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AMD releases first Kabini AM1 APUs Advanced Micro Devices has launched the first Kabini APUs designed for the recently released socket AM1 platform. There are four models at the moment that belong to the Athlon and Sempron APU families. Despite this difference the new chips share quite a few hardware specs and feature Jaguar CPU cores as well as Graphics Core Next architecture for the GPU integrated in the chip itself. The first Kabini chips are in fact a complete computational system on their own. They come with two or four computational cores, on-chip graphics, cache memory, a memory controller, support for SATA 3.0, two USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, PCI-E 2.0 graphics and three video outputs – DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA. The chips are also cheap as the most expensive one of them costs just USD 59. Here’s a quick overview: - AMD Athlon 5350 – quad-core, 2.05 GHz, 128 stream processors at 600 MHz, support for DDR3-1600 memory, 2 MB L2 cache, TDP of 25 watts, USB 59; - AMD Athlon 5150 – quad-core, 1.60 GHz, 128 stream processors at 600 MHz, support for DDR3-1600 memory, 2 MB L2 cache, TDP of 25 watts, USB 49; - AMD Sempron 3850 – quad-core, 1.30 GHz, 128 stream processors at 450 MHz, support for DDR3-1600 memory, 2 MB L2 cache, TDP of 25 watts, USB 39; - AMD Sempron 2650 – dual-core, 1.45 GHz, 128 stream processors at 400 MHz, support for DDR3-1333 memory, 1 MB L2 cache, TDP of 25 watts, USB 34; The new AMD AM1 chips are already available for purchase.
Drunk Driving and Dram Shop Some 28 people in the United State are killed daily due to automobile accidents that involve an alcohol-impaired driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control. This amounts to one preventable death every 53 minutes in the U.S. as a result of someone driving while intoxicated. In 2014, nearly 100,000 people were killed due to alcohol-related auto accidents, which accounted for nearly one-third of all traffic-related deaths that year. Additionally, 1.1 million drivers were arrested in 2014 alone for driving under the influence. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), driving under the influence was responsible for 247 deaths last year in Alabama, which accounted for 29 percent of all of the state's driving deaths. This was, however, down 6.8 percent from the previous year. Beginning in 2016, law enforcement in every state, including Alabama, started enforcing the national slogan, "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over." This slogan was updated from the previous campaign, "Drunk Driving: Over the Limit, Under Arrest" to reflect the increasing possibility that drivers can be under the influence of substances other than alcohol.Alabama Law and Driving Under the Influence Alabama law indicates the following regarding blood alcohol content (BAC) and driving: - If your BAC is .08 or higher, you are considered legally intoxicated and unable to operate a motor vehicle. - If you are under 21 years old and your BAC is .02 or higher, you are considered intoxicated and unable to operate a motor vehicle. - If you are a commercial truck driver and your BAC is .04 or higher, you are considered intoxicated and unable to operate a motor vehicle. In all of the above cases, you are subject to being arrested and charged with driving under the influence (DUI).Hollis Wright Alabama Drunk Driving Accident Attorneys Will Fight for You The Alabama drunk driving accident attorneys at Hollis Wright specialize in alcohol-related claims involving those who have been injured or killed by an impaired driver. Josh Wright, managing partner at Hollis Wright, consistently lobbies the Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control Board for higher insurance liability limits in alcohol-related cases. Specifically, Josh eliminated the "eroding" insurance policies in Alabama with his amendment to the Alabama ABC Board Regulations in 2010. An "eroding" insurance policy refers to a policy in which attorney fees are included in the insurance policy limit, so the amount available to settle a claim "erodes" as attorney fees are paid. Bars and restaurants, in the past, may have had this type of policy in place to cover their liability in the event that a waiter or bartender over serves a customer, resulting in an alcohol-related accident. If the bar or restaurant is sued as a result of the customer being over served, then the cost and attorney fees associated with defending the claim would reduce the amount of available insurance coverage for injured victims. Bars and restaurants typically like this type of policy because it allowed them to comply with the insurance requirements imposed by the ABC Board while paying much lower premiums for coverage. However, injured victims routinely received less compensation for their injuries. Thanks to the hard work of Josh Wright and others, bars and restaurants are no longer allowed to carry this type of insurance in Alabama. Our attorneys also regularly give presentations at seminars on alcohol-related cases and have had success in litigating such cases with excellent economic results for our clients. The firm has handled cases involving drunk driving, as well as cases involving bar fights, guns, domestic injuries, and property damage, as related to alcohol or substance over indulgence.Alabama Liquor Liability Laws Damages can be claimed against the intoxicated driver or the server or the establishment that provided the alcohol to the intoxicated person. Alabama has a statutory law that protects people who are injured as a result of the unlawful sale or furnishing of alcohol to someone who causes an injury to another person as a result of intoxication. This law, called the Dram Shop Act, ensures that establishments that serve alcoholic beverages do so in a responsible manner, or face being held responsible for possible damages caused by an intoxicated individual's actions. What is serving in a responsible manner? Essentially, the server cannot legally serve a customer or patron who is showing signs of "visible intoxication" and/or cannot serve a patron or customer that, based upon the "totality of circumstances," the server should reasonably know the patron will become intoxicated. Alabama also has a law called the Alabama Civil Damages Act that protects against minors being served or furnished alcohol. If a bar or restaurant serves alcohol to a minor, and knows or has reason to know the person is a minor, then they can face legal repercussions for serving said minor. This applies whether an injury results from the action or not.Don't Delay: Contact Hollis Wright If you believe you have a viable claim under the Alabama Dram Shop Law or Civil Damages Act, contact Alabama drunk driving accident attorneys at Hollis Wright as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to receive the compensation to which you may be entitled. We will immediately work with you to gather the facts of the motor vehicle accident. Additionally, we will talk with all involved in the alcohol service. Contact us for a free consultation. Our attorneys will work on a contingency-fee arrangement, meaning that we only receive payment if we recover money on your behalf.
Set amidst the arid mountains of East Nusa Tenggara and plunging into pristine waters is a location so untouched and remote, it’s easy to see why the world’s largest lizard calls Komodo National Park home. This UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the centre of the Indonesian archipelago, is the perfect place to explore by boat no matter what kind of trip you are looking for. Relax and unwind or explore and discover – the choice is yours. A sailing trip around Komodo National Park from Labuan Bajo is bound to impress even the most well-travelled individual. Where is Komodo National Park? Komodo National Park is an equatorial group of islands located 744 kilometres (462 miles) east of Denpasar, Bali – just off the coast of East Nusa Tenggara. The park boasts similar characteristics to the Mediterranean regions, making it easy to see why the Komodo dragon has thrived here. The mountains and valleys are harsh terrain, often very dry, with intense humidity – a complete contrast to lush, tropical Bali. The mountains are staggering, dramatic and seem to sink effortlessly into the azure waters that encircle them. Scattered sand islands are randomly dispersed throughout some of the most electric blue water you’re likely to ever lay eyes on. If it’s adventure you seek, the islands of Komodo National Park play host to some of the most exceptionally beautiful and desolate landscapes imaginable – a sure fire way to get the adrenaline pumping. Beyond the sheer beauty, lies Labuan Bajo, the fishing village of East Nusa Tenggara and home to a backpackers’ haven of adventure, food and Indonesian culture. As Labuan Bajo frantically tries to keep up with the number of tourists visiting the area, it’s interesting to gauge how this humble little fishing village fairs as a tourist hotspot in the coming years. How to get to Komodo National Park? Getting to Komodo National Park is as simple as booking your flights into Labuan Bajo, a small fishing village on the far West coast of East Nusa Tenggara. Flights run daily from Denpasar, Bali into Labuan Bajo with the following airlines: - Garuda Indonesia - Lion/Wings Air - Nam Air The flight takes approximately one hour and ten minutes from Denpasar and catering on board is limited. As these flights are extremely popular, I recommend booking early to secure your seat. Labuan Bajo is a short car ride or transfer from the main airport on the island. When you arrive at the airport, you’ll notice a large gathering of locals hoping to drive you wherever you desire. Just smile, be polite and suggest a price before choosing your driver. It can be quite overwhelming if you’ve never dealt with this type of ‘driver ambush’ before, so just breathe and enjoy the moment. Indonesians are super friendly, so be sure to have a chat and ask questions. Expect to pay approximately 40-50,000 IDR for a 20-30-minute car ride for your entire party of travellers. Where to stay near Komodo National Park There are a couple of great hostels you can book in Labuan Bajo. Ciao Hostel has a huge terrace that overlooks the harbour, where you can try a morning yoga class or relax with a drink at sunset. If you’ve already visited Gili or Lombok on your Indonesia trip, then you’ll be familiar with the lovely La Boheme hostels. La Boheme Bajo is very charming, with colourful umbrellas and tiles plus some breezy seaside vibes. Exploring the islands While there are more dive boats and daily tours to the islands than you can poke a stick at, Labuan Bajo offers more than its fair share of options to explore the islands and I recommend booking your expedition prior to arriving. I really enjoyed my tour with Le Pirate Explorer, as they give you the peace of mind knowing everything is completely taken care of, from start to finish. You can choose to sail and explore the islands for up to seven days on their ‘Explorer’ series of boats, plus you’ll have the opportunity to travel and visit the following islands: - Rinca Island - Komodo Island - Kelor Island - Padar Island - Taka Makassar There are also many other single or multi-day sailing options you can choose from. The main street in Labuan Bajo has countless booking desks and sailing charters offering their tours. For an alternative day trip or overnight options, I recommend using Flores XP Adventure Tours. The following list of activities and adventures are just an example of what to expect whilst exploring this part of the world. I recommend making sure your tour includes: - Visiting the Komodo Dragons - Hiking Padar Island - Swimming with Manta Rays - Diving/Snorkelling Batu Balong - Relaxing on your boat - Watching the largest migration of bats on earth. - Exploring remote and untouched islands. Be sure to book a day or two in advance if possible as popularity in the region is rapidly increasing. Diving is proving to be the most popular activity in this part of the world and Labuan Bajo has one of the highest concentrations of dive centres in Indonesia. Taking a short walk along the main street behind the harbour is bound to give you a selection of the best dive centres the region has on offer. We’d recommend looking into Komodo Dive Centre first. Australian certified divers run many of the dive centres, so you’re bound to bump into someone proficient in English that can guide you on the best diving expedition. Where to eat and drink in Labuan Bajo Start your day right with breakfast at one of the many street-side breakfast bars and cafes. I recommend Bamboo Cafe, which is open from 6am-6pm and caters for those hungry and sun-drenched travellers and divers all day long. The menu is modern and a little pricey for this part of the world, but it does offer a comfortably air-conditioned reprieve from the harsh Indonesian humidity with a slice of home-grown healthy treats and drinks. If you’re prepared to wander further afield, the entire street of Jl. Soekarno Hatta has got you covered. Everything from western dishes to traditional Indonesian meals can be found within a short stroll from the main harbour. Restaurants like Made in Italy and Pasar Malam are worth checking out. While Made in Italy is a little further from the main drag of the Labuan Bajo Harbour, Pasar Malam offers visitors a relaxed waterfront night market experience. Expect to sample plenty of fresh seafood and fried dishes. Know Before You Go This region of Indonesia is humid – let’s get that straight. Like much of these equatorial Indonesian islands, Labuan Bajo is notoriously hot, sweaty and uncomfortable in the heat of the day. That’s not to say it can put a dampener on your epic sailing adventures through the islands. Plan your day early to avoid the extreme heat of the day and ensure you have plenty of bottled water. If eating out or dining in, just be sure to ask if they use filtered water and try to avoid ice in drinks or salads that have been washed in tap water. What to pack As a precaution, always travel with any medication in case of emergencies. Traveller’s Diarrhoea is common in this part of the world, so always come prepared. Sunscreen, long shirts, hats and plenty of water will be your best friends during your travels throughout these islands. Trust us, a week on board a boat is best enjoyed without looking and feeling like a complete lobster. About the Author Scott Pass is a travel writer, photographer & videographer hailing from the beaches of Australia’s Sunshine Coast. Scott aims to showcase the world’s most remote and bucket-list worthy destinations in such a way that evokes a strong and insatiable desire to explore far and wide. You can follow Scott’s escapades over his website and Instagram. Pin this blog for later!
Snapchat is rolling out features at an incredible rate. Some of them are nice tweaks, like adding voice filters. Others, like Snap Map, are honestly pretty dangerous. Let’s look at what the new Snap Map is, what’s wrong with it, and most importantly, how to disable it. What Is Snap Map? Snap Map is a new feature in Snapchat that shares your location with your friends. Unlike most location-based features, however, Snap Map doesn’t give a general location, it shows exactly where you are. It doesn’t show that I’m in Dublin, Ireland; it shows you where my house is. Zoom in close enough in the image below, and you’ll be able to work out exactly where I live. If you have Snap Map enabled, every time you open Snapchat, your position will be updated. Go to work and open Snapchat there? Now everyone knows where you work. Go over to a friends’ house for drinks and send a Snap? Yep, all your friends know where they live now too. Obviously this feature is a privacy nightmare, and we can’t recommend you use it. How to Disable Snap Map Thankfully, Snap Map isn’t turned on by default. When you open Snapchat after the app has updated, you’ll get a demo of the new feature and be prompted to turn it on. If you haven’t already, don’t. If you turned it on out of curiosity, though, you should really turn it off. Here’s how. Open Snapchat. From the main screen, do a two-finger pinch as if you’re zooming out in a regular map app. This brings you to the Snap Map. Tap the Gear icon in the top right corner of the screen to get to Settings. Tap the switch next to Ghost Mode to turn off location sharing. You’ll still be able to see all your friends’ locations, which is really weird, but at least you won’t be broadcasting your location to them. The Snap Map feature has received a lot of backlash already, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was radically changed or removed in a future update. Until that happens, the best thing to do is pretend it doesn’t exist. If you’re a parent, you should probably check to make sure your children don’t have it enabled.
Nearly a year after it began, the Kenwood Food Project has grown, expanding to help provide food from local restaurants and grocery stores to families at Bret Harte Elementary School and the Hyde Park Refugee Project. The initiative started last March as a partnership with Kenwood Academy. Counselors there would identify students at risk of going hungry, and provide them with gift cards from the Kenwood Food Project to local restaurants like Pizza Capri and Cafe 53, as well as Hyde Park Produce and Food and Paper Supply Company. The gift cards are funded by donations to the Food Project. It's a way to help families in danger of going hungry, as well as local restaurants who may be struggling during the pandemic. Last June, the Food Project began working with the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club (HPNC), which allowed the organization to write off donations as tax-deductible. “The community responded so well that we had more gift certificates than Kenwood had a need for at that particular time,” said Linda Swift, who started the project. One day, after getting her haircut, she walked by Bret Harte and saw one of the school employees handing out free lunches. “I chatted with the lunch lady, and she already had 26 people. I was asking her, you know, maybe we could give (the gift cards) out.” Swift got in touch with Charlie Bright, the principal at Bret Harte. (“He has a perfect name for an elementary school principal,” she noted.) Bright agreed that it was a good idea, and began thinking of the best method to target families in need. “When she came there and just asked if I would be able to pass out the gift cards — without a doubt, I’d be able to do that,” he said. “We started with families that we hadn’t received forms for. When they turned in their forms and we found out they were receiving free and reduced lunch, we were able to give them a gift card at the same time they brought those forms.” Bright also gave gift cards to families who came to the school on Fridays to receive groceries as part of the Feeding South Shore program, as well as students who picked up Chromebooks and iPads. “Our school as a whole is over 70% free and reduced lunch,” said Bright. “It’s not everyone, but it’s a good number of families.” He said the gift cards had come in handy for one family after their refrigerator broke. “I was talking to the mother and she said, ‘You know, the timing was perfect. All our food had spoiled.’ This was a chance for her to go to the store and buy some more fresh fruits and vegetables,” he said. “Right now with the pandemic, so many of our families — and so many families through the city — can use support. So the Kenwood Food Project has been a great way to tell (families) we’re thinking about them.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, Swift said that the Food Project has raised over $11,000, almost all of it since it began operating under the auspices of the HPNC. Four people have become regular donors, including Clairan Ferrono. “I think having the Neighborhood Club handle the financial side, the digital side, has made it a lot easier, so I decided to make a monthly contribution,” said Ferrono. “Those of us who can afford it need to help those who can’t — it’s that plain and simple.” Apart from working with local schools, Swift also reached out to the Hyde Park Refugee Project last fall when she had a surplus of gift cards. “A lot of the (refugees) work at restaurants and, you know, they are losing their jobs like everybody else,” she said. In total, Swift ended up giving 18 gift certificates to the 8 families at the Refugee Project. She said that she’ll look to help them out again the next time she finds herself with extras. Bright, for his part, reflected on the importance of projects like Swift’s, given the need that many of his families find themselves in because of the pandemic. “I was talking to a dad yesterday, and he said while he knows others are worse off than he is, he’s struggling, paying bills late, paying rent late, but he’s paying them,” Bright said. “But, you know, any kind of help you can get. And our families aren’t asking for it, but they appreciate the offers when they’re made to them. “A lot of these families would normally be pretty quiet, but I think because of programs like the Kenwood Food Project it’s been a way for principals like myself and other principals in Hyde Park to connect with families.” Visit hpnclub.org/kfp to donate to the Kenwood Food Project.
Letter: Vote 'yes' for future of our children I am a proud "parent" to approximately 286 children. I am an educator. I have spent the past 30 years in school: first as a student in Manitowoc and later as a teacher at Stangel Elementary. This is where I met "my children," where I have watched them grow and accomplish amazing things. As a parent, whether they are my biological children or those who walk through my door at the beginning of the school year, I always strive to give them my all. I want to know that I've inspired them to be their best and make a difference. I want them to be respectful and responsible. I hope my students never back down from a problem they face. Our community is facing a problem. Public education funding is at an all-time low for Manitowoc. The district has cut $6.2 million since 2011. This year is the first time our district has asked for the community's help. They are asking for the community to approve a referendum that would cost the average homeowner a mere $1.37 per week. The referendum will help to maintain programs: fifth- and sixth-grade band and orchestra, D.A.R.E., seventh- and eighth-grade extracurriculars and the school forest. It will avoid increased class sizes, retain or attract quality educators, upgrade security, technology, and buildings, and help to purchase computers. Our family believes in the old saying, "It takes a whole village to raise a child." That's what education is all about. We come together to help raise our community's children. The upcoming referendum is asking you to come together for our children. Are you going to send the message that our children are worth it? Are you going to stand up for our kids, walk together as a community, and engage our children in love? Vote yes on April 7.
A 620 km long human chain was organised by the ruling CPI(M) led Left Democratic Front in Kerala on Republic Day, demanding withdrawal of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The chain, which stretched from Kasaragod in north Kerala to Kaliyakkavilai in the southernmost part of the state, was formed at 4 PM, following which the preamble of the Constitution was read out. Later, participants took an oath to protect the Constitution from the “attempts of the Central government” to destroy it. The LDF claimed that around seven million people participated in the human chain. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI leader Kanam Rajendran joined the protest in Thiruvananthapuram. Senior CPI(M) leader S Ramachandran Pillai was the first link of the 620-km-long human chain at Kasaragod, while M A Baby was the last link at Kaliyakkavilai. In an address after the oath, Pinarayi said, “Peaceful protests are possible when the entire population unites. We can take pride in this fact. Participation in the human chain has been overwhelming. The message is clear— we do not accept CAA as this divides people on the basis of religion. Nations across the world and the United Nations should not have let this happen.” “In Kerala, we have already made it clear that neither NPR nor NRC will happen. We cannot rest until the CAA is withdrawn,” he said, Malayala Manorama quoted. The Left front has been in the forefront of anti-CAA protests in Kerala and organised various protests across the state. The LDF and the Congress-led Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) had earlier jointly protested against the Act.
"You're going to Pennsylvania?" our friends asked. "You're usually flying off to some destination we've never heard of, but the state named after William Penn? Why Pennsylvania?" I could hear the thud of a gauntlet being tossed down when the words "why Pennsylvania?" were uttered. I picked up the metaphorical glove and flew east to answer the question. Because eyeballs get weary and time is a more valuable commodity than emeralds, I will share with you 10 answers to the Pennsylvania challenge. You will note that great restaurants and hotels are omitted here, and quirk rules. But you have a reader's chit for information about all of the above in a later post. 1. The State Capitol building in Harrisburg is arguably the most beautiful capitol in the U.S. The dome is an homage to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the staircase is modeled after the one in the Paris opera, and the paintings of a woman named Violet Oakley adorn some of the most ornate and spectacular chambers. At a time in our misogynistic past when Ms. Oakley didn't even have the right to vote, she was depicting world peace, an end to slavery, and an end to the enslavement of women. In one painting, a woman is in shackles. You go, Violet! (http://www.pacapitol.com) 2. In Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, the "Tulip House," as it is affectionately called by locals, could make earth worms sit up and take notice. In this historic anthracite coal mining town, where 80 Victorian facades have been restored to the glory of former coal baron days, a rather reclusive woman spends much of her life tending her front and backyard gardens and adorning them with thousands upon thousands of color-coordinated flowers. In the summer, petunias bloom. In the winter, mums. And when I was there, it was tulip time. I stepped from my car and beheld a sea of pink, purple, mauve, fuscia and lilac-hued tulips. I am not a flower person, but I instantly became one. (http://www.tamaqua.net) 3. In Bethlehem, in a l741 house where I began a historic Moravian tour, I learned about the fascinating sect that practiced polyglot singing (adherents came from many countries and each sang in his own language); had female pastors; and separated congregants according to age, gender, and marital status. Between 18 and 24 months, a child was taken from its parents and placed in a nursery to be raised--think: kibbutz. There was a separate house for suckling mothers. Another one for widows. All needs were paid for and taken care of by the community --from food to education to health care. They were very prosperous and probably had the first pumped water system in America. And the missionaries learned Native American languages and didn't force people to convert. (http://www.historicbethlehem.org/index.cfm?organization_id=127§ion_id=2292&page_id=9377) 4. Porter's Pub, in Easton, is a 25-minute drive from Bethlehem. The ceiling is lined with 3700 mugs, and if you drink every one of the 60 craft beers on the menu--with names like "Blithering Idiot" and "Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale"--you get your own mug and become part of the architecture. You can also go on the "Beer-muda Triangle," which includes Porter's Pub, Black & Blue Restaurant and Two Rivers Brewing Company. (http://www.porterspubeaston.com) 5. Everyone is curious about the Amish, and the best way to appreciate the simple life they live is to drive on your own through Amish Farmland country in Lancaster County. The Anabaptists ride by in horse-drawn buggies, plough their fields, and hang their traditional black and dark blue clothes to dry on clotheslines. You can stop at Amish shops to buy candles, quilts, fresh hot pretzels, and crafts. If you wish to take an Amish- led tour, google will get you the options. 6. President Buchanan? I'll wager you know nothing about our only bachelor President, who preceded Lincoln. Learn about why he never married, why his vendetta against Stephen Douglas split the Democratic party and enabled Lincoln to win the election, and why he was accused of being a "doughface" (a northerner with Southern sympathies) at Wheatland, his home. (http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/james_buchanan_wheatland.html) 7. Can you name the only resort in the United States that has a private wildlife habitat; off-roading school; dog sledding; art tours of a $50,000,000 collection that is out in the open, accessible, and not hidden behind glass; buried (fake) prehistoric bones that kids can dig up; vintage autos and a vintage airplane museum; a big chunk of the Berlin wall; a pet spa with private condominums (avec flat-screen T.V.s, of course), blueberry facials, a presidential suite and orthopedic beds? Five words say it all: Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa. (http://www.nemacolin.com) 8. You have seen photos of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, but nothing, repeat, nothing, equals the joy, amazement and awe one feels at the house that seems to float over a waterfall. The cantilevered marvel, with balconies suspended in mid-air, is a crown jewel of organic architecture. As you walk through the house, you are accompanied by the sound of rushing water. From what the guide implied, Wright was a horrid human and I think that, with few exceptions, most of his love was lavished on nature and natural elements. (http://www.fallingwater.org) 9. Speaking of floating, you can float on a raft for a historical tour with a guide dressed in Colonial period knickers and a billowy white muslin shirt. Learn about George Washington's only surrender; how Washington's surveyor was roasted alive by Native people; the history of the railroad and rye whiskey; and the coke ovens, with the other coke. Raft and tour provided by Wilderness Voyageurs. (http://wilderness-voyageurs.com) 10. Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, in Avella, Pennsylvania, near the Ohio border. The oldest inhabited site in North America. 16,000 years ago, some campers spent a night or two making fire, eating, and sleeping. Were they really so different from us, except in technology? Films, a visit to the archeological site, and villages representing those who lived in the area for the last 16,000 years. (http://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/meadowcroft.aspx) So, let me know. Have I won the Pennsylvania challenge? Photography by Paul Ross Judith Fein is an award-winning travel writer who has contributed to more than 100 publications. She is the author of LIFE IS A TRIP: The Transformative Magic of Travel. Her website is www.GlobalAdventure.us
Since the word banana does not occur in Scripture, any evidence of bananas in ancient Middle Eastern diets would have to come from the ground. New research found just that, and the details unwittingly imply trade capacities well-suited to the ancient world represented in the Bible. Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Munich-led researchers found food chemicals glued to buried tooth tartar.1 They used new techniques to identify ancient protein remnants locked onto the teeth. Signatures of bananas, soy beans, sesame seeds, and turmeric turned up among their selected 16 skeletons. The international team used Bronze Age individuals excavated from the ancient trade city of Megiddo, and later used individuals excavated from the Iron Age city of Tel Erani. With no prior evidence that these plants previously grew in the Levant, the publishing research team was forced to conclude that long-reaching trade brought the produce from Southeast Asia. Co-senior author Philipp Stockhammer said in a University of Munich news release, “I find it spectacular that food was exchanged over long distances at such an early point in history.”2 Early craftiness would seem much more spectacular if our early ancestors were still evolving from less-than-crafty forebears. In this evolutionary scenario, civilizations’ technologies such as making wine,3 performing surgery,4 “cave men” eating veggies,5 and building boats ready to sail the seas6 should have crept forward over eons. In contrast, biblical origins and archaeology demonstrate humans as fully capable of these technologies from the start. Sailing from East Asia to Israel could take 40 days—perhaps twice the time it takes today’s green bananas to ripen. Possibly the ancients grew bananas in the Levant. The biblical Flood model opens this possibility by moving the Ice Age from over 11,000 years ago to the time of Abraham.7 The Middle East was tropical back then. But nearby banana trees wouldn’t diminish the likelihood of international trade, especially of items that last longer than bananas. Stockhammer said, “Exotic spices, fruits and oils from Asia had thus reached the Mediterranean several centuries, in some cases even millennia, earlier than had been previously thought.” He concluded, “We can now grasp the impact of globalization during the 2nd millennium BCE on East Mediterranean cuisine….Mediterranean cuisine was characterized by intercultural exchange from an early stage.”2 That time frame reaches back almost to Abraham, born as Abram in 2166 BC, using the Bible’s chronology.8 On his journey from Ur to Canaan along the main trade route through the Fertile Crescent, Abram could hardly have missed Megiddo. Genesis 12:6 says, “Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land.” Shechem lies a handful of miles south of Megiddo, with its now-excavated Bronze Age Canaanite remains. In light of this, biblical accounts of traders can be reviewed and better understood. For instance, perhaps the travelers who took Joseph to Egypt carried turmeric in the inventory of the “spices” they transported (Genesis 37:25). Likewise, it may be that “the caravans of Tema” mentioned in Job 6:19 carried sesame oil. This new evidence from ancient tooth plaque spices up the biblical accounts, including the possibility that Abraham and his kids ate bananas in Canaan. Folks back then were just as into long distance trading as we are today, demonstrating that people have been fully people from the beginning. 1. Scott, A. et al. 2020. Exotic foods reveal contact between South Asia and the Near East during the second millennium BCE. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online December 21, 2020. 2. The aroma of distant worlds. University of Munich news release. Posted on www.en.uni-muenchen.de December 22, 2020, accessed January 6, 2021. 3. Barnard, H. et al. 2011. Chemical evidence for wine production around 4000 BCE in the Late Chalcolithic Near Eastern highlands. Journal of Archaeological Science. 38 (5): 977-984. 4. Buquet-Marcon, C., P. Charlier, and A. Samzun, 2009. A possible Early Neolithic amputation at Buthiers-Boulancourt (Seine-et-Marne), France. Antiquity. 83 (322). 5. Henry, A. G., A. S. Brooks, and D. R. Piperno. 2011. Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (2): 486-491. 6. Dennell, R. W. et al. 2014. The origins and persistence of Homo floresiensis on Flores: biogeographical and ecological perspectives. Quaternary Science Review. 96: 98-107. 7. Hebert, J. 2018. The Bible Best Explains the Ice Age. Acts & Facts. 47 (11): 10-13; Thomas, B. Archaeology Confirms Genesis, Job Climate. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org September 20, 2016. 8. Steinmann, A. E. 2011. From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 72. *Dr. Brian Thomas is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in paleobiochemistry from the University of Liverpool. Abraham Ate Bananas? Do the Unpersuaded Have Enough Proof? At a local Bible conference, a respected seminary professor unintentionally contradicted the apostle Paul. During the Q&A session, he opined that... Gunnison's Black Canyon: The Flood Solves Mysterious Missing... Brian Thomas, Ph.D., and Tim Clarey, Ph.D. The Gunnison River winds westward from the Colorado Rocky Mountains through dry and dramatic landscapes.... The Fossils Still Say No: The Fins-to-Feet Transition One of the alleged greatest transformations in vertebrate evolution is said to be the emergence of creatures that traded fins for feet and transitioned... Largest Canyons Were Formed by the Receding Flood Two newly discovered canyons in Greenland and Antarctica have a lot in common with Grand Canyon. Both canyons are as deep as or deeper than Grand Canyon...
In Northerner India, there is a state known as Himachal Pradesh (H.P) filled up with natural beauty. Himachal is situated in the western Himalayas or bordered by Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Haryana. Nature plays an important role in Himachal weathers, winter is very cold and summers are cool and pleasant here. In Himachal, life is not so fast. Peoples don’t live in the modern world, they reside in the dense forests of Himachal Pradesh. They just believe in the valleys and mountains of Himachal as their home. That’s why they live so simply and peacefully. Himachalis are humble, hardworking, polite by nature and represent respect towards nature. They are very peaceful people who believe in working hard. Here people take dinner early and prefer to stay indoors after 6 pm. People are doing their work at a slow pace but never get tired of their work and never get frustrated by their work. They have owned a unique culture that attracts the whole of India towards them. Photostory by IIPian Vishwas Sunita Shrivastava taken during his studies as a project.
- Release: 2010-03-22 - Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) - Price: FREE - File: PDF, 192 page - ISBN: 9781429930468 Patrice Williams was happy living in Georgia with her grandmother, who called her "cocoa grandbaby." Then her mother lured her to Chicago and ended up in jail. Now Patrice lives with her Auntie Mae, and her new nickname is "Puffy" – thanks to her giant poof of hair. But Patrice's hair isn't the only reason she sticks out: she cares about her grades and strives for the best. That's why Monty Freeman, another eighth grader who lives in the building, asks Patrice to tutor his little brother. Even though Monty's friends make Patrice uneasy, Monty himself is friendly, confident, and surprisingly smart. When he becomes her guardian angel, Patrice begins to think something stronger than friendship might be growing between them. Still, nothing will stop her from applying for a scholarship at prestigious Dogwood Academy – her ticket out of the project and a school populated by gangs and drug runners. In her debut novel, Traci L. Jones presents a girl with grit she never knew she had, and a boy so inspired by her that he begins to take pride in his own abilities. Standing Against the Wind is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year and the winner of the 2007 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Award.
Chimes of temple bells, religious chanting of priests, temples dotted on the banks Chimes of temple bells, religious chanting of priests, temples dotted on Ganges banks, Haridwar is a spiritual sojourn. Located in Uttarakhand, it is among India's seven holiest towns for Hindus and is indeed a multi-faced spiritual and cultural destination. The gateway to God is propitiously located when the holy Ganges emerges from the glorious Himalayas. This holy town of Uttarakhand has its mention in the epic Mahabharata and ancient scriptures. It is the same site where the Maha Kumbh Mela - a massive religious gathering of Hindus. Haridwar is a spiritual stopover and has different ancient names in ancient writing - Mayapuri, Gangadwar, Mokshadwar. Ancient Hindu epics had mentioned this holy town as the place where the Hindu Gods are believed to have incarnated in distinct avatars. The majority of the Hindu community visit Haridwar to attain liberation from the vicious cycle of rebirth and death. The ghats, along with the Ganges, witness the Ganga Aarti ceremony. Devotees lit lamps, prayers are offered by priests and Hindu followers. Haridwar serves as the Charm Dham Yatra's entry point of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri, and Gangotri. Why Visit Haridwar? In simple words, you must visit Haridwar to attain spiritual awakening. The importance of spiritual maturity plays a significant role in our overall development. A visit to a holy place like Haridwar will tempt your senses, calm your mind, and promote harmony in your life. Particularly, Hindu people visit Haridwar as there are many old-age shrines of the Gods. But in the last years, religious tourism in India skyrocketed, and it is international tourists who are equally drawn to Haridwar like locals in India. Another key reason to visit Haridwar is its sacred point of Charm Dham Yatra - Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri. In Hindu manuscripts, it is mentioned that Haridwar is the same place where Almighty Vishnu took a bath. Mythological believes that taking a dip into the holy Ganges will awash all the sins of past and present life. Best Time to Visit Haridwar The best time to visit Haridwar is between October-February (winters) when it sees the best influx of tourists. During these five months, you will see clear blue skies making it an excellent time to enjoy relaxing sightseeing at the Hindu holy sites. However, March-June (summer months) are considered best to enjoy Ramnavmi and Buddha Purnima Festivals. How to Reach Haridwar Road travel is the most preferred way to reach Haridwar from the capital town - Delhi, as the journey only takes 5-6 hours. Air travel is another mode of transport to reach Haridwar from the major Indian long-distance towns like Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, etc. Jolly Grant Airport is the nearest domestic airport to Haridwar. While the international airport is in Delhi - India Gandhi International Airport. Tourists who prefer the safe and cost-friendly transportation option can also take the train to Haridwar Railway Station. Haridwar has its own railhead, which is well-linked with metro towns of India. How to Get Around in Haridwar The best way to get around Haridwar is by auto-rickshaws and cycle rickshaws, which is navigable, inexpensive, and reliable. Although taxis are available in Haridwar, the local transport in Haridwar will allow you to become a local in India's holy town. Places to Visit in Haridwar This one of the Seven Holiest Cities in India is situated on the holy Ganges banks, which marks the tourist influx in abundance throughout the year. Haridwar boasts stunning temples of the bygone era, various Aarti Ghats, peaceful ashrams for spirituality and tranquility seekers. The best places to visit in Haridwar attracts both domestic as well as international tourists. The city is considered the Gateway to Gods and will leave you in total awe. If you are a hill station lover, take advantage of the holidaying in the nearby hill stations around Haridwar. It probably goes without saying that you must visit Vishnu Ghat, Shanti Kunj, Bilkeshwar Mahadev Temple, Saptrishi Ashram. Things to Do in Haridwar There are many thrilling, engaging, and spiritually awakening things to do in Haridwar that will dump your mundane. Start your trip to Haridwar with a spiritual bath in the Ganges' holy water at Har Ki Pauri Ghat. Watch the spectacular evening Ganga Aarti at the same Ghat. Indulge in soulful experience by temple-hopping—practice mindfulness amidst the lush green environs. Shop til you drop the Pahadi souvenirs at the street vendors. Tourists with kids must not miss the Crystal World visit - a theme and water park with plenty of fun rides for adults and kids. Epic adventures, spiritual sojourns await you in Haridwar. Accommodation in Haridwar Finding accommodation in Haridwar is not a seldom problem. There are many hotels scattered in Haridwar that range from budget to luxury. The most prominent and exotic hotels are located around the famous Ghats. While the pocket-friendly hotels could be found near the railway station, bus stand. Shopping in Haridwar Shopping in Haridwar is one of the best experiences to have in this holy city, and there is no denying that. Tourists can buy almost anything during their trip to Haridwar. You will be in absolute luck if you visit Pentagon Mall, Moti Bazar, Tibetan Shopping center. Don’t miss exploring the bustling lanes of Haridwar on your shopping hopping venture.
Pranayam is an ancient Indian practice concerned with controlling your breath. Research has shown that practicing Pranayama may be able to relieve symptoms of asthma.It may be beneficial in treating stress related disorders, such as anxiety and depression. There are a total of six types of Pranayam practice, all of which are detailed here. In short, Anulom Vilom is a form of alternate nostril breathing—inhaling through the left nostril, holding the breath in, then exhaling through the right nostril. The sequence is then reversed: inhale through the right nostril, hold the breath in, and exhale through the left nostril. The name Anuloma Viloma means “with the grain and against the grain.” This is a reference to one nostril usually being more open than the other. Before start yoga also need a good yoga mat. However, it is advisable to use a cheap mat until you are sure you are going to continue your practice. Once you fall in love with yoga, you could invest in the right mat, depending on the form of yoga you chose. Practicing Anuloma Viloma Pranayama 1. Before beginning Anulom Vilom, sit comfortably in a cross-legged position, kneeling, or on a chair. Wobble a little side to side and back to front to make sure your seat provides adequate and balanced support. If your seat does not support you properly, your abdominal muscles will have to work harder and be less available for breathing. 2. Bring your body to stillness. Feel your spine and lengthen it as much as you can by pulling your tailbone down and the back of your neck up. Pull your shoulders forward and up, then back and down. Pull your shoulder blades in toward your spine and down toward your sacrum, but keep your spine long. 3. Begin Dirgha pranayama. You may grow into Dirgha with several successively deeper breaths or go right to your deepest inhalation. Empty your lungs completely each time you exhale. Add the Ujjayi sound to help keep your mind focused. 4. Practice Dirgha pranayama for about two minutes, until it feels absorbing and there is no resistance. Then, raise either hand to your face and, when you start your next exhale, block the right nostril so that all the breath flows out slowly through your left nostril. This is the transition to Anulom Vilom Pranayama. You can continue making the Ujjayi sound if you wish. As soon as you are empty, inhale through your left nostril and immediately exhale through your right. Continue alternating breaths through your nostrils (exhale, inhale, change; exhale, inhale change, etc.) until your mind has relaxed into this level of practice (about four rounds). Make sure the breath is as deep as it can be. If you feel dizzy or nauseous, slow down. You can use any comfortable hand position to block your nostrils; the yoga tradition recommends Vishnu Mudra. 5. After about five cycles of Dirgha pranayama through alternate nostrils, inhale and pause for about 10 seconds and then exhale through the other side. If the pause feels good, continue. If it doesn’t, shorten the pause. After a few rounds with the short pause, make it a few seconds longer. Very gradually lengthen the pause.You should find it sweet and absorbing at first. As you hold longer, your feelings will intensify. Let them grow as strong as you are able to witness. At the same time, progress slowly. Never hold so long that the holding on the next side must be shortened. With longer holding times, you can let your hand rest in your lap. You can also change hands as frequently as you need. If your seated position becomes uncomfortable, simply adjust and continue the pranayama. 6. After about 10 rounds of Anulom-Vilom, end the pranayama on an exhale through your left nostril. Then release your hand to your lap and let your breath flow freely. 7. Let your attention drift into your body and feel the effects of what you have done. Many students report feeling energized and peaceful, with their minds expanded. Take at least three to five minutes to explore all the changes in your body, emotions, and mind. When you are ready to move, start slowly. You might feel uncoordinated for a few minutes. Mantras and affirmations : Inhale: Om bhur bhuvah svah Hold: Tat savitur vareniyam Bhargo devasya dhimahi Exhale: Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat
On the night of September 28, close to 100 specially trained operators exhaled gently as they lay in wait at multiple locations across the Line of Control. The moon had waned to a thin, near-invisible crescent. Until H-hour, the cutting edge of the Indian army's Parachute regiment Special Forces, Para-SF for short, did not exist. They blended into the rugged topography because they had reduced their four S-es-shape, shine, silhouette and smell. Their combat fatigues blended into the forest, their faces were streaked with camouflage paint. Their skin was covered in a thin film of mud to suppress body odour. Their weapons had been blackened. They had lain in ambush for over 48 hours. There was nothing on their minds except the success of their mission. Not the 19 soldiers who had been killed in Uri on September 18, nor their fate if they were captured alive. The operators were the decisive tip of a very long spear that began in the army's Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) on the first floor of South Block. Here, India's military leadership sat with their political bosses, the prime minister and the defence minister. It passed through the Northern Army Command's bunker in Udhampur that planned the operation, and, finally, led across the border. For days now, the SF teams had stalked their targets-launchpads used to infiltrate militants into India. At H-hour, a coded signal went out to the teams. The operators opened up with the portable artillery they had backpacked across the LoC-Carl Gustaf rocket launchers, thermobaric rockets, under barrel grenade launchers clipped on rifles and 'Milkor' multiple grenade launchers that spat out six 40 mm grenades in one pull of the trigger. Six launchpads at Kel, Lipa, Athmuqam, Tattapani and Bhimber, located within five kilometres of the LoC, were hit near-simultaneously. The explosions were captured on hand-held cameras and by Indian Army drones floating above, relaying the images back to base. At each location, the operation was terminated in minutes. "It was a destruction mission, they did not engage their targets with small arms fire nor wait to count casualties," one official says. The weapons were chosen to inflict the maximum structural damage. The Russian Shmel, for instance, is called a flame-thrower by its manufacturer as it ignites a fuel-air mix that collapses structures and has the impact of one 155 mm Bofors shell. The commandos had accomplished a textbook 'raid' after infiltrating enemy-held territory. The US Special Forces Operational Techniques' field manual FM 31-20, one of the few such documents that is publicly accesible, hails overland infiltration "as the most secure way of getting the Special Forces team into place, especially if time is not crucial. Distance is not necessarily a problem for well-equipped Special Forces personnel, trained to use their skills, wits and resources". This is precisely why Indian SF operators eschew helicopters. They lack mission-specific helicopters like the stealthy Ghost Hawks Navy Seals used in the 2011 raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. Indian SF operators who do 30-km cross-country speed marches with 40 kg backpacks are comfortable with stealthy landborne insertion. They know the swathe of dense virgin temperate forest on the LoC like the back of their hand. They navigate around the 'nars' or dry river channels leading into the Kishenganga and know which ridges to take to evade detection. They are at home in the 2 km no man's land belt where vision drops to less than a metre in broad daylight and the crackle of twigs could well be a wild bear, a marauding panther, a militant or a Pakistani SSG operator. The commandos maintained their composure throughout the mission. At one camp which they staked out, terrorist sentries randomly hosed the trees around with assault weapon fire. Shredded leaves showered the waiting commandos, making them wonder if the mission had been compromised. Army officials in the know say the number of casualties on the terrorist side are only guesstimates based on how many terrorists and their supporters are within each camp. There were no casualties on the Indian side. One operator sustained foot injuries when he walked across a mine on the way back. He did not cry even once. A commando attributes it to the adrenaline surge during these missions and say the build-up causes post-action nausea and vomiting. In what is believed to be a first for such missions, the operators took visual evidence of the strike. One team waited until daybreak, past 6 am, to capture a camp being blown up on video. The infrared bloom in one of the launchpads led the brass to wonder whether the operators had hit a weapons dump. The footage was carefully analysed by army and intelligence sources and shown to the leadership before India went public with the strike. At noon on September 29, while the launchpads were still smouldering, DGMO Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh addressed a press conference in New Delhi announcing that India had carried out 'surgical strikes' 'along' the border after receiving specific and credible input on terrorists planning to infiltrate into India to carry out attacks. "During these counter-terrorist operations, significant casualties were caused to terrorists and those providing support to them," Lt Gen Singh said, the restrained statement coming 11 days after he had vowed to respond to the Uri attacks at "a time and place of the army's choosing". The signal to move in had already been given days after the Uri attack as the government seethed in its aftermath and the mounting public pressure for retaliation. An 'Eyes Only' file one officer calls the 'book of targets' kept in a secure location within the DGMO, was opened. The targets were identified in consultation with the Northern Army Command. Updated image feeds of the camps were taken from intelligence agencies. The first teams of SF operators were infiltrated across the LoC to conduct Close Target Reconnaissance (CTR), a crucial element in the planning process. It identifies targets, verifies they are operational and reverts to the planners who then wargame the operation. The CTR teams staked out and identified the targets, the infiltration routes and the approximate times for infiltration and exfiltration. They took pains to evade thermal imagers on the Pakistani side. One infiltration route ran through a counter-infiltration minefield laid by the Indian side, littered with buried anti-personnel mines. The team chose to mark a safe route through this lethal obstacle as an alternative route would take time. The planners kept the operation secret and anonymous. Unlike previous cross-LoC missions, it was not given a name, nor were written orders issued. The infiltration teams were believed to have been sent into the Indian posts on the LoC in disguise before their launch, to keep their arrival secret. Predictably, Pakistan disputed the Indian army's version. "The notion of a surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists' bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by India to create false effects," the Pakistan army said in a statement. Indian military commanders have chafed at their inability to strike at militant sanctuaries just across the border. At the height of the Kargil war in 1999, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee issued orders to his military commanders that the LoC was sacrosanct. This, when military advice indicated that the war could have been terminated even sooner had India struck Pakistan's supply routes and bases across the LoC. Vajpayee, however, wanted India to retake the Kargil Heights from a moral high ground. War apart, cross-border operations across the LoC have been commonplace for decades, part of establishing 'moral ascendancy' over the adversary and conducted at the battalion level. The November 2003 ceasefire between India and Pakistan drastically reduced such operations, but they began a decade ago when both armies began targeting each other in a cycle of violence and counter-violence. Army officials privately admit to at least two cross-border SF raids in 2008 and 2011. But these were authorised by the Northern Command in retaliation to specific action by Pakistan army Border Action Teams (BATs). Surgical strikes against Pakistan-based terrorists, including specific operations to target their leadership, were discussed by the Manmohan Singh-led cabinet committee on security in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. These were abandoned for lack of precise targeting information and, more importantly, what one participant in the meeting calls, a clear lack of political will. To that extent, the September 29 raid authorised by the topmost political leadership and later broadcast to the world, marks a radical departure in policy. The September 29 operations covered a frontage of over 200 km, both north and south of the Pir Panjal range. In that sense, it was also a step-up from the June 6 raid by Indian SF on NSCN(K)-PLA camp after its guerrillas ambushed and killed 18 Army men in Chandel, Manipur. The raid was carried out with the knowledge of the Myanmar government. Whether the September 29 strikes mark a permanent change in the government policy of restraint remains to be seen. Army brass believe this operation is a one-off. "There is no change in policy at the formation level," a senior army official says. The army is quick to underline that this surgical strike calls for a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to undertake a range of future clandestine and covert operations. This command was first proposed by the army in 2002 but shelved. The proposal was resurrected by the Naresh Chandra committee in 2011. The SOCOM, reporting to the Permanent Chairman, Chiefs of Staff, would have integrated training facilities, a common pool of equipment and dedicated transport aircraft (the army and navy rely on the IAF to fly them for long-range missions). That the proposal has languished before the CCS since 2013 is inexplicable given that the leadership believes in the changed nature of future wars. This, even as the prime minister told the Combined Commanders' Conference last December that "full-scale wars may become rare, but force will remain an instrument of deterrence and influencing behaviour". The next surgery, clearly, has to be on India's moribund defence reforms.
Full time position, minimum 40 hours per week. Assembling roll up doors for the transport and emergency vehicle markets using various hand tools and stationary equipment. Tasks could include cutting, drilling, hammering, painting, riveting, sanding, polishing, lifting, moving and transporting various materials, such as wood, aluminum or steel. - Follow and obey all safety policies and regulations. - Follow standard processes as required to achieve set objectives. - Physically fit and agile - May include heavy lifting - Punctual and dependable work history - Able to speak, read and write English - Familiar with manufacturing processes and environments - Able to read an Imperial tape measure (inches) - Able to interpret simple drawings and work instructions - Some computer skills - Valid lift truck certification would be an asset, but not necessary - Experience with LEAN manufacturing methods in an ISO environment would be an asset
- Coronavirus pandemic-related stress is a risk factor that could drive people to cheat, according to two University of Tennessee Knoxville psychologists. - They said that married people are contacting ex-lovers and using dating websites to have virtual affairs. - Couples who have to recover from affairs during the pandemic could face unique challenges like financial insecurity, interpersonal violence, and isolation, the psychologists said. - Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Data suggests more Americans are having virtual affairs during lockdown, according to two psychologists who penned an editorial in the journal Family Process. In the July 3 article, The University of Tennessee Knoxville psychologists Kristina Coop Gordon and Erica A. Mitchell said pandemic-related stress is straining relationships, driving people onto dating apps. They said people who have affairs and get caught could have more trouble reconciling with their partners than usual "due to the intersection with the social, emotional, and financial consequences of COVID-19," they wrote. What's more, they expect the current stress to drive an uptick in in-person affairs once the pandemic is over. People are stressed, so they're turning to dating apps and contacting ex-lovers Though the pandemic has limited in-person meetups, Gordon and Mitchell said technologies like FaceTime, online dating services, and smartphones have allowed stressed out partners to find solace in virtual affairs. "Individuals who are dissatisfied in their current relationship are more likely to explore alternative options and the increased stress from the pandemic may be contributing to more negative perceptions for individuals of both their partner and their relationship," they wrote. According to data Gordon and Mitchell obtained from a dating website for married people (they didn't disclose which site), 17,ooo new people have signed up for the services every day during the pandemic. This compares to the 1,500 daily new member sign-ups in 2019. People are also reaching out to ex-lovers during the pandemic despite being in committed relationships. Researchers at the Kinsey Institute surveyed 1,ooo married people between 30 and 50 years old, and found in their preliminary results that 13% contacted an ex-partner during the pandemic. Reasons for reaching out varied, but the majority of married folks said their motivations were having sex with their ex or rekindling a relationship with them. Pandemic affairs could have serious psychological, physical, and financial consequences No matter when an affair occurs, it can lead to distrust and even relationship dissolution. But Gordon and Mitchell said the high stress of the pandemic could make it even more difficult for couples who have weathered affairs to recover. There's evidence that the pandemic has lead to an uptick in mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and those problems could only be made worse by an affair because of its "devastating" nature, Gordon and Mitchell said. The pandemic could also exacerbate the financial fallout of an affair. The unemployment rate in the US is at an all-time high, and those who have lost jobs and are currently dealing with financial insecurity could be at an increased risk for relationship violence if they experience an affair too, according to Gordon and Mitchell. They said that generally speaking, unemployment, lack of social support, and increased stress due to financial insecurity are risks for relationship violence, and the pandemic has only made these risks more common. "These trends are alarming for couples in the aftermath of an affair, as they are already at higher risk for increases in conflict, aggressive behaviors, and intimate partner violence, as consequences of the affair," they wrote. And lack of financial support in the aftermath of an affair could make it difficult to get resources like therapy that could help a person process and recover from the situation, they said. Gordon and Mitchell said that solving these problems and recovering from an affair during a pandemic will never be easy, but it is possible. They suggested the cheater in the relationship work with their partner to create a trust-building plan. That could include taking their children with them on errands so their partner doesn't feel like they're going off to cheat, cutting off contact with the person they cheated with, and allowing their partner space and time to process the situation. Anyone affected by abuse and in need of support can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Advocates are available 24/7 and additionally reachable by texting LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474 or via live chat on thehotline.org
As with all medical procedures, clinical radiology does involve a level of risk. However the benefit of improved diagnosis and…Read more A bursa is a soft tissue space between two structures, such as bone, muscle, tendon and skin, which allows the structures to slide over one another. Soft tissue, such as muscle, fat and skin, connects and surrounds the bones and internal organs of the body. The most commonly injected bursas are around the shoulder (subacromial bursa) and hip (trochanteric (submaximus) bursa), but a bursal injection might also be helpful in many other areas of the body. These include the elbow (olecranon bursa) and the knee (prepatellar bursa). Ultrasound is most often used to guide the placement of a needle directly into the bursa, with an injection of corticosteroid (‘cortisone’ or ‘steroid’) and local anaesthetic medication. Your doctor would refer you for this procedure if bursitis was thought to be the cause of your symptoms. Bursitis (inflammation of a bursa) is a common cause of soft tissue pain. Movement of the affected area might be painful and you might also have reduced movement. Injection of a small dose of corticosteroid and local anaesthetic into the bursa might relieve these symptoms by reducing inflammation in or around the bursa. Bursitis in the shoulder might also be felt as pain in the upper arm. Bursitis around the hip is usually over the lateral aspect (outside) of the hip, where the gluteal muscles are located. These muscles lie within your buttock, and extend to the top and outside of the upper femur (leg bone). You are more likely to feel focal tenderness (pain when pressing) over the bone on the outside of the hip, and pain can sometimes go down the outside of your thigh. Both shoulder and lateral hip bursitis can give you pain at night and disturb your sleep. No specific preparation is needed. You should take any previous X-rays, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to the appointment. When you make your appointment for the bursal injection, you need to let the radiology facility know if you are taking any blood thinning medication, particularly warfarin. Blood thinning medications might need to be stopped for a period of days, or your normal dose reduced, before this procedure is carried out. The radiology facility or your own doctor will give you specific instructions about whether you need to stop or reduce the medication and when to restart the medication. These medications are usually prescribed to prevent stroke or heart attack, so it is very important that you do not stop taking them without being instructed to do so by your doctor or the radiology practice, or both. A blood test might be required to check your blood clotting on the day of the procedure. Continue with pain medication and other medications as usual. You will most likely be asked to change into a gown. This will depend on the area that is being injected. You will lie on a scanning bed or sit in a chair in a comfortable position, usually in an ultrasound room. A radiologist (specialist doctor) and/or the sonographer (ultrasound technician) will explain the procedure to you. You will be able to ask any questions. The area to be injected is imaged to locate the bursa. Sometimes a mark is placed on the skin by the doctor to help guide the needle into the correct place. The skin is then cleaned with antiseptic liquid. A fine needle is passed directly into the bursa using ultrasound images to guide the placement of the needle. Occasionally, the needle is inserted at the point of maximum tenderness for a lateral hip injection, without using ultrasound guidance. A small amount of corticosteroid and local anaesthetic (usually just a few millilitres) is injected and the needle is removed. The needle is generally in and out again within a minute. Most people are surprised by how quick the procedure is. The doctor will then give you instructions for after the injection. This will generally include completely resting the limb or the part of the body injected for 6 hours, and then limiting its use for between 1 and 3 days, sometimes longer. As with any injection, there is sometimes a dull ache for a few hours after the procedure. There might be an area of numbness around the injection site, for 1 or 2 hours, due to the local anaesthetic. Some bruising and a few spots of blood at the site of the injection might occur. The corticosteroid does not usually start working for 24 hours, and sometimes this takes up to 3 days. During this time, the normal symptoms might continue or occasionally worsen. If symptoms are much worse, it generally indicates a reaction to part of the injected medication or to the injection itself. If you find this worrying or distressing, you should see your own doctor or contact the radiology facility where the procedure was carried out. Sometimes people can experience general reactions, such as flushing and redness of the body and face, related to the absorption of the corticosteroid into the body. These occur over the first few days. In diabetics, the absorption of the corticosteroid can increase the blood sugar levels (BSL) for a few days and the BSL should generally be checked several hours after the procedure. The procedure itself rarely takes more than 5 minutes, and with the preparation (scanning, marking, explaining the procedure etc.) it will take approximately 15 minutes. If your own doctor has requested an ultrasound to assess the area as well as an injection, this can take up to 30 minutes. This is a very safe procedure with few significant risks. Few people complain of side-effects, but occasionally problems are experienced. The aim of a bursal injection is primarily to reduce any inflammation in or around the bursa by injecting a small dose of corticosteroid and local anaesthetic. This should result in pain relief and swelling reduction. Sometimes the injection is carried out to assess if the bursa is the cause of your pain. A good response to the injection confirms that the source of pain is the bursa that was injected. If there is no improvement in your pain, it is unlikely to be arising from the bursa or the adjacent structures. This can be helpful information for your own doctor, as it means that other causes need to be investigated. The bursal injection is carried out by a radiologist (specialist doctor). A sonographer (ultrasound technician) will in general carry out the ultrasound and assist the doctor. The doctor will provide a written report, which is sent to your own doctor, detailing the results of the scan and the procedure. A bursal injection is usually carried out in either a hospital imaging department or a private radiology or nuclear medicine practice. The time that it takes your doctor to receive a written report on the test or procedure you have had will vary, depending on: Please feel free to ask the private practice, clinic or hospital where you are having your test or procedure when your doctor is likely to have the written report It is important that you discuss the results with the doctor who referred you, either in person or on the telephone, so that they can explain what the results mean for you. The relief of symptoms from the bursal injection might last a few weeks to several months. It is therefore only part of an overall plan for managing your symptoms. You would most likely have been advised to rest the affected area and also change the way you carry out some of your activities. You might have been taking anti-inflammatory tablets and having physical therapy to help the symptoms settle. Page last modified on 26/7/2017. RANZCR® is not aware that any person intends to act or rely upon the opinions, advices or information contained in this publication or of the manner in which it might be possible to do so. It issues no invitation to any person to act or rely upon such opinions, advices or information or any of them and it accepts no responsibility for any of them. RANZCR® intends by this statement to exclude liability for any such opinions, advices or information. The content of this publication is not intended as a substitute for medical advice. It is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient and his/her doctor. Some of the tests and procedures included in this publication may not be available at all radiology providers. RANZCR® recommends that any specific questions regarding any procedure be discussed with a person's family doctor or medical specialist. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, RANZCR®, its Board, officers and employees assume no responsibility for its content, use, or interpretation. Each person should rely on their own inquires before making decisions that touch their own interests.
The Racism We Never Discussed If Asian American families like mine can't contextualize our pain within America's racist history, then we can't be the best allies. “Did your parents ever talk to you about being biracial?” my therapist asked me. We had been discussing my internalized racism, the conflict that had played out in my brain when I was young: I was not white enough. I was not Asian enough. I passed for neither race, and harbored a deep-seated fear that I didn’t actually fit in with either side of my family. I was never comfortable. “... No?” I replied, confused. I wondered, What would that conversation even look like? My (white) dad is a firm believer in the idea that racism no longer exists. “I don’t see color” is a line he touts often, as well as, “I mean, I married your mother.” He never discussed race with my brother and me because he never saw a reason to. My mom’s family was similarly indifferent, believing that for the most part, enough progress had been made for Asians in America. And anything else could be overcome by hard work. And yet here we are, almost 30 years after I was born, facing the biggest reckoning around race in the U.S. since the Civil Rights Movement — which, as a reminder, was only 50 years ago. But while millions are marching for Black Lives Matter, there are others, like my dad, who are convinced that we “solved” racism already, and that most Americans, and more specifically, American institutions, aren’t racist. That belief, and the silence that accompanies it, is dangerous. Before the protests, racism against Asian Americans was spiking, too. Almost 80 years after the internment of Japanese Americans, we were being targeted, and the stereotypes (which have always taken two forms: “the model minority” — robotic, subdued, worker bees; and the “un-compassionate savages” — the dog eaters, the no-mercy barbarians and kamikaze pilots) all too easily flooded back into the American vernacular. As a community, we learned that racism was always there, just lurking under the surface. And we’re the fools for acting surprised when we discovered these new attacks were just the tip of the big ‘ol racist iceberg. When I was growing up, my family didn’t talk about racism we experienced daily, or the racism faced by other minorities — we just pretended it didn’t exist. When we did discuss racism, it was in the past tense: our family was discriminated against then, but they are treated fairly now. Black people were forced to use different water fountains then, but we all use the same fountains now. Our silence can be attributed both to our Japanese American culture, as well as in the myth of the post-racial world. But it is undoubtedly a part of the cracked foundation of modern America, which gave way recently following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and countless others at the hands of police. Because when we weren’t talking about racism against ourselves, we also weren’t talking about our experiences in the larger context of racism in America. We weren’t talking about the anti-Black history of Asian Americans in Southern California, where I grew up. We weren’t talking about the experience of Black Americans. And with our silence, we failed ourselves. I only learned about the internment of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children (including my relatives) when my older brother wrote a history paper about it in high school, revealing to me that 120,000 people’s basic rights were violated out of xenophobic fear. Later, I also wrote about the racism rampant in Southern California both before and after WWII. It was the first time I understood racism in America as something that wasn’t limited to the experience of Black and brown people in our country’s past. But the anti-Japanese propaganda, the internment — none of it felt personal to me. Even as I interviewed my grandpa as a primary source for my paper, he conveyed no trace of emotion or anger. “We were sent to Arkansas. We farmed. I was drafted into the military from camp. I came back.” There was never animosity, no righteous anger toward Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who issued the executive order that stripped his family of their land and livelihoods. No resentment of the fact that after being sent thousands of miles away from the only place he knew as home — Southern California — he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to war in Europe. He might as well have been describing summer camp. So, no, we didn’t talk about my biracial heritage when I was young, or the brutal racism my grandparents faced. I believed my dad when he said that liberals were complaining about racism just to make white people feel bad. And I went on straightening the thick curls I inherited from my Japanese side every day and wishing my eyes would turn blue overnight. A few months ago, when racist attacks against Asian Americans began to spike in light of the pandemic, I called my mom. We talked about the violence, about Donald Trump’s blatantly racist language, about the subtext of an attack ad published by his reelection campaign insinuating that Joe Biden was in cahoots with the Chinese government because he was friendly with the former governor of Washington, Gary Locke, an Asian American man. She expressed shock. I expressed resignation of what I saw as inevitable. “Haven’t you experienced racism in your life?” I asked. She danced around an answer, clearly uncomfortable acknowledging that she has ever been on the receiving end of anything that could be labeled as such. “I don’t know that [racism] has held me back,” she said. “You know, life happens,” she continued. “I think you can’t let [racism] stop you from doing the things you want to do.” “Right,” I countered, “but sometimes it does.” A pattern began to emerge as we spoke of my grandparents’ experience in this country, as well as my mom’s own childhood: No one in my Japanese-American family spoke about racism. Not even as our experiences with it evolved over four generations of living here. It wasn’t so much a refusal to speak about the suffering, so much as a denial of it. But racism was still there and eating away at the youngest generations: All of us Yonsei, or fourth generation Japanese Americans, my brother and cousins, had no way to explain how we felt when kids would tug at their eyes, singing “Chinese! Japanese! Siamese!” So we repressed our anger and smiled because the adults in our life told us it was “just a joke.” My mom says her parents “didn't really talk about" racist incidents they experienced in Southern California, “because … you don’t. You just work really hard, you think that you’re going to get ahead, and people will recognize that.” And there was even less talk of their experience in the internment camps, which my mom chalks up to a generational mindset. “[My parents] just talked about it as it was something that was,” she says, because “they were Nisei,” or second generation Japanese Americans. She says they were happy when, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan issued a formal apology on behalf of the United States government and issued reparations to survivors. “I think that we’re lucky that that happened.” Not talking about it, though, meant they weren't talking about how nothing resembling reparations has happened for Black Americans. It still hasn't, to this day. My mother was proud of the strength her family showed in overcoming the discrimination they faced, and though she grew up more culturally American than not, says “I liked being Japanese. I never wanted to be white. I wanted, I think, to not have being seen as Asian be a detriment.” Like my dad, she spent her youth believing that she existed in a post-racial world. She straightened her thick, unruly waves, but unlike me, she did it to fit what she thought a proper Asian woman should look like. Only in the past few years, as she’s begun paying more attention to the dialogue around racism, has she looked back and identified some encounters in her life as racist, from the taunting "dirty Japanese" rhyme in her mostly white elementary school to being overlooked at a job, and told she would never be a leader because of traits chalked up to “cultural differences.” Even with all that hindsight, she was still nervous about sharing her stories with me. She worried her pain was nothing compared to what other minority groups have faced in this country, and she'd be seen as ungrateful for her success, or trying to excuse her own shortcomings. As a young adult, even I questioned whether my family's experiences with racism were that bad — a form of gaslighting from both within and outside of my family. “I gave a speech on the internment, and I had said how bad it was for all of these Japanese American citizens who had gone into camp,” my mom told me, recalling a college communications course. “And that was a little bit eye opening to me, because [when] people gave feedback, a lot of it said, ‘Well, it seemed to be OK, because you never knew who was going to be a traitor.’ I was surprised that people said, ‘Well, it was OK to put Japanese Americans in internment camps to prevent something really bad.’” As she told me the story, I thought of my eighth grade history teacher who told me I shouldn’t use the word “camps” to describe the Japanese American experience in places like Topaz in Utah, Rohwer in Arkansas, and Manzanar in the remote California desert, because it “wasn’t actually that bad.” I thought of my Italian great-grandparents on my dad’s side, who immigrated to the U.S. in the same decade as my Japanese ancestors, and whose businesses carried on in California as Mussolini joined forces with Hitler. I think of the people on crowded subways who'd refuse to sit next to an Asian American person this spring, but not think twice about squeezing a little closer to the white man in the business suit with a suitcase tag from JFK. I think about the impact of the virus on New York City’s Chinatown, even though it is now believed most infections in the United States arrived from Europe. My brother and I, like many people our age, became keenly aware of the racism we encountered only as we entered adulthood and left our small hometown behind. As kids, we didn’t see an “us” group in our predominantly white and Latinx school. We didn’t see our desire to be perceived as “more white” in order to fit in as internalized racism. Because our parents never talked to us about race, they never told us that white is not “better.” My brother and I never spoke of our shared insecurity — or that he had secretly envied me for looking “less Asian” — because we both believed that somehow, if we tried harder, we could just change ourselves a little bit, and then fit in. We believed that all of the insecurity we felt for existing in our own skin was something we made up in our heads “because racism doesn’t exist anymore.” In the context of heightened racism against Asian Americans in 2020, we realized the source of our social anxiety: Our country did have a history of racism against Japanese Americans. Our country did have a history of racism toward the Latinx people we were so often mistaken for, and it was this racism that often resulted in more blatant displays of hatred: A soda cup thrown at my brother’s head as he walked down the street; a friend’s father who begrudgingly drove me home from soccer practice while making snide comments about who he assumed my dad to be — an illegal "alien" working as a gardener. (The guilt of responding, “I’m actually not Latina,” is fodder for another essay.) Those inklings we had about being treated differently because of the way we looked were not symptoms of hysteria. They were valid. My mom, who is only now coming to terms with the microaggressions she faced, explained the dichotomous experience of being Asian in America like so: Though we have been discriminated against, denied citizenship, and depicted by Dr. Seuss himself as soldiers ready to betray America at any turn, we have not experienced the levels of racism that Black and brown people continue to face daily. Though we were put in camps, Japanese Americans were not exterminated like the Jews in Europe. And yet, at the same time, how bad do our experiences have to get before we say something? Before we talk openly about it among our families, how many more hate crimes need to be committed for it to count? Until we talk about our experiences, we can’t fully comprehend the gravity and the context of those who have it worse. Our power as allies isn't in gaslighting ourselves into believing we're just fine, it's in joining our pain to others', acknowledging it all out in the open, and saying none of it was ever OK.
The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on systemic flaws leading up to a 2012 train derailment that leaked a dangerous gas in southern New Jersey. The report issued Tuesday was approved by the NTSB last month, and its key findings were made public at that time. The release gives full details of the Nov. 30, 2012 accident in Paulsboro — in which seven cars derailed, with some falling from a bridge into a creek — and its aftermath. Vinyl chloride, a gas used in industrial processes that has been linked to respiratory problems, dizziness and death — was released into the air. The safety board faults Conrail for continuing to open and close a swinging bridge where the accident occurred, despite a consultant’s recommendation to keep it closed. The report said a conductor decided to go over the bridge anyway despite not having adequate training to make such a call. It also found problems with the way Conrail and local officials handled the emergency response. Even before the final report was made public, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez began calling for tougher penalties for railroads found to violate safety standards. Menendez said his proposal was a reaction to the NTSB’s findings. Last month, Conrail said it was concerned with safety and was taking the recommendations seriously. Local officials said they are already working on emergency response protocols. Several people are suing over the spill. A judge this month declined to grant them class-action status. Was this article valuable? Here are more articles you may enjoy.
When you first set up a new Mac, or when you do a clean installation of a new version of OS X, you create a user account, and that account is set, by default, to log in automatically at startup. This isn’t a problem when you’re at home, but if you use a laptop, and travel, this is a serious risk. This automatic login means that anyone who finds your Mac only needs to start it up to have access to your files. You can change this, and tell OS X to display a login screen on boot. There are two ways to do this. First, if you go to the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences, and click on Login Options, you’ll see a menu that lets you choose which user logs in automatically at startup, or you can choose Off from this menu to turn off automatic login.
Who is the Kanban Board for? I realize it should probably be "For Whom is the Kanban Board," but that sounded a little too Hemingway. Like anything, it would be a mistake to make laws that fit every single situation, but in general, any given Kanban board is primarily for the people doing the work represented on the board and only secondarily for other interested parties (like standups). This is because, in general, the purpose of a Kanban board is to make work visible and assist in managing its flow. Let me put this in a slightly different way: Purpose of a Kanban Board Make work visible Not the Purpose of a Kanban Board Hand-off mechanism for items between silos Project management tool A way to keep an eye on everyone and make sure nobody is slacking off While it is possible that a Kanban board might provide some insight or value into the above items (it's also possible to make a board specifically for one of those purposes), that's not its primary purpose in most cases. I watch a lot of football (the American variety, not to be confused with what everyone else in the world calls "football"), and in every game, there's a small group of people on the sidelines called the chain crew. The chain crew has a couple of large signal posts with the eponymous chain connecting them. These posts travel up and down the field and assist the players and referees in things like determining the line of scrimmage, figuring out if a team got a first down, where the next ten yards are, and so on. As a watcher of football, the positions of these posts are of interest to me because I also want to know things like how much further a team has to go for a first down, did they make it on that last drive, etc. However, the chain crew is not primarily for me. If I complained to the NFL that the chains were too hard for me to see, or that the whole system was unclear to me, they probably wouldn't care all that much. While the NFL might change, say, they format of their displays during a broadcast to suit viewers, they probably aren't going to change the chain crew just because viewers might ask for that. The chain crew serves referees and players, and those are the people who are in the best position to decide if the chain crew methodology needs changing in some way. It primarily serves the players on the field, not the observers, not teams who aren't playing, not the people who mow the grass between games, not the owners, not the statisticians, not the managers, etc., although any of those people might be interested in where those chains are at any given point. In the same way, a Kanban board serves the players and referees on the field. It exists to help play the game in the most efficient manner possible. The people actually playing the game need that tool; it is for them. If they want to change it, it should be changed. If someone else wants to change it, their input is useful, but it's not their call. For example, if a project manager has a hard time understanding a development team's board, it's completely valid for that PM to communicate that, and perhaps in that input are some insights the team could use for structuring their board. However, it would be silly to change the board just because it was difficult for the PM to interpret. It would be like the NFL changing the chain crew system because a team owner thought the bright, orange colors would confuse people since they're also used for safety gear. The Kanban board does not exist for the project manager; it exists for the team doing the work to get the work done as efficiently as possible. What might be a better solution would be for the PM to create her own board for project management purposes. For smaller operations, the lines might be blurrier (assuming blurrier is a word). Sometimes, one board can capture the entirety of an organization's value stream at a level that is equally useful for everyone. In those cases, if part of your organization has trouble with The Board, then you need to deal with that. In that case, the board exists for literally every individual. Of course, if your operation is small enough to pull off the One True Board, then you probably don't have a layer of management that isn't directly involved in executing on the work. More commonly, though, organizations have teams that execute on their work items, and while higher level Kanban boards can (and should) exist, keep in mind that their primary purpose is workflow management. Anytime you want to add something, remove something, or move something on the board, you should be able to answer yes to the following questions: Am I responsible for executing on what this item represents? Will doing this help us get the work done more efficiently? If your answer is no to one or both of those questions, consider yourself in the category of someone who might have valuable input, but ultimately, the board is not for you and your concerns are not the primary reasons to make changes to it. What should you do if you find a team's Kanban board isn't helping you with your jobs (I'm looking at you, project managers)? My suggestion: make your own board. The different ways Kanban boards can serve different levels of the organization will be the focus of a later article.
Where We Work See our interactive map Civil war makes it hard to get health services and medications, especially for kids like Abdu. Abdu* is five years old and lives with his mother in South Sudan’s capital city of Juba. He is HIV-positive and must remain vigilant about adhering to his antiretroviral treatment (ART) plan. But war and displacement make this kind of adherence difficult, or even impossible for some families. The months went by as Abdu’s family navigated life in a conflict zone. He missed important monitoring visits to the Juba Military Referral Hospital, where they would have replenished his drugs, measured his growth, and changed his dosage as needed. This kind of thing happens frequently in South Sudan, which has one of the largest displacement crises in Africa. Since 2013, civil war has killed nearly 400,000 people and displaced more than 4.3 million. And 1.9 million people are internally displaced. The 4Children project in South Sudan is trying to make sure this doesn’t happen again to Abdu or to other children living with HIV. The project strives to improve the lives of orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV and other adversities by ensuring regular access to treatment, especially during conflict or in the face of other obstacles. Conflict makes accessing health care very hard, especially for children, who face unique challenges when it comes to HIV treatment. Some do not have immediate caregivers, or their caregivers are reluctant to take them to health facilities. Unreliable communication networks—combined with the often sudden need to travel—make it difficult to get in touch with health workers and adjust treatment plans. This has resulted in more children missing their follow-up care, which often leads to very high viral loads, low weight, and poor health outcomes. By the time Abdu was able to return to the health facility, he was emaciated. He weighed only 9 kilograms—under 20 pounds—had facial swelling, and a much higher viral load. “I almost lost my son,” Abdu’s mother says. “Today he is healthy and able to play with other children.” The 4Children Project aims to decrease such instances by “tracing” children to make sure they are attending appointments and receiving treatment. The clinic staff, case care workers, and social workers met to discuss what had gone wrong in Abdu’s care. They pinpointed referral barriers, lack of medical records, and changes in the family’s contact information. Then they came up with a plan tailored for Abdu and his mother. Health workers began meeting with Abdu and his mother regularly to monitor his treatment adherence. Through a combination of regular home visits, reminders, and adherence counseling, they’ve gotten the family back on track with their treatment. Today, Abdu has a 100% attendance rate. His viral load has gone down, and his weight has more than doubled. “I almost lost my son while in the village,” Abdu’s mother said during a follow-up home visit. “Today he is healthy and able to play with other children.” *Name has been changed for anonymity. 4Children is led by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) with partners IntraHealth, Maestral, Pact, Plan International USA, and Westat. Funding is through the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Get the latest updates from the blog and eNews
Multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk has spent his career connecting to his Nunavimmiut identity while living and producing art in an urban centre. “What does it mean to be an Inuk?” he asks me over the phone from his home in Montreal, QC. “I try to integrate that into my work as much as possible.” Koperqualuk is known for co-directing 2018’s The 5th Region, a documentary that explores what it means to be among the 30 per cent of Inuit now living in the South as an emerging “fifth region” of Inuit Nunangat. The film focuses on the lives and careers of artist Niap (Nancy Saunders) and educator and community organizer Joshua Stribbell, detailing their experiences with community, belonging and identity formation in the city. By day, Koperqualuk is a journalist for the radio program Nipivut, and notes that his role has given him the opportunity to connect with and interview artists, musicians and politicians that have since influenced his own practice. Trained in commercial photography at Dawson College, Koperqualuk now explores other avenues of image-making by transforming photographs into shifting, geometric and psychedelic worlds in the experimental series that populate his social media accounts. Using his own images as well as archival photographs of the Arctic, the artist sees his work as a contemporary nod to the adaptability of traditional ways of life. “In my digital work I’m taking a photograph and transforming it into some-thing completely new,” Koperqualuk says of these stills and animations. “To me, it resonates with our traditional way of being in the North—taking what we have in front of us and using it in our own creative ways to help us survive.” – Emily Henderson Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk Glitchberg (2017)IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST Emily Henderson: Can you tell me a bit about your process in making the documentary film The 5th Region (2018)? Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk: The 5th Region was a little complicated as it was my first major film project and I had only done small independent projects previously. We got funding from Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage (MICH) for it. I was working here in Montreal, QC, and I had to collaborate over email with my co-director Aeyliya Husain who was based in Toronto, ON. Aeyliya was able to mentor me on a lot of things, such as how to be a producer and how to be a director. We spent a lot of time talking back and forth about what would work and what would be great for the film. I think the documentary really reflects this new energy that’s happening today—this new “urban Inuit” identity. I think it’s exciting. I think people have reacted in a way where they seem to appreciate, and sort of empathize, with Niap and Joshua Stribbell’s stories of the challenges of growing up not really knowing who you are or what your cultural connection is. And, while facing a lot racism along the way. I was really creating it for myself and other Inuit in the city, but people from across regions and different age groups all really enjoyed it when it was screened at ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. I was very surprised, and pleased, by that. EH: You also produce digital art. Can you discuss that practice? GK: Digital work, like graphic design like abstract art design, has always been a calling for me; a necessity almost. I love exploring the simplicity of it. I have a very short attention span and digital work allows me to work very quickly and I can save it and work on it later. I can work on ten different versions of something at the same time if I wanted to. But I mainly see it as an exploration of who I am and as a way to ask myself questions. I’m striving to obtain a spiritual connection, or sometimes just trying to express ideas that I have in my mind that I find to be strange. I’m also interested in just creating these psychedelic worlds where viewers are disoriented in space, like in a higher dimension or a spiritual world. I think the concept of the mandala has been a big influence, as well as kaleidoscopic images. I actually graduated from the Commercial Photography program at Dawson College in Montreal, QC, and I often alter my own images to create these artworks. My process involves taking a photo and transforming it into something completely new, which resonates with our traditional way of living by taking what we have in front of us and using it in our own creative ways to help us survive. I really enjoy digital art in general when it comes to film, images and abstract art. I’d like to see if there are other Inuit artists interested in this medium. It’s kind of a funny thing when it comes to digital art, because there’s this tension between more traditional Inuit art and contemporary and emerging forms of Inuit art. But I’m seeing these ideas slowly being broken, which is interesting to me because I really enjoy the digital world and I’d like to explore it a lot more. Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk Centre (2017)IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST EH: Who or what would you consider to be your major creative influences? GK: I think my major influence is my Inuit heritage and any creative Inuk I encounter. I think every Inuk is creative in their own way and I find there’s this energy about all of us that’s unique to each individual, but it’s something we all share collectively as Inuit. I can feel it there and I think a lot of that energy has inspired me to express myself. I’m always asking: what does it mean to be an Inuk?”I try to integrate that question into my work as much as possible. I am also interested in the work of Jobie Weetaluktuk, and I’ve seen a couple of his films before on subjects related to what it means to be an urban Inuk. My broadcasting experience with Nipivut Radio has been also been strong influence on me and I’ve been working with them for about a year now. My work has allowed me to interview and produce Inuit content from all over, from all regions, from people just on the street to people that are political leaders, artists and musicians. All these Inuit that I meet have influenced who I am as an Inuk and helped me reconnect to my roots. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA who is an amazing artist and printmaker from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU. It really nice to be able to do sit down with her as it felt like we were just hanging out and talking. Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk Aqpik (2019)COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY EH: What role do social media channels play in your work and the development of your practice? GK: I post a lot, and I really enjoy Instagram because there’s so many people who use it. It’s very popular and easy, accessible and you can upload it right away. What I enjoy really about using social is sharing my art with other people and hoping they feel something similar to what I am feeling. For example, I’ll occasionally post something that, though I worked on it for white a while, I am not particularly happy with it. Then, all of a sudden, people will start responding, commenting and sharing the work. This makes me think to myself “wow, okay I can just continue creating, I can just create.” As an artist, I think it happens a lot where you get stuck or you see your own work a little too much and you feel like its stagnating. For myself, Instagram and Facebook have allowed me to just share things I make, and appreciate when people comment and give feedback. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. This Profile appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly.
If you're not able to pay the tax you owe by your original filing due date, the balance is subject to interest and a monthly late payment penalty. There's also a penalty for failure to file a tax return, so you should file timely even if you can't pay your balance in full. It's always in your best interest to pay in full as soon as you can to minimize the additional charges. Paying electronically is a convenient way to pay your federal taxes online, by phone for (EFTPS: The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System) or card payments, or from a mobile device. Electronic payment options are available on our payments page and the IRS2Go app. When paying electronically, you can schedule your payment in advance. You'll receive instant confirmation after you submit your payment. You can opt in to receive email notifications about your payments. The IRS uses the latest encryption technology making electronic payments safe and secure. It's quick, easy, and much faster than mailing in a check or money order. IRS Direct Pay is a secure service you can use to pay your taxes for Form 1040 series, estimated taxes or other associated forms directly from your checking or savings account at no cost to you. Complete the five easy steps and you'll receive instant confirmation after you submit your payment. With Direct Pay, you can use the "Look Up a Payment" feature to view your payment details and status. You can opt in to receive email notifications about your payment. You can also modify or cancel your payment up to two business days before your scheduled payment date. You can access your federal tax account information through a secure login at irs.gov/account. You can view the amount you owe along with details of your balance, view your payment history, access Get Transcript to download or print your tax records, and view key information from your current year tax return as originally filed. In addition, you can pay using your bank account or a debit or credit card or apply for an online payment agreement if you need more time to pay. If you decide to pay by mail, enclose a check or money order with a copy of your tax return or notice. Make it payable to the United States Treasury and provide your name, address, daytime phone number, taxpayer identification number, tax year, and form or notice number (for example, 2020 Form 1040) on the front of your payment. If you can't pay in full, you should pay as much as possible to reduce the accrual of interest on your account. Please refer to Topic No. 158 for information needed to ensure proper credit of your payment. You should consider financing the full payment of your tax liability through loans, such as a home equity loan from a financial institution or a credit card. The interest rate and any applicable fees charged by a bank or credit card company may be lower than the combination of interest and penalties set by the Internal Revenue Code. Short-Term Payment Plans (up to 180 days) If you can't pay in full immediately, you may qualify for additional time --up to 180 days-- to pay in full. There's no fee for this full payment; however, interest and any applicable penalties continue to accrue until your liability is paid in full. Individuals may be able to set up a short-term payment plan using the Online Payment Agreement (OPA) application or by calling us at 800-829-1040 (individuals). See Telephone and Local Assistance for hours of availability. Note that individuals applying through OPA can set up a plan of up to 120 days at this time. Payment Plans (Installment Agreements) If you're not able to pay your balance in full immediately or within 180 days, you may qualify for a monthly payment plan (including an installment agreement). To request a payment plan, use the OPA application, complete Form 9465, Installment Agreement Request, and mail it to us, or call the appropriate telephone number listed below. A payment plan allows you to make a series of monthly payments over time. The IRS offers various options for making monthly payments: Direct debit from your bank account, Payroll deduction from your employer, Payment by EFTPS, Payment by credit card via phone or Internet, Payment via check or money order, or Payment with cash at a retail partner. The IRS charges a user fee when you enter into a payment plan; however, if you are a low-income taxpayer, this user fee is reduced and possibly waived or reimbursed when certain conditions apply. See Additional Information on Payment Plans for more details. If you are filing a Form 1040 for the current tax year and cannot pay the balance in full: You may request a payment plan (including an installment agreement) using the OPA application. Even if the IRS hasn't yet issued you a bill, you may establish a pre-assessed agreement by entering the balance you'll owe from your tax return. OPA is quick and has a lower user fee compared to other application methods. Alternatively, you may submit a Form 9465 with your return. Installment agreement requests submitted through electronic filing software are processed similarly to a Form 9465; you may use OPA instead, regardless of filing method, for quicker processing and a reduced user fee. You may also request a payment plan by calling the toll-free number on your bill, or if you don't have a bill, call us at 800-829-1040 (individuals) or 800-829-4933 (businesses). Before your payment plan request can be considered, you must be current on all filing and payment requirements. Taxpayers in an open bankruptcy proceeding aren't generally eligible. You must specify the amount you can pay and the day of the month (1st through 28th). Your payment must be received by the IRS on your due date. If you plan on mailing your payment, consider mailing time when you select a payment day. OPA will provide an immediate determination for your proposed payment plan. If you mail Form 9465, the IRS will respond to your request typically within 30 days but it may take longer during filing season. Installment agreements by direct debit and payroll deduction enable you to make timely payments automatically and reduce the possibility of default. These convenient payment methods also allow you to avoid the time and expense of mailing monthly payments or paying electronically each month. For a direct debit installment agreement, you must provide your checking account number, your bank routing number, and written authorization to initiate the automated withdrawal of the payment. Apply by using the OPA application, contacting us by phone or mailing us Form 9465 with your checking account number and bank routing number. Direct debit installment agreements have a lower user fee compared to other installment agreements, and the user fee may be waived or reimbursed for low-income taxpayers. For a payroll deduction installment agreement, submit Form 2159, Payroll Deduction Agreement PDF. Your employer must complete Form 2159, as it's an agreement between you, your employer, and the IRS. Visit Additional Information on Payment Plans for more information. Offer in Compromise An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is an agreement between you and the IRS that resolves your tax liability by payment of an agreed upon reduced amount. Before the IRS will consider an OIC, you must have filed all tax returns, made all required estimated tax payments for the current year, and made all required federal tax deposits for the current quarter if you are a business owner with employees. If you are in an open bankruptcy proceeding, you aren't eligible to enter into an OIC. To confirm eligibility and ensure use of the current application forms, use the Offer in Compromise Pre-Qualifier tool. For additional information on OICs, refer to Topic No. 204. Temporarily Delay Collection If you can't pay any of the amount due because payment would prevent you from meeting your basic living expenses, you can request that the IRS delay collection until you're able to pay. If the IRS determines that you can't pay any of your tax debt because of financial hardship, the IRS may temporarily delay collection by reporting your account as currently not collectible until your financial condition improves. Being currently not collectible does not mean the debt goes away. It means the IRS has determined you can't afford to pay the debt at this time. Prior to approving your request to delay collection, we may ask you to complete a Collection Information Statement (Form 433-F PDF, Form 433-A PDF or Form 433-B PDF) and provide proof of your financial status (this may include information about your assets and your monthly income and expenses). You should know that if we do delay collecting from you, your debt continues to accrue penalties and interest until the debt is paid in full. During a temporary delay, we will again review your ability to pay. The IRS may temporarily suspend certain collection actions, such as issuing a levy (refer to Topic No. 201) until your financial condition improves. However, we may still file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien (refer to Topic No. 201) while your account is suspended. Please call the phone number listed below to discuss this option. Responding to Your IRS Notice It's important to respond to an IRS notice. 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Also, check Coronavirus Tax Relief and IR-2020-248 for taxpayer relief information.
A DOSE-RESPONSE APPROACH DIFFERENTIATING VIRULENCE OF MYCOSPHAERELLA FIJIENSIS STRAINS ON BANANA LEAVES USES EITHER SPORES OR MYCELIA AS INOCULA The assessment of virulence of geographically and genetically diverse strains of Mycosphaerella fijiensis and resistance of their Musa hosts poses several challenges. Mycosphaerella fijiensis is slow growing and requires relatively strict culture conditions to produce conidia for inoculum. The size and relatively slow growth rate of banana plants from tissue culture further complicate screening efforts. In addition, relatively little is known about the effect of dose on disease outcome. A reliable and robust virulence assay using weighed fragmented mycelia brushed onto multiple defined areas (5 × 5 cm) of the abaxial surface of leaves of 3 to 6 month-old banana plants was developed. Methods to reduce the time needed for inoculum production and increase the number of assays that could be undertaken over time were developed. Image analysis software was used to measure the percentage of each inoculated leaf section showing black leaf streak symptoms, thereby allowing calculation and statistical analyses of leaf area affected using a dose-response model. The mycelium-based assay differentiated virulence levels of four M. fijiensis strains and revealed that one mutant, in addition to being deficient in conidia production and pigmentation, is of very low virulence. By localising inoculum onto small areas of large leaves, a dramatic increase in the number of strains that can be tested on each leaf and plant was achieved. The standardised method will be of value for evaluating Mycosphaerella pathogen virulence and Musa resistance where direct, quantitative measures during symptom development are necessary without requiring the use of expensive biotechnology-based tools. Donzelli, B.G.G. and Churchill, A.C.L. (2009). A DOSE-RESPONSE APPROACH DIFFERENTIATING VIRULENCE OF MYCOSPHAERELLA FIJIENSIS STRAINS ON BANANA LEAVES USES EITHER SPORES OR MYCELIA AS INOCULA . Acta Hortic. 828, 153-160 AUDPC, CLL, dose-response, EC50, EC25, endpoint
Pennsylvania Act 126 Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting School entities and independent contractors of school entities shall provide their employees who have direct contact with children with mandatory training on child abuse recognition and reporting. Below is the statute governing the required training. The training is a requirement for employees of school entities every 5 years. It is important to note that there are only a handful of approved providers for the Act 126 training, the Act 115 Trafficking Training and the Educator Misconduct Training. You can reference the Pennsylvania Department of Education page for the approved providers and what they are approved to provide at the link below.
Intimidation is almost always as a result of someone trying to gain control over someone or something that they never had control over before. Therefore intimidation acts as a disguise to strike fear in its victim to ultimately gain control and cause its victim to become subject to them. Our bible tells us candidly that Satan is “like” a roaring Lion, seeking whom he may devour. One has to ask the question if Satan is the ultimate evil and adversary opposing the Almighty, then why is he about “acting” like a roaring lion and not equal to or greater than a lion in his behavior? This scripture clearly exposes the limited power this so frequently talked about creature has. Christians, if Satan has to act or behave ” like” a roaring lion towards us, then this spells three things for us and they are: A) his power is limited as it relates to the Christian B) he has no control over us, but attempts to gain that control via intimidation and C) he is subject to us because he has to deceive us via intimidation in order to rule over us. My dear readers it is my job to challenge jump start, inspire and motivate the believer in the process of the renewing of their mind. So, whomever or whatever has been or is presently trying to intimidate you, know for sure that they are agents of the enemy and they are more afraid of you than you are of them. Jesus put it this way, “They are of their father the Devil”, pretending to be what they’re not, again all in an effort to gain ground they never had before. As a matter of fact based on the understanding of the word intimidation it provides a clear cut view of the one who is really intimidated here. As a reminder our bible clearly tells us that God did not give us a spirit of fear (note: fear is a spirit). So if God isn’t providing this spirit of fear, then it is clear Satan is, seeing that these are the only two primary opposing forces. Instead the bible says God has provided us with power, love and a sound mind, 2Timothy 1:7. Now, is it not obvious why Satan is using the tool of intimidation? Well, mainly to control, or deprive us of our power, love and soundness of mind. Which clearly suggest that if he’s attempting to control or deprive us of it, then he has no present control in these areas that he’s challenging us in. So, if your are overwhelmed by intimidation due to a doctor’s visit or a Doctor’s report, your kids possibly contracting HIV, some misunderstanding on the job, not being able to pay your bills and the like. This is the work of Satan creeping into your life to saturate your mind with negative thoughts and ultimately make you a slave to fear. Take this opportunity right now and say, SATAN, YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC FORCES I REJECT EVERY IDEA, THOUGHT AND IMIGNATION YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO INJECT INTO MY MIND IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST! Speak to the power of darkness as if you actually see them before you, let them know that you are the one God has given power to trample over evil forces and every work of the Enemy. Let them know that greater is God who resides in you than Satan that is roaming this world. Lastly, make no mistake these evil spirits are desperate to gain control over our will, please! Bind the spirit of intimidation and not the person. The person is just an agent who has made themselves available to the will of the enemy. As a reminder our fight is not against what is visible but those things that are invisible constantly warring against the spirit of our minds. Heavenly Father It is my prayer that your spirits of love, power and soundness of mind aggressively rise up in every reader of this article and violently crush the head of every spirit of intimidation, fear, worry, depression, frustration and fatigue that has imprison your people. Now Father, I apply your law that says death and life is in the power of the tongue and I speak peace and clarity in their minds right now in the matchless name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen! THE SUCCESS OF INTIMADATION AUTOMATICALLY IMPRISON ITS VICTIM! Written by: Kevin L A Ewing
ABOUT THE JOINT EUROPEAN DISRUPTIVE INITIATIVE - JEDI European countries represented Technology Challenges ready to launch. 3 launched already The Joint European Disruptive Initiative is a non-profit, common-good agency powered by Europe’s civil society and its tech and science ecosystem. It is entirely independent, intellectually and financially fueled by the contribution of the 4.100 JEDIs in 29 countries as well as by foundations and public funding. JEDI aims to provide Europeans and democracies with the means of technological and scientific power, for prosperity and societal resilience. Driven by humanistic values, it is focused on solving major societal challenges of our time through innovation, with a method based on speed, excellence and bold risk-taking. It is often called 'the European Darpa'. JEDI'S MISSION - SOLVE SOME OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST CHALLENGES THROUGH INNOVATION The mission of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative is to bring Europe and democracies in a leadership position in breakthrough technologies, and to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges through innovation. We do this by launching Technology GrandChallenges to push the frontiers of science & technology, and to invent the Next Big Thing. JEDIs are CEOs of deeptech startups and SMEs, heads of research labs and academics, executives from large corporations who share the vision that technology must be a force for good and should be placed at the service of mankind. A DARPA-inspired methodology Our inspiration includes the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For sixty years, DARPA achieved breakthrough innovations, transforming revolutionary concepts & seemingly impossible challenges into working prototypes (Internet, GPS, stealth technology, automated voice recognition, language translation, autonomous cars, among many others) THE JEDI BOARD JEDI's Board is composed of high level leaders coming from the technology ecosystem: CEOs of deeptech startups, top executives from major corporations, leading academics and presidents of research institutions. JEDI'S FOUNDING DIRECTOR André Loesekrug-Pietri held leadership positions in private equity, government, industry and as an entrepreneur. Starting as assistant to the CEO of Aerospatiale-Airbus, he then spent 15 years in private equity and venture capital. In 2017, he paused from the private sector to become Special Advisor to the French Minister of Defence, responsible in particular for European Defense policy as well as technology and innovation. HEC and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, he is lecturer at SciencesPo and regular columnist in several international media. He attended Sup-Aero aerospace engineering school, was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, is a private pilot, and Colonel with the French Air Force People’s Reserve.
May we help you? Please call us at 316-683-9215. Spectacular gold jewelry from the West African nation of Senegal will be the focus of a brand new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, in Washington, D.C. “Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women” will explore the history of Senegal’s gold, from past to present, as well as the beauty and complexity of the way Senegalese women use fashion and ornamentation to present themselves. A key theme of the exhibition is the Senegalese concept of sañse (the Wolof word for dressing up, looking good and feeling good). What’s more, the exhibit will reveal the ways in which Senegalese women have historically used jewelry as a means of fashioning a cosmopolitan identity of power and prestige. The collection includes more than 250 works of West African jewelry amassed by art historian Marian Ashby Johnson and then gifted to the Smithsonian in 2012. A press release noted that Johnson pursued research for several decades in Senegal, engaging a broad number of jewelers, or “teugues,” in interviews and extended observation. The Johnson collection is supplemented with nearly 2,000 field and archival photographs providing a singular opportunity to understand the range and complexity of gold in the West African nation. “While most of the objects in the exhibition were made by men, the designs, styles and names of such works are by women,” said Amanda Maples, guest curator of the exhibition and lead author of Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women. The National Museum of African Art commissioned Oumou Sy — Senegal’s “Queen of Couture” and its most celebrated fashion designer — to supplement the jewelry collection with a new haute couture ensemble inspired by the strength of Senegalese women. In addition, a catalog will be released to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. It will include new photography of key works in the collection and trace the history of gold in Senegal, documenting the techniques, materials and practices of goldsmiths. “Good as Gold” will make its debut on October 24 and run through September 29, 2019, in a redesigned first-floor exhibition gallery. Admission is free. Credit: Image by Fabrice Monteiro b. 1972, Namur, Belgium. Works in Dakar, Senegal Signare #1 2011. Exhibition print. Courtesy Mariane Ibrahim Gallery via Smithsonian.
Getting Ready for the Final Exam Studies in the Book of Revelation Dr. Jim Denison Overview of Revelation 1-14 I. The revelation of Jesus Christ (ch. 1) II. The letters to the churches (chs. 2-3) III. The revelation of heaven (ch. 4) IV. The scroll and the Lamb (ch. 5) V. Seven seals (6.1-8.1) VI. Seven trumpets (8.2-11.19) VII. Seven signs (12.1-14.20) Seven angels with seven plagues (ch. 15) Seven angels are revealed with “the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed” (15.1). Those who were victorious over the beast, image, and number worshipped God with harps and song (vs. 2-4). The seven angels came out of the “tabernacle of the Testimony” (vs. 5-6). The “tabernacle” was the dwelling place of God during the desert wandering of the Israelites. It contained the two tablets of the Testimony brought down from Sinai. One of the four living creatures gave them “seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God” (v. 7). The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, so much so that no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues were completed (v. 8). The seven bowls of God’s wrath (ch. 16) First bowl: ugly and painful sores were on those who had the mark of the beast and worshiped his image (v. 2). (CF, the sixth Egyptian plague in Exodus 9). Second bowl: the sea turned to blood, and all life in it died (v. 3). Third bowl: rivers and springs of water became blood, while the angel praised God (vs. 4-7). Fourth bowl: the sun scorched people, but “they refused to repent” (vs. 8-9). Fifth bowl: poured on the throne of the beast, and the world was plunged into darkness but refused to repent (vs. 10-11). “Throne” is mentioned in Revelation 42 times; once it refers to Satan’s throne (2.13), and here it is the throne of the beast. The other 40 times it refers to the throne of God. Sixth bowl: Euphrates was dried up “to prepare the way for the kings from the East”; demons gathered the kings of the world “for the battle on the great day of God Almighty” (v. 14), “the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” (v. 16). The Hebrew was Har Mageddon, “the mountain of Megiddo.” Many see no specific geographic location here, but a reference to the final overthrow of evil by God. Seventh bowl: the greatest earthquake in human history; Babylon (Rome) was destroyed as God “gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath” (v. 19). 100-pound hailstones fell upon men, and “they cursed God” (v. 21). The woman on the beast (ch. 17) One of the seven angels showed John the punishment “of the great prostitute” (vs. 1-2). Sitting on a scarlet beast. The beat was covered with blasphemous names and had 7 heads and 10 horns. She was dressed in fine clothing and jewels, and held a golden cup filled with her abominations. The title on her forehead: “Mystery / Babylon the Great / the mother of prostitutes / and of the abominations of the earth” (v. 5). She was “drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus” (v. 6). The beast “once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction” (v. 8). The seven heads are seven hills “on which the woman sits” (v. 9). They are “also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while” (v. 10). Rome began as a network of seven hill settlements on the left bank of the Tiber river. Her designation as the city on seven hills was common among Roman writers, including Virgil, Martial, and Cicero. The beast “is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction” (v. 11). The ten horns “are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast” (v. 12). They will “make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them” (v. 14). The waters where the prostitute sits are “peoples, multitudes, nations and languages” (v. 15). The beast and the ten horns will “hate the prostitute” and “bring her to ruin” (v. 16). This woman is “the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (v. 18). The fall of Babylon and joy in heaven (18.1-19.10) Another angel shouts, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!” (v. 1). Another voice calls God’s people to “Come out of her” (v. 4). The “merchants of the earth” will “weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more” (v. 11). Then a mighty angel picks up a boulder the size of a large millstone and throws it into the sea, saying, “With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again” (v. 21). A “great multitude in heaven” shouts their hallelujahs and praise to God (19.1-8). An angel says to John, “Write: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (v. 9). John tries to worship him, but he refuses and directs his worship to God alone (v. 10). The rider on the white horse (19.11-21) The rider is called “Faithful and True” (v. 11). He wears many crowns and a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God (v. 13). The armies of heaven follow him; out of his mouth comes a sharp sword “with which to strike down the nations” (v. 15). His title: King of Kings and Lord of Lords (v. 16). The beast and the kings of the earth gather their armies to make war against him, but the beast is captured and with him the false prophet (v. 20). The two are thrown into the lake of fire, and the rest are killed with the sword which came out of the mouth of the rider (v. 21).
Lack of a standard definition of neonatal sepsis and a swift diagnostic method has proven detrimental in the management of this serious condition. Biomarkers have emerged as a beacon that might help us detect neonatal sepsis more effectively. The use of point-of-care biomarkers can aid in early diagnosis and timely initiation of treatment. Procalcitonin, presepsin, interleukin-6, highly specific C-reactive protein, and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin have been proven to aid in early diagnosis and timely initiation of treatment, thereby reducing sepsis-induced morbidity and mortality. These biomarkers have been found to be useful in reducing the duration of hospital stay and monitoring the response to therapy. When used in combination with each other, or with clinical scores, they have been proven to be advantageous over the gold standard by eliminating the waiting time for blood culture results. The use of biomarkers as a point of care investigation holds a future over the traditional method. We present a state of science review of literature summarizing the current status of these biomarkers in neonatal sepsis.
Qualities of Great Nannies and Au Pairs If you have children, or know anyone who does, you probably know that deciding to leave your children in someone else’s care is no easy task. Most parents or guardians will have a rigorous application and interview process when choosing a nanny, or will enlist the help of an agency to do some of the screening work for them. They want to ensure that whomever they bring into their home is reliable and trustworthy. The specific needs of each family will vary. Some families may want their nanny or au pair to have a specific academic background or speak a foreign language to help the children learn. Others may look for a nanny or au pair that has similar religious beliefs to the family. But there are a few things that absolutely every family is looking for in a nanny or au pair: Good Job References Good references are absolutely essential when you are applying for a nanny or au pair job. Would you trust your own children to someone who could not be recommended by their former employers or peers? Probably not. That means that you should be considerate of every person that you work for, and make sure that you leave all of your previous jobs on good terms. If you’ve never worked with children before, your references are still important! Any of your previous employers (even your supervisor at the supermarket) can comment on your dependability, punctuality and work ethic. However, if you are having trouble finding a nanny or au pair job because of a lack of experience, picking up a temporary babysitting job is a great way get some applicable references. First Aid Skills One of the best ways to get a leg up on the nanny and au pair competition is to become certified in first aid and CPR, particularly for children. These extra safeguards will look very attractive to parents and guardians (especially over-protective ones!) and are fairly easy to get. Both the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association offer classes in CPR and First Aid. Classes are typically easy to find and sign up for, and you can check both at the American Heart Association (americanheart.org) and American Red Cross (redcross.org). There are also a number of online alternatives to in-person classes, but the most universally recognized certification classes are those provided by the ARC and AHA. Having similar beliefs as the family for which you work does not necessarily refer to beliefs of the religious or spiritual kind, but of beliefs around learning style and discipline. Families will want their nannies and au pairs to have the ability to carry out their wishes when that are not with the children, and that include using the same language and style as the parents when talking to the children.
Enjoyed a good cup of tea this morning? I did until I read this. Conditions on this Bengal plantation are appalling with workers exposed to health risks without protection. A worker dies after spraying chemicals on crops. How these poisons might have affected the tea I’ve just drunk I can’t say. The plantation belongs to a large multinational concern. The pastoral images on its web site lull us into a sense that this is a benevolent caring concern who spend time supporting the poor and dispossessed. They also trade on their long establishment which gives an air of respectability: “Amalgamated Plantations’ origins date back to the pioneering days of tea, when James Finlay in 19th century, played a dominant role in the Indian tea industry. A century later, in 1976, Tata and Finlay joined forces to form Tata Finlay. This partnership, opened up new frontiers of growth and business. Some years later, Finlays divested their share to the Tata Group. In 1983, a newly energized company was formed – Tata Tea.” As we know Tata also makes cars along with everything else imaginable. This is the company’s vision: “The most trusted provider of quality teas and differentiated agricultural product supply solutions.” “Enduring partnerships with customers and suppliers. Agricultural productivity in the regions where we operate. The quality of life in the communities we serve. Value for all stakeholders. An organisation which fosters innovation and empowerment.” “Fairness and respect. Celebrate successes / Recognise achievements. Promote work-life balance. Close to ground empowerment. Discuss, decide and then support.” Elsewhere we find the company extending its interests “beyond tea” with agriculture claiming “the hottest chilli (don’t say if it’s genetically modified or if they’re into that), aquaculture (fisheries). (Don’t know what effect it has on fresh water supplies here) and dairy. “The majority of APPL shares are in the hands of by two companies owned by the Tata Group. Tata Global Beverages owns 49.07 per cent of APPL, while Tata Investment Corporation owns a further 15 per cent. APPL is a key supplier to another Tata-owned firm, Tetley Tea. Both Tata and Tetley Tea deny any involvement in the management of APPL. It was revealed this week that the head of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata, had been selected by David Cameron to sit on the newly formed Business Advisory Group. The group, which also includes BAE systems chairman Dick Olver and Sir Michael Rake of BT and Easyjet, will advise on ‘critical business and economic issues facing the country,’ Downing Street said.” (Source Morning Star) The story is yet another one of the history of exploitation of people and environment for maximum profit.
By Walden Bello \| ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) \| – – Trump’s ban isn’t about national security. It’s about race, religion, and cultural exclusion. As a citizen of the Philippines who’s been detained and subjected to questioning and “secondary screening” almost every time I’ve entered the United States, I feel much sympathy for those whose freedom of movement has been violated by Donald Trump. There’s a difference in our situations though. While my being temporarily detained on almost every occasion probably stems from my long record of arrests from leading protests in the United States against the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, Trump’s controversial travel ban has nothing to do with vetting visitors. Visa holders, refugees, and U.S. permanent residents from the seven predominantly Muslim countries on the list are already among the people most tightly and comprehensively vetted by U.S. immigration and intelligence authorities, so it’s hard to understand how Trump’s move will bring added security. It’s about Immigration, Stupid What this is all about isn’t national security. It’s about keeping America Snow White and Prince Charming Christian. It’s about immigration, in short. And it’s the opening salvo of Trump’s determined effort to make religion a criterion for becoming part of American society. Whenever he pronounced the three words “radical Islamic terrorist” during his presidential campaign, he always put the stress on the second word, “Islamic,” and continually attacked former President Barack Obama’s refusal to dignify his demagogical effort to promote the idea that Islam promotes terrorism. Trump’s is a politics of exclusion, and immigration policy is his most direct method of carrying this out. He’s building a wall to keep out Mexican workers, but let’s face it: “Mexican” for him and his followers doesn’t only refer to Mexicans, but to all Latinos. When he attacks China for what he considers unfair trading practices, he’s not just talking about trade. China is also a code-word for the stereotypical crafty Asian taking advantage of the American people. Even children get it, as Asian American youngsters taunted by their peers at school would testify. Trump’s immigration policy, security policy, and economic policy are all intertwined, and the lynchpin of the package is fear of the Other — that is, fear of those who are non-white and non-Christian. He’s both a creator and a creature of the new nativist movement that draws deep from the wellsprings of American prejudices about Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and Muslims. It’s a movement fed by what he and his followers regard as a cataclysmic event: that in a few more years, white Americans will no longer be the majority of the population. More Restrictions to Come So what happens next? Trump will surely issue more executive orders on immigration, and he’s sure to push for comprehensive immigration legislation along right-wing lines. But even if these fail or are delayed, current immigration procedures and legislation already provide him with a lot of power to practice his exclusionary politics. Immigration policy and processes are extraordinarily susceptible to subjective assessments and informal rules, whatever the laws on books say. Anyone who’s applied for a visa to go the United States knows that they’re at the mercy of their interviewer and prey to his or her quirks, biases, and moods. Everyone who endures this process takes it for granted that there are quotas for different categories of people, even when those quotas aren’t formally set. Race, class, and ethnicity aren’t supposed to matter in assessing one’s qualifications to migrate to the United States, but everyone knows that at the top of the preferred migrants or visitors are those from the Anglosphere, and that if you’re non-white and not from the elite, you’re way down the list of possible entrants — unless you have a skill assessed as valuable to the U.S. economic machine. And Trump wants to take away even that channel with his plan to eliminate the H1B visa that allows people with specialty occupations to work in the U.S. Already highly discretionary in practice, immigration procedures will become even more discretionary under Trump. Waiting for Other Shoes to Drop My country, the Philippines, isn’t on the list of seven countries — yet. During his presidential campaign, Trump identified the Philippines as a haven for terrorists and among the priority countries that he’d put on a blacklist. Trump’s list is highly arbitrary and flexible, depending on the occasion or his mood. But even without the Philippines being on that list, you can bet that any Filipino with a Muslim name applying to enter the U.S. will find it much harder to enter America than one with a Christian name. With Trump’s overt anti-Muslim stance fortifying the anti-Muslim prejudices of many in the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, it’s likely that if you’re a young Muslim male from Mindanao, you’ll be pigeonholed by your interviewer as a potential security threat unless you can prove otherwise. And, as some have found, even if you do get a visa, you’re not guaranteed entry: You can be put into what’s called secondary screening , like I’ve been, and depending on the subjective judgment of your interviewer, you may be refused entry at the airport. There are thousands of Filipino Muslims who live in the U.S., and they and their relatives go back and forth between the two countries. Their right to travel faces severe curtailment if the new immigration regime goes forward. This is why instead of saying it will respect Trump’s recent order, the Philippine government should speak out publicly against it, in order to blunt the momentum of an exclusionary regime that will eventually affect its citizens. Indeed, so should all governments, whether out of decency, solidarity, or self-interest. After all, there’s a strong likelihood that someday soon their citizens will be blacklisted under this racist, nativist, and culturally exclusivist regime. Walden Bello was chairman of the Philippine House of Representatives Committee on Overseas Workers from 2010 to 2015. He’s been put into secondary screening by U.S. immigration officials almost every time that he’s entered the United States owing to his record of arrests in the U.S. while opposing the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Related video added by Juan Cole:
by S.D. Dave This series of essays is an effort to understand and appreciate the concept of a Sympathetic Justice Delivery System (JDS). The JDS of any democratic country ought to constitute five components:, the State; the Law; the Judges; the Lawyers and the Litigants, working in their own fields, discharging the duties cast upon them, each different from the other whilst ultimately creating a cohesive machinery capable of dispensing justice. Each must function in tandem and with regard and respect for the other in order to ensure cohesion and continuity. None of the five components can be undervalued or bypassed with a lesser understanding of it. Whenever they have been found acting in such an exclusive culture, their actions are found to be coupled with the disjunction of the institution of which they are a part. In this four-part series, the focus will first be upon the State as a component of the JDS. The preference for purposes of study must first be allocated to the State for a variety of reasons. A democratic Country following the Doctrine of Separation of Powers in spirit, without saying so, is an important limb saddled with multiple obligations in a number of fields. It is within the responsibilities of the State to retain its integrity and sovereignty in the midst of competing claims being made by other powers and to provide its people with a stable and self supporting governance and ultimately to secure for them, a living and progressive society, less and less amenable to conflicts and insecurities. The State has to strive for better life living for the citizens and to secure the socioeconomic development of the country. Furthermore it is the State that provides support, help and administrative assistance to the other components. These are some of the justifiable reasons for dealing with the State as a component, before others. A final aspect on the matter of prioritizing the discussion on the State is with regard to the role of the State as the ultimate protector of the rights of the rights of the people and the maintainer of peace and equality in the society. All the prosecutions are in the name of the State and at the same time, the State is always under a statutory obligation to provide for the legal assistance to the persons being prosecuted by the State itself, before the Courts of Law. Formation of the Three Institutions Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) in ‘The Politics’ describes the three organs as the Elements. They are Deliberative, the Official and the Judicial. Thomas Hobbs (1588 – 1697) appears to be propounding the very same theory, though not in clear and easily appreciable words, in his three works ‘The Elements of Law’ (1640); ‘Decive’ (1642); and ‘Levithan’ (1651) where there is a Sovereign, and the Public Ministers meant for general as well as special administration, but some Ministers while in their Seats of Justice, representing the Sovereign, would decide the controversies of Facts or Law by their Judgments. John Locke (1632 – 1704) speaks of two powers, only the Executive and the Legislature. Charles Montesquieu (1689 – 1756), not agreeing with any of the three, propounds the theory of fear, where societies under the fear of inter se wars would recognise an Institution called ‘Government’, with a later development of the Doctrine of Division of Powers, the State being the main component. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) advances the theory of ‘The Social Pact’, where the societies under the fear of war, would bind themselves by certain Rules to be legislated and interpreted by ‘The Tribunate’. All this thinking has resulted into the formation of the three Institutions, the Executive; the Legislature; and the Judiciary. A Sympathetic JDS A Sympathetic JDS is a sine qua non for any democratic country, which believes honestly and sincerely, in upholding the Rule of Law as envisaged in its Constitution and in granting all its citizens the rights and liberties enshrined in it, without fear or favour, prejudice or bias. This objective cannot be achieved, in absence of an easy Access to Justice, which ultimately could result into a socio-economic structure of the society. But again such an access is of no avail, if all the components of the JDS are not sympathetic to each other, especially to the litigants. The term ‘Sympathy’, having its roots in Greek and Latin, a combination of two words ‘Sun’ (with) and ‘Pathos’ (feelings), means the understanding of the feelings of others. A sympathetic approach cannot be cultivated unless a person or a group thereof, understands the feelings of the other components. Understanding of the feelings of others with whom they are connected, whether in the family, in the society or in any institution where one is working, enjoys a place of priority because the society lives on with the basic principle – “Live and let others live”. History has witnessed destruction of civilizations resulting from non-understanding of the feelings of others. On the other hand, understanding and respecting of the feelings of the fellow men have been helpful in creating a peace loving polity, where despite the differences, the people have been able to coexist without acrimony and to make all the possible efforts to achieve progress in different directions. This understanding of the feelings of others is a much-needed environment for the creation of the Sympathetic JDS. Before a JDS can successfully claim to be sympathetic, its five components, the State; the Law; the Judges; the Lawyers; and the Litigants, each having a each having a sympathetic understanding of the other, in fact, acts with this wisdom. Role of the State The State, as the first component, performs more than one role. It is up to it, to establish a sound JDS not only by creating the whole order, including sufficient number of Courts with the infrastructural facilities and the appointments of the Judges to man them, who appreciate and construe the laws and make them enforceable by their verdicts, remaining within the limits as prescribed by the Constitution, which, though not expressly indicating the adherence to the Doctrine of Separation of Powers, leans heavily towards it. This would be the first step towards the establishment of a sympathetic JDS. Enactment of Laws is not as simple as it appears to be. It is the lawmakers that make the Laws, but the political which sets the machinery in motion, and to do so effectively, the State must for doing so the State must be aware of the needs of the changing society, especially when the Indian Constitution guarantees Equality before Law and Equal Protection of under Articles 14 and 15. Equal Protection implies the right to claim and achieve equal treatment, while situated in similar circumstances. The questions would be; how can you provide equal treatment to the un-equals? And would it survive the judicial scrutiny? These questions stand duly answered by the Supreme Court in Case of Reserve Bank of India v. Peerless General Finance and Insurance Company Ltd. [(1996) 1 SCC 642] by laying down that the treatment which appears to be leaning towards the un-equals is not liable to be struck down as discriminatory unless there is a simultaneous absence of a rational relation to the object intended to achieve by the law. The other related question arises out of the same thought process. Would it be open for the State; i.e. the Executive and the Legislature; to recognise a classification and to work accordingly? The Supreme Court in Budhan Chaudhary v. State of Bihar [(1955) (1) SCR 1045] has said that what Article 14 prohibits is class legislation, and not a reasonable classification for the purpose of legislation. Article 13(1) and 13(2) of the Indian Constitution, mandate that the pre-Constitution Laws would be void to the extent to which they are inconsistent with the Fundamental Rights, and that the prospective legislation should not be such as either taking away totally or abrogating them in part. The State should be aware of the fact that these constitutional essentials are required to be observed while initiating the law making process, which would ultimately help in building a sympathetic JDS. The State, as a keeper of law, is the authority to prosecute the offenders. This requires honest and sincere investigation by the authorised agencies, the ultimate aim being to penalise the guilty and to safeguard the sufferers. Here is the scope for the State to be sympathetic to both the components so as to avoid, not only injustice but unnecessary delay and hardships also, which are conspicuous at every stage. Connected therewith is the duty of the State to establish and maintain the prisons which would allow the prisoners to live with human dignity and seize the opportunities for their reformation so that, when free they can live the life of responsible citizens. The same applies equally to the duties of the State to run Remand Homes and Shelter Houses. The Probation Officers also should be discharging their duties sympathetically. All this would be a step forward. There are yet other avenues open for the State, to be sympathetic to the litigants. The State, as said by Sir Thomas Holland (Holland on Jurisprudence. 13th Edition by Universal Law Publishing Company Limited. Pages 387, 388 and 389) is a great Juristic Person having many Quasi Rights against individuals and Quasi Duties in their favour, and irrespective of the Doctrine of Eminent Domain, is a great landed proprietor having a right of servitude over the estates of the individuals, and subject to that, has to act for the benefit of such estates. Hence the State is supposed to be sympathetic to the Subjects, by not assisting the nonservitude causes. The State is one of the biggest litigants and is entitled under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure (of India), to a two months notice before instituting the suit, granting an opportunity to amend the State action. The State can also be a consenting party for the settlement of disputes outside the Courts, as contemplated under Section 89 of the Code. Thus, the State by rendering just and bona fide services in time and by adhering to their statutory powers and duties can minimise litigations in the over-flooded courts, and the costs of litigation to the litigants and the State as well.
A new study from UCSF shows that new rapid COVID tests could be key for lowering infection rates. If you’ve ever taken a COVID-19 test, chances are you were swabbed with something called a PCR test. It’s considered the gold-standard when it comes to testing. But a PCR test takes days to return results. This prompted the development of a new so-called rapid test. It can provide results in under 30 minutes, but it can’t detect the coronavirus if the levels are too low. So, is it effective? To find out, researchers from UCSF and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub recently evaluated the tests. They set up a free pop-up testing site in San Francisco’s Mission District. Everyone who visited provided two nasal swab samples. One was tested for COVID using PCR, the other was run through the rapid test. The results showed that for people with high amounts of the virus, the rapid tests were almost as effective as the PCR test. Researchers say the rapid test could help quickly identify people who are the most infectious so they can quarantine to keep from spreading the virus. The results of the study will help the California Department of Public Health plan for how they can roll out rapid-testing efforts of their own.
A denial of service attack works by flooding a server with information and making it so busy that it locks-up and becomes useless. Normally an attacker would have to martial some serious horsepower to overwhelm a big website but this latest vulnerability allows them to do it with a lot less effort. Frankly it’s the last thing the web needs in this summer of me-too hacktivism. The vulnerability works by exploiting a feature in web servers that gives you the ability to pause and resume your downloads. These days if you have to stop downloading something part-way through you can generally pick up where you left off and you don’t have to start again from scratch. This useful feature is possible because a web server can be told to give you only the part of a file you need. In fact it’s possible to ask for more than one part of a file at the same time. And that’s the problem. It seems you can legitimately ask for hundreds of very large overlapping parts of a file in a single request. Enough parts that a relatively modest number of requests can tie a server’s CPU and memory in knots. It seems that Apache deals with these kinds of request particularly inefficiently but the exploit is at least partly caused by a weakness in the HTTP protocol itself – the set of rules that determine how any web server should behave. Because all web servers follow the same set of rules it’s possible that all web servers are vulnerable to some degree. According to the advisory an attack tool is already in the wild and in use. Although no patch is available at the time of writing one is expected within hours. In the meantime diligent webmasters will probably want to consider the mitigation strategies outlined in the advisory. More generally this raises some interesting questions about the wisdom of having so much of the web reliant on one piece of software, no matter how good it is.
Councilmember Larry Gossett: From Harlem to the Mob Attack on the Country’s Capitol Building February 18, 2021 - 11:40 pm A KBCS interview with one of our region’s powerful leaders, Councilmember Larry Gossett. He served as King County Councilmember between the years of 1993 and 2019. Councilmember Gossett was also an active Black Panther Party member and was a founding member of the University of Washington Black Student Union. Listen to the experiences that transformed his life, and informed his approach to public service. Producer: Yuko Kodama - Bookmarks from Bellevue College Library - Densho Project: Collecting Stories from Japanese American Incarceration
Despite conventional wisdom, gun sales do not always spike after mass shootings. In fact, as two economic researchers, we observed no spike in sales following this year's two mass shootings -- Las Vegas, the worst in modern US history, and Sutherland Springs, Texas, the fifth worst. However, following the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, there was a significant spike in sales -- 3 million additional guns sold from December 2012 to April 2013, according to our calculations based on FBI criminal background check data. And after the San Bernardino terrorist attack in 2015, there was also a spike -- 1.7 million additional guns sold from December 2015 to February 2016. So why the discrepancy in sales? Based on our research, going back to 1998, dramatic spikes in sales occur when a mass shooting takes place in a political environment where it is plausible that federal restrictions on firearms sales may result. When President Barack Obama's administration prioritized reducing gun violence, there was a real fear of gun restrictions among gun owners. At other times, and certainly now under Donald Trump's administration and with a Republican-controlled Congress, there simply isn't the political will to put in place gun control measures. In conducting our recent research, we used background checks, which are required before a gun is purchased from a licensed dealer, as an indicator of gun sales. While they are not perfect, they are highly correlated with several other indicators of gun sales -- tax revenue from firearm sales and number of guns produced, for instance -- and are widely used as indicators of gun sales. In an ordinary month, about 2 million firearms are sold in the US. But guns sales show a strong seasonal pattern, with a peak each year in December. Sales also have been trending upward over time. To accurately determine whether gun sales in any period have increased beyond what would be expected, it is important to adjust for these trends and seasonal patterns. Based on our analysis of background checks over the past two decades, only a handful of events generated increases in gun sales (again, after adjusting the data for trends and seasonal patterns). Most of those increases were relatively minor. For example, we observed small spikes leading up to January 2000 (Y2K -- 300,000 additional guns sold in November and December of 1999) and following the September 11 terrorist attack (400,000 additional guns sold from September through November of 2001). Barack Obama's election in November 2008 also generated a modest spike (500,000 additional guns from November 2008 through January 2009). Large spikes in gun sales occur in response to a legitimate risk that some controls on gun access will be implemented, even if those efforts are ultimately unsuccessful. The Sandy Hook school shooting provides the most striking evidence in support of this hypothesis. Following the shooting, Obama delivered a dramatic speech on December 16, 2012, created an interagency gun violence task force on December 19, 2012 and proposed new gun control legislation on January, 16, 2013. The legislation was ultimately voted down on April 17, 2013, by a Republican Congress. Interest in buying guns, based on Google searches that include the words, "buy gun," also closely tracks these events. These searches jumped up after the first three dates and dropped after the fourth date. Data on gun sales further supports this view. According to the FBI, gun sales on December 19-22 -- the days immediately following Obama's announcement -- were among the top-10 days of gun sales since data collection began, with over 600,000 guns sold on those four days alone. The shooting in San Bernardino led to similar calls for gun control legislation. Hillary Clinton, who was the leading candidate for president at that time, tweeted, "We must take action to stop gun violence now." President Obama made a plea for a "sense of urgency" about gun violence and, in early January 2016, announced specific executive actions that were aimed at reducing it. Google searches related to purchasing guns jumped after the shooting itself and again after Obama's announcement of executive actions. Other events, such as the recent tragedies in Las Vegas or Sutherland Springs, engender no such fear of firearms restrictions. President Trump's stated unwillingness to support new gun legislation reduces the fear of restricted access, even following tragic events like these. We see this in the absence of a spike in gun sales and a smaller and shorter duration spike in searches for terms related to buying a gun after these events. Spikes in gun sales are important, in part because they generate the possibility of greater accidental deaths. Newly purchased guns may be less likely to be stored properly, increasing exposure in those households. Our research shows that, indeed, the spike in gun exposure in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting led to the accidental firearm deaths of an additional 20 children and 40 adults from December 2012 through April 2013. The irony is that the desire to prevent gun tragedies by introducing gun legislation leads to more tragedies. It is a Catch-22 that we would all benefit from resolving.
Photo Gallery 8 Images BROOKINGS, Ore. — UPDATE: The south side of Highway 101 continues to move about 10 to 12 inches an hour, according to ODOT District Manager Darrin Neavoll. Neavoll says he is hoping it will start to slow down over the next few days. Movement on the north end has slowed. Starting tomorrow, officials plan to begin building a road on that end. Tidewater has been working to divert the water away from the main part of the slide. Officials have also been hauling in rock and storing it on the north end. Neavoll drove the detour on Carpenterville and said the overall flow of traffic is moving well in both directions. OSP will continue patrolling the road to make sure people drive slow. UPDATE: With the buckling roadway on Highway 101 continuing to move, ODOT has been unable to address a contingency plan for traffic in the area. ODOT has now put a checkpoint in place on the nearby Carpenterville Road to prevent commercial semi-trucks from taking the narrow, winding route as a detour, according to Curry County Emergency Services. Most traffic can continue to use Carpenterville as a detour. Meanwhile, the Hooskanadan Slide that has buckled the highway between Brookings and Gold Beach continues to move, Curr County Emergency Services said. "Contractors are working to get Highway 101 reopened as quickly and as safely as possible. If you must travel between Brookings and Gold Beach along Carpenterville Road, please allow extra time for travel and drive cautiously." ODOT said that it may have a low bidder for a contractor to repair the slide. "But until the slide slows, work cannot begin. The slide continues to move at a rate of nearly two-feet an hour," the agency said. For more specifics on freight restrictions, see the following: • Truck Tractor and Semitrailer Combinations (fifth wheel hitch) - 60 feet overall length, 40 foot trailer length. • Truck and Trailer Combinations (pintle hitch) - 65 feet overall length, 40 foot trailer length. • Doubles Combinations - 65 feet overall length, 40 foot trailer length. • Other length limits as shown on Group Map 1. (Updated 2/27/19 at 11 a.m.) UPDATE: The Hooskanadan Slide on Highway 101 north of Brookings continued to move on Tuesday, according to ODOT. The agency said that the roadway was still buckling, moving about 10 feet "both horizontally and vertically." "The goal, once it slows down, is to gravel a portion of the highway and get it open under 24/7 flagger control," ODOT said in a statement. ODOT reiterated that commercial trucks should not be using Carpenterville Highway as a detour, and said that a checkpoint could be put into place on Wednesday morning to deter oversized vehicles. (Updated 2/26/19 at 5 p.m.) INITIAL REPORT: Highway 101 remains closed on Tuesday morning about halfway between Brookings and Gold Beach due to a "sunken grade," according to the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). The closure is at milepost 344, about 12 miles north of Brookings. ODOT said that the spot is known to locals as the Hooskanadan Slide, which "abruptly shifted" following the storm system over the weekend and is apparently a chronic trouble spot on the highway. “Hopefully, we can get a single lane open under gravel later today,” said ODOT District Manager Darrin Neavoll, “but given the nature of the sunken grade that maybe wishful thinking.” Although the Carpenterville Highway runs nearby, ODOT said that it is a narrow and steep roadway and commercial traffic on that route — with the exception of logging trucks — is discouraged due to potential hazards. "Through traffic should use alternate state highway routes," ODOT said.
By Jeremy Herb, CNN (CNN) -- The Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment Wednesday, marking the inevitable and historic end to a bitterly fought, divisive impeachment trial that will reverberate into the 2020 election and shape Trump's presidential legacy. BREAKING: Pres. Donald Trump has been acquitted by the Senate on both articles of impeachment. https://t.co/pZ46hjTyU1— ABC News (@ABC) February 5, 2020 Chief Justice Roberts: "It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles." pic.twitter.com/61M9Ugs72K— CSPAN (@cspan) February 5, 2020 But the final day of the Senate's impeachment trial was not without suspense: Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, found the President guilty of abuse of power, becoming the first senator in US history to vote to remove from office a president from the same party. The third Senate impeachment trial of a sitting president in US history concluded Wednesday afternoon with votes finding the President not guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the impeachment articles the House charged Trump with in December. Romney was the sole Republican to vote to convict the President on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. Romney voted with Republican against the obstruction of Congress charge, which fell along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal. The acquittal verdict was the final act of a four-month impeachment that inflamed the partisan tensions simmering throughout the course of the Trump administration, tensions that boiled over during the State of the Union even though Trump left impeachment out of his speech. While Wednesday's vote marks the end of the formal impeachment process, Trump and his Democratic detractors are sure to take up the fight over the ultimate significance of the President's impeachment as the presidential campaign heats up. Though Trump is likely to claim victory and vindication with the Senate's vote, Romney's vote denies him a purely partisan outcome on impeachment. Every Democrat, including fence-sitters like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted to convict the President, meaning the acquittal vote was not bipartisan like it was in the House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose icy exchanges with Trump during the State of the Union only underscored the acrimony of the impeachment process, has been quick to remind Trump he's now been "impeached for life" by the House. Democrats have dismissed the Senate trial as a cover-up for the President after Senate Republicans refused to consider new and important evidence. The ultimate impact of Trump's impeachment will remain murky until November, when voters will have their say on whether an impeached President will receive a second term. In his Senate floor speech announcing his vote, Romney choked up while explaining how his faith helped guide him to what he described as "the most difficult decision I have ever faced." "Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine," Romney said in explaining his vote. The groundwork for the third impeachment of a US president began in September when Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry following an anonymous whistleblower complaint alleging Trump sought election help from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 2019 phone call. The House's whirlwind investigation that followed uncovered a months-long effort in which Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pressured Ukraine to announce investigations into the President's political rivals while $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting were withheld. The House voted to impeach the President on two articles in December, backed by all but two Democrats. Republican-turned independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan also voted in favor. Every Republican voted against it, and one of the Democrats who joined them in opposition, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, switched parties soon after. Senate trial focused on witnesses In the Senate, Democrats knew the votes were never there to remove the President. So they focused their efforts on pushing for the trial to include testimony from witnesses and subpoenaing documents that the White House blocked during the House's impeachment inquiry. The witness vote would be closely contested, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell included a request from his moderates in the trial rules to have a vote whether witnesses should be called after opening arguments and senator questions. The week of the vote, a bomb was dropped on Republicans working to defeat the witness vote — new revelations from the draft book manuscript of former national security adviser John Bolton alleging the President told Bolton US aid was conditioned on Ukraine announcing investigations into Democrats. The revelations upended the Republican efforts to lock up votes to defeat the motion for witnesses, and Democrats argued that Bolton's claims and willingness to testify required the Senate to hear from him. McConnell urged his caucus to "take a deep breath." Republicans warned that calling Bolton could spark unintended consequences and an indefinite extension of the trial that had ground the Senate to a halt, while the President's attorneys told senators that what Bolton alleged, if true, still did not constitute an impeachable offense. Two Republicans, Romney and Susan Collins of Maine, signaled they would support witnesses. A third, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was on the fence. But the potential key swing vote, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, was convinced by the Republican argument, concluding the House proved its case but it didn't warrant impeachment. "The question then is not whether the President did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did," Alexander said Wednesday explaining his vote. Murkowski also sided with Alexander, leading to a 49-51 vote against witnesses on Friday. She said she believed that all sides failed in the impeachment process: the House, the Senate and the President. After the failed witness vote, the trial was headed to a quick end, and the two sides reached their only agreement of the trial: the trial would break for the weekend and the final vote would come Wednesday after closing arguments and three days of senator speeches to explain their votes. 'For all of history' In closing arguments on Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the lead impeachment manager, urged senators to consider history as they cast votes of guilty and not guilty. The outcome may have been certain but not every vote had been accounted for. "If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history," Schiff said. "But if you find the courage to stand up to him, to speak the awful truth to his rank falsehood, your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath. If only you will say enough." One by one, however, the Republicans who may have been on the fence about voting to convict the President said they would render a verdict of not guilty — until Romney's announcement on Wednesday. "Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience," Romney said. Democrats praised Romney for standing up to his party, but the backlash was swift in Republican circles. Romney's GOP Senate colleagues said they were disappointed, downplaying the significance of his vote, while the President's son Donald Trump Jr. called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican Party. Among Democrats, the impeachment managers' case convinced any wavering senators that Trump's actions did not warrant removal. The biggest Democratic wildcard was Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who said all week he was struggling with the decision. But both Manchin and Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for reelection in 2020, said they reluctantly voted guilty. "I cannot and will not shrink from my duty to defend the constitution and to do impartial justice," Jones said. This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.
In the Trailblazer Biography series, an entry that proceeds chronologically, through the highlights of Jefferson's life, from his boyhood in Virginia, college days, family, views on slavery, the construction of Monticello, his reluctant participation in the new government, retirement, and death, with an summary of his legacy. Throughout, Ferris (What I Had Was Singing, 1994) focuses on Jefferson's writings and his fanatical organization. The text is seamless in the coverage of Jefferson's public life, and will hold interest; it is less effective when offering a glimpse of the man's private life, e.g., the deaths of his children are mentioned without a hint of how he may have been affected. As a result, he remains a statesman in this volume, rather than a fully realized person. The complexities and contradictions (that he kept slaves while attempting to eliminate slavery) are rationalized, but not convincingly. Despite these flaws, this biography will attract readers too young for John B. Severance's Thomas Jefferson (p. 1293).
From an early age, children can learn about money and value. While it may seem like a difficult topic to help a young child understand, there are some fun ways your child can learn about money. Play games involving imaginary money Letting your child play games with imaginary money is a risk-free way to help them understand the concepts around it. Even children as young as toddlers can play games like “store” or “restaurant” in a simple way. For example, you can ask how much an ice cream cone costs, and hand over the appropriate amount of play money. For a toddler who may not yet be able to count out an amount of money, they can still get familiar with the concepts involved. Investigate kid-friendly educational money games online Websites such as Practical Money Skills offer age-appropriate games to help children learn about the concepts around money, spending, and value. These games are offered for children ages 3 to 8. Sit with your child while they play, and have discussions together about the concepts and images they see. Put your child in charge Older children who have a foundational grasp on numbers and addition can have fun being “in charge” of how much you’re spending at the grocery store. Give them a calculator and tell them the cost of each item you’re putting in the cart. You may also want to ask your child to help you choose between two similarly-priced items, or change your mind and ask your child to subtract the amount. They’ll not only practice their math skills and develop a sense of pride, but they’ll learn more about the value of everyday items. Read books together There are many books out there to help children learn about money, including: - Lemonade in Winter: A Book About Two Kids Counting Money by Emily Jenkins, ages 3-7 - Lily Learns about Wants and Needs by Lisa Bullard, ages 5-7 - The Coin Counting Bookby Rozanne Lanczak Williams, ages 6-9 - National Geographic Kids Everything Money, ages 8-12 With these entertaining and engaging ideas, your child will soon become more familiar with concepts of money and value.
Easy to operate, it will automatically stop after fully inflate. Four pressure units: PSI, BAR, KPA, kg / cm2, up to 71PSI. Inflate 0–2.5kg (215/70) tire is about 15 minutes. Used for: various types of automobiles (excluding trucks and engineering vehicles of more than 5 tons), motorcycles, various bicycles, various balls, life buoys, swimming rings, inflatable cushions, kayak and other inflatable products. Mini size, very portable, easy to carry. Powered by cigar lighters, convenient to use. Pure copper cylinder, use longer than other ordinary cylinder. Gifts: Furnished with three kinds of air mouths for automobile, motorcycle, bicycle, inflatable boat and ball, etc. 1. Not applicable to trucks, coaches, RVS, trucks. 2. This motor lasts for 40 minutes and can inflate a 5kg tyre! Other ordinary motor must after 8-10 minutes using, or it will burn out.
Austria will expel several foreign-funded imams and shut seven mosques in a crackdown on “political Islam”, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Friday. Kurz said the moves came after an investigation by the religious affairs authority into images which emerged earlier this year of children in Turkish-backed mosques playing dead and reenacting the World War I battle of Gallipoli. “Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country,” Kurz said. The photos, published by the Falter weekly, showed the young boys in camouflage uniforms marching, saluting, waving Turkish flags and then playing dead. Their “corpses” were then lined up and draped in the flags. The mosque in question was run by the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations (ATIB) organisation, based in the German city of Cologne, and a branch of Turkey’s religious affairs agency Diyanet. ATIB itself condemned the photos at the time, calling the event “highly regrettable”.
Enjoy Traditional African Hand Drumming This class runs on Wednesdays, Feb 10 – March 17 (6 classes) from 6:00pm – 7:30pm Helen Bond will share the great joy of traditional hand drumming from Guinea, West Africa! Shes been traveling to Guinea for the past 19 years studying the music and culture. You will learn basic rhythms on dunun drums and the djembe accompaniment parts. You’ll also learn the origins of each rhythm, receive expert instruction on all instruments in the traditional djembe orchestra and deepen your understanding of the place of music, dance, and song in West African life. Helen is able to work simultaneously with students of all levels – beginner to professional. All levels are welcome! Drums will be provided should you not have one. No experience needed.
Not later than 1 year after June 22, 2016, the Administrator shall establish, by rule, a risk-based screening process, including criteria for designating chemical substances as high-priority substances for risk evaluations or low-priority substances for which risk evaluations are not warranted at the time. The process to designate the priority of chemical substances shall include a consideration of the hazard and exposure potential of a chemical substance or a category of chemical substances (including consideration of persistence and bioaccumulation, potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations and storage near significant sources of drinking water), the conditions of use or significant changes in the conditions of use of the chemical substance, and the volume or significant changes in the volume of the chemical substance manufactured or processed. The Administrator shall designate as a high-priority substance a chemical substance that the Administrator concludes, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment because of a potential hazard and a potential route of exposure under the conditions of use, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant by the Administrator. The Administrator shall designate a chemical substance as a low-priority substance if the Administrator concludes, based on information sufficient to establish, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, that such substance does not meet the standard identified in clause (i) for designating a chemical substance a high-priority substance. Not later than three and one half years after June 22, 2016, the Administrator shall ensure that risk evaluations are being conducted on at least 20 high-priority substances and that at least 20 chemical substances have been designated as low-priority substances, subject to the limitation that at least 50 percent of all chemical substances on which risk evaluations are being conducted by the Administrator are drawn from the 2014 update of the TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments. In identifying priorities for risk evaluation and conducting risk evaluations of metals and metal compounds, the Administrator shall use the Framework for Metals Risk Assessment of the Office of the Science Advisor, Risk Assessment Forum, and dated March 2007, or a successor document that addresses metals risk assessment and is peer reviewed by the Science Advisory Board. The Administrator shall conduct risk evaluations pursuant to this paragraph to determine whether a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant to the risk evaluation by the Administrator, under the conditions of use. The Administrator shall, not later than 6 months after the initiation of a risk evaluation, publish the scope of the risk evaluation to be conducted, including the hazards, exposures, conditions of use, and the potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations the Administrator expects to consider, and, for each designation of a high-priority substance, ensure not less than 12 months between the initiation of the prioritization process for the chemical substance and the publication of the scope of the risk evaluation for the chemical substance, and for risk evaluations conducted on chemical substances that have been identified under paragraph (2)(A) or selected under subparagraph (E)(iv)(II) of this paragraph, ensure not less than 3 months before the Administrator publishes the scope of the risk evaluation. In deciding whether to grant requests under subparagraph (C)(ii), the Administrator shall give preference to requests for risk evaluations on chemical substances for which the Administrator determines that restrictions imposed by 1 or more States have the potential to have a significant impact on interstate commerce or health or the environment. The Administrator shall provide no less than 30 days public notice and an opportunity for comment on a draft risk evaluation prior to publishing a final risk evaluation. In selecting among prohibitions and other restrictions, the Administrator shall factor in, to the extent practicable, the considerations under subparagraph (A) in accordance with subsection (a). Based on the information published under subparagraph (A), in deciding whether to prohibit or restrict in a manner that substantially prevents a specific condition of use of a chemical substance or mixture, and in setting an appropriate transition period for such action, the Administrator shall consider, to the extent practicable, whether technically and economically feasible alternatives that benefit health or the environment, compared to the use so proposed to be prohibited or restricted, will be reasonably available as a substitute when the proposed prohibition or other restriction takes effect. The Administrator shall exempt replacement parts for complex durable goods and complex consumer goods that are designed prior to the date of publication in the Federal Register of the rule under subsection (a), unless the Administrator finds that such replacement parts contribute significantly to the risk, identified in a risk evaluation conducted under subsection (b)(4)(A), to the general population or to an identified potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation. In selecting among prohibitions and other restrictions, the Administrator shall apply such prohibitions or other restrictions to an article or category of articles containing the chemical substance or mixture only to the extent necessary to address the identified risks from exposure to the chemical substance or mixture from the article or category of articles so that the substance or mixture does not present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment identified in the risk evaluation conducted in accordance with subsection (b)(4)(A). Except as provided in paragraph (2), effective beginning on October 14, 2008, no Federal agency shall convey, sell, or distribute to any other Federal agency, any State or local government agency, or any private individual or entity any elemental mercury under the control or jurisdiction of the Federal agency. In proposing an exemption under this subsection, the Administrator shall analyze the need for the exemption, and shall make public the analysis and a statement describing how the analysis was taken into account. The Administrator shall establish, as part of a rule under this subsection, a time limit on any exemption for a time to be determined by the Administrator as reasonable on a case-by-case basis, and, by rule, may extend, modify, or eliminate an exemption if the Administrator determines, on the basis of reasonably available information and after adequate public justification, the exemption warrants extension or modification or is no longer necessary. As part of a rule promulgated under this subsection, the Administrator shall include conditions, including reasonable recordkeeping, monitoring, and reporting requirements, to the extent that the Administrator determines the conditions are necessary to protect health and the environment while achieving the purposes of the exemption. Not later than 18 months after proposing a rule pursuant to paragraph (1), the Administrator shall promulgate a final rule under subsection (a). In selecting among prohibitions and other restrictions promulgated in a rule under subsection (a) pursuant to paragraph (1), the Administrator shall address the risks of injury to health or the environment that the Administrator determines are presented by the chemical substance and shall reduce exposure to the substance to the extent practicable. If, at any time prior to the date that is 90 days after June 22, 2016, the Administrator makes a designation under subsection (b)(1)(B)(i), or receives a request under subsection (b)(4)(C)(ii), such chemical substance shall not be subject to this subsection, except that in selecting among prohibitions and other restrictions promulgated in a rule pursuant to subsection (a), the Administrator shall both ensure that the chemical substance meets the rulemaking standard under subsection (a) and reduce exposure to the substance to the extent practicable. For the purposes of this chapter, the term “requirement” as used in this section shall not displace statutory or common law.
It would be really helpful if you could furnish details about why the husband is not happy, inorder to provide specific laws applicable. Nonetheless, please find below the grounds for divorce: Under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 - S. 13 (1) states 9 grounds of divorce that can pleaded by either the husband or the wife in a solemnized marriage. They can file a petiton arguing that the other party- (i) is living in adultery; or (ii) has ceased to be a Hindu by conversion to another religion; or (iii) has been incurably of unsound mind for a continuous period of not less than three years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition; or (iv) has, for a period of not less than three years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition, been (v) had, for a period of not less than three years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition, been suffering from venereal disease in a communicable form; or (vi) has renounced the world by entering any religious order; or (vii) has not been heard of as being alive for a period of seven years or more by those persons who would naturally have heard of it, had that party been alive; or (viii) has not resumed cohabitation for a space of two years or upwards after the passing of a decree for judicial separation against that party; or (ix) has failed to comply with a decree for restitution of conjugal rights for a period of two years or upwards after the passing of the decree. If it is Divorce by mutual consent, then as per S. 13 B of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and S. 28 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 - for atelast one year the coupld should be living seperately before the instituion of proceedings, whereas under S. 10A of the Divorce Act, 1869 the time span is of 2 years. There must also be reasoning for why the divorce is being filed. Living separately here means they have not been living together like husabnd and wife.
Tax season can be a daunting time for many people. Understanding the appropriate forms that need to be filed for one’s financial situation and the deadlines one has to follow can be both cumbersome and frustrating. The process can seem even more frustrating for homeowners who wish to file for a tax abatement. A straightforward timeline and a basic understanding of the concepts behind tax abatements, coupled with advice from our seasoned attorneys, will get you off to the right start. Real estate taxes constitute some of the largest payments that are incurred each year for small businesses. Whatever a local government’s motivations may be, all property tax abatements are essentially designed to lessen the amount of taxes one pays on a parcel of land for a given period of time. In Nashua and Windham, residents may apply for tax where a parcel of land has received too high of an assessment compared to other similarly situated property. If, after you receive your property tax bill, you believe that the assessment on your property is too high, you should first check the assessment data (available online) to see if any of the variables, such as square footage and age of the property, are incorrect. If the data is incorrect, the assessment is incorrect. Getting the assessment changed is a relatively simple process that can be resolved by contacting the Nashua assessor’s office. If the data is correct and you still believe the assessment is high, you are eligible to apply for a tax abatement—just remember that it is important to comply with filing fees and deadlines. If you live in Nashua or Windham, a typical breakdown of filing timing and associated costs might look like this: March 1: Applications for tax abatements of the previous year are due. Note: if you miss the March 1 deadline you may request a “spring review,” where the assessor’s office will review your property the following year. July 1: The first of two annual tax bills is due (July assessment multiplied by 50% of the prior year’s tax rate). October: The tax rate for the year is calculated. This is the rate that will be used in December as well as the one that will be used the following July. December: 30 days from the date tax bill is mailed, the second of two annual tax bills is due (December assessment multiplied by the tax rate for the year). Co-authored by Thomas “Jay” Leonard and Laura Del Camp, WWF Law Clerk. If you think you may be eligible for a tax abatement, or simply want to learn more about the process, please contact Attorneys Jack White or Jay Leonard in our Nashua office at (603) 883-0797 This blog is intended for informational use only. The information contained herein should not be construed as offering legal advice or a legal opinion.
Note: the photo above is not of wolves in Colorado It appears an active wolf pack on the ground in northwest Colorado is now breeding. Colorado Public Radio (CPR) filed an open records request and acquired details about a recent wolf pup sighting. It came from a biologist who saw the pup following behind an adult wolf. CPR reached out to a Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson who said there is no reason to doubt the sighting. This sighting begs an obvious question. Why should Colorado voters approve a ballot issue to forcibly introduce wolves into the state if a wolf pack is not only confirmed on the ground but is now producing offspring? History shows wolves are resilient and have the ability to reproduce and spread across the landscape. The federal government placed 35 wolves on the ground in central Idaho in the mid-1990s. Those wolves multiplied and eventually crossed into Washington and Oregon. At the time, there were no calls to augment those individuals or small packs. As of earlier this year, Oregon is home to a minimum estimated population of 158 wolves (15 percent increase from 2018) while Washington also reports its largest population in recent history at 108 animals (an 11 percent increase over 2018). As of last summer, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reported a minimum population of 1,500 wolves within its borders. Additionally, wolves are extremely territorial. One of the leading causes of wolf deaths is from other wolves. Bringing additional wolves into Colorado may cause wolf conflict and depredation. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation strongly opposes a forced introduction of wolves into Colorado. “We have said this from the beginning and nothing has changed. Using the ballot box to circumvent professional wildlife managers and create wildlife management policy is reckless. On top of that, now more than ever, it’s fiscally irresponsible,” said Kyle Weaver, RMEF president and CEO. “Proponents continue to push for millions in new public spending for a forced and totally unnecessary wolf introduction even though wolves are already confirmed on the ground and taxpayer money to fund it simply is not available.” The Colorado legislature recently made a series of drastic spending cuts to deal with a $3 billion budget shortfall triggered by the coronavirus. Those cuts included $448 million from K-12 education and $493 million from higher education. It also made other significant cuts and cancelled four planned tax breaks even as legislators say the outlook for the state’s 2021 budget looks bleak. (Photo source: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife) The post Report: Wolf Pups on the Ground in Colorado appeared first on Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. This content was originally published here.
Learners will construct a geo-dome that displays information illustrating statistics, vocabulary and examples of philanthropy during World War II (Holocaust). Filter by subjects: Filter by audience: Filter by unit » issue area: find a lesson Unit: Roosevelt's Tree Army Students explore in detail the origin, activities, and impact of the Civilian Conservation Corps. This lesson teaches students how to journal about their own experiences and feelings. It is intended to be taught in conjunction with a student project of civic engagement or service. The project provides content and a context for journaling about personal experience. Unit: Oil Changes Everything Unit: Saving the Monarch The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the learners to the concept of Environmental Stewardship, community and how making an area beautiful is an act of philanthropy. Learners will look at the Monarch Butterfly and the four stages of its life cycle. They... Unit: Concepts of Leadership Students will gain a basic understanding of philanthropic vocabulary and how they see it reflected in their lives and in their school and community.
The learners will reflect on quotations about self-discipline and relate them to personal goals. Filter by subjects: Filter by audience: Filter by unit » issue area: find a lesson Students view and discuss the DVD The Gift of All: a Community of Givers and identify the influences and attributes of the generous people interviewed. Students read, summarize, and report on short biographies of philanthropists. Students write journal reflections and create a four-... Unit: Go, Johnny, Go! Students will define philanthropy and identify ways in which Johnny Appleseed acted as a philanthropist. After identifying ways in which they personally act as philanthropists, they will raise awareness of philanthropy in the school and home. Unit: Book Builders In an effort to make an awesome school year, students draft and share a simple book describing the strengths and needs at the school to challenge everyone to make the school great. They learn the importance of community/social capital by building positive experiences with students of... Students reflect in writing about the value of honesty and following the rules. They explore the benefits to self and the common good. Unit: Grow Involved 3-5 Learners will identify and tell the stories of historical figures who acted for and affected the common good, and review personal qualities that these historical figures possessed.
Modern age has a drastic effect on our lifestyle. Modern lifestyle has changed the food habits especially in school children. Consumption of junk food is common. The word ‘junk’ means useless or worthless. In ordinary language, junk food means packaged or processed food having no or less nutritional value.Junk food includes pizzas, burger, soft drinks, samosas, French fries. Children consume junk food mainly due to the taste but it does more harm than good. It is very common to see kid having junk food while sitting in front of television. According to estimates one out of every five children are obese. And the reasons why they are obese are unhealthy food practices that are consumption of junk food. Junk food is low in nutrition and high in calories. According to estimates 44% of the children population takes of soft drink everyday, 39% prefer soft drink with a burger and 31% take pizza with soft drink. The changing eating habits are exposing them to diseases like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc. it will not only have bad effect on health but also cause mood swings, laziness, weight gain, decreased enthusiasm to handle workouts etc. Negative Impacts On Health - Poor nutrition: children tend to avoid consumption diet. This lead to poor nutrition and weak immune system. Children are more prone to cold and fever and other health problem. Problem of constipation is come. Processed food has no fiber content that is why people suffer from constipation. Soft drinks contain phosphorus and other chemical which have negative impact on their body, including teeth and bone - Weight gain: consumption of junk food lead to weight gain and sometimes obesity. Soft drinks, fried food pizza burger etc. add hundreds of calories to our body. - Cardiovascular diseases: high level of saturated fat increases the cholesterol level leading to risk of cardiovascular diseases like stroke, heart attack, etc. such people also suffer from high blood pressure. - Irritable bowel syndrome, depression among teenagers, fluctuation in blood sugar level, risk of cancer increases. - Laziness is another problem. The capacity to handle daily workout reduces. People fell sleepy. - The level of efficiency reduces. - Risk of diabetes is there. The risk of kidney failure is also there. - Moodiness is another problem due to intake of junk food. - Bad effect on brain due to lack of oxygen supply to brain and liver. What Should Be Done??? - Instead of consuming junk food, children should be encouraged to have a healthy diet. Healthy diet includes required level of protein, vitamins, fiber, carbohydrates and fat. Children should be encouraged to have whole grain cereals, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, nuts etc. - Parents should ensure that appetizing and healthy food should be cooked at home in an innovative manner to temp the kids. - Say NO to JUNK FOOD. - School and media should play an important role to educate the students on harmful effect of fast / junk food. - Rallies should be conducted at regular intervals to spread the awareness at school and college levels. - There should be ban on fast food in school canteens. - Do thirty minutes of physical activity to burn calories and stay healthy. - Parents should keep a constant view on their kid’s consumption pattern. Looking at the ill effects of junk / fast food, we can conclude that junk food does more harm than good. It will definitely ruin everyone’s health despite of their age. To stay healthy, it is important and the need of the hour is to reduce the level of junk food consumption. Children are the future asset of any nation and government of that nation should take steps to prevent consumption of fast food. Television advertisements often promote junk food, so the government should put restrictions on such advertisements. Restrictions should be put on vendors selling fast / junk food Parents can play a dominant role regarding this. They should take extra efforts to feed their kids with healthy food and educate the ill effects of junk food on their health.It can be said that junk food is just for a minute but health is for life. By taking small things into account, parents can help their children for a better future and better life ahead of them.
The Tesla started it, but the idea that cars using alternative tech can still look great and be fun to drive is good news for petrolheads with a conscience. I actually think it’s quite ugly, but it’s intriguing – and better that than bland. The job of the Spyder is to showcase lightweight construction and eDrive hybrid-electric technology. Its passenger cell is made of lightweight, strong carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP), while the drive modules are made primarily from aluminum components. The 131hp electric motor on the front axle works in tandem with a turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine sending 223hp through the rear wheels. The Spyder can sprint from 0 to 62mph (100 km/h) in 5.0sec on the way to an electronically governed top speed of 155mph. In European tests, it has recorded a jaw-dropping 94mpg.
Brooklyn construction sites often present hazards for passersby, but for workers, danger is part of the job every day. Construction work in the United States is safer now than it was in the past, but experts say more needs to be done to decrease accidents and fatalities for workers. Safety firms are now turning to technology to prevent accidents on job sites. One of the most common safety measures at construction sites is the audible signal that sounds when a vehicle is backing up. The familiar sound of these reversing alarms has saved many lives, but recently there has been concern that when multiple vehicles sound their alarms at once, workers cannot tell where each sound is coming from. A new type of reversing alarm can solve that problem by using broadband frequencies to make it easier for a person to pinpoint the direction the sound is coming from. In addition, the signal makes a white noise sound that can be clearly heard, even if a worker is wearing noise protection equipment. Onboard cameras are a newer safety measure that can prevent accidents by giving vehicle operators a complete view of the area around their vehicle. Radar systems are also being implemented to help drivers by signaling them to warn of people or objects that are in their blind spot. These are just some of the advancements in safety technology that could dramatically reduce construction accidents and fatalities. Some job site accidents are considered to have been unavoidable, but in some cases a worker’s injury could have been prevented if not for the negligence of a non-employer third party. If a worker is harmed by a defective tool, for example, an attorney might suggest the filing of a lawsuit against its manufacturer.
Full details of the London Underground stations that within a few years will 'buckle’ under the strain of overcrowding have been released to Caroline Pidgeon AM, Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member and Deputy Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee. After investigations made by the London Assembly Member, TfL has finally disclosed that the 17 London Underground stations that face grinding to a halt without Crossrail 2 are: - King’s Cross St. Pancras - Liverpool Street - London Bridge - Finsbury Park - Oxford Circus - Highbury & Islington - Clapham Common - Clapham North - Clapham South - Warren Street - Leicester Square In addition to these Tube stations TfL has admitted that Clapham Junction train station will be similarly affected by excessive overcrowding. Unless pressure is reduced on the stations by Crossrail 2 chronic overcrowding will have built up by the 2030s, forcing these stations to introduce drastic measures to deal with crowds and passenger numbers, such as permanent one-way systems or even regular closures. On the day that the Mayor of London is meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport to discuss the progress of Crossrail 2 Caroline Pidgeon AM said: “Overcrowding on the Underground is already a daily battle, with many passengers facing regular delays to simply get through barriers at stations. “Unless Crossrail 2 is built these delays will increasingly build up until drastic measures are necessary at 17 key Tube stations, not to mention Clapham Junction railway station. “Planning ahead for Crossrail 2 is not an optional extra for London’s transport network but of vital importance to keep London moving.”
2nd January 2014 at 3:38 pm #5459 well I have had a day off today so I did some work on my land rover and then felt happy enough to have a look at the z. It grumbles and splutters but don’t start. I think having done some other things on it that the points or timing may be at fault. so took the point cover off, turned bike over on key, no movement of the points. so turned it slowly with a ratchet and the points only open a tiny amount. I mean about a millimetre if that, the opening is almost un-noticeable. an no spark is obvious so the questions are… A- should the points have a gap when at the f mark? B- if not then at what mark? C- what size gap. D- how much should they move when working. E- am I right in thinking the timing is set at the f mark. that’s what I have found out through the internet. beef2nd January 2014 at 11:40 pm #10363 I am trying to post sections from the manual which I have as a PDF file but can’t work out how to do it!!!!! Yes the ‘F’ mark is the timing mark and should align with the cast line at the top of the points housing as the points first open. The points gap is 0.3 to 0.4 mm (11 to 16 thou) but is not that critical as it is when they open that really counts which is governed by the timing. This should be set when the points are at their max opening. IE when the points dog is at the top of the cam lobe. The timing in my opinion is best set using a bulb and wire. To do this wrap a wire around the body a single filament 12v bulb such as an indicator bulb. Connect the other end of the wire to the spring on the points taking care that it does not short to anything else or restrict the movement of the points. The centre connection then needs to be fixed to earth on the bike engine for example. Remove the plug caps (to prevent accidental firing of the engine) and turn on the ignition. Using a 17mm spanner or socket rotate the engine ANTICLOCKWISE and you will see the bulb light up when the points open. Rotate the engine again and set the points plate so the bulb first lighte when the ‘F’ mark and timing mark are aligned and tighten up the points plate and recheck adjusting as required. I hope this answers your problem but if you have any further issues shout up3rd January 2014 at 9:27 am #10411 So the points should be open at the f mark. and I have the light bulb. Saw it in you tube so that’s the route I went.3rd January 2014 at 12:32 pm #10364 Yes. The bulb should light up as the ‘F’ mark and timing mark align3rd January 2014 at 1:21 pm #10412 Well nothing. Tried the bulb method and nothing. Tested the coil. Nothing at both ends. Moved a wire all dash lights went out. I think the answer is a rewire. New coils. Point. Condenser. Battery.3rd January 2014 at 2:23 pm #10365 That does indeed sound like a major wiring connection issue. Can’t you check it through yourself? Maybe its just a connector come out? Have you asked Hoggy?3rd January 2014 at 2:37 pm #10366 I’ve just spoken to Hoggy and he has explained a bit about how it is wired so I think I understand better what your problems could be. I have sent you a Private Message4th February 2014 at 5:26 pm #10413 am off tomorrow and would love to get this bugger running, KK tried ringing a couple of times but no answer. can you post on here what I need to do…4th February 2014 at 5:42 pm #10367 PM sent mate. Hoggy said he has moved the electric units from under the side panels to under the seat unit and the wires are on full stretch. He said that its prob connectors pulled out. Also you have B1 electrics and an un butchered harness so shouldn’t be too difficult to sort out17th February 2014 at 9:17 am #10414 Still not had time to look at it. Been working and doing my bathroom up because swmbo said I had to finish off after 8 months……17th February 2014 at 2:03 pm #10415 Just thinking about the bike and am sat here wondering do the the wires from the regulator all need to be wired up to something else. The green wire on mine us not connected because it was wired to the indicators which have come off17th February 2014 at 4:41 pm #10390TangoParticipant Hell After 8 months I would have disappeared! My Wife would have a well fed flower bed though! Yer I think you had better not push that one anymore Beef! LoL Arrr Well dont Worrie I have enough to keep this lot busy!! 🙂17th February 2014 at 8:00 pm #10416 its done now, just in time for my long week end and my week off in a couple of weeks. just got to figure the wires now and then get it sorted. want it back on the road17th February 2014 at 9:52 pm #10391TangoParticipant You Go Beef! Have you got your Wire diagrams?17th February 2014 at 10:41 pm #10417 I have got a diagram for it. It’s not exactly standard so not 100% how accurate the diagram will be… - You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
If you are under 21 years of age and you are convicted of a DUI in California, most of the penalties are the same as they would be for adults. However, you will face a longer license suspension (at least 1 year), and you can face some penalties even in circumstances where adults couldn’t be convicted. This is because of California’s Zero Tolerance policy. This policy penalizes underage drinker from driving with any amount of alcohol in their system, even if it is not enough to count for a normal DUI. These policies mean that underage drivers face different types of penalties depending in how high their BAC (blood alcohol concentration) is. The normal BAC limit for drivers is .08%—perhaps two or more drinks depending on the individual. For any driver under 21, however, penalties begin at .01% BAC. Even one drink (or less than a full drink) could be enough to cross this limit. Below, we’ll cover the penalties for every level of underage DUI: - Penalties for .01% – .05% BAC - Penalties for .05% – .07% BAC - Penalties for .08% BAC and above - Penalties for refusing a breath test Under 21 Penalties for .01% – .05% BAC When police pull you over on the suspicion of drink driving, they will typically give you a breath test known as a PAS. This is a roadside test with a small portable device. If you are over 21 you do not have to take this test, but if you are under 21 it is required, and there are consequences if you refuse. If the PAS test result shows any amount of alcohol, from .01% to .05%, you will not be convicted of a full DUI but you will face penalties: - An infraction in traffic court, which will involve a fine and possibly points off your license - Your driver’s license will be referred to the DMV, which will suspend it for 1 year This is an administrative or “per se” license suspension, and you can request a hearing to fight it. You should have a lawyer represent you at this hearing. The deadline to request a hearing is 30 days from the date of your arrest/infraction. Under 21 Penalties for .05% – .07% BAC At this threshold, the state is worried that the alcohol in your system is impairing your driving, even though it would not normally count as impairment for an adult. Penalties include: - 1 year suspended license, as above; - A traffic infraction with a fine, as above; - At least three months in DUI school, a program designed to convince you not to drink and drive; and - Possibly being ordered into the “Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program.” This program is run by the coroner’s office. It id designed to “scare you straight.” You may have to look at graphic images of DUI victims’ injuries and corpses. You could also be ordered not to drink again until you are 21 years of age. As a court order, this carries extra weight—you will face additional penalties if you are caught with alcohol again before your 21st birthday, whether driving is involved or not. Penalties for DUI Under 21—.08% BAC and Above If your BAC tests at the normal “legal limit” of .08% BAC or higher, you will still face the infractions and penalties above, but you will also face standard adult DUI penalties. This is true even if you are younger than 18 years of age. For a first time DUI, these penalties include: - At least two days in jail (up to 6 months maximum) - License suspension (1 year if you are under 21) - A fine of up to $1,000 - 3 months of DUI school - 3-5 years of probation DUIs can also affect both college admission and future job opportunities. Penalties for Refusing a Breath Test California law states that all drivers agree to take a breath test, blood test or urine test if they are ever arrested for DUI. For drivers under 21, the law also states that you agree to take a roadside breath test (PAS) if you are simply pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving—even if you have not been arrested yet. If you refuse any of these chemical tests, you will face: - A minimum 1-year automatic suspension of your driver’s license in all cases - A longer 2- or 3-year suspension of your license if you are convicted of DUI Fighting an Underage DUI California’s DUI laws are among the most severe in the nation, especially when it comes to drivers under 21. While the intention behind these laws is to protect children, the opposite is often the case: the penalties are so onerous that a single mistake can derail a young person’s life. If you, or your son or daughter, face an underage DUI charge, you need to talk to an experienced DUI lawyer and fight your case. DUI cases can be won several ways: - Showing that police did not follow procedure or that the traffic stop was illegal - Disputing whether you truly refused the breath test or not - Attacking the validity of the breath test results These and other tactics can be used to whittle down the evidence against you. The result could be keeping your license, avoiding jail time, or even winning your DUI case entirely. Have you been charged with DUI? We can connect you with an experienced Los Angeles DUI lawyer and get you a FREE consultation. Fill out the form to the right or call (310) 862-0199 and get your free consultation today.
Roman Roof Tile or Tegula Part of tegula While sorting through items in the Mansion House in Upgate, we came across this piece of fired clay. David Robinson had no hesitation in informing us that it is part of a Roman roof tile. A Roman roof had two types of overlapping tile. Flatish tiles with raised edges “tegula” and curved “imbrex” which covered the joints. Our piece is part of a tegula. When the Romans came to Britain, they brought their art of tile-making with them, and Roman tiles are common finds in archaeological sites. In the later Roman Empire each tegula had a raised border on the two long sides, to channel rainwater, rather than allowing it to seep between tiles. Imbrices and tegulae are still in use in Rome.
Good morning Year 3. Today there is some Maths, English, RE and Music for you to have a go at. Make sure you upload your work onto Seesaw so that I can have a look at what you have been doing. Reading Plus and TT Rockstars Start today by spending some time completing at least two sessions of your reading plus and some time practising your timetables on TT Rockstars. Continuing with our recap on previous learning of statistics, we are going to look today at drawing pictograms. Take a look at the video (link below) and then give the activities which are attached a go. Carrying on with the theme of 'Expressing Ourselves', today you are going to plan and create your own storyboard. This is a bit like a comic strip. This is going to tell a short story around the theme of someone expressing themselves. We are going to bring in what we looked at on Tuesday when we thought about turning negative thoughts into a positive one. You are going to come up with your own story of a child/person who has a negative thought about expressing themselves. It could be that they like to play a sport but aren't as good as everyone else or a child who likes to listen to Rock music but no-one else does and they are worried that people will make fun of them. Think about what 'negative thought dilemma' your character will have... We are then going to have them overcome that worry by turning their negative thought into a positive. They might do this on their own, with the help of a friend or they might find someone who likes to express themselves in the same way and so don't feel so different anymore. I want your storyboard to end with this positive thought and a positive outcome. Make sure you have a good think about this and produce as good a storyboard as you can as on Friday, you will be writing your storyboard as a short written story. There is a template for a storyboard below which you can use. You are not limited to just using the 8 sections, if you need more, you can use more. Each section is split into a big box for your pictures and a small box for your text which narrates what is going on. Good luck Year 3! Carrying on from Tuesday's lesson, I want you to read the story again which you will find in the attached document. From here, I want you to design your own version of the story. You could write about someone who makes a meal from sticks, or leaves but keep the same concept of people coming together to share ingredients to make a lovely meal that they can all share together. Using the logins which I have sent out to you, login to Yumu and have a go at the fifth music session on there.
Financial reporting simply means the information that discloses the financial health of your business. In particular, it is the perfect way for the management and external stakeholders to know how the company has been performing over a period of time. Information provided by financial reporting can be vital for management to make decisions about the future of the business. In addition, financial reports form the backbone for planning, analysis, benchmarking, and decision making to achieve the financial goal. Financial reports are generally issued on a quarterly and annual basis. Some of its essential components include: The income Statement is the information on the company's income, expenses, and profits or loss over a period of time. It can also be defined as the profit and loss statement or the statement of income and expense. The income statement offers useful insights into the activities of a business, the efficiency of its management, the under-performing sectors, and its performance relative to industry peers. Technically, the statement includes the details of the company's gross profit (or loss) or net profit (or loss). It is a report on the assets, liabilities, and equity of a company at a given point in time, usually at the end of a fiscal quarter or year. Additionally, Balance sheets should include detailed recordings of the non-current assets, current assets, non-current liabilities, and current liabilities. In particular, non-current assets include computers/laptops, machines, and office furniture while current assets include inventory, accounts receivable, and cash. On the other hand, non-current liabilities deal with debt financing whereas current liabilities include information about trade payables and bank overdrafts. Cash flows are the next component of financial reporting. It summarizes the inward and outward cash movements of your business. Information regarding Inflows and outflows of money can be visualized from operations, investment, and financing activities. Company cash flows rely on the company's everyday business. In particular, sales and inventory acquisitions are classified as the activity of the company. Moreover, cash flow also includes investments that contributed to revenue and investment produced by long-term project programs. Change in equity is the last component of financial reporting. This aspect reflects on changes in the company's equity during the specified time frame. Any adjustment over a given time can be tracked from an increase or decrease of the starting balance as compared to the final balance. The fluctuation of the organization's equity arises from transactions such as new capital investment, the dividend paid, owner’s withdrawal, net profit or loss, and fixed assets revaluation, etc. Change is equity also indicates a correlation between the balance sheet and the company's income statement. Furthermore, it also demonstrates transactions that are not on the balance sheet and on the income statement, such as the dividend payment and the withdrawal of the owner. Creating a financial report or statement has a significant role for your business, ranging from legal issues to the accomplishment of the company's financial targets. To be specific, financial statements lets executives communicate previous achievements and future business goals. Signup early to be among the early users to get free subscriptions for three months.
It’s been a while, but we’re back now! And this time Nikitas Vgontzas, who’s been in charge of montage for 15 years, will help us with the post and explain us some things about montage. On offset printers, we mainly print on A1 (61cm x 86cm) and B1 (70cm x 100cm) sized papers. View previous post: Economical printing paper sizes Depending on the desirable printout size (when folded), we choose the adequate paper size. - A. We want to print a 16-page product catalogue, sized A4 (21cm x 29cm). A4 is part of A1 (61cm x 86cm). On each side of an A1 sized paper we can fit 8 A4 sized pages. For printing a 16-paged printout we’ll need two sides of A1 paper. The way they’re placed on the surface depends on the way the sheet will be folded. You can see pictures of the broadsheet layout process and a video of how the sheet is folded below. Montage of A side Montage of B side - B. We want to print an 8-page product catalogue, sized A4. As we have mentioned, we can fit 8 pages on each side of an A1 paper, so we’ll only need one side this time. In order to print the pages front and back we’ll use the work-and-turn method, which means we’ll print once on the sheet as is and then we’ll turn it to print on the same side. 8-page file montage for work-and-turn printing All montage required for printing works with the same logic. Here are some tips for graphic designers that can help the typographers’ job: - Printers need some spaces on the paper. The A1-sized sheet (61x86cm) divided by 8 pages equals 21.5×30.5cm per page. When we’re creating the file, we should size up the final trimmed printout to be 1 centimeter smaller than the 1/8 of the A1 sheet. e.g. 20.5×29, 14.5×20.5, 29×42, 16.5×24, 24×33.5, 11.5×16.5 More on the post “Economical printing paper sizes” - As you can see on the montage picture, page 4 is above page 5, page 13 above page 12 etc. The printing machine prints in zones, so the colours of page 5 affect those of page 4 etc. We should know that in case the colours of the two pages are completely different or contrasting, there may be little differences on the output. It would be best, if possible, to put colour consistent pages next to each other. - Furthermore, as I already mentioned, the number of pages that can be printed on one side depends on the size of the page. In magazines or books with many pages, they should be evenly divided, so that they can be printed economically. e.g. In a 252-page book of B5 size, we need 15 sides for the 240 pages in sets of 16 pages, 1 side for an 8-page set and 1 side for the remaining 4 pages. If the book had 256 pages, we’d only need 16 sides for sets of 16 pages (we’d need one less side). This way, both the printing and the binding processes would be more economical. Finally, I’ll mention two prevailing montage programs in Greece: - Signastation from Heidelberg - Preps from Kodak Thank you very much! We’ll talk further about montage on some next post. We’ll also mention some issues that appear in the files we receive for montaging. A few words about montage
Choice the File Beginning In some cases (only when working with the FAT file system), the program is unable to precisely determine the beginning of a file (the first sector of its contents), and several variants are possible. Other programs simply use the first variant, as a result of which you may, for example, be given a completely different photograph, instead of the one you wanted. Magic Partition Recovery offers you all possible recovery variants, and you can choose the beginning of the file. There are two ways to open the window for choosing the beginning of a file. If the “Preview” option is enabled, then when you select such a file in the preview toolbar menu (the bottom part of the toolbar) a button for choosing the beginning of the file will appear. In the left part of the window variants of the first file sector are offered to you. Choosing values in the left side, you can look through file contents in the right. The selection window also appears when such a file is being recovered. In this event, the button “Save All” allows saving the file in all of the offered variants. If the file is named, for instance, “My file.txt”, then it will be saved as “My file1.txt”, “My file2.txt”, “My file3.txt”, etc. If you choose an option “Don’t show in this session” and will press “Save All” the program will not display any more this window, and will apply this option to all same files.
Crisis Prevention and Intervention Services (CPIS) staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist individuals and providers with stabilization and support through a crisis. These services are available to adults ages 18 and older who have been found eligible for Developmental Disability Services or are living in a Brain Injury waiver home. How do I get help? Call the Toll-Free Crisis Hotline at 1-888-568-1112 and ask for a developmental disability services crisis worker. CPIS has four teams and Crisis Houses based in Caribou, Bangor, Augusta and Portland. Proactive, comprehensive and individualized approaches to assist consumers and their supporters to identify ways to help them avoid a crisis or successfully work through an emergent situation using consultation, education and development of a crisis prevention plan. Crisis Telephone Services - Supportive communication, consultation, problem solving, information and referral for persons in distress. Crisis staff assess whether a caller needs additional supports and should meet face-to-face with crisis personnel and/or other professional staff. Mobile Crisis Outreach - Provided where a crisis is occurring, which could be a residential facility, private residence, police station, jail, boarding home, homeless shelter, work site, or in the community. - CPIS staff provide on-site assessments, consultations, education, crisis stabilization and crisis plan development. - Crisis staff assist individuals to become stabilized within his/her current residence when possible. In-Home Crisis Supports - Home-based services to help stabilize people in collaboration with their current support system. - Builds on existing support system and prevents potential adverse effects of having a person leave their home. - Includes: consultation, assessment, and crisis prevention planning services. Crisis Residential Services - Provide short-term, highly supportive and supervised residential settings where individual can stabilize and return home or move to another location. - Ensure CPIS staff are present 24/7 to assist in crisis planning and stabilization, training/assistance in daily living skills, monitor medications, and provide transportation to all necessary appointments during an individual’s stay at a Crisis House. Ensure CPIS staff are present 24/7 to assist in crisis planning and stabilization, training/assistance in daily living skills, monitor medications, and provide transportation to all necessary appointments during an individual’s stay at a Crisis House. The State of Maine has rules that govern emergency interventions and the procedural steps that must be taken prior to the implementation of planned behavioral interventions. More information on that topic can be found on the Behavioral Regulation page. More information on that topic can be found on the Behavioral Regulation page. If your questions are related to a current crisis or situation, please call our toll-free crisis hotline at 1-888 -568-1112 and ask for a developmental disability services crisis worker. Any other questions please call 207-287-9200 or email the Office of Aging and Disability at OADS@maine.gov.
Maltipu is not an ancient breed, but one of the youngest. Only 40 years ago the poodle and maltese were first bred in the USA to get a good hypoallergenic breed for people with asthma and allergies. And they did it great 🙂 Today, the maltipu has won the hearts of so many people and the breed has become truly popular. But! still unrecognized FCI (Federation Cynologique Internationale – International Cynological Federation). And only in America maltipu recognized in the AKC (American Kennel Club – American Kennel Club). There Malta get their club ID number from 2009 and from 2020 will begin to participate in exhibitions. Definitely, soon our cynological unions will accept and recognize the charming maltipu. But for now, we get all the right information in the USA (scroll through the carousel to read the sources). So, let’s talk about sizes. In America, they say that maltipas are from 5 to 20 pounds, which in terms of kilograms is from 2.3 to 9 kg. By size, maltipa in America is divided into: 1. Toy (toy): 2.3-4 kg 2. Mini: 6-9 kg Sometimes, with very small maltipu sizes (up to 2 kg), the name Teacup maltipoo (ticap maltipu) is used. 🐾 For some reason, other names have entrenched in our domestic market. It is believed that there is a микро micro ’, мини mini’, and стандарт standard ’maltipu, where the micro is an American pickup, the mini is an American toy, and the standard is an American mini. 🐾 As you can see, domestic names are very different from those used in the homeland of maltipu, but the point is that you need to understand what size maltipu is suitable for your family. We’ll talk separately about the size of the “micro”, which in America is called the “Tikap” (up to 2 kg). Such dogs can not live in a family with young children (less than 8-10 years old), with traveling families, in a house with stairs. Such dogs need special care: regular feeding of even an adult dog (4-5 times a day) to avoid a sharp drop in sugar; in no case should such dogs be supercooled or overheated; be sure to teach the dog not to jump off the sofa on his own, as they can easily break a bone; owners should carefully move around the house and use the doors with care.
Business Technology Working As A Consultant The above short article is mainly on the advantages of working with an effective service advancement professional. Among the primary advantages of hiring such a business design advancement specialist is he or she can certainly aid in producing new cutting-edge concepts for the business. One more benefit of hiring a service advancement specialist to assist in the growth of your company is she or he can help in taking care of business facets of your company that will be beneficial for you. These consultants are without a doubt really essential, as they play an important role in the monitoring of a company. In situation you are taking into consideration hiring one after that below are a few of the vital benefits of doing so. Price Performance: The major benefit of service development consultants depends on their ability to lower the prices incurred on creating new ideas and also concepts. The high prices of producing brand-new products and services often cause a significant loss of profit for the firm. Nonetheless, by hiring the services of these consultants, it comes to be feasible to cut down the prices associated with such productions. As an example, it is frequently feasible to use the affordable consultancy services of business innovation professionals in order to produce new pharmaceutical items that supply a good deal of relief to people that experience health issues. This type of merchandise will not only confirm to be a true blessing for these individuals but for the total healthcare field too. Because of this, the quantity of cash that is invested in study for such medications is reduced as the healthcare business are able to produce far better medicines at a minimal expense. Know-how: The knowledge possessed by the organization technology consultants has a lot to do with the real production of the principle. These experts are skilled in evaluating the requirements of the people involved in the firm and after that they generate different ideas that they think can address these needs. It is then a matter of implementing the recommended version as well as creating an item that assists in resolving these issues. Nonetheless, it is important that the experts create concepts that can in fact assist you achieve your goals rather than simply suggesting a model of just how points must be done. Support: The support provided by the company model development professional in the growth of originalities is another vital facet of this process. Such an expert will certainly have the ability to assist you discover the various avenues that can be taken in order to execute these suggestions into business. It is therefore essential that you find a professional who can supply you with the type of help you require in the execution of your originalities. The expert should additionally have the ability to lead you regarding the different techniques that can be used in order to make your concept a success. Assistance: The support provided by a company innovation expert in the kind of application pointers is likewise very important. Such a person will certainly be aware about what approaches can be used in order to make your item a success. Furthermore, such a person will likewise remain in a placement to give you tips concerning the different networks that can be utilized to promote your item. Therefore, it is necessary that you select a professional who can support you in every possible manner in order to make your ingenious item a success. Cost: One of the most essential element that will certainly affect your decision to hire a specialist for implementing your cutting-edge suggestions is the expense associated with the whole process. You will certainly need to spend cash in employing experts for implementing your innovative idea. Nonetheless, when you are handling competent business technology consultancy services, there need to not be a great deal of expense associated with this procedure. Therefore, it is essential that you search and locate a professional who can give you with affordable consultancy solutions. This post topic: Personal Product & Services
If your accounting has become an aimless mess, then Golden Rules of Accounting can resolve all the issues in your system of debit and credit. Keeping a check on your finances is essential for every business. Accounting is a record of all the transactions of a business. It is a process of collecting, recording, and classifying the daily transactions of a company. It facilitates a better interpretation of financial information. The golden rules of accounting are for making it simple to decide what transaction must go in where, in each type of account. You can gauge the health of your business by going through your accounts. It gives you a summary of your profits, losses, etc. Each record made in an account comes under one of the two categories, namely- A debit is an increase in the value of assets. For example, if you purchase some land for your company, that would be termed as a debit. It increases the value of your assets, but there is a decrease in your capital amount. A credit, on the other hand, is a decrease in the value of assets. Following the same example, if you sell the land you acquired, there is a decrease in the value of your assets, whereas there is an increase in the capital of your company. So, if you are also in quest of what the golden rules of accounting are to manage your debit and credit system, this post is personalized to you. Let us get started right away- What are the Golden Rules of Accounting? Accounting rules simplify how to record your financial transactions. There are three different types of accounts in the traditional approach to accounting. A personal account is associated with companies, firms, and anything to do with people. The real account maintains your transactions regarding assets, possessions, or properties. There are two types of real accounts, tangible and intangible. A nominal account records your losses, gains, income, expenses, etc. There is one rule that dictates how you record your transactions for each account- real, personal, or nominal. Thus the three rules for the three different types of accounts make up the Golden Rules of Accounting. The First Golden Rule of Accounting – Debit the Receiver, Credit the Giver This rule is for personal accounts. When a person or an organization gives something to the company, it is recorded as a debit in the account. In the same way, if the company gives out something to a person or another company or firm, it is recorded as a credit in the company’s account. The Second Golden Rule of Accounting – Debit What Comes In, Credit What Goes Out The second rule applies to real accounts. Any asset a company buys or that comes into the possession of the company like machinery, land, etc. is maintained as a debit in your account. And any asset the company gives out is marked as a credit to the company’s real account. In simple terms, if you buy some assets for the company, it is recorded as debit as in the company’s real account and vice versa. The Third Golden Rule of Accounting – Debit all Expenses and Losses, Credit all Incomes and Gains Electricity bills, telephone expenses, profit on sales, etc. fall under this rule, in the category of the nominal account. This rule translates into this. If you have earned money through sales, interest received, etc., then it is posted as a credit in the account. If you have spent money to pay off bills, etc. it is posted as a debit in the account. Analysis of Modern Approach towards Golden Rules of Accounting There is also the modern approach to accounting, which classifies accounts into six different heads: An increase in assets is termed as a debit in the account, and a decrease in assets is termed as credit. A decrease in liabilities translates as a debit in the account and vice versa. Similarly, a decrease in the company’s capital is recorded as a debit, and an increase in the same is a credit. A decrease in the revenue is a debit in the account, and an increase is a credit. An increase in expenditure results in debt and a decrease in expenditure is credit. An increase in withdrawal will be classified as a debit, and a decrease will be classified as a credit. Benefits of Golden Rules of Accounting Whether it is a small or large business, maintaining proper records of transactions and accounts is highly recommended. A few of the benefits of accounting are captured below: 1. It is a permanent record of transactions An organization enters into numerous transactions every day, and it is impossible to remember all the transactions. Maintaining an account of all the daily transactions is the best way to keep permanent track of all this data. 2. Profit and Loss Analysis Keeping proper accounts helps the business in taking stock of the profit and loss accrued during each quarter or any set period. 3. Financial Position The financial position of a company at a given date can also be established if there is a proper record of the transactions. It might be essential to convince people to invest in your business or for applying for a loan. 4. Cost Control It also helps evaluate where the company can curtail unnecessary expenditure to the company. 5. Management of Business It also helps to plan and manage the company’s future income and expenditure. 6. Comparative Analysis It makes it possible for the company to make a comparative analysis of how it has performed in comparison to the same period, the previous years. Final Thoughts about the Golden Rules of Accounting! With the help of the Golden Rules of Accounting, you will be able to understand transaction adeptly by comprehending the actual and practical meaning of which account should be debited or credited. So, go through these accounting rules and use them as the guidelines while recording and managing transactions in your books of accounts. How important do you consider the golden rules of accounting in managing the debit and credit system?
Motto of Āyurvedā The main motto of Āyurvedā are- To sustain the health of the healthy; To cure the ailments of the ailing. Purpose of Āyurvedā To carry out any task in this world, a healthy body is essential. Be it performing a duty, indulging the senses or earning wealth. Preserving health, thus, is the major purpose of Āyurvedā. Āyurvedā is Holistic Āyurvedā looks at a person as the union of the body, mind and consciousness; and does not reduce it as a mere body part or an ailment. Caring and treating for all three components in all the circumstances is how Āyurvedā functions. Have some questions? Head to the FAQ page now.
Most of us wish we had a little more energy. When that lull hits sometime after lunch, it can be hard to finish out the workday without dreaming of a cat nap. But you don’t really want to reach for another cup of coffee. What can you eat that gives you that boost of extra energy you need? Here are seven food options that will increase your energy: Oatmeal is packed with fiber, which takes a long time to digest. That helps you feel full, and it sustains your energy level over several hours. That’s why oatmeal makes such a good breakfast choice — you can start your day off with the energy you need in one simple dish. Only a small amount of peanut butter can give you plenty of protein for energy. Plus, it’s packed with fiber to help you feel full, and it provides healthy fats to boot. Choose an all-natural nut butter without added preservatives, flavors, or sugars, and keep the portion size relatively small. It tastes great with some apple or banana slices. Salmon is just about the healthiest fish you can eat. It’s packed with nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids, which are important for brain health, and it can even help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Salmon also has plenty of protein for energy and feeling full. These naturally portable fruits aren’t just easy to eat. They’re packed with fiber, vitamin B6, and potassium, which promote muscle function and energy. You can also slice bananas into other foods, like yogurt or oatmeal, for an added boost of energy. Many types of nuts are good for providing a boost of energy, and almonds sit at the top of the pack. They help convert food to energy with the help of nutrients like magnesium and B vitamins. Just make sure not to overdo it with nuts, so you don’t add too many extra calories to your daily intake. This delicious dip originated from Mediterranean, and it couldn’t be simpler. Pureed garbanzo beans, olive oil, lemon juice, and tahini combine to make this tasty treat, and fiber and protein from the beans give you a boost of energy and fill you up. Try dipping veggies like carrots or pepper strips in hummus, or go for carrots or pita bread. Did you know that Greek yogurt can give twice the amount of protein as regular yogurt varieties? That makes for a nutrient-packed snack that gives you plenty of energy to get through your day. Plus, it’s perfectly portable, and you can add in berries or nuts for extra flavor and nutrition. Delicious, Nutritious, and Energizing You don’t have to drink four cups of coffee a day to stay energized. Boost your body naturally — try these energizing foods for your next sack and see how you feel. Would you like even more great tips on your health and wellness? Visit Medical Professionals online.
Days before Christmas, a hospital in the North Carolina foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains maxed out its resources. Caldwell UNC Health Care, a 137-bed hospital in Lenoir, had planned for a surge of COVID-19 cases for months. But the facility went from treating 19 infected patients to 49 in just one week, its president and CEO Laura Easton told MedPage Today. The hospital's average daily census rose from between 60 and 80 patients to between 110 and 120. Community spread was high, and a number of employees were also out of work, Easton said. Three out of five neighboring hospitals were similarly stretched. The outlook was bleak, but Easton and her colleagues thought of an organization nearby. Samaritan's Purse -- an evangelical Christian charity known for treating Ebola patients and victims of war abroad -- is based in the mountain town of Boone, just 25 miles from Caldwell UNC Health Care. Easton knew the organization had previously deployed COVID field hospitals in New York City's Central Park, Italy, and the Bahamas, and thought perhaps it could do the same for them. The chief medical officer at Caldwell UNC Health Care made a call, and it turned out the charity had been closely watching the rising number of cases in its own backyard, Easton said. It took just a week to stand up a 30-bed field hospital adjacent to Caldwell UNC Health Care, Easton noted. Once the charity decides to deploy a field hospital, it moves fast because it knows the need is immediate and may not be the same in just a short period of time. "This is what they do," Easton said. "They go into crisis situations, and they execute rapidly." The field hospital at Caldwell UNC Health Care opened Jan. 7, and has been supporting that facility as well as five other hospitals in Western North Carolina. Nine days later, Samaritan's Purse also stood up a 54-bed unit in Los Angeles County, California, next to Antelope Valley Hospital. Both non-state-run facilities -- funded by donations and staffed with volunteers, including its doctors and nurses -- are uniquely positioned to help ease the strain on hard-hit hospitals. But they haven't evaded scrutiny. LGBTQ activists last year opposed the COVID field hospital set up by Samaritan's Purse in New York. And as the North Carolina and California facilities opened, the charity's CEO, Franklin Graham -- son of the late evangelist Billy Graham -- found himself in hot water over his support for former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. All the while, hospitals say the charity's resources have filled a void and been critical to managing a surge of COVID cases. Samaritan's Purse -- founded more than 50 years ago -- has experience transporting, setting up, and running field hospitals. It has responded to natural disasters, war, and famine, with a mission of providing humanitarian aid and promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ in doing so. In recent years, it has increased its focus on the treatment of infectious diseases. In 2014, Samaritan's Purse deployed staff to care for Ebola patients in West Africa, and in 2016, the organization first flew its own field hospital in response to the massive earthquake that hit Ecuador. Less than a year later, it transported a facility to treat civilians injured during the conflict between Iraqi security forces and ISIS in Mosul. Though the pandemic presented a new challenge, it was relatively simple to adapt the charity's existing field hospital model to one with a primary focus on respiratory support, Ken Isaacs, vice president of international programs and international relations at Samaritan's Purse, told MedPage Today. "We need to be next to a hospital ... that allows for the easy passage of patients," Isaacs said. "We're not a receiving center. We're an extension of a co-located hospital." COVID patients who need care, such as supplemental oxygen or treatment with medications, are transferred to the field hospital to free up beds in the co-located facility, he said. Doing so eases the burden on space and staff, and allows the primary hospital to focus on caring for COVID patients who need ventilators as well as non-COVID patients with other health concerns. Field hospitals are primarily funded through donations, Isaacs said. The cost of setting up and running the facilities ranges from about $700,000 to $3 million. Most are in operation at a site for between six weeks and three months. Though flying portable hospitals around the world on a moment's notice is a heavy lift, Samaritan's Purse has the resources to do so. Samaritan's Purse reported $734 million in revenue in 2019, of which ($720 million) was from contributions and grants, according to its most recently available financial filing. Total revenue was up nearly 5% from the year prior. Expenses were $689 million in 2019, with the majority (86%) going to program services. Just shy of 8% of expenses were for fundraising, and about 5% were administrative. The organization's top paid employee was its CEO, Graham, who made $722,403 in 2019. Charity Navigator, a nonprofit that evaluates organizations' finances and transparency, gives Samaritan's Purse its highest rating of four stars. No Shortage of Staff In 2019, Samaritan's Purse employed 3,305 people, and enlisted the services of 197,000 volunteers, according to its financial filing. That is what differentiates the organization's swift ability to set up field hospitals, said Easton of Caldwell UNC Health Care. "Their field workers are prepared to go anywhere in the world, several times a year," Easton said of Samaritan's Purse. "They had that advantage over a state government-run hospital." The team can put out a call on Monday night, and by Tuesday afternoon feel confident that it has enough people to staff a unit, Easton said. "These folks are very mission-motivated ... and they do this on a regular basis," she said. "When the team came in, they knew each other. They were in Italy together. They were in the Congo together. It's really a unique set of circumstances." The state of North Carolina has been very supportive, Easton noted. However, one challenge it faces is that, if it needs to call in members of the National Guard who are medically trained, it may have to pull individuals out of the very hospitals it is intending to help. With Samaritan's Purse, volunteers are coming from all parts of the country. "It didn't harm the COVID effort of any one single institution like it might have if [North Carolina] pulled some of the resources that they could have within the state," Easton said. Keith Acree, a spokesman for North Carolina Emergency Management and the Department of Public Safety, told MedPage Today in an email that the state has not set up any field hospitals during the pandemic. He said that the state does have one recently closed hospital equipped and on standby in case it is needed for overflow. However, that facility would indeed require staffing, he added. Easing the Strain Last year Samaritan's Purse treated more than 680 COVID patients at its field hospitals in Italy, New York City, and the Bahamas. At Antelope Valley Hospital in California, Samaritan's Purse has already admitted 83 COVID patients to its new field hospital, according to Cynthia Frausto, director of marketing and public relations at the hospital. Within two-and-a half days of the charity's assessment team making an initial on-site visit, the field hospital was up and running, Frausto told MedPage Today. "We did experience the patient surge from the holidays, especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving," Frausto said. "We're in the middle of waiting to see [what] the last of the holiday patient surge is going to bring." That's where Samaritan's Purse has been able to alleviate stress. "They have been incredibly helpful in terms of picking up COVID patients who otherwise would have been waiting for beds in our hospital," Frausto said. "It's not only the space," she added. "The biggest help is having the staff and the resources that come with Samaritan's Purse. They provide all of their supplies, nurses, doctors, techs. They come well-equipped to help these patients and the hospital." Easton of Caldwell UNC Health Care concurred. Co-located hospitals provide other support, such as patient medical records, connections to oxygen tanks, pharmaceuticals, and even malpractice insurance, Easton said. Though it is not a profitable endeavor for Caldwell UNC Health Care, billing insurers for patient care should cover the cost, she said. Both Easton and Frausto said that their respective communities have been supportive of Samaritan's Purse setting up field hospitals. However, that hasn't always been the case. After Samaritan's Purse set up a 68-bed field hospital in New York City's Central Park last April, the charity's CEO and Christian minister Franklin Graham said in a statement that it had faced backlash from eight democratic members of New York's Congressional delegation, the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and the Reclaim Pride Coalition. Their objections focused on a statement of faith the charity asks its employees to sign and its volunteers to support. The statement notes the organization's belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Graham said at the time that the organization didn't believe it was the time or place to wage the debate. "It's true, for 50 years, we have asked our paid staff to subscribe to a statement of faith -- but we have never asked any of the millions of people we have served to subscribe to anything," Graham said. "In other words, as a religious charity, while we lawfully hire staff who share our Christian beliefs, we do not discriminate in who we serve." "We have provided billions of dollars of medical care and supplies, food and water, and emergency shelter without any conditions whatsoever," he added. New York's Mount Sinai Health System, with which Samaritan's Purse partnered on the Central Park field hospital, declined a request for comment for this story. Though Samaritan's Purse said that its other field hospitals have not faced similar opposition, Graham has come under fire for an unrelated reason during the most recent openings. Following the siege on the nation's Capitol Jan. 6., Graham -- a supporter of former President Donald Trump -- made public comments against a second impeachment of Trump for inciting an insurrection. "Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with @SpeakerPelosi & the House Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday," Graham tweeted Jan. 14. "After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back & betray him so quickly? What was done yesterday only further divides our nation." In response, the nonprofit Faithful America -- which describes itself as a community of Christians committed to social justice -- launched a petition calling for Graham to be removed from his leadership positions at Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It has garnered more than 25,000 signatures. "By appearing to legitimize Franklin Graham's hateful politics and his lies about the 2020 election results -- which were part of the disinformation campaign that provoked the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol -- the board of Samaritan's Purse is detracting from its vital medical mission and undermining its intended message of Christian love," Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest and campaigns director at Faithful America, said in an emailed statement. Empsall said that enabling conspiracy theories can also lead to a fractured news environment, misinformation, and the additional spread of COVID. "The work of Samaritan's Purse staff members can be incredibly beneficial in spite of Franklin Graham, including in COVID-19 field hospitals from Italy to North Carolina -- yet those professionals could do even more under different, reasonable leadership," he said. "How much more love and healing would Samaritan's Purse achieve if it welcomed all qualified health-care workers?" he questioned. "And how many patients have chosen to stay away in fear of receiving biased, substandard care?" Committed to the Cause Paul Saber, who serves on the boards of both Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, provided a statement in response to the petition, saying that Faithful America fabricated a lie that Franklin Graham incited violence at the Capitol. "Mr. Graham was not in Washington, D.C., he didn't encourage people to go to the Capitol on January 6, and he condemned the violence at the Capitol," Saber said. "The Boards of Directors for Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association have expressed that they fully support Franklin Graham and are more than satisfied with the job he has done and is doing in leading these ministries to bless people in over 100 countries around the world." Isaacs of Samaritan's Purse said that, at the current stage of the pandemic, there continues to be international interest in its COVID field hospitals. Its resources -- though substantial -- can only stretch so far. "We consider each situation and request on a case-by-case basis," Isaacs said. "We don't want to say no, but we can't say yes everywhere either." He said that he expects and hopes infections will continue on a downward trajectory this year, especially with vaccinations. "I hope that we're not needed," Isaacs said. "What we have to offer is just a small thing when you look at the magnitude of the disease," he added. "But if it's a service we can provide, we want to do that." Easton of Caldwell UNC Health Care also said that she hopes COVID cases will continue to decline. To date, about 80 patients have been treated at the field hospital in Lenoir, she said. That included a husband and wife who celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary under its tents, Easton said. Most of the field hospital's patients -- including the couple -- have been successfully discharged.
My Dad passed away at the age of 57 from mesothelioma. This disease is a direct consequence of exposure to asbestos. I know I don’t usually say much about asbestos, but there are some things that need to be stated. Asbestos is still legal in the United States. To me, this is unacceptable. How can we still be allowing this material to be used when it has sickened or killed so many? It seems to me that the majority of people still take asbestos exposure lightly. Honestly, I wasn’t familiar with the material until my father was diagnosed with mesothelioma, so I was one of those people. The key is to educate the general public about its dangers. Since Dad’s diagnosis, I have had people tell me that asbestos is nothing to be afraid of. “It’s nothing! I’ve been around it forever and I’m fine. People just overreact about it!” I cannot form a concrete sentence about how much it pains me to hear these things. It has understandably become something inherently personal to me. Knowing what my family and so many others have gone through, it honestly feels like a slap in the face. Protect yourself! Don’t let your family go through what mine has. Get educated, please. If you think something is asbestos, leave it alone and then ask questions about it. Even though it used to be accepted as a wonderful, safe product, history has proven that to be wildly incorrect. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Take action and help to eradicate mesothelioma forever. Jennifer Gelsick has started a blog about advocating for the mesothelioma community. See more about her efforts to help find a cure for mesothelioma . Know more about Mesothelioma and how you can deal with it.
a defense of some offensive behavior or some failure to keep a promise etc.; "he kept finding excuses to stay"; "every day he had a new alibi for not getting a job"; "his transparent self-justification was unacceptable" In jurisprudence, an excuse or justification is a form of immunity which must be distinguished from an exculpation. In this context, "to excuse" means to grant or obtain an exemption for a group of persons sharing a common characteristic from a potential liability. "To justify" as in justifiable homicide means to "vindicate" or show the justice in the particular conduct. 1. A made-up reason for doing or saying something. Sometimes for not doing or saying something. 2. An alcoholic will make up an excuse for his or her behavior, so that someone else is to blame. The responsibility is "not mine"! 3. A pretext we use to explain our actions, or lack of action. It is common that this reason target someone or something other than us.
Table of Contents This article will outline what Redis database monitoring is and how to set up a Redis database monitoring system with MetricFire. Then we’ll show what the final graphs and dashboards look like when displayed on Grafana. We will be using MetricFire’s hosted Prometheus and Grafana to power the monitoring, and we'll use a simulated Redis DB to generate the data for the Grafana dashboards. What are Redis DB and Redis Clusters? A Redis Database is an in-memory Data Structure Store which organizes data into key-value pairs which can be used as a database, cache, or message broker. Redis DB is open-source, and there are various hosted services offered. A Redis data structure is efficient both in terms of performance and ease of use. Redis DBs are usually used for data that needs to be retrieved quickly, such as a password that is connected to a single username, or for data that is transient and can be deleted shortly afterwards. The simple command-line interface reduces developmental effort and the in-memory component reduces latency and increases throughput. A Redis cluster is an implementation of Redis DB that allows data to be automatically sharded across multiple Redis nodes. Clusters also provide a level of redundancy and availability during partitioning, meaning data can be communicated/transmitted when a node is recovering or failing. Redis Clusters also run on a master-slave model which protects data in the event of a “master” node failure. How does MetricFire monitor Redis? Each Redis cluster has a metrics_exporter component that listens on port 8070, and acts as a Prometheus endpoint from which Prometheus can get metrics. Monitoring Redis metrics with Prometheus causes little to no load to the database. Redis will push the required metrics to the Prometheus endpoint where users can scrape Prometheus for the available Redis metrics, avoiding scraping Redis each time a metric is queried. You can monitor the total number of keys in a Redis cluster, the current number of commands processed, memory usage, and total Redis connections. In addition, you can monitor cluster-wide data, individual node data, or single database data. If you are using hosted Prometheus by MetricFire, it works in exactly the same way. MetricFire scrapes the Redis DB endpoint for metrics information, and displays it automatically in the Grafana dashboard. How do you set up Redis Cluster Monitoring with MetricFire? a. Install Prometheus and Redis in MetricFire UI - Go to Add-Ons menu on the left-hand side of the MetricFire UI. - Find Your Prometheus API Key. - Edit the prometheus.yml file to include remote_write and remote_read sections with the API Key as bearer_token. b. Edit Prometheus Configuration to include Redis Enterprise Job According to docs.redislabs.com, copy the Prometheus configuration from the above step into ./prometheus/prometheus.yml in your current folder. The cluster name can be either the fully-qualified domain name or the IP address. c. Add Data Source to Grafana Dashboard in the MetricFire UI. In the MetricFire UI, go to Dashboards on the left side menu, and click Grafana. As seen below, Go to Data Source menu. Add Prometheus as a Data Source. As seen below, you can see the Prometheus data source settings menu. Change the URL to http://localhost:9090. For Access, select Browser. Then, click Save & Test. c. To view data in Grafana Dashboards, change Data Source to Prometheus Then, change the Data Source to Prometheus to see your data shown in the Grafana Dashboard. Example dashboards of Redis Cluster monitoring with Prometheus Graph 1 - Dashboard Row with four Graphs This is an example of a row within a Grafana Dashboard. This row is made up of four panels. Grafana has the ability to group graphs, text, and tables into relevant categories so you can easily sort through different metrics within one dashboard. Organizing your panels helps with correlation and being able to quickly troubleshoot the issue. This dashboard is showing four metrics pushed from our Redis DB. They are: - Redis Client view - the total number of Redis clients - Key view - the total number of keys in each Redis DB instance - Commands processed - the number of commands processed per group of machines - Memory - total memory usage for each different aggregation machines Graph 2 - Redis on Aggregation Machines This graph shows the total memory usage for different aggregation machines. These machines are responsible for gathering data that is ingested and aggregating the data into more manageable formats. We want to monitor how much memory each resource is using. When a resource is getting close to max memory consumption, performance will start to decrease. A spike in memory usage can act as an identifier for important changes in your application and processes. The graph is ‘stacked’ meaning the total range between lines is what the current metric is reading. This makes it easier to see the different metrics being sent when their values are all similar. This graph also has a floating legend, which helps with easy reading. Graph 3 - Commands Processed This is the zoomed in ‘Commands Processed’ graph from the row above. It shows the different groups of machines running a Redis DB instance and their associated number of commands processed. The ‘Commands Processed’ graph is an important metric to graph because it allows DB administrators to monitor commands passed to Redis DB. This shows us the traffic and potential stress placed on the resource. Graph 4 - Key View This is the zoomed in Key View graph from the dashboard row above. This is showing the total number of keys in each Redis DB instance. Similar to the other graphs, knowing the total number of keys within an instance gives administrators greater insight into each Redis DB. If you are using Redis DB as a distributed caching store, then a graph like this will be useful to ensure each instance is being properly balanced and utilized. If an instance is showing a significant drop in keys then this is an indicator to look into this issue further. Key Metrics for Redis DB There are a lot of metrics that are automatically pushed from Redis DB. Take a look at a few below, and you can find a full list on the Redis website. - Bdb_avg_latency - Average latency of operations on the database in microseconds - Bdb_conns - Number of client connections to database - Bdb_ingress_bytes - Rates if incoming network traffic to DB in bytes/second - Bdb_no_of_keys - Number of keys in database - Node_conns - Number of clients connected to endpoints on nodes - Node_cpu_user - CPU time portion spent by users-pace process - Node_free_memory - Free memory in a node in bytes - Node_up - If a node is part of the cluster and is connected - Redis_up - Shard is up and running
The Cost of Trying to “Cover the Material” A MiddleWeb Blog By the time you read this, maybe we’ll all be feeling a little more relaxed. Mid-school year is always stressful. This year the stress came from constantly feeling like I was falling further and further behind in all of my lesson plans. I was falling behind for all the usual reasons: early release days for weather (tornado and snow), student illnesses, family illness, field trips and a million other things. I became increasingly stressed out trying to figure out how to “cover” all the material before the end of the semester. I don’t know about everyone else, but when I’m trying to figure how to get it all in, I’m prone to developing tunnel vision. This year I became so laser focused on covering all the material that I didn’t think about anything else. I spent a lot of one-on-one time with my calendar furiously marking out some things and rearranging others just to see if I could get it all in. Does anyone else do this? Toward the end of the semester I was feeling pretty good about getting all (or most) of my material in – when I looked out at my classroom and the whole class looked sad. They were paying attention but there was literally no joy in the room. Honestly, I felt the same way. I knew I needed to course-correct, so I went to the desk and got my stamper and walked around the room and stamped every paper where a student was working and said thank you for working. (My students love stamps; I’m not sure why). That got me a few smiles from students. Even better I took a few minutes to talk with them about non-math topics. I can’t remember what we talked about, but I can remember feeling some of the stress leave the room. After they left for the day, I did some reflection. I had mostly caught up from all the interruptions but at what cost? Nobody was leaving my room thinking, “I really enjoyed today’s class.” Typically when I plan a lesson, I try to have a variety of learning experiences for my students: an interesting introduction, student discovery, independent work, partner work, card sorts, technology, even games if applicable. What is my classroom like when I’m trying to “cover” material? It’s a lot of me at the board and my students taking notes, very little interaction, mostly students are just passively listening. That’s not good teaching, and it’s not fair to my students or me. To adjust for missed or shortened classes, I had changed my teaching practices. Well, I’m determined to stop repeating this particular mistake. As a reminder for myself, I made a list of the reasons why “covering” material is a bad idea. “Covering” Material is not Good Teaching - Students can only absorb so much new material. Rushing through to just “cover” it all isn’t effective teaching. - I’m not in control of people’s health, the weather, or most of the things that happen to interrupt my class, and always rushing to catch up is robbing me and my students of a pleasant learning experience. - Teaching to my standards is important, but covering material is not the reason I became a teacher. All that said, it’s also important to realize that classes will be cancelled – there has never been a year when it hasn’t happened – and I need a realistic plan to counter the mid-year panic. So I’ve come up with a few suggestions for myself when the inevitable happens, instead of reverting back to me at the board “covering” material. What to do instead - Reread the standards to make sure I am teaching what I am supposed be to teaching and not adding more additional content than I can cope with. - Be realistic when planning: Interruptions will happen so plan accordingly. - Instead of using class time to review tests, allow students to come to my room during advisement period to review their tests. - Combine standards when possible; sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone without sacrificing learning. - Remember: Learning that sticks – and an enjoyable classroom environment – are my priorities, not ticking off standards in my lesson planner. They say the first step toward recovery is to admit you have a problem. Well I have a problem. And next semester will not be any easier. We will be giving the ACT in March, and we really need our students to do well. So in addition to covering our curriculum, we will be preparing our students for the ACT. I am really going to need to reread this column before school starts back in January! And probably in February and in March! Above all, I am going to have to remind myself that good teaching practices and joy in the classroom should always come first.
Recently Sarah Cooper did two lessons with her eighth grade history and civics students that afterward made her stand back and ask: Why did that work out so well? Here she analyzes the women’s suffrage lessons to uncover the key elements of success for future reflection. Tagged: class discussion Student-generated questions put kids in the driver’s seat, advancing learning and engagement, writes expert Jackie Walsh. To encourage students to ask more questions, teachers need to grow a classroom culture where questioning is valued. Walsh shares five strategies that can help. Too often classroom questioning becomes pedagogical ping-pong, resulting in predictable, back-and-forth exchanges between teachers and students. Use these questioning strategies and tools shared by teacher educator and former Kansas TOY Curtis Chandler to up your game. Giving students tools to slice into a text and formulate specific thoughts backed with evidence has transformed NBCT Marilyn Pryle’s classroom discussions. “Instead of tentative guesses from a few, we now have detailed conversations that draw the whole class in.” During classroom discussion, paired Think Times provide a break in the action that helps teachers use student responses to shape effective feedback to learners, says expert Jackie Walsh – provided we “explicitly instruct our students in the what, why, and how of these time-outs.” One area of Matt Smith’s teaching “that has improved tremendously since my novice days” is facilitating productive discussions. Students need to engage in active talk to process complex ideas. This won’t happen until teachers master “wait time” and stop affirming too much. Noting that high quality classroom discussion fosters content learning and critical thinking, social studies teacher Michael Yell reports that Challenging Learning through Dialogue is a powerful resource to help make middle grades discussion more thoughtful, engaging, and real.
Explains what stress is, what might cause it and how it can affect you. Includes information about ways you can help yourself and how to get support. Online mental health community (formerly called Big White Wall). Free in some areas through your GP, employer or university. Information and guidance on health and safety law in the workplace. Information about stress, including details of practitioners who may be able to help you. Information about health problems and treatments, including details of local NHS services in England. 116 123 (freephone) Chris, Freepost RSRB-KKBY-CYJK PO Box 90 90 Stirling FK8 2SA Samaritans are open 24/7 for anyone who needs to talk. You can visit some Samaritans branches in person. Samaritans also have a Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123 (7pm–11pm every day). Information about stress, including causes, treatments and coping techniques. This information was published in November 2017. This page is currently under review. All content was accurate when published. References are available on request. If you would like to reproduce any of this information, see our page on permissions and licensing.
Unlock your personality in this lockdown- Finding the right personality test online Over the last few weeks in lockdown, you must have worked really hard and cleared all the “pending” tasks and by now your daily “Things to do” list must be getting shorter by day. A friend confessed recently, “I am running out of things to clean.” Although you may be running out of things to do, the stubborn lockdown is showing no sign of running away yet. So here you are sitting in isolation, socially distancing yourself from friends and folks, left on your own with your own self. How you are reacting to the present predicament could have some deeper connections to your personality traits. Whether you are relaxed or worried, whether you are creating or complaining, all this could not just be a result of the pandemic but it could have a lot to do with your personality as well. To understand personality and personality traits, many psychologists and researchers over the years have promulgated many theories. One such widely popular personality theory is called the Big Five Personality Trait theory – you can read more about it here BIG 5 PERSONALITY TRAITS. As a result of such personality trait theories, many tests have surfaced over the years. You can find a range of these online, some free and some not, and test yourself to unlock your personality. However, you must be wary of the test that you want to pick. How to choose the right personality test for yourself? - First and foremost, it is important to find out the theory behind the available test. Most personality tests are based on the Big Five theory mentioned above. - Next is to understand why you want to take a personality test. Is it because you want to be better at your relationship? Do you want a career that you can flourish in? Once your motive is clear, it will be easier for you to narrow down the right test for yourself. - Finally, you must select the test that has got validation. Every test available online may not have the Reliability and Validity prescribed for a psychometric test. Therefore, before you take any test online, check it for validity. 16PF – Sixteen Personality Factors With multitudes of personality tests available online, the one that stands out as it checks all the boxes is the 16pf. Raymond Cattel developed this test in the 1940s after conducting extensive research for decades. As the name suggests, this test measures sixteen traits that form your personality. There are 185 questions and it will take you about half-an hour to finish the test. It measures personality on two extremes and so the left extremes and right extremes are the traits of an individual, that are dominant, intense and come frequently. You can use the scores from the test to understand your personality better. This is one test that employers use to screen prospective employees, career guidance counselors use it to recommend vocations for students and even psychologists and other mental health professionals use it to formulate treatment options. So take out some time to find more about your personality and what drives your behavior. By unlocking your personality, you will be able to understand yourself better, know yourself better, and become a better version of yourself.
As some forecasts predict that unemployment could reach 15% as a result of measures taken to contain the Covid -19 virus, now is the time to make a national investment in vocational training and skills to support jobseekers. That’s the advice which has bee n given to the Prime Minister by the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent providers in the higher education, vocational education, training and skills sectors. “Few things can be more devastating at a personal level than unemployment. As a nation, we need to send a clear and unambiguous sign to jobseekers that we believe in them and are willing to invest in their future. It’s time that the Australian Government step -up an d make a major investment in providing them with the education and skills that will get them back into work,” said Mr Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive. ITECA has put to the Prime Minister a bold plan and immediate and practical solution s that support jobseekers and also focuss es on broader economic benefits for the longer term. This is to invest in training in occupations that currently appear on the skills needs list compiled by each state / territory. Students would be offered subsidised t raining via a direct Australian Government voucher which a jobseeker can ‘redeem’ at any Registered Training Organisation (RTO) in an accredited course to receive a full qualification (e.g. Certificate II. Certificate III, Certificate IV and Diploma) in oc cupations that are directly aligned with local needs. “ITECA is recommending that the Australian Government act with some haste to develop and implement a range of measures to support jobseekers through job -relevant vocational education and skills. This n eeds to be targeted and also directed towards supporting the long -term economic prosperity of Australia,” Mr Williams said. The independent vocational education and training sector is positioned to take the lead role in this, given that it supports around 8 0% of the 4.1 million students in vocational education and training. An investment in the training and reskilling of jobseekers will also act to preserve the capacity of RTO s to support the nation during the economic recovery phase. A recent analysis by ITECA has identified that three in four independent vocational education and training providers anticipate a reduction in their enrolments due to the Covid -19 outbreak. “Recent Australian Government initiatives such as the JobKeeper payment and suspension of certain fees and charges levied by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) will help the sector ; however, the reality is that independent RTOs are struggling to assist students, support their employees and keep their doors open. It’s time th at the Australian Government step -up and back the sector,” Mr Williams said. Importantly, National Centre for Vocational Education Research ( NCVER ) data continues to show that independent RTOs enjoy superior completion rates, post -study employment rates and employer satisfaction than taxpayer subsidised publ ic TAFE colleges. “The NCVER data highlights the importance of making an investment in training and reskilling that will not only benefit jobseekers, but also ensure the sustainability of the independent vocational education and training system,” Mr Willi ams concluded.
Cooktops—those countertop wonders on which we cook a variety of foods are a basic necessity for every home. And what you ultimately decide to cook on may be just as crucial as what you decide to cook your food with. If you are in the market for a new stove or cooktop, you may already know that there are a variety of units from which to choose today. Because of the investment you will be making in one of these appliances, it is ultra-important that you first know and understand all the facts before making a final purchasing decision. In the following article we will cover some of those facts as they apply to two different types of cook tops: induction and gas. Not only will we explain in detail, how both of these cooktops work, we will also list the pros and cons associated with each product type to assist you in making the most educated and informed purchasing decision. Conduction vs. Induction Cooking Before we speak specifically about induction and gas cooktops, let’s look at the difference between conduction and induction cooking. First let us say that whether using the conduction or induction method of cooking, the final result is usually the same; the food becomes cooked to satisfaction and ready to eat. However, the method for getting that food ready to serve is quite different. In “conduction” cooking, of which most of us are familiar, the heating element on the stove sends heat upward through the cookware (pot or pan) to the food. Examples of conduction cooking apparatus are electric and gas ranges or stoves. In both of these, it is the heating element on the stove itself that cooks the food—the burner on an electric stove or the flame on a gas stove. In “induction” cooking, the cookware itself is heated up through magnetic induction, and it is the heat from that cookware (pot or pan) that actually cooks the food. You will learn more about induction cooking in our next section: “What Are Induction Cooktops?” What Are Induction Cooktops? Induction cooktops bear a strong resemblance to the flat, glass-covered electric cooktops and ranges. However, that resemblance is where the similarities end. Induction cooktops work by heating up your cookware through a process known as “magnetic induction.” In other words, instead of the actual stove or cooktop heating the food you cook, it is actually the cookware in which the food is contained that does all the heating and cooking in the induction process. Truth be told, when your induction cooktop is turned on, you can actually place your hand over (or right on top of) the plate or burner and you will feel no heat whatsoever, nor will your hand get burned. Be careful with this, however, and do not try this if there is a piece of induction cookware on that burner. That’s because the induction cooktop heats the pot or pan through magnetic induction, and that pot or pan can get very hot and will actually transfer its heat back to the glass burner through heat “conduction”—the opposite of heat induction. On an induction cooktop, which transfers heat to the cookware magnetically, it is much easier to accurately control the temperature of the pot or pan, and most things actually cook more rapidly via this type of heat transfer. One of the most important things to remember with regard to induction cooktops is that you will NOT be able to use just any pot or pan you wish; you will actually need to use cookware that is designed specifically for induction cooking. So what makes a pot or pan suitable for induction cooking? You will have to ensure that the pot or pan you are using has iron or steel in the base and is magnetic. Most stainless steel and cast iron cookware will work great on induction cooktops, but some of your older ceramic, glass or non-stick cookware may not work. The good news is many manufacturers are now outfitting their non-stick and ceramic cookware for induction cooking by adding a layer of steel or other magnetic metals to the base of the pots and pans. What Are Gas Cooktops? Gas cooktops are a bit easier to explain because most of us have been cooking on gas ranges and stove tops for decades. When you cook on a gas cooktop or range, you are actually cooking with a controlled flame. How do you control the size of the flame? By increasing or decreasing the flow of gas using the handle that controls that specific burner. More gas equals a higher flame, and less gas equals a lower flame. Moreover, a higher flame means hotter and faster cooking, while a lower flame means slower cooking with a lower flame. With a gas cooktop, you control the flow of gas to the flame and thus directly control the temperature of what you are cooking. In gas cooking, the pot or pan will also heat up as the result of the flame, but instead of the food being cooked by the cookware, it is actually being cooked by the fire below the cookware. For decades now, gas has been the preferred method of stove-top cooking, and most homes have either a gas or electric powered range. Professional chefs, however, would not be caught dead using the latter; they all use gas cooktops and almost unanimously tout the benefits of this cooking method with regard to temperature control and the speed at which you can make adjustments—going from high to low to high again with just a quick turn of a knob. Gas cooktops afford cooks a greater degree of flexibility and versatility, largely because the heat is not set at a certain level like you will find on electric or induction cooktops. Because of this, chefs are able to move pots and pans around freely without worrying about losing any heat, which lends itself to certain tricks and unique cooking methods within the kitchen. Advantages and Disadvantages of Induction Cooktops and Gas Cooktops Now that you understand the basic manner in which both induction and gas cooking works, let us now highlight the pros and cons of each of these appliances. In doing this, we hope to answer many of the questions you may have, which will ultimately help you select the cooking method that best suits your current needs, preferences and cooking style. Induction Cooktops: Pros and Cons - Fast. Induction cooktops work faster than most gas stoves, and are able to bring 6 quarts of water to a boil about 2 minutes faster. - Energy efficient. Induction cooktops use less energy than their gas counterparts. - Child friendly. When an induction cooktop is turned on, the burner cannot cause any burns when accidentally touched (unless a hot pot is transferring heat back to the burner). - Keeps kitchens cooler. Because induction cooktops do not create any heat themselves, they are much cooler to run. - Easy to clean. The flat, glass surface on induction cooktops make them much easier to wipe clean. - Pre-set temperatures. Many induction cooktops have pre-set temperatures that allow you to more accurately cook food at the recommended temperature. - Premium priced. Most induction cooktops are much more premium priced than gas cooktops, making them not as attractive to the budget-conscious consumer. - May have to buy new cookware. If you do not already possess the proper cookware for induction cooktops—cookware with steel or iron in the base that is magnetic—you may have to spend hundreds of dollars for new cookware. - Glass surfaces can crack. Induction cooktops are almost always covered by glass, which can crack or break should a pot or pan fall on it. - Touch controls take some getting used to. If you have never used induction cooktops previously, the pre-set temps and touch controls can be a little confusing. - Need constant contact. Unlike with gas stoves, the pot or pan must remain in constant contact with the burner to heat the food. Gas Cooktops: Pros and Cons - Instant heat source. When a gas cooktop is turned on, the flame represents an instant heat source with no waiting required. - Versatile. Gas cooktops allow you to move pots and pans around the stove freely to achieve the best results. - Can change temps rapidly. With gas cooktops, going from low to high heat—and even back again—can be accomplished with no waiting. - Visual temperatures. The flame on the gas cooktop allows chefs to get an instant visual clue as to the heat of the burner. - Can use all your current cookware. With a gas cooktop you will NOT have to replace any of your tried and true cookware. - Easy to Use. Most have used gas cooktops for generations, and their manual knobs make them very familiar and easy to use. - Can be expensive to install. If you do not have a gas supply line already installed in your kitchen, a gas cooktop can set you back in terms of installation. - Can be dangerous. Hands can get burned; clothes and towels can catch fire, etc. if you are not careful with the flames from the gas cooktop. - Not child friendly. For all the reasons mentioned above, gas cooktops may not be safe to use around small children. - Can be hard to clean. The sunken burners and grates on a gas cooktop can be very difficult to clean. As you can see, there are many benefits and drawbacks to owning/using both an induction and gas cooktop. Induction cooktops are safe, efficient and easy to clean. They keep your kitchen cooler and are much more child friendly. However, they may be difficult to understand and use, very costly and you may have to buy all-new cookware. Gas cooktops are versatile, visual and easy to use, allowing you much more flexibility in the kitchen. They can also be expensive to install, hard to clean and dangerous in some situations. Obviously, no product is ever perfect across the board, but with these pros and cons in mind, we hope you can now make an educated decision that best suits all of your needs and the needs of your family. - While it is very rare there are occasionally gas explosions from leaks etc so there is a safety factor that needs to be taken into account. - The naked flame makes them not very child friendly and so children in the kitchen have to be closely supervised. - The heating method is not as efficient as induction and it is not uncommon for kitchen to get hot when you are cooking because of this heat escape. - Are not so easy to keep clean, there are little bits that need to come off and be cleaned so there is some level of maintenance. - Because of the safety features you will need to ensure a reasonable amount of maintenance to ensure good and safe performance.
Willibrord was the son of the hermit St. Wilgis, who sent him to the Benedictine monastery of Ripon, England, under Abbot St. Wilfrid of York. After Wilfrid was deposed and exiled in 677/678, Willibrord also went into exile, spending 12 years in Ireland, where he became a disciple of St. Egbert. He was ordained a priest in 688. In 690 Egbert sent Willibrord with 11 companions to undertake the Christianization of the Frisians (the inhabitants of present day Netherlands and Northwestern Germany), whose districts had recently been conquered (689) by Pippin II, ruler of the Franks. Willibrord began the policy of mutual cooperation between the English missions and the Carolingian dynasty of France. He went to Rome in 690 for a commission from Pope St. Sergius I and was later sent again by Pippin for his consecration (Nov. 21, 695) as archbishop of the Frisians. His seat was established at Utrecht, Netherlands. On that occasion, Sergius renamed him Clement. Willibrord’s unusual respect for Roman authority had established a precedent that greatly increased papal influence in the affairs of the Frankish church. In 698, Willibrord established his second missionary base, the important monastery of Echternach in Luxembourg. Having extended his apostolate into Friesland, he attempted to evangelize Denmark, where he instructed and baptized 30 boys; returning with them, he made dramatic stops on the Frisian islands of Helgoland and Walcheren. In 714 he baptized Pippin III the Short, heir to the Merovingian kingdom. Upon the death of Pippin II, the pagan Frisian king Radbod launched a highly destructive campaign against the Christians and banished Willibrord. After Radbod’s death in 719, Willibrord, with the aid of the Frankish king Charles Martel, regained his apostolate. From 719 to 722 he was assisted in his missionary work by the man who carried on his work after 739, Wynfrith (St. Boniface), apostle of Germany. While training a native clergy, he established in the Frankish kingdoms an English cultural influence that was to dominate Charlemagne’s court through the extensive labors of later missionaries. He began in the West the appointment of chōrepiscopoi (“country bishops”), or suffragan bishops (i.e., bishops of sees under an archbishop, or metropolitan), and he introduced into the Franks’ dominions the practice of dating by the Christian Era. Willibrord was buried in the abbey church of Echternach. The “Calendar of St. Willibrord” (a calendar of saints with some lines attributed to Willibrord) was printed in facsimile in 1918. Adapted by A.J. Valentini
It’s no secret that preventive maintenance practices can drastically improve the overall efficiency and reliability of a refinery or any other industrial operation. However, while some types of repairs can be made while the equipment is operating, many times a major overhaul of the plant, or a turnaround (TAR), is necessary in order to keep production moving. Occurring every four to six years, turnarounds are an essential part of continuous operations in the refining industry. Companies invest thousands of dollars in resources to support these maintenance activities, making it vital for all parties to pay close attention to each stage of the program. However, choosing the right partner to assist in this process can often become a challenge within itself. Stemming from our experience in the TAR space, we’ve outlined several key differentiators that have put MPW Industrial Services ahead of its competition on previous turnaround projects. Effective planning is perhaps the single most important piece of maintaining an efficient, profitable refining operation. It’s what keeps a refinery running smoothly, and helps avoid unnecessary delays in production. Refineries are in continuous operation, which means any maintenance must be carefully structured to ensure day-to-day plant activity is not interrupted, or is only interrupted for a planned window of time. Look for a partner that gets involved in every phase, including the pre-turnaround phase. Many industrial cleaning contractors do not insert themselves into the early planning stages of a TAR, as we do at MPW and we find this to be a major oversight for such projects. When every partner is involved from the beginning, they have a better understanding of the company’s goals, and can align their solutions accordingly. For instance, MPW’s project managers and planning teams start by attending meetings with plant personnel before a turnaround event begins. This allows MPW to predict the customer’s needs through innovative research and planning, and then develop the necessary solutions. Our team is also involved in the development of job cards to ensure each component of the TAR has the required manpower, equipment and time allotted to get the job done. MPW also utilizes a proprietary tracking system to monitor every aspect of a project from start to finish. Available engineering resources Turnarounds typically utilize various third-party contracting companies, primarily for their expertise in a specific area. At MPW, our expertise is cultivated by our brand-new, state-of-the-art engineering and technology center, located at our Hebron, Ohio headquarters. Spanning 86,000 square feet, the facility was designed to house MPW’s growing engineering, fabrication and IT teams. As part of this new center, MPW designs, maintains and provides custom solutions for the most vexing demands from any North American industry – especially in the refining and petrochemical markets. Chemical, electrical, mechanical, civil and industrial engineers work together for system design and commissioning. The facility’s fabrication shop takes up nearly half of the facility at 40,000 square feet, making it the largest of its kind in North America. Fabricators and trained assembly technicians manufacture and assemble all mobile and automated equipment. The shop’s cutting-edge features make it simple to design easy-to-disassemble modular tools, while still maintaining standard safety features. To accommodate the steady and/or emergent activity at this high-tech assembly space, the shop has a shipping and receiving dock, a grand door for outside inventory and 13 trailer docks. Technicians staff this facility 24 hours per day, continually assembling and overhauling industrial equipment. Innovation and advanced automation Automation is constantly changing the way industrial companies operate. Greater precision, reduced safety concerns and faster results are helping plant operators cut costs and improve productivity—especially during a refinery turnaround. Selecting MPW as a partner with our vast resources and automation capabilities will help you accomplish nearly any task using less manpower, while improving efficiencies. At MPW, we provide the experience, customization options and expert engineering to allow for a safe and efficient TAR process. With a special focus on automated industrial cleaning solutions, our team works 24/7 to support every plant’s unique needs. Our blast pad service specializes in the latest automated technology for exchanger ID and OD cleaning applications in the refining and petrochemical markets. Equipment such as the cab-operated multi-lance machine and dual-stage, shell-side machine allows MPW to get customers’ equipment back to optimal running conditions in a fraction of the time. All MPW equipment is remotely operated, keeping employees out of harm’s way and ensuring a safer work place with reduced risks to the company. Ultimately, turnarounds are a necessary evil of the refining business. Although they can present a major disruption to operations, they also play a crucial role in sustaining the overall health of a plant. A partner like MPW will assist in the TAR process and is fully invested in all projects, with the appropriate time, skills and resources to get the job done right. With more than 45 years of experience in the industrial space, MPW has the talent and technological expertise needed to support our customers’ most challenging application requirements. For more information on our industry-leading experience on turnaround projects, click here.
Sergei Dobrianski’s final message for students was, “Study hard at math and physics.” He added, “Be sure to learn at least basic computer programming. Everything needs to be programmed plus knowing the basics will help you on the business side of things.” He was spending his time outlining one of the most ambitious projects to have had legs in Burnaby! He knows what is necessary. He is the CEO of Dobri Solutions, a company that has spent 7 years developing a very small-size craft to send to the moon and back, with onboard communications, and then marketing the spin-off science. All of the work has involved math and physics calculations and computer software. He and his team, Plan B, were in a competition called, “The Google Lunar X Prize”. Numerous international teams passed through various levels and those who found a sponsor for launching a spacecraft by December 2016, passed into the final phase. 5 teams made the cut. Plan B did not. Just one more year of development may have made the difference. The actual prize winner will be announced at the end of 2017. Sergei’s father entered the contest not long before the deadline in 2010. It had been his dream to work on a project involving the moon. He convinced both of his sons to join in the work, plus 50 others over the last few years. Even Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut, has checked in with the team. Entering the Google Lunar X prize competition, Sergei explained, was not about winning. Though $30 million would be a fine accomplishment, the ultimate prize. You see, space technology relies on work that was done in the 50’s and 60’s though we do have much more powerful computer capabilities. He noted that the iPhones we carry around in the palms of our hands are more capable then the technology that helped to achieve the original Apollo Mission to the moon. The $30 million offering was Google’s way of getting private companies to push forward in an area that had not taken risks for years. Apparently, this is similar to how plane travel began. A prize was offered which tugged at competitive human nature, and we have all benefitted from the result – flying – something no one thought was possible at the time. Adobri Solutions’ plan is to create a 3D printer that works on the moon’s surface. At that time, soil from the surface with it’s basic available elements like titanium, would be utilized to create tools and products, things needed for other work on the moon by spacecraft such as the one being developed by Sergei and family. The company will forge forward on a solid footing with a firm goal in mind, with private funding as it comes in. Canada does not have a space industry, and indirectly as a result, it does not have investors willing to back the companies trying to get an industry started. Without one, the other can’t exist. It’s a repetitive loop. Dobri Solutions hopes that the inroads they are making will enable the future to offer space careers to today’s students, even with the difficult path they have travelled to get media and investor attention. Burnaby Central Secondary students had many questions for the guest speaker. None seemed to want to leave the room at the end of this third and last session of the Science Trailblazers Speaker Series. Maybe it was kind of exhilarating to be in the same room as a real person who has built the object that might touch the moon. Maybe it’s not that far-fetched to think that a Burnaby Central student might just do the same thing. Why not?
In addition to writing I take photographs. I am good at both. Landscapes are aggravating—I haven’t composed a satisfying one yet—and commas and I have a difficult relationship, but I have studied the forms of both arts and have practiced. Family, friends, or acquaintances who know my dedication to these arts will often ask if I will look at their pictures or stories and tell them what I think. The first stage of my answer is always the same, “Do you want me to tell you how great they are, or do you want an actual critique?” Critiquing is a rare and unappreciated skill, and it is a skill. Giving a critique is not just saying you like something or don’t like something. It is a skill that must be learned and that requires knowledge of the forms of whatever is being critiqued, be it prose, poetry, photography, or surgery. Receiving a critique is also a skill that must be learned. I studied architecture in graduate school. We had studio crits every week. As a graduate school, my class was comprised entirely of adults. Even the youngest and most naive amongst us had full undergraduate degrees under their belts. Every week included people crying in the hallway. It wasn’t that we were particularly horrid to each other, although some professors did use critiques more to assert their power over cowering students that to teach. It takes effort to learn and internalize that it is an individual work being critiqued, not your worth as an individual. We had some core rules for critiques that I have encountered again and again in worthwhile critique groups. - The creator of the work may introduce the work, but is not required to. - The creator of the work will answer direct questions, but is not allowed to defend the work. Listen. - Only the work presented may be critiqued. Not other works. Not any aspect of the creator as a person. - If you say something negative, you must say something positive, and vice versa. The last is not to spare the feelings of the creator. Notice it works both ways. If you say something positive, you must also say something negative. The purpose is to get the critic to examine the work. There is always something good in every work. There is always something not so good in every work. The common phrase “I am my own worst critic,” captures the natural and proper state of things. As creator of a work, you have examined that work more closely than any critic will. Critics will spot things you missed, but you still have unparalleled detailed knowledge of the work. You know the things that don’t work, and the things that don’t work as well as they could. Those categories usually cover everything. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be satisfied with a work. There is a monumental difference between thinking a work is the best you can do at the moment, or good enough, and thinking it is beyond criticism. A very populous culture on the internet puts their works up for critique and demand that people say only nice things. Idiots and fools engaged in a complete waste of time. Nothing you nor I will ever create will be perfect. Learn to separate your self worth from your work, grow a thick skin, take your lumps, and learn your craft. That said, most of the negative comments these delicate flowers are trying to avoid are equally useless. Another annoying culture teems on the internet. I don’t know if the internet spawned it, aggravated it, or merely highlighted it. A very large number of people on the internet, and in the meat world, think the statements “It is not good, therefore I don’t like it.” and “I don’t like it, therefore it is not good.” are equivalent. They are not. I don’t care if you didn’t like it. I don’t know who you are, other than you’re a nobody, a nothing, an insignificant speck of flotsam in the gyre of humanity. Same as me. Same as everyone. Some blogs and other sites purport to review movies or books or whatnots, but are nothing more than an individual or group saying they didn’t like this therefore it isn’t good or they did like this therefore it is good. Tell me why a work is good or not good or you tell me nothing. In the story arts, tell me about plot, setting, characterization. In the performance arts tell me about performance. In the visual arts tell me about composition, colour, light, balance, discord. Tell me how a work makes you feel, but tell me why the work makes you feel that. Roger Ebert, to pick a name most people will recognize, is a good critic. In part, I have seen so many films I have read his reviews of that I have a good idea of our comparative tastes. That aside, he still writes a darn good review. He gives enough information, without giving away too much, that I can decide if I am likely to enjoy a film or not whatever his final judgement. He and other entertainment critics are in a special position in needing to convey the tone of the plot without giving away the plot, but he manages. I don’t have to rely on his thumbs up or thumbs down. His critiques provide enough information for me to form my own opinion whether a film is likely worth the gamble of admission. The vast majority of user reviews on websites are useless. Two hundred words on how The Latest Bestseller is the best book you have ever read in your life ever, how it cured your cat and spiced up your love life, give me no useful information at all—except for a worrisome glimpse into your relationship with your pets. Star ratings are, if possible, even less useful. The anonymous clicking of buttons provides no clues for weeding out the merely inane from the insane. Sites which provide a relative breakdown of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 star ratings are a huge step up. I’ll discuss why when I tackle statistics. Giving and receiving critiques are both skills that most people have not mastered or even attempted. If you want to improve your craft or if you put your work out for public acclaim, you must learn to take a critique. To review the fundamental points for receiving a critique: - It is not about you. - Don’t defend. You got a bad critique? Move on. Don’t pick fights. Do ask yourself if the critique is bad because you don’t agree with it or bad because it doesn’t provide any useful insight. If the critic missed the key point of your work that explains everything, did he miss it because he’s a drooling idiot and his mother dresses him funny, or did he miss it because you were not clear? When giving a critique: - Critique the work, not the creator. - Be clear and precise in your statements. - Reference the forms of the work. - Find the positive and the negative. Both are present in every work. Go out. Have fun. Help each other. And if you want me to look at your pictures or your stories, ask yourself—do you want me to tell you how great they are, or do you want an actual critique?
March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day and the top dental surgeons advices to eat, drink, be merry and take care of your teeth! You can be sure to see green, almost everywhere you look on St. Patrick’s Day. Most American’s tend to celebrate this Irish holiday by boozing it up and dyeing the alcohol green. Although green beer is a fun idea, but it can lead to tooth decay. The dye used to turn the beer into a glass full of green goodness during St. Patrick’s day will stain the teeth and cause dry mouth. The dye is not the complete problem since alcohol is full of sugars and starches they also dry your mouth, which in turn will decrease the amount of saliva that are required to combat the cavities in your teeth. In this post, I am listing out a few tips that will help you maintain your oral health with beautiful, healthy smile on St. Patrick’s Day: - Everything in Moderation: Although its expected that millions of us will enjoy a couple of pints at their nearest pub or a few beers at home to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but its is good to remember what alcohol could do to your oral health. Too much drinking can contribute to tooth decay and periodontal disease. You should enjoy yourself, but not in excess! Remember to hydrate yourself by drinking plenty of water in between alcohol consumption. If you don’t stay hydrated then you are more susceptible to cavities, thrush and oral yeast infections. - Try to Stay Away from the Green Stuff: Try staying away from the green stuff or else you may end up like one of the many people waking up with green teeth! Though this will be temporary, it can keep you from showing your teeth the next day. If this happens, brush your teeth with a whitening toothpaste. If your teeth remain green for a long period of time, contact your dentist. If you are sober enough, you should brush your teeth before going to bed. But try to refrain from doing this directly after drinking since the acid in ale, beer and other alcoholic beverages could damage your tooth enamel. Brush and floss your teeth after 30 minutes to an hour of drinking the beer. Just a few minutes of preventive steps will save your smile and your teeth will thank you! - Use a Good Mouthwash: After all the corned beef, cabbage combination, nobody will desire to share a kiss, no matter how much you have had to drink. Use a good mouthwash for that “kiss me, I’m Irish” moment. Even though St. Patrick’s Day is a sfun-filled with endless flowing rivers of blissful beer, try to keep things in moderation since tooth decay and periodontal disease are serious oral problems and excess drinking can lead to both. You can consult the top dental surgeons, if you have any dental concerns about your overall oral health on St. Patrick’s day. Meanwhile, you can also read:
Reflux Diet or Acid Reflux Diet or GERD Diet How you eat is almost as important as what you eat, instead of eating lot of food (Big Portion) at one time eat small quantities after an interval of two hours. Keep away from foods such as citrus, tomato and coffee that straightly irritate the mucosa. Other irritants that should be avoided in an Acid Reflux or GERD Diet include onion, chocolate, peppermint and any food with high fat content that affect pressure in the stomach. Following tips can be helpful:- - Evade eating foods at bed time - Stay away from chewing gum - Stop Smoking - Keep away from tight clothing - Eat small frequent meals - Elevate head when sleeping - If overweight, reducing weight can be helpful - Do not sleep straight, sleep on your left side Foods to be avoided in Acid Reflux Disease or GERD Following Foods shall preferably be avoided in Acid Reflux Disease:- - Spicy foods - Tomatoes and tomato-based foods, including pizza - Citrus fruit - Fried foods - Coffee (including decaf) - Alcohol, particularly wine - Soda. Soda and other carbonated beverages are some of the main causes of acid reflux. The bubbles of carbonation expand inside the stomach, and the increased pressure contributes to reflux. Sodas with caffeine and those that are acidic (almost all) are even worse. - Citrus fruit juices Research has shown that making dietary changes had very little effect on the occurrence of acid reflux. More important forgetting relief is lifestyle changes like elevating the head of a bed or losing weight. Acid Reflux Foods or Acid Reflux Diet or GERD Diet - Low Fat Dairy Products. Be careful with dairy products, use low fat dairy products only. - Oatmeal. Oatmeal is best breakfast and a snack because the oatmeal absorbs the acidity of the raisins - Salads. Salad is a primary meal for acid reflux patients, tomatoes, onions, cheese and high fat dressings should be avoided. - Include lots of fiber in your Diet. Fiber improves digestion; stuff up diet with fiber-packed fruits, veggies, nuts, and whole grains. Aspire to eat one whole fruit, different non-starchy veggies and fibers like beans, grains, and nuts. - Make friendship with Ginger and Fennel. Research suggests Ginger speed up the passage of food from the stomach into the small intestine. Fresh, dried, candied, or pickled varieties are all good bets. Fennel, a high-fiber vegetable that can be eaten raw or cooked, is thought to relieve bloating. - Avoid Fried Meals. As a replacement for of frying meals, make an effort to roasting, grilling, or poaching. Make use of extra-virgin olive oil as a replacement for of butter or margarine. - Bananas. With a pH 5.6 makes a great snack and usually great for people with acid reflux. Some people may find their condition worsen with Bananas. - Melon, honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon. With a pH 6.1, these are good for acid reflux. - Chicken. Chicken barbecued, steamed, sauteed but not fried is good for Acid Reflux Patients. - Sea Food. Sea Food including Fish barbecued, steamed, sauteed, baked or grilled but not fried is good for Acid Reflux Patients. - Rice. Rice without fats is considered good for Acid Reflux - Apple cider vinegar in particular is touted by many people as an effective cure for acid reflux. If using ACV, it is best to mix one to two tablespoons with an eight-ounce glass of water and drink it all at once. - Raw Foods and Vegetables. The bulk of uncooked vegetables and fruits are alkaline and easy to digest. Cooking these foods lowers their alkalinity, making them somewhat more acidic. Raw fruits and vegetables hold lots of enzymes to support digestion. - Acid Reflux Treatment In Pregnancy Makes A Difference (holistichealthliving.wordpress.com) - New advancements in acid reflux disease (wfaa.com)
In many ways, we seem to be living in a golden age for bicycling in Los Angeles. Since the city’s visionary 2010 Bicycle Plan was adopted, dozens of miles of streets have received new, bicycle-friendly treatments. Bicycling culture across the city has blossomed in a similar way. Huge increases in ridership at bicycling events have been accompanied by considerable growth in the number of people commuting by bicycle. Strong support from city officials and the LAPD have helped make these notable gains possible. Another factor contributing to bicycling’s substantial and growing momentum is the increasing awareness of its benefits to our health and the health of our communities. Recent studies suggest that regular exercise is not only good for our cardiovascular health, but that it can also relieve stress and help us be happier. Fortunately for all of us with busy schedules, riding a bike to and from work, and/or running errands by bike on and around campus, can build workouts seamlessly into our daily routines. Even in a city as committed as Los Angeles is to encouraging bicycling, UCLA continues to lead the way with its ongoing dedication to becoming as bike friendly as it can be. One of many examples of these efforts is the UCLA Bike Shop – an on-campus resource for the UCLA Community (students, faculty, and staff) made possible by a partnership between UCLA Cultural and Recreational Affairs and UCLA Events and Transportation. Our mission at the UCLA Bike Shop is mainly to support and encourage bicycling for transportation to, from, and on campus. To help UCLA’s bicycle commuters understand how to ride safely and responsibly on city streets, we have started offering Traffic-Skills Classes free of charge. The focus of these classes is on teaching people how to ride their bikes as they would drive a car. This approach is based on the League of American Bicyclists’ core ideal that bicyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. Last May, we offered an all-day version of this class that included on-the-bike drills aimed at helping riders become more confident on their bikes. We also incorporated a group ride into the class to enable participants to practice on the streets what they learned in the classroom. Acquiring the skills to fix one’s bike, and thereby reducing the likelihood of being stranded by mishaps like flat tires, is hugely empowering. Therefore, the UCLA Bike Shop has an extensive schedule of bike-repair classes offered free of charge to the UCLA Community. During most of each quarter, UCLA students, faculty, and staff are also welcome to use our workshop and tools to fix their own bikes free of charge. Upon request and as our work schedule permits, we gladly provide repair guidance ranging from the occasional tip to detailed instruction. Additionally, we perform fee-for-service repairs and offer parts, lights, locks, and helmets for sale to the UCLA Community. Thanks to generous funding from ASUCLA’s The Green Initiative Fund and the GSA’s Sustainable Resource Center, quarterly rentals from our Bruin-Bike Library are available to UCLA students. Also, members of the UCLA Community can rent bikes from us on a daily, weekend, or weekly basis. All of our bike rentals come with a helmet, front and rear lights, and a U-lock with a cable; as of recently, our daily, weekend, and weekly rentals even include optional panniers. UCLA Cultural and Recreational Affairs
For history students, the dissertation or final year project should be the crowning glory of their undergraduate studies. However, for many, it becomes more of a crushing weight they simultaneously can’t ignore but can’t seem to progress with. This is the time when it feels like the wheels are coming off the whole thing. This post will focus on some practical steps you can take to make sure those wheels stay on and you’re able to steer it all safely home. It’s that time of year again. Seminars are mainly over, ‘silence’ signs are appearing all over campus and there’s not a seat to be had in the library for love nor money. It can only be the exam period. Students seem to see exams as a hurdle, a challenge, a horrible pain-filled Herculean labour that exist solely to cause the most amount of stress before the joy-filled days of post-exam frolics. I’m not about to suggest that anyone should really enjoy exams (although I suspect some people do get off on the drama of it all – flouncing round the library with water bottles & coloured pens, distracting everyone by talking about how little revision they’re doing and how they’ll definitely fail before doing annoyingly well). But I do think we can – and should – break down some of the myths about exams. Here’s my top four exam myths and some advice on how to bust them. It’s late at night (or possibly early morning), and you’ve just got down the final sentence of your final paragraph of that essay that’s been haunting you for days. And the deadline is tomorrow/later today. Excellent. Job done. Now you’re finished, you can relax… You probably know by now that’s not the case. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen when you finish writing but before you can submit a finished piece of work. The thing is, realistically, you might not have much time between finishing writing and submitting, and sometimes things get shoved to one side and you only remember them when they’ve been circled & underlined and handed back to you by your marker. It’s annoying and frustrating, for both you and your marker. You might well even have lost marks for things that you know you meant to do… Only you never did them. And that’s probably the thing that niggles the most. I’ll write more about the stages of writing an essay and the importance of giving yourself time to edit in another post, but for now, here is my checklist of things to check before you hand your essay in. It’s divided into two main parts – Content and Style. Continue reading Dr Barker’s essay checklist→ Well, it’s hard to believe but the summer is officially over and now begins the chaos of the start of term. In the midst of moving house, catching up with friends and generally getting back in to the swing of things, it is easy for an ongoing project like a dissertation to be pushed to the side-lines but at HE History Hub we’re here to make sure you keep it front and centre. Well the summer vacation is nearly upon us and for those of you just finishing your second year thoughts will be turning to dissertations and the work that you have to do over the coming months. Beyond actually deciding what you’re going to spend the next academic year working on and the idea of having to write ten thousand words on one single topic, probably the most daunting prospect is having to face doing a significant amount of primary research. Most of you will have done a far amount of research already – every time you write an essay or prepare a presentation there will be some degree of research involved – but it has probably been guided by your tutor to some extent and based either on online resources or what is held in your own institution’s library. Depending on what you’ve chosen to work on for your dissertation, chances are you’re now going to have to go further afield in the coming months to other libraries and archives in order to track down the sources you require and do so entirely of your own volition. *Ok, well not deadly and strictly speaking not sins but definitely seven things you should try to avoid doing. It’s almost the end of the year, so what better time is there for us here at the Hub to reflect on some of the most common student queries and missteps we have encountered over the past few months in an effort to stop you bringing those bad habits back with you in September. How many of these have you been guilty of this year?! When you look back at all the things you do at university, well, the academic things, your dissertation should be the thing of which you are most proud. For history students, it is the headline event. You’ll spend a large chunk of your final year, and probably a whack of your penultimate year, working on it: it will most likely be the lengthiest thing you produce as an undergrad, and it will sit on a shelf in your house long after you graduate, finished and bound like a proper published work. It’s the thing you can show your friends and family for years to come – an essay’s an essay, but the dissertation looks and feels that bit different, that bit more significant. Yet the dissertation can also be scary. It looms ahead of you throughout first and second year, when all you really know of it comes from the harassed looking third years camped out in the library. They might terrify you with mind-boggling scare stories, or they might have really helpful advice, like this recent Guardian blog post. You don’t really get to practice it, like you do with essays and presentations and the like – you only get one shot at the dissertation. You probably don’t have classes in how to do the dissertation, you’re just expected to get on with it (you’re not really, but I’ll cover that in another post). This post will cover the things you need to consider at the start of the dissertation process, when you’re coming up with the initial ideas and as you start your research. In particular, I’m going to focus on how you go about deciding what to work on. The dissertation’s big selling point – you get to work on whatever you want – is also what terrifies a lot of people – how on earth do you pick one thing? Finding the topic that will allow you to complete a good dissertation is challenging, but not impossible, and there are some things to bear in mind as you start to narrow down a topic. A few things have prompted me to write this post. I’m putting together some new module outlines, and I’ve been thinking about how to assess these. I’ve also spoken to several students about their experiences of group work recently, both as part of the official feedback process and in general conversation. And I talk regularly with my colleagues about how teaching is going. These situations typically prompt me, and my colleagues, to reflect upon our practice, but also how we communicate that practice to our students – in other words, do we make it clear why we ask you to do the things we want you to do? Ideally we should, but there’s a big difference between listing some bullet points in a module template’s ILOs (Intended Learning Outcomes) and really explaining to students how the different parts of their studies all fit together. That’s one of the reasons we started this blog – to de-mystify the process a bit. What really got me to my computer though was finding out what students think about their studies when they’re talking to each other and not to a tutor. It’s Sabbatical Election time on campus at the moment – there are posters and slogans and people in colourful costumes all over the place! Over the weekend, I was reading about some of the policies suggested by candidates for the Vice President Education sabbatical post (their debate was helpfully recapped on Twitter and then written up by the Exeter student paper Exposé.) I have the utmost respect for students who are engaged and driven enough to stand for election to these demanding posts, they play a crucial role in shaping how universities work, and I think even more students should get engaged with the process – if only through the simple act of voting! And I was impressed with many of the ideas and policies proposed by the various candidates. Several of the candidates brought up group work when outlining their policies, in particular ensuring that the marks awarded for group work were fair. The general point being made was that students should be rewarded for the work they, individually, put in. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? It did get me thinking, however, about how tutors are explaining group work to students, if it is mainly seen as leading to a grade based on hours of work done individually. The balance between the individual and the group is a tricky one to navigate, but group work is about much more than grades, and if tutors are not getting that across, then that worries me a bit. After a few weeks away, HE History Hub is back and this week we’re going to be thinking about student-led seminars. With increasing emphasis today being on ensuring that students leave university with a useable skill-set as well as knowledge, chances are that at some point you are going to be asked to run at least part of a seminar. This is can be a really daunting task: you have probably given little thought to what it is that your tutor does to prepare a seminar and now all of a sudden you’re faced with filling a big chunk of time and taking responsibility for leading your classmates through a particular topic, all the while knowing that you’re being judged on how well you do this by both your tutor and your peers. Once the initial panic subsides a little, you’ll find that the best approach is to work systematically through the various stages of what you’re being asked to do and, while this will differ from class to class, what follows should be broadly applicable to most scenarios. Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand Confucius There is no doubt that the traditional lecture is under fire, and many would argue that it is with good cause. Outmoded and didactic, the lecture is something of an educational dinosaur, appearing as a format that is contrary to contemporary thought on optimum ways of learning and seemingly undermining many universities’ aspirations when it comes to research-led teaching. But for all the criticism that exists surrounding the lecture format, it persists – why is this the case, and how far do we need to change the traditional lecture to meet the needs of our students in the twenty-first century?
[Photo from Zambia: Workers Detail Abuse in Chinese-Owned Mines] Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, income, etc, with regard to the enforcement of environmental policies. Unfortunately we, as the people, have been doing the opposite. There are places in close proximity to toxic areas where people live or work daily that are generally too unbalanced for the normal human body. Sometimes it’s the disregard of foundation owners, like in Zambia, where locals work from 12 to 18 hours in fume infested tunnels. The chinese state-run copper mining industry is poorly kept in safety and labor conditions. Overall things such as air pollution, industrial sites, illegal waste dumping, mercury exposure, food deserts, unsafe water, and others, are considered forms environmental injustice. A common problem is people of color exposed to 38% more deadly chemicals and because of that they have a higher risk of heart and general health problems. Some speculate that corporations actively target communities in a weak state. There is evidence that regulators miss clear violations in these communities, by wrongly believing firms are cooperative with the regulation rules. This phenomenon is known as “compliance bias.” Areas that can’t fight back because of lack of resources and/or lack of political capital to resist environmental hazard fall victim to these situations. The unequal enforcement needs to be noticed for it to be dealt with. Regulators find violations at sluggish rates and put small penalties to action in vulnerable communities. This kind of information is found throughout history. Environmental justice is about ‘the people’ getting the message across and around that we need to work together and communicate to bring a final action. Making the people who have never been in environmentally unstable areas see what it’s like or how bad things can get. The connections made inspire others to have stronger environmental justice as well. And that’s what this is all about.
The government needs to effectively arrange and distribute the needed resource to help achieve sustainable development goals, environment, wildlife and tourism deputy permanent secretary, Mr Jimmy Opelo explained. Mr Opelo explained that it was important to ensure that the contribution of natural capital to sustainable economic growth, maintenance and improvement of social capital and human well-being should be quantified and integrated into development and business practice. He emphasized this at the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa. He insisted that the follow up meeting that where agreed upon at the 2012 Gaborone Declaration should be consistent with the three action statements made at the summit. The following action statements where signed as follows 1) The value of natural capital is integrated into the national accounting and corporate planning processes as well as reporting processes, policies and programs. 2) The transition of agriculture, extractive industries, fisheries and other natural capital uses to practice that promote sustainable employment in order to build capital and reduce poverty. 3) The Promotion of leadership and new models in the field of sustainable development by building knowledge, data and capacity and policy networks. The Gaborone Declaration was formed so that people would not lose their ecosystem and also to make shore that loose of well being and of economic growth will not become a hazard to Africans. The Gaborone Declaration was done in so to help share the needed information to the different states to help arrange and manage their tools ,knowledge , technology , and capacities on how best to manage natural resources to help sustain and develop the economic and social well-being. Of all the ten countries that signed the Declaration last year only some of the countries appeared for the meeting these countries include: Botswana, Ghana , Kenya , Namibia , South Africa , Madagascar, Tanzania, Gabon ,Mozambique, Rwanda and Liberia . The Declaration is an agreement to help different states take care of their natural resources for sustainable development which was held over the two day summit for sustainability in Africa which was held in Gaborone. With such a document that has been drawn up for different states to make their way and sign the Declaration shows there is a commitment to nature. Africa is changing and there is a sustainable movement that is making its way. The Natural resource that are found in Africa should be managed with more diligence and care to not only help different countries prosper ,but also to make shore that the peoples well being is helped and improved. The purpose of a developing economy is not only for the economy to be developed but also to make shore that the individuals living in that economy are benefiting from the economy. We look forward to seeing how and what the different countries plan to do with their natural resources. Botswana Daily News
spiral-paper-flower-tutorial.005 — Wedding Ideas, Wedding Trends, and Wedding Galleries Only paper but beautiful Buborékfújó műanyagpalackból és szívószálból. homemade giant bubbles - mix your own. 3 cups water, 1/2 cup dawn dishwashing liquid, 1/4 cup corn starch, 1 tbsp. baking powder, 1 tbsp corn syrup. Click to learn how to make the wand. Thanks skiptomylou.org How to make your own bubbles - simple and cheaper than buying your own! Balloon Tennis... Easy and cheap entertainment! -- 29 clever activities for kids that parents will actually enjoy doing, too! fun kids craft for summer Grandes ideas para decorar tu casa DIY Glowing Jar diy crafts craft ideas easy crafts diy ideas diy idea diy home easy diy kids crafts for the home crafty decor home ideas diy decorations kids craft diy kids crafts
It has this little cubby in the back of the book that holds a 12-piece puzzle to go along with the book. The craft was so simple and fun for her! She glued 5 red mini cupcake liners onto a green sheet of cardstock paper. We chose green so it would look like they were on a leaf or grass. Next she glued on the black faces that I had pre-cut before starting. At this point I used a black marker to draw a black line down the center of the cupcake liner dependent on where she placed the face. To finish she glued black dots (made with a hole punch) onto the ladybugs and wiggly eyes onto the faces. The cupcake liners I purchased were the Wilton brand and they came in a pack of primary colors (red, yellow, blue) so I was able to get both the ladybugs and chicks crafts out of the same pack of cupcake liners.
There is an uproar over a cable TV reality show entitled Duck Dynasty. The show features a Louisiana family, the Robertsons, who own and operate a very successful business making products for duck hunters. The men on the show are known for their long beards and traditional Protestant views. The show is one of the most successful on television. The show's patriarch, Phil Robertson gave an interview to GQ magazine, in which he was asked what he thought was sinful. He said (in pertinent part), "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." The "Gaystapo" was quick to denounce Robertson as a "bigot" and demanded his job. On December 18, 2013, the network indefinitely suspended Robertson and apologized to the sodomites. This has become a showdown between the secular left and right over alleged bigotry and freedom of speech. To put this in historical perspective, in 1990 there was a huge issue regarding federal funding through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). An "artist" Andres Serrano (a fallen away Catholic), made alleged works of art using his own blood, urine and semen. He took a picture of a beautiful traditional crucifix submerged in a glass vat filled with his own urine and named it "Piss Christ." This sacrilegious piece of garbage was funded with federal tax money. Congress rebuffed critics on grounds of First Amendment freedom of expression. In the instant case, no one is forced to subsidize Duck Dynasty. While admitting that Mr. Robertson is not an articulate and erudite defender of traditional moral values, he expressed his religious belief and also clarified that he did not condone hatred or violence against anyone. Serrano was paid with our hard earned money and Robertson was suspended from his private job and faces permanent dismissal. I hope I'm not the only one who sees something seriously wrong. The station claimed that his analogy of homosexuality to bestiality was "too much." Actually, Robertson was right on many counts. Both acts are unnatural. If sex isn't about procreation in Holy Matrimony, it comes down to "coupling" between any two or more people and not creating a family upon which civilization was built. Just this month: - a federal judge in Utah declared there is a "right" to homosexual marriage in the US Constitution - Canada struck down all laws against prostitution - another judge in Utah struck down anti-polygamy laws - a 39 year old man in Nebraska was sentenced to 35-45 years in prison for having sex with a 14 year old girl when he was 29. He is already serving time for another sex offense. He tried to have his conviction overturned by arguing, “This happens all the time in history. How can all of a sudden it be wrong? It can't be wrong. It is the position of the Legislature of Nebraska to say we're going to make a law about it. I don't have to agree with that.” While Time and the (sodomite) Advocate's "Person of the Year" is lauded by the world for being "inclusive." "welcoming," and tells us "Who am I to judge" in regard to sodomites, he's quick to judge Traditionalists as wrong. He takes away from a small group of Vatican II friars the right to use the 1962 Missal. He denigrates us as "self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagians." In other words, Modernists, like the political left wing, want acceptance for anything EXCEPT THE TRUTH. I'll wrap-up with a couple of "oldie but goodie" quotes: For the detractors of Mr. Robertson: "The answer to speech with which we disagree is more speech, not enforced silence."--Associate Justice Louis Brandeis For Antipope Francis: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."--Isaiah 5:20 For Traditionalists in these times of near universal apostasy: "Dominus firmamentum meum, et refugium meum, et liberator meus: Deus meus adjutor meus." (The Lord is my firmament, and my refuge, and my deliverer, my God is my helper--Psalm 17:3)
At first glance, the heads, busts and body parts created by Li Hongbo resemble simple plaster casts. But upon closer, hands-on inspection, it becomes clear that the Beijing artist's anatomical models are something entirely out of the ordinary. The secret to Hongbo's morphing sculptures is his medium. Thousands of layers of paper, arranged in a honeycomb-like lattice and pieced together with glue, give rise to what at first resembles a large block of wood or plaster. He then employs a subtractive carving technique, whittling away at his block with an electric saw, until he is left with a 3-D form that can be opened and closed like an accordion. The finished piece can be pulled, twisted and positioned into an infinite number of conformations; it seems Hongbo's only limitation, when deciding how to display each of his sculptures, is the extent of his installation space: The artist borrowed his technique from traditional Chinese decorations known as "paper gourds" — ornaments that can be stored flat and opened into a variety of three dimensional forms. But Hongbo favors anatomical features over abstract shapes, and his sculptures contain many, many more layers. The end result is mesmerizing to behold, whether it's resting static, on display, or being manipulated by hand (though the sculptures are definitely at their most captivating when they're in motion, a fact to which the video up top can attest): [Spotted on COLOSSAL]
Alex Sinyakov, AMC Bridge LLC Slide after slide shows C++11 code side by side with the same code written in older C++ style or in other languages. You'll quickly notice a pattern: In example after example, C++11 code is clean, safe, and as fast as ever... and sometimes even faster. As Bjarne Stroustrup puts it: "Surprisingly, C++11 feels like a new language: The pieces just fit together better than they used to and I find a higher-level style of programming more natural than before and as efficient as ever." Enjoy these great quick study notes as a refresher before your next C++11 interview. For a detailed treatment of what’s new in C++11, see Overview of the New C++ (C++11) by Scott Meyers, featured on our Get Started! page. These are Scott’s fully-annotated color training materials from his course of the same name, and the best current approximation of “a book on what’s new in C++11.” (Free sample available.)
Should footballers be allowed to Twitter? Accepting that social network site communication, like texting has risen to a popularity that endangers real conversation. (Proof if needed being in this posting, my writing and the ever-increasing amount of time that I – and others from all walks of life – spend on the Internet.) The question asked is tantamount to restricting freedom of speech to question whether anybody should be allowed. This is close to restricting internet access. Wait, China. There are 13 countries with restrictions and corporations attempting this right now in the Western World that will have GLOBAL effect on ALL of us. Search TPP or use this link. All of which makes the question trivial. But it isn’t. Footballers rights will probably get more reaction than infringement on your own rights? If you react to my use of ‘you’, then ‘you’ know it! Still this article seems somewhat incomplete. The main point being made is that footballers as all media stars have a responsibility to act more than responsibly as role models for the young and easily influenced. And icons of escapism with a seemingly paradoxical sense of belonging for the ‘you’? When anybody dons that shirt of a team they are representing that team and society itself. Does society expect bad behaviour? Do we really want to condone it as doing so only encourages it and similar in those who emulate their heroes? When anybody signs that contract to receive a farcical ridiculous amount of money, they ‘know’ what else is involved. Shouldn’t exemplary sporting behaviour be a requisite signed for in triplicate and upheld by fines from the F.A? Media itself is our mogul it sadly seems. Should we not expect the highest levels of public interest from those making a fortune from public interest? What do you think? By Mollie Bennett When you think about football, you think of passion, pride and commitment; you think of proudly wearing your team’s jersey on match day. You don’t think of following your football hero on twitter, well at least you never used to. Rewind ten years and social networking wasn’t an issue, in fact most people wouldn’t have a clue what it was, they would talk to each other face to face or by telephone. Today it’s broadcast online for the world to see. Footballers run the risk on a daily basis when using social networking sights, take Rio Ferdinand for example, calling his fellow England international a “choc ice” for all of his 3.4m followers to see and receiving a mere £45,000 fine for his troubles. Ferdinand branded his Premier League rival a “choc ice” after Cole gave evidence on behalf of Terry in a racist trail involving Rio’s… View original post 353 more words
All that is buried is not dead. —Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the spectre tugs your sleeve On a still, cool day in the east of a city by the sea, three sounds only: a bulldozer’s engine, a forgotten song, a canon that tells the time. Behind the bulldozer, a sign: Luxury Mall Coming Soon … —What Remains, Part 1 For the last few years I’ve been reading and thinking about slavery at the Cape. Neither the reading nor the thinking has been easy; it is a history full of unimaginable violence and unresolved sorrow. And unresolved histories have a way of making themselves known—‘the spectre tugs at your sleeve’, wrote Baudelaire, ‘in broad day’. Cape Town’s dark beginning has cast a long and chilling shadow on its present: the morphing of slavery into colonialism and later apartheid has made it a city where, famously, natural beauty exists in stark contrast to deep and abiding disparity. And it’s a disparity that not only narrates a terrible history but also allows for a certain kind of protected ‘unknowingness’: it is possible to be of and from this place and not have to negotiate its past, not have to recognise its present. It is possible to do that until the past erupts and demands to be listened to. The play is about an instance of rupture and reckoning and, though it grew to become about the moment we find ourselves in in South Africa now, it did not begin with a new generation of protests and protesters. It began, instead, with a generation long since passed. It began with a burial site. I first began writing it at the end of 2014. At the time I thought I was working on a novella, a text about Cape slavery, loosely based on the uncovering of the graveyard at Prestwich Place in Cape Town where, in 2003, a corporate real estate development famously, unexpectedly, struck an eighteenth century burial ground—one of the largest ever to be unearthed in the Southern Hemisphere. Nearly 3000 bodies were accounted for, from babies who were a just few weeks old—the children of slave washerwomen—to men in their late sixties. It was, by any estimation, an astonishing turn of events. The response in Cape Town was immediate and polarised: the property developers wanted to continue building, heritage managers and archaeologists prioritised a scientific examination of the remains (important data could be drawn from the bones, the material traces held answers, frustrating gaps in archival research could be closed) while an alliance of community activists claiming descendancy from those buried insisted on the immediate re-interment of the bones. They felt (understandably) that to examine the bones, to pick them over, would be to commit violence afresh on bodies that had in life been subjected to unforgivable cruelty. ‘Stop robbing the graves!’ cried someone at one of the first community meetings¹, and another, ‘I went to school at Prestwich Street Primary School. We grew up with haunted places; we lived on haunted ground. We knew there were burial grounds there. My question to the City is, how did this happen?’² I was in Cape Town when the bones were discovered but I didn’t pay it as much attention as I might have. I’m not sure why, because it was an extraordinary drama in which battle-lines between competing values were drawn and insisted upon; lines between memory and history, the material and the immaterial, spirituality and science, the living and the dead. Over a decade later, I understand that moment as telling us not only about the faultlines of a post-apartheid city but also as a prophecy, a warning of just how deep our difficulties lie. By 2014 I’d been living, for a decade, outside of South Africa. Each trip home (I returned frequently, sometimes several times a year, for work and family) was always made up in equal parts of nostalgia, longing, astonishment, love, anger and worry. Distance from home can be a strange thing: it intensifies the differences, the specificities of a place, it invites constant comparison, but it also blunts a deep, quick understanding of what is happening. I’m not sure anymore if anyone living outside of a place can ever really take its temperature; I missed certain things, certain developments, I noticed others … In a country like South Africa, where the national political life lurches with disorientating speed, it’s hard to keep track. When I left in 2004 I’d been working on and off at the District Six Museum for three years. It’s difficult to imagine now, but back then the conversation around land redistribution or compensation was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and ‘how’. It wasn’t a radical conversation, it was a centrist one; it was understood as a reasonable series of steps that should be taken to rectify past criminality and ensure an equitable and functional future for the country. The dialogue between government and activists and NGOs around the issue may have been at times thorny, enmeshed in bureaucracy, and the distance between action and execution may have been frustratingly slow, but there appeared a broad moral and political agreement on what should happen. The gentrification of Woodstock and the Bo-Kaap had already begun, of course, but it wasn’t moving at the dizzying speed it is today: there was a sense then that a course correction was still possible; that an unravelling of the mess of past iniquity was within reach. There were instances of residents being driven from their homes, but those were unusual stories recited with horror, not resignation. There were no Temporary Relocation Areas like Blikkiesdorp, no reanimation of the old story of Forced Removals: You may have lived here for generations but this is not your home, leave now, here is a letter, we will move you to another place, far from here and what you know. At some point that centrist conversation was moved irrevocably to the margins of the far left. I’m not a political analyst, I’m still not sure how this happened, but what I did know was that the city had re-choreographed an old dance and that we all knew the steps. A friend described that early noughties decade as containing all the foggy disassociation that comes after a night of euphoric celebration; ‘We were hazy,’ he said, ‘sleepwalking … no wonder these kids talk about wanting to wake us.’ As a writer, I wanted to circle in close to the city of my birth, write about its brokenness, its survival, but also I wanted to close one eye, obscure the location and create an unspecified landscape where each character’s voice borrowed from different times and places. It was to be both of and not-of Cape Town. The characters, The Healer, The Archaeologist, The Chairman (now Chairwoman), The Student and others came quickly, easily, but there was something about the form of the text that wasn’t quite working. I began to understand that it needed something else, required something else, and that something was live performance. I’ve worked for a long time with the idea that performance and memory are intertwined, that they are each other’s echo and that no other art form is as uniquely placed to evoke memory, to represent it, to bring it into a conversation with the present. This is partly driven by the liveness of performance, by its capacity to disappear, but also because its very immateriality, its lack of durability, allows for a profound psychic interface between itself and memory. Both performance and memory are forms of storytelling that lend themselves to the communal. A play is not only collaborative in its making but in its viewing; the communal experience of watching a play is an important, ancient activity that binds us, that creates a fleeting community, that invites us all to bear witness at what is unfolding before us. In the staging of this work, Jay Pather places the audience in two rows, facing each other: in his director’s notes he explains the staging; ‘Looking across the room at a row of spectators watching like you, histories playing out, you may identify a perpetrator of catastrophe […] (or) on the opposite bank of spectators the possibility of an ally.’ This kind of precise thoughtfulness is of the (many) reasons I’ve always admired Jay Pather’s work. That and the seamless yet provocative way he forges connections and relationships between landscapes, the body, place and agency, the way he uses beauty to disrupt and challenge comfort. I approached him with the text, hoping that he would be interested in creating a performance piece from it. To my delight, he was. We decided early in our conversations that in addition to actors, the piece needed a dancer, a figure able to evoke the mysterious, the ghostly, a body that could hold history and tell its stories, narrate the unsaid, speak the unspeakable, that there were some histories—and slavery is one of them—where text is insufficient. It is only the body that knows, remembers, can tell. During our initial workshops, I reworked the beginnings of the novella, dividing it into twelve-part performance text. (The twelve parts a nod both to the division of time in a year and day and to John Berger’s Economies of the Dead). As the process unfolded, Pather transformed The Narrator, the figure who watches, observes, notices, tells, into The Student, creating a performative link with 2015’s student protests, one that suggested an intergenerational conversation and brought the play sharply into conversation with the now. In watching this play being made, I was reminded of the collaborative nature of the theatre and how that collaboration shifts the primacy of a text and makes it just one of many components. The rest, the direction, the scenography, the choreography, the videography, the performers, each art form and artist brings their creativity, the weight of their experience, their own history of work, of life, to bear on what we are making, together. For a writer, this is thrilling, this is daunting: what was once on the page will spring, suddenly, into a different life. This is especially true when the cast takes up the text and the directorial vision and infuses it with new meanings: Denise Newman, Faniswa Yisa, Shaun Oelf, Buhle Ngaba move lightly, furiously, precisely, wildly, among the bones and the books of this story. They stand on burial grounds and talk on stoeps, they hear old songs and dance new steps, they argue about history and memory, they see the dead, they chastise the living even as they try to protect them, they speak, they reason until reason itself gives way, they enact archetypes even as they dig deep into the intensely personal dimensions of each character. It has been an immense privilege to watch them and Pather work together. In early email correspondence, Pather wrote that the play is, at its core, ‘about “disruption”: the play understands disruption to be historic and deeply lodged in memory and in bone. When the bones are found, when they are disrupted, it is a topographic and geological disruption of earth that in turn becomes a metaphor for the necessity of breaking ground, of opening surfaces to allow truth to emerge. This energy of slippage and seepage connects with the student disruption and the taut, episodic structure—the twelve parts—as it tries to contain these impending disruptive moments until it too gives way.’ I would add that slavery itself is about extreme disruption; it is about rupture from place, it is about being snatched from one way of being and dragged into another. It is a radical remaking of time; the breaking of continuity and the construction of a terrible and eternal boundary between then, the life before, and now, the life after. Towards the end of the piece, a group gather to lay claim to the bones, to rescue them from where they have been stored; they come with fire and dance and anger and chanting, and The Archaeologist says to The Healer ‘This cannot be the answer’. She replies, ‘It’s not an answer. It’s an old, old scream.’ There are no answers in this piece, only questions, only expressions about the relationship between then and now. As I write this, we are just a day away from leaving for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. It is Eid morning and I am sitting in my parents’ house while the smell of everything that is good in the world is floating up from the kitchen. It is the first Eid I have been home for in twelve years and it occurs to me this very Cape morning, as the rhythms of the day play out—a holiday celebrated on these shores for close to 400 years, that came here through slavery—that I cannot imagine What Remains holding quite the same meaning in any other city. I cannot imagine that strange mesh of feelings—sorrow, relief, rage, biting humour, disbelief, terror, wonder—present in the room as I watched the cast rehearse, manifesting in quite the same way anywhere else. I say this not because I want to speak of a people of one place laying possessive claim to the stories of that place (ownership between people and stories exist, but not the way we think: most of the time it is we who are in the grip of a story, not the other way around) but because there is something important about knowing the story that, from its first telling and at every retelling, has shaped the city you call home. There is something important about understanding what kind of place you come from, about being yanked from protected unknowingness, from the safety of sleep into being alive to the stories of your dead. It is, is in some sense, the least the living can do. - What Remains played at the weekend at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, and will play in Cape Town from 6 to 12 July; find more information on Facebook - Nadia Davids is an award-winning writer who works across a range of forms: plays, articles, short stories and screenplays. Her theatre works, including the well-known At Her Feet and Cissie, have been staged in South Africa and abroad and her writing has appeared in various newspapers and anthologies. Her debut novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was published in 2015. 1. Nick Shepherd, ‘Archaeology dreaming Post-apartheid urban imaginaries and the bones of the Prestwich Street dead’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2007, p. 8. 2. Antonia Malan, 2003, p. 5 in Ibid. Henri, Yazir and Heidi Grunebaum, ‘Re-historicising Trauma: Reflections on Violence and Memory in Current-day Cape Town’, paper presented at the Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory, Cape Town, South Africa, 2005. Available from: www.medico.de/download/report26/ps_henrigrunebaum_en.pdf (accessed 27 November 2011). Jonker, Julian David, ‘Excavating the Legal Subject: The Unnamed Dead of Prestwich Place, Cape Town’, Griffith Law Review 14, 2, 2005, pp. 187–211. Shepherd, Nick, ‘Archaeology dreaming Post-apartheid urban imaginaries and the bones of the Prestwich Street dead’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2007.
Second graders drew detailed hummingbirds with Sharpies. They added a variety of flowers which they colored with crayons. Borders were added with Sharpies and crayons. Liquid watercolors completed the sky and borders. Posts tagged ‘watercolor’ First graders carefully observed the parts of a dragonfly as we drew it together step by step. Large, medium and small flowers were added to create a garden. A thick application of crayon resisted the watercolor sky. First graders watched Reading Rainbow’s Run Away Duck before drawing these adorable mallards in crayon. Crayons were used to draw cattails, then a wash of blue watercolor was painted over all. When dry, horizontal wavy lines were brushed on to suggest water. I saw this lesson on numerous blogs and had to try it! Van Gogh’s Sunflowers inspired this sunny composition. Overlapping sunflowers were drawn in a variety of sizes. A thick layer of blended craypas filled each flower. Complimentary blue-violet watercolor was used in the background. Grant Wood’s farms inspired this craypas resist landscape. Craypas were used to create patterns suggesting crops. Liquid watercolors were mixed to achieve a variety of greens to paint over the patterns. Farm buildings, ponds, and a vibrant sky complete the composition.
Innovation is the flavor of the month; has been for more than a few months now. Organizational learning is another management trend–it refers to the ability of an organization to learn–to become more effective over time, to develop new knowledge and retain it to respond to future situations. What both innovation and learning have in common is adaptability and improvisationality. In an article in the Fall 2007 issue of Sloan Management Review, Joaquín Alegre and Ricardo Chiva studied organizations high in organizational learning capability (OLC) and identified five core features of high OLC companies: experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue and participative decision making. This is fascinating because in my research, I’ve found that these five characteristics also hold true of organizations that use the power of collaboration to generate innovation. (1) Experimentation, as defined by these authors, produces a flow of new ideas that challenge the established order. (2) Risk taking is just what it sounds like: the tolerance for ambiguity and errors. And as I’ve found, innovative organizations foster idea generation and tolerate failure. (3) Interaction with the external environment is what I call “collaborating with customers” and is associated with innovative networks that I call collaborative webs in my book Group Genius. Deborah Ancona, in her 2007 book X-Teams, has likewise discovered that successful teams have an outward focus, and strong social network ties with people outside of their team. (4) Dialogue and (5) participative decision making are what I call improvisation–a style of communication and an organizational culture that is egalitarian, open to flows across status levels. Improvisational organizations excel at a type of dialogue that opens up possibilities, a style of conversation in which new and unexpected ideas emerge. I firmly believe that organizations high in learning ability are more likely to be innovative organizations, and I’m delighted to read of this fascinating study confirming the link.
From the landscape architect: The town of Esperance, 720 kilometres south-east of Perth in Western Australia, is expected to experience rapid growth as the state’s population more than doubles by 2050. As a government designated ‘SuperTown’, Esperance has been earmarked for strategic development to support this growth – with the Hassell design for the waterfront renewal a key component. A place for a growing community By redeveloping the waterfront, the Shire of Esperance aimed to balance a family-oriented destination with improved infrastructure, tourist attractions and opportunities for private investment. Critically, the new waterfront protects and restores the community’s central foreshore on this stretch of dramatic coastline. We worked with the shire to better understand how people in Esperance used the waterfront – and how they wanted it to look and work in the future. Following a program of community engagement, we designed a waterfront precinct that integrated a reclaimed headland, seawall, pavilions and a play space that’s a major drawcard for families. The reclaimed headland includes a vast lawn space wrapped around the historic Tanker Jetty, where open-air community gatherings and sports activities can take place. This space also supports new business ventures, like food trucks and pop-up events. A beachside plaza at James Street, marked by a striking Whale Tail sculpture, offers improved access to the waterfront. This both ‘stitches’ the precinct back into the town and positions the Esperance Waterfront for future growth. Creating a sense of place The new waterfront tells the stories of Esperance – which covers indigenous, natural and early settler history. We worked with historians, local artists and graphic designers to interpret these stories through ‘pause moments’ along the waterfront’s landscaped pathways. Interpretative signage, shelters and public art highlight important places like the foreshore jetties and the distinctive flora and fauna – particularly “Sammy,” the adored resident seal. We also drew on local materials to reinforce the sense of place. Esperance pink granite was used for walls and paving, and reclaimed jetty timber, including part of the original railway line that serviced the jetty, was used for benches, playground features and walkways. A foundation for the future The new seawall was designed to reflect the contours of the natural bays and headlands, which together with extensive planting of Indigenous trees and shrubs, was critical to reducing the impact of erosion. In fact, over 63,000 new plants were grown, including over 1,000 trees to strengthen the foreshore and provide extra shelter. According to the Shire of Esperance’s Waterfront Community and Tourist Satisfaction Survey, taken in June 2015, more than 85% of locals said the waterfront redevelopment met their expectations and 90% of locals use the foreshore every week. “We are really proud of our new waterfront, which has truly enhanced the vibrancy of our town. On any given day you can see people strolling along it, walking their dogs or simply enjoying the view,” said Malcolm Heasman, Shire of Esperance President.
The 2016 Australian Census has revealed that for the first time since colonization migration to Australia from Asia has surpassed that from Europe. Our country’s fortunes have long been tied to the economic markets of our regional neighbours, yet most agree that our understanding of Asian cultures, including design cultures, must improve if we are to seize the enormous opportunities offered by the so-called “Asian century.” The 2018 Landscape Australia Conference: Sharing Local Knowledge for a Global Future will present six exciting design practices from our immediate region – New Zealand, India, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore and China – that are creatively and optimistically tackling the complex challenges of the twenty-first century. The one-day conference will explore the opportunities and pitfalls of practising internationally, what Australian and Asian practitioners can learn from their regional counterparts who are facing similar challenges, and the importance of understanding cultural differences. The speakers will bring a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives to the conversation, spanning landscape architecture, horticulture, garden design, architecture and urbanism, to ensure engaging and lively debate. Each session will include a moderated panel discussion geared toward identifying tools and methods for Australian practitioners, researchers and students. The event will be held on Saturday, 5 May 2018 at the Frank Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology Sydney (TBC), with morning and lunch breaks on the Goods Line, a multi-award-winning linear park designed by Aspect Studios and CHROFI. 9.00 – 9.15 Welcomes 9.15 – 9.55 Chang Huai-yan (Salad Dressing, Singapore) 10.35 – 10.55 Discussion chaired by Elly Russell (TCL, Australia) 10.55 – 11.20 Morning tea 11.20 – 12.00 Megan Wraight (Wraight + Associates, New Zealand) 12.00 – 12.40 Jungyoon Kim (PARKKIM, South Korea) 12.40 – 1.00 Discussion chaired by Jillian Walliss (University of Melbourne, Australia) 1.00 – 2.15 Lunch 2.15 – 2.55 John Lin (Rural Urban Framework, Hong Kong) 3.35 – 3.55 Discussion chaired by Andrew Toland (UTS, Australia) 3.55 – 4.00 Closing comments 4.00 – 5.00 Closing drinks More program and CPD info coming soon. Tickets are limited, don’t miss out!

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