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warc | 201704 | Once-daily BREO is a prescription medicine for adults whose asthma is not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. BREO is not used to relieve sudden breathing problems and won't replace a rescue inhaler.
BREO is the first and only once-daily inhaled asthma combination treatment—an inhaled corticosteroid (fluticasone furoate) and a long-acting beta
2-adrenergic agonist (vilanterol)—that has been shown to work all day and night, for a full 24 hours. It opens up airways in the lungs for better breathing. Your results may vary.
BREO prevents symptoms such as wheezing, cough, chest tightness, and shortness of breath and can help keep them from coming back. Your results may vary.
Taking once-daily BREO every day can also reduce the days when asthma symptoms occur and reduce the days when a rescue inhaler is needed. Your results may vary.
BREO is not a rescue medicine and should not be used to treat sudden symptoms of asthma.
Two of the main causes of asthma symptoms are airway inflammation and airway constriction. BREO treats these two causes with a combination of two medicines:
In people with a history of asthma flare-ups (or "exacerbations"), BREO has been shown to reduce the risk of future flare-ups. A flare-up is a time when asthma symptoms have worsened and are severe enough to require treatment with steroids, or also a hospital stay or emergency department visit. Your results may vary.
Once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop BREO and may prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. | 1,647 | 778 | 0.001303 |
warc | 201704 | Free Consultation
Fill out this form to get started.
If your initial application has been denied, your next step is to file a Request for Reconsideration. (There are a few states where this level has been removed and claimants appeal for a hearing following an initial denial. Your paperwork from Social Security will tell you which appeal to file in your state.)
The Reconsideration level is where your file is reviewed again by Disability Determination Services (DDS). In order to make a decision, DDS may request medical records or other evidence from you or your doctor. They may also have you complete evaluations or medical forms regarding your specific disability. If they do not have enough evidence to make a determination, they may schedule a Consultative Exam. After reviewing the results of this exam, they will then send you a Notice of Decision.
Remember that a strong majority of claims are denied again at the Reconsideration level. If you are denied, it is very important to appeal that decision. The next level, or the Hearing level, is where you are most likely to be approved. If you wait and have to reapply, you will start all over again at the initial level and will be wasting crucial months waiting.
The next appeal is the Request for Hearing, at which time you may also submit new evidence if you would like. However, the hearing level is rather lengthy. It is common for a claim to take several months to a year or more just to get a hearing scheduled, and then several months before the hearing takes place. Then a claimant waits another 2-6 months for a decision. The total wait can be 1-3 years. While it is a long and frustrating wait, it also often yields the best fruit—a Favorable Decision. (And remember that you will be reimbursed for the wait—see Back Pay.)
Author – Brad Myler
Fill out this form to get started. | 1,873 | 922 | 0.001099 |
warc | 201704 | Psychosis Service Location: Bethlem Royal Hospital Mode: Inpatient, outpatient, outreach Average length of inpatient treatment: 6-12 months Referrals are accepted from: Consultant Psychiatrists, GP’s CCG’s and self-funded referrals Beds: 23 Male and Female Key areas: schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, psychotic depression, psychosis, drug-induced psychosis, delusional disorder, bipolar disorder Overview
Our service specialises in expert, evidence-based treatment for people with complex and co-morbid psychosis, to enhance their quality of life through recovery and substantially reduce the risk of readmission or expensive
long-term care costs.
We have an internationally renowned team, pioneering treatment interventions and helping people who had no treatment options. The doctors, nurses, pharmacists, phsyicians, occupational therapists, social workers and psychologists attached to our service are experts in their field, with the majority also undertaking research into the causes of psychotic disorders and the effectiveness of both existing and new treatments. Every person undergoes an assessment with the team, and an individual physical and mental health treatment plan is developed.
As people are often a long way from home, we make admissions as short as possible, and communicate regularly with carers and the referring team.
A couple of months after she’d been in the Psychosis Unit we were standing on a railway station platform, and in a quiet moment she began to sing to herself. It was lovely because that was something I hadn’t heard her do since she’d been ill. | 1,625 | 881 | 0.001158 |
warc | 201704 | Small business insurance needs reform, Louisiana business owners say Business owners call for lower insurance costs
Louisiana business owners are desperate for cuts in small business insurance costs, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship said this week.
The committee released several letters written by Louisiana entrepreneurs to local newspapers. A New Orleans small business owner, Maude Varela, said she had "experienced first-hand how broken our healthcare system is." She wanted to be able to offer insurance to employees but said the cost was too high. Another entrepreneur, Mecheall Williams from Bossier City, said that "because [she] can't afford to provide insurance, it is that much harder for [her] business to grow and compete." And Mary Black of Baton Rouge cited a 2008 report from the Center for American Progress, which said that small business owners and employees make up "the largest share of the uninsured population" - 27 million of the 47 million Americans without health insurance. Under the current healthcare reform proposals, small groups businesses with fewer than 50 employees) should not see an increase in their insurance costs, the Government Accountability Office says. Tax credits for some businesses would effectively cut the cost of small business insurance by 50 percent.
Learn more about business insurance from NetQuote -- get your free business insurance quotes today.
Posted: December 9, 2009
Related Business Insurance Articles Workers Compensation 101 - Basics for Business Owners Home Business Insurance Guide Insurance: New Business Tips Business General Liability Insurance Cheap Car Insurance for Young Drivers | 1,693 | 873 | 0.001154 |
warc | 201704 | Medac Pharma, Inc., a privately held pharmaceutical company focused on the development of new molecules and improving the effectiveness of existing medicines, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Rasuvo™, a subcutaneous injectable methotrexate (MTX) therapy delivered in an auto-injector for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), polyarticular-course juvenile idiopathic arthritis (pJIA) and psoriasis. Rasuvo will be available in 10 dosage strengths, ranging from 7.5 mg to 30 mg in 2.5 mg increments and will be launched in the U.S.
The company concurrently announced that the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware has denied a motion for a preliminary injunction filed by Antares Pharma, Inc.
"We're delighted to have secured approval for our lead product, Rasuvo, and look forward to introducing this much-needed therapy to the market," stated Ms. Terri Shoemaker, President and CEO of Medac Pharma, Inc. "Methotrexate has long been recognized as a mainstay in rheumatoid arthritis therapy. With its virtually painless administration, broad dose range, and significantly enhanced bioavailability, we believe Rasuvo may benefit those patients using methotrexate." Regarding the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware's decision, Ms. Shoemaker stated, "We're pleased with the Court's decision and are moving forward with our commercialization efforts as planned."
With more than 30 years of clinical usage, MTX remains the most commonly used drug for treating RA and is recommended by both the American College of Rheumatology and European League Against Rheumatism as a first-line therapy for RA patients. While many patients prescribed MTX take an oral form of this drug, this route of administration has been associated with highly variable absorption rates and inconsistent bioavailability among patients.
Medac Pharma, Inc. developed Rasuvo to optimize MTX therapy. The subcutaneous mode of delivery of Rasuvo, with its wide range of dosing options, has been designed to improve bioavailability.
Rheumatologist Eric Ruderman, MD, Professor of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, stated, "As a rheumatologist, I believe Rasuvo will offer patients the opportunity to maximize the benefit they get from methotrexate. Rasuvo's dosing flexibility, in particular, will be very helpful, as RA patients do not all respond equally to methotrexate, making it important to select a treatment regimen that is appropriate for the patient's condition." | 2,537 | 1,282 | 0.000786 |
warc | 201704 | July 23, 2007 Smokers who see more ads for smoking-cessation products are more likely to quit successfully, study finds
The more magazine ads smokers see for the nicotine patch and other quit-smoking aids, the more likely they are to try to quit smoking and be successful -- even without buying the products, finds a new Cornell study.
"We think that the reason may be that important 'spillover effects' from advertising may be occurring, which has important implications for advertising for a wide range of health products," said Alan Mathios, professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell and a co-author of the study, published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Political Economy and winner of best conference paper at the 2007 American Marketing Association's Public Policy and Marketing Conference, May 31-June 2, in Washington, D.C.
Mathios noted that the results of this study may also apply to other types of pharmaceutical advertising. For example, when patients discuss with their physicians an advertised drug that lowers cholesterol, physicians will often recommend such health behavior changes as diet and exercise, creating a positive spillover effect from the advertising.
Using databases on the consumer behavior and magazine-reading habits of 28,303 current or former smokers and advertising data in 26 consumer magazines, Mathios and three Cornell colleagues explored the impact of advertising of smoking-cessation products on quitting decisions.
They found that although some of the increased quitting behavior involves buying smoking-cessation products, just seeing the ads makes it more likely that smokers will try to quit.
"Thus, the public health returns to smoking-cessation product advertisements exceed the private returns to the manufacturers," write the researchers.
Independent of the impact of advertising, smokers who do not read any magazines are less likely to try to quit, while smokers who read magazines that refuse cigarette ads or who read specialty magazines related to parenting or health are more likely to attempt to quit, the researchers reported.
They also calculated that if the smoking-cessation product industry increased its average annual spending on magazine advertising by about $2.6 million or 10 percent, the average smoker would see 2.1 more ads each year; according to their calculations, this would translate to about 80,000 additional quits each year. About 45 million people in the United States now smoke.
The results of this study raise questions about how direct-to-consumer advertising of smoking cessation products are regulated. Ironically, says Mathios, ads for prescription smoking-cessation products are more heavily regulated than cigarette ads because of mandatory risk disclosures.
In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Regulatory Economics, the same Cornell authors found that consumers are exposed to more ads for over-the-counter smoking-cessation products than those requiring a prescription. If all smoking cessation products were available over the counter, the two studies taken together suggest that they would be advertised more heavily and, therefore, lead to significantly more successful quits.
When smokers try to quit, at least two-thirds try "cold turkey" and do not use a smoking-cessation product. However, in recent years at least 20 percent of smokers who attempt to quit report using a pharmaceutical smoking-cessation product.
Other co-authors include Rosemary Avery, Don Kenkel and Dean Lillard, all at Cornell. The work was funded in part by the National Cancer Institute, Merck Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. | 3,663 | 1,689 | 0.000595 |
warc | 201704 | While much of the American public is reveling in the telltale signs of spring, those with seasonal allergies are bracing for what’s expected to be a particularly brutal few months. Due in part to an unusually wet winter, experts are predicting a considerably higher level of allergens in the air than usually expected at this time of year and advising those worst affected by seasonal allergies to begin all necessary preventive treatments right now.
This week in particular has seen pollen counts hit extraordinary highs, on occasion going beyond the 2,000 mark – 100 being considered high.
Read more | 615 | 380 | 0.002693 |
warc | 201704 | Official Report (Hansard) Session: 2013/2014 Date: 16 October 2013
PDF version of this report (198.5 kb)
Committee for Employment and Learning
DEL European Policy Developments including European Social Fund 2014-2020: DEL Update
The Deputy Chairperson: I welcome Mr Colin Jack, Mrs Patricia McVeigh and Mrs Briege Rainey to our Committee. We have your paper in front of us, so I ask you to give us a brief run-through, and we will then open up the meeting to questions.
Mr Colin Jack (Department for Employment and Learning): Thank you. In the past, we have had a series of quarterly updates on European policy developments, where we have involved the desk officer in the Office of the Northern Ireland Executive in Brussels. There has been a slight change to the system of dealing with that. The desk officers are staff from the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM), and their reports have been submitted to the Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, which has circulated those to the other Committees.
I am here today to give you an update from the Department's perspective on the European policy developments that affect us and also on the European social fund proposals 2014-2020, because we have a consultation exercise under way on those at the moment.
I will start with the European social fund. The proposals for the new programme were published in a consultation document that was launched on 29 July, and the closing date for responses is 21 October. Officials engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, including other Departments and representatives from the community and voluntary sector and from local government in advance of publishing the document. We have also had a number of consultation meetings as part of the process.
The design of the programme is in line with the regulations that have been emerging from the European Commission and the European institutions, and a set of investment priorities was agreed for the structural funds across Europe by the European Council. Within those priorities, there are 11 thematic objectives. We have taken the view that three of those are relevant to the European social fund: objective 8, which is promoting employment and supporting labour mobility; objective 9, which is promoting social inclusion and combating poverty; and objective 10, which is investing in education, skills and lifelong learning.
We have set out our proposals for the new programme on the basis that priority 1 will address a number of the groups facing barriers to employability that have been targeted by our current European social fund programme. To give an indication of the scale of the money involved in the current programme, we have had €166 million over the seven-year programming period, which increased to just under €190 million. In the new programme, we expect to have roughly the same amount of money — about €183 million — over the programming period. That is a 40% intervention rate. We propose that the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) will make a 25% contribution. There will be a requirement for a further 35% match-funding from other sources in the new programme. By the time that you add in that match-funding, we expect the total value of the programme to be around €450 million in 2014-2020.
The activity that we intend to support under priority 1 will be looking at engaging people who are unemployed and economically inactive and helping them to attain and sustain employment. We expect an increased emphasis in the new programme on young people, particularly those not in education, employment or training (NEET). We expect a number of the other groups that are facing barriers that we supported under the current programme to be eligible.
Under priority 2, we have a requirement from the Commission to demonstrate that at least 20% of the new programme is targeted at social inclusion. Our view is that everything that we have done historically under the European social fund programme has targeted social inclusion, and we expect that to continue. However, to make sure that we can demonstrate that 20% requirement, we are earmarking 30% for priority 2. We expect that to target particularly those with health conditions and disabilities that are barriers to employment. We also expect some community family support activity to be under priority 2.
Under priority 3, we expect to support the development of apprenticeships, taking into account the outcome of the review of apprenticeships that the Department is carrying forward, and adopt the dual system of people being trained while in employment. That was shown to be effective across Europe.
That is the broad structure of the new European social fund programme. I can pause for questions now or go on to talk about two or three of the other top European policy issues.
The Deputy Chairperson: I have had some indications from Committee members, so perhaps we should pause there for some questions before going on.
Mr F McCann: I am looking for a wee bit of information. I attended a recent seminar held by Martina Anderson MEP on how organisations and groups can tap into the new possibilities that may arise. It was interesting, because a number of issues raised their head. One was that it is not possible for even medium-sized groups in, say, a constituency to sit down and make an application, because it may be outside their ability to do so, and that it is instead better when applying to go for the bigger groups or an amalgamation of a number of groups.
Another issue that she raised was that to draw up applications is near enough a specialism. If groups with the best interests in the world sit down to do it, if it is not done in the European way of doing applications, it will be rejected, and it also costs a fortune to do.
A third issue raised was to get good advice on how to apply and encourage local groups to bond and make multiple applications or an application that encompasses all the work that they are doing. What would the Department be able to do to assist that? I think that one figure quoted for getting an application done was £50,000 or something like that, maybe even more.
Mr Jack: I am not sure whether the focus of that event was on the European social fund or more broadly on —
Mr F McCann: It took in the European social fund programme and spoke about the fund's new possibilities.
Mr Jack: It sounds as if it was probably about the competitive funding opportunities, which generally require a range of partners from different member states. We get feedback that the process can be complex, and I suppose that those are processes that we want to encourage organisations here to take advantage of. The Executive have a target for a 20% increase of those competitive funds, as they are in addition to the structural funds, which we are entitled to. These competitive funds are over and above that, so it is in our interests to get more applications.
Mrs Patricia McVeigh (Department for Employment and Learning): There are different aspects of the competitive funds, and, as Eoin said, we are still waiting for more definitive information on those new funds, which become applicable in 2014. That includes Erasmusplus, which is the lifelong learning programme that many voluntary and community organisations have previously accessed. In the Department, we have looked at why and how people access them, and then we will see how we can improve the knowledge about funding so that people can have it more quickly and have more time to think about it and look at how we can facilitate that.
I also know that OFMDFM is looking at issues around the capacity of groups being able to complete application forms and looking to see whether it can create a fund to support those groups. There are other types of funding, including INTERREG. We are looking at holding workshops on INTERREG and inviting people along to understand and to create partners or to learn from previous successful applicants. As a Department, we will be trying to share knowledge about people who have been successful, and, where possible, we will try to give people longer notice. We will work with OFMDFM, which is responsible for the social cohesion aspect of the funds to see how, collaboratively, we can support voluntary and community organisations to access funding.
Mr Jack: On the European social fund specifically, we will reflect on those views. I appreciate that any funding process can be complex for organisations in the voluntary and community sector. There are opportunities for organisations to work together, and we will certainly look at that in developing our arrangements.
Mr P Ramsey: All the priorities in the thematic objectives seem to be hitting the right notes. Is it Europe that determines the thematic objectives, or is it DEL that makes a bid in those areas?
Mr Jack: Europe determines the objectives, but it is up to DEL to determine, and, ultimately, for the Executive to agree, what specific activities are supported under each objective.
Mr P Ramsey: It is a lot of money: €450 million is the overall amount. Is that purely for DEL to create programmes around?
Mr Jack: No. DEL has been given the job by DFP of drawing up the European social fund programme, but we expect quite a range of organisations to benefit from the money.
Mr P Ramsey: Is administering the money purely down to DEL?
Mr Jack: The managing authority for the European social fund is in DEL.
Mr P Ramsey: We are talking about NEETs and trying to encourage more social inclusion. Do you have a sub-regional stakeholder event at which you can talk to people about how to achieve those objectives?
Mrs Briege Rainey (Department for Employment and Learning): Before the consultation document was published, we attended an event with the community and voluntary sector with cluster groups who look after particular interests, including young people, people with a disability and lone parents. At that stage, we took on board their comments on our proposals before we had anything concrete to publish. We discussed with them in groups what the issues were with the current programme and how they saw things improving and developing.
Mr P Ramsey: Were those groups that were providing training or whatever through the European social fund? Mr Jack: We facilitate a number of interest groups. There are themes in the organisations that we support under the European social fund, and we have cluster groups that look at those themes. We have also had engagement more broadly with the voluntary and community sector facilitated by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA).
Mrs Rainey: We had an event facilitated by NICVA, which was attended mostly by community and voluntary sector organisations, although it was open to other people. That was after we had published the consultation document. They voiced their concerns and hopes for the new programme.
Mr P Ramsey: Was it one event or was it a series of events across Northern Ireland?
Mrs Rainey: One event was organised by NICVA for people from across Northern Ireland, and there have been individual meetings with other interested parties. There was one event before and another after publication.
Mr P Ramsey: Presumably, there will be discussions as you develop it. I am keen to hear how you would involve young people in determining objectives. It is important that their voice be heard. How will you achieve that?
Mr Jack: We are engaging with young people on an ongoing basis, whether specifically in relation to the European social fund programme or not. We have an event that we are inviting the Committee to, which I mentioned the last time that I gave evidence on the Pathways to Success programme. We have a conference that is due to take place on 21 and 22 November, and we are making sure that we have young people's engagement in that process. That is looking at what provision is made generally under any funding programme for young people not in education, employment or training, and we are seeking to learn lessons from other parts of Europe. We are organising a pre-event the week before the main conference where the young people will have the opportunity to talk through the issues from their perspective and prepare some of their participation in the main conference so that they have an opportunity to think through the issues in a way that is tailored to them and that they have prepared to engage with the policy makers who will be at that conference.
Mr P Ramsey: I am delighted to hear that, but I encourage you to develop a strategy across Northern Ireland to involve young people in different areas.
My final question is on finance. Of the €450 million, is there an early indication of how that will be broken down in respect of the level that the community and voluntary sector would be achieving to deliver programmes? What are the administration costs? What are the various other costs?
Mrs Rainey: We have the allocation that we propose for each of those priorities. For example, priority 1, in the main, will be delivered by the community and voluntary sector; some 28·5% of the allocation will go to priority 1; 30% will go to priority 2; and the other 40% will go to priority 3.
Mr P Ramsey: I have just realised that it is in the report.
Mrs Rainey: Does that answer your question?
Mr P Ramsey: That is fine.
The Deputy Chairperson: How are you making contact with all the young people to ensure their involvement and to ensure that their voice is heard in all the events that you are holding?
Mr Jack: We have not had specific events for young people as part of the development of the European social fund programme, but we are keen to engage with young people more on the policy issues and what provision works for them. The conference next month will be a key opportunity for us to engage with young people, and we are using innovative approaches to do that. We are having the event the week beforehand. We are getting young people involved in the organisation of the conference, and we have arranged for people who are involved in some of our programmes for young people not in education, employment or training to get world host training and be involved in the delivery of the conference.
We think carefully about how we engage with young people on all our policy developments. We take part in a forum that the Commissioner for Children and Young People convenes for Departments and other public bodies on engagement with young people. We also convene various groups; there is one for young people who come from a care background, and we have engagement mechanisms built in through the trusts on that. We are always alive to the need to engage effectively with young people.
The Deputy Chairperson: We appreciate your work to engage with young people on policy development, but how do you contact young people? How do you advertise? How do young people get to be part of that engagement, that is, young people from all sectors as opposed to just the catchment area that you are looking at?
Mr Jack: We do it through the organisations that we work with and which we support to work with young people. Organisations that run some of our European social fund programmes, as well as collaboration and innovation fund programmes, work with young people daily and recruit them to take part in their programmes. We engage with young people whom we support through our programmes.
Mrs Rainey: We also have engagement through our careers service. We can contact people before they leave school and make them aware of the possibilities even at that stage. There is a great deal of contact.
The Deputy Chairperson: What uptake is there among young people in engaging with you?
Mr Jack: I do not have precise figures. We target young people to engage with us. We can see whether we can provide a better impression in figures.
The Deputy Chairperson: It is important to engage with young people on policy developments and so forth, as you want to get their views. How do you get them encourage them to come? You can hold all the events that you want, but if you do not have the people who you want there, you are defeating the purpose. It is a case of getting them there so that you can engage with them.
Mr Jack: We know from working with organisations such as Include Youth, Opportunity Youth and the Prince's Trust that if we did not engage with young people, listen to them and respond to their needs, we would know about it very quickly.
Mr Douglas: Thank you for the presentation. The consultation closes in four or five days' time. This draft was put together by you and stakeholders. Did anything new arise from the consultation that you will add to the strategy, Colin?
Mr Jack: It is still early days for responses. We had a few, but it is hard to comment on the basis of only a few. We expect the bulk of them to arrive closer to the date. That tends to be the way.
Mr Douglas: Once you formulate agreement on the strategy, it goes right up to 2020.
Mr Jack: Yes.
Mr Douglas: Is that fixed? If you look at how the economy has declined in recent years, is the strategy flexible enough to be changed along the way, depending on circumstances?
Mr Jack: That is a very good question. The years in the title of the programme are slightly misleading in that although the current programme is 2007-2013, we are funding organisations up to March 2015 because an arrangement called N+2 allows extra time to spend the money.
Experience shows that each new round of programmes takes longer to negotiate at European level than the title suggests. Although the budget for the 2014-2020 programme was agreed in June at the European Council meeting, quite a range of detail of the regulations for the funds is still being discussed between the European Parliament, the Commission and Governments at the European Council. We expect the funding to start to flow when the current funding finishes early in 2015. It is then likely to go on beyond 2020, probably into 2022. That is the basis on which we are planning. With the current programme, we had two tranches of funding; the first for three years and the second for four years. Because economic circumstances have changed significantly during the course of the current programme, we need to retain the flexibility to address new challenges that emerge during the programme period.
Mr Douglas: Priority 3 talks about "lifelong learning". How do you envisage rolling that out?
Mr Jack: The priority in the document is that we focus the money under priority 3 on apprenticeships. The scope of that priority could be wider. We could choose to do other things with that money, but the Minister has proposed that we support the apprenticeships programme. It is big amount — €450 million — over seven years. However, in context, it accounts for roughly 7% of the Department's annual budget of £800 million. Therefore we have to be selective about what we will support under the European social fund as opposed to through mainstream resources.
The Deputy Chairperson: Just on that point: how many stakeholders was this consultation sent to? You said that you had a few responses. Will you clarify what "a few" means? I suggest that those "few" would account for at least 50%, because from now until Monday, you are not going to get many more than you already have.
Mrs Rainey: We have a very small number — about seven — in at the minute. We have a list of section 75 consultees that we send documents to, and it went to them first. I cannot give you figures, but it covers a huge number of organisations throughout Northern Ireland. We would then look specifically at the projects that operate at the minute and the organisations that deliver for us, and we sent out to those, as well as political parties and other interested groups. There was a very wide-ranging consultation —
The Deputy Chairperson: Yet, such a low response at the moment.
Mrs Rainey: Yes, but we were made aware at the stage of the pre-consultation event that certain issues that we were proposing did not go down well and we adjusted the document accordingly. At the event after we published, the response to what we were suggesting was positive and supportive. We expect quite a high volume of responses; we are assured that they will all come in the last couple of days. To date, the responses that have come in have been supportive.
The Deputy Chairperson: I admire your faith.
Mr Jack: It reflects our experience. We generally find that responses to consultation exercises come in very close to the date.
The Deputy Chairperson: That is the question on that. You have another couple of points to make.
Mr Jack: I will go over a couple of broader European policy issues. First, there are the other funding programmes. Erasmus + is the new programme for mobility. Members may be familiar with the Erasmus programme, which has been about mobility in higher education. Erasmus was part of a programme called Lifelong Learning, which is the current programme in the further and higher education area. Erasmus+ is the replacement for the Lifelong Learning programme. Rather than have lots of individual strands, as the current programme had — Erasmus, Leonardo, Grundtvig —
Mrs Rainey: Transversal.
Mr Jack: — and Transversal. There were various programmes and it was quite complex to navigate. The new Erasmus + is the only mobility programme. Like the current Erasmus programme, it is for students. It is also for young people who are in training or further education or groups of young people who wish to travel and broaden their experience generally. The arrangements for administering that programme in the UK are being resolved. We want to publicise the opportunities for young people to take part in that programme in future and we are developing a strategy for that.
Horizon 2020 has been mentioned, which is the new research framework programme to follow on from FP7, the current research programme. It is my understanding that Horizon 2020 has a budget of €80 billion across Europe, making it the biggest opportunity for competitive funding. We have put an infrastructure in place in Northern Ireland to maximise the uptake of that funding by universities, businesses and others. Through the work of the Barroso task force committee, we found that organisations in the voluntary and community sector are accessing FP7. The police service has, in fact, successfully funded a project through FP7. That is another main focus for our activities.
There are some other competitive funding programmes that will be of interest to organisations in the DEL sectors. However, I will bring the Committee up to date with a couple of other policy initiatives that members will have heard of. The first is the youth employment initiative, which is an €6 billion programme across Europe. The budget for it was agreed at the June Council meeting. There is €3 billion in new money and €3 billion that member states have to find from their European social fund allocations.
However, Northern Ireland is not likely to be eligible for the youth employment initiative because it is targeted at regions with youth unemployment above 25%. Our rate at the qualifying date, which was 2012, was 18·9%. We have explored our eligibility from a number of perspectives; there is a 10% flexibility that member states have to use the money at a lower geographical area, at what is called nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) 3 level. We have looked into whether any sub-region of Northern Ireland at NUTS 3 level has high enough youth unemployment, but it appears that that is not the case. Nonetheless, we will continue to explore that possibility until it is exhausted. However, the likelihood does not look particularly strong that there will be any money for Northern Ireland from that initiative.
The Youth Guarantee is something that the Commission and the Council have agreed; it is about making an offer of a quality education or training place to every young person under the age of 25 who is unemployed. We are looking at the extent to which we comply with that, but we believe that we have a very broad range of programmes that are tailored to a wide range of groups of young people. We are putting together our evidence at the moment to say to the Commission that we believe that we are delivering on the Youth Guarantee in Northern Ireland. That is our plan for the future.
The Deputy Chairperson: Thank you, Colin. One of the Committee's concerns is, perhaps, that this report is somewhat out of date. We should really be getting a report up to the end of September, rather than to the end of June. On 5 June, we got a report from Gordon Browne, which brought us up to the end of May. The report is out of date, and we have brought it to your attention before that we would like to see more up-to-date reports being brought to the Committee. This came from OFMDFM, and that is where the delay is. We have written to OFMDFM on two occasions. Is that right?
The Committee Clerk: Yes.
The Deputy Chairperson: Yet we have still not received the up-to-date report. It is a cause of concern that we are always on the back foot with these reports.
Mr Jack: I am sure that that concern has been conveyed to the Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, but we will also convey it to OFMDFM directly. We will update the Committee from our perspective on the engagement that we have had on European issues.
The Deputy Chairperson: Gordon Browne always used to come before us to give us an update. Why has that stopped? Why does he no longer come to the Committee?
Mr Jack: Well, again it reflects —
Mrs McVeigh: As Colin said at the beginning of the meeting, it has been agreed that OFMDFM will collate the reports of the four desk officers. The collated report will go via the Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister and will then be circulated to all the other Committees.
You are right, Chair. If that had happened sooner, Gordon could have been here to talk about his report. I think that it is just about the timing and the mechanisms. We need to improve on those. If you had received the report, Gordon could have been here to talk to you about it. However, as the report has not reached you, we decided that it was not perhaps appropriate for Gordon to come and speak to that report.
The Deputy Chairperson: When will this matter be cleared up? We are way behind on this report, and that is hardly good enough. We cannot get Gordon Browne to come here and update us or to provide a report when we have not got it. It seems that there is a difficulty in another Committee. When will this be sorted out so that we will have the report in time and get the person here to update us on it?
Mr Jack: I suppose that the process of resolving it is not within our control. However, we will convey that to officials in OFMDFM. We will update you from our perspective on the engagement that we have had. Gordon works in support of us on that.
I also understand that the Committee is going to Brussels in the near future and that there will be engagement with Gordon as part of that visit.
The Deputy Chairperson: Is it fair to say that when you come to give us an update, you do not have the same detail as Gordon Browne?
Mr Jack: We —
Mrs McVeigh: We received a copy of Gordon's report that has gone to OFMDFM. I think that what Colin is saying is that although we are not specifically referencing Gordon's report, we give you an overview at these briefings of up-to-date European policy and issues from a DEL perspective. Our briefing is up to date in relation to DEL and the Committee for Employment and Learning, although we are not necessarily articulating exactly what Gordon has said.
Mr P Ramsey: That is a good diplomatic response.
Mr Jack: It is worth saying that much of the European policy development process is very fast-moving. When Eoin was with you earlier, he expressed frustration at his difficulty in accessing documents or finding anything that has been published on some of the policy developments. That is because there are still negotiations under way on details of a number of programmes for the 2014-2020 period. Currently, we have the Lithuanian presidency. The budget was agreed during the Irish presidency, but some of the details have yet to be resolved about how the programmes will work. Negotiations continue. The European Parliament made proposals for changing the rules around some of the new programmes, and the new presidency now has to come up with compromise proposals where those from the Parliament have not been acceptable to the member states in the Council. The position can change on some of the issues from day to day. It is phenomenally complex to keep on top of all that, and capturing it on paper is pretty difficult.
The Deputy Chairperson: No other members have indicated that they want to ask a question. Colin, Patricia and Briege, thank you very much for coming along to the Committee. | 29,343 | 10,752 | 0.000094 |
warc | 201704 | Chiropractor Mesquite, TX Mesquite Injury Rehab & Chiropractic Call Now for a FREE Consultation! (214) 239-2185 X-RayTechnology Mesquite, TX
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subluxations can cause changes in the function of the disc and posterior joints. These changes can alter the shape of the disc and the intervertebral foramina where the delicate spinal nerves exit. The result is irritation to the spinal nerves that send and receive information between the body and the brain. Chiropractic is based on the scientific fact that your body is a self-regulating, self-healing organism. These important functions are controlled by the brain, spinal cord, and all the nerves of the body. The skull protects the delicate tissues of the brain. The moving bones of the spine protect the vulnerable communication pathways of the spinal cord and nerve roots. If the nervous system is impaired, it can cause malfunction of the tissues and organs throughout the body. Doctors call this the Vertebral Subluxation Complex (VSC).
Chiropractors work by restoring your own inborn ability to be healthy. When under proper control of your nervous system, all the cells, tissues, and organs of your body are designed to resist disease and ill health. The
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warc | 201704 | Senate Bill 193, which created a mandatory online registry for scrap metal and bulk merchandise container dealers is now available on Ohio Homeland Security’s website https://ext.dps.state.oh.us/Scra.... The online registry aims to create an infrastructure within the industry to crack down on scrap theft, thereby protecting Ohio’s infrastructure by focusing on the end point - the dealers and recycling facilities.
Whether it is the theft of railroad spikes and rails or copper communication lines, scrap metal theft presents a significant threat to Ohio’s infrastructure. These types of thefts can create disruptions in communication services and dangers to the public.
In addition to the online registry, the Department of Public Safety continues to offer training for both law enforcement officers and representatives from the scrap metal industry. The training provides a comprehensive overview of the bill. Attendees will also receive information on how and where to register, what penalties can result for failure to comply with the revised law and ways to determine if someone may be attempting to scrap stolen property.
For more information regarding the training dates and locations, please visit http://homelandsecurity.ohio.gov...
If you See Something, Say Something. Contact Ohio Homeland Security at 1-877-OHS-INTEL or for emergencies, call 911. | 1,381 | 751 | 0.001352 |
warc | 201704 | As if rising commodity costs and increased competition were not posing enough worries for big quick-service chains, their costly expenditures for television advertising now may be yielding a dwindling response from fast-food customers.
Major quick-service brands’ TV spots are getting lower grades from consumers this year compared with the previous year in such critical areas as being understandable and motivating product purchases, among other deficiencies, according to a new study of | 497 | 327 | 0.003108 |
warc | 201704 | Hessian Peace Prize
Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative President
Kartmann, Premier Koch: I want to thank you both for your remarks and for the gracious welcome I’ve received here in Hesse.
I am deeply grateful to the Albert Osswald Foundation – and Karl Starzacher, Professor Muller and the members of the Board of Trustees – for this prestigious award and wonderful honor. Through this award, I believe that you are sending a clear signal around the globe that we must work together to reduce nuclear risks, which threaten mankind.
It is a great honor for me to join your impressive list of past recipients and to be introduced today by Hans Blix. After a remarkable career of public service, Hans came out of retirement to take on the role of Chief Weapons Inspector for Iraq. He took unjustified criticism from certain sectors, because he
did not find … what was not there.
Hans is a man of honor and courage dedicated to making the world safer and a real hero. Hans, I thank you for your outstanding service to mankind, and I am honored to follow in your footsteps in receiving this award.
Some have received this prize for a mission accomplished. I can assure this audience that I do not confuse this wonderful recognition with a completed mission. There is an increasingly dangerous gap between the growing threat and our response. Today, we must ask ourselves, have we learned the lessons of the Cold War?
The role that nuclear dangers have played in guiding my professional life began to unfold 45 years ago – near Wiesbaden, at Ramstein Air Force Base. Let’s flash back to October 1962. I was 24 years old and working as a staff lawyer for the House Armed Services Committee on a three-week trip to Europe. Our small group was touring NATO bases when the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out. During this period, while the world held its breath, our delegation met at Ramstein with the head of U.S. Air Force Europe. He explained that, in the event of war, he had only a very few minutes to launch all of his Quick Reaction Aircraft, or they would be destroyed. These planes were the first target for the Soviets because they would deliver the first nuclear weapons to strike the Soviet Union.
The fact that the fate of mankind rested on the shoulders of a few people, who had only moments to decide whether to launch, made a deep and lasting impression on me. From that early period of my life, I have been dedicated to doing everything possible to increase warning time for both sides and to take other steps to avoid the chance of a nuclear war, including war by accident or a catastrophic mistake. Today, we still have thousands of weapons on hair trigger alert with very little decision time for those with their fingers on the nuclear trigger. Our job of risk reduction is far from complete.
Let’s flash back to 1974 -- my first trip to NATO as a newly-elected Senator. It was clear that the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact had a large advantage over NATO in manpower, tanks, artillery and other equipment. NATO had developed a nuclear “first use” strategy to deter the aggregation and use of large tank formations across NATO’s eastern border and prevent an invasion of Germany and Western Europe.
In late-night informal discussions, I learned that we not only had a “first use” policy – but an “
early first use” policy. Those in charge made it clear to me that in the event of a Soviet invasion, they were going to seek immediate authorization for the use of short-range battlefield nuclear weapons.
They expected that any U.S. President would not grant release authority for at least a couple of days, and therefore, they intended to make the request at a very early stage. The bottom line -- in the event of a war, we would move up the ladder of escalation very rapidly. I spent much of my time in the United States Senate working to strengthen the conventional forces of NATO, so we could move away -- both operationally and psychologically -- from early nuclear first use with tactical nuclear weapons. Today, there is no Warsaw Pact or Soviet Union -- we have greatly reduced political tension and military confrontation. However the erosion of Russia’s conventional military capability has led it to increase its dependency on nuclear weapons, including short range battlefield nuclear weapons. As NATO did during the Cold War, Russia has now declared that it may use nuclear weapons first.
Welcome to the end of the Cold War – battlefield nuclear weapons are still in vogue and for the first time, both Russia and NATO have reserved the right to use nuclear weapons first, even if not attacked with nuclear weapons. In today’s world, any nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO is much more likely to be by accident than by design, and nuclear first use policy by both Russia and NATO needs a major rethinking. Short-range battlefield nuclear weapons are a terrorists’ dream. I believe that it would be in NATO and Russia’s fundamental security interest to agree on transparency and accountability for all such weapons. Today, this discussion has not even begun.
Fast back to 1991. Just after President Gorbachev was released from house arrest following the failed August coup, a Russian friend contacted me and invited me to make an urgent trip to Moscow to meet with the new Russian leaders and President Gorbachev. In my previous meetings with President Gorbachev, I always found him to be candid and direct. As I left the meeting, I asked him: “Mr. President, did you retain command and control of the Soviet nuclear forces during the coup attempt?” President Gorbachev looked away and did not answer. That was answer enough for me.
The Soviet Union was coming apart. I believed that the end of the Soviet empire would speed the march of freedom and reduce the risk of war, but I left Moscow convinced that it would also present a grave global security challenge. The Soviet Union had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to make 40,000-60,000 more -- stored in over 250 buildings in more than 50 sites, across 11 time zones. In addition, they had a huge stockpile of chemical weapons and biological materials and thousands of scientists who knew how to make weapons of mass destruction. As one strategic nuclear power turned into four – Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus – the security future looked both uncertain and ominous.
Over the next two months, I joined forces with Senator Richard Lugar and other Senators to convince our colleagues in the United States Congress that helping Moscow secure its nuclear weapons and materials, destroy excess weapons, and employ its weapons scientists was not ‘aid to the Soviet military,’ as some called it, but a way to prevent a national security calamity for the United States, Russia, Europe and the world. Congress approved passage of the first Nunn-Lugar bill in the fall of 1991, just months before the Soviet Union formally dissolved.
The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs have eliminated hundreds of missiles, deactivated thousands of warheads, secured tons of nuclear materials, and engaged thousands of weapons experts. None of this would have been possible without a shared sense of priority between Russians and Americans.
Unfortunately, in spite of the important gains, our efforts have not kept pace with the threat. Today, the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point:
Terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons, and there can be little doubt that if they acquire a weapon that they will use it. There are nuclear weapons materials in more than 40 countries, some secured by nothing more than a chain link fence, and, at the current pace, it will be decades before this material is adequately secured or eliminated globally. The know-how and expertise to build nuclear weapons is far more available today, because of an explosion of information and commerce throughout the world. The number of nuclear weapons states is increasing. A world with 12 or 20 nuclear weapons states will be much more dangerous and make it much more likely that nuclear weapons fall into terrorist hands. With the growing interest in nuclear energy, a number of countries are considering developing the capacity to enrich uranium – a capacity that would also give them the means to make nuclear weapons and the raw materials for catastrophic terrorism. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia continue to deploy thousands of nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles that can hit their targets in less than 30 minutes – a posture that carries with it an unacceptable risk of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch.
Today, we are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe.
With these growing dangers in mind, former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and I published an essay in January 2007 in
The Wall Street Journal that called for a sharp change of direction in our nuclear weapons policy. It laid out the vision and steps for moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
The four of us – and the many other security leaders who have endorsed our views – are keenly aware that the quest for a world free of nuclear weapons is fraught with practical and political challenges.
As
The Economist magazine wrote in 2006: “By simply demanding the goal of a world without nuclear weapons without a readiness to tackle the practical problems raised by it ensures that it will never happen.”
We have taken aim at the practical problems by laying out a series of steps toward the goal of deemphasizing nuclear weapons – for keeping them out of terrorists’ hands and ultimately ridding our world of them.
In broad terms, the steps involve dramatically reducing the number of nuclear weapons; taking weapons off of quick-launch, hair-trigger status; eliminating short-range tactical weapons; and converting the conflict we now have with Russia over missile defense into an opportunity to work together on warning time – decision time and defense against limited attacks whether deliberate or by accident.
We must secure nuclear weapons and materials around the world to the highest standards. We must enhance verification and enforcement capabilities.
We have to limit the availability of highly enriched uranium through a range of cooperative methods, and we in America must work to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force.
Finally, we need to redouble efforts to resolve the regional confrontations that increase demand for nuclear weapons.
Each of these steps will help reduce the risk of nuclear use, and each will help build a spirit of trust and cooperation. We cannot take these crucial steps without the cooperation of other nations; we cannot get the cooperation of other nations without the vision of ending these weapons as a threat to the world.
Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible.
The reaction of many people to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons comes in two parts – on the one hand they say “that would be great.” And their second thought is: “we can never get there.”
To me, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. It is tempting and easy to say: “We can’t get there from here.” It is true that today in our troubled world we can’t see the top of the mountain. But we can see that we are heading down -- not up. We can see that we must turn around, that we must take paths leading to higher ground and that we must get others to move with us.
Let me close with a parable of hope. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States began working with Russia to dismantle Soviet nuclear missiles and warheads, our countries struck a deal to reduce excess highly enriched uranium.
Under this agreement, 500 tons of highly enriched uranium from former Soviet nuclear weapons is being blended down to low enriched uranium, and then used as fuel for nuclear power plants in the United States.
When you calculate that 20% of all electricity in the United States comes from nuclear power plants, and 50% of the nuclear fuel used in the U.S. comes through this agreement, you have an interesting fact: today roughly speaking – one out of every ten light bulbs in America today is powered by material that 20 years ago was in Soviet nuclear warheads that were pointed at the United States and other NATO countries.
From swords to ploughshares. Who would have thought this possible in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or even in the early 90s? It would have certainly been seen as a mountain too high to climb.
Today, we can show our children and grandchildren the beauty and safety of the mountaintop, but only if we have the vision to see the upward path … and the courage to take it.
Nearly 20 years ago, President Reagan said, “We now have a weapon that can destroy the world -- why don't we recognize that threat more clearly and then come together with one aim in mind: how safely, sanely, and quickly can we rid the world of this threat to our civilization and our existence.”
If we want our children and grandchildren to ever see the mountaintop, our generation must begin to answer this question.
###
About
NTI Co-Chairman Sam Nunn was honored with the Hessian Peace Prize for his "long-standing involvement and strong engagement in avoiding nuclear conflicts and his work toward nuclear disarmament." In his acceptance remarks, he spoke about the need to reduce global nuclear dangers.
Authors
Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, NTI | 14,050 | 6,144 | 0.000166 |
warc | 201704 | D4 THERMAL SHOCK
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*The products and the claims made about specific products on or through this website have not been evaluated by this website or the United States Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. | 4,196 | 2,118 | 0.000477 |
warc | 201704 | I was able to choose the five kinds of snacks that I wanted from NatureBox which was awesome. My favorite would have to be the dried California apricots. I have always loved dried fruit and these are very firm and chewy which I loved. My other favorite is the blueberry almond bites which are addictive! They are crisp and fruity.
The other snacks that I tried were all delicious as well including the pistachio power clusters, cinnamon spiced almonds and southern BBQ sunflower kernels. When I was choosing the snacks I wanted, I made sure to include filling options such as these nuts which help keep me full during the day while taking care of a little baby. These snacks are all high quality and are a lot nicer than what you can typically find in most grocery stores.
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warc | 201704 | On the Internet, every day is April Fools’ Day.
On this day, the holiest for online pranksters, today’s headlines, R.S.S. feeds and tweet-streams will be flooded with fake press releases, fake news items and prank headlines.
Adding to the confusion, some companies will introduce products today whose press releases will be mistaken for jokes. When Gmail was announced April 1, 2004, many people thought the then unheard-of offer of one gigabyte of free e-mail storage could not be true.
But then, Google can only blame itself. The company is famous for April Fools’ pranks like fictitious job openings for a research center on the moon, Google Gulp, a drink to make you smarter about making search inquiries and a broadband service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, that used wires strung through sewers. (Not a bad idea, really.)
Thinking about how people get fooled on April 1 is a good way to prepare for the year-round attempts by swindlers to bamboozle the naïve, the witless and those who just aren’t paying close attention. In other words, all of us.
The same themes run through the e-mail solicitations of Nigerian princes waiting to share their riches, messages by banks to type in your PIN or frantic pleas from Facebook friends trapped overseas without any money.Continue reading the main story
How do you tell the real from the surreal today?
“Anything that’s too good to be true requires skepticism,” said Baratunde Thurston, someone who knows a thing or two about how people react to information. He is an editor of The Onion. The Onion explicitly tries not to fool people — its fake news reports are satire, not hoaxes — yet readers have groaned that these days they cannot tell the difference between straight-faced CNN headlines and The Onion’s parodies. A recent Onion video report that claimed that Stouffer’s had added suicide prevention tips to the packaging of its single-serving microwaveable meals was retweeted by several suicide prevention groups.
The Internet is a great place to fool people, Mr. Thurston said, because of what he called “tickerization” of news.
Internet distribution means a lot more people can be fooled at once, and a much wider audience can watch the spectacle.
One of the best way to prepare for today’s pranks and scams is to study the classics. The quickest way is a walk through the April Fools’ exhibit at The Museum of Hoaxes. You will begin to get the feel for the recognizable patterns to the most credible hoaxes, like the one in 1996, when Taco Bell put out a press release claiming that the company had bought the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell. (Mike McCurry, White House press secretary at the time, was asked about the sale and ad-libbed that the Lincoln Memorial had also been bought and would be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial. Other companies realized: you can’t buy that kind of publicity.)
For the second phase of your education, head over to Snopes.com, the debunker of urban legends and klaxon of Internet scams. Click on “Top Scams” for information about advance fee scams or foreign lottery schemes. Bookmark the “What’s New” section to track the latest hoaxes like Olive Garden, the restaurant chain, giving $500 gift certificates to people who sign up as Facebook fans or the threat of cockroach eggs in drinking straws. This is the first site to visit when you are the least bit suspicious about an e-mail message or Facebook posting.
Facebook, which increasingly drives more traffic to Web sites, has been refreshingly candid about frauds being perpetrated on its pages. A list at facebook.com/security warns to watch out for fake toolbars, requests for passwords or messages that claim to be from friends in need of money in a foreign country. Adjust your privacy settings so strangers do not learn too much about you.
Facebook posts a new warning almost every week. If you become a fan of the security page, you will be notified of new threats and tips posted there.
Dating is also ripe for swindles.
“We’ve seen a huge wave in dating Web site fraud,” said Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer for the antifraud company Identity Theft 911 in Scottsdale, Ariz. “It’s not high tech. People are lonely, and that loneliness can be exploited,” he said.
A man or a woman — it seems to be an equal opportunity con — is befriended by someone overseas on Facebook or a dating site. They start a correspondence that can go on for months to build up their trust. Then comes a request for money.
“The fraudster might say, ‘I think we’ve got something good going on. I’d love to come out and see if we can make this work,’ ” Mr. Goodman said. In some cases, he said, the American buys the pen pal a ticket and goes to the airport to meet the person. Hours after the flight has arrived, it dawns on the victim that the swindler walked right past into a new life, possibly with someone else who had been lied to for months.
Any request for personal information from someone you have never met should be suspect, Mr. Goodman said. Most important, he said, “always, always suspect anyone who asks for money, even if the other party appears to be a family member. The goal is to push you to jump to making a payment before you’ve figured out your doubts.”
Phishing is a malicious spoof in which a stranger sends out thousands of e-mail messages intended to trick people into sending personal information, like a bank account number or Facebook password. The message may look like official correspondence from a bank, PayPal or even Facebook. Or it may look like a personal message or a business invoice. The goal is to get you to click your way to a Web page that looks authentic and get you to enter personal information.
A Facebook spokesman pointed to the company’s help page on phishing, which warns: “Don’t click on strange links in posts or messages, even if they’re from friends. If it seems weird for an old friend to write on your Wall or send you a message, it’s possible that the person’s account has been taken over by a spammer.” It also advises to be “especially wary of e-mails that ask you to update your account, tell you to open an attachment or warn you to act quickly before something happens."
In the end, you may have to accept that if you use the Internet, every once in a while, you are going to play the fool. “The only way to avoid getting pranked online is to think critically about every single thing you’re seeing,” said the performance artist Andy Bichlbaum, a member of the Yes Men, who impersonate corporate executives to spread political messages. “But then you’ll realize there’s a huge P.R. industry that’s paid to manufacture news. In effect, you’re being pranked constantly.”Continue reading the main story | 7,055 | 3,398 | 0.000308 |
warc | 201704 | WASHINGTON — Mandatory federal spending cuts scheduled to begin Friday are already affecting operations at many of the nation’s national parks and wildlife refuges, officials said Monday.
Contracts for plowing Tioga and Glacier Point roads in Yosemite National Park and Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park have been delayed, pushing back the opening of large parts of those popular parks. Hiring of seasonal workers — including firefighters, law enforcement officers, search-and-rescue teams, and maintenance staff members — has been frozen. Rangers are preparing to close or cut back hours at campgrounds, trails and visitor centers at parks from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Denali in Alaska in anticipation of the across-the-board budget cuts.
Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, did not announce the closing of any parks, monuments or refuges, but said that hours for visitors centers, tours and interpretive programs, like those at the Gettysburg battlefield, would be curtailed. He also said that access to some backcountry trails and campgrounds could be limited if firefighting and rescue teams are cut back.
“These are real impacts we’re looking at,” Mr. Salazar said in a call with reporters on Monday. “The sequester was not supposed to happen and now we have to implement these reduced numbers in the remaining seven months of the year.”
Mr. Salazar’s comments and his dire predictions for impacts on the millions of visitors to the nation’s 398 national parks and 561 wildlife refuges are part of a concerted administration campaign to pressure Congress to cancel the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration and to accept President Obama’s demand for balanced deficit reduction including some tax increases.
Mr. Salazar and Jonathan B. Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, used the call to highlight the economic impact of the 280 million annual visits to federally managed lands and the businesses that depend on them. They said the national parks generate $30 billion in economic activity and support 252,000 jobs and that some portion of those businesses and those jobs will suffer under the looming cuts.
Under the mandatory spending cuts, each park must absorb a 5 percent decrease in its annual budget. But since the sequester begins in the middle of the fiscal year, the immediate impact is in effect doubled.
Mr. Salazar has announced that he intends to leave office in March to return to his family in Colorado. President Obama has nominated Sally Jewell, currently the chief executive of the outdoor outfitter REI, to take over the department.
Mr. Salazar said that if the cuts take effect as scheduled, the agency will have to temporarily furlough thousands of employees, some for as long as 22 days. He said that federal personnel law requires 30 days’ notice of involuntary furloughs, so none will take effect before April 1. He said that he and other officials are now planning such actions.
The Interior Department has already warned that the budget cuts will reduce federal revenue by slowing development of oil, gas and coal on federal lands and waters. Mr. Salazar, in a letter earlier this month to Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat and chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said that the required cuts will have serious effects on the nation’s prized natural, scientific and tribal resources.
Mr. Salazar said that the spending slowdown would delay review of an expected 550 drilling plans for the Gulf of Mexico and permits for seismic testing and air quality in Alaska. He also said that the agency would issue about 300 fewer drilling permits than anticipated this year for oil and gas wells in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
In addition, delays in coal leasing because of the sequester will cost the federal government $50 million to $60 million for each delayed lease sale, Mr. Salazar said.
Mr. Salazar also warned that federal mineral revenue sharing payments to state and local governments will decline by more than $200 million and that programs for Native American tribes would be trimmed by nearly $130 million.
Joan Anzelmo, the former superintendent of the Colorado National Monument and spokeswoman for the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said that Mr. Salazar and Mr. Jarvis are highlighting the cuts that will be most immediately felt by the public to bring pressure on Congress to call off the sequester.
She said that the park service budget has been stagnant for four years while operating costs are rising. Something has to give, she said.
“Instead of being focused on getting their jobs done, park managers are all focused on how they’re going to implement these cuts,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Wyoming. “It’s hurting people, it’s hurting communities around the parks, and employees are at a point where they’re hitting a wall. This is no way for our government to work.”Continue reading the main story | 5,080 | 2,398 | 0.000428 |
warc | 201704 | Targeted therapy succeeds for common form of lung cancer in initial testing
Targeted therapy succeeds for common form of lung cancer in initial testing
The most common genetic subtype of lung cancer, which has long defied treatment with targeted therapies, has had its growth halted by a combination of two drugs already in use in laboratory and animal studies, setting the stage for clinical trials of these drugs in patients.
The study, published in
Cancer Discovery (2014; doi:10.1158/2159-8290.CD-13-0646), describes a new tack in the treatment of lung adenocarcinomas that carry mutations in the gene KRAS, which account for about 40% of all lung cancers. While most efforts to target KRAS directly with drugs have not proven successful, the authors of the current study took a more circuitous approach—targeting KRAS's accomplices, the genes that carry out its instructions, rather than KRAS itself.
“About 30% of lung adenocarcinomas have mutations in
KRAS, which amounts to nearly 30,000 of all patients diagnosed with lung cancer each year in the United States,” said the study's senior author, David Barbie, MD, of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber and the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. “That represents the single biggest subset of lung cancer patients, if grouped by the mutations within their tumor cells. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a reliable way at striking at the genetic mechanism that causes these cells to proliferate.”
Mutations in
KRAS cause cancer cells to grow and divide in a wildly disordered way. The lack of drugs able to block KRAS safely has led investigators to look for ways of stifling its effects downstream—by interfering with the signals it sends to other genes.
Barbie was studying one of these signaling pathways, which involves TBK1, a protein active in the immune system. He conducted a search of scientific literature to see if there are any compounds capable of blocking this protein. One study stated, deep in the footnotes, that a drug known as CYT387—already being tested as a treatment for the bone marrow disorder myelofibrosis—is also active against the TBK1 protein.
The researchers tested CYT387 in laboratory samples of lung adenocarcinoma cells and found it to be a potent inhibitor of TBK1 and, as a bonus, an effective suppressor of cytokines, proteins that congregate in the tissue around tumors and help cancer cells survive and spread to other parts of the body. Animal studies produced similarly encouraging results.
The research team next ran tests in more aggressive lung adenocarcinomas, which, in addition to having mutations in
KRAS, also had mutations in the key gene p53. When they tested two drugs in tandem—CYT387 and AZD6244—they found that the combination was potent against the tumors, both in laboratory cell samples and in animals with the disease.
They explained that their next step is to test these results in lung cancer patients. They are in the process of developing a clinical trial, and these findings may also be tested in colon and pancreatic cancer, which share these mutations. | 3,204 | 1,559 | 0.000655 |
warc | 201704 | There is a very funny tweet by Matthew Hankins about the over-use of “paradigm shift” in articles in Scopus between 1962-2014 which clearly suggest we over-use the term:
Percentage of shifts described as paradigm shifts, 1962-2014 pic.twitter.com/nHLuBUrH0H
— Matthew Hankins (@mc_hankins) January 23, 2016
However, last week there was a genuine shift in DNA sequencing published in bioRxiv by Matt Loose called “Real time selective sequencing using nanopore technology“. So what makes this paper special? Why is this a genuine paradigm shift?
Well, this is the first example, ever, of a DNA sequencer
selecting regions of the input genome to sequence. To be more accurate, Matt demonstrates the MinION sequencing DNA molecules and analyzing them in real time; testing whether they come from a region of the genome he is interested in; and if they are not, rejecting them (“spitting them out”) and making the nanopore available for the next read.
This has huge applications from human health through to pathogen genomics and microbiome research. There are many applications in genomics where you are only interested in a subset of the DNA molecules in your sample. For example, exome sequencing, or other sequence capture experiments – at the moment a separate capture reaction needs to take place and this can actually be more expensive than the sequencing. Or pathogen diagnostics – here most of what you sequence would be host DNA, which you could ask the sequencer to reject, leaving only the pathogen to sequence; or flip it round – human saliva samples can have up to 40% oral microbiome DNA, which is wasted if what you want to sequence is the host. I have worked with piRNA and siRNA datasets from insects where less than 1% of the Illumina reads are those I actually want. If you want to know if a particular bacterial infection is resistant to antibiotics, you only actually need to sequence the antibiotic-resistance genes/islands/plasmids, not the entire genome. etc etc etc
Of course, we still have a bit of a way to go – Matt demonstrates so-called “read until” on Lambda, a relatively small, simple genome – but this is an amazing proof-of-principle of an incredible idea – that you can tell your sequencer what to sequence. The paper deserves your attention. Please read it and fire up your imagination! | 2,403 | 1,216 | 0.000852 |
warc | 201704 | by Prof. Robert Greenberg
Early retirement; who doesn’t dream of it, or at least think about it now and then?But for the vast majority of us, early retirement is like winning the lottery: a fantasy never to be realized.
Now, if you are one of the lucky few that genuinely like what you do for a living, retirement holds little attraction.I have a good friend, a fabulously successful investment manager in his mid-60’s, who could retire today.But, as he says, he would wake up tomorrow and simply start another business doing exactly the same thing he had been doing
before he “retired.”
For me, the issue isn’t so much retirement as having the liberty to do
less: of not feeling constantly pressured to write and perform and worry, endlessly, about money.
People who use their bodies for a living – professional athletes and dancers – do not have the option to do less.They know that time is not on their side and that only total physical commitment is possible.And woe to the athlete or dancer who goes on for too long: their bodies break down and their reputations are permanently sullied.
On the flip-side of that coin are those great athletes who quit in their prime and went out on top.Such retirements leave fans with mixed feelings: what amazing things might Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown and Rocky Marciano have accomplished had they kept at it for another five years? Sandy Koufax retired at 30 with three Cy Young Awards, four World Series Rings, and a lifetime ERA of 2.76.Jim Brown retired after only nine years in the NFL during which he was MVP three times and led the league in rushing eight times.Rocky Marciano retired from the ring as the undisputed heavyweight champion at the age of 32.His professional record?49 wins, no losses or draws, 43 wins by knockout.D'oh!
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was the greatest Italian-born opera composer who ever lived.And as early as 1845, the 32-year-old Verdi was already considering retirement.As it turned out, he did not retire from the opera stage until 1871 when, following the premiere of
Aida, the then 58-year-old Verdi threw in the towel and announced that he was DONE.But, in fact, he wasn’t done.Finally lured out of retirement by a conspiracy of family and friends, Verdi went on to complete what are – arguably – his two greatest operas: Otello, completed at age 73, and Falstaff, completed at the age of 79.
It’s one thing to quit when you’re relatively young.It’s another thing entirely to comeback when you’re no longer so young and not only regain your past form but reach an entirely new level.Verdi did it, and so did his spiritual brother, Michael Jordan.
In 1993, 30-year-old Jordan was at the TOP of his game.He had just won his third consecutive NBA title and third Finals MVP award.He had been voted league MVP three times.So when His Airness announced that he was quitting basketball in order to play baseball(!) you could hear the proverbial pin drop across the entire planet.
Jordan was a bust as a baseball player and he returned to the Chicago Bulls and professional basketball in March 1995.I remember the pundits saying that he was through: that the demands of the game and his advancing age spelled inevitable doom for his comeback.
Nah -- it was as if he had never left. In his first game back Jordan scored 19 points.In his fifth game back he hung a double-nickel (55 points) on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.Jordan’s Chicago Bulls went on to win three more NBA championships and Jordan himself three more Finals MVP awards and two more league MVP titles.Jordan finally retired -- for good – in 2003, at the age of 40.Thanks to his comeback, MJ’s legacy went from “the greatest of his time” to “the greatest of all time”.
The same can be said of Giuseppe Verdi’s and his comeback.Stay tuned to Ora TV and “Scandalous Overtures” for “The Nefarious plot to get Giuseppe Verdi Back to Work!”
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ora Media, LLC, its affiliates, or its employees. | 4,204 | 2,112 | 0.000491 |
warc | 201704 | Speaking in defence of eye-watering salaries at top American orchestras a reader commented that star conductors earn that much because “someone is willing to pay”. Which is quite true, but begs the question of why orchestras are willing to pay such disproportionate and divisive remuneration levels when many other highly talented musicians face penury. The answer lies in classical music’s obsession with acceptable faces; which, in turn, is driven by the misconception that only celebrities can make classical music comprehensible to new audiences. This misconception is encapsulated, for example, in the industry’s obsession with a doubtless very talented but grossly over-exposed Gustavo Dudamel. As well as being viewed, wrongly, as open sesames to new audiences, acceptable faces are also seen as a way of winning favour with subscribers, sponsors and critics. And that explains why Levine, Tilson Thomas, Gilbert, Dutoit
et alare paid small fortunes every year.
So far so good. However, as I said earlier, the premise that classical music needs lavishly remunerated acceptable faces is a misconception. There is no doubt that classical music needs great musicians, and it also needs talented
animateurs. But it does not need lavishly remunerated celebrities, because it already has a very acceptable and persuasive face - the music itself. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere the natural order has been reversed and classical music has become the servant of highly paid celebrities. Which not only distorts the industry’s economics, but also puts a barrier between new listeners and the magic of the music. If classical music really wants to sort out its ongoing financial crisis and reach new audiences it needs to kick the celebrity habit – there are already case studies of how this can be done successfully. Let me end by re-writing a fable which appears in many mystical traditions, notably Sufism:
A young man leaves home to understand classical music, and he travels all over the world and sits at the feet of many celebrities. But somehow classical music eludes him: he’s never quite able to get a hold of it. When he’s an old man, he returns home and opens the door, and there it is. Classical music was there all the time; it was just waiting to be discovered.
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warc | 201704 | The Straits Times | September 6, 2014
The 'shareconomy' is booming, and Singapore is well-placed to take advantage of it. Framing regulations is a challenge but outlawing this new economy would be a mistake.
By Ayesha Khanna & Parag Khanna
THE rise of the "shareconomy" is profoundly changing much of the world's daily economic routines. Mediated by the Internet, the sharing of goods, services and labour becomes a spontaneous and efficient transaction amid a growing marketplace of offerings. A plethora of service firms - such as Uber, Lyft and RelayRides for urban transportation, Airbnb for housing, TaskRabbit, Fiverr and Mechanical Turk for tasks, and Favor and Instacart for grocery delivery - have popped up, allowing people to more easily share their homes, driving services as well as willingness to do chores. Crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Lending Club are part of this trend, for they allow mass participation in grants, loans and investments in entrepreneurial start-ups.
The shareconomy is a highly efficient form of peer-to-peer capitalism. Its participants mutually determine the value of goods and services on a transactional basis. Businesses build (and lose) their reputations through the transparent feedback mechanisms Web-based platforms allow, creating an eco-system that rewards those that constantly improve their service. The shareconomy also boosts a culture of entrepreneurship, since participants compete to offer novel and high-quality services, characteristics much valued in consumption-oriented economies.
Evolution in regulation
WHILE such a system empowers individuals and enables a more inclusive economy, and the technology helps decouple ownership from utilisation and reduce transaction costs, the shareconomy is also chaotic, fraught with consequences that require a rapid evolution in regulations.
What started as an income boost for people to share their homes or cars has become a formidable disruptive force. Forbes estimated that revenues from the shareconomy were over US$3.5 billion (S$4.4 billion) last year, bringing substantial benefits to the so-called "99 per cent" of the masses. During the recent soccer World Cup in Brazil, more than 100,000 people used home-sharing websites to find rooms in the country, given its deficit in formal hotel accommodation. In Singapore, Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) guidelines suggest minimum six-month periods for rental of private property. Housing Board flats, too, cannot be let out to tourists. This summer, two HDB residents lost their flats after the board found they were being rented to tourists. While there is a valid regulatory point that HDB flats are subsidised housing intended for the owners to live in, elderly residents are also encouraged to rent out rooms in their flats to augment their income - albeit to long-term tenants, not tourists.
Under what conditions would URA and HDB allow residents to rent out their rooms on a platform like Roomorama? Could loosening up on this be beneficial to Singaporeans? According to Airbnb, half of its hosts in the United States are in the low- to moderate-income bracket and 90 per cent of its global hosts are home owners renting out their primary residence. If the same is true in Singapore, then it would be hard to make the case that home-sharers are trying to just cash in and make a quick profit.
Policy innovation
LEGAL battles continue in major cities such as New York, London, Paris and Berlin about shareconomy services that benefit consumers but undermine organisations by not paying similar taxes. Nonetheless, progressive cities are embracing the shareconomy.
Seattle, for example, has deregulated its transportation and hospitality sectors, recognising that incumbent policies have granted monopolies to taxi companies and large hotels. But monopolies can also emerge from within the shareconomy, making it incumbent upon regulators to ensure a level playing field.
Does allowing companies flooded with venture capital funding to run loss-making operations to gain market share make an economy more competitive? Should governments allow shareconomy firms to have data- sharing partnerships with telecoms when they could give them an unfair advantage in knowing customer habits and movements? Framing rules for shareconomy companies is a complex undertaking, but outlawing them completely would be a mistake.
Singapore could bolster its "smart nation" status by developing rules, specialised services and insurance products related specifically to the shareconomy. For example, TaskRabbit, which allows people to take on errands like putting together Ikea furniture, has imposed a minimum wage and launched an insurance scheme in the US to protect workers' rights. Similarly, the tyranny of technology platforms not centred on human values and experiences must also be constrained.
So-called "algorithmic scheduling", by which employers use technology platforms to automatically change workers' shifts and hours to optimise business cycles, disrupts family life and causes physical stress. As services converge with software, governments need to enhance their own technical skills and partner the private sector to monitor and maintain fairness. Service review manipulation, for instance, must be prevented to help avoid consumer bias. Only authentic reviews by customers who have used the specific services should be allowed, as enforced by Airbnb and Expedia.
The complex financial dimensions of the shareconomy also require policy revisions. As more people shift into portfolio careers involving transactional micro-activities, data collection on labour markets will become more complicated. New accounting and reporting standards will be needed to calculate wages, assess and forecast incomes, and categorise workers within the growing ranks of the "self-employed". Together with data-sharing guidelines, such standards will help determine when and how much to tax shareconomy-related deals.
Nano-workers
WHILE part-time labour is not new, the shareconomy enables freelancers to become nano-workers, shifting between employers not monthly or daily but multiple times within the same day. As the United States and Europe experience stubborn unemployment and wage stagnation, the option of a diverse portfolio of even modest income streams becomes essential salvation. Today, almost 18 million Americans are surviving on part-time, project- based incomes.
While Singapore has very low unemployment, the impending automation of services also points to the need for empowering the local shareconomy. According to a recent paper by Oxford University, almost 50 per cent of all services in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) are at high risk of becoming automated. The shareconomy provides opportunities to smooth income disruptions for displaced workers as they upgrade their skills and move to new jobs.
Indeed, with the help of data from shareconomy companies, governments can identify individuals whose skills are at risk of automation and provide subsidised training programmes to help them move to higher-paying jobs.
The shareconomy is an inevitable trend at the intersection of individual entrepreneurialism and technological connectivity - forces that Singapore wants to strategically embrace. Though its disruptions have left many taxi companies disgruntled and hotel owners feeling threatened, the overall shareconomy has the potential to increase and distribute economic activity, crucial benefits for cities with highly stratified incomes such as Singapore. | 7,615 | 3,623 | 0.000277 |
warc | 201704 | Mr. Fabien Gélinas (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, As an Individual):
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I would first like to thank the committee for inviting me to participate in your work in this way. It is an honour and a pleasure. Well, maybe we will see about the pleasure later.
I was not able to prepare a written report, for which I apologize, but I did bring some notes that I gave to the clerk to facilitate the work of the interpreters and, as a result, the work of committee members.
We are here to shed light on Bill C-20, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.
In order to prepare a sufficiently big picture for the committee, I followed the evolution of Bill S-4, which is now Bill C-19, dealing with the length of senators' terms. In so doing, I was also able to read the comments of Professor Hogg who is here with us and to whom I extend greetings.
The two bills on Senate reform remind me, in a number of respects, of the two best-known lovers in western theatre, Romeo and Juliet. We may ask ourselves whether they are really meant for each other. Are they ever going to end up together anywhere but in the great beyond? Another question comes to mind. Will the death of one, real or feigned, cause the death of the other? Questions like that arise. And everything is still possible at this stage.
So I propose to focus my introductory remarks on Bill C-20 considered separately and apart from the other bill, and to broaden my comments during the discussion if the members of the committee consider that useful.
As a constitutional lawyer, I naturally asked myself if the bill is valid constitutionally. In legal terms, the answer seems quite simple. The bill does not seem to change any provision of the Constitution within the meaning of section 52 of the Constitution Act of 1982. The constitutional amending procedure in section 38 of the act and those following does not come into play. It simply does not apply.
Nevertheless, in our political system, everyone can appreciate the limits of the legal provisions that are enshrined. It is clear that passing the bill may well have a major impact on the functioning and the balance of our political institutions. The impact will be felt by the normative, or conventional, effect of the Constitution, the conventions of the Constitution that are unwritten, and not in the law, but that nevertheless are binding.
Since we are talking about choosing senators, the problem here, in summary, comes from section 24 of the Constitution Act of 1867, which gives the Governor General the exclusive legal power to appoint senators. Section 24 makes no mention of the Prime Minister, however often it is informally said that senators are appointed by the Prime Minister.
We know that the conventions of responsible government establish that Governors General exercise most of their powers only with the advice of their ministers. The conventions stipulate that the special power described in section 24, the power to appoint senators, is exercised with the advice of the prime minister. This is one of the so-called special prerogatives.
The legal power enshrined in the Constitution belongs to the Governor General, therefore. Because of a constitutional convention, he or she exercises that power only in accordance with the advice of the prime minister. The convention exists because of the principle of responsible government, which, in the British parliamentary system, is a means of ensuring the operation of democratic principles.
The Bill under study organizes the mechanisms of an optional consultation process that might well look like an election for senators. These provisions in no way require the Governor General to appoint the senators receiving most popular support at the end of the consultations. They do not even require the Prime Minister to accept the result of the consultation when formulating his advice to the Governor General. In fact, no requirement is placed on the Governor General or even on the Prime Minister. There is therefore no impact on section 24 of the Constitution Act of 1867.
As I have already mentioned, the bill may well have a significant impact on the conventions of the Constitution. The current Prime Minister is almost obliged, politically, to be bound by the results of the consultation. If he so declares himself, either before or after the legislation is passed, and if he then moves to make appointments as a result, he is demonstrably laying the foundation for a constitutional convention. This would be confirmed, in my view, only if his successor saw fit to be bound by the same rules.
The requirements for a convention to be established are generally considered to be precedents, a feeling of obligation on the part of the political actor involved, and a reason for the rule. What I would like to highlight here is this reason for the constitutional norm that is the subject of our attention.
There is a reason for the conventional rule that transfers the Governor General's power in section 24 of the Constitution Act of 1867 to the Prime Minister, and the reason is the democratic principle. The conventional rule apparently sought here, to transfer the power of elected people—the power accorded to the Prime Minister acting with the confidence of the House of Commons—to voters, that is, the people who would be consulted, is the democratic principle too. The concept of democracy is also described in the first paragraph of the preamble to the bill. These are two different concepts—that is what I want to underline here—or at least two very different ways to put the democratic principle into operation. The first takes the familiar and well-paved road of responsible government in the House of Commons. The other cuts a largely uncharted path through our political system.
The Supreme Court has already had the opportunity to study the protection provided by constitutional law to the rules of responsible government. The principle of responsible government is definitely, but somewhat uncertainly, enshrined in the Constitution and protected from unilateral change by Parliament, or by a provincial legislature in the case of an amendment to a provincial constitution. This protection is guaranteed, both federally and provincially, by section 41 of the Constitution Act of 1982 that, as you know, requires unanimous consent to amend the offices of Governor General and Lieutenant Governors. This is a way to protect the principle of responsible government under the Constitution. In the case of the Senate, this protection is guaranteed in section 42 of the procedure for amending the constitution, which protects section 24 of the Constitution Act of 1867 from unilateral amendment.
This leads me to suggest that, if the bill went any further in limiting the Governor General's decision-making under section 24, it would move into an area of constitutional uncertainty.
But, in my view, this is not the case here. If we consider the bill in isolation and in its current form, I believe that no fault can be found with its constitutional validity.
Politically, however, I would say to sum up that the idea that lies beneath the intended reform deserves serious attention. Although it claims to uphold the democratic principle, it introduces a foreign element into our system whose consequences do not seem, to me at least, to be sufficiently clear.
Thank you.
Professor Peter Hogg (Scholar in Residence, Blake, Cassels and Graydon LLP, As an Individual):
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you, Professor Gélinas.
My view is not very different from that of Professor Gélinas, and I will attempt to speak to the particular point that he made before I finish, but let me set out my argument, which is pretty straightforward.
I say that Bill C-20 would be a valid act of Parliament, and it escapes the strictures of paragraph 42(1)(b), the fact that it requires an amendment to change the method of selecting senators. It avoids that because it does not literally amend section 24 of the Constitution Act, 1867.
It could be argued—and Professor Gélinas did not argue this—that Bill C-20 is, in pith and substance, really an amendment to the method of selecting senators and is therefore unconstitutional under paragraph 42(1)(b). My view is that the Supreme Court of Canada would not accept that argument, and I say that because the appointing power of section 24, which only speaks to the Governor General, does not now impose any restrictions on the consultations or considerations that the Prime Minister might take into account before recommending an appointment to the Governor General.
For example, right now the Prime Minister could, if he wished, commission an informal poll as to the wishes of the electorate with respect to an appointment from a particular province. The Prime Minister could right now, and in fact has done, respect the choice of the electorate expressed in a provincial election, as we know has been done in respect of appointments from Alberta, where those elections have been held.
So all Bill C-20 does is make a formal consultation process available to the Prime Minister, should he choose to take advantage of it. As you will know, the Prime Minister does not need to take advantage of the consultation process if he doesn't want to; the bill leaves that as a matter of discretion in the Governor in Council. If the Prime Minister does order the formal consultation process to take place, he does not have to respect the results in making recommendations for appointments.
I fully recognize—and this starts to get me into the area where Professor Gélinas is—and obviously a court would recognize that after Parliament has established the complicated process proposed by Bill C-20, no Prime Minister is likely to continue to make appointments in the old way. But I say that is a truth of politics, not a truth of law. It might be different if Bill C-20 compelled the Prime Minister to follow the statutory consultation process and then compelled him to make appointment recommendations in accordance with the outcome of the process, but as we know, Bill C-20 doesn't do either of those things. Bill C-20 simply gives the Prime Minister a vehicle for consulting the electorate, but does not require him to use it and does not require him to respect the outcome if he does use it.
Getting to the corner of Professor Gélinas' point, section 24 has never attempted to control the decision-making process that precedes the decision of the Governor General to make Senate appointments. So if it did turn out that prime ministers now automatically use the process, and if it came to be accepted, as Professor Gélinas suggests might be a possibility, that this was really a convention, that this ripened into a new convention that appointments would always be made by using this admittedly optional process, section 24 would not speak to that. Section 24 says nothing about the conventions that precede an appointment, and conventions can change in various ways over the years. If this ended up causing a change in the convention, section 24 would simply operate in the way it has always done. That is to say, whoever by convention is supposed to make the recommendations of the Governor General, the Governor General would then go ahead and make the appointment.
Let me raise one other point that I know has been at least mentioned in the proceedings before the committee. The point is this. In the upper house reference, the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1980, the Supreme Court said that the fundamental features or essential characteristics of the Senate were outside the unilateral power of Parliament.
I know it has been suggested, and now is still the case, that any bill--this was suggested, for example, with respect to the term limit bill--that arguably altered the fundamental features or essential characteristics of the Senate would be outside Parliament's power. I just want to briefly answer that point, because I'm sure it will be part of your deliberations.
That upper house re-decision was a decision in 1980, before the Constitution Act 1982. It was the answer to a series of questions that were put to the Supreme Court of Canada by the government of the day about the extent of Parliament's power to change the Senate, including to make provision for elections to the Senate. The court gave very general answers to those questions--it wasn't asked anything very specific, and it didn't have a bill placed before it. The court's answers were particularly concerned with the protection of the provisions respecting regional and provincial representation in the Senate. Of course, Bill C-20 doesn't touch those.
The important point is that that case is no longer relevant. When it was decided in 1980, the Constitution Act 1867, which was the only authority then for making changes to the Senate, said nothing about Parliament's power to enact changes to the Senate. So the court was constructing some general rules in the face of a Constitution that said nothing. Of course, that has now been overtaken by the Constitution Act 1982, which now specifies expressly what has been withdrawn from the unilateral power of Parliament. One of those matters, of course, as we have seen, is “the method of selecting senators”. Another is “the powers of the Senate”. Another is “the number of members by which a province is entitled to be represented in the Senate”. Another is the “residence qualifications of senators”. They're all set out in section 42, the 7/50 provision in the amending powers.
Those explicit provisions are now the governing constitutional law with respect to changes to the Senate. I say the only one that is potentially relevant is the method of selecting senators, and I've explained my view that that provision does not cover Bill C-20.
My conclusion is that the Parliament of Canada does have the power to enact Bill C-20, and if it were enacted, it would be a valid act of Parliament.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Brian Murphy (Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, Lib.):
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for attending.
I want to get into some broad-ranging questions about two competing elected houses and the international experience, in a few seconds. But I want to give
[
Translation]
the opportunity for Professor Gélinas to respond to Professor Hogg's contention that, if a constitutional convention became established after two or three prime ministers had chosen to endorse the choice of the electors, section 24 of the act would not be affected at all.
[
English]
To be clearer in English, for me, Professor Hogg has suggested—and I don't think you quite got there in your submission—that if, after time, having put the voters to their choice and having put Elections Canada and taxpayers to the expense of a selection process, a Prime Minister elected to choose the candidates who were chosen, and if after a number of terms, let's say, or one term, that became a convention, Professor Hogg, I think, was saying that this would have no effect on who ultimately selects senators and therefore would, in itself, be fine.
Do you agree with that?
Mr. Brian Murphy:
That's very clear. Thank you for that.
Now, on the broader question, it seems that on the black letter aspect of this legislation there's nothing that you feel impugns the Constitution. That's fine. But the political effect of it is that the selection process will be followed, in all likelihood, by prime ministers, and therefore it changes directly the method by which senators are elected or selected.
Therefore we can envision in a very short time two democratically elected houses. I tread very carefully in talking about Australasia and New Zealand and Australia. But in New Zealand, I believe, that never came to pass, because they rejected the elected aspect. In Australia there are specific powers between the two houses, as there are in the United States under the presidential aspect of veto.
There is a very short time, but how do you envisage this working in our current environment with, effectively, an elected Senate and an elected House of Commons with respect to gridlock and stalemate? I'll give you each an occasion to answer that, if we have time.
Mr. Pierre Paquette:
Yes.
We really get the impression that, faced with repeated failures to reform the Senate, the Conservative government, who have made this their kind of trademark, has come up with a bill that addresses the main pitfall, the constitutional amendment process that Senate reform would normally entail. So, the bill has been written so that the sections that you mentioned, section 24, for example, are not affected, though the political intention is still to have an elected Senate. That has come up on several occasions.
For example, to hold public consultations under Bill C-20, it would cost $150 million, according to the Chief Electoral Officer, or about half the cost of a general election. I cannot see how the Prime Minister, who proposed this reform, would not take the results of the public consultation into account. They are doing indirectly what they cannot do directly. That is, getting themselves a list of candidates who have been indirectly elected. If you combine Bill C-19, which limits terms to eight years, and Bill C-20, which establishes public consultations, you have Senate reform, that is for sure.
In my opinion, what we are looking at is a complete reform of the nature of the Senate as conceived by the founders of Canada.
Let me ask you for your opinion. Is it not your impression that Bills C-19 and C-20 are going to let the government and Parliament, if they are passed, do indirectly what the Constitution prevents them from doing directly?
Hon. Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, Lib.):
I've practised what I'm going to say about the fact that I am certainly not a lawyer. I have heard Mr. Hogg, Professor Gélinas, and the Canadian Bar Association give three very different opinions on this issue. I suppose It's interesting to see how one can split the law the way one can split a hair.
I'm not going to go into the splitting of that, because I'm not lawyer and therefore I can't debate that. However, I like to look at outcomes; this is what I'm good at as a physician. For me, the outcome of this piece of legislation is going to be very important, and if the outcome fundamentally changes the way our parliaments work, then one has to be concerned about what that outcome is going to be. Whether one can get around it by saying that the Prime Minister doesn't have to abide by the results of those elections.... That's one way of getting around the constitutionality, but is it a valid and ethical way to get around the constitutionality if the outcome is going to affect Canadians?
Secondly, if one takes something to the people and asks the people to vote, would the people—who are an institution, if you want to look at them as such—or will civil society believe that by voting they are automatically doing the democratic thing and that the vote should and must be taken into consideration or must be a mandatory thing?
Having said both of those things, because obviously the outcome here is to democratize the system—and no one is against that, we are all in favour of it—and given what the Supreme Court had to say about changing the fundamental way we elect senators.... That's the outcome at the end of the day; whether constitutionally you can get around it or not, that's going to be fundamentally changed. The way the Senate and the House of Commons work is going to be fundamentally changed.
I wonder first about the ethics of it, because that's the outcome—what is the ethical outcome you're looking for?—second, whether it is democratic; and third, given how the people voted on the Charlottetown accord, whether the people want us to do this. I would like to suggest that there's a different process, a more democratic and a more meaningful process of getting this done. One of the ways, as the bar association suggested, would be to go to the Supreme Court with the question.
Could you give me some answers about the ethics of it, the democracy component of it, and obviously whether the Supreme Court should speak to this issue or not?
Prof. Fabien Gélinas:
Your question presupposes that it's going to change the system. It's a step toward changing the system, that's for sure, but I don't think we can take for granted that the system will be changed.
It could very well be a matter of being a flash in the pan here. The next Prime Minister might refuse to hold consultations for the appointment of senators. The next Prime Minister, or even this Prime Minister, might have a constitutional agenda that will be put on the table and might negotiate things with the provinces that will change everything fundamentally.
This is all politics, and it doesn't really affect the answer to a legal question. The legal question, of course, is not cut and dried. It is not always as clear as one might expect it to be. There is no question that political principles have an influence on decisions in hard cases, and this could eventually be a hard case if both statutes go forward. I am not saying that it's not difficult.
The question of ethics would be answered by the electorate. If a Prime Minister holds consultations and, for no obvious reason, decides not to follow the result, then there'll be an outcry, there'll be outrage, and there'll be political sanctions. That is my answer.
Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC):
Thank you, Chair.
My question concerns Bill C-20 in light of the upper house reference of 1980, and specifically some of the provincial concerns that have been raised here and previously about these pieces of legislation. I'd like both of you to respond to these concerns and give us your opinion on them.
The Province of Quebec has traditionally demanded that the National Assembly play a role in the selection of senators to the Senate of Canada, and has also raised issues about the constitutionality of Bill C-20 in the Senate committee hearing. At that committee hearing, Mr. Pelletier noted that in his view the federal bills on Senate reform represent not limited change but fundamental change to the nature of the Senate.
So in that context, and in the context of the upper house reference of 1980, which stated that the Government of Canada could not unilaterally alter or change the fundamental features, or central characteristics, of the Senate with respect to its regional representation and its other essential features, do you agree or disagree with Mr. Pelletier's view on this, or do you share some of his views and not others?
Maybe you could tell us what your views are of this.
Mr. Rob Moore (Fundy Royal, CPC):
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses. I apologize for having to step out for a bit, and I also apologize if my question covers some of the ground that you've already covered.
Mr. Hogg, I look at your conclusion in your brief that you submitted to the committee: that if the act were challenged in court on constitutional grounds, the challenge would be unsuccessful, and that the Parliament of Canada does indeed have the power to enact Bill C-20, and if it were enacted, it would be a valid act of Parliament. Obviously I agree with that.
I'm looking at the first page, your last paragraph, and you didn't go over that in your opening remarks. So I just wanted a bit of a review.
It says that the bill stops with the counting of votes and the report to the Prime Minister. It does not go on to declare that the successful nominees are elected; nor does it say that they will be appointed. The bill does not impose any duties of any kind on the Prime Minister or the Governor General. And it says that obviously the bill assumes that the Prime Minister would be under a political imperative to respect the outcomes of the consultation that he has ordered, but this is not a legal imperative.
Can you explain how you reached that conclusion, but also explain why that is important for the constitutional validity of the bill?
Mr. Charlie Angus:
I'm glad you brought up the role of the Supreme Court, because it certainly has changed very much in terms of interpreting our national law.
I'm trying to find out how we, in this day and age, manage to maintain a relic like the Senate, which seems to be often appointed on a partisan basis. There have been some excellent candidates and there have been some pretty sketchy people in there as well.
An hon. member: [ Inaudible]
Mr. Charlie Angus: Yes, but the difference is that in the House of Commons we have to go back to the people, and they decide whether or not we should be in the House. I know some of my Liberal friends certainly think that party bagmen can stay in there till the age of 75, that it's a perfectly legitimate dumping ground. I personally don't agree.
One of the arguments is that they play an important role in protecting regional interests. I have a senator from my region, the great Senator Frank Mahovlich. I say “great”; he was a great hockey player, number 27. He came from Schumacher--the same town, by the way, as the industry minister, Jim Prentice, comes from. I have nothing against Frank Mahovlich, but the only time I ever see him in my riding is during elections to try to have me defeated. That seems to be a regional role he plays, to come up and promote the Liberal flag.
I'm asking all this because I don't see anything in this bill that would set out how we would ensure that regional interests are guaranteed. In Ontario, for example, if we have five candidates picked, they could come from anywhere. There's nothing to say that they are going to be aboriginal or they're going to come from the north, or one from the city and one from the rural southwest.
How can we be assured that this Senate will actually represent its so-called regional interests if it's done on a very ad hoc, hit-and-miss basis?
Mr. Gary Goodyear (Cambridge, CPC):
Thank you, Chair.
Through you, Chair, thank you to our guests for coming. I've enjoyed the discussions we've had on this bill.
I have a comment and then a question.
I've had the opportunity to travel with the parliamentary Commonwealth group, which has given me a great opportunity to meet some of the smaller countries in the Commonwealth: Barbados, the Turks and Caicos, and so on. What I noticed there was that we have countries that are run, frankly, by small numbers of members of Parliament—15, and in some cases 8 or 11. As good a job as they do, it became clear to me that to have a second upper chamber, an area of second thought to go over some of the decisions made by the members, was probably a good idea. But when we have a Parliament as large as ours, with 308 members, with all the facilities offered to us—the researchers, the analysts, witnesses, the funds to bring in experts like you—I remain unconvinced that we need a Senate to continue.
As you had mentioned, institutions tend to change in time, and perhaps it's time. That's a decision we are wrestling with and will continue to wrestle with, but it's a point that I make.
The question I have here is that as I read through Bill C-20, I understand the issues with constitutionality, but I'm gathering from you, for the most part, that at the end of the day this is not in direct violation of the Constitution. Would you say that this is a significant move in democracy, in a democratic way, toward a Senate that reflects better the nation and the needs of the nation, the opinions of Canadians, and a move toward reforming the Senate in a democratic way that does not violate the Constitution? Would you agree with that statement? | 28,145 | 10,619 | 0.000095 |
warc | 201704 | In my recent book,
Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism (2011, HarperCollins India), I’ve discussed how a constant striving for balance and equilibrium between the forces of “chaos” and “order” (rather than the complete annihilation of chaos) permeates Indian philosophy, art, cuisine, music and erotica, distinguishes Indian culture from its Western counterpart and avoids the absolutism of Western sacred literature that views the two poles locked in a zero-sum battle in which only order may triumph. This perpetual reordering, fundamental to Indian culture and religion, has privileged dynamism and creativity, and yielded the diversity evident in Indian life and cultural artifacts.
The difference in attitudes toward order and chaos is one of the chief differences discussed at length in the book. It is worth considering why the Indian religious imagination so unequivocally embraced the notion of diversity and multiplicity while others have not to a similar extent. Since all civilizations have tried to answer such existential questions as who we are, why we are here, what the nature of the Divine and the cosmos are etc., why are some Indian answers so markedly different from the Abrahamic ones?
Sri Aurobindo offers us a clue. In Dharmic traditions, unity is grounded in a sense of the Integral One, and there can be immense multiplicity without fear of “collapse into disintegration and chaos”. He suggests that the “forest” with the “richness and luxuriance of its vegetation” is both an inspiration and metaphor for India’s spiritual outlook. A quick look at world cultures and civilizations reveals how profoundly the geography and the human response to it affected those cultures. So it may well be that the physical features and characteristics of the subcontinent, once lush with tropical forests, also contributed to its deepest spiritual values (in contrast to those that were born, as the Abrahamic religions are, in the milieu of the desert).
The forest has always been a symbol of beneficence in India – a refuge from the heat, and abundant enough to support a life of contemplation without the worries of survival when worldly ties had to be severed for the pursuit of spiritual goals. (The penultimate stage of life advocated for individuals in Dharma traditions is called “vanaprastha” or “the forest stage of life”). Forests support thousands of species that survive interdependently and contain complex life and biology that changes and grows organically. Forest creatures are adaptive; they mutate and fuse into new forms easily. The forest loves to play host; newer life forms migrate to it and are rehabilitated as natives. Forests are ever evolving, their dance never final or complete.
Indian thought, analogously, favors plurality, adaptation, interdependence and evolution. Diversity is natural, normal and desirable, an expression in fact of God’s immanence. Just as there are virtually unlimited species and processes in the forest, so there are infinite ways of Dharmic practice including communicating with God. The plethora of scriptures, rituals, deities, festivals and traditions are not seen as “chaos” but harmoniously interwoven, reconfiguring themselves quite organically as time and place dictate. Life-giving forests and nature are not intended for man’s “dominion” (as they are in the Abrahamic religions) but are part of the same cosmic family as man. Sri Aurobindo emphasizes this natural predisposition to pluralism in the Indian mind where “the Infinite must always present itself in an endless variety of aspects” and contrasts this to the religious mindset of the West which has privileged the “idea of a single religion for all mankind […], one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one array of prohibitions and injunctions, one ecclesiastical ordinance”.
In
Being Different, I posit that just as forests may have inspired and shaped Dharmic thinking, so too have deserts, the dominant landscape of the Middle-East where the Abrahamic faiths arose, left their imprint on the ethos of those faiths. Deserts can be hostile places and are not places to easily dwell in permanently, or to marvel at the diversity of life. The vast emptiness and unique beauty of a desert does instill awe and humility, but also fear. Deserts generally connote starkness, a paucity of life, harsh environs and danger. The desert has fewer types of life and less multiplicity in general. Desert dwellers look to overcome their harsh circumstances by turning to a God above. The Abrahamic religious ethos is built on this sense of awe and fear. Nature is not supportive but profoundly threatening – an enemy to be tamed, civilized and controlled. The divine is less a nurturing mother than an austere and oftentimes angry father. The desert, like its climate, seems to lend itself to extremes of religious experience. God rescues man by offering strict and immutable do’s and don’ts – the Ten Commandments. For their obedience, He confers grace and mercy on men but expects the deepest repentance and atonement. Those who disobey get punished in draconian ways, and there is only one life in which to prove oneself with no second chance through reincarnation.
Geography however, is only one contributor to the differences between Indian and Western thought. In my next blog, I will discuss how attitudes toward history further differentiate India from the West. | 5,604 | 2,709 | 0.000381 |
warc | 201704 | Andy Mudie, Marketing & Business Development Director at Nuaire outlines why the quality of indoor air in buildings is an issue that cannot be ignored
Deborah Stephenson, Director of Operations at Habinteg highlights the impact of living in accessible homes and the importance of inclusive design
Andy Butchers, Director of Build-Zone Survey Services shares his insider knowledge to help you troubleshoot this key element of your building project.
About Access outlines the need for greater guidance when it comes to glass and highlights opportunities to ensure good design also incorporates safety
Planning and building regulations allow developers to make bad technical decisions. David Frise, Head of Sustainability, BESA, has an alternative approach
The revised Code of Conduct will be introduced on 1 January 2017. Paul Wilkins, Chair of the ACAI, explains what the changes mean for Approved Inspectors
Nicola Harrison, General Manager, Bereco says Part Q is a step in the right direction for building security but certification will ensure compliance
Secured by Design outlines the physical security guidance set out in Part Q and highlights why this is as important as long-established fire regulations
Fire safety is imperative to protect buildings and their occupants from danger. Here, the Fire Industry Association outlines the Fire Safety Order
A new and targeted approach of housing retrofits to the UK’s housing stock is needed to allow it to contribute to a cost effective decarbonisation strategy
The growing national demand for inclusive, accessible housing shouldn’t be a niche issue, as argued by Jean Hewitt, Director of the Centre for Accessible Environments.
The construction industry is being urged to ensure indoor air quality in buildings is of a high standard.
Secured by Design is a national police project which aims to improve the physical security of a home.
Domestic air quality is put in the spotlight to deliver better outcomes for consumers – a White Paper by Steve Hodgson, Chief Executive of the Property Care Association | 2,087 | 1,102 | 0.000921 |
warc | 201704 | From governments and business executives to marketers and construction professionals – everyone in the construction industry today is talking about digitalisation.
In times when big ideas such as the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, mixed reality or Building Information Modelling (BIM) dictate what is to become of the manufacturing industry, there is a growing need for operating more rigorous digital processes in the industry challenging everything we know.
As a manufacturer, you have already spent a significant amount of your time making your products better through innovation.
When it comes to manufacturing: technology brings efficiency to your processes. It cuts down costs and helps you sell more, no arguing there. But what about the augmented product or the non-physical part of your product?
So today, in the age of big data: have you noticed that the information you already have is big enough?
Have you started thinking about the efficiencies you can achieve through optimising your DATA?
Have you started thinking about turning your product information into a powerful asset that can deliver benefits to your brand and the bottom line?
To help you answer these questions the coBuilder Digital Strategy team identified the practical actions to help you power charge the data you already have for the best commercial benefit.
This is the result: a 6-step action plan to help you transform your product information into an irresistible offer to your clients.
An essential element of any good marketing campaign is never to approach anyone with your offer before first asking them what they need. This is why an integral part of our e-book and our 6-step action plan is the 0 step – our Data Heath Check Survey.
Completing it would be the first part of a free consultation you will receive as a courtesy for your interest in this e-book. Please take the time to answer the survey questions to the best of your knowledge.
You will find links leading to the survey on each page of this e-book. So, let coBuilder help start your data journey. | 2,077 | 1,041 | 0.000971 |
warc | 201704 | The operation is the first of its kind, and shows that adult stem cells combined with re-engineered biological materials can "radically improve the ability of surgeons to treat patients with serious diseases," said Martin Birchall, a professor at the University of Bristol in Britain, and one of the study’s authors.
"We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care," he said in a statement.
The loss of a normal airway is devastating, and attempts to replace them have met with serious problems such as rejection by the immune system, the uncontrolled die-off of cells — called necrosis — and lethal bleeding.
Claudia Castillo, stricken with tuberculosis, was facing the loss of her left lung after the tube-like branch connecting it to the trachea, or windpipe, became infected and collapsed beyond repair.
Doctors explained that they could try an untested method to replace the ruined airway.
"I was scared at the beginning because I was the first patient, but had confidence and trusted my doctors," Ms. Castillo said in a press release.
"The possibility of avoiding the removal of my entire lung — and instead replacing only my diseased bronchus — represented a unique chance for me to return to a normal life."
With her green light, a team of scientists and surgeons from Spain, Italy and Britain each contributed specialized knowledge to the task.
Using a new technique developed at the University of Padua, scientists remove all the cells from the trachea of a 51-year old donor by essentially scrubbing it clean with a high-tech detergent solution.
The next steps were to reconstitute the living tissue using Ms. Castillo’s own cells, and grafting them onto this biological scaffolding.
Stem cells were obtained from her bone marrow, and cultivated in large numbers in Mr. Birchall’s laboratory in Britain.
The stem cells were then coaxed — using growth-stimulating proteins — into becoming structure-giving cartilage cells using a method originally devised for treating osteoarthritis.
The surface of the donor’s sterile trachea was seeded with these lab-grown cells using a bioreactor that allowed them to migrate into the tissue.
Next the trachea was colonized with epithelial cells, which help the major airways keep clean by moving foreign objects away from the lungs.
Finally, Ms. Castillo’s damaged airway was surgically removed and replaced with the rebuilt windpipe.
The operation was entirely successful, the authors report.
"Within four days after transplantation, the graft was almost indistinguishable from adjacent normal bronchi," said Paolo Macchiarini, a professor at the University of Barcelona, where the operation was performed, and lead author of the study.
And only ten days after surgery, Ms. Castillo left the hospital to rejoin her two children, aged 15 and four.
"We think that this first experience represents a milestone in medicine and hope that it will unlock the door for a safe and recipient-tailored transplantation of the airway in adults and children," the authors conclude.
For Ms. Castillo the results are already tangible.
"I am now enjoying life and am very happy my illness has been cured," she said.
source: Business Worldhttp://www.bworldonline.com/Weekender112108/main.php?id=health2 | 3,369 | 1,694 | 0.000607 |
warc | 201704 | INTRODUCTION “I hope you will fall into good hands; but a horse never knows who may buy him, or who may drive him; it is all a chance for us, but still I say, do your best, wherever it is, and keep up your good name” (p. 13).
Few writers make the kind of lasting mark that Anna Sewell achieved when she published
Black Beauty in 1877. Although the first-time author died shortly after its publication, she lived long enough to see it become an immediate sensation. The novel sold a staggering five million copies and permanently altered both the laws and public consciousness regarding the ethical treatment of horses.
Written in autobiographical form,
Black Beauty begins with a yet-to-be-named young colt sharing his earliest memories of life. “Whilst I was young I lived upon my mother’s milk, as I could not eat grass” (p. 3). The colt’s early years are quiet and idyllic. However, the reader bears witness to the colt’s dawning awareness of the greater world and its troubling complexities.
During this time, a peaceful morning is shattered by the sounds of dogs and galloping horses. In his ignorance, the colt is captivated by the excitement of the passing hunt until two horses stumble and the sport takes a brutal and tragic turn for animal and human alike.
Tranquility returns to the meadow, but our narrator’s days within it are numbered. At four years old, he is now ready to be broken in and trained for a working life.
His master is a kind man who gradually introduces the young horse to the steel bit he must wear in his mouth, the iron shoes that will be nailed onto his feet, and the saddle and harness he will need to ferry humans. Though it all feels strange and uncomfortable at first, he recollects how “in time I got used to everything” (p. 12).
No sooner is he trained than the young horse is taken to Birtwick Park, the estate of his new master, Squire Gordon. Life is good there, and he is named Black Beauty for his coloring and handsome looks. The coachman, John Manly, is kind to his equine charges, including Ginger, a wary and high-spirited mare who warms to the newcomer. As the two become friends, Ginger tells Black Beauty how early ill treatment caused her to regard men as her “natural enemies” (p. 30).
Both Black Beauty and Ginger thrive at Birtwick, but the tides of fortune are about to change. When Squire Gordon’s wife is ordered abroad for her health, the household and stables are broken up and Black Beauty must again embark on a new life alone.
As his circumstances and name change over the ensuing years, Black Beauty journeys from the country to the city and back again, encountering the full range of human evils—foolishness, cruelty, drunkenness, and greed—as well as havens of goodness.
Today,
Black Beauty is often relegated to young readers’ shelves, but its lessons are still universal. In relating the story of his life, Black Beauty illuminates how we are all—man and beast—at the whim of circumstance, yet “if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt” (p. 156).
Anna Mary Sewell (1820 – 1878) was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. At age fourteen, she slipped while walking home from school and severely injured both of her ankles. Sewell remained disabled for the rest of her life, most likely due to mistreatment of her injuries, and could not walk or stand without a crutch. Her need for horse-drawn carriages and her constant close proximity to horses led to her increased awareness and concern for their humane treatment. She wrote
Black Beauty from 1871 to 1877 amid declining health and died five months after her only novel’s publication. | 3,806 | 1,925 | 0.000537 |
warc | 201704 | Children?s Preferences for Sweeter and Saltier Tastes Are Linked to Each Other and to Measures of Growth Children who most prefer high levels of sweet tastes also most prefer high levels of salt taste and, in general, children prefer sweeter and saltier tastes than do adults. These preferences also relate to measures of growth and can have important implications for efforts to change children?s diets. Many illnesses of modern society are related to poor food choices. Because children consume far more sugar and salt than recommended, which contributes to poor health, understanding the biology behind children's preferences for these tastes is a crucial first step to reducing their intake. View full story | 713 | 393 | 0.002552 |
warc | 201704 | Analysis
First Ship Routes Recommended for the Bering Strait
This week, after years of planning, the U.S. Coast Guard released draft recommendations for the first shipping routes through the Bering Strait, the gateway between the Pacific and Arctic oceans. As decreasing sea ice makes resource development and related vessel activity possible, more ships are transiting the strait. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the considerable increase in ship traffic from 2008 to 2013 was driven by tankers, cargo ships, and tugs.
The Bering Strait is part of a highly productive marine ecosystem that supports polar bears, walrus, ice seals, gray whales, beluga whales, an estimated 12 million seabirds, and the biannual migration of thousands of western Arctic bowhead whales. It is also home to indigenous communities that have an extensive knowledge of the region, its ecosystem, and its diverse wildlife. The subsistence traditions of these communities involve traveling many miles from shore in small open skiffs and rely on a safe and healthy marine environment.
Almost the entire population of western Arctic bowhead whales migrates through the Bering Strait twice a year, along with walrus, ice seals, and millions of seabirds.
The Coast Guard is recommending that the first “rules of the road” include: Two 4-mile wide, two-way ship routes.One proposed route would take ships from the Aleutian Islands, the other from the western side of Saint Lawrence Island; these routes converge to take one path through the Strait. In this narrowest area, the lane operates like a two-lane road for cars, pointing ships to the most efficient and least-hazardous path. 4 Precautionary Areas.To increase vessel safety, ships would be required to navigate with particular caution in these four areas, each one 8 miles across. They are located at the start and end of the proposed routes, where they converge to one.
These recommended routing measures are an important first step to prevent and limit the problems increased shipping could cause. Still, more guidelines are needed to ensure a safe voyage for ships and protection for the region, especially because extreme weather, dense fog, ice, and rough seas heighten the chance of a spill or accident, and create new obstacles for response.
To promote safe shipping and minimize the inherent risks, Pew recommends: Updating charts: Bering Strait navigational charts are inadequate and outdated; the majority predate 1970. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plan for updating them has already been cut back due to funding shortages. Charting should be promptly completed and updated on a regular basis. Identifying areas to be avoided: Communities and scientists should be consulted about which areas to avoid to protect subsistence activities and the vulnerable marine ecosystem. Keeping ships away from coastal communities would lessen the impact of shipping on the people who live there and would reduce the odds that a disabled vessel would drift ashore before help arrived. Developing more prevention and response capability: No icebreakers are stationed in or near the U.S. Arctic, which limits response and rescue operations. The closest vessel is the U.S. Coast Guard’s Healy, which operates out of Seattle. Similarly, no tug is permanently stationed in the Bering Strait to help in an emergency. There is only one spill response organization for the entire Bering Sea, Preventing vessel pollution:The Bering Strait should not be a dumping zone. Ships should be prohibited from dumping in these rich marine waters that provide food to indigenous peoples and harbor millions of fish, birds, and marine mammals. Communities in the five western subareas of Alaska, from the Aleutians to the North Slope, are especially affected by ships transiting the Bering Strait. | 3,858 | 1,855 | 0.000543 |
warc | 201704 | A recent study showed that a delay in prescribing diabetes drugs or insulin to patients with type 2 diabetes is unwise, because effective control of blood sugar is crucial to averting serious complications. For the study, researchers polled 3790 physicians and nurses in 13 countries regarding their attitudes toward insulin. The study also included 2061 patients with type 2 diabetes who were not taking insulin.
The findings indicated that >50% of the physicians reported
"threatening" their patients with requiring insulin if they did not
take better control of their blood sugar. Another 50% to 55% of
physicians and nurses said that they would delay prescribing
insulin until "absolutely necessary." Patients often said that the
burden would be on them if taking insulin became necessary.
The patients who ate better, exercised more, and worried less
about their disease, however, would be less likely to blame
themselves. (The findings were reported in
Diabetes Care,
November 2005.)
The Oncology Care Pharmacist in Health-System Pharmacy According to the National Cancer Institute, almost 40% of men and women will be given a diagnosis of some form of cancer in their lifetime.
Conference Coverage News from the year's biggest meetings Pharmacist Education Clinical features with downloadable PDFs | 1,323 | 719 | 0.001411 |
warc | 201704 | We Are Sequencing the Genomes of the World, and It’s Giving Us a New Vision of Life
In one fell swoop, the world of genomics got a massive present: 45 new, fully sequenced bird genomes. This bonanza came in 2014 out of a four-year mega-sequencing project involving hundreds of researchers from more than 80 institutions across 20 countries. It represents just one tip of the huge tree of life.
The project was led by China’s BGI, the world’s largest genomics center. BGI has also led the sequencing of panda, rice and 38 different types of pigeon, which Darwin used as prime evidence for evolution in his 1859 masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species.”
One of BGI’s biggest findings was support for the “big bang” concept of bird evolution. The family tree built from these genomes shows that most bird lineages burst forth in a relatively short period of time (10-15 million years) after dinosaurs vanished from the Earth. Birds are “dinosaurs with wings,” after all — just look at a scaly foot of a chicken.
BGI’s Avian Phylogenomics Project was huge: analysis of the data took more than 300 years of CPU (central processing units) time on several supercomputers. Yet it was just one small slice of global efforts to decode the DNA of life on Earth. Birds, some of our favorite vertebrate species — there are more than 40 million birdwatchers in the U.S. alone — are just a tiny twig of the four-billion-year-old tree of life.
Graphic shows higher-order animals that have had or in the process of having, their genomes sequenced.
Genomes 10K, for example, aims to sequence a representative genome from every animal type with a spine. It will take 10,000 genomes just to sample each highly related grouping of species, or “genus.” —> Read More | 1,835 | 1,010 | 0.001043 |
warc | 201704 | What is Prepaid Internet?
Prepaid internet is internet service that you pay for before you use it. It’s just like prepaid cell phones, except instead of paying for minutes, you (usually) pay for the amount of data you want to use. However, in some cases there is the option to prepay for internet on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
How Does Prepaid Internet Service Work?
It’s simply, really.
The first step is to choose a wireless carrier. There are several internet providers you can choose from, including the big name companies like AT&T, Verizon or Virgin. With a little bit of searching you can find smaller companies that offer prepaid internet, too.
The next step is to determine how much data you need. Different companies will offer different amounts, but you should be able to prepay for as much as 20 GB. When deciding on how much data you want, keep a few things in mind:
Data is much more expensive prepaid. For example, 5GB is $80 at Verizon, but you can get 10 GB for the same price (at Verizon) if you go with a monthly (non-prepaid) plan. Your data may expire. You’ll want to ask your prepaid provider about that, or be sure to read the plan and the terms and conditions. The reason why this is important is that if you don’t use up all of the internet before your time runs out, it’ll go to waste and you’ll be out money.
Once you’ve chosen your carrier and data plan, you’ll then need to get your equipment. The equipment you’ll need depends on the carrier. With some companies you’ll rent your equipment, such as a modem or USB, while with other internet providers you’ll need to buy that stuff. The bigger companies (usually) make you buy your own equipment. You can choose from a USB, hotspot modem or pc card. Prices for equipment will range from $25 to $125, so it can get expensive quick.
There are starter packs that you can buy too. These will come with everything you need to get going, including a software disc (if needed), your USB or pc card.
After that you’ll need to get setup. It’s usually a matter of visiting the companies site and entering in serial numbers and activation codes on the back of the packaging.
From there you should be able to access your internet. You’ll want to keep an eye on your usage and top off your account as needed to avoid being disconnected. One thing to keep in mind is that for some prepaid services, you can’t top off until you have used so much of your data up. And when you do top off it’ll replace what you have left. So if you have 20GB of data left, you might want to wait to top off until you have much less, say 5GB, because 20GB is worth about $200-$300, and replacing that (without using it) would be costly.
Pre Paid Internet Pros Use as little or as much internet as you’d like. There are no bills or contracts. No hidden fees, data overages or other expensive surprises. Doesn’t require credit (credit checks) to get service. No termination fees. Switch providers as often as you’d like. Pre Paid Internet Cons If you don’t keep track of your data (or time), you can run out of internet service. Data plans can expire, so it can become very expensive if you miscalculate how much you’ll use, and get more than you need. Topping off can be expensive, too, if you don’t use your previous data beforehand. Equipment can be expensive — $25 to $125+. No the best solution for gamers. | 3,489 | 1,613 | 0.000644 |
warc | 201704 | Some people have trouble thinking of a megayacht as an eco-friendly vessel, which is understandable. Fuel and freshwater capacities are measured in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of gallons. Some yachts devote entire refrigerators to keeping fresh flowers, and most maintain enough food stocks to feed a charter party of 12 for up to a week. But despite all this, many megayacht builders and designers are looking for ways to reduce the impact of the vessels they build and refit by recognizing that in the world of big yachts, small changes can go a long way.
For instance, Feadship has taken a series of steps to reduce the electricity consumed by marine air conditioning, a yacht’s largest energy drain as it runs 24 hours per day. One way is to apply a heat-reflective glaze to the hull and another is by combining recirculated indoor air and precooling outdoor air both with the goal of reducing the air conditioning systems cooling load. Yet another is using heat produced by propulsion and generator engines to heat water for domestic use, including an onboard pool.
Other builders are concentrating on new hullforms to improve efficiency. One, Hong Kong-based Kingship, laid the keel of its new 44-meter (144-foot) Green Voyager line (above) at the end of March. The naval architecture firm Axis Group designed the hull with a plumb bow that maximizes waterline length and therefore reduces hydrodynamic drag, resulting in a claimed 20-percent reduction in fuel consumption, compared to a conventional hull. The main saloon will feature windows that open to the full height of the deck to reduce the need for air conditioning. But the greenest feature onboard the Green Voyager won’t be visible. Siemens’ hybrid propulsion system was chosen for its low energy consumption, clean operation, and relatively small size. Similar to a hybrid car, it will store 600-kWH of energy in compact lithium batteries, allowing the Green Voyager to be propelled by diesel-electric or electric only, as well as straight diesel power.
Another innovator is sailboat-builder Perini Navi, which launched its first motoryacht last year, the 50-meter (164-foot) Exuma (right). The Picchiotti Vitruvius-branded yacht employs a weight-saving all-aluminum hull that mimics the slippery lines and outstanding efficiency of a sailing vessel’s. Exuma was awarded the first Rina Green Plus Platinum designation based on her efficiency, exhaust emissions, and advanced black- and grey-water-treatment technology. She will have a range of 5,500 miles at 12 knots (13.5 mph) and carry a 12-foot hovercraft in her bow.
By paying attention to details like waste-water treatment and air conditioning systems, shipyards are today making older yachts greener without compromising comfort or amenities. And new yachts are increasingly enjoying significantly better fuel efficiency thanks to advanced hull designs and weight-saving construction techniques.
This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of
Power & Motoryacht magazine. | 3,052 | 1,599 | 0.000631 |
warc | 201704 | by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion
The Psalms are the most famous poems in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet praying them can often be difficult for the reason that they express sentiments that do not reflect the mindset of the one praying them at that moment. Indeed, some people are put off by the psalms and abandon them completely.
Is there a solution to this problem? I suggest that there is (and I am not being particularly original here).
Take the opening words of Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” This Psalm is very powerful when the one praying it is distressed and overcome by a sense that God is far away.
But, what does it mean to pray this Psalm when life is experienced as positive, fulfilled, and happy, and the supplicant has a strong sense of the closeness of God?
The answer may be found in the truth that the Psalms are always prayed on behalf of the whole Church, indeed the whole world. One may not oneself find the opening phrase of Psalm 130 particularly relevant to one’s spiritual outlook at the moment, but someone in the circle of family, friends, and fellow parishioners may.
Or, if a pastor knows of a person in his parish who is depressed and whose life is full of trouble, he can pray the Psalm on that person’s behalf, putting the words of the Psalm, so to speak, on that person’s lips.
Or, one can pray on behalf of the whole Church in time of crisis—and especially the suffering Church in places where war and oppression hold sway. For a moment, the one praying the opening phrase of Psalm 130 becomes the whole Church.
One can also pray the first words of Psalm 130 for that part of humanity which experiences the broad range of joy, elation, peace, on the one hand, and tragedy, sadness, and psychological oppression, on the other.
Hebrew poets composed the Psalms. Accordingly, the Jewish people have a special claim on the Psalms—notably Jews for whom the horror of the Holocaust is seared into their hearts and souls to this very day. Many Jewish people lost their faith because of the Holocaust and feel that God abandoned them—if there is a God. Praying the Psalms on behalf of downcast Jews is a good and worthy act.
One can also put the words of the Psalms on the lips of the faithful Christians and Muslims of the Middle East who are suffering terribly, with seemingly no let-up. They may not be able to pray, but we can pray of their behalf.
In all of this, there is an important lesson: Even in the most private prayer there is always a public, communal dimension—a dimension that incorporates all the spiritually needy of the world.
Parishes, for that reason, appropriately pray the Liturgy of the Hours publicly, even if only a handful of people are present. This kind of public recitation of the Psalms was recommended for all Catholics by Vatican II. Even in personal prayer the Psalms are always communal, worldly, and cosmic.
Monastic and other religious communities build their day around the recitation of the psalms, praying not just for their own members, but for the whole church and the whole world.
The opening phrase of Psalm 130 is a good example of a Psalm that may not always meet the personal needs of those who recite it, but is a prayer that one can recite on behalf of the pressing situations of humankind.
Msgr. Mannion is pastor emeritus of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Salt Lake City. Reprinted by permission of Catholic News Agency. | 3,489 | 1,666 | 0.000611 |
warc | 201704 | Do you ever wonder why we gentleman do the things we do? At Forgetful Gentleman, we’ve always been fascinated by the origins of the gentlemanly actions we conduct every day. In some cases, understanding where our cultural norms come from can give us a renewed appreciation for them. In other cases, it just makes for fun trivia. Either way, we hope you’ll find these historical tidbits as interesting as we do. At the very least they make for great cocktail conversation fodder!
Why do we escort women on our left arm?
When a man escorts his partner, tradition has it that he offers his left arm.This tradition originates from medieval times when men escorted women around town and through the fields. Should a threat arise or the woman’s honor require defending, the man’s sword hand (his right hand) would be free, giving him quick and easy access to his sword, worn on his left side.
To this day, the left arm rule still applies while indoors. However, with the rise of wheeled vehicles and non-pedestrian streets, the proper escorting etiquette evolved over the years for outdoor environments. Today, when escorting a women outdoors, you should position yourself on the outside (closest to the street) to protect her from traffic, mud splashing, etc.
Why are the bottom buttons of our suit jackets and blazers never to be fastened?
This fashion guideline is typically attributed to King Edward VII, the British monarch from 1901 until his death in 1910. Quite the gourmand, King Edward loved his food so much that the royal tailors often had trouble keeping up with his ballooning figure. One day, seeking reprieve from the confining constriction of his waistcoat, King Edward casually unbuttoned the bottom button. At that time, the King set the fashion trends and when members of his court saw his new look, they quickly emulated it. The fad spread like wildfire and within weeks unbuttoned bottom buttons were found everywhere.
We continue to honor the memory of Edward the Wide to this day. Modern suit jackets and blazers are actually designed to cutaway at the hips with the bottom button left undone. Buttoning it results in unsightly pulling and bunching of fabric at the waist and disapproving looks from your fellow gentlemen.
Why do we give toasts?
In ancient Greece, being poisoned was a real and constant fear. In order to allay this fear, at a party, the host would pour wine for his guests and then take the first drink and toast everyone to show that the wine was safe to drink. Incidentally, the term “toast” also comes from this tradition. Toasting is a reference to the toasted bread that ancient Greeks dipped into their wine to cut the acidity.
Where did the custom of removing or tipping a hat as a sign of respect come from?
In medieval times, knights often encountered each other in full armor making it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. As a sign of friendliness, knights would lift their helmet visors, showing their faces to one another.The custom of tipping ones hat to another, as a symbol of politeness, is a direct descendant of this medieval practice. Interesting note: the modern military salute shares the same origin.
Why do we give flowers to communicate our feelings of love, friendship, grief, sympathy and congratulations?
In the 1700’s, Charles II of Sweden returned from Persia, bringing with him the custom of “the language of flowers” to Europe. Different flowers communicated different sentiments or meanings to the point that entire conversations were carried out through the sending and receiving of flower bouquets. Today we usually communicate our intent overtly with an attached note or card but the custom of sending flowers endures.
Do you know the history behind your favorite gentlemanly etiquette? Share it with us in the comments section; we’d love to hear it! | 3,892 | 1,927 | 0.000528 |
warc | 201704 | We conducted a survey to see if tourists would be interested in going on an artisanal fishing boat to see and swim with Manta rays, what they would expect and how much they would be prepared to pay. In these cases you want a wide range of opinions and views and we believe this is what we got.
The surveys were handed out in the town of Mancora in northern Peru. Mancora is a very popular tourist town in northern Peru. Here, souvenir stalls still sell turtle shells, shark jaws and framed sea creatures such as sea horses, sea stars, urchins and shells. These types of gifts are quite abundant.
Some surveys were left in hostels, hotels and the local dive centre. Many of the accommodations were happy to help by giving out the surveys to their guests, but soon we realised that some of these promises were a bit loose. One hotel promoting it’s exceptional eco issues was very excited to begin with but after going back a few times over the weeks they pulled a number of blank surveys from under their forgotten paperwork. Finally, we got to survey 42 people.
Even though we were focusing the surveys at tourists, Mancora locals also filled out our surveys. They also seemed interested in the project. On the occasions that we were present while they answered the surveys, we found that almost everyone asked, ‘Aren’t Manta Rays the ones that killed Steve Irwin?’ We corrected them but were still surprised at the amount of people that thought this. 33% of interviewees thought that mantas were dangerous, yet curiously, 4 people out of these stated they would still be interested in swimming with them! There definitely needs to be more education on these wonderful animals in this area.
Further questions from our survey revealed a large market potential, where approximately 65% of the interviewees stated that they would be interested to go out on an authentic artisanal fishing boat from northern Peru and 71% had snorkelled before. 93% mentioned that they were interested in environmental conservation and 74% thought it was important to support local businesses while on holiday. Considering the little that those surveyed knew about Manta rays, 74% said that they wanted to learn something new on a day trip. This also gives us scope to introduce an important education factor.
Questions related to expected prices, expected duration of the trip, among others, were also asked, and we’re now using this information to outline a marketing strategy for this service. In conclusion, this survey showed that tourists are interested but there has to be more education on mantas and that they expect a certain level of comfort on the boat, but not necessarily luxury.
After the surveys, we organised meetings with the local coastal authorities in northern Peru to get their support for the project. We wanted to show them what we want to achieve and how we will go about it. First we went to IMARPE (Sea Institute of Peru), in the town of Santa Cruz to speak to Elmer Ordinola, head of the Research Lab. They do research on marine species and fisheries in and around north Peru waters.
The next meeting was with Erlin Jimenez, Director of DIRCETUR (Regional Direction for Commerce and Tourism). He’s in charge of looking after Tourism Businesses in north Peru. He was excited and enthusiastic about our vision. He said he would be very interested in getting involved with the project and even advised as to who we should talk to next.
We next went to see Manuel Feijoo, Director of PRODUCE (Regional Direction of Production). PRODUCE regulates and documents catches in this area and look after the fishermen. They offered their help in anything we might need, and offered a space where the meetings and workshops can take place.
The last meeting was with the Department of Natural Resources of the Regional Government. We met with María del Carmen Tapia, and she gave us the contact of the Department of Economic Development, which was very interested in helping us and gave us their support.
With these authorities on board, plus an assessment of the local market, we have the go ahead to start... | 4,148 | 2,007 | 0.000504 |
warc | 201704 | This unique arrangement with NASA helps Hera Systems realize the promise of the COTSAT design, and demonstrates new heights of performance in a low-cost Earth observation platform - Bobby Machinski, CEO
San Jose, California (PRWEB) August 04, 2016
Hera Systems, home of innovative, small satellite platforms for Earth observation and real-time on-board analytics, announced that it has entered into a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement (NRSAA) with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center (“NASA Ames”). Under this agreement, NASA Ames and Hera Systems will collaborate on the development of an upgraded satellite design for Hera Systems that is based on NASA’s existing COTSAT (Cost Optimized Test for Spacecraft Avionics and Technologies) prototype spacecraft. The agreement is a key stepping stone in Hera Systems’ plans to deliver affordable, highly refreshed, high-resolution satellite imagery and derived information to customers, and significantly accelerates the company’s own development timeline.
The arrangement with NASA Ames is unique in the aerospace industry. It enables Hera Systems to use the COTSAT technology to undertake final mission integration, launch and operation of its own 2HOPSat™ (2nd-Generation High Optical Performance Satellite), a low Earth orbit system designed to provide imagery of the Earth for a range of government and commercial applications.
NASA Ames originally developed COTSAT to demonstrate rapid and low-cost prototyping concepts. Based on this design, which houses the bus and payload subsystems in a single-atmosphere, artificial environment, the Hera Systems 2HOPSat technology demonstrator will accommodate multiple payloads, including a sensor capable of imaging the Earth’s surface at better than 22 centimeters ground sample distance (GSD). This level of resolution is particularly suitable to security applications and for monitoring the built environment and related activity.
“This unique arrangement with NASA helps Hera Systems realize the promise of the COTSAT design, and demonstrates new heights of performance in a low-cost Earth observation platform,” said Bobby Machinski, chief executive officer and president of Hera Systems. “We’re thrilled, because we’re able to save money and time by leveraging NASA’s program investment.”
Current U.S. government policy restricts commercial satellite imagery resolution to 1-meter (multispectral) and 25-centimeter (panchromatic). However, to date, governments are the most frequent users of the highest quality imagery, while other types of user organizations are limited by the high cost of and low access to such products; Hera Systems’ objective is to greatly broaden the user base.
“Our aim is to level the playing field. We know that certain applications in government and commerce benefit particularly from 31-centimeter resolution and better, and intend to open up access to such imagery and derived information to the greatest allowable extent,” Machinski said.
COTSAT provides an ideal foundation for the extremely stable platform necessary for such levels of ultra-high resolution imaging and optical communications. 2HOPSat will incorporate sensors to cover a range of visible and infrared spectra for the delivery of still-frame and video products. It will also incorporate on-board analytics capabilities that are already built into Hera Systems’ first-generation 1HOPSat design. As announced in a February 2016 news release, the 1HOPSat constellation will provide fresh, daily imagery and video as well as intelligent analytics and derived information products. The company is on track to launch the 1HOPSat constellation beginning in late 2016, and plans to launch the 2HOPSat mission in late 2017.
More information about Hera Systems’ products and services may be obtained by contacting the Hera Systems sales team directly at sales(at)herasys(dot)com or +1.844.437.2797 ext. 721.
About Hera Systems
Hera Systems is a satellite information and analytics company that collects images of the Earth every day, enabling commercial and government organizations to monitor change and make smart decisions in near-real time. The company is the only single source of fresh, up-to-the minute, universally accessible, affordable, high-resolution information about any location on the globe. Hera Systems’ initial satellite constellation will enable customers to acquire imagery and video, as well as intelligent analytics and derived information, on demand through a simplified user interface. Future generation systems will feature higher resolution imaging capabilities and other advanced technologies. For more information, visit http://www.herasys.com. | 4,813 | 2,127 | 0.000481 |
warc | 201704 | The event is being organised alongside the CREER trade show, a leading European event for entrepreneurs, which is being held at the same venue from 8 to 10 September 2008.
Four workshops will be led by renowned international experts, giving the opportunity for fruitful debates about entrepreneurship to be held. LIFE is open to all institutional, professional and academic specialists in this sector.
Workshop 1 will focus on Unique characteristics and opportunities in cross-border entrepreneurship. Even in the era of the Schengen Agreement and market internationalisation, creating or taking over a company in a cross-border zone can be a very complex process. Differences in business practices as well as legislative or linguistic hurdles represent obstacles to this type of cross-border entrepreneurship. Support organisations, on either side of a border, which can accompany entrepreneurs and underpin business performance, are able to provide valuable assistance in this respect.
This workshop will provide European examples of border zones characterised by high economic density, where skills networking has demonstrated its effectiveness, including 1,2,3 GO Networking, an inter-regional network of experts based in Luxembourg, which operates in Germany, Belgium and France. Since 2000, this network has supported 775 companies and helped to create 170 enterprises, generating about 800 jobs. The speaker will be Rachel Gaessler of ASBL Business Initiative (Luxembourg).
The workshop will also highlight the example of CEMAT, a Finnish organisation that supports economic exchanges between Russia, Finland and Estonia. This workshop will be led by Corine Moriou, a reporter for French magazine L’Entreprise (part of the Express-Expansion group).
Speakers will include Bram Louvrouw of UNIZO (Belgium), Olivier Ceccotti of CCI Grand Lille (France), and Peyo Olhagaray of CCI de Bayonne (France).
Workshop 2 will be on Events and publications on entrepreneurship. Speakers on this theme will include Erkko Autio, a specialist in entrepreneurial technology for Global Entrepreneurship Monitor UK, which is an agency established in 48 countries to measure the rate of entrepreneurship within each area; and Markku Aholainen, from the European Day of the Entrepreneur in Turku (Finland).
Speakers will also include Tina Zournatzi (DG Enterprises, Belgium), Yves Henri Robillard (World Entrepreneurship Forum, France), and Mariska Van Der Linden (Enterprise Week, UK).
Workshop 3 will address the topic: What roles can the education system play in stimulating entrepreneurship? The workshop will dwell on the importance of the education system – from primary schools through to universities – in training entrepreneurs in Europe. Additionally, it will focus on ways of harmonising and optimising the relationship between teaching and entrepreneurial culture.
Speakers will include Catherine Dervaux (Université Catholique de Lille, France), Didier Gesp (Institut de l’Entrepreneuriat, France), Naomi Birdthistle (University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland), Poul Rind Chirstensen (Aarhus Business School, Denmark), Christophe Terrasse EFMD, Belgium), and Ivan Diego Rodriguez (Ciudad Industrial del Valle del Nalón, SA Valnalón, Spain). The workshop will be run by Stéphane CAPLIER (Donner envie d’entreprendre, France).
Workshop 4 will take as its theme: How can government initiatives best support the performance of the entrepreneur and the enterprise? – European best practice. This workshop will be highlighting the Y4 Project, which aims to turn central Finland into one of the world’s most dynamic areas, as well as the Foundation for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship-Poland, which is working towards promoting modern management standards as well as private enterprise principles throughout the Lodz region (in central Poland). This workshop will be led by Gabriela Miranda, a consultant and economist at the OECD.
Speakers will also include Petri Palviainen (Y4 Finland), Yannick Giry (Conseil Régional Nord-Pas de Calais, France), and Malgorzata Sikorska (Foundation for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship, Poland).
About LIFE FORUM
LIFE FORUM will be held at the Grand Palais in Lille (in northern France) on 9 September 2008 – a day to welcome European and international experts on entrepreneurship, as well as decision-makers in the business and political fields.
Four workshops will enable European experts to compare their respective entrepreneurial experiences as well as best practices across Europe. The various methods and approaches that are adopted, and the different sets of guidelines that exist throughout the continent, will be examined and discussed.
More than 20 speakers from across Europe – from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, and Spain – are already slated to participate.
The second CREER trade fair, a leading European event for entrepreneurs and business leaders, will be held alongside the Forum from 8 to 10 September 2008. The trade fair will gather experts, consultants and potential business partners over 12,000m2. There will be 225 exhibitors and partners, 150 workshops and an expected 20,000 visitors. | 5,282 | 2,482 | 0.00041 |
warc | 201704 | Book T of C
Chap T of C Prev page Next page
In Freud's opinion, his new method of probing a patient's memories without hypnosis produced longer-lasting cures than the cathartic method using hypnosis. His patients retained a clear memory of the therapy itself, and they could think about what they had learned while they were away from the doctor. Because the technique did not require hypnosis, it could be used on everybody.
With uncanny reliability, the procedure revealed traumatic incidents responsible for the first symptoms of hysteria. For example, an eighteen-year-old girl who was troubled by anxiety attacks and shortness of breath lost her symptoms when (with great outpouring of emotion) she remembered her father's attempt to seduce her when she was fourteen.
Another patient, secretly in love with her sister's husband, was cured when she remembered standing at her dying sister's bedside and thinking an awful thought: "Now he is free again and I can be his wife." When she remembered the incident, her symptoms of anxiety became worse for a time, then her symptoms went away.
What pattern did Freud claim to have found, by 1896?
By 1896, Freud claimed to see a definite pattern in memories his patients expressed during cathartic episodes. They always involved sex, or some connection with sex. In fact, with a little prodding, every one of his patients could remember being victimized by seduction attempts during childhood. Freud wrote:
What did Freud think was the specific cause of hysteria?
The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious memory is a precocious [unusually early] experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals, resulting from sexual abuse committed by another person; and the period of life at which this fatal event takes place is earliest youth—the years up to the age of eight or ten, before the child has reached sexual maturity. A passive sexual experience before puberty: this then is the specific aetiology [cause] of hysteria.
...In some eighteen cases of hysteria I have been able to discover this connection in every single case and, where the circumstances allowed, to confirm it by therapeutic success. (1962/1896, p.199)
Then Freud changed his mind. In a decision that is still hotly debated, Freud declared that many of these memories were fantasies or confabulations (false memories ) rather than actual recollections of seduction attempts. It did not matter, he said, because the false memories still showed how a person was thinking and feeling in childhood. Freud had a strong commitment to his theory of the family drama, which included the idea of sexual fantasies in childhood, so in a sense it did not matter to Freud if the memories of sexual abuse in childhood were accurate or not; they reflected what he believed was a universal emotional drama of childhood.
Some present-day psychologists think Freud was correct in identifying many of the memories as confabulations, because Freud was encouraging particular types of memories under a state resembling hypnosis, and false memories easily occur under such circumstances. Others think Freud made a huge mistake, because childhood sexual abuse is actually quite common and can indeed cause troubling aftereffects later in life.
How might his "19th patient" have influenced Freud?
Why did Freud change his mind and decide his patients were fabricating their memories? We cannot know for sure, but some scholars suggest Freud was influenced by his "nineteenth patient"—himself. Freud carried out a very thorough (Freudians sometimes say "heroic") self-analysis in 1897. During that time, Freud decided he and his brothers and sisters all showed signs of hysterical behavior. If these symptoms were always related to perverse sexual experiences, as Freud believed, it would imply that Freud's father molested his children, which was unthinkable. So (according to this theory) Freud decided his patients' early recollections were just fantasies. That let his father off the hook.
What is evidence that Freud avoided blaming fathers?
There is other evidence that Freud had a hang-up about guilty fathers. Florence Rush, who researched the topic for her book,
The Best Kept Secret, pointed out that Freud went to extraordinary lengths to avoid blaming fathers in print, even when it meant changing the facts. Freud referred to seductions by governesses, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles, but never fathers. A case described earlier—the 18-year-old who was molested at age 14—was initially published in an article where Freud blamed her uncle. Only 30 years later, in 1925, did Freud reveal that the "uncle" was actually her father.
This all makes it sound like Freud was engaged in some kind of cover-up, and his patients were having accurate memories. But matters are not necessarily so simple. Probably some of Freud's patients
did make up false memories. Freud urged them to have such memories while they were lying quietly in a state similar to hypnosis. Modern psychologists know that hypnotized people easily confabulate (make up) memories at the suggestion of the hypnotist, and later they are unable to distinguish the hypnotically-induced fantasies from genuine memories.
What is some evidence that memories of sexual abuse can be forgotten? Why is this not necessarily compelling evidence for repression?
This whole
recovered memory issue has become quite controversial. Some psychologists maintain that there is no good evidence of memory repression as a phenomenon. Others point to data showing that some people do indeed forget sexual abuse. Psychologist Linda Meyer Williams found that 38 of 100 women with a history of childhood sexual abuse documented in their hospital records could not remember the incidents as adults (Bower, 1993). However, memory for all life events is full of gaps. Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent memory expert, cites data showing that memories of sexual abuse are forgotten (and remembered) at rates no different from other life experiences (Holden, 2000).
Perhaps some of Freud's patients were retrieving genuine memories and others were having false memories because of Freud's probing questions. It does seem somewhat unlikely that 18 patients in a row were suffering from the same problem.
What did Freud eventually decide?
Eventually Freud decided it might not matter whether the memories were true or false, because they functioned psychologically as if they were true. Freud started to put less emphasis on recollections. Eventually Freud stopped trying to eliminate symptoms one by one and concentrated on long-lasting change in the whole person (a goal he never achieved, according to some critics—Freud only published a handful of case histories, and none showed consistent long-term improvement). But Freud never minimized the importance of catharsis. He wrote in 1925:
The cathartic method was the immediate precursor of psycho-analysis; and, in spite of every extension of experience and every modification of theory, is still contained within its nucleus.
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warc | 201704 | Most councils are coping with the cuts councils but they will face difficult decisions about how to meet their funding shortfall in the next few years. This is the conclusion of the Audit Commission report Tough Times.
The Commission believes that, so far, councils have responded well to these challenges. Auditors have some confidence that most will balance their books this year. Many have also protected the most vulnerable people in their area. But with more reductions to come, and wider economic problems intensifying the pressure, councils need to prepare for a potentially rocky road ahead.
‘Good financial management and the continued search for efficiency savings will help councils navigate their way through this period, but they will also need to make some tough decisions about how to bridge the funding gap in the coming years.’
Local government faces three more years of cuts in government funding with almost 60 per cent of the total reductions yet to come. To meet this future challenge the report finds that some elements of councils’ cost-reducing strategies will have to change. In the larger councils almost half of this year’s savings will come from planning, housing and cultural services, but these only cover 16 per cent of service spending. These services cannot deliver similar savings every year. Many councils will face difficult decisions about how to meet their funding shortfall in the next few years.
Strong leadership and financial management mean that most councils should balance the books this year. However, many have had to cut back on services to secure their financial stability. Most local authorities are taking the right steps to make efficiency savings but have also had to reduce the quality and quantity of services. Charges are going up in many councils.
Although most councils are coping, the report finds that a minority of councils were considered by auditors to be ‘at risk’ of not meeting their budget for 2011/12.
The common characteristic of these councils is a combination of financial and managerial issues. Facing large funding reductions is not, on its own, enough to cause auditors to worry about a council’s financial resilience. It is councils with both big funding reductions and weak financial management that are at most risk of not achieving their budget. ‘At risk’ councils were less likely to have thoroughly evaluated their savings proposals and were more likely to use short-term financial fixes.
Tough times can be downloaded here. | 2,558 | 1,167 | 0.000875 |
warc | 201704 | Published By :
19 May 2016 | Published By : QYRESEARCH
Nobody is an exception when it comes to making an appointment with their dentist. Everyone goes through dental issues such as irregular teeth, aching teeth, implant requirements, cavities, and so on. The solutions for these problems are diverse and will depend on the severity of the problem. It could range from a simple filling to a root canal, to completely replacing the tooth with a fake one. In the case of the latter, there is not real need to fear though, as the days of using wooden dentures are long gone. Modern medicine has advanced to a point where the new dental implants will not let you feel a thing and function just as well as your old teeth.
Current Dental Implant Types Dental implants are inserted into the jawbone. It is done in a way that will allow the implant to fuse with the natural bone and therefore gain a solid foundation to work with. The modern procedures are completely safe and pose no postoperative harm to the mouth or the implant. The procedures can be used to replace either a single tooth or even create a bridge to support the implant, or build an entire set of dentures for the patient. The current lineup of dentures can use titanium, which is a highly biocompatible metal. It is easily accepted by the body and is strong enough to provide a superior foundation for the implants. Most implants can be used for patients of any age, but are usually advised after the human jaw stops growing, which is till puberty. Previous modes of dental reparations included the traditional dental bridges that supported the teeth. They are highly temporary and cannot be used for a lifetime, like the modern implants. Improvements in Dental Implants and Prosthetics One of the key factors that is propelling the global markets for dental implants and prosthetics is the rapid developments in technology in the dental industry, especially in terms of new materials and their manipulation. This is further pushed ahead by the growing investments and expenditures made in the healthcare industry. | 2,081 | 1,072 | 0.000935 |
warc | 201704 | Almost all drivers want horse riders to clean up after their four-legged friends on the road.
As many as 97% believe they should pick up and bag manure, according to research by waste management firm Business Waste - while 89% think they should be fined for failing to do so, much like dog owners.
Horse riders currently have no obligation to clear up the foul left behind by their animal. But the study highlights the safety risk that manure presents to road users, particularly those riding bicycles and motorbikes.
There are also a number of clear health risks as it contains unhealthy bacteria such as E. Coli, Listeria and Salmonella - all of which have the potential to cause serious illness among members of the public.
Dog owners who fail to clean up after their dog can be given an on-the-spot fine - ranging from £50 to £80, depending on the council area - and drivers want horse riders to face the same sort of punishment.
Copyright Press Association 2014 | 983 | 582 | 0.001748 |
warc | 201704 | Radon Gas Information
Radon is a natural radioactive gas that you can’t see, smell or taste and is known to the Surgeon General to be a cause of cancer. Radon is known to be the leading cause of cancer among those that do not smoke. If there is radon in your home the radon can create a serious danger to you and your family’s health. Radon in the home can be detected with a low cost radon detector.
Radon is also seen as the second leading cause of lung cancer in America and statistically claims around 20,000 lives each year. For your good health your home should be tested for radon.
Studies have shown that there is evidence of a definite association between radon exposure in the home and lung cancer.
The Environmental Protection Association and the Surgeon General recommend that all homes be tested for the presence of radon.
According to Tom Kelly, Director of the Environmental Protection Association’s Indoor Environments Division, “These findings effectively end any doubts about the risks to Americans of having radon in their homes. We know that radon is a carcinogen. This research confirms that breathing low levels of radon can lead to lung cancer.”The Environmental Protection Association and the Surgeon General recommend that all homes be tested for the presence of radon.
Radon is not isolated to any particular type of home as any home can have dangerous levels of radon buildup.
Radon is a gas that occurs naturally from decaying uranium and is found in almost all types of soil. As the uranium in the soil begins to decay it moves up through the ground and into the air. When a home is built over the ground area where the uranium is decaying the radon will seep into the home through cracks and holes in the foundation. The radon will then be trapped in the home where it can begin to build up inside the walls of the house and because you cannot see, smell or taste the radon you may never know it is there until it is too late. It does not matter how new or old the house is, what type of foundation it has or how it is built, radon can affect any home, anywhere. Well water can also be a cause for radon and although rare, some building products can cause radon
You can hire a professional to test your home for radon or you can purchase a low priced radon gas detector kit.
For more information on radon you can visit these sources: Environmental Protection Agency
Where can you purchase a low cost radon detector for your home?
Safe Home Products, a well known company that has been around since 1999 offers over 10,000 products including carbon monoxide and radon detectors. They have a low cost radon detector
This site brought to you as a public service to help educate about the dangers of radon gas, how it can naturally occur and its potential to cause cancer if high levels are present in the home. Remember that a radon gas detector in the home can help save a life from exposure to radon gas. This site brought to you by
Safe Home Products®, Inc . | 3,033 | 1,324 | 0.000767 |
warc | 201704 | -4
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American Horror Story: Why U.S. Broadband Is Sooo Sloooow
By global standards, U.S. broadband speeds are slow—and getting slower. In Akamai's worldwide ranking of Internet speeds, the U.S. recently dropped from 12th place to 14th, lapped by Denmark, Norway ... and Romania.
True, in absolute terms, U.S. speeds are still edging upward. In the second quarter, for instance, average broadband speeds in this country rose to 11.4 megabits per second (Mbps), up from 10.5 Mbps in the previous quarter. That's the good news. Bad news is, the rest of the world is getting even faster Readwrite.com
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For those who still languish over "losing to China" or believe that the economy is still in recession, wake up and smell the data. Economic development in the South was about as good as it gets in calendar year 2015 according to the data. And as for China, borrowing a quote from the late football coach Bear Bryant that he made in the half-time locker room down 15-0 to Georgia Tech in 1960, "We got 'em right where we want 'em." For those of you who don't know the rich history of Alabama Crimson Tide football, Bama scored all of its 16 points in the fourth quarter, kicking a field goal on the last play of the game to beat Tech 16-15.
FEATURE
By Mike Randle
Today, factories in the U.S. make twice as much product as they did in 1984. And they are doing it with one-third of the manufacturing workforce. In fact, the output of durable goods in 2015 was the highest in the nation's history. So, we do have a strong manufacturing base, at least in the South, much of the Midwest and parts of the West, and it is getting stronger because on a cost-basis, we can compete with any major manufacturing nation in the world.
FEATURE
The argument for or against a minimum wage hike continues between the reds and the blues, as well as within the economic development community in the South. Should we stay the course with a minimum wage under $8 an hour to better compete with Mexico, the South's biggest competitor for jobs, or set a minimum wage just over $10 an hour, a wage floor most centrists support? That $10 per hour is, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, about right in most states in the South for one adult to be able to cover basic expenses plus all relevant taxes.
Recent data from the Computing Technology Industry Association (Comp TIA) showed that the technology industry is one of the fastest growing job generators in the South and the nation. The report also indicated that technology job compensation is growing faster than any other sector. | 2,695 | 1,429 | 0.000706 |
warc | 201704 | ‘Good guys’ with guns: This is how cops became fixtures in America’s schools The 1990s-era ‘tough on crime’ movement that encouraged police inside schools has expanded under Obama, despite the lack of consensus it improves safety
Richland County sheriff Leon Lott announced Wednesday he would fire senior deputy sheriff Ben Fields for yanking a high school girl from her desk and dragging her across the floor in a South Carolina classroom, and that video of the incident gave him “heartburn”.
“He picked a student up, and he threw a student across the room,” Lott said. “That’s what caused me my heartburn, and my issues with this.”
But Lott directed criticism not just at Fields, but at a South Carolina law that he said empowers cops to mete out too much discipline in classrooms.
“Maybe that’s something that should have been handled by the administrator, without ever calling the deputy,” Lott said. “I didn’t pass the law. It’s something that’s been put on us, and I’ll be one of the first ones to say that it’s been abused in the past.”
South Carolina is far from alone in intermingling policing and education.
In the last 25 years, sworn police officers have become a fixture of the US’s public education system, the vast majority armed with the power to arrest and interrogate students, often, advocates say, without the constitutional protections that children might be afforded on the street.
“The two most significant factors in a decision to include heavy security measures – which includes police – is the race of the students and the poverty level,” said Harold Jordan, the senior policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, who has worked extensively on issues involving law enforcement in schools. “So we know that there is a problem, and the problem is not just located in South Carolina.”
The 1990s-era “tough on crime” movement that encouraged educators to place local police inside schools has been under increasing scrutiny in the last five years, as these policies disproportionately impact students of color and allegedly criminalize adolescent behavior. But an uneasy expansion of the programs has taken place even under the Obama administration, despite the lack of consensus that they improve school safety.
Concerns about such programs have raised enough concern for the nation’s highest education authority, the US Department of Education, to investigate.
Statistics culled by investigators at the Office of Civil Rights found black students were disproportionately arrested or referred to law enforcement at school. In 2014, the department found 260,000 students of America’s 49 million were referred to police. Black student represented 27% of law enforcement referrals, despite making up only 16% of enrollment. White students, meanwhile, comprised 41% of referrals, but 51% of enrollment.
Even the Justice Department has taken notice , suing a few school districts that routinely used police to enforce disciplinary infractions. “A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct,” attorney general Eric Holder said last January.
In just the last 12 months, school resource officers have been involved in several high-profile use-of-force incidents.
In Colorado Springs, an officer punched a 15-year-old girl in the face when trying to break up a fight. Police said the force was justified and returned the officer to his job at the high school. The two students involved were ticketed and suspended.
An officer in Kentucky punched a 13-year-old student in the face in the cafeteria in front a large portion of the school (including teachers) for allegedly cutting the lunch line. The officer arrested the student on menacing and resisting arrest charges. The next day the officer returned, placed a different 13-year-old in a chokehold until he lost consciousness, handcuffed the student, kept him out of class and then drove him home.
School district officials said the punching incident was, “in front of everyone. It was in the cafeteria, so we were aware of it”. Asked by local reporters why the school resource officer wasn’t immediately removed, the spokesman refused to comment, and said he didn’t know how such incidents were investigated. The officer’s supervisor was also apparently shown a video of the incident, but did nothing to prevent the officer’s return the next day.
Even before the officer punched the student in the face, community members criticized his behavior. He was named in a civil lawsuit alleging he and three other police officers physically and verbally abused children at a summer camp program called the Gentleman’s Academy, according to WLKY .
“I worked with, I think, five SROs, and I would say four of the five were effective, and one in particular had that very quick trigger,” said Spencer Weiler, an education professor at Northern Colorado University. He was a middle school administrator and teacher for more than 14 years before becoming a researcher who studied school resource officers. Weiler described an incident where a student got “belligerent” with an officer.
“Within seconds, the SRO had this student face down in the countertop in the front office, and in handcuffs, and I was like, ‘What is going on? Why is this person reacting this way?’” said Weiler. “We had a conversation with him after the fact.”
The education department’s study counting arrests is one of the most comprehensive. Research into the effectiveness of SROs has been criticized as “limited”, both by the small number of studies and for lack of rigor, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.
Meanwhile, millions in federal grants have flowed to the programs.
“Nobody knows exactly how many officers are in schools,” said Jordan. The best estimates of roughly 19,000 is from an 8-year-old Bureau of Justice Statistics report.
Over the last two decades, Democrats have been ardent pushers of SRO programs.
After shooters at Columbine high school in Colorado killed 13 people and injured 20 , president Bill Clinton and congressional lawmakers quickly dedicated an initial round of funding to Cops in Schools, or Cops grants.
The number of positions that program created is a best guess – in 2004 the National Association of School Resource Officers polled attendees of its national conference and found 45% of about 19,900 had their positions funded with the help of federal grants. That program handed out $753m before it was defunded in 2005, under Republican President George W Bush. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department is a beneficiary of these funds, according to Lott, helping pay for 87 student resource officers in the county.
Before it was cut, Democrats came to the defense of Cops grants, including gun control advocates such as New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer.
“Thanks to Cops, people feel safer with their children on the streets today,” Schumer said in a press release in May 2004, the National Review reported . “But now the Administration has proposed ending the program and taking away funding to hire thousands of police officers just when they are needed most. Why the Administration would want to rip a hole in that sense of security by slashing COPS funding is beyond me.”
Even the Obama administration provided millions to place cops in schools. In the wake of the massacre of 20 people in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the Justice Department pledged $45m to fund 356 new school resource officer positions , fulfilling a call by the National Rifle Association to put more “good guys” with guns in schools.
Many have cited Columbine as the beginning of the SRO era. While funding tied to the event undoubtedly expanded the ranks, it appears the movement was well underway before the massacre. In fact, an armed deputy sheriff was already assigned to Columbine high school when the shooting happened .
By 1991, enough school resource officers were in the field that a specialized police association was founded, the National Association of School Resource Officers. By 1997 (two years before Columbine), there were already an estimated 12,300 school resource officers on campus, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The time was one of a confluence of concerns about criminal justice, when many of the nation’s “tough on crime” laws were written. Crime peaked in America in 1993 . Just three years later, in 1996, a Princeton professor would issue the guiding document for politicians looking to strengthen juvenile sentences – the theory of the juvenile “superpredator” .
Even descriptions for the best possible school resource officers raise constitutional concerns, advocates said. NASRO describes the best school resource officers as those that adhere to the “triad” of teacher, law enforcement officer and counselor. But police are not trained as teachers, and students who confide in school resource officers have none of the privacy protections guaranteed by trained counselors and psychologists.
“I maintain that that’s punting the issue,” Jordan said about the “triad” theory. “Ultimately, you need to reduce the rolls of police in school and restrict it to only the most serious and violent situations.”
At a press conference Wednesday, members of the Richland County Sheriff’s citizens advisory council described a program that, most of the time, worked well.
“As parents and a community, nobody from the sheriff’s department, or anybody else, just dumped this on our heads. There was an outcry,” for more law enforcement, Bishop C L Lorick Junior told reporters. “We made certain laws, and we also made certain policies called ‘zero tolerance.’ As someone eloquently said some time ago, the chickens have come home to roost.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015 | 10,300 | 4,544 | 0.000231 |
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DOUBLE TAP TO ZOOM WITH PHONE OR TABLET some of the energy that would otherwise go into moving the car forward. Similarly, the bumps on the mesh shelf liner shake the car, which also diverts energy from moving the car forward. This is why the cars on these two tracks move more slowly. Mathematics Content This activity encourages measurement of both speed and distance. While younger children will judge speed and acceleration based on visual perception, older children can clap at regular intervals to mea- sure the time a car takes to reach the bottom of each track. (In this case, they will need to race the cars one at a time.) A metronome, which produces sounds and light flashes at regular intervals for musicians to follow, is even better to use. These devices are not ex- pensive and can be used in a variety of activities. The gridlines along the floor help children begin to quan- tify measurements of distance. Children can also link together manipulative materials, such as snap blocks, to measure distance. This helps children realize that measurement involves use of a designated item as a unit, and the number of units used is the distance. Children will likely want to discuss the order of finish of the cars, which leads to the learning and application of ordinal numbers—fi rst, second, third, and fourth. They may even want to record the order of finish on a score sheet. Connections to Technology and Engineering Use of a digital video camera to preserve some of the ramp experiments allows children to review the re- sults and the teacher to lead discussions with groups of children. As children watch the cars move down the various tracks, they can together clap and count pulses to determine speed. Children can also com- municate about the experiments and share their infer- ences regarding what affects the speed of the cars. Understanding how the surface of roads affects speed is important to civil engineers. Sometimes curves on a steep road have ridges to help prevent vehicles from going too fast. Teachers can intro- duce these concepts through their discussions with children. Comments and Questions to Support Inquiry • Does the car on the wood ramp always get to the bottom first? Why do you think that happens? • This time let’s watch for the car that comes in third place. • Can you predict which car will go the farthest? • Does the fastest car always go the farthest? • Does the slowest car always go the shortest distance? COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL ST E M lE aR n I ng c E n T E R S 23 | 2,647 | 1,353 | 0.00075 |
warc | 201704 | in preparing contracts with group purchasing. Learn more.
Welcome to the Responsible Purchasing Guide for Toner Cartridges. This Guide provides information and recommendations on responsible use, purchasing, and disposal of toner cartridges for laser printers, copiers, and fax machines.
Remanufactured toner and ink jet cartridges (remans) reduce waste, save natural resources, and cut costs by reusing empty cores and parts rather than disposing single-use products from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Remanufactured cartridges are available for laser monochrome and color as well as ink jets. Monochrome laser remans are the most applicable for wide-spread adoption by institutional purchasers and are the focus of this Guide.
Each year, over 350 million toner cartridges go to landfills and incinerators in the United States. A typical OEM toner cartridge consumes 5 to 9 pounds of virgin material in the production process and is composed of 40% plastic and 40% metal. Remans reuse this plastic and metal and save other materials and energy needed to produce a comparable OEM cartridge. Cartridge remanufacturers in the United States reuse over 35 thousand tons of plastic and save over 400,000 barrels of oil each year. Since cartridges may be remanufactured more than once, resource intensity is reduced further with each additional remanufacture by extending the total life of the unit.
The cost of remans is conservatively estimated to be 30% to 60% less than new cartridges on a cost-per-copy basis. Remans are suitable for use in most printers, copiers and other machines using laser cartridges. Reman products offer equivalent quality, performance, and yield compared to OEM standards. During remanufacture, cartridges are disassembled and cleaned. Worn, defective, and high-usage parts are replaced. Units are refilled with toner, reassembled, tested for quality, and resold. Purchasers should specify the STMC testing protocol in order to guarantee product quality and performance.
There are an estimated 2,000 cartridge remanufacturers in the United States who produce over 27 million remans each year. Remans are available from most national office supply vendors as well as local vendors throughout the country. One simple way of switching is to ask suppliers to auto-substitute remans any time an order is placed for new cartridges and to train purchasers on the use of this auto-substitute feature. In addition to using remans, cartridges should be recycled at the end of their useful life. Sourcing from local remanufacturers and recyclers may provide additional environmental benefits and contribute to the local economy.
Compared to OEM cartridges, remanufactured toner cartridges reduce energy and resource intensity and limit waste, while offering immediate cost savings, comparable quality, and ready availability – a straightforward case of win-win for the environment and the bottom line. | 2,938 | 1,359 | 0.000739 |
warc | 201704 | Imagine this situation: You sit in you backyard, having a barbecue party with drinks, fruits and desert, trying to enjoy and relax with your friends and family and then those pesky flies come. They all over your food, drinks, fruits, flying around making that awful noise and biting your skin. Flies can be pretty annoying and even if you can keep them away from your kitchen and bedroom, it’s a bit harder to get rid of them outside, especially if there is food on the table.
But there is one simple, easy trick you can do in order to get rid of those pesky little flies and keep them away forever. Enjoy your backyard party without worrying about flies. And this is also all natural, because you sure don’t want to use some commercial fly (insect) repellent around food and pets. It’s chemical free and cheap. You can now get rid of flies naturally and cheaply. You will be amazed to see how all of a sudden all the flies disappear in a short time.
How to Get Rid of Flies
You will need: A few apples (depending on how big your backyard is ) Cloves | 1,070 | 593 | 0.001718 |
warc | 201704 | The study, by scientists at Temple University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Georgetown University, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Colorado, is published in the the journal
Child Development.
The researchers looked at more than 900 individuals ranging in age from 10 to 30 and from an ethnically and socio-economically diverse group to determine how people of different ages think about the future consequences of their decisions. They used a new questionnaire and an experimental task called delay discounting, which measures the extent to which people prefer immediate but smaller rewards over delayed but larger ones.
Compared with adults, the researchers found, teenagers consider the future less and prefer immediate rewards over delayed ones (for example, $700 today versus $1,000 a year from now). But it may not be impulsivity that guides their lack of forethought. Instead, the study found that teens are shortsighted more due to immaturity in the brain systems that govern sensation seeking than to immaturity in the brain systems responsible for self-control.
Brain systems governing sensation seeking are very active between the ages of 10 and 16, while brain systems governing self-control continue to mature beyond age 16. In this study, the researchers saw few changes in teens' concepts about the future after age 16.
"Those who wish to use research on adolescent decision-making to guide legal policies concerning teenagers' rights and responsibilities need to be more specific about which particular capacities are being studied—sensation seeking or self-control—since they don't all mature along the same timetable," concludes Laurence Steinberg, Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Temple University and the study's lead author.
Article: Child Development, Vol. 80, Issue 1, Age Differences in Future Orientation and Delay Discounting by Steinberg, L (Temple University), Graham, S (University of California, Los Angeles), O'Brien, LO (Temple University), Woolard, J (Georgetown University), Cauffman, E (University of California, Irvine), and Banich, M (University of Coloarado). | 2,178 | 1,072 | 0.000941 |
warc | 201704 | SCLS Home
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At its simplest level, to calculate the amount to request from your municipality (C):
However,this can be an oversimplification. If you don't get all that you estimate from other sources, you will still need enough to operate. Providing this "cushion" is the responsibility of the municipality which established the library. Similarly, if you get more than you expect, or a healthy increase, from another source (for example, your county), that doesn't relieve the municipality of their responsibility—rather, it should be an opportunity for the library to pursue new initiatives, or to make up for past budget shortfalls. Back to top
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Formula (all figures come from your most recent annual report):
Your total operating expenditures. (A) Any federal funds spent on operating expenditures. (B) Your total circulation. (C) Your circulation to county residents who live in municipalities that don't maintain a public library. (D) ((A-B) / C) x D x 70% = Minimum amount county owes your library
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Board's exclusive control. The library board, not the municipality, has exclusive control of the money appropriated for the library fund. Wis. Stat. 43.58(1)
(A third statute, commonly called "Maintenance of Effort," was eliminated in the 2011-2013 Wisconsin State Budget. Your municipality is no longer required to appropriate for your operating budget at least the average of their operating appropriation for the previous 3 years.)
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Two types of budgets (there are others)
Line item budget
Commonly used, and may be the format your municipality requires. Contains categories ("lines") of expenditures, for example: Personnel Materials Equipment Etc. Each may be broken down further Sample (in Word)
Program budget
Organized around programmatic areas, for example: Administration Youth services Circulation Reference Technical Services Public Programs Etc. May be sub-arranged in line item style Divide salaries, supplies, equipment, contracts, etc. up, and put under each program area. Allows you to see how much is spent on each area. Not easy to do, but powerful If your municipality requires a line-item budget, you can back it up with program budget. When a line in your line item budget is challenged (for example, telecommunication) you can show your program budget and ask "from which program do you suggest telecommunication be removed?" Sample (in Excel)
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Tips to help you get the local funds you request
Budget format. Use the format and guidelines your municipality requires, but back them up with documented information about what you really need.
Percentages. Municipal officials will often talk about percentages. It is wise to try to deflect this, by explaining that 2% of the library's budget, for example, is very different from 2% of the budget for streets.
Levy limits. For 2012 budgets, municipalities are under a tax levy limit of 0%, or the percentage of net new construction, whichever is greater, OR they may exceed these limits if approved by referendum. (Net New Construction figures typically become available in August.) During these years, local governments can also calculate their limit based on the prior year’s allowable, as opposed to actual, tax levy. You may find the Department of Revenue's FAQ on Levy Limits and the League of Wisconsin Muncipalities' Brief Explanation helpful.
Documentation. It helps to back up the amounts in your budget request with a carefully chosen blend of statistics and anecdotes.
Statistics. Numbers show that your library is being used, and can point out funding inequities. Your most recent annual report is a good source for statistics, but you can also keep additional statistics. For your budget proposal, choose statistics that illustrate the need you describe. For example (in Word) , show that circulation has dramatically increased, while local funding has remained flat. "Break it Down." It can be hard for any of us to grasp what is meant by huge dollar amounts. A $20,000 increase in the municipal appropriation for a small municipal library may sound like a lot to some people. But by dividing the increase by the municipal population, you can say something like, "The increase translates to less than $14 per capita, or less than 3¢ per day. What else can you buy for 3 cents? Isn't it worth it a small price to pay for an investment in the future for our children?" Testimonials / Anecdotes. While numbers and statistics are impressive, it may be easier for your audience to relate to real life stories from satisfied customers. An example might be something like “Last month my husband was diagnosed with a rare health condition. Library staff members helped me find useful information, and locate a specialist 200 miles away. I don’t know what we would have done without the library.” Keep a file of these so you can pull them out at budget time.
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Presentation. In addition to your budget request, and your written documentation, it is wise to make an oral presentation. The following tips may help you:
Make sure you know the audience and that they know you. Budget time should not be the only time they hear about how wonderful the public library is.
Take members of your library board and Friends group with you. Even better, let the library board president make the presentation.
Don't use jargon. Explain any acronyms.
Be pleasant—Don't let the encounter become adversarial.
Use some (not too much!) humor.
Be brief.
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After the budget appropriation is approved. This is time for library director and board to review how the budget process went:
Typical Budget calendar (adapted from "Developing the Library Budget", DPI. Your actual calendar may vary)
February-March Spring Mid-Year Summer Late Summer / Early Fall Fall Fall
Late fall
(post approval)
Ongoing
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Resources
For more information about library budgets, contact Mark Ibach.
Page created 11/07.
South Central Library System
4610 South Biltmore Lane
Madison, WI 53718
(608) 246-7970
Toll-free: (855) 516-7257 | 8,568 | 3,923 | 0.000259 |
warc | 201704 | SUPERMARKET giant Tesco has been accused of failing to understand the Chinese consumer after falling sales saw the retailer announce plans to abandon its solo plans and form a joint venture in China.
Qing Wang, professor of marking and innovation at Warwick Business School, claimed that the Chinese market was “unsuited” to the retailer’s “secret weapon” – its loyalty Clubcard – due to fierce competition.
Instead, Tesco should have “looked into the cultural differences in China compared to the UK before investing in the second-biggest economy in the world”, Wang said.
He said a majority of Chinese consumers have loyalty cards from at least four retailers, which means “any information held on one store card is incomplete at best and misleading at worst, and is thus not fit for the purpose as Tesco intended”.
Wang said: “Tesco turned up late to the party in China, only opening its first store in 2004. Rivals like Walmart, which entered China in 1996, were able to gain an early advantage. Though it entered the country eight years later than Walmart, Tesco believed it could catch up thanks to its successful Clubcard system pioneered back home.
“But the participants in our research believed that these loyalty programmes offered many similar attributes, such as the type of product information and promotions provided and the criteria for collecting rewards. Meanwhile, the store loyalty is low as customers tend to switch stores to look for bargains.”
Last month Tesco revealed plans to put its Chinese oeprations into a joint venture with China Resources Enterprise, creating a business with sales of £10 billion in which Tesco will have a 20 per cent stake.
Tesco declined to comment yesterday on Wang’s research. | 1,818 | 983 | 0.00107 |
warc | 201704 | How to keep in control when you are a label printer.
By Gail Flower
At the CEO panel on September 12, 2012 in Rosemont, IL, during Labelexpo Americas, Dan Nolan, president, Materials Group, Avery Dennison Corporation, asked some really telling questions. Most CEOs might shy away from a direct probing question, and others want lots of time to consider their response beforehand. The responses from this panel of CEOs sounded honest and deliberate.
Let me give you a sample. Nolan asked what concerns kept them up at night. Here are some responses. See if you can relate to them: “On-going growth keeps me up at night .We’ve got to keep developing products constantly. If we aren’t getting better, someone else is. It’s time to invest time and money in new products and to know what doesn’t work. Not everything we attempt works, but that’s OK.” “The bottom line and right-spending in automation keep us awake.” Money—that is having enough of it—bothered every one of them no matter the size of the firm. “I need to invest more in the label industry while we’re in a recovering economy. Good companies flourish in tough times, and there are lots of opportunities in the print industry. Money is so cheap right now that it’s a good time to invest in your company.” One company with 110 employees talked about being lean and retaining the best people. What kept this CEO up was considering what other good companies to acquire. Apparently good companies are those that are distressed, but still functioning. Once you buy them, you break them down further to get at the root of their problems, and then build them back up to sustainability. It sounded a bit like induction into the military to me. But I’ve been in a couple of buyouts, and that’s exactly what happened. One CEO complained that equipment manufacturers wouldn’t design around his specific needs. “Why can’t they design the equipment we want, not fit our stuff into their existing equipment? Just modify the darn thing!” he urged. Equipment designers need to be more responsive. They all felt that structuring the sales team was important and keeping the manufacturing team coordinated took lots of their time. However, the most important thing that a CEO does is to focus on the customer and on servicing the customer. If a customer wants something new, find a creative way to structure an innovation to fit it. Trying to make it all work seems to be what all good CEOs do well. But they don’t have to do it alone. “Keep an eye out for under-utilized talent in the organization, then mentor and teach that person. If you want to grow, you have to grow your employees first,” one panelist said. Some key questions every CEO should ask are: 1. What game are we playing? 2. How do we win? Next, you need to find the leaders within your organization to help you win. The hardest thing to do is: 1. Believe the numbers. 2. Face up to increased cost. 3. Be rational, thoughtful. Ask others to help you when there is a problem. 4. Realize that extremely unreasonable customers are looking to seek a release. 5. Mine your existing customers before seeking new ones you don’t know.
Many times customers don’t know what they want exactly. How many times have you heard, “I’m not quite certain what I want, but that’s not it?” On the other hand, if you are innovative and show them what’s possible, many times they will identify the printing effect, right price, delivery time, colors, or design of a final product. Keep samples of what you have done in the past or make suggestions to save the customers’ resources.
The best CEOs are good listeners, and they look at things carefully before responding. And that’s exactly what this panel seemed to do.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine. | 3,945 | 1,936 | 0.00054 |
warc | 201704 | LUNENBURG -- The Planning Board expressed concern Monday night when representatives from a subcontracting company working with a solar developer expressed a need to put all utility lines above ground.
Representatives from Gehrlicher Solar American Corp., who are working with NuGen Capital on a solar project on Pleasant Street, said when the project was first proposed that burying the utility lines would not be a problem.
But with the current infrastructure, the company now says the best option is to have the wires above ground, with four poles on the 40-acre property.
Board Chairwoman Joanna Bilotta-Simeone said the special permit for the project stipulates that all utility lines must be underground.
Bilotta-Simeone said the solar project has been years in the making, and the board had worked closely with the residents in that neighborhood to protect their rights as much as possible without unreasonably restricting the developer's plans.
She said putting four poles up on the property is not fair to neighbors and she would not support any request for them.
Representatives from the contracting and engineering firm who were on hand Monday said they were never told to stop putting the poles up, and that it is the most cost-effective way for NuGen Capital.
The poles would provide a "trip" mechanism -- if there were problems with the solar panels, they would be shut off so they would not impact the grid.
Board member Toby Bakaysa said he also could not support adding utility poles to the project, and asked that alternatives be looked at that still benefit the project but do not impact the neighbors.
"I want to find a solution to this," he said, while asking that all potential alternatives be brought to a future meeting.
In the meantime, no more work can be done with the utility poles until the issue is resolved.
Celeste McCain-Stober, whose home looks out over the solar field, said at the end of the meeting that she does not feel what was proposed is the only option, but rather is the least expensive option.
"It was agreed upon that everything would be underground," she said. "They could still go underground and then come up at the street and tie into a pole there and tie into the system."
She said it is not the town's responsibility to ensure that the developer makes a profit.
The Planning Board also unanimously voted to support a medical-marijuana bylaw that will go before Town Meeting on May 3.
There are no plans for a medical-marijuana dispensary in Lunenburg, but the bylaw will help protect the town if an applicant comes forward.
The board has been crafting its bylaw off the state's draft bylaw, but adding additional items to better protect the town. Minor changes that were approved Monday night include:
* Facilities that cultivate and process, but do not do sell, marijuana are allowed in office parks and industrial districts by special permit.
* Cultivation and/or agricultural processing will be allowed in all districts if an applicant is eligible under Massachusetts General Law. Any cultivation within a building will require a special permit.
* Cultivation facilities located outside of retail, commercial or office-park and industrial districts shall be surrounded by a buffer strip of 200 feet.
Resident Carl Luck questioned a portion of the bylaw that dictates that the Planning Board must be provided with all decisions or approvals, denials or other substantive actions by the state Department of Public Health regarding the facility and all submittals of information between both sides.
He questioned whether the town was setting itself up to get a copy of every email or other routine correspondence from either party they did not need.
Chantell Fleck, who works with the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission and is helping fill the planning director's position while Marion Benson is on medical leave, said she feels that the way it is written, the town will only get "substantive" information from the developer.
Planning Board member Nathan Lockwood agreed, saying the board put that provision in the bylaw so it could be kept up to speed on what the applicant is doing and what provisions, if any, have been granted to them by the DPH.
Follow Katina Caraganis on Tout and Twitter @kcaraganis. | 4,301 | 2,024 | 0.000498 |
warc | 201704 | Curing your wanderlust can be an expensive endeavor, but when you get the itch to travel it’s hard to resist. If you don’t have a trust fund or a huge bank account to draw from, you’ll need to get creative with building your travel budget and commit to sticking to it. Fortunately, creating a feasible travel plan that won’t set you back financially doesn’t take a ton of time and once you’ve done it you’ll have peace of mind and a way to move forward. Here are ten ways to build a great travel budget.
1. Research transportation first
This one factor can eat up your travel budget faster than anything else, and it’s also an area where you’ll want to be flexible. The goal should be finding reliable transportation at the best price, whether it’s airfare, a train ticket, or a bus ticket. Comparing between sites is an easy way to do this, but don’t forget to look into any airline miles or points that you may have racked up with your credit cards. Some travelers are able to significantly cut down on transportation by being strategic with their cards and being on the lookout for good deals.
2. Choose accommodation
There are so many options when it comes to accommodation that you should find out what’s available in your destination and see what fits best into your price range. Don’t just look at hotels, but guest homes, private rental condos, hostels, bed and breakfasts, and even campsites if you’re open to it. If you plan to travel for an extended amount of time, it may be less expensive to mix and match the types of accommodation that you book. Doing so will also allow you to enjoy more unique experiences more on your vacation. For instance, you could spend three nights in a bed and breakfast, four in a hostel, and another four in a rental home.
3. Figure out food costs
One way to blow your travel budget is not being very specific about what you’ll spend on eating and drinking. Some head off with a very general amount in mind, arrive at their destination, don’t keep track of what’s being bought and ordered, then get home to find they’ve spent several hundred dollars more on food than they intended. Nail down how much you’ll spend per day, set a limit, and also research restaurants suitable for your budget so you’ll have a list before your trip starts. Don’t forget to factor in costs for eating while traveling to and from your destination.
4. Include ways to get around
Getting to your destination is one issue, but moving around once you’ve arrived is another. Include in your budget funds for traveling in the city you’re going to, and research options including taxis, public transport, and car rentals. The type of transport available will vary widely depending on where you plan to go, but it’s smart to know what types of rides you can count on and the approximate costs.
5. Set aside money for excursions
Unless you’re going to an all-inclusive resort or taking a cruise, chances are you’ll want to explore the area you’re going to. Whether you plan to visit museums, famous monuments, go boutique shopping, or have outdoor adventures you need to include room in your budget for activities and excursions. Research comes in handy in this area — especially looking at the websites of attractions you want to see and noting the prices — as does seeking recommendations from acquaintances that have visited the city you’re traveling to.
6. Make room for souvenirs
This is a travel budget item that many people overlook or don’t think of, until they get home to find they’ve spent tons of money on trinkets and souvenirs that they didn’t plan for. Especially since these items can get expensive, make this one of the less flexible items on your budget and set a firm limit.
7. Consider staying connected
While some hotels, restaurants, and other establishments offer complimentary internet access, others charge a fee per day or hour. In other cases, you may have access to a basic connection and have to pay for Wi-Fi. The rates for using your smartphone’s internet can also be significantly higher if you’re traveling abroad and put you over budget. Ensure you know the cost of staying connected during your trip and think of ways to reduce this expense before you head out.
8. Put extra aside for emergencies
No one likes to think about what types of emergencies could pop up during a trip, but it happens too often not to plan for it in your travel budget. You could end up losing your phone, luggage, having to leave due to a weather emergency, or you could get sick far away from home and need to go to a doctor or hospital. Having a few hundred dollars that you don’t touch unless a true need arises is a very wise idea, as is purchasing travel insurance.
9. Think about costs for trip preparation
If you’re going out of the country, you may be surprised at the cost of getting a passport and any required vaccinations. On the other hand, if you’re staying in the States and haven’t traveled in awhile, getting smaller sized toiletries, luggage, and such could also cost a bundle. The cost of preparing for your trip needs to be included in your budget, unless you already have absolutely everything and every document that you’ll need to head off to your destination.
10. Pick a way to track your spending
Sitting down and coming up with a travel budget is much different than actually sticking to it once your vacation has gotten underway. You need to check what you’re spending against your budget each day of the trip. To ensure that this actually happens, make the task as easy as possible. There’s the time tested method of carrying a notepad with details of your budget along with you, but downloading an app such as Trail Wallet or TrabeePocket is a convenient alternative. | 5,954 | 2,688 | 0.000387 |
warc | 201704 | Small business offered help on becoming sustainable
August 28, 2013 by James
The next Sustainability and Small Business Summit is taking place this September. Sponsored by Verizon, it is designed for small business leaders who want to adopt a more maintainable strategy within their company.
The summit will feature panel discussions from such business leaders as Sarah Robinson of the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, Dawn Hawkins-Nixon from the Prince George County Government, Ryan Wallace of MWW Group, and John Columbus from Verizon. Other panelists will represent the Department of Energy, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and business leaders from public and private companies.
Guests will learn how they can save money and increase profits while becoming more environmentally friendly and sustainable. Experts will be on hand to advise businesses on how to get started on the road to adopting a greener and more resourceful style of operation. It will also be a networking opportunity for local businesses, and there will no doubt be plenty of time to exchange digital business cards or discuss business during breaks.
It is possible that some of the business leaders speaking at this summit will have experience working with or for Arlington printing companies. The printing industry is a good example of how companies can become for environmentally friendly, as most printers now use vegetable based inks, purchase recyclable paper and dispose of harmful chemicals safely.
The Sustainability and Small Business Summit will take place at Artisphere on September 24 from 7:30 am – 2:00 pm, and is free to attend. | 1,638 | 864 | 0.001167 |
warc | 201704 | CAPE MAY – Marke “Hoot” Gibson, the Federal Aviation Administration's senior advisor on UAS integration, said two of the biggest issues facing the agency related to unmanned aviation systems, or drones, are privacy and pre-emption.
U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, who introduced Gibson at the 2016 UAS Conference held Oct. 13-14, said the FAA had to be dragged kicking and screaming into attempting to integrate drones into U.S. airspace. The best thing the FAA did was hire Gibson to take on the issue, he said.
Gibson and LoBiondo were keynote speakers at the conference sponsored by Cape May County, the Delaware River and Bay Authority, the city of Cape May and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Gibson said the FAA is not in the business of dealing with privacy, but there is a long history of case law dealing with traditional aviation.
“However, it has generally dealt with noise and airports – this is personal use – it comes right in your back yard,” he said, referring to unmanned aircraft.
Gibson said the preemption issue is one that might have to be settled in the courts. Local and state governments across the nation have attempted to regulate drones within their borders. For instance, Ocean City last year restricted drones with an ordinance, but FAA rules released this year seemed to override that. During an earlier panel discussion at the UAS Conference, panelists commented on state regulation, which ranged from very restrictive to simply making reference to FAA regulations. Jonathon Hauenschild, director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Task Force on Communications and Technology, said there have been more than 750 bills introduced in the 50 states in an attempt to regulate drones, but none have been passed or signed by the governor. He said the top trends of state law have been privacy or surveillance related, or related to using UAS as aids to hunting.
“Three states have really good laws,” Hauenschild said.
He said Arizona, Virginia, and Maryland have enacted laws that say local municipalities are prohibited from banning UAS. He said these states have enacted legislation saying the state will follow federal law, and prohibit the reckless operation of UAS. New Jersey was not among the states mentioned as having introduced UAS legislation, but Hauenschild said information on other state laws can be found at alec.org.
Gibson said it was the FAA’s job to regulate airspace, which now includes more and more drones. He referred to UAS as the wave of the future, likening it to the development of the jet engine. Gibson said it is going to be a process of developing operating rules, which will progress from low risk, isolated UAS flights, to full UAS integration in airspace.
On June 21, the US Department of Transportation and FAA announced new rules for UAS flights, known as Part 107. The rules, which affect both commercial and recreational users, allow:
- Visual line-of-sight flying only,
- Daylight or civil twilight (the brightest portion of twilight) only,
- No operations over people,
- UAS operators must yield to manned aircraft,
- Only one UAS per operator,
- UAS may fly at a maximum ground speed of 100 mph, and…
- Flying with external loads is only permitted if the load does not interfere with the operations or control of the UAS.
“A lot of what Part 107 addresses are new (FAA) regulations,” Gibson said, adding that the rules were formulated after receiving 10,000 comments from the public.
Gibson said anyone who complies with the regulations may now legally operate a drone, however, users are now required to register their UAS with the FAA (http://federaldroneregistration.com/). The registration fee is $5.
Gibson said the word the FAA wants to get out to hobbyists who, essentially “want to fly their kite,” is they are flying in airspace used by manned aircraft. Gibson also highlighted what the FAA has labeled the “Micro Rule,” which prohibits operating UAS over people. He said the initial thought was the rule would apply to a lower weight class of UAS, but the FAA is continuing to define the rules for larger UAS, which he said would be out before the beginning of 2017.
Gibson also addressed the FAA’s integration strategy, which is a long process between isolated flights and full integration of UAS into the airspace.
“High altitude integration is the next big phase of regulation,” Gibson said.
Gibson said there are many manned aircraft that could be converted as UAS and used commercially. He said before they get to full integration the regulations will have to address issues such as flying beyond the line of sight and flying UAS at night.
Gibson, who spoke at the first Cape May County UAS conference, held last fall at the Cape May Airport, first joked with the audience, saying, “To be invited back anywhere is a new experience for me.”
For the past two years, the conference has included representatives from government, private business, and academia. The county and DRBA have been co-hosting smaller UAS forums throughout the year, with most taking place at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal. | 5,255 | 2,471 | 0.000415 |
warc | 201704 | CHE 333 CLASS 12. DIFFUSION. EXAM Wednesday. Martensite Heat treatment of steels Age Hardening Defects. DIFFUSION. Diffusion – is the movement of matter driven by chemical and thermal processes such as concentration gradients and heating. Both are
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CHE 333 CLASS 12
DIFFUSION
Diffusion – is the movement of matter driven by
chemical and thermal processes such as
concentration gradients and heating. Both are
needed as it is an activation controlled
process. An energy barrier is present so
external energy must be provided, such as heat.
Atoms will diffuse down a concentration gradient
provided they have overcome the
activation energy needed for the process.
Copper atoms will diffuse into the
nickel until an equal concentration is
achieved. Remember that Cu-Ni system
is one of complete solid solubility.
2. Interstitial diffusion involves small
atoms diffusing in a matrix of large
atoms. For metallic atoms, the
H, C, N, O, B atoms are the ones
small enough to fit in the spaces
between the large metallic atoms.
Steady State Diffusion – constant linear concentration gradient.
J – Diffusion Flux – atoms/m2.sec – number of atoms moving through one m2 in one sec.
This is the rate of unidirectional mass motion per unit area per second.
J= -D(dC/dx) Ficks First Law
D – diffusivity or diffusion coefficient – m2/s. Depends on temperature, diffusing element,
bond strength, packing factor and imperfections.
dC/dx – concentration gradient.
SoluteSolventD at 500 C D at1000 C
CarbonBCC iron5x10-12 2x10-9
CarbonFCC iron5x10-15 3x10-11
IronBCC iron10-20 3x10-14
NickelFCC iron10-23 2x10-16
Silver Silver Xtal10-17
SilverSilver Grain Bound10-11
Conc
dC/dx
Distance
Gradient is constant with time
SoluteSolventTypeD at 500 C D at 1000 C
CarbonBCC ironInter5x10-12 2x10-9
IronBCC ironSubst10-20 3x10-14
higher number of defects at a grain boundary. This is important in second phase growth under equilibrium conditions, as second phases are then usually found on grain boundaries of the initial phase. For example pro-eutectoid phases in steels.
Non Steady State – Concentration changes at position x as a function of time, eg Cu Ni
dc/dt=D(d2C/dx2) Ficks 2nd Law
Solution to this :-
(Cx-Co)/(Cs-Co)= 1- erf(x/2((Dt)-1/2))
Cx – concentration at depth x at time t, wt%
Co – concentration in average in bulk, wt %
Cs – concentration at surface, fixed with time t, wt%
Co- concentration in average in bulk, wt%
erf – error function – look up in tables.
x – distance below surface, m
D – diffusion coefficient, m2/s
t – time in seconds
Cu Conc’n
100%
t=0
t=equilib
50%
t=0.5 equilib
0%
Distance
Time for the carbon concentration at 500C to reach half way between the steel
composition level and the external level at 0.5mm below the surface.
Using Fick’s second law Cx-Co/Cs-Co= 1- erf(x/2((Dt)-1/2))
The left hand side is 0.5.
0.5= 1- erf(x/2((Dt)-1/2))
Rearranging 0.5 = erf(x/2((Dt)-1/2))
0.5 = erf(0.5205)
So
0.5=(x/2((Dt)-1/2))
Dt = x2
t=x2/D
=(5x10-4)2/(5x10-12)
t= 25x10-8/5x10-12
=5x104sec
=13.8 hours
Diffusion increased with temperature
It is activation controlled so follows:-
D=Do exp(-E/kT)
Where D = Diffusivity(m2/sec)
Do = Constant
E = activation energy
k = Boltzman’s Constant
T = temperature in oK
k= 13.8x10-24 J/atom.K
lnD=lnDo – Q/RT
Q – cal/mole
R – 1.987 cal/mole.K
y= c +mx
Slope = Q/R if ln D plotted against 1/T
Decarburizing.
Hypereutectoid
Steel – Carpenter #11
Decarburized layer - ferrite
1600F for 10 minutes then air cool – etch 5% Nital mag X20.
Decarburization at 1200F after quench crack in material. The crack left enough open surface
For the carbon to diffuse out and leave a ferrite layer either side of the crack.
Bonding – by placing metals close together and heating them, as atoms from one go
into the other, a bond is formed.
Nitriding, carburizing, for surface hardening of steels – forms hard compounds on the
Surface for wear resistance.
Removal of hydrogen after electroplating – heat up to 350F for 24 hours to reduce
hydrogen and stop hydrogen embrittlement in high strength steels.
Semi conductor processing – dopants added by diffusion to silicon wafers.
Vacuum heat treating of titanium – oxygen embrittles titanium so use a vacuum
atmosphere or remove a surface layer calculated from Ficks second law.
Fuel Cells – Proton Exchange Membrane hydrogen ion diffuses through a polymer.
Pharmaceutical drug delivery – controlled release through polymers, creates steady flow
compared to tablets which have a high initial amount then quickly low.
Different Materials and Diffusion Rates
Metals in metals slow, interstitials in metals much faster.
Polymers – Fick’s Laws observed, fast diffusion, for example moisture into polymers
1.5% weight gain into “free volume” as it is not a crystal structure.
Ceramics – very low near zero diffusion rates – ionic and covalent bonding.
Composites –orientation dependent, along fiber interfaces high.
Damaging – decarburization, oxygen in titanium alloys, hydrogen in steels,
oxygen and nitrogen along grain boundaries in metals at high temperature, moisture
pick up in composites.
Useful
Surface treatments of metals, for example carburizing, nitriding
Porous materials, lubricant impregnated bearings.
Permeation – like diffusion but use volume defects.
Concrete – moisture, salt, leads to steel corrosion – Fick’s second law. | 6,006 | 2,815 | 0.000377 |
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1.9 Active packaging Brian P.F. Day9.1 IntroductionActive packaging refers to the incorporation of certain additives into packagingfilm or within packaging containers with the aim of maintaining and extendingproduct shelf life (Day, 1989). Packaging may be termed active when itperforms some desired role in food preservation other than providing an inertbarrier to external conditions (Rooney, 1995; Hotchkiss, 1994). Active pack-aging includes additives or freshness enhancers that are capable of scavengingoxygen; adsorbing carbon dioxide, moisture, ethylene and/or flavour/odourtaints; releasing ethanol, sorbates, antioxidants and/or other preservatives; and/ormaintaining temperature control. Table 9.1 lists examples of active packagingsystems, some of which may offer extended shelf life opportunities for newcategories of food products (Day, 1989, 2001; Rooney, 1995). Active packaging has been used with many food products and is beingtested with numerous others. Table 9.1 lists some of the food applications thathave benefited from active packaging technology. It should be noted that allfood products have a unique deterioration mechanism that must be understoodbefore applying this technology. (Chapter 2 discusses biodeterioration of foodsand Chapter 3 discusses food quality issues.) The shelf life of packaged foodis dependent on numerous factors such as the intrinsic nature of the food,e.g. acidity (pH), water activity (aw), nutrient content, occurrence of antimicro-bial compounds, redox potential, respiration rate and biological structure, andextrinsic factors, e.g. temperature, relative humidity (RH) and the surroundinggaseous composition. These factors will directly influence the chemical,biochemical, physical and microbiological spoilage mechanisms of individualfood products and their achievable shelf lives. By carefully considering all ofthese factors, it is possible to evaluate existing and developing active packagingtechnologies and apply them for maintaining the quality and extending theshelf life of different food products (Day, 1989). Active packaging is not synonymous with intelligent or smart packaging,which refers to packaging that senses and informs (Summers, 1992; Day,2001). Intelligent packaging devices are capable of sensing and providinginformation about the function and properties of packaged food and can provideassurances of pack integrity, tamper evidence, product safety and quality, andare being utilised in applications such as product authenticity, anti-theft and
2.ACTIVE PACKAGING 283Table 9.1 Selected examples of active packaging systemsActive packaging system Mechanisms Food applicationsOxygen scavengers 1. iron based bread, cakes, cooked rice, 2. metal/acid biscuits, pizza, pasta, cheese, 3. metal (e.g. platinum) catalyst cured meats and fish, coffee, 4. ascorbate/metallic salts snack foods, dried foods and 5. enzyme based beveragesCarbon dioxide 1. iron oxide/calcium hydroxide coffee, fresh meats and fish,scavengers/emitters 2. ferrous carbonate/metal halide nuts and other snack food 3. calcium oxide/activated charcoal products and sponge cakes 4. ascorbate/sodium bicarbonateEthylene scavengers 1. potassium permanganate fruit, vegetables and other 2. activated carbon horticultural products 3. activated clays/zeolitesPreservative releasers 1. organic acids cereals, meats, fish, bread, 2. silver zeolite cheese, snack foods, fruit and 3. spice and herb extracts vegetables 4. BHA/BHT antioxidants 5. vitamin E antioxidant 6. volatile chlorine dioxide/ sulphur dioxideEthanol emitters 1. alcohol spray pizza crusts, cakes, bread, 2. encapsulated ethanol biscuits, fish and bakery productsMoisture absorbers 1. PVA blanket fish, meats, poultry, snack 2. activated clays and minerals foods, cereals, dried foods, 3. silica gel sandwiches, fruit and vegetablesFlavour/odour adsorbers 1. cellulose triacetate fruit juices, fried snack 2. acetylated paper foods, fish, cereals, poultry, 3. citric acid dairy products and fruit 4. ferrous salt/ascorbate 5. activated carbon/clays/zeolitesTemperature control 1. non-woven plastics ready meals, meats, fish,packaging 2. double walled containers poultry and beverages 3. hydrofluorocarbon gas 4. Lime/water 5. ammonium nitrate/waterproduct traceability (Summers, 1992; Day, 2001). Intelligent packaging devicesinclude time-temperature indicators, gas sensing dyes, microbial growthindicators, physical shock indicators, and numerous examples of tamper proof,anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft technologies. Information on intelligentpackaging technology can be obtained from other reference sources (Summers,1992; Day, 1994, 2001).
3.284 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY It is not the intention of this chapter to extensively review all active-packagingtechnologies but rather to describe the different types of devices, the scientificprinciples behind them, the principal food applications and the food safety andregulatory issues that need to be considered by potential users. The majorfocus of this chapter is on oxygen scavengers but other active packaging techno-logies are also discussed and some recent developments highlighted. Moredetailed information on active packaging can be obtained from the numerousreferences listed.9.2 Oxygen scavengersOxygen can have considerable detrimental effects on foods. Oxygen scavengerscan therefore help maintain food product quality by decreasing food metabolism,reducing oxidative rancidity, inhibiting undesirable oxidation of labile pigmentsand vitamins, controlling enzymic discolouration and inhibiting the growth ofaerobic microorganisms (Day, 1989, 2001; Rooney, 1995). Oxygen scavengers are by far the most commercially important sub-categoryof active packaging. The global market for oxygen scavengers was estimated toexceed 10 billion units in Japan, several hundred million in the USA and tensof millions in Europe in 1996 (Anon, 1996; Rooney, 1998). The global valueof this market in 1996 was estimated to exceed $200 million and is predicted totop $1 billion by 2002. The recent commercialisation of oxygen scavengingpolyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, bottle caps and crowns for beers andother beverages has contributed to this growth (Anon, 1996; Rooney, 1998;Day, 2001). The most well known oxygen scavengers take the form of small sachetscontaining various iron based powders combined with a suitable catalyst.These chemical systems often react with water supplied by the food to producea reactive hydrated metallic reducing agent that scavenges oxygen within thefood package and irreversibly converts it to a stable oxide. The iron powder isseparated from the food by keeping it in a small, highly oxygen permeablesachet that is labelled Do not eat. The main advantage of using such oxygenscavengers is that they are capable of reducing oxygen levels to less than0.01% which is much lower than the typical 0.3–3.0% residual oxygen levelsachievable by modified atmosphere packaging (MAP). Oxygen scavengers canbe used alone or in combination with MAP. Their use alone eliminates theneed for MAP machinery and can increase packaging speeds. However, it is acommon commercial practice to remove most of the atmospheric oxygen byMAP and then use a relatively small and inexpensive scavenger to mop up theresidual oxygen remaining within the food package (Idol, 1993). Non-metallic oxygen scavengers have also been developed to alleviate thepotential for metallic taints being imparted to food products. The problem of
4.ACTIVE PACKAGING 285inadvertently setting off in-line metal detectors is also alleviated even thoughsome modern detectors can now be tuned to phase out the scavenger signal whilstretaining high sensitivity for ferrous and non-ferrous metallic contaminants(Anon, 1995). Non-metallic scavengers include those that use organic reducingagents such as ascorbic acid, ascorbate salts or catechol. They also includeenzymic oxygen scavenger systems using either glucose oxidase or ethanoloxidase which could be incorporated into sachets, adhesive labels or immobilisedonto packaging film surfaces (Hurme, 1996). Oxygen scavengers were first marketed in Japan in 1976 by the MitsubishiGas Chemical Co. Ltd under the trade name Ageless™. Since then, severalother Japanese companies including Toppan Printing Co. Ltd and Toyo SeikanKaisha Ltd have entered the market but Mitsubishi still dominates the oxygenscavenger business in Japan with a market share of 73% (Rooney, 1995). Oxygenscavenger technology has been successful in Japan for a variety of reasonsincluding the acceptance by Japanese consumers of innovative packaging andthe hot and humid climate in Japan during the summer months, which isconducive to mould spoilage of food products. In contrast to the Japanesemarket, the acceptance of oxygen scavengers in North America and Europehas been slow, although several manufacturers and distributors of oxygenscavengers are now established in both these continents and sales have beenestimated to be growing at a rate of 20% annually (Rooney, 1995). Table 9.2lists selected manufacturers and trade names of oxygen scavengers, includingsome which are still under development or have been suspended because ofregulatory controls (Rooney, 1995, 1998; Castle, 1996; Anon, 1997, 1998;Glaskin, 1997). It should be noted that discrete oxygen scavenging sachets suffer from thedisadvantage of possible accidental ingestion of the contents by the consumerand this has hampered their commercial success, particularly in North Americaand Europe. However, in the last few years, the development of oxygenscavenging adhesive labels that can be applied to the inside of packages andthe incorporation of oxygen scavenging materials into laminated trays andplastic films have enhanced and will encourage the commercial acceptance ofthis technology. For example, Marks & Spencer Ltd were the first UK retailerto use oxygen scavenging adhesive labels for a range of sliced cooked andcured meat and poultry products which are particularly sensitive to deleteriouslight and oxygen-induced colour changes (Day, 2001). Other UK retailers,distributors and caterers are now using these labels for the above food productsas well as for coffee, pizzas, speciality bakery goods and dried food ingredi-ents (Hirst, 1998). Other common food applications for oxygen scavengerlabels and sachets include cakes, breads, biscuits, croissants, fresh pastas,cured fish, tea, powdered milk, dried egg, spices, herbs, confectionery andsnack food (Day, 2001). In Japan, Toyo Seikan Kaisha Ltd have marketed alaminate containing a ferrous oxygen scavenger which can be thermoformed
5.286 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGYTable 9.2 Selected commercial oxygen scavenger systems ScavengerManufacturer Country Trade name mechanism Packaging formMitsubishi Gas Chemical Japan Ageless iron based sachets and labels Co. LtdToppan Printing Co. Ltd Japan Freshilizer iron based sachetsToagosei Chem. Industry Japan Vitalon iron based sachets Co. LtdNippon Soda Co. Ltd Japan Seagul iron based sachetsFinetec Co. Ltd Japan Sanso-Cut iron based sachetsToyo Seikan Kaisha Ltd. Japan Oxyguard iron based plastic traysMultisorb Technologies USA FreshMax iron based labels Inc. FreshPax iron based labels Fresh Pack iron based labelsCiba Speciality USA Shelf-plus PET copolyester plastic film ChemicalsChevron Chemicals USA N/A benzyl acrylate plastic filmW.R. Grace Co. Ltd USA PureSeal ascorbate/ bottle crowns metallic saltsFood Science Australia/ Australia ZERO2 photosensitive plastic film Visy Industries dye/organic compoundCMB Technologies France Oxbar cobalt catalyst plastic bottlesStanda Industrie France ATCO iron based sachets Oxycap iron based bottle crownsEMCO Packaging UK ATCO iron based labels SystemsJohnson Matthey Plc UK N/A platinum group labels metal catalystBioka Ltd Finland Bioka enzyme based sachetsAlcoa CSI Europe UK O2-Displacer unknown bottle crowns Systeminto an Oxyguard™ tray which has been used commercially for cooked rice(see Fig. 9.1). The use of oxygen scavengers for beer, wine and other beverages is poten-tially a huge market that has only recently begun to be exploited. Iron basedlabel and sachet scavengers cannot be used for beverages or high aw foodsbecause, when wet, their oxygen scavenging capability is rapidly lost. Instead,various non-metallic reagents and organo-metallic compounds which have anaffinity for oxygen have been incorporated into bottle closures, crowns andcaps or blended into polymer materials so that oxygen is scavenged from thebottle headspace and any ingressing oxygen is also scavenged. The PureSeal™oxygen scavenging bottle crowns (marketed by W.R. Grace Co. Ltd and ZapatATechnologies Inc., USA), oxygen scavenging plastic (PET) beer bottles(manufactured by Continental PET Technologies, Toledo, USA) and light
6.ACTIVE PACKAGING 287 High-barrier lid ® OXYGUARD tray O2 O2 O2 O2 Inside Heat sealable layer Oxygen absorbing layer Barrier layer (EVOH) Protect layer Outside O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 Figure 9.1 Structure of Oxyguard™ tray (courtesy of Toyo Seikan Kaisha Ltd).activated ZERO2™ oxygen scavenger materials (developed by Food ScienceAustralia, North Ryde, NSW, Australia and now partly owned by Visy Industries,Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) are just three of many oxygen scavengerdevelopments aimed at the beverage market but are also applicable to otherfood applications (Rooney, 1995, 1998, 2000; Castle, 1996). It should be notedthat the speed and capacity of oxygen scavenging plastic films and laminatedtrays are considerably lower compared with iron based oxygen scavengersachets or labels (Hirst, 1998). More detailed information on the technical requirements (i.e. for low,medium and high aw foods and beverages; speed of reaction; storage tem-perature; oxygen scavenging capacity and necessary packaging criteria) of thedifferent types of oxygen scavengers can be obtained from Labuza and Breene(1989), Idol (1993), Rooney (1995, 1998, 2000) and Hurme and Ahvenainen(1996).
7.288 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY9.2.1 ZERO2TM oxygen scavenging materialsAs a case study, brief details of the ZERO2™ oxygen scavenging developmentare described here (Rooney, 2000). ZERO2™ is the trade name for a range ofoxygen scavenging plastic packaging materials under development, in whichthe reactive components are activated by means of ultraviolet light or relatedhigh-energy processes. The plastics’ oxygen scavenging properties remaininactive until activated by an appropriate stimulus and thus can be subjectedto conventional extrusion-based converting processes in the manufacture ofpackaging such as film, sheet, coatings, adhesives, lacquers, bottles, closureliners and can coatings. This patented technology is based on research under-taken at Food Science Australia (North Ryde, NSW, Australia) and is nowbeing developed partly with Visy Industries (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia). Packaging problems involving the need for oxygen scavenging may bedivided into two classes based on the origin of the oxygen that needs to beremoved. The headspace and dissolved oxygen is present at the time of closingmost packages of foods and beverages. Removal of some or all of this oxygenis required at a rate greater than that of the various food degradation processesthat occur in the food. In this case, a headspace scavenger package is required.The oxygen that enters the package by permeation or leakage after closingneeds to be removed, preferably before contacting the food. The scavengerrequired is a chemically enhanced barrier. Prototype ZERO2™ headspacescavenging polymer compositions to meet these two requirements have beensynthesised from food-grade commercial polymers and extruded into film ona pilot scale. Oxygen scavenging from the gas phase can be made to occurwithin minutes at retort temperatures and within several hours to one or two daysat room temperature. Oxygen scavenging to very low levels under refrigerationtemperatures can require two or more days, as expected when gas diffusioninto the polymer is slowed. Beverages are particularly susceptible to quality degradation due to oxidationor, in some cases, due to microbial growth. Distribution can require shelf livesof up to a year under ambient conditions in some cases, resulting in a need foran enhanced barrier for plastics. The conditions found in liquid paperboardcartons, laminate pouches or multilayer barrier bottles were recently studied(Rooney, 2000) in collaboration with TNO Food Science and Nutrition (Zeist,The Netherlands). Experimental conditions were chosen using sachets of alaminate including a layer of ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) with an experi-mental ZERO2™ layer on the inside (with an EVOH/polyethylene laminate ascontrol). The test beverage was orange juice and, in the control packs, thedissolved oxygen concentration decreased from 8 to 0 ppm, due to reactionwith the ascorbic acid (vitamin C), over one month at 25°C and 75 days at 4°C.At both temperatures, the ZERO2™ laminate removed the oxygen in lessthan three days and halved the loss of the vitamin C over the storage period of
8.ACTIVE PACKAGING 289one year. Browning was reduced by one third after one year at 25°C. Use oflower surface-to-volume ratios found in commercial packs would be expectedto result in more protection against oxidative deterioration. Alcoholic beverages, such as beer and white wine, are also susceptible torapid oxidative degradation. Using ZERO2™ materials, shelf life extensionsof at least 33% have been demonstrated for bag-in-box wine and multilayerPET beer bottles. Cheese and processed meats are examples of refrigeratedfoods that are normally packaged under modified atmospheres. It is the head-space oxygen that severely limits the storage life of these products. Cheesenormally requires the presence of carbon dioxide as well as an oxygen levelbelow 1%. Results of packaging in laminates with and without a ZERO2™layer suggest that the common spoilage moulds can be inhibited completelywith little or no carbon dioxide. Sliced smoked ham can be inhibited fromdiscolouring under refrigerated cabinet lighting conditions when the pack-aging laminate scavenges the initial oxygen concentration of 4% to very lowlevels. Development of ZERO2™ and competing processes are aimed atinhibiting the widest range of oxygen-mediated food degradation processes.Examples studied so far indicate that some fast degradation reactions can beaddressed although there are more challenging cases yet to be investigated(Rooney, 2000).9.3 Carbon dioxide scavengers/emittersThere are many commercial sachet and label devices that can be used to eitherscavenge or emit carbon dioxide. The use of carbon dioxide scavengers isparticularly applicable for fresh roasted or ground coffees that produce signi-ficant volumes of carbon dioxide. Fresh roasted or ground coffees cannotbe left unpackaged since they will absorb moisture and oxygen and losedesirable volatile aromas and flavours. However, if coffee is hermeticallysealed in packs directly after roasting, the carbon dioxide released will buildup within the packs and eventually cause them to burst (Subramaniam, 1998).To circumvent this problem, two solutions are currently used. The first is touse packaging with patented one-way valves that will allow excess carbondioxide to escape. The second solution is to use a carbon dioxide scavenger ora dual-action oxygen and carbon dioxide scavenger system. A mixture ofcalcium oxide and activated charcoal has been used in polyethylene coffeepouches to scavenge carbon dioxide but dual-action oxygen and carbondioxide scavenger sachets and labels are more common and are commerciallyused for canned and foil pouched coffees in Japan and the USA (Day, 1989;Anon, 1995; Rooney, 1995). These dual-action sachets and labels typicallycontain iron powder for scavenging oxygen, and calcium hydroxide whichscavenges carbon dioxide when it is converted to calcium carbonate under
9.290 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGYsufficiently high humidity conditions (Rooney, 1995). Commercially avail-able dual-action oxygen and carbon dioxide scavengers are available fromJapanese manufacturers, e.g. Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. Ltd (Ageless™type E and Fresh Lock™) and Toppan Printing Co. Ltd (Freshilizer™type CV). Carbon dioxide emitting sachet and label devices can either be used aloneor combined with an oxygen scavenger. An example of the former is the Veri-frais™ package that has been manufactured by SARL Codimer (Paris, France)and used for extending the shelf life of fresh meats and fish. This innovativepackage consists of a standard MAP tray but has a perforated false bottomunder which a porous sachet containing sodium bicarbonate/ascorbate is pos-itioned. When exudate from modified atmosphere packed meat or fish contactsthe sachet’s contents, carbon dioxide is emitted and this antimicrobial gas canreplace the carbon dioxide already absorbed by the fresh food, so avoidingpack collapse (Rooney, 1995). Pack collapse or the development of a partial vacuum can also be a problemfor foods packed with an oxygen scavenger. To overcome this problem, dual-action oxygen scavenger/carbon dioxide emitter sachets and labels have beendeveloped, which absorb oxygen and generate an equal volume of carbondioxide. These sachets and labels usually contain ferrous carbonate and a metalhalide catalyst although non-ferrous variants are available. Commercial manu-facturers include Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. Ltd (Ageless™ type G), andMultisorb Technologies Inc. (Freshpax™ type M). The main food applications forthese dual-action oxygen scavenger/carbon dioxide emitter sachets and labelshave been with snack food products, e.g. nuts and sponge cakes (Naito et al.,1991; Rooney, 1995).9.4 Ethylene scavengersEthylene (C2H4) is a plant growth regulator which accelerates the respirationrate and subsequent senescence of horticultural products such as fruit, vegetablesand flowers. Many of the effects of ethylene are necessary, e.g. induction offlowering in pineapples, colour development in citrus fruits, bananas andtomatoes, stimulation of root production in baby carrots and development ofbitter flavour in bulk delivered cucumbers, but in most horticultural situationsit is desirable to remove ethylene or to suppress its negative effects. Con-sequently, much research has been undertaken to incorporate ethylenescavengers into fresh produce packaging and storage areas. Some of this efforthas met with commercial success, but much of it has not (Abeles et al., 1992;Rooney, 1995). Table 9.3 lists selected commercial ethylene scavenger systems. Effectivesystems utilise potassium permanganate (KMnO4) immobilised on an inert
10.ACTIVE PACKAGING 291Table 9.3 Selected commercial ethylene scavenger systemsManufacturer Country Trade name Scavenger mechanism Packaging formAir Repair Products Inc. USA N/A KMnO4 sachets/blanketsEthylene Control Inc. USA N/A KMnO4 sachets/blanketsExtenda Life Systems USA N/A KMnO4 sachets/blanketsKes Irrigations Systems USA Bio-Kleen Titanium dioxide not known catalystSekisui Jushi Ltd Japan Neupalon activated carbon sachetHonshu Paper Ltd Japan Hatofresh activated carbon paper/boardMitsubishi Gas Japan Sendo-Mate activated carbon sachetsChemical Co. LtdCho Yang Heung San Korea Orega activated clays/ plastic filmCo. Ltd zeolitesEvert-Fresh Corporation USA Evert-Fresh activated zeolites plastic filmOdja Shoji Co. Ltd Japan BO Film crysburite ceramic plastic filmPEAKfresh Products Ltd Australia PEAKfresh activated clays/ plastic film zeolitesmineral substrate such as alumina or silica gel. KMnO4 oxidises ethylene toacetate and ethanol and in the process changes colour from purple to brownand hence indicates its remaining ethylene scavenging capacity. KMnO4-based ethylene scavengers are available in sachets to be placed inside producepackages, or inside blankets or tubes that can be placed in produce storagewarehouses (Labuza & Breene, 1989; Abeles et al., 1992; Rooney, 1995). Activated carbon-based scavengers with various metal catalysts can alsoeffectively remove ethylene. They have been used to scavenge ethylene fromproduce warehouses or incorporated into sachets for inclusion into producepacks or embedded into paper bags or corrugated board boxes for producestorage. A dual-action ethylene scavenger and moisture absorber has beenmarketed in Japan by Sekisui Jushi Limited. Neupalon™ sachets containactivated carbon, a metal catalyst and silica gel and are capable of scavengingethylene as well as acting as a moisture absorber (Abeles et al., 1992;Rooney, 1995). In recent years, numerous produce packaging films and bags have appearedin the market place which are based on the putative ability of certain finelyground minerals to adsorb ethylene and to emit antimicrobial far-infraredradiation. However, little direct evidence for these effects have been publishedin peer-reviewed scientific journals. Typically, these activated earth-typeminerals include clays, pumice, zeolites, coral, ceramics and even JapaneseOya stone. These minerals are embedded or blended into polyethylene filmbags which are then used to package fresh produce. Manufacturers of suchbags claim extended shelf life for fresh produce partly due to the adsorption ofethylene by the minerals dispersed within the bags. The evidence offered in
11.292 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGYsupport of this claim is generally based on the extended shelf life of produceand reduction of headspace ethylene in mineral-filled bags in comparison withcommon polyethylene bags. However, independent research has shown thatthe gas permeability of mineral-filled polyethylene bags is much greater andconsequently ethylene will diffuse out of these bags much faster, as is also thecase for commercially available microperforated film bags. In addition, a morefavourable equilibrium modified atmosphere is likely to develop within thesebags compared with common polyethylene bags, especially if the produce hasa high respiration rate. Therefore, these effects can improve produce shelf lifeand reduce headspace ethylene independently of any ethylene adsorption. Infact, almost any powdered mineral can confer such effects without relyingon expensive Oya stone or other speciality minerals (Abeles et al., 1992;Rooney, 1995).9.5 Ethanol emittersThe use of ethanol as an antimicrobial agent is well documented. It is particularlyeffective against mould but can also inhibit the growth of yeasts and bacteria.Ethanol can be sprayed directly onto food products just prior to packaging.Several reports have demonstrated that the mould-free shelf life of bakeryproducts can be significantly extended after spraying with 95% ethanol to giveconcentrations of 0.5–1.5% (w/w) in the products. However, a more practicaland safer method of generating ethanol is through the use of ethanol-emittingfilms and sachets (Rooney, 1995). Many applications of ethanol emitting films and sachets have beenpatented, primarily by Japanese manufacturers. These include Ethicap™,Antimold 102™ and Negamold™ (Freund Industrial Co. Ltd), Oitech™ (NipponKayaku Co. Ltd), ET Pack™ (Ueno Seiyaku Co. Ltd) and Ageless™ type SE(Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. Ltd). All of these films and sachets containabsorbed or encapsulated ethanol in a carrier material which allows the con-trolled release of ethanol vapour. For example, Ethicap™ which is the mostcommercially popular ethanol emitter in Japan, consists of food-grade alcohol(55%) and water (10%) adsorbed onto silicon dioxide powder (35%) and con-tained in a sachet made of a paper and ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymerlaminate. To mask the odour of alcohol, some sachets contain traces of vanillaor other flavours. The sachets are labelled Do not eat contents and include adiagram illustrating this warning. Other ethanol emitters such as Negamould™and Ageless™ type SE are dual-action sachets which scavenge oxygen as wellas emit ethanol vapour (Rooney, 1995). The size and capacity of the ethanol-emitting sachet used depends on theweight of food, the aw of the food and the desired shelf life required. Whenfood is packed with an ethanol-emitting sachet, moisture is absorbed by the
12.ACTIVE PACKAGING 293food, and ethanol vapour is released and diffuses into the package headspace.Ethanol emitters are used extensively in Japan to extend the mould-free shelf lifeof high ratio cakes and other high moisture bakery products by up to 2000%(Rooney, 1995; Hebeda & Zobel, 1996). Research has also shown that suchbakery products packed with ethanol-emitting sachets did not get as hard as thecontrols and results were better than those using an oxygen scavenger alone toinhibit mould growth. Hence, ethanol vapour also appears to exert an anti-stalingeffect in addition to its anti-mould properties. Ethanol-emitting sachets arealso widely used in Japan for extending the shelf life of semi-moist and dryfish products (Rooney, 1995).9.6 Preservative releasersRecently, there has been great interest in the potential use of antimicrobial andantioxidant packaging films which have preservative properties for extendingthe shelf life of a wide range of food products. As with other categories of act-ive packaging, many patents exist and some antimicrobial and antioxidantfilms have been marketed but the majority have so far failed to be commercialisedbecause of doubts about their effectiveness, economic factors and/or regulatoryconstraints (Rooney, 1995). Some commercial antimicrobial films and materials have been introduced,primarily in Japan. For example, one widely reported product is a syntheticsilver zeolite which has been directly incorporated into food contact packagingfilm. The purpose of the zeolite is, apparently, to allow slow release of anti-microbial silver ions into the surface of food products. Many other synthetic andnaturally occurring preservatives have been proposed and/or tested for anti-microbial activity in plastic and edible films (Anon, 1994; Rooney, 1995; Wenget al., 1997; Gray, 2000). These include organic acids, e.g. propionate, benzoateand sorbate, bacteriocins, e.g. nisin, spice and herb extracts, e.g. from rosemary,cloves, horseradish, mustard, cinnamon and thyme, enzymes, e.g. peroxidase,lysozyme and glucose oxidase, chelating agents, e.g. EDTA, inorganic acids,e.g. sulphur dioxide and chlorine dioxide and antifungal agents, e.g. imazaliland benomyl. The major potential food applications for antimicrobial filmsinclude meats, fish, bread, cheese, fruit and vegetables. Figure 9.2 illustratesthe controlled release of volatile chlorine dioxide that has received GRAS statusfor food use in the USA (Gray, 2000). An interesting commercial development in the UK is the recent exclusivemarketing of food contact approved Microban™ (Microban International,Huntersville, USA) kitchen products such as chopping boards, dish cloths andbin bags by J. Sainsbury Plc. These Microban™ products contain triclosan, anantibacterial aromatic chloro-organic compound, which is also used in soaps,shampoos, lotions, toothpaste and mouth washes (Goddard, 1995a; Jamieson,
13.294 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY H2O Light Microatmosphère™ Ionic bonded phase ClO2 Hydrophobic phase Controlled releaseFigure 9.2 Microatmosphère™ chlorine dioxide releasing antimicrobial labels (courtesy of BernàrdTechnologies Inc., USA).1997; Rubinstein, 2000). Another interesting development is the incorporationof methyl salicylate (a synthetic version of wintergreen oil) into RepelKote™paperboard boxes by Tenneco Packaging (Lake Forest, Illinois, USA). Methylsalicylate has antimicrobial properties, but RepelKote™ is primarily beingmarketed as an insect repellent and its main food applications are dried foodswhich are very susceptible to insect infestations (Barlas, 1998). Two influences have stimulated interest in the use of antioxidant packagingfilms. The first of these is the consumer demand for reduced antioxidants andother additives in foods. The second is the interest of plastic manufacturers inusing natural approved food antioxidants, e.g. vitamin E for polymer stabilisationinstead of synthetic antioxidants developed specifically for plastics (Rooney,1995). The potential for evaporative migration of antioxidants into foods frompackaging films has been extensively researched and commercialised in someinstances. For example, the cereal industry in the USA has used this approachfor the release of butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxy-anisole (BHA) antioxidants from waxed paper liners into breakfast cerealand snack food products (Labuza & Breene, 1989). Recently there has beenmuch interest in the use of α-tocopherol (vitamin E) as a viable alternative toBHT/BHA-impregnated packaging films (Newcorn, 1997). The use of packagingfilms incorporating natural vitamin E can confer benefits to both film manu-facturers and the food industry. There have been questions raised regardingBHT and BHA’s safety, and hence using vitamin E is a safer alternative.Research has shown vitamin E to be as effective as an antioxidant compared
14.ACTIVE PACKAGING 295with BHT, BHA or other synthetic polymer antioxidants for inhibiting packagingfilm degradation during film extrusion or blow moulding. Vitamin E is also asafe and effective antioxidant for low to medium aw cereal and snack foodproducts where development of rancid odours and flavours is often the shelflife limited spoilage mechanism (Labuza & Breene, 1989; Rooney, 1995;Newcorn, 1997).9.7 Moisture absorbersExcess moisture is a major cause of food spoilage. Soaking up moisture byusing various absorbers or desiccants is very effective in maintaining foodquality and extending shelf life by inhibiting microbial growth and moisturerelated degradation of texture and flavour. Several companies manufacturemoisture absorbers in the form of sachets, pads, sheets or blankets. For pack-aged dried food applications, desiccants such as silica gel, calcium oxide andactivated clays and minerals are typically contained within Tyvek™ (DupontChemicals, Wilmington, Delaware, USA) tear-resistant permeable plasticsachets. For dual-action purposes, these sachets may also contain activatedcarbon for odour adsorption or iron powder for oxygen scavenging (Rice,1994; Rooney, 1995). The use of moisture absorber sachets is common inJapan, where popular foods feature a number of dried products which need tobe protected from humidity damage. The use of moisture absorber sachets isalso quite common in the USA where the major suppliers include MultisorbTechnologies Inc. (Buffalo, New York), United Desiccants (Louisville,Kentucky) and Baltimore Chemicals (Baltimore, Maryland). These sachets arenot only utilised for dried snack foods and cereals but also for a wide array ofpharmaceutical, electrical and electronic goods. In the UK, Marks & SpencerPlc have used silica gel-based moisture absorber sachets for maintaining thecrispness of filled ciabatta bread rolls. In addition to moisture-absorber sachets for humidity control in packageddried foods, several companies manufacture moisture-drip absorbent pads,sheets and blankets for liquid water control in high aw foods such as meats,fish, poultry, fruit and vegetables. Basically, they consist of two layers ofa microporous non-woven plastic film, such as polyethylene or polypropylene,between which is placed a superabsorbent polymer which is capable ofabsorbing up to 500 times its own weight with water. Typical superabsorbentpolymers include polyacrylate salts, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) andstarch copolymers which have a very strong affinity for water. Moisture dripabsorber pads are commonly placed under packaged fresh meats, fish andpoultry to absorb unsightly tissue drip exudate. Larger sheets and blankets areused for absorption of melted ice from chilled seafood during air freight trans-portation, or for controlling transpiration of horticultural produce (Rooney,
15.296 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY1995). Commercial moisture absorber sheets, blankets and trays includeToppan Sheet™ (Toppan Printing Co. Ltd, Japan), Thermarite™ (ThermaritePty Ltd, Australia) and Fresh-R-Pax™ (Maxwell Chase Inc., Douglasville,GA, USA). Another approach for the control of excess moisture in high aw foods is tointercept the moisture in the vapour phase. This approach allows food packersor even householders to decrease the water activity on the surface of foods byreducing in-pack RH. This can be done by placing one or more humectantsbetween two layers of water permeable plastic film. For example, the Japanesecompany Showa Denko Co. Ltd has developed a Pichit™ film which consistsof a layer of humectant carbohydrate and propylene glycol sandwichedbetween two layers of polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) plastic film. Pichit™ film ismarketed for home use in a roll or single sheet form for wrapping fresh meats,fish and poultry. After wrapping in this film, the surface of the food isdehydrated by osmotic pressure, resulting in microbial inhibition and shelflife extension of 3–4 days under chilled storage (Labuza & Breene, 1989;Rooney, 1995). Another example of this approach has been applied in thedistribution of horticultural produce. In recent years, microporous sachets ofdesiccant inorganic salts such as sodium chloride have been used for thedistribution of tomatoes in the USA (Rooney, 1995). Yet another example isan innovative fibreboard box which functions as a humidity buffer on its ownwithout relying on a desiccant insert. It consists of an integral water vapourbarrier on the inner surface of the fibreboard, a paper-like material bonded tothe barrier which acts as a wick, and an unwettable, but highly permeable towater vapour, layer next to the fruit or vegetables. This multi-layered box isable to take up water in the vapour state when the temperature drops and theRH rises. Conversely, when the temperature rises, the multi-layered box canrelease water vapour back in response to a lowering of the RH (Patterson &Joyce, 1993).9.8 Flavour/odour adsorbersThe interaction of packaging with food flavours and aromas has long beenrecognised, especially through the undesirable flavour scalping of desirablefood components. For example, the scalping of a considerable proportion ofdesirable limonene has been demonstrated after only two weeks storage inaseptic packs of orange juice (Rooney, 1995). Commercially, very few activepackaging techniques have been used to selectively remove undesirableflavours and taints, but many potential opportunities exist. An example of suchan opportunity is the debittering of pasteurised orange juices. Some varietiesof orange, such as Navel, are particularly prone to bitter flavours caused bylimonin, a tetraterpenoid which is liberated into the juice after orange pressing
16.ACTIVE PACKAGING 297and subsequent pasteurisation. Processes have been developed for debitteringsuch juices by passing them through columns of cellulose triacetate or nylonbeads (Rooney, 1995). A possible active-packaging solution would be to includelimonin adsorbers (e.g. cellulose triacetate or acetylated paper) into orangejuice packaging material. Two types of taints amenable to removal by active packaging are amines,which are formed from the breakdown of fish muscle proteins, and aldehydeswhich are formed from the auto-oxidation of fats and oils. Unpleasant smell-ing volatile amines, such as trimethylamine, associated with fish proteinbreakdown are alkaline and can be neutralised by various acidic compounds(Franzetti et al., 2001). In Japan, Anico Co. Ltd have marketed Anico™ bagsthat are made from film containing a ferrous salt and an organic acid such ascitrate or ascorbate. These bags are claimed to oxidise amines as they areadsorbed by the polymer film (Rooney, 1995). Removal of aldehydes such as hexanal and heptanal from package head-spaces is claimed by Dupont’s Odour and Taste Control (OTC) technology(Anon, 1996). This technology is based upon a molecular sieve with poresizes of around five nanometres, and Dupont claim that their OTC removes orneutralises aldehydes although evidence for this is lacking. The claimed foodapplications for this technology are snack foods, cereals, dairy products,poultry and fish (Anon, 1996). A similar claim of aldehyde removal has beenreported (Goddard, 1995b). Swedish company EKA Noble in co-operationwith Dutch company Akzo, have developed a range of synthetic aluminosili-cate zeolites which, they claim, adsorb odorous gases within their highlyporous structure. Their BMH™ powder can be incorporated into packagingmaterials, especially those that are paper-based, and apparently odorousaldehydes are adsorbed in the pore interstices of the powder (Goddard,1995b).9.9 Temperature control packagingTemperature control active packaging includes the use of innovative insulatingmaterials, self-heating and self-cooling cans. For example, to guard againstundue temperature abuse during storage and distribution of chilled foods,special insulating materials have been developed. One such material isThinsulate™ (3M Company, USA), which is a special non-woven plastic withmany air pore spaces. Another approach for maintaining chilled temperaturesis to increase the thermal mass of the food package so that it is capable of with-standing temperature rises. The Adenko Company of Japan has developed andmarketed a Cool Bowl™ which consists of a double walled PET container inwhich an insulating gel is deposited in between the walls (Labuza & Breene,1989).
17.298 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY Self-heating cans and containers have been commercially available fordecades and are particularly popular in Japan. Self-heating aluminium andsteel cans and containers for sake, coffee, tea and ready meals are heated by anexothermic reaction which occurs when lime and water positioned in the baseare mixed. In the UK, Nestlé has recently introduced a range of Nescafécoffees in self-heating insulated cans that use the lime and water exothermicreaction. Self-cooling cans have also been marketed in Japan for raw sake. Theendothermic dissolution of ammonium nitrate and chloride in water is used tocool the product. Another self-cooling can that has recently been introduced isthe Chill Can™ (The Joseph Company, USA) which relies on a hydrofluoro-carbon ( HFC) gas refrigerant. The release of HRC gas is triggered by a buttonset into the can’s base and can cool a drink by 10°C in two minutes. However,concerns about the environmental impact of HFC’s are likely to curtail thecommercial success of the Chill Can™ (Anon, 1997).9.10 Food safety, consumer acceptability and regulatory issuesAt least four types of food safety and regulatory issues related to active pack-aging of foods need to be addressed. First, any need for food contact approvalmust be established before any form of active packaging is used. Second, it isimportant to consider environmental regulations covering active-packagingmaterials. Third, there may be a need for labelling in cases where active packagingmay give rise to consumer confusion. Fourth, it is pertinent to consider theeffects of active packaging on the microbial ecology and safety of foods(Rooney, 1995). All of these issues are addressed in an EC funded Actipackproject which aims to evaluate the safety, effectiveness, economic and envir-onmental impact and consumer acceptance of active and intelligent packaging(De Kruijf, 2000). Food contact approval will often be required because active packagingmay affect foods in two ways. Active packaging substances may migrate intothe food or may be removed from it. Migrants may be intended or unintended.Intended migrants include antioxidants, ethanol and antimicrobial preserva-tives which would require regulatory approval in terms of their identity,concentration and possible toxicology effects. Unintended migrants includevarious metal compounds which achieve their active purpose inside packagingmaterials but do not need to, or should not, enter foods. Food additiveregulations require identification and quantification of any such unintendedmigration. Environmental regulations covering reuse, recycling, identification to assistin recycling or the recovery of energy from active packaging materials need tobe addressed on a case-by-case basis. European Union companies using activepackaging as well as other packaging need to meet the requirements of the
18.ACTIVE PACKAGING 299Packaging Waste Directive (1994) and consider the environmental impact oftheir packaging operations. Food labelling is currently required to reduce the risk of consumers ingest-ing the contents of oxygen scavenger sachets or other in-pack active-packagingdevices. Some active packages may look different from their passive counter-parts. Therefore it may be advisable to use appropriate labelling to explain thisdifference to the consumer even in the absence of regulations. Finally, it is very important for food manufacturers using certain type ofactive packaging to consider the effects this will have on the microbial ecologyand safety of foods. For example, removing all the oxygen from within thepacks of high aw chilled perishable food products may stimulate the growth ofanaerobic pathogenic bacteria such as Clostridium botulinum. Specific guid-ance is available to minimise the microbial safety risks of foods packed underreduced oxygen atmospheres (Betts, 1996). Regarding the use of antimicrobialfilms, it is important to consider what spectrum of microorganisms will beinhibited. Antimicrobial films which only inhibit spoilage microorganisms with-out affecting the growth of pathogenic bacteria will raise food safety concerns. In the USA, Japan and Australia, active packaging concepts are alreadybeing successfully applied. In Europe, the development and application of act-ive packaging is limited because of legislative restrictions, fear of consumerresistance, lack of knowledge about effectiveness and economic and environ-mental impact of concepts (Vermeiren et al., 1999). No specific regulationsexist on the use of active packaging in Europe. Active packaging is subjectedto traditional packaging legislation, which requires that compounds areregistered on positive lists and that the overall and specific migration limits arerespected. This is more or less contradictory to the concept of some activepackaging systems in which packaging releases substances to extend shelf lifeor improve quality (De Kruijf, 2000). The food industry’s main concern aboutintroducing active components to packaging seems to be that consumers mayconsider the components harmful and may not accept them. In Finland, aconsumer survey conducted in order to determine consumer attitudes towardsoxygen scavengers revealed that the new concepts would be accepted if con-sumers are well informed by using reliable information channels (Ahvenainen& Hurme, 1997). More information is needed on the chemical, microbiologi-cal and physiological effects of various active concepts on the packaged food,i.e. in regard to its quality and safety. So far, research has mainly concentratedon the development of various methods and their testing in a model system,but not so much on functioning in food preservation with real food products.Furthermore, the benefits of active packaging need to be considered in a holisticapproach to environmental impact assessment. The environmental effect ofplastics-based active packaging will vary with the nature of the product/packagecombination, and additional additives need to be evaluated for their environmentalimpact (Vermeiren et al., 1999).
19.300 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY9.11 ConclusionsActive packaging is an emerging and exciting area of food technology that canconfer many preservation benefits on a wide range of food products. Activepackaging is a technology developing a new trust because of recent advancesin packaging, material science, biotechnology and new consumer demands.The objectives of this technology are to maintain sensory quality and extendthe shelf life of foods whilst at the same time maintaining nutritional qualityand ensuring microbial safety. Oxygen scavengers are by far the most commercially important sub-category of active packaging and the market has been growing steadily for thelast ten years. It is predicted that the recent introduction of oxygen scavengingfilms and bottle caps will further help to stimulate the market in future yearsand the unit costs of oxygen scavenging technology will drop. Other activepackaging technologies are also predicted to be us+ed more in the future,particularly carbon dioxide scavengers and emitters, moisture absorbers andtemperature control packaging. Food safety and regulatory issues in the EUare likely to restrict the use of certain preservative releasers and flavour/odouradsorber active packaging technologies. Nevertheless, the use of active pack-aging is becoming increasingly popular and many new opportunities in thefood and non-food industries will open up for utilising this technology in thefuture.ReferencesAbeles, F.B., Morgan, P.W. and Saltveit, M.E. (1992) Ethylene in Plant Biology, Academic Press Ltd, London, UK.Ahvenainen, R. and Hurme, E. (1997) Active and smart packaging for meeting consumer demands for quality and safety. Food Additives Contaminants, 14, 753–763.Anon (1994) Fresh produce is keen as mustard to last longer. Packaging Week, 10(21), 6.Anon (1995) Scavenger solution. Packaging News, December edn, p. 20.Anon (1995) Pursuit of freshness creates packaging opportunities. Japanese Packaging News, 12, 14–15.Anon (1996) Odour Eater. Packaging News, August edn, 3.Anon (1996) Oxygen absorbing packaging materials near market debuts. Packaging Strategies Supple- ment, January 31 edn, Packaging Strategies Inc., West Chester, PA, USA.Anon (1997) Labels help cooked meats to keep their colour. Packaging Week, 12(40), 4.Anon (1997) Things get hot for cool can of the year. Packaging News, July edn, 1.Barlas, S. (1998) Packagers tell insects: ‘Stop bugging us!’. Packaging World, 5(6), 31.Betts, G.D. (ed.) (1996) Code of Practice for the Manufacture of Vacuum and Modified Atmosphere Packaged Chilled Foods with Particular Regards to the Risks of Botulism. Guideline No. 11, Campden & Chorleywood Food Research Association, Chipping Campden, Glos., UK.Castle, D. (1996) Polymer advance doubles shelf-life. Packaging Week, 12(17), 1.Day, B.P.F. (1989) Extension of shelf-life of chilled foods. European Food and Drink Review, 4, 47–56.
21.302 FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGYSubramaniam, P.J. (1998) Dairy foods, multi-component products, dried foods and beverages, in Principles and Applications of Modified Atmosphere Packaging of Foods (ed. B.A. Blakistone), 2nd edn, Blackie Academic & Professional, London, UK, pp. 158–193.Summers, L. (1992) Intelligent Packaging, Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology, London, UK.Vermeiren, L., Devlieghere, F., van Beest, M., deKruijf, N. and Debevere, J. (1999) Developments in the active packaging of foods. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 10, 77–86.Weng, Y.M., Chen, M.J. and Chen, W. (1997) Benzoyl chloride modified ionomer films as anti- microbial food packaging materials. International Journal of Food Science and Technology, 32, 229–234. | 52,133 | 20,001 | 0.00005 |
warc | 201704 | Finding a fossil in a coal mine is no big deal. Coal deposits, after all, are petrified peat swamps, and peat is made from decaying plants, which leave their imprints in mud and clay as it hardens into shale stone.
From This Story Related Content
But it was a different thing entirely when John Nelson and Scott Elrick, geologists with the Illinois State Geological Survey, examined the Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines in eastern Illinois. Etched into ceilings of the mine shafts is the largest intact fossil forest ever seen—at least four square miles of tropical wilderness preserved 307 million years ago. That's when an earthquake suddenly lowered the swamp 15 to 30 feet and mud and sand rushed in, covering everything with sediment and killing trees and other plants. "It must have happened in a matter of weeks," says Elrick. "What we see here is the death of a peat swamp, a moment in geologic time frozen by an accident of nature."
To see this little-known wonder, I joined Nelson and Elrick at the Vermilion Grove site, a working mine operated by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy and closed to the public. I donned a hard hat, a light, gloves and steel-toed boots. I received an oxygen bottle and a safety lecture. In case of emergency—poison gas, fire or an explosion—follow the red lights to find the way out of the mine, safety manager Mike Middlemas counseled. We could encounter "thick black smoke, and you won't be able to see anything in front of you." He said to use the lifeline running along the ceiling, a slender rope threaded through wooden cones, like floats in a swimming pool.
The fossil-rich coal seam is 230 feet below ground, and we rode there in an open-sided, Humvee-like diesel jitney known as a "man-trip." The driver took us through four miles of bewildering twists and turns in tunnels illuminated only by escape beacons and the vehicle's headlights. The journey took 30 minutes and ended in Area 5. The tunnels here are 6.5 feet high and about the width of a two-way suburban street.
The tunnels were silent and, lit by low-wattage bulbs, gloomy. Humid summer air, drawn in from above, was chilly and clingy underground, where temperatures hover around 60 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Miners are finished extracting coal here, and the sides of the tunnel have been sprayed with quicklime to suppress explosive coal dust. The shale roof—made of the sediment that destroyed the forest so long ago—is cracking and flaking off now that the coal below it has been removed. Wire mesh covers the ceiling to prevent big pieces from falling into the roadways or hitting miners.
Nelson picked his way along the tunnel, stepping around piles of broken stone and lumps of coal tumbled like black dice across the dusty floor. He stopped and looked upward. There, shining in the glow from his helmet light, is the forest—a riot of intertwined tree trunks, leaves, fern fronds and twigs silhouetted black-on-gray on the clammy shale surface of the tunnel roof. "I had seen fossils before, but nothing like this," he says.
Nelson, who is now retired, first visited the Riola-Vermilion Grove site during a routine inspection shortly after the mine opened in 1998. He spotted fossils but didn't pay much attention to them. He saw more fossils when he inspected different tunnels the next year, and still more the year after that. Elrick joined him in 2005, and by then the fossils added up to "too many," Elrick says. "Something odd was going on."
Nelson called in two paleobotanists, William DiMichele, of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Howard Falcon-Lang, of Britain's University of Bristol, to view the site. Falcon-Lang describes it as "a spectacular discovery" because the whole forest—not just individual trees or plants—is intact on the ceiling. Most ancient peat forests die gradually, leaving only spotty evidence of what grew there. Because this one was buried all at once, almost everything that was there is still there. "We can look at the trees and the surrounding vegetation and try to understand the whole forest," says DiMichele.
The lords of this jungle were the lycopsids: scaly plants with trunks up to 6 feet in circumference that grew up to 120 feet in height and bore spore-producing cones. They looked like giant asparagus spears. In the pale light of the tunnel, 30-foot fossil traces of lycopsid gleam slickly in the shale roof like alligator skins.
Next to the lycopsids are calamites—30-foot-tall cousins of the modern-day horsetail—and ancient, mangrove-size conifers known as cordaites. Seed ferns (which are unrelated to modern ferns) grew 25 feet tall. Tree ferns grew 30 feet, with crowns of large, feathery fronds.
Few animal fossils have been found in the mine—chemicals in the ancient swamp's water may have dissolved shells and bones—but other sites from more than 300 million years ago, a period known as the Carboniferous, have yielded fossils of millipedes, spiders, cockroaches and amphibians. Monster dragonflies with 2.5-foot wingspans ruled the skies. (It would be another 70 million years before the first dinosaurs.)
And then the earthquake struck, and this swampy rain forest was gone.
One of the reasons the site is so valuable to scientists is that it opens a window on the natural world just prior to a period of great, and puzzling, change. For several hundred thousand years after this rain forest was entombed, tree ferns, lycopsids and other plants competed for dominance—"a kind of vegetational chaos," says DiMichele. For some unknown reason, the tree ferns prevailed, he says, and eventually took over the world's tropical wetland forests.Two-thirds of the species found in Riola-Vermilion Grove would vanish. The mighty lycopsids virtually disappeared.
Researchers offer several possible reasons for the great makeover in plant communities around 306 million years ago: precipitous changes in global temperatures; drying in the tropics; or, perhaps, tectonic upheaval that eroded even older coal deposits, exposing carbon that then turned into carbon dioxide. Whatever the reason, earth's atmosphere suddenly acquired a lot more carbon dioxide. Determining the relationship between this ancient atmospheric change and the changes in vegetation could offer clues about how today's ecosystem will react to carbon dioxide increases caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The Riola-Vermilion Grove team, DiMichele says, is using the fossil forest as a reference point. The researchers are analyzing the chemical makeup of earlier and later coal deposits for measures of ancient carbon dioxide, temperature, rainfall and other variables. So far, the rise in carbon dioxide seems to be fairly smooth over time, but the change in vegetation is jerkier.
Comparing fossils from before 306 million years ago and after, "you have a total regime change without much warning," says DiMichele. "We need to look much more closely at the past," he adds. "And this is our first opportunity to see it all."
Guy Gugliotta has written about cheetahs and human migrations for Smithsonian. | 7,185 | 3,495 | 0.000291 |
warc | 201704 | You are here Standards, Solar Thermal Power
This paper was released by the Stanwell Corporation, University of Sydney and the University of NSW in 2006. It describes the success and implementation of the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar thermal system.
This presentation was created by Frank Proske, the Market Development Manager for Renewables at A.O. Smith Water Products Co. in Pennsylvania, USA. The focus of the presentation is on the evolution and current state of various solar thermal technologies and the maturation of their market.
The presentation identifies a few key factors as the driving trends in the solar thermal market.
Solar thermal generation (with gas assist) has been shown to be cost competitive when compared to other similar fossil technologies providing comparable products, i.e. firm on-peak capacity and energy. The recently published CEC Cost Comparison Report concluded that, essentially, solar thermal generation with gas assist is cost competitive to combustion turbine technology when used in the same application (firm peaking).
This topic was addressed by George Roditis, Head of the Applied Energy Laboratory, at IRENA’s conference on renewable energy applications for island tourism which took place in Cyprus in May 2014. | 1,286 | 706 | 0.00143 |
warc | 201704 | Question
Consider the following initial rate data for the decomposition of compound AB to give A and B:
Determine the half-life for the decomposition reaction initially having 1.00 M AB present.
Answer to relevant QuestionsThe rate law for the reaction 2NOBr(g) → 2NO(g) + Br2(g) at some temperature is a. If the half- life for this reaction is 2.00 s when [NOBr]0 = 0.900 M, calculate the value of k for this reaction. b. How much time is ...Theophylline is a phamaceutical drug that is sometimes used to help with lung function. You observe a case where the initial lab results indicate that the concentration of theophylline in a patient’s body decreased from ...A possible mechanism for the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide is H2O2 → 2OH H2O2 + OH → H2O + HO2 HO2 + OH → H2O + O2 Using your results fom Exercise 31, specify which step is the rate- determining step. What is the ...In the gas phase, the production of phosgene from chlorine and carbon monoxide is assumed to proceed by the following mechanism: a. Write the rate law for this reaction. b. Which species are intermediates? The activation energy for the decomposition of HI(g) to H2(g) and I2(g) is 186 kJ/ mol. The rate constant at 555 K is 3.52 × 10-7 Lmol-1s-1. What is the rate constant at 645 K?
Post your question | 1,324 | 733 | 0.001402 |
warc | 201704 | Question
What is the purpose of a forecast? What factors does a firm use to create its forecasts of future income and expenses?
Answer to relevant QuestionsOn what factors or conditions do completely new firms base their forecasts? If a college student has a business idea, what should the student do while in college to improve his or her chances of getting accepted by one of the better accelerator programs? How does recruiting a well-known and highly respected board of directors lend legitimacy to a firm? Cindy Combs, a professional investor, was having lunch with a colleague recently and said, “Do you remember Peter Kennedy, the entrepreneur we met the other day who created an iPhone app that helps busy families keep track ...What can a new venture do to overcome the liabilities of newness?
Post your question | 831 | 504 | 0.002008 |
warc | 201704 | I know this is a cliche but it was time to face the truth. I have been so despondent with the weight loss being at a standstill/plateau that I have scoured the web, magazines and every where I could find information on how to break through my plateau. Most articles and tidbits state, if you have been true to the diet and to the workouts, then change up the workouts, do something different, do HIITs workouts, and to my surprise many have said to have a cheat meal or day. Well I tried the change in workout routines and still was at a standstill. I finally confessed to my trainer my dismay in the weight loss not moving and he too encouraged me to have a cheat meal a week or one cheat day....I guess I didn't hear the one because I did an entire weekend and low and behold I definitely had some movement, but in the wrong direction...up 2 lbs!
But, I did not beat myself up, I definitely realize the meals had a lot to do with getting the scale to move. Yes, my clothes are fitting better, but I still have a ways to go in the weight loss so I need the scale to move in the downward direction.
Today I decided to play around with some of the tools available to us between my gym website (24 hour fitness) and spark people. 24 hour fitness web page allow members to review their gym visits over a course of time and we all know that we have the tracker tools in spark people. Looking at my visits since Dec. 2011 when I first got serious about this weight loss journey, I see that I have been consistent in going to the the gym, well that is very good. But I wanted to drill it down further and see what exactly I was doing when I lost my biggest poundage.
The tracker reports show that I have had my biggest weight loss in two months, March and in July and here is where the truth hit me square in the face. I compared my calorie intake with my cardio output and with the number of days I worked out. The simple truth of the matter is this- I ate less in those two months and worked out more in a weeks time compared to all the months combined. In my head I was believing that I was working out regularly and consistently which is one sense was true, but consistent was not meeting the goals I had set for myself. The numbers don't lie, it showed that I was only working out on average 2.5 days a week. When I saw this number I was a little surprised but had to be honest with myself and reflect on why this was not at my goal of at least 5 days a week. When I reflect on the months past, I noticed that I allowed other matters/issues or just plain old stuff get into the way of my days to workout. So, now that I have faced the truth as to why I have been plateauing with the weight and knowing that I crave the new smaller and toned me, I have to kick it up.
Starting tomorrow, Monday I will commit to myself first and foremost to do me!
I will get in 5 days of cardio in a weeks time. I also need to have 2 to 3 days of strength training. I already have 1 day of ST with my personal trainer so I need to incorporate at least 1 more day of ST on my own and maybe another day with the trainer. I realize I should not try to do it all at once so I am going to set some mini goals.
1. For the next two weeks I will do 5 days of Cardio
2. For the next two weeks I will do 2 days of ST
3. By week 2 going into week 3 I will add 1 more day with my trainer so 2 trainer days/week.
4. I will do at least 30 minutes of Cardio each session and mix it up (run/elliptical/bike/HIIT/what
ever) for 30 days (4 weeks) Sept. 27th.
Reward: Mini Facial & New workout shoes
wt today is 194 | 3,591 | 1,723 | 0.000583 |
warc | 201704 | Stadiums Vs Our Children’s Future “Education has long been recognized as a good that has external effects and public attributes. Without public support, the market will yield too few educated workers and too little basic research. This problem has long been understood in the United States and it is why our government, at all levels, has supported public funding for education... Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that one critical form of education, early childhood development, or ECD, is grossly underfunded. However, if properly funded and managed, investment in ECD yields an extraordinary return, far exceeding the return on most investments, private or public.” Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return- March 2003
Rob Grunewald - Regional Economic Analyst, Arthur J. Rolnick - Senior Vice President and Director of Research
Last Saturday, I attended a panel discussion focusing on early childhood development organized by Twin Cities African American leaders. The panel was moderated by Art Rolnick, Senior Vice President and Director of Research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Panel members consisted of: Daniel P. Mueller, Ph.D., Associate Director, Wilder Research; Scott McConnell, Director of Community Engagement, Center for Early Education and Development, University of Minnesota; Becky Roloff, CEO, YWCA of Minneapolis; Sameerah Bilal-Roby, Executive Director, Early Childhood Resource & Training Center; and Carolyn Smallwood, Executive Director, Way to Grow.
There were several salient points during this panel discussion I thought were germane to the concept of paying forward our public investments, up front, in order to realize savings in the long run. My summary doesn’t cover every panelist’s presentation. It does highlight important aspects of this discussion for consideration in the broader public policy debate.
Art Rolnick opened the panel discussion by framing the current proposal to invest $1 billion into a new Vikings stadium, but nowhere, according to Rolnick, do you hear political leaders talking about a $1 billion investment towards early childhood development. It was an interesting way of framing a political choice to the panel. I’m not sure it was a realistic choice (in part because I love the Vikings), but it did make me think that as we choose to invest in one set of priorities, we are making a decision not to invest in others.
In fact, in his work, Art Rolnick has been a courageous leader in bringing the issue of investing in early childhood development to the forefront in Minnesota and throughout the country. Rolnick postulates that “The conventional view of economic development typically includes company headquarters, office towers, entertainment centers, and professional sports stadiums and arenas… in the future any proposed economic development list should have early childhood development at the top. The return on investment from early childhood development is extraordinary, resulting in better working public schools, more educated workers and less crime.”
For example, Rolnick argues that Detroit has two professional sports stadiums and several casinos. These investments have proven insufficient in moving Detroit out of economic decay. Rolnick believes that the old-fashioned approach to economic development of providing public subsidies to private companies is “short-sighted and fundamentally flawed”. Jobs are not created “they are only relocated” and the public return on these investments is, at most, zero, according to Rolnick.
Rolnick is not alone in this view, Nobel Prize Laureate and University of Chicago Professor James Heckman, also evaluated the public “return on investment,” and concluded that, viewed purely as an economic development strategy, the return on investment to the public of early childhood development programs “far exceeds the return on most projects that are currently funded as economic development,” such as building sports stadiums or relocating businesses.
Another panel member, Becky Roloff, CEO of the Minneapolis YWCA, stated that “The front end of the educational system is broken and everybody knows it. Imagine what Minnesota would be like if we paid attention to education from cradle to grave.” As someone formerly in the corporate world, Roloff stated that she had always felt that Minnesota was great in early childhood education until she began to understand the “horrific trade-off “that we’ve made to reduce money for education and put it somewhere else. One of the answers that Roloff suggests is that K-12 and higher education leaders sit down with the next governor to be very clear that 40-50 percent of raw materials (children) are not ready for education. According to Roloff, there is a plethora of research data available that shows investment in early childhood education is one of the most effective means of ensuring that the next generation are productive citizens and have a pathway out of poverty.
Sameerah Bilal-Roby, Executive Director of the Early Childhood Resource & Training Center, talked about the importance of working with parents to increase their understanding of the impact of self-regulation and verbal responsiveness in their child’s development. Bilal-Roby also focused on new research in physiology and chemistry of the brain that has established that the first three years of life are more critical to the development of human capacities than any three that follow. According to Bilal-Roby, “We know that quality school readiness must be coordinated with housing, food and mental health in order for it to be successful.”
Carolyn Smallwood, Executive Director of Way to Grow, stated that “Twenty percent of Minnesota workers are functionally illiterate. Less than one half of the children in this state are proficient in reading and math. Children born with low birthrate and fewer parental resources have poor health, are less likely to work and have lower earnings as adults. By age three, children of parents on welfare have a vocabulary foundation of about 500 words, working class parents 700 words, and college educated parents 1,100 words. Children who are chronically hungry are more likely to be in special education, repeat a grade, get into fights, and to have lower test scores. We are losing two to three generations of uneducated children.”
These are powerful statements and statistics that get to the heart of why many of leaders of major corporations such as Best Buy Co. Inc., Cargill, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., Ecolab, Inc., General Mills and others, have formed The Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (http://www.melf.us/) whose mission is “To recommend cost-effective strategies for preparing children to succeed in school… A child with a winning start becomes part of a solid community, contributes to our competitiveness and enriches our society.”
Another effort that is gaining momentum in seeking public and private support to address early childhood education is the School Readiness Funders Coalition. The Coalition members include the Blandin Foundation, Twin Cities United Way, Grotto Foundation, McKnight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, Sheltering Arms Foundation, Social Ventures Partners, and the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. These funders believe that every child in Minnesota needs to be ready for kindergarten by 2020. The School Readiness Funders Coalition also believes that “Minnesota needs a comprehensive approach to early childhood care and education that establishes accountability for measurable and sustained progress.” For more information on this innovative approach, please visit http://www.readyforschoolmn.com/.
According to Lisabeth B. Schorr, in her book
Common Purpose – Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America,“Our nation’s failure to act on what we know about the early years is the product, at least in part, of our commitment to rugged individualism. The notion that every family should be able to care for its own, without outside help, has made the U.S. the only industrialized country in the world without universal pre-school, paid paternal leave, and income supports for families with young children… One in ten children is growing up in extreme poverty – conditions in which it is almost impossible to give young children the responsive care and nurturing…their healthy development requires.”
As we think about what our priorities are as a state, it is hard to imagine that Minnesotans value sports stadiums and mega malls more than the human capital development of our children. I would argue, by making these investments now, we can begin to reverse the cycle of intergenerational poverty and welfare dependency. We could invest upstream in early child development, rather than paying much more money down steam, by building prisons to support increased incarcerations rates, low productivity, unsafe communities and increasing demands for public services. The current arrangement is unsustainable.
I had dinner the other night with a former state legislator and we talked about the wealth of evidence to support public investment in early childhood development. I asked this person, why haven’t we invested to bring early childhood education efforts to scale? He said, “It’s simple, at the Legislature it is about entrenched interest and power and children don’t have either.”
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warc | 201704 | This exam has two (2) parts – multiple choice and short answer essay. Circle the correct answers (2 points each).
1) The methods used to give new or present employees the skills they need to perform their jobs are called ________. A) orientation
B) training
C) development
D) appraisal
2) The first step in a training program is to ________.
A) assess the program's successes or failures
B) design the program content
C) conduct a needs analysis
D) train the targeted group of employees
3) What is the second step in the training process?
A) assess the program's successes or failures
B) present the program to a small test audience
C) design the instructional content
D) conduct a needs analysis
4) James is currently identifying the specific job performance skills needed, analyzing the skills of prospective trainees, and developing knowledge and performance objectives based on the deficiencies he finds. James is working on the ________ step in the training and development process. A) first
B) second
C) third
D) fifth
5) Which of the following characterizes training today?
A) training is increasingly technology based
B) training is more prevalent in the higher levels of an organization C) training is developing a great reputation for getting results D) training is being evaluated extensively
6) The process of verifying that there is a performance deficiency and determining if such deficiency should be corrected through training or through some other means is called ________. A) needs analysis
B) task analysis
C) performance analysis
D) development planning
7) All of the following are sources of identifying training needs except A) attitude surveys
B) assessment centers
C) management-by-objective evaluations
D) all of the above
8) Which of the following training methods is the most popular? A) on-the-job training
B) apprenticeship training
C) informal learning
D) lectures
9) On-the-job training can be accomplished through the use of all of the following techniques except A) coaching
B) programmed learning
C) understudy
D) job rotation
10) In the ________ method a manager is presented with a written description of an organizational problem to diagnose and solve. A) case study
B) diagnose and learn
C) action learning
D) job rotation
11) When goal setting, performance appraisal, and development are consolidated into a single, common system designed to ensure that employee performance supports a company's strategy, it is called ________. A) strategic organizational development
B) performance management
C) performance appraisal
D) human resource management
12) Which of the following is not one of the guidelines for effective goal setting? A) assign specific goals
B) assign measurable goals
C) assign challenging but doable goals
D) assign consequences for performance
13) The A in the acronym for SMART goals stands for ________. A) actionable
B) appropriate
C) attainable
D) asset
14) Participatively set goals result in higher performance than assigned goals when ________. A) participatively set goals are more difficult
B) assigned goals are more difficult
C) the rewards are also higher
D) the goals are doable
15) When using goal setting in performance management, the goals should be ________. A) difficult
B) doable
C) specific
D) all of the above
16) Performance appraisals may be conducted by ________.
A) the immediate supervisor
B) peers
C) rating committees
D) all of the above
17) Which big five personality trait is associated with performance appraisal ratings that are too lenient? A) agreeableness
B) extroversion
C) conscientiousness
D) openness
18) ________ refers to all forms of pay or rewards going to employees and arising from their employment. A) Reimbursement
B) Employee compensation
C) Salary
D) Benefits
19) Which of the following... | 3,879 | 1,697 | 0.000602 |
warc | 201704 | HARRIET MARTINEAU
Harriet Martineau, the founding mother of sociology, was a very accomplished female. She was, among other things, a feminist, Unitarian, critic, social scientist, and an atheist. She began many methodological, theoretical and substantive studies that would now be considered the study of sociology. She analyzed women’s rights, disability, education slavery, history, health and religion within her lifetime. “Long before Marx, Weber, or Durkheim, Martineau also studied and wrote about social class, suicide, forms of religions, domestic relations, delinquency, and the status of women” (Gordon). Her neglect by sociologists in later years is a perfect example of how academic sociology has excluded women sociologists from its study. Martineau stated that, “an American woman's life is equal to that of a slave's, (in that) they were both given indulgence rather than justice.” (Berleant) Harriet saw that women were denied education and had only one option and duty in the United States: marriage. Her attitude towards the injustice of women would most suit the feminist theory which focuses on analyzing gender inequality and promotes women’s rights, interests and issues. A recent incident, showing the inequality women still face today, occurred when a female was denied equal treatment at the workplace causing a gender discrimination lawsuit.
Monday March 15th, 2010, a federal judge announced a $2.5 million discrimination verdict in favor of Michelle Maher, who was forced out of the Fresno Fire Department’s training academy. Maher, a single mother, former professional mixed-martial arts fighter and certified EMT with 13 certificates in firefighting skills, was clearly qualified for the job at hand but apparently the fire training academy supervisors continuously focused on asking her personal questions and setting her up to fail certain tasks while unfairly grading her exam. Maher sued the Fire Department in... | 1,987 | 1,077 | 0.000947 |
warc | 201704 | Sustainability
Businesses are looking at themselves, their products and the service they provide from a social and environmental point of view. Modern society, political strategies and the way everything is produced is based on sustainability and social responsibility. The products or a production process that damages the well-being of other humans or do harm to environment may affect the businesses and their image. Forward-looking companies try to avoid these things and are ready to accept the responsibilities to the world around them. They view socially responsible actions as an opportunity to do well by doing good. In that way they create solid image for the costumer. Not-for-profit marketing
Non profit organisations also use marketing to attract students to the universities, patients to hospitals or members of political parties. Government also uses social marketing to discourage people from smoking, alcohol and drugs. These organisations seek to achieve objectives other than primarily economic ones like profit or market share. The electronic marketplace
The technology created new ways to learn about and track costumers and to create products and services for individual needs. The businesses use marvels of technology everywhere from taking orders to distributing goods. Internet links individuals and businesses and help to exchange information, find entertainment or just to connect with almost anybody. E-commerce not only helps existing businesses in their work but also created new businesses (Ebay, Amazon, Google). Major supermarkets in UK have got their online shopping services. Every single product or service now is available on the internet. Costumers has got opportunity to compare the prices, check out various deals from different companies and can find a last minute deals for a concert or a flight. The global marketplace
Globalization influenced the way business work nowadays. Marketers are looking for a low-cost... | 1,964 | 986 | 0.001017 |
warc | 201704 | Introduction
Ethics, defined as the study of right and wrong, is an important domain that must be studied by future leaders/managers of organizations practicing their profession in the business industry. The study of ethics is important for managers, since professional responsibility should be given to managers. As a professional, the manager is engaged in activities that are always coupled with public interest. And because of this public interest, the manager should ensure that the organization's clients, stakeholders, and market's welfare are given attention and consideration when formulating business-related decision. Business-related decisions should always take into account proper managerial conduct, which entails having the proper "moral imagination and the courage to do the right thing" (Kreitner, 1995:99). The impact of technology on work-related stress is important to understand as another important OB trend in order to maximize work performance and efficiency within the organization and also to increase morale across the company.
The Influence of Ethics on Decision Making
There are several ground rules that should be considered in the decision-making process, when ethics are concerned. Ethics operate according to a certain set of moral criteria acceptable to society at a given time or in a given place. Ethics or morals dictate how we as human beings should conduct our lives. They determine the standards of right or wrong actions in terms of the truly human life. A further aspect of ethics is admitting where society's ethics fall short in terms of concerns that are minimized or ignored. In ethical decision- making it is then necessary to identify and recognize a moral issue. Such a decision is dictated by some recognized wrong in terms of personal, interpersonal or social criteria. Damage to people, animals or the environment has to be curbed by an ethical decision. Legal or institutional concerns should play a... | 1,963 | 972 | 0.001032 |
warc | 201704 | Everest University
Andrew McMonigle
Instructor: Sarah Carson
3/30/2013
Pets are known to have many different effects on their owners. Pets have the ability to lighten up someone’s day and make them forget about their stress from school and work. Many people enjoy having pets in their homes. Different types of pets offer unique experiences for their masters. With most animals there comes a classification of different breeds that one can choose from, as well. Some of the more commonly seen pets in America would have to include dogs, cats, reptiles, fish, and birds. Within each species there are many different breeds for an owner to choose from. What helps determine a compatible candidate for being someone’s house pet? If one hopes to gain a better understanding for what it means to have a pet and take care of one, this is where they want to be.
The causes for wanting a pet will differ for everyone. For some it is a family tradition to have a pet. For others they could have just looked in through a window at a pet store and fell in love with the animal they saw. Everybody has their own reason for wanting a pet, and that is okay. What matters is that when so-and-so decides to own a pet, they need to have the pet’s best interest in mind and raise it as if a child.
Different dogs, for instance, come with different capabilities. Someone who likes to go hunting might find the instinct and loyalty of a greyhound handy when it comes to finding that kill. Someone who likes to go outdoors a lot would like a dog that is active and energetic, possibly a Labrador retriever would suit them well. Ladies that are into fashion might want a dog with its own fashion statement, such as a poodle. These are all different causes for one to want a pet because they can help better the owner’s life as well as the dog’s life too.
Some dogs unfortunately, do not come with a smile but rather with a difficult past. Often pets at local shelters and veterinary clinics have a tendency of being more loud or aggressive. Some of us like to assume we know why a dog acts a certain way, but other times we do not know. Sometimes it can be hard to determine the cause of a pet’s emotions. All we can do is rehabilitate them and give them a better life. In reference from an observational study made by Dr. Karen Overall, “I do not doubt that people could make problem dogs worse, and some people, or situations, could render the most normal and appropriate of dogs problematic. However, until we understand more about gene X environment interactions, the question of cause will be open” (1998).
We still have a lot to learn about some animals on this planet. We already know a lot about many animals on this planet at the same time. For instance, we all know as humans that a hamster would be a nice pet to keep in a cage and feed. A mountain lion, however, would cause problems in a typical suburban household. This is due to the mountain lion’s carnivorous instincts it naturally develops. Hamsters do not have carnivorous instincts. Once someone finds a pet that they keep, however, the benefits that one will enjoy are truly indescribable.
The feelings and self-reward one gets from raising a pet of their own is great. Many people experience great joy from the effects of raising an animal. “It's funny how a simple creature like a dog can cause so much emotion. The bond between human and animal can be one of life's greatest experiences. People who don't have pets can't understand the depth of feeling owners have for their animals” (Charles, 2006).
The feelings are even known to spread to the workplace. It can be tricky to bring pets into work environments for a number of reasons. The work environment could be unsafe or possess unsafe equipment for pets, other employees could have possible allergies, and pets can cause a distraction for people who are trying to finish their work. These are just a few of the reasons... | 3,996 | 1,923 | 0.000529 |
warc | 201704 | The benefit of exposure of electronic devices and gadgets to children Everything has its usefulness and also its negative aspect on over-exposed to the devices and gadgets. Besides the abovementioned points, let us look at the benefit of using the devices.
For younger children below preschool age, the gadgets may positively help them to stimulate their senses and imagination. Some may helps to promote listening ability, learning of sounds and also speaking ability.
Electronic devices and games play positive effects in encourage cognitive learning and development of analytical skills. This may helps in build-up innovative thinking, investigative skills, strategic thinking and foster the creativity potential of kids.
They may improve manual dexterity and making the children computer literacy. Besides that being an educational and learning media, a lot of people have an opinion that they are good medium to distract peoples stress and providing funs and entertainment to them. It is started to enhance the confident level of the children by mastering certain games,. It also helps to develop a good coordination of eye, hand and mentally coordination over a period of time. Most of the games designed to encourage kids to moving levels and earning score to survive the game. This may have positively encouraging quick mathematical and engineering... | 1,364 | 688 | 0.001459 |
warc | 201704 | Unlike many other major industries which create wealth conventionally Packaging industry plays a unique role by creating wealth through a vast range of manufacturing activities and it also preserves the value of many other products manufactured by various industry sectors. Packaging, was not just considered to be a protective and sealing element in the industry, it is a branding platform that can be absolutely used by a company in today‟s modern economic world. A unique packing by itself attracts more sales than a retro or ordinary packing. Packaging has a close relationship with an Indian consumer. A packaging material at times turns to a daily life utility to an average Indian family. Best example can be viewed in a re-used detergent packing box which is used for ever in a household in various applications. A Castrol lubricant can is used as a water container in many situations, and that is India. A consumer‟s relation with packaging industry is more than just „use and throw.‟
In Indian economy, packaging industry served more than just a huge value addition and employment involved, it helped preserving product quality and elongated the shelf life of uncountable product ranges from milk to biscuits, medicines to drugs, processed foods, vegetables and fruits, edible oil, electronic appliances and also industrial machinery which need transportation. India, which is a seriously developing nation, has no room to compromise in terms of packaging where the major concentration has to be on product development and quality handling. Water packaging, which is universally a great concern, was strictly followed by many water supplier companies in India.
Most of the times, market share is determined by the extent of packing a consumer product in a manner that meet the criteria of safety, convenience and attractiveness. In the aggregate, packaging as a sectoral activity boosts consumption and economic growth. Heightened competition in all product... | 1,994 | 1,003 | 0.001009 |
warc | 201704 | English 91
4/23/2012
Ms. Brock
Should kids get paid for learning? My name is Clifton bell I’m a member of the fog city school board and we are voting on if we should incentivize kids for different tasks in school. A Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. ran a randomized experiment to see if incentives will motivate kids to do better in school. The experiment took place in four states Dallas, New York, Chicago, and Washington where he used 6.3 million dollars to pay 18, 00 kids. He brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects incentives have in the class room. When it comes to paying kids to do something that they should do without getting paid, I’m in the middle but we have to keep in mind some of these questions how long will the funding last? Should the program be limited to low income families? Will incentives motivate all students? Incentives can work both ways it can motivate or it can discourage kids depending on what the reward is for. Incentives in schools are a good idea depending what the reward is for.
Rewards can work if you reward for easy tasks. In Dallas they paid second graders to read books. Kids who got paid to read books even though they already know how to read this will motivate them to read more. The more kids read the better their reading comprehension gets. In the article should kids be bribed to do well in school? Amanda Ripley says “paying second graders all year to read books produced the most dramatic gains of all “paragraph (17). Paying kids to read is a good incentive because kid who don’t read as much as other kids makes them to want to read more witch leads to higher test scores on the standardized test and they might find out that they really like to read. Kids get excited when cash is involved you can get them to do anything however they are not worried about the real work that... | 1,899 | 987 | 0.00103 |
warc | 201704 | Is Google Reaching Its End Game?
Having been around the internet since long before there was an internet, one of the things you learn is that sites, companies, and products come and go. For every mountain that is built, there is another group with earth movers set to tear it down. So while companies like Facebook and Google currently dominate the internet landscape, there is little indication that they will be there in the future.
There has been plenty of people suggesting that Both Facebook and Google have already “jumped the shark” and have move to points where they are harder to take seriously. Facebook in particular has suffered in dealing with the public on privacy issues, and have dealt business wise with significantly poorer income on mobile based customers. Recent moves to try to shore up the bottom line have gotten some users upset, and lead to Google pointing out that their social network does not permit sponsored stories forced into your timeline.
Google itself is facing plenty of issues. This story from the CNBC suggests that Google could be all but gone in 5 years, but I think that this story misses perhaps the bigger issues that exist within Google, namely that their core search product is actually getting to be a poorer and poorer choice for searching online.
In the last year or so, Google has rolled out many changes to it’s systems for indexing the web and return the results to users. The so called Panda and Penguin updates have had the effects of churning up the results and really giving the displayed results a different look and feel. But these changes are to me at the very core of a problem within Google. The P&P updates have been aimed at rising “quality” sites to the top of Google’s results, with that quality calculated in many different ways. One of the significant drivers at this point isn’t links to a given site, but rather links with social relevancy. So a link on a twitter or facebook post may have more weight than a link from another site, example.
The effects are that Google tends now to return popular pages in it’s results. It’s sort of like the old Ray Davies song, “Give the People What They Want”. Google has moved to become perhaps one of the most obvious mirrors of what society likes and talks about. In doing so, however, I think they have made the mistake of making their results less relevant to themselves, and more relevant perhaps in a social media discussion sort of a way. It’s not the best pages that are at the top of the results, but rather, it’s the pages people are talking about the most.
Oddly, I find that this is creating a sort of bad feedback loop. Rather than helping people to find the best pages, Google helps them find popular pages, which is something that is already occurring in an organic fashion through social media. So instead of proposing the best pages for a given search and expanding people’s horizons, Google is instead focusing more on what people already like, and are returning them results which narrow the world’s focus to a smaller and smaller subset of sites. The real issue comes when people then go to social media as a result of their search on Google and post up links and talk about something. That completes a feedback look, as those very links will help to determine what is returned in the next Google search. Those search results drive social media discussions, and the whole thing starts to spiral out of control.
It should be noted that Google’s algorithmic changes have also severely cut into the reported traffic to index sites, guides, reviews, and promotional websites, even when these sites might be the most relevant pages out there. Google now appears to treat those sites as “middlemen” on the internet, and seems intent to make them less relevant in their search results, which in turn drive social media discussion, which in turn reinforces those narrowed search results.
At this point, Google has taken the sort of steps that leave it vulnerable to more nimble and more focused competition. As more and more people realize that Google search results aren’t really the best around, the more these people will take to other sites and other search methods. If Google’s search traffic drops in a notable way, the effects on their stock could be significant.
I should also say that I think that Google will be hit with anti-trust investigations that will lead to significant changes inside the company (and in the way it works) over the next few years. Their failure to separate “church and state” (search and other products) as well as their current dominant position in search makes it very likely that someone, somewhere will take a legal swipe at them, and all the cash in the world may not be able to save Google from a changed and perhaps separated future. At that point, Google as we know it will have reached it’s end game, eaten apart from the inside rather than the outside. | 5,040 | 2,262 | 0.000453 |
warc | 201704 | Snick. That’s the quiet sound of Neal Maloney shucking an oyster. With the midday sun glinting off the bay around us, he pops it open as effortlessly as if he’s unlocking his own front door. He hands it, all shimmering and pearly, to me. In a second I’ve slurped it from the shell. It’s firm, cold, and briny-sweet, with a faint melon-and-cucumber finish that makes me immediately want another one.
A 29-year-old marine biologist who radiates contentment, Neal has been growing oysters in Morro Bay, on California’s Central Coast, for 7 years, first for Tomales Bay Oyster Company, now for himself. As he explained to me after I’d clambered onto his Morro Bay Oyster Company—a bobbing bunch of wooden platforms surrounded by chains of floating mesh oyster bags—his oysters, Pacific Golds, are good in part because of where they’re grown. Pacifics (Crassostrea gigas) are a mellow-tasting variety popular all over the world, and have been raised in Morro Bay since 1932. Like all oysters, they’re flavored by their home waters. That’s why a Hama Hama Pacific, from Washington, will taste different than a Pacific from Oregon’s Yaquina Bay—and why they’re often known by their place names.
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How Morro oysters get good
I soak up the view as Neal describes how that very scenery matters to his oysters, much like terroir in wine. Morro Rock juts up at the far end of the bay like the brow of a submerged giant. Along with a sand spit, it helps shield the waters here, making them calm enough for oyster production. Even so, there’s an exhilarating amount of wind, enough to bring the blood to our cheeks, spray our sunglasses with briny drops, and whip up waves that tumble the oysters around in their bags. And that is a good thing. “Oysters will turn into a brick if you don’t shake them up,” he says. Left undisturbed, they’d glom onto each other and become a fortress of twisted shells. Neal hauls up a nearby bag for me to see, and every oyster in it is separate and shapely.
Then there’s the water itself, full of minerals washed down from the volcanic soil around the bay, which deepens the oysters’ melon-cucumber flavor. Fresh water flowing into the bay from aquifers and creeks adds sweetness. More seasoning comes from nutrients in the deep ocean shelf a little way out, arriving with the twice-daily tides.
The shallowness of the bay factors in too. During low tide, Neal explains, the bags end up resting on the mud, forcing the oysters to clamp shut so they don’t dry out. Once the tides seep back over them, they open up to feed on plankton and absorb oxygen from the water. This open-close routine strengthens the oyster’s ability to seal tight and keep out bacteria—which gives it a longer shelf life.
“The bay does a lot of the work for me,” Neal says. But definitely not all. He and his two employees here on the platform—lanky, laid-back twin brothers in bright orange overalls—shake all the bags several times a week, in addition to what the waves do.
As Neal talks, the twins dump harvested oysters from their mesh bags onto a long steel worktable slick with salt water and gray mud, while Rod Stewart belts “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” from a yellow radio as sturdy as a Tonka truck. They begin sorting: Oyster sizes run from 2-inch “extra-smalls” to hefty 7-inch “larges,” which go mainly for barbecuing, since the meat shrinks as it cooks. Every now and then a “cowboy” will land on the table, a 1-pound monster about a foot long. One of them can feed four, and forget about slurping—you need a knife and fork.
Some oysters have fragile rims, and these the twins grind against the table. Bits of shell fly everywhere. “Roughing them up makes them better,” Neal says. Those oysters will go back into the water to build up another layer of shell, creating deeper bottom cups—and filling them out with plumper, more luscious bodies. Morro Bay Oyster Company tends three-quarters of a million oysters each year, all by hand.
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The oyster as eco hero
Neal tells me why he likes raising them while—snick, snick—he pops open a few more oysters to taste. For lowly mollusks, they’re pretty impressive. They don’t eat ground-up fish the way other farmed seafood, like salmon, do. Being filter feeders, all they need is plankton, a floating buffet of microorganisms already in the water. This makes oysters not only cheap to raise but also harmless to other species.
What’s more, their industrious filtering clarifies the bay, which makes for cleaner water and gives eelgrass the light it needs to grow. There’s a big patch of eelgrass just a few hundred yards away from the platform, in fact. It buffers the shoreline from erosion, making the water that much purer.
I can see how rewarding it might be to raise something that tastes good and gives back. But it’s a lot of work dealing with winches and a floating dock, and shaking bags that weigh up to 100 pounds each, whenever the tide is low, day or night. What would possess a person to want such a life? “My office is Mother Nature,” Neal says. “We see these sunsets and sunrises. Sometimes I’m out at midnight, harvesting oysters, and the winds die down and there’s a full moon—it’s like it’s neon.” | 5,488 | 2,714 | 0.00039 |
warc | 201704 | Himalaya Clarina Anti-Acne Face Wash Gel 60ml :- Action
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Neem (Nimba) is especially beneficial for skin disorders like eczema and minor skin infections. Neem leaves also eliminate acne-causing bacteria.
Barbados Aloe (Ghrita-kumari) has potent antibacterial, antiseptic and antifungal properties, which are beneficial in treating skin wounds, allergies and insect bites. Aloe has soothing properties which relieve dryness and itching.
Turmeric (Haridra) has strong anti-inflammatory properties, which soothe the skin gently. The herb helps to even out skin tone and color, making it an excellent ingredient in a face wash. Turmeric also helps to retain the skin’s elasticity and makes it more supple. Directions for use:
Moisten face. Take a small quantity of Clarina Anti-Acne Face Wash Gel and apply using a gentle circular motion, working up a lather. Rinse well and pat dry.
For best results, use twice daily. Side effects:
Clarina Anti-Acne Face Wash Gel is not known to have any side effects. | 1,454 | 755 | 0.001338 |
warc | 201704 | We’ve lived together in a recessionary economy long enough now for it to have some effect on all of us; that’s a given.
If we put that aggravation aside, and allow whatever difficulty we may be experiencing to just
be (for it is what it is) we can move on to the next effect on our lives. We can make it one that we purposely will affect, being mover and shaker this time, and vowing never to be an unwitting victim again.
I recently came across this quote, transcribed in an interview that Bono, lead singer of U2, had done with
Rolling Stone some time ago:
“I used to think that one day I’d be able to resolve the different drives I have in different directions, the tensions between the different people that I am. Now I realize that is who I am. I do feel I’m getting closer to the song in my head. I wasn’t looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me.”
We can be like Bono
Here is a gift of this recession: Like Bono, you are “able to resolve the different drives [you] have in different directions” too.
You may not be feeling the tension he felt, and you may not feel you are torn between being “different people” in one stretched skin, however you can go for the same release, and the same grace. Instead of a release, you can think of it as a new filling up of your capacity to be more.
Not only can you do this, it is the new expectation of business today. Exciting stuff.
Our potential abundance is Palena ‘ole
I grew up in a generation anticipating that like our parents we would devote our lives to a single career, and that is not at all the case today. It still amazes me that I myself became an example, going from manager (of a couple different incarnations and stripes) to published author and workplace culture coach, and you can bet I’m dreaming up my next career leap (and hoping it includes independent wealth, but you know what? Not a requirement.)
In our
Managing with Aloha workshops, we teach palena ‘ole as the manager’s exponential growth stage. It is about seeing bigger and better leadership dreams come to fruition. We urge managers to think “Legacy” and we help them come up with a plan to create abundance by honoring a four-fold capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Your abundance may no longer be discretionary
“Exponential growth stage.” Used to be this workshop talk about possibility and potential was thought of as extra. It was considered going above and beyond; the next grand adventure of the overly ambitious and optimistically courageous.
Well, what
used to be discretionary may be our new normal; a requirement in the survival of the fittest.
I don’t think the
Alaka‘i leader has much of a choice today. My prediction is that this resolution of “different drives [we] have in different directions” is what will separate the winners from the losers. It is a combination of diversification and reinvention. Will you go there willingly — with grace, or will you keep kicking and screaming against it? If so, you deny your own capacity, however you also may be denying the best opportunity you have ever had.
Is it time for your Alaka‘i Abundance?
(There’s a ring to that I really like!)
I say,
Oh yes, it’s time. It always was. Only question is if you’ll be like Bono, willing to say, “Now I realize this is who I am willing to be.”
For here’s the rub:
If you don’t take the leap to be more than whatever you have been, you aren’t leading today, and you won’t be in the future.
Even our island sky will teach us, “I am more than just blue.”
Aouli: The skies and “blue vault of heaven” (Pukui-Elbert) Let’s talk story; I’d love to hear from you. My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting] Each Tuesday I write a leadership posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at The Honolulu Advertiser. The edition here on Talking Story is revised with internally directed links, and I can take a few more editorial liberties. One person — I prefer using the word managers — will do both things; manage and lead: Leadership is Why and When, and Management is What and How. We explore the management side of the coin each Thursday. You might ask, “What’s in it for me?” Very good! For I think of that as A Great Self-Leadership Question. | 4,458 | 2,165 | 0.000492 |
warc | 201704 | House and Senate address concerns about hospital Medicaid funding
The House and Senate have compromised on how much money to put toward hospital Medicaid funding, allaying many of the concerns raised by safety net hospitals.
Under the compromise, an extra $88 million will be added to the pot of money used to pay all of the state's hospitals. Initially, the Senate had proposed no extra spending.
The Senate also backed down from its position that counties that use local taxes to draw down extra federal dollars should share almost half of their windfall with the rest of the state. Under the compromise, those counties only have to share 10 percent of their additional federal funding statewide.
Tony Carvalho, President of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, said he won't know for sure how this impacts individual hospitals out until budget negotiators finalize the actual allocation formula. But the compromise reached today is a positive sign, he said.
"The formula that I believe that they've agreed to on DRG's would protect safety net hospitals," he said. "Again the disappointment is any diversion of the local tax money, but its 20 percent of what could have been a worst-case scenario."
Last year, the Legislature directed the state Agency for Health Care Administration to create a new system that pays hospitals flat fees based on Medicaid patients' actual ailments and treatment. This diagnosis-related group model -- or DRG -- is similar to how the federal government reimburses providers under Medicare.
Under the existing system, hospitals are paid based on the length of a patient's stay.
Safety net hospitals blasted the final proposal that AHCA sent to the Legislature, saying that the needies hospitals lost funding while for-profit hospitals saw increases. When the Senate and House each make tweaks, safety net hospitals praised the House proposal and blasted the Senate's.
Senate budget chief
Joe Negron, R-Stuart, said his chamber agreed to the compromise because he wanted to make sure children's hospital funding didn't suffer under the new formula.
"We were doing our best to recognize the same factors that the House had in making sure that in this transition period that our children's hospitals would still have the funding that they need to complete their mission," Negron said. | 2,340 | 1,144 | 0.000881 |
warc | 201704 | Q: A friend was negotiating to buy a condo. He offered $670,000. The seller countered with $697,000. My friend thought about it overnight and decided to pass on that condo and look at some other properties. Later that day his agent called and told him the seller had accepted his offer of $670,000. Is this legal? What if my friend had made a successful offer on another property? Would he still have been obliged to buy the first condo? A: Your friend probably got a good deal. The seller obviously wanted to sell and did not want to lose your friend as a buyer.
In your friend's situation, he offered $670,000 and the seller counteroffered with $697,000. That counteroffer legally eliminated your friend's offer, so had he signed a contract for another property, he would not be liable to this seller.
Suppose, instead, that the buyer made an offer that the seller subsequently accepted without counteroffering. Unless your friend had formally withdrawn his offer, a strong argument can be made that they have a binding contract, even if your friend had entered into a contract on another property.
That's why it's a good idea to say that an offer is valid for a finite period of time — until 6 p.m. the next day, or for 48 hours after presentation by the agent, or whatever seems appropriate. Typically contracts say that "time is of the essence." It's in everyone's interest to put time limits on offers so both sides move a deal along or agree to walk away and things aren't left to drift.
Mortgages have financial benefits Q: I'm hearing a lot right now about how owning is more expensive than renting, especially given the recent real estate downturn. But, no one ever discusses the positive tax consequences of owning. My husband and I would be paying close to $20,000 additional income tax each year without the mortgage interest deduction. (We wouldn't be able to itemize deductions without it.) Am I missing something, or is it just that for many people the mortgage interest doesn't make as much of a difference in their tax bill? A: You have raised a very significant issue: Should you get a mortgage or pay all cash when you buy a house?
I have to disagree with your statement that no one ever discusses the tax consequences of ownership. On the contrary, most financial columnists — and all of the mortgage lenders — tout the benefits of being able to deduct your mortgage interest when you file your annual income tax return.
Rarely do I read about the benefits of paying cash for your house.
In my opinion, it makes no sense to own your house free and clear unless you have enough money stashed away and are comfortable that you will be able to financially cope with emergencies that may arise in the future. You do not want to be house rich and cash poor.
Let's face it, however. If, for example, you are in the 28 percent tax bracket, for every dollar that you pay in interest to your mortgage lender, only 28 cents is deductible. The remaining 72 cents is just coming out of your pocket.
But, as you suggest, if you did not have this deduction you would not be able to itemize. That's one clear advantage.
Perhaps the most significant advantage is that the money you have invested in your house is just dead equity. If your house appreciates in value, it would do so regardless of the amount of your equity. If your house depreciates, the equity is also going to go down.
Why not use this cash for other purposes? Travel, buy furniture, or just put it in a safe, insured investment for that rainy day.
Benny Kass can be reached at benny@inman.com. | 3,598 | 1,709 | 0.00059 |
warc | 201704 | During the 2010/2011 NHL season, Patrick Kane played right winger for the Chicago Blackhawks, wearing number 88. He reportedly had a salary of $6,500,000. The total team salary for the Chicago Blackhawks was reportedly $62,502,857, so his salary was about 10.4% of the team's total reported payroll. The median salary for a player on the Chicago Blackhawks was $1,125,000. The average salary was $2,604,285. During the 73 games that he played that season, he scored 27 goals and had 46 assists - a total of 73 points. If we divide his reported salary by the number of games played, we find he earned $89,041.10 per game played. Patrick Kane had a plus/minus of 7, 28 PIM (penalties in minutes), 5 PP (power play goals), 0 SH (short-handed goals), 2 GWG (game winning goals), and took 216 shots. He had a shooting percentage in the 2010/2011 season of 12.50%. If we want to evaluate his performance strictly on offense, we can divide his salary by the number of goals scored, as well as by the number of points (goals plus assists). His salary per goal scored was $240,741 and his salary per point was $89,041.
But then, there are taxes. Each hockey season is played during two calendar years, however, given an annual salary in the U.S. of $6,500,000 we can estimate that he would have to pay $2,250,284 in federal income taxes. That is about the same amount of tax as the tax paid by 276 median high school teachers, 314 median police officers, or 446 median fire fighters. After paying the IRS, he would have $4,249,716 left over. However, he may still have to use some of that money to pay state or city taxes as well.
Author: Mark McCracken is a corporate trainer and author living in Higashi Osaka, Japan. He is the author of thousands of online articles as well as the Business English textbook, "25 Business Skills in English". | 1,840 | 976 | 0.001028 |
warc | 201704 | The government organisation’s executive body is now launching a consultation on European Union roaming charges, claiming that a lack of competition has allowed operators to impose unjustifiably high fees for customers who are travelling outside their home countries.
“Huge differences between domestic and roaming charges have no place in a true EU Single Market,” Neelie Kroes, the EU’s commissioner for the digital agenda said.”We need to address the source of current problems, namely a lack of competition, and to find a durable solution,” she added.
The mobile roaming question has been raging for a good few years now. Viviane Reding moved to try to tackle these problems in 2007 by setting caps on the tariffs mobile phone operators can charge for making a call abroad. She has also lowered the prices of text messages to 10 pence and capped data downloads, which included forcing mobile providers to send out a warning when customers reached a £50 download fee. However, the measures are temporary and due to lapse in June 2012.
Commissioner Kroes, who took over the commission’s digital agenda brief early this year, has set a target to fully eradicate the difference between national call charges and roaming charges by 2015.
The Commission is also seeking the views of telecom operators, business users and consumers to find the best way to achieve that target.
The responses will feed into a review of the EU’s roaming rules that the commission will present to EU governments and the European Parliament in June next year. | 1,586 | 851 | 0.001215 |
warc | 201704 | The Royal Academy of Engineers said torrential downpours, like those experienced in tropical countries, have already been seen in the last few years in Boscastle, Morpeth, Tewkesbury and Crewkerne.
As temperatures rise due to global warming the UK will have to be prepared for 'monsoon style' storms by building open drainage ditches beside urban roads, pourous pavements and storing water in reservoirs under car parks.
Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency, said Britain is experiencing a "new kind of rain" in the summer that is putting cities at increasing risk, especially London.
"We’ve been familiar for centuries with rain that comes marching across the country in a curtain, usually from the west, with relatively predictable consequences for everything in its path. That will continue to be the case. But now we are having to come to terms – as well – with rain that falls in huge quantities, all at once, in one place. Lots of it, in a defined area, falling as a deluge. And with climate change, we are likely to see this happening with increasing frequency."
Lord Smith said one in six people in England and Wales are now at risk of flooding.
In a speech to the Insurance Institute of London, he said insurance companies should reduce premiums for households that have taken steps to protect their property and re-build homes in a way that make them resilient to repeat flooding in the future.
Dr Peter Jones, head of the flood and coastal risk management branch of the Welsh Assembly Government, said existing systems had served the UK's cities well in the past, but with extreme rainfall events becoming more common as the climate changes some areas could suffer problems from surface water flooding.
At a meeting at the Royal Academy of Engineers experts from countries like Malaysia, that are more used to dealing with tropical storms, said the UK should look at new ways to prepare for the 'monsoon style' downpours such as allowing floodwater to run through certain streets. | 2,029 | 1,086 | 0.000934 |
warc | 201704 | People in Britain will spend more time consuming media on their desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones than they will on their televisions in 2014, according to a new report.
The average UK adult will spend more than 8.5 hours each day consuming media in 2014. Of that total, 3 hours 41 minutes per day will be spent online, on non-voice mobile activities or with other digital media, according to analyst eMarketer’s estimates, compared to 3 hours 15 minutes watching television.
This shift has been driven primarily by the growth of mobile. While time spent on desktops and laptops is plateauing, time spent with mobile (via smartphone, tablet or feature phone) has come to represent more than half of TV’s share of total media time, as well as nearly half of digital media time as a whole.
This includes simultaneous media consumption – for example, if someone uses a mobile device for an hour while watching television, it counts as an hour for each activity.
"The growth of mobile is the key to this shift, as it continues to drive both digital growth and overall growth of time spent with all media," said eMarketer in its report.
The bulk of mobile time is spent on smartphones, at almost one hour per day, but tablets are not far behind. Feature phones account for relatively little time spent on non-voice mobile activities, since few have robust mobile internet capabilities.
eMarketer said that Smartphone usage is the most important contributor to overall usage because key mobile activities (email, SMS, social networking, mobile games) tend to be time-intensive and because smartphone penetration rates are have sharply increased in recent years.
Video and gaming are two time-intensive activities that are common among tablet users, pushing up the time spent on tablets, but relative to smartphones, tablet use is less common. This year, tablet penetration is expected to reach 38.2 per cent of the total population, well short of smartphone penetration. | 2,001 | 948 | 0.001069 |
warc | 201704 | Popular standards flow from the lowest common denominator.
From Ericsson’s 50 billion node mobile universe to Qualcomm’s 1,000X meme, there’s been no shortage of grand vision for machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity at CES. Meaningful standards are lacking, but at least a consensus seems to be building around what to call it: the Internet of things – IoT.
Since it’ll be using the same, old Internet, there’s no particular worry about how to deliver data from point A to point B, and back again. Work needs to be done on standardising wireless access to networks, including mobile gateways, but that’s a finite problem, both in terms of technological alternatives and the entities that need to agree on them.
The biggest hurdle right now is figuring out a protocol for interaction amongst devices that’s as universally acceptable as hypertext transfer protocol is for human-to-machine interaction.
AllJoyn is a rising contender for that role. Originally developed as an open source project by Qualcomm, it’s now been transferred to the custodianship of the Linux Foundation, which in turn has rolled it into the AllSeen Alliance, whose members…
…will contribute software and engineering resources as part of their collaboration on an open software framework that enables hardware manufacturers, service providers and software developers to create interoperable devices and services. This open source framework allows ad hoc systems to seamlessly discover, dynamically connect and interact with nearby products regardless of brand, transport layer, platform or operating system.
Qualcomm is a premier member, of course, as are LG, Sharp, Panasonic and Haier, all of which are in the business of making dull, reliable and absolutely necessary appliances like refrigerators, dryers and air conditioners. If white goods manufacturers continue to sign on with AllJoyn/AllSeen, it could become the de facto standard for consumer-grade M2M/IoT products by cornering an industry segment that makes a virtue out of short attention spans and long replacement cycles. It could also inject pizzazz into white goods – who knows, the superstar at a future CES could even be a dishwasher, instead of the usual gonzo-sized video screen.
The Linux Foundation has already made inroads into the appliance business with Tizen, bringing Samsung and Intel into the mix, at least on the operating system side. World wide washing, anyone? | 2,486 | 1,315 | 0.000782 |
warc | 201704 | What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation of citizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds? These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly United States together. In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.
Jill Lepore is an associate professor of history at Boston University. She is the author ofThe Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity, which won the Bancroft Prize, Phi Beta Kappa’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ Book Prize, and the New England Historical Association’s Book Award. She is cofounder and coeditor of the Web magazine Common-place (www.common-place.org), and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. | 1,572 | 874 | 0.001192 |
warc | 201704 | You may be able to reduce your taxes if you made certain energy-efficient home improvements last year. Here are some key facts you should know about home energy tax credits.
Non-Business Credit
This credit is worth 10 percent of the cost of certain qualified energy-saving items you added to your main home last year. This includes items such as insulation, windows, doors and roofs.
You may also be able to claim the credit for the actual cost of certain property. This may include items such as water heaters and heating and air conditioning systems. Each type of property has a different dollar limit.
This credit has a maximum lifetime limit of $500. You may use only $200 of this limit for windows.
Your main home must be located in the U.S. to qualify for the credit.
Be sure you have the written certification from the manufacturer that its product qualifies for this tax credit. Companies usually post it on their websites or include it with the product's packaging. You can rely on it to claim the credit, but do not attach it to your return. Keep it with your tax records.
This credit expired at the end of 2013. You may still claim the credit on your 2013 tax return if you didn't reach the lifetime limit in prior years.
Residential Credit
This tax credit is 30 percent of the cost of alternative energy equipment installed on or in your home.
Qualified equipment includes solar water heaters, solar electric equipment and wind turbines.
There is no dollar limit on the credit for most types of property. If your credit is more than the tax you owe, you can carry forward the unused portion of this credit to next year's tax return.
The home must be in the U.S. It does not have to be your main home.
This credit is available through 2016.
Use Form 5695, Residential Energy Credits, to claim these credits. For more on this topic, refer to the form's instructions. You can get it on IRS.gov or order it by mail by calling 800-TAX-FORM (800-829-3676). | 1,978 | 970 | 0.001039 |
warc | 201704 | MEDIA The News: A User's Manual ALAIN DE BOTTON HAMISH HAMILTON, $29.99
The problem with the news is that, as often as not, it isn't. What the news is, and this is beyond contest, is ubiquitous.
We are living in an information age, a time so exhaustively documented across the many platforms of legacy media and the modern online, that an entire world of pseudo news has had to be created to fill the space so suddenly and overwhelmingly available. The real news of significant lives, things and events is no longer enough.
How this happened, when this happened and why this happened - the key questions of journalism beside ''what?'' - are not the chief concerns of Alain de Botton in his pithy
The News: A User's Manual.
Confronted, like the rest of us, by a world of news slowly creeping beyond 24/7 to some place outside the very fabric of time that might accommodate even more sex, death and Miley Cyrus, de Botton is here to help. He is here, in his preferred guise of consoling philosopher companion, to offer clues to a better and more confident understanding of our shared media morass.
And what he has done is good in parts. Good if it only makes us stop to consider the sudden enveloping thickness of the surrounding news fog. The change has come imperceptibly. But it's no less real for its slow, rolling boil.
We are the most informed people in history. As de Botton puts it: ''For most of history, news was so hard to gather and expensive to deliver, its hold on our inner lives was inevitably kept in check. Now there is almost nowhere on the planet we are able to go to escape from it.''
This must change us, and in ways we may be slow to comprehend. De Botton aims first to introduce us to the very idea of this enveloping transformation, and then give clues, across the various and endlessly repeated subject categories of news, to how we might best navigate this new and subtly toxic environment.
His argument is that of a sometimes quite giddy optimist, a firm believer that ultimately we might be able to shape this info-environment for the common good: ''This project has a utopian dimension to it. It not only asks what news currently is; it also tries to imagine what it could one day be.''
The evidence suggests that it might one day be unthinkably worse, with our culture, our thinking, our inner selves done much damage as a consequence.
De Botton would doubtless argue that the best way to avoid that sort of degenerative information nightmare is through first acknowledging the problem and then asserting what power we might have to change it.
And there may be something in that, though truly to acknowledge the extent of the problem we need to consider not only the sudden inescapable quantum of news but also the circumstances that govern its creation.
It is significant that news is also business - a point that de Botton does not acknowledge - that the constant stream of celebrity drivel, polemic and stealthily traumatising tragedy that is the constant backdrop to our modern, ceaselessly connected lives, is produced for commercial gain.
It is there not so much because we demand it, but because in our demand there is also profit. And that distorts the nature of the product, turning modern news, through some twist of our mutual compulsive behaviour, into a daily exploration of the darker facets of human nature; our absorption in our selves, or in the imagined fabulousness of celebrity artifice; our fascination with the ghastly and grotesque; with cruelty, with greed, with destructive force and manipulative power.
Look at what fills the TV news, study the pages of the Mail Online, or any other major news website. How much of that content falls outside those narrow categories?
And we have to ask, as de Botton does, what might slowly become of us if this distorted world view becomes entrenched as a received and accepted reality, if our perception of the world is conditioned by the alternately grim, grisly and vapidly superficial world of news.
We ought to worry. And we ought to worry most because it is that guiding commercial imperative that will leave this new environment almost impervious to change.
De Botton suggests, for example, that the best counter to the vast stupid emptiness of celebrity coverage is to invest in a better class of celebrity.
''The interest that currently latches on to details of celebrities' clothes or diet should be channelled towards a project of growth. In the ideal news service of the future, every celebrity story would at heart be a piece of education: an invitation to learn from an admirable person about how to become a slightly better version of oneself.''
Well, he did say utopian.
De Botton does, however, have the great virtue of practising what he preaches. His website The Philosophers' Mail offers an alternative universe to that created by
The Daily Mail version, a world in which he takes and then elevates tabloid subject matter through thoughtful introspection. Here, for example, you can read ''Paedophile rapist Stuart Hall's wife leaves him after fresh rape charges: now let's try to get into his mind.'' It's a novel twist and a project de Botton approaches with serious intent.
Which is all well and good, and filling a happy niche need, but the truth of news lies elsewhere, with the half-dozen individuals and corporate entities who determine the content of the news and have studied our tastes and dark desires. And they have found us vulnerable to their product. Needy. They know us well enough to know what we will consume, constantly. They will maintain the diet.
The sad accompanying truth is that in a world of challenge to the business models of media, it is the trivial, the hateful and the ugly that are winning out, and finding favour and markets.
We might live in the era of information, but we also live in the era in which tabloidism became the accepted standard, in which the declining income available from niche interests - some of them quite lofty and ennobling - was overwhelmed by the greater earning capacity of mass taste, taste that in a financially virtuous circle could be directed through constant formulaic repetition to achieve a sustainable flow of readership and revenue. That's the dark truth of modern news, that the good stuff, the enriching stuff - that celebrates either knowledge, virtue or higher human values - is overwhelmed by the stuff that pays its way.
In coming to an understanding of these realities, or getting a sense of the distorted image of the world they impose upon us, de Botton's book is certainly helpful. It provokes a curiosity: ''a little manual that briefly tries to communicate a habit that, at present, has come to seem a bit too normal and harmless for its own good.''
And he's right, just a little too normal, but a long way from harmless.
Think for a moment on the flattening perspective of modern news, a trick of presentation that reduces the most grievous and heart-rending of circumstances to level pegging with the latest publicity-seeking inanities of fabulous nobodies.
Think too about the cumulative effect of our exposure to the troubling and traumatic, of how many deaths, injuries and horrors all of us have seen now, sights and stories that once would have burdened only the intimately involved, but now quietly curse all of us.
Think too, on the way news distorts public debate and the policy agenda through short-termism, bias and determined self-interest.
And wonder how any of this might end well.
Jonathan Green presents Sunday Extra on ABC Radio National. His The Year My Politics Broke is published by Melbourne University Press. | 7,656 | 3,685 | 0.000273 |
warc | 201704 | Reflect, for a second, on the spaces on campus that have earned their way into your heart. Maybe it’s a fraternity, a religious center, a cultural center or even a college house.
Penn has invested heavily to ensure that students of all walks of life have a place to call home.
Du Bois College House used to be one of these places. It was created in 1972 through the Afro-American Studies program and the Du Bois residential program, which occupied two floors.
The idea was spearheaded by then-sophomore Cathy Barlow. Barlow and three white male students planned a major sit-in at College Hall to protest the rising attrition rates amongst black students and the University’s encroachment into the West Philadelphia community, which was jeopardizing its black residents.
Penn has come leaps and bounds in recognizing the need to support students of color. In addition to creating Du Bois, it departmentalized the Africana Center as well as establishing the African-American Resource Center and Makuu — the black cultural center.
Since its inception, Du Bois has been a welcoming place for students interested in learning more about the black community. But the house also used to be an incubator for progressive leaders and social innovators, giving rise to projects like the Ase Academy, an academic and cultural enrichment program for secondary students in Philadelphia.
2002 College graduate and Africana studies professor Tanji Gilliam, who lived in Du Bois during its heyday, made it the center of her academic and social life on campus.
“Whether it was having [New Spirit at Penn gospel choir] practice, seeing groups such as the Onyx Senior Honor Society holding meetings, Greek organizations such as Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. having annual events in the multi-purpose room, to having classes run by faculty masters in the seminar rooms — Du Bois truly was a home,” she said.
In recent years, however, Du Bois has lost its spark.
When it was time for me to apply for housing as a freshman, I got in touch with a few residents of Du Bois to learn more about living there. To my surprise, they urged me to live elsewhere.
With such a deep history and continued commitment to Afro-American history, what could stop me from living in the house?
The upperclassmen explained how, over the years, Du Bois had become a restrictive place to live. Residents felt the need to constantly mind their behavior, which created a subdued atmosphere.
It seems like not much has changed, according to College senior Adrienne Edwards, who lived in the house during her first three years.
“I find the policies of Du Bois to be exponentially oppressive because they are rooted in creating the best external appearance of the College House,” she said.
Edwards added, “there is nothing more strangling, as a black student at Penn, than being constantly reminded of and having to adjust your behavior for an external eye that you can seemingly never please.”
Du Bois House Dean Trish Williams, who has overseen the house since 2001, explained that she strives to “create a comfortable space, one that is not rowdy and disrespectful.”
“My job is to make this an environment of learners, of scholars,” she added.
But scholastic excellence and a communal atmosphere should not be mutually exclusive. Perhaps Du Bois need not function solely as an extension to the classroom. Its residents, like all other residents of college houses, are multifaceted individuals with interests and passions that extend beyond their textbooks.
That’s not to say that residents are unhappy. According to Faculty Master Rev. William Gipson, “a quick glance at the College House Survey reveals that this is in fact a welcoming space.”
But this assertion stands in contrast to the findings by the Perception of Undergraduate Life and Student Engagement survey in 2009 which reveal that 36 percent of black students were not comfortable on this campus.
Given Du Bois’ historical significance, it seems like a natural place to begin understanding the root of this problem. Alternative spaces, such as Makuu, have become less viable this year, as the center has been temporarily relocated to a cramped space with limited hours of operation to accommodate renovations of the ARCH building.
The house can rise to the occasion and reinvent itself as a nurturing space for the black community: one that welcomes distinguished alumni, faculty from the Africana Studies Department and major speakers on black thought. It can bridge Makuu, the West Philadelphia community and a multiplicity of cultures and communities.
As Du Bois celebrates its 40th anniversary, we should strive to spark a renaissance. We owe it to the likes of Cathy Barlow.
Aya Saed is a College senior from Washington, D.C. Her email address is saed.aya@gmail.com. “Seeds of Reason” appears every other Friday. Follow her on Twitter @_AyaS Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian. | 5,072 | 2,461 | 0.000417 |
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Manage Money: How to Set Financial Goals
A favorite topic of discussion here at TGMC is how to help schools reach their financial goals. In fact, we have a pretty good average with over 88% of our clients meeting, or exceeding, their fundraising goals!
A large part of managing money, whether for a PTO group or for your own finances, is learning how to set goals that are 1. Achievable and 2. Logical.
For instance, a goal of saving $10 each week is more than reasonable for most of us, but does it make sense? Will it provide for what you need in the long run?
We’re lucky to have learned what really works when it comes to setting financial goals and reaching them, and we want to share these best practices with you!
The following tips are for individuals looking to better manage their money in the New Year. If you’re a PTO leader and want tips on setting financial goals for your next fundraiser, we have excellent guides in our Event Toolbox! Shoot us an email for a free tour and to learn more about these great resources.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind...
Making a resolution to better manage your money and set achievable financial goals is great, but keep in mind that this is one commitment that will take time and follow through. Part of staying on track is making sure you take the tips we give you and amend them to fit your needs, budget, and personal goals. We have helped a ton of schools reach their goals, but we've also worked very closely with them to guide and advise them on their journey.
Since we can't hold your hand each step of the way, we want to make sure that you keep a few things in mind as you continue into this new year as smart money managers!
How to Set Goals for Big Purchases
Ok, so what is it? A TV? Laptop? Car? House? Swimming pool and hot tub? Whatever big purchase that you've been dreaming about, just promise us that you will take your credit cards and lock them up or freeze them in blocks of ice before you're tempted to make an impulse buy.
Big purchases are not off limits, by any means! But, we want to show you that saving wisely is a much better option than going out and getting that dream item right away. Don't believe us? Check out these facts & figures that might change your mind:
We could all do with a bit more saving and a bit less impulse purchasing with credit cards.
Take the Time to Think about It
This may seem like the obvious first step to making a big purchase, but we also know how easy it is to get sucked into a sale without take the time to really think it over. So, to begin we suggest asking yourself the "because" question. "I need/want a new refridgerator because our old one is falling a part and leaking" or " I need/want a new car because my kids put pennies in the vent and now the heat won't work...plus it's old and smells like an ash tray."
These are fine reasons for purchasing a big item! But, if you ask the "because" question and can think of nothing else other than "because I want it" then maybe consider if there's anything else that is more deserving of your hard-earned money.
Next, we recommend planning out what you want (in detail) rather than buying the first car/refridgerator/TV you see. This means laying out some criteria such as special features, color, size, and, of course, price. If you go into the it with a game plan, and stick with it, then you are much more likely to feel good about your purchase even after spending all that dough.
Lastly, and if necessary, do a pros and cons list between some of the items you've picked out. If you're deciding between the cheaper mini van and the shiny new SUV, doing a pros and cons list may help you realize that what you need actually outweighs what you want (or vice versa!).
So, to review, here's what to do before you even begin thinking about the money planning stage:
Break It down into Achievable Parts
If you are purchasing an item that will require a loan or payments in monthly installments (like a car, boat, or big home appliance) then it is a great idea to break the price down into payable parts. First, make sure you have enough for the down payment (this means saving until you reach that amount, not dipping into your nest egg or emergency fund). Then, make sure you will have enough in the months to come to make that regular payment. This means going over what you earn and what expenses you regularly have, including bills and budgets for things like food, gas, clothes, etc.
If you have enough saved for the down payment and your income will support the monthly payments, then you can really consider the big purchase. If not, we advise you to either hold off and continue to save until it is feasible, or to consider an alternative (i.e., getting the cheaper car or the not-so-fancy washing machine & dryer).
By the way, if you really are considering getting a car and you want help with figuring out an approximate monthly payment, Cars.com has a great calculator available for you to use.
Ease Yourself Into the Payments
Once you have calculated what you will need to pay each month, take the next few months to take that amount from each paycheck and put it into yout savings. This will basically kill two birds with one stone! First, it will allow you to save up for the down payment. Secondly, it will get you used to making that payment each month to pay off your loan. This gives you time to adjust your budget and your mentalitiy about having to make that monthly payment!
If you have decided that you aren't going to need a loan and that making the big purchase really just comes down to putting enough away until you can afford it, then we recommend using a similar tactic. Take the large amount that you will need to pay and break it down into monthly amounts. For instace, if you're going to be spending $10,000 on a used car and you already have $5,000 saved, take the next 3 months to put away approximately $500 each week into your savings account. But, the trick is to treat it like a bill, like something you have pay. In this way, you are less tempted to use that $500 on other, more immediate expenses and using a credit card when you could have just taken the time to save up gradually.
How to Set Goals for Long-Term Saving
One thing we want to highlight before jumping into this section: Write down your goals! Long-term saving goals, short-term goals, goals for big purchases, even goals for other things like losing weight or being a better leader or cleaning the house regularly. If you write something down it is much more likely to stay on your mind and keep you on track!
Ok, now that we got that out of the way, let's go over a few ground rules about setting goals for long-term savings:
As you begin or continue the journey toward long-term saving, remember: You can do it, just keep movin' and you will reach your goals!
Savings Accounts 101
Saving money for long-term needs and wealth means a lot more than stuffing bills in your mattress. Long-term savings need to be kept in the right type of account at your bank and, if possible, divided based on what is saved for emergencies and what is saved for long-term goals. Here are some helpful tools for finding accounts that are a good fit for you, based on high savings rates and interest amounts (money you earn from the bank);
Lose the Debt and Save the Little Stuff
Trying to save money for the long-term while in debt is like trying to climb a tree when you're stuck in a hole. With student loans, mortgages, and the price of transportation it's hard to avoid debt nowadays. But, it is something that needs to be overcome before starting to think about saving long-term. Getting out of debt requires its own blog post, but we can point you in the right direction by telling you to think about your debt like you'd think about a huge purchase. If you have $15,000 in student debt, start by breaking it into manageable pieces that you can pay off in chunks.
Also, it's always good to start with your smaller debts and work your way to the big ones. In this way, you can begin to pay off some of your loans completely rather than trying to tackle everything at once and prolonging some debts that could be paid off sooner.
Another good practice is to save the little stuff. By this we mean the change floating around in your back pocket, the wad of cash collecting dust on your dresser, the coupons clipped and forgotten, etc. Saving smaller amounts of cash and using it for things like food, entertainment, unexpected pharmacy runs, and the like will keep you from grabbing the credit or debit cards and help you on your way to saving long-term.
How to Set Everyday Goals
Maybe this section should be titled "how to save money everyday." Each day is like a building block for our larger goals, whether those are long-term or for big purchases. So each day we should be following through with those goals in small ways, like using a reusable mug at Starbucks to save on paying for a cup or buying refurbished electronics rather than brand new.
We can't really tell you what your everyday goals should be, because that's really up to you and dependent on your habits, activities and schedule. But, we do have some general tips that we think will help you with managing your money throughout the day.
Budget, Budget, Budget
Oh, did we mention you should budget? Budgeting is the number one way to make sure you are spending your money wisely each and every day. Basically all you need to do is take your total income, subtract out monthly bills and money set aside for savings or long-term goals, and, with the rest, divide it up into budget categories. So, put aside money for food, entertainment, clothes, gifts, school supplies, cleaning materials, etc. The categories are really up to you.
The point is that you are being conscious of where you money is going each month and you are tracking how much you spend on each category so that you don't go over your alloted budget.
There's an App for That
There are some great digital tools out there for helping you save money everyday. These apps are customized to fit you and your lifestyle, plus we think they're actually pretty fun!
Keep it Fun – Turn Your Goals into Personal Bets
When you are constanty focused on those big money-saving goals, the everyday savings can get tiresome. It will feel like you are never going to reach the finish line and it will be tempting to get out of the race altogether. But, we have a different idea. How about turning your everyday goals in personal challenges or bets? Make it fun! There's no one saying that managing money has to be burdensome, so let's spice it up a bit.
For instance, instead of going out and buying dinner or ordering take-out, make it a challenge for yourself that at least 3 times a week you will make up a concoction from whatever you have in the fridge. This way, you are saving money and having fun doing it (especially if you get the family involved!). Another fun one is the jar challenge. Get yourself a jar, or mug, or water cooler if you're ambitious and each day fill it with cash or change. When it's full us that money to treat you and your family to something fun! It may not be going toward your big goals but it will keep you in the habit of saving money before spending it. | 11,411 | 5,158 | 0.000195 |
warc | 201704 | Saeed Ali Shah's first conversation with a foreigner came in the aftermath of the earthquake that ravaged his valley in 2005. Aid workers replacing ruined houses passed over Mr. Shah's remote village, figuring it would be impossible to carry building materials up the narrow mountain path to his settlement.
But Mr. Shah needed a home, so he travelled 170 kilometres to the charity's headquarters in Islamabad. The devout Muslim didn't know that the aid group, Church World Service, describes itself as "embodying the love of Jesus Christ." All he knew was that a Westerner listened to him carefully, and soon afterward his family received one of the best houses in his village, with a tin roof and a flush toilet.
"Our respect for the foreigners has increased a lot," he said.
The cultural transformation in these craggy reaches of northern Pakistan, driven by foreign assistance in the wake of the earthquake, offers a unique case study for understanding so-called "hearts and minds" efforts in the Muslim world. The international community spends billions to bridge the gap between East and West, trying to suck the oxygen from conflicts in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the fires of extremism are spreading.
But who knows whether the money changes anybody's mind? The only known academic study of the subject, a widely overlooked World Bank survey of the earthquake zone, suggests that aid delivered on the ground by foreigners can radically change local views of the outside world.
I visited the village of Suwan near the fault line in 2005, 2006 and 2010 and have witnessed firsthand the community, isolated for centuries, opening up to new ideas. The villagers' stories suggest that a massive aid influx - however messy, corrupt and disruptive of old traditions - can hasten the integration of a rural backwater with the rest of society.
It's a hopeful conclusion at a time of skepticism about the aid industry. Some donors are reluctant to help Pakistan rebuild after this summer's devastating floods, worried the aid won't make a dent in extremism. In tribal areas, some flood victims accepted food shipments but ripped away the packaging so they could burn the U.S. flags printed on the wrappers.
Relief workers faced similar problems after the quake five years ago, when they hiked into remote corners of northern Pakistan. One organization sent a team of young staffers who ended their workdays sitting around a campfire together, drinking alcohol, wearing shorts and T-shirts that locals found unsettling. Village elders asked them to leave, and as a consequence, the aid group has banned alcohol from its field operations in Pakistan.
Such friction did not stop the villagers from rethinking their views of Westerners. A survey published as a working paper by the World Bank made what the authors describe as the first-ever attempt to correlate aid with trust. Published in September, "In Aid We Trust: Hearts and Minds and the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005" parses questionnaires from 2,800 households in northern Pakistan and concludes that trust in foreigners declines six percentage points every 10 kilometres from the fault line. In other words, those touched by the disaster had far more positive opinions of the outside world.
The quake gave researchers an unusually pristine laboratory for statistical analysis of the attitude shift, because the fault traced a jagged line through remote, forbidding terrain; those affected were just as likely to be isolated and mistrustful as their unaffected neighbours on the opposite ridge.
"There's a growing pessimism about aid, saying it doesn't work," said Tahir Andrabi, a development economist at Pomona College in California who co-authored the study. "But we're arguing that your dollar can make a difference, can affect mindsets."
The Red Cross and several of the biggest disaster response agencies agreed on a voluntary code of conduct in 1994, forbidding themselves from using aid to "further a particular political or religious standpoint," and such rules are usually obeyed with extreme strictness in Pakistan for the sake of avoiding provocation.
Foreigners often cheer quietly, however, at the cultural byproducts of their work. A female medical staffer helping flood victims in the southern province of Sindh described with amazement how the disaster had forced some local women to leave family compounds for the first time in their lives, breaking ancient custom.Report Typo/Error
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warc | 201704 | A guest post from Larry Vertal, a Principal with the Enterprise Business Solutions group of Fujitsu America, a member of Fujitsu’s Global Sustainability Team and Founding Director of The Green Grid.
The drive to green computing is a business necessity, not an option. Those that ignore it do so at their peril.
IT has become central to the competitiveness of most corporations. But with the cost of energy to run data centres and the rest of the IT infrastructure likely to exceed the cost of the equipment, IT is a huge and growing corporate cost centre.
The possibility of CAPEX IT investments becoming smaller than the OPEX energy costs is a sobering thought and an issue which, if not addressed, threatens the competitive position of a company. Stopping this OPEX spiral is a green computing issue because the resource footprint of IT is an efficiency issue, which is part of green computing.
Yet most companies lack hard data and metrics to understand where to focus, much less to enable, a strategy for fast ROI. This is compounded by disconnects between IT, Operations and the C-level management, which result in excessive OPEX.
You can’t start addressing a problem without knowing where you are. And you can’t manage what you don’t measure. From addressing a company’s data centres to the entire scope of corporate IT, from servers to PCs, action needs to begin with fact, data driven analysis and metrics to set the baseline for tangible improvements and measured returns.
A well-designed assessment methodology for all of an enterprise’s IT, or one more narrowly focused on client devices or data centres, is essential. It sets the basis for an on-going Sustainable IT Framework that targets cost, energy, resource and operational optimization.
A metrics-driven, formal assessment makes obvious both the actions that can offer rapid benefit and provides the justification to the C-Suite for undertaking them. Without such an approach it is easy to miss low hanging fruit.
For example, in data centres the magnitude of the benefits of changes in thermal airflow, power layouts, temperature and humidity set points are often not understood, or cannot be justified, without a formal assessment. Additionally, an analysis can also make clear the value of projects focused on server consolidation, server replacement, virtualization and cloud computing, which all tend to be another side of green IT.
It is not unusual for such assessments to identify 30% or greater savings in data centre energy costs, with ROI’s as short as six months. And in the case of office and PC equipment, where typically desktops, printers and other devices can account for 40% of the office power bill, 50% reductions can be achieved through proper power management.
While optimizing IT OPEX, these types of savings also release previously trapped capital for investments to further increase the competitiveness of a company. And in some cases the savings can reduce or defer previously planned CAPEX for a data centre expansion or new build.
This is a competitive advantage and one reason why green computing is a business necessity.
Of course focusing on energy also addresses greenhouse gases, one of the key components in a corporation’s environmental footprint, as the generation of the electricity has a significant carbon footprint. And while energy efficiency is the chief area of focus for many companies today, there are other variables such as water, waste and lifecycle management which are part of a comprehensive green computing stewardship.
Indeed for many multinational corporations in particular a full corporate wide Sustainable IT Framework which includes on-going measurement and metrics is already a business requirement. Deeper understanding, measurement and reporting are often required to comply with current or emerging carbon regulations or taxes. And for companies of all sizes, demands by customers for environmental reporting by suppliers are becoming the norm.
Be it driven by energy or cost optimization to support a corporations competitiveness or by the need to comply with regulations or customer requirements, those that wish to keep their companies and organizations from withering have no option but to implement green computing. | 4,306 | 2,033 | 0.000498 |
warc | 201704 | Teach Yourself Complete Irish - Book and 2 Audio CDs
Book and 2 Audio CDs
Are you looking for a complete course in Irish which takes you effortlessly from beginner to confident speaker? Whether you are starting from scratch, or are just out of practice, Complete Irish will guarantee success! Now fully updated to make your language learning experience fun and interactive. You can still rely on the benefits of a top language teacher and our years of teaching experience, but now with added learning features within the course and online. The course is structured in thematic units and the emphasis is placed on communication, so that you effortlessly progress from introducing yourself and dealing with everyday situations, to using the phone and talking about work. By the end of this course, you will be at Level B2 of the Common European Framework for Languages: Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
Learn effortlessly with a new easy-to-read page design and interactive features:
NOT GOT MUCH TIME?
One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.
AUTHOR INSIGHTS
Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.
GRAMMAR TIPS
Easy-to-follow building blocks to give you a clear understanding.
USEFUL VOCABULARY
Easy to find and learn, to build a solid foundation for speaking.
DIALOGUES
Read and listen to everyday dialogues to help you speak and understand fast.
PRONUNCIATION
Don't sound like a tourist! Perfect your pronunciation before you go.
TEST YOURSELF
Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.
EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Extra online articles at: www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of the culture and history of Irish.
TRY THIS
Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.
Comprehensive - gives you all you need to understand and speak basic, everyday Irish
Level - suitable for both the complete beginner and the person who wants to brush up rusty 'school' Irish
New features - this edition has an English-Irish vocabulary, a 'Taking it further' section with websites and other sources of Irish, and has been reset in a new, modern page design
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Pronunciation guide
My name is...
I am a teacher
Are you married?
This is...
This is your room
It is fine today
Who does this belong to?
What pastime do you have?
Would you like a cup of tea?
What does this cost?
What did you do?
I haven't seen you for a while
I have been learning Irish for the past two years
I was born in Cork
Keep going half a mile
His office is upstairs
I'll meet you at eight
I think the bank is closed
What do you do?
I used to have a lot to do
Key to the exercises
Appendices
Irish-English vocabulary
English-Irish vocabulary
Grammatical index
About the Author:
Diarmuid O Se is a lecturer at University College, Dublin. He has worked as a secondary teacher and language laboratory instructor and was for many years a researcher at the Linguistics Institute of Ireland. Joseph Sheils is Head of Modern Languages at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. He was previously Head of the Department of Language Pedagogy at the Linguistics Institute of Ireland. He is an experienced teacher, teacher-trainer and curriculum developer.
About the Irish Language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population – mostly in Gaeltacht areas – but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used across the country in a variety of media, personal contexts and social situations. It enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland and it is an official language of the European Union. Irish is also an officially recognised minority language in Northern Ireland.
Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the Republic's population Estimates of fully native speakers range from under 20,000 up to 80,000 people. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated in 2007 that about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in "weak" Gaeltacht communities; Irish was no longer the main community language in the remaining parts of the official Gaeltacht. However, since Irish is an obligatory subject in schools, many more are reasonably fluent second-language speakers. Furthermore, a much larger number regard themselves as competent in the language to some degree: 1,656,790 (41.9% of the total population aged three years and over) regard themselves as competent Irish speakers.
On 13 June 2005, EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an official language of the European Union. The new arrangements came into effect on 1 January 2007, and Irish was first used at a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers, by Minister Noel Treacy, T.D., on 22 January 2007.
Many English-speaking Irish people use small and simple phrases (known as cúpla focal, "a few words") in their everyday speech, e.g. Slán ("goodbye"), Slán abhaile ("get home safely"), Sláinte ("good health"; used when drinking like "bottoms up" or "cheers"), Go raibh maith agat ("thank you"), Céad míle fáilte ("a hundred thousand welcomes", a tourist board saying, also used by President Hillery to welcome Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979) and Conas atá tú? ("How are you?"). There are many more small sayings that have crept into Hiberno-English. The term craic has been popularised outside Ireland in this Gaelicized spelling: "How's the craic?" or "What's the craic'?" ("how's the fun?"/"how is it going?"), though the word is not Irish in origin, and the expression "How's the crack?" was widely used in Ireland since at least the 1960s before the Irish-language spelling "craic" became the common journalistic style.
Bilingual sign in English and Irish in Tesco store, Ballyfermot, Dublin.
Many public bodies have Irish language or bilingual names, but some have downgraded the language. An Post, the Republic's postal service, displays Irish place names in both Irish and English is equal prominence outside its offices and continues to have place names in Irish on its postmarks as well as recognising addresses (as does the Royal Mail in Northern Ireland). Traditionally, the private sector has been less supportive, although support for the language has come from some private companies. For example, Irish supermarket chain Superquinn introduced bilingual signs in its stores in the 1980s, a move which was followed more recently by the British chain Tesco for its stores in the Republic. Woodies DIY now also have bilingual signs in their chain of stores. In contrast, the "100% Irish" SuperValu has few if any Irish signs, and the German retailers Aldi and Lidl have none at all.
In an effort to increase the use of the Irish language by the State, the Official Languages Act was passed in 2003. This act ensures that most publications made by a governmental body must be published in both official languages, Irish and English. In addition, the office of Language Commissioner has been set up to act as an ombudsman with regard to equal treatment for both languages. A major factor in the decline of natively-spoken Irish has been the movement of English speakers into the Gaeltacht (predominantly Irish speaking areas) and the return of native Irish-speakers who have returned with English-speaking partners. This has been stimulated by government grants and infrastructure projects: "only about half Gaeltacht children learn Irish in the home... this is related to the high level of in-migration and return migration which has accompanied the economic restructuring of the Gaeltacht in recent decades". In a last-ditch effort to stop the demise of Irish-speaking in Connemara in Galway, planning controls have been introduced on the building of new homes in Irish speaking areas. Thanks in large part to Gael-Taca and Gaillimh Le Gaeilge and two local groups a significant number of new residential developments are named in Irish today in most of the Republic of Ireland. In several counties there are a large number being named in Irish. | 8,706 | 4,116 | 0.000247 |
warc | 201704 | What would you do if you won the lottery?
Becoming a billionaire overnight is just about anybody’s dream.
The most recent powerball was 1.6 billion dollars, making it the largest powerball ever.
People were cashing in tickets, hoping for a chance to hit the jackpot. Students on campus said that they would want to pay off either student loans, tuition or any outstanding bills if they won the lottery.
While, some students said that they would lend a helping hand to their parents or donate to a worthy cause, others said that they would invest the money and save for their children’s future education.
“I probably would get an apartment and then I would go on a really nice vacation. I would go on a world tour on a yacht and then I’ll buy my own island and relax there,” Molly Gardner, a sophomore nursing major, said.
Before even spending the money, the winner needs to determine how to receive their winnings. After winning the lottery, there are multiple ways to receive the winnings like taking the cash lump sum immediately or getting the annuity over the next 30 years.
“Assuming each of the three powerball winners gets a jackpot of 5million dollars the annuity payments would add up to five hundred million dollars. On the other hand the cash lump sum will be around three hundred ten million which is 62% of the jackpot,” Professor Xiaoqing Xu, professor in the department of finance, said.
If the winner dies before their 30 years of receiving the winnings then the remaining balance will go to their heir or next of kin. Ultimately, the decision to receive one’s winnings in either a lump sum or annuity depends on the risk preference, reinvestment options and life expectancy of the winner.
“Honestly, I would pay off all my tuition and loans. After, I would give the rest to a charity, Doctors Without Borders and what they do is that doctors and medical professionals go to third world countries and give medical assistance. I would want to do that because I see myself doing that one day,” Kevin Kattiandagho, a sophomore nursing major, said. “I would then buy a house and then go to Chiptole.”
Anthony Loviscek, associate professor and chair of the department of finance, said that a great first step would be to set up a budget plan. He added that what many students said they would do, and pay off all of their debts such as car, student and credit card loans, among other things. “One should set aside a good chunk of the money for liquid investments especially for unforeseen emergency expenditures and for one’s retirement,” Loviscek said.
“The best way to keep money safe and be taxed fairly would be donating the windfall profit,” Yeomin Yoon, professor of finance and international business, said.
Alexis Hordge can be reached at alexis.hordge@student.shu.edu | 2,885 | 1,367 | 0.000758 |
warc | 201704 | Microsemi has a longstanding commitment to the space market and has played an important role in hundreds of global initiatives over the past 55 years. The company's high-reliability products are designed for applications that require high levels of radiation hardness, and have been used in trips to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Microsemi's roots date back to some of the earliest rocket programs including the Atlas, Delta and Titan initiatives of the late 1950s, and on through the Agena, Polaris, Poseidon, Mercury and Centaur missions of the early 1960s. The company also played a key role in the Surveyor and Apollo and Saturn Rover missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and during the past two decades has provided enabling technology for the international space station, Mars Rover, Mars Science Lab and Cygnus programs.
With one of the industry's most comprehensive portfolios of space products, Microsemi provides radiation-hardened and radiation-tolerant solutions ranging from diodes, transistors and power converters, to FPGAs, ASICs, RF components, custom semiconductor packaging, and integrated power distribution systems. The company is committed to supporting its products throughout the lifetime of its customers' programs, and delivers ongoing innovations in such areas as semiconductor materials, advanced packaging technologies, and high-density integrated circuits.
Among Microsemi's most noteworthy innovations are radiation-hardening-by-design techniques that protect its FPGAs against single event upset (SEU) radiation effects, as well as process advances using silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) wide band gap materials that have allowed manufacturers to reduce component count, size and weight while providing increased bandwidth and reduced operating temperature. Microsemi also has extensive packaging expertise, including novel technologies for enabling integration of FPGAs into hybrids and multi-chip modules, plus multi-chip system-in-package technology for space-saving, reduced-weight, class K-compliant subsystems.
Product reliability is extremely important to Microsemi and its customers. For instance, the company's products are qualified to the highest government, DLA, NASA and ESA standards, and multiple agencies have independently certified their reliability. Microsemi's RF and microwave devices are all screened to JAN class S requirements, and it's radiation-tolerant FPGAs feature QML qualification to classes Q and Y and have survived more than 26 million device-hours of independent reliability testing. Additionally, Microsemi's Phoenix, Arizona, facility is Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) accredited as a trusted supplier of radiation-tolerant FPGAs, and the location is fully ITAR compliance and includes a DOD secure area.
Microsemi also was the first diode manufacturer selected by the U.S. military services as a supply source to quality product to the highest specified reliability level, and the company has more DLA slash sheet qualifications than any other manufacturer of space-level discrete products. Other examples of the company's commitment to rigorous testing include its radiation-hardened MOSFETs, which undergo single event effect (SEE) testing at Texas A&M University to 85.4MeV using Au ions.
Microsemi solves problems at all stages of design and implementation, including power conversion and distribution, radio and radar signal processing, system telemetry and control, digital logic integration, and semiconductor packaging. The company is committed to helping its customers meet their most difficult space system design challenges.
Electrical Power System | 3,667 | 1,771 | 0.000566 |
warc | 201704 | It blows down dry streets in eddies, dead. It gathers in corners. It forms into rich earth, and out of it sprout tiny seeds. It compacts into warm and rich clay, which can be cut and slammed and shaped by hands and wheel into pots, and bowls and little figures of stout women and tiny men. It blows in the stellar winds in furthest space. It is dust.
We are dust.
Do we read it as promise or as curse? As a cause for humility, or a reassurance? It is a complex image. We are dust, blown around for a moment on one corner of the planet Earth that we call home, and the next become ash and mud. Stand for a moment on any hill, and look down on a road, a city, to see how tiny each figure is in comparison to the great world we live upon. We are specks on the face of a mighty globe. It puts us firmly in our places: all the books published, the families reared, the academic recognition, the wealth earned, the tests passed, the career ladder climbed, all these are as nothing in comparison to the mighty Earth, still less in the face of the universe. Look at the dust eddying down the street. That is the totality of your achievements.
On the other hand, being dust limits our failures. The family row, the declining attendance at our churches, the catch dropped, the dead-end job, the constant grind to make both ends meet, well, that too is dust, insignificant, and unimportant. All of us are so tiny in the sight of the universe that it hardly matters. It is not that it will all be the same in a hundred years. It is all the same now. I struggle to imagine a universe so huge that the pinprick of light I see from my dark hillside, unpolluted by street-lights, is, in fact, an entire galaxy. Stand outside on a clear night and see the glittering dust in the sky and know that what you see as a speck of light is in fact not just a star but a galaxy of stars with their own planets. Let your miseries fall behind you and rejoice in being part of a dance of life so incredibly huge you cannot know all of it, indeed you cannot even imagine it all.
It is hard to believe that we, tiny little specks of dust, set on the face of a planet which is itself a speck in an immense universe, can be of huge value to God. That he can bend near us, and listen to our worries, and our anguish and our delight. Yet that is what we are taught. I pour out my joy for a new lamb born safely to one of my ewes, or my pleas understanding of the next steps that my path of life should follow to God, and this God is the same God who dances on the seas of some planet in that same bright speck of a galaxy. The sheer immensity of it all is what brings me my most agonising moments of doubt.
But then, I am dust. Dust is so limited. Our faith has always known that. As a liberal, I am frequently berated for trying to create a god who fits my limitations. Actually I don’t think I do. When I stand outside on a clear night, and compare myself to a speck in the mud on my wellies, I am acutely aware of the immensity of God. If the sheer scale of it all brings me doubt, it also brings me reassurance. No wonder there is so much I cannot get my mind around. No wonder the pain of the universe puzzles me. I cannot even understand how time and space can be the same thing; at least I cannot understand that intuitively. I know that there must be truths even more profound beyond my reach.
How then to make sense of it all? How to accept my intellectual limitations, and grasp both my lack of stature as dust, and also my belonging to God? I turn to that same One who dances on some distant planet as even now it comes into being, in the curved space/time continuum. Ah, that, then, is the worth God gives to dust: he becomes it. Dust may be limited but it can embody every value of God. My task is simple: to begin on the path of embodying those same values. Did I say simple?Posted by Rosemary Hannah on Wednesday, 13 February 2013 at 6:00am GMT | TrackBack | 3,949 | 1,937 | 0.000518 |
warc | 201704 | There is a very interesting debate taking place on the profitability of options as opposed to the underlying stock. It originates in this post from Ultimi Barbarorum on options volume following the Palm/3Com announcement, and continues in the comments on Felix Salmon's coverage of that post.
The crux of the argument is the spike in options volatility immediately preceding the merger announcement, which many took as a clear sign of insider trading. Baruch argues that options are notoriously volatile, so one spike is hardly a smoking gun, and I agree (see also: superstitions regarding trading on option expiration days). However, I echo Felix in noting that it's very hard, therefore, to draw any conclusion about insider trading whatsoever. Baruch's second point is that if it were insider trading, it was misguided - the insiders could have made more money and attracted far less attention by trading the underlying stock rather than the options. This is where the debate lies - and I confess up front that my immediate impulse was to say "that can't be right." In fact, it could be right, depending on your point of view.
(p.s. hats off to Baruch for introducing his post with "Before the Zero Hedge folks get the pitchforks out, let’s stop and think a bit.")
Baruch writes:
Had someone concrete knowledge of the 3Com deal, it would be far more efficient to buy the stock. The most important of the “Greeks”, as options dudes call the panoply of statistics surrounding options, is “delta”, the rate of change in the value of the option relative to the value of the shares (it’s a function of volatility, time to expiry, a whole lot of stuff, don’t trouble your head), and this is always less than one. 3Com options buyers made far less money on the takeover by buying options than they would if they had bought the stock.
It will be instructive here to discuss delta - I know some of TGR's readers are already familiar with concept, and I hope you will excuse this detour.
"Delta" is a mathematical (as opposed to financial!) derivative of the option formula, as described by Baruch - but it is easier to understand as a "hedge ratio." It tells you how many shares of stock you need to hedge your exposure to an option (I'm going to assume from here on that we are discussing calls). To see why, run back to the math for one second and consider that delta is the amount that the price of the option will rise if the stock price goes up by $1 - ok, now ignore the math. If the option is way in the money and trades at its intrinsic value, then it will gain $1 for every $1 the stock rises - a delta of 1. It the option is at the money, then its as likely about whether it will ultimately pay off at all, and so it only gains $0.50 for every $1 the stock rises - a delta of .5. Thus, if you want to hedge your option exposure, you would short [delta] shares for every option you hold. Delta is always less than 1; no option will gain more than $1 for every $1 the stock price rises.
The key to this delta business is that as long as delta is less than 1, you need to short fewer shares than the amount you control via options in order to hedge your option exposure. Put another way, it takes more options than shares to create the same exposure (on a per-share basis) to the underlying stock. If the stock price moves up, the dollar gain from holding that stock will be greater than the dollar gain from the options, hence the argument that stocks are "far more efficient" than options.
The closing price for COMS on November 10th, the day before the option purchasing frenzy, was 5.41. The $5 November calls cost slightly more than their intrinsic value at $0.55, trading with a delta of 0.72. On November 12th, the stock closed at $7.46, representing a gain of $2.05, whereas the options finished at $2.50, gaining just $1.95. Share for share, the stock outperformed.
However, shares controlled is an poor metric for comparing investments. This is particularly true for options, where you may not know until the day they expire if you actually control those shares or not! Instead, for risk management purposes we think of the number of shares the position is likely to control, given the current state of the world: the probability-weighted number of shares. Unsurprisingly, it's the same as the number of shares it takes to delta-hedge the position. From this observation, a nice property of delta is revealed: it may be roughly interpreted as the probability of an option finishing in the money.
The important philosophical point here is not to make the mistake of thinking that the number of options you buy is equal to the number of shares you own - that's only true the day they mature in the money. To set up the same exposure in options as we have with shares,
at the time of purchase, we need to buy a few extra options. Specifically, for the November calls with a delta of .72, we need 1/.72 or 1.39 options for every share. Run the numbers and you'll see that this results in a final profit of $2.71 on the option side, vs $2.05 for the shares. If an insider bought options on a delta-adjusted share basis, he'd find the options more profitable than the stock.
(If you constantly adjust the number of options to correspond to the prevailing delta, you'll wind up making $2.05 on your options - this process is called dynamic delta-hedging [that's a real aside for this post, because the discontinuity in COMS stock price would make the rebalancing futile].)
So, on the basis of shares-at-maturity, stock yielded a better dollar profit. On the basis of shares-at-trade, options would have been preferable. There's an argument to be made that, as an insider, you
know the options will finish in the money, so shares-at-maturity is the right way to consider it. But there's a third exposure metric: capital at risk.
You can look at capital at risk as either 1) the maximum loss you could experience OR (if you're an insider who knows the trade will be profitable) as the opportunity cost of capital. This is very straightforward to explain: those options only cost $0.55; the stock cost $5.41. The percentage gain on the options is 355%; for the stock it's just 38%. If you consider your exposure in terms of dollars invested, rather than shares controlled, you'd find the options a far better bet: they cost almost 90% less than the stock but return nearly as much per contract! So for every dollar you could put into the stock, you could instead put into options and return 10x as much. Options, from this perspective, are far more effective.
So this all depends on how you look at your risk and exposure. Baruch assumes that his insiders want to control a certain number of shares, and from that perspective they should absolutely have transacted stock instead of options (assuming that, with their perfect knowledge, they skip over the delta-adjust share argument). Personally, I would look at it from a capital at risk perspective - if I'm willing to spend $5.41/share to make $2.05, why not put that to work in options and make $19.18?
It all depends on your perspective - both answers could be correct, given some set of portfolio constraints and different definitions of risk/exposure. | 7,273 | 3,307 | 0.000305 |
warc | 201704 | For many fields these days, to have a great career, the first step is landing an internship. Students can cultivate lasting professional relationships and mentors from the experience, and, with hard work and a bit of luck, the internship can lead to a full-time job offer.
But finding the perfect opportunity is one thing — actually locking it down is another. These days, getting an internship at a top company can be just as competitive as a job hunt.
Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, consistently has one of the top-ranked internship programs in the country. While landing a spot with the social networking site is extremely competitive, feedback from interns is consistent: It boosts self-confidence, and helps create a foundation on which to build a successful career.
"Our intern program is one of the best ways to identify the next generation of Facebook talent,” Hyla Wallis, university programs and operations manager at Facebook, told TODAY.com. Facebook employs more than 1,000 interns annually, and each intern is given a final review before he or she leaves, with a full-time offer depending on performance.
“We want to make sure that every intern that joins has the opportunity for the full-time offer,” said Wallis.
Facebook’s open and creative culture, world-class mentors and opportunity to make real change are a few of the many reasons why its internship program is viewed favorably — it was ranked the No. 1 internship program two years in a row by job-search website Glassdoor.
Instead of performing menial tasks in a "Devil Wears Prada"-like hierarchical structure, Facebook interns are given a chance to have a real impact. For example, the social network's rainbow filter — launched after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide last year — has been used by more than 26 million people around the world. It was created by an intern during one of the company’s hackathons, intensive events during which computer programmers collaborate on software projects.
So what does it take to land an internship at Facebook? “Being persistent around craving knowledge,” Wallis said. “We talk about 'lean-in' circles, surrounding yourself with people who are looking to achieve similar goals as you.”
Another important factor is spreading knowledge. “People who are working in a way to help others grow, TAs (teaching assistants), or work in some capacity where they motivate knowledge share," she said.
Watch Natalie Morales’ frantic day as a Cosmopolitan internPlay Video - 5:27 Watch Natalie Morales’ frantic day as a Cosmopolitan internPlay Video - 5:27 More video Tips to get hired: How to build instant rapport in job interviews How 2 young entrepreneurs transformed theSkimm from dream to reality Meet self-made millionaire Sophia Amoruso, 32 — voice of an empowered generation Hold back? The one quality that can set women apart in the workplace, explained
Even more than that, when it comes to boosting your resume, extracurriculars are key to being noticed. Wallis said they look for candidates who take the initiative to build something, and push the boundaries to make their community better.
Here are some insights from current and former interns on how they landed their internships, and the experience they've gained through the program:
Marion Xu, junior, current software engineer intern
“I have a background in computer science," Xu told TODAY.com. "I got involved and got pretty passionate.”
But it takes more than passion to land a spot in a competitive internship application process. “I prepared a lot for the interviews, looked at a bunch of different resources," she said. "They had a technical challenge so I went online and did practice problems."
Javier Fraire, current software engineer intern
To get in the door at Facebook, Javier Fraire was recommended by a friend. "A few weeks later I was interviewing with Facebook," he said.
Fraire is from Argentina, and is in the middle of his second Facebook internship. Last year, he and his hackathon team presented something they built to Mark Zuckerberg.
"It was definitely one of the best experiences of my life," said Fraire. "The benefits of a hackathon is getting great product ideas. A lot of our products come from hackathons. In fact, this year I worked on a feature during a hackathon that will be shipping in the next few weeks."
Devon Porter, business operations full-time employee, former intern
Devon Porter, who went from Facebook intern to full-time employee, couldn't be happier with his career journey. "Facebook expects their interns to do the same work as a full-time employee," he said. "There’s a lot of responsibility and autonomy given to you on day one, so in a very short period of time you gain a huge amount of hands-on experience." | 4,912 | 2,348 | 0.000439 |
warc | 201704 | Tribridge recently wrapped up our annual company-wide event, Connect 16. Throughout the weekend, the team heard me talk a lot about Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A), and they excitedly confirmed that BI&A was the icing on the cake when we provide solutions for our customers.
The more I thought about it though, the more I came to the realization that BI&A isn't just the icing on the cake. It
is the cake - the whole cake, the rich, beautiful, decadent, glossy, mouth-watering chocolate cake, covered in chocolate ganache and wrapped in chocolate ribbons.
Let me explain. When you look at that eye-popping chocolate cake, it seems like a real indulgence, but an optional one and one that you can easily walk away from. But the more you think about it, the more you begin to realize that this isn't the case. That luscious, enticing chocolate cake is the work of many peoples’ hands: some have raised the chickens and collected the eggs; some have grown corn and milled the flour; and others have harvested the cocoa beans. Then, it was a process of getting the raw materials packaged and transported to the artisan chef to transform these raw materials into an enticing end-product.
This is a remarkable analogy to BI&A.
The raw materials in this case are the data that your organization has collected. You have invested extraordinary amounts of resources in creating, collecting, cleansing and processing this data – data about your customers, your manufacturing or delivery processes, your websites and from social media, as well as many others. You have reviewed the data and prepared it for use by your businesses and stakeholders. Many of your organizations have also transported this data to a common location like a data warehouse, but haven't taken this nearly far enough.
Instead, many organizations have left this data in something close to its raw form - something about as appetizing as a raw egg or a bag of flour. That's very unfortunate, considering all of the raw materials that you have in the form of data, and how a skilled artisan like a chef, can blend those materials and transform them into something magical.
Here's what I mean:
Combine materials: Every business uses some type of raw materials to produce their products or services, but frequently overlook their data as one of those resources. Combine the raw materials mentioned above and you have a much more mouth-watering result. The same can be said when you mash up and combine your data – the results can be very insightful, and much more appetizing than their raw form. Presentation is everything: As good as a decadent chocolate cake might be, unless it is presented well, not many people will try it out. The same can be said for your BI&A solution. As compelling as the data might be, unless you present it in an attractive, well-designed and easily-digestible format, the best you can expect to get is some nibbles and a whole lot of leftovers. Serve the need and consider the appetite: Understand the need and “appetite” of users before embarking on a BI&A effort. Serving a rich chocolate cake when all they want is a crisp kale salad is akin to giving them the best darned dashboards you could envision, when they are struggling to produce a consolidated income statement in a timely manner. Likewise, spending time improving the financial reporting solution when they really need real-time insight into the business is like serving unsalted rice cakes with candles at a birthday party – very un-filling. Test and adjust your “recipe”: Lastly, test and adjust your recipe for that chocolate cake, using feedback from the people who are tasting it to make it better. Excellent chefs do this - the same should be done with your BI&A solution. What you produce out of the gate is a good first effort, but you shouldn’t stop there. Evaluate it, get input, gauge reactions and adjust to satisfy the appetite without giving them too much to digest at once.
Your organization has done the grueling, back-breaking work of collecting, cleansing, processing, and packaging your data. It’s now time to reap the benefits of that, and be able to really savor the results of that.
Contact us to schedule a one-on-one discussion to see if we have the right recipe for you. | 4,321 | 2,021 | 0.000502 |
warc | 201704 | 28 December 2015 The United Nations and its partners have helped deliver humanitarian aid packages to over 100 families affected by the recent fighting in the Kunduz area of northern Afghanistan, according to the UN mission in the country.
As part of the Afghan Civilian Assistance Programme (ACAP), a countrywide project aiding people affected by conflict, mines and explosive remnants of war, the families received various food and non-food items, including water containers and bedding materials, from the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan, which is supported by the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS).
Since the Kunduz fighting this past autumn, over 500 families have received a variety of food and non-food aid via ACAP, with further distributions planned in the province, according to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Between 28 September and 13 October, Kunduz city residents suffered a Taliban attack and temporary occupation, followed by a counter-offensive by pro-Government forces who regained control of the city. There was also fighting elsewhere in Kunduz province.
A report released in December by UNAMA and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented civilian deaths and injuries during the period, with a preliminary toll of 289 civilians killed and 559 injured. Other sources point to thousands of people displaced from their homes.
Abdul Matin, who lost one of his legs in the fighting, said he was happy to receive the help. “I’m in contact with the physical rehabilitation people to have a prosthesis leg made for myself,” he added, noting that people are tired of conflict and want the parties to stop the violence.
Parikhal, a mother-of-six who lost her husband in the fighting, said she is grateful to receive an aid package, although she expressed uncertainty as to how she will manage to support her family in the long term.
News Tracker: past stories on this issue | 1,973 | 1,057 | 0.000958 |
warc | 201704 | Reuters has some quality reporting on recent efforts to gain a better understanding of swine flu. It turns out that the swine flu virus circulating today is remarkably similar to the flu virus that wiped out tens of millions of people in 1918—so similar, in fact, that a vaccine prepared from one strain provides at least some protection from the other. Link. | 366 | 247 | 0.004128 |
warc | 201704 | Endocrine Index Glossary
Mechanism of Action: Hormones with Intracellular Receptors
Receptors for steroid and thyroid hormones are located inside target cells, in the cytoplasm or nucleus, and function as
Thus, the mechanism of action of steroid hormones is to modulate gene expression in target cells. By selectively affecting transcription from a battery of genes, the concentration of those respective proteins are altered, which clearly can change the phenotype of the cell.
Structure of Intracellular Receptors
Steroid and thyroid hormone receptors are members of a large group ("superfamily") of transcription factors. In some cases, multiple forms of a given receptor are expressed in cells, adding to the complexity of the response. All of these receptors are composed of a single polypeptide chain that has, in the simplist analysis, three distinct domains:
In addition to these three core domains, two other important regions of the receptor protein are a nuclear localization sequence, which targets the the protein to nucleus, and a dimerization domain, which is responsible for latching two receptors together in a form capable of binding DNA.
Hormone-Receptor Binding and Interactions with DNA
Being lipids, steroid hormones enter the cell by simple diffusion across the plasma membrane. Thyroid hormones enter the cell by facilitated diffusion. The receptors exist either in the cytoplasm or nucleus, which is where they meet the hormone. When hormone binds to receptor, a characteristic series of events occurs:
As might be expected, there are a number of variations on the themes described above, depending on the specific receptor in question. For example, in the absense of hormone, some intracellular receptors do bind their hormone response elements loosely and silence transcription, but, when complexed to hormone, become activated and strongly stimulate transcription. Some receptors bind DNA not with another of their kind, but with different intracellular receptor.
As a specific example, consider glucocorticoids, a type of steroid hormone that probably affects the physiology of all cells in the body. The image to the right depicts a pair of glucocorticoid receptors (blue and green on the top) bound to their DNA hormone response element (bottom). The two steroid hormones are not visible in this depiction.
The consensus sequence of the hormone response element in this case (called a
Index of: Mechanisms of Hormone Action Mechanism of Action: Hormones with Cell Surface Receptors Introduction and Index
Last updated on May 27, 1998
Author: R. Bowen Send comments via form or email to rbowen@lamar.colostate.edu | 2,661 | 1,240 | 0.000812 |
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