created a task force to examine possible anticompetitive efforts to restrict competition on the Internet. The task force is analyzing state regulations, such as occupational licensing and physical office requirements, that may have pro-consumer or pro-competition rationales, but that nevertheless may restrict the entry of new Internet competitors. The task force also is examining barriers that arise when private parties employ potentially anticompetitive tactics, such as when suppliers or dealers apply collective pressure to limit online sales. To position the FTC to make intelligent contributions to competition policy through litigation or non-litigation instruments, Muris stressed the need for substantial investments in competition policy research and development. "For the FTC to be effective," Muris said, "the agency should be in the forefront in understanding whether markets are operating in a competitive fashion, and in communicating to decision makers the harm to consumer welfare when there is movement away from competitive, free markets. The agency also should explore the relevance of the theoretical foundation (generally, but not exclusively, industrial organization theory) of our efforts and those of others." Muris detailed that the FTC's current competition policy Research and Development efforts have focused on: (1) improving the empirical understanding of our theoretical framework, (2) analyzing "merger outcomes," (3) reviewing two decades of change in the petroleum industry, (4) a unique effort in the real time monitoring of wholesale and retail gas prices across the nation, (5) the operation of current and developing health care markets, (6) reviewing the development of barriers to e-commerce, and (7) considering the interplay between the competition and intellectual property regimes. He stressed that the findings in these areas will continue to form the basis for enforcement actions, changes in enforcement policies, legislative recommendations, and public reports and comments. Muris cited the FTC's recent two-day health care workshop as an example of the Commission's efforts, and noted that because the workshop only began to explore these complex and interdependent issues, the Commission authorized an extended set of hearings on health care and competition policy, commencing in February 2003 and continuing through the year. Muris concluded his speech by touching on the role of the FTC in improving competition policy institutions and processes. He explained that the Commission has a special responsibility to pursue improvements in the processes and institutional arrangements through which competition policy is formulated at home and abroad. On several occasions in the past year, the Commission has issued statements explaining why it declined to take actions involving mergers for which the agency had issued a second request or otherwise conducted a significant inquiry. By doing so, the agency has sought to provide greater transparency concerning its analysis of mergers. The FTC also has made a considerable effort to improve the premerger review of specific transactions and reduce the costs associated with the merger-control regime. Continuing on this theme, Muris said that the FTC is intensifying its commitment to improve the operation of our bilateral cooperation agreements. "No relationship assumes greater importance than our cooperation with the Competition Directorate of the European Commission," said Muris. "In many respects, this relationship between two of the world's most substantial antitrust regimes is a vital testing ground for collaborative approaches and practical techniques that might be adapted on a larger multinational scale. The past year has featured expanded cooperation between our agencies on a variety of fronts, and it is evident that the additional effort is yielding positive results." Muris announced that he expects to see the FTC and its counterparts overseas use their experience in antitrust cooperation to improve the enforcement of consumer protection prohibitions against fraud. Such efforts, he noted, could become part of a larger international program to improve understanding of the links between competition policy and consumer protection and to ensure that public policy in these two areas serves the mutually reinforcing purpose of improving consumer welfare. Finally, Muris stressed that the FTC's commitment to assist transition economies in building effective competition policy and consumer protection regimes has reached an all-time high. In the fiscal year that concluded in September, the FTC performed numerous short-term technical assistance missions involving antitrust and consumer protection issues in transition economies and assigned long-term advisors to assist the competition authorities of Indonesia and South Africa. These initiatives extend and build upon the FTC's decade-long program to help less developed countries build the legal infrastructure to support the operation of a market economy. - Media Contact: - Cathy MacFarlane, Office of Public Affairs
Mary Margaret Gretta WREN was born in Lancaster, Ohio, June 15,1875 to Edward WREN and Margaret Kinnane WREN. She married Patrick Leo REAP on January 17,1917 in New York City. Gretta died on March 23,1938 in Pittston, PA and is buried in St. John's Cemetery, Pittston. PA. They had one child, Edward Wren REAP born on May 10, 1919. Gretta's father, Edward originated the WREN Dry Good Store in Springfield, Ohio in 1877. He owned and expanded the very well know store until 1917 when he died while living at Far Rockaway Beach, NY. My great grandfather, John, was Edward WREN's brother and was also in the dry goods business. They were born in Littur Townland, County Kerry, Ireland. Edward Wren REAP married Rita REAGAN in Chicago. They have 5 children. Please tell me the NAME of your husband's cousin that worked at WREN's store. Explain the relationship as I have all the information on the WREN family in Springfield. Thank you, Jenny Notify Administrator about this message? \|Home \| Help \| About Us \| Site Index \| Jobs \| PRIVACY \| Affiliate\| \|© 2007 The Generations Network\|
The goddess Venus tries to restrain her lover Adonis from going off to the hunt. She clings to him, imploring him not to go, but Adonis looks down at her impassively. His dogs strain at their leashes, echoing his impatience, as detailed in the tragic love story found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cupid sleeps in the background, a symbol of Adonis's resistance to Venus's entreaties, since his ineffective arrows hang uselessly in a tree. The story ends tragically; during the hunt the mortal Adonis is fatally gored by a wild boar. Titian's loose, energetic strokes of paint give the painting a sense of spontaneity and movement. In some areas, the artist even painted with his finger, as seen in Adonis's arm. The composition's dynamism springs from the torsion caused by Venus's awkward pose, which was inspired by an ancient sculptural relief. Titian used rich colors, shimmering highlights, and a lush landscape to create the painting's evocative, poignant mood.
Elizabeth was sold into marriage at a young age. When she had daughters of her own, she wanted them to avoid the same fate. She dreamed that they would be able to finish school. So when Elizabeth’s husband insisted that their daughter Athieng be given away in an arranged marriage, Elizabeth refused. She hid Athieng away from the family so that her daughter could continue to attend school. For her defiance, Elizabeth was beaten. She was thrown into prison. She was shunned by her entire community. After turning to Women for Women International, Elizabeth learned to read and write. She received rights awareness and job skills training. She now has a job that pays well enough to keep all her children in school—without depending on an abusive husband. Elizabeth’s determination to give Athieng the opportunities that she never had has paid off. Athieng is continuing her education and wants to become a lawyer. With her daughter at her side, Elizabeth says, “Now I can imagine a tomorrow that could be better than today." Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues. If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating or by subscribing to this project's RSS feed. Online Marketing Manager
Glass tiles are thin, flat shaped tiles used to line or cover a surface. Glass tiles come in a wide variety of shapes, transparencies, colors, and can come in combination with other materials such as stainless steel. They can be used to make a surface more durable or water repellent, or they can be used for surface decoration. Glass tiles are more rigid than ceramic or cement tiles, making them easier to break under stresses. Though they require more delicate handling, glass tiles are popular because they can refract light, offering a wider variety of surface effects than ceramic or porcelain. Glass is also impervious to water, will not fade in sunlight, and is frost-proof. Glass tiles are typically used for walls, bathrooms, in window details, or for decoration. However, some glass tiles are manufactured for use as floor tiles. Glass floor tiles are often textured to prevent slippage when wet. Tiles come in a wide variety of shapes and colors, making them attractive for both residential and commercial use. Glass tiles can be transparent or opaque, depending upon the mixture of glass and other components such as metal oxides. Some tiles are backed with other materials like stainless steel, or coated with substances that allow the tiles to be impregnated with heat transfer dyes. Coated tiles are used to create custom glass tiles for use in murals or other artistic designs. Glass tiles can be cast into identical shapes, such as a square or rectangle, and used with grout to cover a surface in a geometric pattern. The tiles can also be irregular in shape and used to create a free-flowing or organic design. Glass mosaics have been made this way for many years, using a variety of shapes and colors to make a unique design. Glass tiles can also be manufactured in large sheets with a mesh backing, making for easier installation. Glass tiles are commonly manufactured by fusing, which involves placing several thin sheets of glass in layers into a kiln and heated to about 800 degrees Celsius, essentially fusing the different layers of glass together into one sheet. Glass tiles may also be manufactured using glass powders that are melted together in kilns operating at much higher temperatures. The layers of glass go through a cycle of ramps, where they are heated rapidly; and then soaks, where they are held at a specific temperature. Tiles go through the ramping and soaking process for several cycles until the kiln operator decides they have fused together to the desired effect. The fused layers are then allowed to cool over time, essentially annealing or strengthening the glass tiles. Installing glass tiles involves using a backing such as a cement board; green board, which is water resistant; concrete; or drywall. The tiles are mounted in an adhesive and then secured together with a grout. Glass tiles may also be cut to fit into small areas or around fixtures. Tile cutters or nippers are used to shape small tiles, while a wet saw is preferable for use on larger or thicker tiles.
11 December 2013 - Findings from The 2013 Issues Survey, a GlobeScan/SustainAbility Survey. In comparison to the 2011 edition of this survey, this year’s results show a slight uptick in the level of urgency experts feel across top sustainability issues, as well as in their impressions of how well industry is managing the transition to sustainability. But, even while perceptions of performance have increased incrementally for nearly every sector (a first since 2000), the overall gap between urgency and performance remains significant. For the first time in this survey series, experts were asked not only for their views on which issues are most urgent for particular industry sectors, but also which sectors are most accountable for reducing their impact on, or providing solutions for, each issue. By comparing these results against issue urgency, a series of sector-specific “accountability/urgency maps” were created, each of which provides an updated view on industry challenges and opportunities, and a unique input for materiality analyses, strategy setting and other processes. This report includes a generalized version of these maps that aggregates ratings of urgency and accountability across all issues and highlights two distinct groups of industries: those facing high levels of both urgency and accountability on a number of fronts, versus those dealing with less overall urgency and accountability. For those in the second group, however, there is often still at least one or a subset of issues that stand out. For example, while the pharmaceutical industry’s overall urgency and accountability scores are relatively low (see page 17), experts consider this industry extremely accountable for addressing the issue of access to medicines/healthcare. As outlined in GlobeScan and SustainAbility’s 2013 report Changing Tack, collaboration within and across industries is required to address the many challenges facing corporations and society at large. With this in mind, readers are encouraged to view the following findings as both a snapshot of where we are as well as a springboard for discussions that raise ambition and instigate enhanced collective action.
This spring 200 school kids learned that building a dream city is easier when it's made out of cardboard than from steel and concrete, but the principles of design still apply. "Box City" is a miniature community of cardboard, construction paper and pipe cleaner "people'. Architects and architectural grad students worked with 4th, 5th and 6th graders and their teachers to explore the basics of design, the physics of structure and the essentials of city planning. It will be on display as one of the events for Architecture Week. The Utah Center for Architecture (UCFA), a non-profit cultural organization created the week to invite people to look more closely at their neighborhoods and urban environments and to appreciate inspired design where it occurs. The tours and exhibits are free and open to the public. Here are the events from Wednesday, April 30th - Saturday, May 3rd. Wednesday, April 30 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Educating Elementary Children Through Architecture (EECTA) Box City Awards presentation and new exhibit about design principles taught through EECTA for adults. Salt Lake City Main Public Library Urban Room and Auditorium. Box City closes. Friday, May 2 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Walking tour: “East of Washington: Reintroducing the Trolley District” of Odgen’s historic 25th Street and original streetcar neighborhoods led by co-authors of Ogden’s Historic Trolley District Book, Shalae Larsen, ASLA PLA and Sue Wilkerson. Tour begins at Union Station. Co-sponsored by the Trolley Distrct Community Council. Refreshments provided. 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. Exhibit: Brett Donnelly Gallery in Ogden hosts ”Form, Space and Concept” an exhibit of models created by architects and architectural students to explore concepts, ideas, and functions that ultimately are developed into habitable spaces. Saturday, May 3 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. “Rethinking Sugar House Park”, a Jane Jacobs Walk, will be led by University Honors students who studied it in depth and recently shared capital improvement ideas for the park with the Sugar House Park Authority. The walk will allow participants to share ideas and re-envision the park (see map for tour route). Co-sponsored by UCFA. Refreshments provided. 11:00 a.m. – Noon Walking tour of late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings in downtown Salt Lake City designed by Richard Kletting, architect of the Utah Capitol. Meet in the courtyard of the Boston & Newhouse Buildings on Exchange Place at Main St. Led by Allen Roberts, AIA, historic preservation expert and CRSA president. 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Tour of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, completed in 2011, designed by Sparano & Mooney Architecture, at 7405 S Redwood Road, West Jordan. Received the Design Arts Award from the Utah Arts Council, an Excellence in Concrete Award from the American Concrete Institute, and Merit Awards from AIA Western Mountain Region and from AIA Utah. For more information, please visit: http://utahcfa.org/.
In Alaska with Shipwreck Kelly 1897 - the last great gold rush More than a hundred thousand raced toward the Yukon and the Klondike - all of them desperate to be first to arrive at the headwaters of the Yukon. Leaving his federal post in Montana, U.S. Deputy Marshall Patrick Kelly becomes a partner in a spectacular enterprise: the disassembly and transportation of Studdsworth P. Blackmore's famous Alham...more Audio Cassette, Abridged Published by Paperback Nova Audio Books (first published February 1st 1996) To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
US 5227104 A A method is described for producing hard, dense, finely crystalline fired bodies from alumina gels of solids content greater than 45%, by the use of high pressure in mixing and/or presssure extrusion together with seeding of the gel by submicron alpha alumina particles. 1. A method for making ceramic bodies comprising polycrystalline alpha alumina comprising the steps of: gelling a mixture including hydrated alumina powder, water and acid, said mixture having a solids content of more than 30% by weight, by extruding said mixture while exerting pressure thereon, said mixture immediately prior to extrusion containing ungelled agglomerates of unpeptized alumina powder, said extrusion acting to force the water and acid into contact with such ungelled alumina powder to provide a substantially homogeneous gelled product; drying said gelled product; firing the dried product to a temperature of less than 1500° C. to convert at least a portion of said hydrated alumina to alpha alumina, said body having a density of at least 90% of theoretical; and providing in said gelled product prior to said firing step submicron sized alpha alumina particles or equivalent nucleation centers as seed material in an amount of between about 0.1% and 5% by weight of the hydrated alumina solids content of the mixture. 2. The method of claim 1 wherein said seed material includes submicron size alpha alumina particles. 3. The method of claim 2 wherein the amount of said seed material present is 5% or less of the total content of said mixture. 4. The method of claim 1 wherein the temperature of firing is 1400° C. or less. 5. The method of claim 1 wherein the solids content of said mixture is at least 50% by weight. 6. The method as in any one of claims 1 to 3 wherein the solids content of said mixture is between 45% and 75% by weight. 7. The method of claim 6 further including the steps of hydrothermally treating said mixture prior to said gelling step. 8. The method of claim 6 wherein said pressure forces said mixture through an extrusion die. 9. The method of claim 1 wherein the solids content is between 45% and 65% by weight and said pressure is between 20 lbs. and 20 tons per square inch. 10. The method of claim 6 further including the step of crushing or breaking up the dried product prior to the firing step to form abrasive grits upon firing. 11. A method for making abrasive grits comprising the steps of: (a) forming a mixture including hydrated alumina powder, water and acid, said mixture having a solids content of more than 30% by weight; (b) gelling said mixture by extruding said mixture under pressure through a die to obtain substantially homogeneous gelled extruded rods, said mixture immediately prior to such extrusion containing ungelled agglomerates of unpeptized alumina powder, said extrusion acting to force the water and acid into contact with said unpeptized alumina powder; (c) drying said rods; (d) firing said rods at a temperature of less than 1500° to convert at least a portion of said hydrated alumina to alpha alumina to alpha alumina having crystal sizes of less than 1 micron; and (e) providing in said rods prior to said firing step submicron alpha alumina particles or equivalent nucleation centers as seed material in an amount of between about 0.1% and 5% by weight of the hydrated alumina solids content of the mixture. 12. The method of claim 11 wherein said mixture has a solids content of between 45% to 75%. 13. The method of claim 11 wherein said grits have a density of at least about 97% of theoretical. 14. The method of claims 11, 12 or 13 wherein said seed material constitutes 5% or less of the total solids of said mixture. 15. The method of claims 11, or 13 further including the step of breaking up said rods prior to firing. 16. The method of claims 11, 12 or 13 in which said seed material includes submicron sized alpha alumina particles. This is a continuation of copending application Ser. No. 07/323,268 filed on Mar. 15, 1989, now abandoned which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 06/732,973 filed May 13, 1985 now abandoned, which in turn is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 06/620,654 filed Jun. 14, 1984 (now abandoned). In the manufacture of so called sol-gel aluminum oxide ceramic articles and in particular aluminous abrasive grain, large volumes of water have been used to form the gels. These large volumes have been made necessary basically for 3 (three) reasons: 1. The prior art teaches that gels, particularly for abrasive purposes, made from gelable alumina powders should contain high levels (3-7 weight percent) of MgO. The MgO is introduced into the sol-gel as a solution of a magnesium salt. Such introduction of salt solutions dramatically increases the viscosity of the system. Therefore, to ensure good homogeneous mixing of the magnesium salt with the alumina gel it is necessary to work with a relatively dilute sol-gel so that upon addition of the magnesium salt the viscosity remains low enough so that efficient and good mixing remain possible. For conventional abrasive manufacture containing around 5% MgO, a solids content in the 15-25 weight % range may be conveniently worked with but becomes very tedious beyond that. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,827 and published British application 2,099,012A. 2. The manufacture of gels from present commercially derived alumina monohydrate powders requires that some acid (e.g., nitric or formic) be added to the powder to allow the colloidal particles to disperse. In order to ensure that the acid can interact with all of the powder, the acid is diluted with a large volume of water and conventionally mixed in a high shear blender or other convenient mixer. If insufficient water is used, the gel becomes too viscous to homogeneously mix in the magnesia (as above) and also it is extremely difficult to gel agglomerates of unpeptized alumina powder. With conventional mixing it becomes very very tedious to ensure a homogeneous peptization beyond about 45 weight % solids content. Solids content referes only to alumina monohydrate content in the sol gel and neglects the magnesia salt. 3. Relatively large volumes of solvent (almost always water but could be a mixture of methanl-water or many other possibilities) are required in conventional gel preparation in order to ensure proper formation of the gel so that a coherent glassy dried green form is obtained. If insufficient water (solvent) is present the resulting green-ware is not coherent and tends to crumble easily, not at all exhibiting the glassy like features of the high water containing gel. When these poorer quality green bodies are sintered, the product tends to have weak zones and "pock marked" surfaces. This becomes especially noticeable beyond about 50 weight % solids. The presence of large volumes of water has several major disadvantages: 1. energy cost to remove the water is extremely high because conventional dewatering such as filtration is difficult if not impossible once the gel is formed, 2. large capital investments are needed to provide large scale dewatering equipment, 3. volumes handled are large, and 4. control of shrinkage and cracking during drying is extremely difficult. In view of the drawbacks of these conventional low solids content gels, I was led to investigate means whereby high quality ceramic articles, particularly abrasive grain could be made at high solids (greater than 30%) levels. Thus an object of the invention is to produce a high solids content aluminum oxide based gel system which will as a result have much improved economics of drying (dewatering) and permit much more control of greenware shrinkage and cracking during drying. Copending U.S. application Ser. No. 06/592,689, filed Mar. 23, 1984, now abandoned, along with its continuation-in-part U.S. application Ser. No. 662,869 filed Oct. 19, 1984, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,364, and its copending further continuation-in-part U.S. application Ser. No. 023,346 filed Mar. 9, 1987, teaches that high quality abrasive grain may be formed from a gel without the use of high levels of MgO. Rather than requiring the MgO as sintering aid/grain growth inhibitor, it has been found that an addition of extremely fine Al2 O3 will allow the gel to sinter to greater than 90% theoretical density in only a few minutes and thereby still retain a submicron microstructure. Such a "seeded" ceramic abrasive material has been found to perform much better than the MgO containing "unseeded" gel in many grinding applications. The MgO may still be added to the "seeded" gel but generally does not improve performance any further and is often deleterious. By eliminating magnesium salt additions then, I have effectively removed the first reason cited earlier for high water requirements, and the solids content can be increased by a factor of 2-3 times. In order to insure complete peptization of the alumina (i.e. contact with acid), and to also insure "polymerization" i.e. contact with water, I resorted to using a high solids kneader/mixer and subsequent extrusion of the mix with either a piston or auger type extruder. It was felt that the pressure exerted on the mixed paste/gel would force the liquids (acid and water) into any remaining ungelled alumina powder compacts and provide a homogeneous gelled product. When the solids content was from 45-65 weight % it was found that pressures from 200 psi to 20 tons/square inch worked satisfactorily with the preferred pressured at 300 psi to 10 tons/square inch. Presumably, given a mixer with the combined features of mixing and exerting such pressures, the extrusion step could be omitted unless, of course, shape control was desired. The problem of unpeptized material, typically in the amount of a few percent is recognized even in the case of dilute sol-gel dispersions, as indicated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,827, where the use of a centrifuge is disclosed to eliminate such material. In the case of the high solids sol-gel dispersions of the present invention, removal of unpeptized material cannot be practically done by centrifuging. However, such material can be made peptizable by subjecting the mix to hydrothermal treatment e.g. 180° C. for 2 hours at autogenous pressure. Such treatment may or may not be needed depending upon the quality of the alumina monohydrate powder and the tolerable amount of unpeptized material in the product. Illustrates sintering enhancement by using "seeded" gel, preparation of high solids content gel and effects of extrusion. In a Maternini mixer was put 8 kg Condea Pural SB alumina monohydrate, 9.5 kg of alumina gel (Condea base) at 20.7% solids which had been "seeded" with 10 g ultra fine (submicron) Al2 O3 generated from wear on Sweco mill (vibratory mill) alumina grinding media, and 400 ml concentrated nitric acid. The 56% solids paste which formed was very difficult to mix thoroughly and many sections of unreacted powder were visible. A sample of this paste was dried and sintered at 1400° C. for 10 minutes; the specimen showed a Vickers hardness of 16.5 GPa but many large pores and pits were visible. The remainder of the sample was extruded in a verticle piston extruder through a 1/16" die plate at a pressure of 13-15 tons per square inch and 27 inches of vacuum. The extrudate which was very pasty and crumbly going in, emerged as translucent/transparent fibres, quite homogeneous and relatively flaw free. The extrudate after sintering as described above had only a few small pores and uniform hardness of 16.5 GPa. The extrudate, therefore, had hardness (density) equivalent to non-seeded MgO containing gels suitable for use as a superior abrasive. The extrudate fibres dried essentially intact although some cracking was observed. Nonetheless, shrinkage and cracking control were much improved over the conventional 15-25%, gels and drying rates were increased dramatically. Illustrates preparation of high solids (50%) Gel extrusion and sintering to 97% theoretical density. In a mix-muller were mixed 40 pounds Condea Pural SB monohydrate alumina powder, 11 pounds of Sweco milled water (661/2 hours milling with 1/2×1/2 cylindrical, 90% alumina, grinding media) which contained 2.266% solids, 14 pounds of tap water was added and the whole mixed. A mixture of 1600 ml concentrated nitric acid and 1600 ml tap water was then added the whole mixed for 2 minutes. Then 6 pounds more of tap water was added. The whole was mixed 2 minutes more and then piston extruded through 1/8" holes at 500-1000 pounds per square inch pressure. The mixed material as in the previous example did not seem to be homogeneously gelled and was somewhat granular. After extrusion the material appeared to be much more uniformly and homogeneously gelled. The extrudate after sintering at 1400° C. for 5 minutes had Vickers hardness of 19.5-20 GPa. The aluminous bodies made by the process of the present invention may contain spinel formers such as alumina, modifying agents such as titania, and may serve as matrixes or boding agents for other ceramic materials. By solids contents I mean 100% times the ratio of the weight of the alumina hydrate to the sum of the weight of the solid alumina hydrate starting material and the weight of added liquid. My invention comprehends a solids content of from 45% to as high as 75%. It should be noted that although the alumina (boehmite) starting materials are termed "monohydrates" they may in fact contain more or less than one mole of H2 O per calculated mole of Al2 O3. By "seed material" I mean submicron sized alpha alumina particles or equivalent nucleation centers which produce a non-cellular submicron structures in the alumina bodies when fired for 10 minutes or less at 1400° C. The optimum amount of submicron seed material (contained in the "milled water" in the above example) is 1% solids based on the total solids of the mixture. No more than 5% of such seed material should be added since at such levels above the optimum it tends to increase the crystal size of the fired product and reduces the hardness of the product. The minimum, as evidenced by Example I, is about 0.1% by weight of the hydrated alumina solids content of the mixture. In all of the products of this invention, as in the above example, the fired crystal size of the alpha alumina body, (or matrix material when serving as a bonding agent) should be less than one micron. The preferred firing temperature is 1400° C. or less, and in no event should be over 1500° C. to retain the required submicron crystal size of the product. Hardnesses herein were measured by a Vickers diamond indenter point at a load of 500 grams. The high solids gels of this invention may be shaped by extrusion or molded to produce wear resistant parts, parts designed for use in corrosive or high temperature environments, substrates for electronic applications, and any other applications where strong and dense alpha alumina bodies are required. Where abrasive grits are desired, extruded rods of appropriate size may be formed then dried and crushed or broken up to the desired grit shapes prior to firing. The gels of the present invention may also be used to form coatings, which are then fired to 3.9 or greater specific gravity. Illustrates usefulness of the invention as an abrasive and sintering to 99% density. Eight (8) mixtures were prepared and extruded as in II. After drying at 80° C. the extrudate was impact crushed and fired (sintered) in a rotary electric kiln (SiC tube) under various conditions. The resultant grain was sized to 50 grit (Coated Abrasive Manufacturers Institute Standard) and evaluated as an abrasive on coated disc. The results are shown below: ______________________________________ % of Result UsingSintering Hard- CAD Co-fusedTemp. Time Density ness Results Alumina-Test °C. Min. (g/cm)3 (GPa) 1020 Zirconia______________________________________1 1350 5 3.84 19.9 120 882 1350 10 3.89 19.9 100 823 1350 30 3.94 19.9 80 684 1350 60 3.95 19.1 80 545 1400 5 3.91 19.9 93 786 1400 10 3.94 19.1 76 677 1400 30 3.97 18.5 74 47______________________________________ In this particular example, best grinding performance was obtained at relatively lower densities. This is so because at the higher densities, exaggerated grain growth has become a deleterious factor fracture characteristics of the material. This does not mean that in general better grinding will occur with lower density. The data indicates that the gel can sinter to near theoretical density under relatively mild conditions. The comparison abrasive, co-fused alumina zirconia, is the best prior art fused abrasive material for use in coated abrasives. The results reported in the table refer to the weight of material removed before failure from (1) a 1020 steel speciman as a % of the weight removed by an alumina-zirconia coated disc, and (2) the weight of stainless removed by the test abrasive as a % of that removed by the alumina-zirconia abrasive, under identical test conditions.
Funding and grants for groups and individuals. Oxfordshire County Council has a section on it's website about Funding and grants for groups and individuals. Many of the links on this page are taken from there. GRANTNET - Free to use funding database. Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action (OCVA) OCVA runs a free Funding Advice Service for voluntary and community organisations and the Development Team can help you put your application together and offer advice on other sources of help. [OCVA website] The Oxfordshire Guide to Funding Opportunities 2011 This is currently being updated. You can also use Source Oxfordshire which helps businesses and voluntary organisations understand the procurement and grants processes as well as helping to find and apply for opportunities in Oxfordshire and further afield. Big Society fund - February 2011 Oxfordshire County Council has created the Big Society fund of £600,000 so that community groups can bid for funds to help them take responsibility for providing services in their communities. It will be one-off funding to help communities get their ideas going. For more information and guidance go to the Big Society Fund pages. Funding for children and young people for out of school play and leisure. Funding for Community Chest has now ended. (July 2011) OCC can't currently fund any applications for assistance. Play Design Grants The Play Design Grants (PDG) are small grants to help groups develop their ideas for improving the play spaces in their communities. Playbuilder Capital Grant £1,000,000 funding from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) part of the 'Fair Play’ initiative, that aims to change the way play spaces are commissioned, designed and built. [link] Chill Out Fund for youth activities Improving and extending provision for children and young people in Oxfordshire [link] Village hall grantsOCC have a small grants scheme to fund improvements to village halls and community centres in market towns, including Oxford. All enquiries about this fund should be made to the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council (ORCC) who administers the scheme on their behalf. List of links to funding and grant making bodies - Chill Out Fund - Grants Online - Lottery Good Causes - Awards for All - Big Lottery Fund - Sport England - Arts Council - Heritage Lottery Fund Waste Recycling Environmental Limited. Provide grants under the terms and conditions of the Landfill Communities Fund (formerly the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme). Department for Culture, Media and Sport - Directory of Social Change South East Museum, Library & Archive Council - Government Funding - Oxfordshire Community Foundation - The API Lead trade body within the play sector representing the interests of manufacturers, designers and distributors of both indoor and outdoor play equipment and play area surfacing. - Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) - The Football Foundation One of the largest sports charities in the world and certainly the largest in the UK. They are an important funder of multi-use games areas. - The Forestry Commission Deliver practical programmes to make sure that, as communities and individuals, we can get the most from our forests. Search for Play Space on their excellent website for a variety of resources. - The Free Play Network Aims to promote greater public understanding of the need for better play opportunities for children, by promoting discussion, exchange of information, and guidance on best practice in development of children's play opportunities. Work for disabled children, young people and their families. KIDS vision is a world in which all disabled children and young people realise their aspirations and their right to an inclusive community which supports them and their families. - The Oxfordshire Community Foundation Has been awarded £761,000 over three years to make grants from between £250 to £5,000 in a straightforward and easy way, to voluntary and community groups with annual incomes below £20,000. - The Oxfordshire Playing Fields Association (OPFA) A body of expertise on local Outdoor Play, they organise a Children's Playground Inspection Roadshow programme. - The Oxfordshire Play Association (OPA) a registered charity that promotes play for all children & young people throughout Oxfordshire. - Play England provides advice and support to promote good practice, and works to ensure that the importance of play is recognised by policy makers, planners and the public. - Play Wales the national organisation for children's play in Wales. multi-faceted independent play and informal leisure consultancy working in the areas of design, planning, policy, strategy, local engagement, fundraising and organisational development.
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Existencial quantification and polymorphic datatypes (actually, components...) lrpalmer at gmail.com Tue Jan 20 16:00:55 EST 2009 On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:14 PM, David Menendez <dave at zednenem.com> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Mauricio <briqueabraque at yahoo.com> wrote: > >>> But how is this: > >>> data SomeNum = forall a. SN a > >>> different from: > >>> data SomeNum = SN (forall a. a) > >> At a glance they look the same to me — but only the first is accepted by > >> ghc. > > Following the link you pointed in the last > > message, I found this at 18.104.22.168: > > data T a = T1 (forall b. b -> b -> b) a The constructor here is irrelevant. The function here can do anything a top-level function of type: something :: b -> b -> b I like to think about quantification in this regard in terms of isomorphisms. Think about what a function of type forall b. b -> b -> b can do. It cannot do anything with its arguments, because it must work on all types, so it only has one choice to make: it can return the first argument, or it can return the second argument. So, forall b. b -> b -> b is isomorphic to Bool. For symmetry, the constructor T1 has type: T1 :: (forall b. b -> b -> b) -> a -> T1 a > > If I understand properly, it can be activated > > with -XPolymorphicComponents. It's different > > from my example, but I would like to know what > > it does that this can't: > data T a = forall b. T1 (b->b->b) a The constructor T1 here has type: T1 :: forall b. (b -> b -> b) -> a -> T1 a See the difference? You can pass the latter a function of any type you choose, eg. (Int -> Int -> Int) or ((Bool -> Bool) -> (Bool -> Bool) -> (Bool -> Bool)). So when somebody gets a T from you, they have no idea what type the function you gave it was, so they can only use it in limited ways (in this case, nothing useful at all can be done with it). Here's another existential type: data T' a = forall b. T' (b -> a) b Here, a T' contains a value of some type b -- who knows what it is -- and a function to get from that value to an a. Since we don't know anything about b, all we can do is to apply the function. T' a is isomorphic to a. But it might have different operational behavior; e.g. maybe a is a huge list which is cheaply generated from some small generator value (of type b). Then if you pass a T' around, it's the same as passing that big list around, except for you don't cache the results of the list, improving memory performance. It's like inverse memoization. Not all existential types are for inverse memoization, this is just one I found it easiest to reason about these with the types of the constructors, and thinking about what non-quantified type they are isomorphic to. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... More information about the Haskell-Cafe
July 24th, 2014 Pioneer Day July 24th, 2014 Laylat al-Qadr July 27th, 2014 Parents' Day July 28th, 2014 World Hepatitis Day July 29th, 2014 Eid-al-Fitr July 30th, 2014 World Friendship Day August 5th, 2014 Tisha B'Av August 9th, 2014 World Indigenous Peoples’ Day August 11th, 2014 Victory Day August 12th, 2014 International Youth Day August 15th, 2014 'Bennington Battle Day' observed August 15th, 2014 Statehood Day in Hawaii August 15th, 2014 Assumption of Mary August 16th, 2014 Bennington Battle Day August 19th, 2014 National Aviation Day August 19th, 2014 World Humanitarian Day August 23rd, 2014 World Day for Slave Trade Abolition Potion Masters Mahogany Wood Wand W/ Velvet Bag Wiccan Wizard Druid Pagan For Sale This hand turned mahogany wood wand measures approximately 15 inches in length with an approximate5/8 inch diameter handle. The wand handle is a gothic inspired design and the wand features a beautiful ebony finish and mahoganywood grain. The wand includes a velvet wand storage bag. All of our wood magick wandsare hand turned, carved, and finished by master wand makers. Each wand is carefully crafted to enhance the appeal of the natural wood grain and to maintain the balance of the wand. Wands may have slight color, size and wood pattern variations. Mahogany: This wood is in touch with the elements of fire and earth. Well balanced, this wood seeks a partner with strength and energy. Excellent for protection spells. Magical properties: This is one of the most spiritually focused of all woods, and would be best used in magick dealing with anything non-physical. Divination and spiritual growth and guidance are its primary properties. It is also an excellent wood for healing spells, though mostly for emotional and spiritual healing. Please Note: That this listing is for a single wand and each wand is individually hand turned, carved, and finished, no two wands are exactly alike and each wand has it's own unique appearance and finished design. This wand includes a velvet cloth storage bag to protect the wand from dust, dirt, and any unwanted energies. Stands, display and storage boxes, and leather holsters are sold separately.
Take a look a these Gout Home Remedies and see which one can help you soothe the extremely painful symptoms of a bout of gout, which comes on suddenly and without any warning. Gout, dubbed as the "rich man's illness", is a great source of amusement for others. But you ask anyone who has suffered from this and they will tell you in detail that it is no laughing matter. It is seriously painful! Now that we have checked out some of the facts about gout let's take a look at some traditional Gout Home Remedies and see how these old folklore solutions can help in reducing the build up of uric acid in the body, and perhaps help us stop worrying about what is causing our gout. And at the same time give some relief in soothing the area afflicted by this incredibly painful ailment. "The Best Remedy that I have for Rheumatism is to thank the Lord it ain't Gout". 1 pkt Epsom Salts 1 pkt Cream of Tartar 1 pkt Flowers of Sulfur Mix all the ingredients together and place in an airtight container. Take a half teaspoon stirred into a glass of water first thing in the morning. Take a few leafs of the Arum Lily Do not crush or bruise the leaf and heat it up in water. Apply this as a plaster to the gout infected area for relief of itching and peeling of the skin which is one the the unpleasant after effects of a gout attack. One thick slice of bread One large onion Heat the milk, and pour onto the slice of bread. Grate the onion and add to the milk and bread. Mix into a paste and place on the inflamed gout infected area. Keep in place with a retaining dressing. A bowl of cherries a day will keep my gout at bay! To the top of Gout Home Remedies Or else back to our Home Page Copyright 2010 Home Remedies Haven.com. All Rights Reserved. Soak 4 figs in water, mash them and then apply directly to the affected area and keep in place with a clean cloth. Leave for up to an hour. Gout is caused by build up of uric acid in the joints. Figs are alkaline and help to counteract this acidity. Morin, a compound found in figs have been shown to reduce uric acid. The information on this site does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with your Health Professional.
Press Release No.: Date: 26 April 2009 Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is monitoring events concerning the recent cases of ‘swine influenza’ in Mexico and the United States. On 25 April 2009 the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting of its Emergency Committee, and subsequently determined that the situation represented a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ under the terms of the International Health Regulation (2005). Details of the WHO’s statements can be found at www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en Guidelines for managing suspected communicable diseases during such public health events have been developed by IATA, in consultation with WHO, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and Airports Council International (ACI) and are available on IATA's Communicable diseases and Air Transport pages. At the present time, IATA recommends that airlines review their preparedness plans for public health emergency and consider how they may be implemented in the event that the current situation becomes more widespread. No specific additional measures are currently advised. Recommendations will be reviewed in light of WHO evaluation of the evolving situation. Notes for editors: For more information, please contact: Tel: +41 22 770 2967
- THE MAGAZINE In my 40-plus years of affiliation with the cleaning Industry I have watched closely the ebb and flow of our business in relation to the ups and downs of the general economy. Unlike direct retail, our service business seems to weather the storms of economic downturn and recession fairly well. When money gets tight, as it is now, consumers tend to want to take good care of what they have, as opposed to replacing their things with new. Cleaning companies often experience actual increases in business when the general economy takes a downturn. There is an increase in consumers shopping for a bargain, but companies with strong reputations for providing good value for the price paid seem to do well during these times. One thing that is a bit different about the current times is the relationship of the economic downturn to the two issues of housing and the price of fuel. The “correction” in the housing market has led to a decrease in New Housing construction which has definitely affected the carpet manufacturing industry resulting in some of the lowest levels of production and sales in recent history. This could have a delayed effect the cleaning industry, since these would be the carpets being cleaned in the years to come. The whole mortgage and foreclosure crisis has created a lot of pressure on the bank accounts of consumers. On the one hand, many are cleaning up homes to sell, while others are just letting things go, expecting to lose the property. This creates an uncertainty in the cleaning marketplace unlike anything I’ve seen before. The price of oil and gasoline has cut deeply into the amount of “disposable” or elective income available for services like carpet cleaning. While travel plans and vacations can be modified, many must use fuel for transportation to and from work in order to keep their jobs. This need for basic transportation, plus the increase in the cost of shipping goods to market leading to higher prices for food and other basic necessities, will cause people to look at what is a necessity and what is a luxury. To weather this storm, cleaning businesses need to emphasize the role cleaning plays in maintaining a healthy environment and protecting the value of expensive furnishings. Cleaning just for appearance reasons can put our service into the “optional” category, but health and investment protection are more likely to be placed in the necessity column and less likely to get cut out of the household budget. I am still optimistic that the current times represent as many opportunities for the cleaning service professional, but careful marketing and packaging of our services emphasizing improving the healthiness of the home and protecting the value of investments is a necessity.
Font Installation on Unix and Other Systems Windows and Macintosh systems have one central directory where all applications access their fonts. Unfortunately, in Linux and Unix, each application implements fonts differently: the X Window system has its way, word processors want it a different way, printing systems want it another way, and so on. Several font installation examples are documented below with links provided by IDAutomation's clients. If they are not helpful, contact the operating system or application vendor for installation procedures. IDAutomation's TrueType and PostScript fonts are created to the standards set for TrueType and PostScript fonts, and can be treated as any other font for the purpose of getting the vendor's assistance. IDAutomation can only support the font tools, the symbology and the fonts themselves as stated in the statement of support - IDAutomation is unable to assist with the installation of the fonts on Unix or Linux systems. Assistance for installing fonts on a Unix platform can be obtained from the consulting company mentioned in the tutorial about installing fonts in Unix for Oracle Reports or consider IDAutomation's Java Barcode Packages, which work on any operating system with a Java Virtual Machine. Sun Solaris Xsun supports TrueType fonts. Use the Font Administrator GUI, /usr/dt/bin/sdtfontadm, to add them to the server's list of fonts. Currently, Linux does not provide native support for TrueType fonts, but it is possible to install and use TrueType fonts with xfstt, a free TrueType font server. More information on xfstt is available at the following links: Enter the following commands in sequence from a terminal window (Assuming the ttf file has been downloaded to "/usr/local/fonts/ttf" directory) This will create two files, "fonts.scale" and "fonts.dir", containing a list with full font names for each true type font. Finally, add this directory to XWindow's font search path. Redhat users can make use of "chkfontpath" tool to add search path. chkfontpath -a /usr/local/fonts/ttf If the "chkfontpath" utility is not available, then manually edit the "/etc/X11/xfs/config" file (or "/etc/X11/fs/config"). Find the line "catalog = ". Add the directory to the end of list, separated by commas. Sometimes, the font server needs to be restarted for the changes to take place. This information was from one of IDAutomation's previous customers. With most PostScript installations, PostScript interpretation is done in the printer. All that is needed is to get the proper PostScript commands onto the stack in the printer. For instance: When a PostScript program has been created to print a document, prepend the .pfa font to the file, then when the PostScript program is ready for use, add the following line in the program: /FontName findfont 12 scalefont setfont. This will load the font named "FontName" from the font dictionary, set it to a scale of 12 and set it to the active font; this will work with any OS. If the flat text document were sent to LPT1 on a windows machine by typing or copying, not by the printer driver, the same thing would be achieved. For additional information, refer to the installation of PostScript fonts on Unix using X11 example. The ASCII version of IDAutomation fonts does not always work with X-Server on Sun Solaris with Oracle Reports. This is what one customer did to get the fonts working. Please note that the following steps were used to install the sample version of the IDAutomation Interleaved 2 of 5 fonts, sADVI25f, on a Solaris machine. In order to get the ASCII version font to work properly in another environment, please substitute the font name to be loaded for IDAutomationC128M. Customer's Solution: "I told you that the binary version *.pfb worked on my X-Server but I need this font for Oracle Reports. Oracle Reports can only handle the ASCII version, so the problem was not solved with the binary version. But I found a solution": (0) Make the ASCII-file work:This is all of the information IDAutomation has concerning the font installation on Sun Solaris.
Build a Better Base (Revision 109) It has come to my attention that many are asking how the Pros make epic bases. Guides are definitely lurking in every corner of the forums but sometimes to a newbie it can still be confusing how to put those pieces in order. With this guide I’ll present piece by piece what you need to know and understand in building bases. Each essential concept will be explained and coupled with an actual base being created step by step using the concepts. To start it off, there are two types of bases according to purpose: 1. Short-Term Bases These bases are made in relation to the current player’s level, number of max buildings to be created and the kind of attacks one is getting at the current state. The design of this type changes/develops as the player levels. 2. Long-Term Bases These bases are designed at an early level however the designer plans ahead of time where to put additional buildings (i.e. bunkers) or blocks or even traps without changing much the basic design once those are achieved in the late levels. Depending on your preference and amount of time you spend for the game, it’s your choice which one you will go with. The advantage of making short-term bases is that it is dynamic and it adapts well in relation to base effectiveness in attacks appropriate to the player’s level. With long-term bases, it won’t be stressful to redesign the base that much and is a benefit to those who have lesser game time with BYM. Bases come in a variety of shapes starting with a simple box, pine cones, and circle-shaped ones. Imagination is the key here in creating epic bases. You may even get inspiration from nature itself. As what Steve Jobs wrote in his quote, “ Design is just not what it looks and feels like but design as well is how it works.” Clearly, how your base design can withstand certain attacks is valued more compared to how it looks. Of course, if you make it look great and works well then that by definition is considered to be epic as well. ^_^. Higher player level is not a requirement in creating good bases. Even a base with level 5 TH and 150 blocks can be epic if done right. So to help out fellow new comers of the game, I designed this guide to be both informative and practical with an actual base being created from scratch. Before starting to create your base, make sure to put these into consideration: - Will I be making a short-term or long-term base? - What level is my TH? And what buildings (including towers and RGs) do I currently have? - How many blocks can I use for pathing? - Do I have yard planner and monster baiter created already? - How much yard space do I have? - Depending on how long I spend time in building my base, do I need damage protection or not while in the process? Lets now begin building that epic base! What Links HereMain Page Top Wiki Contributors Need assistance with editing this wiki? Check out these resources:
Increases pH level generally from 1. 0 to 2. 0, produces low negative ORP (generally 200mv) Filters your water of excess chlorine and other contaminants. The nanometer Energy cup can change the common purified water into nanometer activated water by the activation of Pearl calcium ion and Energy stone, which can release far infrared ray and negative ion, thereby causing the syntony of water molecules, releasing mineral element (such as Ca, Mg , K, Ca ), Nano Energy Flask Features: Alkaline Water : Make the drinking to be alkaline , Neutralizes Human Body Acidic substances and keep balance of the body system. Maintain a healthy PH Figure and protect liver from side effect of Nicotine and alcohol might do.( Change Filtered Water to nano activated water rich in Ca, Mg, K and Na etc ( Micro elements).Energizes Water with small molecular cluster structure with strong osmosis, diffusibility and Enhanced with Scalar Energy, our Nano Energy Flask is capable of restructuring water molecules into smaller clusters which will thereby improve the bio-availability of water in the body and promote varied physiological functions in the body complex. The water filled in the Quantum Energy Flask facilitates the absorption of nutrients in the body as well as assists in the detoxification process. Moreover, the water stored in our Scalar Energy Quantum Flask can also be used to wash. Benefits of using Alkaline Ionized water: - Detoxification: Flushes acidic waste products from the body. - Gently cleanses at a deep cellular level. - Hydration: Three to five times as effective as regular water with bio-available electrolytes. - Allows nutrients to be absorbed more efficiently - Anti-oxidant: Electron charged water helps control free radical activate. - Improved Taste and Purity: Your body will crave more water - You and your family will enjoy drinking more water. - Increased Energy: Feel the difference usually within a few days. - Improved Digestion: As you digest and assimilate your food better, health improves, energy levels increase, weight sheds - The Factor IV activated water is made up of micro molecule group, with negative potential & of alkalescence. It has strong penetrability and solubility; it can eliminate the excrescent free radical, detoxicate the alcohol & tobacco, improve the nutrient absorption, metabolism & immunity. If you drink it for long term, it can resist oxidation, delay senility, prevent and dissolve kinds of calculus in your body, eliminate the dysphoria, cure the high blood pressure and gastritis. The Factor IV activated water is the water of health, which can increase the physiological behaviour, build up your health.
From the Opening of the Policy Paper: The aim of this policy paper is to make policy recommendations for cultural institutions to preserve the Public Domain when using digitization services provided by private entities. This becomes particularly relevant in the context of the 2013 Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive which adds Museums, Libraries and Archives in the list of Public Sector Bodies (PSBs) that have to make their information reusable. The Public Domain ensures the free dissemination of knowledge and provides everyone with the potential to access and create new works based on previous works. Thus, all Public Domain works should be free for everyone to use and reuse. Yet, as many cultural heritage institutions are entering into contractual agreements with third parties for the digitization of Public Domain works, there are serious concerns regarding the conditions of access, use and reuse of the resulting digitized copies. Read the Complete Policy Paper Learn More About Communia Communia International Association on the Public Domain is a network of researchers and practitioners from universities, NGOs and SME established in 10 Member States. The mission of COMMUNIA is to foster, strengthen and enrich the Public Domain. To fulfill its mission, COMMUNIA and its members raise awareness in, educate about, advocate for, offer expertise on and research about the Public Domain in the digital age within society and with policy-makers, at the EU level and worldwide. COMMUNIA Association is a WIPO observer since October 2012.
If you are experiencing problems downloading PDF or HTML fulltext, our helpdesk recommend clearing your browser cache and trying again. If you need help in clearing your cache, please click here . Still need help? Email firstname.lastname@example.org Field-plot tests were conducted in the southern High Plains with various dosages of the nuclear polyhedrosis Virus for control of Heliothis spp. in cotton. In general, better control was obtained with increase in virus dosage. At the rate of 100 larval equivalents per acre per application (1 LE = 6X109polyhedral inclusion bodies) , the seed yield with the virus was equivalent to that secured with chemical insecticide mixtures. The predominant species in these tests was the bollworm, Heliothis zea (Boddie). The tobacco budworm, H. virescens (F.), was not present in economic numbers. The results of these tests indicate that the nuclear polyhedrosis virus was effective in reducing the bollworm populations and increasing yields. Document Type: Research Article Publication date: June 1, 1967 More about this publication? Journal of Economic Entomology is published bimonthly in February, April, June, August, October, and December. The journal publishes articles on the economic significance of insects and is divided into the following sections: apiculture & social insects; arthropods in relation to plant disease; forum; insecticide resistance and resistance management; ecotoxicology; biological and microbial control; ecology and behavior; sampling and biostatistics; household and structural insects; medical entomology; molecular entomology; veterinary entomology; forest entomology; horticultural entomology; field and forage crops, and small grains; stored-product; commodity treatment and quarantine entomology; and plant resistance. In addition to research papers, Journal of Economic Entomology publishes Letters to the Editor, interpretive articles in a Forum section, Short Communications, Rapid Communications, and Book Reviews.
Nearly half of female faculty members in top science departments wish they'd had more children, but didn't because of their careers, while about a quarter of their male counterparts feel the same way, according to a new study. The analysis comes at a time of continued interest in why women -- even those with degrees in science and technology fields -- are less likely than men to pursue science careers. The findings, published in the journal PLoS ONE, are the first in a series of papers on related topics planned by two sociologists, Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University and Anne Lincoln of Southern Methodist University. The study is based on a survey of 3,455 scientists (graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and tenured and tenure-track faculty members) in astronomy, physics and biology in "top 20" departments, as judged by the National Research Council in 2005 and by U.S. News & World Report. At each of the career stages examined, men were more likely than women to be married and to have had children. They also had more children than women did -- and were less likely to regret not having more children. Women reported working roughly the same number of hours per week as men in graduate school, but more at later stages of their careers. Scientists and Family Status \|Hours Worked Per Week\|\|% Married\|\|% With Children\|\|Average Number of Children\|\|% Who Had Fewer Children Than They Wanted Due to Science Career\| The survey also asked those in the earlier career stages whether they were considering careers outside of science, and one in four graduate students and one in five postdocs said that they were. Further, those who believe that they have fewer children because of their career are more likely than others to consider a career switch. "Given these findings, universities would do well to re-evaluate how family-friendly their policies are," the authors write. Ecklund of Rice said in an interview that it was important to note that the regret over not having more children is not an issue just for women, but for many men as well. "We can do a disservice to the issue if we focus on this only as a women's issue," she said, even if these challenges fall disproportionately on women. Further, she said that while the scientists who are the most senior in these departments, generally men, advanced in part through the help of wives without outside careers, the men entering the academy today are more likely to be married to people with career ambitions themselves. For a next stage of the research, male and female scientists are being interviewed about family-friendly policies they have enjoyed, or wish they had. Ecklund said several trends are emerging. Many scientists, she said, especially those who are married to other scientists, spoke about "the amazing help" of having on-campus day care available. But at the same time, she said, interview subjects spoke about issues beyond traditional day care. Top scientists regularly travel abroad either to conduct research or to share results. So Ecklund said some form of "child care credits" that could be used to pay for nannies for short-term needs might be useful, especially for junior faculty members. Ecklund also said that she thinks that universities need to think more about mentoring issues with regard to life outside the lab. "People need mentoring on how to balance their careers with their families," she said.
This month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that its “stateside waiver” program would go into effect on March 4, 2013. This program is simply a change in the way that Immigration processes certain visa applications. It is not a new green card or visa program, and it only affects a very limited group of immigrants. Immigrants who will benefit from this new policy are those who: have a U.S. Citizen spouse, or are between the ages of 18 and 21, unmarried, and have a U.S. Citizen parent, or have an adult child who is a U.S. Citizen and also have either a parent or spouse who is either a U.S. Citizen or permanent resident. Additionally, the following circumstances must apply: they have been in the U.S. for more than 180 days without any legal immigration status, and they were not inspected by U.S. immigration when they entered the U.S. It is important to note that immigrants who entered the U.S. under the visa waiver program will not benefit from this program, as they were inspected by U.S. immigration. As the law stands now, Immigrants who enter the U.S. without inspection are, in most cases, required to apply for their permanent residence by leaving the U.S. and applying at the consulate in their home country. Unfortunately, when they leave the U.S., a law goes into effect that prevents them from reentering the U.S. for either 3 or 10 years. This law has been called the “3 and 10 year bar.” Those who were in the U.S. unlawfully for more than 180 days but less than a year are subject to the 3 year bar. Those with unlawful presence of a year or more are subject to the 10 year bar. These immigrants must apply for a waiver of this law, like a pardon, in order to be allowed back to the U.S. sooner than 3 or 10 years. Up until now, immigrants had to apply for such waivers at their consular interview, after leaving the U.S. Then they would have to wait a long time, usually between 6 months and a year, before a decision was made. If the waiver was denied, the immigrant was stuck in their country for years. This new policy attempts to fix this situation by allowing these immigrants to apply for the waiver before they leave the U.S. for their consular interview. If all goes well, a provisional waiver is granted, the immigrant returns to her home country for a consular interview, and she quickly returns to the U.S. The risks of the program are yet to be seen. While all the immigrants applying through the stateside waiver program are out of status and subject to deportation, Immigration has stated that it will not attempt to deport people who apply for the program unless there is some other reason that they should be deported (such as criminal history, a prior deportation order, or fraud). It is less clear what will happen to those applicants whose stateside waiver is denied. As a final note, the stateside waiver program only applies to those immigrants who need a waiver for the 3 and 10 year bar. It is not available for other waivers (such as the waivers needed for fraud or criminal history). Additionally, those who entered the U.S. with inspection (with a visa or through the visa waiver program) and who have a U.S. Citizen spouse or adult child or are under 21, unmarried, and have a U.S parent, do not need this program. They can apply for permanent residence in the U.S. and do not need a waiver. If you have questions about this or any other aspect of immigration law, visit one of IIIC’s weekly clinics advertised in the Emigrant for a free, confidential consultation. Disclaimer: This articles is published to inform generally, not to advise in individual cases. Areas of law are rapidly changing. US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of State regularly amend regulations and alter processing and filing procedures. For legal advice seek the assistance of an IIIC immigration specialist or an immigration lawyer.
Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 This law makes it illegal to discriminate against a qualified person with a disability in the federal government. The law also makes it illegal to retaliate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit. The law also requires that employers reasonably accommodate the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or employee, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer's business. Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
14. Creating Transformation in Practice – The Pillar of Empowerment Creating Transformation in Practice – The Pillar of Empowerment The third pillar of creating transformation in practice is the pillar of Empowerment. This can be a somewhat confusing concept – what does it mean to empower others? Simply put, empowering others means that someone you encounter feels more powerful, more clear, more able, more inspired, more confident, more energized, more optimistic – or just Bigger – than they were before they encountered you. Granted, there is a lot of similarity between caring for others and empowering others. If you’d like two really simple examples, caring for another might include helping them to carry their bags – or giving them a ‘good morning’ or a hug when they need it. Empowering someone might be expressed by saying the right thing at the right time to someone who needs to hear it; or asking the right questions, or helping someone to see something in a different way that really helps their point of view. Obviously these two types of actions (caring and empowering) have a lot of overlap, but I think you get the idea. On a basic level, empowering others can be as easy as telling someone, “gosh you do that well!” Or, “I really admire you because of _________.” However, there are other levels when it’s not that simple. On a more subtle level, empowering others requires a certain sort of vision – a sense of sight – a type of perception. It means seeing past the surface levels to the very deepest parts of a person where their greatness and essence resides. It means reaching and bringing their most powerful, greatest and most essential self to the surface. Needless to say, in order to reach someone on this level, you have to first see them on this level. This ability to see the essence and greatness of a person says much more about the seer than the one who is seen. How do you see people? Do you see them as great beings (albeit sometimes not aware of their own greatness)? Do you see them as an expression of the Divine? Do you see people as spiritual souls trying their very best to express themselves in a challenging physical world? On a more practical level, do you see people as vulnerable and needy, reaching out even in the midst of fear and misunderstanding? Do you see people as being harder on themselves than they are on others? Do you see the unkind stories people tell themselves about their world? Do you see how they punish themselves? Do you see how badly they want love – and how sometimes they don’t know how to get it? In the case of people who are truly dangerous or toxic (and the appellation ‘truly’ belongs only to a very small subset of humanity), do you see how much easier it is to ‘see’ those people than to ‘be’ them? (Remember the old rhyme? – ‘I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one – but I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather ‘see’ than ‘be’ one’.) Do you see how much more preferable it is to be the one who is robbed, rather than the thief? Can you look at even those who are beyond your reach with compassion and caring (at the same time as you take steps to protect or distance yourself as necessary)? Again, the ability to empower is profoundly linked to our ability to see others at their most essential, truest, most divine, most vulnerable, most needy, most great, most powerful, most sublime, most spiritual, most human. How does one cultivate this kind of sight – insight, actually – into one’s fellow human beings? Again, it is mostly a reflection of one’s basic view of one’s fellow human beings. This is also a reflection of one’s view of oneself. Needless to say, one cannot see others’ greatest selves, if one does not see one’s own self that way. Granted, it can be harder to see oneself with love and compassion than it can be to see others that way. Yet, we know we should try and see ourselves that way, even if it is a challenge to do so at times. Many of us judge ourselves much more harshly than we judge others. For this reason, it is of prime importance to have at least one or two people in our lives that can reflect this vision of ourselves back to us when we have lost the ability to see ourselves in that way. When we strive to empower others, we need to keep those who can empower us closest. So, how can we cultivate this kind of vision into the essence of another person? The analogy I’d give is the development of an artist. Anyone who pursues the visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture, photography) learns to sharpen their vision relative to the world. They look carefully; they learn to see with an artist’s eye. They also cultivate what is called ‘eye-hand coordination.’ This is the ability to translate their keen vision into the movements of their hand so that it can be expressed as lines drawn on a page; the movement of a brush on canvas; the handling of a camera to capture what is seen. I’m emphasizing this sharpening of the artist’s eye and the eye-hand coordination that develops along with it for a particular reason: even someone who is born with a measure of artistic talent knows that it reaches its pinnacle with long use and practice. It is not an ability that one either has or does not have. Even those who are blessed with talent must sharpen it. So also, the ability to see the depths of a person, who they really are and what they really need in a given moment, is like the cultivation of an artist’s eye and hand. Some people may be born with more of a natural perceptive ability than others, but everyone can develop this ability through the practice of careful listening and careful seeing. One thing that empowerment requires is an ability to see past one’s own personal biases and points of view. Empowerment definitely does not mean imposing one’s own agenda on another person. The crusading zealot who preaches their rigid view of the world to others and demands that they accept it is not empowering to others. He or she is not bringing out what is most essential about those other people. Instead, they are trying to squeeze people into their own narrow box. This is not something that is done only by religious fundamentalists (the common stereotype). Trying to get someone to accept one’s worldview is something that is done by ideologists of every stripe – the religious, the secular, the political, the therapeutic, the oppressive, the ‘helpful.’ Empowering someone means looking past our own beliefs and dogmas and really seeing the other person for who they are on the deepest level. It means going outside of our own narrow selves, our narrow perspectives. It means really looking, really listening to another person. Lastly, empowering others means being first and foremost, respectful of the personal territory of others. As much as it entails developing an ability to see deeply into the nature of another person, it also means being acutely aware of the boundaries of another person. This is not (at all) about Freudian–style analysis of others. It does not mean pushing people to reveal themselves in ways they don’t want to. It is not about taking people apart. It certainly does not mean thinking that we know more about someone than they know about themselves. As a matter of fact, listening to someone’s words about themselves and their life is the very foundation of understanding another – what someone else says about themselves is much more important than what we see or think we see in them. Respect is the beginning, middle and end of empowerment. Next column: Empowering others from real-life experience
Subscribe To our E-Newsletter New Hechsher to Consider Ethics Associated With the Workplace Except for a few historical cases where rabbinical authorities tried to link the two issues, generally, they've been considered sperate spheres. But a newly formed commission created by the Conservative movement is calling attention to conditions faced by workers at kosher-meat plants. The Commission of Inquiry is weighing whether or not to call for a "Tsedek Hekhsher," combining the Hebrew word for justice with the traditional term for kosher certification. The initiative would create a process to certify that kosher meat and chicken were prepared in an environment where workers are paid fairly and on time, treated with dignity and receive adequate safety training. "I believe that we, as Jews, when it comes to the food we are obligated to eat, should make sure it is produced in a way that meets the necessary standards of Jewish law and Jewish values," stated Morris Allen, a Minnesota rabbi who's chairing the commission established by the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Also sitting on the committee is Avram B. Lyon, a New Jersey resident, who also serves as executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee. He spoke about the commission's work last month at the University of Pennsylvania in a program sponsored by the Philadelphia office of the Jewish Labor Committee and Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue in West Philadelphia. Lyon explained that the idea is that the Tsedek Heksher would serve as a supplement to -- and not a replacement for -- traditional certification of kosher meat, which is virtually always done under Orthodox auspices. "The Talmud is rather explicit about the treatment of workers," he noted in an interview after the program. "When looking into the problems that may or not exist in a plant, there's a whole series of things you want to look at." Lyon stressed that the commission members are still figuring out what criteria will be used, and how deeply certifiers will have to dig to investigate conditions. It's also not clear whether the hechsher will just stick to labor issues, or if it will also take a page from the eco-kosher idea -- developed by leaders of the Jewish Renewal movement, including Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Philadelphia Rabbi Arthur Waskow -- and also examine a slaughterhouse's effect on the environment. Another conundrum is just how deep certifiers would be asked to dig. In an industry where undocumented immigrants make up a large portion of the workforce, it's difficult to obtain information easily, and reliable safety statistics are hard to pin down, explained Lyon. He could not provide a time frame for when the initiative might go into the next phase, nor could he offer specific details about how the process would work. He stressed that the commission is treading carefully, and trying to avoid creating acrimony between Orthodox authorities, particularly those in the business of kosher supervision, and the Conservative movement. This, of course, comes closely on the heels of the movement's decision to allow the ordination of gay rabbis -- a measure that put more distance between Conservative Judaism and its approach to Jewish law, and Orthodoxy. At its upcoming annual convention in Boston, the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly will vote on whether or not to support the efforts of the commission. According to Lyon, the story behind the commission begins in Postville, Iowa, home of Agriprocessors, the largest supplier of kosher meat in the country. That plant has already had its fair share of attention from both a book, Postville, and a 2004 controversy stirred by the release of slaughterhouse footage secretly filmed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a move seen by many in the Orthodox world as an attack on the practice of kosher slaughtering. In May 2006, the Forward published a story about poor working conditions at Agriprocessors; the Conservative movement decided to form a commission to investigate. The commission did specify a number of safety issues and received a response from management that claimed these concerns would be addressed. The same commission also visited the Empire Poultry Plant in Mifflintown, Pa., and found conditions there to be far better. Late last year, the commission decided to expand the mission and explore the possibility of creating the hechsher. "This is an issue on which the Conservative movement has an opportunity to be at the forefront of leadership," declared Allen, the Minnesota rabbi. "Jews who keep kosher want to know that in their observance of kashrut, that they are doing the right thing. Jews want to feel good about their religious acts."
It was the same when he was two and I took him to a music class. While the other children sang and danced and itsy-bitsy-spidered their hands like crazy, my shy little Ben sat in my lap and refused to do anything more than timidly observe. Ben is now eight. And while he’s definitely an introvert—some might still describe him as a little bit shy—he is very comfortable with himself, and even outgoing at times. He looks people in the eye when he talks to them, he raises his hand in class, and he even frequently gets loud and crazy when he’s with his friends—even in public. In fact, last week I noticed him showing off a silly dance in the dugout with his teammates. Researchers who study human personality tell us that shyness is to a large extent genetic. It’s actually a part of a person’s core makeup. However, as my husband and I learned with Ben, that doesn’t mean that shyness isn’t changeable to a significant degree. In fact, the way parents handle their child’s shyness has a big impact on how the child deals with that aspect of his or her personality, as well as how shy the child is later on. Here are a few guidelines to help you know how to best know how to respond to your child’s shyness. Watch your words. Talk about shyness as how your child feels, not who he or she is. For example, if your daughter is hiding behind your leg and refusing to say hello to Grandpa, you might be tempted to say something like, “Sorry, Grandpa. She’s shy.” Instead, tell your daughter, “You feel shy right now. That’s OK—you can say hello when you’re ready.” It’s a subtle difference, but saying “You feel” is much better than saying “You are,” because it names a momentary state, rather than the essence of your child’s being. Also, keep in mind that being shy is a temperament issue. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s just part of who your daughter is, like her height or the color of her hair. So make sure that you’re not sending (verbal or nonverbal) messages that communicate that you don’t like this part of who she is. Don’t push too hard. Research shows that kids whose parents push them too far, too quickly, end up withdrawing even more. Because shy children feel uncertainty and anxiety in certain social situations, when parents force them to participate or to do things they aren’t comfortable doing, it just makes them more anxious, making it less likely they’ll be willing to give it a try the next time. If your son is insisting that he doesn’t want to do something that feels terrifying to him, don’t force him. Make sure that he’s confident that you will help him feel safe. After all, it’s probably not that important that he take his turn at the piñata. On the other hand, it’s important that you give your child opportunities to succeed in new situations. Help your little bashful one take gentle steps in the direction of achievement and accomplishment. Freely use the phrase “I’ll do it with you,” and say things like, “I know it’s hard (or you’re uncomfortable), but I’ll be with you. Let’s just give it a try.” A gentle nudge might include saying “Let’s just go take a look.” There may be times when you need to pull back when you can sense that your child simply isn’t ready to do something. Then you can respond with lots of empathy and comfort: “Maybe next time, when you’re ready, we’ll try again.” But keep in mind that mastery of new experiences builds confidence, so be careful not to deprive your child of these opportunities by rescuing them too quickly. Notice and comment on even small triumphs. “Way to go! You got closer to watch the kids hit the piñata! Maybe next time you’ll want to take a swing.” Or, “I know you weren’t sure about it, but you tried it anyway! I’m proud of you.” Focus on your child’s effort, and the fact that he’s trying, not on whether or not he actually goes through with whatever you wanted him to do. The more you can encourage and support him, embracing him for who he is, the more he will believe in himself and take on challenges as he grows into who he’s supposed to be.
Darth Vader's Technical Difficulties Palm Desert Charter Middle School STEM Promotional Videos Entry Age Group: 8th grade and below Our video is about Darth Vader’s technical situation and injuries, and how STEM helps him recover from his fall in a pit of lava after his battle with Obi Guacamole. Our first scene is about Darth Vader’s suit breaking down. We solved this situation by hiring an engineer who helps us fix Darth Vader’s suit. The second scene is about Darth Vader falling into a pit of lava, and because of this major event, he got a terrible burn that will affect the rest of his life. We solved this situation by hiring both a technician and a surgeon (doctor) to help make his suit more efficient to prevent these types of incidents, and to perform surgery on his flesh that got burned because of the lava.
The number of Americans suffering from contaminated food illness is increasing. According to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, tainted food outbreaks sicken approximately 48 million people every year. As CNN reported, the group's report highlights a growing concern among food safety advocates. Despite the signing of the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act, which aimed to hold food suppliers responsible for foodborne illness, outbreaks are getting worse. According to the report, the FDA has not been able to keep up with the increased demands for food inspections because of budget cuts for the Food and Drug Administration. Recent food recalls include moon pies, peanut butter, cookies and other foods linked to potential Salmonella contamination. Popcorn and some cheese products have been recalled due to possible contamination by Listeria. And in early October, a beef recall tied to potential E. coli contamination affected 30 states and Canada. To avoid getting sick from foodborne illness outbreaks, be sure to check out our guide to keeping leftovers and view the essential tips for keeping food fresh in the slideshow above.
Southern Colorado will soon be home to 150 new wind turbines, but not everyone is happy about the proposal. Residents from Calhan showed up Thursday at the El Paso County commissioners meeting to express concerns about details of the plan. Some said the wind farm will be too close to their homes. Others said they are concerned about how large the turbines will be and how it may affect birds such as eagles and geese that fly through the area. Supporters of the project said it will create hundreds of jobs and pump millions of dollars into the local economy. County commissioners gave the controversial proposal the OK late Thursday night, after a 10-hour public meeting. They'll break ground in March, and the turbines will be up and running by summer 2015. None of the turbines can be built any closer than a quarter-mile from homes that haven't signed agreements. KKTV firmly believes in freedom of speech for all and we are happy to provide this forum for the community to share opinions and facts. We ask that commenters keep it clean, keep it truthful, stay on topic and be responsible. Comments left here do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of KKTV 11 News. If you believe that any of the comments on our site are inappropriate or offensive, please tell us by clicking “Report Abuse” and answering the questions that follow. We will review any reported comments promptly.powered by Disqus
Posted 3:32 PM 6/6/2011 by Bonnie Markoff, DVM, ABVP Animal Care Clinic, San Luis Obispo The first heat cycle in a dog is usually at 5-8 months of age, but can be as early as 4 months in some cases. Dogs then cycle about 1-2 times a year. They have a very different cycle than people do. The vast majority of veterinarians recommend spaying dogs and cats before they ever (More) ANIMAL CARE CLINIC 162 Cross Street San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 Phone: (805) 545-8212 \|Monday\|\|7:30 am to 8:00 pm\| \|Tuesday\|\|7:30 am to 6:00 pm\| \|Wednesday\|\|7:30 am to 6:00 pm\| \|Thursday\|\|7:30 am to 6:00 pm\| \|Friday\|\|7:30 am to 6:00 pm\| \|Saturday\|\|9:00 am to 3:00 pm\| \|Sunday\|\|5:00 pm to 7:00 pm\|
Tucson-area snail same as other snail species TUCSON, Ariz. -- A terrestrial snail found in Arizona no longer is a candidate for federal endangered species protection. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that's because the Rosemont talussnail is the same species as the Santa Rita talussnail. The Center for Biological Diversity had filed a petition in 2010 seeking protection for the Rosemont talussnail that it said lives only in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Jeff Humphrey said Wednesday that identifying the snails requires an examination of soft body parts. Scientists found no difference in the shapes or sizes of the male or female reproductive organs between the Santa Rita and the Rosemont talussnail. Humphrey says the Santa Rita snail is widespread and commonly found in southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.
Should Chlamydia be included in a feline vaccination program.... Jul 24 2014 ... and what does this disease do in cats? When Chlamydia infects a cat, the owner first notices their pet is sniffling and has a red, slightly swollen eye. In a few days both eyes are red and swollen. If allowed to continue, the infection can cause eyeball scarring and even pneumonia. Check with your vet about including Chlamydia in a feline vaccination program because this disease is somewhat common, is harmful to cats, is zoonotic, and the vaccine significantly reduces infection. Nutritionals that have spirulina or Norweigian Kelp also help reduce Chlamydial and viral infections. 100% Made in the USA following strict FGSI food quality standards, Pet Factory's 100% American Beefhide chews provide unsurpassed quality combined with full flavor. Our 100% American Beefhide chews contain more and thicker fibers than any other rawhide dog chew. The result is a longer lasting chew with great American bred taste that will not only satisfy your pets, but also helps promote great oral hygiene by removing tartar and plaque. Available in Natural or a variety of flavors, 100% American Beefhide chews give dogs what they want and let you know you're providing the best possible chew for your pet. Caution: Not for human consumption. Select a chew large enough for your dog and supervise consumption. Discard any small pieces. Coatings are water soluble, but may stain indoor material.
By a unanimous vote in Church Council, a Golden Calf will be placed below the pulpit in the Main Sanctuary on June 1st, 1999. The calf will remain there until July 7th, marking the closing ceremony of Landover Baptist's 52nd Annual Levitical Law Week Celebration. Freehold Iowa Farmer, and council member, brother John Wilkins, was glad to offer recently born calf, Clara Bell. Her corpse will serve as the framework that will be dipped into a vat of molten gold. There is still some debate as to how the early Jews went about this practice. We are uncertain at this point as to whether or not Clara Bell will be placed into the scalding hot liquid metal while she is still breathing. "We are giving everyone a taste of idolatry, before they actually have to pay for it," Rev. Deacon Fred stated at all 14 Wednesday evening services. He was speaking of Landover's upcoming 'Levitical Law Week' where church members are placed back under the complex system of laws enforced upon the early Jews, for a period of 7 days.. "Members will be subject to all of the laws written in the book of Leviticus by God." Rev. Deacon Fred continued, "You can look at the idol, you can touch the idol, you can even bow your head before the idol, but on July 1-7, anyone caught doing so will be placed under Dr. Jonathan Edwards' care. Under his care, you can expect to be subjected to chemically induced wasting diseases that will destroy your sight, and drain away your life.(Lev 26:18) If you return to the sanctuary and look at the idol again, you will have your home burned down, and be forced to eat the flesh of your sons and daughters (Lev 26:23-29). Folks, let's try to keep the casualty list down this year, and make it a wonderful celebration." The golden calf is placed in the Sanctuary to provide Church members with a 'virtual' experience. "They will feel like they are going through the same temptations that the early Jews went through," Pastor Smith remarked, "When the 7th day of July is upon us, we expect to melt the gold from the idol, and dispose of the rotted carcass of Clara Bell. The gold will then be cast into a 27 foot cross, that will be erected above the pulpit in the east wing of Sanctuary 11A."
(a) This section covers the requirements for aerial service wires intended for aerial subscriber drops. (b) The aerial service wires can be either copper coated steel reinforced or nonmetallic reinforced designs. (c) For the copper coated steel reinforced design, the reinforcing members are the conductors. (1) The conductors are solid copper-covered steel wires. (2) The wire structure is completed by insulating the conductors with an overall extruded plastic insulating compound. (d) For the nonmetallic reinforced design, the conductors are solid copper individually insulated with an extruded solid insulating compound. (1) The insulated conductors are either laid parallel (two conductor design only) or twisted into pairs (a star-quad configuration is permitted for two pair wires). (2) The wire structure is completed by the application of nonmetallic reinforcing members and an overall plastic jacket. (e) All wires sold to RUS borrowers for projects involving RUS loan funds under §§ 1755.700 through 1755.704 must be accepted by RUS Technical Standards Committee “A” (Telecommunications). For wires manufactured to the specification of §§ 1755.700 through 1755.704, all design changes to an accepted design must be submitted for acceptance. RUS will be the sole authority on what constitutes a design change. (f) Materials, manufacturing techniques, or wire designs not specifically addressed by §§ 1755.700 through 1755.704 may be allowed if accepted by RUS. Justification for acceptance of modified materials, manufacturing techniques, or wire designs must be provided to substantiate product utility and long term stability and endurance.
Oak Park Journal Profiles Young Center's Maria Woltjen In the trenches of the fight for U.S. immigration reform is Oak Parker Maria Woltjen. With a dedicated staff of about 80 volunteer bi-lingual guardians ad litem (Child Advocates), she is fervently standing up as the federal immigration system for the best interests of a rapidly growing group of unaccompanied immigrant children. These kids count on The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights at the University of Chicago for support as they face the possibility of deportation alone, without their parents. As its founder, Woltjen says the tens of thousands of these unaccompanied children have made incredible journeys from places like Bosnia, Romania, India, China, Central America, and other noncontiguous countries, hoping to find relief and protection from a homeland that is no longer safe.
David Boaz of the Cato Institute has come out in opposition to the Mississippi state flag. The Mississippi flag, you see, includes in one corner the St. Andrew’s cross, in particular, the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. (For more details on the dispute, from the side which Boaz opposes, visit FreeMississippi.org. How enlightened and progressive of Boaz. Perhaps the United States can emulate the United Kingdom, which, in 1954, banned display of the Irish tricolor (the green, white, and orange flag of the Republic of Ireland so familiar around St. Patrick’s Day) in the English-occupied territory of Northern Ireland. In his article, Boaz opines that As long as the violence and cruelty of slavery remain a living memory to millions of Americans, symbols of slavery should not be displayed by American governments. Those who want to honor their brave ancestors who fought for Southern independence should fly the Confederate flag themselves, tend to Confederate graves and hold Southern Heritage picnics. They should not ask their fellow citizens to walk into a state capitol under a banner that proclaims the superiority of some citizens to others. Ironically, I received a request for funding from the Cato Institute last night at home. It was slick, printed on glossy paper, and asked me if I wanted "to work to restore freedom in America." Inside of the brochure was a photo of reporters thronging Christine Todd Whitman, head of Bush II’s EPA and former governor of New Jersey, in the Hayek Auditorium at the Cato headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC. I’m writing a PhD on Hayek. Christie Whitman is no Hayek. In short, I ripped the brochure up neatly and threw it out. And reading David Boaz’s piece on the Mississippi flag makes me glad — so very glad — that I did so. A question for Mr. Boaz: what flags flew while slaves were imported to the United States from the time the first slaves were brought to the American colonies until the South became a separate nation, say from the arrival of Africans at Jamestown, via Dutch traders, in 1619, until 1861? Answer: the Union Jack (the British flag, or the St. George’s Cross — the English flag) and the Stars and Stripes. Another question for Mr. Boaz: what ports did American slave ships call home? Answer: Boston and other New England ports. Boston had an open-air slave market, where slaves were auctioned. The flag which flew over Boston, and has flown over Boston uninterrupted since roughly 1789, is the Stars and Stripes. The fact of Yankee slave trading, by the way, is not exactly "revisionist," although it is largely hidden due to its embarrassment. About a year ago, Yankee Magazine ran a feature by a man descended from a Boston slave auctioneer, describing the man’s quest to find out where in the city the slave market had been. The reason that Yankees shipped slaves to America, but didn’t use slave labor, is economics: southern plantation agriculture required large numbers of laborers, while the rocky soil of New England did not. Additionally, recall that the "three-fifths compromise" was a part of the US Constitution of 1789, and the US Supreme Court — under that Stars and Stripes, mind you — upheld the legality of the Fugitive Slave laws in the famous case of Dred Scott. Because of the federal government’s protection of slavery, Northern abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Lysander Spooner argued that the federal constitution was a deal with the Devil. Garrison, for example, urged the North to secede so as not to be associated with slavery. If Boaz is consistent, the Stars and Stripes, Union Jack, and St. George’s Cross must be regarded as symbols of slavery. As late as 1964, the Stars and Stripes also "proclaimed the superiority of some citizens to others," especially those who lived under Jim Crow. The doctrine was known as "separate but equal." Apparently unlike David Boaz, some Americans do not pledge allegiance to the Stars and Stripes because of the perceived racism of American society (the pledge, by the way, was written by a socialist). Forgetting slavery for a moment, since the US Civil Rights Commission recently urged schools to drop American Indian mascots, perhaps the Commission should also call for a redesign of the Stars and Stripes, given the horrible way the federal government has treated the American Indians over the years. Perhaps Boaz would contend that the United States has stopped "proclaiming the superiority of some citizens to others," and that to redesign or abolish the Stars and Stripes is therefore a mistake. This argument, however, would undercut Boaz’s opposition to Confederate history. Given that the CSA ceased to exist after its military occupation by the USA, the CSA certainly has stopped committing whatever alleged evils it committed in the past. Slavery was legal in the USA, and it was legal in the CSA. Slavery, then, cannot mandate the obliteration of Confederate symbols while not at the same time mandating the obliteration of the symbols of the USA as well. Will Boaz now call for the elimination of Old Glory? To do so would be just as foolish as what Boaz is now urging in Mississippi. Boaz and the flag-banning crowd whose bandwagon he has joined distort history and perform a civic disservice by following the path of tyrants who outlaw unapproved symbols. To be precise, the error in outlawing the display of Confederate, Irish, or American flags is that such an action serves only to give credibility to the notion that the past is a simple matter of good and evil. An examination of history, however, should dispel such a childish notion. Human history is populated by human beings. Human beings being human, they are sinful, fallible, and sometimes evil. The notion that every aspect of the Confederacy was evil — that every man, woman and child living below the Mason-Dixon line was evil — is patently stupid. Even if such a notion were not patently stupid, in other words, even if it were true that every Southern man, woman and child was a demon incarnate, occupied every waking hour with the torture and degradation of black slaves, the obliteration of Confederate symbols accomplishes nothing. To abolish all things Confederate cannot change the past, and it cannot in any way aid a reasoned debate over the nature and history of slavery whether in the Arab world or South America — which were the destinations for the vast majority of Africans who were sold into slavery — or in America (the destination for a comparatively small percentage of Africans sold into slavery). Americans have a skewed view of slavery because of the accidental fact of the racial element. As noted on Africana.com, The distinction between slave and master in Africa was not, as in the Americas, typically based on a distinction in race. But indicators such as name, language, scarification, dress, and manners all distinguished the identity and social status of slaves from those of their masters. Africans could not base their ownership of other Africans on the distinction of race. Despite this fact, Africans enslaved other Africans. Race, then, is an accidental, as opposed to an inherent or necessary element of slavery; slavery can exist even when the master and the slave are of the same race. The American fixation on the racial element of slavery, apparently shared by Boaz, cannot aid in understanding the nature of slavery, as opposed to the small portion of "the history of human slavery" which is "the history of slavery in America." (Perhaps the American view of slavery is simply a part of the general American fixation on all things American, as if Americans are the only people ever to have walked the earth). Sadly, it must be noted that the end of slavery in Europe and America did not bring an end to slavery in Africa: the world markets for slave labor and for the goods produced by slaves remained strong in the middle and late nineteenth century, and these markets supported slavery and slave trading in Africa. The European powers poised to invade the continent pointed to the persistence of African slavery to justify colonization. Thus the Berlin Conference of 1885, convened as an anti-slavery meeting, in fact set the rules for the European conquest of Africa. Between 1890 and 1940 the European colonial powers strengthened their grip on African lands and African societies and preached a doctrine of anti-slavery. The result was not, however, immediate emancipation. Large-scale slave raiding came to an end because the European powers had monopolized the use of armed force. But slavery itself continued for millions of Africans until the eve of World War II. The notion that slavery ended with the Abe Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation is utterly mistaken. Instead, Africa spent the next 100 years under the boot of European imperialism. Additionally, regarding the slave trade in the Arab world and India, Africana.com notes that Slave exports across the Indian Ocean, the Sahara, and the Red Sea reached their peak in about 1850, then declined at varying rates until the end of the century. During this time, some enslaved Africans were carried across the Red Sea to build an expanded pilgrimage site at Mecca, in Saudi Arabia; others were carried on steamers through the Suez Canal, bound for Istanbul and Izmir. Will David Boaz seek to redesign or abolish the flags and symbols of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and most of the European nations as well, due to their historic connections to the slave trade and the colonization of Africa? Don’t hold your breath. Mr. Dieteman is an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America. © 2001 David Dieteman
In cooperation with The Churchill Centre, Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress presented two symposia.: - February 19, 2004 - Churchill and the Three Presidents (Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower) - view program for full-day symposium - June 1, 2004 - a half-day symposium explored new scholarship on Sir Winston Churchill. Please call 202-707-9203 for further information. Thursday, February 19, 2004 The Mumford Room, James Madison Building Symposiarch: James W. Muller James Muller is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he has taught since 1983, and Academic Chairman of The Churchill Centre. Educated at Harvard University, he served as a White House Fellow in 1983-84. 9:00–9:15 a.m. - Welcome Prosser Gifford, Director of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress William C. Ives, President, The Churchill Centre 9:15–10:45 a.m. - Churchill and Roosevelt Piers Brendon: "Churchill, Roosevelt, and Empire" Piers Brendon served for six years as the Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, U.K., which holds the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, and other eminent figures. Brendon is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is currently writing a history of the British Empire. Warren Kimball: "Churchill and Roosevelt: Joined at the Hip, by History, or Historians?" Warren F. Kimball is the Robert Treat Professor of History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey and, for 2002-2004, is the Mark Clark Visiting Distinguished Professor History at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. 10:45–11:15 a.m. - Morning coffee 11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m. - Churchill and Truman Arnold A. Offner: "Churchill Without Tears: President Truman and the Ambivalence of Anglo-American Relations" Arnold A. Offner is the Cornelia F. Hugel Professor of History at Lafayette College and past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. David Reynolds: "Churchill and Truman: The Struggle for History" David Reynolds is a Professor of International History at Cambridge University. He is completing a study of Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War, to be published in 2005. 1:00–2:30 p.m. - Luncheon break 2:30–4:15 p.m. - Churchill and Eisenhower Klaus W. Larres: "Unequal Relations: Churchill and Eisenhower during the Cold War" Klaus W. Larres holds the Royal Holloway Chair in International Relations and Foreign Policy at the University of London. In 2002-03 he was the Henry A. Kissinger Professor in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress. John Ramsden: "Old and Dear Friends, Old and New Worlds" John Ramsden is Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, where he has taught since 1972, and Director of the Graduate School in Humanities and Social Sciences. Ramsden is a member of The Churchill Centre Board of Academic Advisers, serving as vice chairman since 2003.
Here are my unscientific observations based on the repointing project... Opinions only Plastic tips seem to have been developed to prevent point deformation of cartridges in the magazine after the first shot. This then caught on as they are pretty sexy looking and caught on with shooters Plastic tips are simple to form and incorporate into bullet forming. They are very light and my opinion is that they contribute very little to bullet weight or stability considerations. Plastic tips are very uniform thus bullet to bullet bc should be very consistent. Plastic tips are relatively blunt thus bc will be lower than if the same weight hollow point bullet had a meplat diameter of 0.025" The the repointing project trims the jacket back a specific amount, removes the plastic stub and inserts a brass tip with a meplate less than 0.030" and a weight of around 11 grains with a significant increase in overall length length. The final bullet weight is increased a few tenths under 10 grains. BC is increased by a published and real world tested just under 0.500 to a calculated estimate 0.660. Field testing is sporadically underway with definite indications of significant bc increase. Out of my 8 twist barrel @ 3500 MV stability doesn't appear to be an issue. However, process tolerances definitely make a difference. Here's a pic to feed your mind processing a bit. The 159.8 grain repointed bullet compared to the 150 Ballistic Tip and a 195 grain Wildcat.
Pros: Beautiful art, sophisticated presentation of oft-derided medium/pass-time Cons: Not for beginners, author problems, said 'beautiful art' needs larger photography The Bottom Line: Overly ambitious book manages to succeed in introducing the reader to a more sophisticated level of 'dollhouses,' presented in a jumbled yet inspiring fashion. The Van-Gogh-inspired cozy bedroom on the cover of 'The Art of the Miniature: Small Worlds and How to Make Them' makes for an inviting book, and further browsing reveals 128 glossy pages, almost all with fascinating photographs. An alluring buy. For reasons I initially couldn't quite put my finger on, I found myself flipping through this half-text half-photograph volume repeatedly. Part of this was because the 'small worlds' -- truly elaborate miniature scenes from galleries rather than toystores -- demanded and deserved close scrutiny. Literally. This would be a fabulously successful art book if the photographs of the dioramas were full-page with minimal, technical commentary. The other need to re-read was thanks to Jane Freeman, author of 'The Art of the Miniature,' acclaimed miniaturist, very mediocre and self-involved author. Aiming for instruction and display of a serious undertaking is simply too ambitious a project for a 128-page book; the beginner will glean very little thanks to a paucity of instruction crossed with a very distracting mish-mash of examples. A frequent distraction is Freeman's references to parts of the works that can't be seen in the actual photographs. A frequent irritation is Freeman's beliefs being paramount: do not use figurines because she and artists W, I, Y, X and Z do not, because it is Better. There are some mild jolts in the photographs, along with a plethora of good ideas. The good ideas are often hidden; which see the urge to re-read/look closely at the photographs. The 'jolts' are amusements: things you would not have imagined on your own for a dollhouse that are suddenly obvious materials, and the odd flaws in the representative 'small worlds.' Freeman draws a lot of conclusions, but it may be safer to draw your own. A heaping of grosgrain ribbon in a scene would look quite different if I did not have grosgrain ribbon periodically tying down my hair or stitched into my sweater -- lesson -- if an object is going to be overly familiar to anybody, disguise it. Large plastic objects stick out in miniature, just as they would in real life. Further fussing: Freeman is limited in trades, so to speak. She often mentions sending things to be made by a carpenter, she can't do metalwork, and so on, and her work would be greatly enhanced by expanding -- well, anyway, it looks as though a MFA does not guarantee wide skill. I found myself wishing my shop teacher had not been a raging paedophiliac pervert (hello, Barry Waller of Nepean, Ontario) so I might have learned something in the plastics section of the course. Almost any trade or craft will greatly enhance the ability to create 'miniature worlds,' expanding as it will your choice of materials. Despite all the fussing, I can't fault 'The Art of the Miniature' too much. Nice as larger pictures with multiple angles would be, I am grateful it is not a wildly overpriced coffee table book. It's remarkably inspirational; after paging through, all manner of household miscellany seems to offer itself up for adaptation. If you buy the book, buy shampoo with a plain but attractive cap: you will want to glue in some fake foliage and turn it into a plant pot... What did you think of this review? Fun to Read What's your opinion on The Art of the Miniature: Small Worlds a...?
Start learning with our library of video tutorials taught by experts. Get started Viewers: in countries Watching now: In this course, author Ian Robinson introduces Adobe After Effects CS6 and the world of animation, effects, and compositing. Chapter 1 introduces the six foundations of After Effects, which include concepts like layers, keyframes, rendering, and moving in 3D space. The rest of the course expands on these ideas, and shows how to build compositions with layers, perform rotoscoping, animate your composition with keyframes, add effects and transitions, and render and export the finished piece. Two real-world example projects demonstrate keying green screen footage and creating an advanced 3D composition with the expanded 3D toolset, an important addition to CS6. It is keyframe animation that's really at the core of about 90% of the After Effects projects I've ever worked on. And in case you need the definition again, keyframes are just recordings of the settings of one specific parameter at a specific point in time, and there are actually several ways to create keyframes inside of After Effects. So let's look at our project here. You notice, if you double-click the Keyframes comps just to make sure everything is open, we have the kinetEco logo and all the layers are set up in our comp already. We have pre-comps for each one of the words and we also have individual layers for each one of the objects. Now these happen to be Illustrator files and everything is pretty much already set up for animation, so all we're going to do is animate how these little circles appear into the screen and then we'll fade the words on one after the other. So this is going to be the final resting place of everything in this animation. Now to get started, let's select Layer 4, the Yellow circle layer, and we'll adjust the position keyframes to begin the animation process. So press P on your keyboard. This just optimizes our timeline so we're only looking at the Position parameter. Now with Position open, we'll animate backwards. I can go to 1 second here on the timeline and record my first keyframe. To record the keyframe, go to the Position parameter and click on the Stopwatch. See, I'm saying backwards because we're starting at the end. Notice I'm at 1 second, that's going to be where our animation ends for this one specific object. If we move our current-time indicator back to the beginning, 0 frames, now we can go ahead and move this off the screen. So to see things better, let's go ahead and expand our canvas here just a little bit so I can move this all the way off the screen. And just so I can see Layer 4, I'll hover my mouse over the timeline and scroll up until I see Layer 4. Now since Layer 4 is already selected, I can click and drag it up. After I start dragging, I'm going to hold down Shift, and that will snap the movement along the Y axis. Drag it up until it goes all the way off the edge of the canvas. Now you'll notice we have two keyframes and we have an animation. Let's go ahead and press 0 on our keypad, and as you can see, the first circle is animated. Now I'm going to stop playback just by pressing the Spacebar. And instead of having to recreate all of the keyframe animations for each one of these circles, what I want to do is Copy and Paste these keyframes onto the other objects. Let's see what happens if I select the position keyframes for this first yellow circle. To select all the keyframes quickly, just click on the word Position in the timeline and now you'll notice both of these keyframes are highlighted bright yellow. If we scroll down to our blue circle here, press Command+V, or just go up and say Edit > Paste, notice nothing's happening. So let's select our Position keyframe and press Command+C to Copy, or Edit > Copy. If we go down to the Blue layer, we can go to Edit > Paste, now when we press P on the Blue layer, look, our keyframes are pasted all the way down here on the timeline. Well that's a problem. And also, notice, now the circle is gone. Well that's a problem too. So let's start with the obvious, the first one; this down the timeline, not so much. We don't want to do that. And basically what you need to do is not have your current-time indicator down the timeline when you paste. See, whenever you paste keyframes they'll paste exactly where the current-time indicator is. So let's just Command+Z, undo that last command. Now the other problem, see, this Position keyframe, it's actually not only recording the position of this object on the Y axis, but it also recorded it on the X axis. So what we need to do is just copy the Y axis of these position keyframes. I'm going to expand this view up here a little bit. And to do this, select the Position parameter and right-click. Now if you go to Separate Dimensions, you'll notice I have keyframes for X position and Y position. Now since the Y position already matches for all these other layers, all we have to do is select the Y position keyframes just by clicking on it, and say Command+C or Ctrl+C on Windows, and I'm going to press Home to make sure that I've moved back to the beginning of the timeline. And now, if we press Command+V, you notice it automatically split the position keyframes and applied that set of keyframes to that new parameter. So we can do the exact same thing for Green here. So let's press Home and I'm going to say Command+V, and now that's going to move down. Now if I want to move these so they kind of fall one after the other, all we have to do is just slide the keyframes in the timeline. So I'll just expand my timeline view here just a little bit and select the Y position keyframes for Layer 2. Instead of just selecting the Y position keyframes, go ahead and select Layer 5 and just click and drag that layer to start further down the timeline. See, since the object is starting off the canvas already, I'm just scrolling out with my mouse, nobody is going to know whether it existed before this point in time or not. So let's do the same thing with the Green layer. I'm going to press U to open up its animated parameters, and that shows me just the Y position keyframes, which I pasted, and I'll just drag down the timeline here. If we press 0, you can see 1, 2, 3. Now we're going to start speeding things up. You already know how to break out keyframes and copy them and paste them, let me show you how to actually animate multiple objects at once. It's pretty straightforward. Let's select Layer 7 through 9. Click on the first layer, Layer 7, and hold down Shift and click on 9. Now we can go ahead and press P to open up the Position parameter. There's a pretty neat shortcut you can use to automatically create keyframes for specific parameters at any time, and basically the way that works, instead of just pressing P to open up the Position, what you want to do is position your current-time indicator where you want to set your first keyframe. I want the motion of these objects to end at 1 second. So I'm going to move my current time indicator to 1 second, and now I'm going to press Option+P. And what that does, holding down Option or Alt on Windows, it sets the keyframe for whatever parameter you hit the shortcut for next. So P is the shortcut for Position. If you press Home, in order to move all these down, all you have to do is click and drag on the Y parameter. And I'm going to click and drag to the right until they go all the way off screen. Notice, since I had all three layers selected, when I clicked and dragged on one Y parameter, it moved all of them. So to ripple this down, all we have to do is just click and drag on the layer, click and drag on the layer. So now if we press 0, you see they all pop down and now all we need to do is add the Fade for each of the words. So to do that, we can just select our first word, which is Connect, and move our playhead to where we want our first keyframe. Here, let's go ahead and set it right at the end of this animation, so right about 2 second 5 frames. And we can press Option+T, that will set the keyframe. Now I want to change this parameter because I don't want it to start at 100%. So I'll change it down to 0. Now we have our keyframe set and let's have this fade up over 1 second. So to move down 1 second in the timeline, I'm just going to click on the number here in the timeline and press +100. That's going to move down 1 second. And now to have this fade up to set the second keyframe, just click and drag on the value for Opacity. So I'm going to click and drag it to the right and set it to 100. Now to apply these keyframes to the subsequent layers, all we have to do is select both Opacity keyframes. I'm going to do that in the timeline just by clicking and drawing with a Lasso here, and since I want to stagger how these fade in, I'm going to move my current-time indicator to about halfway in between and select Eco and press-- actually I need to copy those. So with our current-time indicator moved, that's fine, just go ahead and draw a Lasso over both the keyframes and press Command+C or Ctrl+C to Copy. Now we can select Layer 1 and Command+V or Ctrl+V to Paste. And again, if I press U, that will open up the Animated parameter for that layer, and let's do the same thing for ink here. Let's move down the timeline with our current-time indicator and press Command+V or Ctrl+V, and again with U, you can see how that's set up. So let's preview our entire animation. Press Home on your keyboard. I'm going to deselect all the layers here, and change my Magnification to fit up to 100 and just kind of give a little bit more room here, and press 0 on my keyboard. So as you can see, we've now created our first keyframe animation of the entire logo animation. There are currently no FAQs about After Effects CS6 Essential Training. Access exercise files from a button right under the course name. Search within course videos and transcripts, and jump right to the results. Remove icons showing you already watched videos if you want to start over. Make the video wide, narrow, full-screen, or pop the player out of the page into its own window. Click on text in the transcript to jump to that spot in the video. As the video plays, the relevant spot in the transcript will be highlighted.
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Click any word in a definition or example to find the entry for that word What's the difference between these two computers? There's a big difference in the attitudes of town and country people. There are subtle differences in their arrangement of the music. the significant difference in sound quality between CDs and records The fundamental difference between John and Jake is their attitudes to money. The same car costs £500 less here, which is quite a difference! The winner received 2365 votes, and the runner-up 2348 – a difference of only 17 votes. Despite this age difference, they fell in love. There's a world of difference between liking someone and wanting to marry them. trying to smooth out differences between them Joe and I have had our differences, but we work well together. The two parties agreed to settle their differences. Journalists were told the talks had broken down because of irreconcilable differences. The fact that I can now organize my own time makes a big difference. Having someone to talk to made all the difference to my mother. This is the British English definition of difference. View American English definition of difference. old and in bad condition, or no longer effective
An Online Azores Map Are you looking for an Azores map? I have put a map of Azores below for your convenience. And scroll past the maps for links to a map of each island. As you can see by the map below, there are nine islands that make up the Azores Archipelago. The Islands to the west are Flores and Corvo. The most eastern (and southern) Islands are Sao Miguel and Santa Maria. And the central group includes Sao Jorge, Pico, Faial, Graciosa, and Terceira. Image from Wikipedia Commons These nine Azores Islands span quite a distance from each other. So if you go to the Azores for a week plan on visiting just one, or maybe two, of the islands. Each island is worth at least a few days on its own. I have been content with two weeks at a time on San Miguel. I have never run out of sights to see and places to explore. This next map allows you to zoom in and scroll around using the tools on the upper left side of the map. And you can zoom out to see the Azores location. These tools allow you to see the map of any part of the islands that you wish to focus on. Maps of the Azores Islands To see a map of any of the islands, click the appropriate link: In the future I will add a link so that you can obtain a map of the Azores to take with you to the islands. If you would like to know about this, or any other updates on the site, please sign up for Azores newsletter. You will also be able to obtain other maps of each island. Leave the Azores Map and visit the Magical Azores Islands home page.
By Jeanne LeFlore Members of the Local Emergency Planning Committee talked about staging a large-scale wildfire training exercise during their meeting on Wednesday. The Pittsburg County committee met for a regular monthly meeting at the Southeast Expo Center. During the meeting, McAlester and county Emergency Management Director Kevin Enloe announced that planning will begin in the next few weeks for the largest-ever disaster training event in Pittsburg County. He said the event will simulate a large-scale wildfire in the Kincaid Hills area. “There is a real likelihood of something like this coming into fruition, and we need to be ready,” Enloe said. During the exercise, local emergency personnel such as firefighters, ambulance drivers and paramedics, and police are encouraged to take part as if a disaster is taking place, according to Enloe. As part of the exercise, staged structure fires, and simulated injuries to and deaths of residents and firefighters are planned. The local hospital and other agencies are expected to take part, he said. Although the events are carefully planned out, details are not revealed until they take place, Enloe said, to better test emergency responses. “It will give everyone a real eye-opening experience,” he said. After the training exercise, participants will gather for a “Hot Wash” to go over what they learned and what could be done differently, according to Enloe. The LEPC meets at 2 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month at the Southeast Expo Center. The meetings are open to the public. Contact Jeanne LeFlore at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Public Health & Policy The FDA has approved a new silicone breast implant for augmentation in women ages 22 and up, and for reconstruction in women of all ages, the agency said. It's the third silicone implant approved in the U.S., and Santa Barbara, Calif.-based manufacturer Sientra will have to conduct postmarketing studies to assess long-term safety and risk of rare diseases. The caution spurs from an FDA review released last year that found a possible link between breast implants and a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It uncovered about three dozen cases of anaplastic large-cell lymphoma in women with breast implants; most of the cases involved silicone-filled devices. The agency followed up with a report six months later showing silicone implants didn't increase the risk of breast cancer, reproductive abnormalities, or other problems, but the lymphoma link was still under investigation and implants were tied to local complications and often needed to be replaced within 10 years. Silicone implants in Europe and Latin America made headlines earlier this year when those from French manufacturer Poly Implant Prostheses were found to have been made of industrial grade silicone, rather than medical grade. Those implants also had an unusually high rupture rate. They were never sold in the U.S. After its review last year, the FDA said women with implants should have regular checkups and pay attention to any changes in their breasts. In a statement announcing the new approval, William Maisel, MD, MPH, deputy director for science in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, echoed that earlier warning. "It's important to remember that breast implants are not lifetime devices," Maisel said in the statement. "Women should fully understand risks associated with breast implants before considering augmentation or reconstruction surgery, and recognize that long-term monitoring is essential." He noted, however, that data on silicone implants "continue to demonstrate a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness." Still, Sientra will have to follow an original cohort of 1,788 patients -- the data on which final approval was based -- for an additional seven years, and will also have to conduct a 10-year study of 4,782 women receiving the implants to assess long-term local complications and other disease outcomes including rheumatoid arthritis and breast and lung cancer. The agency is also requiring an additional five case-control studies looking at associations with rare diseases, including rare connective tissue disease, neurological disease, brain cancer, cervical/vulvar cancer, and lymphoma. The FDA said the initial 1,788-patient trial had an expected number of complications and outcomes similar to those seen with other implants, including a tightening of the area around the implant, reoperation, implant removal, uneven appearance, and infection.
Caribou Mountain prospect, Mount Pisgah District, Bonneville Co., Idaho, USA Porphyry copper deposit. References- Hunstman, J.R. (1984): Caribou Mountain: a porphyry copper deposit in southeastern Idaho. Economic Geology 79, 748-754. - Singer, D.A., Berger, V.I., and Moring, B.C. (2008): Porphyry copper deposits of the world: Database and grade and tonnage models, 2008. US Geological Survey Open-File Report 2008-1155. 18 entries listed. 13 valid minerals. The above list contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary. This page is currently not sponsored. To sponsor this page click here. \|Fade toolbar when not in focus\|\|Fix toolbar to bottom of page\| \|Hide Social Media Links\| \|Slideshow frame delay\|\|seconds\| Locality Updated: Hangha, Kenema District, Eastern Province, Sierra LeoneFrom Dana Slaughter, 24th Jul 2014 03:40:45
spellbinds is a valid word in this word list. For a definition, see the external dictionary links below. The word "spellbinds" uses 10 letters: B D E I L L N P S S. No direct anagrams for spellbinds found in this word list. Adding one letter to spellbinds does not form any other word in this word list.Words within spellbinds not shown as it has more than seven letters. Try a search for spellbinds in these online resources (some words may not be found): Wiktionary - OneLook Dictionaries - Merriam-Webster - Google Search Each search will normally open in a new window. All words formed from spellbinds by changing one letter Browse words starting with spellbinds by next letter
by Reb Gutman Locks @ Mystical Paths This question keeps coming up. Does G-d know what we are going to choose, and if so, are we really free to choose what we want? If He already knows what is going to happen, aren’t our choices already set? If so, how can there be free will! A prophet might know the future. For instance, he could know that Israel is about to fail at something, and G-d has sent him to warn us. But if he knows that we are going to fail, why bother to warn us? If he knows that it is going to happen, then it is already set, and we cannot do anything about it. This seemingly proves that we do not have free will! This is, in fact, the Eastern belief of karma. They say, whatever you did in the past must come back to you. Therefore, they conclude, do not do anything! This is not the Torah’s teaching. Yes, the Torah teaches mida keneged mida (portion across from portion), that what you do will come back to you; but the Torah also teaches that we have free will. We are taught that no matter what is set to come, we, with our deeds can reverse that decision and turn our future to the good. This is why G-d sent prophets to warn us. So, even though G-d knows what is set to come, and He knows what we are going to choose, still, we are free to change our minds, and most importantly, our deeds and choose to do something else instead. And, of course, G-d knows that we were going to make that change, too. How does this affect our lives today? Why hasn’t the Redemption come? Obviously, its time has not yet come. But if we have to wait for its time, why do anything to try to bring it? If it is set for a certain date, shouldn’t we just sit back and wait peacefully. No. The Redemption is set to come by a certain date, and no matter what, it will not come a second later than that moment. But… it could come earlier. If we use our free will, and do the proper deeds, then we can make it happen now. This is our free will, and it is one of the many differences between the Torah and the East. The practical aspect of this difference is, since they feel that they cannot change anything, they say, “Let go… detach.” And since we know that we can change the world, we say, “get involved… make the world a better place.” Not only will you enjoy yourself more, and not only will you reduce suffering, you might even add that tiny drop that was needed to bring the final Redemption right now!
Meteorites play a role in Minnesota's mineral wealth. And some meteorites are more valuable than gold. The problem is finding them, according to University of Minnesota earth sciences professor and meteorite expert Calvin Alexander. "Something on the order of 10 fist-sized meteorites or larger hit Minnesota every year," Alexander said. If you find the rare kind -- pieces of space rock from, say, the moon or Mars, your ship has come in. Rare meteorites fetch prices much higher than gold; in some cases 20 times higher. "There are a group of very rich people who like to buy meteorites, just to have them so nobody else has them," said Alexander. But Minnesota is not a lucrative state for meteorite hunters, because "there's just lots and lots of rocks out there." Calvin Alexander, 68, is a tall, white-haired native of Oklahoma. He's been a professor at the University of Minnesota since 1973. Alexander's research includes the study of moon rocks, and he's been on a few meteorite hunts. "Unfortunately, none of them have been successful." He frequently gets calls from hopeful people who want him to look at a rock they've found. "On the order of 10,000 people have probably walked in over the last 40 years, and four of them have had meteorites," he said. And Alexander says two of those four were found someplace else, not in Minnesota. The problem with meteorite hunting in Minnesota is that the state's landscape and geology are littered with rocks that make meteorite hunting a fool's errand, with one exception -- the Red River Valley, in the northwestern part of the state. "It's perfectly flat land with no rocks in it." That's where the Fisher meteorite, one of the state's most famous, was found back in 1894. Another famous Minnesota meteorite was found in Anoka, back in the 1960s, when a contractor digging a utility hole in a backyard clanged into a bowling ball-sized rock. Alexander said the homeowner kept the rock, but didn't do anything about it. "It sat on his porch for 26 years," said Alexander. "And finally his wife told him, 'find out what the blankety-blank thing is, or get it off my porch.'" He did, and it was a meteorite. It's now in the meteorite collection at the U of M. Meteorites crashed into the news in late April, when observers said a car-sized space rock crashed into an area of California that in 1849 was the scene of that state's gold rush. The event set off a rush of meteorite hunters and reporters to the scene. There were photos of adults and children scooping up bottle cap sized pieces of the meteorite. With visions of dollar signs before them, the meteorite hunters advised the residents to wrap the pieces in foil to protect them from disintegrating and place them in a safe deposit box. Scientific interest in meteorites languished for most of human history with the view that rocks could not fall out of the sky. The exceptions, Alexander notes, were the Chinese and the Romans who recognized the existence of celestial objects hitting the planet. The world's collection of meteorites more than doubled due to soil erosion that occurred in the Great Plains in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, according to Alexander. Relentless winds carrying away soil particles revealed space rocks that had fallen to earth over the years. By the 1960s, when Alexander was doing his doctoral dissertation on meteorites, scientists were increasingly interested in the forces that created our solar system. It was a puzzle that could be solved in part by more careful examination of the composition of meteorites; the leftovers, if you will, of the formation of the universe. The explosion in meteorite prices has put the rocks out of reach for most scientists. Many of the meteorites used for research, Alexander said, come from the so-called blue ice field of Antactica -- which is actually a desert -- where receeding ice reveals meteorites that fell to earth long ago. Countries including the United States have placed Antarctica off limits to for-profit meteorite hunters, according to Alexander. That's not the case with the sandless deserts of north Africa, which is another meteorite-rich area of the planet. Alexander said meteorites have several characteristics that distinguish them from ordinary rocks. "They look kind of like -- when you look on the inside of them -- like low-grade concrete," he said. "They have this black fusion crust." That black crust forms when the space rock hits the earth's atmosphere at thousands of miles an hour. The friction bakes the surface of the meteorite. A distinctive feature of meteorites, not readily detectable to the eyeball, is a fairly high nickel content. And that brings us to a geological debate about Minnesota's mineral wealth: Where did the nickel deposits in the northeastern part of the state, which are increasingly coveted by mining companies, come from? Geologists generally agree on part of the answer -- that a huge meteorite struck about 1.8 billion years ago in an area that is now Sudbury, Ontario. Alexander says that meteorite was so big and powerful that it punched through the earth's crust, and a large volume of nickel-rich magma bubbled up, leaving deposits in what is now northeastern Minnesota. But Alexander also believes the splatter from that disintegrating nickel-rich meteorite accounts for a portion of the deposits. "I'm a space cadet from way back. I think they're probably mining at least some fraction of asteroidal nickel."
Malware makers target Windows 8 – Fake AV and phising While Windows 8 isn’t out for a week yet, malware makers are trying to ride the wave of publicity Microsoft’s latest OS gets. Anti-virus company TrendMicro has posted two security threats on their blog that specifically target Windows 8. One is a fake anti-virus dialog that is shown when visiting malicious websites and which shows fake virus results. Of course the scammers urge you to install their paid software to get rid of the viruses. Many users get afraid of the warning and actually will, like they also did on other Windows versions. It’s clear that this fake anti-virus is specifically made to target Windows 8 users as the dialog says: ‘Win 8 Security System’ . The other one is a phishing mail that tries to lure you to a website where you can download Windows 8 for free. And instead of the actual download the scammers ask for personal details such as an e-mail address and name that can be sold on the underground market for cyber-criminals. There are 3 comments - MyCE Senior Member - Posted on: 02 Nov 12 01:44 Fortunately, Windows 8 comes with a complete security solution built-in. Also, many manufactures and retailers like to bundle a trial version of some security suite, like McAfee, or Norton. - MyCE Die Hard - Posted on: 02 Nov 12 13:49 Like Mina inviting in Count Dracula - once she lets him in, it's all over. Many AVs use their own proper names in the Active Window Title Bar. So, if I've got AVG Anti-Virus installed, I'll see virus-alerts with "AVG AntiVirus" printed in the active-windows title bar. If I see something else, then I know it's a fake alert. Microsoft's Windows Defender and Security Essentials didn't use those exact spellings on their true alerts. Not in the past. Maybe their Win8 programmers discovered "precision" and "correctness" to be useful. Or maybe not. We'll see. The Bleeping Computer has a huge array of hijacker names that have been used, and almost all of them are worthy of tricking more than a few users in their web. I'm not sure how an OS can defeat these hijackers when the nonchalant user is tricked into 'letting them in' but it seems like an OS should be able to detect changes to its core components and offer some solution. Unfortunately, that will always result in some UserID agreeing to the changes - and if that's the HiJacker User, well, then... "Come right in." (I have laughed at the several articles in the past month talking about Win8's "security" and "invulnerabiliteis", and especially, "the lack of virus attacks." Yeah. Riiiight. Before Day One. Uh huh. Next summer, we'll see "Win8 has more Virus Attacks than Win7" articles. Meanwhile, Win98-SE will be among the least-attacked Win OS's. du-uh. - New Member - Posted on: 02 Nov 12 15:17 You have a complementary article on Teckweek : Most popular headlines - Mon 21 Jul 09:07 by Bavo Luysterborg Myce managed to get 2 new Windows Threshold screenshots, one shows the new start... - Sat 19 Jul 05:07 by Kerry Brown After four years of discussions between media companies and internet service pro... - Mon 21 Jul 05:07 by Kerry Brown Western Digital is expanding its line of NAS (network attached storage) drives, ... - Thu 17 Jul 11:07 by DoMiN8ToR Microsoft is planning to lay off 18,000 employees in one year, of which likely 1... - Wed 23 Jul 01:07 by Kerry Brown Vuze is a well known BitTorrent company, whose primary torrent client has evolve...
State lawmakers say they will ask tough questions about the state's strategy to create new jobs through incentives. Florida offers up-front money to businesses in that promise new jobs. Governor Scott and other supporters of our incentive strategy say it helps attract new businesses to our state and is fueling our recovery. But critics point to cases where companies did not deliver on promises and in some cases shut down after receiving state money. Last year, a software company called Redpine Services closed its office in Bay County after accepting $400,000 from the state. This year, an animation production company called Digital Domain closed in South Florida after receiving a $20 million grant. Companies that don't deliver are supposed to repay state incentives. But it's hard to collect when companies shut down. We don't know exactly how many current deals are going, because the state keeps them secret in the early stages. Governor Scott says bad deals are the exception. Offering incentives for the promise of jobs is a key part of an economic development strategy. The governor's department of economic opportunity is now requesting $105 million in economic development tools in the next legislative budget. That request triggered some pushback from lawmakers who have questions about the effectiveness of our incentive program thus far. Lawmakers from both parties say want to make sure we get a good return on our money. Some like Pinellas State Senator Jack Latvala say we should also consider other job creation strategies that ensure our workforce is trained for local job openings. "We have employers in my district who will hire any welder they can find, but they can't find welders," said Latvala. "I have other employers who want to hire Java programmers. But there's not a state institution that's turning out Java programmers." FOX 13 / WTVT-TV Didn't find what you were looking for?
How to Cook Duck Breast - Frying Duck Breast is a wonderful alternative to steak or lamb - it is a boneless fillet, which makes it quick to cook and it has wonderful flavour, which can be enhanced by sauces or glazes. Ducks are a waterfowl and have a layer of fat under their skin to keep them warm and waterproof - this is why the skin of a duck is so thick and why so much fat will render during cooking. For more photos and a video demonstration go to www.nzduck.co.nz . Always thaw your duck breast before cooking. Smooth the duck breast fillet out and remove any excess fat around the edges. Score the skin all over - this will allow the fat layer under the skin to render, during cooking. Season with salt & pepper, or your favourite rub. Heat a non-stick frypan to a low heat. Do not grease the frypan. Place the duck breasts, skin side down, in a frypan. Slowly cook the breast fillets until they begin to brown. The fat layer under the skin will begin to render and will be present in the pan as liquid fat. This is normal. When the duck skin has browned enough and enough of the fat has rendered out of the breast - this could be 10- 15 minutes, turn the duck breast fillet over to cook the other side. Note that the duck breast will reduce in length and will swell in thickness, during this time. When the breast is cooked, the juices will run clear. Crisp the skin in the pan or under a hot grill. Remove from the pan and let the duck breast rest for 5 minutes. Discard or filter the fat remaining in the pan, for future use. Drizzle over your favourite sauce or glaze.
Twitter has announced it will sell shares and float on the stock market in secret IPO - From: News Corp Australia Network - September 13, 2013 TWITTER is going public. The short messaging service aptly tweeted on Thursday it has filed confidential documents for an initial public offering of stock. But the documents are sealed, as Twitter is taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that allows companies with less than $1 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents. San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. posted on its official Twitter account that it has ``confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO.'' The confidentiality will likely help Twitter avoid the public hoopla that surrounded the initial public offerings of other high-profile social networking companies, including Facebook Inc., which went public in May 2012. We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013 Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and has grown to more than 200 million users who share their thoughts in bursts of no more than 140 characters at least once a month, with estimates of total users surpassing 500 million. Twitter's massive growth has produced strong IPO buzz for years, but neighbour Facebook's rough Wall Street debut quieted much of the excitement: The Menlo Park, California, company exercised a record-breaking IPO in May 2012 that valued CEO Mark Zuckerberg's creation at more than $US100 billion, but problems with initial trades and doubts about Facebook's ability to generate revenues helped push shares from an initial price of $US38 to less than $US20 in the first year of public availability. Facebook Inc. stock has rebounded of late, however, pushing to an all-time high of more than $US45 Wednesday after the company's most recent earnings report showed strong gains in mobile revenues. The IPO market has also fully rebounded after a lull following Facebook's debut, with seven San Francisco Bay Area companies filing to go public in August. "There's more of an appetite for IPOs than there's been in some time,'' Thomas Kellerman, an attorney with Morgan Lewis in Palo Alto, California, who co-chairs the firm's tech practice, told the San Jose Mercury News last month. Twitter's IPO has been long expected. The company has been ramping up its advertising products and working to boost ad revenue in preparation. Goldman Sachs is to be the lead underwriter for the IPO. Now, back to work. pic.twitter.com/e4lK8e7pY9— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013
Your editorial about farmed salmon states that without fish we would be missing out on important omega-3 "fish oils" (17 January, p 3). I would not expect No doubt omega-3 oils are beneficial to a healthy cardiovascular system and brain development, but fish are not the best source. Linseed or flaxseed has a far greater concentration of omega-3. Even green leafy vegetables are a source of omega-3. Preformed DHA (from omega-3) can now be synthesised without ever involving any fish. Why not leave the fish alone, cut to the chase and consume these "fish oils". To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
Seismologists say a minor earthquake occurred in Alaska, and was felt in Anchorage. The Alaska Earthquake Center says the quake occurred at 11 a.m. Sunday. It was located about 30 miles southwest of Anchorage and had a magnitude of 3.7. © Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Ursid Meteor Shower Earth is heading for a stream of comet dust that could produce a pleasing outburst of "shooting stars" this weekend (Dec 21-23). Forecasters say dozens of meteors per hour could emerge from a spot in the sky near the North Star (Polaris) when Earth encounters the dust on Saturday evening, Dec. 22nd. These meteors are called "Ursids" after Ursa Minor, the constellation where the North Star is located. If forecasting models are correct, the shower's peak will occur between 2100 and 2200 UT (4-5 pm EST) with meteors visible as much as four hours before and after that time. The source of the dust is Comet 8P/Tuttle, which is traveling through the inner solar system this month and next. The comet itself can be seen through binoculars not far from the radiant of the shower. This gives sky watchers a rare opportunity to see a comet and its meteors in the same observing session. Ursid meteors, which appear in small numbers annually, have a reputation for faintness and delicacy. Dark skies are usually required to see them; bright moonlight on Dec. 22nd will only exacerbate the problem of visibility. However, say forecasters, during an outburst of Ursids there may be a fair number of bright meteors. No one knows what will happen--all the more reason to look! Unfortunately, though, a nearly full moon will drown out the fainter meteors. For more information on the Ursids, see: Next page: Green Comet Approaches Earth Bookmark/Share This Page: Ursid Meteor Shower News 'Weak' New Meteor Shower Due To Fragile Comet Dust - Universe Today23 Jul 2014 at 9:38am 'Weak' New Meteor Shower Due To Fragile Comet Dust A Camelopardalid seen frame-by-frame in a recording taken May 24, 2014 at 1:58:08 a.m. UT (9:58:08 p.m. ET). Credit: Original recording by Peter C. Slansky; compilation by Jim Albers and Peter Jenniskens. While the Camelopardalid shower only produced ... New meteor shower "just a memory" of what once was therePhys.Org all 5 news articles » 2014 Meteor Shower: Where and How to Best View Delta Aquarids Meteor ... - In...21 Jul 2014 at 2:48am 2014 Meteor Shower: Where and How to Best View Delta Aquarids Meteor ... International Business Times AU The months of July and August will offer sky watchers the viewing experience for the 2014 Delta Aquarids meteor shower. The sky display started on July 12 and it can be viewed until Aug 23, 2014 with the peak scheduled to take place from July 28 to 29 ... Meteor shower peaking next week, increasing shooting stars right nowTucson News Now Delta Aquarid meteor shower is under wayiTWire all 4 news articles » Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower 2014: Dates for Entire Shower, and the Peak Time...12 Jul 2014 at 10:28pm Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower 2014: Dates for Entire Shower, and the Peak Time The Epoch Times The Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower is basically here, starting on July 12 and running all the way through August 23. The meteor shower is slated to peak on July 28 and July 29. ?This year's peak occurs during a new moon, which means dark skies for ... and more » Astronomy in July: Meteor shower, Milky Way and moon - The News-Press3 Jul 2014 at 8:31am Astronomy in July: Meteor shower, Milky Way and moon Humans are watchers of the skies, romantics, dreamers. And nothing has inspired the dreamers among us more than the moon. There are nights when it seems close enough to touch, its reflective full light shimmering on our creations below. Other nights ... Spot Planets and a Meteor Shower In July 2014 \| Skywatching Video - Space.com30 Jun 2014 at 10:45am Spot Planets and a Meteor Shower In July 2014 \| Skywatching Video Saturn and Mars are visible in the evening and Venus and Mercury can be found before sunrise. At the end of the month, the annual Delta Aquarid peaks with 20 meteors per hour. (Skywatching Guide). Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute, Office of ...
Loading Photo Gallery NEWARK — Newark has seen a 40 percent surge in gun violence this year, but the city’s top cop said today that despite a recent rash of shootings, his "Safe City" anti-violence campaign is helping to reverse the trend. Between Jan. 1 and July 10, there were 175 shootings in Newark, leaving 213 people dead or injured, according to police statistics. During the same period last year, there were 125 shootings and 161 victims. The statistics were obtained today by The Star-Ledger less than 24 hours after a spate of drug-related violence on Monday left 11 people injured and a 15-year-old high school football player dead. "We’re not going to turn everything around in one month. That’s an impossibility. But we’re heading in the right direction," Acting Police Director Samuel DeMaio said in an interview. "We weren’t doing the right thing in January, February, March, April or May. That’s when it kept going up and up and up." DeMaio was named police director in May when Garry McCarthy resigned after four years to become superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Within a month of taking over, DeMaio launched his "Safe City" campaign, the goal of which is to increase police presence in dangerous neighborhoods and boost community involvement. While there were more shootings in June 2011 than June 2010, according to the statistics, the number of incidents dropped from May to June of this year. In addition, DeMaio said, the number of homicides between June 1 and today is slightly lower than the same period last summer. "We’re not going to have a crime that’s up 60 percent in a six-month period, and take it to where it’s going positive in one month," DeMaio said, referring to the city’s homicide rate. "If you have it cut down almost in half in a five-week period, that’s pretty good." Authorities said Monday’s violence was the result of a growing rivalry between drug crews. Around 6 p.m., four people were injured when shots were fired on Halsey Street in the city’s bustling downtown area. Four hours later, 15-year-old Al-Aziz Stewart was killed and seven others were injured in a shooting on Scheerer Avenue in the city’s South Ward. During a morning news conference at City Hall, DeMaio and Mayor Cory Booker said the attacks were linked to warring drug crews, who have been embroiled in a "back and forth" that led to several shootings this month. "This is not a whole bunch of people. We’re not talking hundreds or even dozens here," Booker said. "We’re talking about a small group of individuals who may be responsible for a number of the shooting victims we’ve seen over this month." DeMaio said a car rolled to a stop at each location Monday, and multiple gunmen opened fire into crowds at both scenes. Booker said the assailants wore rubber gloves and masks in one attack. Authorities would not say if the drug crews have gang affiliations, or how many shootings they are linked to. This morning on Scheerer Avenue, a neighbor opened a water valve to rinse the blood from the driveway where Stewart was killed. Across the street, Stewart’s sister, Naja Jenkins, wept as she remembered the popular teen who was the starting quarterback for West Side High School’s freshman football team. "He was a comedian. He was well known throughout this neighborhood," she said. "Everybody loved my brother." Jenkins said her brother wasn’t involved in the Newark drug trade and didn’t have any connection to gangs. Stewart’s football coach, Brian Logan, said the teen was a "real nice kid" who excelled on his freshman team. "He was a happy guy, smart guy, happy kid, you know? He loved life," Logan said. "He looked forward to getting back into football." Jenkins broke down as she recalled her last conversation with her brother. "I just thank God I told him every single day that I love him. And the last thing I told him was to be careful, and that I love him," she said. "Every single day I told my brother that. Every day. So he knew, going out, that we love him."
PubMed® Notes 2011 Other pertinent articles: \| MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities 2011 MeSH Now Available Cataloging News 2011 MEDLINE Data Changes 2011 PubMed Notes 2011 What's New for 2011 MeSH Newly Maintained MEDLINE for 2011 MeSH Now Available in PubMed The 2011 PubMed system will be available in mid-December. Links to other articles pertinent to the new system are provided to the right. There are a few changes to PubMed this year: Changes to the Limits page were reported in the article, Comings and Goings for PubMed® Limits. - Users of XML data may want to see additional information including DTD and XML changes for the NLM 2011 production year: XML users can keep up to date by subscribing to an announcement mailing list at this site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mailman/listinfo/utilities-announce. - The Abstract display will be modified to accommodate changes to Supplementary Concept Records in the MeSH® vocabulary (see below). PubMed Abstract Display Modified for Supplementary Concepts The MeSH Vocabulary includes nearly 200,000 records known as the Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs). Until recently these were primarily records for drugs and substances plus a small percentage of protocols. Beginning with 2011 MeSH, SCR records will also include disease terms that are not MeSH headings as explained in the forthcoming article, What's New for 2011 MeSH®. [Editor's Note: This article was published on December 10, 2010.] PubMed will display SCR terms in the expandable section for supplemental information of the Abstract format as follows: - Chemicals and substances will continue to display under the header, Substances. - Protocols and disease terms will display under the new header, Supplementary Concepts. All SCRs will display on the MEDLINE format with the RN field tag. All SCRs can be searched using these search tags: - [supplementary concept] - [substance name] Example: kindler syndrome [nm] [Note: The changes described above appeared in PubMed on December 13, 2010. At the same time the link to the Journals Database on the PubMed homepage was replaced with the link, Journals in NCBI Databases which connects to the NLM Catalog (see: NLM Catalog: New Search Features for Journals Cited in Entrez Databases.)] Nahin AM. PubMed® Notes 2011. NLM Tech Bull. 2010 Nov-Dec;(377):e16.
Closing in on the Higgs BosonWhen: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 11:15 am Where: DA 114 Speaker: Joseph Haley Organization: Northeastern University Sponsor: Physics Colloquium The Higgs mechanism was proposed nearly fifty years ago as a way to explain how fundamental particles can have mass. In addition to explaining the origin of mass in the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory requires the existence of a yet undiscovered particle called the Higgs boson. After year of searching for this “last puzzle piece,” we are finally on the verge of either finding the Higgs boson or shattering the long standing Standard Model. The stage has been set by recent hints from the CMS and ATLAS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider of a Higgs boson with a mass around 125 times the proton mass. I will present brand new results from Fermilab’s Tevatron collider, which achieve similar and complementary sensitivity to a Higgs boson in this most interesting mass range.
Expect Dry Conditions and Warm Temperatures Through the First Half of This Week Monsoonal weather patterns have moved into the Grand Canyon area decreasing fire danger. As a result, on Tuesday, July 8 at 8 a.m. fire managers lifted fire restrictions within Grand Canyon National Park. More » Two Bats Collected in the Park Have Tested Positive for Rabies One on the North Kaibab Trail and the other at Tusayan Ruin/Museum. Any persons having physical contact with bats in Grand Canyon National Park, please call 928-638-7767. Rabies can be prevented if appropriate medical care is given following an exposure. More » River Trip Orientation Video - Chapter 1 Continue to the Next Chapter (2) Water Temperature and Flow Variations River Trip Orientation Video Chapter Menu Watch the River Trip Orientation Videos on YouTube Here is the link to the YouTube playlist with all the videos: Here are links to the individual video chapters on YouTube: Part 3: Low Impact Camping Tips - 04m:18s Part 10: Diamond Creek to Lake Mead Pearce Ferry Take-out/ Rapid- 04m:01s Did You Know? In November of 1934, the Grand Canyon Civilian Conservation Corps began working on a telephone line through the canyon. They started at Indian Garden and moved down to the Colorado River. They needed to complete this portion of the line first before the extreme summer heat started. More...
PRELUDE TO SYSTEMATIC FEDERAL MANAGEMENT (continued) Modern Military Training The Mojave Desert, a "wasteland" with easy railroad access, seemed to General George S. Patton to be an excellent place to train his troops during World War II. In early 1942, Patton established the Desert Training Center, and stationed troops throughout the Mojave. Much of the heaviest activity took place to the south of the current Mojave National Preserve boundaries, but some of these wartime camps and much of the maneuver areas were inside the present Preserve. A major division-size camp, Camp Clipper, was located north of Essex, with its northern boundary located inside the Preserve, north of I-40. A support division, including an ammunition dump, several large warehouses, and a military hospital, were located at Goffs, along with an emergency airfield a mile north of the hamlet. Later, the training grounds were expanded and renamed the California Arizona Maneuver Area, and remained in use until mid-1944. At least one million soldiers spent time in the area. Tanks and other military vehicles roamed throughout the desert, conducting exercises in the valleys of the Preserve and surrounding areas. During World War II, many places in the greater Mojave desert received permanent designation as military training areas, but lack of such a status did not preclude the military from again using the eastern Mojave for practice. In May 1964, the Army staged a training exercise in the public lands west of Needles with 89,000 troops. Soldiers practiced amphibious landings on the banks of the Colorado River, troops constructed machine-gun emplacements at major crossroads, and heavy weaponry rolled across the sweeping valleys. The operation, known as "Desert Strike," caused significant impact to desert plants and animals. At least some locals attempted to halt the operation, but were unable to get support from the BLM or conservation groups. One author pointed out that the maneuver "laid environmental waste to sizable swaths of the East Mojave." Fortunately for the fragile lands of the east Mojave, Operation Desert Strike was the last major military use of the area now encompassed by the Preserve. The army's training exercises left permanent scars on the desert. Tank tracks remain visible in many places inside and outside the Preserve. Rock alignments laying out huge tent camps dot the desert, especially in the southeast corner of the Preserve, and military debris still litters the desert floor in some places. Military use compacted the soil and changed the natural ecology of the desert. Military use of the Mojave for training purposes had civilian ramifications as well. The military systematically mapped the entire Mojave desert in detail for the first time, utilizing aerial photography and traditional land-based methods to create maps for their training operations. After the war, many of the Army maps were sold to the public, and the U.S. Geological Survey utilized Army Map Service data to produce a series of 15 minute quads of the desert in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The experiences of soldiers at the wartime desert camps translated to increased recreational use of the desert after the war. War surplus jeeps and camping gear enabled former soldiers and their friends to explore the desert in four-wheel drive, as they had done during their training, with new maps of the Mojave to guide their travels. One U.S. Army photo, dated 1942, shows a soldier in full battle gear steering a huge military Harley-Davidson motorcycle down a Mojave sand dune - a stunning prelude of recreation to come. Recreational use of the desert began before World War II, but accelerated tremendously after that conflict concluded. The rise of recreation by off-highway vehicles (OHV) eventually prompted increased management of the entire desert by the BLM , and will be addressed in the following chapter. In addition to OHV users, others made attempts to encourage recreation in the eastern Mojave. Jack Mitchell, a Los Angeles businessman who lost almost everything in the 1929 stock market crash, initiated an early attempt at recreational tourism in the present-day Preserve. Mitchell became interested in three magnificent limestone caverns after a local rancher, Mark Pettit, showed him the caves. By 1932, Mitchell had explored the caves, offered tours, and set up signs along Route 66 to direct visitors to the site. He continued to guide visitors for the next two decades. As Mitchell grew closer to retirement age in the early 1950s, he began deliberations with California's state park system to take over operation of the caves as a state park. Mitchell was killed in an accident before negotiations could be finalized, and the California state park system added Mitchell's Caverns to its holdings in 1956. The state promoted the tourism and development of the caverns and the surrounding Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, and dug a connection between the two main caves in Mitchell's Caverns to produce a single-loop tour experience. The caves and the state park continue to draw thousands of visitors every year to the area, and are the oldest formal tourism-related activity in the Mojave National Preserve. Originally, two more state parks were planned for Cima Dome and the Cinder Cones, but these were never built. The California Department of Fish and Game (CDF&G) long encouraged recreational hunting in the eastern Mojave desert, as in the rest of the state. During the 1940s, CDF&G stocked non-native mule deer in what later became the Preserve. Deer are native to some parts of the desert, but the eastern Mojave, by 1940, was a landscape constructed by ranchers for production of beef. Hunting was seen by the ranchers as an undesirable intrusion of animals that would compete with their cattle and people who might damage their property. One local angrily categorized the action as "dumping them on land where ranchers were paying for the forage rights and where, with hunting, they have been a source of trouble ever since." Winnie Southcott, wife of the owner of the Gold Valley Ranch, died after she was attacked in her front yard by a large buck who apparently had no fear of humans. By the mid-1980s, hunters harvested an average of 25 deer each year from the area of the Preserve, about a quarter of the total for San Bernardino County. California Department of Fish and Game also introduced chukar, an upland game bird popular with hunters, in the mid-twentieth century. Hunting of bighorn sheep had long been prohibited in the desert, but beginning in the fall of 1987, limited hunting was allowed to resume by CDF&G. From the 1940s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the state of California actively attempted to increase recreation opportunities in the eastern Mojave by locally implementing statewide programs designed to promote and sustain hunting. While CDF&G attempted to make the desert amenable to hunters and Jack Mitchell tried to profit by showcasing its wondrous caves, a controversial preacher promoted an alternative vision of recreation in the Mojave. In September 1944, "Dr." Curtis Howe Springer, a radio evangelist and alternative-medicine salesman, staked mining claims at the site of Soda Springs, which he gradually developed into his famous Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Resort. Springer was a curious historical character who can be painted as a swindling quack or a misunderstood visionary. Springer constructed most of the buildings at Zzyzx today before 1955, utilizing men from the slums of Los Angeles for labor. Treatment at Zzyzx included good food and plenty of rest, along with an alcohol-free environment, which certainly helped some visitors. Lodging and meals were provided free of charge, though donations were encouraged. Over time, Zzyzx proved very popular. The post office in Baker was upgraded to first-class status, largely because of Springer's mail volume, and motels there often lodged prospective visitors waiting for their turn at Zzyzx. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, after a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times raised the public's awareness of the seemingly illegitimate side of the Zzyzx business, several agencies, including the BLM and the Food and Drug Administration, pursued charges against Springer for allegedly false advertising, misleading labels, and misusing mining claims. BLM rangers bodily evicted Springer and his wife in April 1974 on the grounds that Springer was trespassing on public lands because he was living on his mining claims rather than extracting minerals from them. The BLM showed the Springers little sympathy, threatening them with handcuffs and giving them thirty-six hours to gather their possessions and vacate the property. Two years later, after some BLM consternation about what to do with Zzyzx, the California State University Desert Studies Consortium was granted a renewable lease to run the property as a research and education facility. After World War II, recreational use of the desert grew to substantial importance. From Jack Mitchell's attempts to make a living by giving tours of limestone caves to Curtis Springer's decades-long development and promotion of Zzyzx Mineral Springs, private interests used the eastern Mojave for economic gain through recreation and tourism. The State of California also sought to increase recreational opportunities by introducing non-native animals to the area as a means of increasing hunting. Recreation by off-highway vehicle users became so substantial that it prompted the first major systematic federal management of the desert. Beginning recently and growing rapidly, few could have predicted the speed with which recreation became a major activity on the lands of the east Mojave. One of the least populated areas in the United States, the eastern Mojave saw relatively little management of any sort for much of its recent history. Euro-American traders chose to avoid the Mohaves when possible, but even after the establishment of a wagon road, military presence was limited to a thin corridor. Miners extracted wealth from the land, subject to only the permissive provisions of the General Mining Law of 1872. Ranchers used federal land as their own, possessing genuine title only to land around water sources. Homesteaders futilely plowed their personal portion of the public domain, but few were able to patent their holdings and none were subject to more oversight than that provided by hostile local ranchers. Military exercises used the eastern Mojave as a playground, and railroads, interstate freeways, electrical transmission lines, and petroleum pipelines were all constructed across the land. Increased management appeared on the distant horizon with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which required Mojave ranchers to change their practices and their landscapes to fit the new regulations. Only in the 1960s did the desert face an issue large enough to demand major attention. Recreation in the desert surged in popularity, and forced the federal government to move toward systematic management of the desert for the first time. Last Updated: 05-Apr-2004
This website is best viewed in a browser that supports web standards. Skip to content or, if you would rather, Skip to navigation. Jan. 20, 2010 Maryville, Mo. - Northwest students can develop new leadership skills and enhance existing skills during a variety of workshops at the university's first Bearcat Leadership Training conference. BLT, which is free, will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, in the J.W. Jones Student Union. Check-in will be 8:15 a.m. to 9 a.m. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. In addition to guiding students, the conference is designed to assist student organizations and their leaders with improving and advancing operations and group management. The conference will feature keynote speakers Alumni Association President Neil Neumeyer and Tim McMahon, Northwest's vice president of marketing and university relations. Workshop topics will include leadership styles and personality traits, goal setting, motivation, event planning, interculturalism and diversity, teamwork, balance and well-being, conflict management, running effective meetings and organizational structure. Students must register by 5 p.m. Jan. 25. Students can register by clicking this link: For more information, contact Beyza Aydar, leadership graduate assistant in the Office of Campus Activities, at 660.562.1226 or email@example.com. Mark Hornickel, Media Relations Specialist firstname.lastname@example.org \| 660.562.1704 \| Fax: 660.562.1900 Northwest Missouri State University 215 Administration Building \| 800 University Drive \| Maryville, MO 64468
Since last month and continuing to present, several outbreaks of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis have been reported in various Central American and Caribbean countries. In Central America, the disease has mainly affected four countries: - Nicaragua presented a radical increase during the month of May. People from 5 to 14 years were the most affected, and the counties with the highest number of cases were Managua and Chontales. Honduras suffered a big outbreak mainly among factory workers. The cities most affected were San Pedro Sula, El Progreso, La Lima, and Chomola. - Guatemala reported 2,035 cases to 20 September 2003 in the 14 health zones. The national incidence rate is 13 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Of the cases, 81% are concentrated in five areas: Izabal, Chiquimula, San Marcos, Petén Suroriente and Guatemala City. - In El Salvador, 335 cases of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis occurred up to 16 September. The more affected health zones were the Center zone, Santa Ana and New Concepción. Samples have been taken from three health zones. Results to identify the causal agent are pending, although viral infection is suspected by the symptoms presented. - In the Caribbean, eight countries reported having had cases of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. The start and end of the outbreaks, and the description of them, are showed in the following table: - Caribbean Epidemiology Center (CAREC): Caribbean Surveillance Network (Carisurvnet). - Laboratory reports and Department of Epidemiology of the respective countries. - Boletín Epidemiológico de Guatemala (Guatemala Epidemiological Bulletin), Week 37-03. - Boletín Epidemiológico de El Salvador (El Salvador Epidemiological Bulletin), Week 38-03. Ante el inicio de la temporada de mayor transmisión de conjuntivitis hemorrágica en países tropicales, la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS) enfatiza en la necesidad de reforzar la vigilancia e implementar las recomendaciones que contribuyen a controlar la diseminación de la enfermedad. Central America: The following outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic conjunctivitis are still active: Guatemala: To 29 September 2003, there have been 2,269 cases in 18 health districts. The national incidence rate is 18 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and the trend is still rising. The health districts with the greatest number of cases are Izabal (247), Petén Suroriente (200) Chiquimula (77), Santa Rosa (34), Petén Norte (30), San Marcos (23) and Escuintla (18). The illness is primarily affecting persons over the age of five. El Salvador: To 30 September 2003, the health districts most affected continue to be El Centro (84), Santa Ana (52) and Nueva Concepción (52). The age group most affected is from 20 to 59 years; and regarding gender, the cumulative number of cases reported among women is higher than among men - Boletín epidemiológico de Guatemala (Epidemiological Bulletin of Guatemala) No. 38, 2003. - Boletín epidemiológico de El Salvador (Epidemiological Bulletin of El Salvador), 30 September 2003. Mexico: The conjunctivitis outbreak has affected 32 states. To 26 September 2003, 67,513 cases of conjunctivitis were reported. The three states with the highest number of cases are Campeche (14,309), Quintana Roo (11,169), and Tabasco (11,092). Source: Boletín epidemiológico de México (Epidemiological Bulletin of Mexico), No. 38, 2003.
One Click Table Sorting How to one click table sorting. To sort records in a table with one click, open a table in Datasheet View. Highlight one or more adjacent columns. Click either the Sort Ascending or the Sort Descending button to sort the records in the datasheet. They'll be sorted, starting with the left-most column and moving to the right.
But the files are transferred and the other print statements are executed? If I understand Net::SFTP::Foreign correctly, the callback function should be executed at least once per call to ->get. Maybe it is overwritten too quickly - what if you remove the \r or replace it with \n? Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data! Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place. Please read these before you post! — Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags: Outside of code tags, you may need to use entities for some characters: - a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking? See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info. \| & \|\| & \| \| < \|\| < \| \| > \|\| > \| \| [ \|\| [ \| \| ] \|\| ] \|\|
Re^2: Possible pairings for first knockout round of UEFA champions leagueby LanX (Canon) \|on Dec 22, 2012 at 15:36 UTC\|\|Need Help??\| It's a branch and bound-algorithm, by early cutting unnecessary branches I avoid calculating all permutations, which is (far╣) more efficient.▓ And it gave me the opportunity to check some mathematical approaches (which are more challenging for me) But you're welcome to show us your way to do it!(BTW: I saw your approach already been done in Python, if you're interested) ╣) since 8! is only ~40000 it's not too obvious in this special case. ▓) Furthermore branching allows to cache/memoize results for subtrees to go even faster.
It seems that so many individuals are unsatisfied with their relationship with their parents. During adolescence I heard from many of my friends the frustrations they were feeling towards their parents. Sometimes they felt annoyed, other times they felt over-controlled by them. I've also talked to older individuals who still have problems with their parents. They say that they just don't get along anymore, or they reflect on resentment that they felt towards them in their younger years. What is it that makes parent-child relationships so difficult? I mean, they are our own flesh and blood. I have always had a hard time relating to people when they talk about their issues with their parents. To me, my family is the most important part of my life, and therefore I do everything I can to cherish that relationship. Maybe I see the parent child relationship a little bit differently, or maybe my parents really aren't difficult to get along with, it's hard to say. Regardless, I have always tried to recognize that they are real people too, and I truly do appreciate all the time and money they've spent on me. I also understand that a relationship is a two way street. Regardless, it has been shown that the relationship we have with our parents can affect the life an personality of their children. First off, several studies have been conducted on parenting styles. The most popular being the model created by Diana Baumrind. She created four different parenting styles depending on the amount of demanding-ness and responsiveness they expressed. Authoritative parenting style, which was high in both of those domains, has been shown to have the best outcome in children. Parent relationships also affect their children in other ways. It has been shown that children whose parents don't supervise them as much engage in greater adolescence risk taking. This seems to be especially true in regards to adolescence alcohol use. The reverse relationship is also true, as adolescent alcohol use has actually been shown to predict less effective parenting supervision. This could be because children who choose to engage in that sort of behavior resist parenting supervision, or it could be because the children use alcohol because their parents didn't supervise them in the first place. (Clark, 2008). This phenomenon stems further than just alcohol use though. Parenting style and the relationship with ones parents can affect psychological aspects of an individuals life as well. Those with authoritarian parents tend to be less confident and show sign of depression. The indulgent parenting style tends to create individuals who are under appreciative and self-entitled. (Baumrind, 1991). To make things more confusing, the structure of one's family can actually predict adolescence outcomes as well. It has been shown that in father only households, adolescence are most likely to engage in alcohol use. (Hoffman & Johnson, 1998). So, what can be done about all this? I believe that it is important to educate parents about the importance of a specific parenting style. Since many adults don't go out of their way to seek this knowledge, it should be presented to them when they are receiving their education. Children play a part in this too, which is why they should be taught effective communication skills during their adolescence. I believe a more modern approach should be taken in our school systems. Our youth spends so much of their time in school, which means there is so much opportunity for them to gain valuable life information. Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56-95. Retrieved from www.sagepub.org Clark, D. (2008). Parental supervision and alcohol use in adolescence: developmentally specific interactions. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 29(4), 285-292. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18562983 Hoffmann, J., & Johnson, R. (1998). A national portrait of family structure and adolescent drug use. Journal of Marriage and Family, 60(3), 633-645.
Ireland's medicines shortages have worsened significantly in the last 12 months, and the government must intervene to ensure that patients get the drugs they need, pharmacists have warned. 98% of pharmacists have told the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) that they have noticed drug shortages in the last year, while 91% say these have got worse over the period and 93% expect them to worsen over the next 12 months. 44% of pharmacists believe that patients' health outcomes have been harmed by the shortages, and the IPU also reports that pharmacy staff spend an average eight hours each month working to resolve the problems. This is time that would be better spent tending to patients’ needs, said IPU president Rory O'Donnell, and he warned: "the longer the situation is allowed to continue, the greater the impact on patients' health." Currently, pharmacists are particularly reporting shortages of Eli Lilly's antidepressant/fibromyalgia treatment Cymbalta (duloxetine) and Pfizer's Lyrica (pregabalin), used in epilepsy, fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain, among other products. The IPU also warns that Ireland's planned introduction of reference pricing will only exacerbate the situation, particularly if the reference price is set too low. "Adding to these concerns is the fact that pharmacists typically receive little or no warning that these medicines are going out of stock and there is often little information on when these stocks will be replenished," said Mr O'Donnell. "Ultimately, it is up to the Department of Health to ensure that patients have continuity of supply of medicines and we would ask that steps be taken as a matter of urgency to solve the existing problems of medicines shortages and to ensure that further shortages do not occur," he concluded. Responding, the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), representing the branded drugmakers, pointed out that key provisions of the state/IPHA supply agreement, which was renewed last October, are designed to ensure continuity as far as is possible. From time to time, disruptions can emerge with individual products because of manufacturing processes. However, more recently shortages have resulted from products being traded across European markets when the price in one country has been pushed well below that in other countries, says the IPHA, pointing out that these cross-border trading issues are beyond its members’ control. The Department of Health says it is working to manage drug shortages, so that the impact on patients is minimised, say local reports.
\|Uploader Compression Help\| Compressed vs. non-compressed examples. Click Here to see a comparison of an image uploaded in compressed mode and non-compressed mode. Why is compression not recommended if I want to make prints? Compressing image files may decrease the visual quality for images that are made into prints. Therefore we recommend you select the Non Compressed option in the uploader. Why is compression recommended for images I upload for online viewing? Compressing images before uploading them will result in a faster upload without decreasing the quality of the images when viewed online. We recommend you select the Compressed option in the uploader. What are the effects of compressing an image? The file size of an image taken with a digital camera is generally fairly large. Therefore it can be compressed and still preserve a visual quality more than adequate for online viewing. This reduced file size allows for faster uploads and the difference in quality when viewing the image online is generally not perceptible. Contact Tech Support. If you have specific questions about compression, please contact us at:
SAE Unveils Combined Charger System Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen strongly support a "harmonized single-port DC-fast charging technology" and will be present at the unveiling of the Combined Charging System at the EVS26 event currently running in Los Angeles, California. The system is "intended to optimize customer ease of use and to accelerate more affordable deployment of electrified vehicles," according to Volkswagen. It's believed that the Combined Charging System will be used on electric vehicles in Europe and the US starting in 2013. Only the eight automakers listed above have agreed to adopt the use of the Combined Charging System. The Combined Charging System "integrates one-phase AC-charging, fast three-phase AC-charging, DC-charging at home and ultra-fast DC-charging at public stations into one vehicle inlet." This setup will "allow customers to charge at most existing charging stations regardless of power source and may speed more affordable adoption of a standardized infrastructure," according to VW. The International Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has chosen the Combined Charging System as its standard and will publish official guidelines this summer. Aside from the SAE, the ACEA—the European association of vehicle manufacturers—has announced that it selected the Combined Charging System as its AC/DC-charging interface for all plug-in vehicles sold in Europe beginning in 2017. Charging stations compatible with the Combined Charging System will become available in late 2012. Compatible vehicles will launch in 2013. New to EVs? Start here What Is An Electric Car? Before we get going, let's establish basic definitions. A Quick Guide to Plug-in Hybrids Some plug-in cars have back-up engines to extend driving range. Electric Cars Pros and Cons EVs are a great solution for most people. But not everybody. Eight Rules of Electric Vehicle Charging Etiquette Thou shalt charge only when necessary. And other rules to live by. Seven Things To Know About Buying a Plug-In Car A few simple tips before you visit the dealership. Eight Factors Determining Total Cost of Ownership of an Electric Car EVs get bad rap as expensive. Until you look at TCO. Federal and Local Incentives for Plug-in Hybrids and Electric Cars Take advantage of credits and rebates to reduce EV costs. Guide to Buying First Home EV Charger You'll want a home charger. Here's how to buy the right one. Electric Car Utility Rate Plans: Top Five Rules With the right utility plan, electric fuel can be dirt cheap. The Ultimate Guide to Electric Car Charging Networks If you plan to charge in public, you'll want to sign up for charging network membership (or two).
The name Pound Cake comes from the fact that the original pound cake contained one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. No other ingredients were used other than the air whipped into the batter. In the days when many people couldn't read, this simple convention made it simple to remember recipes. The pound cake dates back to the early 18th century, and was favored because its ingredients were easy to remember: one pound each of four things. It was improved immeasurably by the invention of rising agents in the 19th century. The pound cake is known as the following names in their respective countries: France: Gâteau Quatre-Quarts, which means “Four Fourths,” referring to the equal portions of eggs, flour. sugar, and butter. Spain: Queque Seco. Pound cake originated in the 1700s in England. It was discovered by Hannah Glasse in her Art of Cookery (published in 1747). By the mid 1800’s, Pound Cake recipes started to add liquids and in the 1900’s, baking powder was added to the recipes. And though butter, eggs, flour, and sugar are still used, the proportions have been adjusted to make the cake less heavy. The Pound Cake is subtle, balanced, and robust. The texture is spongy but not flaky. It is moist without having the uncooked pudding-like quality you get from those "extra-moist" box jobs you get at the store. Nor it is puffy and dry as so many homemade cakes can be This site gives the ingredients to extremely popular FREE pound cake recipes along with photos and other Pound Cake goodies. So, let’s get started and make some fantastic pound cake! Pound Cake \| Original Pound Cake \| Chocolate Pound Cake \| Lemon Pound Cake \| Key Lime Pound Cake \| Strawberry Pound Cake \| Rum Pound Cake \| Cream Cheese Pound Cake \| Fudge Marble Pound Cake \| Cranberry Orange Pound Cake \| Almond Pound Cake \| Vanilla Bean Pound Cake \| Sour Cream Pound Cake \| 7 Up Pound Cake \| Orange Pound Cake \| Coconut Pound Cake \| Buttermilk Pound Cake \| Blueberry Pound Cake \|
Earthrace, the bio-fuelled UIM powerboat is speeding up the Red Sea heading for Suez on Day 55 of her Round the World record run, just three thousand miles from the Sagunto in Spain and the finish line. In the last 24 hours the giant trimaran has travelled 516 nautical miles, at an average speed of 21.5 knots, and she is now 3,017 miles ahead of the 1998 Cable & Wireless World Record. On Day 54 Earthrace averaged 20.5 knots and her New Zealand skipper Pete Bethune commented ‘We’ve lost some boat speed. For the amount of fuel we’re burning at the moment we should be doing around 24 knots, and yet we’re just over 22. ‘It is a combination of things. Certainly the propeller we changed in Singapore has had an impact. The previous one was the very latest from Hytorque in Canada and it was super-efficient, especially compared with the older prop we have now put on. ‘Also the repairs we did in Singapore will have had an adverse affect. The P-Bracket is now fatter and with a slightly rough surface, similarly the repairs to the bow and rudder were relatively rough, and these would all add slightly to drag.’ Conditions are excellent for Earthrace as she runs fast up the Red Sea, she has a ¼ to ½ metre following sea and she will, at current pace, reach the mouth of the Suez Canal on Monday. If she has a fast transit and a good run across the Mediterranean, she could complete her round the world run 12 or 13 days inside the record. Her two sat tracking units are current U/S; the one on the roof top has cracked and taken on water but a second one up higher on the horn might be able to be repaired. Listen to the latest report from Earthrace below.
Global Panda Conservation Campaign Launched in Hong Kong HONG KONG, Aug. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizers and panda ambassadors urged the public to step up efforts to protect pandas and other endangered species as the Global Panda Conservation Tour kicked off here Friday. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, main organizer of the event, said in a statement that protecting pandas is also a process of conserving bio-diversity. "We need to protect pandas not only because they are our national treasures, but also because their habitats are bio-diversity hotspots in China," it said. "Through protecting pandas and their habitats, other animals and plants in the area can also be preserved." At a press conference held at the Ocean Park, Chen Yinrong, one of the three panda ambassadors, or "Pambassadors" selected from 1.16 million global applicants, said protecting pandas is not merely the duty of Pambassadors. "I hope everyone can take part in the protection of pandas and other wildlife," she said. The three Pambassadors, Chen from China, Jerome Pouille from France and Melissa Katz from the United States, were chosen in a recruiting campaign for ambassadors for the most iconic animal in China, which began in September 2012. Ju Mengjun, director of Asia-Pacific Bureau of Xinhua News Agency, another organizer of the project, said this tour is also a tour of peace. "We expect the tour, starting from its first stop in Hong Kong, can bring the voice of peace and a harmonious mindset from China to the world," he said. The three Pambassadors will start their tour to cities around the world that currently house pandas, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Paris and Edinburgh. The Pambassadors visited the four pandas living in the Ocean Park's Panda Village and talked to visitors about the importance of panda preservation. "I think we should all take actions to protect pandas and their habitats, otherwise our future generations can only see these lovely creatures in televisions," said He Jianming, a tourist from China's eastern Jiangxi Province, after signing his name on a poster board for the event. The four pandas living in Hong Kong - An An, Jia Jia, Ying Ying and Le Le - were given in pairs as gifts to the city, marking the second and 10th anniversary of its return to China. Pandas, also known as giant pandas, are native to China and one of the most endangered animal species in the world. About 1,600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of China's western Sichuan Province, while more than 300 live in captivity. Image Attachments Links: SOURCE Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
A new study confirms that men's minds come from Mars and women's from Venus. In an article recently published in the online journal PLoS ONE, Italian cognitive psychologist Marco Del Giudice and his collaborators compared the personality traits of men and women in a sample of over 10,000 people and found huge differences. Women scored much higher than in men in Sensitivity, Warmth, and Apprehension, while men scored higher than women in Emotional Stability, Dominance, Rule-Consciousness, and Vigilance. When many personality traits were considered simultaneously, there was only a 10% overlap between the distributions of these traits in men and women. Essentially, the study suggests that when it comes to personality men and women belong to two different species. Although many of us have long known - on the basis of personal experience - that women are generally more sensitive than men, and men are slightly more emotionally stable than women, previous studies comparing personality traits in men and women found few or no quantitative differences. Del Giudice and his collaborators argue that these previous studies didn't use an appropriate methodology. Their argument is that measuring personality at the level of the Big Five - the way it was done before - can potentially hide some important differences between the sexes because this approach lacks resolution. They suggest, instead, that in order to get the most accurate picture of sex differences, researchers need to (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five, (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors rather than observed scores; and (c) assess global differences between males and females by computing a multivariate effect size. And this is exactly what they did in the study reported in the PLoS ONE article. The personality data for this study were obtained from an existing database, in which 10,261 adults of US nationality were interviewed in 1993 to validate a particular personality questionnaire (16PF). The people in the sample were 50.1% female and 49.9% male. The sample was primarily white (77.9%), was proportionally geographically distributed, and on average, the educational level and years in education of the sample was greater than that of the US population. Personality was assessed with 15 primary scales, corresponding to the following traits: Warmth (reserved vs. warm), Emotional Stability (reactive vs. emotionally stable), Dominance (deferential vs. dominant), Liveliness (serious vs. lively), Rule-Consciousness (expedient vs. rule-conscious), Social Boldness (shy vs. socially bold), Sensitivity (utilitarian vs. sensitive), Vigilance (trusting vs. vigilant), Abstractness (grounded vs. abstracted), Privateness (forthright vs. private), Apprehension (self-assured vs. apprehensive), Openness to Change (traditional vs. open to change), Self-Reliance (group-oriented vs. self-reliant), Perfectionism (tolerates disorder vs. perfectionistic), and Tension (relaxed vs. tense). These 15 primary scales were further organized into the following 5 global scales: Extraversion (Warmth, Liveliness, Social Boldness, Privateness, and Self-Reliance), Anxiety (Emotional Stability, Vigilance, Apprehension, and Tension), Tough-Mindedness (Warmth, Sensitivity, Abstractedness, and Openness to Change), Independence (Dominance, Social Boldness, Vigilance, and Openness to Change) and Self-Control (Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, and Perfectionism. Del Giudice and collaborators used a statistical technique called multigroup latent variable modeling to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). They found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. This is an extremely large effect by any psychological standard, which suggests that the sex differences in personality are of the same magnitude as the sex differences in aggression or vocational interests. From an evolutionary perspective, large differences in personality between the sexes make perfect sense. Divergent sexual selection pressures on men and women are expected to produce substantial differences in personality traits that influence mating and reproductive strategies. For example, sexual promiscuity is predicted by extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism (especially in women), positive schizotypy, and the ''dark triad'' traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). Negative predictors of promiscuity and short- term mating include agreeableness, conscientiousness, honesty, and autistic-like traits. Relationship instability is associated with extraversion, neuroticism, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness. In addition to their direct influences on predispositions for sexual promiscuity and relationship instability or sexual monogamy and parental investment, personality traits may also influence competitive tendencies such as status-seeking and risk-taking. Del Giudice and colleagues conclude that from an evolutionary perspective personality traits are clearly not neutral with respect to sexual selection. "Instead, there are grounds to expect robust and wide-ranging sex differences in this area, resulting in strongly sexually differentiated patterns of emotion, thought, and behavior - as if there were two human natures." If you like this blog, you might like to buy my book Games Primates Play FOLLOW ME on Twitter! Del Giudice, M., Booth, T., and Irwing, P. (2012). The distance between Mars and Venus: Measuring global sex differences in personality. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29265.
If you are hosting a luncheon and soup will be served, include a soup bowl in your place setting. Whether your luncheon is casual or formal, the basic setting is the same. A casual setting includes mostly the same dinnerware as a formal setting, and it is arranged in the same manner. If your luncheon is informal, feel free to choose a variety of colors and patterns to add a bit of your personality to the table. Positions of Dinnerware The proper placement of your dinnerware is important. If you are using a placemat, position it on the table so that it centers the chair. The plate is then placed squarely in the center of the placemat. If a placemat is not used, set the plate two inches from the edge of the table, ensuring it is placed on the table so that it centers the chair. Place your soup bowl on top of the plate. If you are serving salad, position the salad plate to the left of the plate and slightly above it, leaving adequate room for your silverware. For informal luncheons, choose plates and bowls of contrasting colors or patterns to add a lively touch to your table setting. Proper Placement of Silverware The dinner fork is placed on the left side of the plate with the tip of the handle aligned with the bottom edge of the plate and the tines pointing away from the table edge. If you are serving a salad or dessert with the meal, place a second fork on the left of the dinner fork. If you are using a salad plate and it is not properly positioned above the forks and near the plate, move it to its proper position. A knife is placed on the right side of the plate with the tip of its handle in alignment with the bottom edge of the plate. Ensure the blade is facing the plate, as it is considered impolite for the blade to face the next diner. A soup spoon is placed to the right of the knife with the tip of its handle aligned with the tip of the knife. Tumblers and Stemware It is perfectly acceptable to use tumblers and stemware together in a place setting. Tumblers are placed above the spoon. If you are using a stemmed glass, place it beside or behind the tumbler. If you are using more than two glasses, the glasses are often arranged in a triangle above the spoon, but there is no particular way to arrange the glasses. When a water glass is used, place it where it is most convenient for the guest as this is often the frequently used glass. Napkins and Salt-and-Pepper Shakers Napkins are traditionally placed to the left of the forks on the left side of the plate or on the plate. A setting that includes a bowl for soup does not allow you to place the napkin on the plate. It is acceptable to arrange the napkin inside stemware in an attractive manner. Use brightly colored napkins to add flair to your table settings. Always place your salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table so they are convenient for all guests. - Goodshoot/Goodshoot/Getty Images
The rapid economic growth and population expansion of Cambodian and Vietnam presents opportunities for impacting the livelihood of many people, where horticulture remains an important undeveloped business sector supported by small farmers. This team's goal is to empower small-scale farmers (59% of whom are women) with integrated experiential education and training for sustainable vegetable production that limits postharvest losses, increases food safety, increases market access and, importantly, increases income. The project team designed a participatory approach to meet these goals by networking experts in horticulture production through marketing. Including stakeholders of farmer communes, regional universities, local governments and national communications companies provides continuity needed for continuation of farmer outreach training and education beyond the lifetime of project funding. The successful completion of the project in Vietnam will serve as a model for implementation of the participatory action network in other, more challenging, countries like Cambodia and Laos with similar, but less developed, horticulture business sectors. Completion of this project will address essential capacity-building needs of Cambodia including an assessment of capabilities, research training, outreach development and promotion of communication between policy makers, universities and the agribusiness community. One extension of this project will work with savings groups in Cambodia that will be trained in financial literacy and cell phone-related savings technology. The savings and lending groups will also be introduced to improved horticultural technologies investigated by other Horticulture Innovation Lab projects and provided with the opportunity to invest in these technologies. The project team will collect data on the demand and use of these technologies in rural farming systems. This model will enable information to flow in two directions, as farmers and savings groups gain access to “leapfrog technologies,” and the Horticulture Innovation Lab learns how rural farmers in Cambodia reinvent new technologies to accommodate local, on-the-ground realities. This project will also help determine which horticulture technologies are in demand among Cambodian farmers, and what specific conditions create demand for these technologies.
This is a second in a two-part series on Housing Market Realities. Please click here to read part I- Fourth, there is the distinction between want and need. People need housing, as they need food and clothing. These are not optional choices that can be foregone in favour of other spending preferences. Housing is not an optional choice because there is no product that can be substituted for it. If I don’t like the price for a particular fruit at the grocery store, I have the option of choosing a different fruit, or buying no fruit at all. This is not the case with housing. There is no product that can substitute for it. These realities create a supply and demand gap for low-income households. Housing demand is based on ability to pay. If a would-be renter cannot pay for housing at the price for which offered there is no effective demand. The need of low-income households for housing is undiminished but it is not supported by purchasing power: the market cannot supply rental housing at a price low-income households can afford. This is the gap that the free market cannot bridge. Meanwhile, everyone needs suitable housing that they can afford. Thus the price of rental housing cannot simply be left to open market conditions because to recap, housing is not an optional commodity that people can do without. Everyone needs housing. The rental housing supply is inelastic in the short and medium term; increased demand will not alter the supply of purpose-built rental housing, but will raise its price. There are no products that can be purchased instead of housing that will meet shelter needs. And finally, the affordable housing needs of low-income (and even moderate-income households in many markets) cannot be met through free-market supply and demand. Overcoming the supply and demand gap First, consider the regulatory technique of rent control. Rent controls exist in many jurisdictions, with landlords, in many but not all cases, being subject to government-determined maximum rent increases. Rent controls are favoured by tenant rights organizations and activists. It can be argued, however, that rent controls are in fact counter-productive because they provide a disincentive for investors to expand the stock of private rental housing or even to repair and maintain existing properties to an adequate standard. And landlords can be exempted from rent controls in many different ways, such as under new tenancies or when renovations are carried out. They are a flawed system of controlling rent levels in the residential tenancy market. So if the private rental market cannot on its own supply housing to low-income households at a price they can afford, and with rent controls offering a inadequate solution at best, what is the policy answer for low-income households? There are three complimentary policy solutions for government which taken together can in large measure address the housing affordability crisis facing Canada. (A fourth and equally important housing policy goal must be to launch a Canada-wide initiative to end homelessness. This is not addressed in detail here only because the present focus is on affordability for Canadians who are already housed.) First, there is the question of addressing the situation facing co‑operative, non-profit and public housing – the stock of existing community housing in Canada – that has been supported by government assistance programs. The total stock housing of this housing amounts to some 630,000 homes, of which 200,000 house low-income households that have depended on government financial assistance to pay rent. The programs that have provided this support are ending. Unless they are replaced, which can be most effectively achieved through multilateral government cost-sharing programs, Canada runs the real risk of losing existing housing affordability even as we explore policy intitatives to add other affordable housing options. This is a critical and urgent matter. It would be illogical to say the least not to address it, given the cost effectiveness of continuing to support affordability in stock we already have. For tenants in the private market without any immediate prospect of getting into existing affordable social housing, the most effective, immediate and comprehensive solution is a government system of portable housing benefit that is paid directly to households according to their incomes. Paying the benefit to the tenant and not the landlord reduces the risk of inflation in the rental market because a landlord need not be aware that a tenant is receiving the benefit. Inflation risk can be further mitigated if the benefit is only provided to assist the tenant up to a median market rent, based on an appropriate unit size for the household, and not up to the actual rent charged by a landlord if that rent is above the market median. Allowing the benefit to be portable, to go where the tenant goes rather than being tied to a particular housing unit, as has been the case with most low-income rent subsidies in Canada, would be a real step forward in allowing mobility, whether to a job opportunity, a more suitable location or for reasons of personal safety. A Housing Benefit has been in place in the UK for decades and it has worked well. Introducing a housing benefit will not on its own address Canada’s housing challenges without a supply-side solution. Here lies the third policy solution There is an opportunty for government to stimulate growth in the supply of purpose-built rental housing, both in the private and social rental markets. New financing and equity models are needed to attract private capital to the development of new rental stock, thus allowing supply to come into a better balance with demand over time. This approach should encompass both the the social and private rental sectors. The latter has generated significant growth in Canada’s rental stock when government incentive programs have been available in the past. Private market actors should not be excluded if new supply programs are to have maximum impact on rental stock expansion. But as we noted earlier, the supply of rental housing is inelastic in the shorter term – it can take years for development incentive programs to deliver new housing. Hence the critical need for the more immediate solutions of replacing community housing rental assistamce programs and launching a comprehensive housing benefit program will lift hundreds of thousands of Canadians out of housing poverty in very short order. Government should not delay the introduction of either of these measures. The argument has been made that state rental subsidies single out low-income households for favoured treatment at taxpayers’ expense. This is not reasonable. The labour market conditions that create income disparity in the first place disfavour the same households. And because our income-tax system is progressive, the taxpayer “burden” of a housing benefit, if it can be called that, is borne to a greater degree by those taxpayers who are favoured in the economy through higher incomes.
This letter to the editor, written in 1986 by my dad’s friend and fellow Bravo Company “Sky Trooper,” sadly still resonates today. Below are excerpts of that letter. “Vietnam veterans and nation still recovering” Last week this letter came to me in the mail. And, though it was addressed to me, clearly it was written to you, too – to all of us. So I wanted you to see it: “I have been following [this] column on the situation of the Vietnam veteran. It is encouraging to know that there are a few who still consider his plight. “The Vietnam vets I’m in contact with are in one stage or another of turning their lives around. They’re trying to get on with it. These stages have been fairly common to us all. We were confused, as we tried to fit ourselves back into a world that had drastically changed for us. We denied any war-related problems as the first inklings of unusual behavior or attitudes appeared in us. “Ultimately we were forced to recognize the problem – and this was rough – when our images of ourselves and others could not for an instant longer be supported by our inner feelings. Then came delayed grief, depression and anxiety, intermixed with bitterness, rage and fear as each of us tried to place blame on whomever we considered the cause of our problem. “And then the final stage – and this one the toughest of all: forgiving those who ravaged our young lives, for they knew not what they did. And perhaps still don’t know. “ These stages aren’t this smooth of orderly, of course. They intermingle, collide, and a guy might regress a little if some citizen irritably calls his attention to some petty peacetime rule, while the vet remembers how he was ordered to brutally break some very major human rules to keep this same citizen safe. But the vet moves on… “I, myself, I think, am edging toward this last stage. I am beginning to view the Vietnam war as something other than the preconceived atrocity that I was assuming it to be. I am starting to see it as, perhaps, the social equivalent to a ‘Black Hole’ in outer space – an all-encompassing negative energy, anti-everything that sustains life, and not understandable in and of itself. Who do you blame for a “Black Hole’ in space? Nobody. Period. You accept it. “And, yet, something is still awry. “The veteran was the most obviously damaged by this ‘Black Hole’ event in American history. But the Vietnam war hurt us all. “The veteran feels all to acutely the emptiness of spirit this has left in him. He wonders why this burden continues to remain his alone. But it may not. “Perhaps, as a society, we all carry the load.” This letter, published Wednesday, November 12, 1986, was written by Bill Hardin to The Daily News columnist Phyllis Miletich.
148f77 Color Code 148f77 color RGB value is (20, 143, 119). This hex color code is also a web safe color which is equal to #148f77. 148f77 hex color red value is 20, green value is 143 and the blue value of its RGB is 119. Cylindrical-coordinate representations (also known as HSL) of color 148f77 hue: 0.47, saturation: 0.64 and the lightness value of 148f77 is 0.32.
Drop sets are an exercise intensity buildup technique that are incorporated in one's routine when he or she is short on time. For those undergoing the rather tedious task of muscle buildup, slacking off is not an option especially if you are expecting results. In order to maintain a good training volume you must be willing to spend a good portion of your spare time in the gym. However, many times we do not have that kind of time on our hands. That is where drop sets come into the picture. Essentially, a drop set is executed by taking a workout to transitory muscular failure after which the load is decreased and then made to hit failure again. The concept behind this practice is to increase greater muscular fatigue that in turn results in more muscular growth. Multiple drop sets enable the lifter to increase his or her time under tension, ischemia, and metabolic stress and total volume in a reduced amount of time as opposed to the time it would take them to complete their regular workout sets. Studies have approved the use of drop sets when the eventual goal is to achieve muscle hypertrophy. These researches studied lifters who employed drop sets in the gym and exhibited good results by spending less than half the amount of time spent by their normal set practicing counterparts. The two groups studied were instructed to follow the same training volume however; the group that incorporated drop sets in their workout revealed twice the amount of muscular growth in just over 6 weeks. This proved that spending a limited amount of time in the gym has nothing to do with the amount of muscular gain. While studies show exceptional results with the use of drop sets, there is no denying the possibility of contracted revenues because pushing a muscle to failure several times during one exercise and then forcing it to go through the same stress a few days later may lead to overstraining of the muscle, reduced recovery as well as neuromuscular problems. The best way to go about drop sets is to use them tactically over the course of the week by performing a set with several drops on a muscle group no more than twice or thrice a week. Weight selector machines are ideal because a fixed ROM will help you maintain your form without the risk of sustaining injuries due to muscle fatigue and boosts recovery time. Opt for isolation movements when performing drop sets as opposed to compound movements because isolation movements exhaust your targeted muscle down to the fiber. Drop sets are the closest thing to a substitute of traditional intense straight set training because they tend to come in handy when you are at a time crunch or if you are looking to increase your muscle volume without having to slave for hours and hours. We would really like to here from you. Please leave your comment below.
ImpactAlpha, April 11 – More than 300,000 private schools in India serve 80 million students, the majority of them poor. Many parents perceive these low-fee schools to be of higher quality than the country’s public schools, and enrollment is rising. But difficulties in finding financing “puts quality at risk,” according to the Omidyar Network. Varthana, a Bangalore-based financial institution, provides loans to affordable private schools to build or rehabilitate facilities, purchase classroom resources and train teachers. The company works with schools to develop quality improvement plans and offers financial incentives to schools to achieve their improvement goals. Varthana says it supports more than 3,500 schools serving 2.5 million students. - Impact investors… Omidyar Network, which has been an investor in Varthana since 2014, joined the company’s recent Series C funding, along with Elevar Equity, LGT Impact and Kaizen Private Equity. - Commercial capital… Significantly, the round was led by ChrysCapital, an Indian private equity firm, signaling the availability of more capital for education financing. “We are humbled that [ChrysCapital] are as convinced as we are about Varthana’s potential to have a significant, positive impact on the Indian education ecosystem,” Varthana’s founders said in a statement.
– Congratulations Charlottesville, Virginia! The First City to Pass Anti-Drone Legislation (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Feb 5, 2013): This simple piece of legislation proves that you can make a difference at the local level. We need a lot more of this type of thing all over these United States. As I have said many times, it’s not that I am against drones in all capacities; however, we must be vigilant about how these things are used and must have serious safeguards in place to protect civil liberties. Kudos to the Rutherford Institute for leading the charge here. From US News: Charlottesville, Va., has become the first city in the United States to formally pass an anti-drone resolution. The resolution passed by a 3-2 vote and was brought to the city council by activist David Swanson and the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group based in the city. The measure also endorses a proposed two-year moratorium on drones in Virginia. Councilmember Dede Smith, who voted in favor of the bill, says that drones are “pretty clearly a threat to our constitutional right to privacy.” “If we don’t get out ahead of it to establish some guidelines for how drones are used, they will be used in a very invasive way and we’ll be left to try and pick up the pieces,” she says. “With a lot of these resolutions, although they don’t have a lot of teeth to them, they can inspire other governments to pass similar measures,” she says. “You can get a critical mass and then it does have influence. One doesn’t do much, but a thousand of them might. We want this on [federal and state lawmakers’] radars.” Full article here.
As many of you know, in spring 2015 we ran an altered version of our very successful project “Mechanical MOOC”. At the heart of this MOOC we offered a course titled A Gentle Introduction to Python. It is a six week course offering exercises and learning materials from MIT OCW’s course combined with Codecademy exercises that were carefully incorporated into the curriculum of the course. This time around we tried to answer some of the deeper learning hypothesis in particular how to grow academic mindsets during a MOOC. If you are saying: “OK, but what exactly does that mean?”, here it comes. According to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s research, when learning one needs to increase the sense of the following in order to achieve that deeper learning: - I belong in this academic community (Belonging) - I can succeed at this (Self-efficacy) - My ability and competence grow with my effort (Growth mindset) - This work has value for me (Relevance) There were a few things that we changed on the course in comparison to previous iterations in order to increase deeper learning of people who took this course, such as: - Location – When learners signed up, we introduced them to a global map where each of the learners could set their own location. This way people had a sense that they are a part of global community and also get the feeling of the existence of the fellow co-learners in their local vicinities. - Introductions – To increase the sense of belonging in the course community we asked learners to introduce themselves to others and share their stories about why they want to learn about programming with Python. - Working on a project – Continuation is nice, so we also extended the curriculum of the course for learning to happen through work on a project and this left learners with a nice game of Tetris in the end. - Community -We made it our business to constantly remind learners to support each other through community space that was opened for them. Each of the learner received two emails per week into their inbox. One informed them of the materials for that particular week and other encouraged them to seek and give support to each other in various ways. - Finding out the interesting stuff about the topic you learn – One of the ways of connecting with each other was invitation to search and share for programs that were built with the language they are learning. They were asked to share a Python project that they know of or they could find on the internet and are at least a bit familiar with it prior to taking this course. We called this activity a Python Safari. - Goals – One way to achieve a goal is to break it into few micro goals and then slowly take one by one. With this in mind we asked learners to do this, share their goals for a week with others and then speak to each other about the goals and the ways to achieve them. - Failing party – As long as there is learning, there will always be failing too and we made sure that learners knew that failing is part of learning process and we need to celebrate it just the same. We introduced an activity called a Fail Party for this reason. In this activity we invited them to share about their fail and talk about why they think they are failing P2P done F2F Historically we have been advocates for online learning, but per our name we have also been strong advocates for peer learning. As our strategy says we wish to teach people to get the most out of their time studying in order to really learn and improve their lives. What better way of achieving that, then to do a great online course together with peers in a study group, or as we like to call it, Learning Circle? For this course we invited everyone to try and find folks near them, who want to learn Python as well and organize their own Learning Circle. We provided some guidelines for everyone on how to do that. In the end 3 Learning Circles happened during the course(that we are aware of!). Places where they were held were: - Chicago Public Library, Chicago, USA, facilitated by Emily who is a cybernavigator in Chicago Public Library - Cape Town, South Africa facilitated by Hamish who runs the IT department for the Observatory in Cape Town - Ljubljana, Slovenia, facilitated by Erika our professional software developer and her friends from the Codecatz group Three different continents! That is pretty sweet. The facilitators of these Learning Circles couldn’t be more different to each other. Hamish and Erika were well-versed in computer science but Emily had no experience and knowledge about programming from before. All of their experiences with facilitation of the Learning Circle was interesting, but one difference really stood out: While Emily wished she would know more about programming and be able to help learners more, Erika wished she would know less about it, so other participants in the Learning Circle would not look her way every time a hurdle needed to be jumped over. To support each other more. We found that a lot of the time learners are reserved about helping one another when they feel that their level of knowledge is not up to par. That happens especially, when there is an expert in the room. The fear of being judged and being wrong is always present. With that experience it is safe to say that a little bit of facilitator’s knowledge about the topic is a good thing, but a lot of knowledge is not so much. Midway through the course we organized a facilitator’s meeting, where all of the facilitators could share experiences from their group and ask for advice, if they needed some realignment. This meeting provided a lot of insight into what are the expectations of learners coming to the Learning Circles.It was very productive gathering for us, as we also got a lot of feedback from facilitators on the structure of the course and in particular got direct information about experiences of the course takers. For that reason we didn’t want to leave out the people who could not join face to face Learning Circles, so we also invited Glenn Richards, who is a champion of the online community. He was ever so helpful for his fellow learners, with the course content or just sparking up the conversations about it. In the future we hope to meet many more Glenns! It seems that very traditional way of learning, where there is a teacher in the middle of the process, is deeply rooted in our society, however as a cognitive beings, we are very quick to embrace different ways of learning as for example peer learning. Peer learning FTW!
NGO representatives at the Asia Pacific regional SAICM meeting in Kuala Lumpur Numerous IPEN Participating Organization representatives attended the 4th Asia-Pacific regional meeting on the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and related workshops, which occured from 23 - 27 March in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting and workshops were preceded by a South East Asian sub-regional wokshop in support of the ratification and early implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The SAICM meeting covered issues such as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), lead in paint, nanotechnology, highly hazardous pesticides and other subjects in the SAICM. This week at the 5th African regional meeting on the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and related workshops in Pretoria, South Africa, Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement (CREPD) from Cameroon received the award for "Outstanding Quick Start Programme project in Africa" for their project on lead in paint.
Design of LDPC codes for BP algorithm with channel estimation error When belief propagation (BP) algorithm is used to decode low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the binary input additive white Gaussian noise (BIA WGN) channel, the knowledge of the channel noise power is necessary for the algorithm to achieve its predicted performance. If the noise power is estimated erroneously, we refer to this as "signal to noise ratio (SNR) mismatch". In this paper, irregular LDPC codes are designed that perform better (have a lower SNR threshold) in the presence of mismatch compared to conventionally designed irregular LDPC codes that are optimized for zero mismatch. It is shown that with a negligible performance loss at zero mismatch, highly irregular codes that are more robust against mismatch can be designed. A method to generate EXIT curves in the presence of mismatch is proposed that will be used to design such irregular codes. Finite block length simulation results are provided to confirm the asymptotic analysis results. \|Conference\|\|6th International ITG-Conference on Source and Channel Coding and 2006 4th International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Related Topics, TURBOCODING 2006\| Saeedi, H. (Hamid), & Banihashemi, A. (2006). Design of LDPC codes for BP algorithm with channel estimation error. In Turbo Codes and Related Topics; 6th International ITG-Conference on Source and Channel Coding (TURBOCODING), 2006 4th International Symposium on.
Laplace-domain approximation to the transfer functions of a rotor blade in forward flight A continuous frequency domain method with roots on the classic Hill's determinant analysis is presented to approximate the time-varying characteristics of a linear periodic system. The method is particularly useful to derive a time-invariant equivalent form of the time-varying aeroelastic problem of a rotor blade in forward flight. The proposed technique allows methodology usually employed in fixed wing aircraft to obtain closed-loop control laws be extended to rotary wings. The method is first validated solving Mathieu's equation. Next, the two-degree-of-freedom (flap bending and torsion) problem of rotating beam subject to unsteady and incompressible aerodynamics in forward flight is solved in the laplace domain. As a demonstration of the proposed method, the transfer functions in the 's' plane between a sudden and uniformly distributed input pressure perturbation applied along the beam and the output response of the two elastic degrees of freedom considered are obtained at a set of local sections. Nitzsche, F. (2001). Laplace-domain approximation to the transfer functions of a rotor blade in forward flight.
- Poster presentation - Open Access Evaluation of RV and LV mass by CMR and comparison to recipient heart following heart transplant; the first-ever CMR human autopsy study © Reddy et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 - Published: 16 January 2014 - Heart Transplant Recipient - Orthotopic Heart Transplantation - Explanted Heart - Cardiac Transplant Patient - Recipient Heart CMR is considered the 'gold standard' for non-invasive LV and RV mass quantitation. To our knowledge, this information is solely based on GRE sequences, with its dependence on flow conditions having never been prospectively or retrospectively validated in humans undermining its credibility. SSFP, with intrinsic contrast dependent on T1/T2 characteristics, offers superior image contrast between blood and myocardium and might redefine the CMR gold standard for cardiac mass. Herein we validate an SSFP approach using explanted hearts obtained from heart transplant recipients. To establish a correlation between SSFP-CMR derived LV and RV mass vs. autopsy mass of ex vivo hearts from cardiac transplant patients. Over 3 years, 48 explantations were obtained immediately upon orthotopic heart transplantation from the OR. They were quickly cleaned, prepared (removal of PM/AICDs and/or LV/RVADs), suspended in a saline-filled container and scanned ex vivo via SSFP-SA slices definingCMR LV/RV mass (g). Using a readily available automatic thresholding program, segmentation of the slices was achieved in combination with manual trimming (ATMT) of the extraneous tissue using a 3D model by an independent and blinded reader (implemented on a 1.5 GE, Milwaukee, WI). The explanted hearts were dissected with ventricles surgically separated at the inter-ventricular septum. The weight of the total including papillary and trabecular myocardium for the LV and RV was measured using a high-fidelity scale. Correlation between the 3D CMR method and pathology were performed along with Bland-Altman plots. SSFP-CMR accurately determines total myocardial, LV and RV masses as compared to weighed explanted hearts, despite variable surgical removal of instrumentation (LVAD/RVAD, AICDs and often apical core removals). Thus, while GRE was the original 'gold standard' for LV mass, SSFP despite its universal acceptance as the 'de facto gold standard is now formally validated in a first-ever human autopsy study. Further, the regression equation now includes, not excludes papillary and trabecular mass supporting that our Society should now incorporate both into standard cardiac measurements. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Publishers are spending millions revamping journal websites. What were formerly simple portals where you accessed articles are being radically redesigned as online content delivery platforms. As the website for the JAMA Network of journals announced late last year: We have aimed to make the platform more usable, discoverable, and faster on any device. In case you haven’t noticed, many journals no longer publish articles on paper, which are bound in journals and stored on library shelves. Many journals still preserve the appearance of publishing articles organized in “issues” scheduled on particular dates. But articles no longer have to wait being organized in an issue. They now typically appear as quickly as possible as “early views.” [There is a sneaky trick here. Journal impact factors are supposedly calculated based on the number of citations articles receive within two years of publishing. But Web of Science starts the two-year window from what is an increasingly artificial date of publication. Journals can exploit early views to get citations coming before that publication date. Journal impact factors can be manipulated with lots of early view articles available months before being assigned an issue and page numbers.] You can still download old-fashioned PDFs resembling the pages of paper journals, but PDFs no longer must be papercentric, modeled after what was printed on dead trees and bound in volumes. Online enhanced content delivery platforms increasingly offer enhanced PDFs. As described by Wiley – Whilst keeping the clear layout and simple design of the standard PDF, PDFs opened in the ReadCube Enhanced PDF format, feature hyperlinked in-line citations and clickable author details, allowing quick look up and cross reference. Supplementary information, figures and other valuable article data, are always just a click away, making it easier for researchers to discover, access and interact with our scientific literature. Integrated social sharing and social metrics data are also available from Altmetric, connecting our articles in new, innovative ways. Wiley, like other for-profit publishers capitalizes on enhanced PDFs to make money in new ways, by providing: More flexible options for “Pay-Per-View” journal article access, replacing our existing PPV service for individual users with affordable rental, cloud and PDF download options, ensuring we give users a range of options in how they view and access that content. Particularly with publishers of medical journals like the American Medical Association, you may have noticed that email alerts have for a while had links for temporary free access to articles. However, when the links take you to the online platform, you find that you can’t download the PDFs without paying a fee, but must read them in the ReadCube or other enhanced PDF platform. Scientific publishing is is also digitalized, with journals no longer accepting submissions by snail mail, but requiring that submissions be uploaded through portals like ScholarOne. Digitalization also means that access to articles can be monitored, with readers, individually and collectively, put under surveillance concerning their viewing habits. Once harvested , these data become extremely valuable in guiding decision-making. Big data also provide instant feedback about what topics and what specific articles are getting attention and can even be used to make judgments about how successful particular authors in drawing traffic to their website. In the process of converting to online content delivery platforms, publishers have followed the lead of Amazon, Netflix and Uber. Sometimes hiring programmers from these organizations , publishers have created algorithms to collect and process big data to personalize what is being offered to readers accessing their websites. You may have noticed that when you access an article, it is accompanied by recommendations about other articles that may interest you. Yup, journals are evaluating topics and authors in terms of their ability to draw traffic to their websites, keep visitors at their websites and coming back. In authors’ cover letters accompanying submissions, it has become strategic to inform the editor how specifically acceptance of your manuscript would serve this aim of the journal. Authors might do well to cite altmetrics of their last paper published in a journal: We are submitting our manuscript [title] to your journal because of the extraordinary altmetrics achieved by our last paper published there. Depending on the value editors attach to your submission, journals may expect you to collaborate with them in increasing traffic to their website, once your manuscript is accepted. For papers promising to be particularly successful, the journals may expect you to provide press releases; write additional shorter, more engaging abstracts; and even prepare audio and video presentations and especially podcast interviews. Over the coming months, I will be writing a series of blog posts about these huge changes in scientific publishing. I’ll also be making available free videos about the opportunities and challenges these transformations mean for you as an author. This summer I will be releasing a web-based course of five, one hour videos entitled How to Write High Impact Papers: a Strategic Approach. I’ll still be offering live workshops, such as at the European Health Psychology Conference in Padova at the end of August, but I am seeking to reach a broader audience by going to the web. The videos will be in English, but they will have subtitles in a variety of other languages, as well as English. You can sign up now for email alerts about my blogs, web-based courses, and e=books at @CoyneoftheRealm.com. But for now, I will simply point to the temptations that the aims of these online content delivery platforms pose for authors. Editors seek manuscripts with newsworthy, attention-grabbing story lines, not just another brick in the wall. They want claims of –God save us- paradigm-changing findings. They are less concerned what is robust and enduring, but in what draws in traffic to their platforms. Yet, so much well executed and transparently reported science does not fit this picture. Are you tempted to make your manuscript attractive in these terms, even if you have to get flexible in what data you report and how you analyze and interpret these data? Basically, publishers are transforming their websites based on big data that suggests that if they going to maximize the success and profit, they must adapt to new readers. These readers are being profoundly changed by mobile devices and the internet. Their behavior has been shaped by their experience with social media and digital devices. The new wave of readers is accustomed to ordering pizzas and Uber cars easily and to being guided by the ratings of other uses of these services. They expect similar experiences accessing scientific articles. I don’t think we can ignore all this and still get the best benefit in reading and writing scientific papers. The old ways of doing things are working less and less well. Are you gearing your manuscripts and cover letters to the new wave of readers that publishers want to attract to their platforms and keep coming?
It’s the very first thing I wrote down in my notebook. Act as if. How exactly was I supposed to do that? Surely the trainer was going to reveal the secret during our first day of leadership training. Instead she took us on a year-long journey that started with THINK AS IF …led to ACT AS IF…and ultimately became the way things are. (or in progress of becoming.) What is leading? It’s knowing when to talk and when to listen. It’s knowing when to lead and when to follow. It’s motivating people to do good work. It’s about having outstanding interpersonal skills. And staying focused on business outcomes. Always. It’s all of that and so much more. As I wrote down “Act as if” in my notebook I realized that some of the simplest lessons would be the hardest to apply. How to say yes “No!” It’s the hallmark of my 3 year olds vocabulary. It’s easy to say. It’s definitive. It leaves no room for speculation. Sometimes it’s necessary to say no at work. But falling into the trap of only 2 answers — “yes” or “no” – is very limiting. There are so many possibilities between yes and no. Learning to say “yes” (even with caveats and boundaries) opens up a dialogue that leads to creative solutions. Today I say YES more often. How to make a better first impression My dad taught me early on that a firm handshake and eye contact are the ways to make a good first impression. I mastered those when I was 10. Standing in front of 30 women, I learned to take it up a notch. To convey warmth instead of perkiness. To control the inflection of my voice. To stand tall despite being 5’2” (and a half!). Today I make a better first impression. Though I am still working on “Good morning” (inside joke for BL18!) Ask…for what I want This is so.unbelievably.difficult. Asking for what I want means (a) knowing exactly what it is I actually want (b) articulating what I want in a way my audience (manager, co-workers, team) will hear and act on (c) demonstrating the benefits of my request. One of my mentors explained “showing your value doesn’t mean talking the most. Or the loudest. (I am fairly certain she would cringe at some of the meetings I attend). She told me to ask more questions. Offer less answers. And BE QUIET. Ask…how I can help Give me a problem. I want to solve it. NOW. One of my mentors politely asked me, “does your team ask you to solve their problems?” “Is your team capable of solving problems?” “Start by asking how you can help. It’s more effective than solving every problem”. Huh. I discovered this applies to my kids too. Today — every day — I ask. I ask questions. I ask for what I want. What my team wants. I simply put out my questions, pause, and wait for the answer. The power of the pause I admit the first time I heard about the “power of the pause” I broke out into Vanilla Ice lyrics…stop. collaborate and listen… But really? Sometimes silence is exactly what’s needed to get unstuck. My normal pace is to respond (react?) immediately to everything. Pausing gives me the luxury of saying the right thing at the right time (I cannot claim to always get this right). Sometimes in that pause I even manage to think up some good questions. Today I take a deep breath and pause. Have I mentioned that I think every problem is mine to solve? A big-huge-slap-in-the-face lesson I learned is that sometimes a battle is not worth fighting. I have to strategically choose when to collaborate, when to compromise, and when to avoid. Today I make better choices that lead to better outcomes. What got you here won’t get you there All those things that led to my current success? They aren’t the things that will necessarily lead to my next success. And that brings us right back to… Act as if In a year I made things possible that I couldn’t imagine when I started this journey. I put life-changing tools in my toolbox and learned how — and when — to use them. I stopped acting and started being the person I set out to be one year ago. Today I lead. And people follow! Like this blog? Follow me on twitter.
Purchase this article with an account. Brad Kempster, Claudia Gonzalez; Left hemisphere advantage in the visual processing of graspable objects. Journal of Vision 2011;11(11):830. doi: 10.1167/11.11.830. Download citation file: © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present) n a series of grasping studies using visual illusions we showed that regardless of handedness, right hand but not left hand grip apertures are accurately scaled to the size of an object. Grip apertures in the left hand, reflected the perceived (illusory) and not the real size of the target (Gonzalez et al., 2006, 2008). We advanced the hypothesis that the left hemisphere is specialized for visually-guided grasping and that this specialization was independent of handedness. Grasping requires the integration of a visual and a motor component, however. Here we investigate if there are hemispheric asymmetries in encoding visual properties of objects that could later explain the left hemisphere/right hand advantages in visually-guided grasping. We presented pictures of graspable objects, defined as objects that could be picked up with one hand (e.g. coin, apple, etc) and non-graspable objects, defined as tangible objects that could not be picked up with one hand (i.e. car, piano, etc) selectively to the right (RVF) or left (LVF) visual fields. Graspable/non-graspable objects and RVF/LVF presentation were randomized over the trials. Right- and left-handed participants quickly pressed a button with the index finger if the object on the screen was of a graspable object and pressed a different button with the middle finger if it was of a non-graspable object. Responding fingers and starting hands were counterbalanced among participants. Overall, reaction times were shorter for graspable objects than for non-graspable objects. Furthermore, there was a RVF (left hemisphere) advantage (shorter reaction times) but only for graspable objects. No visual field difference was detected for non-graspable objects. These findings were the same for right and left-handers. The results strongly suggest that the processing of graspable objects regardless of handedness is more efficient in the left hemisphere and this might help explain asymmetries in visually-guided grasping. This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

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