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Now from a cross-border crisis to Germany's internal struggles with extremism. Human rights groups say that over the past two decades, more than 180 people have been killed in right-wing attacks. And the country's interior minister says that xenophobia and neo-Nazism are on the rise. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, German authorities are sounding the alarm.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: The spread of neo-Nazi influence in Germany came to light fully last year with the shocking discovery of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell responsible for the worst right-wing violence since World War II: the murders of at least nine people of migrant origin as well as bomb attacks and bank robberies.
In response, Germany, last month, established the first centralized neo-Nazi database, similar to those that existed for decades for Islamic and leftist extremists. Germans have been stunned that despite six decades of required anti-Nazi teaching in schools, right-wing extremism is still attracting recruits. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has warned that neo-Nazis are knowingly infiltrating civil society to achieve their goals.
Schoneweide, a suburb in southeast Berlin, is considered an ultra-right-wing stronghold. A visit here on a rainy Saturday afternoon is like a trip back in time to the bleak period of communist East Germany - dreary, closed shops and glum expressions on the few people out on streets. The Executioner, a bar frequented by known neo-Nazis, opens only in the evening. Its window panes are thick and impossible to see through. A young man walking his dog looks at the shuttered door fearfully.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking foreign language)
POGGIOLI: I'd never go in there, he says, or over there, as he points us further down the street and moves quickly away. A block down, we find a shop named for a violent explosive, Hexogen. It sells batons, knives and clothes with neo-Nazi codes such as 88, for Heil Hitler - the letter H being eighth in the alphabet. Daniel Koehler, a researcher at Exit, an association that helps former right-wing extremists return to mainstream society, says the neo-Nazi goal is to create so-called national liberated areas.
DANIEL KOEHLER: As a movement, they try to concentrate. They try to set up a social infrastructure. We even have parts in Berlin where they would control whole streets. They have their own bars. They have their own supermarkets. They have their own bookstores. So this is a strategic concept.
POGGIOLI: The ultra-right has been particularly successful in former East Germany, where 22 years after unification, unemployment is almost twice as high as in the West. The NPD, the National Democratic Party, which glorifies the Third Reich, has won seats in two regional parliaments and numerous municipalities. They organize sports events, music concerts, summer festivals and run youth clubs. But the right-wing movement, Koehler says, is fluid and dynamic and present all over Germany. The NPD, which like other parties with local deputies, receives government funding, is the focal point.
KOEHLER: The NPD provides an umbrella. They provide space to meet, to talk, to interact, to network.
POGGIOLI: After last year's discovery of the neo-Nazi terrorist cell, several officials, including the head of the domestic intelligence agency, had to step down. And just last week, two paid police informers were arrested on charges of having supplied the terror cell with weapons and explosives. The revelations caused huge embarrassment among the police and the media, which had long dismissed the murders as intra-immigrant vendetta killings, codenamed Operation Bosporus, after the strait that marks the boundary between Europe and Turkey. Commentator Stephan Kuzmany says that name alone speaks volumes.
STEPHAN KUZMANY: The thought that they are committing those crimes between each other is much easier thought than the thought that Germans who hates foreigners would do that.
POGGIOLI: At a cafe in Kreuzburg, perhaps Berlin's most multicultural district, a large crowd has turned up for a panel discussion on the ultra-right-wing movement. One speaker notes the 180 racially motivated murders in Germany since reunification. Another participant points to intelligence statistics saying there are now 20 to 30,000 hardcore, ultra-right militants ready to use violence at any moment. A third panelist stresses that numerous recent polls show that one-third of Germans say the country would be better off without foreigners. Twenty percent of Germany's 80 million people have foreign roots. For this reason, Mely Kiyak, a journalist of migrant origin, says she's not worried only about the ultra-right.
MELY KIYAK: The problem are the people in Germany themselves. The Germans think that we have got too much foreigners in this country.
POGGIOLI: After years of ignoring the problem, German authorities now seem determined to tackle rightwing extremism. Law enforcement agencies have collected 1,000 pages worth of evidence showing the NPD as anti-Semitic, racist and anti-democratic. But authorities are moving cautiously. A first attempt in 2003 to get the NPD banned failed when the Constitutional Court ruled that the party had been so deeply infiltrated by police it was hard to determine who was in charge. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Berlin.
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Q: What war was this, for the Battles of Saratoga?
A: The American Revolutionary War.
Q: Why was the Battle of Saratoga important?
A: The Battles of Saratoga (there were actually two battles, September 19, 1777 and October 7, 1777) were a major American victory, one that assured criticial international recognition and aid and helped secure the independence of the United States.
Q: How long did the Battles take place?
A: The first day of fighting, September 19th, 1777, lasted from about 12:30 p.m. to about 5:00 p.m. The second day, October 7, 1777, lasted from about 3:00 p.m. until about 5:00 p.m.
Q: How many people were killed in the Battles?
A: The British side lost about 1500 men, the American side about 800.
Q: Are the Battlefield and the Park the same thing?
A: Saratoga National Historical Park is actually made up of three sites, none of them physically touching the others: the Battlefield (in Stillwater, NY), Schuyler House (in Schuylerville, NY, about 8 miles north of the Battlefield) and the Saratoga Monument (in Victory, about 3/4 miles west of Schuyler House).
Q: How big is the Park?
A: The Park is about 3400 acres in size. The Battlefield is the largest of the three Park units, at about 3000 acres.
Q: How many soldiers fought in the Battles of Saratoga?
A: September 19, 1777 --British: about 7500; American: about 8500
October 7, 1777 --British: about 6800; American: about 13000
Q: Is there a comprehensive list of all the soldiers who fought in the Battles of Saratoga?
A: Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive list. Further, many variables exist between different sources for such information, such as which army (German, British, American), which state, Continental versus Milita troops, etc.
Q: Isn't it true that Benedict Arnold was the hero of Saratoga?
A: Many perspectives exist on who played the most important role(s) in the Battles of Saratoga, each with evidence worth consideration. |
Home > NRC Library > Document Collections > Generic Communications > Information Notices > 1980 > IN 80-35
Information Notice No. 80-35: Leaking and Dislodged Iodine-125 Implant Seeds
SSINS No.: 6870 Accession No. 8006190046 IEIN 80-35 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF INSPECTION AND ENFORCEMENT WASHINGTON, D.C. 20555 October 10, 1980 Information Notice No. 80-35: LEAKING AND DISLODGED IODINE-125 IMPLANT SEEDS Description of Circumstances: During surveys performed following the implant of iodine-125 seeds for interstitial treatment of cancer of the prostate, iodine-125 was detected in the patient's urine and thyroid. As a result of the iodine leakage, the patient's thyroid received an estimated eighty (80) rem dose. The cause of the leakage of iodine-125 was determined to be physical damage to one of the seeds prior to implantation. The hospital staff had inserted the seeds into nylon tubing prior to steam sterilization in an autoclave. The nylon tubings were supplied with a permanent interstitial implant instrument, Model #6501, manufactured by Mick Radio-Nuclear Instruments, Incorporated. After autoclaving for six (6) minutes at 275
F (135 C) and 30 psi, the iodine-125 seeds could not be pushed out of the nylon tubing. Forceps and scissors had to be used to free the seeds and place them into the implant instrument. It was determined that, during this process, one of the iodine seeds had been superficially cut. The surveys performed after the surgery indicated that some iodine-125 seeds had been dislodged. Some seeds were found on the floor, the operating table, and in suction liquids collected during surgery. In addition, an iodine-125 seed was found in the patient's urine specimen collected on the sixth day following implant surgery. Notice to Licensee: Your staff responsible for preparation and implantation of sealed sources of byproduct material should be made aware of the contents of this Information Notice. They should review handling procedures for the sealed sources, including methods of sterilization, to eliminate those procedures which could physically damage the sealed sources. Necessary procedures should be established to assure that, following implantation, proper surveys are performed for detecting leaking or dislodged sources. No written response to this Information Notice is required. If you need additional information regarding this subject, contact the Director of the appropriate NRC Regional Office.
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KEY QUESTIONS ON NUCLEAR POWER MUST BE ADDRESSED, SAYS NRDC
Bush Speech Highlights Need to Put All Issues on the Table
WASHINGTON (May 24, 2006) -- Amid the rush to embrace nuclear power as a solution to global warming, critical questions about this technology are being overlooked, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
President Bush's remarks today on nuclear power at the Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania serves as a reminder that the debate needs to fully address such vital issues as the exorbitant cost of building new nuclear facilities, the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the disposal of radioactive wastes, said Dr. Thomas B. Cochran, director of NRDC's nuclear program.
Until such matters are answered satisfactorily, we need to adopt a realistic view toward the promises -- and the pitfalls -- of nuclear power, Cochran said.
"Nuclear plants are very expensive to build. That is why the industry's K Street lobbyists ran to Capitol Hill to get some $10 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build five or six new nuclear plants. Subsidizing a few new nuclear plants is unlikely to solve nuclear power's economic woes," Cochran said.
A growing reliance on nuclear power globally also will increase the risk of a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, according to Cochran.
"The international regime meant to prevent countries from using civilian nuclear technology and materials for weapons has major unresolved problems. Today Iran is taking advantage of loopholes in the existing safeguards regime to get close to a nuclear weapons capability," Cochran added. "The same reactors and fuel-processing facilities used for energy production can be used to manufacture weapons. Only a few kilograms of this material could destroy an area the size of Lower Manhattan."
"At the same time, we still don't have a safe way to dispose of high-level waste, which remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. There simply are no geologic repositories in operation anywhere in the world. And here in the United States, the proposed geologic repository at Yucca Mountain will leak far worse than originally thought. And now the U.S. government is trying to solve this problem by relaxing the disposal regulations instead of searching for a new disposal site," Cochran said.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Related NRDC Pages
Position Paper: Commercial Nuclear Power
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ANN ARBOR—Like the elevation in the Rocky Mountains where the snow caps begin, a snow line in a solar system is the point where falling temperatures freeze and clump together water or other chemical compounds that would otherwise be vapor. Astronomers believe snow lines in space serve a vital role in forming planets because frozen moisture can help dust grains stick together.
Astronomers have, for the first time, directly imaged a snow line at another star. Using the new Atacama Larger Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, they obtained radio-wavelength images of the carbon monoxide snow line around TW Hydrae, a young star 175 light-years away from Earth. TW Hydrae, in the constellation Hydra, is believed to be our closest infant solar system.
"We've had evidence of snow lines in our own solar system, but now we're able to see one with our own eyes. That is exciting," said Edwin Bergin, professor of astronomy in the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Bergin is co-author on a paper on the results published in Science Express on July 18.
Different chemical compounds freeze at different distances from a central star. In our own solar system, water freezes at about five times the distance from the Earth to the sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Various chemical compounds' snow lines may be linked to the formation of specific kinds of planets. The carbon monoxide line in our system corresponds to the orbit of Neptune, and it could also mark the starting point where smaller icy bodies like comets and dwarf planets like Pluto would form, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Until now, snow lines have only been detected by their spectral signature. They have never been imaged directly, so their precise location and extent could not be determined.
"ALMA has given us the first real picture of a snow line around a young star, which is extremely exciting because of what it tells us about the very early period in the history of our own solar system," said co-author Chunhua "Charlie" Qi, a researcher with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "We can now see previously hidden details about the frozen outer reaches of another solar system, one that has much in common with our own when it was less than 10 million years old."
Snow lines have been difficult to image because they only form in the relatively narrow central plane of a planet-forming disk. Above and below this region, radiation from the central star keeps the gases warm.
An outer cocoon of hot gas prevents astronomers from peering inside the disk where the gas is frozen. Instead, they hunted for a different molecule called diazenylium. Carbon monoxide gas destroys diazenylium, so it is only detectable in regions where the gas is frozen. It shines brightly in the millimeter portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which can be detected by radio telescopes like ALMA.
By tracing the distribution of diazenylium, astronomers identified a boundary approximately 30 astronomical units from TW Hydrae. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the sun.
"Using this technique, we were able to create, in effect, a photonegative of the carbon monoxide snow in the disk surrounding TW Hydrae," said Karin Öberg, also with Harvard but who was with the University of Virginia at the time of the observation. "With this, we could see the snow line precisely where theory predicts it should be—the inner rim of the diazenylium ring."
Öberg also points out that this snow line is particularly interesting since carbon monoxide ice is needed to form methanol, which is a building block of more complex organic molecules essential for life. Comets and asteroids could then ferry these molecules to newly forming Earth-like planets, seeding them with the ingredients for life.
ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by the European Southern Observatory, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The Joint ALMA Observatory provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities Inc. |
Rajkot is one of the largest urban settlements in the state of Gujarat and is popular for its historical landmarks which dot its entire land. However, if you are tired of exploring the corners of Rajkot and are done with studying its rich history and culture, then you must look around this fast-growing city to witness the actual splendours of Gujarat.
Even though Gujarat has everything within its boundaries, ranging from historical places to religious sites and beaches to lakes, it is mainly popular amongst tourists, coming from all over the world, for its ancient sites and religious centres, which have been witnessing these visitors in millions every year.
If you are keen on learning more about Gujarat and contemplating it brilliance, then following are the must-visit weekend getaways from Rajkot which you cannot afford to miss if you love travelling. Read on to know more about these enthralling beauties and their respective distances from Rajkot.
Distance From Rajkot - 230 km
Located in the Kutch district, Bhuj is an ancient town of several historical landmarks which have been narrating the glorious past of the region for centuries. As per records, it is believed to have been founded during the early 16th century by Rao Hamir and was declared as the capital of Kutch region by a Jadeja Rajput.
Today, it is visited by thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. From lakes to temples, forts to hills and palaces to other historical sites, you can spot a lot of tourist places within the boundaries of Bhuj.
These places include Hamirsar Lake, Bhujia Fort, Prag Mahal, Aina Mahal, Swaminarayan Temple and Kutch Museum. If you are looking forward to learning in detail about the ancient Kutch state during the 16th century, then you must plan a trip to Bhuj. It is certainly a beauty lurking in the historical aisles of Gujarat.
Distance From Rajkot - 280 km
Mandvi is one of the few places in Gujarat which can certainly soothe your nerves and let you feel the grandeur of nature. Once a summer destination for the kings of the Kutch state, Mandvi is a famous tourist spot today, which is frequented by innumerable locals and seasonal tourist on a regular basis.
Famous for its charming beaches and other historical sites, it can be reached within 5 h from Rajkot; therefore, it makes for an ideal weekend destination away from the city crowd amid seclusion around beaches, palaces and lakes.
The must-visit attractions here include Mandvi Beach, Mandvi Fort, 72 Jinalaya, Vijay Vilas Palace, Topansar Lake, Wind Farms Beach and Rukmavati river. Isn't it a beautiful destination to spend weekends and make them memorable?
Distance From Rajkot - 180 km
Commonly known as the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, Porbandar is one of the ancient settlements in the world as several remains from the time of the Harappan Civilisation have been found within its boundaries. Being such an old settlement, how can one not expect tourist sites in the form of historical places here?
Ruled by several dynasties until it came under the control of the British, Porbandar is a sure-shot place to explore, especially for a history lover. Apart from ancient marvels, you can also spot here numerous natural sites which include sanctuaries and beautiful parks.
Once you have reached Porbandar, the major places which you must visit include Huzoor Palace, Kirti Mandir, Rana Bapu's Mahal, Porbandar Bird Sanctuary, Tara Mandir and Barda Hills Wildlife Sanctuary.
Distance From Rajkot - 90 km
Also known as Paris of Saurashtra, Jamnagar is a beautiful weekend getaway from Rajkot and is popular for its majestic palaces, charming lakes and beautiful temples. If you are looking for a place where you can find everything related to the history of Gujarat, then Jamnagar is one of the few stoppages which you shouldn't miss exploring.
It is also known for its oil refineries. Jamnagar was founded during the 16th century by Jam Rawal, a king of Nawanagar dynasty. The prominent places to explore here include Lakhota Fort and Lake, Darbargadh Palace, Pratap Vilas Palace, Balachadi Beach, Marine National Park, Jogger's Park and Vardhman Shah's Temple.
Great Rann Of Kutch
Distance From Rajkot - 200 km
One of the most beautiful places in Gujarat, the Great Rann of Kutch is located in the Thar Desert and is a long stretch of a salt marsh. It is one of the richest parts of Gujarat, which have been nurturing wildlife and natural beauties since their outset.
Providing its visitors with spectacular views at the time of dawn and dusk, this salt desert is certainly a beauty which shouldn't be ignored by any tourist or traveller. So, what do you think of planning a trip to this wondrous expansion of nature, which is one of the largest salt marshes in the world? |
At Naturahealth we feel that understanding the treatment and how it will potentially help you acheive your health goals is important.
Acupuncture is an integral part of China’s current and past health care system. It has been used to treat many different conditions for over 2,500 years! Within Chinese medicine, disease comes from the blockage or incorrect movement of the body’s energy, or Qi. Acupuncture is used to correct these abnormal flow patterns. Many people feel relief after the first session and continually do in subsequent sessions.
The conditions treated are vast, but in western society acupuncture has been mainly used to treat pain, migraines, anxiety, and infertility. Studies have shown acupuncture to be as effective at relieve chronic pain as opioid pain killer medication, when done on a consistent basis.
It can also be used to rejuvante your skin. Minizing the look of fine lines and wrinkles by inducing the growth and repair of the collagen that is lost as we age. |
We've all gone through insane lengths to spite someone before, haven't we? And spite is a confusing feeling, mixed with pride, justice, power and… guilt. But don't feel too guilty. At least you didn't build an entire house to spite someone like these people did.
Mental Floss is highlighting nine houses that were built just to screw someone over by thwarting city planners or challenging city ordinances. Whether it's due to an odd shape, being built on a microscopic lot, or a mind-blowingly odd renovation, these homes are full of character--spiteful character.
For example, the Hollensbury Spite House in Alexandria, Virginia, looks adorable from the outside. It's a sliver of a home painted in poppy, bright blue. But the seven-foot-wide home wasn't meant to be adorable, it was built by one of the next-door owners so nobody would loiter in his alley. It seems like a lot of trouble, but yet it's also incredibly effective.
The Skinny House in Boston is the result of an inheritance dispute between brothers. One brother built a large home on the land he shared with his brother, who was in the military. When his brother returned, he was so mad he built the skinny house so as to block the sunlight from the larger home. The four-story house is wider in the front than the back.
Read the rest of the stories at Mental Floss. |
An environmental group has sued the city of Vacaville over the amount of a naturally occurring carcinogen in groundwater.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports the federal lawsuit was filed Monday at the U.S. District Court in Sacramento.
California River Watch is demanding that the Solano County city purge its water of chromium-6, the naturally occurring carcinogen that famously sickened Southern California residents as depicted in the movie "Erin Brockovich."
The newspaper reported that the environmental advocacy group also wants Vacaville leaders to give residents more notice of potential health problems associated with the contaminant and provide bottled water or another clean source to seniors and children.
The suit comes as Vacaville is already taking steps to bring its drinking water into compliance with California health regulations by 2020.
City spokesman Mark Mazzaferro declined to comment on pending litigation. |
The museum is presenting a 70-minute documentary, titled Unzipped, on how designer Isaac Mizrahi planned his 1994 collection. It’s a look at the creative process of fashion with a discussion afterward. (Not moderated by Heidi Klum, unfortunately.) But her fellow supermodels, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss are all in the movie.
Unzipped is part of the exhibition “Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum,” which opened at the end of September.
The exhibit displays garments from 1861 to 2004, with information about the intriguing women who wore them, and how each design influenced the fashion of the next generation.
Ms. Klum, we say this show is “in.”
Want a sneak peek? Check out this behind-the-scenes video on the museum’s blog. |
The Lakotas and Yanktonais (Sioux) attended the Great Council at Fort Laramie in 1851. The treaty assigned a large territory to the Lakotas and Yanktonais (See Map 5). They were expected to live in the area west of the Missouri River, south of the Heart River and north of the territory of Nebraska. However, the tribes were given access to more land to the west and north where they could hunt.
Map 5: Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851. This map defines an area in which the Sioux (Lakotas and Yanktonais) were to confine themselves. This was not a reservation. These defined territories were designed to prevent conflict among the tribes that lived and hunted on the northern Great Plains.
The treaty was soon broken by the building of Army posts and trails through the treaty lands. The Lakotas resisted these violations of the treaty. Some went to war against the Army and discouraged settlement and travel by non-Indians.
Map 6: Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868. This map shows that under the terms of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, the Sioux refused to cede and retained a large territory for hunting (in yellow). However, the Great Sioux Reservation (in gray) was established on the west side of the Missouri River in southern Dakota Territory and in the southwest portion of northern Dakota Territory. The “Unceded Indian Territory” to the west of the Great Sioux Reservation was a place of compromise. The Army gave up its forts (Fort Phil Kearny) and control of the Bozeman Trail. The Sioux and other tribes could hunt there. In September, 1876, the unceded lands in northern Dakota Territory became part of the Sioux Reservation with an agency at Fort Yates. The Cannonball River became the northern boundary of the reservation.
Map 7: Sioux Reservation, 1877. In 1876, Congress re-drew the map of the Great Sioux Reservation. Though the tribes had been approached about a treaty, so few men signed the document that it was not legally binding. As a form of punishment for the Battle of the Little Big Horn (in which the 7th Cavalry under Colonel G. A. Custer was wiped out), Congress passed a law verifying that the “treaty” had the power of law. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, and the region was seeing rapid growth of towns and mining industry. By this act of Congress, the land reserved to the Lakotas was reduced by 40 million acres. Of great concern to the Lakotas was the loss of the Black Hills. (The area around Deadwood is in the Black Hills.) Their sacred sites were located in the Black Hills and many of their important religious ceremonies took place there. r.
The United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs wanted peace in the northern Great Plains in order for settlers to develop farms and railroads to build through the region. Another peace council was held at Fort Laramie in 1868. This time, the treaty declared that much of the land identified by the Treaty of 1851 would be the homeland of the Sioux. It was to be called the Great Sioux Reservation (See Map 6) An agency was established at Grand River (in present-day South Dakota.)
Again, there were violations of the treaty. To the Lakotas, the most disturbing of these violations was the 1874 expedition to the Black Hills led by Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The men of this expedition brought back news to Bismarck that there was gold in the Black Hills. The government asked the Lakotas to cede (give up) the Black Hills which was part of Great Sioux Reservation. The Lakotas refused to cede this land which was the location of their most sacred sites.
Image 8: John Grass (1837-1918) was a great orator and respected leader on the Standing Rock Reservation. He spoke for peace in the 1870s and led his tribe in the transition to reservation life in the 1880s. However, he did not give up land easily and stood up to the federal government when necessary. SHSND 1952-0126-2.
Image 9: This delegation of leaders from Standing Rock traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1888 to discuss the new treaty which led to the break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation. The group included John Grass, Sitting Bull (not in the picture), and James McLaughlin (not in the picture.) SHSND D0157.
Document 15: Newspaper clipping. John Grass, a well-known speaker for the Blackfeet (Sihasapa) band of Lakotas, explained his opposition to the proposed reduction of the Great Sioux reservation to a reporter. This article was printed in the New York Times October 11, 1888.
Map 8: The Break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation, 1889 In 1889, another treaty again reduced the Great Sioux Reservation. This time, it was broken up into four smaller reservations: Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock. Each reservation had its own agency. Lakotas were encouraged to live near the agency so that the agent could keep an eye on their activities. The agency for Standing Rock had already been established at Fort Yates (1873.) The Lakotas and Yanktonais vigorously resisted the loss of land. Eventually, under great pressure from their agent, James McLaughlin, about half of the men over the age of 18 signed the treaty creating Standing Rock Reservation. The break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation opened 9,000,000 acres to settlement in the new states of North Dakota and South Dakota.
In 1876, the Lakotas, along with Cheyennes and others, fought with the Army at the Little Big Horn River in Montana. At this battle, the men of the 7th Cavalry, led by Colonel Custer, were all killed. The battle was a major defeat for the U.S. Army. As a result, the Black Hills were taken from the Great Sioux Reservation and officially opened to non-Indian settlement and mining. (See Map 7)
Another reduction in the reservation came about in 1889. The great Lakota leader, John Grass, protested the break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation (See Document 15). (See Image 8) A delegation went to Washington to impress on Congress the wishes of the tribes (See Image 9). Congress, however, proceeded and the reservation was broken up into smaller parcels (See Map 8). One of these smaller reservations was the Standing Rock Reservation which is located in both North Dakota and South Dakota. Most of the residents were Lakotas and Yanktonais.
Soon after Standing Rock Reservation was created, it was approved for allotment. The enrolled members received land according to their age and family status. As they tried to adapt to this way of life they had not chosen, they learned to farm, to bring crops to market, to raise cattle, and to live in log cabins on their own allotment.
In 1908, the federal government again approached the Lakotas and Yanktonais, Again, there were few choices, Congress wanted to take unallotted land and make it available to non-Indians. In 1910, portions of the reservation were opened to white settlement (See Map 9).
Map 9: In 1889, with the creation of Standing Rock Reservation, the Lakotas and Yanktonais were approved for allotment. The process of allotting land to families continued for several years. In 1910, Congress passed a law opening the much of the unallotted lands to settlement by non-Indians. This map (dated 1954) shows the lands allotted between 1889 and 1930 in yellow with diagonal stripes. SHSND 978.488 O324 1954.
This section will help you understand the processes that caused the Standing Rock Reservation to have the shape it does today. As the reservation boundaries changed, the relationship between the tribes and the government changed. By 1915, many of the residents of Standing Rock had become U.S. citizens. It was a long process, often violent, very sad, and stressful for the Sioux. It is a difficult chapter in American and North Dakota history. |
Over deze norm
1.1 This test method is used to determine the bow and skew of woven and knitted fabrics over a fixed distance, using a measuring tool.
1.2 This test method is useful when a small specimen or cut parts need to be evaluated for bow and skew, provided a warp or fill, or both, reference line is available, to aid in aligning the tool.
1.3 Test Method may be used when measuring bow and skew in fabric in rolls. However, results obtained with may not be comparable with results obtained by this test method.
1.4 There is no known ISO equivalent standard.
1.5 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as standard. No other units of measurement are included in this standard.
1.6 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety, health and environmental practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
1.7 This international standard was developed in accordance with internationally recognized principles on standardization established in the Decision on Principles for the Development of International Standards, Guides and Recommendations issued by the World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee.
|Engelse titel||Standard Test Method for Bow and Skew Using a Measuring Tool| |
Over deze norm
1.1 This test method specifies procedures and equipment used for testing and evaluating the accessibility of fitness equipment for compliance to Specification design parameters. Where possible and applicable, accepted test methods from other recognized bodies will be used and referenced. In case of a conflict between this document and Specification , Specification takes precedence.
1.2 This test method is to be used in conjunction with Specification .
1.3 This standard is to be used as additional requirements to address the accessibility of the equipment for persons with disabilities.
Note 1: Additional test methods applicable to specific pieces of equipment, such as treadmills, bicycles, ellipticals, and strength equipment are currently under development.
1.4 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as the standard. The values given in parentheses are for information only.
1.5 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
|Engelse titel||Standard Test Method for Evaluating the Universal Design of Fitness Equipment for Inclusive Use by Persons with Functional Limitations and Impairments| |
BUS391 Data Visualization
Data visualization is an important visual method for effective communication and analyzing large datasets. Through data visualizations we are able to draw conclusions from data that sometimes are not immediately obvious, and interact with the data in an entirely different way. This course will provide you with an informative introduction to the methods, tools and processes involved in visualizing big data.
- Must be enrolled in the following level: Undergraduate
- Must be enrolled in one of the following field(s) of study (major, minor or concentration): Accounting (542), Business Analytics (531), Finance (543), General Business (547), General Business - ITU (547U), General Business - Izmir (547I), International Business (546), Management (544), Marketing (545), Pre-MBA (0MBA), Undeclared:Business (000B), Undeclared:Pre-Accounting (00AC), Undeclared:Pre-Bus Analytics (00BN), Undeclared:Pre-Finance (00FI), Undeclared:Pre-Gen Business (00GB), Undeclared:Pre-Interntnl Bus (00IB), Undeclared:Pre-Management (00MG), Undeclared:Pre-Marketing (00MK)
- May not be enrolled in the following class: Freshman
- BUS309 Minimum Grade of C- |
Holiday hiring boosted both counties’ job markets in December.
The unemployment rates in Volusia and Flagler counties fell in December to their lowest levels since May 2008.
Volusia County’s unemployment rate improved to 6 percent last month, from 6.4 percent in November and 8 percent in December 2012.
In Flagler County, the unemployment rate declined to 8.8 percent in December, from 9.2 percent in November. The Flagler unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent in December 2012.
Holiday hiring boosted both counties’ job markets in December, said Arva Campbell, manager of the Center for Business Excellence’s One-Stop Employment Center in Daytona Beach.
“When the January numbers come out, we’ll probably see the unemployment rate spike up a little,” she said.
The Center for Business Excellence, the Volusia-Flagler area’s workforce development board, operates One-Stop Employment Centers in Daytona Beach, Orange City and Palm Coast.
Even though its unemployment rate fell, Flagler County had the second-highest rate in the state in December, behind Hendry County, which had an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent.
Volusia County was tied with Palm Beach and Lake counties for the 30th-highest unemployment rate out of the state’s 67 counties.
The state’s unemployment rate improved to 6.2 percent in December, from 6.4 percent in November. It stood at 7.9 percent in December 2012.
Florida’s December unemployment rate was the lowest since June 2008.
“We saw the number of jobs added to the payroll steadily increase over the year,” said University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith. “We’re on a nice trajectory.”
The estimated number of people employed in Volusia County rose by 2,161 in December from the same month the previous year, and the number of unemployed residents actively seeking work declined year over year by 5,260, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
Retail and hospitality led Volusia County employment sectors in job gains in December, adding 600 jobs apiece over the year, according to data from the Center for Business Excellence.
“It just reflects the continuing improvements in the national and local economies,” said Rob Ehrhardt, Volusia County economic development manager, of the falling unemployment numbers.
“It’s fair to say there’s reason to continue to be optimistic,” he said, pointing to the ongoing $400 million renovation of Daytona International Speedway that began last year. “Opportunities will increase as announced projects progress and come online.”
In Flagler County, employers had 578 fewer workers on their payroll in December than they did in the same month in 2012. Still, the unemployment rate fell over that period thanks in part to 798 fewer people searching for jobs.
None of the 10 major employment sectors in Flagler County tracked by the Center for Business Excellence gained jobs over the year in December. Information, financial, leisure and hospitality, and government lost 100 jobs each between December 2012 and December 2013, according to the center.
In both counties, the labor force, which includes those working or looking for work, shrank between December 2012 and December 2013. The number of people in Volusia County’s labor force declined to 248,666 in December 2013 from 251,765 the same month the previous year. Flagler County’s labor force shrank to 33,570 in December, from 34,946 in December 2012.
“If (the lower unemployment number) is coming at the expense of people dropping out of the labor force, that’s not a reason you want unemployment to go down,” said Snaith.
“Some folks have exhausted their unemployment benefits, so they’re not figured in (the labor force),” said Campbell. “That’s probably why that number is dropping a little bit.” |
News + Ideas
News Release – What’s New in Ed Tech for Early Learning?
August 7, 2017
NewSchools Launches Challenge Based on New Findings
(Oakland, CA, August 7, 2017) – NewSchools Venture Fund recently conducted market research on early learning and uncovered unmet needs in ed tech tools tailored for preK-2nd grade learners. This research – generated through interviews with educators, school leaders, entrepreneurs, and funders – inspired the NewSchools Ignite challenge for innovative ed tech tools to support students in PreK-2nd grade. The “Early Learning Challenge – PreK-2nd Grade” runs August 1-31, 2017 and is supported in part by Omidyar Network.
“NewSchools Ignite is rooted in research, and we always start by talking to people in the field who are doing this work,” said Tonika Cheek Clayton, managing partner, NewSchools Venture Fund. “We heard from both educators and ed tech developers about the lack of high-quality tools to support academic and social development for young students. They also emphasized the importance of limiting the hours spent on devices and promoting interaction with parents and teachers.”
“Given NewSchools Venture Fund’s track record of sparking new ideas and activities in education for nearly 20 years, Omidyar Network is proud to help support the NewSchools Ignite challenge focused on early learning,” said Isabelle Hau, US Education Lead and Venture Partner, Omidyar Network. “We want to foster greater innovation in early learning and create quality early learning solutions for all children, their families and their teachers.”
Among key findings of the market research:
- 60 percent of four-year-olds are not enrolled in publicly funded preschool programs.
- Children who don’t attend preschool are developmentally behind by almost a year or more by the time they enter Kindergarten.
- Educators want to see more PreK through early elementary alignment, specifically around academic, social-emotional, and executive functioning.
- Children’s learning experiences in pre-kindergarten through early elementary are shaped by many factors, including race and income, creating school readiness gaps that could be addressed in part with technology solutions.
- Parents want to use educational technology to understand their child’s early learning goals in school and better assist their children at home with learning challenges.
Full findings of NewSchools’ market research on early learners will be released in a Market Gap Snapshot, the first of many to be developed in tandem with NewSchools Ignite ed tech challenges. This Market Gap Snapshot will be available beginning August 12 on the newly released NewSchools/WestEd Ed Tech Research Portal, which features a collection of market research insights, literature reviews, webinars, a product rubric and a growing collection of resources developed by other organizations.
The “Early Learning Challenge – PreK-2nd Grade” offers companies and nonprofits a unique opportunity to create ed tech tools that address the needs of young students during this crucial time for social and academic development. NewSchools is looking for tools that can be used by students, teachers and/or parents to address one or more of the following critical needs:
- Enhance interactions between students, parents, and teachers;
- Enable engaging, interactive experiences that support academic development while reinforcing essential mindsets, skills and habits for success in college, career and life;
- Thoughtfully consider and optimize students’ screen time while providing teachers and parents with helpful information to guide learning; and
- Expand opportunities for families to discover and take advantage of developmentally appropriate early learning experiences.
In addition to funding in the range of $50,000 to $150,000, winners of NewSchools’ ed tech challenge will receive management assistance and participate in a virtual accelerator. We also provide grant recipients with targeted support and feedback from researchers, educators, investors and other experts. Submissions are due by August 31, and winners will be selected by late October.
About NewSchools Venture Fund
NewSchools Venture Fund is a national nonprofit that supports and invests in promising entrepreneurs and teams of educators who want to reimagine learning. We help them accomplish their missions to achieve outstanding results for the schools, students, and educators they serve. We are committed to helping students graduate high school prepared and inspired to achieve their most ambitious dreams and plans. Through our investments, management assistance, network building, and thought leadership, NewSchools helps to reimagine PreK-12 education.
About Omidyar Network
Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. Omidyar Network has committed more than $1 billion to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple initiatives, including Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance & Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. To learn more, visit www.omidyar.com, and follow on Twitter @omidyarnetwork #PositiveReturns
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By: Will Steffen
236 pages, Col illus, figs, tabs
The Strategic Assessment of the vulnerability of Australia's Biodiversity to Climate Change aims to profile the vulnerability of Australia's biodiversity to climate change and to identify national research and management priorities to mitigate the impacts of climate change on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. This is the first such assessment to be undertaken and will be a key input to identifying management and research priorities in developing an adaptation response to climate change for Australia's biodiversity.
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This post contains the list of newly approved courses in FUTA by the school management. The Federal University of Technology, Akure is a academic institution of learning in Nigeria. The various departments in FUTA are also accredited.
The school also offers different programs of study such as Masters, direct entry, post-graduate programmes etc. To know more about latest FUTA school fees, direct entry admission requirements and postgraduate courses visit the University’s official website here.
Below is a list of newly accredited courses offered in FUTA
- Agricultural Engineering
- Agricultural Extension and Communication Technology
- Agricultural Extension and Rural Development
- Agricultural Resource Extension
- Animal Production and Health Service
- Crop, Soil And Pest Management
- Eco-Tourism and Wildlife Management
- Electrical / Electronic Engineering
- Entrepreneurship Management Technology
- Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Food Science And Technology
- Forestry and Wood Technology
- Marine Science And Technology
- Metallurgical and Material Engineering
- Project Management Technology
- Remote Sensing And Geosciences Information System
- Surveying and Geo-Informatics
- Transport Management Technology
- Urban and Regional Planning
The Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) is known to be among the best University of technology in Nigeria to study in. It was founded in 1981 and since then the university has grown as it has spread its academic disciplines and research across seven different schools and over fourty academic departments in FUTA that are all approved by the National Univesity Comission (NUC).
It is the vision of the school to be a world class University of Technology and anot academic centre of excellence in training, research and service delivery with iys mission to promote technological advancement by providing conducive environment for research, teaching and learning engenders development of products that are technologically oriented, self-reliant and relevant to society.
Apart from the regular postgraduate courses and various programs offered at FUTA, the school also has its E-learning course which is top notch. All these and more can be found on the school’s official portal. |
In addition to calling for the removal of four Confederate monuments in the city, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Thursday (July 9) said the City Council should abolish Jefferson Davis Parkway and rename it Norman C. Francis Parkway.
Francis was a significant Civil Rights figure in New Orleans and a nationally known advocate of education reform. The first black graduate of Loyola University Law School in New Orleans, Francis turned his career toward education, becoming the president of his undergraduate alma mater, Xavier University, in 1968. He remained at the helm for 46 years before retiring this year. He continues to serve as president emeritus at the school.
Francis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, nation's highest civilian honor, in 2006. President George W. Bush called him "a man of deep intellect and compassion and character."
Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, was a friend and classmate of Francis'. |
Visit Saint Cyprien
Saint Cyprien is situated on the hillside above the River Dordogne and makes a perfect base for visiting the fabuous caves, beautiful villages and lovely scenery that this section of the Dordogne is famous for.
Saint Cyprien Tourism
Saint Cyprien has a beautiful old town which winds uphill towards the 12th century belltower and the abbey church which dominate the town.
Arriving at St Cyprien you are first greeted, unfortunately, by the commercial area with Intermarché etc. (Useful though if you are based here to have a good local supermarket). Head up to the town proper and you first get to the main street, the Rue Gambetta.
Along here are loads of restaurants and bars and a number of boutiques - some are very nice, there is an excellent shop selling beautiful cabinets and sinks for the bathroom. If you are looking for a meal or a coffee this is the street to head for. The tourist information office is on this street and they can give you a very useful map for exploring the old town. Whilst on the Rue Gambetta look at the detail of the buildings, there are some lovely balconies and carved stone window surrounds.
The real treat of St Cyprien is behind the Rue Gambetta, it is here that the old town starts. Behind the Tourist Office is the Place de la Liberte. From here head up the Rue du Terme. This is a steep street leading up towards the abbey. There is a stately 18th century Chartreuse (a Perigordian mansion house) here which was built for the chief officer of the French Royal Navy. There are some other wonderful buildings neighbouring the Chartreuse.
This leads to the Impasse Talbot. On this street there is a house which was used by General Talbot, the Commander of the British troops during the Hundred Years War. On a historical note General Talbot was killed whilst crossing the Dordogne at Lamothe-Montravel in 1453. The battle of Castillon took place the following day and lacking their commander in chief the British forces were defeated and the Hundred Years War came to an end.
On the Rue de la Justice de Paix look out for a door with a heart carved above it. This belonged to a religious institution and parts date to the 12th century. It even has an underground passage.
Leading above the town are a number of steep narrow lanes. The houses here are squeezed together as everyone wanted to be inside the city wall. This area of town is called "Montmartre" and has excellent views of St Cyprien and the Dordogne valley below.
The abbey of Saint Cyprien has an interesting history. Back in 620AD a hermit called St Cyprien took up residence in a cave overlooking the Dordogne Valley. Gradually a religious community grew up around him. Barbarian invasions of the 9th century led monks to build defensive walls.
In 1568 during the Religious Wars the priory was destroyed. The monastery was rebuilt in 1685 though the bell-tower and keep remain from the 12th century.
The highlight for me in St Cyprien was just ambling round the medieval streets admiring the wonderful architecture scattered throughout.
Market day in St Cyprien is a Sunday morning. A good place to buy the culinary highlights of the region: Foie gras, walnut cake, wines of Monbazillac, Pecharmant and Bergerac as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.
Places to Visit near Saint Cyprien
Photos of Saint Cyprien
Click any picture to start the gallery |
Growing Vegetables from seeds and seedlings for the home garden is productive and healthy. Varieties available for sale from online and mail order seed suppliers that are popular in the home garden, not only for taste, but for cost saving and the knowledge of a healthy food source from your own garden.
You can grow your own vegetables from seed, including organic varieties. And we show you how to grow a range of vegetables Amaranth to Zucchini.
Pest control, diseases and some recipes are included. Some easy to follow ideas on establishing a No Dig Vegetable Garden. Hydroponic vegetable growing.
Vegetables – Seeds for the home gardener
With so many heirloom vegetable seeds available for sale online access to garden vegetable varieties has never been easier for the home gardener.
Growing vegetables from seed in the garden or using Vegetable growing systems are become increasingly popular with home gardeners as a means of easily and economically growing vegetables in limited spaces or in areas with poor soils. Many commercially available growing systems are suitable for small courtyards.
Growing vegetables from seeds or seedlings is a rewarding garden experience for the whole family. With more and more concern about healthy food and rising food costs we aim to provide you with the knowledge and confidence to grow your own vegetables.
Along with new ideas about how to grow the most productive crops we hope to provide easy access to suppliers of vegetable seeds, seedlings and tubers, heritage varieties, hard to find varieties and new releases.
Simple systems such as these self watering
raised pots from Sage Horticultural Pictured left, that uses the wet pot watering system, or the hydroponics system
below make growing your own vegetables a breeze even in confined spaces.
No Dig Vegetable Gardens
No Dig Gardens are increasingly popular as a means of quickly establishing a new garden, we provide some ideas on how to establish a No Dig Vegetable Garden
Growing Vegetables in pots or containers
Growing vegetables in pots is great for those with limited space, many varieties can easily be grown on balconies, in courtyards or even in pots outside the kitchen door, we provide some basic information on How to Grow Vegetables in pots
Hydroponics Vegetable growing systems
Hydroponic systems are fantastic for those with limited space or those who are looking for a really efficient system of growing vegetable. We provide a simple guide and some resources on Growing vegetables using hydroponics
- Garlic Varieties for Sale
- Globe Artichokes
- Grow your own Pandanus Leaf
- Growing Beetroot
- Growing Broccoli
- Growing Cabbages
- Growing Capsicums
- Growing Hydroponic Vegetables
- Growing Leeks
- Growing Okra
- Growing Parsnip from seed
- Growing Pumpkins
- Growing Snow Peas
- Growing Sprouts at Home
- Growing Sweet Corn
- Growing Vegetables in Containers
- Growing Yams
- Heirloom Tomatoes
- Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
- How to Grow Carrots from Seed
- How to Grow Cauliflower
- How to Grow Eggplants
- How to Grow Garlic
- How to grow lettuce
- How to Grow Onions
- How to Grow Peas
- How to Grow Potatoes
- How to Grow Radishes
- How to Grow Spring Onions
- How to Grow Squash
- How to Grow Swede
- How to Grow Sweet Potatoes
- How to Grow Tuscan Kale
- How to Grow Watercress
- How to grow Witlof
- How to Grow Zucchini |
Acting is acting some say, no matter the medium. And there is some truth in that; we all come at it from different directions and we all have our own unique backgrounds. Some started in theater, some started off on YouTube, some got lucky and landed a commercial right out of the gate for their first acting gig. It doesn’t really matter–any experience is good experience when it comes to developing your skills.
That said, there are obviously significant differences in what is required from the actor working in these different media. The pipes you need to work in a stage musical aren’t going to be a priority if you’re auditioning for a television crime drama–unless you somehow happen to be auditioning for the role of a singing detective.
Or better yet, a singing criminal! Someone call Dick Wolf, I’ve got a pitch for him…
Among the biggest challenges up-and-coming actors face is that of taking their stage experience in front of the camera. The obvious first thing to look into is of course taking a class with a seasoned professional who can provide you with on-the-spot feedback and real-time tweaks to help shape the contours of your acting for the camera.
But barring that–or in addition to it–there are a ton of excellent books out there that offer great practical advice for developing your skill set with regard to working on camera. Here are a few:
1. Acting for the Camera – Tony Barr
This is the granddaddy of on-camera acting books, and the revised edition of the 1997 original remains an essential part of any actor’s library. Tony Barr distills the most vital tidbits from his 40-plus years of experience as an actor, director and acting instructor in Hollywood and lays it out in an easy-to-digest format that reads so smoothly it’s more like reading a novel than a textbook. Rather than start from scratch, Barr takes the knowledge that stage actors already possess and tweaks it with his “creative adjustments” for the camera. The new edition includes expanded chapters with exercises for developing on-camera skills, as well as additional advice on character development, visual focus, and working with directors–all specifically geared toward on-camera work. An invaluable reference tool for any actor at any level of experience.
2. Acting in Film: An Actor’s Take on Movie Making – Michael Caine
Michael Caine is a legendary actor who has taken the time to share a tremendous treasure trove of insights from his five decades of experience in front of the camera. But don’t think that because this book, published in 2000 and revised and expanded since, is written by a lion of old-school Hollywood that it is going to be little more than meandering on-set stories, quips and gossip. No, Caine gets right down to work and appears to expect his readers to do the same, as he packs this highly engaging tome with chapters breaking down the actor’s process and how it varies when working on camera. Chapters like Preparation, In Front of the Camera Before Shooting, The Take, and many more will help demystify the work and provide a great template for the up-and-coming actor to work from.
3. The Secrets of Screen Acting – Patrick Tucker
Another venerable screen acting book, Patrick Tucker’s “The Secrets of Screen Acting” has been providing a solid grounding for screen actors since it was published in 1993. Like Caine’s book, Tucker also provides actors with a no-nonsense, nuts and bolts approach to acting for the screen, laying out the differences in reaction time, physical timing, blocking and placement. In a novel approach, especially for the time when it was published, “Secrets” eschews the usual struggle of actors and directors to fit real life action onto a screen, and instead approaches it from the point of view of adapting the action to the realities of filming. He offers a step-by-step guide for effective on-screen acting, as well as over 50 acting exercises designed to hone your on-camera skills.
4. Auditioning and Acting for the Camera – John Shepard
Shepard approaches explaining the realities of on-camera acting by looking at the variety of types of work we are asked to audition for. From industrial films to commercials to sit-coms to commercials to films, Shepard has tailored advice and techniques to enhance your auditions and performances in each of these fields. He also takes some time to thoughtfully cover more than what most authors of this kind of book do in terms of the bigger picture: what it’s like on set, different audition techniques, and what it’s like to work on location. Shepard also provides a number of practice scripts and valuable exercises to help you hone your skills.
5. The Science of On-Camera Acting – Andrea Morris
If this sounds to you like it’s going to be a hardcore breakdown of the technicalities of acting for the camera, you are correct. Morris works with psychologist Paul Ekman–who was the loose basis for the lead character on the show “Lie to Me”–to examine the neuroscience behind emotional responses and how they manifest in facial expressions and other physicality. The machinery of dialogue, the voice and the movements of the face are all broken down here in minute detail, then reconstructed again, giving you a better understanding of what and how you are showing yourself and your characters’ emotions on screen in subtle detail.
6. How To Book Acting Jobs in TV and Film: The Truth About the Acting Industry – Cathy Reinking, CSA
Reinking has casting credits for shows like “Frasier” and “Arrested Development,” and is the former manager of casting at NBC, so she knows better than most what television casting agents are looking for in an actor. In this book she helps to lay out in clear terms just what an audition looks like from behind the table. With chapters covering auditioning for a variety of different television shows–comedies, dramas, etc.–as well as a chapter on charisma and how to build it, Reinking’s perspective is unique and provides invaluable reportage from “behind enemy lines” for the actor. And the best part is that the entirety of the book is presented in a very chatty, comfortable manner, such that it makes you feel as if you are in a room with the author having a conversation. |
The phone rings at 6:15 A.M. In my stupor, I pick it up and hear: ''Good morning, Rock Radio 690 here! Is this the professor who wrote the 'Star Trek' book?'' My caller, it seems, has an urgent question: ''Have you heard about the news reported from Austria on quantum teleportation of photons?''
This may sound like a weird dream (or nightmare, depending upon your attitude toward physics), except that it actually happened. A group of European scientists have destroyed a single particle of light in one place and reproduced it instantly somewhere else in their lab, the equivalent of teleportation.
You may have missed the news, but be assured that few Trekkers did. Let's go back in time 30 years. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of ''Star Trek,'' didn't have the budget to show a starship landing on a different planet each week. So when he was asked how the crew would get down to where the action was, he responded, ''We'll beam them down!'' Thus was the Transporter born, and the phrase ''Beam me up, Scotty'' soon became a part of popular culture.
And why not? Who wouldn't want to be transported instantly to their destination without having to endure lost luggage and packed planes? But there is a problem: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics states that we can never simultaneously measure exactly where each particle in your body is and what it is doing. Clearly we need to know both things if we are to re-create your body exactly, atom by atom.
Or do we? The experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues in Austria, following on an original proposal by an American physicist, Charles Bennett, and his colleagues at I.B.M., showed that it is precisely possible to destroy an individual particle -- in this case the quantum of light called a photon -- in one place and instantly (yes, faster than the speed of light!) transfer its properties exactly to another photon on the other side of the room -- or, if you set things up correctly, on the other side of the galaxy! This is the stuff that dreams are made of, which explains the early morning phone calls with the burning question, How long might it be before we could transport a person?
Well, sadly, the answer still is, probably never. Quantum mechanics tells us that elementary particles carry, in essence, much more information than we can get ahold of in a single measurement and, moreover, that measuring them inevitably changes them in the process -- the root of Heisenberg's principle. The clever researchers in Austria and the United States were able to get around the Heisenberg principle by never actually measuring the first photon before destroying it and transferring its identity.Continue reading the main story
They did so by exploiting the quantum mechanical nature of the elementary particles themselves: if undisturbed, they can carry and transfer information that is not directly accessible by the measurement process. But this trick won't work with people, or any large, classical objects, where this extra information would be washed out by interactions before you could transfer it.
So, is all of this in the end mere gamesmanship by physicists who try to exploit the eccentricities of nature for their own amusement? Not really. The techniques of quantum teleportation may not make air travel obsolete. But as computers become smaller, these same techniques may allow the development of ''quantum computers,'' which directly exploit the quantum weirdness of nature at its smallest scales to perform calculations in seconds that would require present-day computers longer than the age of the universe. Indeed, I claim that this very sort of technique will change 21st-century technology more than any single development has affected technology in the 20th century.
My own hyperbole notwithstanding, perhaps the prospect of quantum computing doesn't seem as exciting as teleportation. What would it take to make it so? Perhaps the realization that such computers might re-create another popular vision from the Big Screen. With potentially faster computers comes the possibility of intelligence and self-awareness, and with that comes the possibility of HAL, or perhaps his less malevolent cousin, Data. Stay tuned.Continue reading the main story |
BUDAPEST — The morning shadows were receding from the small square in front of this city’s yellow-and-red-brick synagogue, a vaguely Moorish monument, recently restored with American money. It is one of the largest synagogues in Europe, today serving a small Jewish community.
“This is where my story begins,” said Kati Marton, a former television journalist-turned-writer, out for an early walk through the city and its past.
She was talking about her book “The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World,” to be published this month by Simon & Schuster. But Ms. Marton was also talking about family history: her great-grandfather was married in the synagogue, and her maternal grandparents perished at Auschwitz.
As this month’s 50th anniversary of the disastrous uprising against Soviet domination approaches, the synagogue, to Ms. Marton, is both an emblem of Budapest’s once-thriving Jewish community and of the failed promise and broken dreams that have plagued the city since the 20th century began.
Much of the city on view today was built in the four decades after the “Ausgleich,” or compromise, of February 1867, when the Austrian emperor Franz Josef accepted the Magyar nobles’ demand for greater autonomy and made Budapest co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire.Continue reading the main story
The city embarked on a building spree to make itself worthy of its newfound status: a neo-Classical Hapsburg palace rose on the bluffs of Buda, facing a massive Westminster-inspired parliament building across the river in Pest.
From 1870 to 1910, Budapest grew to more than a million residents from 300,000, many of them Jews drawn from the provinces by the booming economy and cosmopolitan atmosphere. By 1900, 20 percent of city residents were Jewish, compared with just 5 percent in the rest of the kingdom.
There was no ghetto and little Zionist yearning for a Jewish homeland — even though the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was born in a building where the synagogue now stands. Instead there were opportunities and ideas packed into bustling Pest, which was dotted with cafes, the social and intellectual hubs of the day. And for a brief, deceptive period — one generation, Ms. Marton writes — anti-Semitic prejudice waned, and those liberated from its strictures responded with a remarkable, concentrated flowering of creative genius.
Four of the men profiled in Ms. Marton’s book were scientists who played critical roles in shaping the nuclear and computer age: Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and John von Neumann. Two were filmmakers: Michael Curtiz, who directed “Casablanca” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and Alexander Korda, the first film director ever knighted, who produced “The Third Man.” Two were photographers: Andre Kertesz, widely regarded as the father of photojournalism; and Robert Capa, whose pictures of the Spanish Civil War and D-Day defined war photography for generations.
Another was Arthur Koestler, author of “Darkness at Noon,” the prophetic novel on communist totalitarianism.
But history circles this city like a bird of prey, and time and again has swooped down to drive off its brilliant sons and daughters, as it did again with Ms. Marton’s group.
Her book begins in 1939, with Szilard’s visit to Einstein on Long Island. He was there to alert Einstein to the potential of nuclear fission to produce a devastating bomb. And he enlisted that great man in warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Hitler’s scientists were working on such a weapon.
Ms. Marton’s story ends after World War II, by which time Szilard and Wigner were working for arms control, while von Neumann and Teller (an inspiration for the character Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film) pushed for ever more powerful weapons.
“God protect us from the enemy without and the Hungarians within,” Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project director, says in Ms. Marton’s book — his way of characterizing the disputatious intellectual fervor of this remarkable group.
A walk through town takes Ms. Marton past the apartment where von Neumann lived, near the basilica where Curtiz’ orthodox Jewish father laid bricks. Here is the street down which Capa walked to high school, the same that Korda and the later noble laureate Imre Kertesz and Andy Grove, the co-founder of Intel, attended. Around the corner is the Royal Hotel, where Korda lived.
“They all lived within a five-mile radius of one another,” Ms. Marton said. “They were constantly rubbing up against other bright, ambitious young people.”
And nearby still stands the cathedral-like spire of the Cafe New York, a social and intellectual center of the times. “Curtiz and Korda first dreamed of escape in the marble and gilt Cafe New York,” Ms. Marton said. “They never found its like in the New World, but Curtiz recreated it as Rick’s in ‘Casablanca.’ ”
The cafe has been restored in all its baroque opulence, dripping gold and crystal from its twisted columns and satyr sconces. But no writers, no actors, no directors huddled over the tables on the recent afternoon that Ms. Marton stopped there.
“They used to have an inexpensive plate of cold cuts for hungry artists,” Ms. Marton said.
In 1920 the Treaty of Trianon lopped off two-thirds of Hungary’s territory, including its Adriatic seaports. Within months Admiral Miklos Horthy, former commander of the Austro-Hungarian imperial fleet, rode into Budapest on a white horse and ruled Hungary as regent for the next 24 years. He became an early ally of Hilter and took fascism to his country.
Horthy’s government passed a series of anti-Jewish laws, once again defining Jews racially, which led many people, including the men in Ms. Marton’s book, to flee. They went first to Paris, Vienna or Berlin, then further afield as the Nazis came to power.
To survive, Ms. Marton’s parents converted to Roman Catholicism during the war. After the war ended, they were still barred from holding many jobs because of their political views and social class. They found work as reporters for Western news agencies and moved to an Art Deco apartment in the diplomatic quarter in the hills of Buda.
When Ms. Marton was 6, her father was arrested, then her mother a few months later. Both were tried and convicted as spies.
Ms. Marton and her sister were sent to a foster home, while her parents were locked away in a reddish stone prison that still stands in the center of town. Her mother was released after nearly a year and her father after 18 months.
They resumed their reporting careers, and Ms. Marton remembers holding her father’s hand on the crowded Budapest square in front of the foreign ministry building in October 1956 when someone started shouting, “Russians go home.” As Russian tanks rolled in to crush the first anti-Soviet uprising of the postwar era, killing thousands of Hungarians, she and her family crawled through a hole in the fence of their backyard to take refuge in an American diplomat’s home. They were eventually spirited out of the country.
The city’s population has thinned since the cold war ended, and for all the promise of the democratic era, many of its most talented young are still drawn to more dynamic capitals farther west.
Ever Vienna’s poor stepsister and now overshadowed by its more beautiful cousin, Prague, Budapest, perhaps more than any other of the central European cities still emerging from the cold storage of the Soviet era, is still waiting for its future to arrive.
“I hope that someday people won’t have to leave here to succeed,” Ms. Marton said.Continue reading the main story |
“It’s like ‘The Shining,’ ” a young man said to his companion, who agreed with a chuckle. I was eavesdropping as they talked about one of William Eggleston’s 36 transcendentally beautiful photographs from the 1970s and early ’80s in “At War With the Obvious,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts a grungy, turquoise-tiled shower and bath alcove. Shot straight-on with deadpan objectivity, the image does have an ominous feeling. Shower scenes being a staple of horror movies, and Stanley Kubrick, the director of “The Shining,” being a master of highly stylized dread, I could understand the comment.
I thought it was interesting, though, that this viewer’s comparison was not to the work of another photographer like Walker Evans or Garry Winogrand, who, like Mr. Eggleston, made transfiguring images of ordinary people, places and things. Then I remembered the exhibition’s introductory wall text, which says that Mr. Eggleston’s work has influenced artists better known for work in other fields, including the musician David Byrne and the filmmakers David Lynch and Joel and Ethan Coen. Only one person mentioned, Nan Goldin, is a photographer, and the diaristic, snapshotlike aesthetic for which she is known is different from Mr. Eggleston’s more exactingly formal and rarely overtly autobiographical approach.
So my fellow viewer’s comment did not come out of the blue. Prompted by the wall text, I too found myself seeing almost every photograph in the show as a moment in some noirish, low-budget movie set somewhere in Mississippi, where Mr. Eggleston has made most of his work.
Looking at the bleached and rusted sign advertising Wonder Bread at the edge of a plowed field in a picture from around 1970, I imagined a man on the run from gangsters driving by and seeing it as a metaphor for his own broken-down dreams. In another picture from the same year, a weather-beaten tricycle looms gigantically in the foreground, dwarfing a suburban ranch house farther back: it’s like the start of a movie about a kidnapping.
The people in Mr. Eggleston’s photographs could be taken for characters in a Coen brothers movie. The skinny, sharp-featured woman in the bouffant hairdo sitting on the low perimeter wall of a parking lot and the balding man with the sensuous lips at a small airport are comical and vaguely alarming figures. That scene with the middle-aged white man in a dark suit and the black man in a white jacket standing behind him, next to a white sedan on ground covered by dead leaves: Could it have been an inspiration for “Miller’s Crossing”?
But photographs like Mr. Eggleston’s are not like movie images, which come in linear sequences, establishing explanatory narratives around scenes that would be mysterious, were they viewed in isolation. There is no before and after here, so the photographs remain provocatively enigmatic, which accounts for much of their poetic resonance. His pictures tease the mind, eliciting associations and possible meanings that swirl around them like bugs around a light bulb.Continue reading the main story
The 1974 image of a big, old flatbed truck bathed in the orange light of a rising or setting sun precipitates all kinds of unanswerable questions. What’s the story? Who owns it? Why is it parked here on a field of short grass? Why was Mr. Eggleston attracted to it? Shot from a low angle, the truck appears monumental and heroic, but if it symbolizes something, it’s hard to say what. Could it represent the waning of the American Empire? Maybe it’s a kind of self-portrait of the artist as rugged individualist: Mr. Eggleston is known for pioneering the use of color in fine-art photography back when it was considered good only for commercial, popular work. Most of the photographs here suggest a defiant, personal identification with the lowly, the downtrodden and the unfashionable.
Whatever Mr. Eggleston’s relationship to motion pictures may be, it is nothing like the one that has prevailed in postmodern art, thanks largely to Cindy Sherman, whose black-and-white “Untitled Film Stills” were staged to resemble Hollywood B movies. Later came Gregory Crewdson’s lavish color photographs resembling scenes from big-budget movies like Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” This genre reflects on popular movie culture, but it also is a form of meta-photography: photography chasing its own tail and forgetting about real life. Such conceptually driven photography lends itself to easy explication; it teaches viewers obvious lessons about the mass media and modern myths. As the exhibition’s title suggests, Mr. Eggleston is not a friend of the obvious.
This is not to claim a contrasting visual innocence for Mr. Eggleston. His elegantly formal work is evidently richly informed by photography from Atget to Arbus. But it is about experiencing the real, material world, not photography and not theoretical abstractions. He brings to light those occasional sacred moments when something you ordinarily would pass by without a thought — a children’s swing set overgrown by weeds, an abandoned gas station, a basket of fake flowers hanging on someone’s front door — suddenly takes your breath away.
An art review on Friday about “At War With the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, misidentified the state where Mr. Eggleston resides. It is Tennessee (in Memphis), not Mississippi. |
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Parliament on Wednesday approved sweeping new powers for the country’s security forces, with an antiterrorism measure that the government says is needed to combat the Taliban, but that rights activists warned could result in state-sponsored human rights violations.
The Protection of Pakistan Bill 2014 allows the security forces to shoot suspects on sight, arrest suspects without a warrant and withhold information about where detainees are being held or what they are being charged with.
It comes at a time of great public trepidation in Pakistan. The military is engaged in a large-scale offensive against the Pakistan Taliban and allied jihadist groups in the North Waziristan tribal district. Many Pakistanis fear violent militant reprisals in the country’s main cities.
In presenting the measure, one cabinet minister, Zahid Hamid, said it would “send a message that the government stands with the military in the operation against terrorists.”
The bill offers “statutory cover to armed forces which are fighting against the enemies of the country for the revival of peace and stability,” Mr. Hamid added.
But rights groups and civil rights activists said the legislation risked curbing civil liberties in a country with an already abysmal record of human rights violations.
“It is an attack on the rights of the people,” said I. A. Rehman, a veteran activist with the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “It is very difficult to swallow.”
Military and some civilian leaders have long complained that flaws in the country’s criminal justice system have hampered their ability to fight militant groups.
Militants are rarely convicted in court, often because witnesses refuse to testify or judges are afraid to hear such cases, and there is no witness protection system to speak of. Trials move at a sluggish pace, often taking several years.
But the new legislation, critics say, provides legal cover for practices that have more frequently been denounced as human rights abuses and have often embarrassed the military in the news media. Thousands of people have been illegally detained at the hands of the country’s powerful intelligence agency, often on suspicion of involvement in militancy, or in the insurgency in the western province of Baluchistan.
The major opposition parties originally opposed the draft bill, which was presented before Parliament early this year, as a draconian measure.
But the amended bill that passed Wednesday contained provisions for judicial oversight and review, and was supported by the largest opposition party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, as well as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Party, which dominates in Karachi.
The new measure doubles the maximum prison sentence for those convicted of terrorism offenses, allows security forces to hold suspects for up to 60 days and empowers senior police and armed forces officials to issue “shoot on sight” orders.
The security forces are allowed to search a building without a warrant, provided they justify their actions to a special judicial magistrate within two days. Intercepted cellphone communications will be admissible in court as evidence.
Several conservative opposition parties refused to endorse the new legislation. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which is led by the former cricketer Imran Khan, abstained from the vote. Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s biggest religious political party, opposed the legislation.
During Wednesday’s parliamentary session, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a former minister and opposition politician, suggested that the law could be easily exploited by the country’s heavily politicized police force.
For all its stringent powers, however, one pressing question about the Protection of Pakistan law is whether the country’s weak judicial system can enforce its provisions.
Law enforcement agencies have struggled to fully carry out the existing antiterrorism law, or even basic provisions of the criminal code.
For instance, the antiterrorism courts in Karachi, which has a history of militant and sectarian violence, have yet to see a case dealing with terrorism financing because the police lack the resources and training for such an investigation.
Specialized antiterrorism courts in the city have obtained convictions in a small number of high-profile cases, including local leaders of the banned anti-Shiite militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But legal experts say the system has done little to stem the broader surge of militancy in Karachi.
“The existing law wasn’t utilized properly, and now they’ve brought a new one,” said Abdul Maroof Maher, a prosecutor based in Karachi. The government would have been better, Mr. Maher said, to improve the existing laws and improve the shoddy courts infrastructure.
But the new legislation has the backing of the country’s civil and military leadership.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a rare appearance in the national assembly when the legislation was presented on Wednesday. Pakistan’s president, Mamnoon Hussain, is expected to sign it into law this week. |
Clyde Lovellette, a bruising Hall of Famer who was one of the first big men in basketball and the first player to win an N.C.A.A. championship, an Olympic gold medal and an N.B.A. title, died on Wednesday at his home in North Manchester, Ind. He was 86.
The cause was cancer, his daughter Cynthia Heckelsberg said.
Lovellette’s triple feat — playing on N.C.A.A., Olympic and National Basketball Association championship teams — was later matched by Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, among others.
Lovellette (pronounced loh-VEL-et) won three championships altogether in his 11 seasons in the N.B.A., from 1953 to 1964: one title with the Minneapolis Lakers and two with the Boston Celtics. Both teams were already dynasties by the time he joined them.
At 6 feet 9 inches and 234 pounds, the fair-haired Lovellette was part of an emerging generation of big men who transformed the game, bringing not only greater size to the court but also scoring power and a degree of athleticism that the professional ranks had seldom seen in its centers. (Old-timers were still deriding centers as clumsy, bulky “goons.”)
Some fans, sportswriters and basketball officials were for the first time urging (in vain) that the hoop be raised, from 10 feet to 12.
Lovellette arrived in Minneapolis in 1953 as one of the N.B.A.’s most sought-after recruits. At Kansas, where he was known as “the Great White Whale,” he had been an all-American, averaging almost 25 points a game at a time when basketball was a slower, lower-scoring pursuit. And he had starred on the 1952 Olympic squad that took the gold for the United States in Helsinki, Finland.
He joined a Lakers team that had just won two consecutive N.B.A. titles, led by the league’s most dominant player, the 6-foot-10 George Mikan, another future Hall of Famer.
“Lou Gehrig has been added to Babe Ruth,” the sports columnist Arthur Daley wrote in The New York Times after the Lakers signed Lovellette.
The Lakers went on to win their third consecutive title in Lovellette’s first season, defeating the Syracuse Nationals in the finals with a deep roster that included still another future Hall of Famer, Vern Mikkelsen.
At 29, Mikan was showing signs of wear, and Lovellette would spell him at center. But Lovellette could also shift to the wings and complement Mikan as a towering scoring threat.
“He has the delicate, feathery touch in his shot-making of a seamstress threading a needle,” Daley wrote.
In its biography of Lovellette, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., described him as “one of the first big men to move outside and utilize the one-handed set shot, extending his shooting range and offensive repertoire.”
It continued: “This tactic allowed him to play either the small forward, power forward or center positions, forcing the opposition’s big man to play out of position.”
Lovellette developed a bad-boy image on the court.
“It reached a point where Wilt Chamberlain flat out decked him in a one-sided game and didn’t receive as much as an ejection,” The Kansas City Star wrote in 1993, recalling the physical play in the N.B.A. decades before. “Why? As Chamberlain said recently, ‘Because everybody hated Clyde Lovellette.’ ”
Lovellette, by his own account, didn’t mind if they did: He enjoyed the tough-guy image.
“My strength was I could shoot, I was strong, I was not going to be intimidated and I was so mean,” he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1987. “I caused a lot of controversy as far as roughness goes. I took my lumps and gave them.”
Clyde Edward Lovellette was born on Sept. 7, 1929, in Petersburg, Ind., and moved with his family to Terre Haute as a boy. He was tall and awkward then. “His mother made him jump rope and do exercises to develop agility,” HickokSports.com reported.
After starring for a powerhouse team from Terre Haute Garfield High School, he was courted strenuously by Indiana University and the University of Kansas. The Kansas coach, Dr. Forrest Allen, better known as Phog, told him that the height on Mount Oread, where part of the campus, in Lawrence, is situated, would be good for his asthma.
(That claim was disputed in 1986 by the Times sportswriter Malcolm Moran, who wrote, “The fact is that Mount Oread is not high enough to stop a speck of Salina dust from settling beneath a Kansas City eyelid.”)
Lovellette chose Kansas, and from 1949 to 1952 he played three seasons for the Jayhawks, averaging 24.7 points a game. He was twice named an all-American. His last team won the N.C.A.A. championship when he scored 33 points against St. John’s University in an 80-63 victory in Seattle. He averaged 35.2 points in four N.C.A.A. tournament games and was named the tournament’s most valuable player.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1952, Lovellette played one season for the Phillips 66ers (also known as the Oilers), an amateur-league team in Oklahoma sponsored by the Phillips Petroleum Company. Playing for them preserved his eligibility for the all-amateur 1952 Olympics. (Allen was an assistant coach for the squad.)
Lovellette was so keen on playing in the Games that he turned down a three-year, $80,000 professional contract, it was reported at the time.
After his stint with the Lakers, 1953-57, he played for the Cincinnati Royals (1957-58), the St. Louis Hawks (1958-62) and the Celtics (1962-64). He won titles with Boston in each of his two seasons there, playing on rosters that included Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn and Sam Jones.
Over his N.B.A. career Lovellette averaged 17.0 points in 704 regular-season games and 14.0 points in 69 playoff games. He made the N.B.A. All-Star team three times.
Lovellette was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1988. That night, he lost by 12 votes in a bid for a spot on the Republican ticket for the Wabash County Council in Indiana.
He married Sally Wheeler in 1951. That marriage ended in divorce.
In addition to Ms. Heckelsberg, he is survived by two other daughters from his first marriage, Linda Mcleaish and Cherie Doyle; his wife, Judy Lovellette; a stepson, Robb Lovellette; 13 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
In later years Lovellette was a sports broadcaster, auto salesman, teacher, counselor, gift-shop entrepreneur and the sheriff of Vigo County, Ind. In 1967 he had the task of blocking 55 protesters from entering an arena in Terre Haute, where George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama and an avowed segregationist, was preparing to speak.
Lovellette was also the director of vocational rehabilitation and the eighth-grade basketball coach at White’s Institute near Wabash. Winning was not his main concern there, he said.
“If you come here for a winning record or to win the state championship, forget about it,” he said in 1982. “It’s a school for delinquent children having problems at home. We try to show them and teach them that the world is a great place, and it’s what you make of it.”
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration escalated its trade dispute with China on Tuesday, saying it would impose tariffs on roughly $200 billion worth of Chinese fish, petroleum, chemicals, handbags, textiles and other products if Beijing does not change its trade practices.
The threat comes just days after President Trump imposed levies on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, including robotics, airplane parts and ball bearings. Mr. Trump has said he is prepared to tax as much as $450 billion worth of Chinese products.
On Tuesday, his administration detailed the next list of products that would face Mr. Trump’s wrath unless Beijing folds to Washington’s demands. The White House is pushing China to reduce its trade surplus with the United States, halt intellectual property theft and open its markets to American companies.
Neither side appears eager to blink first. China has responded to Mr. Trump’s initial tariffs with its own equal amount of levies on American goods like pork, steel, cars and fiber optic cable and has said that it is prepared to continue retaliating.
The Chinese government said it would take unspecified countermeasures against new tariffs and renewed its threat to take its complaints to the World Trade Organization, which handles trade disputes.
“The American side’s behavior harms China, harms the world and also harms itself,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
With no official discussions scheduled to settle the trade dispute, it is unclear how or when the differences get resolved. A senior White House official said on Tuesday evening that the administration welcomed China’s engagement and had been “extremely clear” with China about its concerns over its trade practices, but that China had been “nonresponsive.” The official said that the process of imposing tariffs on the new list of goods would take roughly two months, with a public hearing on the tariffs scheduled for Aug. 20 through Aug 23.
The trade war has already started to raise costs for businesses that depend on international supply chains, from manufacturers to retailers, and consumers that purchase their products. The Trump administration said it intended its first wave of tariffs to target industrial products that the Chinese government subsidizes and to minimize the impact to American households.
But as the list of taxed products grows, the number of consumers and businesses that will feel the pinch also increases.
“It gets harder for them to keep it from the shelves of Walmart and Target and Best Buy,” said Mary E. Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It also gets harder for them to continue to hide behind this rationale of hitting China for forced technology transfer.”
The administration’s approach has prompted criticism from lawmakers, particularly those from farm states, who say Mr. Trump is approaching a serious issue in an undisciplined way that could backfire.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that he supported the administration’s effort to crack down on Chinese practices, but the decision to use tariffs was not the proper response.
“Tonight’s announcement appears reckless and is not a targeted approach,” Mr. Hatch said. “We cannot turn a blind eye to China’s mercantilist trade practices, but this action falls short of a strategy that will give the administration negotiating leverage with China while maintaining the long-term health and prosperity of the American economy.”
The White House administration disagrees. Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, said in a statement that the announcement was “an appropriate response.”
“Rather than address our legitimate concerns, China has begun to retaliate against U.S. products,” he said. “There is no justification for such action.”
For now, the limited tariffs combined with a booming economy seem to be having little impact beyond targeted industries.
Goldman Sachs economists estimated this week that the initial tariffs on Chinese goods would reduce the size of the United States economy by a minimal amount, and said they did not expect the White House to follow through on Mr. Trump’s latest threatened tariffs.
But Federal Reserve officials and others are worried about potential damage from a prolonged trade war. Minutes from the Fed’s June meeting show business contacts “indicated that plans for capital spending had been scaled back or postponed as a result of uncertainty over trade policy.”
Goldman economists said in a report earlier this month that, if the broader range of tariffs were actually enacted, it would be more damaging because they would hit Americans more quickly in the wallet than the initial round of tariffs.
Economists have also cautioned that the potential damage to the economy could grow if the trade conflict grows. Eswar Prasad, a professor of international trade at Cornell University, said that it was difficult to see a path to cooling off tensions, especially with the highly charged midterm elections approaching in the United States.
“With China in attack mode as well, additional tariffs risk escalating the trade war to a level from which it is becoming increasingly difficult to envision an exit path,” he said.
The Trump White House
The historic moments, head-spinning developments and inside-the-White House intrigue.
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At some point, everybody’s worked with that guy who ate fast food everyday, lit his next cigarette with the butt of his previous one, and could barely contain his contempt for your healthy lifestyle.
To him, your salad was “rabbit food,” working out made you a “narcissist,” and your protein smoothies looked “like something I’d flush.”
So he really would have hated spirulina.
To the uninitiated, this edible algae product may seem like nothing more than pond scum—another example of newfangled, hippie-dippy, pseudo-nutrition.
But your old colleague (rest his soul, by the way) would be wrong.
In fact, spirulina is a bonafide superfood with the potential to not only restore your body but the planet at large, making it a more than worthwhile addition to your list of healthy habits.
What Is Spirulina?
Spirulina is a type of blue-green colored algae that grows in freshwater around the world. Technically, it’s a blend of two non-toxic species of bacteria called Arthrospira Platensis and Arthrospira Maxima. (The bacteria are spiral-shaped, hence the “spirulina” name.) Spirulina has been consumed for hundreds of years, if not more, as records show it was part of the diet of the Aztec native Americans.
A source of complete protein and several vitamins and minerals, spirulina is so nutritious that it’s often used as an ingredient in greens powders and as a supplement on its own. In fact, it’s been studied as a food source for astronauts on long space missions. In 2005, the European Space Agency (think: NASA across the pond) even developed a gnocchi pasta out of spirulina, and determined that it was one of a select few foods that could be grown in a greenhouse on Mars, or other planets that may one day be colonized.
Sounds a lot more appetizing than Matt Damon’s shit potatoes, doesn’t it?
Easy to grow and ecologically-friendly, spirulina has been endorsed by the World Health Organization and United Nations as a food for fighting malnutrition in developing nations.
Spirulina is most often taken as a supplement. It’s known for benefitting the body in the following ways.
Provides Complete Protein
Spirulina can be 55–70% protein by weight. Since algae is plant life, spirulina is a vegan protein—but, unlike most non-animal protein sources, its protein contains all the essential amino acids and is therefore complete. This makes spirulina a valuable addition to a vegan or vegetarian regimen, especially among athletes and gym goers whose protein needs are higher than that of the average person. One tablespoon of spirulina powder has about five grams protein.
Supplies Basic Nutrients
Spirulina is a highly-concentrated food source, offering a plethora of micronutrition that includes essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals that many people don’t get enough of, such as calcium, iodine, and magnesium. In fact, one teaspoon of spirulina has more calcium than the same amount of whole milk, more beta carotene than an equivalent amount of carrots and… are you ready for this? More than 10 times the iron of spinach. (Suck it, Popeye.)
A study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology found that spirulina supplementation improved aerobic exercise performance by extending the duration of exercise. The researchers suspected that spirulina aided in the maintenance of muscle cell integrity, allowing the subjects’ muscles to resist fatigue. Another trial in Medicine and Science In Sports and Exercise found a similar boost in aerobic performance while the subjects kept up levels of glutathione, a molecule that promotes cellular health (and usually diminishes as it fights free radicals released by intense exercise). Bonus points: spirulina aided in burning more fat for fuel during exercise as well.
Promotes Heart Health
An investigation into spirulina and blood markers of health was published in the journal Lipids In Health and Disease. Scientists founds that spirulina helped regulate blood cholesterol levels and blood pressure in subjects without them making any other changes to their diets or lifestyle.
Assists In Relieving Occasional Respiratory Distress
Some people eat bee pollen to aid in relieving symptoms associated with environmental allergies. The science supporting spirulina for the same purpose, however, is much stronger. A European study found that, compared to a placebo, spirulina supplementation significantly aided in the relief of occasional runny nose, sneezing, nasal congestion, and itching. The researchers deemed it effective for helping to lessen these effects.
Helps To Cleanse Arsenic
Arsenic is a poison that’s prevalent in the drinking water of developing nations. A study in the Journal of Clinical Toxicology had subjects take spirulina (along with a small amount of zinc) or a placebo. The spirulina plus zinc combo helped users lower levels of stored arsenic in their bodies.
Supports Environmental Sustainability
One of the biggest environmental problems the world is facing is how to continue supplying food for a growing population without running out of farmland. Unlike animals, spirulina is cheap and easy to raise for food. An Oxford study determined that spirulina requires the least amount of land per unit of protein and unit of human digestible energy, meaning that it needs less land to produce the same amount of protein and energy as livestock does.
To that end, spirulina is often used in feed for livestock and fish/shellfish farming.
Spirulina Tablets or Powder?
Spirulina supplements come in tablet or powder form. Powders make it easy to add to shakes, juices, sauces, and dips, all of which help to hide spirulina’s earthy, slightly savory flavor (if that’s not your thing). However, scooping spirulina can get messy, and tubs of it take up space and don’t travel well. Plus, granules of algae can get stuck in your teeth like salad bits. For these reasons, plus better portability, you may opt for tablets instead.
Spirulina vs. Chlorella
Discussions about spirulina usually include mention of chlorella, a similar algae food that is also popular as a greens supplement. However, unlike spirulina, chlorella is more challenging to grow and process for human consumption. Chlorella’s cell wall is made of indigestible fiber, so it must be broken down before you take it. As a result, chlorella is more expensive and therefore isn’t as popular.
Still, it’s a worthwhile supplement. As the name implies, chlorella contains large amounts of chlorophyll, the pigment in plants that makes them green. Chlorophyll has a number beneficial properties for the body, including boosting the immune system. Chlorella also has four times the iron in spirulina (which, if you’ll remember from above, is already loaded with iron). Iron is necessary for healthy red blood cells that carry nutrients throughout the body, keeping up energy levels. For the widest array of nutrition, supplement with both spirulina and chlorella, or look for a greens product that offers both in one place.
Read more about chlorella in our corresponding guide Stop Getting Sick: The Benefits of Chlorella. |
Michigan legislators did not write the so-called "right to work" legislation that they have enacted in a mad rush of anti-democratic excess.
They simply did as they were told.
The ideas, the outlines and the words themselves came from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the right-wing "bill mill" that produces "model legislation" at the behest of Koch Industries, Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, ExxonMobil and the corporate cabal that is always looking to "buy" states.
As the Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" project revealed (in conjunction with The Nation), ALEC has developed binders full of "model legislation" that assaults the rights of working people, consumers and communities.
ALEC's package of "model legislation" includes numerous bills and resolutions that, by any reasonable measure, would be referred to as "no rights at work" schemes.
Those measures formed the basis for HB 4003, the Michigan "Right-to-Work Act" that has provoked mass demonstrations in Lansing and other Michigan communities.
Section after section, line after line, of the Michigan legislation mirrors the ALEC model legislation, as revealed by the "ALEC Exposed" project. "The legislation is straight out of the Koch-funded ALEC playbook," explains Brendan Fischer, the staff counsel with the Center for Media and Democracy. At some points, the Michigan lawmakers shifted words, from "resign or refrain from"a labor organization" in the ALEC model legislation to "refrain or resign from"a labor organization" in one of the two Michigan bills. |
Flood response study approved by city council
Council members approved a $289,000 study of the city’s sanitary and storm sewer systems on Monday during a city council meeting.
The firms Hubbell, Roth and Clark along with Orchard, Hiltz and McCliment will embark on the joint venture. Midland has worked with both firms in the past, which were suggested by city staff because of their experience on similar projects, said Joseph Sova, Midland utilities director.
The study will take about five or six months, and will begin immediately, Sova said. Results are expected in February or March of 2018.
Products of the study will include:
• technical reports on wastewater and storm water
• data collection from public engagement
• findings from modeling efforts of flood response systems
• options for making improvements
Despite improvements made to the city’s sewer response systems over the past two decades, the city’s sewer infrastructure is not designed or built to handle flooding that occurred in June 2017, Sova said.
“Pumping stations throughout the city ran at design capacities and conveyed flows never seen before to the Wastewater Treatment Plant over a one-week period,” Sova said.
The flooding marked the second highest water level of the Tittabawasse River that Midland has seen in modern history at 32.15 feet on June 24. The June floods are considered the third major event of flooding the city has experienced in the last 31 years, Sova said.
Improvements and policies implemented over the past two decades increased conveyance and storage capacities, and worked as they were designed to, but were still overburdened by the volume and rate of flooding, Sova said. More than 250 million gallons of diluted or partially treated sewage overflowed from the Waste Water Treatment Plant.
Midland residents affected by the flooding spoke during the public comment portion at the city council meeting, including Pat Blasy who lives in the floodplain.
"I just live in fear every year that I will be flooded," Blasy said. "I will be flooded again, there is no question."
Blasy said her home has been flooded three times in the last five years.
"I’m not talking a few inches, we’re talking four or five feet in my basement," Blasy said. "I can't live like this. My biggest asset is my home and I don't see a whole lot of value in it anymore."
Sewer backups and overland flooding was also experienced by many residents during June 1996 flooding, which caused the city to call on HRC to conduct a similar $330,000 study of the sanitary and storm sewer in 1997.
The study led to construction of relief storm sewers and storage facilities, but voters did not approve higher costing options identified in the study, Sova said.
When council members were asked on Oct. 16 if another study was necessary, council member Steve Arnosky said he did not want to rely on old data. Others agreed, and the study was approved in a 5-0 vote.
“I don’t believe we’re that far off from having better protection (from flooding),” Sova said. Members of city staff do not have resources or knowledge to conduct a useful study internally, so it is necessary to utilize professional services, he explained.
HRC also aided in design, construction and engineering services of a 43.5 million-gallon storage basin to prevent bypasses from the Water Waste Treatment Plant in 2003.
The storage basin project was a requirement in an Administrative Consent Order with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality due to a series of sanitary sewer overflows in violation of the treatment plant’s discharge permit. The city used HRC again for another requirement of the consent order to conduct a flow monitoring study.
A $13.6 million bond proposal was passed by voters in 2001 to increase capacity of the sanitary sewer conveyance system.
Since the 1996 rain event, the city has:
• Lined thousands of feet of sanitary sewer pipe.
• Repaired and sealed hundreds of aged and deteriorating manholes.
• Separated hundreds of downspouts, roof drains, yard drains, truck docks and parking lot drains. |
Living With Your Gastric Band
Your lifestyle is made up of the actions you make repeatedly. This includes the foods you eat, the amount of activity you engage in, and the choices you make day after day. Like most habits, your lifestyle behaviors become second nature—they are tendencies that are unique to you, but encourage normalcy in your life.
Following gastric band surgery, you’ll have to make a collection of fundamental changes to your lifestyle. This will include changes to:
- How you manage stress
- The way you react to hunger cues and emotional eating triggers
- Level of alcohol consumption and tobacco use
- Where and how often you dine out
- The food choices you make daily and their nutritional values
Lap Band surgery will introduce several additional life-factors that you will have to adjust to. This includes changing relationships, personal changes to your level of self-esteem and most noticeably changes to your body weight.
There are several tools that may help you cope with these changes, and you may choose to make use of them after weight loss surgery. These tools include:
You will also learn to manage your gastric band adjustments by paying close attention to your body and developing a deeper level of awareness concerning your dietary habits.
Developing a Healthier Lifestyle
A lifestyle behavior is something you participate in without a second thought. To lose weight, you’ll have to make some changes to your everyday behaviors. Even after weight loss surgery, the choices you make every day will influence your level of weight loss success.
Adopting a healthier lifestyle requires a full shift to an improved state of being. This requires a combination of:
- Psychological changes
- Nutritional changes
- Activity changes
Developing a healthier lifestyle can happen faster than you may think. There are three primary steps to take:
1. Identify Poor Habits
Poor lifestyle habits can hold you back from achieving an optimal state of wellness. Unfortunately, many of our habits are embed in our daily routine, and you may not even notice when you engage in a behavior that has potentially negative consequences.
Draw awareness to poor habits by:
- Becoming more mindful of your actions and eating behavior
- Journaling your actions, eating habits and daily routine
- Asking a friend or family member to become a source of external accountability
2. Replace the Bad with the Good
Instead of simply erasing a bad habit, consider ways that you can replace it with something positive. When you attempt to stop a negative behavior, you create a void in your routine. Filling that void with something healthy can encourage you to move forward.
Consider swapping negative habits for healthier counterparts:
- Replace unhealthy snacks with fruits and vegetables
- Instead of eating to manage stress, go for a walk
- Refill a water bottle instead of getting soda or juice from a vending machine
The trick to making a new habit stick is repetition. Research suggests that it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. Once a habit is formed, it starts to feel like second nature and breaking it will take some effort.
If you get started today, three weeks from now you may find yourself in a much healthier place. |
China Trades Up in Latin America
China Trades Up in Latin America
In the past 15 years, China has gone from being a relatively insignificant economic partner in Latin America to the number-one trading partner of some of the largest economies in the region.
In many cases, China has unseated the United States in its own backyard. As a whole, Latin American exports to China have risen massively since 2000, averaging a 23-percent annual export growth rate.
However, this relatively rosy picture obscures the fact that in recent years this rate has dropped precipitously, slowing to a growth rate of just 7.2 percent in 2012. Much of this slowdown can be attributed to falling commodity prices. Despite Latin American exports to China growing in volume, price volatility has allowed for stagnant, or even declining, export values.
The Latin American reliance on commodity-based exporting to China has allowed for regional vulnerability to price fluctuations. Over 50 percent of Latin American exports are in just three sectors: copper, iron, and soy. This lack of diversification is problematic, as copper and iron prices have both experienced a double-digit percentage global decline in recent years while global soy prices have also begun stagnating.
Additionally, these three main commodity exports are concentrated in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, further demonstrating a lack of regional diversification in exporting to China. This lack of diversity in exports as well as exporting nations leaves Latin America as a whole vulnerable to unforeseen future disruptions or trends.
Conversely, Chinese exports to Latin America are growing in both volume and valuation, owing mostly to the diversity and relatively high-skilled nature of the exported goods. The majority of Chinese exports to Latin America are in the manufacturing sector, with a heavy emphasis on electronics and vehicles. Such industries, compared to raw materials, are much less prone to price volatility, thus preserving much of the overall value of Chinese exports.
The impact of these trends is that since 2011, a growing Latin American trade deficit in goods has opened up with China. Despite the fact that the volume of exports to China is increasing, the fundamental nature of Latin American exports is undermining growth and creating an impending balance-of-payments problem. As long as commodity price values remain on a downswing, this trend will continue through 2014.
As China continues to overtake the United States as the key trading partner of the region as a whole, U.S. influence may decline in Latin America. A heavier reliance on Chinese demand for commodity exports will likely drive many Latin American foreign policy moves in the near future. Already China has used its economic leverage in the region to diminish the political influence of Taiwan in Latin America. Chinese nationalists view the tiny island nation as a rebellious extension of the mainland, and consequently many Chinese leaders seek to circumscribe any international support for an independent Taiwan. Should the issue ever reach the United Nations or World Court, China has already locked down support from nearly every country in the Latin American region.
Some of Latin America’s traditionally leftist countries are cozying up to China for political reasons (viewing China as an alternative to the hegemony of the United States), and perhaps more significantly, for economic reasons. Oil-producing nations such as Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador are hugely dependent on and influenced by their economic ties to China and, as a result, tend to follow China’s lead on the international diplomatic stage.
Indeed, one recent study concluded that the more a nation trades with China, the more inclined that nation will be to vote in China’s favor at the United Nations. That will place limits on international scrutiny of the Chinese human rights record, and it could mean a boon for proxy powers in world conflicts supported by China as opposed to the United States. |
Alcohol causes varying effects on different cells. In general, alcohol increases tissue sensitivity to injury and prevents postinjury recovery. Alcohol stimulates brain cells by disrupting calcium channels within the cell membranes. It is thought that alcohol affects the fluidity of the membrane phospholipids. Alcohol also causes mitochondrial damage, depressed platelet function, decreased synthesis and transportation of proteins from the liver, and the activation of pancreatic enzymes that may subsequently damage the lining of the lung. |
Q. Why are my nipples already secreting fluid?
A. Your breasts are setting themselves up to become milk factories. The number of milk ducts is increasing, the milk glands are preparing for milk production, and the nipples are beginning to protrude more, making them easier for a baby to suck. During pregnancy some women notice a thin, yellowish liquid coming from their nipples. This is colostrum, which is the first fluid a nursing baby receives from the breasts. Colostrum, which contains nutrients and health-protecting antibodies, is produced for a day or two after delivery, followed by milk.
Originally published in You & Your Baby: Pregnancy.
All content on this Web site, including medical opinion and any other health-related information, is for informational purposes only and should not be considered to be a specific diagnosis or treatment plan for any individual situation. Use of this site and the information contained herein does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Always seek the direct advice of your own doctor in connection with any questions or issues you may have regarding your own health or the health of others. |
Attackers are developing an aggressive new ransomware program for Windows machines that encrypts user files as well as the computer's master boot record (MBR), leaving devices unable to load the OS.
The program is dubbed Satana -- meaning "Satan" in Italian and Romanian -- and, according to researchers from security firm Malwarebytes, it is functional but still under development.
Satana is the second ransomware threat affecting the MBR and seems inspired by another program, Petya, that appeared in March.
The MBR code is stored in the first sectors of a hard disk drive, contains information about the disk's partitions and launches the operating system's boot loader. Without a proper MBR, computers don't know which partitions contain the OS and how to start it.
There are significant differences between Satana and Petya. For example, Petya replaces the MBR in order to launch a custom bootloader that then encrypts the system's master file table (MFT) -- a special file on NTFS partitions that contains information about all other files, like names, sizes and mappings to the hard disk sectors.
Satana doesn't encrypt the MFT. It just replaces the MBR with its own code and stores an encrypted version of the original boot record so it can restore it later if the victim pays the ransom. This leaves the computer unbootable, but can be fixed more easily than if the MFT had also been encrypted.
In May, Petya was combined with a separate ransomware program, called Mischa, which exhibits a more traditional behavior: it encrypts users' personal files directly if it can't obtain administrator privileges to attack the MBR and MFT.
Satana uses the same combination of traditional file encryption and MBR encryption, but in the same program. It first encrypts user files with specific extensions and then waits patiently for the first reboot, at which time it replaces the MBR. The user then sees a screen demanding a ransom payment of 0.5 bitcoin (about US$340).
This routine makes it harder for nontechnical users to restore their systems, because it forces them to use a separate computer to make the payment, as the affected computer can no longer boot into Windows.
"Unfortunately, at this time there is no way to decrypt Satana encrypted files for free," said Lawrence Abrams, founder of the BleepingComputer.com tech support forum, in a blog post.
Users might be able to repair the MBR by using the Windows recovery options, but this requires working with the Windows command line and the bootrec.exe (boot recovery) tool, so it is likely beyond the abilities of typical users.
The current version of Satana hasn’t yet been widely distributed, and the researchers don’t expect that it will because the code is not yet mature and has flaws. However, they believe this version will likely serve as a base for future improvements. |
The photographer Edward S. Curtis created an invaluable photographic and written record of every major Native America tribe west of the Mississippi around the turn of the century in striking, sepia-toned images. This pattern is based on one of his photos, and embodies the elements of earth and sky. The grey triangular step pattern in the center is a mountain design, and geometric motifs symbolize wheat, grass and seed. Crosses represent the four directions: North, West, East and South.
Created exclusively for the American Indian College Fund (AICF), a nonprofit organization that helps fund scholarships for Native American students and tribal colleges. Your purchase of this USA-made blanket helps support their honorable mission.
• 64" x 80"
• Unnapped; felt bound
• Pure virgin wool/cotton
• Dry clean
• Made in USA
See More Care Information
When you purchase a blanket from Pendleton’s AICF Collection, a portion of proceeds will be donated to support this honorable mission.
- bvseo_sdk, dw_cartridge, 16.1.1, p_sdk_3.2.0
- CLOUD, getContent, 24ms
- reviews, product |
By Brenda Goh and David Stanway
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s health regulator has ordered local medical institutions to stop using a heart drug from Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, in a directive that comes just days after another case of a tainted medical product.
Public confidence in domestic-made drugs has been shaken since Huahai’s case came to light at the beginning of July, followed by a government investigation concluding Changsheng Bio-technology Co Ltd sold a substandard rabies vaccine. The prices of healthcare shares have since dropped.
In the Huahai case, the European Medicines Agency found the firm’s valsartan blood and heart drug tainted with an impurity linked to cancer, saying the issue likely dated to changes in the firm’s manufacturing processes in 2012.
Huahai has since halted production and recalled the product. On Monday, it said its other products did not contain the impurity – NDMA – and that there was not enough data to categorically conclude it has carcinogenic effects on humans.
China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, also on Monday, said on its website that the drug must not be used for diagnosis or treatment. It was not clear whether medical institutions could be penalized for non-compliance.
The regulator also said six local firms used the drug in their own products, of which five have issued recalls. It said the sixth, a subsidiary of Zhuzhou Qianjin Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, had not distributed its products.
Qianjin in a statement said it returned its stock of valsartan after Huahai halted production, and that none of its products were affected by Huahai’s recall.
Alex Jiang, a Hong Kong-based analyst at UOB Kay Hian, said the Huahai incident could affect China’s roughly three-year effort to export locally made drugs, impacting not just drugmakers but also other firms involved in the push.
“Their drug products could receive stronger supervision from the (United States’) Food and Drug Administration,” he said.
An index tracking the share prices of major Chinese healthcare firms closed 2.9 percent lower on Monday, for the index’s third consecutive day of loss.
In the Changsheng case, police on Sunday said it had applied for arrest warrants for 18 people at the firm, which the government investigation found had falsified data and sold ineffective vaccines for children.
Changsheng previously apologized for the incident. Calls to the company seeking comment on Sunday went unanswered.
(Reporting by David Stanway and Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing) |
I'm working on the following fun problem. I have a circle of a given radius, R0. (Green circle in the image). I want to be able to supply a radius of the first circle that is to fit into this large circle. Lets say R1 is 0.75 * R0. Following this I find the best position of R2 (to maximise its radius), is on top of the smaller circle. This is the largest circle that can fit inside the green circle without overlapping the red circle or going out of the green circle. I can calculate its radius and position easily. I now want to place the next largest circles next to the white circle - there will be two of equal diameter, next to the white and touching the white and red and border of green. I do not know how to calculate their radius or position. I've included the html to generate the above placement with R1=0.75 R0. When R1 is altered the white circle automatically changes size. In the image below the blue circles represent the next largest circles that can be fitted. I expect there should be an infinite series of circles getting smaller and smaller. I would like to be able to calculate their placement and radius, leaving only R1 (red circle) as a variable that can be altered and all the other circles should get rendered automatically. |
New pictures have revealed the progress of Plymouth’s new history centre.
Work on The Box began in March of last year, and it will open in 2020 as part of the Mayflower celebrations.
The venue will become the city’s cultural centre which will hold thousands of artefacts and archives.
Yesterday, the temporary roof which has been on the building at Tavistock Place was removed for the first time.
The old glass roofs have been removed and Wilmott Dixon Construction Limited, who are working on the site, were able to demolish part of the old library whilst keeping the mahogany library bookshelves and beech panelling safe, dry and in a stable condition while a new steel and concrete frame was built.
Scaffolding will soon be coming down on North Hill, too.
Kristian Cartwright, construction manager for The Box, said: “We’ve finished all of the concrete works and it’s now reached its strength so we’re taking out all of the propping that was holding it [part of the building] up.
“The new roof has started on top of The Box and we’re well underway with the installation of all the mechanical, electrical and plumbing services in the museum and St Luke’s.
“Everybody’s loving being part of something that they can come back to for years to come with their families and friends.”
As well as a variety of exhibitions that will tell various stories of Plymouth’s vast history, an art gallery will be installed where the Church of St Luke used to be.
It’s also set to be the biggest art gallery in the South West.
In addition to looking back at the city’s heritage, ‘The Box’s’ state-of-the-art technology will provide a futuristic feel too as it aims to become Plymouth’s fulcrum.
While a few small outbuildings have been demolished as part of the scheme, the beautiful Edwardian buildings that make up the former Central Library and Museum and Art Gallery will be retained.
Funding for the building has been secured from a range of significant partners such as Plymouth City Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England, the coastal Communities Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation, Plymouth University and the Wolfson Foundation. |
Many health care organizations have already deployed secure email software but don't realize that their providers are still sending sensitive patient information to each other via SMS text messages. Text messaging is king, especially in the hospital setting where highly mobile physicians need fast answers about the sickest patients and aren't always in front of a computer.
But secure text messaging solutions aren't all the same. SMS text messaging is very easy to use and everyone already has it installed on their phone, so if you expect a secure replacement to get widespread adoption, the secure texting software actually has to be better than SMS in some way. In this series, I will share some areas of opportunity that we've discovered at pMD while helping our customers deploy our secure text messaging software. If you're in the market for something like this, I hope you find this series informative and that it inspires you to seek the best solution on the market for your needs!
This scenario may sound familiar: you send someone an SMS text message about something important and you're waiting to hear back. Some time later, you realize that you haven't heard back. Maybe the recipient didn't get your message. You decide to open up your text messaging app, but it doesn't say one way or the other. You start to wonder if you should send another text message, or maybe even call the other person. Then something distracts you and you lose the thread. It could be a while before you think to check again, and your phone won't bring the unread message to your attention. The recipient might not have received your message, or might not have noticed when it arrived; either way, the thread of communication stopped there.
Most secure text messaging software on the market actually makes this problem more severe. Unlike SMS text messages, you need a data signal (WiFi or cellular data) in order to get notified about a secure text message that was sent to you. Most hospitals are riddled with dead zones where you can't find out right away that a secure text message was sent to you because there isn't enough data signal for push notifications to reach you. This is dangerous in the hospital setting where providers are sending time-sensitive clinical information and they expect it to work like SMS.
To solve this problem, seek a solution that will automatically follow up on your behalf. Replaying the scenario described above, if the recipient hasn't received or hasn't read your message after a period of time, the software should automatically follow up with an SMS text message reminding them that they have a secure text message from you. Even if they don't have a data signal, they can get this text message reminder - you don't have to remember to text them to see if they got your first message because the system does it for you.
Ideally the software should follow up again, this time with an automated voice call, if the recipient still hasn't read your message in pMD after even more time has passed. Though more intrusive than an SMS, the voice call is appropriate for time-sensitive messages like a stat consult - in other words, situations where you yourself would call the recipient if you didn't get a quick reply... if you remembered to. Automation makes this consistent and saves you the trouble.
If the recipient got distracted or was unreachable and never read your message, at a certain point you want to know that. Most secure and non-secure messaging systems require you to actively keep checking the status of the message to see if it was read. You should look for a system that instead closes the loop by actively letting you know that the recipient hasn't read it yet after more time elapsed. This way you don't have to check the status of the message and you can't forget to check it.
Putting all these reminders together, you should seek a secure text messaging solution that acts like a concierge or assistant for your communication. It should follow up for you, using different types of reminders that don't rely on data and that become increasingly hard to ignore. Finally, if your message still wasn't read, the system should let you know so you can try to reach the person a different way, or find someone else to contact. That way if your message wasn't read, you'll be the first to know.
These follow up actions shouldn't be needed most of the time, but when they kick in, you’ll be relieved to know that your message isn't just sitting out there in limbo. Hospital-based physicians can find great peace of mind in knowing that their messages are not only secure, but also persistent. |
We have all known someone who seems to have been born lucky. Everything they tackle seems to only either lead to success or opens doors to more opportunities. It is likely you have felt jealous seeing their apparent luck at work and considered it unfair! Thankfully, this luck can actually be harnessed to your own benefit. Read our list of some positive habits of lucky people you should be adopting for yourself!
Here Are 7 Habits of Lucky People
“The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act.” – Barbara Sher
1. Being proactive
You would find that the luckiest people also happen to be the most proactive. What we mean by this is that apparently lucky people are actually constantly going around knocking on doors. After all, that fulfilling career you have always dreamed of realistically isn’t going to just fall into your lap! In other words, in order to create your own luck, go out and find it! Take extra classes if they will help you better your skills. Go out and talk to people. Become active in the charting of your own future, and luck will find you.
2. Talk to people
Socializing can be incredibly difficult for many of us, even a source of anxiety. You will notice, however, that lucky people seem to be like social butterflies. Even if they are not highly social, you will find that they normally have impressive social circles and seem to be at least acquainted with just about everyone. This is actually one of their many secrets to their apparent luck!
Most of the time, what we consider luck is really just opportunities landing at our feet. Some examples you can think of might include getting that job you want, or finally finding the partner you have dreamed of. You might assume that this is based on luck, but that really isn’t the case. Rather, it is reliant on you knowing the right person!
Of course, in order to find the people that will give you those opportunities, you have to go out and get your name out there first. Luck can’t come your way if the people who would offer it to you don’t know who you are! So, get out there and try to have a bit of fun in social circles.
3. Seize opportunities
At a glance, lucky people the same age as you appear to have experienced so much more of the world than you have. In actuality, lucky people have been given about the same number of options as you have had. The difference, however, is in how they grab every offer that comes their way, even if it isn’t quite what they had planned in mind.
To follow their example, your mindset needs to become flexible in order to take advantage of everything that comes your way. You also want to seize any offers or opportunities given. The lack of money and time in addition to the burden of social responsibilities may be legitimate excuses, but in the end, they are still excuses. The key is to try your best anyway. There is always something to gain; you just have to reach for it first.
4. Encourage positive thinking
When looking at the lucky people around you, you might presume that the reason they are so positive is because of their success. Rather, studies have proven that this is the other way around! Researcher Shawn Achor notes in his research that positive thinking begets the success so desperately desired, instead of success bringing about happiness as is normally thought. With positive thinking, you are able to see the good that comes from any situation, and glean the opportunities that it offers!
5. Stay optimistic
Here is the interesting thing about lucky people – they expect to be lucky. This optimism doesn’t mean that they lie back and wait for good things to come. Rather they let their optimism pull them through what is otherwise a string of apparent failures. They look forward to the future. Their optimism in their future isn’t baseless either, as studies have proven that there is a strong correlation between optimism and resilience.
That resilience will prove necessary because you will need to be able to bounce back from the many rejections and failures you will first endure. People don’t talk about it and prefer to focus on the final results, but you need to try several times before you get that breakthrough you were looking for.
6. Get creative
Every time we hear news about how people manage to survive an experience that should have otherwise killed them, we think that they were incredibly lucky. In fact, they had to create an opening for luck by getting resourceful. Lost in the wilderness and have no camping equipment? Get creative and figure out how to fashion a shelter from things around you. Then only do you have room for luck to come in and help.
While we won’t really have to experience such dire circumstances in our day-to-day lives, the concept still applies. Get creative. Think out of the box. Look at your situation from different perspectives in order to find loopholes. What seems to be luck is really just people tackling a problem from an unexpected angle!
7. Trust your gut
You may have noticed that on top of everything else, lucky people are incredibly instinctual. When they lack the information they need to make an informed decision, they tend to go by gut instinct. There actually is a reason for this. Research has shown that mind-body relations and the information extracted from this relationship are far more complex than they initially appear. We also learn in many different ways that aren’t readily apparent, which means we have a hefty catalog of information to back up any decisions we make. So, when in doubt, trust what your body has learned throughout its lifetime and follow your gut!
Lucky people may initially seem to be just that – lucky. However, these people don’t rely on chance interfering with their lives. Rather, they knock on doors and seek out their fortune. This means that when chance grants them the opportunity they were looking for, they are already ready to take advantage of it. Follow in their footsteps, and you will also find yourself becoming one of those lucky people! |
March 30, 2018
On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.
“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.
“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.
“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”
The explosive internal memo is titled “The Ugly,” and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.
This article was posted: Friday, March 30, 2018 at 3:40 am |
March 21, 2018
Science is now racist.
From Campus Reform:
A newly published academic journal article argues that science educators must do more to combat “whiteness” and “White ideology” in the classroom.
In their research essay titled “Towards a truer multicultural science education: how whiteness impacts science education,” University of Colorado at Denver scholars Cheryl E. Matias and Paul T. Le seek to “have the field consider the theoretical frames of whiteness and how it might influence how we engage in science education such that our hope for diversity never fully materializes.”
“Whiteness embraces White ideology, and because Whites are at the apex of the racial hierarchy, whiteness becomes normalized and is invisible to those who benefit the most from it,” the scholars observe. “This is particularly troubling because the normality of whiteness means that Whites do not believe that they are actively investing in White supremacy or racism, which keeps oppression intact.”
While “the [science] culture attempts to be unbiased through peer reviewing and consistent methods and methodologies,” this interpretation “falsely makes us believe that science is an objective enterprise and transcends culture,” the academics assert.
“For many scientists, we are convinced that objectivity prevents an oppressive culture because discoveries are independent of identity,” they observe. “Consequently, we unknowingly spread whiteness ideology.”
Indeed, new liberal science tell us a skyscraper is no better than a mud hut and penicillin is no better than a witch doctor’s voodoo.
We can just throw out these charts of scientific accomplishment compiled by political scientist Charles Murray for his book Human Accomplishment:
Science which isn’t based around “multi-culturalism” and “inclusiveness” is worthless.
For her own part, Matias has contributed to scientific progress by comparing “whiteness” to a “disease” and working to “dismantle whiteness from education” here in America.
This article was posted: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at 7:49 am |
Tips for creating a safe room where you and your family can retreat, in the unfortunate event of a home intrusion.
There’s no denying that South Africa has a crime problem. With this in mind, many homeowners have taken to securing their homes as best they can against intruders. But what if the unthinkable happens? What if intruders manage to penetrate all of your exterior defences and safeguards, and infiltrate your home?
Perhaps it’s time you gave some thought to creating a safe room.
In essence, safe rooms are impenetrable areas to which you and your family can retreat if your exterior security is breached. While images of stark bunkers may spring to mind, safe rooms can be seamlessly incorporated into your living space and can actually add value to a home come time to sell.
The following are points to consider when creating a safe room:
The first step to take when creating a safe room is to purchase an alarm system that will alert you to the fact that there has been an intrusion which will give you time to retreat accordingly. Having a safe room is pointless if you aren’t aware there has been a breach in the first place.
Select an area of your home that ideally has one point of entry and replace the door with a solid core or reinforced door. Most modern homes feature hollow core doors which, while fine for buffering sound and providing privacy will not stand up to being kicked or shot through by an intruder. A number of door companies offer designer reinforced security doors which blend in with modern décor.
Reinforce the doorframe
If you upgrade your door but then overlook your doorframe, your security can still be compromised as determined intruders can apply force until the frame breaks. Ensure that when you purchase your reinforced door that the frame is reinforced too. Generally speaking, aim for something that is rated to withstand the full force of a 100-kg man repeatedly slamming himself against it.
These can add another level of protection to your safe room entrance and are usually fitted outside doors. Security gates can take the form of roller style shutters, slam lock barriers or fixed bar security doors. Such barriers can usually be tailored to fit the space and serve to slow intruders down. The easier and quicker it is to secure such barriers, the better.
Multiple, one-sided deadbolts that can be activated via a single locking mechanism are generally advocated by security companies; multiple locks distribute impact over a greater area, thereby reducing the chance of frame failure – they also share the load between locks, thereby lessening the chance of lock failure.
Windows can become an escape route for you – or a point of entry for intruders; with this in mind, consider installing retractable barriers or security screens that can only be opened from the inside.
Lastly, the most important thing to have with you in your safe room is your cell phone and a panic button, which should be a permanent fixture; this will allow you to call or alert the necessary security personnel and hopefully bring an end to any ordeal you may have the misfortune to encounter. |
Parker graduated from Duke University as an All-America tailback.
Parker signed a contract with the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team, but after the 1937 baseball season he obtained permission from the Athletics to give pro football a try.
Ace joined the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National Football League expecting to play out just one pro football season.
Parker stayed with the Dodgers until World War II military service interrupted his career in 1942.
Ace returned to the pros in 1945 with the Boston Yanks then added a brilliant final campaign with the New York Yankees of the All-America Football Conference in 1946.
Ace played a total of 7 seasons, 68 games in his pro football career.
Parker won Most Valuable Player honors in the NFL even though he had suffered a broken left ankle in a summer baseball game that year.
Ace during the 2003 Enshrinement.
Parker with his presenter Jack White, GM of the 49ers, during his Enshrinement in 1972.
Parker's Hall of Fame mural.
Parker's Hall of Fame bust. |
The service provides access to voter registration information in the U.S. state of Illinois. The state maintains rolls of qualified voters and makes this public data accessible to registered political committees, which includes individuals or organizations making contributions above $3000 in support or opposition to candidates and ballot measures.
API methods support search for registered voter information and signature data statewide. Methods also allow for updating voter registration records.
The following is a list of SDKs from our SDK directory that matched your search term. Though your definition of an SDK may differ, in our world, we define SDKs as platform- specific tools for consuming existing APIs of the sort we list in our API directory. For example, the Ruby SDK for consuming the Twitter Ads API. If you think an SDK, API, or other asset is missing from our directory, be sure to check our guidelines for making contributions to ProgrammableWeb. |
While Google played Base down, remarking 'we are testing a new way to submit content to Google' (Computer Business Review, 27 October), the rumour mill predicted the death knell for eBay and virtual listings service Craigslist, and even a body blow to traditional ad outlets. 'When Google turns to a new area, rivals quake' (Lex, Financial Times, 26 October). There was talk of a 'global hard drive' (The Times, 26 October), a worldwide developer database (Gartner, vnunet.com, 27 October) and an attempt to 'index the world' (TechSmec.com, 26 October).
The downside of Google's urge to diversify, however, was an undercurrent of fear. 'Google is being viewed with the kind of suspicion once reserved for Bill Gates and Microsoft,' commented The Observer (30 October).
Blogger Rodney Kuhn was more succinct: 'Google vs the world!' (The Business, 30 October).
Analysis conducted by Echo Research from data supplied to PRWeek from NewsNow. www.echoresearch.com www.newsnow.co.uk |
Welcome to the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association of New Zealand
Freephone PWS Helpline: 0800 4PWS HELP | 0800 4797 4357
PWS is a complex genetic disorder presenting with a spectrum of symptoms found listed throughout this website. Individuals may present with less or more of these symptoms, each in varying degrees. The typically occurring symptoms which characterise PWS can be found in ‘What is PWS?‘ below. Further information about symptoms of PWS can be found in the Medical A-Z and Support and Management sections of our website. If you cannot find what you are looking for, please contact us and we will be happy to find useful resources and answer questions.
Disclaimer: This website is intended to provide information only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult qualified healthcare providers with any questions regarding a medical condition. Do not delay seeking medical advice with any concerns. |
The WWI memorial in Westbrook is an ever-present reminder of the effects of war on this small rural Darling Downs community. The memorial records that 47 local men went to war. About half of the families listed are represented by more than one member. Two families each saw four of their men go off to war and the Westbrook community mourned the loss of 10 lives.
The popular 'Digger' statue with an honour roll was unveiled around June 1922 by federal parliamentarian LE Groom (his father William had served as the Darling Downs' first federal politician from 1901).
The 4.2 metre monument, a life-sized soldier statue standing on a pedestal, was designed and produced by Bruce Brothers of Toowoomba.
Once, the memorial stood in an open field. Today, development around it finds it adjacent to Westbrook's public hall. |
It’s fire season in the Cariboo. Time for breathing smoke and checking wildfire updates. Wildfires out of control have a way of changing your patterns and priorities.
It has become our habit each summer to pack things that have meaning to us into our pick-up truck and leave it in town whenever we go away. At least our most treasured possessions would be saved if a fire swept our home away. Living in the bush with no fire protection makes us consider what is most important if we had to choose to save only a few possessions. I have realized that I actually pack up less each year. As I grow older, less of my ‘stuff’ is important and the truck is more empty each season.
Contemplating my ‘stuff’ leads to asking the bigger questions about what is important in my life. Where are my priorities? What in my life is really worth focusing on and what will last? A poem reads: Only one life, ‘twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.
One day, death will come like a consuming fire and burn up all the ‘stuff’ of our lives. How much of what I spend my time and energy on will last through that fire? Only what I’ve done for Christ. When I leave ministry what will remain is the love of Jesus that I’ve been able to share with people here.
What will endure of my legacy in my family will be how well I poured out my faith in Jesus into my children and eventually grandchildren. They say you can’t take anything with you, but we can leave with more than we came with as we grow in our love for Jesus and we leave that behind for others when we go. I hope you can get some fire perspective on what is important in your life, what will last.
Shannon Bell is a pastor with the Cariboo Presbyterian Church in Nazko. |
In the beginning, there were flour bags, old clothing and scraps from new clothes. These made up the quilting fabric. Remember the labyrinthine crazy quilts of the Victorian era, and the flour sack quilts that started popping up in the 1920’s? Frugal has been part of quilt making since the beginning, but, with the cost of fabric today, can we be frugal quilters? Importantly, should we be frugal quilters?
Every quilter has to set his or her own limits, but, from my experience, it’s all in how you look at “frugal,” and in how you look at “cheap.”
Relative value of time, vs cost of materials and emotion/heart vs life cycle of a quilt.
All 100% Cotton Fabric is Not Alike
You have to understand the fabric before you can make any decisions.
All cotton quilt fabric begins as unbleached, untreated cotton. But, even at this basic level, not all cotton is alike.
Thread count….the number of threads woven into a square inch of fabric constitutes it’s “thread count.” Many quilters like a thread count of around 70 threads per square inch. A lower thread count will fray and fall apart, and stretch. A higher thread count can be tough to get a needle through (and tougher to get the holes out if you need to rip.)
Larger chain stores often have less expensive fabric. Don’t assume this is because they buy in volume. Often the base fabric they are selling has fewer threads per inch. Make sure you look at the fabric you’re buying for a nice tight thread count. It can help to bring a swatch of fabric that you know has 70 threads per inch to compare. Also, make sure you feel the fabric you’re buying. Often, the fabric with fewer threads per inch is treated with a stabilizer that makes it feel a bit stiff. Making the choice
Many say it depends on your skills. They insist that the expense of higher quality fabric is unnecessary if your skill level is not advanced. I disagree. There are many reasons I think beginning quilters, especially, should use the best quality fabric:
- It is harder to piece well if fabric is stretching or fraying.
- It takes a beginner even more time to complete a quilt than it takes an advanced quilter, why risk taking all that time to produce a quilt that could fall apart because of low quality materials?
- Many first quilts are one and done. That is, the maker finds quilting isn’t their thing. If you use better quality materials, the only quilt you ever make will last generations. (See Feb. 6, 2018 Blog titled: Great Grandma Book’s Quilt.)
For myself, I love the tactile nature of the quilting process. Better fabric is nicer to touch. Using anything but good materials is a waste of my quilting time.
Live well. Quilt well. |
From our private database of 14,100+ case briefs...
J.R. Hale Contracting Company v. United New Mexico Bank at Albuquerque
Supreme Court of New Mexico
799 P.2d 581 (1990)
Over an 11-year period, United New Mexico Bank at Albuquerque (United) (defendant) extended numerous lines of credit to J.R. Hale Contracting Company, Inc. (Hale) (plaintiff). Although Hale was often late in making payments, United declined to take any adverse action other than occasionally contacting Hale to request the overdue payments. In November 1982, United extended a $400,000 loan to Hale. The loan note required one interest payment to be made by March 1, 1983, and provided that, upon any past due payments, United was entitled to exercise its right to accelerate payment of the entire balance without notice to Hale. The following year, Hale met with United several times to discuss the possibility of borrowing additional funds. Although Hale failed to make the interest payment, United did not remind Hale about the payment during the meetings. Hale was not notified of United’s intention to exercise the right to accelerate payment until March 24, when United gave Hale a letter demanding immediate payment of the entire balance. The notice provided that United had chosen to accelerate because Hale had failed to make the interest payment and because United had concerns about Hale’s overall ability to make payments on the note. Hale filed suit against United, claiming wrongful acceleration. The trial court granted a directed verdict in United’s favor based on the explicit language of the note. Hale appealed, arguing that United’s conduct invalidated the terms of the note.
Rule of Law
Holding and Reasoning (Ransom, J.)
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From our private database of 14,100+ case briefs...
United States v. Microsoft Corporation
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
253 F.3d 34 (2001)
The United States and various individual states (plaintiffs) filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) (defendant). The district court found that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws, and ordered that Microsoft be restructured. Immediately after the district court entered final judgment against Microsoft, interviews with the trial judge appeared in the press. The judge had apparently given secret interviews to reporters before entering the final judgment against Microsoft. The earliest interview was two months before the judge published his findings of fact. In the interviews, the judge expressed his impression of the testimony offered during trial, including the testimony of Bill Gates, whom the judge described as not credible. The judge also likened Microsoft’s conduct to drug traffickers and told reporters that he did not have to give Microsoft any due process. Four months before the final restructuring order, the judge told reporters that he was not comfortable restructuring Microsoft, because he did not know if he was competent to do so. The judge insisted that these interviews remain secret until after he issued the final judgment. Microsoft appealed the district court’s judgment, arguing that the judge had committed ethical violations by making comments to the press on the merits of the case.
Rule of Law
Holding and Reasoning (Per Curiam)
What to do next…
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Learn more about Quimbee’s unique (and proven) approach to achieving great grades at law school.
Quimbee is a company hell-bent on one thing: helping you get an “A” in every course you take in law school, so you can graduate at the top of your class and get a high-paying law job. We’re not just a study aid for law students; we’re the study aid for law students. Read more about Quimbee.
Here's why 218,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 14,100 briefs, keyed to 189 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language. |
South Birmingham PCT commissions local health services for a population of 383,000. Its primary care services include 64 GP practices, 70 general dental practitioners, 85 local pharmacists and 51 local opticians.
Penny Coxon, Communications Assistant at South Birmingham PCT, uses Qwizdom for events and team meetings. The PCT purchased the system 12 months ago to educate staff and patients and encourage interactivity through group discussions.
Monthly team meetings: approximately 50 staff attend and a major focus is learning about each others’ roles as the PCT recently split into two so the organisation is relatively new. Qwizdom is a good ice-breaker and the quizzes help familiarise people with each others’ roles. It is also used to obtain results for reports based on staff feedback. Questions posed include: ‘What do you think is the best resource at the PCT?’ The results can be displayed on graphs instantly and can be acted upon to make improvements.
PIAG: At a recent Public Information Action Group, the PCT posed questions such as: ‘How would you prefer to be contacted by us?’ The multiple choice answers included: ‘a) letter b) email c) telephone. More than one option could be selected and this provoked group discussion as people debated which they would prefer. The PCT plans to use such information for reports to establish the preferred contact methods and would then act upon it to ensure public satisfaction.
AGM, September: The PCT decided to do something a bit more fun and interactive this time so Qwizdom was used to pose questions such as ‘What is the biggest cause of death in South Birmingham?’ Answers: a) Stroke b) Coronary Heart Disease c) Lung Disease. This encouraged group interaction as people discussed their thoughts and reactions.
“We believe that every NHS organisation has a duty to obtain feedback from staff and patients about their experiences. Qwizdom is a very easy and fun way of achieving this and it provides useful information for us to act upon to continually improve services. Technology is evolving so fast and if you’re going to use it in public there is sometimes a worry that people might be apprehensive about technical aspects but Qwizdom is as easy to use as a mobile phone!”
— Penny Coxon / Communications Assistant, South Birmingham PCT |
Medical teams performing fluoroscopy-guided procedures are regularly exposed to high cumulative doses of harmful radiation. They wear heavy protection gear, which provides only partial protection, while taking its toll on their skeletal health.
We develop a game-changing technology for radiation protection that provides better protection and unparalleled comfort.
To provide a safe work environment and freedom from heavy protective apparel for medical teams, thus imroving their health and increasing their capacity and productivity.
Medical teams in interventional suites are regularly exposed to hazardous X-ray radiation.
With the growth in number and complexity of fluoroscopy-guided procedures, the exposure of medical teams to high cumulative doses of radiation is dangerously increasing.
Studies show alarming effects of radiation exposure on physicians, including increased risk for brain tumors, cognitive damages, cataract and various types of cancer.
The existing protective gear is heavy and causing orthopedic injuries, loss of working capacity, reduced efficiency, and does not provide full body protection.
Therefore, a new approach is needed for radiation protection solutions.
Our new technology is a paradigm shift that provides dramatically reduced radiation exposure and increased comfort, resulting in better health and increased performance.
Radiaction’s innovative radiation shielding technology enables full body protection to all medical team members anywhere in the interventional suite.
Protection levels provided by our technology are higher than current gold standard solutions, such as lead aprons and segmental shields.
The unique concept shifts the shielding from the personnel to the fluoroscopy system itself and encapsulates the scattered radiation at its origin.
- Full body protection, including head and hands
- One system protects all personnel anywhere in the room
- Automatic operation
- Seamless integration into the work flow
- Zero-impact on image quality
- Lead-free & non-toxic materials
(0.5 mm Pb)
To improve the health and efficiency of medical teams by dramatically reducing radiation exposure and burden of heavy protective apparel.
We aspire for all medical teams in the interventional rooms to be free from wearing heavy and limiting protective apparel while being protected from hazardous radiation, relieving them from orthopedic injuries and life threatening illnesses.
Recent tests show significant reduction in the amount of radiation that reaches the body of the medical team members around the room.
The Radiaction system reduced the scattered radiation by over 97% for the entire team, in comparison to 93% with a standard lead apron, that does not cover the head, hands and legs. The tests showed the great value of our technology in providing better protection than current standard solutions to everyone, everywhere around the interventional suite.
With over 12 years of experience in R&D management, Jonathan has a unique mix of hands on experience and strategic overview.
Prior to Radiaction, Jonathan directed an R&D team in the Ballistic Missile Defense field at WALES Ltd, heading cutting edge studies for Departments of Defense of various countries.
Jonathan received his BSc in Physics and Business Administration and MSc in Bio-Medical Engineering, all with honors, from Tel Aviv University.
Mr. Yifat was a regular keynote speaker at professional conferences around the world and published several papers and patents both in missile defense, and medical technologies.
As a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Belson was the founder and CEO of NeoGuide Systems that was acquired by Intuitive Surgical in 2009 and founder of Vascular Pathways that was acquired by C.R Bard Inc. in 2015. Belson is also the founder of various medical device companies, such as Emboline, Zipline Medical, Qool Therapeutics and Modular Surgical.
He is the author of over 30 medical papers and abstracts and has more than 500 issued and pending patents.
Amir graduated from the school of medicine of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He did his pediatric residency at Dana Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv and his pediatric nephrology fellowship at Stanford. He also served several years as a flight surgeon in Israel’s air force rescue unit before moving to the US for a three-year Pediatric Nephrology fellowship at Stanford University Medical Center. Belson also spent one year as a research fellow with the Biomedical Technology Innovation Program at Stanford.
Yossi has a BA in Humanities & received his MA in philosophy from the Tel Aviv university, Israel & his MBA in Finance from IDC Herzliya, Israel. Yossi is an innovative research and development leader with diverse experience in design & commercialization of medical device products. He is highly experienced with building & managing diverse R&D teams with specialty in novel medical robotic systems, surgical instruments and devices for assisted procedures in the spine & brain fields. In addition, Yossi oversaw regulatory processes with FDA, CE and CFDA, including clinical trials. Prior to Radiaction, Yossi was the head of R&D at Mazor Robotics Ltd and served as a Major in the Israeli air force in the technical field.
Professor Chaim Lotan is currently serving as the head of the Heart Institute in Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, Israel. Previously, Prof. Lotan founded the Israeli Workgroup for Interventional Cardiology and served as its Secretary General for 4 years, and was Director of Interventional Cardiology and Cardiovascular Catheterization at Hadassah Medical Center since 1996.
Prof. Lotan is the chairman of the Ministry of Health Committee on Certification and Licensing of Coronary Stents in Israel and also the joint Chairman of the ICI Meeting, which is considered one of the world’s leading conferences in the cardiovascular innovation arena.
He completed his medical training at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School where he concluded his residence in Cardiology
Dr. Faermann got his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Brazil and M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from the Technion, Israel. He completed his Ph.D. at the Ben-Gurion University – Department of Nuclear Engineering and the Soreq Nuclear Research Center. He was a research fellow in the Gershenson Medical Center, Detroit, the Curie Institute, Paris, and the Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo.
Sergio is a qualified expert in the fields of medical radiation physics of the International Atomic Energy Agency and of the Israeli Ministry of Environment in Medical Radiation Risk Evaluation. Sergio served as the chairman of the Israel Society for Medical Physics and as the Chief Medical Physicist and Chief Radiation Protection Officer of the Soroka University Medical Center.
Dr. Faermann is the author of more than 50 papers, abstracts and presentations in international conferences.
Amichay is Co-founder and CEO of E-Motion Medical Ltd, a medical device company in the field of restorative digestive motor function therapy.
With over 15 years of experience in management, Amichay assists young companies to move forward more effectively and efficiently and serves as an advisor for management, operations, technology and business strategy.
Previously, Amichay founded and headed a line of airborne cooling systems at RAFAEL, and served as a Captain in the Israeli Air Force and as staff member at the Technion.
Amichay holds a BSc and MSc in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion (IIT), and an MBA from the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). |
Outdoor Learning Spaces
We often encourage our students to learn actively in spaces outside of the classroom walls. When our desks are empty, we are out in the world, learning from what we find.
It’s a Friday morning in February. The schedule on the kindergarten classroom wall says it’s time for science, but the classroom is empty. Bundled up in snow pants, gloves, hats, and boots, they will spend the morning in Rashi’s outdoor laboratory—its nature trails, woods, river, and open fields. With sketchbooks in hand, they will visit the tree that they have been studying all year. Their teacher guides them with a set of questions, “what do you see? How has it changed since the last time you observed it? How many details of your tree can you draw from memory? What details can you add if you look closely?” As the class begins to make their way back to the classroom, they are given a set of challenges. Identify at least one set of animal prints. Find something that is created by people and something that is created by nature. What is the evidence for your answer? Before they go inside, they stop to roll down a hill.
Learning in the outdoors is essential for the well-being of our students. Kindergarten teacher, Sharon Miller reflects, “We spend so much time being entertained inside. It’s important to be outside to see, to breathe, to touch.” Across all grades, our teachers find that students are more focused in the classroom if they have had enough time to let out their energy outside of the classroom. This time outside, which can often be more unstructured than their time in the classroom, provides students with the optimal environment to work through problems that may arise. Opportunities to learn outside are woven through all grades at Rashi.
Each year in mid-November, the Sixth Grade students make a trip to Nature’s Classroom in Charlton, Massachusetts. They explore the outdoors both in the day and at night. Through a series of exercises designed to challenge them to trust each other and to advocate for themselves through questioning, they learn to problem solve, be more self-sufficient, rely on each other, and practice teamwork.
During these intense days in nature, our students learn shomrei adamah, that they are guardians of the earth and think about what they can do to protect the world around them. Whether learning about animal camouflage, the shapes of leaves, the types of Hemlock or looking at the shafts of sunlight as they fall on the ground, they use their senses and appreciating all that our earth offers.
Backs in the grass, looking up at the stars, a group of students listens carefully for the distant calls of an owl or even the lonely cry of a coyote. Recreating the sounds they hear, Rashi’s sixth graders converse with the wildlife. Thursday morning minyan is held outdoors. Some students cluster around trees and some find their spiritual peace in open spaces. Others look up at the clouds and sky and appreciate the beauty and gifts of the earth around them. They come away from this four-day experience with knowledge of ecology, biology and with the new insight and appreciation; if we take care of the earth, the earth gives back to us. |
February 7, 2017. Exodus 25-27.
The next three chapters in our daily reading are instructions from God to Moses on how to build the Tabernacle and how to furnish it. There is very much detail in how God wanted this holy sanctuary to be built. God gave specific instructions from the type of wood to use to how detailed the decorations of the lamp stand.
But I want to draw our attention today, specifically to the first two verses:
“The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to bring me an offering. You must receive the offering for me from everyone whose hearts move them to give. (Exodus 25:1-2)
Two things jumped out at me as I read this passage: Moses was required to receive an offering, and it could only come from those who felt in the heart that they wanted to give.
It’s not like God could not have created His own sanctuary for the people in the desert. He had already displayed His magnificent power in delivering the people from Egypt. He had parted the Red Sea for them, provided food for them miraculously, and set His angel to lead them and protect them. Why did He need the people to build the sanctuary? The purpose of the sanctuary/tabernacle was for a place where God could dwell among them (Exodus 25:8) God is omnipresent, so more than a dwelling place for God, it was the place where the people could come to worship and meet with with their mighty Deliverer. Having the people build it gave them a kind of ownership in the structure. They would also be more committed to it’s purpose. Having a part in building it would compel them to want to take part in its finished purpose; to meet with God. Having a designated place to meet with God would also make it more of a centerpiece of their life as well. They would not be able to pass by that spot without remembering their purpose in building it.
The second phrase “…from everyone whose hearts move them to give” is equally important. God did not want this to be a forced tax upon the people. He wanted it to be a free will offering; something the people gave from their heart. This same idea is carried over in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul wrote, “ Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. You shouldn’t give if you don’t want to. You shouldn’t give because you are forced to. God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7) It pleases God when His children give out of a grateful heart. Our gifts and acts of kindness to others should be from a heart that is moved to do so. Giving should display what is in our hearts.
How are you joining with God in His work? Do you give from a willing heart? |
CALGARY — The Harper government has given the “green” light to eight projects aimed at developing carbon capture and storage technologies.
Funding was announced last April but it took the Natural Resources Department a year to choose from almost 40 proposals it received.
“I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of this technology,” Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said Thursday at an announcement in Calgary.
“These companies span B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan, and they will be demonstrating how carbon capture and storage can be used to reduce our emissions associated with projects such as fertilizer production, gas processing and coal-fired electricity generation.”
Ottawa will spend between $3 million and $30 million on each of the projects up to a total of $140 million.
“It’s very true it is not an inexpensive solution and moving from research to commercialization is very difficult,” Raitt said.
“However, that’s exactly why we have to be here today … the end goal is to make … this technology … utilized and socially acceptable in terms of cost.”
The Alberta government has already said it will spend $2 billion to develop a carbon capture system for the oilsands.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced after Obama’s visit to Canada last month that they would work together to develop new technologies to stem emissions from the coal and oil industries.
Carbon capture and storage is a process in which carbon dioxide is taken from the air and buried. A timeline for when such a technology could actually begin reducing the carbon footprint left by big polluters is unclear.
However, Saskatchewan’s minister of Crown Corporations pointed to a project already in place in his province as proof that it works.
“We have an operation in Saskatchewan operating right now. It’s commercially viable and it’s beyond the test stage and now we’re taking it to that next level where we’re talking many tonnes of carbon capture and sequestration,” said Ken Cheveldayoff, who was at the announcement.
Raitt said it’s hoped “rising economic powers” such as India and China will eventually apply the technology to their energy production. |
Stettler County declared the county an agricultural disaster area after seasonal dry conditions and bad weather have affected crops and delayed harvest. This not only affects grain farmers but also cattle producers.
Coun. James Nibourg brought the issue to council during their regular meeting Oct. 10.
Coun. Nibourg said he had numerous ratepayers call him asking why Stettler County isn’t on Alberta Agriculture’s prescribed list of drought and flood regions. Being on the list allows farmers, through the Federal Livestock Tax Deferral program, to sell part of their breeding herd due to drought or flooding and defer a portion of the money to the next year.
“We did get some moisture in certain spots,” said Coun. Nibourg, adding that many farmers didn’t get any.
In addition, many farmers can’t get their crops off the field because they are now under snow.
“Every day the crops are out there they are losing grade,” said Coun. Nibourg.
The Alberta Agriculture and Forestry/Agriculture Financial Services Corporation Crop Reporting Survey as of Oct. 2 indicates 43 per cent of crops have been combined in the Central Region. The five-year average at this same time, in the same area, is 79 per cent.
“As we sit here today, many farmer’s crops remain on the field because of unseasonable weather conditions. The snow and moisture have made it difficult to get into the fields. Certain crops will diminish in value as these crops remain in the fields,” said Stettler County Reeve Larry Clarke.
This affects cattle producers relying on grazing land for their herds after crops are taken off. Coun. Nibourg said currently hay is selling for 11 cents a pound, whereas last year it went for about four and a half cents a pound.
“That’s insane,” said Coun. Nibourg.
In fact, some farmers have asked the county if they can graze their cattle in county ditches.
“We haven’t had a request to graze in our ditches before. That shows we are having real issues out there. In the eight years I’ve been on council I’ve never had that before.
Stettler County passed a Ditch Grazing Policy at its Oct. 10 meeting to deal with this issue.
“Hopefully we won’t need it another year,” said Stettler County Chief Administrative Officer, Yvette Cassidy.
The County of Stettler’s Agricultural Services Board disagreed earlier in September, with a list of Prescribed Regions identified to qualify for the 2018 Livestock Tax Deferral Program with Alberta Agriculture, which indicated Stettler County did not make the cut as a drought or flood affected region. Statistics indicate Stettler County has received low to average precipitation, but locally we are aware of areas that as of Sept. 6 when the map was released, had not received any moisture.
Neighbouring Camrose County, Lacombe County and Ponoka County are on the prescribed list of drought and flood regions. Alberta Agriculture, however, doesn’t list Stettler County and Coun. Nibourg said by declaring the county an agricultural disaster he hopes this will prompt the federal and provincial governments to kick in programs for the area. This could help Stettler producers gain access to the Federal Livestock Tax Deferral program and drought disaster programs.
Coun. Nibourg said he disagrees with the statistics Alberta Agriculture is using to list counties and wants to see Stettler County listed.
“Their stats are saying we have low to average precipitation in the county is some areas and I would agree with that but some areas had no precipitation at all or some had more than average. It is so hit and miss.
“I’m trying to bring attention to the situation,” said Coun. Nibourg.
The situation is causing immense strain on farmers’ emotional health.
“These guys are under a lot of stress and if we as a county can help mitigate it then we should.” |
Paul Bunyan is a fictional, giant lumberjack popularized by American folk legends. According to early tales, he stood seven feet tall, but in later embellishments he became significantly taller. He was accompanied on his adventures by a giant blue ox named Babe.
The earliest references to Paul Bunyan were in logging camps in the late 19th century. Folktales about Bunyan first appeared in print on Aug. 4, 1904, in the Duluth Evening News. The tales were subsequently reprinted in publications such as the Oscoda Press, the Washington Post and the Wisconsin State Journal. The tales of Paul Bunyan achieved widespread popularity following an ad campaign for the Red River Lumber Company. The stories appeared in a series of pamphlets promoting the company and were then collected in a book called "The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan."
Among the exploits attributed to Bunyan were the creation of Lake Superior, Puget Sound, the Grand Canyon and the Black Hills. The griddle on which to fry his pancakes was supposedly so large that cooks skated on bacon slabs to grease it. The tales say that Bunyan would call his men to dinner by using a hollow tree as a megaphone. Another legend says that it was so cold one winter in Bunyan's camp that speech froze as soon as people spoke, and they had to wait until spring to hear what was said. |
Most female ducks begin to lay eggs at around six to seven months of age. Egg production also depends on a number of other factors.
The breed of duck can affect the age when the duck lays her eggs. For example, Pekin ducks begin to lay eggs at around five to six months of age, which is an entire month sooner than most other ducks. Lighting also can play a part on when and how often ducks lay their eggs. More consistent lighting for a period of 15 hours a day can help ducks achieve a better egg production schedule. |
The permanent memory that comes built into a computer is called read-only memory, or ROM. Read-only memory typically holds the most basic level of software that a computer needs to run.
Read-only memory is independent of the operating system, but it offers the foundation that allows the operating system to start. This type of memory can be updated, but it is difficult to do. Other examples can be found in the firmware that runs a cable modem or in a classic video game cartridge. While updating or changing ROM is possible, this type of memory is not at risk for virus or malware infection. |
See what questions
a doctor would ask.
Excess skin pigmentation: A condition which is characterized by an abnormal excess of skin pigmentation. See detailed information below for a list of 32 causes of Excess skin pigmentation, Symptom Checker, including diseases and drug side effect causes.
The following medical conditions are some of the possible
causes of Excess skin pigmentation.
There are likely to be other possible causes, so ask your doctor
about your symptoms.
Listed below are some combinations of symptoms associated with Excess skin pigmentation, as listed in our database. Visit the Symptom Checker, to add and remove symptoms and research your condition.
Review further information on Excess skin pigmentation Treatments.
Real-life user stories relating to Excess skin pigmentation:
Some of the comorbid or associated medical symptoms for Excess skin pigmentation may include these symptoms:
Research the causes of these more general types of symptom:
Research the causes of related medical symptoms such as:
Research the causes of these symptoms that are similar to, or related to, the symptom Excess skin pigmentation:
Read more about causes and Excess skin pigmentation deaths.
Other ways to find a doctor, or use doctor, physician and specialist online research services:
The list below shows some of the causes of Excess skin pigmentation mentioned in various sources:
This information refers to the general prevalence and incidence of these diseases, not to how likely they are to be the actual cause of Excess skin pigmentation. Of the 32 causes of Excess skin pigmentation that we have listed, we have the following prevalence/incidence information:
The following list of conditions have 'Excess skin pigmentation' or similar listed as a symptom in our database. This computer-generated list may be inaccurate or incomplete. Always seek prompt professional medical advice about the cause of any symptom.
Select from the following alphabetical view of conditions which include a symptom of Excess skin pigmentation or choose View All.
Ask or answer a question about symptoms or diseases at one of our free interactive user forums.
Medical story forums: If you have a medical story then we want to hear it.
This information shows analysis of the list of causes of Excess skin pigmentation based
on whether certain risk factors apply to the patient:
Medical Conditions associated with Excess skin pigmentation:
Skin rash (461 causes), Skin symptoms (5992 causes), Hyperpigmentation (151 causes), Skin problems (3422 causes), Skin color changes (2348 causes), Dark skin (136 causes), Pigmentation symptoms (305 causes), Skin color symptoms (2348 causes), Rash (1165 causes)
Symptoms related to Excess skin pigmentation:
Dark skin (136 causes), Bruising (348 causes), Hyperpigmentation (151 causes), Skin rash (461 causes), Skin blisters (426 causes), Melanin, Diabetes mellitus (66 causes), Acanthosis nigricans (38 causes), Melanoma, Naevi, Mole
Doctor-patient articles related to symptoms and diagnosis:
These general medical articles may be of interest:
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Abortion. The Military. LGBT rights. Religious freedom. The death penalty. Chicken sandwiches and cake.
These things may not appear to be closely related, but if you debate about them often enough, you will begin to notice a common thread; all of these topics come down to personal freedom. They all come down to where, exactly, the line should be drawn between individual autonomy and the collective good. To where, exactly, the line should be drawn between personal values and public interests. All of these subjects can be viewed through both the lens of individual rights and social pragmatism. No matter what your position is on any of these topics, it's more than likely that your position is informed by your ideas about freedom and consequence. It's highly likely that you believe what you do because that's what feels right to you.
But we don't really care whether we're right or not, do we? Every statistic, anecdote, and theory can be stacked against us, but we will still cling to our position. We can stare directly in the face of a thousand facts that prove us wrong, and we will hold that we are right. We see this play out again and again and again. There are those who are anti-abortion who do not recognize the need for sexual education, easy access to birth control, affordable daycare, or that there are already 30,000 kids waiting to be adopted, the vast majority of whom never will be. There are those who believe in the death penalty even though there is zero evidence that it works as a deterrent, plenty of evidence that a death row inmate will end up costing more than a lifetime prisoner, and a scary number of death row inmates who were proven innocent after they had been executed. There are those who believe a business discriminating against a certain group is justified, but express outrage when it is a group they are part of that is being discriminated against.
We claim to care a lot about specific issues, but very few of us follow through. Very few of us care about what would truly help our cause. Very few of us are willing to look at the facts. We just decide that x is right and y is wrong, and refuse to look beyond that. Worst of all, we expect the law to support our feelings, even when our feelings cannot be supported by facts. We all want the world to conform to our own personal values, and feel a sense of righteous indignation when it doesn't.
We all have a choice to make. We must either acknowledge the facts, and work hard to look for solutions - knowing they will not always sit well with us - or we must admit we don't care as much as we claim to. We must either be willing to change our positions in the face of evidence, or we must be willing to admit our positions are based on nothing but our own feelings, and therefore should not be legislated. We must either be consistent in our views, or face the fact that we aren't passionate, but self-centered. We must all, ultimately, decide whether we want to make this world a better place for everyone, or for only ourselves. I do hope that we can all find the courage to choose the former.
Wherein I say
whatever I want. |
In Maryland child support cases, both parents are presumed to be the natural custodians of their children, unless otherwise stated. As such, both parents, in addition to aunts, uncles, grandparents, court-appointed guardians and any other established natural custodian, qualify for child support services. While there are many different benefits of child support services utilized by guardians, the most common are establishing paternity, establishing a court order for a child or their medical support and collecting current or past due support payments. Here, the family law attorneys at Rodier Family Law explain how the custodian of a minor child may go about receiving child support.
Establishing Paternity for a Child
Before child support can be ordered by either or both parents, parentage (the identity of the child’s biological parents) must be established. Establishing parentage is important because it allows for the child to benefit from the either or both parents in a number of different ways, including financially. If the father acknowledges paternity, a court trial may not be necessary; however, if paternity is not willingly acknowledged, a genetic testing appointment may be ordered by the court. In Maryland, if a child is born to married parents, the husband is presumed to be the father of the child unless another individual can establish paternity.
Filing for Child Support
Custodians seeking child support must first complete an application and then pay an application fee of $15—note that a separate application, as well as separate fee, will be necessary for each case. In the instance that a custodian is already receiving Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) or Medical Assistance to care for the child, then there is no charge for the associated child support services. To have an application mailed to you, contact the Child Support Administration at 800-332-6347.
Processing a Child Support Case
A child support order can often be established in 90-180 days. However, if a parent lives out-of-state, has been incarcerated or fails to appear for a hearing, this may cause the order to be delayed. If both parents are cooperative and communicative with the court, orders can be established in a timely manner. If the custodian does not know where the other parent currently resides, the court will conduct a search using local, state and federal resources. If this is the case, custodians should provide the court with as much information as possible regarding the parent’s last known address, telephone number, employer information and any other relevant details to facilitate this search.
The Maryland Child Support Administration has a toll-free line (1-800-332-6347) to help answer all general child support questions. This includes assistance with payment, changes of address or employment, requests for enforcement of an order, along with other questions associated with processing or upholding child support cases.
Determining the Level of Child Support
Arguably the most common factor regarding child support services involves the level of financial support that could be provided to the custodian. The court will determine the level of child support to be paid to the custodian based on several factors:
- Income of both parents
- Number of children
- Cost of health insurance for the children
- Current alimony payments
- Cost of daycare
- Current child support being paid for other children
- Any extraordinary medical or care costs for the children.
The court may also award the custodian child support retroactively, meaning that child support will have to be paid from an earlier date—typically the date when the child was brought into the care of the custodian.
Custodians also have the right to request a review for modification of child support if there has been a change in circumstances since the order was originally entered, or if it has been three years or more since the order was entered or last reviewed for modification. Special circumstances that may provide grounds for an increase or decrease in child support includes: significant changes in income, changes in work-related day care cost, changes in health care costs, a change in custody or a change in the financial needs of the child.
Discussing Child Support with a Family Law Attorney
Child support can be a complicated matter, especially if parentage is uncertain or contested. Your child deserves the support of both parents, both from a financial and emotional perspective. The family law attorneys at Rodier Family Law are available to answer any questions or concerns you have regarding child support and have years of experience helping child custodians receive the support they require and deserve. To get started, contact us today for your consultation. |
For years we have been buying seedless grapes from the supermarket, but there is a lot of good in those little pips.
Grape seeds are an excellent source of vitamins C and E, as well as antioxidants known as flavonoids, all of which may improve skin’s texture and reduce the signs of aging.
Cleansers, scrubs, moisturizers and other products, as well as many professional treatments, include crushed grape seeds, grape seed extract and even other parts of the grape to help you reap these and other rewards.
Grape seeds can make your skin not only look younger but they can protect your skin from the sun.
Protection against sunburn and sun damage
Grape seed extract (along with the fleshy parts of grapes themselves) contains proanthocyanidins and resveratrol, as well as other powerful antioxidants.
Research shows that when grape seed extract is applied to skin prior to UV light exposure, the compounds may have a sunscreen effect, helping to reduce redness and damage to cells.
How to use it: Before you throw away your sun cream, still use it. It's your best defense against those harmful rays! Consider using grape seed- and resveratrol-containing serums and lotions as supplements to your sun protection routine; apply them before slathering on your regular SPF cream.
Reduces appearance of wrinkles and other signs of ageing
Aside from causing sunburns, UV light also ages skin. Antioxidants in grape seeds, vitamin C in particular, may help reverse or reduce some of the wrinkling effects.
A small trial at the St. Helena Institute for Plastic Surgery showed an 88 percent improvement in skin texture after subjects used a product containing grape seed extract for six weeks.
How to use it: Have a look for creams and moisturisers with grape seed extract in them. Image Skincare's Vital C Hydrating Intense Moisturizer lists it as one of it's ingredients and has been praised by beauty experts worldwide. Buy it here for €35.
Soften and smooth skin
Grape seed oil is rich, moisturizing and gentle; massage therapists sometimes reach for it to give their treatments an extra skin-hydrating benefit.
Grape seed extract, meanwhile, delivers vitamin E, a nutrient that concentrates in the membranes of skin cells and helps hold on to moisture.
In addition, crushed grape seeds make for an effective exfoliant; by gently scrubbing your skin with them, you remove the top layer of dead cells, uncovering the smoother, healthier skin underneath.
How to use it: You can pick up grape seed oil from your local health store. Add a few drops of your favorite essential oil to make your own scented body oil, or apply it solo. Buy a bottle here from Holland & Barrett for less than €3. Also try scrubs and moisturizers containing grape seeds or the extract. The seeds themselves provide significant grit so be extra careful; scrub skin gently, especially if it’s sensitive. |
Public-private partnerships in space travel hold much promise, and greater cost-efficiency, but government should be transparent about the risks and inevitable failures.
On Monday, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX, conducted a successful launch of a resupply mission to the International Space Station, or ISS, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the company’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket returning safely to SpaceX’s landing zone at Cape Canaveral.
It was the company’s 12th resupply mission, and its 14th successful rocket recovery.
SpaceX is one of two companies — Orbital ATK is the other — that stepped into the breach created when NASA ended the Space Shuttle program in July 2011.
Subsequently, Orbital ATK and SpaceX each won contracts through NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program to deliver at least 20 metric tons of cargo to the orbiting ISS.
SpaceX, a Hawthorne-based company founded and headed by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, is the only company deploying reusable space vehicles.
In November, SpaceX will try to launch the Falcon Heavy, a triple-booster rocket with two-thirds of the thrust that the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket used to get to the moon. Musk has warned that the test flight is “risky,” and it will be a win if the launch pad isn’t damaged or destroyed.
Public-private partnerships can be nerve-wracking for taxpayers.
In June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 preparing to resupply the space station exploded on the launch pad during fueling for a pre-flight engine test. Last month, NASA announced that it would not publicly release the results of its investigation into the failure.
That was a reversal for NASA, which had earlier promised to release a summary of its investigation. Now the agency says it was “not required to complete a formal final report or public summary” because the flight was under the FAA’s jurisdiction.
Another investigation into the Falcon 9 explosion was conducted by a board made up of 10 SpaceX employees and one voting member from the FAA. But an audit by NASA’s inspector general warned an investigation run by the contractor “raises questions about inherent conflicts of interest.”
Orbital ATK was treated differently regarding the investigation into the explosion of its Antares rocket in October 2014 that destroyed a $51 million load of cargo headed for the ISS. NASA released an executive summary of the investigators’ findings a year after the accident.
Unlike a lot of work done by government contractors, this actually is rocket science, and the public should not expect companies engaged in it to have an error rate of zero. But NASA must avoid even the appearance of favoritism or conflict of interest in its dealings with private contractors. To the extent possible with proprietary technology, transparency should be the rule, and not the exception, in any investigation into a technical failure.
The development of commercial spaceflight holds nearly limitless potential for technological advances, economic benefits and high-paying jobs. Public-private partnerships are helping to launch this nascent industry. Oversight and transparency will ensure that the flight stays on course. |
Dr. Darren Scott is an Associate Director and Professor in the School of Geography & Earth Sciences at McMaster University where he teaches courses in geographic information science and transportation. Dr. Scott was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Louisville between 1999 and 2002, and held a Visiting Research Professor position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich) in 2008. Dr. Scott's undergraduate degree is in geography (BA. Honors and Co-op, 1991), with graduate degrees also in geography from the University of Western Ontario (MA, 1994) and McMaster University (PhD, 2000). Dr. Scott has published over seventy refereed journal articles in leading transportation, regional science, and urban studies journals. Dr. Scott's research program has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States (NSF), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Geomatics for Informed Decisions (GEOIDE), among other funding agencies. In 2008, Dr. Scott established a research lab - TransLAB - in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences where advanced transportation research is conducted by students working under his supervision.
Active transportation (cycling and walking); Big data (GPS); Bike share; Geographic information science (GIS); Sustainable transportation; Travel behaviour |
Research on Self-Tuning Fuzzy PID Control Strategy of Metallurgy Furnace Temperature
Aim at the effect of the control method in traditional metallurgy furnace temperature is not good, a self-tuning fuzzy PID control method combining fuzzy control with PID control was proposed in this paper based on the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the PID control and fuzzy control method, and a concrete control algorithm was put forward and simulation experiment was finished. The simulation results show that the effect of the controller is good, and the control of system is fast and smoothly according to it.
Wenzhe Chen, Xipeng Xu, Pinqiang Dai, Yonglu Chen and Zhengyi Jiang
R. Luo et al., "Research on Self-Tuning Fuzzy PID Control Strategy of Metallurgy Furnace Temperature", Advanced Materials Research, Vols. 472-475, pp. 3063-3066, 2012 |
Emerging markets can weather the hawkish Fed storm
Nicholas Spiro says the prospect of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates three more times this year has unsettled investors, but emerging markets have remained resilient so far
Signs that international investors are starting to position themselves for a more hawkish Federal Reserve are becoming more apparent by the day.
Last Friday, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed that speculative investors upped their bearish bets in 10-year Treasury futures to the highest level on record, following the rise in the yield on the benchmark US bond to just over the symbolically important level of 3 per cent.
The probability that the Fed will raise interest rates three more times this year, rather than the two additional hikes forecast by the central bank, is now approaching 40 per cent, roughly double the odds at the beginning of April.
The sudden repricing of US interest rate expectations is fuelling a rally in the dollar which is putting emerging market assets under strain. Last week, Argentina and Turkey were forced to raise borrowing costs aggressively to shore up their currencies. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index, a gauge of developing economies’ currencies, is down 2 per cent since early April while inflows into emerging market bond and equity are drying up, and in certain asset categories have turned into outflows.
The Institute of International Finance (IIF) says the abrupt rise in US bond yields and the dollar echoes the 2013 “taper tantrum” when emerging market assets were pummelled by the Fed’s decision to wind down its quantitative easing programme.
While it would be a mistake to underestimate the risks posed by a more hawkish-than-anticipated Fed, it would be equally wrong to play down the resilience of emerging markets.
The sharp fall in the yield on China’s 10-year government bond, which has fallen 35 basis points since the end of January to 3.65 per cent (and was as low as 3.5 per cent on April 20), is the most obvious example of the strong performance of emerging market assets in the face of tightening global financial conditions.
China’s bond rally has eroded the yield premium over 10-year Treasuries to just 65 basis points – down from more than 160 last November – and turned the country’s local currency debt into this year’s best performer in the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index, a leading gauge of sovereign and corporate bonds.
Other examples of the resilience of emerging markets include central and east European bonds. These are much more influenced by the policies of the European Central Bank, which, in response to a slowdown in the euro zone, may be forced to delay the end of its quantitative easing scheme.
The yield on Poland’s domestic 10-year debt has plunged 60 basis points since early February. Meanwhile, spreads, or the risk premium, on junk-rated emerging market corporate bonds have fallen by 6 basis points over the past month and remain close to their lowest levels since the global financial crisis, according to data from JPMorgan.
Still, there is a limit to the outperformance of emerging market assets in the current environment.
While the decline in China’s bond yields stems partly from recent signs that the economy is weakening, a gap of just 65 basis points between China’s 10-year yield and its US equivalent diminishes the appeal of yuan-denominated assets and casts doubt on Beijing’s commitment to crack down on financial risk, which, presumably, would call for tougher measures to head off another bond bubble.
A bond rally fuelled by expectations of a further easing of monetary policy following the People’s Bank of China’s recent decision to cut the required reserve ratio would cause the divergence between US and Chinese debt markets to widen too far. Deutsche Bank has rightly warned that Chinese government bonds have become overpriced.
Much now hinges on the direction of US Treasuries – particularly the closely watched 10-year yield – and the dollar.
If America’s inflation rate keeps inching up, US bond yields will continue to rise, bolstering the dollar and putting emerging markets under more pressure.
A 10-year Treasury yield of just over 3 per cent is already proving to be a more attractive buying opportunity for bond investors, particularly Japanese investors who face a 10-year yield at home that is barely above zero per cent. Bank of America Merrill Lynch noted last week that foreign buying of Treasuries has surged to its strongest level since February last year.
If this trend persists, the 10-year yield could start falling again, easing the strain on emerging market assets.
For now, the IIF’s fears of another taper tantrum look overdone.
Nicholas Spiro is a partner at Lauressa Advisory |
You can support youth in crisis by becoming a monthly giver today
Sir David Martin Foundation is a charity dedicated to helping young people in crisis. We fund programs to support young people suffering from problems such as substance addiction, homelessness, mental illness, disengagement from society, abuse, unemployment and family breakdown. These programs provide treatment and support for these issues, as well as assist young people in returning to education and training to find pathways to employment and a healthy, productive life.
Why give monthly?
Monthly giving is easy.
It is also one of the most powerful ways to donate.
A monthly donation is simple to set-up and reduces the amount of time we spend on administration compared to a series of standalone donations.
All donations $2 and over are 100% tax-deductible and we'll send your annual tax receipt to you in July.
When you join our community of regular givers – also known as pledge givers – your support goes beyond the donations you make. Consistent income streams have a powerful impact on the way we work, enabling us to strengthen our commitment to helping even more young Australians in crisis.
For you, the benefits of recurring giving are similar to those for us:
- You like being able to turn a small donation into a larger one without straining your pocketbook.
- You appreciate our need for long-term, reliable income and are happy to help.
- You enjoy the convenience. You can set it up once and not have to worry about it for a long time.
We would love to have you partner with us in this way.
Become a monthly giver today – young people in crisis need you.
Please call us if you have any questions on (02) 9219 2002 |
How Bad Is It to Lick Your Contact, Then Put It Back In?
Honest question: Have you ever been tempted to lick a contact lens because you needed to put it back in your eye and there was no contact solution in sight? Maybe your contact made a break for it, surprising you by suddenly popping out. Perhaps you removed it yourself because your eye couldn’t handle the dryness, but you need to insert it again to...you know...see.
If you’ve got it together enough to always have some contact solution on you, bravo. Otherwise, you might have the urge to lick and stick, as in, lick your lens, then stick back on your eyeball. What could possibly go wrong? Um, a lot, according to experts, who warn that you should absolutely not do this. Ever. Here’s why.
Anything you put into your eyes should be as pristine as humanly possible. Spit doesn’t make the list.
“[Licking contact lenses] is pretty terrible,” Jennifer Fogt, O.D., fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and an associate professor in the College of Optometry at The Ohio State University, tells SELF. Your whole goal with contact lenses is to keep them immaculate. This is why you’re supposed to rinse and store your contacts in sterile solution explicitly made for that purpose and otherwise follow the expert-approved guidelines on using your contacts to keep your eyes safe.
Sorry, but your spit is definitely not as clean as contact solution. “The mouth is a dark and moist place, which makes an ideal living environment for many different types of bacteria,” Vivian Shibayama, O.D., an optometrist and contact lens specialist with UCLA Health, tells SELF. It’s true that some of that bacteria is actually protective and meant to prevent the overgrowth of other bacteria that can harm your health, but that doesn’t mean your spit is sterile. Plus, your mouth also contains fungi and can carry viruses, too, even if you don’t necessarily feel sick.
Also, no offense, but if you’re licking your contacts before putting them in your eyes, chances are you probably haven’t washed your hands first, which is another problem. “You never know what type of bugs a person has on their hands,” Dr. Shibayama says.
A few different eye issues can come out of a contact-licking habit, mainly involving infection or inflammation that can lead to distressing symptoms.
Keratitis is a huge potential culprit here, Dr. Fogt says. Keratitis happens when bacteria, fungi, or parasites infect your cornea (the clear dome that covers the surface of your eye), according to the Mayo Clinic. People who wear contacts are usually more vulnerable to this than non-contact wearers because these tiny devices can house various pathogens. Licking your contacts increases those odds because you’re delivering microorganisms like bacteria directly to your lenses, Dr. Fogt says.
Keratitis can cause symptoms like eye pain, redness, blurry vision, sensitivity to light, excessive tearing, and discharge, according to the Mayo Clinic, and if it’s left untreated, it can lead to permanent vision damage. “You don’t want to mess with this,” Dr. Fogt says. As it turns out, one of the biggest ways to prevent keratitis is to use—and clean—your contact lenses according to their instructions, the Mayo Clinic says.
Then there’s the not-washing-your-hands-first part, which means you’re basically begging to get something like pink eye, Dr. Shibayama says. Pink eye (known in fancy med speak as conjunctivitis) is a bacterial, viral, or fungal inflammation or infection of your conjunctiva, the see-through membrane on the whites of your eyes and inside of your eyelids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Symptoms include redness, itchiness, a gritty feeling, discharge, discomfort when using contacts, and tearing.
Since bacterial and viral conjunctivitis are incredibly contagious, proper hand hygiene is a cornerstone of preventing their spread, according to the Mayo Clinic. Also, get this: the Mayo Clinic specifically links using contacts that haven’t been cleaned properly (using spit would fall into this category) with the bacterial form of this condition.
So, rule number 1: Always wash your hands if you’re going to touch your eyes, including before putting in or removing contacts. Rule number 2: Absolutely never put spit in your eyeballs, people! Grab your glasses instead of reusing those contacts, ask your coworkers if they have contact solution, or duck out and go buy some. Basically do whatever you need to when it comes to eye care, because it’s really not a game.
Once you have your hands on some contact solution, take a second to ask yourself why you wanted to lick your contact lenses in the first place.
If your eyeballs are always dry, dry eye could be your issue. This is a condition that happens when your eyes can’t lubricate themselves adequately, according to the National Eye Institute. Usually, dry eye happens when the amount or quality of your tears can’t keep your eyes moist enough. Symptoms include the obvious dryness, along with tons of others like itchiness, scratchiness, stinging, burning, sensitivity to light, and more.
The fix for dry eye involves adding moisture into the equation, but only in a safe way, which means not with spit. If you think you have dry eye, make a doctor’s appointment to be sure, since a lot of other eye conditions have similar symptoms. In the meantime, use artificial tears (the simple kind that only aim to wet your eyes, not the kind that removes redness, which can just cause further irritation). Be sure to have your eye drops on you in case you need them. Your doctor may decide those drops are all you need, or they may discuss other dry eye treatment options with you.
The problem could also come down to the fit of your contacts, which should be just snug enough to stay put without causing discomfort. Although contacts may seem like one-size-fits-all devices, they’re not, which is why your doctor performs a complete eye exam before suggesting contacts that could be right for you. Check in with your doctor if your contacts are giving you trouble (and, in general, be sure to visit them every other year at a minimum so they can keep tabs on if your contacts need updating).
As you can see, you have some options here! But whatever you do, avoid mixing your spit and contact lenses. “Please don’t do this,” Dr. Fogt says. |
Summary: The unfolding of the Lord’s teaching in Matthew 24
"THE WRATH OF GOD-WHEN IS IT?"
In the last message we left off discussing the opening of the fifth seal of Revelation which will result in the Antichrist persecuting and martyring God’s children with increasing intensity after he is revealed at the mid-point of Daniel’s Seventieth Week. However, it is the opening of the Sixth Seal and it’s results that underscore where we are in God’s prophetic timetable, for the opening of this seal brings about the sign/pre-cursor of the Day of the Lord.
This seal as described in Revelation 6:12-17 is the most significant of all that precede for it binds together all of the passages that mention these great wonders in the heavens, the darkening of the sun, the moon becoming as blood, and the stars falling unto the earth. Being preceded by a great earthquake (v.12) these events are without a doubt the planet-shaking acts of the Creator God of heaven as He signals the advent of His wrath, the impending Day of the Lord judgment!
And, if the wrath of God is about to come (Revelation 6:16,17) we know and have been promised that before it begins we, the born-again believers, will be raptured, taken out, removed to safety by the Lord Jesus just as He promised! "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also."(John 14:3) "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation (deliverance) by our Lord Jesus Christ."
These have got to be some of the most important promises the believer is given! This marvelous, miraculous removal of the saints will indeed take place just before the wrath of God is poured out on an unbelieving world! Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ will come in the clouds just as He promised in His chronological teaching of the end times (Matthew 24:29-31).
God’s pattern of delivering His own and immediately judging the wicked has been His way in the past and, praise His holy name, it will continue to be His way in the future. ’And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given n marriage, until the day the Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they solk, they planted, the builded, But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.’ (Luke 17:26-30)
These accounts of Noah and Lot’s family’s deliverance from God’s judgment are compared to Jesus’ Coming to rapture and deliver the saints from the devastating persecution of the Antichrist and the future impending wrath of God. He will deliver the saints the same day God’s wrath/The Day of the Lord begins, right after the wonders in heaven which occur at the opening of the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12,13).
This is exactly what God did in the case of Noah and Lot. When they were removed to safety He began His destructive judgment upon the wicked. These heavenly wonders are the signaling event to the persecuted believers of that day that Jesus is coming soon, for God’s wrath/Day of the Lord is about to begin!
This event (The opening of the Sixth Seal and the ensuing heavenly wonders) will take place during Daniel’s Seventieth Week some time after the beginning of the Great Tribulation which begins at the mid-point of Daniel’s Seventieth Week.
The Lord Jesus, in response to the disciples questions: "when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" (Matthew 24:3) gave very specific, chronological and detailed answers to His disciples.
Throughout Matthew 24 He used the words: "then...v.9; then...v.10; then...v.14; when...v.15; Then...v.16; For then...v.21; Then...v.23; Immediately after...v.29; then...then...v.30; When...v.33" which clearly show His purpose of unfolding an accurate timetable for "end of the world"(v.3) events.
This significant chapter of the Bible must not be chopped up into bite size sections pulling out a few verses here or there and applying them to different people and different times! No, the Lord gave a precise understandable timetable for the end times that any born-again believer can understand whether a newly saved babe in Christ from the far reaches of an isolated mission field, or a seasoned Bible prophecy professor of a university, this passage rings with the simplicity that is typical of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In this most vital chapter Jesus begins His conclusion in (v.29) with these words: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days..." referring to the days of the "great tribulation" (v.21). It would seem that we are now at the end of Daniel’s Seventieth Week because it is now "after" the great tribulation which traditionally has been defined as 3-1/2 years in length. |
Its a Reasonor Intention
Motivation is the reason or
intention for doing something or
behaving in a certain manner. It
becomes the source of
willingness to perform a certain
WHY MOTIVATION AT
Because "Motivated" employees are "Happy" employees
and are more "Productive"
Almost all the tasks that we perform in our daily routine
are result of motivation. And it is equally true in the work
place. A workplace which is driven by motivation yields
positive and better results. Because here, employees not
only work for money but also out of sheer motivation.
Several corporate giants have over the decades spend
tones of money to organise motivation seminars,
workshops, guest lectures and like stuffs only with the
intention to increase motivation among employees or to
keep them motivated in their work. One of the
consultancies in Mumbai does this. High level of
motivation increases productivity
An unmotivated employee will only do the bare minimal in
being of fired.
Whereas a motivated employee will employees who are
motivated will of course work for money but will also make
sure that his/her work is recognised and is counted well
among the contributions to the success of the company.
T&A Solutions is one of the placement consultants in
Bangalore practising motivation in employees. |
Data driven marketing set foot in this particular brand’s life when they decided to explore hyper local targeting approach to reach out their TG in the famous suburbs of Andheri (in Mumbai).
Data insights highlighted that the longest signal on Western Express Highway has commuters check their cell phones constantly to keep up with IPL scores. Working on this insight, the brand installed a digital hoarding with live IPL scores at that signal to attract consumers with value plus brand recall.
Data driven marketing is nothing but marketing strategies derived on the back of conclusions drawn by data scientists.
With the concept now taking root, we at Social Samosa point out a couple of errors that should be avoided.
Data Driven Marketing = Real Time Marketing
It’s one of the biggest myths that brands tend to follow. Real time marketing is complementary to data driven marketing and not equivalent to it. Use the right tools to verify whether you need to implement data backed decisions in reaching out to consumers on real time basis or translate data into a brief plan that spans over a few months.
Not everyone is an influencer
There is an influencer in every nook and cranny of the city. However, the question is who is the right influencer for a particular brand?
Use extremely strong data backed statistics to understand the demographics and substance of the influencer and how it will impact the brand. Certain tools allow brands to determine which influencers suit them the best. For instance, Thoughtbuzz identifies influencers basis the influencers interaction with the brand and vice versa.
Data driven marketing is not limited to big screens
Use the data to create smart marketing initiatives. Cater to mobile optimised data this will enable brands to track data across social accounts. Afterall, RoI comes in from all screens.
A lot of us might not know, but, targeting is not limited to audiences. Keep a tab of what your competitors are planning.
In terms of targeting users, take a data scientist approach in figuring out which content resonates best with them. Video, audio or pictorial – invest in data that works the best with your niche.
Create a RoI driven approach towards social nexus
In the end, everything boils down to what gives the best bang of the buck. When executing a campaign, determine which platform offers best RoI modules for the brand. Don’t stick to Facebook and Twitter because of generic reasons.
Explore platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and others according to the nature and the need of the campaign. It’s time to go beyond the usual. |
Aviva Insurance Goes Solar to Reduce Carbon Emissions with Solar Roof Systems
- Published: Thursday, 21 April 2016 08:12
Aviva has invested in solar roof systems for three of its offices in the UK. The solar panels will enable Aviva to save energy, which is in line with the organisation’s commitment to reduce its carbon emissions.
The panels will generate 445,000kWh of energy each year, for the next 25 years, which will offset Aviva’s reliance on grid energy and cut energy costs.
Solarcentury has installed solar roof systems on buildings at three sites: Perth in Scotland and Norwich and Bristol in England. The majority of energy consumed is during daylight hours, which aligns perfectly with solar PV technology. Remote monitoring has been installed to give real-time performance data to the Aviva energy team, allowing them to understand the benefits of installing solar.
Lee Preston, Group carbon and utilities manager at Aviva Insurance said, “We’re committed to understanding the organisational environmental impact and are now working hard to reduce it, through a range of initiatives that will help us to reduce our carbon emissions by 40% by 2050. We hope that by 2025, all electricity we use will be from 100% renewable sources. We already reduce our carbon emissions through energy efficiency measures such as LED lighting; we’re now taking this one stage further by investing in solar. We needed a solar partner who could overcome the technical challenges presented by our complex roof structures.”
Solarcentury will be carrying out all O&M for the next 10 years and full monitoring to ensure consistency of operation. Solarcentury has also provided a unique yield guarantee to assure Aviva that the systems generate as anticipated.
Neil Perry, CFO at Solarcentury comments, “Making use of unused roof spaces by installing solar is such a simple and cost effective way to help businesses save money and do their bit for the environment. Installing systems for Aviva across its Scottish and English sites demonstrates the opportunity for solar, even at these latitudes, and the energy demand perfectly matches the energy profile for these buildings. Installing solar also demonstrates to employees and customers that the company is genuinely committed to reducing its environmental impact.”
All three systems have been successfully installed and commissioned, and since they’re designed for self-consumption, the clean solar electricity is now being used directly by the buildings to power things like the lighting and office equipment, and call centre operations in Perth and Norwich. This gives a strong message of social and environmental responsibility to Aviva employees and customers.
1. Perth office, Scotland - 114kWp
2. Norwich office, England - 184kWp
3. Bristol office, England – 244kWp |
Whatever side of the vote you were on, when the results came in on June 24th there was widespread shock. Even Brexiters couldn’t believe that the decision to leave had been made. As we soon saw from the disarray in government, no one was prepared for a Brexit. And, as we have seen since, working out how to handle it isn’t going to be easy. For individuals, the impact of the referendum result will take some time to filter through. While that is being processed, here are a few post-Brexit budget tips you can think about now.
Book an all-inclusive holiday
If you have yet to book your annual break then do away with budgetary uncertainty with an all-inclusive. You won’t have to worry about the value of your pound fluctuating as everything is paid for in advance. All inclusives also take away the need to withdraw cash from an ATM. As we saw in the wake of Brexit, some holidaymakers were unable to access cash at all as banks simply didn’t know what exchange rate to set. That’s a risk that few of us want to take. So, if you want to holiday free from exchange rate worries then all inclusive is the way to go.
Buy insurance before we exit (if you’re a man)
EU directives have had an impact in a number of consumer areas. One of these is insurance, where the EU Gender Directive has required gender-neutral pricing since 2012. The practical impact of this is that gender can’t be taken into account when setting the price for something like car insurance. However, post-Brexit, this could change. Men are traditionally seen as a higher risk than women and so – before 2012 – paid more for insurance products. As we exit the EU, gender neutral insurance pricing could be reversed, causing premiums to shoot up for men.
Drive your car less
This is a budgeting tip that arises in just about any circumstance. However, post Brexit – with fuel prices set to rise – it could become even more costly to rely on your car as a main method of transport. Instead, try walking shorter distances or take public transport where it’s available. You might want to consider investing in a bicycle – this is a great (free) way to get around. Bikes also offer a way to introduce more exercise into your daily routine, whether cycling to work or study.
Make use of ISAs
No one really knows the extent to which bank based savings could be at risk as a result of Brexit. Scaremongers tell us our financial system could collapse at any time. Downgrades in the UK’s rating from credit agencies such as Standard & Poor’s make for gloomy ready. There have been numerous negative forecasts of financial collapse but so far little has happened. However, there is some wisdom in accepting that it’s often difficult to see something like that coming. So, if you’re putting money away as savings, opt for an ISA that is government protected. Just in case.
Buy a property
There is no doubt that house prices have dropped somewhat since Brexit – in some locations more than others. Some argue that this was already happening, others attribute this firmly to Brexit. Either way, now is an interesting time to look at buying, if you have been struggling to get on the housing ladder. A number of experts believe that mortgage rates are also about to take a dip. This would make it cheaper to remortgage and potentially easier to obtain a mortgage for first time buyers. It will also apply less financial pressure in terms of the size of monthly payments. If lenders decide that cheaper rates are necessary to ensure a steady flow of interest then this could be a great time to put in an application.
Don’t buy an annuity
For those of pensionable age looking to buy an annuity, experts warn that now is not the time. An annuity is essentially the purchase of a regular income for the rest of life and rates have been dropping recently. This means that the income that can be bought for savings accrued has fallen. Although rates were already on a downward path, when Brexit happened in June, some providers took the opportunity to cut them even further. As buying an annuity is a one off purchase, the timing of it is key. Once the annuity is purchased there’s no way to change your mind so make sure you get the timing right and wait until the Brexit storm has passed.
Keep up to date – here are related articles about Brexit. |
JEITA A measuring standard is based on the following conditions:
1. Screen saver: None.
2. Volume control: Mute.
3. Switch off the Wireless LAN switch.
4. Turn off the Windows automatic updates
5. Go to VAIO Control Center -> Power Management -> Power Option -> Uncheck Automatically enter Hibernate mode when battery is low
6. Go to Intel Display Settings -> Power Settings -> Modify Settings -> Power Feature Settings -> Uncheck Intel(R) Display Power Saving Technology
* Power Plan
1. Select Power saver
Go to Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings
1. Sleep afer ->
2. Hibernate after ->
3. Dim display afetr ->
4. Turn off display after ->
5. Low battery notification ->
JEITA Measuring Method A:
* Display Brightness
- Go to Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Display Brightness
- Change the brightness level to 28% |
Schools tackling air pollution across Southwark met at the Houses of Parliament last week to share their progress, writes Simon Throssell …
The cleaner air for Southwark schools group’s second meeting was held on Tuesday, June 5, at the Houses of Parliament and organised by Councillor Richard Livingstone, cabinet member for environment, transport management and air quality.
The network, consisting of eleven Southwark schools, were invited by Helen Hayes who highlighted the importance of pulling together to combat the problem, which has affected Southwark schools in the past, in an investigation previously reported by Southwark News last year.
The Greenpeace investigation found children at a number of Southwark nurseries are at risk of being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution from diesel vehicles.
The investigation revealed in April last year the dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) near 44 nurseries and pre-schools in the borough.
The environmental organisation’s analysis of Government data showed Southwark, as a local authority, ranked the fifth highest in London for the number of nurseries within 150 metres of a road breaching the legal NO2 limit.
The Dulwich and West Norwood MP explained how she believed that stopping engine idling and introducing a vehicle scrappage scheme would overall help to improve air quality, and further encouraged members to work alongside other local action groups to help bring about change at both a local and national level.
Amy Foster, from Bessemer Grange Primary School, talked about her school’s annual bike trip held every May, in which the children head to Dulwich Park to practise and learn with the Cycle Confident team.
She also explained how the school close the road outside the entrance once a month on a Friday in order to create a safe play-street outside for the children to play in. Like Ms Hayes, Amy was very passionate about tackling and improving air quality and road safety.
Kimberly Hickman, from Goose Green School, praised the role that parents, local businesses, the council, local MPs and many others have played in securing funding and installing green screens around the school.
Goose Green Primary has also introduced an ‘eco warrior scheme’ for the children as well as a gardening club, with the aim of working towards achieving even better air quality.
Speaking after the event, Cllr Livingstone said: “We heard inspiring stories about some of the excellent work that is happening in Southwark’s schools to improve air quality for children in the borough.
“It was great to see that schools want to pull together and help one another and I look forward to supporting their efforts.
“I would encourage all Southwark schools to sign up and come along to future meetings.”
If your school would liked to be involved in the future, please contact Signe Norberg at Signe.Norberg@southwark.gov.uk |
At the Arrival Day Exhibition at the National Museum, there is a display of black and white photographs depicting the East Indians who came and/or their descendants. Two of the photographs on display are photos of two teachers who were formerly attached to the Indian Cultural Centre – Pandit Charan Girdhar Chand, dance teacher and Pandit Misra, tabla teacher. Both were Indian nationals who came to teach at the Indian Cultural Centre during the late 1970s and early 1980s and they both went back to their homeland when their contracts were finished.
This display is the work of the Library of the University of Guyana. None of the photographs had any names. |
Data Sense: Local crime rate declines in accordance with national trends
February 1, 2014
Recent data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting program indicates that local crime is on the decline.
The FBI has been collecting, publishing and archiving crime statistics as part of the UCR program since 1929.The data is produced from the information received from more than 18,000 city, university, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the program. The UCR data is the most comprehensive source for detailed crime statistics.
The 2012 UCR report provides insight into local crime. Overall, it indicates that the crime rate in Steamboat Springs has fallen during the past five years.
According to the data, there were 35 violent crimes against people reported in Steamboat Springs in 2012. Given the reported population level of 12,116, that works out to a violent crime rate of 0.3 percent. During this same period, 322 crimes against property were reported. This works out to a property crime rate of 2.7 percent. The rate of violent crime in Steamboat Springs is well below the national average of 3.9 percent, and the property crime rate is just below the national average of 2.9 percent as reported in the 2012 UCR report.
A comparison of the 2012 UCR data with the 2007 data set indicates that crime rates have fallen during the past five years. In 2007, 58 violent crimes were report in Steamboat Springs. This level of violent crime was associated with a 0.5 percent crime rate. Reported property crimes in 2007 were 526 and the associated rate of property crime was 3.8 percent. Thus, in the last five years, the local violent crime rate dropped by 0.2 percent and the property crime rate dropped by 1.1 percent.
The local drop in crime actually mirrors the national trend. Since 2007, the national violent crime rate dropped by 0.5 percent to 0.4 percent and the property crime rate dropped from 3.3 percent to 2.9 percent. Criminologists are debating the sources behind the national decline in the crime rate, but no single cause has been identified.
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In addition to the standard summary UCR data, the FBI has another more detailed crime reporting system known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System. NIBRS captures more information than the UCR data because it records all of the criminal offenses for each crime incident whereas the standard UCR data reflect only the most serious offense for any single incident.
The NIBRS data is consistent with the UCR data, but shows higher crime rates. A total of 893 offenses were reported in the 2012 NIBRS. Two-thirds of the reported offenses were crimes against property, the balance were either crimes against persons or drug offenses.
Brandon Owens is an independent contractor for Yampa Valley Data Partners. |
Anyone who studies the history of modern art—in art museums, in the classroom, in art historical handbooks or specialist surveys—will soon be aware of a certain recurrent pattern governing the selection of objects and forming a certain type of narrative where the history of modern art is presented as a variety of different -isms that dissolve into each other in the coherent sequence that constitutes the history of modern art as modernism.
But why is this pattern so similar in all different places and contexts? Is it possible to distinguish between the history of modern art and the history of modernism? And if so, when, where and how did modernism become synonymous with art of the modern era?
With a dual perspective—regarding art as well as the discursive perception of art—Modernism as an Institution attempts to answer these questions by studying the frameworks for the institutional establishment, as well as the historiography, of modern art.
These are words or phrases in the text that have been automatically identified by the Named Entity Recognition and Disambiguation service, which provides Wikipedia () and Wikidata () links for these entities.
Hayden, H. 2018. Modernism as Institution: On the Establishment of an Aesthetic and Historiographic Paradigm. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bar
This is an Open Access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).
This book has been peer reviewed. See our Peer Review Policies for more information.
Published on Sept. 20, 2018 |
Stop-motion animation is still a relevant art form even in a world where cgi is king
Check out this recent post from Grant Phillips on moviemaker.com about the art of stop-motion and it's future in the movie industry. He does a great job bringing to light some of this art's history and how stop-motion can be relevant moving forward. He definitely hits the nail on the head in talking about how collectives of artists, animators and storytellers are more important than the works of an individual. In today's movie making process, CGI definitely seems to be the standard. However, collectives like Laika and others could (as Phillips put it), "counterpunch Hollywood’s now-digitized “gold standard” of animation production."
Keep pushing the art of stop-motion and work together in groups to progress this time honored tradition of animation. |
This storyboard does not have a description.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy In 6 Comic Panels
The wizard Gandalf tells Frodo the hobbit that the ring he has can be the death to everyone. Frodo must go on a journey to save Middle Earth.
Frodo meets Sam, Pippin and Mary on the beginning of his journey. They stumble across a Nazgul who seeks the ring and will slaughter everyone in its path.
Frodo and the hobbits arrive at Rivendell where they create the Fellowship of the Ring. A group who helps Frodo towards Mordor to destroy the one ring.
Gandalf the white arrives at Rohan to save the fallen king from his curse.
Frodo and a creature gollum travel into a spiders nest where the creature gollum plans to sabotage Frodo and kill him for the ring.
Frodo and Sam arrive at Mount Doom in Mordor to destroy the ring. Gollum tries to get the ring by biting Frodo's finger off. It results with the ring, Frodo's finger, and gollum being incinerated in the lava of mount doom. THE END
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Staying safe in the hot weather
The UK has seen an unprecedented bout of warm weather throughout the summer months. With the weather set to stay warm for the next few weeks, the Severn Trent Trust Fund wanted to share some tips and advice to keep yourselves, others and pets safe during the hot weather, as well as ways to save water during the summer days.
- Avoid the heat – try planning your day to avoid going out during the hottest time of the day. (11am-3pm)
- Wear loose clothing – if you do go out remember to wear loose cool clothing, a hat and sunglasses.
- Shut windows and keep your curtains closed – keep your house cool by blocking the sun out. Keep windows shut and closing curtains will keep the shade in and keep your house cooler.
- Keeping rooms cooler – use shades or reflective material outside your windows. Alternatively use light coloured curtains (dark curtains can make the room hotter) and keep them closed.
- Keeping cool – have cool showers and splash yourself with cool water to stop yourself from overheating.
- Stay hydrated – keeping yourself hydrated during the warm weather is very important. Drink plenty of cold drinks such as water and diluted juice drinks. Try to avoid excess alcohol as well as caffeine and drinks in high sugar.
- Check up on others – don’t forget to check on others as well, friends, relatives and neighbours who may be less at risk during the warm weather.
Don’t forget your pets will also be feeling the effects of the summer sunshine. Here are some tips on how to keep them cool:
- Never leave animals in hot cars, conservatories, outbuildings or caravans. Leaving pets in isolated warm areas (even for just a short while) can see temperatures rise to 47 degrees which can result in death.
- Sun cream – did you know that there is pet friendly sun cream? You can use the sun cream on exposed parts of your pets skin, such as the tips of the ears and nose to help avoid sunburn. If you are unsure of which sun cream is the right product please check with your vet first.
- Ice cubes – putting ice cubes into your pets drinks will help to keep them cool, similarly try making some treats and freezing them.
- Damp towels – give your pets some welcome relief by using damp towels or an ice pack wrapped inside a towel to keep them cool.
- Walking – when walking your pets remember to be conscious of the time, the RSPCA recommend walking your pets in the morning or evening. This will ensure they are not at risk of burning their paws on the pavement or getting heatstroke.
As well as keeping yourself safe and protected during the summer months, don’t forget that you can still save water (and money) during the hot period. Here Severn Trent provide some great tips on how you can be water wise:
- Swap your sprinkler for a watering can – Sprinklers can use up to 1,000 litres of water in just one hour, that’s more than a family of four uses in two days. A watering can will do a similar and save water along the way.
- Replace the hosepipe for a bucket – A hosepipe uses around 500 litres of water every 30 minutes, replace it for a bucket.
- Water plants in the evening – water your plants (using a watering can) in the evening. It is more effective as less water will evaporate.
- Lawns are survivors – unless you have new turf or seed don’t worry about watering it, your lawn will bounce back once it starts raining again.
- Utilise your water butt – This is one of the easiest ways to save water. Having a water butt can collect and provide water for your plants during the summer months.
- Reuse your water – Just washed your vegetables? Use the water for your plants as well.
- Fill your dishwasher – Most dishwashers use less water than washing up by hand. Just make sure you fill it up before starting it.
- Always use a bowl – Remember to fill up your washing bowl instead of letting a tap run. This can save up to 20 litres every single minute.
- Turn the taps off – by simply turning your tap off when brushing your teeth you could save six litres of water every minute.
- Fix the leaks – a dripping tap or a leaking loo can waste up to 5,000 litres of water every year, if you see a leak make sure you get it fixed.
- Choose the shower – Having a cool short shower is the best way to cool down during the summer months, it also saves tonnes of water too. Did you know one bath can use over 80 litres of water? By showering you can save over 40 litres every time.
With the warm weather set to stay for the next few weeks, we hope that you find these tips helpful to keep you safe, hydrated and cool as well as helping you to save some money. If you have any great ideas or tips why not share them with us? Let us know what you have been doing on our Facebook or Twitter pages.
The Severn Trent Trust Fund is an independent grant making charity. The Trust is helping people out of poverty thanks to generous donations from Severn Trent. If you are struggling and need help then please contact us here. |
On this page
- What to include in the cost of living
- Tips for searching for comparison
When you calculate the cost of living in Melbourne or regional Victoria you may find that the expenses are different to what you have to pay in your own country.
The Living costs in Australia page on the Study in Australia website lists some common expenses and approximate costs.
There are some other sites that also provide cost of living information, comparing the cost of living in Melbourne to other locations. Search for cost of living melbourne to see the most popular comparison sites.
What to include in the cost of living
Rent (or other accommodation), utilities, groceries, restaurants and transport are good places to start.
Rent and other accommodation
Tenants pay rent and also need to pay for electricity, gas, internet and cable services.
If you are sharing the rental of a property, you and the other tenants will probably split these expenses between you.
If you are living in a homestay, student accommodation or in a residential college on campus you may find that these expenses are included in your rental.
In Australia you may hear people talking about 'utilities'. Utilities include electricity, gas, telephone an internet.
To check the cost of electricity and gas in Melbourne or other Victorian cities, search the internet for energy price comparison melbourne (or the name of another city in Victoria where you want to study)
For best results, view the organic search results. The sponsored results may not give an unbiased answer.
Transport and travel
Transport costs vary depending on where you live. If you travel regularly by public transport you can save money by buying monthly passes. Most universities offer easy bicycle parking. As an international student you may be eligible for a 50% discount on the price of Myki, with an iUsepass.
Read more on the iUsepass page on the PTV website.
Groceries and restaurants
If you plan to enjoy Melbourne's wonderful restaurants, include the cost of eating out in your calculations. You can keep costs low by cooking your own meals. |
Question: Discuss how the global media industry started taking shape after the Second World War. What were the major features of media industry in US and Europe during 1950s to 1970s? How did the media industry in US get restructured during 1980s to 1990s? Media can be defined in general as, "media" refers to various means of communication. For example, television, radio, and the newspaper are different types of media. Media includes every broadcasting and narrowcasting medium such as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, billboards, direct mail, telephone, fax, and internet. Thus Media Industry is thus the business activities related to media.
There has been a constant change in the Global Media Industry with the changing expertise and technology over the years. Global Media Industry during the Second World War (1939-45)
The media was the major source of information during the Second World War. News about the war was generally received from such sources as radio, newspapers, magazines, and newsreels. In a way, they acted as propaganda for stirring up American support for the war effort in Europe. Even propaganda in the U.S. with Uncle Sam posters, and the importance of defending your country helped keep military recruitments up and a high trust in the government. Propaganda was the sole reason that made Hitler so powerful. Global Media Industry after Second World War and how it started taking shape? (late 1940’s) The 1940s were dominated by World War II This was as true for the media as it was for other areas of American life. Till 1946, newspapers and radio concentrated their coverage on the war. Military Media
At the scenes of conflict, the men and women in uniform were kept informed by thousands of military newspapers, the most important being Stars and Stripes. Radio in the 1940s
Radio showed its importance in the nearly instant reporting of major events, such as the Battle of Britain and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer set the news standard for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network, a standard that would follow into the new dominant format, television, and last for decades after the war. But radio was not just a purveyor of news during the war. Radio meant entertainment, and the 1940s was the last decade in which radio was dominant. Music had long been a staple of radio, much of it performed live. Musicians had been unhappy for many years with what radio paid them for their talents. Beginnings of Television
After the war the broadcast companies put large amounts of money into television, starving radio, which had been their focus for twenty years. Most of the radio programs were transferred to television by the early 1950s, leaving the radio with music. As quickly as radio had transformed American life in the 1920s, television began a new revolution in the 1940s and 1950s. Comic Books
Comic books were successful in the 1940s, as they provided cheap, exciting entertainment. Superheroes flourished during a time in which evil was all too real in the world. Captain Marvel, Captain America, Batman, and other heroes like them did battle with evil and fed the imagination of the youth of the United States. McCarthyism
But the end of the war and the rise of the Soviet Union as a European and world power brought new problems that erupted in unlikely spots, such as the media. The first rumbling of institutional anticommunism led to the blacklist, whereby motion picture, television, and radio artists and writers were denied the freedom to work under their own names. During the 1950s the darkness of McCarthyism intensified before the pain of these victims eased. Transition
During and after the war, indeed even during the Depression of the 1930s, revolutionary seeds were sown in the media that did not fully bear fruit until the 1950s, a truly revolutionary decade.
Summary of Global Media Industry in 1940’s
Also, Radio became the dominant form of media during...
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January 29, 2014
Over the course of Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing, the two main female characters – Beatrice and Hero – are contrasted and compared in regards to their power, their personalities, and their virtues. Beatrice, the outspoken orphan who swears she will never fall in love is often set in juxtaposition to her cousin Hero, the virginal, quiet, perfect daughter. While each has their own certain amount of power, Beatrice is ultimately the one who holds the most control over the other characters in the play because of the ability to control language, her ‘maid’ status, and her lack of parents to watch over her.
Language is one of the largest themes throughout Much Ado and the control that comes with the ability to use language in the right ways is constantly examined. Characters such as Beatrice and Benedick, who are witty and know how to use language to their advantage, can often get other characters to do what they wish without much persuasion. Hero, on the other hand, hardly speaks throughout the entire play, making her into the image of a perfect daughter. She is quiet and only speaks when spoken to, which is the exact opposite of her cousin. This contrast is fully portrayed in Act 3 Scene 4, when Hero, Margaret, and Beatrice are all talking while getting ready for Hero’s wedding. Beatrice, who comes in late to the scene is considered to have the final say on whatever Margaret says, while Hero is just there, taking in everything that happens around her. Beatrice has the ability to control the situation and the mood in the room by saying simply, “I am out of all other tune, methinks” (3.4.42). She is explaining, in so few words, that she is feeling ‘ill’ as a result of her love for Benedick. After this statement, the conversation in the room quickly moves from Margaret making fun of Hero and her virginity to Margaret attempting to poke fun at Beatrice’s newfound love for Benedick. The way Beatrice can command a room just by one...
Cited: Cook, Carol. ""The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor": Reading Gender Differences in Much Ado About Nothing." JSTOR. Modern Language Association, 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
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The Troodos Mountains is Cyprus' largest mountain range and also home to the country's highest peak, Mt Olympus. The flora of the Geopark is the richest in Cyprus and, for this reason, the Troodos mountain range is considered one of the most important mountain habitats for plants in the whole of Europe. The fauna of Troodos reflects the rich flora and the wide spectrum of habitats it creates for many insects, birds and animals, many of which are endemic to the region.
The Cyprus Mouflon - Ovis gmelini ophion
The mouflon is a wild sheep and this subspecies is found only in Cyprus and dates back 10,000 years. Other variants can be found in Turkey, Corsica and Sardinia. It is a large animal, the largest of the local wildlife fauna, and was endangered for many years as hunters considered it to be quite a prize. Some specimens are kept in a large enclosure of several acres at the mountain forestry centre at Stavros Tis Psokas but, over the last few years, as the animal is now protected except for the occasional poacher, it has bred successfully and can sometimes be spotted while on mountain trails. It is estimated that there are now over 3,000 individuals that roam the forests of the Troodos and Paphos mountains. Males weigh approximately 35 kilos and have heavy sickle shaped, 2 ft long horns when mature. The mouflon is a shy, beautiful and agile animal and it’s a privilege to see one. |
The King of Swords is the final card in the suit of Swords. The King of Swords embodies much of the meaning of the entire suit, and should be taken seriously when seen. Much like the Queen of Swords, The King can represent a strong male influence in your life, someone with authority and power.
The King of Swords in a sentence
The King of Swords represents decision making, maturity, authority and assertion.
The King of Swords in a time based position
Past – You may have been extremely mature for your age and help more responsibility than average. People considered you to have authority over a subject, you were the ‘go-to’ person for it. Life may or may not be the same now, but the lesson to learn is that you can always harness that sort of power if you dedicate yourself.
Present – The King of Swords in the present position would suggest a ‘father-figure’. You should take what they say seriously, even if they haven’t followed what they believe in. They may have the best advice, but just because they haven’t followed it doesn’t make them any less right. Look for someone with a lot of experience who is truly interested in help you for your sake, and not their own.
Future – The King of Swords in the future position symbolises the path you’re currently on; a life you are happy with if you’re willing to work for it. It isn’t about earning money, it’s about reaching your potential. You have the ability, determination and drive to reach your goals. The only thing stopping you is yourself. Don’t give up.
The King of Swords in regards to life issues
Work / Education – The King of Swords in regards to work or education can mean you’ll need to look to someone more experienced and learn from them,likely an older male in a position of authority. Don’t be afraid of going straight to the top if you want advice, they’ll see it as using your initiative. Remember, that other people on the ladder want to climb too, so they might not earnestly help you out. If you’re studying, talk to your professor or lecturer in your free time to build up a rapport so they know your face. Contacts and links like that can help in many ways in the future.
Romance – The King of Swords in romance is a very good sign. Expect a new level of maturity in any existing relationships. The King of Swords is an especially good sign when it comes to finding love, especially when masculine energy is needed. If you’re male, then work on what you think masculinity is. If you’re female, then look for defined male traits in a prospective partner.
Friends – The King of Swords in regards to friendship means things are going well with your circle. You might have to decide something for everyone soon, but rest assured that they’ll agree with whatever choice you make. If people are swinging between two choices, just do what you think is best and they will follow.
Money – The King of Swords in regards to finances is another good sign. Look at your spending objectively. Don’t shy away from the bad, you have to grow and tackle it. Do not do it tomorrow, or next week, but tackle your money issues today. You can decide to change your lifestyle to accommodate your needs.
Health – The King of Swords echoes the mature nature of the card when health is concerned. It’s a case of knowing what is right for your body and mind, and then doing those things. You know how to eat well, you know how to exercise, you know what to avoid. It’s just a case of putting these things into practice. A role model will be a good thing to have right now. think of someone living your perfect life, and aim for it. If you cant find a role model, exercise that inner determination. Willpower is a funny thing, because we all have it, but we don’t choose to use it. Some would rather take the easier option. Don’t be lazy.
Spirituality and Mentality – The King of Swords in spirituality can be mixed when spirituality is concerned. Sometimes, ‘mature’ people will scoff at the thought of religion and esotericism. Take charge here. It doesn’t matter what other people believe. If it’s working for you then continue. Try to be mindful as much as you can and utilise basic instincts in real life. We are all animals after all.
Other associations of The King of Swords
As a Yes or No question: Yes |
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Yes! Rename wildlife refuge for Nathaniel 'Nat' Reed | Thumb up
The Editorial Board of Treasure Coast Newspapers agrees. Emphatically. The Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge should be renamed for environmentalist Nathaniel "Nat" Reed.
A bill filed this week by U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would change the official name to the Nathaniel P. Reed Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.
That has a nice ring to it — especially considering Reed grew up and lived on Jupiter Island, near the 1,035-acre refuge in southern Martin County.
Reed, who died in July at 84, spent much of his life fighting to preserve America's natural resources. One notable example: As assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior in the Nixon administration, Reed helped to shepherd the Endangered Species Act of 1973 through Congress and into law.
As our Editorial Board has noted previously, Florida owes a huge debt to Nat Reed. |
Eating disorders are serious medical conditions that involve major changes and disturbances in eating habits. Eating disorders are becoming increasingly common and according to the National Eating Disorders Association, around 35% of young girls engage in dieting, purging, or take dieting pills to lose weight.
There are three types of eating disorders:
- Anorexia – an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with food and losing weight and a distorted perception of body image.
- Bulimia – an eating disorder that involves binge eating and then purging by vomiting or using laxatives or diet pills to prevent weight gain.
- Binge eating disorder – an eating disorder characterized by the consumption of large amounts of food and binge eating, without the subsequent purging.
What are the Common Signs of an Eating Disorder?
Eating disorders can have severe health implications so it’s important as a parent that you educate yourself on the signs and symptoms and identify possible warning signs early on.
Some of the warning signs include:Drastic weight loss or extremely low weight
- Drastic weight loss or extremely low weight
- Intense fear of gaining weight, even if underweight
- Distorted image or perception of body and negative thoughts
- Obsession with restricting calorie intake, weight and dieting
- Vomiting or purging after meals, or abuse of laxatives or diet pills
- Excessive exercise regime
- Secret eating or avoiding situations that involve food
- Withdrawal from friends, family or social activities
- Changes in menstrual cycle
What Do I Do if I Think My Daughter Has an Eating Disorder?
Your immediate focus should be your daughter’s health, initiating an open discussion about the issue and seeking help from a healthcare professional to gain understanding and get a proper diagnosis.
How Do I Approach the Issue?
- Seek advice. It’s important that you seek advice from a healthcare profession to develop an understanding of eating disorders to help you to approach the issue with your daughter. The more you know about eating disorders, the better you will be able to understand what she is going through and how she is feeling.
- Ask open questions. Instead of accusing your daughter of having an eating disorder, ask questions such as “Is there a reason why you’re not eating as much lately”, to promote an open, honest conversation.
- Reinforce your support. Your daughter needs to know that she has your support and that you are concerned about her health, rather than angry or disappointed. Your daughter will be less likely to talk to you if she feels she will get into trouble, so emphasize that you want to help her get through this.
Why Do People Develop Eating Disorders?
You shouldn’t blame yourself if your child develops an eating disorder. Eating disorders are complicated mental illnesses that can stem from various factors. Often, people use food to deal with their emotions, and restricting food is a way to regain control of their life. It’s important to recognize the warning signs and support your child rather than placing blame or feeling at fault.
Are There Health Concerns Associated with Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders are very serious illnesses and can lead to many health complications. If left untreated, eating disorders can get severely out of control and can lead to life-threatening health problems, heart disease, kidney failure and in worst cases, fatality.
Recognizing an eating disorder is the first stage towards the recovery process. As a parent, you need to provide your daughter with love and support so that you can help her in the road to recovery.
Feature image Satyrenko / Shutterstock |
While it’s true that cats are typically easier to care for than dogs, felines do require (and benefit greatly from) your time an attention. With a few simple steps, you can ensure a happier life for your kitty.
· First and foremost, if you have a kitten, be sure he has another feline buddy to play with. Cats are the best playmates for each other and will be more likely to stay out of trouble if they have one another to wrestle and play with.
· Do not entice cats or kittens to play with your fingers, hands, or feet. This may be fun and cute when they are babies, but when they are adults with sharp teeth and strong jaws, it’s not so fun!
· Try to use interactive toys: lasers, fishing-pole style toys, and things you can toss are all great options. The LAST thing you want is for your cat to associate your hands and feet with play time.
· Lasers and bubbles are fun, but can also be frustrating for a kitty because they never get to “capture” something. At the end of play time, make the laser “fly away” up the wall like a bug. Or, end your play session with a treat.
· To engage your kitty in true interactive play:
o Cats like to hide from and stalk their prey. They will likely hide from, and watch, the toy for a long time before pouncing. Be patient.
o Do not simply dangle the toy in front of your cat’s face. And definitely don’t hit him with it! You want to challenge the cat, simulate prey, and help him enjoy the hunt.
o Try to move toys in a way that actual mice, birds, etc. would move.
o Allow your cat to actually catch the prey now and again. If the toy always escapes her, she may become frustrated. Let her savor the moment before starting again.
o Think of playtime as a workout – warm up slowly, have a period of intense exercise with the most vigorous workout, and then have a time of cool-down. If you get him riled up and then leave for dinner, he will be highly unsatisfied. For the cool-down, make the toy move slowly, as though it is injured, and let him catch it one last time.
o Reward the end of every play session with a treat or a meal.
o Please make playtime a daily occurrence. Cats are extremely routine oriented and will come to expect and greatly anticipate their play sessions. It’s such a great way to bond with your cat. Aim for two 15-minute sessions a day.
o Keep in mind that kittens may require more play time, but in shorter segments.
· In multi-cat households:
o If your cats do not get along well, you may need to conduct separate play sessions.
o You might need to have more than one toy in your hands.
o Make sure every cat gets to capture the prey.
· Don’t forget to use catnip! Try to limit its use to once a week, or it may lose effectiveness. |
ydroweave™ is designed to harness the cooling power of evaporation. The new fabric is
used in garments to lower the core body temperature. AquaTex Industries Inc. of Huntsville, Ala.,
developed the product.
The fabric can keep people working in temperatures from 90° to 360° cool for up to eight
hours, according to the company. Tests conducted at Auburn University show that Hydroweave offers
users superior heat protection.
The fabric sheds heat and regulates core body temperatures using evaporation. These benefits
are especially important in industrial applications and other environments where personal
protective equipment is worn.
“Humans give off 75 percent of our energy in heat,” said Dr. David Pascoe, a human
bioenergetics expert and associate professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at
“If personal protective equipment or other barriers prevent us from releasing that heat to
the environment, we have to find another way to get rid of it before problems such as heat stress
or heat stroke arise.”
The fabric’s temperature-regulating properties enable people to work up to 16.4 percent
longer when wearing a vest made of Hydroweave under their standard-issue protective gear, according
to encapsulated tests conducted by Dr. Pascoe. Hydroweave’s cooling properties stem from its unique
design and water-absorbing fiber batting.
In the fabric’s patented three-layer composite design, the batting is sandwiched between an
inner thermal conductive lining and a breathable outer shell.
Before use the fabric is soaked in tap water for five minutes. Excess water is then squeezed
from the garment, and the inner lining is wiped dry.
During wear the microporous inner conductive lining pulls heat away from the wearer.
Super-absorbent fibers in the batting store more water than conventional fabric and release the
water in a controlled fashion over a longer period of time.
The water evaporates as it passes through the outer shell, cooling the user.
The gradual moisture release results in increased cooling and a longer-lasting cooling
effect. Since the conductive waterproof lining separates the batting from the wearer, the garment
feels cool, dry and comfortable.
Current Hydroweave users include The 3M Company, Sterling Environmental, the Glendale Police
Bomb Squad, Synthetic Industries and the Medical Transportation Service of Fort Benning, Ga. The
fabric is also being combined with DuPont’s fireproof Nomex® fiber for use in flame-retardant
Hydroweave also has sport applications. Several NFL and collegiate teams are using the
product. Players for the Cleveland Browns, St. Louis Rams, Philadelphia Eagles and the University
of Alabama’s Crimson Tide are wearing shoulder pads and helmet liners made of Hydroweave.
AquaTex Industries has also signed an agreement with LEAF Racewear & Safety Equipment to
provide Hydroweave fabric to be used in a line of racing suits and inner liners for racing suits.
The new suits are designed for oval, drag and road racing.
For more information on Hydroweave™ contact AquaTex Industries Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., (800) |
Everybody has an ambition that they want to achieve in their lifetime; it might be something practical such as having a child, or getting a job you deserve. Or, it could be something exciting and fun, such as visiting a particular place or enjoying a certain experience. As for places to visit, we are lucky to live on a planet with a massive amount of diversity in terms of landscapes, animals and other wildlife, and when you begin to think about it, a great deal of the most astonishing and amazing of our living creatures exist in the seas and oceans.
Seeing wild animals in a zoo or safari park setting is not the same as experiencing them in the wild, in their natural habitat. This is even more so when we consider the great creatures of the oceans, those that live beneath the surface and come up only occasionally. The chance to swim with some of these is something that you simply cannot miss, and it’s a very real opportunity if you visit the Ningaloo Reef, a stunning part of the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.
Swimming with Whale Sharks
Wouldn’t you love the opportunity to experience, up close and in their natural habitat, magnificent whale sharks that let you swim alongside? That’s just one of the many exciting things you can do if you take a trip to the Ningaloo Reef. If you check out the website https://www.ningaloowhalesharkndive.com.au/ you will find all the information you could possibly need on how you – and your family – can enjoy an experience that is quite unlike anything else.
Despite their name, whale sharks are a placid creature, posing no threat or harm to man, and those in the Ningaloo area are quite used to people swimming and diving among them. The younger ones can be quite playful, in fact, and these glorious, serene and intelligent fish – the biggest species of fish in the world – will provide you with endless entertainment. Put simply, if you can swim, you can take a trip on the Ningaloo Whaleshark-N-Dive boat, the Aliikai, and witness these quite spectacular creatures up close, and even the kids can swim with the whale sharks, so docile they are.
Enjoy the Experience
During your trip on the boat you will be accompanied by a Marine Biologist, who will educate and inform you about whale sharks, plus the many other wonderful sea creatures you may be able to watch. If in season, you may even see majestic humpbacked whales, amazing manta rays and playful dolphins, as well as the many turtles that inhabit the reef and surrounding area.
The Ningaloo Reef is genuinely unique, and few places in the world offer you such an opportunity to swim with creatures as astonishing as these. Check out the website now for more information on what you can see and do in the bay, and book yourself and your family a holiday that you will never forget. |
In 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, the physicist Louis Slotin stood in front of a low table at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, concentrating intensely on the object in front of him. His left thumb was hooked into a hole on the top of a heavy beryllium dome, fingers bracing the side as he carefully cantilevered it on its leftmost edge. In his right hand he held a flathead screwdriver, its head wedged under the right edge of the dome to keep it from closing completely. Through the gap on the right side you could just barely catch a metallic gleam, a glimpse of the 14-pound plutonium sphere that was slated to become one of the United States’ next nuclear weapons.
Slotin began slowly lowering the dome, using the screwdriver gingerly to control the opening. He had performed this feat many times before, but this time was different. As his left hand eased its hold on the dome, his right hand slipped outward just a hair too far, pulling the screwdriver out from under its edge and leaving nothing to stop it from closing.
A bright blue flash signaled that the dome had fallen into place, and Slotin felt an intense heat all across his skin. He quickly twisted his wrist to pop the dome completely off the plutonium sphere, but the damage had already been done. Nine days later, he was dead.
In the half-second that the dome was closed, the plutonium had gone supercritical, initiating a nuclear chain reaction and releasing a lethal dose of gamma rays that damaged Slotin’s cells beyond repair. Seven other people were in the room with him during the accident; three were hospitalized for acute radiation sickness. All it had taken was misplacing a screwdriver a fraction of an inch, for a fraction of a second. Richard Feynman called the technique, relatively common at the time, “tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.”
The demon core, that 14-pound lump of plutonium that claimed the life of Louis Slotin, began its existence as rods of uranium-238, a relatively stable isotope, at the Hanford Site in Washington State. These rods were inserted into a nuclear reactor and bombarded with neutrons, tiny, uncharged subatomic particles, with the hope that some would get stuck to uranium atoms, increasing their atomic number to 239. Unlike uranium-238 (a half-life of 4.5 billion years), uranium-239 is very unstable (23 minutes); it rapidly decays into neptunium-239 (2.4 days), and after that, plutonium-239 (24,000 years). The crude plutonium for the demon core was then purified and sent to the Los Alamos Laboratory as a salt, plutonium nitrate.
Going from plutonium nitrate to a finished bomb core had proven to be a major challenge for the metallurgists at Los Alamos Laboratory. By the time they made the demon core (the third plutonium core, after those in the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs) they had worked out many of the kinks. They first converted the plutonium salt into plutonium metal by reacting it with metallic calcium, a relatively straightforward process. The metallurgists weren’t done, though: Early studies had found that plutonium produced this way is incredibly brittle, cracking with every attempt to make it into the needed shapes. To solve this, the metallurgists tried mixing the plutonium with various other metals to see if they could improve its workability as an alloy, eventually finding gallium to be ideal. The plutonium-gallium alloy of the demon core was hot-pressed into two hemispheres and then coated with a thin layer of nickel to protect the plutonium from rusting; joining these two hemispheres together completed its manufacture.
When and how World War II would end was still uncertain, so the scientists at Los Alamos had worked tirelessly to complete the core. Just as they were preparing to ship it for final installation in a bomb, the August 15, 1945, surrender of Japan came. This development left the U.S. Nuclear Program with a question: What would be done with the heart of the third bomb? Mercifully, it was no longer needed for warfare.
An opportunity came in the form of Operation Crossroads, a testing program to determine the impact of nuclear weapons on warships. However, now that the wartime pressure was off, the scientists realized that it would be useful to run some more tests on their creation.
The demon core, destined for use in a weapon of mass destruction, was designed to have a hair trigger. It was meant to be in a “-5 cents” configuration, meaning that it would take only 5 percent more plutonium for the core to go supercritical and result in a radiation accident. In other words, the core was always right on the edge of going off. A few errant neutrons would be enough to trigger a deadly chain reaction. The scientists knew that the core was unstable, though now they had the opportunity to measure just how close it was to going critical and how, with different techniques, it might be brought even closer.
The experiment that killed Louis Slotin in 1946 posed these questions. It was already well-known that bombarding a plutonium core with neutrons could provide the push it needs to go critical, and it was also known that plutonium fires off neutrons as part of its natural decay. By partially covering the core with a dome made out of beryllium, an excellent neutron reflector, it was possible to bombard the core with enough of its own neutrons to bring it close to criticality, while still allowing enough to escape to keep it from going all the way. By dropping the dome, Slotin had stopped any neutrons from escaping, giving the demon core enough energy to undergo a dangerous chain reaction.
Slotin was actually the second scientist to be killed by the demon core. Harry Daghlian, another physicist at Los Alamos, had attempted a similar experiment the previous year using tungsten-carbide bricks instead of a beryllium dome. While arranging the bricks around the core, he accidentally dropped one right on top of it, supplying that small amount of energy needed to go critical. Like Slotin, Daghlian acted quickly to remove all the neutron reflectors from the demon core, but it only takes a moment of supercriticality to release a lethal amount of radiation. Daghlian wasted away in the hospital for 25 days before finally succumbing to his injuries.
The demon core never actually made it into a nuclear weapon. Following the Slotin accident, it was melted down and its elements were redistributed across several new warheads. Still, its existence offered an important lesson: Even outside a weapon, plutonium posed an immediate danger. All it took was an errant brick or misplaced screwdriver to kill two civilian scientists.
Today, an estimated 15,000 nuclear weapons are spread across the globe. That figure should also suggest a much larger danger. All it would take is a misread message or mis-pressed button to kill millions of people, potentially igniting a global conflict that would kill millions more.
In the early days of nuclear-fission bombs, that danger was palpable and understood. Not just because those bombs could level cities and murder populations, but because their components were still new and unproven, offering reason to respect and fear them. Today, nuclear warheads go unseen and unconsidered, even as nuclear war feels closer than it has in decades.
Los Alamos ended hand-manipulation of nuclear cores in criticality experiments after Slotin’s death. That was certainly for the best. And yet, Feynman’s quip about the test—comparing it to tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon—also kept the certainty of unimaginable destruction close at hand.
This post appears courtesy of Object Lessons.
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Bearn Stearns, Its Collapse, and Bailout
How a Bank That Survived the Depression Started the Great Recession
Bear Stearns was an investment bank that survived the Great Depression only to succumb to the Great Recession. Founded in 1923, it became one of the world's largest investment banks. In 2006, it produced $9 billion in revenue, earned $2 billion in profits, and employed over 13,000 employees worldwide. Its stock market capitalization was $20 billion in 2007. This well-respected firm offered a variety of successful financial services, except for one. Its greed drove it into the hedge fund business.
That caused its demise in March 2008, kicking off the 2008 financial crisis.
In April 2007, bond dealers told the managers of two Bear Stearns hedge funds that they should write down the value of their assets. The funds, High-Grade Structured-Credit Strategies Fund and Enhanced Leverage Fund, owned $20 billion in collateralized debt obligations. These derivatives were based on mortgage-backed securities. They started losing value in September 2006 when housing prices began falling. That was the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis.
In May 2007, the Enhanced Leverage Fund announced its assets had lost 6.75 percent. Two weeks later it revised that to an 18 percent loss. Investors began pulling out their money. Then the fund's bankers called in their loans. Parent company Bear Stearns scrambled to provide cash for the hedge fund, selling $3.6 billion in its assets. But Merrill Lynch wasn't reassured. It required the fund to give it the CDOs as collateral for its loan. Merrill announced it would sell $850 million worth that afternoon.
But it could only unload $100 billion.
Bear Stearns agreed to buy the securities from Merrill and other lenders for $3.2 billion. It bailed out the failed hedge fund to protect its reputation.
In November 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article criticizing Bear's CEO. It accused James Cayne of playing bridge and smoking pot instead of focusing on saving the company. The article further damaged Bear Stearns’ reputation.
On December 20, 2007, Bear Stearns announced its first loss in 80 years. It lost $854 million for the fourth quarter. It announced a $1.9 billion write-down of its subprime mortgage holdings. Moody's downgraded its debt from A1 to A2. Bear replaced CEO Cayne with Alan Schwartz.
On Monday, March 10, 2008, Schwartz thought he had resolved the hedge fund problem. He had worked with Bear's bankers to write down loans. Bear had $18 billion in cash reserves.
On March 11, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced its Terms Securities Lending Facility. It gave banks like Bear a credit guarantee. But investors thought this was a veiled attempt to bail out Bear. The same day, Moody's downgraded Bear's MBS to B and C levels. The two events triggered an old-fashioned bank run on Bear Stearns. Its clients pulled out their deposits and investments.
At 7:45 p.m. on March 13, Bear Stearns' only had $3.5 billion left in cash. How did that happen so quickly? Like many other Wall Street banks, Bear relied on short-term loans called repurchase agreements. It traded its securities to other banks for cash. The so-called repo agreement lasted anywhere from overnight to a few weeks. When the repo ended, the banks simply reversed the transaction. The lender earned a quick and easy 2-3 percent premium. Bear hemorrhaged cash when the other banks called in their repos and refused to lend more.
No one wanted to get stuck with the Bear's junk securities.
Bear didn't have enough cash to open for business the next morning. It asked its bank, JP Morgan Chase, for a $25 billion overnight loan. Chase CEO Jamie Dimon needed more time to research Bear's real value before making a commitment. He asked the New York Federal Reserve bank to guarantee the loan so Bear could open on Friday. Yet Bear's stock price plummeted when the markets opened the next day.
That weekend, Chase realized Bear Stearns was worth only $236 million. That was just one-fifth the value of its headquarters building. To solve the problem, the Federal Reserve held its first emergency weekend meeting in 30 years..
The Fed lent up to $30 billion to Chase to purchase Bear. Chase could default on the loan if Bear did not have enough assets to pay it off. Without the Fed's intervention, the failure of Bear Stearns could have spread to other over-leveraged investment banks. These included Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Citigroup.
Bear's demise started a panic on Wall Street. Banks realized that no one knew where all the bad debt was buried within the portfolios of some of the most respected names in the business. This caused a banking liquidity crisis, in which banks became unwilling to lend to each other.
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon regrets buying both Bear Stearns and another failed bank, Washington Mutual. Both cost Chase $13 billion in legal fees. Winding up Bear's failed trades cost Chase another $4 billion. Worst of all, says Dimon, is the loss of investor confidence as Chase took on Bear's sketchy assets. That depressed Chase's stock price for at least seven years. |
Having lost her mum to a brain tumour in 2007 Sarah Lambkin embarked on an extreme challenge to raise funds towards finding a cure.
Keen to do something completely outside of her comfort zone, Sarah pledged to run an incredible 1,000 miles in a year. She recently completed her final mile at the end of the Virgin Money London Marathon on 24 April, while at the same time raising over £3,500 for us.
“After my mum was diagnosed I think we were all in shock as she was never ill, she was the rock of our family and she held us all together, you didn't mess with my mum. Then, within two months she was gone. We all still miss her dearly.
“I was determined to raise awareness of brain tumours which have such a devastating effect on too many families including my own. Running was the best way I could make a difference, not only did it push me to focus on a challenge but it allowed me time to think and reflect. After a training run, I was always fully motivated to raise even more for research into brain tumours."
Despite Sarah's amazing achievement, she has not always been a keen runner.
“I never used to run. In fact, Lambkins don't run! I couldn't imagine running to the end of the street let alone 1,000 miles.
“However, about three years ago I decided that I needed to get fit and lose some weight, so I signed myself up to some charity runs and my fitness and determination grew from there."
To ensure Sarah hit her 1,000 mile target, she ran up to 19 miles a week and completed various different running events for us before her finale at the Virgin Money London Marathon.
“Being part of The Brainy Bunch Running Group on Facebook really made me realise how there are like-minded people who have gone through similar experiences. But in the end, we're all coming together so we can hopefully find a cure. They were all a real motivation to me."
“I'm thrilled that the money raised will go into research for new treatments to help improve the lives of those living with a brain tumour and eventually defeat this horrible disease."
Sarah and our runners are a real inspiration to us all and it's thanks to them we can fund pioneering research which can help get us closer to finding a cure. |
I was selecting a Valentine’s Day card this week with literally dozens of people shopping near me. I was wondering if any of these people gave as much thought to their finances as much as their gift and card selections for Valentine’s Day?
Were any of these people “in love” with their finances? It gave me an idea for an article.
As I was standing there selecting a card for my wife, it dawned on me that I’ve never written a Valentine’s Day article.
Why not? I really don’t know why. So this year I thought a Valentine’s Day article would be appropriate.
I have racked my brain on how to get these two subjects together without repeating the same old financial advice. So here it goes.
Here’s how to Fall in Love With Your Finances This Valentine’s Day:
1. Don’t ignore your finances. You shouldn’t ignore your love relationships, and you shouldn’t ignore your finances. If you ignore people you love they will stop caring about you. The same goes with your little green friend. Make the commitment this Valentine’s Day that you will start paying closer attention to your money. Do you overspend habitually? Then develop a budget or use a credit card that categorizes your purchases, so you can see where it goes. Take the time to understand your money and why save or spend the way you do.
2. Educate yourself about your finances. Personally, if you are not a subscriber to this blog, then you should start here. I’m a little biased of course! But seriously, there are some really good articles about personal finance and investing on The Diligent Advisor. My suggestion here is to start reading. Read as many books, blogs and web sites about personal finance that you can get your hands on. Don’t get caught up with all the other stuff in life. Your relationship with money will suffer. My wife has a phrase she likes to use with my oldest son that is 22. When he makes a mistake that costs some money, she says, “being stupid costs more.” She’s right. Not being educated about money will cost you more money.
3. Spend purposefully. What I mean here is to make every purchase one that you want to make. Think about the money you spend. Did it further my purpose in life? Did it make me happy? Or did I buy it to cheer myself up? When you spend money make sure it is for the things that make you happy. Spend with a purpose. You’ll fall in love with your finances all over again if you do.
4. Love the one you’re with. So goes the line from the song. Part of falling in love with your finances is being content with what you have. Don’t spend like you make more money than you do. Live within your means. Less stress equals more harmony with your finances. That will lead you back to loving your finances.
Remember, don’t ignore that special someone in your life. This Valentine’s Day do something unique, fall in love with your finances all over again. You’ll be happier for it. Follow my advice in #2 and subscribe here for free! Happy Valentine’s Day! |
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