Datasets:

jetx

/

sn29

like 0

Sara sits in a café by herself, staring out the window and looking very pensive. The narrator explains, “It’s been several months since Martín’s party, and Sara is in a café thinking about Kim and her secret.” The screen focuses on Sara as she rests her face in her hands, and she thinks to herself, The image of Sara moves to the top-left corner as images of Kim at the party appear on screen. As Sara thinks, “Maybe I could have told her not to drink so much?” footage of Kim drinking at the party appears on the screen, while the still image of Sara at the café remains in the top-left corner. Sara continues to think. “Maybe I could have stopped her from taking drugs from Ana?” Footage of Kim taking drugs from someone’s hand appears on the screen. A still image of Sara is in the top-left corner and a still image of Kim drinking is below it. The image in the top-left corner fills up the screen to bring the focus back on Sara before her thoughts are interrupted by an incoming text message on her cell phone. The screen splits to show Sara looking at her cell phone and a guy’s hand holding a cell phone as the narrator says, “Just as she is thinking about Kim, Sara gets a text from her new boyfriend.” The clip ends with an image of a guy’s hand holding a cell phone. The narrator summarizes: “Was Kim the only one who made bad decisions that night?” The screen changes to explain that the d’cisions Webisode series is brought to you by NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Visit hiv.drugabuse.gov for more information. |Accessibility | Privacy | FOIA (NIH) | Sitemap| |The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the principal biomedical and behavioral research agency of the United States Government. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.|

I wanted to get into 3D printing so that I can start working on some physical interfaces for my design circuits. Traditional 3D printers are way out my price range but, along comes the RepRap movement and with it an army of 3D off-shoot printers. Now, 3D printing is within reach of the hobbyist. I decided to purchase a MakerBot Replicator because the company is pretty well known for quality products and the Replicator has a dual extruder. MakerBot fully builds and tests each Replicator before shipping and packages each machine very well. I followed the instructions from the MakerBot setup videos and manual without any issues. The Replicator has an SD slot built in so that you can save designs to a card and run them straight from the machine. I selected one of the sample designs already loaded onto the SD card for my first print. Another option is to load designs into the ReplicatorG software, connect a USB cable and print from the PC or MAC. Here is a screenshot of my next print loaded into ReplicatorG along with the results: These are replacement feet for the Replicator as the stock set is cut rubber tubing which does not stay on very well. The design can be found here on Thingiverse. I need to go through some more tutorials before I feel comfortable enough to create and print my own designs (there is a slight learning curve to the Replicator). Onward I march so that I can finish up my Probotix FireBall V90 CNC build.

Butterfly gardens make a lovely addition to any piece of property. Such gardens are created by using assorted plants and flowers that are especially attractive to these brightly colored insects. To ensure butterflies return to your garden, it is best to refrain from using synthetic pesticides, which can kill butterflies and other beneficial insects that consume unwanted pests. Use assorted safe pest control methods to maintain a beautiful butterfly garden. Control With Flowers Use plants that are repulsive to pest insects to keep your butterfly garden in bloom and attractive to assorted butterfly species. Use assorted flowers, plants and herbs as borders around your butterfly garden to keep pest out, or stagger a few among your butterfly-friendly plants. Recommended plants to keep pest insects out of your garden include mint, the oil of which deters mosquitoes; marigold, which is repulsive to plant-eating aphids; and rosemary and lemongrass, both of which are disliked by mosquitoes. Beneficial Insect Control Assorted beneficial insects can work to keep pest insects out of your butterfly garden. Though arachnids such as spiders are generally wanted in most gardens because they consume pest insects, they also eat butterflies, so it is not recommended that you release spiders into your butterfly garden. Green lacewings consume mealybugs, thrips, aphids and immature white flies; however, they also eat caterpillars. Ladybugs are extremely beneficial to any garden, because both larvae and adult ladybugs feed on aphids, as well as other plant-consuming insects and arachnids, including scales, white flies and mites. Ground beetles consume housefly maggots, grasshoppers and aphids, and boat-backed beetles eat slugs and snails. Though synthetic pesticides decrease the number of pest insects in just about any garden, they also destroy wanted insects. If you must use pesticides in your butterfly garden, look for nontoxic varieties that will not harm butterflies or the beneficial insects that keep the garden pest free. Try organic horticultural oils and sprays, such as those that feature neem oil. Homemade Pest Control Options Several homemade pest control options are safe for gardens. Make a puree from one or two raw onions and soak it overnight in warm water. Strain it the following morning to spray on plants that are infested with aphids. Place beer in small glass or plastic containers around plants to deal with slugs and snails, or combine 1 cup of tobacco in 1 gallon of water and allow it to stand overnight before using it as an insecticide. Do not use the tobacco mixture on members of the solanaceous plant family. - The Herb Companion: Fresh Clips: Plants That Repel Insects - Colorado State University Extension: All About Spiders - Ladybug Lady: What Do Ladybugs Eat? - Different Kinds of Plants: Green Lacewing - Beneficial Bugs: Boat-Backed Ground Beetles - University of Minnesota Extension: Creating a Butterfly Garden - Green Eco Services: Top 12 Non-Toxic Pesticides - Royal Entomological Society: Ground Beetles (Coleoptera) - Goodshoot/Goodshoot/Getty Images

The most dangerous intersection in San Francisco, Fell & Masonic, is back in the news. First, they installed a bike signal in 2008. This confused drivers, so then, in January, the MTA installed a camera. The camera issues about 500 tickets a month that cost drivers between $480 and $522 a pop. Drivers complained that the intersection was too confusing and cluttered with all the different signals, so, just recently, the MTA has added a grate over the bike signal to help make the red light more obvious to drivers. The newest plan to mitigate the confusion is a sign, which will go up before the intersection, warning drivers that there is a no-turn signal coming up. Do you cross that intersection regularly, via bike, car, or feet? What's it like for you? Do you think an extra sign will help? (And don't forget, it's bike to work day! The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has an events schedule for you here, with, you guessed it, an energizer station at the Most Dangerous Intersection TM. Be safe out there, and happy commuting!) Never miss a story. Subscribe today to get Hoodline delivered straight to your inbox. Now let's customize your news feed. Just pick at least one neighborhood that interests you.

Why This Program? If you enjoy solving puzzles you should consider this field. Problem solving, logic, abstract and analytical thinking are all hallmarks of a computer science professional. You should be prepared to enhance the abilities you bring with you through classroom exercises, teamwork and math study. As your troubleshooting and problem solving skills blossom, you will be able to not just connect the dots, but you will also be one of the rare individuals who can find the next dot. This program prepares students for entry-level positions in computer information processing as well as the first two years of a bachelor's degree in information processing. Students are encouraged to complete the four-year degree. Students with no training in typing should enroll in Beginning Keyboarding. This program does not display outcomes to the public.

The Foreign Minister of Iceland Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson released a statement yesterday deploring the President of Uganda’s decision to sign an Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which further criminalizes homosexuality and makes it punishable by up to life imprisonment. “The Government of Iceland strongly supports the rights of LGBT people and this law is therefore very disappointing,” Gunnar said. The law is in breach of human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It contravenes the essential principles of non-discrimination enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, both ratified by Uganda, the statement continued. The Foreign Minister underlined that it is the responsibility of the Ugandan authorities to protect the human rights of all its nationals, homosexual and heterosexual alike. Uganda is one of five key partner countries in the strategy for Iceland’s development cooperation 2013-2016. Development cooperation with Uganda takes place on the district level and through NGOs.

The first question I thought of was how long the T-Rex would last. For the purposes of the exercise, assume that the city government is paralyzed and the State and Feds are tangled in legal questions about endangered species, so the citizens are on their own. NY has some issues with citizens owning guns (the Sullivan Act had more to do with politicians protecting their pet street gang supporters than public safety), and something big enough to stop an elephant isn't found in every local Walmart. So, what do they do? If the net and cellphones are still working, put together a tracking system. Malicious folk will try to subvert it with fake sightings, but I think a majority rule evaluation and attentive administrators will be able to keep it real. Then pick weapons. A half dozen guys with 30-06's from a 3'rd floor window might do enough damage in a half a minute to make the T-Rex wish it hadn't chased the Time Traveler. Get large pile of meat from a butcher and poison it, and have some brave soul haul it to a street ahead of the beast. Then wait and hope. A dozen lads with Molotov cocktails and motorbikes. Hijack a dump truck and run it in reverse to break his leg. Tricky, because he can probably turn fast enough to get that tail in motion, but ... Yes, I'm punchy. Why do you ask?

Severe weather causes human disasters. The most useful way to decrease a national disaster is by building more atmospheric sensing equipments to monitor the climate change. The data produced by these sensing equipments are of a huge amount and play an important role for weather prediction. Moreover, new sensing equipments enrich weather data. Everyday terabyte and petabyte-scale data are collected. Retrieval of such information requires access to large volumes of data; thus an efficient organisation is necessary both to reduce access time and to allow for efficient knowledge extraction. A new class of `data grid` infrastructure is efficient to support management, transportation, distributed access and analysis of these data sets by thousands of potential users. Intelligent agents can play an important role in helping achieve the `data grid` vision. In this study, the authors present a multi-agent-based framework to implement manage, share and query weather data in a geographical distributed environment, named weather data sharing system (WDSS). In each node, some services are designed for querying and accessing data sets based on agent environment. Information retrieval can be conducted locally, by considering portions of weather data, or in a distributed scenario, by exploiting global metadata. The agents` local and remote search is evaluated. The transfer speeds for different file types are also evaluated. From the presented platform, the system extensibility is analysed. The authors believe that this will be a useful platform for research on WDSS in a national area.

Skip to Main Content Solar energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources. In order to integrate this type of source into an existing power distribution system, system planners need an accurate model that predicts the availability of the generating capacity. Solar resources are known to exhibit a high variability in space and time due to the influence of other climatic factors such as cloud cover. The probability distribution of irradiance fluctuations is difficult to predict due to various uncertainties. For efficient conversion and utilization of the solar resource, the solar resource modelling is one of the most essential tools for proper development, planning, maintenance scheduling and pricing of solar energy system. This paper proposes the Mathematical and Neural Network Prediction models for estimation of solar radiation for Singapore. Meteorological and geographical data (latitude, longitude, altitude, month, mean sunshine duration, etc.) were used as inputs to the models. The estimated results are compared with the field data obtained from the pyranometer installed on the solar panel with a tilt of 15°. The relevance and performance of each model in Singapore's weather context is then evaluated using statistical tools, namely Mean Bias Error, Root Mean Squared Error and Mean Absolute Percentage Error. The results show that the correlation coefficients between the proposed model and the actual daily solar radiation were higher than 90%, thus suggesting a high reliability of the model for evaluation of solar radiation received in Singapore. These models can be used easily for estimation of solar radiation for preliminary design of solar applications.

Election Day is the most exciting day of the year at American University in Washington, DC. We tallied this list based on the responses of 122,000 students at 377 colleges to our survey question, “How popular are political/activist groups on your campus?” To find out what students at American have to say about their school's academics, social life, and student body, read below! American University exploits its Washington, D.C., location—that facilitates a strong faculty, prestigious guest lecturers, and “a wealth of internship opportunities”—to offer “incredibly strong programs” in political science and international relations. “The poli-sci kids are all going to be president one day, and the international studies ones are all going to save the world,” a student insists. The school of communication also excels, and the school works hard to accommodate “interdisciplinary majors and the opportunities associated with studying them,” which include “taking advantage of the resources of the city. The school values learning out of the classroom as much as learning in the classroom.” As you might expect from a school with a strong international relations program, “AU’s study abroad program is one of the best.” Although AU “does not have the automatically recognizable prestige of nearby Georgetown,” that’s not necessarily a drawback; on the contrary, “The administration and professors go out of their way to ensure a great academic experience,” in part because the school is trying to “climb in the rankings and gain recognition as one of the nation’s top universities.” However, some concede, “The university could improve programs in other fields, aside from its specialties in international studies, public affairs, business, and communication.” “The greatest strength of AU is the activity level both politically and in the community,” students tell us, noting that during the most recent election the campus “was a proxy holy war...Whether it was signs in windows, talk in the class or in the hallways, t-shirts, or canvassing in Metro-accessible Virginia, students on both sides took November 4 religiously.” As one student explains, “Let’s put it this way: A politician who comes to campus is likely to draw about ninety percent of the student population [and] an AU basketball game, about nine [percent].” Students get involved in the community through “campus outreach by student-run organizations,” which many see as “the school’s greatest asset.” The typical undergrad is “incredibly engaged and active...Students seek internships in every line of work, becoming actively involved in a field of interest before graduation.” When it’s time to relax, “Washington, D.C., offers limitless opportunities to explore.” Many “enjoy partying and hanging out off campus and on campus (even though AU is a ’dry campus’),” but there are also “a lot of people who don’t drink and have a very good time just using what D.C. has to offer: museums, restaurants, parks, cinemas, theaters, and shops.” As one student sums it up: “The city is the school’s greatest resource. You will never run out of things to do in Washington.” Student BodyAU attracts a crowd that “tends to be very ideologically driven.” “Liberals run the show,” most here agree, although they add that “Plenty of students don’t fit this mold, and I’ve never seen anyone rejected for what they believe.” The campus “is very friendly to those with alternative lifestyles (GLBT, vegetarian, green-living, etc.),” but students with more socially conservative inclinations note that “while AU boasts about the many religious groups on campus, there is still a general antipathy toward piety.” The perception that some departments outshine others is reflected in the way students perceive each other; one says, “You have the political studies know-it-alls, the international studies student who thinks he is going to save the world, the artsy film/communication students, and the rest [who] are unhappy students who couldn’t get into George Washington or Georgetown.”

Evansville Zoo officials are busy trying to meet the hungry demands of two Mexican wolf pups. The male pups were born last week in New York and were transported to the Mesker Park Zoo to be fostered. They are an extremely rare breed with only about 300 left in the world. The pups‘ mother had numerous liters that have failed, and Zoo spokesperson Susan Lyndakers says they are hoping this pair will thrive in their new Indiana home. “We are asking them to be attentive to them and show them what being a wolf is all about,” Lyndaker says. They are being bottled fed by staff and will hopefully be fostered by wolves at the park. The pups could be on display to the public in four to six weeks.

The fate of at least 30,000 families — 6 lakh people — at Manjalpur hangs in balance after the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) announced to implement a Town Planning (TP) scheme in an area of approximately 11.70 lakh sq meters (117.01 hectares). Residents, who purchased their properties from individual buyers 45 years ago, are agitated and ready to fight for their properties. According to officials, several years back the said land was reserved for a Gujarat government housing scheme project. However, the project was never realised. According to rules, the notification for the scheme lapsed after 10 years. But the government did not reverse the notification officially. According to officials, during this time, the Gujarat Housing Board (GHB) got shut. It was later revived by Narendra Modi during his tenure as the chief minister. During this time, the individual land owners of these areas, mostly farmers, sold off the land to willing buyers. Families say they have been residing here for over four decades. Today, most houses are raised up to be at least two-storey and house roughly families of five each. V M Mali, a resident of the area, says, “The VMC has sent notice of the TP scheme’s implementation to the original owners of the land, from whom we purchased homes. This is ridiculous because they are very well aware that the lands have been sold several years ago. We are paying all hefty VMC taxes, including property tax, drainage tax and water tax and other utility bills. How come the VMC collects all these taxes from us if we are not supposed to be here?” Residents said that on Monday, a group of officers of the VMC had arrived to explain their plan of developing the area. Rajkamal Solanki, another resident, says, “The implementation will leave us homeless. We have spent several years building these houses and we are not illegal slum-dwellers. In lieu of our land, they are offering us a one-room kitchen apartment in under-construction housing projects in distant areas that are almost inaccessible from the city.” Corporator Chinnam Gandhi has rallied around the residents in this matter. Gandhi says that the idea of implementing the TP scheme is politically motivated and the Mayor has been ill-advised as the government notification on the land lapsed many years ago. Gandhi says that the decision is not even in line with the rules of TP Scheme implementation. “First of all, a TP scheme can be implemented in an open area of more than 550 hectares. Here, on almost 85% land, homes have been constructed and are standing for several years. Secondly, a TP Scheme needs to have provision for a hospital, public spaces, schools and gardens continued…

Celebrating Independent Gainesville Okay, first off: if you’re still texting and driving, stop. Seriously. You have less than 24 hours to give that up, too, because starting tomorrow (October 1, 2013), Florida’s law against texting and driving goes into effect. The law was passed to keep the roads as safe as possible. What you need to know about the law: 1. Don’t text and drive EVER. (Okay, so that’s just seemingly common sense…) 2. Texting while driving (TWD?) isn’t enough to get you pulled over. TWD is a secondary offence, which means there has to be another reason for you to be pulled over. You must be in violation of another law first, like speeding, not wearing your seatbelt, your taillight is out, etc. 3. You may not TWD, but you can: use your phone for music, navigational apps, or to pick up a call. 4. Texting while driving will be a no. But Florida drivers may text or email if they happen to be stopped at a red light. (Just pay attention to the light, it’s annoying to get stuck behind the person who’s writing the world’s longest text and miss the green light. It messes with the traffic flow, AND is just inconsiderate to everyone else on the road. 5. A first TWD violation is a $30 fine, which may not seem like a lot to some. Remember: it’s a secondary offense. That means you’ll also have another fine on top of the $30. 6. After your first TWD ticket, every additional TWD ticket shall count as a moving violation. To cut to the chase, that means after one TWD, your insurance premium may increase and you’ll have to reckon with the points on your drivers license. So be smart. Protect yourself. If you absolutely MUST text while in the car, pull over. Also, if you have time or still think “I can text just fine while driving,” please watch:

JR East is studying the possibility of adding a new station to the Yamanote line in Tokyo between Shinagawa and Tamachi stations—a distance of 2.2 kilometers. If the plan is realized, it will be the first new station on the line in about 40 years, JR East said in a statement. The area is currently a JR train depot and storage yards. It has been designated as part of a major commercial redevelopment project starting in 2013, which the Tokyo metropolitan government hopes will attract more foreign enterprises to Tokyo due to its proximity to Haneda airport. The Yamanote line loop currently has 29 stations. The last station to be added was Nishi-Nippori in 1971. Photo source: Wikipedia

Our Video Sunday feature continues with this interview with Ray Kurzweil, who recently joined Google as Director of Engineering. Speaking with Singularity Hub Founder Keith Kleiner, Kurzweil discusses his new role, how his research interests connect with his latest book, and how technology will advance to produce a “cybernetic friend.” The project we plan to do is focused on natural language understanding,” said Kurzweil. “It’s ambitious. In fact there’s no more important project than understanding intelligence and recreating it.” Read the Full Story.

Lead Scientist, Financial Instruments Sector Team Daniel Osgood brings advances in the use of climate information and financial mechanisms to improve livelihoods in developing countries. His PhD in agricultural and resource economics at the University of California at Berkeley addressed the use of weather information in irrigated agriculture. He has been involved in insurance design and evaluation for development and adaptation oriented index insurance pilots in more than a dozen countries, breaking barriers in index insurance through products with high take-up and dramatic scaling. Tens of thousands of smallholder farmers have purchased contracts he has helped design in farmer-driven processes. Research contributions include work on the use of probabilistic information in decision making, the valuation of environmental features, the use of remote sensing proxies in quantifying environmental amenities and environmental risk, the value of information in negotiation and markets, how uncertainty, risk, and information impacts negotiations between players, and work specific to index insurance, climate information, adaptation, and economic development. Osgood has been awarded several million dollars of funding for his work. He has been involved in global policy processes such as the COP and GHF meetings and his work has received attention in popular press outlets such as the Guardian, Nature, the New York Times, and Reuters.

"Egypt has sent a strong message to Israel saying it won’t allow an operation to take place.." #1. Does Egypt now have the ability to veto Israeli operations? #2. If the military regime now ruling Egypt is now apparently on record for stopping a major Israeli operation doesn't this create a dilemma for any future Egyptian regime that in the event of a major Israeli operation that the Egyptian "street" will assume that Egypt gave its silent approval for the operation. [Stay tuned for this "dilemma" to be cited by Israeli officials in the future to explain why the Jewish State's hands are tied.] Ambassador: Israeli-Egyptian relations still tense Published Wednesday 24/08/2011 (updated) 25/08/2011 15:59 BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Yasser Othman, the Egyptian ambassador to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, said Wednesday that there is still tension in Egyptian-Israeli relations after the killing of five Egyptian soldiers last week. “We want a clear, strong apology and a pledge to not to repeat such acts in the future,” he said. It was not enough that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres expressed regret for the incident, Egypt's cabinet said. The Eilat attacks had nothing to do with Egypt, Othman said, and investigations are ongoing on both sides. Egypt had "forbidden" Israel from launching a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip, he added. “The Egyptian side has felt after the Eilat operation that Israel intends to [get] revenge,” so Egypt has sent a strong message to Israel saying it won’t allow an operation to take place. Israel did not launch a large-scale operation because they fear the Egyptian people’s reaction, Othman added. His remarks echoed reports in the Israeli media that Egyptian officials had conveyed messages to Israel that a large-scale military operation could lead Cairo to the point of suspending relations. In talks held this week between a senior Egyptian official and a very high-placed official in Jerusalem, the latter told him: “We stoppedg:\israel\politics\blog\hard_nl OUT.txt the escalation in Gaza because of you,” according to the report in Maariv. This was preceded by talks held between Defense Minister Ehud Barak with Gen. Hussein Tantawi and intelligence chief Murad Muwafi, who conveyed messages in a similar vein, the report said. Meanwhile, the Egyptian-brokered halt to recent violence appeared to be holding despite sporadic rocket fire from Gaza and an airstrike that killed a member of Islamic Jihad's military wing late Tuesday. The truce was announced Sunday evening following four days of violence sparked by a series of shooting ambushes near Eilat in southern Israel on Thursday in which eight Israelis died. Israel launched a series of airstrikes in the aftermath of Thursday's attack, killing 15 Palestinians and injuring more than 50. Among those killed was Popular Resistance Committees chief Kamal Al-Nayrab. Also Wednesday, Israel's army chief Benny Gantz ordered increased measures along the border with Egypt due to intelligence about new attacks being planned, according to a report in Israel's Haaretz newspaper. Armed groups are planning attacks similar to the ones last Thursday, the report said. The new defensive measures include putting in place additional means of electronic and visual intelligence gathering as well bolstering navy capabilities in the south, according to the report. IMRA (Independent Media Review and Analysis) Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Typically this blog focuses on the intricacies of preserving data, including backups and disaster recovery. However, this time we’re going to talk about destroying it — or, in other words, blowing *&(*&(& up. The topic has been alluded to before, most recently in the context of the guy who threw a disk drive away and then was trying to figure out a way to find it in the landfill so he could retrieve the up to $7.5 million in Bitcoin from it. It was noted at the time that he could have had a problem with simply throwing away a disk drive in the first place, as the data was still accessible and could have been used for nefarious purposes had it been found, regardless of how much Bitcoin might be on it, and that people getting rid of PCs in the near future might want to be particularly careful because people might be cruising dumps for similar largesse. This also being the end of the year, typically the end of the budget year when companies buy new equipment, and people get new electronic gadgets for Christmas — particularly for organizations with BYOD policies — means it’s a good time to discuss the proper method of disposing of the old stuff. A survey last year from Fiberlink, conducted by Harris Interactive, showed the extent of the problem in connection with replaced BYOD devices. “Only 16% had the data professionally wiped from the old device and only 5% had the device securely destroyed,” the report noted. “The majority of respondents, 58%, said they kept the old device, although it remained inactive; 13% turned it over to their service provider; 11% said they donated the device, simply gave it away or threw it in the trash; and 9% did something else with their previous device.” While there are a number of entertaining ways to destroy disk drives — melting them in acid, setting them on fire with thermite, taking them out to the desert and shooting them (popular here in Idaho) — a number of these methods are apparently not only dangerous but won’t necessarily destroy data on the drives. (Note, for example, that though Adam Lanza reportedly destroyed the hard drives on his computer before his Newton, Conn., shooting rampage, the final report includes information from his computer.) So how do you get rid of the darn thing? - Cornell University recommends that disks that will be reused be rewritten three times, following DoD standards, and that disks that are too decrepit to follow this procedure should be physically destroyed by methods such as drilling, hammering, or crushing. “Destroying the logic section of the drive without damaging the platters is insufficient and not recommended,” it cautions. - In a very thorough 2010 article, Andrew Kelleher, president of Security Engineered Machinery (SEM), a direct supplier of high-security information destruction equipment, recommends a “belt and suspenders” system using at least two methods, such as degaussing the drive with a strong magnet and then shredding it. He also has a lot of contempt for some of the more fanciful methods of disk destruction. “Many so-called methods of destruction border on the insane and unsafe, not to mention the unreliable,” he writes. “Yes, some might be feasible if you have one or two hard drives to dispose of, but even those could pose huge liability risks when done for an employer. If you have time to waste, gloves on your hands, and safety goggles on your eyes, some of these methods might even work. But businesses that have to deal with liability, workplace safety, and the disposal of multiple hard drives should have a problem with these methods, not to mention they are just crazy dangerous! Besides, even if carried out as recommended, most of these measures are far less than 100% effective.” - Remember to destroy SD cards, SIM cards, and other accoutrements, notes Dark Reading’s Kelly Jackson Higgins. - Specifically for old ZIP disks, take them apart and run them through the shredder. Fun as it might be, though, this really isn’t a situation for testing out the new Christmas Glock 9mm. Sorry. Christmas thermite, on the other hand…

|Sylvia Long (Chronicle, 2011)| Andersen's story was first published in Denmark (naturally) in 1835, with the original Danish title, Tommelise. Below is an 1837 edition of Eventyr, fortalte for Børn, in which Tommelise appeared: Here's a slightly more recent version: |Tommelise (Tiden, 1967)| And there are hundreds of other covers, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've gathered a few of each below, with brief commentary. Interesting backdrop for this easy reader: But then there's this. The cover says this book is meant for "Creative Character Building." I suppose that's true if the character you hope to build is lonely and sullen: Graphically interesting version below, but a silhouette doesn't really bring out that Thumbelina charm, does it? What is she staring at? Another early reader version: In French, pouce means "thumb," so this is the little female thumb girl, La Poucette: Interesting, but not particularly pretty: Too cute. No, really. This is sickeningly cute: Um. Wow, a comic book. So true to the original tale [sarcasm]: The thought that this (below) may become some child's introduction to Thumbelina gives me a sick headache: Do you remember what image graced the cover of your childhood Thumbelina? P.S. Sorry about the silly title for this post~CB

—To identify clinical and laboratory parameters at birth that are associated with the rapidly progressive form of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) disease in children born to infected mothers. —Multicenter, prospective study of infants born to HIV-seropositive mothers. —A total of 62 obstetric and pediatric centers in France. —Of 1386 children born to HIV-1—seropositive mothers at least 18 months before the cutoff date, 267 were infected. Infection was defined as serological positivity at 18 months or death from HIV disease before this age. Main Outcome Measure. —Category C events (including opportunistic infections, recurrent severe bacterial infections, cancers, specific encephalopathy, and wasting syndrome) in the new pediatric Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classification during the first year of life, according to clinical, immunological, and virological findings at birth. —The risk of category C manifestations at 12 months was significantly higher when an infected newborn had liver and/or spleen enlargement and/or adenopathies (38.1% vs 15.1%; relative risk [RR], 2.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4 to 6.0; P<.02) or a low proportion (<30%) of CD4+ cells at birth (45.5% vs 15.0%; RR, 3.0; 95% CI, 1.4 to 6.4; P<.005). Similarly, HIV-1 culture and/or polymerase chain reaction positivity during the first week of life was associated with a higher risk of the early, severe form of HIV infection (26.4% vs 9.3%; RR, 2.8; 95% CI, 1.3 to 6.1; P<.006). In case of positive antigenemia at birth, the risk was 50.0% vs 14.4% (RR, 3.5; 95% CI, 1.9 to 6.2; P<.001 ). These parameters, determined at birth, were strongly interrelated and could reflect active disease onset in utero in some cases of early, severe HIV-1 disease in childhood. —These prognostic markers, particularly virological parameters, are of value in monitoring children infected by HIV and might serve as a basis for early therapeutic intervention.(JAMA. 1996;275:606-610)

Some time ago I converted a massive Subversion repository to git. It’s largely legacy projects that are in storage. I’ve been asked to update one project, and felt it would be best to split that project out into its own git repository. I was able to find an excellent treatment on stackoverflow here. The following are my notes and observations. - Clone the local repository. git clone monster-repository project-repository cd project-repository This creates a working copy that will be manipulated. - In this particular case, I was not interested in any branches other than master. - Disconnect the new repository from the old origin git remote rm origin - In this particular case, I was not interested in preserving the tags, especially the one generated during the Subversion to git conversion. This removes all tags. git tag -l | xargs git tag -d - This is a cool command. It removes everything except the desired subdirectory, and moves the subdirectory up to the project root directory. In this example, project-directory is the name of the subdirectory for the project that we’re extracting and want to move to the relative root. git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter project-directory HEAD - This purges the repository of all unrelated commits and shrinks the repository. git reset --hard git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d git reflog expire --expire=now --all git gc --aggressive --prune=now - Finally, connect this repository to the new remote, and populate the new remote repository. git remote add origin [url] git push origin master I didn’t want to purge the project from the original legacy repository, so I simply deleted the entire project directory, and committed with the message “This directory has been moved to its own git repository found at [url].”.

Someone sent me a thread of comments this morning from some parents talking about Winnipeg youth soccer eliminating league standings below U12. In case you missed it, eliminating standings and player stats below U12 is part of the general recasting of Canadian youth soccer along the lines of Long-Term Player Development (LTPD). The move has inspired a lot of heated debate in the media in Ontario in particular, and most of the discussion is very poorly informed. If you want to understand the rationale for why LTPD recommends eliminating standings at these early ages, simply read this backgrounder from the Canadian Soccer Association. I don’t want to waste time reiterating what it already clearly explains. Instead, I want to address another emerging part of the discussion, which is the claim that kids “won’t learn important lessons about winning and losing and dealing with disappointment” if league standings and championship trophies are removed. Below age 12. I have coached youth soccer for more than 15 years, including the BC provincial finals, and I have raised three children who are top academics and high performance athletes who have also competed in provincial level tournaments. Let me assure those parents and coaches who express concern over the absence of league standings below age 12. Kids will still learn about winning and losing. Here’s how it works. Week by week, the children will still win and lose games, they will still feel excited when they know they have won, and they will still feel disappointment when they know they have lost. And they will know whether they have won or lost – because indeed, they will keep score, as will the parents and the coaches. This is good and healthy and integral to the sport. But the kids will forget about the win or loss within 20 minutes of finishing the game. And by dinnertime, they will hardly remember that they even played soccer that day. This is how it should be at these early ages. It’s a game among children, not the World Cup. But some coaches and parents want to pretend it’s the World Cup. They get very excited with wins, and very upset with losses. When they feel upset and disappointed, they often want to let the kids know. Some conduct themselves like orangutans on the touchlines, while others are a little more discrete, quietly conveying their disappointment to their children through post-game commentary on the car ride home. All because of the kids’ failure to garnish the three points in the league standings that they needed that day to retain any hope of winning the league title and the championship trophy. At age nine. As adults, do we remember what it was to be nine years old? Or even 11 years old? And do we imagine that children these ages need to live with the same competitive pressures as a 25-year-old professional soccer player at the World Cup? Could it be – just maybe – that the cognitive and psychological development of a nine-year-old girl or boy is different than that of a 25-year-old adult? Let’s think about that for a minute. And while we mull over that question, consider my observations as a soccer coach who has coached a variety of competitive and recreational soccer teams for more than 15 years spanning ages U6 to U21, including child house leagues where no standings were kept. The argument about kids not learning how to win and lose is entirely misleading. We are not talking about teenagers as they enter the years where competition and sport specialization becomes important. We are talking about children under the age of 12. In the absence of league standings, kids under the age of 12 are learning what they need to learn: "Hey, we lost the game today. That's disappointing. Oh well, better luck next time. Coach says if we practice a little more passing, we’re sure to score more goals." That’s certainly an appropriate lesson in winning and losing for a six year old, or even an 11 year old. As opposed to this common scenario where standings are involved: Dad or mom: "You girls LOST today – I can't believe it! That’s going to cost us. Suzy should have passed, but instead she shot and MISSED – and it cost us three points in the standings! There's no way the team can win the league now. Suzy is AWFUL! And it’s not the first time, either. She should get cut from the team next year!" And we are talking about an eight-year-old child. Do we really want an eight-year-old child to be living the disappointment of losing a soccer game for weeks afterwards? And have it affect their schoolwork, their sleep patterns, their social relationships with their peers, and their familial relationships with their parents? And should we bench them because they are less skilled than some of their peers? Even though their parents paid money for them to play and learn the game, just like every other child on the team? Does benching them help to develop their skills? Does it improve their competitive mentality in games? Furthermore, if these less-skilled players are deemed to have made a poor play or series of plays that cost their team of eight-year-olds the crucial championship game, should we make damned sure they aren’t selected to the team next year when the kids progress to the dizzying heights of nine-year-old community soccer? After all, there will be a championship title to play for again, and we need to start preparing early…. Sure, having good coaches helps to mitigate these problems. However, even well-intentioned coaches face a huge challenge then dealing with the pressures from the groups of parents who too often become fixated on the “prize” of the league title. I mean, if the league title is there, that must be what it’s all about, right? So why is the coach playing Jacob at forward, when we know he sucks? The bottom line here is that standings are for the adults, not the kids. In the absence of league standings, kids generally feel disappointment with a loss, but they forget about it after a few hours, if not a few minutes. It’s the adults who can’t let it go. League standings are part of an engineered competition structure, and the way we structure competition affects how coaches approach that same competition. If we create a structure that rewards “win at all costs”, then we tend to get coaches who care about winning at all costs. If we have a competition system that emphasizes player development, then we start to attract coaches who care about player development and helping kids to achieve long-term excellence. These tend to be adults who care about instilling a love of the game and who make the effort to develop the skills of all players, instead of adults with stunted self-esteem who need check marks in the win column of their U7 league standings in order to find peace with themselves. Trust me, you don’t want your child coached by someone who desperately wants a trophy on his mantelpiece at home, so he can tell his poker buddies on Friday night, "Yeah, I'm such an awesome coach, I won this trophy with my team ... [hesitates, shuffles feet, casts his eyes downwards, murmurs barely audibly] … of eight-year-old girls ...." One more point. Some people have tried to argue that eliminating league standings is a form of social engineering. That is, they argue that the absence of league standings is an unnatural state in children’s sport. Again – really? When have you ever seen primary school kids keeping standings and player stats? When I was in elementary school, my rural home was the epicentre of every neighbourhood baseball game, soccer game, basketball game and football game. We never maintained standings or player stats. Yet my friends and I competed so hard against each other that we occasionally got into fistfights when one of us felt aggrieved by a personal foul or a bad call. I’m not advocating that kids have fistfights while they play – I’m just making the point that we still cared about winning and losing despite the fact that there was no league and no league standings. (Those were great years. As 10 year olds, we provided our own officiating through collective bargaining and negotiation. Occasionally kids would go home prematurely because they felt they had not been treated justly. This posed a serious problem in instances when they took the ball with them.) The truth is this: league standings are social engineering. To have league standings, adults actually have to contrive to create league tables, collect scores from different games as they are played across the city, update websites, send people nasty emails when they fail to report scores on time, occasionally hand out fines for noncompliance, and all the rest of it. Your average 11 year old has not the least interest in doing this, and your average six or seven year old certainly doesn’t. Remember what we are talking about. We are talking about children under the age of 12 years. We are not talking about high-performance players at ages 14, 16, or 18. When the kids get older and their cognitive and emotional development is in the right place, we will bark at them and put more demands on them. Light a fire under their asses, if you will. But we don’t need to do this when they are five, eight, and even 11 years old. So please stop fretting. The kids will learn how to lose without league standings. And in the process, they’ll actually become much better soccer players with a deeper love for the game. Copyright © 2013 by Jim Grove. All rights reserved.

Citation: Marcovitch H (2005) Little Fish Are Less Likely to Take the Bait. PLoS Med 2(7): e221. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020221 Published: July 26, 2005 Copyright: © 2005 Harvey Marcovitch. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Competing interests: HM was Editor of Archives of Disease in Childhood for nine years, and is now Associate Editor for the BMJ. He has no pharmaceutical company sponsorship. One solution for fair-minded doctors not mentioned by Smith might be to keep away from major high-impact journals and subscribe instead to those with a lower profile but that serve their specialty. I analysed all original papers published in the last 12 issues of Archives of Disease in Childhood. Of 198 such papers, there were seven (3.5%) manufacturer-funded studies dealing with drugs, vaccines, or infant foods. Another ten papers (5%) dealt with drugs or vaccines, including three reports of adverse events, but were not funded by industry. The funding of one was obscure. This pristine record was somewhat spoiled by a sponsored supplement, but clearly labelled as such, about a particular medication. It provoked an angry correspondence on the subscribers' message board of one of the co-publishers. It seems that at least paediatrics, a far-away specialty of which Smith may know little, treads a careful path.

Device Manages Care Online For Chronic Disease PatientsThe Cleveland Plain Dealer: A pilot project at the Cleveland Clinic that monitored 250 patients with chronic diseases showed patients were able to increase the number of days between visits. The study used a medical device that shared daily patient data online with doctors and nurses and found that patients better managed their care using the system. "The project found a significant change in the average number of days between doctor's office visits for diabetic and hypertensive patients, who were able to increase the number of days between appointments by 71 percent and 26 percent, respectively Doctors and nurses, using electronic medical records and the uploaded data, were able to monitor, for example, a heart-failure patient's daily weight, blood pressure and activity level." Clinic officials said the devices also helped patients manage medications and flag for doctor intervention should they need it. They hope the next step is an even larger study (Theiss, 3/16).This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.

This past Sunday a new “Sunday School” class started at my church on biblical manhood and womanhood. One of the elders who is teaching the class introduced everyone to the Danvers Statement. You may be wondering what the Danvers Statement is and what in the world it has to do with your life. You can read it here: Since biblical gender roles is something I have been passionate about since somtime in college, I thought I would take this time to walk through the Danvers Statement. Not for theological purposes, because Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem do such a thorough job of defining terms and basing them on biblical passages. But, for women in the pew, who didn’t go to seminary, or those who did go to seminary or teach even – how do we put these 10 principles into practice. 1. Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18) These verses and this statement (made in 1987) were made long before the political battlew over the definition of marriage. Our base for politics should be the word of God. Since the Word of God is the very breath of God, therefore perfect and never changing (2 Tim 3:16-17, Psalm 19), it should determine our decisions on every matter of life and politics. The joke heard for decades now is “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” I think that is a crude way of saying the truth. God had a permanent purpose and grand design in how He perfectly created and placed Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam and Eve, and all peoples procreated from them for all the generations to come, bear the image of God (imago dei) and should be treated as worthy of that. Each person bears the image of God, even those who disagree with us or treat us badly. Something inherent in their very being shows us God. He is the masterful Creator. I like the word distinct in this first affirmation. I can’t play the role my husband has, either sexually or emotionally, in our marriage. I can’t play the role my pastors and elders have in the church I attend. God set measures in place that we are to abide by and obey for our good and His glory. But, we also have distinct roles and priviliges that men don’t – simply because we are women. What a unique pleasure it is to always feel Baby Campbell kicking in me. My husband can feel him if he is kicking or see him when he makes my belly move, but he can’t feel him all the time. That is something unique that God has designed just for women. 2. Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order, and should find an echo in every human heart. (Genesis 2:18, 21-24; 1 Cor 11:7-9; 1 Tim 2:12-14) Two essential parts of this affirmation: when these distinctions came to be and how that should influence me today. God is eternal and all of His Words are eternal. They never change. The principles of biblical gender were set in place when God first created Adam and Eve, he didn’t wait until after sin occurred in the Garden to set these principles in place. These distinctions, both in function and person, were foundational from the very beginning. Sin only makes living these distinctions out difficult. There are many times when I try to urge my husband to make a decision or try to lead in our relationship. There are many times when I feel more qualified to teach a class at church because there is lack of strong male authority and teaching ability. But, as often as these thoughts or actions occur in me, the Spirit checks my Spirit with His and with the Word. There is an eagerness (praise the Lord) in me to confess those thoughts, pray for strength, and repent of any actions I might have done. If we walk in step with the Spirit we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Oh, the flesh is so strong in women, especially Christian women when we are at daily war with the one who wants his way in our life versus the One who paid the price for our souls. Stand firm – resist the devil and he will flee from you! 3. Adam’s headship in marriage was established by God as part of the created order, and was not the result of sin. (Genesis 3:1-13, and Scriptures listed in 2.) I love this design of marriage. I always knew I wanted this in a marriage, but never found someone who was willing to take his rightful place and lead with humility and servanthood (like Jesus) in a marraige. Being both bold and pursuing, and loving and gently. My God has been very gracious to me in my marriage. My husband lives out biblical headship and Christ-like servanthood and meekness to me every day. He prays for me, leads our marriage, is gentle with me when I need correcting, and meek in his leadership. This design is for all married men. Men, don’t give this authority up – neither lord it over your wives. Jesus lead with meekness and authority. He was gentle. He wasn’t effeminate or a tyrant. He was perfect. Women, if you see your husbands or your Christian brothers not living this way (or for single brothers, not seeing these qualities in them), pray for them. I repeatedly didn’t do this service for them, but instead I complained and belittled them, saying there were no good single men left. That was one of my biggest regrets of my single life. We are called to encourage our brothers and husbands, not belitlttle them. Those actions of belittling is the result of sin, not how God wanted us to live. 4. The Fall introduced distortions into the relationships between men and women (in the home and in the church) – for further explanation of this affirmation, see the link above) (Genesis 3:1-7, 12, 16) Oh, how I hate sin. Sin permeates every aspect of our lives. Women want to lead in the homes and in the churches. Men either are patriachal authoritarians or weak spineless shells of real men. Many of our churches are filled with women who want men to step up and lead and few men who will take their place and lead. (I see this a lot in the music ministry of churches – where our choirs and orchestras are filled with mostly women, but our praise teams and bands are “cooler” now and include more men – haven’t figured out that one yet). Women: if you struggle with wanting to lead: pray for the desire to humbly follow your husband’s leadership and pray for him that he will lead humbly and sacrificially. Men, pray for strength to stand in the position of authority in humility and servanthood that God created you to be in. 5. Both the Old and New Testaments manifests the equally high value and dignity which God attached to the roles of both men and women (Gen 1:26-27, 2:18, Gal 3:28) and affirm the principles of male headship in the family and the covenant community (Genesis 2:18, Eph 5:21-33, 1 Tim 2:11-15). Some believers only want to take some of God’s Word or take verses out of context. God saw to it that the the Word was kept for us to read – all of it ordained by Him and kept by Him. It is perfect. All of it. Men and women are equal in that we both stand level at the cross – we are both sinners and in equal need of a Savior. Men aren’t more worthy of salvation nor do their possess more of God or display God better solely because they are male. This is the sticky part for some people: God’s entire Word sets up the standards for both the home and church. In God’s Word: it says that men are to be in leadership positions of teaching and authority in our churches not women. I believe this also goes for worship leading because worship leading is an authority of the Word of God and you are leading and teaching others as you direct the worship of the entire congregation. Song leading or directing a choir is something different, and then I would lean toward a championing of male leadership by way of example, not by Scriptural authority. This also has nothing to do with skill level. I’m sure there are women out there who can teach better than some of the pastors who stand in their pulpits and can sing better/play better than their worship pastors. Often when sitting in a co-ed SS class I get frustrated because of the depth, or lack thereof, of the teaching. But my role is not to teach…my role is to submit and learn and pray for growth. This will be continued tomorrow, affirmations 6-10. How do you apply these truths to your life, both in the home and church? What are some ways you see Christians failing to live out these commandments and patterns that God has set up for His children to follow? Be encouraged. We need the Gospel daily to live these out. Rest in Him. Pursue Him.

Zig Ziglar talks to Keith Rosen about who his mentors and heroes were growing up and the impact they made on him. Zig shares stories about his youth and lessons from his first boss. He also discusses the importance of having good mentor in your life. Working in a grocery store at a very young age, Zig Ziglar describes his first boss, Mr. John R. Anderson, as a wonderful man who he later named his son after. Mr. Anderson had a big farm. He took an interest in Zig. Mr. Anderson would take him to his farm, as Zig would listen to him as he talked to the laborers. Mr. Anderson took Zig to conventions for the organizations he worked with. Born Alabama and raised in Mississippi, Zig admits he had never been out of Yazoo City, Mississippi before traveling to these conventions. He recalls how Mr. Anderson, also a school teacher, would certainly provide very quick and direct feedback if he ever made a grammatical error. “I got corrected right away. He was straight, but it was effective,” proclaimed Zig. Zig then shared how important coaching and mentoring is for every one. “It absolutely makes THE difference.” Zig talks about how fortunate he was to have so many wonderful people in this life who took an interest in him. Zig continued to talk about the number of people in his life, including his coach in college who he described as, “A was a wise man who took an interest in me and my family. In a small community, that happens. He always made it a point to ensure I was following the right path.” Of course, the greatest influence was his mom. “As ten of twelve children, mom always taught all of us.” Zig recalls one of his mother’s powerful, lifelong lessons he still lives by. “With little certain sermon-esque, mom would say, “Tell the truth and tell it ever cost it what it will. For he who hides the wrong he did does the wrong thing still.” And then she’d follow up and nail it down by by saying, “If you’re word is no good, people will soon find out that you’re no good.” So, who his your mentor and coach? Who guides and encourages you to ensure you’re on the right path, as Zig explained, who truly has your best interests in mind over all else Who are you looking to model? Who is your coach, trainer, mentor, subject matter expert, predecessor and adviser? Is it your coach, a family member, teacher, friend, co worker, boss, company leader, community leader? Is it even someone who actually ever existed? Yes, that’s what happens if you’re a perfectionist; picturing the perfect person to try and model and emulate who doesn’t even exist. (In reality, of course, we’re all perfect in our own way, right? That’s what makes us human.) It was a privilege and honor to spend a day with Zig Ziglar, one one one, in 2009 at his corporate office in Dallas. We did this series of interviews, which never aired. In honor of Zig Ziglar, I’m dedicating these videos in his memory. We are forever grateful for Zig’s wisdom and the gifts he has given to all of us over the years. His words and inspiration will continue to impact us today and for many generations to come.

Medicare and The Under-65 Disabled As part of The Faces of Medicare, a collection of fact sheets profiling the characteristics and health needs of different groups of Medicare beneficiaries, Medicare and the Under-65 Disabled highlights key information about Medicare’s under-65 disabled, whose disproportionately high rates of health and cognitive problems are compounded by low incomes. also of interest - One Year into Duals Demo Enrollment: Early Expectations Meet Reality - Financial and Administrative Alignment Demonstrations for Dual Eligible Beneficiaries Compared: States with Memoranda of Understanding Approved by CMS - Financial Alignment Demonstrations for Dual Eligible Beneficiaries: A Look at CMS’s Evaluation Plan - Long-Term Services and Supports in the Financial Alignment Demonstrations for Dual Eligible Beneficiaries

Check before you go to the airport; nationwide flight delays OKLAHOMA CITY – As millions of Americans are heading to airports across the country, you may experience a delay or two before reaching your final destination. The Federal Aviation Administration has created a map that shows where delays are located and how long you may have to wait for your flight. As of 10 a.m. on Wednesday, most locations are on time. However, a few spots show delays of 15 minutes or less. Along the East Coast, traffic heading to some of the airports is being delayed. The map also has an interactive feature that allows users to look up delays in specific regions, airports and major airports.

Severe Storms, Isolated Tornadoes Possible Today As the afternoon progresses, widespread showers and thunderstorms should start popping up across East Texas. Some of these storms could get to severe levels. A cold front is located near the D/FW Metroplex and it extends back to the Texas Hill Country. This front along with a strong upper air disturbance are the source of these storms. For the most part, damaging straight line winds and locally heavy rain will be the biggest threat from these storms, however, an isolated tornado or two can not be ruled out. As of 12:45 this afternoon, no watches nor warnings have been issued. Once the storms pass through the evening, cooler weather will filter in and Monday and Tuesday should promise clear skies with highs in the 60′s. Get more details here.

The world of a data journalist is mired in numbers. Stats after stats, spreadsheets after spreadsheets — gathering, cleaning, and processing data is undeniably a tedious process. They are worthwhile and necessary endeavors, yes, but as a budding journalism student it seems learning all of that process could make developing the skills of the data journalist seem inaccessible. It’s hard to remain invested in a project before its narrative has been fleshed out, when all you have in your hands is the numbers – not quite yet a compelling story. And for people who are just entering the field and learning to code, there is an intangible quality to data and programming that can be frustrating. What if there were ways to help data feel tangible? What if we found ways to discover and analyze it in a way that merges physical and digital boundaries? — Sean Greene (@seangreene89) February 28, 2014 — Hrisanthi Kroi (@HrisanthiKroi) February 28, 2014 Using simple LED lights, basic code, and the remarkably versatile electronics prototyping platform Arduino, Team Blinky, a group of DIY hackers including John Keefe of the WNYC Data News Team and Liza Stark of Parsons the New School of Design did just that. At NICAR, in a session titled “Cooking with Hardware,” the two demonstrated several projects that collected or presented physical data, like this version of a dynamic traffic monitor Keefe built as a physical manifestation of Chartbeat. The more the audience tweeted @teamblinky, the higher the column of lights lit up. — Shelly Tan (@Tan_Shelly) February 28, 2014 — Jennifer Brookland (@jenndb) February 28, 2014 Some of the projects presented during the hardware session at NICAR included: The Stress Sensing Apron: When the wearer is in a neutral state, the LED lights on the front of the apron will be lit. When the wearer is anxious, a Galvanic Skin Response sensor picks up on the moisture secreted by sweat glands, and the lights will begin to soothingly fade in cycles. — Aron Pilhofer (@pilhofer) February 28, 2014 — Heather Martino (@HeatherSaidTHAT) February 28, 2014 The Heartbeat Hoodie: Using a Polar band – a device made for runners to track their heart rates – hooked up to a type of Arduino, and sew-on LED lights, Keefe designed a hoodie that puts on display the wearer’s heartbeat. A pressure sensor matrix mat: Stark and Keefe rigged a welcome mat up with pressure sensors and lay it across the entrance to their presentation room. Using Spark.io, the mat used wifi to send a signal that displayed a new welcome screen on the projector everytime someone walked in. The Mood Cube: While not displayed at the session, Keefe did discuss the Mood Cube, an “ambient indicator” he built to help his wife track her period and thus predict her mood. The device itself is simply an IKEA lamp whose bulb Keefe replaced with LED lights that follow a 28 day color cycle: white for 18 days, and a progressively darker red-orange for the next 10. At the start of her period, Keefe’s wife Kristin simply pushes a button to reset the colors, and the cube will fade to black when it detects that the room is dark. — Alex Goldmark (@alexgoldmark) February 28, 2014 So, is there actual journalistic potential for the use of physical data? What exactly are the journalistic applications for this? “That’s what I want to know,” Keefe says, and that, of course, is the entire point. He describes our world as both physical and digital, and to confine the data we bother with to the latter is a gross omission. Even if we’re still figuring out what we can do with physical data, we know that we can do something. Last year, RadioLab and WNYC worked with similar Arduino sensors to track the return of cicadas along the Eastern Seaboard. Eventually, nearly 800 people participated with homebuilt sensors. “It filled a gap in the data we had,” Keefe said. “In a way, we were crowdsourcing. If you’re trying to get at a story and the data’s not there, you can collect it.” It wasn’t a one-time-only projects, either – WNYC is also collaborating with the Mailman School of Public Health at the Columbia University Medical Center to develop a project that would distribute air particulate matter sensors to bike commuters, map their routes to work, and detect how much particulate matter they inhale along the way as a way of exploring health and pollution. I’m not going to go as far as to say that integrating physical and digital realities like this is the future of data journalism – because I’m not qualified to do so and because I have no idea if it’s true – but it will certainly be an aspect of it. The world of physical data is worth exploring, worth a shot, because collecting data like this doesn’t just make for really rad projects – it will tell us things about the people, spaces, and environments around us that we couldn’t have otherwise known. It will help us find stories in places we might not have thought to look. And, isn’t that precisely what data journalism is about? — Team Blinky (@teamblinky) March 1, 2014 Every year New York Times’ Chrys Wu curates ‘Slides, Links & Tutorials’ from the annual CAR conference: 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011. They are a fantastic resource for all journalists and investigators of all skill levels.

Copyright © 2003 Depression is much more than simple unhappiness. Clinical depression, sometimes called major depression, is a "mood disorder" that is a significant mental health problem. The main symptom of depression is a sad, despairing mood that: - is present most days and lasts most of the day - lasts for more than two weeks - impairs the person's performance at work, at school or in social relationships. Other symptoms of depression may include: - changes in appetite and weight - sleep problems - loss of interest in work, hobbies, people or sex - withdrawal from family members and friends - feeling useless, hopeless, excessively guilty, pessimistic or low self-esteem - agitation or feeling slowed down - trouble concentrating, remembering and making decisions - crying easily, or feeling like crying but being not able to - thoughts of suicide (which should always be taken seriously) - a loss of touch with reality, hearing voices (hallucinations) or having strange ideas (delusions). Depression in women Major depression can occur in 10 to 25 per cent of women—almost twice as many as men. Many hormonal factors may contribute to the increased rate of depression in women—particularly during times such as menstrual cycle changes, pregnancy and postpartum, miscarriage, pre-menopause, and menopause. Depression in men Men with depression typically have a higher rate of feeling irritable, angry and discouraged. This can make it harder to recognize depression in men. The rate of completed suicide in men is four times that of women, though more women attempt it. Depression in older adults Some people have the mistaken idea that it is normal for older adults to feel depressed. Older adults often don't want to discuss feeling hopeless, sad, a loss of interest in normally pleasurable activities, or prolonged grief after a loss. Depression in children A child who is depressed may pretend to be sick, refuse to go to school, cling to a parent or worry that the parent may die. Older children may sulk, get into trouble at school, be negative or grouchy, and feel misunderstood. Because normal behaviours vary from one childhood stage to another, it can be difficult to tell whether a child is just going through a temporary "phase" or has depression. Types of depression Different types of depression have different symptoms. These include: - Seasonal affective disorder This type of depression is usually affected by the weather and time of the year. - Postpartum depression This occurs in women, following the birth of a child. About 13 per cent of women will experience this type of depression. - Depression with psychosis In some cases, depression may become so severe that a person loses touch with reality and experiences hallucinations (hearing voices or seeing people or objects that are not really there) or delusions (beliefs that have no basis in reality). This is a chronically low mood with moderate symptoms of depression. Several factors may play a part in the onset of depression. These include a genetic or family history of depression, psychological or emotional vulnerability to depression, biological factors such as imbalances in brain chemistry and in the endocrine/immune systems, or a major stress in the person's life. Depressive symptoms may be the result of another illness that shares the same symptoms, such as lupus or hypothyroidism. Depression may be a reaction to another illness, such as cancer or a heart attack. Finally, depression may be caused by an illness itself, such as a stroke, where neurological changes have occurred. The most commonly used treatments are pharmacotherapy (medications), psychoeducation, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy. These treatments may be used individually or in combination. Self-help organizations, run by clients of the mental health system and their families, can be an important part of treatment and recovery for people with depression and their families. Clinical depression needs to be managed over a person's lifetime. Depression, like disorders such as diabetes, can be effectively managed and controlled by combining a healthy lifestyle and treatments. Watching for early warnings of a relapse can possibly prevent a full depressive episode. - People should just get over "the blues" and get on with their lives. Clinical depression is not just unhappiness—it is a complex mood disorder caused by a variety of factors, including genetic predisposition, personality, stress and brain chemistry.While it can suddenly go into remission, depression is not something that people can "get over" by their own effort. - My life will never be normal again. - Most people can and do return to function at the level they did before they became depressed. Adapted from Depressive Illness: A Guide for People with Depression and their Families © 1999, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Last week was a real eventful week. Maybe some of you already know very well about the period with many national holidays we have in Japan at the end of April and in the beginning of May. The period is called "Golden Week." In Japan, it's the time you HAVE TO travel, or camp, visit your grandparents, or visit Tokyo Disney Land or Universal Studio Japan or other known travel destinations. OR GEOPARKS. Yes, of course. So some people did choose to come to our Geopark, which we appreciated very, very much! :D To offer such visitors our local cuisine (and to gain a little extra income), this year we tour guides set up a food stand called "Cafe on the Rock." Well, nothing fancy, but just to serve some drinks, desserts and light snacks. And we used local ingredients as much as possible. The jelly was made from locally harvested seaweed. Fruits and sweet potatoes were from our member's orchard and veggie garden. The fish and rice we used for traditional Japanese pilaf were also local. Even the water we used was locally harvested Deep Sea Water (desalinated). So, actually, instant coffee, sugar, cinnamon and coffee lightener were probably the only store-bought things. To make jelly from seaweed: You wash dried seaweed, cook it with water and a little vinegar... Hope you could come and watch and taste our progress!

Internet machine is a multi-screen film by filmmaker Timo Arnall about the infrastructure of the Internet that often remains hidden from all but a few. Specifically, Arnall shot footage within a large data center operated by by telecommunications company Telefónica in Alcalá, Spain to give a better understanding of the reality behind cloud computing. The film explores these hidden architectures with a wide, slowly moving camera. The subtle changes in perspective encourage contemplative reflection on the spaces where internet data and connectivity are being managed. photos via Timo Arnall via Coudal Partners

By: Andy Louder You hear professional athletes all the time denying the fact that they are role models for kids. I have two conflicting thoughts on this. First of all, I don’t see how professional basketball players can deny the fact that kids look up to them more so than other professionals and follow them closely. For this reason I think professional athletes have a responsibility to kids to try and be a good example. On the other hand though I think the public can put way too much of a microscope on them and expect unrealistic things from them. Most of them just want to play basketball and be left alone and you can’t blame them for that. When it comes to coaches at the youth level all the way up to the college level there should be no denying or misunderstanding from coaches. You ARE a role model whether you like it or not. In most situations, players of today spend more time with their coaches than they do with their own parents. If you’re a coach it’s your responsibility to accept this fact, embrace it and commit to doing everything in your power to not only make your kids better basketball players but to also make them better human beings. The worst thing you can do to yourself and to the kids you coach is to deny that you can make a difference in these kid’s lives or refuse to accept the responsibility because all you did was agree to coach basketball and not act as a parent. The fact of the matter is you WILL influence your player’s lives in multiple ways, whether you like it or not. It’s going to happen because you are around them so much and because they look up to you so much. It’s up to you to either be a positive influence or a negative influence because having no influence is impossible. Most coaches will accept the fact that they are a role model but take it too lightly. They think that all kids are independent thinkers and that there is no way the experiences they go through during a season will have a long-term influence on the kids they coach. This is very far from the truth. The truth is… kids look up to their coaches. To them you are on a pedastool and you can do no wrong. You were assigned to be their coach because you are an expert at the game of basketball and what you say is the truth. That’s how they look at you. There are certainly exceptions but even the kids that lack respect or don’t like you will be influenced by you. Sometimes it takes years before they realize it but one day they will either silently thank you or curse you for what kind of impact you had on their life. Most players value their experiences on the basketball court much more than they do in the classroom. They are more open to listening on the basketball floor because that time actually matters to them whereas when they are in the classroom they don’t absorb much because they don’t like being there. Teach your kids respect As kids become adults it’s important for them to have respect for themselves and for others. If they don’t they will likely struggle in the real world. They will struggle in finding a good job and they will find it difficult to get along with others. Be conscious of how you treat every player because this is where they will learn that respect. Be fair, be honest, be tough and be respectful. Example: Letting a player get away with trash talking is sending the message to him that he is more important than the kids on the opposing team. If it goes unchecked this type of attitude will carry on and as an adult he will struggle in society. Teach your kids accountability The answer to a lot of our society’s problems right now is accountability. We live in a day and age where people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. Our current economic condition is a direct correlation for people not wanting to be accountable for their decisions. When you aren’t accountable nothing gets fixed. All remedies are temporary and problems just get worse and worse. You aren’t doing your kids a favor if you aren’t teaching them accountability. They may like you for the time being but eventually they will be an adult and they will figure out what they missed out on and mark my words they will resent you for it. Example: Setting team and individual goals is something all basketball teams should be doing. If you don’t re-visit your goals often and hold yourself accountable for not reaching goals you are teaching your kids that it’s o.k. to not meet your goals. You are teaching them that goals don’t really mean anything and that you don’t have to take them serious. How far can someone get in life with that type of attitude? Teach your kids sacrifice Nothing in life is free. If you want something you have to pay the price. Somewhere there is a quote about the fact that nothing comes without a cost is worth having. I love that quote because it is so true. As humans, we appreciate the things we acquire much more if we’ve had to work for it. When a person learns this simple lesson in life they are well on their way to success. I’m sure we’ve all seen adults who have grown up with a golden spoon in their mouth and struggle to accomplish anything on their own because of it. Make your kids work hard for any rewards you present to them. Example: Instead of just saying yes to things your kids might want to do, make them work for it. If there’s a summer camp they want to attend or if they want to wear a certain style of uniform, come up with something they have to do to earn it. Teach your kids discipline Most things that are worth having aren’t easily acquired. There are times when your players will feel like giving up. The worst thing you can do is give them immediate comfort by letting them know it’s o.k. to quit. They need your support, they need positive reinforcement and they need you to be there for them. Send the message loud and clear that it’s very normal to struggle and that it’s o.k. but what’s not o.k. is quitting. Example: Let’s say you have a player that has worked very hard and wants to get a scholarship but you happen to know that he still has a lot that needs to happen before that is realistic. You can either go to work helping him out or you can encourage him to lower his goals so that you don’t have to bother with it. I think it’s obvious what needs to happen in order to teach this player discipline. Build character in your kids It’s easy to see the value of character. People that have it succeed in life and people that don’t struggle. A person with character is honest, sincere and pure. They don’t try to act like something they are not and they recognize that other human beings are just as important as they are. If a person doesn’t have character they have a very difficult time finding happiness in their life and usually don’t make much of themselves. As a coach it’s important that you are honest in everything you do and that you treat all of your players with the respect they deserve. Example: Letting one of your better players off the hook for academic problems because you want to win the big game teaches the player that winning is more important than being honest. Imagine living in a world where everyone believed that. It seems like such a small thing but the lessons learned from experiences like this carry with these kids on into adult-hood. Build up the self-esteem of your kids It’s hard for anyone to accomplish much if they don’t believe in themselves. I’m not a psychologist but I would dare bet that if you took 100 adults that have poor self-esteem you could trace their condition back to something that happened to them as a kid. I cannot under-estimate the importance of this enough. Something that you might see as silly and trivial could end up ruining a kid’s life for years and years to come and possibly for life. I’m not suggesting that you baby your players at all, what I’m suggesting is you treat your players with respect and do as much as you can to build up their self-esteem. Some players you might not need to spend much time with but others you may need to go out of your way to support them and help them see how valuable they are. Example: After a loss you need to be careful about how you react. Give your players the understanding that losing is not accepted but it’s also not the end of the world. Everybody’s goes through a loss at one point or another. Just because you lose a game doesn’t mean you are an inferior person and can’t accomplish great things. I also want to point out that even NBA players are influenced by their coaches. Certainly not to the extent that younger players are but to think that just because they are adults their coaches don’t have an impact on their lives is silly. There are players all the time that come out and publicly thank their coach for being such a positive influence in their life. It’s so important for you youth, Jr. High, High School and College coaches to realize that your actions are influencing how the kids you coach turn out. Of course kids are accountable for their own actions and make their own choices. I want to recognize that fact. I don’t believe that just because a kid ends up struggling in adult-hood that it’s his basketball coach’s fault. I’m just pointing out the reality that what you do and how you act as a coach, matters a great deal and can make a big difference in the player’s lives that you coach. About the Author Andy Louder is the owner of HoopSkills.com, a basketball coaching and training website. Visit the site for more free basketball tips and coaching resources. Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Why All Basketball Coaches Are Role Models Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Manual Section... (1) - page: dh_quilt_unpatch NAMEdh_quilt_unpatch - unapply patches listed in debian/patches/series SYNOPSISdh_quilt_unpatch [debhelper options] DESCRIPTIONdh_quilt_unpatch simply calls quilt pop -a after having set the environment variable QUILT_PATCHES to debian/patches. All patches listed in debian/patches/series are then unapplied in the current directory. The command does not fail if the patches have already been unapplied. EXAMPLESdh_quilt_unpatch is usually called indirectly in a rules file via the dh command. %: dh --with quilt $@ It can also be direcly called in the clean rule. clean: dh_testdir dh_testroot [ ! -f Makefile ] || $(MAKE) clean dh_quilt_unpatch dh_clean SEE ALSOdebhelper(7), dh(1). AUTHORRaphael Hertzog <firstname.lastname@example.org> This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages. Time: 15:26:07 GMT, June 11, 2010

Ken Young wrote: > Article 310.4 does apply to the grounding conductor. What website did > you see that said different? You wouldn't stand a chance at persuading > the inspectors differently here. They are "by the book, no exceptions". > 73, Kenny, AB4GG Several places.. see for instance or google "parallel grounding conductor 310" and you'll get a bunch of hits. For instance, maybe you've got parallel conduit(raceway) runs, and you're using the conduit as the grounding conductor. Table 250.122 gives the minimum sizing, based on the overcurrent Whether 250.122(f) is applicable to the bonding conductors we're talking about is another question, but at least it's an example of legal parallel conductors smaller than 1/0. There's also the whole issue of a conductor being used to provide grounding (viz Art 800) for, e.g. an antenna mast, as opposed to the electrical safety ground for a piece of equipment or a receptacle (Art 250 stuff). In the latter case, the conductor has to be sized to carry the max fault current in the event of a line/case short. In the former case, that's not necessarily the motivation (in fact, given that they allow AWG 17(!) copper clad steel, I suspect that ANY conductor with sufficient mechanical strength is what they're shooting for) it's an interesting question. TowerTalk mailing list

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:05:39 -1000, Lee Wical wrote: > In your booklet, "A Ham's guide to RFI, Ferrites and Audio >Interference", on page 23, figure 31, you show a photo >of Chokes on a power line. > I need to find out from you what values for ferrites are >best used (#43 or #31 material) and are these Fairite company These are the #31 "big clamp-on" described in the text, with Fair-Rite part numbers listed in Appendix One. >The picture shows six >(6) chokes. Is that what I need for 20M thru 10M? These chokes WILL suppress COMMON MODE radiation by the power line. They will NOT suppress differential mode trash (but that is usually not the major problem anyway). General guidelines for suppression are in the tutorial -- at least 500-1,000 ohms at the frequency of interest, and breaking the "antenna" (the power line is an antenna) up into lengths that are too small to be efficient radiators. A half wave is a great radiator, even with an open circuit at the end, while a quarter wave is not, so try to place clusters of chokes such that the longest "antenna" is something like a quarter wave (or even 3/8) at the highest frequency that the power line is radiating. A quarter wave at ten meters is 2.5 meters. Note that you can only do this when the toroid surrounds all of the power conductors so that the total differential mode field (the power to your house) cancels in the toroid, and the toroid sees only the differential current (hopefully, only noise). In the photo, it's a 120-0-120 feeder, with the bare wire being the neutral. >Any particular part number? And finally, what vendor do you recommend? Recommended vendors are Newark, Allied, Lodestone, and Kreiger. Jim Brown K9YC TowerTalk mailing list

andy at openmoko.com Thu Jul 10 12:38:31 CEST 2008 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Somebody in the thread at some point said: | This sounds like it can't be worked around in software. Correct? Can the | demand on the power rails be mitigated by turning things on over a | longer period of time? That seems to be the case. Since we have no always-on intelligence, we are at the mercy of default PMU actions on its own to bring up the CPU. ~ If we can't "fix this in the almighty userspace" without a CPU either, then it's a problem. As it stands, the problem is hidden by a living battery "filling in". This is yet another case for an always-on MPU to solve it in future designs. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- More information about the openmoko-kernel

Messengers and other servants of the royal household received gifts from time to time, either traditional to their position or because of particular personal service. It was customary for the king and the heads of the lesser royal households to provide New Year presents for all their servants. These gifts usually took the form of clothing, but could include other items. The Black Prince gave one of his messengers some ribbon and an enamelled silver gilt box. Another time messenger John Dagonet was given a grey sumpter horse along with his New year clothing. Eleanor of Provence had a messenger called Robert Long who was given 'one good robe' for bringing the good news to Henry III that his daughter Katherine had recovered from an illness in 1256. During Henry III's minority when my Marshal men were still abounding, the court messengers have left their names in the record. Brice Bongarsun (Goodman) for example, Patrick Pluckhenn, Adam son of Pluckhenn, William Nusquam, William Cherl, William le Vilein. Names such as Ramage (Wild) and Carbonel (Firebrand), make one hope they weren't employed on diplomatic missions! Today's research photo. Gorgeous enamelled tryptych 1350-1370 telling the story of Christ's life and featuring saints to whom the owner was attached, especially Saint Edmund. Can be seen in the V&A Museum. |click to enlarge|

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /home/content/96/11837096/html/listening/General_Listening_Quizzes/index.php on line 89 General Listening Quizzes Easy Pet Care |difficult||pet care||conversation||two men||2:28| What are some basic tips for caring for a dog or cat (e.g., feeding, grooming, house training, etc.)? |I. Pre-Listening Exercises [Top]| HELPFUL TIP: Think twice about buying a pet for a family member as a gift for a birthday or other occasion. Many times, such animals have to be returned because the child and the pet aren't compatible. Rather, give the family member a gift certificate for an animal, and he or she can pick out the pet on their own in person.| Listen to the conversation by pressing the "Play Audio" button and answer the questions. Press the "Final Score" button to check your quiz. |II. Listening Exercises [Top]|

When he speaks to a group about their own dying, as he often does, Florida attorney Jim Towey sometimes asks for a show of hands: ''How many have heard of living wills?'' Nearly everybody's hand goes up. ''How many have one?'' he asks. Maybe a quarter to half the audience raises a hand. ''OK, how many of you have actually talked with your doctor about it?'' Sometimes not a single hand goes up. A new version of living will called ''Five Wishes'' is designed to help change that. The document, written in reader-friendly language, is aimed at prompting people to talk with their families and doctors about something most choose not to talk about: their own death. ''It's not exactly something people enjoy doing,'' said Towey, president of Aging With Dignity, a nonprofit group in Tallahassee, Fla. ''One reason is, it's a bummer. Five Wishes makes that a little easier.'' Aging With Dignity unveiled Five Wishes 17 months ago and printed 40,000 copies for public distribution in Florida. So many requests poured in from people ranging in age from 9 to 96, that they ran out of copies in five weeks. ''We're still kind of overwhelmed,'' Towey said. Talking about death Now Five Wishes has been adapted for national distribution in a campaign backed by the American Bar Association and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Towey, a former hospice worker and secretary of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, said he wanted to design a document that would not only convey the necessary medical and legal information but would ''also be a tool that could help families talk about something that's very difficult to talk about.'' He looked at more than 100 versions of living wills and other advance directives documents that serve as a set of instructions for what kind of medical care a person wants in the event of incapacitating illness. They tended to treat people as if their only concerns at the end of life were medical, he concluded. With the help of an intensive-care-unit nurse and a hospital chaplain, Towey drafted a new document that became the basis of the Five Wishes advance directive. The goal is to prompt a conversation among families that is less morbid and less medical than it normally sounds to people contemplating their own death. ''It's meant more for the living room than the waiting room,'' Towey said. ''Do you want your hand held? Do you want people around your bed? Do you want poetry read to you? How do you want to be remembered?'' At age 42, Towey is smack in the midst of the postwar baby-boom generation. He knows that one barrier his campaign faces is denial the reluctance of young and middle-aged people to face their own mortality. ''It's going to take Mick Jagger getting an artificial hip to drive baby boomers to realize that they're not going to live forever,'' he said. Texas rates high Five Wishes conforms to the specific legal requirements of 33 states and the District of Columbia. In other states it is not illegal, but may not technically match the state-sponsored form of advance directive, said Charles Sabatino, assistant director of the American Bar Association's Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly. ''Any new model out there that helps people (fill out an advance directive) is good,'' Sabatino said. ''No two of us approach this or avoid it in the same way.'' Tom McGovern, director of health care ethics at University Medical Center, said that Texas rates high in terms of recognizing living wills or advance directives. ''In Texas, there is considerable support for appropriate decision making capability by citizens and also protections for physicians under the legal provisions,'' McGovern said, adding, ''When you check in to any hospital now, you're asked if you have an advance directive or durable power of attorney for health care. If (you) say yes, you are asked where the documents are. ''If the answer is no, then the opportunity is offered to make one if you so wish.'' Of course, in emergency situations the first rule is to treat. But in Texas, people can ask hospitals for a medallion that indicates they've made an advance directive for non-treatment, he said. Typically, all hospitals have forms available that cover both the living will and durable power of attorney for health care, McGovern said. Few make living wills However, an estimated three out of four American adults have not filled out a living will of any kind, let alone coupled it with a family conversation about how they want to die. And only about 20 percent of Texas citizens have advance directives. ''The measure of success is not how many forms get signed,'' Sabatino said, ''but how many families are drawn into discussions about how they want to die.'' The so-called living will is a directive to physicians that says "I choose to die a natural death rather than be kept alive by technology or extraordinary medical measures," and it goes into effect with a determination of terminal illness or imminent death, McGovern explained. But the durable power of attorney for health care document is different. ''That appoints a person to make medical decisions if the patient is unable to make decisions for himself,'' he said. ''It is activated when doctors determine that the patient no longer has decision-making capability.'' The Five Wishes document is eight pages long. Wishes 1 and 2 in the document refer mainly to medical and legal issues, such as what kind of life-prolonging treatment one would accept and who will make choices about such treatment if the patient is unconscious or incapacitated. Wishes 3, 4 and 5 involve more personal concerns, such as pain relief, fear of being alone at the moment of death and thoughts about what should be included in the memorial service. Having a signed advance directive is no guarantee of a merciful death, of course. ''I don't want to mislead you that this is a solution,'' Towey said. ''It is not. It's meant to be a tool.'' Karen Kaplan, executive director of Choice in Dying, an advocacy group, said the outstanding contribution of the Five Wishes living will is its description of palliative care when the main goal of treatment is no longer to prolong life but to keep the patient as comfortable as possible in the time that remains. ''People pick it up and say, 'Oh, so that's what palliative care is.' It's one of the best statements of what palliative care is that I've seen,'' Kaplan said. Dozens of living will forms exist, distributed by a variety of groups including the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Right to Life Committee and the American Medical Association. A 1991 Gallup Poll found that while 75 percent of Americans support living wills, only 20 percent had one. Studies have shown that because of inattention, lack of time, legal concerns or simple reluctance to broach an admittedly difficult subject, doctors often ignore or overlook a dying patient's living will. The important message for people concerned about care at the end of life, Kaplan said, is that whatever document they choose, they should also directly tell their families and physicians what kind of treatment they want or don't want to undergo near death. Michael Gaffney, health reporter for The Avalanche-Journal, contributed to this story.

|Project by SplinteredBoard||posted 08-17-2008 05:30 PM||1258 views||0 times favorited||8 comments| I’ve had 4 pieces of 5/4 black walnut (about 6-8” long) sitting around in the garage for months. I got them for $1 at Woodcraft in their cutoff bin. I’ve been trying to think of what to use them for and decided to make my wife a box. I just got Taunton’s Basic Box Making last week and really wanted to try out those mitered keys. It involved resawing the black walnut and a QS white oak board I have laying around, and that was a first for me too. Since I don’t have a bandsaw (I guess that’s the best way to resaw?), I used the table saw. Kind of scary when doing it the first time… It only took a few cuts on the table saw after the resawing, but I still managed to screw it up a little. I wanted to speed up mitering the edges of the smaller end pieces. So I stacked them and then ran them over the blade. Well, that meant that the blade went into the top piece at a different depth than the bottom piece. At least it didn’t go all the way through! I fixed the sawing mistake by inlaying the groove with a sliver of lace wood. The bottom of the box is 1/4” plywood from a previous project. Now that I think of it, this whole project consisted of wood that I had laying around as scraps. Even though I bought the QS white oak and black walnut from the Woodcraft cutoff bins, I had only meant to use it as practice wood anyway. I used 2 coats of Minwax’s Pecan oil finish and 2 rounds of sanding at 400 grit. -- Splintered Board Podcast - Woodworker Un-extraordinaire

The best part of carbon fiber tables is that you could really experiment with the design aesthetics and make it defy the law of physics- Remember the carbon fiber sheath table from Australia that balanced on four thin legs? We have managed to spot something similar and even more outrageous than its previous counterpart. This 12-foot-long absurd carbon fiber dining room table has only one leg! It is conspicuously named Monolito and Megalito by British designer Jules Sturgess and it leaves a lot of room for wonder to take over! Monolito and Megalito has a dramatic, angled design which is supported by a huge slab that keeps it anchored to the ground. The base and the top are separated by an obtuse angle, giving the structure enough leverage to keep it from collapsing. The table narrows down to 5 mm thickness towards the end so guests seated on that end may be having a stiff back from the fear of rupturing the table. All the delicateness and ostentation doesn’t come cheap; the table retails for $50,500 and only 25 of these will ever be made.

(Japan 1839 – 1892) The twilight beauty (Chapter 4) - Other titles: - Chapter Yûgao of the Tale of Genji - Not on display - Further information The series ‘One hundred aspects of the moon’ is based on views of literature and legend. Departing from the traditional iconography of this chapter in the ‘Tale of Genji’, wherein a page girl emerges from an overgrown garden with a fan, this innovative print instead presents Yûgao in dramatic profile, a spectre-like apparition wandering restlessly through her garden, her ethereal body entwined with the moonflower from which her identity is derived. Alluding to her mysterious end, this image created a new niche for her within Japan’s rich tradition of ghost stories. Asian Art Department, AGNSW. - Place of origin - Japan: Meiji period 1868–1912 - colour woodcut - 32.9 x 22.3 cm image; 35.3 x 24.2 cm sheet - Signature & date - Signed l.r., in Japanese, ink [incised on block] "Yoshitoshi". Signed l.r., in Japanese, ink [stamped] "Taiso [artist's seal]". Not dated. - Purchased 1994 - Accession number

LIBOR scandal: Will Feds target not just employees, but a whole bank? If a bank reporting its lending rates has given intentionally inaccurate numbers, that could be a crime, say experts. Prosecutors have been poring over documents related to LIBOR for two years. For a bank, a federal indictment is the ultimate black mark. That’s why lawyers who deal in securities law say the world’s largest banks will agree to almost anything to avoid getting hit with an indictment connected to the developing scandal over the alleged manipulation of a key bank rate—the London interbank-offered rate (LIBOR). Although the US Department of Justice is not commenting, some news reports have said it might target a bank, not just the employees responsible for the alleged transgression. The reason to go after both: frustration by officials that a financial institution was a repeat offender or perhaps impeded an investigation. “Maybe in the mind of the prosecutor, there is such an institution and the prosecutor says, ‘We proceeded civilly with cases against you, and there is no recognition that something culturally has to change with you guys,’ ” says Jim Keneally, a partner in the white-collar practice at Kelley Drye & Warren, a New York law firm. “Maybe you need to punch them in the nose or issue a shot across the bow.” Prosecutors have been poring over documents related to the actions for two years. What they seem to have discovered is that in the wake of the 2008 financial-industry collapse, employees at large banks were underreporting the interest rates their banks were paying to borrow money from other banks. This partly bolstered the banks’ profits and made the banks seem to be better credit risks. However, it also hurt pensions and other institutions, which were using the LIBOR rate to offset risks in their own portfolio. Some of those institutions are now suing the banks. Several state attorneys general are also investigating the actions. In the past, the AGs have sometimes worked together to get settlements, such as the 1998 agreement by the major tobacco companies to pay the states $206 billion over 25 years.

[Numpy-discussion] [mailinglist] How to do: y[y<T] = y+T Mon Oct 27 07:06:34 CDT 2008 On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:45:44PM +0100, Uwe Schmitt wrote: > Nicolas ROUX schrieb: > > Hello, > > I hope this is not a silly question ;-) > > I have a Numpy array, and I want to process it with : > > "if the value is lower than Threshold, then increase by Threshold" > > I would like to translate it as: > > y[y<Treshold] = y + Treshold > your solution does not work, becaus the arrays on both > side do not have the same size in generall. > You can do it in place: > y[y<T] += T Nice, I didn't know this :-) Thanks. More information about the Numpy-discussion

Don't trust your career to just any poultry headhunters or meat headhunters. Let us show you how we are better poultry recruiters and meat recruiters. A member of the university of maryland medical system | in partnership with the university of maryland school of medicine information for patients & visitors referring physicians nurses health care professionals job seekers media professionals volunteers centers & services specialty services cancer center shock trauma heart center transplant center children's hospital departments clinical trials doctors find a doctor make an appointment ask the expert health library medical reference video library surgical webcasts audio podcasts cancer overviews drug interaction tool health calculators news news releases awards and honors patient stories events contact us getting here make an appointment ask the expert connect with ummc patient advocates pay your bill medical records share your feedback ways to help make a donation volunteer patient stories share your ummc story share tweet email print home home > medical reference > patient education ask the expert get answers to your ulcerative colitis questions. Ask dr. Flasar dr. Flasar’s bio | q&a archive note: this is for informational purposes only. Doctors cannot provide a diagnosis or individual treatment advice via e-mail. Please consult your physician about your specific health care concerns. Related content um ibd program conditions we treat patient success stories our doctors ulcerative colitis - introduction highlights introduction causes risk factors complications symptoms diagnosis treatment medications surgery descriptionan in-depth report on the causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of ulcerative colitis. viagra online cheap Alternative names inflammatory bowel disease - ulcerative colitis; colitis - ulcerative introduction: inflammatory bowel disease (ibd) is a general term that covers two disorders: ulcerative colitis crohn's disease some evidence suggests that they are part of a biologic continuum, but at this time they are considered distinct disorders with somewhat different treatment options. The basic distinctions are location and severity. viagra online cheap As many as 10% of patients with ibd have features and symptoms that match the criteria for both disorders, at least in the early stages. viagra online cheap (this is called indeterminate colitis. generic viagra next day delivery ) crohn's disease, also called regional enteritis, is a chronic inflammation of the intestines that is usually more pronounced in the ileum, the terminal portion of the small intestine. Ulcerative colitis is a similar inflammation of the colon, or large intestine. These and other inflammatory bowel diseases have been linked with an increased risk of colorectal cancer. Ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis occurs only in the large intestine. Ulcers form in the inner lining, or mucosa, of the colon or rectum, often resulting in diarrhea, blood, and pus. The inflammation is usually most severe in the sigmoid and rectum and usually diminishes higher in the colon. It is divided into divided into different categories depending on the location of the disease. The three main types of ulcerative colitis are: click the icon to see an image of the structure of the colon. viagra online cheap Proctitis. Disease only in the rectum (the lower part of the colon that connects with the anus). Limited or distal colitis. Disease in the left side of the colon. Pancolitis. Disease in entire colon. Click the icon to see an image of the types of ulcerative colitis. buy now viagra Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease is an inflammation that extends into the deeper layers of the intestinal wall. It is found most often in the area bridging the small and large intestines, specifically in the ileum and the cecum, which is sometimes referred to as the ileocecal region. Crohn's disease can occur less frequently in other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, including the anus, stomach, esophagus, and even the mouth. It may affect the entire colon, form a string of contiguous ulcers in one part of the colon, or develop as multiple scattered clusters of ulcers skipping healthy tissue in between. [for more information, see in-depth report #103: crohn's disease. ] the gastrointestinal tract the gastrointestinal (gi) tract (the digestive system) is a tube that extends from the mouth to the anus. It is a complex organ system that first carries food from the mouth down the esophagus to the stomach and then through the small and large intestine to be excreted through the rectum and anus. Esophagus. The esophagus, commonly called the food pipe, is a narrow muscular tube, about 9 1/2 inches long that begins below the tongue and ends at the stomach. Stomach. In the stomach, acids and stomach motion break food down into particles small enough so that nutrients can be absorbed by the small intestine. Small intestine. The small intestine, despite its name, is the longest part of the gastrointestinal tract and is about 20 feet long. Food that passes from the stomach into the small intestine first passes through three parts: first it enters the duodenum then the jejunum, and finally the ileum most of the digestive process occurs in the small intestine. online pharmacy viagra Large intestine. Undigested material, such as plant fiber, is passed to the large intestine, mostly in liquid form. The large intestine is approximately 6 feet long and is the final portion of the digestive tract. It follows the small intestine and includes the cecum, the appendix, the colon, and the rectum, which extends to the anus. Cecum and appendix. The cecum and the appendix are located in the lower-right quadrant of the abdomen. buying viagra Colon. The colon absorbs excess water and salts into the blood. The remaining waste matter is converted to feces through bacterial action. buy discount viagra The colon is divided into four major sections: the first section, the ascending colon, extends upward from the cecum on the right side of the abdomen. The second section, the transverse colon, crosses the upper abdomen to the left side. viagra online cheap The third section extends downward on the left side of the. For more information, email Bob Leicht at Management Services.

Monday, September 19, 2011 Walk the Walk "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. Forgiving others is one thing, but asking forgiveness from others, risking the chance it might not be granted, is quite another. Jesus makes it even tougher here when He tells us to be "reconciled to them". A dictionary definition of "reconcile" is to "win one over with friendliness, to settle, or to bring into agreement or harmony". It's not just an "I'm sorry for (fill in the blank). Will you forgive me?", although that's the right place to start. It's going the extra mile with them, doing all in our power to mend the breach in the relationship, listening, without interrupting, to their side of the story so we can truly know how our words or actions affected them, and, once comprehending, vow not to let that transgression happen again. Jesus tells us is isn't enough to talk the talk; we need to walk the walk. The commandments to love God and our neighbors as ourselves cannot be severed from one another. When we are a odds with a spouse, a friend, a relative, a co-worker, it's not possible, no matter what we may imagine, to fully worship God at home or in church or participate in Holy Communion without feeling those pangs of guilt about what we have done or left undone with regard to the person we harmed in some way. We have sinned, we must acknowledge this sin, and know it separates us from the love of God. I don't think being separated from God's love is a place any of us want to be! Is there someone in your life today who needs an apology from you? Someone, with whom and for whom, reconciliation is only a step away? Be of good courage! Have faith! If you let Him, Jesus will show you how to make amends while your offering stays at the altar. He will show you how to walk the walk. Psalms 80 or 77 (79) 2 Kings 5:1-19 1 Corinthians 4:8-21

I'm curious to know: A different set of natural numbers has median 20 and medium 17. What will be the largest number in this series? What I have done: Because they are natural numbers then are positive; also for the calculation of the median must be sorted in increasing. Assuming that the number of terms is odd, then the formula for calculating the median is: , where And the formula for calculating the average we have: I guess as I now know how many terms and their sum, I calculate the nth term, for if we assume that the numbers are ordered increasingly, the latter being the largest. Thank you very much.

How Are The Frogs? Several years ago there were a remarkable number of stories in the popular press concerning the decline of some amphibian populations. Biologists and amphibian specialists (known as herpetologists) in many parts of the world reported that toads or frogs they had been studying were becoming scarce or had disappeared. An international meeting of herpetologists was convened in California. From that meeting a new organization was formed, the Declining Amphibian Population Task Force, of which I am an active member. Where does Missouri fit into this story? How are the amphibians doing in the Show-Me State? Luckily, I had been searching for, observing, photographing and studying Missouri's 41 amphibian species (salamanders, toads and frogs) for the past 20 years - 18 as an employee with the Missouri Department of Conservation. My work has given me a good idea as to the distribution of these interesting, but seldom-seen creatures. I've been able to learn about their habitat requirements and reproductive biology (how big frogs make little frogs). But, knowing the exact population status of most of the frogs, toads or salamanders is another matter. When the decline alarm rang out, I, like most herpetologists, lacked the scientific data to evaluate population changes. Sad to say, there are few places in the U.S. where such data exists. A few Midwestern states have long-term surveys of breeding toads and frogs. Of note is Wisconsin's survey which began in 1981. This type of survey relies mostly on amateur volunteers. They select a number of wetlands and visit them three times each season on nights when toads and frogs are sure to be breeding. They learn the breeding calls and learn to estimate the number of male toads or frogs "croaking." They complete field data forms and send them to the survey coordinator where the data are tabulated. After a number of years, rough population trends can be determined. This type of survey is under way in Missouri using volunteer professional biologists. We hope to expand the toad and frog breeding survey statewide so that most of the 21 species are covered. Of equal value in determining the long-term population status of our amphibians is a forest habitat evaluation project in Missouri's southern Ozarks. This extensive research is a combined effort of the Conservation Department's research staff and many temporary employees. It involves the gathering of data on forest plants, birds and small animals. Included in this 30-plus year effort is the study of amphibian and reptile populations as they react to changes in the forest. This large project, known as the Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project (MOFEP), was begun just before the amphibian "decline alarm" sounded and has already provided some valuable data. For example, a rare species of woodland salamander, the four-toed salamander, has been found to be more abundant than expected. As information accumulates over the years, we will have a much better idea of the status of many species in the lower Missouri Ozarks. Missouri's toad and frog populations generally seem to be doing well. They've had to live through several droughts during the last 20 years and amphibians are especially vulnerable in such dry conditions. The Blanchard's cricket frog, a cousin of treefrogs and one of our smallest species, is easily seen because it lives along the edges of swamps, marshes, along creek banks and on the flat, muddy banks of farm ponds. It's found in every Missouri county. This one-inch frog has had rather drastic population declines due to drought, but, at least in Missouri, the species has rebounded when normal rainfall returns. This has not been the case in other states (that's why I've been keeping track of them here). Cricket frogs have nearly disappeared in the northern half of Illinois and throughout their range in Wisconsin. Why this has happened is not known. Bullfrogs, on the other hand, drop in numbers during a drought, but are able to repopulate quickly when normal rainfall returns. Missouri is blessed with incredible bullfrog habitat. The construction of small and medium sized, deep (over five feet) ponds on public and private lands has caused the bullfrog to be abundant. This, of course, is wonderful news to those who enjoy catching and eating bullfrogs. During 1992 and 1993, increased rainfall resulted in many more small puddles. Puddles prove an ideal breeding habitat for toads. As the floodwaters began to recede in 1993, I received numerous complaints from home owners and city managers that there were "...too [blank] many toads!" Even the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City had toads on the steps and in the basement parking garage. Toads are now back to "normal" numbers. These examples help to illustrate that, so far, the majority of Missouri's toads and frogs seem to be holding their own. As it turned out, that amphibian population decline alarm of the late 1980s and early 1990s may have been premature for some species. Several amphibian experts are now saying that normal climatic fluctuations have been the cause of several temporary declines and simply show the natural ups-and-downs of animal populations. However, the plight of amphibians on a worldwide scale is still in question. In many western states the introduction of trout into high elevation lakes (which had been fishless for hundreds of years) has hurt frog and toad populations. Most amphibians cannot coexist with fish, even here in Missouri. In addition the eggs of high elevation amphibians that breed in shallow water are being killed by increased ultraviolet rays caused by a reduction in the Earth's protective ozone layer. The loss of breeding habitat, the introduction of bullfrogs outside their historic range (bullfrogs will eat other frogs), chronic amphibian diseases and excessive use of insecticides have also caused some amphibian populations to decline. Although I was alarmed about the loss of toads and frogs, I was also pleased with the huge, never-seen-before public interest in the plight of these little animals with protruding eyes and wet skin. It shows that people are still interested in what is happening to the environment. The Conservation Department is committed to do its part to monitor amphibian populations and provide adequate habitat for such things as pickerel frogs or narrowmouth toads.

Ofcom invites industry to pilot ‘white space’ devices 26 April 2013 Ofcom has today announced plans for a pilot of innovative 'white space' technology in the UK, among the first of its kind in Europe. The technology uses gaps in radio spectrum, called 'white spaces', which exist in between frequency bands. In this instance, these bands have been reserved for digital terrestrial TV broadcasting and wireless microphones. Use of these white spaces will allow devices to transmit and receive wireless signals for applications such as broadband access for rural communities, Wi-Fi-like services or new 'machine-to-machine' networks. Ofcom is inviting industry to take part in the pilot, which is intended to take place in the autumn. The locations for the trial will be chosen once trial participants have been identified. Following a successful completion of the pilot, Ofcom anticipates that the technology could be fully rolled out during 2014, enabling the use of white space devices across the country. White space technology will be one way of meeting the growing demand for data in the UK. Ofcom is separately planning to free up more spectrum2 in the future for the next generation of high-speed data services, already dubbed '5G'. This follows the successful completion of the 4G mobile spectrum auction in February3. Plans to pilot the use of white space technology were announced by Ofcom today at an event for industry stakeholders. The pilot will test the inter-operation of white spaces devices, white space databases and the processes to mitigate against causing any undue interference to current spectrum users. Ed Richards, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: "Ofcom is preparing for a future where consumers' demand for data services will experience huge growth. This will be fuelled by smartphones, tablets and other new wireless applications. White space technology is one creative way that this demand can be met. We are aiming to facilitate this important innovation by working closely with industry." Why white spaces? Ofcom's planned pilot will use the white spaces that exist between airwaves reserved for digital terrestrial TV broadcasting. Compared with other forms of wireless technologies, such as regular Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the radio waves used by white space devices will be able to travel longer distances and more easily through walls. This is because they would use the lower frequencies that have traditionally been reserved for TV. Under Ofcom's plans, a TV white space device will not be able to start transmitting until it gets clearance from a database qualified by Ofcom and listed on a dedicated Ofcom website. This database will provide updated information on where the TV white spaces are and the power level that devices would need to be restricted to if they wanted to use them. This will help ensure that there is no undue interference with the existing spectrum users1. Spectrum itself is a limited resource that is in huge demand, driven by the explosion in smartphones, tablets and other wireless applications. White space devices offer a creative and efficient way to use spectrum that would otherwise lie fallow. Ofcom recently successfully completed the auction of 4G spectrum, which saw five companies acquire airwaves to launch competing superfast 4G mobile broadband services from spring or early summer. NOTES FOR EDITORS - In November 2012, Ofcom published a consultation on the technical requirements for white space devices. - Ofcom recently published a call for inputs outlining the proposed approach to releasing the 700 MHz frequency band for mobile broadband services. - In February 2013, Ofcom announced that there were five winning bidders in the 4G mobile auction. A total of 250 MHz of spectrum was auctioned in two separate bands - 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz. - For further information on taking part in the pilot, please email TV.WhiteSpaces@ofcom.org.uk. - Ofcom is the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, with responsibilities across television, radio, telecommunications, wireless communications and postal services. - For further details please visit www.ofcom.org.uk.

Twitter & Facebook-free zone. This web page is for grownups. Welcome to Bob's ESR Meter Page Information about the different versions and their availability... This is the well-known Blue ESR meter from Anatek Corp in the USA. Designed for easiest possible construction, everything is mounted on the circuit board. It's powered by a 9V battery which lasts even longer thanks to its low-current cool blue displays and low-dropout voltage regulator. Available in kit and fully-built form, click here for all the info on the Anatek Corp website and chasque aquí para la versión española (in Spanish). These are EVB ESR meters from sunny Portugal. They're the same basic design as the Dick Smith unit (below), but are powered by a 9V battery. The black version has heavy duty protection diodes in parallel with the test leads while the white version is designed to be able to test batteries so it doesn't have those diodes. It still has reasonable protection against charged capacitors. And this is the Dick Smith Electronics K-7214 kit. Unfortunately Dick Smith Electronics has permanently stopped making all kits, including this one. Please note that the kit is quite complex and is not recommended for inexperienced hobbyists. It uses a custom-programmed microcontroller chip. A blank Z86E0412 will not work. You can download the notes for the DSE kit as an Adobe Acrobat file... For Firefox users, right click here and select 'Save Link As...' For Internet Exploder users, right click here and select 'Save Target As...' Then save the k7214.pdf file to an appropriate subdirectory on your hard drive. Measurement range: 0.01 to 99 ohms, auto-ranging Peak voltage across capacitor under test @ full scale: 100mV Update speed: 4 readings/second Power supply: EVB & Blue meter: 9V alkaline battery. DSE: 6 x "AAA" cells. Controls: Single push button for power on/off and zero Dimensions: EVB: 65mm x 131mm x 30mm. Blue meter: 3.4 x 5.8 x 1.0". DSE: 2.7 x 5.2 x 2.2" Microcontroller: ZiLOG Z86E0412PSC 1866 * Tests electrolytics in circuit, & test leads are * Test lead resistance compensation. * Automatic power off when reading is unchanged for 3 minutes. * Low battery voltage warning ('b' flashes on right-hand digit). * Big, easy to read 0.5 inch (13mm) LED displays. * Table of typical good capacitor ESRs on the front panel. * Self-testing firmware for easier identification of construction problems. * Kit contains all hardware and components, except batteries (prohibited in postal system). Note: A variable DC power supply is needed to calibrate the kit meters. Click here for a little circuit you can make if you don't have one. This ESR meter can generally handle being connected to capacitors charged to about 50V without damage, but like most other ESR meters it will be seriously damaged by being connected to such things as the main filter capacitor charged to 300V or more, of a 240V-powered switching power supply. The EVB meter has extra protection as noted above. Thanks to everyone who responded to my poll! This is how you voted....

Last week, you saw a page with one long paragraph of text. But as you can see, I can now divide my text into paragraphs. You should always use the HTML headings in numerical order. Yes, H1 is really large when it's unstyled, but it is the top-level heading, so should be used first - usually as the title of your page. Once you have an H1, add the other heading tags below it. If you want your text to be strongly emphasized or just emphasized, use the strong and emphasis tags. As always, check out the source of this page to see how I did what I did. Have fun, and congratulations on writing your first Web page.

Interesting ‘revelation’ in Times Online. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.” Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power. Hmmm… This Wissner-Gross seems to be a bright lad. He’s a Fellow at the Harvard environment Center where his bio says that in 2003 he “became the last person in MIT history to receive a triple major, with bachelors in Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics, while simultaneously graduating first in his class from the MIT School of Engineering as the Henry Ford II Scholar.” According to his home page he has seven granted or pending patents, and fourteen published papers in addition to his PhD. And he was a boy soprano for the New York City Opera. He’s also set up CO2stats, a site that claims that it “makes your site carbon neutral and shows visitors you’re environmentally friendly”. I’m not convinced by the search vs. kettle calculation, but I am sure that the environmental impact of computing is one of the Next Big Stories. Thanks to Darren Waters for the original link.

15 inches of snow in West Michigan, more on way ALLEGAN, Mich. (AP) - Western Michigan is cleaning up after a winter storm that brought 15 inches or more of snow in some areas, and the National Weather Service says up to 10 inches of fresh snow is possible through Monday night. The weather service says parts of Allegan, Kent, Ottawa and Van Buren counties got more than 15 inches between Wednesday night and Saturday night. It says fresh snow will start falling Sunday, bringing two to four inches inland and localized accumulations of up to 10 inches along Lake Michigan. In populous southeastern Michigan, two to three inches of fresh snow is expected by late Monday. Ice jams have caused flooding along the Muskegon River in Big Rapids. WOOD-TV says at least 60 homes have been evacuated since Wednesday's high water mark.

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women? [...] In many cases, fathers -- and sometimes even mothers -- single out their youngest son to do the killing, Boehmecke said, "because they know minors will get lighter sentences from German judges." In some cases, these boys are revered by their community and fellow inmates as "honor heroes" -- a dementedly skewed status they carry with them for the rest of their lives. Currently, six boys are serving time in Berlin's juvenile prison for honor killings. "In a way, these boys are victims, too," she said. Sometimes they are forced to kill their favorite sister. One of the unsettling truths about Hatin's death [described earlier in the article] and the plight of many Muslim women is that it took the comments of three Turkish boys and the outrage of a male school director to get people to notice. When the murder first happened, it sent no shock waves through the mainstream German press. It only became big news when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked Hatin during a class discussion at a school near the crime scene. One boy said, "She only had herself to blame," while another insisted, "She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German." The enraged school director not only sent a letter home to parents, but also to teachers across Germany. The letter ignited a media fury. Less known, however, is that the letter also hit a nerve among educators. "Teachers from across the country wrote back saying they had had similar experiences," Boehmecke said. They reported Turkish boys taunting Turkish girls who don't wear headscarves as "German sluts." "That's the part no one has written about. Clearly there is huge potential for similar violence across Germany," Boehmecke said. "Not just in the big cities, but all over. It's a problem many politicians haven't been willing to face." The school argued that other Muslim girls relied on the protection of the uniform policy to resist pressure in the community to adopt the jilbab.

MDL News & Trends MDL Continues Research on Extreme Environment Sensors Field emission from carbon nanotube (CNT) bundles has been applied to develop a new class of vacuum microelectronics for harsh environment applications. CNTs have demonstrated superior field emission performance because of their low emission threshold and high current density, and are compatible for monolithic integration with silicon structures to develop microelectronic/microsensor systems. This technology is applicable to in situ sensor electronics for applications where the operating environment is high-temperature and high-pressure, and has corrosive chemicals. The digital and analog electronic devices developed using CNT-vacuum microelectronic technology can be integrated with sensor systems to achieve prolonged stand-alone operation during exploration. High-performance cold cathodes using arrays of CNT bundles have exhibited robust operation in poor vacuums of 10–5 to 10–6 Torr, a typically achievable range inside hermetically sealed microcavities. By monolithically integrating CNT cathodes with micromachined Si multigate structures, MDL has demonstrated a new class of programmable “vacuum” logic gates and achieved switching operation at temperatures up to 700 °C. Work is ongoing to improve design and achieve vacuum packaging to make stand-alone devices for circuit board integration. CNT-vacuum microelectronics opens up a new regime of in situ electronics for novel sensor/electronics systems because of their inherent high-temperature tolerance and corrosion resistance. Unlike traditional vacuum tubes, these are low-power, miniature, and potentially as fast as their solid-state counterparts while exhibiting superior reverse bias or leakage current characteristics. MDL’s research on extreme environment sensors and electronics knowledge has the potential for multiple applications ranging from commercial oil and gas exploration to studies on Venus.

[uf-new] Measurement brainstorming (was: Measure & chris.newell at rd.bbc.co.uk Fri Oct 5 07:31:37 PDT 2007 At 15:03 05/10/2007, you wrote: >On Fri, October 5, 2007 14:57, Chris Newell wrote: >>> Microformats put the burden, where possible, on parsers, not >>> publishers, in order to make life as easy as possible for publishers. >> Agreed, but this is a balance. If it's hard to parse you'll get buggy >*If*; For some value of "hard to parse". >This process is about making sure that's not the case. >> for "measure" (where the unit-codes encompass all SI >> permutations etc) parsing the string to separate the value from the >> unit-code gets more tricky and potentially ambiguous. For example: >> <span class="hmeasure">2m²</span> >That would be: ><abbr class="hmeasure" title="2m2">2m²</abbr> >using "m2", or whatever is that standard for representing square-metres. Given that "parsers must accept the formats" includes [unit-code][number] would: represent 23 metres or 3 square-metres? More information about the microformats-new

The Chicago Tribune published an article by Mark Silva covering today's visit by the president to Notre Dame University. Most reporters seem to think that the protesters represent a minority of strongly outspoken pro-life supporters. The majority of Notre Dame students, the majority of Catholics and the majority of voters in general agree with President Obama's pro-choice position. The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who served as the University of Notre Dame's president for 35 years, says he believes the school was right in inviting Obama. The 91-year-old Hesburgh said in an interview Thursday with WNDU-TV that universities are supposed to be places where people of differing opinions can talk. "It's like a common place where people who disagree can get together, instead of throwing bricks at one another, they can discuss the problem and they can see different solutions to difficult problems and those solutions are going to come out of people from universities,'' he said. "They aren't going to come from people running around with signs.'' What's your opinion? Is Obama making a good move today in accepting the honorary degree from Notre Dame? Isn't there a "church and state" conflict on the part of the pro-life position? Is the pro-choice argument a question of men controlling women? It often seems that way to me. For the most part, I realize it's not 100%, but for the most part it's male legislators and politicians demanding in the name of God to restrict what women can do with their own bodies. That doesn't seem right to me. What do you think?

The Bay Area's 20th annual Bike to Work Day is this Thursday, May 8, and the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway & Transportation District makes it easy for you to participate! Why not join thousands of Bay Area residents in taking to the streets or trails on your bike? Whether you choose to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge or use Golden Gate buses or ferries, please note the following: - Cyclists have all-day toll-free access to the Golden Gate Bridge sidewalks. On weekdays, cyclists use the east sidewalk between 5am and 3:30pm and after 9pm, and use the west sidewalk between 3:30 and 9pm. Note: cyclists must yield to pedestrians and use caution in the areas around the towers due to limited space and visibility. More info about bikes on the Bridge: http://goldengatebridge.org/bikesbridge/bikes.php. - Golden Gate Transit buses are equipped with front-mounted bike racks that accommodate 3 bikes or luggage-bay racks for 2 bikes. Space on racks is first come, first served. More info about bikes on GGT buses: http://goldengatetransit.org/services/bikes.php. - Many Golden Gate Larkspur Ferry morning and afternoon commute trips already operate at capacity with respect to the number of bikes they can accommodate. Cyclists are encouraged to use secure bike racks located inside the paid waiting area at the Larkspur Terminal. The Sausalito Ferry vessel can accommodate up to 200 bikes. Space on board all GGF vessels is first come, first served, and electric bikes are not permitted. More info about bikes on GGF: http://goldengateferry.org/services/bikes.php. Cyclists are invited to stop by the many Bike to Work Day Energizer Stations around the Bay Area, including at Vista Point (north end of the Bridge) between 5:30 and 9:30am and the Larkspur Ferry Terminal between 6:15 and 9:15am. For more information and for trip planning assistance, visit www.goldengate.org or call 511 (say "Golden Gate Transit," then "operator" to bypass recorded messages)/TDD 711. The Golden Gate Customer Service Center is open weekdays from 7am to 6pm.

Posted at 12:20 PM on March 28, 2008 by Jeff Horwich I guess being so far from the action can leave you feeling a little...detached. Dejected. In The Loop sources have supplied an early copy of the town's pending news release: ELY, MINN. -- April 1, 2008 -- Today it was announced that Canada has made an unprecedented offer, as a boost to tourism, to purchase the famous Boundary Waters town of Ely, Minn., and relocate it north of the U.S./Canadian border. In a prepared statement, the Premier of Ontario pledged Ely will retain its worldwide reputation as the entryway to the Boundary Waters, though now from the other side, as well as its legendary lakes, resorts, restaurants, gift shops and museums, including the world-famous International Wolf Center. Reportedly, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has entered into negotiations with the Minnesota DNR and the Governor's office to arrive at a satisfactory price. Sources close to the deal say that Ely will become Ely, Ontario as early as 2009. This text will be replaced by the flash music player. Other spots simulate a bidding war for Ely, among Nebraska, Uzbekistan, and a tycoon who wants to move the town to his private island. The message, of course: Get up to Ely while you still can! Somehow I don't think the press will actually bite on the story (God help any poor little newsroom that sincerely relays this release without checking it out!) but it's a good attention-getter.

Saturday, February 28, 2009 This essay, by Christopher Tollefson, is well worth a read, and should be of particular interest to Catholics engaged with religious-liberty questions. It is also, or might be, responsive, to questions that Steve Shiffrin has raised, most recently, at the Scarpa Conference a few days ago. A bit: Contemporary culture is often hostile to the idea of authority in general and to religious authority in particular. Religious liberty, on the other hand, is readily grasped as a core value of the West. How the two can be harmonized strikes many as an insurmountable difficulty. But properly understood, religious authority need be in no conflict with religious liberty. That proper understanding, however, requires a prior appreciation of the distinctive value of religion. . . . Now it appears that, under these conditions, it is not the case that a non-coercive religious authority—that is, an authority which cannot punish with the sword—is ever in a position to violate the conscience or religious liberty of its members or its alleged members. For those members are either believers, in which case they look to the magisterial authority for guidance and, receiving it, take it to be authoritative for the formation of their conscience, or, they are not believers, perhaps because, having consulted their consciences and exercised their reasoning capacities, they no longer believe in the privileged epistemic position of the magisterial authorities. These agents, whom the magisterial authority is unable to coerce, are free to leave the set of believers, or accept what non-coercive—because avoidable at will—punishments, such as excommunication or lighter discipline the ecclesial authority may mete out, just as agents in any other voluntary association are free to leave, or accept that association’s non-coercive punishments. At the same time, it is also clear, based on what has been said, that a mingling of religious authority and political, or coercive authority, is inappropriate, given the nature and importance of conscience and the good of religion. Yet it is important to see this as the locus of abuse, not the exercise of magisterial authority as such. Religious authority that is exercised with genuinely coercive power—the sort of power characteristic of the political state—is a perversion of both religious and political authority, and is inadequate to the tasks of either. Magisterial authority need pose no threat to religious liberty; and if the claims of some magisterial authority are true, then such authority must be considered essential for the fullest participation in the good of religion.

It’s barely spring in Albuquerque, but already my backyard colony is ramping up for the big bloom! It hit 50°F this afternoon and the girls were soaring like tiny eagles. Which is all to say the queen has increased her egg production and the workers are out looking for food and water. Food? There’s none to be found yet in Albuquerque — not even the elm or sumac are blooming. But water? They’re drinking like champagne on New Year’s Eve. If you haven’t set out water for your hives yet, consider doing so. Even if it freezes at night, the girls will be out on a warm day looking for a source of hydration to mix with pollen for “bee bread”, so it’s safest to ensure they find yours. NOTE: I’ve found it takes about a week for my bees to find a new source of water, so yet another reason to start watering earlier than you might think.

Ford's Main Problem: The UAW's Crippling Job Classifications and Work Rules 1941 UAW-Ford contract Ford's UAW contract has lots of them, governing who can and who can't perform specified tasks on the factory floor. So if a machine breaks down, an assembly line can come to a halt while everyone waits for the worker with the proper classification to arrive at the scene. If other workers nearby are perfectly capable of fixing the machine, well, that doesn't matter. The number of job classifications is less than it was a decade ago, but it's still far too many to maximize a factory's efficiency. The classifications and attendant work rules are enforced by union bureaucracies—members of each plant's shop committee, grievance committee, health and safety committee, etc. They're all paid by the companies, as are their legions of corporate counterparts. One man's feather-bedding is another man's job. All this begs a fundamental, and uncomfortable, question. Can a UAW-represented car company compete effectively, long term, with its nonunion competitors? At the very least, companies organized by the UAW have lots of extra costs to bear at their factories located in the U.S. It's interesting, then, that Consumer Reports rates the quality of the four-cylinder Ford Fusion higher than the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, and the Lincoln MKZ higher than its Acura and Lexus counterparts. The Fusion and MKZ are built in a factory without job classifications because it's in Hermosillo, Mexico, and isn't represented by the UAW. If Ford targets future expansion in Mexico, the recent contract vote will spell further decline for a union that, like Detroit's car companies, badly needs cultural change. "How Ford Is Making Its Comeback: The news from Dearborn is sunny, except for the auto maker's labor relations," in today's WSJ by Paul Ingrassia

The Top Ten Oldest MMORPGs Many gamers were first introduced to the MMORPG genre by World of Warcraft which was released in 2004. This explains why so many people compare every new MMORPG release to WoW, and even go so far as to label them clones of Blizzard’s fantasy MMORPG. The truth is MMORPGs have been around for much longer. Many classic MMORPGs are still alive and kicking. Many of them are even free to play or offer free trials. Below are some of the oldest: Meridian 59 (1996) Meridian 59 was first released on December 15, 1995 as a subscription based game. The game had a classic fantasy theme and allowed players to create custom characters. Unlike many of today’s games, Meridian 59 had no levels or classes and instead allowed players to improve individual skill and stat scores as they progressed. Meridian 59 is still playable today on an official free server to play servers. Like most old games, meridian 59 was a PvP heavily title and allowed player killing anywhere. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds (1996) Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds was one of the first Korean MMORPGs to be developed and brought to the West. The game has an Asian theme and has been in continuous development since its release. The game is still a subscription based title but allows gamers to play for free until level 49. Nexus has seen several major graphic overhauls which have kept it more or less up to date with the visuals of other 2D MMORPGs. Gameplay is still a bit archaic, but Nexus is definitely one of the most playable classics on this list. The Realm Online (1996) The Realm Online, or simply The Realm, was launched before the popular phrase ‘MMORPG’ was coined. Back then, online multiplayer games with graphics were referred to as ‘graphical MUDs.’ History lesson aside, The Realm Online is a subscription based fantasy game that’s still around. There is a 7 day free trial available, but users are expected to pay $6.99 per month after that. The Realm Online has a turn-based combat system which makes it unique among the classic MMORPGs on this list. No not the bone, the game. Tibia is a classic fantasy MMORPG that continues to astound. The game still has a huge community with dozens of packed servers. Players can log in and try the game for free, but many premium features are reserved for paying members. Tibia almost looks like a beta version of Runescape. There are four first class choices (or vocations as they’re called in Tibia) available after hitting level 8, but the gridded map and dated graphics are likely to put off gamers before they get that high. Tibia is one of the few MMORPGs on this list to gain an international audience. There are servers located in Europe, South America, and the US. Ultima Online (1997) Richard Garriott’s Ultima Online may not of been the first MMORPG, but it is credited with bringing the genre into the mainstream. UO was based on the same fantasy world of the previous single-player Ultima RPG games and so had an enormous amount of material to build off of. Additionally, the Ultima brand helped the game attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers whereas older MMORPGs only had player counts in the thousands or tens of thousands. Ultima Online offered player housing, a skill based progression system, mounts and mounted combat, pets, and a detailed crafting system over 10 years ago. Many of these feature have yet to be implemented in today’s MMORPGs. The game is still available as a subscription based game by EA, but has undergone significant changes since its original release. Players who want to experience the retro UO experience must turn to one of the many free private servers out there. NCsoft is one of the best known names in the MMORPG business today. The Korean company got its start with a medieval fantasy MMORPG Lineage back in 1998. Lineage was designed by Jake Song, the same man behind the earlier Korean MMORPG Nexus: Kingdom of the Three Winds. In many respects, Linage was a major step up from previous MMORPGs. It had action-RPG style gameplay and fostered a competitive gaming atmosphere. The game took off in Korea and across Asia and is still regarded as one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world. While it never got quite as big in the West, there are still official Linage servers to play on provided you pay a monthly fee. The game spawned a ‘prequel’ known as Lineage 2: The Chaotic Chronicles which was released in 2003. Dark Ages (1999) Dark Ages is the second MMORPG to be released by KRU Interactive after Nexus. The game is based on Celtic mythology and is still available today. Players can play for free, but must start paying a monthly fee to continue gaining experience after level 99. The game was best known for its rich community involvement and player run political system. While the game does have five classes and is still supported by the original developer, its not likely to attract many new gamers. The Forth Coming (1999) The Forth Coming, also know as T4C or by its french name ‘La Quatrieme Prophetie’, is another classic MMORPG with Diablo style combat. Players can equip any weapon or learn any spell provided they meet the required stats. The level cap in the game is 300, but few players have gone beyond 250 because of the exponential experience point requirements. T4C is still available in the United States and elsewhere through several official servers. Mir 2 (1999-2000) The Legends of Mir 2 was another early Korean hit that paved the way for the country’s flourishing gaming industry. While I couldn’t find an exact release date, I did find that the original developers formed a company called ‘WeMade’ in 2000 as a response to a Chinese studio releasing the game without their permission. Mir 2 had 2D graphics and an isometric camera view. It played a lot like other action-RPGs of the 90s, and was well received across Asia. Mir 2, along with its equal The Legend of Mir 3, are both available in the US today as free to play MMORPGs. Released by Sony Online Entertainment in 1999, EverQuest took mainstream MMORPGs into the third dimension. The game offered a huge variety of races and classes along with a massive game world filled with lore. EverQuest placed much less emphasis on PvP than previous MMORPGs and thus helped extend the genre beyond the young male demographic. Large groups of middle age players could safely explore a dungeon without a small band of punks harassing them at every turn. Some lament this change, but there’s no question that EverQuest paved the way for World of Warcraft. In fact, many WoW developers were veteran EQ players. EverQuest is still going strong with over a dozen expansion packs. Players can try the game for free, but will need to pay a monthly subscription to play past a few days. We neglected to mention the very first MMORPG to display graphics: AOL’s Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights (1991) Developed cooperatively by AOL, Stormfront Studios, SSI, and TSR (later acquired by Wizards of the Coast), Neverwinter Nights was the first MMORPG to display actual graphics. Due to the severe technical restrictions of the time, Neverwinter Nights didn’t carry a monthly subscription, but instead cost $6.00 per hour and as much as $8.00 per hour during peak times. As technology improved, the hourly rate was reduced and eventually dropped. The game ended its run in 1997 at which time it had around 115,000 players. While Neverwinter Nights is no longer with us, it will be remembered as the first MUD to use graphics and thus it paved the way for the other games on this list. By, Erhan Altay

JESSICA van VONDEREN: Church leaders and unions have condemned a proposal to allow clubs and pubs to open their doors on Christmas Day, Anzac Day and Good Friday. It's just one of more than a dozen ideas being considered by the State Government which is reviewing its liquor and gambling laws. The Minister says the primary goal is to reduce red tape for industry. But concedes changes to opening hours, pub lock-outs and the future of drink safe precincts are all up for discussion. James Kelly reports. (FOOTAGE OF DRINKING AND GAMBLING) JAMES KELLY: Drinking and gambling are part of the Australian way of life. But they're also subject to regulation. (FOOTAGE OF POKER MACHINES) JAMES KELLY: This week, the Gambling and Alcohol laws came under review. And for one month, those with a view will be able to have their say. The review is aimed at reducing red tape and it will also consider proposals for reform. Some of those are controversial. PERSON ONE: I think it's probably a good idea. It's good for the community to come out, get to see some of your friends, not just the family. PERSON TWO: I wouldn't say early openings. I'd make openings a bit later mainly for the staff as well to have time with their family before going to work. ARCHBISHOP PHILLIP ASPINALL, ANGLICAN CHURCH: Extending liquor licensing and gambling to Good Friday and Christmas Day is a bad idea. JAMES KELLY: Under the Liquor Act selling alcohol is prohibited on Christmas Day and Good Friday except when served with a meal while Anzac Day trading isn't allowed before 1pm except in RSL and Service Clubs. Gambling is forbidden during those times. ARCHBISHOP PHILLIP ASPINALL: Six out of ten Australians identify themselves as Christians so we're talking about a massive majority of the population and it's a bad idea for them, but it's a bad idea for the community generally. There's precious little family time JAMES KELLY: But the DestinationQ forum a partnership between the Queensland Government and the tourism industry proposed the extended trading hours on the basis that it would bring in more tourist dollars. And, they say Queensland is a multi-cultural society and many tourists are Non-Christian. Brisbane's Anglican Archbishop Phillip Aspinall says it would exacerbate alcohol-fuelled violence. ARCHBISHOP PHILLIP ASPINALL: Let's get real about this. We're talking about three days in the year, for 362 days of the year gambling and alcohol consumption goes ahead uninterrupted. We're talking about three very special days which the community should guard with strength. JAMES KELLY: The union representing hospitality workers also thinks it's a bad idea. GARY BULLOCK, UNITED VOICE: Well, we say hands off. They're listening to business operators that want to make more money at the expense of working families and we say enough is enough. CHRIS McHUGH, RETURNED SERVICES LEAGUE: If that's going to make a difference to your trading figures for the year, you'd probably argue that there's something seriously wrong. JAMES KELLY: The RSL is against change too. CHRIS McHUGH: What we'd hate to see the solemn remembrance of the dawn service or even the Anzac Day march where a bunch of drunks disrupt it. JUSTIN O'CONNOR, QUEENSLAND HOTELS ASSOCIATION: Something like Anzac day, we recognise the solemnity of it, the importance of it and we don't see it as a particular normal trading day, the religious days are a little bit different. JAMES KELLY: The proposal is just one of more than a dozen to be considered. Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie is the Minister responsible. JARROD BLEIJIE ATTORNEY-GENERAL: In the event that there's a complete outrage and, you know, no support for these proposals at all then I'd suggest the Government won't be proceeding down that path but I think it's healthy to have the debate anyway. JAMES KELLY: The Government is also reviewing general trading hours for pubs and clubs. The bipartisan Parliamentary Law, Justice and Safety Committee's "Inquiry into alcohol-related violence" in 2010 was of the view "liquor trading hours should be significantly scaled back" in Extended Trading Hour Precincts like Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. Trading is generally between 10am and 5am. The Committee wanted venues to close at 2am Sunday to Thursday and 4am on Friday and Saturday. JUSTIN O'CONNOR: We have to strike trading hours that are in balance with community expectations but also meet the needs of generation X and Y. JAMES KELLY: The Bligh Government said "NO" to any change and introduced Drink Safe Precincts in Fortitude Valley, Surfers Paradise and Townsville. The Government has extended the trials until September but wants to know if they should be extended further. JARROD BLEIJIE: There's those in the community that say they work. There's those in the community that say they don't. JAMES KELLY: The discussion paper says extra police and other initiatives have reduced alcohol-related violence in Fortitude Valley and Surfers Paradise but NOT in Townsville. JARROD BLEIJIE: I've met with the Drink Safe Police officers up there. Now there's a consistent approach in terms of reporting, for example assaults and so forth so hopefully in Townsville we'll see a decline. JAMES KELLY: Options for continuing the precincts include a user pays approach where patrons would pay more for drinks, pay door entry fees and taxi/transport levees. Alternatively, venue licence fees could go up or the Government could fund it. The 3am lock-outs is also up for discussion. JARROD BLEIJIE: They do stop patrons from going in and out of clubs after 3 o'clock in the morning, however it does mean that you then are rejecting people from clubs and they get a bit agitated. JAMES KELLY: And that creates long queues at taxi ranks. JUSTIN O'CONNOR: We've never seen the evidence to demonstrate why the lockout was put in place in the first place or why it's retained. JAMES KELLY: Increasing the maximum gaming machine bet from $5 to $10 is also being considered. JUSTIN O'CONNOR: You can have a $10, $20, $50, $100 bet at the TAB. What's the difference between that and having a $10 bet on a poker machine? ARCHBISHOP PETER ASPINALL: You double the bet limits and you'll probably double the problems and what that translates into is agony for families. You talk with a family who've lost their family home because of a gambling addict. You talk to the gamblers who try and keep this secret for as long as possible and then suicide when it's discovered. JUSTIN O'CONNOR: We don't see that there's any evidence to connect differences in maximum bet quantities with a direct connection to further problem gambling. JARROD BLEIJIE: Well, look it is all up for grabs. It is a Government Discussion paper but it's not Government policy and these are things that people have been talking to me for some time now and I think we owe it to people at least to have the debate about these and look, some are controversial matters but there's some low-level fruit that we can really attack in terms of red tap reduction and all the better for tourism and small business in Queensland.

If youíre rocking an iPhone 4, or some other iOS device that doesnít have support for Siri, then chances are that you might be a little bit bummed by the fact that you canít take advantage of the sometimes-useful voice dictation feature, which allows you to simply speak in place of typing to input text into text fields. Although some of the older iOS devices are lacking Siri, and Siri dictation, that doesnít mean owners of these older devices have to go without. A new free jailbreak tweak called Sara Dictation Keyboard by iOS developer Nobita.ZZZ is now available in the ModMyi repository to bring you an alternative keyboard-based dictation feature on older iOS devices that donít support Siri dictation. As shown above, the tweak will add a microphone key to the keyboard. It shows up in the same place as the Siri dictation key would on a Siri dictation-enabled device. If you have Siri dictation on your iOS device, and you install Sara Dictation Keyboard, you will have two microphone keys on your keyboard and be able to choose between the two Ė we experienced some glitchy animations on the iPhone 5, but it works functionally. We didn't experience the same glitchy animations on the iPhone 4. You can see the differences between the Sara Dictation Keyboard microphone key, and the Siri dictation microphone key below: When you tap on the Sara Dictation Keyboard microphone key, youíll get the popup alert (shown below) that says sheís listening. You can then talk, and after youíre finished talking, you can tap on the OK button and Sara will process your words: After a couple of seconds (itís noticeably slower than Siri dictation), Sara Dictation Keyboard will translate what you say into readable text on your screen: So basically, Sara Dictation Keyboard works fine, but itís a little slower than weíd prefer. Itís definitely great that itís free, and there will definitely be some people that will enjoy using the tweak so they can type hands-free on non-Siri dictation devices. It's also very nice how the developer managed to integrate Sara Dictation Keyboard into the keyboard as if it were actually a stock feature. Because of the animation glitches we experienced on the iPhone 5, we recommend you stay away from this tweak on devices that already have Siri dictation installed on them. Siri dictation will work better anyhow. If you don't have Siri dictation on your iOS device, definitely give this tweak a try and let us know how you like it! Sara Dictation Keyboard

Theaterworks USA: The Civil War Monday, July 15, 2013 at Various times Repeating every day — Sundays, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays through August 16, 2013 . |Where:||Lucille Lortel Theater 121 Christopher Street, New York NY| |Ages:||8 and up| |Add to cal:||Google Yahoo iCal/Outlook| The Civil War is the story of people from different backgrounds fighting for the future of the nation - both sides believing they are fighting for freedom. With music from the period and many different character perspectives, this historical musical educates the next generation of young people about a major event in the history of our country. The Civil War is a 60-minute, one-act musical recommended for children ages eight and up. The performance schedule is as follows: Monday, July 15-Friday, August 16, 2013 Monday through Friday, 10:30am and 1pm Sunday at 2pm 6 pm performances on Thursday, August 1 and Thursday, August 15. Schedule Exceptions: There are no 1 pm performances July 15-17 and no 10:30 am performance on Thursday, July 18. (No free tickets are available for the opening night benefit, Thursday, July 18 at 6:30 pm.) How to Get Tickets: A limited number of free tickets will be made available to individuals each show day at the theatre on a first come, first served basis. Tickets for each day’s performances will be distributed beginning one hour prior to the first performance of the day. Individuals are limited to 4 tickets per adult per day.

There was no shortage of determination. Nor was there any lack of will. When the European Central Bank (ECB) unveiled a raft of measures last month designed to head off deflation and lift the eurozone out of recession, it was its most determined effort yet to launch the kind of monetary activism that has worked for its counterparts in America, Japan, and the UK. It cut interest rates, introduced a funding scheme for small companies, and took the almost unheard of step of introducing negative interest rates for the banks. Many saw this as throwing the kitchen sink at the problem. The trouble is, the sink wasn’t big enough. Just a few weeks later, it is clear that its efforts have not worked. The ECB had two main objectives: to weaken the euro and to strengthen confidence. Both would have led to stronger growth. Neither has happened. And that leaves the ECB with no alternative but to launch full-scale quantitative easing (QE). There was little question that the ECB had to ‘do something’ last month. The immediate threat of the euro collapsing has been dealt with. Bond markets are no longer in open revolt. But the eurozone is stuck in a grinding recession from which there seems no escape. Spain shows signs of recovery, but France and the Netherlands are now recording flat or falling output. Even once-robust nations, such as Finland, are getting into trouble. Meanwhile, deflation is taking hold. Prices are rising at an annual rate of just 0.5% across the eurozone. The likes of Greece, Cyprus and Portugal are seeing prices fall year-on-year, and at an accelerating pace. There is nothing necessarily wrong with prices falling. But for countries with high debts it can be catastrophic – the debt stays the same, but the income to pay it keeps falling. If the eurozone falls into deflation, it is probably game over for the currency. So it was no great surprise that even the Bundesbank lined up in favour of doing whatever might be needed to stop it. The Germans are no fans of printing money – but neither are they fans of deflation. In response, the ECB cut rates to a new low of 0.25%. It introduced a negative rate for banksleaving money on deposit with the central bank, in the hope they would lend it out instead. And it introduced a scheme for getting money to cash-starved small companies, similar to the ‘funding-for-lending’ programme the Bank of England introduced in the UK. “If required, we will act swiftly with further monetary easing,” said the ECB president, Mario Draghi, as he announced the measures. But it looks as though he will have to make good on that promise, and probably sooner than expected. There were two main mechanisms through which the ECB might have expected its measures to impact on the economy – the exchange rate, and confidence. A lower exchange rate would help countries such as France or Italy. At $1.37 to the euro, the single currency is clearly overvalued, and interest-rate cuts typically weaken a currency. Unfortunately, it has not worked for the euro. After briefly dipping on the ECB’s news, the currency is back to pretty much where it started. There is certainly no sign of the 20% devaluation that might have made a difference. In that objective, the ECB has clearly already failed. As for confidence? That is not looking in much better shape either. Last week, data firm Markit reported that confidence had fallen across the eurozone for a second straight month in June, down from 53.5 to 52.8. The slowdown was evident everywhere, even in Germany, but the French numbers were the most worrying. Manufacturing activity fell to its lowest in six months, and the overall data suggested that the French economy is now shrinking. Given that we are in the middle of the upswing of the business cycle, that is a catastrophic performance for the eurozone’s second-largest economy. And so far this month, the ECB has reported that lending to businesses has fallen once again. So, there is not much sign of confidence picking up – if anything, it is getting worse. Sure, you can’t expect central-bank measures to work immediately. It can take several months for interest-rate cuts to feed through to the economy. But the ECB’s moves should be having more impact than this – the effect on the exchange rate should have been instantaneous. And the impact on confidence should come through very quickly. Both will take time to feed into expanding output and more jobs – but the trend should be clear by now. If you don’t get the lower exchange rate or the upturn in confidence, you aren’t going to get expanding output a few months ahead. Meanwhile, the eurozone is stuck with minimal growth, rising joblessness, and inches ever closer to deflation. In reality, the ECB now has no choice but to move on to full-blown QE. Its first round of policy measures has already failed. The only question is how long it takes it to get there. For investors in Europe’s equities, that is probably reassuring. QE will lift share prices, the same way it has everywhere else it has been tried. But it may well be too late to head off deflation – and for the eurozone itself, that will only deepen its crisis.

|[This is a MPIWG MPDL language technology service]| Hundred (n.) The product of ten mulitplied by ten, or the number of ten times ten; a collection or sum, consisting of ten times ten units or objects; five score. Also, a symbol representing one hundred units, as 100 or C. Hundred (n.) A division of a country in England, supposed to have originally contained a hundred families, or freemen. Hundred (a.) Ten times ten; five score; as, a hundred dollars.

Fun outdoors this summer can turn downright dangerous and result in a trip to the emergency department for kids and parents who are not careful. Each year, nearly 12 million children and adolescents under 18 years old visit the ER for injury-related reasons. “Kids are playing outdoors, being active, playing sports and getting exercise and that’s the way it should be,” said Dr. Alex Rosenau, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. “But sometimes active play can get overly aggressive and careless, resulting in injuries.” Injury is the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 9,000 children died from injuries in 2009 related to incidents, such as car crashes, suffocation, drowning, poisoning, fires and falls. Leading causes of injury-related emergency visits for both men and women include falls, as well as unintentionally being struck by another person or an object. “We realize you can’t avoid every injury,” said Dr. Rosenau. “And you can have the peace of mind of knowing that emergency physicians are ready to treat you or your child in the event one occurs. But there are some things you can do now to limit your chances of hurting yourself or someone else.” Wear Protective Gear — Helmets are the most common form of protective gear to protect a person’s head and brain. These should be used if playing a number of sports, including baseball, softball, biking, skateboarding and inline skating, just to name a few. Also protective padding in contact sports is always a good idea. Prevent Drowning —Supervise young children at all times, learn CPR and make sure children wear life jackets when boating or in lakes or the ocean. Show Respect for Others — For example, make sure children don’t throw objects that can harm people or dive in pools where somebody may be swimming below. Play by the Rules — If a child plays sports outdoors, make sure they listen to coaches and respect the rules of the game. A cheap shot can seriously injure someone. Don’t Play Injured — If a child already has an injury, let it heal before playing again. Make sure to check with a doctor and get clearance before restarting physical activity. For information about the symptoms of childhood emergencies, visit emergencycareforyou.org

Being Rita Hayworth Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom Publication Year: 2004 Published by: Rutgers University Press Title Page, Copyright, Dedication Download PDF (78.3 KB) When the subject of your work is a star like Rita Hayworth, you soon find that a lot of people have some fond recollection involving her and are eager to share it with you (I really never came across anyone who actively detested Hayworth or her films). Doing research for this project has thus been far more than a matter of reading books and articles, sifting... Introduction: Why Rita Hayworth? Download PDF (214.1 KB) "Men fell in love with ‘Gilda,’ but they woke up with me.”1 This quotation can be found in virtually any biography, book-length or otherwise, of the movie star Rita Hayworth. The context and the wording may vary, but always the statement is produced as a sort of revelation whose poignancy derives from the combination of bruised self-awareness... Part One: Stardom Off the Screen Download PDF (85.2 KB) 1. From Cansinoto Hayworth to Beckworth: Constructing the Star Person(a) Download PDF (713.3 KB) 2. Rita Lives for Love: The Family Life of Hollywood’s Unhappiest Star Download PDF (582.0 KB) The revelation at the center of Barbara Leaming’s 1989 biography of Rita Hayworth, If This Was Happiness, is that Hayworth had been sexually abused and beaten by her father throughout her childhood and adolescence. 1 Leaming acquired this information from Orson Welles, in whom Hayworth had presumably confided during the course of Hayworth’s... Part Two: Film Stars, Film Texts, Film Studies Download PDF (98.0 KB) 3. I’m the Goddessof Song and Danceper: Forming Competence in Down to Earth Download PDF (522.0 KB) In its review of the Rita Hayworth musical Tonight and Every Night (1945) Weekly Variety remarked that “In Rita Hayworth, Columbia has a protagonist of musicals second to none in the industry.”1 Her skills in dancing, acting, and “simulated singing” (everyone knew her voice was dubbed by others) had become “expert” and “top-ranked” across the two... 4. I Told You Not to Move—I Mean It! Cross-Examining Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai Download PDF (347.5 KB) The film noir The Lady from Shanghai (1948) is undoubtedly the Rita Hayworth film most frequently studied in the academy. As an Orson Welles film its authorship is the primary reason for its scholarly appeal. Few of Hayworth’s other films were directed by men whom we would now consider auteurs (the exceptions being two early films in Hayworth’s... 5. This Is Hayworth as Hayworth Really Is: The Secret Agent(s) of Affair in Tinidad and a Few Words about Miss Sadie Thompson and Salome Download PDF (382.9 KB) Some of the most significant action in Hayworth’s star vehicle Gilda takes place in the musical numbers rather than, or as well as, in the narrative. On the other hand, musical performance is peripheral to The Lady from Shanghai, whose protagonist is mainly confirmed as a literal, as well as figurative, siren by her singing.... Afterword: Replacing the Love Goddess Download PDF (131.1 KB) As I have mentioned, closure is never the last word (so to speak), not with Hollywood films and especially not with scholarly studies of them or of their component parts. My study has centered on a single Hollywood star, but the questions I have been concerned to address in relation to Rita Hayworth’s film performances and offscreen image only... Download PDF (252.0 KB) Download PDF (150.9 KB) Download PDF (94.0 KB) Download PDF (83.0 KB) Page Count: 288 Illustrations: 40 photographs Publication Year: 2004

Photo: Pinkitron (flickr) The French neighborhood of Saint-Denis is known historically as a burial site for kings and queens, but today Saint-Denis is home to largely African Muslim population. “If you want to see the France most tourists don’t see, it’s the place to go,” writer Harriet Welty said. Saint-Denis is also home to a large indoor market. Travel writer Carol Pucci describes the atmosphere. Inside the Marche de Saint-Denis, Italian tripe sellers work beside Halal butchers. Outside, among stalls stocked with rugs and cheap clothing, vendors peddle corn roasted in grills fashioned from grocery carts. A historic wooden dyehouse, once part of a thriving textile industry started by King Louis XIV, houses a cafe and restaurant. At noon, we listened as church bells rang, and a merchant shouted “Insha’Allah,” the Arabic phrase meaning “If Allah wills.” Read More: In Saint-Denis, the burial place of kings and queens, a Muslim culture thrives (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Are you trying to become debt-free or at least trying to pay off some debt? If so, I commend you for your financial effort. I am a firm believer in debt-free living. My wife and I have been debt-free except for the mortgage for over a year now. We used the debt snowball technique popularized most recently by Dave Ramsey to pay off everything. The debt snowball works! It really does. I’ll share some of my experience and the experience of others in using it successfully to break free from the slavery of debt. The advantages experienced from getting debt-free Paying off all our debt has given us a sense of financial peace and security. We aren’t as afraid of the recession because we aren’t strapped for cash. In fact, we continue to live below our means since we paid off our last debt and we have some cash in the bank just in case. As J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly points out in Free at Last! Saying Good-Bye to 20 Years of Debt, paying off your debt opens up your options in life. It gives you more freedom to pursue your desires. After using the debt snowball technique to pay off all his debt, J.D. was able to quit his day job and become a full-time blogger! How awesome is that? A brief overview of the debt snowball technique The debt snowball technique is amazingly simple. It doesn’t take much time to explain, yet it is a powerful tool for taking charge of your financial situation and reducing your debt. Here’s how the debt snowball works: - List your debts from smallest to largest, but exclude your mortgage. Be thorough! - Make minimum payments on all but the smallest debt to stay current. - Pay the most you can on the smallest debt until it is paid off. - Roll the total amount you were paying on the smallest debt into the payment on the next smallest. This builds your snowball as you move through the list. For an example of how the snowball works and for more details, please see my article Back To Basics- Using The Debt Snowball To Pay Off Debt. Problems you may encounter with your debt snowball Anytime you try something new, you are going to encounter unfamiliar situations that you aren’t sure how to solve. Things may happen as you are paying off your debt that mess up your snowball. Here are three common debt snowball issues and how to solve them: 1. Giving up and incurring more debt. As I said earlier, the debt snowball is amazingly simple, yet it is not easy. It takes time, commitment and discipline. The snowball, when done correctly, is designed to maximum your chance of success, but there are a couple of things you need to do to help. First, you have to stop the bleeding in order to heal the patient. You must stop incurring more debt! If you don’t, then you’ll lose traction, become demoralized and quit. Second, be sure you stick to the debt snowball technique exactly. The debts are listed smallest to largest and attacked in that order because this method will ensure you have some early wins. Getting a few small bills paid off will give you the confidence that freedom from debt is possible. This is 80% mental and 20% method. 2. Letting an unexpected expense get you off track. This happens to almost everyone that is trying to get out of debt. The key is to prepare properly. Dave Ramsey and many others suggest creating a baby emergency fund of at least $1,000 prior to starting the snowball. The baby emergency fund will allow you to handle a lot of smaller emergencies or unexpected expenses without going into more debt. You simply use your emergency fund to pay the expense, temporarily suspend your snowball to replenish your emergency fund and then resume the snowball once you have $1,000 or more in the bank again. 3. The temptation to try a shortcut. I won’t lie to you. Paying off debt sucks. Once it is paid off it is wonderful, but the process kind of stinks. You have to give up some things in the short-run in order to gain long-term financial success. For most, it takes 18 to 24 months to pay off all their debt except the mortgage. Along the way, you are going to be tempted to take some shortcuts. You are going to see ads for places that will suggest they can help you reduce your debts to get them paid off faster. You are going to hear about debt consolidation loans that suggest they can solve your problem instantly. Do not fall victim to these persuasive peddlers of instant gratification. Most of them will cost you more money and will not do anything for you that you can’t do for yourself! Stick to the debt snowball plan and you will succeed. Getting debt-free is worth all the effort, trust me! You will not be disappointed in becoming debt-free. It is a wonderful feeling of peace and security. This is one of the best things that you can do for your kids and family. They will learn from you and this will become part of your legacy. How great will it be to know that you changed the financial destiny of a large chunk of your family tree? Awesome! Where are you at in your journey to becoming debt-free? Photo by kamshots

Search National Agricultural Library Digital Collections Back to Search NALDC Record Details: Aggregate Stability as Affected by Polyacrylamide Molecular Weight, Soil Texture, and Water Quality Download [PDF File] The favorable effects of the environmentally friendly, nontoxic, anionic polyacrylamide (PAM) as a soil conditioner have long been established. Some uncertainties exist, however, regarding the effects of PAM molecular weight (MW) on its performance as a soil amendment and its ability to penetrate into aggregates and stabilize interior surfaces. We studied the effects of two anionic polymers, a high-MW (12 x 10⁶ Da) and a medium-MW (2 x 10⁵ Da) PAM, using deionized water (electrical conductivity of 0.004 dS m-1) or a 15 mmol L-1 gypsum solution, on the stability of aggregates from four smectitic soils varying in clay content. Penetration of PAM into the aggregates was estimated from treating 0.5- to 1.0- and 1.0- to 2.0-mm aggregates with PAM and thereafter comparing the stability of the small aggregates to that of the large aggregates after the latter had been crushed and sieved to 0.5- to 1.0-mm size. The stability ratio (SR) ranged from 0.090 to 0.900 and tended to (i) increase with the increase in soil clay content, (ii) maintain, in the absence of PAM, a greater level with electrolyte solution than deionized water, and (iii) be greater for the PAM-treated aggregates than the control. In the finer textured soils, the SR of the initially small aggregates was generally greater than that of the initially large aggregates, indicating that most of the PAM was adsorbed on the exterior surfaces and only a small fraction of the PAM added, if any, entered into pores. A significant interaction among the treatments tested (PAM MW, aggregate size, and solution ionic strength), with respect to their effect on the SR, was identified. Consequently, neither of the two PAM polymers tested could have been singled out as preferable. soil pore system Soil Science Society of America journal 2007 Nov-Dec, v. 71, no. 6 Journal Articles, USDA Authors, Peer-Reviewed Works produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted. Agricultural Research Service Web Policies and Important Links

Where do I go when I miss that squish? To the Fen! Where, even in this dry spring, coolness seeps through the slats of a plastic boardwalk trail, winding its way across this wetland, fed from below by a shallow aquifer. Beyond its boundaries, what must be vernal pools—for I hear wood frogs calling strongly in the distance, even in the daylight of this warm afternoon. These woods of the fen, though, are mostly quiet, and I walk past the large pools of dark water, so still and reflective, hugging the tall, wide trunks of the Cottonwood trees. Until, at the edge, I step out into a stand of Cattails, and the sleepy, slow pace of the woods is left behind. From all around, wild excitement, as Red-winged Blackbirds noisily call in the sunshine. And masses of slender, brightly colored stems, explode with flowers both dainty and bold. Their feet in cool, clean water--Pussy willows. The exuberance of one who will never know thirst. See more Skywatch here.

The party with the most votes has not necessarily won the election. Instead parties are forced to form coalitions. In political systems like Germany, where we have no party getting anything near 50% of the votes, the usual one-bar-per-party bar charts (shown on the right) totally fail answering this most important question. The alternative visualization below fixes this! On the right the impossible coalitions are shown for comparison. The numbers above the bars show how many seats are missing for a majority.

This classroom demonstration utilizes a manual shake table to teach K-12 students about earthquake engineering concepts. Topics covered include cross bracing and pendulum tuned mass dampers. This acitvity can be employed in a lesson plan centered on engineering and science principles such as Newton's Laws of Motion, pendulums, frequency, period, oscillation, damping, energy, forces, acceleration, earthquakes, earthquake engineering, and more. Credits and References Additional details can be found in the teachers supplemental written by Heidi Falson at Peer Berkeley HERE Cite this work Researchers should cite this work as follows:

A Rwandan court will decide Thursday whether to grant bail to a presidential hopeful arrested on charges that include collaborating with a terrorist organization and "genocide ideology," referring to mass killings of hundreds of thousands in 1994. Victoire Ingabire is a likely challenger to President Paul Kagame in the August elections. Her arrest Wednesday was followed by an appearance in a Kigali court, according to a statement from the prosecution. "The court will decide on Thursday whether she remains in preventive custody as requested by the prosecution or is granted bail awaiting substantive trial," the prosecution said. Prosecution officials said she faces charges of genocide ideology, ethnic division and collaborating with a terrorist group. Ingabire, the leader of the opposition United Democratic Forces party, was in exile in the Netherlands until January. "Her involvement in politics does not mean that she is above the law," the prosecution said in a statement. Opposition party members are facing increasing threats, attacks and harassment ahead of the elections, according to rights groups. Ingabire has said she's been harassed since her return. "The Rwandan government already tightly controls political space," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "These incidents will further undermine democracy by discouraging any meaningful opposition in the elections." Kagame has denied that he's trying to silence the opposition. In an interview with CNN earlier this year, he slammed human rights organizations for their assessment. "You tend to make a judgment of a country, 11 million people, on what a couple of people have said and (they) don't take into account what Rwandans say," he said. "Nobody has asked the Rwandans ... it's as if they don't matter in the eyes of the human rights people. It's our own decisions in the end." Rwanda is scheduled to hold national elections in August, sparking fears of ethnic division. In 1994, militias made up of ethnic Hutus slaughtered ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus nationwide in a 100-day rampage that killed at least 800,000 people. The genocide ended when Tutsi-led militias backing Kagame ousted the Hutu government supporting the massacre. Ingabire is an ethnic Hutu. Her party decried her arrest as illegal and urged officials to release her.

An odd new species of snail, with a translucent shell, was found about 3,000 feet underground in a Croatian cave. This new kind of snail appears to be blind, but seeing isn’t a very important sense when you live in a dark underground cave. The snail was found in one of the deepest caves on Earth. It was described on Aug. 30 in the journal Subterranean Biology. This new species, named Zospeum tholussum, is tiny: most of the shells discovered are only 1.4 to 1.8 millimeters tall. You can even see the snail’s guts through the shell: Scientists found only one of the snails alive, but discovered several shells in the cave. The shells of young snails are translucent, but become more milky white as the snails age. Zospeum tholussum is a separate species within the Zospeum genus. The new species is shown below in box A, and as compared to other members of the genus in B and C. The species was found in the Lukina Jama-Trojama cave system in Croatia. The snail seems to have a limited ability to move around and spends most of its time in the mud near water. This image shows where in the cave system where the new species was discovered: The scientists don’t know much else about the species yet, including what it eats. Thanks to Dan Nosowitz from Popular Science for pointing out the study.

Your dog could hate your guts. If you get home tonight and the little pup moves its right ear, it's time to get a new puppy. That's what animal behavior experts at the Azabu University in Sagamihara, Japan, found after extensively studying the facial expressions and tics of 12 dogs. "If they were presented with an object they didn’t like, such as pair nail clippers, the animals moved their right ear," The Telegraph's Richard Gray wrote. "They found that the dogs tended to move their left eyebrow upwards around half a second after seeing their owner [or someone they like]," he adds. Right ear bad; left eyebrow good. This is good to know in case you have a sneaking suspicion that your dog might be playing you and is only interested in the treats you give him or her (or if, quite simply, your dog isn't as emotive as this pup). "[E]yebrow movement might indicate a visible response where by dogs attempted to look at their owners more intently," says Dr. Miho Nagasawa, one of the researchers involved the study. And that eyebrow movement seems to be specifically attached to humans or something that elicits emotion. According to the study's abstract, the dogs' telling eyebrows didn't move when they were presented with attractive toys, which indicates that "dogs show facial laterality in response to emotional stimuli" rather than non-social stimuli like food, or a ball, or a ball full of food. Now, wait, what's that you say? No. We're not sure what to do if your dog is totally smiling at you while moving its right ear. That's a different story, for a different day. Now, here's video from the study, which includes a bunch of adorable pups with facial sensors : - Hobbies & Personal Activities

Oscar winners are the only ones who know the rare and splendid thrill of hoisting their new golden trophies for the first time in front of a global TV audience. But we bet that few of those icons know about the unique origins of that statue, which can be tied all the way back to a select crew of Chicago craftsmen. In the above video provided to TIME, we get a backstage glimpse at R.S Owens & Company, a Chicago factory that specializes in elegant awards and gifts. Every statue is hand-crafted, molded from gold-plated britannium into an 8-pound figurine. It takes 10 full days to complete a single statue, to move from molten britannium to the final polish and packaging. The names of the winners (who our own Richard Corliss may have predicted) are engraved much later on plates that are then added to the statue; the Chicago artisans never know who will be taking home their handy work. The first statue to be handed out Sunday evening — likely, predictors say, to best supporting actress Octavia Spencer — will be number 3,621 from the R.S. Owens & Company inventory. Every year, around 50 new creations are distributed, adding to an ongoing circulation of artifacts that can be found in stars’ homes, museums and even auction blocks. Of course, beyond who will be taking home this year’s britannium accolades, there’s plenty of buzz swirling around who was denied a nomination to begin with. Particularly these five high-profile snubs:

Marcus Singletary (pictured) attempted to cash in on the tragic killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by applying for a trademark to use the phrase “Justice for Trayvon Martin” on hoodies, reports “The Smoking Gun.” The Los Angeles musician submitted his trademark application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on March 23. When Singletary filled out the lengthy application for the trademark, he specified that the phrase would be used on hooded sweatshirts. The item of clothing that the 36-year-old is referring to was once an icon of popular culture, but has now become a potent symbol of racial injustice brought into the spotlight by the Martin case. Trayvon Martin was unarmed when he was gunned down by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. Martin was walking in a gated community, where his father lived when Zimmerman spotted him and thought he looked “suspicious.” Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman, pursued the boy, an altercation ensued and Martin ended up dead. The shooting has ignited a firestorm across the country. Singletary’s opportunistic motives, however, were thwarted by Trayvon’s mother, Sabrina Fulton, who filed her application with the trademark office just two days earlier. Still, the Trayvon phrases have become rallying cries for racial injustices and Fulton has plans on trademarking two of them: “Justice for Trayvon” and “I Am Trayvon.” Fulton has defended herself against those claiming she and Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, are seeking profit from their son’s death. Both Fulton and Martin worry that people are waiting to exploit their son’s tragedy, so their lawyers have filed the trademarks to protect the integrity of their son’s death. Fulton’s trademark rights will include production of digital media, CDs and DVDs, featuring Trayvon Martin. One of the family’s lawyers, Kimra Major-Morris, said as much to CNN. “The purpose of the trademark filings is to protect against exploitation and to keep the heat on an arrest and that is really our goal and the family is not interested in a profit, said Major-Morris.”

Shaman blames lacklustre results on natives angry over Norway-owned fish farms Norway is traditionally a powerhouse in the Winter Olympics, having placed first overall in Salt Lake City in 2002 with 13 gold medals. But when Norway's early results in the Vancouver Games were not as good as expected, the Norwegian broadcaster NRK sought out a Sami shaman—or indigenous spiritualist—who speculated his counterparts in B.C. might be the cause. Eirik Boie Myrhaug is quoted as saying that Indian magic might be behind Norway's Olympic setbacks. He suggests some B.C. chiefs might have cast an evil spell on the Norwegian athletes. "If I did possess such a power, I don't think I would be directing it at the Norwegian national sportsmen. I think I would direct it towards the fish farms." I dunno, Chief Chamberlin. A sneaky Native sorcerer might realize it's too obvious to attack the fish farm directly. Better to attack a symbol of Norwegian pride like the Olympics team. Presumably that would teach the Norwegians to be more humble and listen to the hunger strikers opposing the farm. Wasn't that the thinking behind the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which had no strategic value but symbolized American might? Same with the Norwegian Olympics team. Ahem. This item goes into the Stereotype of the Month contest for the claims that 1) Indians have mystical powers and 2) Indians would try to hurt people in underhanded ways. It's kind of funny to hear an indigenous Norwegian shaman accuse his indigenous Canadian counterparts of black magic. Is he implying that he also casts spells on people when they don't cooperate? Or is he foolishly stereotyping Indians and thereby stereotyping himself? For more on Indian curses, see Indian Curse in Saturday Night Live and Medicine Man Ends Talladega Curse. For more on the subject in general, see Magical Negroes and Indians. Below: "Team Canada defenceman Dan Boyle (22) fends off Norwegian forward Per-Age Skroder in the teams' Olympic opener on Tuesday. Team Canada defenceman Dan Boyle (22) fends off Norwegian forward Per-Age Skroder in the teams' Olympic opener on Tuesday." (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Officials Urge Those Affected By 9/11 To Register For Victim Compensation Fund NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – Time is running out for people exposed to toxins from the Sept. 11 terror attacks to register for health benefits. As WCBS 880’s Peter Haskell reported, a deadline of Oct. 3 is looming for those who are sick or might become sick because of 9/11. “After that date, you cannot sign up for the Victims Compensation Fund,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney told Haskell at a press conference at 7 World Trade Center on Monday. “Some illnesses do not come forward until years later. The bill now covers cancers, so God forbid if you get a cancer later on and if you haven’t registered then you will not be covered with compensation and the support that you deserve,” said Maloney. “The point is whether you’re sick or not, remember to register. If you do not register, then the program cannot help you.” Maloney added that those enrolled in a 9/11 medical program still need to register separately for economic support. “One thing that is important to know is that if you’re being treated in the Health Treatment Program, that is different and separate from the Compensation Fund. You have to sign up for the Compensation Fund,” she said. Maloney and Rep. Jerrold Nadler joined community and labor officials and emergency workers on Monday for the start of an outreach campaign to publicize the available benefits. Tens of thousands of people are eligible for free medical exams, treatment and medication under the World Trade Center Health Program. They include those who lived and worked in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in the year following 9/11 – even those who may have been exposed just briefly to possible toxins. There’s no deadline to file health claims. “It would be a travesty if people could get compensation and did not apply,” Suzy Ballantine with the AFL-CIO told Haskell. Uniformed Fire Officers Association president Al Hagan said some people are still too emotionally affected by the terror attacks to deal with registering. “Whenever it’s thrust to our attention, it’s kind of like ripping a scab off the wound,” Hagan said. Oct. 3 is the deadline for the Victim Compensation Fund for economic losses due to 9/11 injuries. Maloney and Nadler sponsored the 9/11 James Zadroga Act, which provides benefits to first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks, and their family members. You May Also Be Interested In These Stories - Coney Island Cyclone Gets Stuck On First Public Ride Of Season - Police Investigating Two Paint Ball Attacks Against Jewish Residents In Brooklyn - CBS2 Exclusive: Brooklyn Man Recounts Harrowing East Village Explosion - Police: 2nd Body Found At Site Of East Village Explosion (TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Substandard housing conditions are a common issue farm workers face. Not only do many workers live in crowded, unsanitary conditions, but they often lack basic utilities, live in isolated areas far away from important services like health clinics, grocery stores, and public transportation, and in many cases must pay exorbitant rates for rent. There are different types of housing that farm workers live in, varying widely based on geographic location, immigration status, etc. The most common types of farm worker housing are: - Government housing: In order to qualify for affordable subsidized housing, farm workers must be documented. While it’s impossible to accurately measure exactly how many farm workers are undocumented, estimates show that at least 6 out of 10 of our country’s farm workers are undocumented (Southern Poverty Law Center). - Grower-owned housing: By law, growers are required to provide housing for guest workers: non-immigrant seasonal workers on a special temporary visa called H-2A. However, H-2A workers account for only about 3% of the nation’s agricultural workforce. For the majority of workers living in grower-owned housing, rent is deducted from the farm workers’ paycheck. - Privately rented housing: Farm workers in this case pay a private owner for rent. In the case of the latter housing options– grower-owned and privately rented housing–the landowner can have a monopoly on available housing, which allows them to overcharge. This is especially true in isolated rural areas, where other housing options simply don’t exist, and thus workers have no alternative but to pay these rates. For example, in Immokalee, Florida, this trailer rents for $500 PER WEEK—more than a good-sized apartment in Manhattan—because of its proximity to the parking lot where workers line up in the morning to find work: Because it’s so expensive, 10 workers will pack into this one trailer in order to afford rent. A high ratio of farm workers to available utilities leads to further problems. For example, multiple people share sinks, bathrooms, showers, cooking and laundry facilities, etc. In terms of health, this is problematic because lack of hygiene facilities can promote pesticide exposure and the spread of disease. It’s important for a worker who has been exposed to pesticides to be able to shower and wash their clothes, but with so many people living in one building, this can be difficult. In other places, in order to turn a profit, landowners charge rent fees on a per person basis instead of a total for the building. These per-person rates make life even more difficult for farm worker families, who have to pay separately for each child. In general, lack of government oversight on housing standards and regulations enables growers and private renters to get away with providing substandard housing. For sources and to learn more: Content provided by NFWM-YAYA Staff.

Driver’s Licenses Changes Approved by NJ Committee Parents or guardians in New Jersey might need to complete a driver orientation course before their teens could get their driver’s licenses. A legislative committee on Thursday approved the requirement along with requiring teens to wait longer to get their licenses. Teens would have learner’s permits for at least one year and must log 50 hours of practice driving time. The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety says the measure would decrease the number of road fatalities statewide by 3 percent each year. The bill was advanced unanimously by the Assembly Transportation and Public Works Committee on Thursday. It can now head to the entire Assembly. The state Senate has not yet voted on the bill. (Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

History of Sales Tax Act Sales tax was imposed in in 1920 and is still in force with some modifications. In Canada , Federal Government has never sured officially this tax as sales tax. Actually it was an assortment of commodity tax both at manufacture and retail levels and it was introduced in 1930. United States introduced purchase tax in 1940. Before the partition of subcontinent, India Sales Tax was regarded under the item of 48 of the provincial legislative in the seventh schedule to the Government of India Act, 1930. Great Britain adopted General Tax Act which was earned by the provincial government in the Pakistan Punjab. Federal Government in 1948 took over the sales tax and an addition was made to the federal legislative list an item No. 54B. General Sales Tax Act, 1948 came into force on the 1st day of April 1948, which was based on the multiple point tax system. Pakistan In 1950, a sales tax enquiry committee was appointed to examine and report on the administration, incidence, general structure and leakage of sales tax revenue. The committee made various recommendations including the adoption of the single point tax system and the collection of tax in respect of imported goods at the import stage along with customs duty. The present Sales Tax Act was introduced in the federal legislature on the 30th day of March 1951 to give effect to the recommendations of the committee. After discussions and debates in Parliament the bill was passed by the legislature and was given consent by the time Governor General on the 20th day of April 1951. Sales Tax could not be charged on importation and exportation of commodities but on only consumption, this was further improved by the presidential order, Taxation of Sales and Purchase Order, 1960, on the 30th day of June 1960, according to which the power to impose taxes on the sales, purchases, consumption, importation, exportation, manufacture and production of goods was conferred since 31st day of March 1948. The preamble of the Act was amended by inserting the words “importation and exportation, production, and manufacture” after the word “sale”. Sales tax when levied was fixed at 10% but increased to 12.5% from 1st July 1961 and again further increased to 15% from 1st July 1964. A surcharge of 25% of the sales tax was levied on the sales of taxable manufactured goods by the Finance Supplementary Act, 1965 which was done to meet defence requirements. However, the Defence Surcharge and Rehabilitation Tax were abolished by the Finance Ordinance, 1972. The Federal Government has the powers to enhance the general limit or general rates of sales tax or reduce such rates by a notification published in the official gazette. Sales Tax Act 1990 By virtue of Finance Ordinance, 1990, the Sales Tax Act, 1951 has been completely substituted by a new Act known as Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, 1990. This complete change has been made in order to update the Act so that it should be able to meet country’s economy. Moreover, government has tried to simplify the rules regarding sales tax for the benefit of assessees and collection authorities. The 16 chapters of repealed act have now been replaced by 10 new chapters. The new Act became effective on 1st July 1990. The Act prescribed a Value Added Tax (VAT) type system in which the value added component at each stage of business transaction could be taxed. The sales tax is chargeable from a registered person at import and sale of taxable manufactured goods. Tax credit or input tax is allowed when the registered person keeps proper record of claim regarding tax invoice and bill of entry. The goods meant for export were zero-rated. The tax paid on raw materials and other goods purchased in the course of business are deducted automatically while determining the tax liability. The new system is based on self-assessment/clearance procedure and payment of tax. Salient Features of VAT Type System 1. Administrative structure changed from geographical jurisdiction to functional division. 2. Introduction of combined return-cum-payment challan form. 3. Filing of return-cum-payment challan in the bank. 4. Simplified record keeping i.e. a register for sales and a register for purchases and issuance of tax invoices. 5. No posting of sales tax officials on the business premises. 6. No authentication of documents by the Sales Tax officials. 7. No checking of taxable goods during transportation. 8. No seizure of goods during transportation or otherwise. Extract of the Budget Highlights 2002—2003 1. Sales tax exemptions withdrawn on supplies of vegetable ghee and cooking oil. 2. Immunity from further tax granted on vegetable ghee, cooking oil and fertilizers. 3. Tax rate on imported vegetable oils increased from 15% to 20%. Similarly, tax rate on five other items (Talc, Solvent Oil (non-composite), Calcium Carbonate, Maleic Anhydride and Acrylic Tops) increased to 20%. 4. Zero-rating facility (complete exemption of sales tax) granted on the locally manufactured plant and machinery supplied to petroleum and gas sector E&P companies including OGDC, their contractors and sub-contractors. 5. Input tax adjustment allowed on electricity bills showing registration number and address of a registered person. 6. The scope of tax repayment extended to both imported and domestic inputs used in exportables. 7. The institution of Collector (Appeals) revived to hear appeals against orders passed by officers up to Deputy Collector. 8. An alternate dispute resolution system developed involving participation from private sector for settlement of disputes of taxpayers. 9. Classification of sales tax exemptions made in line with new version of H. S. Code. 10. A statutory provision created for relaxation of expired time limitations in genuine cases. 11. A system of inter-collectorate transfer of registrations evolved. 12. Legal framework developed for establishment and operation of Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) with effect from 1st day of July 2002. 13. Federal Government authorized to allow input tax adjustment in case of determination of past tax liabilities. 14. Collectors empowered to allow adjustment instead of cash refund of un-utilized input tax in subsequent tax period. 15. Ambiguities in the definitions of “input tax”, “registered person” and “enrolled person” removed. 16. 72 new branches of National Bank of designated for payment of sales tax. Pakistan 17. Ambiguities in the recovery related statutory provisions removed and recovery procedure streamlined. Extract of the Budget Highlights 2003—2004 SRO 500(i) 2003, dated 7th June 2003, reduction/waiver off the past liabilities of sales tax to already registered persons has been granted and non-registered persons have been provided incentives to come in the tax met by 31st August 2003. No audit shall be conducted of the persons availing benefit of this notification. 2. In order to encourage retailers to come in the tax net, limit for turnover tax for them has been enhanced from Rs. 5 million to 20 million. Necessary amendments in the Act as well as in the rules have been made accordingly. 3. New entry No. 60 has been added in the Sixth Schedule to grant exemption on supply of fixed assets against which the input tax adjustment is not available under a notification issued in terms of clause (b) of sub-section (1) of section 8 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990. 4. There was no concept of filing of revised return in the Sales Tax Act, 1990. Amendment in sections 26, 26A and 26AA of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, has been made which allows the registered/enrolled persons and retailers to file revised return on payment of evaded amount of tax, additional tax and penalty. However, full or partial exemption from payment of penalty in certain cases has also been granted. Show cause notice shall also stand abated on payment of tax and penalty. 5. The present provisions of law do not allow sales tax registered persons to deduct the amount of sales tax paid on purchases during any preceding tax period which could not be taken into account for the purposes of deduction of total amount of input tax during that period for any reason. Consequently, a large number of refund claims were arising whose disposal was inordinately delayed. Therefore, section 7 has been amended to allow adjustment of input tax of preceding three months. 6. Section 33 has been amended to reduce the penalty for late filing of return for the first fifteen days of the due date.

CHICAGO The Chicago Department of Public Health has identified two Adobo Grills here as sources of nine salmonella cases linked to fresh tomatoes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had declined to publicly identify the restaurants, is attempting to trace shipments back through distributors, packing houses and growers to find the source of an outbreak that has sickened more than 383 people and hospitalized at least 48 nationwide, according to agency officials. But a high-ranking ... Register to view this article It’s free but we need to know a little about you to continually improve our content. Registering allows you to unlock a portion of our premium online content. You can access more in-depth stories and analysis, as well as news not found on any other website or any other media outlet. You also get free eNewsletters, blogs, real-time polls, archives and more. Attention Print Subscribers: While you have already been granted free access to NRN we ask that you register now. We promise it will only take a few minutes! Questions about your account or how to access content?

I have waxed poetic about our love of board games and Family Game night in the past. More often than not you will find my kids bring ing board games out on the weekends or even mid-week to spend time together learning how to win, how to lose and having a great time together. Board games are a great way to keep a group of kids busy during supper prep or a fabulous way to spend a rainy afternoon. One thing I realized when Hasbro contacted me about reviewing games for preschoolers is that we were seriously lacking games geared towards my 4-year-old. Thanks to Hasbro, our problem is now solved and we have a great selection of games for our preschooler. When the box full of new games from Hasbro came for us to review, Hungry Hippos was the first game the kids wanted to bring out. It’s the perfect way introduction to playing games for a preschooler. The rules are easy, it’s fast, fun and high energy. Just make sure you are prepared for the shouts of glee as each marble gets munched by a Hippo and the daily question “Can we play Hungry Hippos?”. We were also sent Memory Match, Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders to check out. My daughter absolutely loves Memory Match and has proven that she can out match even her mama! Chutes and Ladders is a favourite from when I was a kid and it’s the perfect game for kids of all ages. While playing practice counting and your numbers as you move your character up the board. Candy Land was a new game for me, but one my kids informed me was “Super fun!”, they were right. In fact all the games were enjoyed by everyone, even the 10-year-old, although you may never hear her admit it. Why not start a tradition with your preschooler and plan a weekly, or even daily, family game night. It’s a great way to connect and spend time with your little one and teach them valuable lessons too. Which game was your favourite as a kid? *Disclosure I was provided with samples to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

So, we asked New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at last night's benefit for The News Literacy Project, what advice did he have for young people who want to go into journalism these days, you know, given the job market? "Why don't we not go there?" he laughed. Then he went there anyway. "Um, what I would tell them is the industry is in the midst of a massive transition," he said. "But the core of the fundamental job is critical. We have to re-create ourselves, but the heart of what we're going to re-create is still journalism. The way people get information is changing, but the need for information will remain constant." He thinks that physical newspapers will stick around as well. "The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?" he asked. We hadn't. "What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?" We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? "A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?" he said, shaking his head. "Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed," he said. "Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane." Okay, so let us get this straight. The publisher of the New York Times is saying that getting into print journalism is like getting on the Titanic? "We are trying to convert shipping companies to airplane companies," said Sulzberger. "Same business: transporting people safely across long distances. Different cost structure, different way of doing business, but the same core business. There is still a very vibrant business in shipping. It's just not taking masses of people across the Atlantic. It's now taking families around the Seychelles, or something like that. There will still be passenger ships, but they're not going to be in the same business. So print will still be here, I believe, decades from now. But will it be the driving force? No." Awesome. So, we asked awkwardly, how are those layoffs going? "Oh, I haven't gotten there yet."

By RICHARD VIENNE Thousands of Western New York adults are putting their health at risk by failing to do what they can to manage their high blood pressure, according to a new Univera Healthcare report. More than 416,000 Western New York adults, enough to sell out Ralph Wilson Stadium nearly six times, have been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Amazingly, one third of them report not having made any changes to their diet or level of physical activity to help manage their condition, and one fifth report ignoring a physician's advice to take blood pressure control medication. Properly managing high blood pressure can add years to your life and help you avoid costly and crippling health problems, such as heart attacks, strokes and kidney disease. Blood pressure measures how hard the blood pushes against the walls of your arteries. High blood pressure can damage your blood vessels, which can cause heart and kidney disease. You have high blood pressure, also called hypertension, if your systolic pressure (top number) is 140 or higher or your diastolic pressure (bottom number) is 90 or higher. The risk of high blood pressure increases with age and is higher in people who have a family history of the condition. Non-Hispanic blacks and women older than age 65 are also prone to high blood pressure. A healthier lifestyle can help adults prevent and control high blood pressure. A healthy lifestyle includes maintaining a healthy weight; minimizing dietary salt, fat and sugar and getting enough potassium; regularly engaging in aerobic physical activity; moderating alcohol; avoiding tobacco; and following your physician's advice about blood pressure control medication. Obesity is the most important predictor of high blood pressure. In Western New York, 37 percent of adults diagnosed with high blood pressure had a body mass index indicating obesity, and 35 percent had a BMI that categorized them as overweight. Only about one in four adults diagnosed with high blood pressure was at a healthy weight. For the thousands of Western New York adults with unregulated high blood pressure, the best advice is to see your doctor and then act on his or her recommendations. It's as simple as that. The report found that a health professional's advice to adopt healthier behaviors is a powerful motivator for patients. About 75 percent of upstate New York adults diagnosed with high blood pressure who reported adopting a healthier diet, for example, said they were advised by a health professional to do so. The report on high blood pressure is free and available online at UniveraHealthcare.com/factsheets. Richard Vienne, D.O. is vice president and chief medical officer of Univera Healthcare.

After Thursday night's Dunkirk Board of Education meeting, expect school lunches to be a tad bit more expensive. School lunches throughout the Dunkirk City School District will be bumping up slightly for the 2013-2014 school year. Elementary school lunches will be 15 cents more, costing a total of 75 cents, while secondary school lunches will cost 25 cents more, raising the total price to $1.25. "We had to bid, by law, the lunch contract last spring, and we only had one bidder," said School Superintendent Gary Cerne. "With the nature of one bidder, they name their price, and basically with the more nutritious meals that they will be offering, they were forced to raise their price. Even though we absorbed most of the price in the district, we have to raise prices slightly to cover our costs." Reduced meals will continue to be free while breakfast pricing remains flat. Also during the meeting, Board President Kenneth Kozlowski announced the results of an exit poll that was taken on the day of the budget vote several weeks ago. The exit poll asked voters whether the voting areas for the budget should be downsized from four to one. 208 voters said yes while 62 said no. After the results were read, Kozlowski announced that future school votes will be held solely in the auxillary gym of the high school. "It's going to save us some money," Kozlowski said. "It's going to ease up the two elementary schools that we had to have a police officer presence during [any voting], as well as liability insurance we had to purchase for the Fire Hose Company. I think it will be a better spot, better parking, better access, and I think we will have a little bit better control over it, having it at one location." Kozlowski also announced the board is putting its support behind repowering the NRG Power Plant. He said NRG has been a good corporate friend of the district, as well as a good community partner with local charities. Several positions were filled within the district during the meeting, including an English as a second language teacher, a math teacher, two elementary teachers, a clerk, a library aide and a cleaner. The board also recognized Christina Aviles, the student board member, who was in attendance at her final meeting. Aviles will be graduating next week with the rest of her fellow classmates. An executive session was called by the board shortly after the meeting started to discuss a personnel matter. The next meeting will be held July 3 at 5:30 p.m. in the large group instruction room of the administration building. This will be the board's reorganizational meeting. Comments on this story may be submitted to email@example.com.

Yes, it is time to revisit the concept of Official Development Assistance ODA – official development assistance – is an important concept and an important measure. It is, to date, the only systematic means we have of assessing the efforts the ‘traditional’ donors make to support development. But the world is changing, and development finance is changing. In this light, do we need to look at the ODA concept again? I think we agree that the answer is yes. There are several criticisms of the ODA concept. Some say that it includes too much – that it counts much more than the money that actually flows into developing country budgets (donor administrative costs, refugee costs, etc.) This is why the OECD has introduced the concept of ‘country programmable aid’, which enables us to identify just how much is directly usable by countries to fund their priorities and programmes. On the other hand, some feel that ODA cash-flow-based measurement includes too little. Countries make efforts that are not counted as ODA – guarantees, callable capital etc. – that could mobilise significant investment for development by mitigating risk. This is of particular concern today when an increasing number of developing countries need loans, guarantees and equity – rather than grant funding – to boost infrastructure and finance economic growth. Finally, the ODA concept does not capture the complex and continually evolving interaction between public efforts and the use of market mechanisms. All this gives rise to tensions between ODA as a measure of development effort by donors, and flows available to developing countries to reduce poverty and promote growth. This is why the Ministers of our DAC member development agencies – when they met in London in December 2012 – gave the OECD-DAC the mandate to take a fresh look at the broader financing concept, as well the concept and role of ODA per se. This includes, of course, the issue of loans, which is the subject of much debate at the moment – both within the DAC and in the public arena. Loans have always been an important part of development financing – both concessional loans, such as the ones provided by the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), and non-concessional loans provided by many bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors, for instance the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Today, there is a growing demand for loans from the developing countries. The good news is that countries are growing – and this means they need and can afford to borrow money to fuel their continuing economic growth. This is one reason why this debate has risen to the top of the agenda. Recently it has also become evident that our members follow different approaches in determining what makes a loan concessional. Some members follow the approach of the multilateral development banks – where only loans that have been subsidized are reported as concessional. Others emphasize the recipients’ perspective, arguing that loans given on more beneficial terms than developing countries could otherwise attain on the market could be considered concessional. As former OECD-DAC Chair Richard Manning pointed out in his 9 April letter to the Financial Times, there is a need to revisit these calculations to ensure that they reflect the current markets terms. It is also important to keep in mind the importance of the public guarantees for institutions providing loans, which address the high-risk factor of some development investments. As the discussions continue, it is important that these differences – and the data behind them – continue to be publicly known and available for scrutiny. This will stimulate – as we already can see – a welcome and healthy debate. It is fundamental that we continue and deepen these discussions if we’re going to get in place an effective strategy for how to finance the new set of international development goals that will take over from the Millennium Development Goals after 2015. But with the increasing complexity of development financing, the broadening of the development agenda and the growing diversity among developing countries, that debate needs to be about aid and other sources of financing for development. It is not – and cannot be – a question of either/or. That said, we need to be able to discuss other sources of financing without that discussion being used as – or perceived as – an excuse for donors to walk away from their aid commitments. There is full agreement among DAC members that as we move towards 2015, we need to settle this debate, prioritizing innovative means to measure and promote development finance. At OECD, we will continue to work with our members and with other key stakeholders – including developing countries, as well as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions – to ensure that we have a robust measurement system for development finance in place by 2015. In this way, we will also ensure that the OECD DAC continues to be a key source of reliable and transparent data on development financing.

Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy On-line version ISSN 2411-9717 Print version ISSN 0038-223X WILLIAMS, R.A. and VILAR, G.. Measurement of suspension velocity in slurries and pastes using impedance imaging. J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall. [online]. 2008, vol.108, n.10, pp.597-605. ISSN 2411-9717. Electrical impedance tomographic methods have been applied to a variety of mineral and chemical processes in the laboratory and on plant. This review paper surveys technical developments in measurement methods to enable quantitative extraction of key process information in the form of mapping of concentration profiles, mixture homogeneity and suspension velocity. The methods for determining velocity are summarized, since this is of especial interest when applied to opaque systems where most conventional optically based measurements fail. A recent significant development is the use of ultra-high speed measurement that now allows velocity vectors to be extracted for fast moving mixtures and fluids (up to several metres per second). New data are reported pertinent to low and high solids concentration flow in pipelines. Use of the methods offer improvements to design of such systems but also points to the use of tomographic electrical sensor as online flow measurement and fault detection. This offers new opportunities for applications and benefits in the design and monitoring of mineral slurries and sludges.

HTS Theological Studies versão On-line ISSN 2072-8050 versão impressa ISSN 0259-9422 SPANGENBERG, Izak (Sakkie) J.J.. The crumbling of the Augustinian paradigm of theology? A critical discussion of Cornelis Blom's book Zonder grond onder de voeten. Herv. teol. stud. [online]. 2010, vol.66, n.1, pp.1-7. ISSN 2072-8050. The book Zonder grond onder de voeten (i.e. Without any foundation) is the published doctoral thesis which Cornelis Blom submitted at the Free University of Amsterdam. It focuses on evil in creation, and addresses the question: Who is responsible - God or humans? Christian theologians used to conclude (after reading Genesis 1-3) that humans are responsible. Blom, however, takes his cue from the book of Job, and comes to a totally different conclusion. According to his reading of Job and Genesis 1-4, there was no 'fall' from a perfect world. Evil existed right from the beginning, and God did not banish it from the world in which humans have to live. The article raises a number of questions concerning Blom's approach, analyses and conclusions. Palavras-chave : Book of Job; Creation; Evil; Genesis 1-4; Original sin.

I am always drawn to these type of maps where data is collected to determine which states are known for this or that. I have seen maps regarding "state food" and favorite sports teams to name a few, but this one in particular isn't so fun. It shows each state by negative aspects which in fact could actual be useful for things such as travel. Say you have asthma or other respiratory problems, after viewing this map one would probably stay away from California or specificaly Los Angeles due to their levels of smog. On the other hand, according to the map, being a vegetarian in the state of Oklahoma wouldn't be as easy as a more "fruitful" place considering the state has been rated to eat the fewest fruit and vegetables. "In 1979, the National Population and Family Planning Commission in China enacted an ambitious program that called for strict population control. Families in various urban districts are urged to have only one child—preferably a son—in order to solve the problems related to overpopulation. What has happened since then and what are its implications for the future of China?" This is an excellent infographic for understanding population dynamics in the world's most populous country. This was a cool graphic to explain the basics of the birth policies in China. As a country, it is respectable for them to try and control their global footprint and growth within the country, yet some of the measures that are taken to achieve or sustain them are slightly questionable. One of the graphics displayed having one child compared to more than one, which were have the chance of being followed by fines, confiscations of belongings, and even job loss. In a sense, by having more (a child) they actually get less (money, goods, respect). The goal of reducing the birth rates had actually worked since it was put in place, though it didn't come without some sort of an expense of the citizens. Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers. How to integrate my topics' content to my website? Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work. Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility. Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.

A PRESTIGIOUS international exchange programme is to launch its first-ever summer school for American students in Scotland. The University of Dundee and the University of Strathclyde will host the Fulbright Scotland Summer Institute next year. The educational and cultural change programme aims to promote mutual understanding between the people of the US and those in more than 155 countries. Students from American universities will compete for the chance to spend five weeks in either Dundee or Glasgow, with ten selected to come to Scotland next June for an intensive programme of lectures, seminars and cultural visits. First Minister Alex Salmond welcomed the news that the scheme was to host its first Scottish summer school. “Scotland has a rich and proud tradition of excellence in education and has long attracted students from around the world,” Mr Salmond said. “That is why I am pleased that this prestigious international organisation will host its first Scottish summer school shortly. “I believe this will build on our existing work with the Fulbright Commission and further cement the links between American and Scottish universities.”

UPDATE: James Kim's Off-Ramp piece received a 2013 Mark Twain Award by the Associated Press Television-Radio Association for best light feature. Congratulations, James! -- John Rabe I have always had a tough time understanding my parents. Not because we’re from different generations, or born and raised in different countries; it’s that we don’t speak the same language. Growing up, I remembered that my Korean was actually pretty good. My mom said that I “spoke Korean very well for seven years.” But afterwards, I “stopped speaking Korean and only spoke English.” This has made my relationship with my parents difficult to cultivate. We always are easily irritated with each other because we constantly misunderstand what each of us is saying. We can hardly explain a movie’s plot line to one another, let alone express what we’re going through. The only time I talk with my parents is when I’m asking them “what’s for dinner?” I wanted to try and fix this problem by taking the first initial step; that is to figure out if my condition is common or not. I talked to Linda Light, a Linguistics professor at Cal State Long Beach, who assured me that I wasn’t a screw up and that the condition is called First Language Attrition. Light says “there’s a tendency across all minority groups of a three-generation thing.” The first generation of immigrants speaks their native language; the second generation tends to be bilingual, while the third generation loses the native language. “But Koreans especially often lose it in the second generation, not the third.” It was a relief to find out that my ineptness towards speaking Korean was actually common in my immigrant generation. Yet, I still couldn’t help but feel guilty for not being able to communicate with my parents. I decided that the only thing to do was to take initiative and have a one-on-one personal conversation with my parents. Of course, I brought my friend along to help translate the conversation. Going into the interview, I thought that the only thing I had to improve was my Korean language. After doing that, all our problems would be fixed. Wrong. My Dad believes that my “apathy towards Korean culture” is what caused our relationship to tear apart. My mom replied that not only should I express myself to them, but I also need to listen to how they used to live in Korea to understand them better. My lack of Korean language wasn’t the problem; it was my attitude towards Korean culture. This whole time I thought the solution was as simple as taking some courses at a Korean language school. Instead, I learned that my whole demeanor towards my native culture needs a revision.

|Life Magazine. 16 Feb, 1948.| An american construction company employed a 25 year old ex-G.I. from Brooklyn named Russell K. Haight Jr. who during World War 2 had been a non-combatant in France fighting for Canadian Army. After a fall from a cliff, he decided to head back home.But a chance encounter with officials operating the war in Kashmir took him to the Poonch front in southwestern Kashmir where he took part in fighting for two months. At that time all he knew was that Kashmir had a Dogra king and he didn't like that. With his american no-fuss attitude he was soon promoted to brigradier general in the tribal army, a rank he later claimed was given to him as a joke by British army officers. On the front he learnt to handle the maundering and looting tribals by playing upon their vanities and tribal rivalries. But his big american dream of action-adventure did not last long. He got into a fight with Pathans over some machine guns recovered from a downed Indian Air Force place. He killed the guys and became a fugitive. After arriving back in America via Karachi, in an interview with Robert Turnball for New York Times*, he created a few ripples by claiming that the fighting in Kashmir was managed by Pakistan Army, that the land proclaimed as Azad Kashmir was managed by a puppet of Pakistan. That there had been assasination attempts on his life for criticizing the way the war was being handled. And yet he remained sympathetic to the "cause". After the news spread, a communist paper in India claimed him to be an american spy and proof of American meddling in internal affairs of other countries.Around the same time an american author from New York named Nicol Smith (Golden doorway to Tibet, 1949) claimed there was some pro-Russia activity happening in Leh, that the Yarkhandi traders in Leh may be Russian agents. He claimed that there was a chance that the king of Leh may seek help from Russia and seek a separate way out. The old great game just kept going on with old and new players. In 1967, Russell K. Haight retired from U.S. army as a sergeant-major after a long career of fighting in Korea, Germany, Bolivia and Vietnam. After he passed away in 2006, there was small news item in an Indian paper on the american man who fought for the other side. *The Limits of influence: America's Role in Kashmir by Howard B. Schaffer (2009)