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warc | 201704 | You are here Hedge funds earned US$1.5t for investors in last 10 years
[LONDON] Hedge funds earned US$1.5 trillion for their investors over the last ten years and more pension funds are increasing the amount of money they allocate to them, trade body Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) said on Wednesday.
The findings, based on data from industry tracker HFR, come as hedge funds face intense scrutiny following decisions by funds such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System and Netherlands' PFZW to pull out of them, citing high costs, complexity and poor performance.
"The global hedge fund industry has grown at approximately 10 per cent a year since the financial crisis, and much of this growth can be attributed to increased allocations from public and private pensions," AIMA Chief Executive Jack Inglis said.
"But at the same time, many trustees are asking questions about their existing or prospective hedge fund allocations," he said in a statement, launching a series of papers to help investors assess risks and benefits of hedge fund investing.
The trade body said that one in every four dollars invested in the nearly US$3 trillion industry is sourced from public and private pension plans.
Hedge funds recorded net inflows worth US$76.4 billion last year, the highest since 2007. They earned investors US$140.3 billion in performance gains after fees in 2014, about 5 per cent of the assets they managed at the start of last year.
REUTERS | 1,499 | 814 | 0.001239 |
warc | 201704 | State officials overseeing the federal economic stimulus program in Massachusetts say they have no idea how the White House came up with one key pledge—the promise to save or create 79,000 jobs in the state.
They say they’re not even sure how to measure saved jobs—and fear the jobs figure sets an unrealistic yardstick against which the success or failure of the program will be measured. “The federal estimate of 79,000, we really don’t know what’s behind that, we just plain don’t,” Jeffrey Simon, Director of Infrastructure Investment in Massachusetts, told The Associated Press. “I’m not saying it’s not 79,000, but I just don’t have any way of knowing that,” he said. Simon and his counterparts overseeing the distribution of stimulus funds in Massachusetts said concerns about the state jobs numbers were raised at a meeting earlier this month in Washington between state and federal leaders.
Answer by grlygrlz2 at 9:29 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by
Anonymousat 9:31 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by grlygrlz2 at 9:31 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by
Anonymousat 9:33 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
How are the republicans like Boehner any better? They only criticize and when it's time for the plan -they don't have one. or WHEN LAW MAKERS DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEM TAKING MONEY FROM COMPANIES WHO DID GET THE BAILOUT MONEY ?
I didn't vote for Obama . Both sides are in fault .
Answer by
Anonymousat 9:45 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by grlygrlz2 at 9:51 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by
Anonymousat 10:06 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
In regards to the stimulus, anon (and this question posted)Republicans as a majority did NOT vote for it. They criticized it for people voting for it without reading it. This question is about
Obama's STIMULUS BILL.... And about OBAMA'S campaign promise that he made of TRANSPARENCY and being fiscally RESPONSIBLE... Are you saying Obama is no better than any other politician including Republicans and his promise of CHANGE, RESPONSIBILTY, TRANSPARENCY were merely political lies to get a vote? ~If you want to question Republicans specifically on an issue they solely voted on and it cost the nation dearly, I suggest you go to the " ASK A QUESTION" tab and do just that, ask a question. :o)
Answer by grlygrlz2 at 10:21 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by itsmesteph11 at 10:28 AM on Mar. 28, 2009
Answer by kabbot01 at 10:48 AM on Mar. 28, 2009 | 2,440 | 1,222 | 0.000849 |
warc | 201704 | The moment I recognize a former teammate or coach I am immediately overwhelmed with a feeling of nostalgia which manifests itself into a warm smile.
It fascinates me that a bond formed so long ago remains unbreakable, no matter how many days, months, or years have elapsed since we last exchanged words. Like me, many others can relate to the joy that youth sports has brought into our lives.
This speaks volumes about the impact of youth sport, and its role in the socialization of our children. Not only do my memories of early morning practice, sleepover tournaments, and occasional success on the ice form my fondest childhood memories, they are are also the most vivid.
I can recite pre-game speeches word for word, but can’t recall a single line from my Grade 9 history textbook. Interesting...
The time you and your children spend at the rink or practice field helps lay the foundation for their eventual work habits, self discipline, attitudes towards fitness, and general zest for life. Step up and be an active partner in that process. I credit youth sport for teaching me about respect, honour, integrity, work, play and resiliency.
The pressure we put on our youth to win is ludicrous. We should provide every opportunity for our children to fail! Try a new skill (slap shot), fail at it, practice it, try again.
Resiliency is a difficult trait to learn, but probably the most important in determining the future success and happiness of your child.
What about teamwork? Teamwork in the household, at work, and in the community is essential. Youth sport is a great forum for learning these essential life skills.
Parents’ attitudes towards their child’s participation in organized sport can have dramatic impact on their overall experience.
Be realistic. A very small percentage of youth sports participants are destined for pro-sports, so let’s treat the experience for what it is - a social learning forum.
We have a tendency to compartmentalize different parts of our life, which is unfortunate. To look at organized youth sport solely as a vehicle for a child to learn physical skills is to undermine its impact on the “whole person”.
The best gift you can give your child is to educate them and sport can be an incredible catalyst for real life learning.
This post was inspired by my experience as a player in Cambridge Minor Hockey, teammates (that turned into lifelong friends), parents and specifically my favourite coach (now Winter Hawks GM) Jim Kelly, who taught us how to “dump and chase”, but more importantly shared his enthusiasm for the game of hockey and commitment to lifelong learning through sport.
There are amazing people in our community that do not get recognized enough, even though their affect on the community is powerful. Parents, thank your son’s or daughter’s coach. They deserve it. | 2,891 | 1,484 | 0.000689 |
warc | 201704 | Depending on the type and grade of the tumor, the following are some brain cancer surgeries our doctors perform:
Craniotomy: Using specialized tools, we first remove a piece of bone from the skull for access to the tumor. Then, we remove all or most of the tumor. After surgery, the bone is usually replaced. In a craniectomy, the bone is replaced later (or not replaced at all) for various reasons, like if swelling is expected after surgery. Endonasal Endoscopy: We use an endoscope to navigate and access tumors through the nose and sinuses. Using image guidance and special instruments attached to the endoscope, this type of brain cancer surgery allows us to then remove tumors or take samples for biopsy. Neuroendoscopy: Through a small opening in the skull, we use an endoscope to see inside the brain. We can then remove tumors or take biopsy samples using special instruments attached to the endoscope. Other Procedures Shunt: We place a thin tube (called a shunt) into a ventricle of the brain, through a small hole in the skull. The shunt moves excess fluid from the brain to another part of the body, such as the abdominal cavity, where it’s absorbed into the bloodstream. A filter catches stray tumor cells that may be in the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). This procedure can help relieve pressure in the skull. Placement of an Ommaya Reservoir: During this brain cancer surgery, we implant a small reservoir attached to a tube under the scalp. The tubing leads into a ventricle of the brain where the CSF circulates, allowing us to deliver chemotherapy to the brain and CSF, or to remove fluid for biopsy. The reservoir can be removed when it’s no longer needed.
Learn more aboutbrain cancer treatment | 1,727 | 840 | 0.0012 |
warc | 201704 | If you’ve recently tuned in to any home and garden shows, you’ve probably seen people using reclaimed wood in their homes. Decorators are scouring New England for wood from old barns, planks from old schoolhouses and all types of old wood that can be repurposed in today’s houses.
Why is there an obsession with this old world look? Homeowners want a unique, textured appearance. The exclusivity of having hundred year old wood tickles the fancy of upscale designers and decorators.
Are you worried that…
…you don’t have time to go scraping through all of New England for enough planks to outfit your entire house? Don’t worry. The popularity of this look has led several manufacturers to offer a modern day equivalent.
Wood Scraping
Wood scraping tools can be used on new planks to give them an old world, reclaimed wood appearance. This technique gives wood a one-of-a-kind, simple charm. It’s a visual reference to days gone by and the inherent beauty of handmade items.
If you like the look and feel of reclaimed wood, then hand scraped flooring products might be right for you. If the rest of your furnishings and décor reflect a time worn, handcrafted or custom style, then you might find yourself attracted to this look. Even if you don’t otherwise collect antiques, many homeowners just love the and natural finish that you will feel underfoot with a hand scraped plank.
Also, if you’re concerned about how a floor will look when it shows wear over time, then this type of flooring will alleviate your worry. Because it’s already designed to be irregular, you can easily overlook any unintentional dents or dings. Your floor will only acquire more patina with time.
Interested in learning more about hardwood flooring? We have the perfect eBook for you:
Download it for FREE (on the right)! 7 Tips on How to Select Hardwood Flooring,
-Jay | 1,918 | 1,012 | 0.001027 |
warc | 201704 | Botany Faculty
*G. D. Carr, PhD (Chair)—biosystematics, cytotaxonomy, chromosome evolution
Cooperating Graduate Faculty
D. Borthakur, PhD—plant molecular genetics
Affiliate Graduate Faculty
J. J. Ewel, PhD—tropical forest succession
Adjunct Faculty
A. K. Chock, MS—Hawaiian ethnobotany
The Academic Program
UH Manoa has the only botany department (BOT) located in a tropical environment in the U.S. Both aquatic and terrestrial tropical ecosystems provide the subjects of research and teaching. The department is committed to broad-based botanical training that focuses on developing an understanding of Hawai‘i’s unique island environment. While it maintains traditional areas of botanical study, the department also uses new approaches and current technologies. It has faculty in anatomy, ecology, systematics, ethnobotany, physiology, and population and evolutionary biology. Research programs focus on ecology, evolution and conservation of Hawai‘i’s ecosystem and unique endemic flora; the ecology and physiology of marine macroalgae; invasion biology by alien weeds; and the uses of plants by the human cultures of the Pacific Basin. Participation in the interdepartmental undergraduate biology program and the graduate program in ecology, evolution and conservation biology provides interactions with other departments and expands opportunities for breadth in research and instruction. All botany faculty members, regardless of rank, teach courses in the undergraduate curriculum as well as at advanced levels.
The department offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and minor degrees in botany at the undergraduate level; the MS and PhD degrees at the graduate level. Undergraduate majors follow a number of career paths leading to employment as naturalists, environmental planners, policy makers, conservation biologists, teachers, researchers, and museum or organizational directors. A number of graduates have assumed important positions in public and private institutions at the national and international levels. Support at the undergraduate and graduate levels is available via competitive tuition waivers and scholarships. Teaching and research assistantships are available at the graduate level.
The botany programs strongly emphasize field experience and hands-on laboratory training with locally important plants, their environment, historical and present uses, as well as the unique aspects of plant evolution and ecology in Hawai‘i and the Pacific. The department’s website at www.botany.hawaii.edu allows glimpses into the many environments and special plants in Hawai‘i, and provides further information about faculty interests and research.
Over half of all the endangered plant species in the U.S. are endemic to Hawai‘i. Botanical knowledge and understanding are essential to the continued preservation of these unique plants. The botany department cooperates with government and private agencies (see “Affiliations” below) in conservation efforts for these species. The department also provides identifications and fundamental knowledge about Hawai‘i’s unique plants to local citizens, schools, and state and federal agencies.
Hawai‘i’s location provides botany students with the best opportunity for exploration of tropical marine or terrestrial ecosystems available anywhere in the U.S. The varied environments and climates present in the islands allow work from oceanic reefs to the tops of snow-covered volcanoes. The isolation and geology of the islands have produced a unique flora, unmatched in its potential for effective study of systematic, evolutionary, ecological, and ethnobotanical questions.
Affiliations
Botanical studies are enhanced by cooperative working relationships between the department and Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, Kewalo Marine Laboratory of the Pacific Biomedical Research Center, Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit of the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, State of Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Honolulu Botanical Garden, Herbarium Pacificum and the Department of Botany of the B.P. Bishop Museum, Hawai‘i Agriculture Research Center (formerly Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association), and Waikiki Aquarium.
Advising
Student advising is coordinated by the undergraduate adviser who is available to talk with prospective majors about their interests. An information sheet is available in the department office. Graduate students entering the department are assigned an interim committee of three faculty members who provide general advice. The students committee and the Chair of Botanical Sciences oversee requirements and provide a link between the Graduate Division and the student.
Graduate students are encouraged to interact with each faculty to become acquainted with various research approaches and areas of expertise. Once a research topic has been identified, a permanent committee will be established to provide specific assistance.
Undergraduate Study BA Degree
The BA degree provides students flexibility to pursue a broad liberal arts education and still gain a sound foundation in botany with an area of particular interest. Courses are available in conservation, ecology, ethnobotany, evolution, physiology, structural botany, systematics, and selected faculty research specialties. The courses applied toward the botany major may be selected with the student’s interest area in mind.
Requirements
Prospective majors should consult the department promptly to design a curriculum that satisfies these requirements.
BS Degree
The BS degree is designed for those students who plan a career in science with an emphasis on plants, especially those intending to do graduate studies. A full complement of basic courses in biology, chemistry, math, and physics is required in addition to botany courses. As with the BA degree, students may choose among a variety of courses to fulfill requirements for the major.
Requirements
Prospective majors should consult the department promptly to design a curriculum that satisfies these requirements. BOT 101 to BOT 160 do not fulfill major requirements.
Minor Requirements
Students must complete 15 credit hours in non-introductory courses with a grade of C (not C-) or higher.
For tropical field botany:
Individual programs may be designed by the student and adviser for approval by the faculty.
Graduate Study
The department offers programs leading to MS and PhD degrees. Hawai‘i’s location offers unique opportunities to study the patterns and processes of evolution, adaptation, and morphological and physiological variations within a geographically variable and isolated setting. Faculty expertise spans from the molecular to the whole organism in marine and terrestrial environments, with emphasis on evolutionary biology, ecology, ethnobotany, molecular evolution, physiology, structural botany, and systematics. The faculty includes a number of nationally and internationally recognized scientists in ecology, ethnobotany, physiological ecology, and systematics.
In addition to the previously listed affiliations, botany is closely affiliated with the program in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology, providing a variety of opportunities for graduate student education, research, and support.
Recipients of the MS degree often teach at the high school level, pursue careers with government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Park Service, or work with environmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy or the Sierra Club. Those with a PhD may teach and/or conduct research in private industry or in colleges and universities or work with environmental organizations or the government.
A brochure listing faculty members and their research areas and publications is available from the botany office and on the website: www.botany.hawaii.edu. Applications for admission and opportunities for financial aid and support are available upon request.
At the time of application, an official record of the student’s performance on the GRE General Test must be submitted to the department. The subject test in biology is also recommended. Three letters of recommendation from persons who can appraise the student’s aptitude for advanced work are required. In their statement of objectives; applicants should identify a specific area of study within botany: Conservation, Ecology, Ethnobotany, General Botany, Marine Botany, Systematics/Evolution or Whole Plant Biology. Minimum curriculum requirements for each track are available at the department website. Applicants will be evaluated for their level of preparation and potential to successfully complete their proposed plan of study. Application deadlines are
MS and PhD students are admitted to candidacy when they have successfully completed any requirements and pre-program deficiencies identified by their committee and after they have demonstrated the ability to collect, analyze, integrate, and communicate scientific information effectively in the English language. This requirement may be satisfied by a class paper, publication, or other written evidence deemed acceptable by the committee.
Because scientific findings are typically presented orally, as well as in writing, all students must gain and demonstrate proficiency in the presentation of seminars. Students must complete at least two BOT 610 seminars to satisfy this requirement. In addition, MS Plan A and PhD students must present two public seminars: first, outlining the background of a research problem and the student’s proposed research program; and second, at the conclusion of their program, describing the research results and conclusions. The latter seminar also includes a final examination by the thesis or dissertation committee. The final examination for the MS Plan B students includes the presentation of a public seminar summarizing the results of one of their directed research studies.
Master’s Degree
Plan A (thesis) and Plan B (non-thesis) are separate MS programs with distinct purposes. Before admission to candidacy, the plan that a candidate intends to follow must be declared and approved. Plan A is the usual program to be taken by candidates. Plan B is for students who do not intend to make research in botanical sciences their profession. Plan B programs emphasize the methodological aspects of botanical sciences.
MS Plan A (Thesis) Requirements
For Plan A, a minimum of 30 credit hours is required. Of that, a total of 12 credit hours shall be for thesis and a minimum of 18 additional credit hours for courses approved by the candidate’s committee.
MS Plan B (Non-thesis) Requirements
For Plan B, a minimum of 30 credit hours is required. Of that, a total of 18 credit hours shall be earned in the major field or an approved related field in courses numbered 600 and above. Of these credits, at least 6 (but not more than 9) must be for directed research in aspects of botanical sciences chosen by the candidate in consultation with his or her committee.
Doctoral Degree
The PhD program includes gaining a working knowledge in an approved foreign language or other research-tool subject, as well as passing a comprehensive examination and writing a dissertation. Suitability of the language or tool subject is determined by the graduate faculty according to the student’s area of specialization, and proficiency is ordinarily determined by examination or satisfactory completion of a specific course of study.
Requirements
The comprehensive examination is solely oral, or a combination of oral and written, and is conducted by the candidate’s committee, plus any members of the graduate faculty who wish to attend. In addition to general botany, the candidate is examined in-depth in areas of related disciplines that have been previously agreed upon by the student and the committee.
The dissertation is expected to be an original contribution based on independent research. It is initiated by the preparation of a critical review of the literature that becomes the basis for a dissertation proposal. Dissertation research for the PhD degree is carried out in an aspect of botanical sciences for which a member of the graduate faculty of the field will accept responsibility as committee chair.
Catalog Coordinator, Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Student Academic Services, 2600 Campus Road, QLC 102, Honolulu, HI 96822 :: Web Design by Christine Galiza :: | 12,712 | 5,102 | 0.000199 |
warc | 201704 | Weddings are often a time to look back on the past, whether through old, embarrassing photographs of the bride and groom or speeches reminiscing about times and experiences from earlier days.
And royal weddings are no different. They are, after all, history in the making.
In preparation for the wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29, CBC News has compiled information about life in the United Kingdom at the time of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, on July 29, 1981, and how it compares to today.
Here is a look back at the people, politics and economy of the U.K. 30 years ago.
People
In 1981, the population of the U.K. was 56.4 million. By July 2011, it is expected to reach 62.7 million, according to the CIA World Factbook.
That number will include a fair share of Oliver and Olivias, because according to the British government's National Office of Statistics, these are the most popular baby names in 2009.
During the early 1980s, on the other hand, it was Christopher for boys and Sarah for girls.
Over the last 30 years, there has also been a substantial increase in the number of centenarians — people aged 100 and over — in the U.K. From just 2,600 in 1981 the number grew to 11,600 in 2009. At 100 years old, a person has been alive long enough to remember the 1923 wedding between Prince Albert, later King George VI, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, William's great-grandparents.
Economy
During the 1980s, the British economy was facing hard times, with soaring unemployment and an inflation rate of 11.9 per cent. Though not nearly as dire, the country faces significant economic challenges in 2011.
Watching the royal wedding
An estimated 750 million viewers tuned in to watch the nuptials of Charles and Diana on July 29, 1981.
Some have predicted as many as two billion will watch the marriage of William and Kate on April 29, 2011.
However, Britons have much more choice when it comes to channel surfing. In 1981, there were only three television channels, whereas today there are nearly 1,000, according to a BBC site detailing British politics, culture and entertainment in 1981.
In 1981, the unemployment rate stood at around 10 per cent and roughly 2.65 million Britons were out of work. That same year, the country's GDP shrank by 1.2 per cent and inflation stood at 11.9 per cent.
According to the most recent figures released by the Office of National Statistics, the unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent in February 2011, with 2.48 million Britons out of work. The rate of inflation stood at 5.5 per cent during the same time period.
During the last six months, the country's economy has remained largely stagnant, with GDP growth remaining at practically zero.
Joe Grice, chief economist with the Office of National Statistics, told the Telegraph the economy has been "on a plateau" for a number of months.
Politics
The political system in 2011 is also remarkably similar to 1981.
During the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, then Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was just two years into an ambitious plan designed to privatize state-owned enterprise and reduce social spending, including investment in health care and education.
The Iron Lady had won a decisive election victory in 1979, capturing 339 seats in the then-635-seat House of Commons.
Current Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who won 305 seats out of a total of 650 in 2010, has also been embarking on cost-cutting measures, limiting or reducing public spending programs.
The 2011 opposition Labour party seat count is also nearly identical to its 1981 standing, with 255 seats today compared to 269 following the 1979 general election.
Protest and unrest
The 1980s saw a series of marches and riots caused by the poor economic conditions.
There were riots in London, Liverpool, Leeds, and Birmingham in 1981, fuelled by high unemployment and simmering racial tensions in the inner cities.
Trade unions also organized a series of marches designed to draw attention to the worsening economic conditions, including the People's March for Jobs in 1981.
There have been several instances of unrest in the U.K. of late, largely a result of high unemployment and the government's austerity measures.
Last month, 250,000 people gathered in London to protest against public spending cuts. Though the March 26 rally, organized by the Trades Union Congress, was mostly peaceful, a number of protesters attacked luxury shops and banks.
On Dec. 9, 2010, student-led protests against the government's plans to increase tuition by 300 per cent turned violent. And a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was allegedly kicked by demonstrators.
Marriages
Although many Britons have gotten behind the festivities of the current royal wedding — with reports that people started camping out along the procession route as early as April 27 — it seems that some are shying away from the actual institution of marriage.
In 1981, 351,973 couples decided to get hitched, but by 2009 that number had fallen to just 231,490, according to an Office of National Statistics publication entitled Royal-ing back the years.
The report notes that marriage rates have been falling for the last three decades because many have been either delaying when they tie the knot or simply living together without any formal arrangement.
The 2009 numbers are the lowest since 1895, the document says.
It is also unlikely that the pomp and ceremony behind the current celebrations will have any upward pull on the marriage rate. A BBC report looked at data from previous royal weddings in 1840, 1863, 1893, 1923, 1947 and 1981 and found no corresponding rise in the nation's nuptials. | 5,791 | 2,757 | 0.000367 |
warc | 201704 | CFI Tells Federal Court: End Taxpayer Funding of Clergy Housing June 24, 2014
If your employer provides you with housing at your place of work, and requires you to live in it, the value of this housing is not subject to federalincome tax. “Ministers of the gospel,” however, receive a significantly more generous tax benefit. Members of the clergy,
and only members of the clergy, can receive a cash allowance designated for housing , and, if theyuse this cash to pay a mortgage, they can still claim a mortgage tax deduction. Moreover, free of taxes there is no requirement that ministers even reside at their place of work; they can live in a beach house if they want.
This ministers-only benefit is unfair and blatantly unconstitutional. CFI recently filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for theSeventh Circuit, supporting a challenge to what is known as “The Parsonage Exemption” – Internal Revenue Code § 107(2). Following a victory for the FreedomFrom Religion Foundation in the trial court, the government appealed the ruling, and was supported by
hundreds of religious groups seeking to preserve their financial advantage.
We argue that the tax break is unconstitutional on its face. “Ministers of the gospel” receive a tax benefit valued at almost $4 billion every 5 years, abenefit based
solely on religious grounds. The Constitution does not permit tax revenues to be used to pay clerical salaries. We point out thatfor every $1 in tax breaks a member of the clergy receives under this unfair exemption, an ordinary taxpayer has to shell out an extra $1 in taxesto allow the government to balance its books. American taxpayers, religious and nonreligious alike, are being forced to subsidize the salaries of religiousemployees.
We also note that the rationales advanced by the government and hundreds of religious amici are flawed. The Parsonage Exemption is alleged to level theplaying field between churches rich enough to purchase housing, and poorer ones, which can only provide an allowance. But churches’ relative financialwell-being is not the government’s business. Even if it was, the Parsonage Exemption has permitted mega-churches, such as that of Rick Warren, to
pay preachers high salaries entirely in the form of tax-exempt housing payments. Far from benefiting small churches, the exemption hasonly lined the pockets of the wealthiest churches in the country. CFI believes that the tax code should neither favor nor disadvantage religious groups. Where relevant, ministers of the gospel should apply forhousing-based tax exemptions like every other employee in any other part of society. The Court of Appeals should uphold the ruling that the ParsonageExemption is unconstitutional and violates the Establishment Clause.
CFI is working hard for the separation of church and state, recently submitting amicus briefs in major cases involving “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance inMassachusetts, sectarian prayer at legislative sessions in the
Greece v. Galloway Supreme Court case, and on employersimposing their religious views about contraception on their employees in the soon-to-be-decided Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case. But we can’t do any of this without your support. Please donate today and help us keep up the fight for science, reason, and secular values.
*
Image: “Parsonage” of Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Daystar television, from an NPR report. | 3,501 | 1,708 | 0.000601 |
warc | 201704 | Welcome to December's Market Update. Let’s take a look at residential real-estate activity in your area during the month of November. The number of active listings was up 61% from one year earlier, and down 37% from the previous month. Even so, buyers still enjoyed a greater selection of homes today than they did one year ago. As you can see, the median listing price for the month was just under 1.5-million dollars. Compared to last year, the average number of days units spent on the market before being sold was up 39%. This higher number of days may signal a slowdown in the local inventory-turnover rate. The median sale price was just under 1.1-million dollars. The number of units sold increased 18% year-over-year, and increased 37% month-over-month. These figures may indicate that buyers have been taking advantage of opportunities in this market. Thanks for watching. We hope you use this information to make smart, informed decisions in your upcoming real-estate transactions. Feel free to contact us for more information or further assistance.
Show Transcript
Map Information for Lafayette, CA
Area Information for Lafayette, CA
Population:23,969
Median Age:47.03 yr
Median Commute Time:28 mins
Educational Climate*:4
Sales Tax:8%
Population Density:1,625/sq mi
Population Change Since 2000:3.3%
Closest Airport:Metropolitan Oakland International
Closest College:Saint Mary College Of California
Closest Jr. College:Carrington College-pleasant Hill
Median Household Income:$133,849
Annual Residential Turnover:7%
Median Home Sales Price:$1,312,500
Closest Major Sports Team:Golden State Warriors
Change Avg. Household Income Since 2000:30.58%
* Scale from 1-5 ** Index where 100 is the national average
Demographic Data for Lafayette, CA
Median Age: 47.03Married: 52%Number of Households: 9,294Households with Children: 3,252
Community:
Occupancy Types
3599Vacant
8822Owned
12512Rented
Transportation to Work
43%Drive
47%Public Transportation
8%Walk / Bike / Other
8%Work at Home
National Index Comparisons:(100 National Average) | 2,084 | 1,161 | 0.000878 |
warc | 201704 | A Permanent Solution to Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Does generalized anxiety disorder have a serious impact on your life? It may not seem possible, but after more than a decade working with the most severe fears and phobias
we have never met a case of generalized anxiety disorder that could not be overcome.
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We have two proven programs for Generalized Anxiety Disorder First, there is the do-it-yourself Home Study program. Or second, you can work with a board-certified specialist in our one-on-one program:
Order as Boxed CD’s & Workbook or Download the Program Now • Get Underway Instantly & Download Now • Work Through the Program on Your Time Individually-Tailored Plan with a Highly Qualified Practitioner • Confidential Sessions with Board-Certified Specialist • Fast, Personalized & Proven System to Get Rid of the Root of the Fear How CTRN Programs Work
You’ve got to ‘re-wire’ your unconscious mind – and with our help its easier than you may think. You know that Generalized Anxiety Disorder isn’t working for you. But it affects you because your unconscious mind has associated what you fear with fear and perhaps a bunch of other negative emotions and they get triggered automatically – like clockwork – every time.
You have not been able to prevent your feelings of fear because you have not been given the methodology to change your feelings and associations. We’re here to give you give you what you need to take back control. Are you ready to get started?
Process to Overcome Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Treatment Versus Cure
Unlike other solutions, we don’t promise you a cure for your fear. As much as we’d like to wave a magic wand and ‘cure’ you, it’s actually up to you to change how you feel. We’re going to walk you through the process that helps you re-program that tricky subconscious thinking.
The methods in our program will teach clear-cut steps toward gaining self-belief, peace and joy, as well as proven procedures to conquer your negative emotions. Time to say enough is enough. It is time for you to stop that cycle of negative thoughts.
Where Your Generalized Anxiety Disorder Comes From
The root cause of Generalized Anxiety Disorder is often (but not always) traumatic incident in the past. The mind will, in some situations, generate the fear without an apparent cause. By exposing the root cause, you will be able to remedy the problem by easily exchanging harmful triggers. People who are at the greatest risk include:
• Those who have a general predisposition for fear and anxiety
• One who seems to be ‘high-strung’ • If you experience adrenal insufficiency
Any of those portray you? To find out what others are saying about our ability to help, click here.
You can also read what the media has to say.
The Warning Signs You Should be Looking For
Use our 2 minute Generalized Anxiety Disorder Online Analysis to discover the magnitude of the problem for you, but it is pretty simple.
Now is the point in time to take control, if the fear is considerably taking over your life, in a negative way. Does the thought of What You Fear make you nauseous? Does it automatically initiate sticky hands and a mouth that is made of cotton? Does your heart begin to pound? Do you feel as though you are unable to stand?
These are just a few of the most common things people experience. Click here to learn more about the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.
We not only help you deal with the symptom you experience, but we find the cause. This is what we do
Drugs and Prescriptions
We strongly believe that drugs are not a good solution for any Anxious Person, but you should always follow your physician’s advice with regard to drugs/meds and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Meds may seem to help in the short-term by temporarily improving your symptoms, but the problem is that they can never cure the core issue of the fearful patterns of thinking that are the automatic reaction to what you fear and which trigger the intense feelings of fear.
No drug has ever been developed specifically for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, by the way – When looking for an answer, maybe you should think about possible side effects before turning to prescription drugs.
The good news is
with our system you will vanquish your Generalized Anxiety Disorder, without drugs.. Next Action Learn about The VIP One on One Program: The VIP Program for Generalized Anxiety Disorder Discover The Home Study Program: Vanquish Fear & Anxiety for Generalized Anxiety Disorder Or learn more about Generalized Anxiety Disorder: | 4,993 | 2,304 | 0.000449 |
warc | 201704 | Choline chloride Chemical Properties
Choline chloride Usage And Synthesis
B vitamins Choline is an indispensible fundamental component in humans and animal body, often referred to as B vitamins or vitamin B4, and is a necessary low-molecule organic compound for maintaining physiological function off animal body. It can be synthesized inside animal body but still often need to be supplied to dietary and is a kind of vitamin in maximal usage amount. Inside animal cells, it can be used to adjust the in vivo metabolism and conversion of fats, preventing the fat deposition and tissue degeneration of liver and kidney, and then promote the regeneration of amino acids, enhance utilization of amino acids as well as save some part of methionine. Choline chloride is the most commonly used as well as most economical form of synthetic choline and is a water soluble vitamin, and is the component for constituting of acetylcholine, lecithin, and nerve phospholipids of biological tissue. Moreover, it can save methionine and is an important material required for livestock, poultry, and fish. Inside animal body, it can be used for adjusting in vivo metabolism and conversion of fats and can prevent the deposition in liver and related tissue degeneration. As a methyl donor, it can promote the re-formation of amino acids and improve the utilization of amino acids. It is mainly used as an additive for being mixing into the animal feed. During the exact usage process, in addition to prevent moisture deliquescence, you should also note that all kind of feeds usually take the addition of choline chloride as the last step. Because of its destruction effects on other vitamins, especially its rapid destruction on vitamin A, D, K in the presence of metal elements, multi-dimensional formulation should not include choline. Daily feed supplied with it should be used as soon as possible after the addition. Tests have showed that choline chloride is especially important for chicken poultry. Its synthetic amino acids and lecithin can be delivered to various locations inside chicken bodies, being able to prevent the fat deposition in the liver and kidney and accelerate the growth of chickens and increase egg production and hatchability. The above information is edited by the Chemicalbook of Dai Xiongfeng. Content Analysis Accurately weigh sample of about 300 mg and put it into 250 ml Erlenmeyer flask; add 50 ml of glacial acetic acid and heated on a steam bath until complete dissolving. After cooling, add 10 ml of mercury acetic acid mercury test solution (TS-137) and 2 drops of gentian violet reagent; use the acetic acid solution of 0.1 mol/L perchloric acid for titration to green endpoint. At the same time carry out a blank test and make necessary calibration. Each Ml of 0.1mol / L perchloric acid is equivalent to 13.96 mg of choline chloride (C5 H14ClNO). Toxicity ADI does not make restrictive regulations (FAO / WHO, 2001). GRAS (FDA, §182.5252, §182.8252, 2000); LD50: 9000mg / kg (rat, oral). Limited use GMP limit (FDA§182.5252.2000); Chemical Properties It is white hygroscopic crystal and is odorless with fish stench. Its melting point of 240 ℃. Its 10% aqueous solution has a pH 5-6. However, it is unstable in alkaline solution. This product is easily soluble in water and ethanol but insoluble in ether, petroleum ether, benzene and carbon disulfide. It has a low toxicity with LD50 (rat, oral) being 3400 mg / kg. Uses It can be supplied to tissue culture media, animal feed additive and used in clinical anti-fatty liver agent. It can be used for treating fatty liver and cirrhosis. It can also be used as the feed additive which is capable of stimulating ovaries for giving birth to more eggs and farrowing. It can also facilitate the weight gaining process of livestock, fish, etc. Choline chloride is effective in the prevention and treatment of the fat deposition and tissue degeneration in the organs of livestock and poultry. It can also promote the absorption and synthesis of amino acids. Moreover, it can enhance physical fitness and disease resistance of livestock, promote their growth and development, and improve poultry laying rate. The usage amount is 1-2 g / kg. As a kind of feed additive, choline chloride has the following physiological effects: it can prevent the accumulation of the fat in liver and the kidney and tissue degeneration; it can promote recombination of amino acids; it can improve the utilization efficiency of amino acids, especially the essential amino acid methionine in vivo. In Japan, 98% of the applied choline chloride is used as the feed additives of chickens, pigs, cattle and fish and other animal. Most of them have been processed into powder; the preparation process of 50% powder is that: first add an appropriate excipient of certain particle size into the mixer is prepared by previously adding an appropriate particle size of the excipient, and then add drop wise of aqueous solution of choline chloride, after mixing, drying to derive it. Some powder products are also blended with vitamins, minerals, and drugs. Choline chloride is the vitamin B-class drug which can be used for the treatment of hepatitis, liver function degradation, early cirrhosis, and pernicious anemia. Production method (1) Continuous method for preparation of choline chloride solution: continuously send the trimethylamine hydrochloride and a certain amount of ethylene oxide separately through pump into the reactor; the reactants had a residence time at the reactor of 1-1.5h; the reaction was carried out under stirring and has its resulting product being continuously withdrawn so that the liquid level within the reactor remained stable. The withdrawn choline chloride extraction crude product entered into the stripper to obtain 60-80% choline chloride liquid product from the bottom. (2) Trimethylamine hydrochloride was reacted with ethylene oxide, and then added with an organic acid for neutralization and further concentration to obtain the choline chloride (3) Chloro-ethanol was reacted with trimethylamine to generate choline chloride. (3)Ethylene oxide method. It can be made from the reaction between ethylene oxide and trimethylamine. Add the trimethylamine ethanol solution into the reactor, send through ethylene oxide at about 30 ℃ and stirring reaction of 4 hour and further obtain it through neutralization with hydrochloric acid (control PH at 6.5-7.0). The yield of the crude product can be as high as 98%. The crude product can further be subject to activated carbon decolorizing and vacuum concentration to obtain 70% aqueous solution. The aqueous solution was added with ground corn cobs, rice hull flour, wheat bran or diatomaceous earth and some other kinds of excipients and can give 50% of the powder. (4) Chlorohydrin method. Use chlorohydrin to substitute ethylene oxide and hydrochloric acid; have it reacted with trimethylamine in the presence of a small amount of ethylene oxide or alkaline substance; First add 100 parts of chlorohydrin into the reaction vessel, further add 130 parts of trimethylamine from the liquid surface, while supplying 1.7 parts of ethylene oxide to trigger the reaction. After the addition, stir at 32-38 ℃ for 4h with the yield being 84% (calculated from chlorohydrin). For example, if catalyzed with an alkaline substance (such as quaternary ammonium salts), the one-way conversion rate can reach over 97%.Trimethylamine methanol solution and chlorohydrin is subject to heating reaction, concentration under reduced pressure, and re-crystallization to generate it. Chemical Properties White crystalline powder Usage choleretic, lipotropic, hepatoprotectant General Description White crystals. Practically neutral aqueous solution. Air & Water Reactions Deliquescent. Very soluble in water. Reactivity Profile An acidic organic salt. Materials in this group are generally soluble in water. The resulting solutions contain moderate concentrations of hydrogen ions and have pH's of less than 7.0. They react as acids to neutralize bases. These neutralizations generate heat, but less or far less than is generated by neutralization of inorganic acids, inorganic oxoacids, and carboxylic acid. They usually do not react as either oxidizing agents or reducing agents but such behavior is not impossible. Many of these compounds catalyze organic reactions. Fire Hazard Choline chloride is relatively nonflammable.
Choline chloride Preparation Products And Raw materials | 8,523 | 3,650 | 0.000275 |
warc | 201704 | Tuesday evening, I went to the U of C to hear former Ambassador John Bolton speak on the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, and take questions.
Bolton started out by stating his belief that Barack Obama is our first “post-American” President, in that he sees nothing particularly exceptional about the United States that citizens of other countries would not see as exceptional concerning their own countries. Building on the theme, Bolton portrayed the President as preferring to be above issues of national self-interest, which he stated would be to the detriment of American foreign policy. He then turned to specific issues, the first being the attempt to forge a comprehensive peace between the Arabs and the Israelis. Bolton stated that he did not think that the Palestinian Authority serves as a respectable interlocutor because of what he views as the fecklessness of Mahmoud Abbas’s government, and Fatah in general. He thinks that the Obama Administration, instead of being able to persuade Israel to soften its line on issues like settlements, instead inadvertently
hardened the Israeli line. At the same time, he believes that the Palestinians will allow the United States to try to deliver the Israelis on a deal, and stated that this calculation might help the Palestinians stand fast on their own negotiating positions, while the United States worked to persuade the Israelis to compromise. Taking a longer term view of the peace process, Bolton stated his belief that the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was hopeless, and that instead, a three-state solution ought to be pursued; one that involves returning the part or all of the Gaza strip to Egypt, part or all of the West Bank to Jordan, and thus resolving the living arrangements for the Palestinian people. I personally don’t think that this proposal is realistic; the two-state solution is the genie that has escaped the bottle, and there is no putting it back, and a three-state solution is about as likely to be implemented as is a one-state solution in which Arabs and Jews share Israel between them.
Turning to the issue of Iran, North Korea, and both countries’ efforts to get nuclear weapons, Bolton stated that both countries viewed the Obama Administration as weak, a perception that encourages both governments in their drive towards nuclear weapons. I suppose that this is the case, but part of the problem in dealing with either Iran or North Korea concerning the nuclear issue is that both countries have learned how to drag out negotiations to near-interminable lengths in order to give themselves more time to completely master the nuclear cycle, and create weapons. Perceptions of weakness don’t help, but even if there were a perception of strength, neither the Islamic regime in Iran, nor the North Korean regime are staffed with fools, and they understand–as does Bolton–that time is on Iran’s and North Korea’s side.
Quite properly, Bolton had scorn for the Obama Administration’s decision to abandon missile defense in the Czech Republic and in Poland. Recall that part of the rationale behind the Administration’s decision was that it would induce the Russians to help us out on issues like Iran, by being more amenable to sanctions. Well, as Bolton pointed out, that just didn’t happen:
Russia publicly pushed back Tuesday against U.S. efforts to threaten tough new sanctions if Iran fails to prove its nuclear program is peaceful, dealing an apparent setback to President Barack Obama’s hopes for Moscow’s backing for fresh penalties against Tehran.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow believed such threats were “counterproductive” and that only negotiations should be pursued now.
Does anyone
really expect this position to change anytime soon?
Bolton is concerned enough about Iran to have posited that nuclear deterrence would not prevail against a theocratic regime that believes in life in the hereafter. I disagree; the Islamic regime has no problem sending
others to die for God, but it does not want to do the honors itself, and it certainly does not want to have the entire country of Iran do the honors by engaging in a blatant act that would invite a massive retaliatory strike. The greater danger–and I am disappointed somewhat in Bolton’s failure to address this–is that the Islamic regime might sell nuclear technology to another country, and then deny responsibility for any particularly horrible event.
Concerning Afghanistan, Bolton was properly scornful of the Obama Administration’s efforts, stating that the effort to get a strategy put in place on Afghanistan is ridiculously tardy, and an effort to kick the can down the road on the issue of troop deployments. The President announced his strategy at roughly the same time General McChrystal was asked to replace General McKiernan as the commanding general in Afghanistan. Stating
now that we need a new strategy–after having announced the strategy earlier this year with General McChrystal’s appointment–is nothing short of bizarre.
The Q&A was a good one. Obviously, people took issue with Bolton’s comments concerning the need to maintain a belief in American exceptionalism, and they challenged him on the issue. The Ambassador gave as good as he got, and engaged a number of the questioners (all students) in colloquy. He was brusque at times, pugnacious always, but addressed matters with detail and coherence, demonstrating that he continues to do his homework when it comes to foreign policy. At times, things seemed to get a tad
too boisterous, but the moderator made sure to keep everything on an even keel. Overwhelmingly, people were on their best behavior, and even if someone thought about rushing the stage with a cream pie to be delivered to the Ambassador’s face, there were quite a few gentlemen who could have played linebacker for the Chicago Bears, ready to stop that from happening. Fortunately, they did not need to sing–or tackle–for their suppers.
At the end of the day, there were a number of statements Bolton made with which I disagreed. However, he was very articulate in defending his views, and got challenged by several good questions. It was a fun debate to witness. Yours truly did not, alas, get a chance to ask a question; I would have wanted Bolton to address the argument I made here. Maybe another time. | 6,508 | 2,962 | 0.000346 |
warc | 201704 | In his comprehensive biography of Lamar Hunt, entitled
Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports, which debuted this week in bookstores, author Michael MacCambridge identifies his subject’s “remarkably detailed and thorough record-keeping.” Hunt was a prolific writer and his papers, as they call them in academic circles, contain hundreds of subject and idea files, all of which I have read and catalogued over the past two years in my role as the team’s historian.
Some of Hunt’s Herculean output of ideas are sketched out, others digested on a variety of sport-related subjects, but none more important historically than those related to the founding of the American Football League and its early days. The youthful enthusiasm that made Hunt into a sports promoter preoccupied him throughout his life. Football remained his greatest joy and only strengthened his connection to an America that embraced the game as part of its ethos.
Hunt was the prototype of the new owner of a professional sport in America. Years later he lamented to Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber on a lack of total involvement by the owners of the sport. “Like it or not,” he wrote, “identifiable, active investors are very important to start-up sports ventures. In the AFL owners were as a group extensively involved in ticket sales, player recruiting, marketing, etc.”
What we learn in reading Hunt’s many missives is that he more often dismissed formal studies and – while he read them and, in many instances, authorized their completion – made decisions very much on instinct, excelling as he viewed sports from the closest of distances, that of a fan. He acknowledged as much on the occasion of his induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
You must understand the times in which Hunt lived. “The biggest effort of sports marketing in the 50s,” MacCambridge points out, “focused on simply letting people know when the games would be played.” Hunt went well beyond that. Thinking and planning about the promotion and ticket sales of his sports entities were forever on his mind. “I always find that it is more helpful to do a resume of thoughts like this right after the fact – so that things are fresh in my mind,” he wrote to staff in a memo at the conclusion of a successful Chiefs ticket campaign for the 2004 season. Never one to ignore new ideas, he urged his marketing team late in life that “what Green Bay has done with their cabaret-style seating is the wave of the future.” New ideas were what he sought and he borrowed liberally from others he had seen or read.
Though he could sometimes be absentminded in daily life, once he was immersed in his sports, his concentration came together like a laser. There is much evidence throughout his papers of his attention to detail that seem out of place for a man who had so many balls in the air. Consider the level of specificity and marketing vision displayed in this passage on the importance of signage. Writing to a member of the Chiefs promotion department he calls for “quality signage…interesting and classic…has an appropriate relationship to surroundings,” is “solid, not a banner,” has “selective setting and placement” and contains the “ingredients of the sponsor’s name, name of tournament logo, and [league] logo.”
Likewise, there are numerous examples of Hunt’s pragmatic nature that seem to conflict with his reputation as a promoter of his share of grand impractical schemes, particularly in his drive to bring professional soccer to larger United States audiences. But he could just as quickly dismiss frivolous ideas that took away from the games themselves. “I am not excited about a children’s arcade and playground,” he wrote in reviewing early designs for a renovated Arrowhead Stadium. “That does not sound very productive space economically. It might fit baseball or soccer, but I cannot see it being practical at NFL games.” In a later memorandum, he pushed his charges to “not be timid and we must concentrate on revenue production.” Making a profit was very important to him.
Ebullient up to the time of his death, he seems never to have lost his enthusiasm even after receiving all the accolades a sport could bestow. Moreover, failure never seems to have dissuaded him for an idea or a sport he favored. “I wouldn’t say I wake up and think about a certain thing,” he said in a speech a few years before his passing. “It would be stick-to-it-iveness. Pay attention to detail is very important. And always be willing to do the hard work.”
In the prologue to his biography on Hunt, MacCambridge notes that Americans come to sport seeking “refuge and solace and camaraderie that could be found only in the world of games.” Hunt’s “stick-to-it-iveness” helped very much to define those games and the sports he championed were the better for it. | 5,065 | 2,472 | 0.000427 |
warc | 201704 | Home China World Business Sports Life Entertainment Photo Video Opinion Forum Cartoon Language Tips
Heavy fog envelops Beijing on Sunday morning and the municipal meteorological station issues the city's first orange fog warning. [Photo/Xinhua]
BEIJING - Beijing's air pollution reached dangerous levels yet again on Sunday, marking the third consecutive day of severe smog, municipal environmental authorities said.
The municipal meteorological station issued the city's first orange fog warning Sunday morning due to decreased visibility caused by the heavy smog.
Monitoring data released on Sunday showed that air quality indexes in most regions of Beijing had hit 500, the indexes' highest level.
"Beijing implemented its emergency response plan for hazardous pollution for the first time on Sunday," said Yu Jianhua, director of the air quality department under the municipal environmental protection bureau.
The plan, issued last year, includes multiple measures to combat and respond to hazardous levels of air pollution.
The plan calls for construction sites to limit construction activity that creates large amounts of dust, as well as asks industrial enterprises to reduce emissions, during hazardous pollution days.
The plan also requires municipal traffic authorities to limit government vehicle usage during smoggy days, with the goal of reducing such usage by 30 percent compared to normal days.
The plan also calls for education authorities to instruct schools to limit or completely stop outdoor activity during periods of heavy air pollution.
The municipal environmental monitoring center said readings for PM2.5, or airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, had reached more than 700 micrograms per square meter at several monitoring stations in Beijing, reaching as high as 993 Saturday evening.
"These figures represent extremely bad pollution. Pollutants have gradually accumulated over the course of recent windless days, making the air quality even worse," said Zhu Tong, a professor from the college of environmental sciences and engineering at Peking University.
The pollution is expected to engulf Beijing until Wednesday, when wind will arrive to blow the smog away, according to a weather report from the meteorological station.
Related stories: | 2,318 | 1,141 | 0.000884 |
warc | 201704 | Evangelicals apparently have so much political clout that they are poised to install a theocracy, according to some commentators. Such critics don't notice there is little distinctively evangelical about the evangelical approach to politics. The evangelical emphaseson conversion, the Cross, the Bible, and activismdo not themselves amount to a full, independent theological system. Nor do they take us far in understanding politics, which requires at least some grasp of history, government, law, justice, freedom, rights, mercy, violence, and war. Thoughtful evangelicals trying to understand politics often draw on the wider resources of Calvinist, Anabaptist, Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic teaching.
Still, venerable publications like
The New Republic go overboard when they claim that evangelicals merely march to the drumbeat of Catholic thinkers like Richard Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel. Yes, evangelical distinctives can be compatible with a range of other doctrines. Hence, we can speak easily of evangelical Anglicans or Lutherans, even of evangelical Orthodox or Catholics. The Economist plausibly took Sen. Sam Brownback, a recent convert to Catholicism, to symbolize growing evangelical international activism on religious freedom, sex trafficking, AIDS, Sudan, and North Korea.
Evangelical activism through the centuries has undoubtedly produced some laudable results. The evangelical commitment to religious freedom predates the Enlightenment, and the ethic of personal responsibility helped produce the civil society that Alexis de Tocqueville so admired during his 19th-century visit to America. But it also produces major problems. Currently, evangelical activism hampers responsible political engagement ... | 1,747 | 932 | 0.001076 |
warc | 201704 | Conclusion 04
Not only are customer-facing applications such as e-business/e-commerce and customer relationship management among the ones most often budgeted for by respondents overall, they're also the least likely to be cut entirely in the current economic climate. That only confirms the result that CIOs consider revenue-generating projects a top priority.
E-business/e-commerce was the number-one application for respondents overall, mentioned by 51 percent as being a specific budget line in their IT departments. That number rose to an impressive 63 percent among larger companies. Only 5 percent of all respondents said they'd been forced to eliminate their e-business/e-commerce initiatives so far this year, and none of the large-company respondents said they'd been forced to do so. Larger companies were also less likely than their small-company counterparts to either delay or reduce expenditures for e-business applications.
Similarly, only 5 percent of respondents said they'd been forced to eliminate their CRM projectswhich ranked as the fourth most important application in respondents' IT budgets this year. In fact, 10 percent of the respondents said they actually intend to increase CRM spending this year beyond their initial budget levels.
Although knowledge management was the fifth most important applications area (out of 11) in the CIOs' original budget plans, 25 percent of CIOs with knowledge management in their budgets said they'd already eliminated it from this year's revised plans. Enterprise-resource planning was the second most likely to be eliminated, cited by 12 percent of CIOs. And supply-chain management one of the least-cited applications areas in CIOs' current budgets was mentioned by 10 percent of those CIOs as a candidate to be cut if it was already allocated. | 1,815 | 841 | 0.001193 |
warc | 201704 | House Republicans say it’s time for a jobs bill — literally. They are pushing their Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act as a way to help small-business owners by cutting back on regulation, easing entrepreneurs' ability to raise capital, and making modifications to investing in community banks. And here's a news flash: The bill has bipartisan support. So, what's in it?
What's in the JOBS Act?
Six discrete bills, all tied up with a bow. Together, they would have the following impacts:
1. Raises the number of shareholders a company can have before it is forced to go public. You could call this part The Facebook Act. Facebook, among others, was growing rapidly as a private company but quickly bumped up against the 500-shareholder limit, reducing its ability to compensate employees in one of the main coins of the Silicon Valley realm: stock. The new limit would be 1,000.
2. Permits entrepreneurs to “crowd-fund”their businesses — that is, would let small businesses raise money from large pools of small investors (limited to $10,000 or 10 percent of an investor's annual income, whichever is less).
3. Creates a new category of firms called “emerging growth companies” that would be allowed a slower accession into the Security and Exchange Commission’s full regulatory and fee structure. The idea is that if small companies have fewer fees, they can go public faster and use the money they get from the public markets to create more jobs.
4. Allows small firms to use advertisements to solicit investors, a practice previously banned by the SEC.
5. Lets companies looking to raise up to $50 million in share sales avoid SEC registration, up from the $5 million level set 20 years ago.
6. Increases the number of shareholders allowed to invest in a community bank from 500 to 2,000. | 1,849 | 1,016 | 0.001012 |
warc | 201704 | The great “Aha!” in hiring
Most businesses are founded on a new or better idea and a hope and a prayer. Unlike Cochlear Americas, they don't have the benefit of:
• A product that will fundamentally change peoples' lives
• Hundreds of thousands of prospective customers worldwide in a market guaranteed to grow • A built-in mission that evokes passion in employees
No one appreciates these market advantages more than Chris Smith, President of Cochlear Americas: "It is amazing to be able to work for a company and see every day the impact of what you do." In fact, Chris delights in the potential to bring hearing and new life to people of every age, babies to seniors, through cochlear implants. "Hear now. And always." Even the tagline pulls at your heartstrings.
Those points were just background to Chris Smith's key message in his presentation to the Association for Corporate Growth last month. Despite Cochlear's exceptional market position, Chris emphasized that you achieve sustainable growth by building a culture of servitude and community, which is based on hiring first for character and culture, and hiring second for competency-something I have been espousing for years. This is usually the great "aha!" for all those companies that do exactly the opposite.
Hiring for character and culture
It's almost an adage in this country that you "hire for competence, but fire for character." Although it's true that none of us wants to fly on an airplane built by an apprentice, you can hire an apprentice and teach the necessary mechanical skills. What cannot be taught are the ethics that keep that apprentice from covering up a small crack in the fuselage instead of reporting or repairing it. Whatever else your business has going for it, it won't matter unless you hire people with good character to fulfill your purpose.
There's nothing neutral about character. Employees who do not share your corporate culture dilute it. They detract from the essence that defines your company and drives your achievement. Hiring good cultural matches not only helps to ensure a sustainable future for your business, it's cost effective-leading to higher retention, engagement, and deeper relationships with customers. If you find that you have to fire someone for character, damage has already been done.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to know for certain whether the person you want to hire is a good match with your culture. Having a laser clear understanding of your company culture and developing carefully thought-out questions will help. Do you know what makes you unique? Can you define, specifically, what your values are? Can you describe what your work environment is like day to day? When everyone in your organization answers these kinds of questions the same, you can ask them of candidates and measure their responses against yours.
If the character fits with your culture, interview that person a second time to assess their competency.
Which comes first, serving or leading?
One of the companies I most admire is the cable company WOW!. Their simple philosophy of living up to their name is cultivated and nurtured by four values, one of which is "servanthood." To WOW! this means deriving genuine satisfaction from taking care of each other and their customers. Hiring authentically "people-first" employees surely has much to do with Wow!'s exceptional growth and its year-after-year top rankings in many service categories, including the 2011 Consumer Reports magazine top service provider for Internet and television services.
Robert Greenleaf introduced the concept of "servant-leadership" in a 1970 essay describing the different choices people make in their leadership styles, either on the side of putting themselves first, or serving the needs of others first. "Leader-first" types are driven by power and acquiring material things. Servant-leaders take responsibility for the well-being of people and community. Greenleaf believed that only people who are content and motivated can reach their targets and fulfill a set of expectations.
It follows that if you have a culture of servitude, your managers are servant-leaders and share certain values about how to best support and promote the wellbeing of people, whether employees or customers. Can you hire people who have spent a lifetime putting themselves first and expect to train them to do otherwise? Probably not, no matter how competent their skills are. When you're looking for effective new leaders, first make sure servanthood is central to their character before assessing other leadership competencies.
Fans and community
It makes sense to create a community of customer fans so that you can understand what's important to them and develop your product or service offerings accordingly. Equally important, and less considered, is developing a culture of community that makes employees raving fans of your company.
Raving-fan employees are as obsessed with serving each other as they are with serving their customers. You can't fake this obsession, and you can't buy it. It's based on sincerity, respect and integrity. Community is the natural outcome when you build your culture around the common good character of your employees, whose leaders care about their wellbeing.
A sense of community harnesses your collective talents and energies to achieve the big ideas-and to sweat the small stuff that employees busy battling egos and turf issues avoid or ignore. It's often your attention to taking care of details that wins the business.
A guarantee
No one would suggest that a business can succeed without competent employees. What's important to understand is that the long list of "required" competencies companies use as the first phase in screening candidates is the wrong way to go about finding the right people. Look first for the kind of character and culture fit that spawn servant leaders and a sense of community. Then train your people in any skills they lack. No matter what your product or service, you'll have the advantage, and I can almost guarantee that your company will fulfill its potential and purpose.
{pagebreak:Page 1} Kathleen Quinn Votaw is founder and CEO of TalenTrust, a unique recruitment firm that helps companies find exceptional talent to accelerate their growth. TalenTrust LLC is located in Golden, CO. Kathleen is president of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), Denver. Reach Kathleen at kvotaw@talentrust.com or 303-838-3334 x5. | 6,527 | 3,072 | 0.000329 |
warc | 201704 | The charity specialises in dealing with the issues people suffer from because of rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence or previous child sex abuse.
The Rotherham Women’s Counselling Service has set up a weekly six-hour service, which will enable both male and female victims the opportunity to discuss their issues. The phone line is to be manned by trained counsellors every Thursday from 09:00 to 11:30 and Friday from 12:30 to 15:00.
Rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault can all cause psychological trauma injury and this can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If sustained in childhood and left untreated, the effects can last a lifetime. An adult who sustains these psychological injuries will have them for the remainder of their life if they are not treated.
Statistics from ‘Rape Crisis’ reveal that an estimated 1 in 4 women suffer rape or attempted rape in the UK, with the majority of cases involving someone the victim knows. This figure is far higher than official police statistics would suggest.
The effects of sexual harassment, sexual abuse or rape can have a devastating effect on the life of that person and their families. These can be long lasting and can have a significant impact on how they lead a normal life, both from a social and work perspective.
Business development manager for The Rotherham Women’s Counselling Service, Sandra Moule said, “The idea behind the telephone help line is for people who may be already receiving counselling, for people who are contemplating it or people who are on our waiting list. It will give them the opportunity to speak to someone who understands.”
The phone line has been funded by the Ministry of Justice.
View the original BBC News article. | 1,773 | 923 | 0.001108 |
warc | 201704 | The field of law enforcement contains many unique and exciting careers. From local law enforcement to corrections, the private sector and even national security, an ambitious mind can find a variety of rewarding criminal justice career paths to explore.
Within each area of criminal justice there are specific careers, each with a unique role in law enforcement. There are the officers who directly engage the public, the detectives who piece crimes together based on evidence, and the lab analysts who work with that evidence to provide answers to the miniscule questions of a case.
Outside of law enforcement there is national and homeland security, where agents ensure the security of the nation’s borders or protect the country from terrorist threats.
Exlore the career options below and find the right path for you.
Correctional officers run the nation’s jail and prison facilities, performing roles ranging from security to administration, and even education. See the various correctional career paths available here.
Away from the hustle and bustle of the police station or the courthouse is the other wing of the criminal justice world: the science. Falling under this umbrella are the forensic scientists glamorized by shows such as CSI and Law … Continue reading
There are as many different law enforcement agencies as there are crayons in a box of Crayolas. Each one, though, has a specific function and jurisdiction. With a country as large and wide-ranging as the United States, there are numerous … Continue reading
The government employs professionals with criminal justice backgrounds, as does the legal system. Lawyers and others involved in the courts system often have criminal justice degrees, supplemented by specialized training in their field of law. Explore these challenging career paths … Continue reading
Besides public law enforcement, criminal justice professionals can also be employed for private companies, organizations and individuals to provide day-to-day protection or security. These professionals may be self-employed as private investigators, where they may also occasionally work with public agencies … Continue reading | 2,199 | 1,044 | 0.000976 |
warc | 201704 | It was Milan Ondaatje’s
In the Skin of a Lion that first disturbed me, in the real sense of being unsettled. It took me out of a place I knew and loved into a place of unknowing, and I sensed that somehow my ignorance was being exploited. It is a lovely book, quite easy to fall into, but I was taken out of it when the two main characters sit naked on the floor, leaning against the wall, the light coming from a sleepy fireplace. I jolted into consciousness. I stared, bewildered. I saw that they were naked, and then I saw something forbidden, something I did not want to see. I saw them have sex.
This, for me, was a problem. It came largely from a tradition I grew up in, which taught that you were only to see one person naked, your spouse. To see anyone else, even if it was not pornographic, was nonetheless disloyal. A wandering eye ushers in comparisons, expectations, and unfaithful desires—things that should have no part in the marriage bed. Depictions of sex in literature might inject others into those thoughts that should only be of your spouse. In the imagination, the borders of art and reality are permeable. Sex is attractive, and incorrigible, so it’s best that you be attracted to one person in that respect, not others, not even fictional others. I was taught that sex was set apart, sacred.
I thought of sex as holy.
And so I questioned my professor. Should she have given us the book to read? Should the author have written that scene, albeit small? The professor replied that Ondaatje, a veteran novelist, knew what he was doing. The scene was for the sake of the art he was creating. It was necessary to develop the characters; it was precisely what the art demanded. I nodded, but wrestled ad nauseam in my mind if the scene was actually worth it.
This disturbance resurfaced when recently I read Jonathan Franzen’s
The Corrections. It’s the story of a modern family of three kids, a manipulative mother, and a father with Parkinson’s who try (or try not) to get together for Christmas. In the first hundred or so pages, we follow Chip, the middle child of Enid and Alfred Lambert. Chip is consciously and repetitively self-destructive, so much that I wanted to turn away from what seemed like unnecessary, childish acts. Hadn’t he heard of moderation or prudence? Had he one disciplined or admirable bone? We read about Chip’s ogling obsession, which is perhaps linked to his insatiable sexual appetite. We see Chip having sex with his girlfriend, and with the boss’s wife, and even with one of his students. When his French pornographic VHS gets put in the dishwasher, he takes it back out, “in case he needed it later.”
It was a challenge. While I could appreciate innuendo, maybe one or two scenes, the sexual catalogue of
The Corrections was exhaustive. While other characters are more reserved, hesitant, restrained, or repressed than Chip, they share with him the eventual surrender toward what they do not want to become. After reading about some of these other characters, I almost wished to go back to Chip. I read about the loss of virginity, the verge of marital rape, sex between unmarried and married women. I had seizures of conscience. I put the book down for weeks. There are scenes I want to forget. Near the middle of the story, we follow Denise, the daughter of Enid and Alfred, up into her room, with an old, war-veteran co-worker. First he loves her, then he abuses her. Denise hides her stained sheets in the closet.
Somehow, I finished the book. In part, Franzen writes with such brilliance that I couldn’t look away. Every piece was thought out. Every sentence, clause, and word was situated in the whole. The book was artfully, compellingly crafted. Franzen is casual in his prose, but the word-play is wonderful. You misread the book if without laughter. Was it possible that, if Franzen had done this on a literary level, he had also done so with the narrative? Perhaps the story’s explicit content was as intentional as the words.
After some distance between myself and the book, I saw it clearly. And with no little frustration, I realized that I had terribly misread
The Corrections. I had stopped Franzen, and myself, with “but is this ethical?” and “do I need to see this?” and “how was that scene really necessary to develop the character?” But these were the wrong questions, or rather they were asked of the wrong thing. Prior to those questions was something larger, which I had not asked, and Franzen had been answering the whole time. It’s best to show it by a parallel.
Consider this scene between Denise and her employer Brian. Brian has come into some money, and is building a restaurant where Denise will be the head-chef. The two take a culinary trip to Europe, which turns from business to something more. Franzen writes:
[Denise] hated [Brian’s wife] Robin for having a husband she could trust. … Two nights before they left [Europe] … He pulled her into his room and kissed her. He’d given no warning of his change of heart. … She was beautifully, avidly adulterous and she knew it. … until there began to swell inside her, hardly noticeable and then suddenly distinct, and then not merely distinct but increasingly painful in its pressure on her peritoneum and eyeballs and arteries and meninges, a body-sized, Robin-faced balloon of
wrongness. … She clarified by rolling out of bed and crouching in a corner of the hotel room. She said she couldn’t. … She apologized to him. “No, you’re right,” Brian said. … “I feel terrible. I’ve never done anything like this before.” “See, I have,” she said. … “More than once. And I don’t want to anymore.”
No one in the book wants to do what they’ve been doing anymore; they want their lives corrected. The present is so vicious, and the chance of resolution so incredible, that Franzen seems ruthless with his characters. They are not safe; they will see the worst. (Denise eventually sleeps with Brian’s wife, Robin, and destroys the marriage.) But it is not destruction that moves the book. It’s the characters’ struggle to correct what has been destroyed. And that is a motivation born of virtue, even love.
Consider, now, this parallel from
Paradise Lost. This is the scene after Adam decides to take the fruit because of his love for Eve, who has already taken from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:
[N]ever did thy Beauty since the day
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn’d
… so inflamed my sense
With ardor to enjoy thee …
So he said and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose Eye darted contagious Fire
Her hand he seiz’d, and to a shady bank
He led her nothing loath; Flow’rs were the Couch,
Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel,
And Hyacinth, Earth’s freshest softest lap.
There they their fill of Love and Love’s disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the Seal,
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep
oppress’d them, weaired with their amorous play.
Soon found their Eyes how op’n’d, and their minds
How dark’n’d; innocence, that as a veil
Had shadow’d them from knowing ill, was gone.
The disturbing aspect of art is not in showing nudity or sex, not violence or obscenity. Those are accouterments. That is why my questions were asked too early. I had not seen the reality to which all these elements point. They depict man as he reacts to his sin. They display man as he surely dies. The question I should have been asking is whether art has the permission, even obligation, to act out the death which approaches us, which we willingly walk, and sometimes run, towards.
And with what more convicting image can art show this than with the primary relationship of marriage atrophied by neglect; the first mandate to procreate becoming shame; the beginning (and continuing) genealogy of mankind made clandestine and suspect; the act by which two become one becoming the very act that splits them in two? It almost becomes essential, whenever the extent of sin, disorder, and in-correction is presented, to begin where man begins. Procreation thus signals at once the beginning of life and a re-instantiation of life’s brokenness. Sex is hope and confusion. Every person—hence every family, every marriage—emerges from that “contagious Fire.” With this knowledge, to write about sex is to write about fallen man. The ethics of showing nakedness now becomes the ethics of showing decay.
The last thing we want to remember is that sin is contemporary. In one sense, it’s easy to read Milton. He wrote hundreds of years ago. He wrote so long ago that the problems he wrote about also seem far off. But we don’t want a living author showing us that the very same thing is still going on. It’s just a sad story, that once upon a time man lost paradise. But there’s an urgency about man still losing it. Franzen was hard to read because he took me out of history and bluntly depicted the incompleteness and incorrectness of the present.
We all long for life, until we discover what life must undergo. At that point, we go through the event of hope, or despair. And we are good to recall Milton’s other work. Franzen has written a modern simulacrum to Milton’s
Paradise Lost, but we wait to see if he writes with respect to Milton’s Paradise Regained. And there is a glimpse of this. Chip, the character whose destruction was so disheartening to watch and who, in the political metalepsis of the novel, represents our generation, is the one character whose life in the end actually finds some correction. He finds someone to love. They have kids. It’s the one time in the book that Chip’s love for another is described in terms of what it created, not what it destroyed. | 10,052 | 4,729 | 0.00022 |
warc | 201704 | Feb 9
February 9, 2010 |
Brain Basics: Brain Damaged Investor from Inside the Investor's Brain by Richard L. Peterson
According to a 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "Lessons from the Brain-Damaged Investor," brain-damaged traders may have an advantage in the markets (1). Study participants who had a brain lesion that eliminated their ability to emotionally "feel" were compared against "normals" in an investment game. The chief researcher, Professor Baba Shiv (now at Stanford University), used a mixed sample of patients with damage in emotional centers including either the orbitofrontal cortex, the amygdala, or the insula.
In Shiv's experiment, each participant was given $20 to start. Participants were told that they would be making 20 rounds of investment decisions. In each round, they could decide to "invest" or "not invest." If they chose not to invest then they kept their dollar and proceeded to the next round. If they chose to invest, then the experimenter would first take the dollar bill from their hand and then flip a coin in plain view. If the coin landed heads, then the subject lost the dollar, but if it were tails, then $2.50 was awarded. On each round, participants had to decide first whether to invest. The expected gain of each dollar "investment" was $1.25 (average of $0 and $2.50), while each "not invest" decision led to a guaranteed $1. The expected value of the gamble being higher, it was always the most rational choice. Thus, one might assume that subjects always "invested" in order to make more money.
In fact, the results are not uniform. Normals (without brain damage) invested in 57.6 percent of the total rounds, while brain-damaged subjects invested 83.7 percent of the time. Many normal subjects (42.4 percent) were "irrationally" avoiding the investment option. Following an investment loss in the prior round, 40.7 percent of the normals and 85.2 percent of the patients invested in the subsequent round. After recent losses, normals invested 27 percent less often. They became even more "irrationally risk avoidant" after a loss.
Of the patients with different brain lesions, the insula-lesion patients showed the leas sensitivity to risk, investing in 91.3 percent of all the rounds and in 96.8 percent of the rounds following a loss. As a result, it appears that the insula is one of the most important drivers of risk aversion. Without an insula, brain-damaged patients were more likely to "invest."
On the lighter side, neurologist Antoine Bechara ventured that investors must be like "functional psychopaths" to avoid emotional influences in the markets. These individuals are either much better at controlling their emotions or perhaps don't experience emotions with the same intensity as others. According to Professor Shiv, many CEOs and top lawyers might also share this trait: "Being less emotional can help you in certain situations." (2)
1. "Lessons from the Brain-Damaged Investor" Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2005.
2. Chang, H.K. 2005. "Emotions can Negatively Impact Investment Decisions" (September). Stanford GSB. Newton Linchen replies:
Larry Williams teaches that we shouldn't try to "improve" our personality regarding trading and emotions. There are "emotional guys" and there are "cold guys". Being an emotional type and trying to become cooler is another problem to solve, and the markets gives us already much trouble to work with. So, he says in his books that we should only recognize "what type" of people we are, and develop our trading style accordingly.
Pitt T. Maner III comments:
With the availability of more and more powerful software programs for the average Joe, will the human element eventually be less of a factor? One for instance can play a very mean game of chess without being a grandmaster by using a powerful program to suggest moves. There are tournaments where this is allowed—man/computer chess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess So could it be that there will be a move towards very advanced "cyborgian" arrangements in the future. Not necessarily more profitable but less emotional–more algorithmic. It seems the younger generations are more trusting of technology to solve all problems, and as costs come down on the technology and software, will there be a pull to use methods similar to those now employed by professionals? Can one become competitive by using a "crutch"? Mr. Schnytzer noted a couple of years ago, " My guess is that with Deep Blue at your disposal, you'll beat Nigel easily at chess, but won't improve on your options trading profitability." Of course there is a company, however, using the Cyborg name that promises (for a small fee) to bring all this to the common investor…but does it work, or with increasingly advanced software can it work in the future? http://www.businessinsider.com/cyborg-trading-promises-hft-solutions-for-joe-trader-2009-11
Kim Zussman comments:
'We should only recognize "what type" of people we are, and develop our trading style accordingly.' Up to and including not trading. The idea that anyone can learn to trade successfully can be checked by asking yourself:
1. Could you learn to play competitively right now in the NBA , NFL, or national league?
2. How long could you stay conscious in the boxing ring for your weight class, or with an opponent twice your size (SEC says no guns allowed)?
3. If trading can be taught, why do most fail?
4. If a scientist, by definition shouldn't you be too quick to abandon convictions, and therefore vig-out with overly-tight stops?
Rocky Humbert responds:
The answer to Kim's question #1 and #2, as posed, is self-evident.But there may be flaws in the question. No one can just walk onto a field and play pro ball. Likewise, no one can walk into an operating room and perform open heart surgery. However, must people can (assuming they are able-bodied and mentally capable) invest thousands of hours and achieve some reasonable level of proficiency in most activities. A reasonable level of proficiency, does not mean being Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods, Christian Barnard, Buffett, Soros, Steinhardt and Robertson. Fortunately, one does not have to be in the 99.999999% percentile to be deemed a non-failure — or almost every reader (myself included) of this email would be over-dosing on anti-depressants! On #3, Why is there any reason to think that the percentage of traders who fail is any more than the percentage of entrepreneurs who fail (90%), or the number of people who drop out of the 36-week Navy SEAL class (70+%)? Competitive, high-risk activities always have a high drop-out rate. But, most of these people find their calling and are productive members of society…even if they can't throw a 100mph fast ball.
Jeff Watson comments:
I've often wondered where that meme of a 90% failure rate in trading originated. I see it in the literature, and hear it repeated all the time, accepted as gospel. Has anyone actually done a study to quantify this, or is the number just one of those numbers like Mitch Snyder pulled out when he quipped that "10,000 homeless people die a day".. And, what constitutes success in trading, what time parameter. Is success measured by return, by amount made, or by the ability of someone to grind out a small profit for 30-40 years, solidly in the black but never making a fortune?
Rocky Humbert replies:
Jeff's statement: "Is success measured by return, by amount made, or by the ability of someone to grind out a small profit for 30-40 years, solidly in the black but never making a fortune?" are great first questions. Regarding traders "failing," one should also consider a related data point: According to the BLS, the "average" baby boomer held 10.8 jobs from ages 18 to 42. 23 percent held 15+ jobs, and only 14% held fewer than 4 jobs. So, the "average" person changes jobs every 2 years. If one defines trading as a "job," then someone who does this, sitting in the same chair, for a long time is quite unusual compared with the population. see : http://www.bls.gov/nls/y79r22jobsbyedu.pdf
Kim Zussman comments:
No one can just walk onto a field and play pro ball. Likewise, no one can walk into an operating room and perform open heart surgery. However, must people can (assuming they are able-bodied and mentally capable) invest thousands of hours and achieve some reasonable level of proficiency in most activities.> My question is based on evidence like the article; supporting geneticaspects to behaviour, ability, gifts, and handicaps. Not everyone canbe trained to reasonable proficiency in the big leagues - and marketsare by definition among the biggest. Shouldn't traders ask themselves whether the reward/risk compensates the opportunity cost of thousands of hours of (potentially pointless)learning, if one may be (unknowingly) missing abilities needed toexceed results of buy and hold?
Peter C. Earle comments:
I am quite sure that this particular figure - 90%, sometimes shifted to 95%or even 99% - originated firmly in the late 1990s, when the SEC went afterthe SOES shops. They took, as their core example of the dangers, the exampleof one office of a particular firm which in a short amount of time morphedinto a general representation of the daytrading business (e.g., even the'prop shops' which were less focused on commissions than profitable trading)and was ultimately extended through word of mouth and the nascentblogosphere (e.g. message board jabbering) to cover any intraday tradingdone (online brokerage accounts, the occasional one day open/close, etc),and has since grasped the received wisdom of the collective mind at thispoint to an extent that it goes unquestioned. The fact is, the SOES traders/daytraders (as my man Lack will no doubtattest to) were mostly undercapitalized, out-of-work accountants andconstruction workers being sold 'maps to the gold mine', as it were. A better statistic, to start with, would be: with an $X account, after twelve months, how many remained?
Kim Zussman comments:
Interestingly, the author was as irrational as his subjects byfollowing the academic herd, making a low-risk, incorrect conclusion: "This study is especially relevant because of a concept called the"equity premium puzzle" that has long bemused financial experts. Theterm refers to the large number of individuals who prefer to invest inbonds rather than stocks, even though stocks have historicallyprovided a much higher rate of return. According to Shiv, there iswidespread evidence that when the stock market starts to decline,people shift their retirement savings—that is, their long-term, notshort-term, investments—from stocks to bonds. "Whereas all researchsuggests that, even after taking into account fluctuations in themarket, overall people are better off investing in stocks in the longterm," said Shiv. "Investors are not behaving in their own bestfinancial interest. Something is going on that can't be explainedlogically." This study, 2005, was in the middle of a decade where bondsout-performed stocks, and the irrationally risk-averse were punishedby missing out on ruin.
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warc | 201704 | Apparently, the Chevy Volt’s tendency to burst into flames isn’t just a GM problem. The same issue — failure of battery cooling systems — exists in the IQ-test-for-rich-people known as the Fisker Karma:
Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — A123 Systems Inc., the maker of batteries for electric vehicles, said it found a “potential safety issue” in batteries it supplies to Fisker Automotive Inc.
A123, which also sells batteries to automakers such as General Motors Co. and Daimler AG, said hose clamps that are part of the internal cooling system of its batteries supplied to Fisker were “misaligned” and may cause coolant to leak. Such a leak could lead to an electrical short circuit, David Vieau, chief executive officer, wrote in a memo on Waltham, Massachusetts-based A123’s investor-relations website.
One wonders how the car’s means of preventing electrical fires is going to perform after collisions, given that misalignment in manufacturing is a problem. Maybe Fisker will have its own battery shut-down squads roving the nation and swooping in after every crash. Or maybe not.
That’s the problem with increased complexity: It tends to create more ways for things to fail.
Of course, so long as we let capitalists dictate how we conduct our lives, they are going to continue insisting that we butter our toast with these profit-maximizing chainsaws.
Remember our recent report about a Chevy Volt catching fire three weeks after a crash test? Turns out it wasn’t a fluke. According to
Automotive News:
In lab tests completed last week by U.S. safety regulators, a second Volt [battery] pack began to smoke and throw off sparks while a third battery pack caught fire a week after a simulated crash.
GM may redesign the battery for its Chevrolet Volt to address issues raised after federal officials opened a safety probe into the plug-in electric [sic] car, CEO Dan Akerson said today.
GM said on Monday it would also offer loaner vehicles to about 5,500 Volt owners as it works with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on ways to reduce the risk of battery fires breaking out days after crashes involving the car.
How delightful! After shelling out $40,000+ for the car and another few thousand for the home charging station, you get to enjoy a loaner GM.
Such is reality in the Rube Goldberg world of late Oil Age automobiles.
Not that it much matters, given the sub-anemic sales, but it seems that GM’s vaporware/haloware/loss leader, the Chevy Volt, might be prone to conflagration after collisions. Bloomberg reports:
U.S. auto-safety regulators are scrutinizing the safety of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles after a General Motors Co. (GM) Chevrolet Volt battery caught fire, people familiar with the probe said.
The regulators have approached all automakers, including GM, Nissan Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co., that sell or have plans to sell vehicles with lithium-ion batteries with questions about the batteries’ fire risk, four people familiar with the inquiry said.
The Volt caught fire while parked at a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration testing center in Wisconsin, three weeks after a side-impact crash test, said an agency official. The fire was severe enough to burn vehicles parked near the Volt, the agency official said. Investigators determined the battery was the source of the fire, the official said.
As usual, NHTSA is dutifully representing the interests of the industry by keeping the investigation secret:
The official, as well as the three other people familiar with the inquiry, said they couldn’t be named because the investigation isn’t public.
Nissan exaggerates the Leaf’s range by 37 percent.
Turns out the EPA (hardly a tough skeptic on this crucial capitalist push) says the Nissan Leaf, when brand-new, will have a driving range of 73, not 100, miles.
In other words, in its marketing efforts, Nissan exaggerates this key number by 37 percent. (Par for the course in our market-totalitarian “up to” culture.)
Of course, even Nissan admits that the Leaf battery, which stores the burnt coal or natural gas or fissioned uranium on which the Leaf ultimately runs, will, like all batteries, decay over time. Nissan says ordinary decay will take the battery down to 80 percent capacity after five years.
If Nissan is fudging
that figure by roughly the same percentage of its range lies, in 5 years, the preening fools who spend the $35,000+ it takes to get a Leaf and a home charger might have a coal-car than can go maybe 50 miles total. Five years after that? Who knows? | 4,670 | 2,287 | 0.000449 |
warc | 201704 | PROVO — The final go-ahead was given Friday to build a new, 17,500 acre-feet reservoir to irrigate Sanpete County farmland that has typically gone wanting during the end of summer.
It's a decision decades in the making and could mean farmers will be able to harvest an additional seasonal crop.
In the announcement of its decision, the Provo Area office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said the project proposed by the Sanpete County Water Conservancy District will not receive any loans from the agency, but 304 acres of its land can be used.
The decision allows for a reservoir that has a surface area of 604 acres to be built about 16 miles upstream of Scofield Reservoir. The Narrows dam will require 5,400 acre-feet of water per year from the Gooseberry Creek drainage, or the equivalent of 6.6 percent of the annual yield of the Price River above the city of Price.
Such a diversion will allow for the irrigation of 15,420 acres of farmland, and in an area that typically only experiences two cuttings of hay during a harvest limited by water, the yield will increase to a third crop.
The bureau's official Record of Decision regarding the project said being able to tap into additional irrigable water will increase farm income in Sanpete County by 11 percent.
The conservancy district has 15 years to begin building the dam, or the lease on the land will revert to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Touted nearly 80 years ago as a way to provide a reliable source of water to northern Sanpete County residents, the Gooseberry Narrows project has been a constant source of tension between Sanpete and Carbon counties.
As plans for the new dam were being crafted, they soon were tossed aside as it became clear a deteriorating Scofield Reservoir was in need of repairs.
Over the decades, Sanpete County has turned its attention back to the project, but by this time a tug-of-war over the water had erupted into a full-scale legal battle.2 comments on this story
Carbon County fears its water supplies will run dry, environmentalists oppose the diversion of water and the impacts to fisheries and wetlands, and Sanpete County claims it is not getting its fair share of water which leaves farmers and residents suffering.
The bureau said the final environmental document includes 38 different steps, or "commitments," that will be undertaken to mitigate impacts, including effects that may play out in fisheries or to sage grouse or raptor habitat.
E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com
Twitter: amyjoi16 | 2,514 | 1,258 | 0.000802 |
warc | 201704 | Ask the Diabetes Educator Archive
11/14/05
Q:
What is considered normal blood sugar level for a 48 yr old male ? I have just recently been feeling fatigued, light headed, as well as slightly confused sometimes. I checked my blood sugar level a hour after supper, and it was 121. I came back and checked it 2 hours later, having had nothing but water for the last 2 hours, and it had gone up to 175.
Naturally, this is scary, as most of what I read about diabetes is so disheartening. It seems like it affects everything.
A:
The first best thing for you to do is to get a fasting blood sugar test since you do convey symptoms of diabetes. If your fasting blood sugar is under 126 but over 100, we call this "pre diabetes". I would suggest you also be given an oral glucose tolerance test, to see how you respond over a 2 hour period after drinking a syrupy mixture in a fasting state.
Diabetes is manageable. If you do show a positive diagnosis, the sooner you accept the condition, the sooner you can get on top of things. A healthy lifestyle is the best manager. How to do this is what challenges most people, and this is where you will need some guidance. Left unchecked, your fears will play out. Being "proactive" with it, you can lead a high quality life. | 1,273 | 718 | 0.001407 |
warc | 201704 | by Christine Dugan Sierra magazine,
the official publication of the Sierra Club, has issued its annual list of
America’s greenest colleges, and Dickinson has once again made the grade. The
college’s unwavering commitment to sustainability education and encouragement
of environmental responsibility earned it a spot among the top 10. It is the
second time in as many weeks that Dickinson has been the only Pennsylvania school
to receive national accolades for sustainability. On Aug. 5, The Princeton
Review named Dickinson to its Green Honor Roll.
The annual “Cool Schools” list is a collaboration between
Sierra and the Association for Advancement of
Sustainability in Higher Education. More than 150 colleges and universities were
scored based on their commitment to upholding high environmental standards. Dickinson
was one of only three liberal-arts colleges to make the top 10 and qualify for
the title of “Cool School.” Rounding out the list are the University of
California-Irvine, American University, Loyola University Chicago, Lewis and
Clark College, Stanford University, University of South Florida, Green Mountain
College, University of Connecticut and Georgia Institute of Technology.
“For eight years
Sierra magazine has encouraged America's
colleges and universities to fully embrace their unique and multifaceted role
in tackling the climate crisis and protecting America's air, water, public
health and beautiful places,” said Bob Sipchen, Sierra magazine’s editor in
chief. “From innovative research and development to powering campuses with wind
and solar, to educating students in the most advanced thinking on
sustainability, colleges and universities are leaders and models for the rest
of society. Sierra magazine congratulates those that made our annual ‘Coolest Schools’ list.”
The Sierra Club is America's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 2.4 million members and supporters nationwide. The Sierra Club works to safeguard the health of communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying and litigation.
Published August 12, 2014 | 2,274 | 1,153 | 0.000905 |
warc | 201704 | Both of these products have the potential to be contaminated with
Salmonella bacteria.
Complete details regarding this recall are available within the actual FDA News Release dated August 16, 2010.
No product-related illness has been reported to date.
However, dog food recalls involving
Salmonella contamination are potentially serious matters… for both humans and pets. People who handle dry food can easily become infected with the bacteria.
According to the FDA…
Healthy people infected with Salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. Rarely, Salmonella can result in more serious ailments including arterial infections, endocarditis, arthritis, muscle pain, eye irritation and urinary tract symptoms. Consumers exhibiting these signs after having contact with this product should contact their healthcare providers.
Pets with Salmonella infections may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Some pets will have only decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.
So, take precautions… and be sure to
tell everyone you know.
You can report complaints about FDA-regulated pet food products by calling the consumer complaint coordinator in your area.
For questions, contact Merrick Customer Service at 800-664-7387 Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM CDT.
Visit our Dog Food Recalls summary page for a
list of links to all the Advisor’s most recent recall reports. | 1,749 | 944 | 0.001082 |
warc | 201704 | Dynamic Chiropractic – June 18, 2001, Vol. 19, Issue 13
APTA Claims Rights to "Correct a Subluxation"
Motion in HCFA Lawsuit Reveals Intent
By Editorial Staff
As the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) proceeds with its lawsuit against the Medicare Part C regulations that reimburse MDs and DOs (and previously PTs) for spinal adjustments, reimbursement for doctors of chiropractic, Francis Mallon, CEO of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) now claims that PTs "perform manual manipulations of the spine to correct a subluxation, where clinically indicated."
The authority for chiropractors to treat under Medicare is spelled out in the Social Security Act Amendments of 1972, Section 1861(r).
That section states that chiropractors are authorized to treat by "means of
manual manipulation of the spine
(
to correct a subluxation
demonstrated by x-ray to exist)."
"Manual manipulation of the spine to correct subluxations" has always been understood to be a service solely provided by doctors of chiropractic. For over 100 years, not a single other health care profession has understood, much less
claimed to address subluxations; of course, "manipulations (adjustments) to correct subluxations" have been maligned for decades by many in the medical profession.
The APTA looks to be attempting to rewrite congressional intent. Mr. Mallon's full text to the court is presented (
Editor's note: The bolded text is our emphasis).
Supplemental Declaration of Francis J. Mallon (executive officer of the APTA)
Francis J. Mallon declares as follows:
I am the chief executive officer of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). I submit this supplemental declaration in support of the APTA's motion to intervene in this action. ( Editor's note: To intervene in the ACA lawsuit against Medicare reimbursement.)
Contrary to the claims made by the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) in its memorandum in opposition, physical therapists, as explained below, can and do perform manual manipulations of the spine to correct a subluxation, where clinically indicated.
As stated in my initial declaration in this case, physical therapists are permitted to perform manual manipulation, including manual manipulation of the spine, in the great majority of the states. In those states, physical therapists are authorized to perform manual manipulation to treat any condition, including manual manipulation of the spine to correct a subluxation.
Six states (Illinois, Iowa, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, and Utah) prohibit physical therapists from engaging in chiropractic manipulation. While the meaning and impact of that prohibition is unclear, physical therapists are at the very least permitted to perform manual manipulation to correct a subluxation in the many other states where they are permitted to perform manual manipulation generally.
Physical therapists do not typically use the term subluxation, in part because the term is ambiguous and has a variety of different meanings. Medical dictionaries define "subluxation" to mean an incomplete or partial dislocation of a joint, and this is the definition that is generally accepted by physicians and most other health care practitioners. See e.g., Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary 1596 (28 th ed. 1994) (defining subluxation as "incomplete or partial dislocation"); Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 1174 (1984) ("partial dislocation (as one of the bones in a joint)."
The use of the term "subluxation" by chiropractors has evolved over time. At one time, chiropractors used the term narrowly, essentially to describe a misalignment of a vertebra causing a pinching of a nerve, which chiropractors viewed as the root cause of all disease. See Howard T. Vernon, "Biological Rationale for Possible Benefits of Spinal Manipulation," in Chiropractic in the United States: Training, Practice, and Research (Daniel Cherkin, Robert D. Mootz eds., Dec. 1997) (Agency for Health Care Policy and Research Publication No. 98-N002) ("The original chiropractic theory suggested that misaligned spinal vertebrae interfered with nerve function ultimately resulting in altered physiology that could contribute to pain and disease.") In recent years, however, chiropractors have come to use the term much more broadly. This is particularly true since 1972, when Congress first provided that chiropractors' services could be covered by Medicare, but only for chiropractors' treatment of "subluxations" of the spine demonstrated by an x-ray to exist. The Basic Chiropractic Procedural Manual, first issued by the ACA in 1973, noted "[t]hrough the years there have been numerous concepts within the chiropractic profession of what constitutes a subluxation. Each of these has had its own rationale and each has had certain validity that has been a contribution to our understanding of this complex phenomenon." See Stephen Barrett,MD, "Some Notes on Subluxation and Medicare" at www.chirobase.org/02Research/oig.html Editor's Note:
(
website operated by Stephen Barrett,MD, and Charles E. DuVall, Jr.,DC) (quoting the Basic Chiropractic Procedural Manual. The manual then proposed a definition, several pages long, describing the supposed radiologic manifestations of 18 types of "subluxations" including: flexion malposition; extension malposition; lateral flexion malposition; rotational malposition; hypomobility (also called "fixation subluxation"); hypermobility; aberrant motion; altered interosseous spacing; foraminal occlusion; scoliosis, and several conditions in which "gross displacement" are evident. Many chiropractors now use the term "subluxation" so broadly that it essentially includes any spinal impairment. See, e.g., American Chiropractic Association, "Chiropractic: State of the Art, 1994-95," at http://www.amerchiro.org/shared/chiart2.htm#pc (discussing "variant forms of subluxations" and noting that "the term 'subluxation' assumes a broader and more diverse meaning in chiropractic than in classical literature"); The Association of Chiropractic Colleges, "Issues in Chiropractic," (The Subluxation), http://www.chirocolleges.org/paradimt.html (defining subluxation as "a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system function and general health").
No matter which of the definitions set out above is utilized, physical therapists can and do perform manual manipulations of the spine to correct a subluxation where clinically indicated. This is true even though, in most cases, physical therapists would not use the term "subluxation" to describe the condition they were treating. See, generally, American Physical Therapy Association's Guide to Physical Therapist Practice S215 (2d ed. 2001) (including "mobilization/manipulation" among the appropriate procedural interventions for patients with "impaired joint mobility; motor function; muscle performance; range of motion; and reflex integrity associated with spinal disorders").
The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) defines a subluxation of the spine as a "motion segment in which alignment, movement integrity, and/or physiological function of the spine are altered although contact between joint surfaces remains intact." The HCFA Carriers' Manual, Part 3, Chapter II, Û 2251.2(A). Physical therapists routinely provide patients with manipulation services that treat conditions covered by this broad definition, and are routinely reimbursed therefore by Medicare.
In addition, because chiropractors - including the ACA in this case - define the term "subluxation" so broadly as to include any impairment of the spine, the ACA's contention that physical therapists are prohibited from engaging in manual manipulation of the spine to treat a "subluxation" would make it impossible for physical therapists to treat any spinal ailment with manual manipulation, as physical therapists routinely do at the present time. Although I am unaware of any records that show the extent of dollar reimbursement of physical therapists under the Medicare program specifically for manual manipulation of the spine, Medicare data issued annually by HCFA show that in 1999, the latest year for which statistics are available, Medicare allowed charges of almost $25 million for physical therapist services falling within code CPT 97140, which covers manual therapy techniques including mobilization/manipulation of the spine.
The statements made by CEO Mallon make the APTA's position quite clear. As far as they are concerned, doctors of chiropractic are restricted (under Medicare) from treating anything but a subluxation, while physical therapists can (and do) treat everything.
In a response to Mallon's statements, the ACA has argued that:
"When chiropractors were finally added to the Medicare program,
only chiropractors engaged in manual manipulation of the spine to correct a subluxation of the spine. Indeed, manual manipulation of the spine to correct a subluxation was considered a uniquely chiropractic service and in fact, the rest of the medical community thought such diagnosis and treatment to be outside the realm of medicine, and discouraged the use of, or association with, any and all chiropractors.
"However, the fight continues, as those who for decades claimed that manual manipulation of the spine to correct subluxations was 'voo doo,' 'hocus-pocus' and/or 'quackery,' now claim they are qualified to practice it and treat patients via 'manual manipulation of the spine' - a different category of service.
"It should be specifically set forth that the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) does not use the full definition 'manual manipulation of the spine
to correct a subluxation of the spine,' except when quoting the statute or the ACA. The APTA repeatedly uses the terms 'manual manipulation of the spine' and just 'manual manipulation' as if the terms are synonymous with the full definition of the statute.
"The language in the statute is very narrow in scope, specifically identifying a uniquely chiropractic treatment and makes no mention of physical therapists. Physical therapists are not 'physicians' under any definition of the statute in question, which made chiropractors 'physicians' to deliver the unique chiropractic service.
"In fact, manipulation of the spine is defined by the American Physical Therapy Association as 'manual mobilization.' (
See Exhibit 3, 'Taking Care of Your Back,' American Physical Therapy Association, p.8.) 'Mobilization' is defined as 'low-velocity (nonthrust) passive motion that can be stopped by the patient.' ( See Exhibit 4, 'Manipulation of the Cervical Spine,' Physical Therapy, Vol. 79, 1 (January 1999); Regardless of whether the judge grants the APTA request for status as an intervener and allows their testimony to be entered, the chiropractic profession should hear loud and clear what the APTA is saying. Their words are unambiguous. The APTA believes that physical therapists can do everything doctors of chiropractic can do and more." | 11,180 | 4,553 | 0.000222 |
warc | 201704 | This post contains affiliate links.
I ditched non-natural store-bought deodorant over a year ago. I now make homemade natural deodorant using only 3 ingredients. I ditched the stick due to all of the toxins that deodorants contain. Non-natural deodorants contain aluminum, parabans, propylene glycol, TEA, DEA, triclosan, talc, and FD & C colors. These nasty ingredients may be linked to breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, and severe allergies. Homemade natural deodorant contains coconut oil, arrowroot powder, and baking soda…sounds much better, right?
I have been using homemade natural deodorant for well over a year now and it works great for me and I love the coconut smell. Making homemade deodorant is super easy and cost-effective!
Here is what you need: Here is what you do:
Combine equal portions of baking soda & Arrowroot Powder. Then slowly add coconut oil and work it in with a spoon until it maintains the substance you desire.
I simply store mine in a glass jar and rub a small amount under your arms daily or as needed. This homemade deodorant does thicken up and you could place it in a recycled deodorant container but make sure you keep it in a cool place as it softens up when it gets really warm due to the coconut oil. My husband now asks me to label the jars after he brushed his teeth with the deodorant after mistaking it for our homemade toothpaste!
To see all of my natural living recipes please click here.
I am grateful to share our life experiences in this space. I want to let you know that this post includes affiliate links, please know that when you click links and purchase items, in most (not all) cases I will receive a referral commission (thank you, thank you, thank you). Your support in purchasing through these links helps to create our need for more bookcases! Thank you! DISCLAIMER: The statements made here have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. These statements are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure or prevent any disease. | 2,010 | 1,042 | 0.000969 |
warc | 201704 | Yixing teapots are the rage in Malaysia now. Easterntea speaks to aMalaysian expert on this and found that the reason being that most expertsbelieve that the clay used for such teapots are depleteable. In addition,most experts believe that tea brewed from older teapots taste better. As forthe reason why, many do not really understand.
The reason why Malaysian Chinese are collecting teapots made during thecultural revolution is because these teapots were made from 1960s to firsthalf of 1970s. As such they have gone through a few decades of usage. Manybelieve that the more times the teapots are used for brewing, the better thetea would taste in the teapot. Thus, going for such teapots would ensurethat the pots are at least used for a couple of decades. They then takepains to distinguish the older teapots from the new and pay high prices forthem.
Many of such collectors would not even consider new teapots at all, nomatter how well made they are or how creative they are in terms of shapesand techniques. They also believed that it is better to snap up as many ofsuch teapots as possible so that they have a stock of these teapots. Theybelieved that Taiwanese collectors are hoarding such teapots and releasingthem on the market in highly restricted numbers. As a result, they want toensure that they do not fall victim to the Taiwanese teapot cartels.
In addition to teapots, handdrawn teacups are also the rage in Malaysia.These cups are made in the 1970s. As a result, tehy exhibit greatcraftsmanship as well as high quality.
Teapots according to them originated in Song dynasty. But due totechnological backwardness, they were unable to extract the fine andsuperior Yixing clay from the ground. As a result, such teapots were made insmall quantities and very limited. It became popular in MIng Dynasty.
Extracted from Singapore's daily newspaper, The Straits Times on 31 Aug 2001.
Dr. Mahathir is Prime Minister of Malaysia. | 1,946 | 955 | 0.001051 |
warc | 201704 | Black and Multiracial Politics in America by New York University Press (Paperback, 2000) Brand newLOWEST PRICE AU $41.14Free postage Brand new condition Sold by simplybestprices-10to20dayshipping See details for delivery est. Pre-ownedBEST PICK AU $51.95+ AU $12.95 postage Very good condition Sold by ausreseller See details for delivery est. All listings for this product About this product Description DescriptionAmerica is currently in the midst of a major racial and ethnic demographic shift. By the twenty-first century, the population of Hispanics and Asians will increase significantly, while the black population is expected to remain relatively stable. Non-Hispanic Whites will decrease to just over half of the nation's population. How will the changing ethnic and racial composition of American society affect the long struggle for black political power and inclusion? To what extent will these racial and ethnic shifts affect the already tenuous nature of racial politics in American society? Using the literature on black politics as an analytical springboard, Black and Multiracial Politics in America brings together a broad demography of scholars from various racial and ethnic groups to assess how urban political institutions, political coalitions, group identity, media portrayal of mirities, racial consciousness, support for affirmative action policy, political behavior, partisanship, and other crucial issues are impacted by America's multiracial landscape. Contributors include Dianne Pinderhughes, M. Margaret Conway, Pei-te Lein, Susan Howell, Mack Jones, Brigitte L. Nacos, Natasha Hritzuk, Marion Orr, Michael Jones-Correa, A.B. Assensoh, Joseph McCormick, Sekou Franklin, Jose Cruz, Erroll Henderson, Mamie Locke, Reuel Rogers, James Endersby, Charles Menifield and Lawrence J. Hanks. Author BiographyYvette Marie Alex-Assensoh is Assistant Professor of Political Science and LAWRENCE J. HANKS is Associate Professor of Political Science, both at Indiana University at Bloomington. Key Features PublisherNew York University Press Date of Publication31/07/2000 LanguageEnglish FormatPaperback ISBN-100814706630 ISBN-139780814706633 SubjectPolitics: General & Reference Publication Data Place of PublicationNew York Country of PublicationUnited States ImprintNew York University Press Content NoteIllustrations, 1 map Dimensions Weight567 g Width3895 mm Height5830 mm Spine19 mm Credits Edited byLawrence J. Hanks,Yvette Alex-Assensoh Editorial Details Format DetailsTrade paperback (US) Best-selling in Textbooks Save on Textbooks AU $99.00Trending at AU $100.37 AU $67.99Trending at AU $70.85 AU $73.99Trending at AU $75.94 AU $78.00Trending at AU $84.02 AU $95.88Trending at AU $100.60 AU $64.69Trending at AU $68.88 AU $104.88Trending at AU $107.45
This item doesn't belong on this page.
Thanks, we'll look into this. | 2,853 | 1,490 | 0.000672 |
warc | 201704 | Amnesty International is calling on the Indian authorities urgently to investigate the armed abduction of two indigenous leaders, who were on their way to campaign against the bauxite mine project proposed by a subsidiary of UK-based company Vedanta Resources, and the Orissa Mining Corporation.
The pair were abducted on 9 August in Orissa province, in the east of India. One of the activists, Sana Sikaka, was ‘released’ late last night by being thrown out of a van, and has alleged that the gunmen were police. Lado Sikaka, the most senior leader of the Dongria Kondh indigenous community, is still being held by the gunmen.
Orissa provincial police have remained silent on who was responsible for the abduction, and have not opened any investigation despite requests by activists.
Madhu Malhotra, Amnesty International’s Deputy-Director for the Asia-Pacific, said: “This allegation of arbitrary detention and abduction of activists must be immediately and transparently investigated.
“The Orissa police must show its good faith by securing the release of Lado Sikaka, immediately tracking down and arresting these gunmen."
Sana Sikaka told local media today that he and a group of activists were stopped by 15 armed plainclothes officers at the foothills of Niyamgiri mountain, as they were leaving in a van to travel to Delhi, where they planned to campaign against the bauxite mine project. The gunmen confiscated the mobile phones of activists and their vehicle. They then detained Lado and Sana Sikaka, driving them towards the neighbouring district of Rayagada where Sana suspects Lado is being held.
The Dongria Kondh indigenous community is known for their activism to protect their sacred mountain Niyamgiri from the proposed bauxite-mine .
Amnesty International urges the Indian authorities to establish a process to seek the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of the Dongria Kondh before proceeding with the proposed mine project in Niyamgiri. This must include:
-providing the Dongria Kondh with accessible and adequate information about the project;
-undertaking, in genuine and open consultation with the Dongria Kondh, a comprehensive human rights and environmental impact assessment of the project. There should be appropriate procedural safeguards to ensure their participation in the assessment process and that their knowledge and perspectives of the Hills are given due weight and respect;
-respecting the decision of the Dongria Kondh if they do not provide consent to the project.
[Ekk/4] | 2,558 | 1,219 | 0.000833 |
warc | 201704 | Why a Good Night’s Sleep?
The purpose of sleep has been studied by scientists for decades. Although we still don’t know everything that goes on at night, it’s clear that sleep – particularly non-REM sleep – is a time for our skin to repair and rejuvenate itself. In fact, research shows that skin cell regeneration almost doubles at night, peaking between 11p.m.and 4a.m.
Too bad sleep is elusive for so many of us. 60% of women say they don’t get enough sleep,* and over one-third of Americans sleep 2.5 hours less per night than we did a century ago.** So, what are we missing when we fail to catch our Z’s? More than you might imagine.
Sleep deprivation doesn’t simply impair the normal process of healing in our skin. It also increases our stress level, which can further limit our sleep. The resulting chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to inflammation and oxidative stress. And you know what oxidative stress is linked to? Aging signs. Talk about a vicious cycle.
A study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2001)*** showed that women deprived of sleep have a disturbed skin-barrier function, greater water loss from the skin and a far higher level of inflammatory chemicals in circulation. *** Over time, these inflammatory chemicals take a toll on both the outer epidermal layers and the deeper dermal structures. Which explains why lack of sleep can make you look ten years older.
Clearly, we need to get our beauty sleep. It’s also a good idea to support our skin’s natural cycle of repair at night with specially-formulated night creams and treatments. (Avoid using day creams at night as many of them are focused on SPF and protection rather than supporting skin’s natural repair.)
A great night cream maximizes the benefits of any amount of sleep by using specialized ingredients to support your skin’s natural repair process. Ingredients to look for are:
Antioxidants
They help your skin continue to fight free radicals (unfortunately, free radicals never sleep) and prevent oxidation as you sleep.
Retinoids and Exfoliants
These ingredients really work with your skin’s repair process by helping to support natural exfoliation and by removing dead skin to reveal a brighter, healthier glow. It’s important to know that these ingredients are only for nighttime use as they increase sun sensitivity.
Intensive Hydration
As we know from the 2001 Journal of Investigative Dermatology study***, our skin loses more moisture when we don’t sleep enough. Your skin can benefit greatly from a night cream that attracts moisture and binds it to the skin.
*Idebenone has earned its title as the most powerful antioxidant when compared to other common antioxidants (alpha lipoic acid, kinetin, vitamin C, vitamin E and coenzyme Q10) by scoring an Environmental Protection Factor™ of 95 out of 100 | 2,910 | 1,461 | 0.000708 |
warc | 201704 | Asiya Investments, the Asia specialist investment firm, announced today the launch of its Asia Islamic Trade Finance Fund, which will invest in select, Shariah-compliant financing of short-term physical trade flows in Asia and the Middle East.
The Fund aims to capture a unique set of opportunities that exist in today’s market. Key amongst these is the expansion of both intra-Asia as well as cross-border trade flows between Asia and the Middle East.
Annual intra-Asia trade is expected to quadruple from almost $5 trillion to $20 trillion by 2020. Similarly, trade between the GCC and Emerging Asia is growing at a rate of 25% per year.
At the same time, a shortage of US dollar funding has emerged, particularly for medium-sized companies in Asia. The European banking sector, traditionally the largest provider of commodity trade finance, continues to deleverage in light of Europe’s slowdown and adjust to changes in bank capital adequacy rules under Basel III.
The Asia Islamic Trade Finance Fund seeks to fill this financing gap and in turn generate a steady stream of income based on Shariah principles. Its target return is double the rate of Zakat, equating to 5%, while providing investors the flexibility of quarterly liquidity. The Fund has been approved by a board of leading Gulf and international Shariah scholars who will continue to supervise the Fund for on-going Shariah compliance.
The Fund targets annual returns of 5%, and offers investors quarterly liquidity at an attractive spread to Islamic money market “Murabaha” funds, which pay between 0.5% and 1.5%. It also provides a stable alternative to multi-year Islamic bonds, “Sukuks” which currently yield an average 3%.
Asiya Investments will manage the open-ended Fund through the firm’s recently launched Hong Kong investment management arm. It will do so in partnership with EuroFin Asia Group, the Investment Advisor to the Fund and a leading Singapore-based trade finance operator. Together the partners have seeded the Fund with $20 million.
Ahmad Al-Hamad, Group Managing Director of Asiya Investments, said: “The timing could not be better to introduce the Asia Islamic Trade Finance Fund. It comes at a time of continued growth within the Asian continent, as well as growing cross border trade between the GCC and emerging Asia. We are ideally positioned to participate in this growth. Our Hong Kong investment management team and EuroFin Asia have worked together, using their expertise and understanding of both the Asian markets and Shariah structuring, to develop a best-in-class offering to our investors.”
Arab investors seek opportunities in Asia
Mohab Mufti, CEO of Asiya Investments Dubai, said: “GCC investors are eager to step up their exposure to the growing Asian economies as many of them are currently under-allocated to the region. While they are intrigued by the opportunities, most are looking for ways to expand their exposure to Asia via lower risk strategies. Currently there is a shortage of opportunities which offer both attractive income streams and lower risk profiles, especially for those investors who require their investments to be Shariah-based.” He also pointed out that many investors wish to invest “without having to lock up their capital for several years or concentrate their risks in the narrow Sukuk market.” | 3,409 | 1,632 | 0.000627 |
warc | 201704 | How high or low is salary of teachers in UAE
Teaching is often considered a low-paying job in the UAE but the salary bands may not seem too bad if the candidate is in the right place. Even though there are huge discrepancies in the pay scales of teachers across different curriculum, those teaching in international schools may actually fare better than their home country, according to experts in the industry.
The very basic salary in an international school in the country starts at Dh8,000 per month and goes up to Dh35,000, as per Clive Pierrepont, Director of Communications at Taaleem schools.
According to figures provided by the Taleem expert, an assistant teachers gets up to Dh8,000 whereas teachers can take home anything between Dh10,000 to 20,000 per month. The head of primary/secondary get paid Dh22,000 to Dh25,000 (mid-twenties) and the principal get paid Dh35,000 upwards.
“The average salary of teachers in the UAE is of Dh9,750 with average salaries ranging between Dh3,500 and Dh16,000,” Suhail Masri, VP of Sales at Bayt.com, told this website. Teachers in the Indian/Pakistani curriculum tend to be paid salaries on the lower end of the spectrum.
However, for those in international schools, the pay package also include many perks and benefits.
“Besides the basic take home salary, the package also includes benefits such as housing, flights, medical, gratuity and a percentage of school fees for their children. Teaching staff probably earn about 80 per cent of what they would get in their home countries – like the US, UK and Australia but people who come here know what their disposable income is at the end of the day. But again, the benefits of a tax-free environment in the UAE cannot be discounted and if all the benefits like free housing are taken into consideration, the overall package would be comparable with the global average,” Pierrepont told
Emirates 24|7.
“[However], a challenge that expat teachers have to face here is that they will have to make their own arrangements for their retirement as they may be excluded from their social security/pension plans they will have contributed to in their home country,” he added.
“The salary spectrum of teachers in UAE varies largely across private and public schools. Some public schools pay as much or more for some teachers as some private schools. Salaries will depend on experience and expertise as well as qualifications, credentials, years in career track and other variables. There are many exceptionally good schools in Dubai and these are able to attract excellent teachers by the virtue of their competitive pay and benefits practices and work conditions,” said Masri, while discussing the difference in salary structure of those in this profession.
Commenting specifically on Taaleem, Pierrepont added: “We have one salary scale for people performing the same role. The only difference is in the benefits given to people recruited locally or from overseas. In some organisations there can be several salary scales – so people from different ethnic backgrounds get paid differently but can actually be doing the same job. We as an equal opportunity employer, have never approved of this sort of discrimination. Also other organizations may pay part of their salaries as ‘allowances’, this greatly affects the employees gratuity at the end of their contract and teachers should avoid schools that employ this sharp practice to cut costs.”
Minimum qualifications needed to become a teacher in the UAE
"Minimum qualifications vary from one academic institution to another and across teaching positions but typically include a minimum well-known and reputable attested teaching certification and bachelor’s degree in the selected subject matter," added Masri of Bayt.com
"All employers including those in educational institutions look for certain qualifications, skills and experience," he said.
According to Bayt.com's job index survey – January 2012, 6 per cent of UAE employers look for teaching qualifications when searching for suitable candidates. As for the skills, 52 per cent of UAE employers look for candidates with good communication skills in both English and Arabic, 47 per cent look for cooperative, helpful and flexible team players and 42 per cent look for candidates with good leadership skills.
Teachers' salary per month: Assistant teacher - Dh8,000 Teacher - Dh10,000 to 20,000 Head of primary/secondary - Dh22,000 to Dh25,000 Principal - Dh35,000 MUST READ: | 4,574 | 2,117 | 0.000483 |
warc | 201704 | Affordable Care Act Exchanges Are Up and Running
(HealthDay News) – Despite the first federal government shutdown in 17 years and a push by Republicans in the House of Representatives to delay further implementation of "Obamacare," the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges opened for business today.
The new health exchanges offer one-stop shopping for health insurance coverage where eligible Americans can compare health plans and prices and choose coverage based on their needs. The exchanges will also help consumers determine whether they are eligible for public health coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program.
According to estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, some seven million people are expected to enroll in private health coverage through the exchanges in 2014; another nine million will enroll in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. How smoothly enrollment goes will vary by state. Officials in Colorado, Oregon, and the District of Columbia have announced computer system issues prior to the kick-off of open enrollment, which runs through March 31, 2014. People in Oregon can't apply for coverage online for several weeks. Those who want to apply immediately must contact one of the exchange's licensed agents or community partners.
Jesse Ellis O'Brien, a health care advocate with the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group Foundation, told HealthDay he "wouldn't be surprised" if other states found their websites weren't quite ready to go live, either. "I think the key thing is Oct. 1 is a starting point – it's not a finish line," he added. | 1,664 | 911 | 0.001112 |
warc | 201704 | As the Federal Government moves to enforce Treasury Single Account (TSA) this week, there are indications that over 20,000 different bank accounts run by federal ministries and 600 government federal agencies would be clamped.
Sunday Vanguard learnt the agencies’ accounts are holding about N2.6 trillion in 20 banks contrary to the initial estimate of about N1.24 trillion reported in Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) second quarter 2015 report.
The report had indicated that less than 10 per cent of banking industry’s N13 trillion total deposits are public sector funds.
But a top executive of one of the affected banks said, at the weekend, that the CBN report was based on the returns’ renditions by banks which had substantially under-reported public sector proportion of their deposits in order to head-off the impact of the apex bank’s dual Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) policy which was then heavily skewed against public sector deposits.
He said that public sector deposits in banks should be more than double what was reported then.
He pointed out that if government decides to implement the policy strictly, there will be serious liquidity crisis as the top six banks in the public sector deposits control about 70 per cent of total money market liquidity.
However, he noted that the policy is presently predominantly Federal Government account as most states are not eager to toe that line, thereby giving some of the banks a breathing space.
Source: Vanguard | 1,506 | 790 | 0.001295 |
warc | 201704 | The colour of a lamp is defined as a measurement called kelvins. A standard GLS light bulb in your house would be 2,700 kelvins which is in the warm colour spectrum and a lamp with 6,000 kelvins would be at the very cold white spectrum. Getting the right colour temperature of a lamp does matter as the warm colour wavelength helps to soften the tone of the area and gives a warm soft relaxed feel and ideal for colourful flower beds and rockery areas especially with wooden bark and at the other end of the scale a 4,000 to 6,000 kelvin lamp colour would be used against a light background such as white walls or to accentuate grey blueish foliage in shrubs and small trees. When you buy a new, energy efficient bulb, keep your application and colour scheme in mind and make sure to buy the bulb with a colour temperature to match.
colour: black, Grey Lamp description: E27 230 V max. 40 Watt Weight: 0.0754kg Voltage: 220 - 240v Max wattage: 40 Watt IP rating: IP 44 Materials: Constructed from die cast aluminium alloy & glass Dimensions: 6mm H: 100mm W: 235mm Dimmable: yes Material Finish: Matt black textured & frosted glass Bulb Type: E27 Guarantee: 2 years Class: Class 1 - Require earth wire | 1,203 | 697 | 0.001438 |
warc | 201704 | You have probably used that nifty Android an iPhone app that measures your heart rate — but according to some researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the UK, the camera on your smartphone can act as a full-blown diagnostic tool. Using a Motorola Droid phone, a team led by professor Ki Chon can measure your heart rate and rhythm, respiration rate, and blood oxygen saturation — all by looking at the color of your finger when held up against the camera.
By placing your finger over the camera, light has to pass through your blood to reach the sensor. This new app measures how the light reflects off your pulsing stream of plasma, and correlates the shift in color to derive your heart rate and rhythm, and how much oxygen is in your blood. Technically it operates in a very similar way to Instant Heart Rate, the Android app that simply measures your pulse, but in this case the team obviously has enough expert knowledge to pull more information from the data.
As for whether this app can actually be used for medical diagnostics, rather shockingly the app is just as accurate as conventional measurements from ECGs, respiration belts, and blood oximeters. The team tested the output from the app against these medical instruments and the results were found to be the same. Furthermore, since the app can also measure heart rhythm, the research team are currently adding functional to detect atrial fibrillation, the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia.
Tantalizingly, Chon’s team is working on a version that will work with tablets, and presumably the Droid app could be calibrated to work on almost any Android phone — but unfortunately the app isn’t available to download, and a patent has been filed to protect the invention… so who knows when this potentially life-saving app will actually be made available to the public, and at what cost.
Read more at Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 1,945 | 978 | 0.001042 |
warc | 201704 | Way back in the summer of 2013, Elon Musk showed off a new piece of tech that could swap the battery of a Tesla Model S in 90 seconds. In one simple move, these battery swap machines made electric cars almost as convenient as their petrol- and diesel-powered brethren. The original plan was to roll out the tech to Supercharger stations in the second half of 2013, but they never emerged. Now, a single Supercharger station in Harris Ranch California has been equipped with the battery swap tech, and Tesla has started inviting some Model S owners to come try it out.
The idea of Battery Swap (yes, that’s its official name) is to provide a faster but more expensive option for Model S owners in need of a quick recharge. As it stands, Tesla owners can rock up to any Supercharger and get a free charge — but it takes 75 minutes to recharge the battery completely (or about 30 minutes for a half-charge). This is fine if you’re stopping for lunch, or you’re in no rush to get somewhere — but obviously conventional automobiles, with their rapidly pumped hydrocarbon fuel available on almost every street corner, have a sizable advantage when it comes to refilling.
Battery Swap was intended to bridge this gap between electric and conventional vehicles. You roll up to a Supercharging station in your Model S, maneuver your car over the special Battery Swap gizmo, and then wait while it unbolts your battery and swaps in a new one. Back in June 2013, Musk showed a Battery Swap that took just 90 seconds — while it took a full
three minutes for an Audi to fill its tanks with gas. While conventional Supercharging is free, Tesla estimated a cost of around $60 to $80 for a Battery Swap (i.e. about the same price as filling up with gas). In theory, you would then return at some later date to pick up your original battery pack, or have your original battery pack delivered to your home (this part of the process isn’t fully fleshed out yet).
Anyway, Tesla wanted to roll out Battery Swap to its Supercharger stations in late 2013 — but for some reason it never happened. Judging by the Tesla blog post announcing the start of the Battery Swap Pilot Program, it sounds like the delays might have been due to the additional titanium and aluminium shielding that was added to the Model S following a couple of battery fires. The shielding has to be removed before the battery can be swapped out, and obviously that required some changes to the machinery. Due to these additional steps, the battery swap now takes “approximately three minutes” (so, the same as the gas-powered Audi!), but Tesla is “confident that the swap time could be reduced to less than one minute” in the future.
To begin with, Battery Swap is only available by appointment, “across the street from the Tesla Superchargers at Harris Ranch, California.” It sounds like Tesla is asking Model S owners to come on down and try out the battery swap — so it’s more of an early alpha test, rather than a full-blown beta test where a few Model S drivers are using Battery Swap on a daily basis. Given the value of a Model S battery pack ($10,000+), and the potential logistics nightmare of tracking who owns which battery pack (and then shipping them around the country), I suspect it’ll be a while before we see a full-scale roll-out of Battery Swap.
In an ideal world, Battery Swap would be rolled into the cost of a Tesla car — rather than owning the battery pack that’s attached to your car, Tesla would instead permanently loan out battery packs. Each Supercharger station would just slot in the best battery pack that it currently has available, and retire (or recondition) battery packs when their range drops below a certain threshold. Tesla would need lots of batteries to make it work, of course — especially once the mass-market Model 3 arrives — but that’s what the Gigafactory is for! | 3,977 | 1,862 | 0.000553 |
warc | 201704 | You’d be surprised at how affordable and effective some face lift alternatives are! And not only that, I think you’d also be surprised at how they can dramatically improve the quality of your skin without and invasive surgery and extremely risky side effects. These face lift alternatives are safe, natural, and work even for sensitive skin.
The results can truly be amazing!
So, what kind of alternatives am I referring to?
I’m referring to facial exercises, one of the best kept secrets in the entertainment and modeling world for those that do NOT want to go under the knife!
Using the right facial exercise program can lead to all types of fantastic benefits, including things like:
– Reduction of puffiness around your eyes
– Lifting the sagging around your mouth, as well as removing those lines around your mouth – Firming up the neck and jowls – Smoothing out your forehead and improving eyebrow symmetry – Toning your entire face, making you look younger and more energized
In little time, you will notice the difference from the a proper facial exercise program, and so will your friends and family. You certainly won’t get tired of hearing “You look great! What are you doing?”
Also, a little known benefit is actually the improvement of your skin tone as well as a reduction in skin breakouts.
Of course, there are some pretty good reasons to try face lift alternatives. Besides the cost of a face lift, the number one reason in this writer’s mind is the
health risks. The list of possible complication is quite scary, and include: Blood or fluid retention under the skin Nerve damage, tingling and numbness Reaction to anesthesia such as nausia Hematomas, which are swelling blisters filled with blood that require surgery Difficulty healing the skin, which is frequent for smokers Infection Scarring Skin loss Hair loss Discoloration
Not to mention the fact that anyone that undergoes the a face lift will at some point have to go back for a “touch-up” which of course incurs more costs and risk again.
Non-invasive alternatives are much simpler, more fun, do not hurt, do not risk your life, but they DO get you results.
A surgical face lifts cuts your skin around the border of your face and stretches it so that the wrinkles and sags are removed.
A non surgical face lift accomplishes the very same thing, except through natural methods of toning and tightening.
Facial exercises act as a natural face lift, by toning and tightening the muscles that connect your skin and thus help tighten and tone that very same skin.
For anyone that has any doubts as to the effectiveness of face exercises, you just need to do a little research and you will see countless anectodal stories from men and woman all around the world who have seen great improvements in their looks from performing facial exercises. Of course, there are plenty of exercises around the web ready for you to try.
I invite you to give them a try, then invest in a proper program. You need to do this properly so you don’t stretch out the skin or accentuate wrinkles.
The great thing is that even through buying a proper program, the costs is PENNIES compared to what you would spend going under the knife for a surgical procedure.
Besides facial exercises, there are some other face lift alternatives you could try as well:
Acupressure and acupunture – these natural, holistic methods rebalance the energy flows in your body and in your face, to lift, tone and rejuvenate the face.
Facial wraps (like body wraps) – these use minerals and herbs that are applied to your face, which help the skin to release toxins, tone and firm the skin.
Homemade anti-aging treatments – these use ingredients found in your kitchen that have natural antiaging properties to lift, tone and firm the skin.
So remember, you don’t always have to resort to dangerous and costly ways to look and feel your best. Give these natural techniques a try! The cost to benefit ratio is truly outstanding. And by this I mean, it will cost you very little, but can give you amazing results! | 4,157 | 1,951 | 0.000528 |
warc | 201704 | LONDON – In the United States, for people of a certain age, Margaret Thatcher was a superstar, and Americans have been surprised at the sharply divided views on display in the Britain that she governed for 11 years. But Britons were not astonished. Like Tony Blair, Thatcher has long been a British product with more appeal in export markets than at home.
All aspects of her legacy are earnestly disputed. Was she prescient about the problems of European monetary union, or did she leave Britain isolated on the fringes of the continent? Did she create a new economic dynamism, or did she leave the United Kingdom bitterly divided, more unequal, and less cohesive than before? Did she destroy the power of vested interests and create a genuine meritocracy, or did she entrench bankers and financiers as the new elite, with disastrous consequences?
Indeed, one issue that has come under the microscope is Thatcher’s reforms of the City of London in the late 1980’s. In 1986, her government was instrumental in what is known colloquially as the “Big Bang.” Technically, the main change was to end “single capacity,” whereby a stock trader could be a principal or an agent, but not both.
Before 1986, there were brokers, acting for clients, and jobbers, making a market, and never the twain could meet. This system had been abandoned elsewhere, and the reform opened London to new types of institutions, especially the major US investment banks.
The first and most visible consequence was the demise of the long lunch. Beginning with a gin and tonic just after noon, and ending with a Napoleon brandy at three o’clock, lunch prior to the Big Bang was often the most arduous part of a stockbroker’s day. That cozy culture ended soon after the thrusting, brash Americans, who worked even over breakfast, hit town.
But some believe that there were downsides, too. Philip Augar, the author of
The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, argues that “Good characteristics of the City were thrown out along with the bad,” and that Thatcher’s reforms “put us on a helter-skelter course towards the financial crisis.”
How justified is this charge? Can we really trace the roots of today’s malaise back to the 1980’s? Was the Iron Lady an author of the world’s current misfortunes?
Nigel Lawson, Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, denies it. (Full disclosure: I was an adviser to Lawson in the 1980’s). He points out that the reforms were accompanied by new regulation. The Financial Services Act of 1986 put an end to the pure self-regulation regime. Financial interests opposed it vigorously at the time, viewing it as the thin end of a dangerous wedge, though they could not have guessed just how thick that wedge would eventually become.
It is also difficult to trace back to the 1980’s the origins of the credit explosion and the proliferation of exotic and poorly understood financial instruments that lay at the heart of the 2007-2008 crisis. The most dangerous trends, including the upsurge of global imbalances and the dramatic financialization of the economy, accelerated dangerously from about 2004 onwards.
Thatcher herself was not an enthusiast for credit, once famously saying, “I don’t believe in credit cards.” Indeed, she espoused a rigorous philosophy about borrowing: “The secret of happiness is to live within your income and pay your bills on time.”
But perhaps there is a deeper level on which we can see some connections between Thatcherism and the crisis. Her mantra, “You can’t buck the market,” did contribute to a mindset that led governments and central banks to be reluctant to question unsustainable market trends.
Thatcher was referring specifically to the dangers of fixed exchange rates, and can certainly not be counted as one of the principal architects of the so-called “efficient markets hypothesis.” But she was a strong believer in the expansion of private markets, and was instinctively suspicious of government intervention. As the late economist and European central banker Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa once put it, Thatcher “shifted the line dividing markets from government, enlarging the territory of the former at the expense of the latter.” Padoa-Schioppa regarded this as a factor contributing to the US and UK authorities’ reluctance to step in at the right time before the 2007-2008 crisis.
Thatcher was certainly no friend of central bankers. She remained, to the end, hostile to central-bank independence, regularly rejecting the advice of her chancellors to allow the Bank of England to control interest rates. She feared that independent central banks would serve the interests of their banking “clients,” rather than those of the economy as a whole.
She was especially hostile to what she saw as the excessive independence of the European Central Bank. In her last speech in Parliament as Prime Minister, she attacked the ECB as an institution “accountable to no one,” and drew attention to the political implications of centralizing monetary policy, accurately forecasting the dangers of a “democratic deficit,” which now worries many in Europe, and not just in Cyprus or Portugal.
So, in the financial arena, as elsewhere, there is light and shade in the Thatcher inheritance. Her Alan Greenspan-like belief in the self-correcting features of financial markets, and her reverence for the integrity of the price mechanism, do not look as well-founded today as they did in the 1980’s. So, in that sense, she can be seen as an enabler of the market hubris that prevailed until 2007.
On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that a Thatcher government would have run a loose fiscal policy in the 2000’s. And it is equally unlikely that, had she had her way, the eurozone would be the camel – a horse designed by committee – that it is today.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2013. www.project-syndicate.org This article is brought to you by Should you want to support Project Syndicatethat is a not for profit organization. Project Syndicatebrings original, engaging, and thought-provoking commentaries by esteemed leaders and thinkers from around the world to readers everywhere. By offering incisive perspectives on our changing world from those who are shaping its economics, politics, science, and culture, Project Syndicatehas created an unrivalled venue for informed public debate. Please see: www.project-syndicate.org.
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warc | 201704 | Theme 2: What works best?
Drawing on existing knowledge, please tell us how we should go about addressing the hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition challenges head on. Provide us with your own experiences and insights.
Organization: Concern Worldwide (Ethiopia office)
Author of submission:
Below are several key learnings from our project integrating Infant and Young Child Feeding and the Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia:
Two years ago, Concern Worldwide documented the poor nutritional situation in Ethiopia and the multiple obstacles hampering previous efforts to improve it. It concluded that a multi-sectoral approach to improve infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices and to increase access to food were among the responses needed. In 2010, the IYCF – Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) project was launched as a pilot multi-sectoral approach aimed at reducing malnutrition in Dessie Zuria. It targeted poor households enrolled in the existing PSNP as well as the general population and addresses both the direct and root causes of malnutrition. The project aimed to develop an effective, sustainable and scalable model to improve IYCF practices in the most vulnerable households. The final results have been impressive, with large improvements in IYCF practices and a positive response from the communities and stakeholders involved in the project.
A number of factors contributed to the success of the IYCF – PSNP project. The project took a multi-sectoral approach, involving actors across a wide range of groups and sectors. It went beyond simply behaviour change communication, targeting the enabling environment as well as social norms, and involving the community at large. The project used multiple platforms and approaches to disseminate messages, and used a targeted approach to behaviour change, basing project activities and messages on formative research and emphasizing simple, do-able actions rather than health education messages.
The results of this project suggest that it is effectively fostering behaviour change, and increasing levels of awareness among woreda officials, kebele level leaders and community members alike. It has differed from previous efforts to reduce malnutrition because it has shown people how to make simple, practical changes and reinforced the messages through a multitude of actors, contact points and methods, vastly increasing the likelihood of behaviour change. It is also focused on prevention of malnutrition rather than cure.
The approach has been able to reach a large number of people who are widely dispersed over challenging terrain. Channelling activities through the PSNP creates additional contact points and ensures targeting of the poorest households.
Cette consultation thématique est conduite par la FAO et le PAM en partenariat avec « The World We Want »
La consultation est facilitée par le Forum Global sur la Sécurité Alimentaire et la Nutrition (Forum FSN) | 3,010 | 1,448 | 0.000703 |
warc | 201704 | Issue
For more than a century, the President of the United States has had the power to unilaterally designate federal lands as a National Monument without the consent of Congress, local governments or affected citizens. National Monument designations, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, are meant to ensure the proper care and management of historic landmarks and other objects of historic or scientific interest. The Act also states that the monuments shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects.
In recent decades, presidents from both parties have used the power of the Act to designate hundreds of thousands of acres, and in some cases millions of acres at a time. This scale of designation goes far beyond the executive authority that had Congress originally intended. Such abuse restricts or even prohibits economic opportunity and removes decision making from the states and private citizens. These designations have affected water rights, grazing rights and access to state and private lands.
Background
Use of the Antiquities Act for large tract designation does not provide reasonable notice to the public, and has gone well beyond Congress’ original intent to designate the smallest portion of land needed to protect certain objects of genuine historic and scientific interest. Because there is no requirement to determine what the impact of the designation would be on communities and the local economy, these executive actions can lead, and in fact have led, to devastating reductions in economic activity and the loss of jobs in resource-dependent communities.
While many monuments have been quite small, several presidents have established large monuments. Examples of large monuments include Katmai, established in 1918 with 1.1 million acres; Glacier Bay, created in 1925 with 1.4 million acres; most of the Alaska monuments proclaimed in 1978, the largest being Wrangell-St. Elias, with nearly 11 million acres; and Grand Staircase-Escalante, established in 1996 with 1.7 million acres. During the Bush administration, several large marine monuments were designated, namely the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, with approximately 89 million acres; the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, with 60.9 million acres; the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, with 55.6 million acres; and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, with 8.6 million acres.
During the Obama administration, several large designations have been made including the Berryessa Snow Mountain in California (330,780 acres), the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico (496,330 acres), the Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico (242,555 acres) and the Basin and Range in Nevada (703,585 acres).
Since 1906, 145 national monuments have been designated for federal protection. 105 are managed by the National Park Service, 23 by the Bureau of Land Management, 10 by the USDA Forest Service, 7 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and 1 by NOAA Fisheries.
We urge the executive branch to discontinue designation of any national monument under the Antiquities Act until the proposal is first vetted and approved by Congress, landowners and local governments affected by these decisions.
AFBF Policy
Farm Bureau supports rewriting the Antiquities Act to revoke the executive branch’s ability to designate national monuments. Congress, with the approval of state and local governments, should be the body to designate national monuments.
Farm Bureau supports the multiple-use concept of federal lands, recognizing that definable land areas have dominant-use capability, which should be recognized with the concept of multiple uses without the total exclusion of other uses. | 3,758 | 1,699 | 0.000592 |
warc | 201704 | DIVISION UPDATES David M. Whipple, Deputy DirectorDivision of Ophthalmic and Ear, Nose and Throat Devices
Mr. Whipple introduced Dr. Eric A. Mann who has joined the Division Staff as the Chief of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Devices Branch since the last panel meeting in July, 2000. He also noted that the Office Director, Dr. Bernard Statland, would be leaving the FDA, thereby vacating his position as Director of the Office of Device Evaluation. His position will be filled by Dr. Daniel Schultz, who is currently the Office Deputy Director of Clinical and Review Policy.
BRANCH UPDATESEric A. Mann, M.D., Ph.D., ChiefEar, Nose and Throat Devices Branch Introduction of Staff
The staff of the Ear, Nose and Throat Branch includes:
Eric A. Mann, M.D., Ph.D. - Branch Chief, Otolaryngologist Karen Baker, RN, MSN – Scientific Reviewer, Expert Nurse Consultant Teri Cygnarowicz, MA, CCC-A, FAAA – Scientific Reviewer, Audiologist Sidney Jaffee, M.D. – Medical Officer James Kane, Ph.D., CCC-A – Scientific Reviewer, Audiologist/Hearing Scientist Vasant Malshet, Ph.D., DABT – Scientific Reviewer, Toxicologist Product Approvals since previous panel meeting in July, 2000.
Implantable Middle Ear Hearing Devices (IMEHD)
P990052 - Vibrant Soundbridge System (Symphonix Devices, Inc.) Approved: 8/31/00
Intended Use: To provide a useful level of sound perception to individuals via mechanical stimulation of the ossicles
Indicated: For adults (>=18 yrs) with moderate to severe Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) desiring an alternative to acoustic hearing aids. Experience with appropriately fit hearing aids is recommended prior to implantation.
P010023 - Soundtec® Direct System™ (SOUNDTEC, Inc.) Approved: 9/7/01 Indications for use: For adults (>=18 yrs) with moderate to severe SNHL with a desire for an alternative to acoustic hearing aids. Experience with appropriately fitting hearing aids is recommended prior to implantation.
Cochlear Implants
P000025 - COMBI 40+ Cochlear Implant System (MED-EL Corporation) Approved: 8/20/01
Intended Use: for severe to profoundly hearing-impaired individuals who obtain little or no benefit from conventional acoustic amplification in the best aided condition
Indicated For:
Adults (>=18 yrs) with bilateral severe to profound SNHL, pure tone average >= 70 decibels (dB), and limited benefit from hearing aids (HINT scores <= 40% in best aided conditions)
Pediatrics (18 mos. - 17 yrs, 11 mos.) with bilateral profound SNHL (thresholds >= 90 dB at and above 1000 Hz, with a 3 to 6 month hearing aid trial, and lack of auditory skill development; <20% score on multi-syllabic lexical neighborhood test (MLNT) or the lexical neighborhood test (LNT).
P000025/Supplement 1- Combi 40+S(compressed) Electrode Array Combi 40+GB (split) Electrode Array Approved: 7/29/01 Intended Use: for those severe to profoundly hearing impaired individuals with ossified and/or malformed cochleas; with little or no benefit from conventional acoustic amplification in the best-aided condition. P970051/Supplement 15 - Nucleus 24 CI 11+11+2M Double (Cochlear Corporation) Approved: 6/6/02 Indicated For: patients who have cochlear ossification preventing full insertion of a standard Nucleus 24 cochlear implant electrode array.
Brain Stem Implant
P000015 - Nucleus®24 Auditory Brainstem Implant (Cochlear Corporation.) Approved: 10/20/00
Intended Use: to restore useful hearing via electrical stimulation of the cochlear nucleus in the brain stem
Indicated For: >= 12 yr with Neurofibromatosis Type II. Implantation may occur during first or second side
tumor removal or in patients with previously removed acoustic tumors bilaterally
FDA Statement on Meningitis in Cochlear Implant Patients
The FDA has become aware of a possible association between cochlear implants and the occurrence of bacterial meningitis. We have received more than 25 reports from the United States and more than 20 reports from abroad of bacterial meningitis associated with cochlear implantation. Cases have occurred in children and adults ranging in age from 21 months to 82 years. The onset of meningitis symptoms has ranged from less than 24 hours to greater than 5 years from time of implant. At least 12 known deaths have resulted from these cases, with 3 of these deaths occurring in the United States. Although most cases have been caused by
Streptococcus pneumoniae(pneumococcus), other organisms -- including Hemophilus influenza, enterococcus, Esherikia coli, and Streptococcus viridans -- have been cultured. Most of the patients have been children, predominantly under the age of 5, but some adults with cochlear implants have also developed meningitis.
The cause of meningitis in these cochlear implant recipients has not been established. A small percentage of deaf patients may have congenital abnormalities of the cochlea (inner ear) which predispose them to meningitis even prior to implantation. Patients who become deaf as a result of meningitis are also at increased risk of subsequent episodes of meningitis compared to the general population. Other predisposing factors may include young age (< 5 years), otitis media, immunodeficiency, or surgical technique. The cochlear implant, because it is a foreign body, may act as a nidus for infection when patients have bacterial illnesses.
Design of the electrode is also being considered as a possible predisposing factor. The Advanced Bionics CLARION device differs from other currently marketed cochlear implants because it uses an additional piece called “the positioner” which is introduced next to the electrode into the cochlea to facilitate transmission of sound information to the auditory nerve. Advanced Bionics has agreed to discontinue use of the positioner in these countries and will be marketing one of their current cochlear implant systems containing the HiFocus I electrode without the positioner. The company has also initiated a voluntary recall of unimplanted CLARION devices in the United States and has announced that it will be seeking FDA approval for the HiFocus I electrode without the positioner.
FDA believes that cochlear implant candidates, as well as those already implanted, may benefit from vaccinations against organisms that commonly cause bacterial meningitis, particularly
Streptococcus pneumoniaeand Haemophilus influenzae. The immunization status should be ascertained for all candidates for cochlear implants prior to surgery as well as for those with an existing implant. We would again refer you to the FDA website on the screen for specific vaccinations recommendations.
In some of the reported cases of meningitis in cochlear implant recipients, patients may have had overt or sub-clinical otitis media prior to surgery or before the meningitis developed. Physicians are encouraged to consider appropriate prophylactic perioperative antibiotic treatment, and to diagnose and treat otitis media promptly in patients with cochlear implants.
We encourage you to report cases of meningitis in cochlear implant recipients. You can report these directly to the device manufacturer or you can report them to MedWatch, the FDA’s voluntary reporting program. You may submit reports to MedWatch one of four ways: Show slide with contact info….
A team of experts from the various offices within CDRH has been formed to assess this issue, and we are working closely with the manufacturers and collaborating with our colleagues at the CDC to gather complete information on all cases that have occurred within the U.S. Although FDA is carefully investigating these reported cases of meningitis, we recognize that cochlear implantation has been a highly effective procedure to restore hearing function in over 20000 patients in the US and approximately 60000 patients worldwide. We are currently working with the CDC to investigate ways to better define any risk of meningitis associated with cochlear implantation in this population and to develop measures that can be implemented to reduce any identified risks.
GENERAL ISSUES DISCUSSION
The agenda for the August 16, 2002 open session of the Ear, Nose and Throat Devices Panel Meeting was a discussion of a draft guidance entitled "Implantable Middle Ear Hearing Device; Draft Guidance For Industry and FDA." At the June, 1999 Panel Meeting, the Panel discussed many of the issues that were incorporated into the document; however, at this time we are presenting the draft for further comment and recommendation.
The Panel was asked to focus their discussion on three areas and direct their answers to the following questions:
the role of animal studies in determining safety and effectiveness for the implantable middle ear hearing device (IMEHD)
What is the role of animal studies in the development of an IMEHD? When should preclinical animal studies be performed to support the safety and performance of an IMEHD?
additional assessments, if any, related to the clinical protocol for evaluating the IMEHD
What additional assessments, if any, would you recommend be included in Section 5 (Investigational Device Exemptions) to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the IMEHD?
Currently there are several hearing aid fitting algorithms for conventional hearing aids, based on real-ear measurement techniques. These algorithms predict appropriate gain as a function of frequency for various patterns/magnitudes of hearing loss and hearing aid circuitry (e.g., linear vs. compression).
Should IMEHD manufacturers be responsible for developing similar fitting algorithms for their devices? If so, should there be common units of measurement among different manufacturers?
What control condition(s) should studies with an IMEHD include? Should it be "state-of-the-art" acoustic hearing aids? If so, how does one define "state-of-the-art" or "optimally fit" if they are to be utilized in the controls? Should the condition include a comparison to the “best aided” condition, including binaural amplification?
Previous clinical studies with the two approved IMEHDs showed enhanced patient satisfaction with these devices despite the fact that objective hearing assessment results were similar to those using conventional hearing aids. What additional assessments, if any, could be used to demonstrate an enhancement in hearing performance to account for a subjective improvement in patient satisfaction?
the common performance characteristics, e.g., output, gain, frequency response, of the IMEHD
Conventional hearing aid labeling includes performance characteristics based on standardized measurement methodology (i.e., ANSI S3.22, 1996). Given the different types of implantable middle-ear hearing devices (e.g., semi- vs. totally-implantable; electromagnetic vs. piezoelectric), what, if any performance characteristics can be shared among these different device types? What performance characteristics would you want to standardize and include in device labeling (APPENDIX B) common to all IMEHD devices?
NOTE TO THE PUBLIC
The IMEHD draft guidance is up for public comment on the FDA website for a period ending September 12, 2002.
CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENT
The October 17-18, 2002 tentatively scheduled meeting of the Ear, Nose and Throat Devices Meeting has been cancelled. Information on the December 12-13, 2002 meeting will be available by mid-October, 2002.
Contact: Sara M. Thornton, Executive Secretary
(301) 594-2053 Ext. 127, email smt@cdrh.fda.gov
Transcripts can be obtained from: (Written Request Only)
Neal R. Gross & company 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 (voice) or OR Food and Drug Administration Freedom of Information Staff (FOI) 5600 Fishers Lane, HFI-35 Rockville, MD 20852 (301) 827-6500 (voice) (301) 443-1726 (fax)
*Executive Summary May Be Purchased From: (Written Request Only)
Food and Drug Administration Freedom of Information Staff (FOI) 5600 Fishers Lane, HFI-35 Rockville, MD 20852 (301) 827-6500 (voice) (301) 443-1726 (fax)
*Under normal conditions, panel summary minutes are available 60-90 days post meeting. Please time your requests accordingly. | 12,203 | 5,240 | 0.000193 |
warc | 201704 | Inspections, Compliance, Enforcement, and Criminal Investigations Warner Chilcott Company, LLC 3/8/12
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Food and Drug Administration
466 Fernandez Juncos Avenue
San Juan, PR 00901-3223
Telephone: (787) 474-9500
Fax: (787) 729-6658
MAR 8, 2012 WARNING LETTER12-SJN-WL-04 OVERNIGHT MAIL
Mr. Roger Boissonault
Chief Executive Officer Warner Chilcott Company, LLC 100 Enterprise Drive Rockaway, NJ 07866
Dear Mr. Boissonault:
During our June 22 to July 29, 2011 inspection of your pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, Warner Chilcott Company, LLC, located at Road 195, Km. 1.1, Union Street, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, an investigator from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified significant violations of Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) regulations for Finished Pharmaceuticals, Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 210 and 211. These violations cause your drug products to be adulterated within the meaning of section 501(a)(2)(B) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) [21 U.S.C. § 351(a)(2)(B)] in that the methods used in, or the facilities or controls used for, their manufacture, processing, packing, or holding do not conform to, or are not operated or administered in conformity with, CGMP.
We have reviewed your firm's response of August 18, 2011, and note that it lacks sufficient corrective actions.
Specific violations observed during the inspection include, but are not limited, to the following:
1. Your firm has not thoroughly investigated the failure of a batch or any of its components to meet its specifications whether or not the batch has already been distributed [21 C.F.R. §211.192].
For example, since 2006 to present, 7 of 9 lots of Ovcon (Norethindrone (NE) 1 mg and Ethinyl Estradiol (EE)) 50 mcg tablets, laced on stability, failed to meet the assay test specification for Ethinyl Estradiol (EE) at
(b)(4) condition at different stability testing intervals. We are concerned that the current stability data does not support your labeled expiration date. Significantly, your firm failed to identify the root cause of the problem and has been unable to implement appropriate corrective and preventive actions. In addition, during this same time period, your firm has continued to manufacture and release Ovcon 50 tablets, although these may be subpotent.
In your response, you indicated that the
(b)(4) EE assay stability failures are due exclusively to (b)(4). During the manufacture of optimization lot #02260T, your firm implemented a process change to (b)(4) (a potential source of (b)(4) of EE) by using an (b)(4) procedure. In your response, you also indicated that you will package all future lots of Ovcon 50 using a new configuration under a (b)(4). However, you have not conducted a comprehensive evaluation of these corrective actions and assured that these have adequately addressed the persistent Ovcon 50 tablets quality problems. For example, on November 10, 2011, you submitted a Field Alert Report (FAR) to the agency reporting that Ovcon 50, lot 02260T (the above mentioned optimization batch produced using the (b)(4) procedure), failed to comply with the (b)(4) EE assay specification at the (b)(4). You also have not provided documentation to support how the new packaging configuration and (b)(4) within the package will prevent the degradation of the drug product.
Please provide information on the equipment that you will use for the
(b)(4) (e.g., name of the equipment and documentation regarding whether it is capable and has been qualified to provide a (b)(4) to your new packaging configuration), in-process controls that will ensure that the packages contain a (b)(4), details of this process change, and stability data that support the effectiveness of the process change. In addition, you should contact CDER to determine the need to file these modifications relating to manufacturing and packaging process changes to your approved NDA, in accordance with 21 CFR 314.70.
2. Your firm has failed to ensure that your quality control unit fulfills its responsibilities as required by [21 C.F.R. § 211.22(a)].
For example, the stability history of your drug product (Ovcon 50) suggests that since your acquisition of the product in 2005 from
(b)(4) your quality control unit has failed to exercise its responsibility to assure that your product meets its predetermined specifications throughout its shelf life.
When you acquired the product, you changed the manufacturing drying parameters from requiring a drying time of
(b)(4) (the criteria used at (b)(4) to ending the drying process once the product reaches a temperature of (b)(4). Your firm performed validation studies of this altered process, however, while the validation batches met all the product release specifications, two of the three validation batches failed (b)(4) EE assay specification on stability.
Although all stability samples held at the
(b)(4) conditions were analyzed with the same assay test method and passed, you attributed the failing (b)(4) EE assay test results to the lack of robustness of this same analytical method. Your decision to rely on the method appears to have been result-dependent and without scientific justification. Given the background of the change in the drying process and knowing there were other factors that should have been evaluated to reduce variability of the drying process, in 2006 you should have revisited the drying process as a root cause of the stability failures when the first validation batch failed. Instead, you continued to manufacture and release batches to the marketplace for five years (2006-2011) by assigning the root cause of the stability failures to a problem with the analytical method. It was not until June 21, 2011, during the recall of Ovcon 50 lot 01150F, due to a failing EE assay detected at the (b)(4) storage condition, that your firm performed a more rigorous evaluation of the manufacturing process and other possible root causes.
Your quality unit failed to ensure that the drug product quality issues were adequately evaluated. Specifically, your quality unit failed to effectively evaluate available developmental and technical transfer data that may impact the quality attributes of products that you manufacture. It is essential that the quality unit review relevant process design data including process knowledge and understanding obtained during technical transfer activities in order to assure an overall understanding of the process impact on the quality attributes (e.g., assay) of your drug product. In your response, please provide appropriate evidence that you have changed your quality system . and that you have identified steps that you will take to ensure that your quality unit personnel understand their responsibilities, and have the necessary scientific and technical qualifications and the appropriate authorities to effectively execute their quality functions to ensure that your drug products are safe and effective.
In addition, you stated in your written response to the FDA-483 of August 18, 2011, that you did not take market action for Ovcon 50 prior to June 21, 2011 because you considered the
(b)(4) stability condition more appropriate for assessing the stability of the product. Both the (b)(4) and (b)(4) conditions are approved requirements in your stability commitment to the agency. Your product must meet its approved stability specifications under both storage conditions, and your assertion to the contrary is incorrect.
Please conduct a comprehensive retrospective review of your stability program for all approved products to ensure that your marketed products are in compliance with approved application commitments. If any of the products released to the marketplace do not meet your firm's stability commitments, please inform this office of additional corrective actions you intend to implement.
The agency acknowledges your decision to recall the affected lots of Ovcon 50 tablets from the market. However, we remain concerned regarding the quality problems that have gone unresolved for the last five years without you fully understanding the reason for the failures and without assurance that the product will meet its quality attributes throughout the product's shelf life. We would recommend that you place all lots of Ovcon 50 on stability until you verify that your corrective actions are effective. In addition, please provide your plan for how you intend to ensure that other products that you manufacture will meet the required specifications through their expiration dates.
The violations cited in this letter are not intended to be an all-inclusive statement of violations that exist at your facility. You are responsible for investigating and determining the causes of the violations identified above and for preventing their recurrence and the occurrence of other violations. It is your responsibility to assure compliance with all requirements of federal law and FDA regulations.
You should take prompt action to correct the violations cited in this letter. Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in legal action without further notice including, without limitation, seizure and injunction. Other federal agencies may take this Warning Letter into account when considering the award of contracts. Additionally, FDA may withhold approval of requests for export certificates, or approval of pending drug applications listing your facility, until the above violations are corrected. FDA may re-inspect to verify corrective actions have been completed.
Within fifteen working days of receipt of this letter, please notify this office in writing of the specific steps that you have taken to correct violations. Include an explanation of each step being taken to prevent the recurrence of violations and copies of supporting documentation. If you cannot complete corrective action within fifteen working days, state the reason for the delay and the date by which you will have completed the correction.
Your reply should be sent to the following address: Food and Drug Administration, Attention: Carlos A. Medina, Compliance Officer, 466 Fernandez Juncos Avenue, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00901-3223.
Sincerely,
/s/
Maridalia Torres
Director San Juan District
Enclosure: FDA 483
cc: Mr. Frank Rodriguez Senior VP and Plant Manager Warner Chilcott Company LLC P.O. Box 1005 Fajardo, PR 00738-1005 | 10,517 | 4,374 | 0.00023 |
warc | 201704 | 1. Transfers and Subsidies : India's plan to provide subsidies electronically through bank accounts, biometric ID cards, mobile transfers (also know as JAM) can reduce leakage and increase efficiency but what are its limitations? Does it really have the potential to be "the holy grail of efficient and equitable welfare policy?" The New York Times 2. Evidence-Based Policy: The study of deworming pills that launched the RCT movement in development has come into question. But there are a lot of questionsabout the questions. 3. Credit: For rural farmers in India, increasing productivity often means purchasing expensive equipment with a loan, which may be difficult to obtain without collateral or a credit history. Could a financing model based on demand aggregation delivered through a local cooperative/bank partnership help? NextBillion 4. Poverty in the US: A new report shows child poverty in the US is worse now than it was before the Great Recession, especially for African-American and Native American children, despite strides toward economic recovery. PBS Newshour 5. Mobile Money: Mobile money penetration and growth varies dramatically from country to country. In both Indonesia and South Africa, regulatory complexities contribute to the sluggish adoption rates for digital financial products. The Wall Street Journal and TechCentral | 1,354 | 803 | 0.001249 |
warc | 201704 | Unlike many of their developed market peers, U.S. stocks finally found their footing today, in the wake of the conclusion of the Fed's FOMC policy meeting on Wednesday. The
S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC), and the narrower, price-weighted Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) both finished the day up 0.3%. That was hardly enough to undo the damage wrought over the previous two days; on the week, the S&P 500 lost 2.1% -- the fourth week of losses in the past five.
But let's put that loss into some perspective: While we have only witnessed one weekly decline that was larger this year, if we go back to Jan. 1950, we find that:
The S&P 500 fell during 43% of all calendar weeks in that time period. Furthermore, among the losing weeks, roughly one in four produced a greater loss than the one we experience this week.
The
CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) (VOLATILITYINDICES:^VIX), Wall Street's "fear index," declined 7.8% from the year-to-date high it achieved yesterday. Investors are still jittery at the thought of a near-term "roll-back" of the Fed's bond-buying program. At 18.90, the VIX remains elevated by recent standards, although, here again, it's instructive to seek some historical context. On that basis, today's closing figure is not particularly high; in fact, it's below the average daily closing value of the index from its inception in Jan. 1990, which stands at 20.3. (The VIX is calculated from S&P 500 option prices, and reflects investor expectations for stock market volatility over the coming 30 days.)
Instead of obsessing over daily changes in the index, investors would be better off listening to billionaire value investor Ron Baron, who, in an email to CNBC yesterday night, wrote "don't worry" about the volatility sparked by the Fed's new guidelines regarding its bond purchases, adding that he "doesn't think turbulence will last."
Mind you, he isn't a raging bull, either; he estimates it will take something like "nine or 10 years for [the] market" to double from its current level, while adding that "maybe it's five or six for us." Apparently, despite the rise of low-cost index ETFs, there are still investors who believe in the value of stock picking.
Fool contributor Alex Dumortier, CFA has no position in any stocks mentioned; you can follow him on LinkedIn. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | 2,625 | 1,452 | 0.000695 |
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Idealistic MBAs long for the CSR director’s office, imagining that they will lead a company’s social agenda and make their business a force for good. However, executives that actually hold these jobs tell a different story. Most spend their time communicating - cynics might say “selling” - their companies' responsibility story to external constituencies in order to stave off reputational risks. Compiling glossy CSR reports and making speeches to the socially responsible converted is de rigueur. And if you want to hear a collective groan from a group of CSR directors, just mention filling out yet another customer CSR survey.
While this externally-focused CSR function has filled an important role, it has run its course. Driven by need, or frustration, many CSR managers are taking a new tack. Today’s successful CSR executive is leading what can best be called a socially responsible insurgency inside their organization. It is an insurgency that breaks the bounds of job description, budget constraints and the limits of “moral influence.” Its goal is simple: to alter the way business is done in every function and business unit of the company.
By insurgency I obviously don’t mean armed insurrection. An insurgency describes actions that, while not directly authorized by policy, are motivated by shared organizational and societal values. CSR executives are leading this insurgency by inciting functional managers and line employees to identify their own opportunities to improve corporate social performance with their range of influence. This drives CSR down to lower levels of organizational decision making, embedding CSR into the organizational culture.
The new insurgent CSR leadership achieves this by identifying likeminded allies across the organization and providing them with the strategic vision and guidance that empowers them to take action on their own. The organizational CSR function becomes, not a data-compiling, glossy-brochure-producing shop, but “Insurgent HQ,” sponsoring what are in effect “CSR cells” in every function of the organization.
Watch for this trend to spread as "employee engagement" grows in importance as part of corporate CSR strategy. I'll share case study examples of this trend in future posts.
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One of critics' biggest worries about Obamacare is that the law has had negative effects on the labor market.
And a new analysis finds some evidence for that: The Affordable Care Act's employer mandate may be leading companies to cut hours for some workers.
Ben Casselman, the excellent economics writer for FiveThirtyEight, has written a thorough analysis of Obamacare's possible impact on part-time jobs, based on the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. I'd encourage you to read Casselman's piece in full. (It also builds off work done by Jed Graham at
Investor's Business Daily.)
To be clear, Casselman isn't arguing that companies are moving full-time workers into part-time jobs.
The data just doesn't support that: The U.S. economy has been gaining hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs every month while part-time job growth has been flat, as I wrote about last year. Nearly 3 million jobs were created in 2014 — the best one-year jump since 1999 — and unemployment is down to 5.6%.
Overall, you can make a good case that the economy is booming.
What Casselman
does see happening is that companies appear to be cutting hours for part-time workers in order to evade the ACA's mandate that mid-sized and large employers must give health insurance to employees who work at least 30 hours.
That dynamic appears to be playing out in areas where workers are especially vulnerable to having their hours cut back — think of low-wage sectors like retail, restaurants, and education — and historically didn't get health insurance through their employers.
As Casselman writes:
Taken together, the evidence suggests that the health law has likely led a few hundred thousand workers to see their hours cut or capped. That’s small in the context of an economy with 150 million workers. But it isn’t a minor issue for those workers. Most of them are among the economy’s most vulnerable: low-wage, part-time workers who likely have few other options.
Obamacare supporters would argue that the BLS data doesn't capture the whole story. For one, many of the low-wage, part-time workers who are losing hours are also finally gaining health insurance under Obamacare. (Not through their employers, but through the Medicaid coverage expansion.)
And as Casselman points out, one goal of the ACA's authors was to
help some full-time workers willingly shift to part-time workers. Thanks to our nation's unusual employer-based health insurance system, millions of Americans have been stuck in jobs they don't like in order to keep their health coverage, a phenomenon called "job lock." But thanks to the ACA, these workers can presumably leave those jobs and get health coverage through Obamacare's insurance exchanges or Medicaid.
Still, when you're not making many dollars, any lost dollars quickly add up. And Casselman's data is another reminder that even the best-intended laws can have negative unintended consequences.
—
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The Wise Men have decided that the much-ballyhooed Santa Claus rally is not to continue.
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the unraveling of the financial system in 2008, is calling for "a recession in Europe, anemic growth at best in the United States, and a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging market economies."
Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard economist who has studied 800 years of financial crises, calls for a "second great contraction" caused by a badly over-leveraged global economy that requires deleveraging that "typically takes many years to complete."
You want a more official rendering? I give you Christine Lagarde, who keeps warning that the world economy is in a "dangerous situation." This past weekend she explained that the "Santa Claus rally" in the U.S. was due simply to "only temporarily calmed markets."
Be forewarned: Ahead of us, predicts the IMF leader and gritty former French finance minister, is "a crisis of confidence in public debt and the solidity of the financial system."
Crisis of confidence, the solidity of the financial system; these are not to be trifled over. I know the European sovereign debt and bank debt swamps are not clear enough to see clearly from New York. But, here are the numbers to contemplate this last week before 2012 dawns.
French banks hold 27% of the PIIGS debt; German banks, 20%; U.K. banks, 14%. That's 61% all debt of Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and France held by the banks of France, Germany and the U.K. See how interrelated the contagion of debt is structured.
French banks (have pity on them) own 44% of Italy's banking sector claims. U.K. banks hold 30% of Irish bank debt, and Spanish banks are into banks in Portugal to the tune of 43%.
This level of concentration is just pure danger--and explains why the ECB is offering cheap three-year loans to tide these banks over until hopefully some massive extended solution is found. Having this quandary to work out is like the French aristocrats being dragged to a damned prison before facing the guillotine.
As Robert Samuelson put it so neatly in the Washington Post this past weekend, most Americans are in denial that "the politics of giveaway" have morphed into the advent of "the politics of takeaway." Takeaway, as in taking away costly health care, some aspects of Social Security, and spending on defense, education and the like.
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Employee engagement used to mean a fairly simple transaction at the office: the annual campaign that often followed the CEO's lead, and perhaps a volunteer day with bright, branded T-shirts and Up With People style cheerleading. But sometime in the last few years, employee engagement at some leading companies moved beyond half-time at a 70s era Orange Bowl.
Last week, I took part in the annual Charities@Work conference in Manhattan, and moderated a couple of panels. In one, we explored how companies are moving towards providing year-round engagement opportunities for their employees, rather than at a specific time during the year - and how employees (particularly those millennials we all read about) preferred a more authentic experience.
The discussion featured Bea Boccalandro, president of VeraWorks, a consulting firm that helps companies design, execute and measure their community involvement, and Rebecca Wang, who is responsible for employee engagement in the community for Hewlett Packard’s 300,000 employees around the globe. We covered what it means to have an "engaged" workforce and Wang shared some of HP's employee programs and how they encourage year-round participation, with support from the company. It was a good discussion that - in my view - revealed an ongoing evolution in how companies are more focused on what employees want, especially when it comes to involvement in causes.
Tom Watson: What should companies do? Offer employees volunteer opportunities that leverage their professional expertise and bring badly needed expertise to societal causes, like project management? Or offer them a refreshingly different activity that balances out their long work week, like paint a fence? Bea Boccalandro: As employees, we relish both skills-based and extra-hands volunteering. Done well, both satisfy our hard-wired human yearning to contribute. Done well, both create a dopamine-mediated euphoria known as the “helper’s high.” Done well, both make valuable contributions to societal causes (although skills-based volunteering makes a higher-value contribution on a per hour basis). The difference is that extra-hands volunteering helps us achieve work-life balance while skills-based volunteering helps us achieve a meaningful workplace experience. We crave both life balance and meaningful work. Watson: If "painting the fence" - and other extra-hands volunteering - really contributes work-life balance, why do you recommend companies focus on skills-based volunteering? Boccalandro: Because expecting our employer to deliver work-life balance is akin to expecting our gym to deliver a dinner party. They couldn't possibly be less equipped for the task. Work-life balance is best pursued away from the workplace where you don’t interact your micromanaging supervisor or overhear gossip about the menacing re-org. Better go to our community soup kitchens, national parks or international relief organizations for volunteering that counterbalances work.
On the other hand, our
only choice for volunteer opportunities that enrich our everyday work experience is our employer. Skills-based volunteering is not merely the type of volunteering companies are positioned to do best, it’s what we need them to do.
Hewlett Packard has data showing that, while participation in any HP-organized volunteer activity is associated with an uptick in employee morale, the uptick is higher among employees who participate in skills-based opportunities. Upon on seeing the data, one HR representative said “Skills-based volunteering is like promoting them to a better job!” Indeed, evidence is mounting that infusing jobs with a societal contribution transforms employees’ workplace experience. Their engagement, teamwork, sense of belonging, pride and connection to mission improve. Smartly, from mentoring social entrepreneurs to developing nonprofit capacity in project management, all HP’s signature volunteer opportunities are skills-based. The companies offers extra-hands opportunities but focuses its efforts on skills-based opportunities.
Watson: Is it easy to move to skills-based work? Seems like a challenge for both management and employee - they're not social entrepreneurs, after all. Boccalandro: Because it is innovative, selling skills-based volunteering to employees sometimes takes more effort. Once employees do workplace skills-based volunteering, however, it clicks - apparently better than performing tasks that are completely disassociated from their work. At HP, for example, satisfaction is higher with skills-based volunteering than with extra hands volunteering. Watson: So basically, you are not a huge fan of workplace extra-hands volunteering, right?" Boccalandro: There is nothing wrong with extra-hands volunteering. I walk for causes and pick up beach trash. Nevertheless, there is a need for skills-based volunteering. Nonprofits need the expertise it delivers. Employees crave the work transformation it generates. Who else but employers can deliver on the necessity of skills-based volunteering? Companies, like HP, who take on this responsibility quickly realize that they don’t need to be altruistic. Employees, customers and communities reward this high-powered societal contribution with their loyalty. And, so, it appears to work well for all - communities, employees and business - when companies pursue the design and delivery of skills-based volunteering. {{article.article.page + 1}}/ {{article.article.pages.length}}Continue | 5,667 | 2,549 | 0.000398 |
warc | 201704 | The Philippines has made technology-based ridesharing services like Uber legal, providing a regulatory framework for them to operate in the country.
Source: techinasia
The Philippines’ Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) today enacts an order to create the new category of transport known as “Transportation Network Companies (TNCs),” which provide app-based services connecting private vehicle owners or drivers with people looking for a ride.
“We view technological innovation as a driver for progress, especially in transportation where it can provide safer and more convenient commuting options to the public. App-based transport services help address the increasing demand for mobility spurred by rapid urbanization,” says DOTC secretary Jun Abaya in a statement posted on the agency’s website.
The move essentially allows Uber and similar services to “exist within our regulatory framework,” adds Abaya.
Uber praises this “historic” development and says it makes the Philippines the first country to create a national dedicated framework for ridesharing. Uber offers peer-to-peer service UberX and limo-esque UberBlack in the Philippines. “This first-of-its-kind order is a shining example of how collaboration between government and industry can advance urban mobility, create new economic opportunity, and put rider safety first,” notes Uber senior vice president of policy and strategy David Plouffe.
Uber’s fate in the Philippines bucks its status in other Asian markets. In Seoul, for instance, Uber was forced to suspend its UberX service due to ongoing tensions with the government. In China, regulators are also up in arms against Uber and similar services. The Singapore government, for its part, has put pen to paper but has yet to recognize Uber and its ilk as entirely new forms of transportation.
While the Philippines may be the first country in Asia to enforce specific rules for TNCs, it only takes cue from jurisdictions abroad such as California in the US. California was the first US state to classify Uber and similar services as Transportation Network Companies.
The Philippine order follows months-long public consultations to figure out how to regulate Uber’s operations. Uber was under fire from taxi operators who wanted the tech company banned. Initially yielding to pressure, Philippine regulators launched a sting operation against Uber that backfired. The sting operation sparked public outrage, prompting regulators to take a second look at technology-based transport services.
Abaya says his department collaborated closely with concerned tech companies in crafting regulations for the new public transport category. “[We believe these regulations] will motivate current PUV (public utility vehicle) operators to modernize, upgrade, and innovate as well.”
Requirements for TNCs
The DOTC details certain standards for companies falling under the TNC category. For a vehicle to qualify,
it must have GPS tracking and navigation devices, and must be seven (7) years old or below. Only sedans, Asian Utility Vehicles, Sports Utility Vehicles, and vans will be considered. Vehicle owners will be required to obtain a Certificate of Public Convenience for every vehicle to ensure accountability. Drivers must be screened and accredited by the TNCs and registered with the DOTC’s attached agency, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board.
In the meantime, to allow taxi operators to compete with new transport services, the DOTC created a category for “premium taxis.” Compared to regular taxis, premium ones will be equipped with GPS, may be booked through the web or smartphones, will have a seven-year age limit, and allow payment through credit or debit cards.
Source: techinasia | 3,859 | 1,839 | 0.00056 |
warc | 201704 | Book Description - ISBN 978-1-62620-960-2 (35 Pages) This free eBook will give you an understanding of the coaching principles you will need to run a successful coaching program. It discusses the use of external coaches and the issues that confront managers who act as coaches to their own team. It describes key aspects of coaching including: active listening, building rapport, asking questions, demonstrating empathy, using intuition, goal setting and giving feedback.
Chapter 1 - Coaching Management Style The objective of coaching to encourage people to solve problems for themselves rather than referring them back up to their manager. In fact, managers who coach tend to place a lot of emphasis on developing the people reporting to them, and on creating an environment where people can perform as independently as possible. Chapter 2 - Management Coaching Skills Coaching involves the coach and the coachee working together to create changes. The main skills required by the coach involve focusing on goals, listening, asking non-leading questions, and giving non-judgmental feedback. Chapter 3 - Differences Between Coaching and Training Training is driven by the trainer, who will control most of both the process and the content in order to transfer knowledge or develop a new skill as efficiently as possible. In contrast, coaching is driven by questions addressed to the coachee, who then explores what they already know, but in a way that would probably not occur to them without the guidance of a coach. Chapter 4 - Differences Between Coaching and Mentoring? In a mentoring relationship, the advice and expertise sought from the mentor will be broad based, with the objective of developing the individual for future roles both on a career and personal level. In a coaching relationship, the coach does not typically pass on experience or give advice, but rather uses questions and feedback to facilitate the coachee's thinking and practical learning. Chapter 5 - Internal and External Coaches - Advantages and Disadvantages Coaching can be done using professional coaching services supplied by an independent firm or consultancy, or it can be done by the manager themselves or by someone else within the organization. As part of your decision-making process you will have to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches. Chapter 6 - Formal and Informal Coaching Where formal coaching is being used, both the manager and the team member will be clear that they are engaged in 'coaching' and will be explicitly committed to the process. Informal coaching can happen as part of the everyday conversation between the manager and a team member if the manager is using a collaborative leadership style. Chapter 7 - Coaching Skills for Managers The coach must not be judgmental, must believe that the coachee is capable of improving their performance, and be committed to ongoing support. The coachee must be allowed to set the agenda, define the actions required as a result of the coaching session, and demonstrate their accountability for these actions by reporting the progress they have made in the subsequent session. Chapter 8 - Successful Coaching Skills There are seven key skills you need for successful coaching: active listening, building rapport, asking questions, demonstrating empathy, using intuition, goal setting, and giving feedback. Another key part of being a successful coach is the use of a coaching model that aids this learning process.
You will learn:
Practical and useful I've read a few 'big' books on coaching that made me think it was too difficult to implement with the time and resources I have available. This eBook, on the other hand, has made me think about implementing coaching principles in a less formal way. I was also interested to learn about how management coaching emerged from sports coaching - something I hadn't really thought about before. I would say that this book highlights the principles of coaching in an easy to understand and straightforward fashion. I found it really useful and well worth the time it took to read. Jason Rogers Recommended if you want to improve your coaching efforts To be honest, I have always considered myself to be quite strong in the area of coaching. So when I came across this 'Coaching Principles' eBook, I wasn't all too interested because I believed I had already gathered enough skills in that arena. However, I decided to go ahead and give the book a read, and am glad that I did. While there is admittedly some content that was not anything new to me, there was more than enough new information to make it worth my time. My experience in coaching comes mostly from sports, and I always had translated that experience into the workplace. While that method is sometimes effective, it is not always the best approach. After reading this quick book, I feel that I will have more tools available to me as part of my overall coaching strategy.
Early on in this book I hit on a point that I think has probably been lacking in my coaching over the years. Since I come from a sports coaching background, I am used to giving instruction and haven't been open to feedback from the person being coached. In this way, I have missed out on the opportunity to collaborate on ideas and have everyone learn from the experience. My coaching has been too one-sided, and this book made me realize that when it discussed the importance of the collaborative process while coaching. I hope to take a more open-minded approach into future coaching sessions so that I can allow the person I am coaching to provide their valuable input to the process and make sure they feel like their opinions and ideas are being given the proper respect and consideration.
The middle of this book is the only point where it went a little off track for me. There are a couple sections where the book covers the differences between Coaching and Mentoring, and the differences between Coaching and Counseling. There is nothing wrong with these sections specifically, I just didn't feel like I got a whole lot out of them. Perhaps a different reader with different needs and experiences would find them more helpful and informative - they just didn't really hit home for me.
Later on, however, the book got back on track in terms of supplying information that I will be able to put to use. For example, I enjoyed the discussion on the differences between informal and formal coaching sessions. Typically my coaching sessions have been informal because that is how I am most comfortable, but thanks to this book I now see that there are some benefits to formal coaching sessions which I may have overlooked. While most of my future coaching efforts will probably continue to be informal in nature, I will consider setting up some formal coaching meetings to see if they can be more effective for my needs.
Lastly, the book offered a great reminder that it is not the role of the coach to judge the coachee during the process. It is easy for me, again coming from a sports background, to quickly evaluate and pass judgment on the performance of the person being coached. Instead, it is important to be more supportive and remember that the idea is to help the person improve and get closer to their goals.
Despite the middle of this book falling a little off track for me personally, I would recommend reading it if you would like to improve your coaching efforts - or just learn more about the topic. For the time that it will take to read this short book, even gaining just one or two pieces of knowledge will be well worth it. Gerard Cohen Much more to the coaching process than I thought Most people believe they are knowledgeable in terms of coaching and often time's use that term interchangeably with mentoring and counseling, I being one of the guilty. Wanting to improve my leadership skills, I turned to this book for what I thought would be a simple refresher, what I found was that there was much more to the process than I ever imagined. My learning began with a thorough explanation of the difference between coaching, mentoring, and counseling.
As the book progressed I also found myself learning about the differences between internal and external coaching. I found that throughout this book they provided several flow charts which were easily followed and certainly worth printing for quick reference in the future. Although I didn't realize it prior to reading this guide, I can clearly see now why using both internal and external coaches would be the best case for most business. As you will learn upon reading, an external coach is a person who is generally more trained in coaching and does not generally have regular contact with the employees. Internal coaches on the other hand are usually more of direct managers and serve as a daily point of contact for the employees. As you can imagine, someone who works daily with an employee may have a preconceived notion of an employee which can skew how they are managed. This is not always a bad thing but at times it does not afford all employees a fair shot at being heard. On the other hand, and external coach may not understand the personal goals or beliefs of an employee which could result in less effective coaching strategies. As I touched on briefly, there are also strong differences between coaches and counselors.
Sometimes employees may need a counselor to deal with developmental or personal issues. Depending on their relationship with their direct supervisor, external guidance may be preferred to avoid an awkward workplace. If you are a supervisor like me and you are reading this for your personal advancement, I suggest that you focus heavily on the flow charts the accurately and easily allow you to determine just what your employee is needing at the time, which is sometimes nothing more than a receptive ear. Another topic covered is the difference between formal and informal coaching. Although the names are fairly self-explanatory, deciding which to use can be a little more of a gray area. Once you have decided though, creating a positive environment will be crucial. Asking questions, listening, and leading are some of the key responsibilities of a good coach and have proven to be crucial to productive coaching.
In my opinion the book makes one very valid and sadly overlooked point, coaching is more about collaborating and less about controlling. Having joined the workforce a while ago, I have been subjected to many coaching styles myself, most of with are simply a task delegation session. I am glad to see that books like this have been made in order to help foster more productive workplaces and help even senior leaders learn new and more modern strategies. Lastly, if you find yourself in a workplace that is using more internal coaching when external is needed, remember the economy is tight and internal remains cheaper. As a leader and mentor to your team you should do your best to offer bias free leadership, I know that is my biggest challenge and likely yours too.
Simon O'Neil Coaching Your Team - The best way is to encourage your team members to solve their own problems without having to refer back up to you is to create an environment in which this can occur. To achieve this objective your team must have the correct level of knowledge, skills and attitude to perform their role. One effective way to do this is through the use of coaching. Management Coaching Tips - The best way is to encourage your team members to solve problems their own problems without having to refer back up to you. To achieve this objective your team must have the correct level of knowledge, skills and attitude to perform their role. One effective way to do this is through the use of coaching. From a management perspective this can be performed as a discrete activity, management style or an integral part of your daily activities. To be successful you need to create an environment where people can perform as independently as possible. | 12,035 | 4,970 | 0.000201 |
warc | 201704 | Voting and copyrights
By Doug Thompson
Federal voting “reform” is a disaster.
“Research into voting fraud by Lorraine Minnite at Barnard College in New York has turned up no contemporary cases of an election thrown out or overturned due to fraudulent registration,” the Christian Science Monitor reported Oct. 19. “She found only two prosecutions for people faking others’ registrations between 2002 and 2005, involving a total of 13 false applications.” Meanwhile, the bitterly misnamed “Help American Vote Act” has kept or removed millions from voter rolls. It did this at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars. Our Justice Department was packed with hatchet men willing to charge people with voter registration fraud at the drop of a hat. Not one of those cases resulted in any big convictions or uncovered any major cases of fraud. This is what you get when you let people who are elected fiddle with your elections. As we all recall Florida had a very close election in the presidential race in 2000. This caused Congress to declare that the system in all 50 states needed major reform. Congress — 535 people whose greatest desire, individually, is to secure his or her own re-election. Their second greatest desire, collectively, is to secure the majority for their party. This is the body we put in charge of our elections when we let them pass HAVA. The Republicans made it more difficult for members of ethnic groups to register. Now the Democrats are taking over. Expect a wild swing the other way. I’m just a wiseguy from Arkansas but here’s my suggestion. Repeal HAVA. Let states run elections. Let’s save the money we’re spending on the state level, then take all the money we’re wasting on HAVA at the federal level and spend it in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. Let the Senate oversee presidential appointments to that Justice Department. If there’s registration fraud at one extreme or civil rights violations on the other, let our reformed, impartial and professional Justice Department put the guilty in prison. That’s all I have to say about that. Let’s go to a new topic, but stick to the theme of our federal government taking over things they should leave alone. Our government recently created an intellectual property czar. This job will require going after people who make copies of songs, movies and whatnot. The reason for creating this job is because the Recording Industry Association of America, among others, has fought a long, costly and futile legal battle against copying music. Untold millions of dollars spent on the very best copyright attorneys money can buy has not only failed but has made the recording industry’s name stink. They look like desperate and dumb monopolists intent on charging $12 for a CD when their customers really want four songs off it for $4. In the process they’ve made the iPod more popular than then transistor radio was in the 1950s. Drastically declining sales, expensive legal fights and an industry approval rating comparable to that of head lice: What’s the recording industry to do? Why, give much of the expense, the burden and the onus to the taxpayer, of course. Just about everything the government’s done in the field of intellectual property makes things worse. For instance, copyrights used to expire. Then Congress increased the length of copyright by 20 years in 1998. How much do you want to bet they increase it by another 20 years in 2018? You cannot perform Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” without infringing on copyright. Some books published in 1923 are still under copyright protection. Thomas Jefferson is turning over in his grave — and puking. Call me simplistic. Wouldn’t the fight against copyright infringement be easier if we weren’t still trying to protect things that are a century old, or thereabouts? My personal favorite is the granting of a patent to a gene-splicing company for a gene they found in a plant in Madagascar. Now I’m fairly confident that this company didn’t invent the plant. So I’m a little at a loss to understand how they got a patent here. Apparently God needs a good intellectual property lawyer. | 4,312 | 2,134 | 0.000487 |
warc | 201704 | Allergy season has been worse than usual this year for many people across the U.S. due to dry spells and warm weather. Eugene, Oregon, is one region that especially suffered as a result of arid weather. However, a few recent storms have finally brought relief to residents in the area, according to The Register-Guard.
Eugene saw its highest pollen count this season with 532 grains of grass pollen per square inch, which meant plenty of sneezing and itchy eyes for allergy sufferers. Kraig Jacobson, medical director of the Allergy and Asthma Research Group, which is the research arm of Oregon Allergy Associates in Eugene, told the news source that the rain will help allergy sufferers finally find relief.
Individuals who suffer from seasonal allergies may want to consider purchasing an air purifier. A HEPA filter can remove irritating particles from the atmosphere that cause coughing, sneezing and sniffling.
The IQ HealthPro Plus system is efficient at removing ultrafine particles smaller than 0.3 microns in size from up to 900 square feet of space. Its HyperHEPA filter can eliminate dust, pollen and pet dander from the air. | 1,142 | 651 | 0.001543 |
warc | 201704 | CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
The present application claims priority to and full benefit of German National Patent Application No. DE 10 2011 103 224.3 filed 31 May 2011 the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
- Top of Page
This disclosure relates to the field of opthamology and in particular to the appropriate selection and subsequent implantation of an intraocular lens (IOL) in a subject.
BACKGROUND
- Top of Page
OF THE INVENTION
According to the known prior art, IOLs are selected and/or adjusted on the basis of measured and/or estimated variables, wherein only individual parameters in the form of single measurement values or as a mean value from defined patient groups are taken into account. However, the dependencies from the specific concomitants of the treatment, such as characteristics of the patients, diagnostics, surgical method and the like, as well as the use of statistical distribution for the parameters are not taken into account.
The selection according to the known prior art can be described in accordance with FIG. 1.
The biometric data of the eye to be treated, which are determined using an ophthalmological measuring device as well as the data of the (1 . . . n) IOLs eligible for implantation are the input parameters for the calculation process.
These IOLs typically vary according to IOL type (including variation of their asphericity or toricity) and refractive power of the IOL.
With the use of a calculation model (typically an IOL formula or by means of ray-tracing), an output and/or evaluation parameter (typically, the refraction of the patient after implantation of the IOL) is calculated in the next step. This output and/or evaluation parameter is then optimized through variation of the input parameters selectable by the physician such that the target refraction is obtained.
The currently most prevalent calculation models are so-called IOL formulas, e.g. according to Holladay, Hoffer, Binkhorst, Colenbrander, Shammas, or SRK. Accordingly, the refraction D (=output/evaluation parameter) of the patient after implantation of the IOL is calculated as
D=DIOL−f(K,AL,VKT,A) (F1)
wherein f( ) is a classically known IOL formula
and DIOL refractive power of the IOL,
K the measured keratometry value,
AL the measured axis length of the eye,
VKT the measured anterior chamber depth, and
A an IOL type-dependent constant, are input values.
For selecting the IOL, the physician predetermines a target refraction (D=DTARGET). For the optimization, the physician calculates the refraction according to (F1) for different IOLs through variation of DIOL and A. In many cases, the physician uses IOLs of the same type, so there is no variation in A, and the optimization amounts to a formula calculation according to DIOL=DTARGET+f(K, AL, VKT, A). In case of emmetropia as the target, the classical formula calculation of the IOL is therefore DIOL=f(K, AL, VKT, A).
The constant A in the formulas is determined empirically using a patient group in order to adjust the formula values to the actually resulting optimal refraction values. However, this adjustment merely ensures that the mean value of the refraction values for the test group corresponds with the formula.
Statistical errors of the biometry formula are typically taken into account by the physician such that the physician knows from experience that the actual obtained refraction values for a patient have a certain variation in the target refraction. If the physician wants to minimize their influence, the physician makes a correction to the target refraction. For example, if the physician encounters deviations of +/−0.25D when compared to the target refraction, which is typical for patients with myopic eyes, the physician will aim for a refraction of −0.25D in order to avoid a high probability for the eye of the patient to become intolerably hyperopic. This method is a good strategy for the mean value of the patient group.
However, the typical deviation of the target refraction and/or the margin could be reduced if single input parameters of the individual patient were used as an output variable instead of a mean value from a patient group.
In order to avoid systematic errors, various approaches are currently used according to the prior art.
A number of physicians use a different A-constant for every ethnic group of their patients. This reduces systematic errors and, provided the statistical scattering in the respective group is smaller, also statistical errors.
Depending on defined initial conditions, e.g. patients with long axis lengths or previous refractive cornea surgery, other physicians use different biometry formulas which are better adjusted to the respective conditions or which require the measuring of additional parameters, such as anterior chamber depth or lens thickness. This also reduces particularly the systematic errors, however, statistical errors may increase in part because of the additionally measured parameters.
A somewhat smaller number of physicians use ray-tracing methods, according to P.-R. Preussner and others in Preussner, P.-R. u. a.; “Vergleich zwischen Ray-tracing and IOL-Formeln der 3. Generation” (Comparison between ray-tracing and IOL formulas of the 3rd generation), Ophthalmologe 2000, 97:126-141, the contents of which are incorporated herein, as a calculation model instead of simple formulas (FIG. 1). Based on the individual measurement values and estimated variables, particularly the position of the IOL in the eye, an eye model is developed with usually several optically active surfaces and “calculated” according to methods from optics design for one or more rays. The imaging quality on the retina/fovea is calculated as an assessment value. If the input variables are determined with appropriate accuracy, systematic errors can by and large be avoided. However, statistical errors, e.g. due to a lack of reproducibility of the measurements or deviations of the wound healing process, are once again not taken into account.
Some manufacturers of IOLs attempt to compensate for the latter deviations by designing the IOL in such a way that the “active” refractive power of the IOL in the mean, i.e. average eye, is as position-insensitive as possible. Such artificial eye lenses and a method for their improvement are described in WO 2007/128423 A1 the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein. Here, the surface shape of the IOL is modified such that it has a surface shape deviating from the perfect sphere. Thereby, the design of the IOL takes into account the natural optical configuration of the human vision apparatus, e.g. visual axis tilt and pupil decentration. In addition, the design method can account for potential positioning errors caused by implantation and surgery effects. However, deviations in the position of the IOL can ultimately not be taken completely into account or compensated.
According to Warren Hill and Richard Potvin in “Monte Carlo simulation of expected outcomes with the AcryS of toric intraocular lens”, BMC Ophthalmology 2008, 8:22, the contents of which are incorporated herein, a Monte Carlo method/simulation can be used for optimizing the selection of toric IOLs with the objective of optimizing the target margin. Similar to the above-mentioned example, the physician is advised, according to Hill and Potvin, to account for a (negative) residual toricity of the “cornea—IOL” system in order to avoid (under-) correction. | 7,630 | 3,194 | 0.000317 |
warc | 201704 | This Valentine’s Day – Can Improving Your Finances Improve Your Romance?
Talking about money can be difficult. While we’re taught to avoid the potentially sensitive topic in polite conversation, there’s at least one person with whom you need to be able to have frequent and honest financial conversations – your partner or spouse.
This Valentine’s Day, take the opportunity to strengthen your relationship by understanding what drives your partner’s financial decisions. While experts say it may not always be possible to agree on everything, knowing each other’s perspective can help couples avoid frustrating conversations and make better decisions together.
“We all bring our own feelings and experiences to the table and that can have a big impact on how we invest and spend money,” says Joe Duran, CEO of United Capital, a private wealth consulting firm and New York Times best-selling author of The Money Code, a new book that aims to improve financial decision making. “But by honestly getting to the root of what money means to you and to your partner, you can take steps to improve your financial life together.”
In time for Valentine’s Day, here are some ways couples can smooth over their differences:
Prioritize
List your financial priorities and savings goals and determine which are necessary, negotiable and realistic. Draw up a budget and create a financial decision making checklist that satisfies both of you and resolve to stick to it. A clear action plan will help avoid surprise purchases or investments made by you or your partner that could become potential sources of argument.
Communicate
“I like to think of each of us as having a ‘Money Mind,’ which motivates the way we think about money,” says Duran. “Some of us are driven by fear, some by the pursuit of happiness and others by commitment. Whether you’re spending too much in the pursuit of happiness, or missing key opportunities out of fear, become actively aware of what guides you and your partner financially and the potential consequences.”
You’ll be more likely to avoid letting conversations turn into arguments if you’re speaking the same language as your partner. Each of you should have an active voice in the discussion and be participating fully in the financial planning process.
Seek help
Personal biases can sometimes get in the way of sound judgment. But a financial adviser can help you objectively map out a process to achieve your financial goals. Opt for one who doesn’t just focus on investments, but who can also match your financial aspirations with your current resources.
More tips on how to discuss money with your partner can be found by visiting www.HonestConversations.c om.
Don’t let miscommunication stand in the way of a healthy financial future. By taking steps to understand your partner’s perspective, you can develop a joint solution that makes everyone happy. | 3,018 | 1,466 | 0.000715 |
warc | 201704 | Why is it that you rarely see zinnias in summer bedding displays? Do they give the impression of being an old-fashioned flower?
Why is it that you rarely see zinnias in summer bedding displays? Do they give the impression of being an old-fashioned flower? Well, I think they're in for a revival, and with some stunning new varieties coming onto the market I'm recommending them to everyone.
For me it's the single colours that appeal. Bedding plant producers tell me that at retail it's always packs of colour mixtures that sell best, but I always avoid these. OK, so I must be an exception, but thankfully the seed companies cater to my taste for single colours.
Pictured above is a brand new zinnia that you may have discovered this year, but will be widely available in the 2011 seed catalogues. It's called 'Purple Prince' and I've been trialling it this summer. I love it! Growing up to about 75cm (30in) the large, mainly double flowers open first at the tip of the main shoot. Once these fade and are snipped away, further flowers develop in succession on side shoots.
This new variety has very long-lasting flowers that I've enjoyed in the garden, although they could have been cut for indoor display.
Another variety to consider is
Zinnia marylandica 'Zahara Starlight Rose' (pictured left), a beautiful bicolour variety that has resistance to leaf spot and mildew disease, that can sometimes devastate zinnia plants, particularly varieties of Z. elegans.
There are many others, including the fiery
Z. elegans 'Cactus Orange', burning 'Benaries Red' and pale green 'Envy'.
Are zinnias set for a revival, and will you be growing them?
Gardeners' World Web User 23/08/2010 at 13:03
I grew zinnias for the first time this year and they have flowered continuously throughout the summer and still going strong. They were easy to grow from seed and I had a good germinate rate. They do not need dead heading like petunias or cosmos and seem to withstand our hot dry conditions,
Gardeners' World Web User 23/08/2010 at 17:59
they look gorgeous, and when it comes to plants I like I don't care if they're 'in vogue' or 'old fashioned' or just somewhere in between!Are they easy to grow? I get a fair bit of sunshine (when it shines) in parts of my garden, but up here in Central Scotland, it's not overly warm ... if I were to start them off in the greenhouse (which I'm hopefully purchasing later this year!) would they be ok outside when I plant the rest of my summer bedding, say in early June?
Gardeners' World Web User 23/08/2010 at 18:59
We grew zinnias for the first time this year, they have been spectacular, or should I say, they are spectacular, with a bit of dead heading they just keep coming. We did loose a lot of plants in the spring, but had enough survivors to put on a really good show, and will certainly grow them again.
Gardeners' World Web User 24/08/2010 at 15:48
Thanks for the variety recommendations Lila. I'll have to try some of these, as I prefer the single colour varieties rather than the mixes. 'Blackcurrant Cordial' sounds tasty. Pleased to hear from everyone else, too, about how well their zinnias have grown. Flowers appear very long lasting, and are sometimes recommended as cut flowers. Has anyone tried this?
See more comments...
Gardeners' World Web User 25/08/2010 at 13:00
For cut flowers, Adam, cut before the flower bud opens up. I had one orange plant from our local council's leftover sale at their nursery, a beautiful orange one. They remove the labels but I will certainly do some research to find it and try it next year from seed as I am going all out to get a Gold award in next year's "Bristol in Bloom" comp. rather than the Silver I was awarded. Zinnias were a favourite plant in Bristol when I was gardening in my former garden 50 years ago so you are right when it is considered old-fashioned but what is wrong with that when it is such a flamboyant flower? | 3,941 | 1,902 | 0.000529 |
warc | 201704 | Overview
Whether they are growing in a garden bed or as potted plants indoors, geraniums benefit from minor pruning. Geraniums have a tendency to become leggy---some stems grow longer and the plant looses its full ad bushy appearance. Pruning inhibits the legginess and allows the plant to fill out so it is full and lush. This leads to more blooms and a generally more attractive plant. The small amount of time spent pruning will keep your geraniums looking good for many months.
Step 1
Remove flowers as they whither and the petals begin dying. Cut them off ¼ inch beneath the flower head using a pair of sharp shears.
Step 2
Cut off any damaged leaves from the plant where they join the main stem. Cut off damaged stems beneath the damaged area.
Step 3
Remove dying leaves and old stems during winter as the plant begins to produce new growth. Old stems are woody while fresh stems are pliable and green. Cut off the old stems at the base of the plant.
Step 4
Cut off all the dying stems after blooming is finished or in mid-March as they begin to set new flower buds. Cut them down to 3 to 5 inches long or to one third their previous height. Discard the removed stems.
Step 5
Water thoroughly after pruning. Apply a liquid plant fertilizer to encourage lush new growth following label instructions for the specific fertilizer brand. | 1,356 | 709 | 0.001429 |
warc | 201704 | With a population of over 8.6 million people, London's sprawl is incredible. Squeezing an average of 5,491 people into each square kilometre, housing shortages and stratospheric rental and mortgage costs run the risk of forcing a whole generation out of the capital, as well as those in lower-paid essential service industry roles. But even with London's widening boundaries, space on Earth is finite. Can demand for housing ever match the supply?
That's the question asked by the New Ideas For Housing Competition, set by think tank New London Architecture. An international competition attracting entries from some 200 design and architecture teams and artists, it looks outside the box for ways to solve London's increasingly fraught housing situation.
"The scale of the challenge is so big that we genuinely need some fresh thinking," says Lord Bob Kerslake, Chair, London Housing Commission.
"There are a lot of new ideas here, particularly new approaches to tenure and off site construction."
Fresh thinking – and potentially controversial – ideas are certainly what's made the backbone of the 100-strong shortlist. Suburbanites – would you accept a dream home built to your most-wanted specifications if it meant sacrificing half your current plot of land? That's one proposal from Alastair Parvin and Adam Towle in partnership with the WikiHouse Foundation as part of a new initiative called ‘Right to Replace’. How about living on top of an existing hospital or school in a pre-fab, as in Stride Treglown's '[nest]' idea? Or within a mega city along the M25, as part of the 'Mega Planning: Beyond 2050 - MegaPlan for a MegaCity' concept by GL Hearn part of Capita Ltd, which sounds ominously like something from a Judge Dredd comic?
Ten winning ideas will be chosen by an expert jury in mid-October, with winners invited to join a Greater London Authority working group to examine how each winning entrant can develop their ideas into actual real-world housing projects. The 100 shortlisted ideas will make up a free public exhibition at the NLA galleries in The Building Centre from 15th October to 17th December, but we've picked out some of our favourites for you to gawp at below in the meantime.
Floatopolis by drMM
Think Kevin Costner's
Waterworld, but with more Cockneys and jellied eels, and you'll be on your way to drMM's Floatopolis concept. Making use of the Thames's little-used waterways, it'd turn the river into a series of floating neighbourhoods, complete with housing, lidos, open-air cinemas, shops and, presumably, a lifeguard on every corner. Community Led Intensification by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
Is a patch of wasteground going unloved (and driving down your mansion's value) near you? This community-driven app-based idea lets locals identify plots of land crying out for redevelopment, letting housing authorities establish "micro development zones" based on crowd-sourced feedback.
The Streets by NBBJ
A third of London's surface area consists of roads so, you know, why not turn them into pedestrianised housing zones? That won't cause additional problems at all. Yep. Still, investigating London's 9,000 miles of road would likely uncover a few little-used rat runs that could be converted into housing areas with little difficulty. And it's worth remembering that this is from the same crazy team behind the Circle Line Travelator, making this idea seem relatively sane by comparison.
[nest] by Stride Treglown
[nest] proposes installing a series of modular housing units on top of retail spaces and car parks, offering 10 year leases for those willing to live above the bustling spots, with loyalty cards offered to residents that make use of the amenities below. But it's not the only high-rise roof dwelling submission to the competition, with Rooftop (Re)Generation by Bell Phillips Architects looking to do something similar with post-war housing estates. The later could potentially increase London's available housing on existing estates by 30 per cent according to the designers, without eating into existing open spaces.
Bouyant Starts by Floating Homes/ Baca Architects
Another Atlantean concept, Bouyant Starts would put fixed, affordable pre-fab houses along quiet spots of the Thames, re-energising local businesses and creating a potential 7,500 starter homes. Crucially, the customisable plots could be ready within six short months of the project being green-lit.
Living Arteries by Benjamin Marks
If there's 9,000 miles of road in London, what of overground rail lines? According to Benjamin Marks, Greater London has 1,522 hectares of space used by rail lines. His suggestion to build over as little of a quarter of these stretches of train lines would open up room for as many as 53,000 new homes (and make arguments for a window seat on the trains a little less heated, to boot.) | 4,896 | 2,547 | 0.000397 |
warc | 201704 | Introduction
The rise of China has catalysed several shifts in the geopolitical order, one of the key ones being the nascent US and European Resets with Russia and the Russia-NATO rapprochement. Many see in China’s ascent the reason for the renewed Western interest in improving ties with Russia, with the fade-out of the unipolar moment and the retreat from Neocon inspired, Bush-era containment policies proving beneficial to Russia.
But China is proving even this narrative to be overly simplistic. As the West and Russia move tentatively towards partnership, China has leapfrogged over Russia into Europe, while fortifying its position in Eurasia. China is visualizing the geopolitical landscape of the future, and it sees itself as having accreted enough power to be a co-equal in deciding Eurasia’s destiny. China has accordingly started strengthening its presence in Europe now. The ongoing economic crisis has provided China a timely opportunity to garner goodwill in the periphery countries and acquire strategic beachheads in the European economies. Over the last few months, Chinese leaders have visited many of the “periphery” countries with well-timed messages of support, a strategy that has caused some Europeans unease, since it implies a strategy of divide and rule (1). And in nearly every European capital visited by the Chinese leadership in recent months, China has pressed its demand for grant of market economy status and removal of the arms embargo and restrictions on high-tech exports. Since, apart from trade, China does not have a sizable European presence, China has also pitched for facilitation of Chinese investment and greater access to markets and technology, which will contribute in its quest to become a technological superpower.
The First Move: the Russia-West Reset
China could not have remained indifferent to the game-changing rapprochement between the United States and Russia, which offset the improvement in its own relations with Russia. President Obama had launched a “Reset" in U.S. foreign policy, while President Medvedev called for modernisation partnerships with the West to overcome Russia’s relative economic backwardness. Europe also had its Reset with Russia with even Poland coming closer. Germany, France and Russia held a summit after several years and Russia held summits with Germany, Italy, Belgium and the EU with a focus on modernisation partnerships.
But critics questioned the premises of the Reset, raising doubts over Russia’s commitment to democratisation. Others wondered where Russia’s priorities lay, in view of its strategic partnership with China. Robert Kagan for example believed Russia belonged in the autocratic camp (2).
Relations between Russia and China no doubt look close. The first major power President Medvedev visited after he was elected in 2008 was China (after Kazakhstan), a choice perhaps dictated by the pressure exerted by NATO expansion and stationing of BMDs at Russia’s doorstep. Russia received Chinese support on missile defence, NATO expansion, and on the Kurile Islands issue (3).
The two massive Eurasian powers show their capacity to coordinate military action through annual joint military exercises – the ‘Peace Mission’ series. Russia will soon export 15 million tonnes of oil annually through the China spur of the East Siberian Pacific Ocean Pipeline (ESPO), built in record time with Chinese assistance(4). It is planning to export gas to China through pipelines built with Chinese loans. Cooperation extends to many other areas, including currency exchange and the civilian nuclear energy sector.
However, there are major issues in the relationship. Russia cannot but be concerned at the growing power differential between itself and China. Russia’s declining military exports to China and China’s copying of and exporting clones of Russian weapons systems to Russia’s traditional markets are also troubling for Russia. Russia’s economic decline into a mere exporter of raw materials explains President Medvedev’s drive to forge modernisation partnerships with the West. What appeared to be a genuine internal Foreign Ministry strategy paper, leaked in May 2010, reportedly indicated that relations with the West would get priority in Russian foreign policy (5). In the Russian Foreign Minister’s briefing on 13 January 2011, Russia’s relations with the US and the EU were highlighted first and then all of Asia, Latin America and Africa were mentioned in one breath, in that order, in Lavrov’s introductory statement (6). China didn’t figure separately, except much later, together with India.
As regards popular sentiment, Russians do not regard China as a natural ally and have no wish to revert to their authoritarian past, even though the transition from it is perceived to have been mismanaged. Russian culture is part of the European tradition, in terms of its brilliant literature, music, theatre and ballet. Its young President has affirmed that Russia wishes to join the European mainstream, is committed to democracy and has finally “come in from the cold”, which indicates that by choice and not only by necessity, Russians prefer a closer partnership with the West (7).
Meanwhile, Europe’s reaching out to Russia shows a willingness to take concrete measures to make the vision of One Europe come true. It isn’t only about oil. The future of the democratic world may be at stake if Russia is allowed to drift back into an authoritarian embrace.
The qualitative change in East-West relations has been demonstrated most vividly in the defence and strategic spheres. NATO and Russia agreed at their Summit on 20 November 2010 that their security was intertwined and that they no longer constituted a threat to each other. They also agreed to examine cooperation in establishing a joint missile defence system (8). In a brilliant analysis in August 2010, Dmitry Trenin, the Director of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, explained why collaboration on missile defences could be a game-changer, even more so than the START agreements, because “Cooperation on missile defense makes it impossible to regard the other party as a potential military adversary” and “would be the functional equivalent of NATO membership for Russia.”(9)
The Russian Foreign Minister clearly agreed with this assessment. The Russian Foreign Minister stated at a briefing on 13 January 2011 that a joint European missile defence system including Russia and NATO would constitute an unprecedented breakthrough and would be the key test of Western commitment to the principle of indivisible security (10). He added that further discussions on nuclear armaments reductions could take place if the ambit of countries was expanded, a reference which clearly included a rapidly re-arming China.
Then, within weeks of the NATO-Russia Summit, the US Senate ratified the new START treaty by a 71-26 margin, even though many Senators bemoaned that Russia’s numerical superiority in tactical nuclear weapons had been left intact. Clearly a major shift had taken place. China was the elephant in the Senate room. Both Russia and the United States had China in mind as Russia would be unable to deter a threat from the East, for example, a demographic invasion, if it was deprived of its tactical nukes. Russia’s military doctrine also purported to have lowered the threshold for use of nuclear weapons and was interpreted as having dropped No First Use in its nuclear doctrine.
So far NATO and the US have indicated that they are ready only to undertake some information exchange and not marry the two systems in a joint missile defence system. While mistrust may stymie substantive progress for some time, it would be in the interest of both sides to forge unity on an important strategic issue.
China’s Geopolitical response to this historic shift
China had extended support to Russia’s position on missile defence and NATO expansion. As noted in an earlier paper, China’s reaction to the NATO-Russia Council agreement is of utmost significance (11). On this China didn’t keep the world guessing for long. China’s response to the nascent Russian-European-American entente shift was to take advantage of the economic crisis to strengthen its presence in Europe, while projecting this as part of its Eurasian policy. China Daily referred to its leaders’ tours to Eurasia (12). China is positioning itself as a Eurasian Power. China is even planning transportation links to Europe so that this conceptual leap can be given concrete grounding.
There are sound reasons why China should want to intensify engagement with Europe, though doing so during a crisis may seem counterintuitive. The EU is China’s biggest export market and source of high technology, and so early stabilization of its economy and currency is in China’s interest (13). China’s strategy of diversification of its foreign exchange reserves would also be counter-productive if the Euro loses its value. According to a WSJ estimate China may currently “hold as much as €700 billion in euro-zone government bonds” (14). China’s options for investing its surplus capital are limited and it needs new investment avenues. In 2009, Chinese FDI in the EU was only €0.3 billion as per some EU statistics, although it spiked in 2010 due to some major acquisitions like Geely’s purchase of Volvo. By pressing EU countries to accept more Chinese FDI, China aims to replicate the Japanese strategy of locating production in the EU/ Europe. As an insider, China will have greater access to western marketing networks, brand names and high technology, a central plank of Chinese strategy to achieve superpower status. It can also more easily circumvent the protectionist tide which will rise as these economies deflate during restructuring.
Between them Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, President Hu Jintao and Vice Premier Li Keqiang visited the following countries in the last few months: Greece, Belgium (for the 8th Asia-Europe Meeting and the EU-China summit), Germany, Italy and Turkey in October 2010; France and Portugal in November 2010 and Britain, Spain and Germany in January 2011. China’s outreach to Turkey is an extremely significant part of its larger Eurasian strategy. It includes military cooperation and other key elements such as building railway links between Istanbul and Beijing and within Turkey, but is not dealt with here.
China’s interest in European opportunities is not new. In 2007 the Chinese firm Link Global Logistics bought the tiny Parchim Airport in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the home state of Chancellor Merkel, to run direct air cargo services between China and Germany. Parchim had been the fall back option for the VVIP aircraft of G-5 delegations invited for the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, June 2007. Also in June 2010, China signed a currency swap agreement for approximately $500 million with crisis-hit Iceland (15). Iceland possesses significant strategic value, situated as it is close to the Arctic. The German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations found a growing Chinese presence in Eastern Europe.
Goodwill, sovereign debt and the periphery: The VVIP visits to the countries on the itinerary followed more or less a similar script. China sought goodwill and announced support for the Euro, affirmed its intentions to increase holdings of the sovereign debt of the periphery countries, and of imports from the host countries, bought infrastructure assets, and initiated proposals to use its ties with EU countries to strengthen contacts with other regions (16). Prime Minister Wen Jiabao confirmed during his visit to Greece in October 2010, that China was holding and would continue to purchase Greek treasury bonds (17). But this expression of support came several months after the May 2010 Euro 110 billion bailout by the IMF and the EU countries, and did not entail a commitment of funds (18). Similarly, on the eve of his Spanish tour, Li Keqiang wrote in a Spanish newspaper that China was a responsible long-term investor, adding that "China has confidence in Spain's financial market. It has purchased Spanish Treasury bonds and will buy still more". But only Spanish and Portuguese papers mentioned specific figures committed by China, reports that were not confirmed by official sources.
Such periodic expressions of Chinese support for the Euro, something which China was called upon to do in early 2010 too, had a calming effect on markets, even though it was difficult to say precisely how much additional sovereign debt China had bought (19). Yu Yongding, a distinguished senior former member of the monetary policy committee of the Peoples' Bank of China, and former director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had given an indication of Chinese thinking in China Daily, cautioning against buying sovereign debt of the periphery countries without obtaining assurances against debt restructuring (20).
China was in fact not the most weighty actor in the currency stabilisation saga. As the Russian Foreign Minister wryly observed in answer to a question at his 13 January press conference as to why Russia hadn’t stepped in more forcefully to assist its beleaguered Greek ally, while China had, it was the EU which was providing the bulk of assistance to Greece (and not China), adding that nearly 50% of Russia’s reserves were held in Euros.
As a quid pro quo, during their European sojourns Chinese leaders demanded that the EU recognize China's full market economy status (MES), ease restrictions on the export of high-tech products and arms to China and reject trade protectionism. A call was also given to ease pressure for currency revaluation. China simultaneously pursued its agenda of seeking encouragement to its investments on the continent(21).
Visits to Germany and France: The tactic of issuing a soothing opinion piece in a major national newspaper to prepare the ground for the visit, was repeated during Li Keqiang’s German tour, but the focus was predictably different. In his article in Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he pledged that China would continue to open up its economy, strengthen intellectual-property protection and improve the business environment for foreign firms (22). Li also raised the issue of lifting restrictions on high-tech exports to China and on Chinese investment in Germany. The Chinese side is impatient to gain greater access to German technology, and has complained about Germany’s visa requirements.
Germany ceded the number one global exporter position to China only in 2009. As with many other advanced countries, and with Russian military technology, China has reproduced their high-tech goods at lower cost and entered their export markets with cloned products. Given China’s increasing competitiveness in high-tech products, such as high-speed rail, Der Spiegel has wondered “whether the supposedly lucrative China connection will turn out in a few years' time to have been a pact with the devil” (23). Concerns over IPR theft, restrictions on rare earth minerals exports vital for the German high-tech sector, and Chinese regulations mandating (i) preferences in government procurement for indigenously innovated products and (ii) technology transfer as a condition for doing business in China, are thus a major issue with German and with all Western industry (24). Chancellor Merkel has publicly voiced her concerns over this issue, while welcoming “China's efforts to accede to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement” (25).
So while Greece and France conceded China’s demand to acknowledge China’s MES and call for lifting the EU arms embargo, Germany seemed to have been more reticent over the issue of MES (26). While Xinhua was reporting in July 2010 that Chancellor Merkel and the Chinese leadership had agreed that Germany would actively push the European Union to recognize China's full MES, the Chancellor’s official website said the following on the issue:
“In the opinion of the Federal Chancellor, China does not yet completely meet these conditions. According to the Chancellor, the issue of protecting intellectual property has not yet been solved. At present, foreign companies have no assurance that their product will not be counterfeited. It was also not yet clear whether foreign companies will have access to Chinese markets without being disadvantaged, Merkel said.” (27)
According to Deutsche Welle, Germany gave assurances to facilitate China’s MES during Wen’s visit to Germany in October but only by 2016 (28).
But buoyant German exports to China have helped Germany weather the financial crisis. China is now Germany’s top trading partner outside the EU and German car firms have invested heavily in China (all the while complaining that China has copied their IPR and produced clones of their products). $8.7 billion worth of business was done during Vice-Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Germany. Germany also values China’s continued support to the Euro, and is therefore attentive to Chinese sensitivities.
During President Hu Jintao's state visit to France in November 2010, China contracted deals worth 16 billion euros including purchases of 102 aircraft from Airbus, telecom equipment and 20,000 tons of uranium from France's Areva to China's Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp. Progress on the business district in Chateauroux where China would set up manufacturing cum assembly units was also reported (a similar project has been agreed with Ireland). As per the China Daily report, France and China also share the goal of diversifying global currency reserves away from the US dollar (29). As noted above, France endorsed the demand to lift the EU arms embargo on China in the joint statement issued with the Chinese.
Other gains of the visits
While China garnered goodwill with its professions of support to the crisis hit countries, there were other strategic gains from the visits. China had earlier bought the lease to operate terminals at the Greek port Piraeus and now offered multibillion dollar funding for Greek purchases of Chinese ships. Deutsche Welle said China was looking to make Greece “the centre for its exports in south-east and Eastern Europe” (30). According to the Wall Street Journal, during Li Keqiang’s visit to Spain, Sinopec acquired the oil firm Repsol’s Brazilian assets for $7.1 billion (31). The Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA signed a co-operation agreement for Latin America with China Development Bank. This was apart from other major contracts.
In Portugal, which in 2011 is a non-permanent United Nations Security Council member, President Hu said that “China is ready to explore with Lisbon ways to upgrade China's economic and trade cooperation with other Portuguese-speaking nations” (32). An economic forum on trade between China and Portuguese-speaking countries was scheduled in Macao in mid-November. Both Portugal and Spain have historical ties with their former colonies in Latin America and Africa. China could avail of their networks to further strengthen its presence in these countries which are of key importance in the Chinese quest for influence, raw materials and oil. Conversely, drawing Spain and Portugal into an exclusive trans-regional cooperation framework, is a good strategy to increase Chinese contacts with Spain and Portugal away from the EU core.
Assessments
Today the power that stands poised to dominate Eurasia is not Russia, at which containment strategies were aimed by the United States in the 20th and early 21st century, but China. China has expanded its hold over the energy resources, raw materials, pipelines and transportation networks of the Eurasian landmass, reducing its dependence on sea-routed energy supplies. Increased energy imports from Russia and Central Asia – in a sense the classical “Heartland” – enables China to reduce transactions in US dollars, part of its strategy to edge it out as the dominant international reserve currency.
China has now turned its attention to Europe, where the economic crisis has whittled down reservations over its growing presence as in more normal times it faced perennial censure over trade deficits and human rights (33).
Realizing that technological superiority is the key to world power China has parallely and systematically been copying and indigenising high technology, obtained by fair means and foul, from the advanced economies and from Russia.
Thus on the geopolitical stage, China is playing by its own rules in order to reach the pinnacles of power, whether it is in ‘borrowing’ R&D to churn out competitive clones of Western products, in its disproportionate contribution to climate change, or in confronting ‘challenges’ to its writ in unilaterally designated zones of core interests. Chinese advances in technology are beginning to bite as Chinese exports of weapons systems, high-speed rail, telecommunications equipment and IT hardware eat into the country of origin’s market shares.
China’s increasing influence in Europe and in the Eurasian heartland, and super-fast ascent on the technology ladder, should alarm US strategic thinkers who have ever warned that control of the Heartland would pose a strategic danger to the United States.
Conclusions
It is imperative for the West to acknowledge the challenge and calibrate an intelligent response which extends to the economic, technological and geopolitical arenas. The symbiotic interdependence of the major economies means that military options including the oxymoronic nuclear option are precluded for the time being for either side. The West should instead focus on maintaining its unity in defence of fundamental values and should also meet China’s challenge to its technological and economic primacy, the real, long-term foundations of global preeminence (34).
While America seems to be aware and ready (President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address focused on technology, with the President stating: “Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success”), Europe needs to gear up and tackle the related issues of sovereign debt, the Euro crisis, and declining competitiveness of its periphery. This is a devilishly complex task (35). Reversion to national currencies is considered extremely disruptive, with Chancellor Merkel herself ruling out going back to the Deutschemark, and the alternatives seeming equally controversial (36). In fact, many experts believe that the Euro has masked the widening disparities in competitiveness within the Eurozone, encouraged the weaker economies to avail excessively of cheap credit, and led to the development of substantial trade imbalances and budget deficits within the Union.
The EU also needs to simultaneously focus on maintaining/regaining international competitiveness, and tackling the issue of IPR piracy, which the US and EU Chambers of Commerce have highlighted in their respective reports, as the ceaseless hemorrhage of high technology to China directly undercuts their technological lead (37). This is easier said than done, as China is relentlessly pursuing technological supremacy by openly advocating systematic and institutionalized assimilation of “imported” technologies (38).
On the economic front, the EU should ensure that the engagement does not result in lop-sided benefits and contribute to long-term Western decline. The Chinese acquisition of assets in Europe has not as yet gathered any game-changing momentum. But it is a trend that needs to be watched. The EU needs to have its own equivalent of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to monitor the acquisition by external entities of strategic stakes in the EU economy. The EU industry commissioner, Antonio Tajani, has already made a beginning by questioning takeover attempts and expressing a desire to have a regulatory body to look at these issues.
Finally the EU has to address its own lack of leadership (39). This too is fiendishly complicated, with Germany’s candidature ruled out because of its past, and the fact that its position on Iraq, Georgia and NATO expansion did not tally with American preferences, which makes the US wary of German leadership. Germany’s candidature for permanent membership of the UN Security Council has also not been endorsed by the US for several reasons. Germany’s imprint on the EU however is arguably the strongest, with the Lisbon Treaty ratification process yielding progress on streamlining EU decision making structures. Germany clearly desires that the EU should stake a more dynamic geopolitical personality, under its and like-minded countries’ proxy direction.
China has no doubt factored these trends into its approach to Europe. The Chinese leadership may share some parts of an analysis by Chinese commentators on the May 2010 Euro crisis, in which they “competed to outdo each other in pessimistic pronouncements about the future of the eurozone”, hinting at Europe’s decline and other turbulence (40).
Indian analogies may appear far-fetched, but in some ways Europe resembles enormously prosperous but disunited 16th century India, vulnerable to the predatory designs of external powers. In addition, being the modern world’s first genuinely post-war and anti-war civilisation, Emperor Ashok’s famous renunciation of war and violence in 3rd century BC India being the only known historical precedent, the EU as an entity has avowedly turned its back on military options. The other characteristic of the EU is a “Back to Methuselah” syndrome, which reinforces its pacifist image as an ageing and prosperous population (41). These attitudes contrast with China’s determination to expand its influence and control in the world.
The EU should reinforce its strategic partnership with the United States and assist in the irreversible consolidation of Russia’s fragile democracy. Fortunately the trans-Atlantic rupture caused by loss of American credibility in Europe and pursuit of Neocon policies has started to heal since President Obama took charge. Never since the end of the Cold War has the necessity for coordination between the US and EU been greater. “Bringing in Russia from the cold” by moving forward on the Reset agenda should also be a priority.
The way Europe handles the Euro crisis and the structural issues of long term competitiveness, which include the task of retaining technological primacy, will be the first step in determining whether it will retain a leadership role in the 21st century as a viable democratic bulwark.
Otherwise, declining competitiveness and indecisive political and economic direction will reinforce a downward spiral, which the Chinese analysis quoted above seems to predict. Economic crisis, growing inter-dependence and the seductive appeal of large Chinese investments and cheaper goods will override distaste for authoritarianism, and ensure that European responses to any geopolitical transgression by China are muted. If China manages to successfully insinuate itself into Europe’s DNA, it will constitute potentially the biggest test for the post-Cold War order. Europe will lose its claim to moral leadership and accept accommodation with China, while Russia’s democratisation process will probably stall. The US will cease to carry on the burden alone, also settling for mutual accommodation as a more “harmonious” alternative. The world will resemble an Orwellian condominium of China, the US, and the EU in a value-less, mercenary, and totally different version of the End of History than the one envisaged by Francis Fukuyama. Parag Khanna stated in his “Second World” that these three already possess most of the total power in the world (42). But today there is a balance between them which ensures an open international system. Disruption of this balance would mean not just a perverse End of History, but the end of Hope for countries which still look up to the advanced democracies, despite all the latter’s failures, mistakes and colonial pasts.
India should be prepared for both scenarios by building up its own national strengths and working towards good relations with each entity, while not giving way on its territorial integrity. It is in India’s interest to have good relations with China, in view of the huge power differential and also potential economic benefits. It is even in India’s interest to invite Chinese investment in, on the same terms as recommended for the EU. India fears being left alone amongst a handful of countries with which China persists in raking up territorial disputes, while the rest kiss and make up. That is what animates its insecurity and reluctance to take sides openly. India should also hope that European unity is strengthened so that the democracies continue to constitute the dominant geopolitical space in the world.
JS (MEA) on loan to the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, the views expressed are the author's own.
References:
1. “China Respects European Unity”, by Jonas Parello-Plesner, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. http://csis.org/files/publication/pac1062.pdf.
2. “The Return of History and the End of Dreams”, by Robert Kagan, Publisher Alfred A. Knopf. 2008.
3. http://www.idsa.in/specialfeature/RussiaandJapanClashovertheKurilesintheNorthPacific_spurushottam_031110.
4. The progress of the pipeline, completed in record time, was reported in several Chinese and other media commentaries. It was inaugurated during the September 2010 Summit between President Medvedev and President Hu Jintao, “Russia, China fete completion of oil pipeline”, AFP/File, 27 September, 2010, http://www.france24.com/en/20100927-russia-china-fete-completion-oil-pipeline. As late as December 2008, Bobo Lo had implied that talk of Russia diversifying its export markets was just that – talk, stating : “There is no genuine ‘China card’ in Moscow’s energy relations with the EU. The threat to divert Russian gas eastwards is bogus.” [“Ten things everyone should know about the Sino-Russian relationship” by Bobo Lo; http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/pb_china_bl_dec08.pdf].
5. “Is Russia making a great leap West?” http://nato-russia.org/?p=154
6. “Ð’Ñ‹Ñтупление и ответы МиниÑтра иноÑтранных дел РоÑÑии С.Ð’.Лаврова на вопроÑÑ‹ СМИ на преÑÑ-конференции по итогам деÑтельноÑти роÑÑийÑкой дипломатии в 2010 году, 13 ÑÐ½Ð²Ð°Ñ€Ñ 2011 года”. (translation: Presentation and answers by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Questions by the media on results of Russian diplomacy at a press conference in 2010, 13 January, 2011). http://embrus-az.com/vneshnaya-politika/948-vystuplenie-i-otvety-ministra-inostrannyx-del.html
7. Speech at Meeting with German Political, Parliamentary and Civic Leaders, June 5, 2008, Berlin: http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2008/06/05/2203_type82912type82914type84779_202153.shtml
8. NATO-Russia Council Joint Statement, November 20, 2010.
9. From “Q & A: The Modernization of Russia's Foreign Policy”; Dmitri Trenin, AUGUST 02, 2010; http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=41322.
10. Same as for reference 6 above.
11. http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/PresidentMedvedevsVisittoIndia_spurushottam_201210
12. “Wen's Eurasian visit deepens China-Europe co-op: FM”; China Daily, Xinhua, dated: 2010-10-10. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-10/10/content_11391054.htm
13. “EU goods exports to China 2009: €81.7 billion
EU goods imports from China 2009: €214.7 billion” Source: EC website http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/bilateral-relations/countries/china/
14. EU Aims to Seal Deal With Beijing” By Marcus Walker and Jason Dean, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704739504576067152484003010.html. In a China Daily article accessed around June last year, euro debt holdings were estimated at 630 billion: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2010-06/01/content_9914071.htm. At the same time, China’s timetable to elevate the renminbi to international reserve status may be accelerated if the euro’s troubles persist.
15. “Iceland signs currency swap agreement with China” The Associated Press June 9, 2010. LONDON; http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9G7MIT81.htm and many other web reports. China had also entered into loan agreements and currency swap deals with Serbia, Moldova and Belarus, Russia and many other countries.
16. “Sino-EU ties to warm in 2011” by Li Xiaokun and Ai Yang (China Daily) dated 2011-01-04. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-1/04/content_11790939.htm. There are several such reports which cannot all be listed, another being: “Wen makes five-point proposal on China-Greece ties” (Xinhua). 2010-10-03. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-10/03/content_11375283.htm
17. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-0/03/content_11375283.htm.
18. “China backing euro, says Premier Wen” By Su Qiang (China Daily) 2010-10-04: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010WenEU/2010-10/04/content_11375734.htm
19. In May 2010 China’s reiteration of support for the Euro had a positive effect on sentiment: “An Unusual Rebuttal From China’s Forex Regulator”, by Andrew Batson, May 27, 2010, WSJ; http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/05/27/an-unusual-rebuttal-from-china%E2%80%99s-forex-regulator; “The smart euro-debt strategy for China” By Wang Guanyi (HK Edition) 2010-06-01; http://www.chinadaily.cn/hkedition/2010-06/01/content_9914071.htm
20. “China's role in the world”; By Yu Yongding (China Daily) 2011-01-25 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/opinion/2011-01/25/content_11911075.htm;
21. All this can be followed in China Daily reports on these visits which read like official press releases.
22. “China to be more open to world”: Vice Premier English.news.cn 2011-01-05 by Li Keqiang; http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-01/05/c_13677621.htm
23. “Beijing's High-Tech Ambitions: The Dangers of Germany's Dependence on China”, by Spiegel Staff, Der Spiegel, dated 27th August, 2010; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,713478,00.html
24. Several reports on this issue were analysed in “China goes hi-tech, IPR infringements and all”, by Smita Purushottam / October 03, 2010, http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/smita-purushottam-china-goes-hi-tech-ipr-infringementsall/409971/. Concerns regarding a better business environment and addressing IPR theft were also addressed by Wen Jiabao during his visit to Italy: “Wen pledges to protect intellectual property” By Su Qiang (China Daily), dated: 2010-10-08; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-10/08/content_11382187.htm. 60% of Italy’s exports to China are machinery exports.
25. “Germany to push EU to recognize China's market economy status: Communique” (Xinhua) 2010-07-16; http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-07/16/c_13401366_2.htm
26. Joint Statement: “Les deux parties estiment que l'Union européenne doit lever l'embargo sur les ventes d'armes à la Chine et reconnaître, dès que possible, son statut d'économie de marché à part entire”: Translation “Both parties believe that the EU should lift the embargo on arms sales to China and recognize, as soon as possible, its market economy status in itself”. http://www.elysee.fr/president/les-actualites/declarations/2010/declaration-conjointe-m-hu-jintao-president-de.9978.html
27. “Germany to push EU to recognize China's market economy status: Communique”, (Xinhua) 2010-07-16: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/16/content_10118453.htm; “Germany and China strengthen their strategic partnership”; Fri, 16.07.2010. http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/EN/Artikel/2010/07/2010-07-16-merkel-china__en.html
28. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6081889,00.html
29. “China, France ink massive deals amid Hu's visit”, By Wu Jiao, Li Xiaokun (China Daily), dated: 2010-11-06 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/06/content_11510686.htm
30. “China offers Greece cash injection to tackle debt crisis”, Deutsche Welle, 04.10.2010; http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6069926,00.html
31. “China, Spain to Sign $7.3 Billion in Deals” by Jean Yung, Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2011,
32. “China, Portugal to boost bilateral ties” (Xinhua) dated: 2010-11-07; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/07/content_11512472.htm
33. According to the Wall Street Journal (“EU Aims to Seal Deal With Beijing” By Marcus Walker in Berlin and Jason Dean in Beijing, dated January 7, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704739504576067152484003010.html), Der Spiegel (“Capitalizing on the Euro Crisis: China Expands Its Influence in Europe” By Wieland Wagner, 14 December, 2010; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,734323,00.html) and doubtless many other authoritative publications - the Chinese diplomatic blitzkrieg received a better reception than ever before because of the economic crisis. At the public perception level however, the Pew Research Centre polls show that more Germans are unfavourably disposed towards China (61%) than Americans (36%): Pew Global Attitudes Project: Opinion of China. http://pewglobal.org/database/?indicator=24&survey=12&response=Unfavorable&mode=chart
34. This point is too obvious to need bolstering/referencing but Paul Kennedy did a persuasive job in his “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”.
35. “Can Europe Be Saved?” By Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 12, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/magazine/16Europe-t.html
36. “Keeping the Euro: Merkel Rules Out Return to Deutsche Mark”, Der Spiegel; 01/19/2011
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,740336,00.html
37. US COC CHINA INNOVATION REPORT” China’s Drive for ‘Indigenous Innovation’ A Web of Industrial Policies” By James McGregor, http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/PDFs/Chinas_Drive_for_Indigenous_Innovation.pdf. “European Business in China Position Paper 2010/2011”; http://europeanchamber.com.cn/view/static/?sid=7479
38. Number two priority of Chapter (VIII) in the PRC’s “Guidelines for the Medium- and Long-Term National Science and Technology Development Programme” state: “We must perfect and adjust the country's industrial technology policies and enhance the absorption, assimilation, and re-innovation of imported technologies”.
39. “China Respects European Unity” by Jonas Parello-Plesner Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. http://csis.org/files/publication/pac1062.pdf.
40. “Redbacks for Greenbacks: The Internationalisation of the Renminbi; Europessimism in the Chinese Press” by François Godement, CHINA ANALYSIS, Asia Centre, European Council on Foreign Relations, November 2010 issue. http://www.ecfr.eu/uploads/files/china_analysis_redbacks_for_greenbacks_the_internationalisation_of_the_renmimbi_november2010.pdf
41. In George Bernard Shaw’s futuristic play, human beings had skipped to the next stage of evolution, by prolonging their life spans and vastly increasing their mental powers. They had also learnt to value life more and not fritter it away in dispute, war and violence.
42. Second World”, by Parag Khanna, Random House, 2008. | 41,686 | 17,281 | 0.000062 |
warc | 201704 | How to Build Great Habits to Accomplish Your Goals
Most of goals we set for ourselves require us to follow certain good habits. For any goal to be achieved, there are usually two types of results we get. One is that our status or circumstances are changed in certain way, and the other is that some actions have been taken. Forming good habits can make both results become reality much faster and easier on our part.
For example, to get into a better physical shape, it requires changes in our body mass. By forming good exercising and eating habits, we can accomplish that goal faster. To reach a certain financial goal, we often need to take some actions to make things happen. By building good habits, we can set out to do the required things automatically, without the concerted effort every time we need to do them. Having good habits is a great help for reaching our goals.
Before we set out to build some great habits, first we must find out the existing bad habits we have that are stopping us from achieving what we truly want. Otherwise, they will always be there pulling our legs while we are striving to press forward.
Suppose our goal is to improve our health, now what are the bad habits we have that are sabotaging this goal? Is it eating too much ice cream? Or it is spending 4 or 5 hours per day in front of TV? Or is it that we tend to lose temper too quickly?
Another example, if our goal is to start a home business, what are the things we do that are keeping us away from that goal? Is it the poor spending habits that prevent us from saving the required startup capital? Is it the procrastination habit that stops us from taking needed actions? Or is it the pessimistic thinking habits that drain our confidence in the new business? Once we’ve identified what these habits are, we will then be ready to really attack them.
One of the most effective ways to remove an old habit is to replace it with a new habit. Of course, this new habit must be something that can help us move closer to our goal, or at least not pull us away from it. I used to smoke a lot, and I tried many times to quick, but it never seemed to work, until one day I replaced the habit with drinking coffee. (Of course, if you’re already drinking coffee you may want to find something else to try) The point is, forming a new habit to replace an old one is often easier than to eliminate it independently, in a sort of cold turkey way.
Once we’ve dealt with those old habits, we should begin to find and build some new habits that can boost our motivation and productivity for achieving our goals faster. There are many good habits can help one achieve various kinds of goals. Some are quite obvious, while others may need a little experiment to find out if they’re really helpful or not. But all in all, building great habits is a sure-fire way to increase the chance of accomplishing our goals. | 2,917 | 1,393 | 0.000725 |
warc | 201704 | Invert Your Goals to Find All the Bad Habits You Should Avoid
Sometimes reaching a goal means adding new habits or learning a skill, but other times it simply means getting rid of some bad habits. If you want to identify what’s keeping you from your goal, invert it.
As personal finance site Ten Factorial Rocks explains, inverting your goals gives you a new perspective on what you’re trying to accomplish. Say you’re trying to lose weight. Ask yourself, “What do I have to do to gain weight?” Any answer you get is probably a habit you should avoid. The site gives some other examples:
Q2: How do we remain healthy?
IQ2: How do we become unhealthy?
Possible answers to IQ2:
1. Eat whatever you want, whenever you want and how much ever you want.
2. Don’t exercise…ever 3. Don’t do any household chores that require physical activity (have someone do them for you) 4. Don’t play any outdoor games.
By not doing the above (that is, opposite of the inverted question’s answers), we answer the original question.
You may already be doing some of the bad habits that keep you from achieving those goals in the first place, so identifying them is a good first step towards change. Eliminating bad habits and creating good ones are two sides of the same coin, but they each require their own attention. | 1,358 | 735 | 0.001425 |
warc | 201704 | Coimbatore has always had a fascination for gold. Individuals from the city have always had an eye for the finest range of gold jewelery from the very ancient times.
Gram 22 Carat Gold
Today
22 Carat Gold
Yesterday
Daily Price Change 1 gram ₹ 2,818.90 ₹ 2,818.80 ₹ 0.10 8 gram ₹ 22,551.20 ₹ 22,550.40 ₹ 0.80 10 gram ₹ 28,189 ₹ 28,188 ₹ 1 100 gram ₹ 2,81,890 ₹ 2,81,880 ₹ 10
Gram 24 Carat Gold
Today
24 Carat Gold
Yesterday
Daily Price Change 1 gram ₹ 3,004.40 ₹ 3,004.20 ₹ 0.20 8 gram ₹ 24,035.20 ₹ 24,033.60 ₹ 1.60 10 gram ₹ 30,044 ₹ 30,042 ₹ 2 100 gram ₹ 3,00,440 ₹ 3,00,420 ₹ 20
Date 22 Carat 24 Carat Jan 22, 2017 ₹ 28,189 ₹ 30,044 Jan 21, 2017 ₹ 28,188 ₹ 30,042 Jan 20, 2017 ₹ 28,188 ₹ 30,042 Jan 19, 2017 ₹ 28,356 ₹ 30,214 Jan 18, 2017 ₹ 28,356 ₹ 30,214 Jan 17, 2017 ₹ 28,227 ₹ 30,083 Jan 16, 2017 ₹ 27,990 ₹ 29,845 Jan 14, 2017 ₹ 27,958 ₹ 29,808 Jan 13, 2017 ₹ 28,036 ₹ 29,893 Jan 12, 2017 ₹ 27,848 ₹ 29,704
Gold Rates 22 Carat 24 Carat 1 st December rate Rs.26,702 Rs.28,502 31 st December rate Rs.27,057 Rs.28,942 Highest rate in December Rs.27,057 on December 31 Rs.28,942 on December 31 Lowest rate in December Rs.26,467 on December 23 Rs.28,362 on December 23 Over all performance Rising Rising % Change +1.33% +1.54%
Gold Rates 22 Carat 24 Carat 1 st November rate Rs.28,990 Rs.31,010 30 th November rate Rs.28,115 Rs.30,070 Highest rate in November Rs.28,990 on November 2 Rs.31,010 on November 2 Lowest rate in November Rs.28,115 on November 30 Rs.30,070 on November 30 Over all performance Falling Falling % Change -3.02% -3.03%
Gold Rates 22 Carat 24 Carat 1 st October rate Rs.29,832 Rs.31,845 31 st October rate Rs.28,600 Rs.30,600 Highest rate in October Rs.29,832 on October 1 Rs.31,845 on October 1 Lowest rate in October Rs.28,600 on October 29 Rs.30,600 on October 29 Over all performance Falling Falling % Change -4.13% -3.91% 22 Carat gold rates in Coimbatore moves higher or based on a whole lot of factors. The most important of these is international gold prices. When these prices move higher it is almost a certainty that gold prices in Coimbatore would also move higher. Interestingly, gold prices in Tamil Nadu would be the same in all major cities like Madurai, Coimbatore and Chennai. Of course, while rates would be the same the making charges would defer from jeweller to Jeweller.
There are many places where you can buy gold from. You can
buy 22 karat gold in Coimbatore from Lalitha jewellery, Kalyan Jewellers or Joy Alukkas as well. Karpagam Jewellers is another renowned chain from where you can make your purchases. The company's showroom is located at Cross Cut Road. Most of the jewellers in Coimbatore boast of the latest in design and patters.
If you are looking at other options, you can also ask these jewellers if they have the various gold savings scheme. Under these schemes you can buy in a lumpum by saving every month. Of course, you need to check with the individual jewellers on the design and the patterns at their disposal. One important factor is that you should not forget to check the live
22 carats price of gold in Coimbatore.
There will be gold associations in every city and Coimbatore is also having a gold association who fix gold price in Coimbatore. The factors that help the association to
fix the gold price in coimbatore everyday is the MCX Futures and local levies and other duties added to that prices. Generally , international gold rates move in tandem to reflect gold futures prices. Local levies and duties and transportation costs, alter the price and it is diffrent from city to city. So for every city there is a diffrent association to fix the price of gold everyday.
There are few Jewellery who insists not take reciept to
skip tax and also gives you discounts on not taking receipt, which make you suffer while selling it to any jewellery or any third party. In fact, they may insist on you showing a reciept. As the reciept is one of the thing which reflects genuinity of jewellery you are selling.
These days in reputed showrooms its becoming mandatory to show the reciept while selling or else they will not be buying the same. So it is better to take a reciept or you may end up selling your jewellery in cheaper rate than the
gold rate in Coimbatore.
Price of gold in Coimbatore and India changes with the change in economic situation. If you are interested in investing your money in gold there are few influential situations which you should be looking at they are
1. U.S. Dollar
Gold rates fluctuates with the fluctuations of dollar rate because Price of Gold is inversely proportional to Strength of the US Dollar. As dollar goes up gold price will be down and vice versa. Change in strength of other exchange will also affects but the influence of dollar is very high compared to which other currencies are not considerable.
2. Instability of Reserve Bank
Stability of Reserve Bank policies also play a major role which affects the price of gold in Coimbatore and India. So an individual who invested in gold will not bother about Bank disappointments and unpredictable monetary strategies such as demonetization because gold is safe refuge in such conditions. Paper cash framework encounters vulnerability, but commodities such as gold don't. So, during such everyone will chase gold so price increases as well.
3. Financing costs
Gold prices reflect increments and decreases in loan fees. The gold cost may increase again on the grounds as loan fees diminish. For individuals offering gold to free up assets due to which gold costs may mellow. There is a lower opportunity cost to hold on to gold when contrasted with different speculations. With prominent appreciation for gold loan costs liken to be Low.
Generally individual feels that taxes are a burden and it is human tendency to avoid payment of tax or at least minimizing the tax liability. But its very important to pay tax because of tax we are paying which include Health care through Government hospitals, Education, The Government also provides subsidy on cooking gas. Of course the major expenditure of Government spends National Defence, Infrastructure Developments etc. So follow and develop tax culture and in gold There are majorly two taxes wealth tax and capital gains tax.
Wealth tax
As gold rates changes day to day, it is better to check the price of gold in Coimbatore everyday on goodreturns.in and if that value of gold you are having is more than Rs 30 lakhs, there is a wealth tax that you have to pay every year. Until the price is less than 30 Lakhs wealth tax is not applicable.
Capital gains tax
Capital gains tax is applicable if you sell gold at a profit. There are two types of capital gain tax on gold that are applicable: the first is short term capital gains tax on gold which means you have held gold for less than three years. Other is a long term capital gains tax which is defined as more than 3 years.
For the short term you have to pay as per your tax slab and for long term 20 per cent, plus indexation. There is also a capital gains tax that is applicable on Gold ETFs as well same as on physical gold.
There were several methods to check the purity of gold and the purity of gold determined by the hallmark it is the best and the easiest way to look for purity of gold Most jewellery firms in the country sell hallmarked jewellery. Always make sure that you are buying gold from a reputed jeweler and to check The various marks on the gold you are buying, including the purity etc.
For investors, please do not buy gold jewellery. It is better to go for gold coins or gold bars, as they will get better value. Far better option would be to invest in gold ETFs. Because in ETF's gold will be in the electonic form which is the safer better method to buy for investors. Buying or selling gold in ETF is just clicks away.
The most important thing to remember is that you should check the gold prices in Coimbatore before you invest because day to day gold rates will be increasing and decreasing because of few factors as we discussed before so its better to check gold rates in Coimbatore. If you find that gold rates have gone up recently, you should avoid investing. It is a good idea to buy gold when prices are falling.
The purity of gold is defined in karats. The higher the karat, the purer the gold. The purest or finest is 24 karats. When alloyed with other metals such as silver, copper, palladium and zinc. it is called 22k, 18k, 14k and 10 karat and 9 karats depending upon the percentage of gold mixed with the other metal.
22 Karats
When 91.70 percent of gold is alloyed with three metals 5 per cent of silver, 2 per cent of copper and 1.30 percent of zinc then it us called as 22 karats gold.
18 Karats
When 75 per cent of gold is alloyed with 15 per cent silver and 10 per cent copper then its is called 18 karats. In 18 karats zinc is not alloyed like zinc is alloyed in 22 karats.
14 Karats
When 58.30 per cent of gold is alloyed with 30 per cent silver and 11.70 per cent of copper. then it is called 14 karats gold.
10 karats
When 41.7 per cent of gold is mixed with gold 52 per cent silver 6.3 per cent copper then it is called 10 karats gold.
9 Karats
when 37.5 per cent of gold is mixed with 42.5 per cent silver and 20 per cent copper is used then its called 9 Karats gold.
Palladium is mixed in making of white gold. excluding 22k zinc is alloyed with any other.
There are a lot of ways to make money from gold. Among them, instant, safe and secured one is taking a gold loan. You can avail a loan from banks as well as there are many popular nonbanking financial gold loan companies from where you can avail a gold loan from.
Out of all the gold loan companies, there are two of these which are popular gold loan companies that you can approach is the Mannapuram Finance and Muthoot Finance which offer you good interest rates and other schemes due to which these companies are preferred companies to take a gold loan from in Coimbatore. but you must compare the same with bank gold loans before you avail a loan.
Tough there will be no big variation in interest rates and it is difficult to decide which would be better, By comparing only interest rates. Compare the processing charges, loan tenure prepayment charges as well on these loans. In the case of gold loan companies the process is very simple and if you have all your documents, then you can get a loan very easily. Generally, the time it takes for processing is few hours and the amounts will be released instantly. It is important to check for gold price in Coimbatore before availing for a loan.
It was another day where investors would like to forget about gold rates in Coimbatore as price of the precious metal was absolutely flat. Gold for 24 karats was trading in the city at Rs 28,700 per 10 grams, while rates for 22 karats also fell. It is unlikely that we will see a swift recovery in prices of the precious metal in Coimbatore unless there is a surge in demand. If you are looking to buy, purchase in small quantities. This is because you would ultimately make money in gold in the more long term. If you are a short term investor, just stay away from the precious metal.22 December 2016
Disclaimer: The gold rates are sourced from local jewellers in the city. There maybe variance in rates and prices. GoodReturns.in has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, Greynium Information Technologies Pvt Ltd, its subsidiaries and associates do not guarantee such accuracy. The rates are for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to buy, sell in precious gold. Greynium Information Technologies Pvt Ltd, its subsidiaries, associates do not accept culpability for losses and/or damages arising based on gold information provided. | 12,042 | 4,799 | 0.000213 |
warc | 201704 | Three agencies received the federal government's top award for management excellence Monday after successfully embracing and implementing the president's management agenda.
The 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb., the Federal Aviation Administration Logistics Center (FAALC) in Oklahoma City, Okla. and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in Bethesda, Md., each received the President's Quality Award, which honors federal organizations for their exemplary records in performance and management.
"These are examples of what can happen when people put their mind to achieving excellence on behalf of the taxpayer," President Bush said during Monday's awards ceremony. "Each one identified a critical challenge, each one found solutions, each one carried them out. They made good on their promises."
The Office of Personnel Management administers the President's Quality Award program, also known as the Presidential Award for Management Excellence. Each year the award criteria are changed slightly, and, earlier this year, OPM redesigned the criteria to reflect the president's management agenda. Under the management agenda, agencies must improve operations in five key areas: human capital management, competitive sourcing, financial management, electronic government and linking performance to budgets.
The 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base became the Air Force's most efficient organization in 2002 after it saved $46 million in personnel costs through public-private job competitions and activity-based costing, an accounting method that provides managers with useful cost data.
Improved financial management made the Federal Aviation Administration Logistics Center a management excellence winner. The center, which serves as the repair and distribution facility for all air traffic control system parts, turned its $120 million annual budget over to its customers in fiscal 2001. Now customers must pay for the parts and services they need from the center, making them more accountable for the money they spend.
Officials at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency successfully aligned human resources plans with the agency's strategic plan, making it easier to establish recruitment goals, identify employee development requirements and determine the need for outsourcing.
The Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency were finalists in the budget and performance integration category and Tricare, the military managed care program, was the finalist in the e-government category. There were no winners in those two categories. The Labor Department was a finalist in the strategic human capital management category.
A panel of government and industry quality management specialists chose the three winners and four runners-up in a rigorous three-phase process that included a written application review, an on-site visit and a final evaluation. This year's winners received the award because they showed clear results and long-term impact, according to one judge.
"We were looking for results, the specific results of the work, asking ourselves 'Is this a one-show deal, a quick fix or something that has long term impact?'" said Sallyanne Harper, chief financial officer for the General Accounting Office, and one of the five judges on the awards panel.
The significance of the changes at both FAALC and Offutt Air Force Base impressed judge Pete Smith, president of the Private Sector Council.
"There was a major amount of change in the way things were looked at, culture change," Smith said. "Some of the submissions were very well-written summaries of things that we felt that agencies should be doing anyway and these agencies had done these things very, very well and they should be commended for that, but they had done their jobs," he said. "These are the ones that stood out."
The 14-year-old program is modeled on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which is presented annually to high-performing businesses in the private sector. | 4,021 | 1,896 | 0.000531 |
warc | 201704 | A free online service in Macoupin County, Ill., is making legal research easier for residents who can’t afford an attorney.
Run through IllinoisLegalAidOnline.org, the Macoupin County Legal Self-Help Center provides users with legal information and the appropriate forms needed for civil court cases. The service is present in courthouses and libraries statewide, but debuted in September at the Carlinville Public Library in Macoupin.
Here’s how it works:
Users can access the site from home, the library or wherever they have access to the Internet. Some common legal issues appear in a list, but if they don’t apply, a search button below the list lets a person enter in their own legal question or topic like in a search engine format, along with a zip code. The system then returns legal information based on where that user lives.
For example, if landlord-tenant law in Macoupin County differs from the law in Cook County, if a person entered a Macoupin County zip code, they’d get the information based only on the laws that apply in Macoupin County.
“Many people coming to the court system without a lawyer have only a vague idea bout their legal problem and the operations of a court system,” said Circuit Judge Kenneth Deihl of the Macoupin County Courthouse, in a statement. “We hope that the new center will lessen the anguish that many people feel when they have to come to court without a lawyer and provide them with useful information.”
In an interview with
Government Technology, Janet Howard, director of Carlinville Public Library, said the service is a great thing for the community and is a nice way to collaborate with other public entities, in particular the Macoupin County Courthouse. She added that the library has people coming in five or six times a week looking for wills and other legal forms and information. But all the library had to help them was a book to copy from.
With the online service being location-specific, it provides a huge benefit for patrons so they are assured they are getting the correct information.
“The nice thing about it [is] it doesn’t have to be on one computer,” Howard said. “We have it on the desktop for all of our computers and we also have it on our website. They don’t have to even be here. They can do it from home, their laptop or they can do it from McDonalds.”
Long-Running Program
The free online legal aid service is new for Macoupin County, but the concept has been going on since 2007. It was established by a partnership between the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice (ICEJ) and Illinois Legal Aid Online. The website was built and maintained by Illinois Legal Aid Online.
The ICEJ is a joint project of the Illinois State Bar Association and the Chicago Bar Association. The coalition's goal is to improve access to justice for lower-income Illinois residents. During the past six years, ICEJ’s emphasis has been on setting up legal self-help centers in every county in Illinois.
The online service is available in three different formats. In larger counties, the program is located in courthouses with a full-time staff member available to help users get the information they need.
In mid-size counties, the online free legal aid service is also set up in courthouses, but only staffed part-time. In smaller or rural counties, the program is set up in libraries and is not staffed. If a patron has a question on finding a topic or problem using the system, however, volunteer law students are available under a “Live Help” button on the site to assist.
Each county site hosting the service receives a grant to either pay for technology or assist in the cost of having a dedicated employee. The Carlinville Public Library received a $1,500 grant that was used for a new computer, printer, toner cartridges and paper.
Joe Dailing, executive director of the ICEJ, said the material on the site is written at a fifth- or sixth-grade level to make it easy for most users to understand. In addition, legal words are underlined in blue, so a person can click on them and get a plain language definition.
Spanish-speaking users can also use the system without fear of a language barrier. If a person enters Spanish words into the search, the program will detect that and “flip” to Spanish. Legal forms will be printed in English, however, for submission to the court. The user will also receive a copy of the forms in Spanish so they can follow along.
“This is such a benefit to the courts because there is a huge number of people without attorneys with no idea what they are doing and no idea about their legal problem,” Dailing said.
With Macoupin County now online, the system is present in 98 of Illinois’ 102 counties. Dailing said the other four counties should be added by the end of the year. | 4,901 | 2,221 | 0.000463 |
warc | 201704 | home news blogs calendar enewsletters podcasts Michigan's April jobless rate declines slightly
Michigan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April nudged downward over the month by one-tenth of a percentage point to 14.0 percent, according to data released by the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth. Total employment and the state’s labor force rose by 28,000 and 27,000 respectively in April, as unemployment was little changed, declining slightly by 1,000.
The U.S. unemployment rate in April increased by two-tenths of a percentage point over the month to 9.9 percent.
The state’s jobless rate in April 2010 was eight-tenths of a percentage point above the April 2009 rate of 13.2 percent. The national jobless rate increased by a full percentage point over this period.
Employment rose in April as persons entered the Michigan job market, while the number of unemployed individuals in Michigan was essentially flat over the month. The state’s workforce has been increasing in 2010, following sharp reductions in 2009.
Monthly labor force trends and highlights Michigan’s monthly jobless rates have been trending slightly downward in 2010. Since December 2009, the state’s unemployment rate declined by a half percentage point. Michigan’s April jobless rate was the lowest monthly rate for the state since the June 2009 rate of 13.9 percent. From April 2009 to April 2010, unemployment in Michigan increased by 33,000 or 5.1 percent. Nationally, unemployment rose 10.5 percent in the same period.
According to the monthly survey of employers, seasonally adjusted Michigan payroll jobs edged upward in April by 6,000 to 3,836,000. The majority of the state’s industry sectors reported slight gains or were little changed in April. Minor job advances over the month were recorded in trade, transportation and utilities (+3,000), other services (+3,000), construction (+2,000), and education and health services (+2,000). The only measurable decline in April was posted in leisure and hospitality services (-3,000).
Industry employment trends and highlights April’s minor overall job gain was the first monthly increase in Michigan since January. Monthly job totals for the state so far in 2010 have been relatively stable, with April’s level just slightly below the state’s 2010 four-month average of 3,838,000. Retail trade jobs were up statewide by 4,000 in April. This sector’s April job level essentially matched or was slightly above monthly totals recorded since summer 2009. Prior to July 2009, retail trade jobs had been trending downward for a number of years. The over-the-month job loss in leisure and hospitality services continued a long-term downward trend in this sector. Over the last 12 months, leisure and hospitality services had posted nine monthly declines. Since April 2009, this sector lost 14,000 jobs statewide. Jobs in financial activities were essentially flat over the month. This halted the trend of five consecutive monthly declines since October 2009 (the only month in 2009 that it reported a gain). Employment in financial activities was down by 10,000 or 5.1 percent since April 2009. From April 2009 to April 2010, payroll jobs in Michigan fell by 74,000 or 1.9 percent. Over this period, eight of the state’s 11 major industry sectors posted job losses. The largest numerical losses over the year were recorded in trade, transportation and utilities (-18,000), manufacturing (-18,000), and government (-16,000). Education and health services (+14,000) and professional and business services (+9,000) displayed fairly robust gains since April 2009. Seasonally adjusted average weekly hours and earnings of production workers in manufacturing increased over the month as well as over the year. Rick Waclawek is director of DELEG’s Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives. | 3,932 | 1,623 | 0.000629 |
warc | 201704 | Most people's immediate association with liquorice is of Bassetts' Allsorts or Black Jacks, but liquorice root makes a sophisticated cooking ingredient, with an elegant, herbal taste and notes of anise and fennel. Liquorice works just as well in savoury dishes as it does in sweet.
Liquorice root is an ancient ingredient, widely believed to have medical properties. It is appears in historical documents worldwide, from early Chinese medicine to Ancient Egypt. Liquorice is still used as an ingredient in the popular Middle Eastern drink erk-soos, supposed to settle the stomach, and is re-emerging as a popular ingredient with mainstream tea companies, thanks to its soothing qualities.
Liquorice can be bought as a woody root, or as a finely-ground powder, referred to as
jethimadh powder in Indian cuisine and liquorice compound in a molecular context. Beware, sweet recipes will occasionally ask for soft liquorice sticks — referring to the shiny black confectionery which has been sweetened and processed.
Liquorice root is a rare sight, but can be found in specialist shops. Ground powders, compounds and teas are a lot more common, often stocked in high street health shops, and speciality ingredient shops.
Hard and woody liquorice roots impart most flavour when steeped in hot liquid. So teas, syrups, sauces and custards can be infused with the distinctive anise notes by adding the root, heating, and then removing before serving. Increase the intensity of the flavour by adding more roots, or lengthening the amount of time that the roots are steeped in the liquid.
Liquorice roots still give off strong aromas without needing to be heated. Like vanilla pods, they can be used to flavour sugar, and like dried juniper berries, they can be used to liven up salt cures.
Powdered liquorice, or liquorice compound, can be added straight to recipes — whether that's a pinch mixed into a meat rub, stirred into cake batter or added to a sweet custard.
Liquorice's anise flavours feature in a Chinese Five Spice, so cooks should keep that in their mind when using it in savoury dishes. Game like pigeon, quail or duck are all good partners, as is pork. Bitter-herbal juniper notes are also a close fit with liquorice flavours, as Pascal Aussignac demonstrates in his cod recipe, pairing a liquorice sabayon with juniper ashes.
In a sweet context, liquorice is such a big flavour that it works well as a starring ingredient, against a neutral background, as with Christoffer Hruskova's Liquorice ice cream recipe or James Mackenzie's Panna cotta recipe. Liquorice is also a good fit with other big, flavours like ginger and mint, rhubarb and raspberries.
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warc | 201704 | 37. One study suggests that although global water conditions may worsen by 2025 due to population pressure, climate change could have a net positive impact on global water resources.
NB! Note that other studies indicate that with present consumption patterns, 2 of every 3 persons on Earth will experience water stress by 2025.
The diagram on the left side shows the result of this particular study, indicating the water availability for the population. It should be noted that the study is based on runoff characteristics obtained for one particular climate scenario. Another macroeconomic study (not shown here) based on three climate scenarios led to similar conclusion for the Asian continent while suggesting that in Europe changed climate conditions will be associated with some decrease per capita water availability.
The diagram on the right-hand side shows a projection of the population living in increased and decreased water stress under three different CO
2 emission scenarios in the 2080s.
Climate change is likely to have the greatest impact in countries with a high ratio of relative use to available supply. Regions with abundant water supplies are unlikely to be significantly affected, except for the possibility of increased flooding. Paradoxically, countries that currently have little water (e.g. those relying on desalinization) may be relatively unaffected. | 1,388 | 737 | 0.001364 |
warc | 201704 | Ben Hart, a personal trainer and CEO and founder of Qinetic, an online health and fitness community where you can share and discover trends, people and brands, says if you want to look svelte in a short period of time,
these are the exercises that can transform your body: 1. Cable Squat And Row
"This move is simple and you can do it on any cable machine at your gym. It's effective with even a little resistance," says Hart.
HOW TO DO IT: First, grab hold of the long bar on the cable machine with both hands. Adjust to a weight you feel comfortable doing quite a few reps with and walk the cable out a few feet. Now that you're in position, all you have to do while holding it is squat, then row. "Squat your body down low (keeping your hips back and your weight on your heels when you go down) ,and as you come up, pull the weight into your mid stomach to do the row," explains Hart. "Go right back down into a squat and so on. Repeat for 30 seconds continuously—no rest—for about 4 sets. WHY IT WORKS: "These really hit your back muscles, and get your legs, too," says Hart. "But yes, you will feel it everywhere for sure (legs, back and biceps) because you want to hit many muscle groups to help you burn more throughout your day." 2. Alternating Jumping Lunges
"Jumping lunges are one of the best exercises for your legs in terms of power, strength and balance, which all play a huge part in the rate you burn calories," explains Hart.
HOW TO DO IT: Start in a lunging squat stance with your feet about three to four feet apart. Do a slight jump to get both feet off the ground, switching legs in the air so that the leg that was in the back is now in the front. Next, continue this movement, alternating legs for 30 seconds straight and aim to complete four sets total. WHY IT WORKS: "Explosive interval training never fails in burning a ton of calories and it boosts your heart rate," says Hart. "Your legs have the largest muscles in your body, so when worked to fatigue (especially your quads and glutes), they burn the most calories, too." 3. Mountain Climbers
"These hit your abs just as effectively as any other core-centric move but also have the benefit of getting some cardio in at the same time," says Hart.
HOW TO DO IT: Start in a plank position. Then bring your right knee up to the left side of your chest, then rotate, so that you are switching and alternating which leg is coming up to your chest, keeping your core tight. (Think of it like high knees facing the ground, says Hart.) Continue for 30 seconds straight, doing each right- and left-leg combo at least four times total. WHY IT WORKS: "Because this can be a cardio-based ab workout if done properly," says Hart. "And not only will this really target your abs, but it will also hit your shoulders, triceps and chest just by you holding and stabilizing your weight throughout the 30 seconds." 4. Squat Shoulder Press "This is one of the best full body exercises you can do," says Hart. "It targets your glutes, quads, shoulders and triceps—and let's not forget, your core, too." HOW TO DO IT: Grab a weight (like a dumbbell) that's light enough that you feel comfortable that you can shoulder press repeatedly. Hold it in front of your body and up in front of your shoulders and go into a squat, keeping your hips back and heels on the floor. "As you come up, shoulder-press that weight so that your legs give you just a bit of momentum and support to get it up," says Hart. Lower your arms back down to the starting position and repeat for 30 seconds straight. WHY IT WORKS: "Your whole body is being used, targeting shoulders, core, triceps, quads and glutes," explains Hart. "And because there are so many large muscles being used here repetitively, your muscles will have to burn a ton during [the exercise] and all day long, too." 5. Power Jumps
"You can expect to assist your power, coordination and core strength with these power jumps," says Hart.
HOW TO DO IT: Begin by standing tall. Next, jump up, bringing your knees as far up to your chest as you can, then land on the balls of your feet. (And the less time your feet are grounded, the better, says Hart.) Keep jumping for 30 seconds. "If it helps, you can jump moving forward and think about jumping over something," he says. WHY IT WORKS: "This is a high-intensity interval that is going to boost your heart rate through the roof," explains Hart. "The purpose of this exercise is to help you burn fat fast but at the same time, it will target your core from the explosiveness of you bringing your knees to your chest." | 4,630 | 2,079 | 0.000488 |
warc | 201704 | Hello and welcome to Healthcare Magic. Thanks for your query.
Anemia can be confirmed only with a blood test
(for hemoglobin
levels). There can be a variety of causes for poor weight gain and loss of appetite:
- Systemic diseases like diabetes
- Malabsorption
disorders - causing inadequate absorption of food from the intestines
- Hormonal
disorders like thyroid disorders
- Psychiatric problems like anxiety, stress, anorexia
, etc.
Since your girlfriend is having recurrent symptoms and has been suspected to have anemia, I would suggest that you take her to a doctor for a detailed evaluation, in order to establish the cause of her problems.
Wish you all the best.
Regards,
Dr. Jonas Sundarakumar
Consultant Psychiatrist | 742 | 459 | 0.00223 |
warc | 201704 | When thinking about herbal treatments for bowel cancer there are some things to consider such as side effects, cost, and insurance coverage. Come discover some natural remedies to help prevent or contain bowel cancer.
Bowel Cancer
Bowel cancer is a form of cancer that affects the large intestine. It is thought that bowel cancer is mainly caused by diet, however genetics may also play a role. It is estimated that 40 to 50% of bowel cancers are considered curable if diagnosed at the appropriate time. Usually treatment modalities include chemotherapy and radiation, but some people also consider herbal treatment for bowel cancer.
Patients do not always want to deal with the side effects of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Side effects of these modalities include hair loss, possible pain and burning at the site and surrounding areas, vomiting and fatigue. It is for these reasons some patients consider less invasive treatment such as herbal remedies.
Ginger
Ginger is a root that is used to flavor foods but is also available in capsule or tablet form. It may also be available as a tea. Ginger is thought to have the ability to slow the growth of bowel cancer. In a study conducted on lab mice in 2003 by the Association for Cancer Research, ginger inhibited the growth of bowel cancer in the mice. This research has not been duplicated in humans, however. A compound in ginger known as 6-gingerol is the active ingredient believed to slow the ability of the cancer cells to multiply. Ginger is not without possible side effects such as heartburn or nausea, and the risk of side effects increases with the amounts consumed.
Ginger is readily available and cost effective. It is not a drug so therefore insurance companies do not cover the cost of it, but it is an economical herbal treatment.
Green Tea
Green tea is an herbal supplement that is thought to help in the herbal treatment of several types of cancers. Green tea is made from the leaves of a plant called a
camellia sinensis. Green tea is usually taken as a tea, hence its name, but is also available as a supplement in pill or capsule form. Green tea is rich in anti-oxidants and contains an ingredient called epigallocatechin-3-gallate that is thought to suppress the growth of bowel cancer cells. Green tea does have side effects, and the risk of side effects is greater the more that is consumed. Side effects may include diarrhea and nausea. Green tea is also an economical supplement but is not covered by insurance. Diet
Diet can also be included in the list of natural or herbal treatments for fighting bowel cancer. A diet rich in green tea, antioxidants and garlic can improve the chances of developing bowel cancer and can help to decrease the chances of any cancer cells present of multiplying. Avoiding red meat is also recommended. A high fiber diet has also been shown to reduce the risks of developing bowel cancer as well.
Things to Consider
It is important to discuss herbal options with your physician to determine what is right for you. This is particularly important because there are herbal options that can make medical treatment less effective. It is also important to carefully research any herbal option presented to you. The world and especially the internet is full of scammers and quick fixes at a high price. Be careful when researching herbal treatments to avoid being taken advantage of.
Sources
http://www.livestrong.com/article/313505-herbal-treatments-for-bowel-cancer/
http://www.cancervic.org.au/about-cancer/cancer_types/bowel_cancer/treatment_for_bowel_cancer.html
Image source: www.publicdomainpictures.net | 3,636 | 1,593 | 0.000631 |
warc | 201704 | Issue Bulletin #199
July 20, 1994
(Archived document, may contain errors)
199
July 20, 1994
HOUMNG MIS TACKLE NON-FMSTENT CME (HR 3M S. 2M9)
INTRODUCTION
The House and Senate soon will consider legislation to reauthorize the programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The House and Senate bills (H.R. 3838, S. 2049) have been marked up by committee and now will be debated in each chamber. This legislation, however, unfortunately is based on a persistent fiction: that there is a shortage of affordable housing and thus a need for more subsidies to home- buyers and renters. In reality, America's housing quality and quantity have been improving for decades, something not apparent from the continuing stream of pronouncements from congres- sional liberals, state and local officials, labor unions, and builders that the nation faces a housing crisis. This notion of a crisis has triggered demands for ever-larger federal out- lays and more stringent regulation. The appropriations bill passed last fall for fiscal year 1994, for instance, reserved $25 billion for HUD, an increase of 27 percent over the fis- cal 1989 outlay of $19.7 billion when President Bush entered office. A large portion of this money is subsidizing publicly or privately owned multifamily rental housing. Yet many public projects are in physical disrepair, plagued with corrup- tion and mismanaged by the public housing authorities who would get the money. More- over, many of the privately owned multifamily rental projects are prime candidates for foreclosure and repossession by HUD. Some are as decayed as any publicly built project.Some of the information in this Issue Bulletin draws upon material in Carl Horowitz, "Washington's Continuing Fiction: A National Housing Shortage:' Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 783, August 22, 1990.
1 The $25 billion in the appropriations bill is HUD's portionMe bill also set aside funds for the Department of Veterans Affairs and various independent federal agencies.
The House bill, H.R. 3838, introduced in February by Representative Henry Gonzalez (D-TX), Chairman of the House Banking Committee, reauthorizes HUD spending at $31.2 billion in fiscal 1995 and $33.6 billion in fiscal 1996. The Senate version would open the federal purse even more, providing $28. 1 billion for fiscal 1995, but jumping to $39.1 billion for fiscal 1996. The impetus behind the House and Senate bills, which contain many features sup- ported by Secretary Cisneros and other top Clinton Administration officials, is the notion that housing was neglected during the Reagan and Bush years and that this neglect was manifested in massive cutbacks in the HUD budget. Cisneros said of his proposed legisla- tion that it would put HUD "back in the business as a force for positive change in Amer- ica."2 Yet this will not be accomplished by increasing HUD spending. HUD outlays dur- ing the Reagan years rose from $14.9 billion in FY 1981 to $19.7 billion in FY 1989 and reached $25.2 billion in FY 1993. According to this year's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projections, they will have risen to $25.5 billion for fiscal 1994 and to more than $28.4 billion in fiscal 1996. Those who would raise federal spending on housing-related agencies such as HUD, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Farmers Home Administration know-even if they do not admit-that spending has risen. That is why they regularly cite statistics pur- portedly showing that the private sector no longer produces sufficiently affordable hous- ing. As evidence, they refer to the slight decline during the first half of the 1980s in the overall homeownership ratio (which since has been reversed) and to misleadingly high housing cost-to-income ratios of low-income renters. To be sure, there are housing cost problems. Yet neither the 1990 Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (P.L. 101-625) nor the current proposals address those problems. Each of these measures fads to recognize that high taxes and overregulation un- dermine efforts to improve the housing stock and its affordability. Each also fails to rec- ognize that politicizing the distribution of housing raises the likelihood that there is less of it to go around. To combat the idea that massive subsidies are needed for housing production and con- sumption, lawmakers need to bear in mind several realities about housing in America: I ) The supply of America's housing stock has been improving steadily over time in both quality and quantity. 2) The demand for additional housing during the 1990s will not be as great as it was during the 1970s and 1980s. 3) The cost of housing, in comparison to incomes, has been getting less burden- some over the last several years, especially with interest rates last year dip- ping to their lowest levels in some 25 years, and now holding steady at about 8.5 percent.
If HUD officials and Members of Congress really wish to address the nation's housing supply and affordability problems, they should promote greater market efficiency. The reauthorization legislation gives lawmakers the opportunity to make needed changes. To improve the reauthorization legislation, Congress should take several steps. Among them, lawmakers should: V Eliminate provisions that would raise loan limits on Federal Housing Admini- stration (FHA) single-family mortgages. V Eliminate the provision that would end the requirement on public housing ten- ants who obtain a job to continue paying 30 percent of their income in rent. V Add a provision eliminating the requirement on HUD to subsidize the rents, for at least 15 years, of low-income tenants in foreclosed FHA-insured muwrfa- mily rental projects. V Fund the HOPE program. V Give HUD the authority to pressure other federal agencies, and state and local agencies, to reduce excessive land and construction regulations that make hous- ing less affordable. America is not reeling from an affordable housing crisis and was not in the grip of such a crisis during the Reagan and Bush years. Housing conditions and affordability rarely have been better. What HUD and other federal agencies should be doing is enabling hous- ing markets, especially in inner-city neighborhoods, to function more as markets. At pre- sent, they function too much as bureaucratic fiefdoms, a problem exacerbated by high lev- els of crime. While the House and Senate packages contain potentially beneficial ele- ments and even mention the need for crime control, too much in them represents business as usual under the guise of a "reinvention" of HUD. They would boost HUD spending by about a third without necessarily addressing the real problems.
THE SUPPLY OF HOUSING IN AMERICA Plenty of Homes. During the past two decades, America has expanded an already plentiful housing stock. According to the most recent American Housing Survey (199 1), there were 104.6 million conventional (non-mobile) dwellings in the United States, more than 50 percent greater than the 68.7 million units existing in 1970. 3Thus, over one-third of all dwellings available in 1991 were built in or after 1970. 4 This ratio, of course, would be higher if one took into account net housing production since 199 1.
Fewer Deficiencies, More Amenities.
Just as the quantity of housing units is impor- tant, so is the quality. That, too, has risen with affluence and with advances in homebuild- ing technology. Early in this century, a three-room cold-water flat was regarded as ade- quate housing for young urban immigrant families. Today it is considered unacceptable for anyone. Using American Housing Survey in- Table I dicators of housing quality, Table I in- Selected Interior Housing Deficiencies: 1991 dicates how far the U.S. has come in Characteristic % af Owner- % Of eliminating substandard housing. Occupied Renter Only a small portion of dwellings How In Roors 0.8% 2.0% now experience interior problems Open cracks or Hobo 3.4 8.1 such as holes in floors, broken plaster Broken Plaster or Peeling Point 3.0 6.1 or peeling paint, and exposed wiring. No Ellectriol Wiring 0.0 0.0 Moreover, those problems occur less Eqxmd Wiring 1.1 2.5 often in owner-occupied units, which Room without Ellectriclool Outlets 1.4 2.4 account for almost two-thirds of all oc- Lacking All of Sam Plumbing 2.2 2.9 cupied dwellings. SOUM. U.S. Eknau d ft Comm, OA=ftn HawkV StwMm Meanwhile, more new housing than ever before is being built with things once consid- ered luxuries, as Table 2 indicates. To some degree, therefore, rising standards of quality are responsible for rising home prices. The number of newly completed private, single- family homes containing central air conditioning, one or more fireplaces, and 2.5 or more bathrooms each rose during 1970-1992 by anywhere from roughly 80 percent to 200 per- cent. Median interior area rose from 1,385 to 1,920 square feet, an increase of 38.6 per- cent.
Homebuilders provide such amenities largely because buyers insist on them. A 1989 survey by the National Association of Home Builders asked: "If you cannot afford to buy the type of home you want, what would you give up to make it more affordable?" Some 36 percent of respondents said they would choose a house with unfinished rooms, and 35 percent would live farther from work or shopping. Only 18 percent would have accepted .. 5 a smaller house, and only 11 percent would have accepted fewer amemues.
THE DEMAND FOR HOUSING IN AMERICA
Population Growth. During America's baby boom, which spanned the years 1946- 1964, there were 20 to 25 live births per 1,000 population. Thereafter the birth rate de- . 6 - clined, so much so that in 1975 the rate was 14.6 births per 1,000 population, rising again to the 16-to- 17-per- 1,000 range in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The aging of the baby boom population has major implications for the demand for housing.
According to Census Bureau Table 2 mid-range projections, the Characteristics of Now Pfivately Owned population will increase from a One-Family Homes Completed: 1970-1992 little under 250 million to al- most 275 million during 1990- Medlan Percent Percent w/ Percent w/ yew Square Feet WCAC One or More 2.5 or More 20M, or by some 2.5 million Fireplaces Bathrooms annually. Households in the 35- 197o 1,385 34% 35% 16% 54 age bracket-mainly the 1980 1,595 63 56 25 baby boomers-will make up 1984 1,605 71 59 28 more than 75 percent of this 19" 1,660 69 63 33 19" 11810 75 65 42 population increase, rising by Im 1190S 76 66 45 more than 19 million. By con- 1992 1,920 77 64 47 trast, the number of Americans age 18-34 (the people who am Total Change +38A% +126.5% +82.9% +193.8% starting households for the first sown: u.s. Bwm of ve cman, ca@ Row seem cn mw m,,*. time, usually as renters) will decline from about 70 million to 63.5 million during this period. As a result, the age bracket most heavily in financial need win be smaller, numerically as well as proportion- ately. Household Growth. This pattern of population growth and age distribution has sig- nificant implications for housing demand, in particular the demand for new housing con- struction in the 1990s. According to the Census Bureau, the total number of households rose by about 1. 18 million annually during 1980-19927 and will rise by roughly the same rate by the year 2000. However, as with population growth, the age distribution of this shift reveals much. Households headed by persons age 35-54 will account for virtually all 8 of this increase. Yet households headed by persons 34 and under actually will decrease by I million. Growth is occurring, therefore, among households headed by adults in their prime years.
CHANGING HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION
The trend toward smaller proportions of married households had been established by 1980 and since then, even with a falling divorce rate, 9has continued. Table 3 shows that in 1980, 60.8 percent of all households consisted of married couples, fairly evenly di- vided between those with at least one child present in the household and those without. Yet, by 1992 the cumulative proportion of married households, with and without chil- dren, declined to 54.8 percent. Male or female householder families (no spouse present) increased from 12.9 percent to 15.4 percent of the total. 10 Especially marked has been the rise of one-person households Table 3 from 22.7 percent in 1990 to 25.1 Composition of Amedcan Households: percent in 1992, caused in part by 1980 and 1992 the fact that the median age of first Household Type 1980 1 M marriage for men and women has INN rded with Children 30.9% 25.5% increased b TI some three years M:rded without Children 29.9 29.3 since 1970. 31noe-Porent Farnilly (FeMale Headed) 10.8 12.2 Single-Porent Family Nole-Headed) 2.1 3.2 Many lawmakers and orgaru a- Uvkv Ala" 22.7 25.1 tions calling for more housing sub- Other Non-Forrily Households 3.6 4.7 sidies misinterpret the growth in I Towl 100.0% 100.0% non-family households as an up- I bu= U.S. &nNGfftC==,QNWPVUWM RIP&*86fts M Nm WCmwof PW*ft. I= surge in the need for assistance. To be sure, non-married households have incomes well below those of married ones. The median household income of one-person households in 1991 was $15,44 1, while the median figure for female-headed families with children was $17,961. By contrast, the median household income for married households was nearly $41,075. 12 But that does not mean that non-married households are poorly housed or that they must forego food and other basic necessities to acquire good housing without a sub- sidy. The growth of non-family households has been due in large part to the affordability and availability of housing. That is, many of these households would not have formed in the first place were America's housing industry not so productive and adaptive to local market circumstances. In Western Europe, where housing construction levels are far lower than in the United States, marriage is one of the few ways in which a young adult can obtain housing separate from parents. And as a 1992 Heritage Foundation paper made clear, a -pooe' American actually has more housing space per person than the aver- age Western European. 13 It is not the growth of female-headed families that necessitates more welfare. Rather, it is the widened eligibility for welfare that is the major driving force behind the increase in such households in the first place. This includes housing assistance as well as cash pay- ments, Medicaid, and food stamps as its key components. The number of all households (mainly female-headed and/or elderly) receiving HUD housing subsidies alone grew from 3.3 million in fiscal 1981 to roughly 4.7 million in 1993. Subsidization of living expenses makes it more attractive for women with children not to marry and to maintain households separate from their fathers and from other members of their families. One study showed that a roughly $200 increase in monthly welfare benefits causes illegitimate teenage births to rise by 150 percent.
Status, and Living Arrangements: March 1992" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govemment Printing Office, 1993). 11 The median ages of first marriage were 22.5 and 20.6 for men and women, respectively, in 1970. They had risen to 25.5 and 23.7 in 1988. See Vital Statistics. 12 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P-60, No. 180. 13 See Robert Rector, "How the Poor Really Live: Lessons forWelfiwe Reform," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 875, January 31, 1992. 14 Shelley Lundberg and Robert D. Plotnick, "Adolescent Premarital Childbearing: Do Opportunity Costs Matter?" June 1990, revised version of a paper presented at the Population Association of America Conference, Toronto,
At the opposite end of the age spectrum are the elderly, defined as households headed by persons age 65 or over. For over two decades a fast-growing segment of the popula- tion, 15 these households have relatively few housing problems. For example, 77.3 per- cent of senior-citizen households in 1991 owned their own homes, and 82.4 percent did so "free and clear," without any outstanding mortgage debt. The 1991 median monthly housing cost for all elderly households, owners and renters combined, was $257. More- over, only 2.6 percent of all elderly households lived in dwellings with less than com- plete plumbing facilities and with a median of 5.3 rooms per unit. 16 These are not house- holds requiring subsidies; yet advocates of more subsidies frequently call for more fed- eral aid to the elderly, especially under the Section 202 program, enacted by Congress in 1959 to finance the construction of privately owned rental housing projects for senior citi- zens.
THE MARKET FOR HOUSING
Combining these supply and demand characteristics into an overall market reveals how weak the case is for declaring a national housing emergency or even for enacting new housing assistance programs. By examining several basic indicators-vacancy rates, owner-occupancy ratios, costs, and cost-income ratios-it is evident that the supply of af- fordable housing is not in jeopardy.
INCREASING VACANCY RATES
One of the effects of the high levels of housing construction during the period from the 1960s through the 1980s has been relatively high vacancy rates. This is especially true in the case of housing for rent. In 1983, when many housing advocates declared a crisis, the rental vacancy rate was 5.7 percent. Yet each year since 1986 it has been at least 7 per- 17 cent, despite the decline in new apartment construction since the latter half of the 1980s. Those calling for more federally subsidized housing production as the principal way to eliminate homelessness ignore such realities. According to the American Housing Sur- vey, in 1991 there were over 8.7 million vacant year-round housing units. This represents about 15 vacant dwellings for every homeless person, based on the Urban Institute's original top estimate of about 600,000 homeless persons nationwide. 19 These units, more-over, are not cramped "tenements" or "slums." The 1991 American Housing Survey indi- cated they contained a median of 4.3 rooms per unit, and only some 5.5 percent lacked complete plumbing facilities. Almost 48 percent were single-family homes. 19 THE "DECLINING"' OWNER-OCCUPANcy RATio
A common myth about housing affordability is that young homeseekers no longer can afford to buy a home. Ever since 1977, when studies by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Center forUrban Studies of NUT and Harvard University asserted that dwin- Wing proportions of renter households could buy a home, advocates of more federal intru- sion into the housigg market have been sounding alarms about the disappearance of the American Dream.
2(r Typically, they use two statistics to bolster this claim. First they note that in 1980, 64.4 percent of all occupied units were owner-occupied, while in 1985 the figure fell to 63.5 percent. But even if this decline were cause for alarm, the ratio later reversed itself, rising to 64.2 percent in 1991. 21 Second, they often cite a finding from a 1988 report (the first in a continuing annual series on housing affordability by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies) showing that if the national homeownership rate had held steady since 1973, some two million additional households under age 35 would be homeowners. But what the re- searchers fail to emphasize is that more households today than in 1980 are singles and one-parent families (see Table 3). These households have a much higher propensity to rent than do married couples @2 so a slight decline in the overall ownership rate is not sur- prising. In fact, as HUD senior policy analyst Irving Welfeld has noted, the rates of own- ership among married and nonmarried households each rose after 1980, even though the overall rate declined slightly.
Thus, young adults are not being "locked out of' homebuying opportunities. On the contrary, Chicago Title and Trust's widely respected annual survey of recent homebuyers reveals first-time buyers to be an increasingly significant force. In 1989, for example, 40.2 percent of all homebuyers, were buying for the first time; in 1993 this ratio, thanks to small price increases and falling interest rates, reached 46 percent. 24
EXAGGERATED COST BURDENS FOR HOMEOWNERS
If changes in the homeownership ratio do not point to lessening affordability of homes for sale, neither do cost figures themselves, whether for the homes as such or for the mort- gage money used to finance their purchase. Those sounding the alarm bell often point to how much more owner-occupied homes with mortgages cost than do those without mort- gages. Yet the cost of borrowed money is distinct from the cost of housing itself. The American Housing Survey revealed that the median monthly housing cost for homes with a mortgage in 1991 was $761; for homes without a mortgage, it was $222. 25 To read into this a problem of affordability, however, would be erroneous. A great many of today's owners bought their homes during the late 1970s and 1980s when interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgages were in double digits. By contrast, the rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages currently are about 8.5 percent and, for a time late last summer and early fall, fell to the 6.7 percent to 7.0 percent range, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac"), which, among other things, tracks mortgage rates on a weekly basis. Remarked Freddie Mac chief economist Robert Van Order last summer, "The last time interest rates fell below 7 percent was back in 1968."26 Thanks to failing home mortgage interest rates, there has been a surge in the popularity of 15-year and 20-year fixed-rate mortgages. 27 The Federal National Mortgage Associa- tion ("Fannie Mae') and Freddie Mac each reported that in 1993, close to half of all mort- gage refinancings consisted of 15-year or 20-year loans-the highest ratio ever. This trend has helped homes be more affordable for long-term ownership. Not only is the cu- mulative interest on a 15-year loan far lower than on a 30-year loan, but lenders charge interest rates about 0.5 percent lower as well. The homeowner stampede during 1991-1993 to refinance existing mortgages, though slower by now, is one of this decade's more remarkable housing stories. Fannie Mae data released last year indicated that 31 percent of current homeowners have refinanced their mortgages, with almost 20 percent having done so in 1992 or 1993 alone. Another 14 per- cent were considering refinancing. 28 Some 56 percent of the $1.1 trillion in mortgage loan originations in 1993 took the form of loan refinancings, according to Robert Rosenblatt, director of surveys for the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. 29 America's homeowners know a good bargain when they see one. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies data actually provide strong evidence that homeownership is becoming more in reach, not less. Working with the American Housing Survey and other data, the Center's researchers estimated that the annual cost of owning a home (in constant 1989 dollars) fell from $8,895 to $7,077 during 1992-1992. This decline would have been even steeper had expected price appreciation levels not been flat in the last few years. 30 The past decade has been more a buyer's than a seller's market.
Data from Chicago Title and Trust's annual homebuyer survey provide further evi- 31 dence that rising costs, in and of themselves, mean little. During 1980-1993, repeat buy- ers saw the median home purchase price increase from $75,750 to $159,600, or by 110.7 percent. During the same period, however, their median incomes increased from $31,820 to $67,500, or by 112.1 percent. For first-time buyers, median prices increased from $61,450 to $121,100 (97.1 percent) while incomes increased from $27,430 to $53,400 (94.7 percent). Thus, incomes kept pace with prices. That incomes were not higher is due largely to the higher ratio of nonmarried households in the first-time and repeat homebuy- ing populations. Indeed, from 1991 to 1993, the proportion of first-time buyers who were single rose from 21.2 percent to 32.3 percent, according to the survey. These households, as Census figures earlier revealed, have lower incomes than married households. The survey also revealed that although the average mortgage payment as a percentage of income during 1980-1993 rose slightly from 30.3 percent to 30.7 percent for repeat buyers, it fell substantially from 35.6 percent to 32.2 percent for first-time buyers. The argument that a homebuying affordability crisis exists is refuted most thoroughly by examining figures from the National Association of Realtors' monthly publication, Home Sales, which tracks the affordability of existing homes throughout the nation. In 198 1, when President Reagan took office, an existing home cost $68,900; in February 1993 it cost $103,600, an increase of 50.4 percent. Yet price rises are not, in fact, cause for alarm in the context of income growth. NAR has a "Housing Affordability Index," which relates home price to buyer income, given a certain down payment ratio. The Index indicates what proportion of the income needed to qualify for a conventional 30-year mortgage on a median-priced home with a 20 percent downpayment would be possessed by a median-income family. Any Index figure above 100 means that a median-income household has more than enough to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home.
In 1981 the Index for all buyers was 68.9. This meant that a median-income family that year had only 68.9 percent of the income necessary to qualify for the purchase of a me- dian-priced home. During the fourth quarter of 1993, the Index had reached a record-high 141.9. In 'other words, taking into account the cost of mortgage credit and growth in real income, a typical home in the U.S. has become more than twice as affordable in a little more than a dozen years.33 For first-time buyers (renters seeking to buy), the Index im- proved markedly from 49.9 to 92.3 from 1981 through the fourth quarter of 1993.
EXAGGERATED COST BURDENS FOR RENTERS
Renters are less well off than owners. That is why most are not owners in the first place. Yet if the cost of ownership is not preventing today's renters from becoming tomor- row's owners, neither is the cost of renting. Between 1980 and 199 1, the median monthly rent (including utilities), according to the American Housing Survey, increased from $243 to $462, or by 90.1 percent. Yet during thisperiod median renter income rose from $10,500 to $20,300, or by 93.3 percent. Housing activists typically employ a rule of thumb for rental affordability. If rent takes up 30 percent or more of a household's gross (pre-tax) income, the dwelling is "unaf- fordable." Superficially, Ta- Tabie 4 ble 4 shows why they have Monthly Rental Costs as a Ratio of Income: 1991 an effective case. According Cost/income All Renter Poor Renter to American Housing Sur- Raft Households Households vey data, some 45.9 percent of all renter households and LM t1lon 6% 22LOW 14com 5% to 9% LOX= 4M000 69.0 percent of below-pov- 10%1o14% Z7XOOO 114000 erty-line households pay at 15% to 19% 4,2MOM 219.0W least 30 percent of their in- 20% to 24% 42MOM 37&WO conics in housing costs. In- 25% to M% Oftwo 547,0M 30% to 34% ZW3,0W 467.0W deed, 2 1.0 percent of all 35% to 39% zwolow W5,0W renter households and 48.0 40% to 49% 2&9.000 71&OM percent of poor renter house- 50% to 59% 1,707,000 637,000 60% to 69% 1,071,000 W3,000 holds pay at least 50 percent 70% or 3.567.000 Z384000 of their incomes on housing Zero or Negalive Income 547.000 490,000 costs. No Cash lient z5MOM 9&000 Median Rcft 28% 55% Using such Census data, (excwhg w two iines) liberal research organiza- Scum 'Arnek= Houft WW tions like the Center on Note 7he %pros In this table are used by advoooles of a huge boost In federal rert subsidlim 7hey clolm that these Ures tow Mat 459 percal of oil rerftm ord 69.0 Budget and Policy Priorities percent of all Poor refto (ockxft Izero or negaft WcorrW and Im cash wr howeholds)M at least 30 percent of their hmm for "r dwWWV. kft the concki- conclude that rental af- don that mod of the poor cormot afford ftr hou*v arid exlst an the pmctke of homd- fordability is slipping from emm Is wroM. AmorV other reasom reported Wcomes of the poor do not account for enorrnow arrmft from bereffiVn4dnd nich as Medloold food d=pL rert subsidies. and even cash. InckidlM these payrnerils as heome would lower the wit burdem of the grasp of the poor.-4 below-poverty Wo households uWantidy
From this, they conclude Tabie,9 that only large increases in Average Annual Income and Expenditures of government support can pre- Households Among Persons 14 and Over 1991 vent the crisis from worsen- ing. QuIntiles Income Total Total Housing of Income Before Taxes Expenditures Expenditures According to the U.S. De- wd 2o p..t $5,981 $13,4M $ 4,9W partment of Labor's Con- Sscmd 20 penent 14,821 1&986 6.178 sumer Expenditure Survey, 1hkd 20 permt 26,073 26,144 7,975 which measures how much Fwrffi 20 pawl 4OM8 36,151 1Q6M the households of different N9W 20 permt 81,594 57,597 16,898 income levels spend on key consumer items (food, hous- Soumr U.S. DWaftWdLabm, anm&mdAminixi, @LSReW835,Dmff6er1M.) ing, etc.), 35 per-household I I expenditures in 1991 averaged $13,464 among the lowest-quintile-income households, with pre-tax incomes averaging $5,98 1. In other words, the typical "poor" household, ac- cording to the Labor Department's statistics, spends well over $2 for every $ 1.00 it re- ports as income. Table 5 shows expenditures of households in the bottom quintile as a percentage of their reported "total income." Showing housing costs as a proportion of reported income thus gives a grossly mislead- ing impression. Using such methods, one can "prove' that the lowest-income households barely eat since they have spent 82 percent of their "incomes" on housing. Similarly, one could prove that these households have no money to spend on housing and utilities since well over 100 percent of their incomes are spent on other items.36 Something obviously is wrong with the use of rent-to-income ratios as a basis for estimating rental affordabil- ity. Why do government surveys systematically underestimate "incomes" of low-income households? Because most spending is not counted as income. Of the over $300 billion spent in 1992 by federal, state, and local governments on welfare programs for low-in- come persons, most was not included as household income by the Census Bureau.37 Benefits the Census Bureau does not count as income include food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies, and various social services. The second major problem is that government income data fail to include the tens of billions of dollars earned by persons working "off the books" to avoid taxes and regula- tion. The Department of Labor has ppt the total value of unreported earnings at about 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product. 38 As long as the government grossly underreports the incomes of poor and near-poor households, claims that these households spend too high a share of their incomes on housing are meaningless.
THE GROWFH IN FEDERAL AssiSTANCE
Housing assistance has become an increasingly significant part of the welfare state. Ac- cording to an Urban Institute study, about half of all rental subsidies consists of cash wel- fare payments; the other half is federal housing assistance. 39 American Housing Survey data for 1989 (the most recent year available irr such tabulations) indicate that median gross rent (including utilities) for unsubsidized poor renters was $300; for subsidized 40 poor renters it was a little over $150 . The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, building on American Housing Survey data, has estimated that almost 40 percent of all households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median receive HUD housing sub- sidies, up from just under 30 percent in 1989. 41 Such subsidization is gradually becoming a welfare entitlement, something likely to be- come more pronounced. For example, according to the General Accounting Office, the cost of renewing contracts between private landlords and public housing authorities un- der HUD's largest tenant assistance subsidy program, "Section 8," will grow from an esti- mated $6.3 billion in fiscal 1994 to $15.2 billion in fiscal 1998-a jump of almost 150 percent in just four years. 42 Additionally, HUD spent some $6 billion-a record high- in fiscal 1993 on development, modernization, and operating costs for public housing pro- jects. In 1992, a federal commission recommended $7.5 billion in new HUD spending over ten years on "distressed" public housing, which constitutes about 6 percent of all public housing units and, according to the commission, is "Unlivable. ,43 Yet the rental housing stock overall is increasingly affordable. For example, the American Housing Survey for 1987 revealed a median cost-income ratio for poor house- holds of 66 percent; in 199 1, as Table 4 indicates, this ratio had dropped to 55 percent. The portion of all renter households spending 30 percent or more of their incomes on rent in 1987 was 48.4 percent; in 1991 it was 45.9 percent.
HOUSING PROBLEMS AND HUD INITIATIVES
The House and Senate housing committees have prepared their versions of an ex- panded federal presence in the housing market for floor debate. With record-high levels of funding, sponsors of the bills say they want to tackle a crisis in the nation's communi- ties. Part of that crisis, they insist, stems from a large and growing lack of affordable housing. Yet the data demonstrate that neither homeowners nor renters, as a whole, face such a shortage. The congressional proposals assume far too easily that HUD must supplement or supplant the workings of the housing market. Some activities would put the taxpayer in a state of heightened financial liability for risky projects and loan practices. If Con- gress and HUD officials really want to promote affordable housing at minimum taxpayer expense, they should focus on eliminating barriers to market efficiency and on expanding opportunities for low-income residents to take greater control over their living environ- ment.
Clinton Administration officials also should use HUD and other relevant federal agen- cies as "bully pulpits" for eliminating unnecessary state and local regulations that inhibit housing construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance. When Jack Kemp was HUD Secre- tary, he appointed the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Hous- ing to address these issues. The Commission's final report, released in July 199 1, re- vealed that numerous forms of housing and land use regulation were making housing less affordable without necessarily improving housing quality." It outlined over 30 practical recommendations for government at all levels, often working in conjunction with devel- opers, to reduce unnecessary regulation. Lawmakers and officials also should expand residential choice among those least able to exercise it: the poor. Secretary Cisneros, on the surface, recognizes this. Yet the sub- stance of what he and congressional housing advocates support would foster greater de- pendency by low-income households on taxpayer largesse and housing bureaucrats at all levels of government. Rather than pour additional funding into building, maintaining, and modernizing public and subsidized housing projects and restricting opportunities by the private sector to buy and manage such properties, the federal government should be bringing such properties back to the market as quickly as possible. This includes enabling low-income residents themselves to be managers and owners. Such a strategy has turned around Washington, D.C.'s Kendworth-Parkside, now resident-managed and owned, and other low-income projects. HOPE gives tenants of public and privately built, government- held (usually through foreclosure) projects a chance to bypass public agencies in using federal money. 45 About 500 organizations, representing some 45,000 people, partici- pated in the program at the beginning of this year. 46 Yet under Clinton, the program is all but terminated, with planning grants eliminated from the 1994 budget and implementa- tion grants almost dry. No new funding is contemplated for fiscal 1995. Government at all levels, however, can take a big step in turning around low-income urban areas by making crime control a top priority. Fear of crime has transformed many urban neighborhoods and housing projects into no-man's lands. 47 Nothing restricts resi- dential choice mom than crime. When an area is a zone of fear, rather than a real commu- nity, people will not want to live there, no matter what the quality of its housing.
WHAT THE BELLS WOULD DO
The reauthorization bills now before Congress unfortunately ignore the real state of the housing market in America. And although the measures do address some concerns, they include provisions that would add to the problems which do exist while overlooking ac- tions that would tackle these problems.
HELPFUL FEATURES OF THE BILLS
The House and Senate bills do contain some beneficial provisions that would enable HUD programs to be operated in a more efficient manner. To their credit, both bills: V Modify a provision in the 1987 Housing and Community Development Act that requires public housing authorities (PHAs) to replace, on a 1-to-1 dwelling ba- sis, any obsolete projects they demolish. This requirement has been tying the hands of PHAs. Authorities cannot raze these largely vacant properties, many of them public eyesores, since they lack funds or suitable alternative sites to build replacement units. The new provision grants PHAs waivers from that stipulation, and thus should result in the demolition of obsolete units and the better use of existing HUD subsidies. se Broaden HUD's Drug Elimination Program for public housing into a larger Community Partnership Against Crime. Aside from mismanagement by housing authorities, the number one problem in public housing today is crime. The new pro- gram, among other things, would allow a PHA to obtain a record of any prior criminal convictions of a tenant or applicant as a way to help keep projects fire of dangerous offenders. V Consolidate the several programs under the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless As- sistance Act of 1987 into a block grant program that would give states, locali- ties, and nonprofit groups more say over how to use existing funds. Because these grantees are closer to the problems of the homeless than is the federal govern- ment, they will be able to reach more of these people. In addition, the Senate bill rejects a proposal by HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to al- low PHAs to replace obsolete projects by using spending authority to leverage borrowing against future HUD modernization funds. If such loans default, which is especially likely in larger, troubled authorities, taxpayers may end up paying a large tab. Even if the loans are paid on schedule, political pressures to build new projects on vacant sites ensure a high program cost. Congress should be more concerned with selling off existing projects than with building new ones.
TROUBLING FEATURES OF THE BILLS
The House and Senate bills, unfortunately, also contain proposals that should not be en- acted. The bills, for example, mistakenly would: Increase loan limits on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) single-family mortgages. Since its creation in 1934, FHA has been charged with insuring mortgage lenders against the risk of default in their underwriting. Periodically, to adjust to price rises in the housing market, Congress has raised the limits. But H.R. 3838 goes too far, raising the basic FHA ceiling from $67,500 to $101,575 and the high-cost-area ceiling from $151,725 to $172,675. The Senate bin, by contrast, wisely increases the basic limit only to $77,500 and leaves unchanged the high-cost area cap. Cisneros, ag- gressively urging passage of the House version, believes FHA will be able to create 2 million new homeowners over the long run. More likely, given IFHA's recent history and the fact that private mortgage insurers account for most mortgage insurance is- sued, the House version would help young households who eventually would be able to buy anyway, and heighten an already high risk of default. Eliminate the requirement that public housing residents who have or acquire a job, or who undergo job training, must pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent While motivated by a desire to transform public housing into a more stable liv- ing environment, this measure would leave housing authorities with less rent-derived income with which to operate. The taxpayers would have to prop them up even more than is now the case.
PROVISIONS THE BILLS SHOULD INCLUDE
In addition, both bills are significant for some essential provisions they omit. The bills should: V Eliminate the requirement that HUD subsidize rents of low4ncome residents of foreclosed FHA-Insured multifamily rental projects for at least IS years. Some of these projects, especially in Texas, are eyesores. This provision has contributed to- ward HUD's slow property disposition process and this year alone is costing taxpay- ers some $450 million in "Preservation" rent subsidies. V Fund the Homeownership and Opportunity for People for Everywhere pro- gram, or HOPE, to enable lowincome residents to manage and ultimately to own public housing (HOPE 1) and both privately built, publicly held multifa- mily (HOPE 2), and privately built, publicly held single-family (HOPE 3) pro- jects. This program, enacted in 1990 at the strong urging of Cisneros's predecessor at HUD, Jack Kemp, is an innovative anti-poverty program that bypasses local housing bureaucracies to reach the poor. Cisneros, however, has chosen to cancel the program, and Congress has eliminated fiscal 1994 funding for HOPE planning grants, a necessary precondition for rehabilitation and property transfer. Without a vigorous reversal, the program appears dead. V Give HUD authority to pressure other federal agencies and state and local agencies, to reduce excessive regulatory requirements on land use and housing construction. A HUD-sponsored commission three years ago concluded that over- regulation has been imposing serious costs on building and rehabilitating housing and that HUD could play a key role in alleviating the problem. Yet neither Congress nor Secretary Cisneros sees a real need to follow through on such efforts.
CONCLUSION
Despite what has become conventional wisdom, America is not reeling from a nation- wide housing shortage. Today's mortgage interest rates alone render such an argument specious, if not absurd. Cost barriers do exist, especially in California and Northeast met- ropolitan markets; clearly, finding good, affordable housing in Boston or Los Angeles is more difficult than finding it in Cincinnati or Atlanta. But even the most expensive areas have become more affordable in the 1990s as prices and rents alike have exhibited slow rises. Super-luxury homes in Southern California have stood vacant for months, even years, something unthinkable for most of the 1980s. Unfortunately, the temptation continues for Congress to boost federal housing subsi- dies. The Cranston-Gonzalez legislation of 1990, for example, all but locked the federal government into subsidizing permanently the rents of some 360,000 multifamily rental dwellings whose project owners are eligible to prepay their 40-year mortgages after 20 years. HUD's mounting inventory of FHA-foreclosed privately built apartment projects, some of them vacant eyesores, is incurring needless costs of hundreds of millions of dol- lars annually in subsidized maintenance and debt service, thanks to excessively strict re- sale requirements (although Congress last year eased these requirements somewhat). 48 The Clinton Administration should acknowledge that real housing problems exist but that they have more to do with the absence of market incentives and the lack of work-de- rived income among the poor than with the supposed "neglect" of these problems by the federal government. The bills before Congress contain items of merit. Too much in them, however, merely pours old wine into new bottles. Even under the guise of "choice" and "investment," expanding subsidy programs would invite more, not fewer, problems at HUD. Prepared for The Heritage Foundation by Carl F. Horowitz, Ph.D.
The author, fonnerly housing and urban affairs policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, currently is aWashington correspondent with the Los Angeles-based Investor's Business Daily.
2 Quoted in Julio Barreto, "Cisneros Unveils Housing Choice and Community Investment Act," Nation's Cities Weekly, April 25,1994.
3 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census ofPopulation and Housing; Current Housing Reports, "American Housing Survey for the United States in 1991 " (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1993). The American Housing Survey (formerly known as the Annual Housing Survey until the early 1980s, previous to which it had been conducted annually, as its narne implied) is conducted nationally on a biennial basis by the Census Bureau, with technical assistance from HUD. Separate surveys of several dozen metropolitan areas are conducted on an annual rotating basis. All references in this Issue Bulletin to the American Housing Survey, unless otherwise indicated, are to the 1991 survey. In 1991 there were some 7 million mobile homes.
4 Losses of residential units include conversions of a structure from residential to nonresidential use, the combining of two or more separate residences into one, and damage from storms, earthquakes, and other natural phenomena.
5 What Home Buyers Want (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Home Builders, 1989).
6 U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics of the United States, issued annually.
7 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Popuktrion Reports, Series P-20, No. 467, and earlier reports. Census of Population: 1980.
8 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-25, No. 986, "Projections of the Number of Households and Families: 1986 to 2000" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986).
9 Vital Statistics. The rate of divorces per 1,000 population declined during 1980-1990 from 5.2 to 4.7, or by some 10 percent.
10 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No. 467, "Households, Families, MariudMay 1990.
15 In 1970 households headed by a person age 65 or over constituted 19.7 percent of all households in America. In 1991 their share of all households increased to 21.7 percent. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No. 458; Census ofPopulation: 1970.
16 "American Housing Survey," pp. 319, 320, 340, 349. In determining whether a household is poor, the Census Bureau looks at income-but not asset-levels. This is one reason why the elderly are often "house rich, cash poor." Their wealth is tied up in the earned equity of their homes. See Karen Marin Gibler and Joseph Rabianski, "Elderly Interest in Home Equity Conversion," Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 4, Issue 4 (1993), pp. 565-588.
17 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Housing Reports, Series H- I 11, issued quarterly and annually. Vacancy rates on units for sale are typically in the I percent to 2 percent range. Since the mid- 1980s this ratio has held steady at 1.7 percent.
18 Martha R. Burt and Barbara Cohen, America's Homeless. Numbers, Characteristics, and Programs 7hat Serve 7hem (Washington, D.C.: Urban institute Press, 1989). Burt since has revised her numbers downward to a rangeof 354,700 to 461,800. See Martha R. Burt, "Developing the Estimate of 500,000-600,000 Homeless People in the United States in 1987," in Cynthia M. Taeuber, ed., Enumerating Homeless Persons: Methods and Data Needs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991), pp. 130-138. The Census Bureau's special one-night survey of the homeless in March 1990 revealed only 230,000 persons on the streets and in shelters throughout the U.S., a figure the Bureau has revised upward slightly to 240,000. If anything, then, the ratio of vacant year-round dwellings to homeless persons is more in the neighborhood of 30-to- 1, or even higher.
19 "American Housing Survey," pp. 1, 4, 14.
20 Congressional Budget Office, Homeownership: The Changing Relationships of Costs and Incomes and Possible Federal Roles (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 1977); Bernard J. Frieden, Arthur P. Solomon, et al., 7he Nation's Housing Needs (Cambridge, MA: Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard University, 1977).
21 "American Housing Survey," various years. 22 In the 25-29 and 30-34 age brackets, among married couples, 51 percent and 66.4 percent, respectively, were homeowners in 1990. For "other family" households, these rates were 19.1 percent and 28.5 percent. Among one-person households, these figures were
22.1 percent and 33.4 percent. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1990.
23 Irving Welfeld, Where We Live: The American Home and the Social, Political, and Economic Landscape, from Slums to Suburbs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 223.4 Who's Buying Homes in America ... The ChicagoTitle and Trust Family of Title insurers, I 8th Annual Survey of Recent Home Buyers (Chicago: Chicago Tide and Trust, 1994).
25 "American Housing Survey," 1991, p. 74.
26 "Mortgage Rates Fall Below 7 Percent," 7he Washington 77mes, August 27, 1993.
27 Albert B. Crenshaw, "ShorterTerms Draw Borrowers," The Washington Post, January 29, 1994; H. Jane Lehman, "Refinancers Shortened Terms in '93," The Washington Post, April 9, 1994.
28 Some 46 percent of the respondents said that reducing the length of their mortgage term would count most, while 40 percent indicated lower monthly payments were the most important factor
29 Cited in Marianne Kyriakos, "Mortgage Refinancings Set Record Pace in 1993," The Washington Post, January 8, 1994. In 1992, 48 percent of the $894 billion in mortgage originations represented refinancings.
30 7he State of the Nation's Housing 1993, p. 24.Me decline in annual ownership cost, minus the appreciation factor, was f3rom $10,617 to $7,405.
31 Who's Buying Homes in America, op. cit.
32 'Me NAR also calculates an Index for first-time buyers, which is somewhat different than for other buyers. Here, affordability is based on the median price of a "starter" home (85 percent of the price of a median-priced home), and first-time seekers are assumed to need only a 10 percent down payment.
33 Despite an increase in the interest rate used to compute the overall Index from 6.79 percent to 6.91 percent, the Index, according to preliminary NAR data, fell only to 140.9 in the first quarter of 1994 from the fourth quarter of 1993.
34 See, for example, Scott Barancik and Mark Sheft, A Place to Call Home: The Crisis in Housingfor the Poor(Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 1991).
35 The Census Bureau numbers are the basis for calculating incomes in studies which show that poor households pay too much for rent.
36 Arguments to show that low-income households pay too much for housing generally are based on data from the American Housing Survey rather than the Consumer Expenditure Survey. But all government surveys have the same problem: they underreport incomes and thus show expenditures as very high relative to income.
37 See Robert Rector, "Combatting Family Disintegration, Crime, and Dependence: Welfare Reform and Beyond," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 983, April 8, 1994.
38 See U.S. Department of Labor, 7he Underground Economy in the United States, Occasional Paper No. 2, September 1992, p. 24. For examples of this economy in action, see Jeffrey Tucker, "Notes from the Underground: America's Sprawling Informal Economy," Policy Review No. 65 (1993), pp. 76-79.
39 Sandra J. Newman and Ann B. Schnare, Subsidizing Shelter. The Relationship Between Weyhre and Housing Assistance (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, May 1988).
40 These figures are for privately owned dwellings only, and thus exclude units covered under the public housing program-
41 The State of the Nation's Housing 1993, p. 16; 77se State of the Nation's Housing 1992, p. 19.
42 U.S. General Accounting Office, AsAvied Housing: Evening Out the Growth of the Section 8 Program's Funding Needs, GAO/RCED-93-54, August 1993.
43 The Final Report of the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing: A Report to the Congress and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 1992).
44 "Not in My Back Yard". Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing (Washington, D.C.: Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing, July 1991). For additional evidence, see articles in Land Economics, Vol. 66, No. 3 (August 1990).
45 Under HOPE, public agencies are eligible grantees along with tenant and other nonprofit organizations. T'he public housing component of HOPE is lmown as "HOPE V; the privately built, publicly held components are called "HOPE 2" (multifamily housing) and "HOPE 3" (single-family housing).
46 "HOPE and the 'Reinvention' of Government," 7he Empowerment Pioneer, Vol. 2, No. I (February 1994), p. 6. This is a publication of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Empowerment Network Foundation.
47 See Wesley G. Skogan, Disorder and Decline. Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods (New York: Free Press, 1990).
48 See Carl Horowitz, "Another Big Government Loan Bailout?" Investor's Business Daily, July 15, 1993; U.S. General Accounting Office, Multifamily Housing: Information on Selected Properties Owned by HUD, GAO/RCED-94-163F3, April 19%. | 54,277 | 22,750 | 0.000044 |
warc | 201704 | Satisfied customers spend more with you and often speak positively about you. Building customer loyalty will help stop even satisfied customers leaving you if they see can buy an equivalent of your product or service cheaper.
So – are you listening to your customers? Are you seeking out their opinions?
I help you seek out and hear the voice of the customer. With this knowledge you can both capitalise on your strengths and address areas for improvement:
What to do more of What to do less of What to stop What to change
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warc | 201704 | On Thursday I attended the first-ever White House Summit on Financial Capability and Empowerment. This event was yet more evidence that President Obama has done more than any president before him to advance financial knowledge in this country -- particularly among the young, who were well represented in a room normally filled with Important People in suits and ties. Government officials, employers, community leaders, NFL stars, and school kids all spent a few hours talking about what they're doing -- and what more can be done -- to help people take control of their financial futures.
I was especially proud when Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council, announced the launch of Money as You Grow. This online, interactive tool, which I spent more than a year working on as a member of the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability and have mentioned on this blog a few times, gives families a way to teach kids, from ages three to 23 and beyond, the simple, essential money lessons they need to know as they grow.
Now is the moment to start teaching young Americans the ins and outs of personal finance. With higher than average unemployment rates and ballooning student loan debt (the total just reached the $1 trillion mark!), young people inhabit a daunting financial landscape. Yet recent surveys show that many of them can't answer even basic questions about interest, insurance, and how to comparison shop. (For the record: older adults don't fare much better on financial literacy tests.)
Nearly a quarter of young adults do not have bank accounts, which means their money isn't insured by the FDIC and they may be using payday lenders and other high-cost alternatives to perform basic services like cashing paychecks. Roughly two million college students who qualify for Pell Grants miss out because they don't apply. College students who leave school with debt owe, on average, around $25,000 in loans!
Research shows what many of us could already guess: The number one influence on young people's financial behavior is their parents. This is where
Money as You Grow comes in. With its down-to-earth language and sound, clear principles, Money as You Grow gives adults the tools to be the best role models and teachers they can be. It draws on nearly every important curriculum, standard, and study that aims to educate children about money and distills the "greatest hits," if you will, into 20 age-appropriate lessons and corresponding activities designed to influence kids' financial behavior.
The lessons cover everything from basic realities ("You need money to buy things") to new realities ("It can be costly and dangerous to share information online"), driving home important lessons about saving, credit, paying for college, and investing (it's never too early to start!). You can see it for yourself at MoneyAsYouGrow.org.
Not long ago, one of my sons, still in grade school, asked my husband and me what compound interest was. After we got over our astonishment, I was able to tell him (check out Lesson #11 on MoneyAsYouGrow.org for a quick explanation), but not every parent is a financial journalist. (And even I need to brush up on some this stuff from time to time.) In fact, one of the best things about
Money as You Grow and another project I was recently involved in, Sesame Workshop's For Me, For You, For Later, is that parents learn along with the kids.
Several government and nonprofit organizations including the USDA, American Library Association, and the National PTA have already partnered with the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability to build awareness about
Money as You Grow. The best part is that it's catching on with parents -- especially moms -- who are pinning it like crazy on Pinterest. In the week before it was officially unveiled at the summit, more than 100,000 people visited MoneyAsYouGrow.org! The goal: to reach more than 100 million families by year's end.
At the summit, Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and someone whose advice I've come to value a great deal, remarked that after the recession from which we are still healing, we don't need more evidence that financially empowering people is a national economic imperative.
Money as You Grow, he said, "is thoughtful, simple, and common sense," and can put people on the right path, just as driver's ed teaches kids the rules of the road before they get behind the wheel of their own car.
As a mother of three, I want
Money as You Grow to be part of a broad movement to send kids out into our increasingly complex financial world ready to thrive. Together we can do this! Beth Kobliner is a personal finance commentator and journalist, the author of the New York Times bestseller Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties, and a member of the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability. Visit her at bethkobliner.com, follow her on Twitter, and like her on Facebook. This post was originally published on Mint.com.
© 2012 Beth Kobliner, All Rights Reserved
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warc | 201704 | People and veterinarians want to help keep their pets pain-free. According to both the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Animal Hospital Association, which has strict hospital accreditation standards, managing pain is both an ethical and medical concern in veterinary medicine. Veterinarians promise to use their knowledge to reduce animal suffering and we spend a large part of every day trying to accomplish that goal. If we visit any pharmacy and simply look at how many aisles are devoted to pain management, it becomes instantly evident how important pain control is to American consumers, and if we want to resolve, manage or avoid pain, it is important to realize several things.
Pain originates when normal energetics of the body are interrupted. Any sudden and uncontrolled accumulation of energy leads to injury, which signals the organism of a threat to its survival through the perception of pain. In traumatic circumstances, it occurs when excess energy is introduced into a tissue in such a way as to disrupt the normal survival patterning of that tissue. Factors that potentially injure or kill cells result in pain. Besides trauma, energy in the form of radiation can injure tissues by entering energy at rates that exceed the tissue's ability to dissipate that energy. When chemicals act to damage normal structure and function we also experience pain, so any condition that results in inflammation can result in pain. The cardinal signs of inflammation, which are redness, swelling and heat, result in discomfort or painful sensations. From a bioregulatory medicine viewpoint, we see pain result when there is an accumulation of toxic substances or energies, also called homotoxins. These substances interfere with normal functioning and lead to stimulation of local pain fibers that result in the pet experiencing painful stimuli. Bioregulatory therapists measure the progressive levels of damage to tissues on a six-phase scale called the Disease Evolution Table (DET). If we consider the Disease Evolution Table, we can see pain results from inflammation, impregnation, degeneration and dedifferentiation phases. Proper pain managing techniques exist for each of these types of pain, and properly managing pain is much easier if one knows this table and knows how to work cooperatively with the patient's natural systems. Bioregulatory doctors have many more strategies for managing pain than simply giving suppressive medications that disconnect a body part from the experience of pain.
Acute and sudden pain can serve an important biological function that alerts and warns the organism of threats to its survival. If a fish swims into toxic water, it becomes uncomfortable and retreats back into a safer environment. If we attempt to lift too heavy a weight, our back strains and notifies us of the danger. In such ways we need pain and the experience of discomfort to advise us of our present condition, and to allow our biological controls to find optimal solutions to our present problems. While pain can be a good thing when we consider things in that light, chronic pain can lead to a series of destructive events that increase our chances for more serious disease processes and severe, unrelenting pain can even cause death.
Properly managing pain requires two different spheres of work. In the first sphere we have increasing awareness so that appropriate actions can be contemplated and chosen. In the second sphere of pain management we have techniques that help reduce the pain for our patients. These two spheres can conflict, and it can be a challenge to arrive at a balanced strategy of pain management when we are treating our veterinary patients.
Physical trauma and injury, surgical trauma, radiation, injection of medications, ear cleaning or nail trimming techniques can all cause pain. Illnesses may result in direct inflammation and subsequent pain, as well as lead to the need for medical procedures that cause painful stimuli to exist. All these areas require professional consideration in treatment planning. As a veterinarian, most of our efforts and continuing education involves learning about methods that reduce pain, but we also need to address this first sphere of increasing awareness. Since this is so important, let's look at that one first.
One of the most important causes of pain is lowered awareness. Consider a person who is worried about getting to work on time. They just had a disagreement with their spouse and are juggling a hot cup of coffee while trying to drive in traffic. As their cell phone rings, they look down and become less aware of their driving environment only to become involved in a traffic accident. The person's lowered awareness (resulting from sleep deprivation, mental suppression and distraction) results in an environmental imbalance and injury as their car collides with the person in front of them. In veterinary medicine, more pain can occur as the unrestrained dog flies from the back seat to the front seat and smashes into the windshield as a result of the accident. Pain can occur when an animal's steward doesn't understand the importance of proper nutrition and feeds an all-meat diet that leads to abnormal calcium metabolism, brittle bones and eventual fracture. If the owner understood proper nutrition, then the dog would never require veterinary pain management for the fracture.
If we consider things holistically and consider how events come into existence, then we see that many conditions that ultimately result in pain can be affected by properly improving awareness of those involved. These things we collectively call preventative medicine fall into this category. So does education as the more things a person knows, the more tools they have to decide upon in implementing action plans. By taking actions that increase awareness and truthful communication we can prevent many painful conditions. Consider the following:
Feeding pets properly improves their chances of health and longevity. Just maintaining proper body weight improves life expectancy and postpones chronic disease. This decreases the potential for pain. It's no accident that nutrition is part of most pain protocols in our practice.
Pain can occur even when we have done all things to the best of our awareness and ability, and it is important to be able to readily recognize the signs of pain in our animal friends. A major evolution in health occurred recently as people began to better recognize signs of pain in animals. Animals don't always cry when they are in pain. To do that would attract attention to their weakened state, and this could cause them to be easier prey for predators in the wild. Animals tend to hide pain. Some common signs of pain in animals include:
A change in normal behavior. This can manifest in many differing forms including decreased appetite, decreased grooming, avoiding activity, avoiding stairs, a loss in ability to perform for longer periods of time (such as a dog that loves jogging suddenly wanting to stop and go home), not greeting you on arrival home, being less communicative or rubbing, licking or chewing on body parts.
Solutions exist for managing all sorts of pain. The best process is one that brings about healing as healing is the treatment for pain. When healing occurs, then pain vanishes. Suppression of pain without healing can and does lead to increased adverse effects, and while suppression is often needed, it is not the preferred way to bring about healing in most cases. Herbs, homeopathic medicines, anthihomotoxic medicines, drugs, surgery, acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy, massage, hot and cold packs, electromagnetic devices, lasers, prolotherapy and a wide variety of other tools can be used for pain management. In each case we must consider the reason for the intervention's use, its risks and adverse effects, its likelihood for cure, and its cost.
Your veterinarian can offer many different tools for health creation, disease prevention and for pain management. Integrative veterinarians have large toolboxes for pain management. In our hospital we have more than 70 agents that are useful for managing pain. If we properly diagnose our patients and then approach them with the best tools, we can do much to help them live longer, more pain-free lives.
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warc | 201704 | So a corporate Democratic lobbyist named Hillary Rosen made a gaffe about Ann Romney's resumé. So what? The reality is that moms of all ages have been wounded by an obsolete and misguided consensus among Washington elites -- a consensus that is too often mislabeled as 'centrism.'
This false centrism is based on an utterly discredited ideology of deregulation and government austerity -- an ideology that has the GOP in its iron grip and controls much of the Democratic Party apparatus. The Republicans have become too radical to save, but the Democrats need to see the light -- and soon -- because the results are in and they're indisputable.
The Clintonite economic fantasy of "corporate-friendly Democrats" has failed. From Wall Street deregulation to welfare 'reform,' from Social Security "bargains" to jobs cuts for poor mothers, the record is undeniable: "Bipartisan" Washington's economic agenda doesn't work.
Sorry, corporate Democrats: The dream is over. Wake up and smell the GDP. If you won't do it for yourselves, do it for your mothers.
GOP Gone Wild
It's true that Mitt Romney has said stunningly insensitive things about lower-income mothers. And his "bromance" partner Paul Ryan has cooked up a second round of welfare cuts which would decimate lower-income mothers and their children -- even though we now know the first "reform" was a cruel failure.
But Romney's comments aren't all that different from what Bill Clinton said about welfare cuts back in the nineties. And leading Democrats from the White House on down still seem determined to pursue an austerity deal with Republicans that would take the country down the same road of blood and horror that Europe is walking.
(Maybe they should call it a "Grand
Guignol Bargain?)
When will Democrats learn that repeating right-wing talking points only accomplishes three things? It helps turn right-wing ideas into right-wing realities, it legitimizes bad ideas -- and it elects Republicans.
Nostalgia Trip
Right-leaning -- excuse me,
centrist Democrats -- love to lecture others about living in the past. They argue that their party's traditional ideals and themes -- fighting poverty, ensuring a secure old age, and providing work at fair wages -- went out with bell bottoms and Nehru jackets.
The group that used to be known as "DLC Democrats" and is now sometimes called the "Third Way" contingent still controls the party, and it quickly secured leadership positions for itself in the Obama Administration after the 2008 election. As soon as the insurgent candidate won office the White House nomination process rang with an unspoken but undeniable theme: Out with the new, in with the old.
But the nation quickly learned, even if they did not, that they were the ones living in the past. From the Presidential Deficit Commission to the Administration's ill-timed embrace of austerity, the centrism that worked so well in the nineties began tanking in the 21st Century. It even allowed Republicans to run to Democrats'
left on Social Security in 2010 -- and recapture the House.
Why won't they change? Maybe because it's hard to let go of a beautiful dream.
That Nineties Show
High-profile Dems in the 1990s must have thought that you
can have it all: They could bask in the admiration and acclaim enjoyed by their more liberal forebears while enjoying the largesse and security (personal and political) that comes when you win the backing of corporations and very-high-net-worth individuals.
And during the go-go Clinton years it almost seemed as if it worked: The economy was booming as they cut regulations, forced new rules and restrictions onto key antipoverty programs, and very nearly agreed to cut Social Security.
Leading the charge was Bill Clinton himself. He signed the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" on August 22, 1996, saying it would "end welfare as we know it and transform our broken welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and families."
And when he signed the bill repealing Glass-Steagall, Bill Clinton said that ''This legislation is truly historic" -- a statement that's indisputable in hindsight: It's helped contribute to historic levels of unemployment, lost wealth for the middle class, and ongoing economic insecurity. His next sentence -- ''We have done right by the American people" -- is more dubious.
Clintonian economic centrism was nothing but a fantasy -- a bubble-driven fantasy. The go-no nineties were fueled by an Internet bubble, and than a housing bubble sent the economy into manic overdrive.
Moms and Jobs
That nineties-era deregulation led to the financial crisis of 2008. Much has been made of the fact that unemployment statistics look slightly better for women than for men -- but compared to what? And for which women?
As of March 2012 official unemployment rate for women in the United States was 7.7 percent. In the twenty years before the crisis that figure was only reached for all workers in the final months of the first President Bush's term -- just before he lost his re-election bid over dissatisfaction with the economy.
In other words, it's a very bad number. Remember "It's the economy, stupid?"
Single mothers have been disproportionately hurt by the ongoing American recession. So have minority women, as well as mothers from all backgrounds who must contend with un- or underemployed spouses as well as young-adult children who are still living at home or accepting money from their parents during a period of record joblessness for the young.
And the "golden years" won't provide any comfort, much less gold, for America's mothers. Women over the age of 55 actually face higher unemployment rates than men do.
Poor Moms
We now know that welfare reform everybody was bragging about the nineties -- that decade's "Grand Bargain," its "bipartisan" triumph -- was a failure. It may have slightly helped single mothers find jobs in the 1990s, but nearly ninety percent of the job gains among single mothers during that period were due to other factors.
Even those meager gains were soon wiped out. Deregulation shattered the economy and led to mass unemployment, while conservative state legislators slashed the programs meant to help mothers who need jobs. And then the Federal programs were cut too.
But the cuts for mothers and their children? They didn't go away when the jobs did.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children was ended, and we now know that its successor (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families -- TANF) only helps 27 out of every 100 impoverished families. That's less than half the families that were getting help before all of this bipartisan "reform" kicked in.
The
New York Times tells the story of real "welfare reform," describing the "desperate and sometimes illegal ways" mothers without assistance make ends meet: "They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners -- all with children in tow." Grand-Moms
We now know that Bill Clinton was working on a "grand bargain" with Newt Gingrich to cut Social Security and Medicare when his plans were derailed by scandal. Today his successor insists on putting Social Security and Medicare benefits back "on the table" for a similar deal.
How would that affect the country's mothers and grandmothers? A new Kaiser Family Foundation brief confirms that seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income, that medical costs are a large and already-growing part of their budgets, and that women face much greater financial insecurity than men.
Cuts to Social Security or benefit cuts (as opposed to other cost reduction measures) to Medicare would devastate America's moms and grand-moms.
Choosy Mothers
This election year the choice has never been clearer -- except when it isn't.
It's clear that today's Republicans are certainly extremists, and that they're pushing an anti-woman, anti-family agenda. The GOP's push for anti-union, anti-employee laws -- marketed under the name "Right to Work" -- disproportionately hurts working women as well as minorities.
The phony outrage over Ann Romney hides the fact that Mrs. Romney could
make a choice whether to work or stay with her children -- a choice that her supposedly "pro-family" husband wants to deny to less wealthy women: "Even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work," Romney said in January. "I want individuals to have the dignity of work."
Elections have been won and lost on such callous statements. But if the Democrats want to win they're going to have to repudiate their own party's similar rhetoric -- rhetoric that candidate Obama embraced in 2008 when he rad an ad called "Dignity" which used many of the same stock phrases. State Senator Barack Obama was much closer to the mark in 1997 when he called the legislation "disturbing" and said, "I probably would not have supported the federal legislation."
Mother Knows Best
The Third Way types can throw around all the massaged, tweaked, and sliced-and-diced polling data they want (Mike Lux has the details), but their agenda doesn't work any better politically than it does economically. The more populist the president's rhetoric becomes, the better he does in the polls.
A wishy-washy pseudo-centrist message will disenchant the Democrats' core voters -- the young, minorities, and yes, women -- just enough to suppress their turnout in November and give the race to the Republicans. So the Democrats have a choice: They can be the party of corporate lobbyists like -- well, like Hillary Rosen -- or they can fight for the country's mothers.
It's all very well and good to repeat Romney's cruel words about poor mothers and their kids, or to mock right-wingers like Gary Bauer for calling that now-discredited welfare reform "one of the great bipartisan triumphs of the last two decades." But if Democrats don't repudiate the reckless errors of conservative pseudo-centrism they'll be throwing away an electoral opportunity -- and they'll be letting down America's moms.
All of them, that is, except the new First Lady of the United States: Ann Romney.
Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and the host of The Breakdown, broadcast Saturdays nights from 7-9 pm on WeAct Radio, AM 1480 in Washington DC.
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warc | 201704 | Brainstorming: Sponge Versus Sieve
One of the reasons we find brainstorming intimidating is that some people are better than others in squeezing ideas out of their heads.
These people – while amazing because they seem to have magical powers and some conduit to divine inspiration – make the rest of us feel stupid and doubt our creative ability.
Why can’t I pop out ideas like that? I guess I’m just not creative?
This is what old school brainstorming was about. People sitting in a room squeezing out ideas. Sponge style.
When I hear people say brainstorming is broken or doesn’t work… I know they’re referring to sponge style brainstorming.
New school brainstorming is about working smarter, not harder. Spending less time creating alternatives and more time filtering. Using our brainpower as a sieve to filter and narrow ideas to the fewer, bigger, and better.
For example, say we’re trying to create a new name for your energy drink.
Old school sponge style would have us sitting, staring at a pad of paper… hoping great ideas would pop into our heads.
Why waste brain power when we are surrounded by digital inspiration? At our fingertips and eyeballs are millions of images and words that stimulate thought.
Type “energy” or “power” into any favorite image search engine and you’ll instantly have hundreds of idea starters. Type “energy” or “power” into an online thesaurus, and you’ll be presented with loads of word options.
Save your brain to do the things computers aren’t good at. To filter. To select the gold nuggets from the gravel.
If you have access a good sponge, invite them to your brainstorm session… But, for the rest of us, give us some stimulating content and put us to work as filters and sieves. | 1,840 | 927 | 0.001153 |
warc | 201704 | I have been wondering lately about the effectiveness of building a continuous or automatic daily water change system for my reef aquarium. I really hate batch water changes, but they seem like they would be more effective. I decided to do the math and find out if that was true. A continuous water change can be modeled as a differential equation:
where is the amount of some dissolved substance at time , is the flow rate in and out of the system, and is the volume of the tank. We can simplify the model by making some assumptions: a continuous water change will consist of a small volume over a long period of time, thus the flow rate will be low enough to assume complete mixing in the high water flows of a reef aquarium. Flow rates should be chosen to provide an equivalent reduction of dissolved material as a weekly batch water change, however the rate is not of interest here since we are purely interested in comparing the amount of dissolved material reduction with a batch water change, not how long it will take. It will be easiest to calculate volume with a flow rate of 1 liter per hour. We can also assume an input concentration of 0, since the water coming in should be from an RO/DI system. This gives: noting that my aquarium is 75 gallons, or 284 liters. We will also set this up as an initial value problem, with being an initial concentration of 50 mg/L of nitrate. The goal is reduction to 45 mg/L which we will compare to a batch water change later. For my 284L aquarium, the total concentration of nitrate would be . This gives: The particular solution for this IVP is: Now with the solution we can solve for a nitrate reduction to 45 mg/L, which is a total concentration of 12780 mg. This happens at t = 29.9, which is 29.9 liters or 7.9 gallons of exchanged water. Now to compare to batch water changes.
Batch water changes use the formula for dilution:
Where M is the molarity and V is the volume, for initial and final states. Molarity is the moles of solute per liter of solution and nitrate () has a molecular mass of 62.0049 g/mol, so the molarity of nitrate with a 50 mg/L concentration is 806 uM. Our goal of 45 mg/L has a molarity of 726 uM. Substituting these values into the formula: yields an initial volume requirement of 255.8 liters, or 67.6 gallons. That means the amount of water removed would be 7.4 gallons, pretty much exactly a 10% water change.
Now we can compare the two: a 10% batch water change requires 7.4 gallons to reduce nitrates from 50 mg/L to 45 mg/L, while a continuous water change requires 7.9 gallons. That is only half a gallon difference.
So we can readily conclude that continuous water changes, daily water changes, and weekly 10% water changes all have roughly the same effect on dissolved substances in the aquarium. I used a deliberately high concentration of nitrate for this study in order to accentuate the changes, I have no doubt that at typical levels of nitrate and phosphate the difference is even less discernible.
Since the model’s function is exponential, continuous water changes will have a reduced effect compared to batch water changes as the amount exchanged becomes larger. For example, a reduction of nitrate from 50 mg/l to 25 mg/L with a continuous water change requires 52 gallons, where a batch water change only requires 37.5 gallons. 1 Comment to Continuous vs. batch water changes Leave a Reply Recent Posts Instruments for the GSXR Light pipe tail light for the GSXR M17x 6990m / 6970m overheating PAR / Spectrum analyzer Acrylic polishing and scratch removal 330W power supply for M17x update Continuous vs. batch water changes 330 Watt power supply for Alienware M17x mbed 1-wire EPROM driver (DS2502) M17x inverter brightness fix Archives October 2015 (1) May 2015 (1) March 2014 (2) December 2013 (1) July 2013 (1) November 2012 (1) October 2012 (4) September 2012 (1) August 2012 (3) June 2012 (1) March 2012 (1) February 2012 (1) January 2012 (1) October 2011 (3) July 2011 (1) June 2011 (3) May 2011 (2) April 2011 (1) December 2010 (1) August 2010 (1) July 2010 (3) April 2010 (2) March 2010 (2) January 2010 (2) December 2009 (2) October 2009 (2) September 2009 (1) August 2009 (15) | 4,200 | 1,839 | 0.000545 |
warc | 201704 | Many will berate the 'speculators' for ending the European dream. In fact, we should thank them for ending the European nightmare. But in reality the speculators are mere agents of change. The system that they have helped to destroy was deeply flawed from the start.
That is not to say that a fixed or semi-fixed exchange rate system never had a role or can never work, at least for a time. Rather, the ERM changed its character markedly over its short life. It began in 1979 with the rather modest aim of reducing uncertainty in currency markets by limiting the size of variation around agreed central parities, but the parities themselves could be changed, and frequently were.
From 1987 until last September, however, there had been no realignments. Two developments brought about this change. First, Europe as a whole, following a worldwide trend, put the conquest of inflation at the top of its economic agenda and chose to pursue this by maintaining a rigid exchange rate link with the most anti-inflationary of its members, Germany. This would be painful and might require tough policies, including high interest rates, but as long as Germany controlled inflation and they maintained the link, their inflation rates would fall sharply.
The second development was political. The view gained ground that Europe should press on to closer union, with monetary union at the leading edge. In a monetary union, the countries of Europe would have no independent monetary policies; there would be only one interest rate and no possibility of exchange rate changes. Accordingly, why use exchange rate changes in the years running up to monetary union? Rather, the intention was to hang on to the existing structure of exchange rates as the forcing house of monetary and economic union. The need to hold that combination of rates would bring economic reality into line across Europe.
In any case, what was the point of exchange rate changes? The European economies were now so integrated that all behaved more or less similarly, and even if they did not, exchange rate depreciation was no answer for the weaker countries because it merely caused higher inflation. This view betrayed both an extraordinary arrogance towards financial markets in general and a misunderstanding of the role of exchange markets in particular.
For exchange rate changes act as a sort of safety valve when two countries are in some way out of kilter. The divergence may be in trading performance or inflation rates or the relative attraction of assets.
Having an exchange rate to take the strain helps in two ways. First, the rate change may itself alter the relative performance between the two areas. Second, it permits interest rates to be different. As asset markets have become more important and capital movements have been liberalised, so this second factor has become of increased importance.
Far from being a period when differential shocks disappeared from Europe, the early 1990s have witnessed one of the greatest shocks since the war - German reunification. This was bound to lead to faster growth and inflationary pressures in Germany, but the German government's decision (if that is what it was) to let its budget deficit balloon to finance it made matters worse. This effectively obliged the independent Bundesbank to raise German interest rates and keep them high. The obvious solution for Europe (including Germany) was to allow the mark to float up and for the Germans to operate higher interest rates than a number of other European countries. But instead, the ERM imposed this same level of rates (plus a margin) on the whole of Europe. It was at precisely this point, of course, that the UK chose to join the system.
What has made the plight of the system worse is that at just the time the Germans were losing their anti-inflationary halo, other countries' inflation performance was starting to improve. The agony has been particularly acute for France. As the first chart shows, French inflation has reached very low levels but French interest rates, though lower than they were, have remained at ludicrously high levels and in the recent crisis money market rates have headed back up to 10 per cent. Borrowers in France now face real rates close to 10 per cent.
What will happen now? On the economic front, there is little doubt. One way or another, European interest rates are set to plunge to very low levels. Either this will happen within the current system because the Germans buckle and cut rates, to be followed by other members of the ERM (perhaps associated with some sort of realignment), or it will happen outside as the system itself collapses. But happen it will.
This will put added pressure on British base rates and they may well fall to 4 per cent, or even lower, by the year end. These are not startling numbers; the US and Japan already have interest rates at this level. As the second chart shows, since Black Wednesday the UK has chosen an intermediate path between high European and low American rates. What Europe (and the world) needs now is a policy of 3-4 per cent interest rates everywhere, sustained for a long period. After recent events, that may be exactly what transpires.
The political fallout is harder to read. It is possible to see the collapse of the ERM as a mere technical difficulty. All the key aspects of the Maastricht treaty could continue as before. But is this likely? The plans for monetary union are built on the foundations of the ERM. Moreover, how will relations stand between Germany and France after the French are forced to abandon their treasured fixed link with the mark?
At a deeper level, the collapse of the ERM will serve as a symbol of the failure of a general approach to economic policy. Pan-European economic policy-making is characterised by price fixing - fixing the price of labour, of butter and of French francs. In every respect this policy is an unmitigated disaster. Can it survive the collapse of the ERM?
For too long now the Euro steamroller has trundled on, apparently oblivious to the wishes of people and the functioning of markets. Politicians have burbled on, increasingly out of touch with reality, as though living on the Planet Zog. They now owe it to the European peoples to save the worthwhile and important objectives - the single market, and economic and political co-operation - from the ruins of the fantasy world of rigidly fixed exchange rates.
Roger Bootle is chief economist of Midland Global Markets.
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warc | 201704 | The Lighthouse is the weekly email newsletter of the Independent Institute.
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Volume 8, Issue 30: July 24, 2006
Ivan Eland on Israeli Military Tactics vs. Strategy
Alvaro Vargas Llosa on the Lebanon Blitz
Venezuela and Human Rights
Sociology and Classical Liberalism
1) Ivan Eland on Israeli Military Tactics vs. Strategy
Although General Robert E. Lee's aggressive military tactics enabled him to score several battlefield victories for the Southern Confederacy, these successes were inadequate for defeating the Union after it installed General Ulysses S. Grant, who met Lee's tactics by thinking more strategically and engaging in a war of attrition. This lesson from the American Civil War helps explain why Israel's tactics against Hezbollah may be the wrong approach for Israel, according to Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute.
"Strategically, Israel’s disproportionate use of military force will not wipe out these groups or the support that they receive from their respective populations," writes Eland in his latest op-ed. "Only a comprehensive negotiated, not unilateral, Middle East settlement -- in which Israel gives back all of the occupied territories in exchange for peace and normal relations with its Arab neighbors -- will choke off popular support for these radical groups."
Here's how Eland predicts the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict will continue: "Because the Israeli public still remembers the 18-year quagmire that resulted from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israel probably will not again launch the full ground invasion of Lebanon needed to finally crush Hezbollah. Israeli air strikes alone cannot kill all Hezbollah fighters and destroy all of their weapons and infrastructure. Similarly, since the Israelis just withdrew their forces from Gaza, it is unlikely that they would permanently reoccupy it in order to fully eradicate Hamas. In fact, Israel’s grossly disproportionate collective punishment of Lebanon and Gaza for the killing and capturing of a few Israeli soldiers will only fuel the anti-Israel fire in both places and the larger Arab world. When hatred has been stoked, lost fighters and weapons can be replaced -- and rather easily."
"Israel Is Winning the Battle, But Not the War," by Ivan Eland (7/24/06)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1773
"Israel está ganando la batalla, pero no la guerra"
http://www.elindependent.org/articulos/article.asp?id=1773
THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=54
Center on Peace & Liberty (Ivan Eland, director)
http://www.independent.org/research/copal/
^Top
2) Alvaro Vargas Llosa on the Lebanon Blitz
Until the recent renewal of Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, that country was returning to its mid-1970s status as beacon of hope in the Arab world, according to Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who just returned from a recent visit to Lebanon.
"As I traveled in Lebanon two weeks ago, four things struck me: the almost miraculous reconstruction of Beirut; the free-thinking cosmopolitanism of its middle class; the spirit of peaceful coexistence among the various religious groups, thanks in part to the open-mindedness of much of the Sunni population; and the resentment against Hezbollah among Christians (who comprise more than 35 percent of the population) and Muslims almost everywhere except the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon," writes Vargas Llosa, director of the Independent Institute's Center on Global Prosperity.
Unfortunately, Israel's campaign will deal a harsh below to liberal institutions of civil society and will likely make Lebanon ripe for the spread of extremism, Vargas Llosa argues: "It is true that Lebanon in transition had many problems, including the political survival of many leaders who fought the war, a power-sharing arrangement entirely based on religious grounds and, especially, the incapacity of the political institutions to disarm Hezbollah. But Israel's reprisals are not making that right. They are punishing a moderately successful attempt at religious diversity in a climate of peaceful coexistence and modernization in the Arab world."
"The Lebanon Blitz," by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (7/19/06)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1769
"El bombardeo del Líbano"
http://www.elindependent.org/articulos/article.asp?id=1769
LIBERTY FOR LATIN AMERICA: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=55
THE CHE GUEVARA MYTH, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=61
^Top
3) Venezuela and Human Rights
Speaking to the new United Nations Council on Human Rights, Venezuela's deputy minister of foreign affairs recently reaffirmed that Hugo Chavez's government has little in common with those who highly value "civilian and political rights," according to Carlos Sabino, an adjunct fellow of the Independent Institute's Center on Global Prosperity.
"Freedom of the press does exist [in Venezuela], but it is very restricted by a law that a docile Congress (which is now totally made up of supporters of the president) passed more than a year ago," Sabino writes in a new op-ed. "With that gag law, and by constantly threatening to not renew the licenses of radio and TV broadcasters, Chavez has managed to silence much of the opposition, which still dares to criticize the government but takes great care not to overstep its limits."
Freedom of expression, in other words, exists not by right but merely by permission, and can be revoked whenever it suits Chavez's apparatchiks. Similarly, free elections, private-property rights and an independent judiciary in name only. Unfortunately, the opposition to Chavez is so divided and weak that that status of liberty in Venezuela is likely to get worse before it gets better.
See "Venezuela and Human Rights," by Carlos Sabino (7/18/06)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1768
"Venezuela y los Derechos Humanos"
http://www.elindependent.org/articulos/article.asp?id=1768
Center on Global Prosperity (Alvaro Vargas Llosa, director)
http://www.independent.org/research/cogp/
El Independent: El Blog del Centro Para la Prosperidad Global de The Independent Institute
http://independent.typepad.com
^Top
4) Sociology and Classical Liberalism
Sociologists study a diverse group of social issues and communities -- but how diverse a group are sociologists themselves? At least when it comes to political diversity, the answer is: "not very." A new study of American sociologists found far more support for economic regulations, the regulation of personal choices, and a broad role for government than opposition to them.
Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, the authors of the study ("Sociology and Classical Liberalism," THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Summer 2006), sent letters to 1000 members of the American Sociological Association asking their preferences about 18 public-policy topics. The 347 responses they received suggest that the sociology profession in the United States tilts heavily to the left and has few, in any, classical liberals (i.e., those whose primary political values are individual liberty, private-property rights, and the rule of law, not economic equality or a welfare-regulatory state).
Although most of the poll's findings are unsurprising -- recent public statements made by the ASA leadership are consistent with the profession's leftward tilt -- the virtual absence of classical liberals among academic sociologists is harder to explain, especially because classical liberalism has much to offers sociology, Klein and Stern argue. Classical liberals such as Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and F. A. Hayek, for example, wrote at length on topics potentially of interest to contemporary sociologists. In addition, contemporary classical liberals have offered insights that seem ripe for sociological study, such as the differences between cooperation and coercion; the interrelations between commerce and community; the role of privilege, prestige, status, and power in "rent seeking"; and the social mechanisms that foster and reinforce statism.
"Classical liberals may suspect that sociology is inherently holistic, collectivist, or functionalist and therefore inherently hostile to the idea of depoliticizing social affairs," write Klein and Stern. "Our position is that there is no essential tension between sociology and classical liberalism. Many classical-liberal formulations have powerful application to sociological topics, and many sociological insights and literatures can enrich classical liberalism."
"Sociology and Classical Liberalism," by Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern (THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Summer 2006)
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=46&articleID=584
Subscribe to THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW: A Journal of Political Economy, ed. by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/tir/subscriptions.asp
For more on classical liberalism, see THE CHALLENGE OF LIBERTY: Classical Liberalism Today, ed. by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=63
^Top | 9,434 | 4,217 | 0.00024 |
warc | 201704 | With Republicans in control of the General Assembly, a so-called Photo ID requirement for voting in North Carolina seems inevitable. This is despite critics' assertions that, as Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt said, such a measure is a solution in search of a problem.
The question now is, will the law be so onerous that it becomes an obstacle to voting? Or will it allow a registered voter, if he or she has no driver's license or other government-issued ID with a photo on it, to offer alternative forms of identification currently being accepted for first-time voters? These include, according to director of the Durham County elections board Mike Ashe, a utility bill, a bank statement or a government check, or other paycheck showing name and address.
Debate on that subject delayed the introduction of a GOP bill in the first week of the session. Republican candidates across the state promised a Photo ID bill would be one of their first initiatives if they took control of the Legislature. In that stance, they mimicked GOP leaders in other states who've sounded alarms about illegal aliens or other ineligible folks flooding the polls—perhaps even stealing legitimate voters' identities.
That's not likely, says Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, an elections reform group. "Extensive national studies show that voter impersonation happens so rarely," Hall says, "you are more likely to be hit by lightning than have somebody vote in your name."
The State Board of Elections logged just 18 reported cases of voter fraud in 2008 that a Photo ID law would've prevented. It's already a felony to lie when you sign in to vote in North Carolina, Hall notes. And an ID with a verified address is required to register.
State NAACP President William Barber said the real purpose of a Photo ID law may be to discourage voting, especially by low-income people who don't drive or own a car. "What they're talking about is a step back to the poll tax," Barber said.
To comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, Ashe said, since 2006, North Carolina has asked everyone registering to vote for a driver's license number or the last four digits of the person's Social Security number. The names and numbers are run against the Division of Motor Vehicles or Social Security database, Ashe said. If there's no match (for example, a recently married woman whose name has changed), or if the person registering has neither a license nor a Social Security card, he or she is listed in poll books as needing to show valid identification before voting. Photo IDs aren't required, however. A utility bill or the like will suffice.
Outside groups that register people to vote—the Republicans love to point fingers at the now-defunct ACORN organization—are similarly required to submit a driver's license or Social Security number for every new applicant, or else the applicant must offer ID at the polls.
Democracy NC says a strict Photo ID requirement may discourage college students, people in rest homes or people with disabilities who don't have a valid driver's license or whose license doesn't show their current address.
The DMV does offer people who don't drive the option of obtaining a residency Photo ID for $10. Applicants need to prove their age and identity. According to DMV's website, a long list of photo and non-photo documents may be offered as proof, ranging from a passport to a letter from a homeless shelter.
However, the $10 fee could be interpreted as a form of poll tax, which is unconstitutional under the 24th Amendment. In this case, the state would need to establish a system for obtaining a free Photo ID should the Legislature pass a strict Photo ID law.
The cost of such a law could be in the millions of dollars, according to Hall. He said the official cost estimate in Missouri was more than $12 million to supply free IDs to voters without one, to pay for additional poll workers and to run a modest voter education campaign so people aren't caught unaware when they try to vote.
An Indiana law enacted in 2005 with a strict Photo ID requirement and with provisions for free IDs was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 by a 6-3 vote. The dissenters thought it put an unconstitutional burden on the right to participate in federal elections.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 27 states have voter ID laws that go beyond the requirements of the Help America Vote Act. Of these, eight are strict Photo ID laws. The other 19 allow for other forms of identification without photos.
Damon Circosta, executive director of the nonprofit N.C. Center for Voter Education, is asking Republican legislators to take care as they draft a bill to avoid doing more harm than good. "While we take measures to increase security," Circosta said, "we should also look at other ways to increase voter turnout, such as electronic voter registration, Election Day registration and expanding registration activities by agencies.
"Voter turnout in the United States is already abysmally low," he added. "Anything that might suppress turnout should be carefully scrutinized." | 5,181 | 2,493 | 0.000405 |
warc | 201704 | No, this is not another blog post about the Oscars. In case you missed it, this week the USTR released its “Out-Of Cycle Review of Notorious Markets.” This used to be published as part of the Special 301 Report which looks at IP violations by U.S. trading partners, but is now published separately. Basically, this is a sampling of some of the “Worst of the Worst” places for copyright infringement and counterfeiting. USTR describes the list as follows:
“The Notorious Markets List identifies selected markets, including those on the Internet, which exemplify the problem of marketplaces dealing in infringing goods and helping to sustain global piracy and counterfeiting. These are marketplaces that have been the subject of enforcement action or that may merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights infringements.”
So what’s on the list? The report identifies nine different categories of markets, both online and offline (although mostly online):
Pay-per-download sites that sell pirated content (e.g. allofmp3 clones) Sites that provide links to infringing material (e.g. Baidu, the Chinese search engine) B2B & B2C websites (e.g. Taobao) BitTorrent Indexing sites (e.g. The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, Btjunkie) BitTorrent Tracker sites (e.g. Rutracker, Demonoid) Social media sites and cyberlockers (e.g. vKontakte) Live sports piracy (e.g. TV Ants) Smartphone software piracy (e.g. 91.com) Physical markets (e.g. Harco Glodok in Jakarta, Nehru Place in New Delhi)
The findings here are not surprising to people who follow this issue. However, the fact that the USTR publicly cites the problem has ruffled some feathers. Groups like Public Knowledge have already begun to publicly grumble about the report claiming that the USTR is taking on too much of a law enforcement role. (Of course, it is not just the USTR taking on law enforcement that Public Knowledge objects to, but any government or private sector entity enforcing copyright laws online, as is evidenced by their continued objection to increased enforcement efforts.) Groups like Public Knowledge and EFF also criticize the process by which USTR creates these reports, while not actually denying that any of the examples are incorrect. In fact, Public Knowledge even recently admitted, “PK can’t claim to know whether any services that appear on the USTR’s watchlist would violate US law were it applicable, or whether they violate Chinese, South Korean, or any other country’s laws.”
Public Knowledge may not be sure if these examples are valid, but most of us are. For example, the Bahia Market in Guayaquil, Ecuador is accurately identified as a location where a large number of vendors sell illegal goods. I visited the market earlier this year and can attest to the validity of its inclusion in this list. Even my guidebook, ever wanting to put the best face on the city, described it diplomatically as, “La Bahía, near the Malecón north of Olmedo, is more of a black market. All kinds of goods, from shoes to refrigerators, arrive in a tax-free, semi-legal way.”
The list of online “notorious markets” is equally valid. The growing problem of online piracy with websites like cyberlockers is fairly well-documented. As David Price, Head of Piracy Intelligence reported at a recent ITIF event, copyright infringing use of cyberlockers is responsible for approximately 5.1 percent of global Internet traffic. Neither is the problem of rampant online sports piracy a big secret. For example, a recent article in BusinessWeek detailed the growing problem of live sports piracy and how the impact it has on U.S. industries. Some online streaming services, such as Justin.TV work with IP rights holders to protect their content and respond to piracy. But many sites (and countries) do nothing.
Of course, some might question why the government is even publishing this list in the first place. Is this like publishing a list of “Best Street Corners to Buy Illegal Drugs?” However, this report does not reveal information that isn’t already widely known. The fact that IP theft occurs in these locations is no secret.
The report also underscores some of the main points we have made before at ITIF: 1) that piracy and counterfeiting are such intractable problems precisely because in many places it is a profitable business (and thus we should try to limit its profitability); 2) that many of these “notorious markets” thrive when government ignores the activity; and 3) that the U.S. needs to look towards new solutions like COICA to fight back at online infringement because existing tools are not enough.
Increasingly copyright infringement should be recognized as a global problem, not just because it happens in every country, but because in a global economy, the losses will be shared by many. When Chris Corbould accepted the Oscar for Visual Effects for the movie Inception (a movie which can easily be found to download illegally online) he thanked his special effects teams in the US, Canada, France, UK and Morocco who all helped to make the final product. This should serve as a reminder to every country that contributes to the creative economy that they have a stake in protecting IP. It should also remind Congress that one reason they should take action domestically is because too little is being done by our international partners, and at least for the near future, we have the most to lose.
So rather than defend the interest of foreign criminals whose actions directly hurt hard working and law abiding American workers and consumers, as Public Knowledge and their allies do, we should be instead asking what next? What else can we do with this list to protect rights holders? Here’s one idea: use this list to hold recipients of American and multinational (e.g., World Bank) foreign aid accountable. Why are we giving aid to Russia when they openly allow Legalsounds.com and other allofmp3 clones to thrive (and no, the “sounds” are not legal)? Why are we giving aid to China when the vast majority of software consumed there is pirated? This is worse than our prior policy toward tobacco when we subsidized tobacco farmers yet spent millions getting people not to smoke (or the current federal programs that promote excessive cheese consumption to benefit dairy farmers while also running anti-obesity campaigns). So rather than complain that USTR is doing its job by identifying criminal activity that directly threatens America’s economic well-being, we should instead be advocating that it is time to put real consequences behind the list. If you are a nation and you want America’s help, we’re happy to give it, but not if you are stealing from us. | 6,818 | 3,270 | 0.000313 |
warc | 201704 | Research by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center specialists has uncovered a novel pathway in the origin of pancreatic cancers, one of the deadliest of malignancies. Their findings are reported in the June 23, 2003, issue of Cancer Cell. Working with cancer cells from 55 patients, the Hopkins team found that a growth signal normally turned off in adult tissues is mistakenly turned back on after injury or inflammation of the pancreas. "We think reactivation may be a first step in initiating pancreatic cancer, well before the onset of any alterations to the pancreatic cells genetic material," says Steven D. Leach, M.D., Paul K. Neumann Professor in Pancreatic Cancer at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and director of the study. The Notch pathway, when functioning normally, regulates embryonic development in a wide variety of organisms, ranging from fruit flies to humans. In adult tissues, the pathway becomes dormant as cells become differentiated to perform specialized functions. But, when the pancreas is injured or diseased, Notch signaling may be reactivated in the adult pancreas, resulting in conversion of adult pancreas cells to cells similar to those seen in embryonic pancreas. These primitive cells accumulate in the epithelium, or lining, of the pancreas, setting the stage for the additional genetic changes that lead to cancer. "Using drugs to deactivate the Notch pathway could prevent these cancer-causing events from occurring," says Leach.
Team discovers how bacteria exploit a chink in the body's armor
20.01.2017 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rabies viruses reveal wiring in transparent brains
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Yersiniae cause severe intestinal infections. Studies using Yersinia pseudotuberculosis as a model organism aim to elucidate the infection mechanisms of these...
Researchers from the University of Hamburg in Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, have synthesized a new superconducting material by growing a few layers of an antiferromagnetic transition-metal chalcogenide on a bismuth-based topological insulator, both being non-superconducting materials.
While superconductivity and magnetism are generally believed to be mutually exclusive, surprisingly, in this new material, superconducting correlations...
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Among the general public, solar thermal energy is currently associated with dark blue, rectangular collectors on building roofs. Technologies are needed for aesthetically high quality architecture which offer the architect more room for manoeuvre when it comes to low- and plus-energy buildings. With the “ArKol” project, researchers at Fraunhofer ISE together with partners are currently developing two façade collectors for solar thermal energy generation, which permit a high degree of design flexibility: a strip collector for opaque façade sections and a solar thermal blind for transparent sections. The current state of the two developments will be presented at the BAU 2017 trade fair.
As part of the “ArKol – development of architecturally highly integrated façade collectors with heat pipes” project, Fraunhofer ISE together with its partners...
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warc | 201704 | Smart dust particles consist of a computer chip, about a millimetre in dimension, surrounded by a polymer sheath that can be made to wrinkle or smooth out by applying a small voltage. Roughening the surface of the polymer means the drag on the smart dust particle increases and it floats higher in the air; conversely, smoothing out the surface causes the particle to sink. Simulations show that by switching between rough and smooth modes, the smart dust particles can gradually hop towards a target, even in swirling winds.
Professor John Barker, who will be describing possible applications of smart dust at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Preston on 18th April said, “The concept of using smart dust swarms for planetary exploration has been talked about for some time, but this is the first time anyone has looked at how it could actually be achieved. Computer chips of the size and sophistication needed to make a smart dust particle now exist and we are looking through the range of polymers available to find one that matches our requirements for high deformation using minimal voltages.”
Smart dust particles would use wireless networking to communicate with each other and form swarms. Professor Barker explains, “We envisage that most of the particles can only talk to their nearest neighbours but a few can communicate at much longer distances. In our simulations we’ve shown that a swarm of 50 smart dust particles can organise themselves into a star formation, even in turbulent wind. The ability to fly in formation means that the smart dust could form a phased array. It would then be possible to process information between the distributed computer chips and collectively beam a signal back to an orbiting spacecraft.”
In order for the smart dust to be useful in planetary exploration, they would need to carry sensors. With current technology, chemical sensors tend to be rather large for the sand-grain sized particles that could be carried by the thin Martian atmosphere. However, the atmosphere of Venus is much denser and could carry smart sensors up to a few centimetres in size. Professor Barker said, “Scientific studies could theoretically be carried out on Venus using the technology we have now. However, miniaturisation is coming on rapidly. By 2020, we should have chips that have components which are just a few nanometres across, which means our smart particles would behave more like macro-molecules diffusing through an atmosphere rather than dust grains.”
The group at Glasgow thinks it will be some years before smart dust is ready to launched into space. Professor Barker said, “We are still at an early stage, working on simulations and components. We have a lot of obstacles to overcome before we are even ready to physically test our designs. However, the potential applications of smart dust for space exploration are very exciting. Our first close-up studies of extra-solar planets could come from a smart dust swarm delivered to another solar system by ion-drive.”
SF State astronomer searches for signs of life on Wolf 1061 exoplanet
20.01.2017 | San Francisco State University
Molecule flash mob
19.01.2017 | Technische Universität Wien
An important step towards a completely new experimental access to quantum physics has been made at University of Konstanz. The team of scientists headed by...
Yersiniae cause severe intestinal infections. Studies using Yersinia pseudotuberculosis as a model organism aim to elucidate the infection mechanisms of these...
Researchers from the University of Hamburg in Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, have synthesized a new superconducting material by growing a few layers of an antiferromagnetic transition-metal chalcogenide on a bismuth-based topological insulator, both being non-superconducting materials.
While superconductivity and magnetism are generally believed to be mutually exclusive, surprisingly, in this new material, superconducting correlations...
Laser-driving of semimetals allows creating novel quasiparticle states within condensed matter systems and switching between different states on ultrafast time scales
Studying properties of fundamental particles in condensed matter systems is a promising approach to quantum field theory. Quasiparticles offer the opportunity...
Among the general public, solar thermal energy is currently associated with dark blue, rectangular collectors on building roofs. Technologies are needed for aesthetically high quality architecture which offer the architect more room for manoeuvre when it comes to low- and plus-energy buildings. With the “ArKol” project, researchers at Fraunhofer ISE together with partners are currently developing two façade collectors for solar thermal energy generation, which permit a high degree of design flexibility: a strip collector for opaque façade sections and a solar thermal blind for transparent sections. The current state of the two developments will be presented at the BAU 2017 trade fair.
As part of the “ArKol – development of architecturally highly integrated façade collectors with heat pipes” project, Fraunhofer ISE together with its partners...
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warc | 201704 | 7 Post-Workout Skincare Tips to Maintain That Healthy Glow
We know that nothing gets you going for the day like sweating it out in the gym or going for an early morning run. It helps you lose those extra calories, keeps you fit and gives you a healthy glow on your face. But your post-workout skincare routine will decide how long that glow lasts. In fact, if you don’t take care, you can get acne and skin infections
because of your workout.
We share seven post-workout skincare tips with you to help you stay gorgeous.
1.
Get Out of Your Clothes: After you are done working out, change out of those clothes as soon as possible. Gym clothes tend to gather a considerable amount of bacteria and germs due to sweat, so get out of them instead of trying to cool off in the air-conditioning.
2.
Go Hands-Free: Do not touch your gym gloves or sweaty hands on your face till you go for a bath. Always use a fresh towel to wipe sweat off. Your hands touch a lot of equipment and different parts of your body, along with gathering sweat. You don’t want it anywhere near your face—trust us!
3.
Have a Cold Shower: When you go for a shower, opt for cold or extremely mild hot water instead of a warm, steamy bath. While the latter is tempting, the former will help your skin relax and balance the body temperature. This will ensure that there are no sudden fluctuations in your skin.
4.
Be Gentle: Wash your face with a mild cleanser. You may want to use a harsh exfoliating face wash to scrub off the sweat and dirt, but this will only make your skin sensitive and vulnerable. After sweating out the toxins, the skin needs to rest and repair itself. After a bath, use a fresh towel to first wipe your face and then your body. Be gentle when using it on the face.
5.
Moisturise: Once out of the shower, let your skin breathe for a minute or two, then use a hydrating moisturiser on your skin. Avoid rubbing it harshly, especially around your eyes.
6.
Stay Hydrated: Drink at least a bottle or half a bottle of water after the shower too. You can drink water during the workout too, but a shower will leave your skin slightly dehydrated.
7.
Always Wear Sunscreen: Finally, never make the cardinal beauty sin—stay sun-protected.
Go girl, get out there and get in shape while looking gorgeous. Let us know if you have any more valuable tips for skincare—we’d love to hear from you.
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Images courtesy: idiva.com, beautytidbits.com | 2,498 | 1,297 | 0.000787 |
warc | 201704 | What can you do, other than leave the relationship, when you feel that you love your spouse but you don’t feel loved by them?
In their relationship system, Nelly tends to be the caretaker, while Scott is the taker. Nelly often thinks about what would please Scott, while Scott rarely thinks about what Nelly wants or feels.
What should Nelly do? Should she leave Scott, even though she loves him? Should she continue to try to get him to care about her, which has never worked? These are the questions Nelly had for me in a counseling session with me on the phone.
Nelly was quite surprised when I told her that neither action was warranted at this time.
“Nelly, there is a good possibility that the way Scott treats you is a mirror of how you treat yourself. How often do you think about what you want or how you feel?”
“Not very often. I usually think more about Scott and my kids than I do about myself. I think it’s selfish to think about myself. I want to be loving, not selfish.”
Nelly was confused between selfishness and self-responsibility. Actually, in their relationship, Scott was the one who was actively being selfish, in expecting Nelly to give herself up to take responsibility for his feelings and needs. But by not caring about her own feelings and needs, Nelly was training not only Scott, but her children as well to be selfish. The children were already learning to blame her for their feelings and expect her to give herself up for them. As soon as Scott or the children would get angry or withdraw, Nelly would feel guilty and responsible and give herself up to do what they wanted.
Nelly would not be able to tell whether Scott really loved her or not until she started to love herself. What if she left him and met another man? I assured her that the same thing would eventually happen if she remained a caretaker, because people usually end up treating us the way we treat ourselves.
“So what do I do?” asked Nelly. “I’m so used to taking care of everyone else. I have no idea how to take care of myself.”
I began to help Nelly learn the Inner Bonding process. “Imagine that your feelings and needs are a small child that you’ve just adopted. What would you do to help her begin to feel loved?”
“Well, I would spend time with her, and listen to her and hold her. I would let her know that I’m here and not going away. I would do lots of things to help her feel safe and loved.”
“Exactly!” I stated. “This is what you need to start to do for yourself. Keep imagining that your own feelings are a small child and you are the parent of this child. You really do know how to be loving – it’s just that you’ve never thought about being loving to yourself. Take all that you’ve learned about giving to others and now give some of it to yourself.”
Then we moved on to another aspect of Inner Bonding. “Nelly, do you have a source of spiritual Guidance that you turn to?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I’m a Christian and I turn to Jesus.”
“Good,” I said. “Now you need to start asking Jesus for information regarding the loving action toward yourself. You do this by asking a question, such as, ‘Jesus, what would the loving action be toward myself when Scott is angry with me?’ or ‘What is in my highest good when my children are being demanding or disrespectful toward me?’ Then imagine what Jesus might say to you. You might have to make it up for awhile, but after awhile you will begin to experience that Jesus is actually answering you. You will begin to experience two-way communication between you and Jesus. Are you willing to try this?”
Nelly was willing. I cautioned her that Scott and her children might be upset with her for awhile, because they were used to her being a caretaker, but that if they really loved her and wanted her to be happy, they would end up supporting her in loving herself.
“But what if Scott just stays mad?” she asked.
“Well, then you can decide what is in your highest good. But until you are loving to yourself, you will not know the truth about Scott. Most of the people I’ve worked with have found that when they are practicing Inner Bonding and are loving to themselves long enough, their whole relationship improves. I can’t guarantee it, but isn’t it worth a try, rather than just giving up?”
“Yes, I don’t really want to leave Scott. I’m excited about this. I finally have some hope for our relationship!”
The outcome? Instead of staying mad for long, Nelly was thrilled to discover that Scott was actually treating her more lovingly!Find out how
SELFQUEST®unleashes the true power and consciousness within you to help you realize the life changes you desire and deserve. The power to find yourself, heal yourself and love yourself through the transformational self-healing practice of Inner Bonding.
© 2016, Dr. Margaret Paul. All rights reserved. | 5,091 | 2,233 | 0.000475 |
warc | 201704 | Author + information Received August 7, 2012. Revision received November 28, 2012. Accepted December 7, 2012. Published online March 1, 2013. Author Information Thomas Zeller, MD ⁎, ⁎(, ) Michael D. Dake, MD †, Gunnar Tepe, MD ‡, Klaus Brechtel, MD ‡, Elias Noory, MD ⁎, Ulrich Beschorner, MD ⁎, Patricia L. Kultgen, PhD §and Aljoscha Rastan, MD ⁎ ↵⁎ Reprint requests and correspondence: Prof. Dr. Thomas Zeller, Universitäts-Herzzentrum Freiburg–Bad Krozingen, Südring 15, D-79189 Bad Krozingen, Germany Abstract Objectives This study sought to evaluate the outcomes of drug-eluting stent treatment for femoropopliteal in-stent restenosis (ISR). Background ISR after femoropopliteal interventions is an increasing problem. Although the role of drug-eluting stents in the treatment of coronary ISR is well defined, no published studies have examined drug-eluting stents in the treatment of femoropopliteal ISR. Methods This study examines 108 patients with 119 ISR lesions who were enrolled in the ZILVER-PTX single-arm study, a prospective, multicenter clinical trial of 787 patients. All patients were treated with paclitaxel-eluting nitinol stents. Results Mean patient age was 68.3 ± 9.4 years; 61.1% of patients were men. Mean lesion length was 133.0 ± 91.7 mm; 33.6% of lesions were >150 mm long and 31.1% of lesions were totally occluded. Procedural success was achieved in 98.2% of lesions with 2.1 ± 1.2 stents placed per lesion. Primary patency was 95.7% at 6 months and 78.8% at 1 year. Freedom from target lesion revascularization was 96.2% at 6 months, 81.0% at 1 year, and 60.8% at 2 years. Forty patients experienced major adverse events, exclusively target lesion revascularization. Before treatment, 81.1% of patients had Rutherford scores ≥3; at 2 years, 60.9% of patients had Rutherford scores ≤1. Both ankle brachial index and walking impairment questionnaire scores significantly improved following treatment. The 1-year fracture rate of stents used in ISR lesions was 1.2%. No significant risk factors associated with loss of patency were identified. Conclusions Treatment of femoropopliteal ISR with paclitaxel-eluting stents results in favorable acute, midterm, and long-term outcomes. (Zilver PTX Global Registry [ZILVER-PTX]; NCT01094678) drug-eluting stent(s) femoral artery in-stent restenosis paclitaxel peripheral occlusive artery disease revascularization
Stent placement has become a standard treatment modality in peripheral vascular interventions. Randomized controlled studies using second-generation stents have shown superior technical and clinical outcomes over percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) in lesions of the superficial femoral and proximal popliteal arteries (1–5). Therefore, the Trans-Atlantic Inter-Society Consensus (TASC) II guidelines (6) favor endovascular approaches over surgical revascularization in femoropopliteal lesions ≤15 cm in length. However, in-stent restenosis (ISR) has been reported in 19% to 37% of femoropopliteal lesions treated with bare-metal stents within 1 year of treatment (2,3,5,7–10). Moreover, the risk of ISR increases with increasing lesion length (10–12).
The treatment of ISR in the femoropopliteal artery is 1 of the major remaining challenges of endovascular therapy because treatment modalities such as PTA and cutting balloon angioplasty have failed to provide acceptable mid-term results (13,14). To avoid bypass surgery, alternative endovascular approaches are needed to achieve durable long-term results in the treatment of ISR, particularly in long lesions.
Drug-eluting stents, which are available globally, and drug-eluting balloons, which are available in Europe and Latin America, are established therapies for the treatment of coronary ISR (15–17) and may also be useful in the treatment of peripheral ISR. The ZILVER-PTX single-arm study investigated the performance of a paclitaxel-eluting nitinol stent in the superficial femoral and the above-the-knee popliteal arteries (18). This study had very broad inclusion criteria, which allowed for the treatment of patients with femoropopliteal ISR. Here we report the outcomes of patients with ISR lesions who were treated within the ZILVER-PTX single-arm study and compare the results with the current literature.
Methods
The ZILVER-PTX single-arm study is a prospective, multicenter clinical trial that enrolled 787 patients in Europe, Canada, and Korea between April 2006 and June 2008. A detailed description of the study and the 1-year outcomes for the entire cohort, as well as limited, preliminary results for the ISR subgroup, have been previously published (18,19). Approval was obtained from each site's ethics committee, and patients provided written informed consent before enrollment. Patients were eligible for the study if they had ≥1 de novo or restenotic lesions of the above-the-knee segment of the femoropopliteal artery with >50% diameter stenosis and baseline clinical symptoms classified as Rutherford category ≥2. Patients could have multiple lesions requiring treatment, a history of prior stent placement within the lesion, bilateral lesions requiring treatment, and lesions of unlimited length. This report describes the 2-year results for patients who were treated for ISR. Patients treated for multiple lesion types (e.g., both de novo and ISR) were excluded from this analysis.
Study device
Patients were treated with the Zilver PTX drug-eluting stent (Cook Medical, Bloomington, Indiana), a nitinol stent with a polymer-free paclitaxel coating at 3 μg/mm
2 dose density. Pharmacokinetics of the device have been previously described (20). Available stents were 6 to 10 mm in diameter and 20 to 80 mm in length. Although lesions could be of unlimited length, the protocol specified planned treatment with a maximum of 4 Zilver PTX stents per patient. Placement of bare Zilver stents was allowed if additional stents were required. Pre- and post-dilation were performed at the interventionalist's discretion. Medication
Clopidogrel was administered at least 24 h before the procedure or as a loading dose during the procedure. Following treatment, clopidogrel therapy was continued for ≥60 days and aspirin therapy was continued indefinitely. Heparin was administered periprocedurally if heparinization was part of an institution's standard practice. Administered doses of all anticoagulants were based on the standard practice at each institution.
Pre- and post-procedural diagnostic workup
Prior to the procedure and at 1-, 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-ups, patient-perceived walking speed and distance were assessed using the Walking Impairment Questionnaire (21), symptoms were categorized using the Rutherford-Becker classification, and lower limb hemodynamics were assessed with the ankle-brachial index. Stent integrity was assessed by radiograph within 3 days after the procedure and at 6 and 12 months. Target lesion patency was assessed by angiography immediately after stent implantation. Duplex ultrasound was conducted within 3 business days of the procedure and at 6- and 12-month follow-up. Per protocol, duplex ultrasound assessment of lesion patency was not required after 12-month follow-up. Restenosis was confirmed by angiography before target lesion revascularization (TLR).
Definitions
Procedural success was defined as <30% residual diameter stenosis following stent placement. Patency was defined as <50% diameter stenosis, including the region within 5 mm proximal and/or distal to the target lesion as assessed by angiography or duplex ultrasound. For this analysis, a peak systolic velocity ratio <2.5 was used as the patency threshold. Clinically driven TLR was defined as a reintervention performed for >50% diameter stenosis within 5 mm of the target lesion after documentation of recurrent clinical symptoms of peripheral artery disease following the initial procedure. Event-free survival (EFS) was defined as freedom from major adverse events (e.g., procedure- or device-related death, clinically driven TLR, target limb ischemia requiring bypass surgery or amputation, and surgical repair of the target vessel) and freedom from worsening of Rutherford classification by ≥2 classes or to class 5 or 6.
Statistics
Continuous variables were summarized with means and standard deviations; categorical variables were summarized with counts and percentages. As appropriate, the number of observations is the number of patients, treated limbs, or implanted stents. Kaplan-Meier analyses were performed to estimate patency, freedom from TLR, and EFS over time. A paired t test was used to compare pre-procedure ankle brachial index and Walking Impairment Questionnaire values to the follow-up values. A generalized estimating equation model was used to evaluate the association between potential risk factors (e.g., diabetes, lesion length, smoking history, Rutherford classification, occlusion, calcification, lesion location, patent runoff vessels, fracture in prior stent, type of prior stent, days from previous intervention, number of previous interventions, proximal reference vessel diameter, and percentage of diameter stenosis) and 12-month patency; p values <0.05 were considered significant. Data were analyzed using SAS software (version 9.3, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina).
Results
One hundred and eight patients with 119 ISR lesions of the femoropopliteal artery were treated with Zilver PTX drug-eluting stents. Most patients were male (61.1%), hypertensive (84.3%), hypercholesterolemic (74.1%), and had a history of smoking (81.5%) (Table 1). Mean lesion length was 133.0 ± 91.7 mm and 33.6% (40 of 119) of lesions were >150 mm long (Table 2). Most ISR lesions had little to no calcification (68.9%, 82 of 119); however, 31.1% (37 of 119) of the ISR lesions were totally occluded before treatment. Of the 119 ISR lesions, 8.4% (10 of 119) had severely fractured stents (i.e., type III or IV fracture, complete transection of stent) before Zilver PTX treatment, 22.7% (27 of 119) had been previously treated within the last 6 months, and 51.3% (61 of 119) had undergone ≥2 previous interventions.
Procedural outcomes
Procedural success (i.e., <30% restenosis following stent placement) was achieved in 98.2% (112 of 114) of ISR lesions. Most patients were treated for a single lesion (91.7%, 99 of 108); 7 patients were treated for 2 lesions; and 2 patients were treated for 3 lesions. On average, 2.1 ± 1.2 stents were placed in each lesion.
Lesion patency, TLR, and event-free survival
The Kaplan-Meier estimate of primary patency was 95.7% at 6 months and 78.8% at 12 months (Fig. 1). Per protocol, duplex ultrasound assessments of patency were not required after 12-month follow-up; however, clinical follow-up continued through 24 months. Kaplan-Meier estimates of freedom from clinically driven TLR at 6 and 12 months were similar to the patency estimates over the same period. Specifically, the Kaplan-Meier estimate of freedom from TLR was 96.2% at 6 months, 81.0% at 12 months, and 60.8% at 24 months (Fig. 2).
During the course of the study, major adverse events were experienced by 40 patients treated for ISR lesions. Thirty-eight patients each underwent a single TLR, and 2 patients each underwent 2 TLR; 50% of the revascularizations occurred within 12 months of treatment. No amputations or deaths occurred. Because all patients who failed EFS experienced a TLR, Kaplan-Meier estimates of freedom from EFS are identical to estimates of freedom from TLR (Fig. 3).
Multivariate analysis of risk factors for recurrent ISR
A generalized estimating equation model was used to evaluate the association between potential risk factors and loss of patency; however, no significant predictors of recurrent ISR were identified (Table 3).
Clinical outcomes
In addition to establishing vessel patency, treatment of ISR lesions with the Zilver PTX stent also provided clinical benefit to patients. Before treatment, 81.1% (86 of 106) of patients had Rutherford scores ≥3. After treatment, 63.2% (62 of 98) of patients at 12 months and 60.9% (53 of 87) of patients at 24 months had Rutherford scores ≤1. Significant improvements in limb hemodynamic status, as assessed by ankle brachial index, and in patient-perceived walking speed, walking distance, and climbing were also observed (Table 4).
Stent fracture rates
Based on x-ray data collected at the 12-month follow-up, the fracture rate of Zilver PTX stents used in ISR lesions was 1.2% (3 of 257).
Discussion
To date, the ZILVER-PTX single-arm study is the largest trial to prospectively investigate endovascular treatment of femoropopliteal ISR lesions. Of the 787 treated patients, 108 patients were treated for 119 ISR lesions. Treatment of ISR lesions with a paclitaxel-eluting stent had a primary patency estimate of 95.7% at 6 months and 78.8% at 12 months. Freedom from clinically driven TLR at 6 and 12 months was similar to the patency estimates over the same period. Compared with most other published reports of femoropopliteal ISR lesion treatment (13,14,22–27), treatment of ISR lesions with paclitaxel-eluting stents resulted in higher midterm rates of primary patency (Table 5).
Notably, this is the first prospective study to report 2-year results for endovascular treatment of femoropopliteal ISR lesions. Although patency data were only systematically collected through 12-month follow-up, data on TLR, EFS, and other clinical outcomes were collected through 2 years. In this difficult-to-treat patient population, freedom from clinically driven TLR was 60.8% at 2 years. Although revascularization was required for some patients, the TLR procedures were predominantly percutaneous interventions (88%, 37 of 42) and no patients underwent amputation.
These promising results are likely due to several advantageous features of the Zilver PTX stent, a self-expanding nitinol stent with a polymer-free paclitaxel coating. Local delivery of paclitaxel, a drug that disrupts normal microtubule function, may prevent neointimal hyperplasia by inhibiting smooth muscle cell migration, proliferation, and extracellular matrix secretion (28). Because low doses of paclitaxel can inhibit smooth muscle proliferation without inhibiting endothelial cell proliferation (29), local paclitaxel delivery may inhibit restenosis after endovascular interventions without preventing re-endothelialization. This mode of action may reduce the rate of subacute stent thrombosis. Additionally, unlike other drug-eluting stents, the Zilver PTX stent has no polymers, binders, or carriers within the drug coating that might elicit potential inflammatory or thrombotic reactions. Moreover, placement of a second stent layer does not appear to adversely affect the integrity of the Zilver PTX stent as only 1.2% (3 of 257) of stents used in this study had detectable fractures at 12 months.
Few controlled prospective data are published about endovascular treatment of femoropopliteal ISR lesions. Dick et al. (13) performed a pilot trial randomly comparing PTA with cutting balloon angioplasty in femoropopliteal ISR lesions with a mean length of 8 cm. At 6 months, only 27% of PTA-treated lesions and 35% of cutting balloon-treated lesions were patent. In this small study, neither angioplasty method provided acceptable short-term outcomes. In a larger retrospective study by Tosaka et al. (14) that included 133 patients, PTA treatment of femoropopliteal ISR lesions resulted in 69% patency for stenosed lesions at 12 months; however, only 23% of treated occluded lesions were patent at 12 months.
The use of debulking strategies, such as laser atherectomy, directional atherectomy, and mechanical thrombectomy, for treatment of femoropopliteal ISR has been investigated in several case series (Table 5) (22–27,30,31). Supplemental PTA, stent, and/or stent-graft placement were often used adjunctively in these reported experiences. Most of the studies were small (treating 20 to 40 patients) and have reported 1-year primary patency rates ranging from 19% to 58%. Compared with available data on PTA alone or debulking strategies, the results of the ZILVER-PTX single-arm study suggest that treatment of femoropopliteal ISR lesions with paclitaxel-eluting stents is quite promising.
The treatment of femoropopliteal ISR with endovascular brachytherapy has also been examined. In a retrospective case series, 90 consecutive patients underwent angioplasty and subsequent brachytherapy with liquid beta-emitting rhenium Re 188 (32). Similar to the results of the ZILVER-PTX single-arm study, primary patency was 95.2% at 6 months and 79.8% at 12 months. However, the utility of brachytherapy may be limited due to the time-consuming nature of the procedure, complex radiation safety measurements, and staffing requirements. Additionally, patients with stent fracture were excluded from brachytherapy treatment due to the potential risk of balloon rupture. In contrast, patients with stent fracture may be treated with the Zilver PTX stent.
There is also much interest in the potential role of drug-eluting balloons in the treatment of femoropopliteal ISR. One small study of 39 patients reported an impressive 1-year primary patency rate of 92.1% (33). However, 10% of patients also underwent laser-mediated debulking, and 10% of patients required bailout stent placement to treat flow-limiting dissection. Therefore, the patency rate cannot be attributed to the effects of the drug-eluting balloon alone. Additional investigation is necessary, and several ongoing randomized controlled trials are comparing drug-eluting balloons to uncoated balloons for the treatment of femoropopliteal ISR.
Previously, Tosaka et al. (14) identified total occlusion and reference vessel diameter as independent, predictive factors for recurrent ISR following PTA treatment of femoropopliteal ISR. Additionally, in a study that treated femoropopliteal restenosis with angioplasty and stenting, treatment within 180 days of the initial endovascular intervention was identified as a significant predictor for recurrent restenosis (34). In contrast, of the 14 risk factors considered (Table 3), none was predictive for recurrent ISR following treatment with a paclitaxel-eluting stent in this study.
Study limitations
This study lacked a control group. However, the 12-month patency rate for the ISR lesions was only slightly lower than the patency rate for the entire ZILVER-PTX single-arm trial (78.8% vs. 86.2%), which included 76.7% de novo lesions (18). Furthermore, all angiography and duplex ultrasound data are self-reported by sites, and no core laboratory was used to standardize data. Although these results are promising, head-to-head comparative studies are necessary to determine whether the Zilver PTX stent is more effective than other endovascular modalities for treatment of femoropopliteal ISR.
Future perspectives
Several ongoing randomized controlled trials are comparing drug-eluting balloons to uncoated balloons for treatment of femoropopliteal ISR (ISAR-PEBIS [Paclitaxel Eluting Balloon and Conventional Balloon for In-Stent Restenosis of the Superficial Femoral Artery], FAIR [Femoral Artery In-Stent Restenosis Trial], PACUBA I [Paclitaxel Balloon Versus Standard Balloon in In-Stent Restenoses of the Superficial Femoral Artery], COPA CABANA [Cotavance Paclitaxel-Coated Balloon Versus Uncoated Balloon Angioplasty for Treatment of In-stent Restenosis in SFA and Popliteal Arteries], PLAISIR [Paclitaxel Eluting Balloon Application in SFA In-Stent Restenosis], and DEBATE-ISR [Drug Eluting Balloon in Peripheral Intervention for In-Stent Restenosis]). Additionally, other trials are investigating the performance of the Viabahn endoprosthesis (RELINE [Gore Viabahn Versus Plain Old Balloon Angioplasty for Superficial Femoral Artery Restenosis]), drug-coated balloons with and without prior photoablation (PHOTOPAC [Photoablative Atherectomy Followed by a Paclitaxel-Coated Balloon to Inhibit Restenosis in In-Stent Femoro-Popliteal Obstructions]), laser atherectomy with PTA (EXCITE ISR [Randomized Study of Laser and Balloon Angioplasty Versus Balloon Angioplasty to Treat Peripheral In-Stent Restenosis]), and photoablation alone (PATENT [Photo-Ablation using the TURBO-Booster and Excimer Laser for In-stent Restenosis Treatment]) for treatment of femoropopliteal ISR.
Conclusions
The subcohort of the ZILVER-PTX single-arm trial is to date the largest prospective investigation of the midterm and long-term outcomes of femoropopliteal ISR lesions following endovascular treatment. Stent-in-stent placement of a paclitaxel-eluting stent results in promising 1- and 2-year clinical outcomes with a low stent fracture rate.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Shraddha Mehta, PhD, and Alan Saunders, MS, of MED Institute Inc. (a Cook Group Company) for serving as study statisticians and Tony Ragheb, PhD, and Aaron Lottes, PhD, of MED Institute Inc. for providing critical review of the manuscript.
Footnotes
This study was sponsored by Cook Medical, Bloomington, Indiana. Prof. Dr. Zeller has received research grants and speaker honoraria from Cook Medical. Dr. Dake has received a research grant from Cook Medical; and has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards to Abbott Vascular and W. L. Gore. Dr. Kultgen is a full-time employee of MED Institute Inc., a Cook Medical Company. All other authors have reported that they have no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose.
Abbreviations and Acronyms EFS event-free survival ISR in-stent restenosis PTA percutaneous transluminal angioplasty TLR target lesion revascularization Received August 7, 2012. Revision received November 28, 2012. Accepted December 7, 2012. American College of Cardiology Foundation References ↵ Schillinger M., Sabeti S., Dick P., et al. ↵ Laird J.R., Katzen B.T., Scheinert D., et al., RESILIENT Investigators Dake M.D., Ansel G.M., Jaff M.R., et al., ZILVER-PTX Investigators ↵ Bosiers M., Torsello G., Gissler H.M., et al. Krankenberg H., Schlüter M., Steinkamp H.J., et al. ↵ Iida O., Soga Y., Hirano K., et al. ↵ ↵ Tosaka A., Soga Y., Iida O., et al. ↵ Kastrati A., Mehilli J., von Beckerath N., et al., ISAR-DESIRE Study Investigators Kolh P., Wijns W., Danchin N., et al., Task Force on Myocardial Revascularization of the ESC and the EACTS, EAPCI King S.B. 3rd., Smith S.C. Jr.., Hirshfeld J.W. Jr.., et al. ↵ Dake M.D., Scheinert D., Tepe G., et al. ↵ ↵ Hiatt W.R., Hirsch A.T., Regensteiner J.G., Brass E.P. ↵ Laird J.R. Jr.., Yeo K.K., Rocha-Singh K., et al. Zeller T., Rastan A., Sixt S., et al. ↵ Axel D.I., Kunert W., Göggelmann C., et al. ↵ Scheller B., Speck U., Romeike B., et al. Shammas N.W., Shammas G.A., Helou T.J., Voelliger C.M., Mrad L., Jerin M. Shammas N.W., Shammas G.A., Hafez A., Kelly R., Reynolds E., Shammas A.N. ↵ Werner M., Scheinert D., Henn M., et al. ↵ Stabile E., Virga V., Salemme L., et al. ↵ | 23,248 | 8,800 | 0.000115 |
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warc | 201704 | The types of vehicles available to socially responsible investors are the same as those available to all investors: stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), bonds, real estate, hedge funds and so on. However, socially responsible investors screen these vehicles differently than investors with a broader focus. They can also choose from vehicles specifically geared towards the socially responsible investor, like socially responsible mutual funds and ETFs. Let's evaluate the options.
Socially Responsible Stocks
Investing in individual stocks, as a socially responsible investor, is one of the most labor-intensive investing methods out there. Typically, someone who invested in individual stocks would analyze the company's annual reports, and perform ratio analysis to determine if a stock had profitability potential. He or she would also stay on top of its current performance, and the company's new developments to determine if any changes warranted buying more stock or selling existing holdings. In addition to screening for financials, socially responsible investors have to screen for ethical criteria, and it's not always easy to uncover all the details required to make the most informed decision about a company. Investors whose portfolios consist of individual stocks, also, must pay special attention to diversification - buying stocks that are concentrated in just one or two industries can make a portfolio highly volatile. Also, investors who make small purchases, or trade frequently, will pay lots of commissions, which can create a serious drag on returns. However, for investors who have the time and are willing to put in the effort, investing in individual stocks provides a high level of control in ensuring that every investment meets ethical screening criteria. Also, value investors, who have historically achieved some of the highest stock market returns, tend to be individual stock investors. Socially Responsible Mutual Funds A socially responsible mutual fund will invest in anywhere from a handful to hundreds of companies that meet specific ethical criteria. If you buy just one share, of a mutual fund, you'll own a small percentage of numerous stocks, whereas if you buy just one share of a stock, you're only exposed to one company. When you invest in a socially responsible mutual fund, you'll have to decide whether you're comfortable taking the investment company's word that the fund meets the ethical criteria it says it does, or whether you want to thoroughly research it to make sure you agree. If you're going to spend the time researching each of the individual stocks that the mutual fund invests in, you're creating even more work for yourself than if you were to invest in individual stocks. It's probably a better use of your time to thoroughly research a few mutual fund companies, and when you find one or more that you trust, let them do the work for you. Mutual funds often have minimum investment thresholds, such as $2,500 or $10,000, which can be difficult for beginning investors to meet. But, when you buy mutual funds directly from the brokerage that issues them, you won't pay commissions on your trades. On the other hand, the ongoing costs of owning a mutual fund can be more expensive, over time, than buying and holding individual stocks and paying very infrequent trading commissions. (Learn more in our article on Socially Responsible Mutual Funds.) Socially Responsible ETFs Mutual funds have begun to take a back seat to ETFs because, broadly speaking, ETFs are easier to trade and have lower expenses. Since expenses are the most reliable indicator of mutual fund performance, according to Morningstar.com, it makes sense that investors are leaving mutual funds in favor of ETFs. Socially responsible ETFs are put together in a similar manner as socially responsible mutual funds. However, they trade like stocks, so rather than needing, say, $2,500 to start investing, you can start investing in ETFs for as little as the cost of a single share, plus the trading commission. ETFs can also be more tax efficient than mutual funds, which matters if you're investing outside of a tax-advantaged retirement account. Socially Responsible Bonds You might consider some types of bonds to be socially responsible. You could invest in corporate bonds, which allow companies to borrow money from investors, or you could invest in municipal bonds, which fund local government projects and which some people view as a form of community development. You can also invest in bonds through mutual funds and ETFs rather than buying individual bonds. Bonds help to diversify a portfolio based on stocks and can smooth out fluctuations in portfolio value. Real Estate If you're extremely picky in your ethical investment criteria, real estate could be a great choice. You'll have a ton of control over what property to invest in and how to manage it. Real estate investing can be an especially logical choice for environmentally conscious investors, as owning property lets you make daily decisions that affect your environmental impact. It's also a sensible choice for other types of ethical investors, because property ownership doesn't require you to worry about corporate governance or sweatshop labor (except in the purchasing decisions you make when operating, maintaining, remodeling or furnishing your property). You can also use real estate investing to support community development. Government regulations often get in the way of private property rights. So, if you have specific plans for making a property environmentally responsible, check on local, city, state and federal regulations before you buy. For example, if you want to buy a home and install solar panels, make sure it's allowed and you can afford any required installation permits. A potential pitfall with owning property is that the operating and upkeep expenses, and the interest expenses, if you have to borrow money to purchase the property, can create a serious drag on any potential returns. Owning real estate also makes you susceptible to certain types of lawsuits (e.g., someone sues you because they get injured on your property). If you're not comfortable with all of the responsibilities associated with property ownership, or don't have enough money to get started, you can gain exposure to real estate through other methods, such as real estate stocks and real estate investment trusts. (For more, see Diversifying Your Portfolio With Real Estate And Infrastructure.) Hedge FundsHedge funds are only an option if you meet the SEC's criteria for being an accredited investor. Hedge funds often employ high-risk strategies with the intention of achieving high returns. High-risk might mean the use of investment techniques that most people don't understand, or investing in opportunities that aren't available to most people.
Some hedge funds focus on shareholder activism. So, if you've been looking for the kind of strength in numbers that can convince a company to change its behavior, a hedge fund might be your answer. Hedge funds can have expensive management and performance incentive fees, though, so make sure you understand what you're paying for before you invest. (Learn more in
Evaluating Hedge Fund Performance .) Don't Forget the BasicsNo matter which investment vehicle you choose, you can't overlook fundamentals, just because an investment is ethical. If you're investing in mutual funds, you can't ignore expense ratios; if you're investing in real estate, you can't ignore location. Ethical investment doesn't substitute one set of investment criteria for another - it adds a new level of investment criteria to an existing level.
You'll also have to confront the issue of whether buying into a socially responsible investment, issued by a company that caters to everyone is good enough, or whether you're only willing to work with companies that exclusively deal in socially responsible investments.
Next, we'll cover research strategies for ethical investments.
InvestingLearn about the advantages of investing in mutual funds rather than individual stocks, including the benefits of affordability, oversight and diversification. InvestingSocially responsible investing can make you feel good but it may not boost your returns. Managing WealthFind out how morals and ethics can bring you a surprising return. InvestingDiscover five reasons to choose mutual funds over ETFs, such as the wide variety of funds available, the higher service quality and the lack of commission fees. Financial AdvisorLearn how mutual funds work, why they are so popular and how younger investors can get started by putting mutual funds in their IRAs or 401(k)s. Financial AdvisorMore than 80 million people, or half of the households in America, invest in mutual funds. No matter what type of investor you are, there is bound to be a mutual fund that fits your style. InvestingThese steps will help you invest ethically without jeopardizing your financial goals. InvestingLearn how to buy mutual funds online; discover which websites offer mutual fund trading services, how to choose a fund and typical fees. | 9,172 | 3,802 | 0.000263 |
warc | 201704 | Belfast - “Do you like it?” asks my seven-year-old. “What is it?” “It’s a pineapple,” says the budding Cézanne.
“Then why is it orange?” I reply. He looks up from his drawing of a fruit bowl with a crestfallen expression.
I am, once again, pricked by guilt at my poor parenting. I know I am meant to compliment him, but I can’t bring myself to do so when his felt-tip-on-A4 effort lacks perspective, scale or any skill.
His flurry of tries at the weekend’s tag-rugby match were warmly applauded. But to praise him for a dismal drawing seems perverse.
I refuse to do so – even if it causes a sulk.
But I am fighting a losing battle. A recent report provides more ammunition to those who would wreathe the world in a garland of compliments.
A team of Japanese researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences has discovered that the more a person is complimented, the more the striatum part of their brain is stimulated and the better they perform a task.
“Compliments are as good as cash at making us work harder,” ran the headline.
I am not convinced. There is something fundamentally flawed about the conclusion.
Professor Norihiro Sadato, who tested a total of 48 people, says: “There seems to be scientific validity behind the message ‘praise to encourage improvement’. Complimenting someone could become an easy and effective strategy to use in the classroom.’’
That is precisely the problem. Paying a compliment is easy. And we have done it all too often in the name of building self-esteem in children.
My children frequently come back with silver stickers on their primary-school uniforms.
When I ask what they got them for – hoping to hear a stirring tale – I hear the inevitable: “Oh, everyone in our class got one.”
This is in sharp contrast to the school I attended. The headmaster was an old-fashioned, eagle-headed figure who equated the wearing of suede shoes with drug-taking. However, he had charm and manners in spades and would dash off carefully constructed gushes of praise to his pupils.
They were incredibly rare. You were lucky to receive one a year and they were only sent after some heroic act on the playing field or in the classroom.
It was the rarity that made them so valuable. Now, people expect to be complimented on a daily basis.
One of my most awkward meals was at a disappointing French restaurant when the chef, with Napoleonic self-regard, toured the tables scouting for compliments at the end of the meal. I tried to slink down in my seat in the hope he would bypass us.
Like a potty-training baby, he wanted to be applauded for doing his job. I mumbled that the meal was nice. “But what did you like about it?” he pushed.
I don’t like to offer compliments left and right, especially when they are sought out by a needy supplicant.
Dr Jean Twenge, the psychologist and author of Narcissism Epidemic, points out that this culture of compliments “puts the cart before the horse”.
Surely, when we work hard we develop high self-esteem, and then the compliments come – not the other way around?
And when it comes to persuading me to stay late in the office, it is no contest whether a compliment, or a pay rise, is likely to work.
My editor knows where to find my bank account details. – Irish Independent | 3,434 | 1,822 | 0.000579 |
warc | 201704 | Employment laws generate a lot of comment. Hardly a day goes by without the media reporting scare stories about the employment rights of UK employees, which are depicted as being anti competitive, unduly restrictive and in many cases, overly generous.
Each month, we are exposing some of the most common employment law myths and explaining the reality behind them. We are not pretending that employment law is easy – it isn’t, but generally it should not be difficult to get the basics right.
So far we have tackled the following myths:
1. In order to dismiss an employee, you must follow a particular procedure and if you do so, you can safely dismiss.
2. It’s not possible to retire employees anymore. 3. You can’t make a woman on maternity leave redundant. 4. Parents have the right to work part time. 5. An employer has to accept an employee’s resignation before it will take effect. 6. Employers must provide exiting staff with a reference.
If you missed these, click on the links for the answers.
This month we look at the steps employers have to take to prevent illegal working.
Myth
Employers do not need to do pre-employment immigration checks on British or EU recruits.
Busted
All employers have a duty to prevent illegal working and are required to undertake pre-employment immigration checks on all staff they wish to employ to ensure that they have the right to work in the UK.
If you employ someone who does not have the right to work in the UK, you are liable to pay a fine of up to £20,000 per illegal worker. However, if you have undertaken appropriate pre-employment checks you should be able to establish what is known as a “statutory excuse” and avoid paying a fine. However, if you “knowingly” employ someone who does not have the right to work in the UK, this would be a criminal offence and could ultimately result in a jail sentence.
Certain individuals have the right to work in the UK. They include, for example, British citizens, nationals of countries in the European Economic Area, and those with indefinite leave to remain in the UK. The population of the UK is ethnically diverse and it is impossible to tell who has the right to work in the UK without first checking the relevant documents.
Therefore, the only way to be sure that you have properly carried out your checks, and to be protected from the risk of a civil penalty, is to undertake checks on all staff irrespective of where they have come from. You must not assume that someone is British or has the right to work in the UK simply because they have an English sounding name or British accent, nor should you assume that someone does not have the right to work because they have a “foreign” name or accent.
If you only carry out checks on people who you believe are not British citizens, for example, on the basis of their colour, or ethnic or national origins, you are likely be accused of discrimination. Job applicants can bring discrimination claims in an Employment Tribunal against prospective employers, or employment agencies. If successful, the Tribunal will normally order the payment of compensation, for which there is no upper limit.
Before a candidate starts working for you, you must ask him to provide you with certain original documents to establish that he can accept the work on offer. You cannot leave this until the first day they turn up for work.
The Home Office provides advice about what documents you can accept and how check that they are valid. You must satisfy yourself that the individual is the person named in them and check any photographs or dates of birth given. You must take copies of the documents and retain these on file. | 3,732 | 1,704 | 0.000599 |
warc | 201704 | Energy bills going up again - the first of the autumn rises.
More than 8 million customers of Britain's second largest supplier, SSE, face a price hike typically over £100 a year - now all eyes are on the other big energy firms.
Will more follow suit?
Though not doing TV interviews today Scottish and Sothern's chief executive, Ian Marchant, gave an internet message to customers. In it he blames three main factors:
Higher network charges (up 9%) Higher wholesale costs (up 14%) Government schemes (up 30%)
SSE also trades as southern electric, Scottish Hydro and Swalec. It says 8.4 million customers will pay at least £102 more on a typical dual fuel bill, bringing it to £1,274 a year.
As well as covering a 9% rise in actual energy costs that also incorporates a new £200 a year standing charge.
In the past, standing charges were an unpopular aspects of the energy industry, gradually replaced by two tier bills.
The first units charged at a higher rate - to cover costs other than the power you use (such as the pipelines).
Energy expert Anne Robinson from U-Switch told me she thinks standing charges will become far more common. The industry regulator, Ofgem, thinks they will make bills easier to understand.
The price pressures on SSE apply just as much to all the other power firms, so today's blow for family budgets sends a clear warning - energy bills are on the rise. | 1,416 | 803 | 0.001274 |
warc | 201704 | The Definitive Guide to the Holy Spirit’s Work in Your Life Becoming a new creature in Christ is only the beginning...for the full dominion of Christ’s rule to penetrate, “the real you” needs to be rebuilt. Introduction
This is not a self-help book. Neither is it a structured Bible study of the Book of Nehemiah.
But this is a book about help, or better yet, about a Helper. The best part is that the help He has is for you, and the Book of Nehemiah can provide you with a picture of how He wants to help you.
Therefore, far from being a self-help book, this is a book about how to partner with the Holy Spirit on your personal renewal project, which is something that He has wanted to help you with since before you were born again.
Self-help books usually mislead because they promise too much and provide too little. In all self-improvement books, the fundamental grounds for hope are humankind—you, me, us, we. As “self-helpers,” we may not be all that bad, but we’re not really good enough. When you start with human beings, all you’re going to get is human help. Even though the presumption survives that people have what it takes, the evidence is in; the fact is, it isn’t enough.
This book’s foundational proposition is that there is a genuine possibility of personal restoration and fulfillment for everyone, regardless of what your past may hold, but that personal restoration can only occur at the invitation of the Holy Spirit and under His ongoing tutelage.
We have all experienced something of brokenness: hearts, homes, health, finance, dreams, relationships—all as breakable as bones, though harder to set. We may not all be basket cases, but it’s certain we all need the Doctor. The Doctor is God, who is larger than any brokenness and is the fountainhead of life itself. He is the Father of love, and He has the right to speak with authority to His children. He has given us His Word, and He enlivens it to our human hearts.
He sent the Messiah, Jesus, and He has proven the Messiah’s miraculous capacity for meeting our needs by raising Him from the dead and sending His Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. In the context of the reality of the Messiah’s resurrection, there is nothing impossible for your life or mine.
The Holy Spirit has come to glorify Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus is glorified most of all through our human personalities. The Father created us in splendor, in His own image, but that splendor has been badly marred. Jesus came to redeem the Father’s original intention in us and through us.
I believe that you believe this too, because I believe everyone has faith: “As God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3). I am not saying that everyone’s faith is perfect, accurate, or functional. But it is there.
In fact, it takes studied effort and a deep commitment to not believe, for faith can rarely be crowded out of a human soul. Disaster may burn it, tragedy may smash it, injury may bruise it, or arrogance may denounce it. But faith, like seed buried under concrete, is difficult to keep down permanently.
Your faith is probably ready. Your faith may be active, alive, and vibrant enough to respond to the truth of God’s eternal Word and His risen Son.
Let me encourage you to welcome a new dimension of “help” into your life—the help I referred to at the beginning and that comes in the person of a Helper.
His first name is “Holy,” and He is the Spirit of God, called the Holy Spirit. He is as truly and completely God as either the Father or the Son. He is deeply personal, all-powerful, and ever present. He wants to make Himself known in the details of your life.
He is one of the Three-in-One, but don’t worry if you don’t understand such theological elements. He doesn’t mind our human limitations, because the Holy Spirit—indeed, God in any aspect of His person—is fully secure enough to be comfortable with our finite understanding. He isn’t running a heavenly quiz to see how much we know, for in the last analysis, our salvation and our destiny will not be resolved by how much we know but by whom we know.
His mission—and He’s decided to accept it!—is to maximize your potential by helping you to truly “get it all together.” I think your perspective on both yourself and the Holy Spirit will be broadened and deepened as you pursue these pages. As we examine how the seldom-read Book of Nehemiah presents a beautifully encoded picture of the Holy Spirit’s person, style, and ministry, we will be able to participate in the rebuilding of our own souls.
The Helper is ready to bring you to fulfillment and to your highest destiny...
Chapter 1: Meeting a Forever Friend
The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is somewhat of a mystery to most people. Referred to for centuries as the Holy Ghost, a dimension of unreality, if not spookiness, has surrounded His person for a long time.
The Holy Spirit is personal. He is God, a “He,” not an “it.” He is not some abstract force or distant cosmic influence. The Holy Spirit is one expression of the God who created us, loves us, redeemed us, and longs to bring us to full maturity in life, to the realization of His created purpose in each of us.
Jesus shed a great deal of light on the personality of the Holy Spirit when He taught us that: (1) He is like Jesus Himself in character, temperament, and works (John 14:17), (2) His mission is to help us personally understand more and more about Jesus (John 16:14), and (3) He has come to abide—to stay with us, somewhat of a heaven-sent forever friend (John 14:16). The most cursory reading of John’s Gospel, chapters 14 to 16, establishes this. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father, in the name of the Son, to be with each one of us and to help us. There’s nothing spooky about that.
The Holy Spirit Enters at New Birth
When a person comes to God the Father and willingly receives the gift of life through Jesus the Son, the first thing that happens is that the Holy Spirit enters that person’s life. Jesus described Him as a “Comforter”—One who will remain beside you to help, to counsel, to teach, and to strengthen you. His entering is only a beginning, though, and the sensible believer in the Lord Jesus will keep open to the Holy Spirit’s increasing desire to expand the evidence of God’s purposes in his or her life.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and, most of all, the abundant, flowing love of the Holy Spirit are all expressions of God’s intent in giving us His Spirit. In other words, to simply realize that the Holy Spirit entered when I received Christ is to grasp a precious truth. But I need to see more—to want more. The practical development of God’s work in my life requires that I give a growing place to the Holy Spirit’s working within me. The Comforter has come, and His mission is to help us to move forward as growing sons and daughters of the Most High God.
In the Word of God, we can see how to test the validity of the Spirit’s presence and work in a believer’s life: He makes people more thankful, more loving, more generous, more considerate, more understanding—in short, more like Jesus. Since our study will have a great deal to say about the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, let us understand from the beginning that the whole objective is not to displace Jesus with an emphasis on the Holy Spirit, but to replace our weakness and personal inadequacy with the Holy Spirit’s enabling presence. In this way, Jesus Christ will be seen more perfectly in each of us.
Even among people who have experienced the entry of the Holy Spirit into their lives—that is, people who have received God’s love and forgiveness through Christ’s death and resurrection—there seems to be wide variations in response to the Holy Spirit. Some hesitate in their readiness or their ability to allow the Holy Spirit an ever-increasing breadth of space to work in their lives. Such hesitation or apparent inability often seems related to a person’s depth of difficulty with life prior to his or her conversion.
We are notorious for not asking for God’s help until our backs are against the wall. Somehow, we have been persuaded either that we can manage by ourselves or that to “bother” God for anything other than a crisis condition would somehow impinge upon His patience. This habit of waiting until our circumstances are drastic usually means that by the time we finally open our lives to Christ, considerable damage has been done. The net result is that whatever our past, however gifted our capacity at survival, virtually all of us badly need the Holy Spirit’s restoring work in our lives. That work begins when we welcome Him to take charge of the rebuilding process. That process advances as He is permitted full rein—and full reign.
If you have never opened up to the beginning of God’s Spirit working deeply and powerfully in you, the path to that entrance is through one clearly marked door: Jesus Christ, God’s Son. He said, “I am the door. . . . I am the way. . . . No one comes to the Father except through Me. . . . Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (John 10:9; 14:6; Acts 4:12). To open your life to Jesus Christ is to welcome the Holy Spirit into your life at the same time, for “no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Simple heartfelt prayer can establish a turning from your own way unto His. From this beginning, your life is waiting to unfold in the will of God and by the Spirit of God.
Excerpted by permission from
Rebuilding the Real You Copyright © 2009 by Jack Hayford. Charisma House, A Strang Company, Lake Mary, Florida. Used by permission; all rights reserved. Further your study
Our gift of this article by Pastor Jack Hayford is made possible by your gracious support of the ministry. Partner with us online or call toll-free (800) 776-8180 to donate. (Outside the U.S., call (818) 779-8525). | 10,439 | 4,699 | 0.000222 |
warc | 201704 | Online Services
All your resources at your fingertips.Learn More
Gillian Douglas Cardiff University, Julia Pearce Bristol University and Hilary Woodward Cardiff University.
In this article the authors examine the Law Commission's final report, Cohabitation: The Financial Consequences of Relationship Breakdown (Law Com No 307 (TSO, 2007)). The government announced in March 2008 that it will delay implementation of the report until the implications of similar legal changes in Scotland have been evaluated. The article looks at how the Law Commissions final proposals might work in practice, by applying them to some real-life cases. The authors also consider how far the Law Commission's scheme would, in the end, achieve the objectives it set out in its final report for reform of the law. For the full article, see April [2008] Family Law journal. To log on to Family Law Online or to request a free trial click here.
"the principal (monthly) periodical dealing with contemporary issues" Sir Mark Potter P | 1,018 | 618 | 0.001631 |
warc | 201704 | NEW YORK (May. 2)
Clara Schwartz grew up in Hungary, where her father owned a textile business and a winery.Then World War II erupted. Schwartz survived Auschwitz, immigrated to Brooklyn in 1956 and found work in a sweater factory.
Now an ailing widow at 81, Schwartz carries a satchel with a faded picture of her mother and a long list of the prescription medications she requires each month. She lives on $911 per month in social security payments and occasionally receives reparation payments of $900 from Germany — not enough for her to afford the $350 in pills she needs each month. Yet Schwartz refuses to seek assistance.
“I am very proud,” she says.
Schwartz was one of some 200 needy Holocaust survivors and groups from around the world appealing last week to the U.S. District Court of Eastern New York in Brooklyn, recounting tales of unimaginable heartbreak in the hope of gaining a share of the $1.25 billion Swiss banks settlement.
Estimates of the number of survivors in the United States range from 109,000 to 174,000. They are among 80 groups or entities — ranging from the Israeli government to Roma, or gypsies — vying for a share of nearly $600 million expected to be left over from the 1998 Swiss bank settlement after compensation is paid to survivors or their heirs whose bank accounts were taken from them.
So far, Judge Edward Korman, who is overseeing the settlement, has awarded $593 million of the settlement’s $1.25 billion, though only $155 million has gone to 2,000 of the estimated millions of Swiss bank account holders. The rest went to others who suffered because of Switzerland’s ties to Nazi Germany, including refugees and slave laborers in Swiss and German firms.
Under a legal principle known as cy pres, or “next best,” Korman and an adviser, Judah Gribetz, have signaled that the rest of the money should go to the world’s neediest survivors, who they say live in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. In so doing, they stirred up a storm that converged last week on Korman’s courtroom.
Over 10 hours on April 29, survivors and groups made their heart-wrenching appeals to Korman. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which oversees social services for an estimated 225,000 Jews in the former Soviet Union, screened video interviews and presented biographies of survivors subsisting on pensions or other meager incomes of $155 to $420 a month.
“As someone who has observed poverty and deprivation around the world, those in the FSU are the poorest and the neediest on earth,” said Steve Schwager, the JDC’s executive vice president.
Also weighing in was the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which along with the Jewish Agency for Israel submitted eight bids for nearly 48 percent of the remaining money to aid 508,100 survivors in Israel — almost half of the survivors left in the world.
Natan Sharansky, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, told Korman that the Israelis have “strong disagreements” with indications from Korman and Gribetz that survivors in the former Soviet Union should get top priority once Swiss account holders have been compensated.
Israeli survivors “must be taken into account,” said Sharansky, who spoke via video hookup from a Berlin conference on anti-Semitism.
Not lost on Sharansky was the irony that this former symbol of Soviet Jewry was angling for funds his former countrymen might otherwise receive.
“I know very well their needs,” he said, adding that 180,000 survivors have moved to Israel from the former Soviet Union since 1990.
Zev Factor, chairman of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, which is seeking $941 million for health and home care for needy Israeli survivors, said their concerns are no less pressing than those of others.
Like other poor survivors, some 130,000 survivors in Israel must choose between food and medical care, Israeli officials said. Factor cited the case of a 92-year-old Haifa man who can’t afford a visiting heath aide.
“So he doesn’t remain in his own excrement all day, is that any less important than food?” Factor said.
The Israelis also have maintained that Korman should adhere to a general rule applied on other Holocaust restitution fronts, that 20 percent of all monies should go toward Holocaust education and remembrance. Nobel Prize-winning author and survivor Elie Wiesel underscored that point in a letter to Korman.
“Nothing has been mentioned about memory,” said Ruth Brand, 76, an Auschwitz survivor who volunteers at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, in Israel.
Brand’s experience in the death camp — which she said “was not to be described” — and her tale of later marrying an American soldier and spawning three generations of descendants left many in the packed courtroom weeping.
Attorney Paul Berger of Washington said this was the first time in his 47 years in a courtroom that he had cried. As he struggled to maintain his composure, Berman lauded the judge for having the courage to face the dilemmas raised by competing survivor claims.
Korman is “wrestling with issues that have no answers,” Berman said. “How do you take resources that are inadequate to do justice?”
One possible solution, said Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, who also spoke by video hookup from Berlin, was for Korman to give more time to the various parties to “homogenize the various needs” of survivors and reach some consensus with which “we can all feel comfortable.”
One Jewish organizational official said Korman could allow the case to proceed on parallel tracks — allowing the competing parties to work out their differences while the court continues to press the Swiss banks for greater access to settlement money.
Whether the judge will follow that recommendation remains to be seen.
Much of the battle revolved around numbers. Sergio Della Pergola, a Hebrew University demographer, said that if one ignored factors of relative suffering and need, then demographic data should determine where the money goes. He challenged the JDC’s figures about the former Soviet Union, saying they revealed more about the efficiency of the group’s services than about actual survivor numbers.
But Leonard Saxe, a Brandeis University professor who led a report for the JDC and the court on survivor needs worldwide, disagreed.
While it was “odious” to compare survivor needs, Saxe said, he backed the report’s findings that the neediest survivors live in the former Soviet Union.
Still, Saxe welcomed the proposal to “resolve some of these differences.” Collaboration also would help evaluate how the various Holocaust programs aid survivors, he added, and thereby “hold the organizations that provide some of these services accountable.”
Korman is not expected to make any final decision for at least several weeks. | 7,103 | 3,367 | 0.00031 |
warc | 201704 | Yes it is possible to move beyond the betrayal of him cheating on you as well as the, however, it requires work to do so- this is why you cannot move beyond it because it must be dealt with and it requires a great deal of time, energy, and effort from both of you to deal with it in a healthy manner and to heal from the damage he has caused your relationship. Therefore, if possible, I recommend that you both go to a couples counselor- the best option. In situations such as the one you have described where trust has been broken and betrayal occurred, it is very difficult at times for the two people involved to rebuild their relationship on their own and often a third party (-counselor, therapist, etc.) is required to guide them through the healing process. You could ask your boyfriend would he be willing to go to a counselor with you (-and ask him to pay for the sessions). If he says no, then you could revisit the question again at at a later time or you could consider giving him an ultimatum to go with you if he wants to keep you in his life. If counseling is not an option, you could also try doing the following: In your own words tell your boyfriend that you love him and that you would like for him to help you heal from the hurt that he has caused you and the damage he has caused your relationship. Ask him would he be willing to sit down with you once a week solely for the purpose of reading through a book together and discussing what you both read and how it effects both of you in order to help you heal from the hurt he has caused you and to also help your relationship grow stronger as you heal? It is important to designate some time to do this work on a regular basis when the two of you will not be disturbed along with keeping a journal to write down your thoughts and reactions to what you both read and discuss in the self help book. Both of you should agree on how much time you want to spend together working solely on this and agree to how often you want to work on it, for example: once a week, twice a week, etc. Be sure to keep the amount of time designated for this at a comfortable level for both of you so that neither of you dread doing this. The above is an inexpensive and healthy process that takes time to do but it can be done if you both commit to it. A couple of books for you to consider can be found below:
Book 1. Book 2. | 2,378 | 1,108 | 0.000904 |
warc | 201704 | Go to the main menuSkip to contentGo to bottomREFERENCE LINKING PLATFORM OF KOREA S&T JOURNALSsearch wordHOME>Journal Browse>About Journal> Journal Vol & IssueJournal of Marine Bioscience and BiotechnologyJournal Basic InformationpISSN :eISSN :2383-5400Journal DOI :10.15433/KSMBFrequency :OthersPublisher:The Korean Society for Marine BiotechnologyEditor in Chief :Volume & IssuesVolume 8, Issue 1 - Jun 2016Selecting the target year20162015201420112010200820072006All1Production and Application of Recombinant AgaraseKim, Se Won ; Hong, Chae-Hwan ; Yun, Na Kyong ; Shin, Hyun-Jae ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 1~9DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.001AbstractThe hydrolysis of biomass to fermentable sugar (saccharification) and to oligosaccharide is an essential process in biotechnology including biorefinery and biofood. Various macroalgae are commercially cultivated in several Asian countries as a useful resource for food and agar production. Agar is a major component of the cell walls of red algae that can be hydrolyzed by agarase. Agarases are classified into-agarase (E.C. 3.2.1.158) and-agarase (E.C. 3.2.1.81) according to the cleavage pattern and grouped in the glycoside hydrolase (GH) family (GH-16, GH-58, GH-86, GH-96, and GH-118) based on the amino acid sequences of the proteins. Agarases have been isolated from various bacteria found in seawater and marine sediments. To increase productivity of the enzyme, a research on recombinant enzymes has been done. The application of recombinant agarase can be possible in the various filed such as energy, food, cosmetics, medical and so on. This paper reviews the source, biochemical characteristics and production system of recombinant agarases for further study.2Potential Health Risks from Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Marine EcosystemLee, Youn Ju ; Jang, Jae-Seok ; Yang, Jae-Ho ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 10~17DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.010AbstractA wide-spread contamination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as dioxins, PCBs, PBDEs in the aquatic ecosystem has generated a great concern over the potential risk for these substances to impact marine biotas and food web. Since a major exposure route of these substances to the humans is through the consumption of food including fish and marine byproducts, the consumption of contaminated products has been a great public health concern. Exposure to POPs has been associated with a wide spectrum of adverse effects including reproductive, developmental, immunologic, carcinogenic, and neurotoxic effects. This review covers the background information of key POPs substances and the recent development of toxicity studies including the mode of action. Because neurotoxic effects of some POPs have been observed in humans at low concentrations, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), a representative chemical of POPs, is focused to discuss the possible mode(s) of action for the neurotoxic effects. This review provides the updates of toxicity studies on POPs and paves ways to discuss a possible implication of contaminated marine biota over the human health among the marine biotechnology researchers.3Comparison of Biomass Productivity of the Microalgae, Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP, in Polyvinyl Chloride Marine Photobioreactor and High Density Polyethylene Marine PhotobioreactorJung, Seung-Gyun ; Kim, Su-Kwon ; Bun, Moon-Sup ; Cho, Yonghee ; Shin, Dong-Woo ; Kim, Z-Hun ; Lim, Sang-Min ; Lee, Choul-Gyun ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 18~23DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.018AbstractIt is important to design photobioreactor by cheap material for economical microalgal biomass production. In this study, two types of marine photobioreactors (MPBR), made by either polyvinyl chloride (MPBR-PVC) or high density poly ethylene (MPBR-HDPE), are used and performance of these were compared. Tetraselmis sp. KCTC 12236BP is a green marine alga that isolated from Ganghwa Island, Korea, and the strain was used for marine cultivations using MPBR-PVC and MPBR-HDPE. The cultivations were performed three times in the spring season of 2012 using MPBR-PVC and of 2013 using MPBR-HDPE in the coastal area of Young Heung Island. As the results, MPBR-PVC shows higher biomass productivities than MPBR-HDPE, due to its high light transmittance. In the cultivations using MPBR-PVC, the average sea water temperature wasduring the first experiment andduring the second and third experiments. Average light intensities during three times for experiments were 407.5, 268.1 and, respectively. The maximum fresh cell weight and average biomass productivity wereand. These results showed that Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP were adapted well with the environmental conditions from ocean, and grow in the MPBR-PVC and MPBR-HDPE.4Effect of Light Quality on Growth and Fatty Acid Production in Chlorella vugaris Using Light Emitting DiodesKim, Z-Hun ; Kim, Dong Keun ; Lee, Choul-Gyun ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 24~29DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.024AbstractMicroalgae are considered as superior biodiesel producers, because they could effectively produce high amount of lipid with fast growth rate. In this study, Chlorella vulgaris was exposed to various light wavelengths (470 nm,525 nm, and660 nm) using light emitting diodes (LEDs) to examine effect of light quality on their growth and fatty acid production in 0.4-L bubble column photobioreactors. Fluorescent lamps were also used as polychromatic light sources (control). From the results, biomass productivity was varied by light wavelength from 0.05 g/L/day to 0.30 g/L/day. Maximum biomass productivity was obtained from red LED among tested ones. We also observed that contents of oleic acid and linolenic acid, which affect biodiesel properties, were significantly changed depending on supplied wavelength. These results indicated that production of algal biomass, and fatty acid content and productivity could be improved or controlled by supplying specific light wavelength.5Studies on Bioactive Substances and Antioxidant Activities of Marine Algae from Jeju IslandKim, Tae-Hee ; Ko, Seok-Chun ; Oh, Gun-Woo ; Park, Hyeon-Ho ; Lee, Dae-Sung ; Yim, Mi-Jin ; Lee, Jeong Min ; Yoo, Jong Su ; Kim, Chang-Soo ; Choi, Il-Whan ; Jung, Won-Kyo ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 30~38DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.030AbstractThe objective of this study was to investigate the useful components and potential antioxidant activities of 30 marine algae, collected from Jeju Island in Korea. The contents of bioacitve substance of extracts from marine algae, such total polyphenol and carbohydrate, were determined. The extract of Distromium decumbens had the highest amount of total polyphenol content (21.27%), and that of Gracilaria incurvata Okamura had the highest amount of total carbohydrate content (10.18%). The antioxidant activities of extracts obtained from algae were tested through the evaluation of DPPH radical and hydroxyl radical scavenging activity. The extracts of Distromium decumbens, Sargassum hemiphyllum (Turner) C.Agardh, Sargassum serratifolium (C. Agardh) C. Agardh and Acrosorium yendoi Yamada were found to have more than 80% DPPH radical scavenging activity and that of Dictyota okamurae (Dawson), Schnetter, et Prud`homme van Reine, Myagropsis myagroides (Martens ex Turner) Fensholt, Sargassum serratifolium (C. Agardh) C. Agardh and Cladophora wrightiana Harvey showed more than 50% hydroxyl radical scavenging activity. These results suggest that algae collected from Jeju Island would be good raw materials for antioxidant.6Isolation of New Microalga, Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP, and Biodiesel Production using Its BiomassShin, Dong-Woo ; Bae, Jae-Han ; Cho, Yonghee ; Ryu, Young-Jin ; Kim, Z-Hun ; Lim, Sang-Min ; Lee, Choul-Gyun ;Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology, volume 8, issue 1, 2016, Pages 39~44DOI : 10.15433/ksmb.2016.8.1.039AbstractThe microalgae have been studied for a source of biodiesel production. It is important to select the microalgae, which grows rapidly in local environmental conditions such as temperature range and ingredient of local seawater. The aim of this study was isolating microalga, which has rapid growth rate and high FAME contents in wide temperature ranges, for microalgal offshore cultivation in Korea, one of the country with four distinct seasons. Firstly, we had isolated a green microalga, Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP, which has faster growth rate in low temperature (5 and) than Tetraselmis suecica and Dunaliella tertiolecta LB999 from Young Heung Island, Incheon, Korea. This microalga was cultivated in outdoor circulated tank photobioreactor (CT-PBR). As a result, this microalga could grow in wide temperature ranges (6 to), outdoors. After that, the biomass was recovered, and 13.2 g biodiesel could be acquired from 110 g dry biomass. These results indicate that the isolated microalga, Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP is proper to biodiesel production using outdoor cultivation in Korea for all seasons.Related Links>>MSIP.KOFST.KCSE|KSCI.DOAJ.OAK CentralAbout|Privacy|Contact Us | 9,292 | 4,014 | 0.000249 |
warc | 201704 | The ECJ has been the most relevant factor
The European Court of Justice, along with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament constitute a core institutional body of the EU. Its activities have been of great importance to the process of European integration. The Court has used its limited functions and arising opportunities in order expand its autonomy and authority. Scholars representing different theories argue however, on the extent of this expansion. In the first place an introduction of the Court of Justice of the European Union with its roles is presented.
This essay by a close analysis of theoretical perspective regarding constitutions, functioning and powers of courts, principal-agent theory, Neo-functionalism and Neo-realism tries to critically evaluate usefulness of these theories. The application of these theoretical perspective helps understand the reasons responsible for the process of expansion of the ECJ competences.
Throughout the use of some examples of case studies of the ECJ judgements, such as Van Gend en Loos (1963) and Costa v. ENEL (1964), this essay analyses the real importance of the ECJ in the process of European integration and the expansion of its competences.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ), one of the five major institutions of the EU, was established in its first form in 1951 as the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Communities [1] . The Court encompasses the whole judiciary system within the European Union. Three limited roles were assigned to the ECJ when it was created. A first role was to ensure ‘that the Commission and the Council of Ministers did not exceed their authority’, subsequently extended on the other EU institutions [2] . A second role of the Court was related to the dispute resolution by interpreting and filling in vague aspects of disputed EC laws, in other words the Court is ‘filling in the [incomplete] contract through its legal decisions’ [3] . And finally, the ECJ was also designed to ‘decid[e] of charges of noncompliance raised by the Commission or by member states’ [4] .
It is important to be aware of general political theories of constitutions and the role and power of courts. The main purpose of constitutions is a resolution of collective action problems [5] . However, in the absence of a formal constitution of the EU, treaties between member states establishing this organisation serve as an alternative solution to tackle these problems. It is also known that ‘no treaty, constitution, piece of legislation, or executive decision can account for all possible developments – they are always incomplete contracts [6] . To overcome collective action problems the signing agreement parties, have to establish a rule of law, which makes the agreements binding on participants. In order to achieve that, a mechanism for punishing non compliance (judiciary system) with common agreed rules is put in place. The European Union is characterised by an existence of a rule of law, and therefore the EU system of governance can be described as quasi-constitutional system, which was gradually established by progressive constitutionalisation of the treaties through rulings of the ECJ. Some scholars argue (eg. neo-functionalists), that in order to produce the incentive for parties to abide by the law it is necessary that the institutions enforcing law are independent from legislature, which means that a separation of powers between judiciary and legislature need to be present. This theoretical model assumes ‘that the separation of powers works because judges are neutral political actors: they exercise judgement instead of will’, it can be said with whole certainty that ‘judges do have will’ (preferences) [7] .
The phenomenon described above is defined by political scientists as “judicial politics" and it is clearly visible in the EU [8] . The EU’s judiciary is able to exercise its preferences and have a high degree of discretion and influence over the legislation process within the European Union because of flexibility of EU’s quasi-constitution and laws. ‘As a result, the actors responsible for enforcing these contracts in democratic polities – the courts – can often use their discretion and thereby shape policy outcomes beyond the intention of the legislators’ [9] .
It is also important to explain the reason why the ECJ was willing to escape member states control, and how it was possible that from a court with limited functions it became one of the key actors having an important impact on the European integration. Principal-agent theory explains why the ECJ would want to extend its authority. It assumes that agents (eg. the ECJ), created by principals (eg. member states) in order to perform for them some tasks, have different interest than principals [10] . The agent is interested in escaping principal’s control and increasing its autonomy and authority, which is opposite to what principals want, namely to maintain their control over the agent.
Two main reasons explain how it was possible for the Court to escape member states control: ‘the different time horizons of politicians and judges and the lack of a credible political threat’ [11] . The different time horizons thesis assumes that politicians and judges have different interests in each court decision. Politicians are characterised by having shorter time horizons. In order to be re-elected politicians aim at delivering goods to electorate, which means that they prefer to avoid court decisions that could have negative impact on public policies or create financial costs. Judges on the other hand, do have the same constraints as politicians and have longer time horizons. ‘Following a well-known judicial practice, the ECJ expanded its jurisdiction authority by establishing legal principles but not applying the principles to the case at hand’ [12] . Although the Court decisions were bearing minimal political and material impact for governments the legal rhetoric systematically were building the ECJ doctrine. The short-term focus on material impact of legal decisions favoured by politicians over the long-term effect of ECJ doctrine allowed the ECJ expand its authority without arousing major concerns among politicians.
The credible threat thesis assumes that member states usually are not able to create a credible political threat to alter the Court’s role. An inability to pose a political threat to the ECJ is mainly caused by the decision-making rules of the EU with requirement of unanimity. An existence of many “veto-players" (27 member states) makes it more likely that changes to the Court’s interpretations can be blocked which gives the ECJ a greater space for maneuver. Even though it is really hard to reverse or change entrenched policies in the EU it is still possible to do so. ‘The British challenge to the ECJ’ at the 1996-97 Intergovernmental Conference ‘was the most serious to date because it went beyond rhetoric to articulate and specify an anti-ECJ policy’ [13] . Although the British proposals did not directly attack the ECJ or any of its previous rulings they were all rejected by the other member states. However, member states being aware of the ECJ tendency to expand its authority significantly restricted the Court’s powers in the new areas of jurisdiction.
Hix, points out that a model of the strategic interaction between legislators and courts implies that ‘as the ease of adoption new legislation and acquiring information about the likely action of the court goes up, the discretion of the court goes down’ which means that ‘the court has most potential power when there is little information about its likely actions, as at the birth of the European Community’ when the most important changes to EU legal system were introduced [14] . This analysis implies that with passage of time the ECJ has become more constrained in its actions. During the 1996-97 ICG where the negotiations to the Amsterdam Treaty were held, attempts to restrict the ECJ’s powers were taken, however they failed. Furthermore, in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty the jurisdiction of the Court was extended to new policy areas.
However, it needs to bore in mind that member states and the other EU institutions are also very important actors as a driving forces of European integration. Neo-realism argues that states have sufficient control over the ECJ, furthermore it lacks the autonomy and authority to act against the member state interests. In fact the six founding began the whole process of integration and they still posses the power to change or even reverse the decision of the ECJ by amending the treaties. The Court is not included in the legislative process in the EU, it also have to rely on other institutions, member states or individuals to rise infringement, which further constrain its powers.
The case study of a landmark judgement from 1963 (Van Gend en Loos) establishing the principle of ‘direct effect’ shows that the ECJ decision drove the process of European integration in a not intended by member states direction [15] . The case, concerned a dispute in regards to customs fees between the Netherlands customs agency and a Dutch import firm, was referred to the ECJ judgement in 1962. ‘The treaties founding the EU were international law, binding on nation states and holding those states as their objects. Individuals and their rights under and vis-à-vis the European institutions were barely mentioned [...] The Court was essentially created in order to adjudicate disputes between member states, rather than citizens. [16] ’ By establishment of the concept of direct effect the first step towards the constutionalisation of EU law was taken. The transformation of the preliminary ruling system enhanced the power of the Court by allowing it to decrease its ‘dependence on member states and the Commission to rise infringement cases by allowing individuals to rise challenges to national law, and it decreased the Court’s need to craft decisions to elicit voluntary compliance by making ECJ decisions enforceable’ [17] .
The other key case which had a further impact on constutionalisation of the treaties and seriously affected member states sovereignty is Costa v. ENEL (1964) [18] . In this case ‘the ECJ ruled that EU law always trumps national law in conflicts between them two, establishing the supremacy of EU law and a clear hierarchy of norms’ [19] . In other words, the EU law could not be overridden by any domestic law, even constitutional. The ECJ, by asserting the principle of supremacy, was elevated to the position of constitutional court and marked another milestone in the process of European integration.
The history of the European integration shows that the ECJ has developed the institutional and political capacity to make decisions that go against member state interests and seriously influence the direction and speed of the integration process. Theoretical perspectives of constitutions, functioning and powers of courts, principal-agent theory, Neo-functionalism and Neo-realism no always agree with each other on the extent to which the Court is driving the integration process. However, empirical evidences seem to support the argument of increasing influence of the ECJ and its significant role on the direction and speed of integration. The case studies of the Court’s judgements Van Gend en Loos [1963] and Costa v. ENEL [1964] prove that they were against member state interests because their sovereignty was restricted. Even though the ECJ is not the most relevant actor in driving European integration, because other institutions and member states also have proven to be extremely important in the integration process, it can be said with whole certainty that the Court has influenced it in a highly significant way. | 12,113 | 4,879 | 0.000209 |
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