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warc | 201704 | Last week, Adam Greenwood pointed out to me an essay by Sally Thomas in
First Things, titled “Home Schooling and Christian Duty.” Her article defends home schooling against a very particular kind of attack–specifically, the claim that educating one’s children in the home, away from the public schools, is a failure to be a witness to others as a Christian, a failure to be “in the world,” and more specifically be a light unto it. It’s an interesting claim, one which comes down to, as Ms. Thomas puts it, the idea that homeschooling is selfish, that “homeschoolers [have] enthroned the needs of their own children at the expense of the larger society…[and therefore have] truly turned [their] backs on the lost of the world.”
Frankly, I think this is a rather odd claim, and I think Ms. Thomas does a fine job in demolishing it on scriptural and prudential grounds. (Specifically, children are to be brought up in such a way that they can become spiritually strong enough to take on the task of witnessing in hostile environments–which is what Ms. Thomas clearly sees the public school system as being–through their own choice and wisdom; they ought not be sent into such environments out of some sort of misplaced Christian or liberal guilt on the part of parents.) Her demolishing, though, doesn’t especially interest me, because the original claim itself is not one I’ve ever heard or would likely take seriously. (Perhaps some of you homeschoolers out there, particularly those who live in communities with a large evangelical population, have heard something similar though.) What did really interest me about the article, however, was the language of one’s obligation to the “larger society.” How best to fulfill that obligation, to the extent that it exists? And what if it exists, in fact, in multiple, even contradictory ways? On my reading of ther essay (which, as you might guess, took the form of a long post about the ideal of equal public schooling and the uses to which families may be obliged–as both Christians and citizens–to make use of their “human capital”), Ms. Thomas makes a good defense of her decision to keep her children at home and thus be part of one kind of “larger society”–specifically, her immediate neighborhood, which is mostly empty during the day as all spouses depart for work and leave the streets available to whatever bad element may move in–rather than banging her head against the wall trying to “witness to” another, much less responsive larger project–specifically, the local school district.
I bring this up here, not because I want another throwdown regarding home schooling (we’ve done that a few times before), but because the more that I thought about it, the more that I felt that the whole matter of how one arranges one’s “larger” allegiances cuts to the heart of ordinary lived Mormon experience. Unlike home schoolers, Mormons do not, in fact, have the option of withdrawing their children from wards they don’t like and constructing a Sunday School entirely on their own. (Well, of course, they
do have such an option, but the word used to describe such a decision is “inactivity,” and so far as I know the church is not exactly busy responding to pressure from various “home churchers” to reconstitute the temple recommend questions so you can still get one without attending your ward, the way home schooled kids can still receive a high school diploma.) Unless you’re buying a new home or moving to a new city or in a fairly specific demographic category, you can’t even really “ward shop” much in the church, certainly not as much as you can strategize through the public school system, what with all the exceptions and special arrangements which parents keep clamoring for. Basically, we are expected to attend a certain ward, and are presumed to have a obligation–one which the church enforces through strict rules about membership records–to stick with it, for the sake of making the “larger project” of the gospel a reality wherever God has planted us. (Kaimi’s old but still moving post on our “duty to stick with a dysfunctional ward” remains must reading here.)
Why be beholden to dysfunctional ward, but not a dysfunctional school system? Why does one’s presence at church, even if one should have complaints with its functioning, loom so much larger in the thinking of your average potential homeschooling Mormon than does the similar call to support the local school system? Some likely answers: a screwed up ward cannot possibly hurt one’s children in three hours on one day a week as much as a screwed up public school could over a seven hour period five days week; as wards are lay organizations, one can get to know and become involved with repairing the defects of any given ward much easier and much more effectively than in the case in a professionalized school district; we basically trust and our familiar with what gets taught and what takes place in a ward, much more so than is the case in much less focused and more spread out school systems; etc., etc. But of course, none of these are the real reasons–the real reason is, quite simply, that we don’t put the public schools ane wards into the same category. The latter is a community structure we bind ourselves to by covenant, because we believe in and accept the ideal of Zion, however distant our present day lives as Mormons may be from that end. Whereas on the other hand, while many Americans may feel some general allegience to the ideal of equal public schooling for all, we aren’t in any serious sense
covenanted to that project–and moreover, there’s no teaching to suggest that the principals and administrators who set policies for that project our prophets guided by inspiration. Add to that the fact that we have fundamental responsibilities to our families, and it’s easy to say that when family and church collide, some complicated and painful negotiations and compromises may be necessary…but when family and the public schools collide, hey, we’ll happily be out the door and on our way home.
I don’t disagree with that sentiment, not ultimately: as I wrote three years ago, quoting Jonathan Alter, children should never have their education sacrificed on the altar of their parents’ principles. My commitments to my children and their education and happiness is bigger than the larger project of supporting, through potentially dysfunctional institutions, similar efforts on behalf of other peoples’ children. And yet…is it really always so easy to be clear as regards to which principles properly should pull you away from your own home and children and privacy, in the name of something larger? It used to be common to hear pacifist and rejectionist language when it came to politics and war from church headquarters; now such messages are few and far between–and yet why would should the call to support the military aims of the country one happens to live in (aims which may include, as sometimes is the case, unjust wars) be seen as an acceptable obligation despite its manifestly disruptive impact on the lives and families of ordinary saints, while the obligation to support the schooling and education of one’s neighbors’ children through common efforts be seen as an obligation easy to–maybe even
righteous to–shuck off? (Again, I can think of some likely answers here–but I’m not sure they are necessarily obvious ones.)
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once stated that he was “not much of a joiner. I don’t remember belonging to many clubs or social units at school, and more recently I have been about as cautious in my professional affiliations. I give civic service to my community and country, and I try very hard to be a good neighbor, but in many other ways I am a private person.” But then he added that as a “veritable pacifist when it comes to social guilds or luncheon clubs, I turn into something of a militant on the subject of the only true and living Church on the face of the earth.” I like that line very much (though I’m much more opening to joining things than he is). It tells us where our primary membership–our most important “larger project”–lies. But it still leaves open how to negotiate, and why, everything else. |
warc | 201704 | Did You Know?
Flood Insurance - CRS Program
We are pleased to inform you that in 2009, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Community Rating System (CRS)
program has recertified Tinley Park’s Class 6 standing, which will continue to provide you with reduced flood insurance premium rates.
The successful annual CRS review of the Village’s flood management activities qualifies affected residents for a 20% reduction in flood insurance rates on properties within the Special Flood Hazard Area. Properties outside that area receive a 10% reduction in rates. This recertification indicates that our flood mitigation efforts and community outreach programs continue to be successful.
Flooded Buildings and Improvement Requirements
The National Flood Insurance Program
(NFIP) requires that if the cost of reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition or other improvements to a building equals or exceeds 50% of the building’s market value, then the building must meet the same construction requirements as a new building. Substantially damaged buildings must also be brought up to the same standards (i.e., a residence damaged so that the cost of repairs equals or exceeds 50% of the building’s value before it was damaged must be elevated above the base flood elevation).
Elevation Certificates
An elevation certificate is a certificate that verifies the elevation data of a structure on a given property relative to the ground level. The elevation certificate is used by local communities and builders to ensure compliance with local floodplain management ordinances and is also used by insurance agents and companies in the rating of flood insurance policies. Tinley Park elevation certificates
for certain properties are now available online.
Note:
Elevation certificates are not available for all of the properties within Tinley Park. For more information on elevation certificates, contact the Building Department
at (708) 444-5100. |
warc | 201704 | By Chris Kramer
Public announcement of criminals has become more the norm since the rise of the Internet, as law enforcement agencies, both local and federal, can more easily and cheaply publish information. The sex offenders registry, for example, has transformed from a phone-book-style list to an interactive satellite map.
Los Angeles County has created a different sort of database, modeled after the FBI Top 10 Most Wanted list. Their version goes after so-called "deadbeat dads," or more specifically, the "most egregious" child-support-payment evaders, as the Los Angeles Times reports. In a nod to Post Office mug posters, the sheriff's office will be placing physical posters around the county as well.
All told, the ten men listed as the top ten evaders owe more than $2 million in back child support for 17 children. Individually, their past-due amounts range from $63,000 to $427,000. One of the top 10 was already arrested thanks to a tip, and will be forced to face the nearly $300,000 that he owes in child support.
The poster effort is one part of a countywide crackdown on child-support-payment evaders. Since it started early last December, a total of 61 evaders have been arrested, and 64 other evaders have been cited. 160 of 1240 outstanding warrants issued by the LA County Sheriff's Office have been cleared, according to the LA Times.
And early financial returns have been encouraging for officers as well. Around $1 million has been collected from the evaders arrested or those who voluntarily turned themselves in. With a 10 percent interest rate on past-due payments, it can be easy to fall behind and easier to stay behind if you've fallen behind on child support payments. But the county is interested primarily in getting the money to where it's needed, and can work with violators to set up payment plans.
The success of the LA County program may encourage other local agencies with child support problems to establish similar programs. And furthermore, the program seems to have accomplished its goals with as limited shaming as possible.
Shaming stunts have rarely been effective in dealing with criminal activity, from colored license plates for DUI offenders to even sex offender registries. Rather than discouraging behavior, such "scarlet letters" tend to marginalize the criminals. For things such as DUI offenses, it can turn a single-albeit serious-mistake into a stigma that can follow a person indefinitely.
These posters, however, are one of the simplest ways that law enforcement agents can get the word out about scofflaws whom they are seeking, and they do so without the "stigma" problem that follow shaming activities because they focus on just the facts. |
warc | 201704 | BuildingGreen Tells You Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Concrete Wikipedia/CC BY 2.0
Since Roman times, some of the world's most important and beautiful buildings have been made from concrete. Like the Pantheon in Rome, they can last for thousands of years. But there is a huge carbon footprint to the stuff, from the chemistry of turning limestone into cement, to the excavation and transport of aggregate. For years I have complained about the concrete companies claims of being "sustainable" and have gone on about insulated concrete forms being a poison sandwich.
Now the BuildingGreen people have produced a new guide, What You Need to Know About Concrete and Green Building; they describe it:
This special report takes a look at how these materials are made, presents the key environmental considerations relating to their prodution, use, and eventual disposal, and describes ways to reduce their environmental impacts.
The report is what they used to call "fair and balanced" before Fox News appropriated the term: they clearly and carefully go through both sides of the story. They acknowledge (as I do, under duress):
Concrete has many environmental advantages including durability, longevity, heat storage capability, and (in general) chemical inertness. For passive solar applications, concrete’s ability to function as a structural element while also providing thermal mass makes it a valuable material. Its ability to act as both structure and finish in interior was well as exterior applications is unique, and with good design can contribute to an overall reduction in use of building materials on a project.
On the other hand, making cement produces half a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement made. It is the largest industrial emitter of CO2 in America. Its production emits mercury and other heavy metals. But it is getting better; the the amount of portland cement in the mix is being reduced, replaced by recycling fly ash. While there is some concern about putting fly ash or slag into concrete, the consensus appears to be that it is bound in and is safe.
The authors make a lot of suggestions for using concrete wisely: reduce the cement content, look at different designs of foundation systems, avoid toxic admixtures. Given the material's benefits of thermal mass, its fire resistance, and its ability to be a final finish of floors and walls, they make a good case for its use, if it is used right.
© BuildingGreen
I have a few quibbles; the authors buy the concrete industry's party line that the material has a low embodied energy. That's because the table shows the embodied energy per pound. In real life, you want to compare the embodied energy of the material needed per square foot of construction; A concrete slab might weigh a hundred pounds per square foot while a steel structure might weigh a tenth of that. Fiberglass will be a couple of ounces. The embodied energy per pound is completely irrelevant.
Foodstock/Screen capture
I also think that the authors don't give enough exposure to the issue of the aggregate that makes up 65% of concrete. The excavation and transport of the stuff is a huge issue in many parts of the world. 20,000 people showed up last weekend north of Toronto to protest the proposed Melancthon Mega Quarry, and others have been fighting to protect the Niagara Escarpment, a recognized biosphere reserve, from being dug up for gravel. It is a big issue that doesn't get enough attention.
On balance, though, BuildingGreen's Guide not only tells you just about everything you need to know about concrete and green building, it gives great recommendations on how to get the best performance out of the stuff with the least environmental impact.
What You Need to Know About Concrete and Green Building is free to subscribers of BuildingGreen, and is $ 49 to non-members. Joining is a better bet; the site is full of great stuff about green building. |
warc | 201704 | With the amount of air pollution and toxic waste going into the atmosphere every day, it's always nice to try and reduce your consumption any way you can, and these eco-friendly automobiles are a great option when it comes to being more sustainable during your daily routine.
While many people may associate eco-friendly cars with automobiles that are weak and low-grade, these sustainable driving options are often more high-tech and futuristic than most gas-guzzling vehicles. Choosing to be more sustainable when driving is a huge way to give back to the environment. Driving is often a large part of people's days, and by opting for a vehicle that's powered by something other than gas or fuel, you can rest asure that what you're doing is actually helping reduce emissions rather than add to it. From cars that are emission-free to those that are solar powered, these wonderfully eco-friendly automobiles make the process of sustaining the environment much easier. 86 Eco-Friendly Automobiles
Score
More Stats +/-
Power-Sharing Concept Cars Fiery Insect EVs Streamlined Eco Supercars Emission-Free Solar Cars Dual-Engine Italian Supercars From Electric Crossover Cars to Solar Powered Rental Cars
Mar 8, 2013By: Tana Makmanee - |
warc | 201704 | How many of us know that April 22 is Earth Day? Is it just another one of those “calendar holidays” that is largely ignored, or may even have a negative connotation?
I guess every day should really be Earth day, since it’s where we live, and we naturally want to keep it in good shape for a long time!
Recycling and being mindful of keeping waste to a minimum doesn’t mean you have to become a fanatic, or be something that takes a lot of work. Even little changes can make a big difference. Most of us already are doing things like returning bottles or reusing plastic grocery bags.
Like its residents, the city of Trenton has a lot to be proud of when it comes to “being green!” The recycling program at the City Transfer Station (1801 Van Horn Road) is available free of charge for residents. Newspapers, plastic containers, glass, tin, aluminum cans, empty paint and aerosol cans, appliances and used motor oil are accepted.
The items don’t even have to be sorted, so it makes it that much easier! Yard waste such as grass clippings, leaves and tree branches may also be disposed of. Call (734) 675-8470 for further information. Proof of residency is required.
Although the city did try to implement curbside recycling in the past, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Service tells me that they could not get enough residents to participate, and the city cannot shoulder the cost. However, she said, the Transfer Station recycling is a very active program.
It’s never too early for me to start thinking about The Trenton Midsummer Festival! This year, the Festival is again making a big effort to make the event “green.” In 2008, Trenton was the first festival Downriver to provide a “Green Street,” including recycle bins for all kinds of materials, a solar-powered entertainment stage, and many earth-friendly sponsors. Again this year there will be a recycle truck trailer for plastic, bottles and aluminum. The Festival recycled 500 pounds of plastic, cans and paper in 2010 and 710 pounds in 2011!
The Midsummer Festival is looking for Green Team Leaders for this year’s event. If you want to make a difference in your hometown and maybe have something impressive to add to your resume, be a part of it! Volunteers are needed to help promote the Green Street, helping visitors find where to recycle, hand out prizes, and promote environmentally friendly ideas. If you are interested in joining this worthy effort, please call (734) 675-7300 for more information and to sign up.
Recycling and conserving is something that the children of Trenton will grow up doing, and will come naturally to them. We can definitely thank the school system for that. As an example, Hedke Elementary takes teaching kids about protecting the environment seriously.
Principal Vince Porreca tells me that the “students learn about recycling and conservation as part of school” and the school definitely implements recycling as part of the school day.
Hedke has been certified as a Michigan Green School now for the third year in a row. To receive this designation, a school earns points for each earth-friendly activity they have in place. “You have to earn at least 15 points to qualify — this time we got about 18 points,” Porreca said.
“The fourth graders are very involved in the recycling effort, as it goes along with their science curriculum.”
Teacher Angie Essenmacher’s fourth-grade science class also votes on an endangered animal to “adopt” each year. The class learns about the animal, and then on Earth Day, there are poster contests and donations made to their cause.
Each classroom also has paper recycling bins, and the fourth graders go to each classroom to collect the bins and empty them into the large bins located in the parking lot.
Porreca said this results in keeping hundreds of tons of paper out of the landfill and makes a few hundred dollars a year for the PTO.
The fifth-grade classes participate in an Outdoor Ed camp, learning about forests, rivers and streams, and composting. In addition, the school recycles water bottles, batteries, ink cartridges and juice boxes, receiving 2 cents back for every Capri Sun brand and 1 cent for others. He adds that the school building was recently renovated to be energy efficient.
We have only scratched the surface here about what we can do. I’d love to hear about how you and your family are recycling! Do you have or know of a business that is making a green effort? Tell me about it at tribterey@yahoo.com. |
warc | 201704 | What Are The Best Bodybuilding Foods?
Bodybuilding diet and eating the correct foods is essential.
Supplements alone won't do much unless you eat right. Some say that 80% of bodybuilding success if from nutrition.
Best Body Building Nutrition & Body Building Foods
The best bodybuilding foods come from animal sources like fish,
meat, eggs and poultry. Dairy products like cheese are high in protein
but also in fat, which tends to form fat deposits under the skin,
causing loss of definition. The best raw foods from plant sources are
beans, nuts, seeds and grain products.
For additional information: Download Our Free Bodybuilding Food List E-book
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The Information contained herein reflects only the opinion
of the author and is in no way to be considered medical advice.
Specific medical advice should be obtained from a licensed
health care practitioner. Consult your physician before you
begin any nutrition, exercise, or dietary supplement program. |
warc | 201704 | I have previously stated that economists are like Jedis. However, I have recently realised the error of my ways – economists are obviously superior to Jedis.
In both disciplines you have a person trying to understand the nature of society and find what they can add.
Economists do the following:
They stand back, look for tendancies, and try to come up with an objective framework for discussing the tendancies and trade-offs that exist. They are trained from the age of 18, and are also allowed to interact normally with real people. They recognise that they only have the ability to work out trade-offs, and often only express them in an “ordinal” manner – they avoid passing judgment and are careful about quantifying result due to this.
Jedi do the following:
They stand around and meditate waiting for “the force” (voices in their head) to tell them what the trade-offs are. Following the Ruusan reformation they were trained from when they were children, and are allowed no equal interaction with non-Jedi. They think they can determine what is fair and right – and as a result will impose this “truth” on other people. To fix this they rely on what older Jedi’s have told them – these are the same people who also got trained as children, and a good number of them became Sith and tried to take over the galaxy anyway :/
Seriously, the Jedi are a bunch of spoiled kids who are endowed with awesome power – wouldn’t getting them to run society be the same as just telling well meaning businessmen who grew up in a wealthy family to run society (although the business man is likely to be more balanced – as he actually got the chance to grow up, and is unlikely to still treat society in the way an 8 year old would). They may make some good choices, and they may do so with the best intentions – but both these groups are equivalent … even if many of the people who would rise up against the business man would welcome in the Jedi with open arms. |
warc | 201704 | Articles FMLA Needs in the Senior Care Industry
The Family and Medical Leave Act (
FMLA), applies to all industries, including the Senior Care Industry. An employer is considered to be covered if they employ 50 or more workers, in which case they must be cognizant of the FMLA and their responsibilities as employers under this act. The Family and Medical Leave Act allows employees to take unpaid, job protected leave for a variety of medical and family related reasons, such as personal illness or that of a partner or child, time to care for the birth, adoption or fostering of a child amongst other criteria. The criteria and definitions of illness are described fully within the FMLA. However, it is important to note that these may vary depending on state, industry and if the employee is a member of a military family, in which case different criteria apply. Noncompliance of the Family Medical and Leave Act can lead to serious financial consequences. Similarly, rules and definitions may be periodically updated, calling on employees to be aware of any changes which have occurred to ensure compliance.
Ensuring adherence to the Family and Medical Leave Act, including accurate processing and administration of a leave request, can increase the workload of for employers and HR staff. Similarly, employers may have questions regarding how to better track family and medical leave related absence, how to streamline paperwork and how to ensure employees are eligible for family and medical leave. Compliance requirements are complex. Some companies may choose to utilize existing HR procedures. However, due to the regular
FMLA updates and specialist knowledge required, this may cause companies additional workload taking them away from the day to day management of other aspects of the company. Many companies are opting to utilize specialist FMLA management solutions. These are automated software solutions which help to track employee work hours, identify employees who are eligible to leave, and help to administer the family and medical leave process once a request has been made. In many cases, these programs will generate the draft documents and letters which are required during each stage of the process. They also provide a central data storage area for all employee information. Some software solutions also provide step by step guidance during the leave administration process, reminding employers of their obligations and timelines. Software may also be automatically updated in accordance with changes to the Family and Medical Leave Act, on both federal and state levels, ensuring that the employer is always in compliance.
These options help to reduce company overheads, streamline the Family and Medical Leave process whilst providing data analysis and report generating software for employers. These options are suitable for small, mid-sized, and larger companies and can often be tailored to meet the company’s individual needs. |
warc | 201704 | Sat 8 Mar 2014
Lent has begun and here in this old house, we are focusing in our daily readings on the battle between the good that we want to do and don’t, and the bad we don’t want to do and do. Even the weather is in a tug-of-war between winter one day, spring the next, and back to snow the following day.
On the first Sunday in Lent, the Church begins with the Gospel reading focusing on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Living here in Colorado, wilderness is a lovely thing. We fight to protect our wilderness areas that are often breathtakingly beautiful: mountains, streams, forests. It wasn’t until about 15 years ago when I first saw the Judean wilderness in Israel that I understood the Biblical concept of wilderness. The Judean wilderness is stark, barren, monochromatic (except for a short time after the spring rains), desolate, deadly. The Dead Sea is in the heart of it and symbolizes the lifeless feeling of the area. The thought of spending forty days and nights in that place by myself with no provision or protection gave me a whole new appreciation for Jesus’ strength that came through his fasting as well as his ability to say no to rocks-turned-into-bread. I wonder if Satan made those rocks smell like a local bakery, heightening the hunger pangs Jesus was experiencing by then.
It took me a long time to not be afraid of the wilderness near my house, one that interfaces pretty closely with the urban environment but still has elements of wildness about it. I was raised to be afraid of the woods. My grandparents had a farm in Illinois and a small child lost in those immense cornfields is a dangerous situation. Children have died of dehydration before being found in the immensity of those tall, close together stocks. Unfortunately, I was kept from dashing into them to explore by frightening me with the idea of snakes in there (which there were but I don’t think I had ever even seen at that young age). This is a fear I have not fully overcome in my adult life. It used to be I couldn’t even see a picture of a snake in a book without a violent, visceral response but I am better now.
One of two times in 30 years that I have called my husband at work and demanded he come home immediately was when what I thought there was a small rattlesnake wedged between the screen and hardware cloth in our lower front door. By the time he drove the two miles home, I was starting to pack to move out. Because this old house has no foundation, I was sure there was a nest of rattlesnakes down in our dirt-walled crawl space.
It turned out to be a bull snake.
I learned to appreciate bull snakes, even as I didn’t want to see them or have them close to the house, because if you have bull snakes, you will not have rattlesnakes. Bull snakes kill rattlers. Rattlers don’t have to be as fast as they are poisonous and so a faster bull snake can kill a rattlesnake. I have never seen it happen, nor do I care to, but I would always rescue the bull snakes from the cats. I would spray the cat in the face with water so it would drop the snake, letting it escape to freedom, if a bit worse for the wear.
With that history, learning to walk in the woods everyday behind my house for exercise was an act of sheer will. I made myself go farther and farther until I had a 3 1/4 mile exercise loop. There are still days when I am up there with few to no other hikers around that I feel a bit spooked, more now by an awareness of mountain lions. I sing or call “here, kitty, kitty” just to let them and any bears, especially mothers with cubs, know that I am in the area. And it seems like once a year, I come across a huge bull snake in the path. They still freak me out. I must be quite a sight hopping up and down and yelling at the snake to move, which it never seems to be in a hurry to do.
But compared to what Jesus must have encountered in that wilderness in Judea, a five-foot bull snake seems pretty minor. |
warc | 201704 | What is OWASP and the OWASP Top 10? The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing unbiased, practical information about application security. The OWASP Top 10 represents a broad consensus on the most critical web application security flaws. The errors on this list occur frequently in web applications, are often easy to find, and easy to exploit. They are dangerous because they will frequently allow attackers to completely take over your software, steal data, or prevent your software from working at all. Meeting OWASP Compliance Standards is the First Step Toward Secure Code
Web application attacks are now the most frequent pattern in confirmed breaches (2016
Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report). Yet many organizations struggle to implement an application security program because they simply don’t know where to start. Setting policies based on eliminating OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities is an excellent starting point – these vulnerabilities are widely accepted as the most likely to be exploited, and remediating them will greatly decrease your risk of breach. For more details, see The Ultimate Guide to Getting Started with Application Security.
Stat/chart: % of apps that pass
Our research reveals that applications are continuing to emerge in production with OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities (see chart below), even as the news headlines about data breaches proliferate. One reason for this disconnect is the misconceptions around what application security is, and is not. A one-time scan or pen test of a handful of business-critical apps is not effective application security. A program that continuously assesses the applications an organization builds, buys or assembles — from inception to production — is effective application security. Find out more about application security misconceptions with our
Application Security Fallacies and Realities guide.
Stat/chart: internal vs commercial
As development speed has increased, so has the reliance on third-party apps and code. Yet, as the chart below shows, third-party applications also continue to feature a significant number of OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. This chart reinforces the fact that organizations should have policies that require third-party software to adhere to the same standards as internally developed software. Many organizations are increasingly turning to outside security experts that can work with their software supply chains to ensure these policies are being met.
Application security affects all organizations in all industries, but our research has found that different OWASP Top 10 flaws are more prevalent in different industries. Organizations should use this information to shift their focus to the most pressing issues facing their particular sector. Check out our
State of Software Security: Focus on Industry Verticals for details. A Guide to Testing for the OWASP Top 10
As software increases in importance, and breaches continue to proliferate through the application layer, organizations will need a new approach to security. An application security program that uses a mix of technologies and services to secure the entire application landscape, and each application throughout its lifecycle, is becoming a necessity. This mix should include:
Tools and processes that enable developers to find and fix vulnerabilities while they are coding Third-party security Software composition analysis Dynamic analysis Static analysis Runtime protection Web perimeter monitoring
Get started with our
Ultimate Guide to Getting Started With Application Security. VERAFIED Security Mark for the OWASP TOP 10
Although the Veracode Platform detects hundreds of software security flaws, we provide a razor focus on finding the problems that are “worth fixing”. The OWASP Top 10 is a list of flaws so prevalent and severe that no web application should be delivered to customers without some evidence that the software does not contain these errors.
The following table identifies technical flaws found through automated analysis used to achieve the VERAFIED security mark and the additional coverage provided through manual penetration testing to detect business logic and design errors to achieve the VERAFIED HIGH ASSURANCE security mark for the 2013 OWASP Top 10.
Rank OWASP Top 10
OWASP urges all companies to be aware of these concerns within their organization and start the process of ensuring that their web applications do not contain these flaws.
A1 Injection X A2 Broken Authentication and Session Management (XSS) X A3 Cross Site Scripting (XSS) X A4 Insecure Direct Object References X A5 Security Misconfiguration A6 Sensitive Data Exposure X A7 Missing Function Level Access Control X A8 Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) A9 Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities A10 Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards X |
warc | 201704 | Students in divided Ivory Coast are going back to school in government-run areas in the south of the country this week, but in the rebel-held north, the start of the school year is being postponed until January.
A young boy rings a bell at a primary school in Abidjan, marking the start of the new school year.
Here, dozens of children cram into small classrooms. It is much the same across the government-held city. The reason for the overcrowding is that many of the students come from the rebel-held north, where schools are closed.
When the civil war broke out 13 months ago, the education ministry started what it called a second school year in January, placing tens of thousands of northern children into private schools at government cost.
This year, free education for northerners has ended because the government says it can't pay for it anymore. It now requires northern students in the private schools to pay about half of the tuition, and charges a nominal fee to students in public schools.
At the private Newton junior high school in the Yopougon district, students from the north look at registration boards to see where the education ministry has decided to place them.
Alain Clovis, 11, looks for his name. His family lives in the rebel-held city of Bouake. But he was on vacation in Abidjan in September last year when the insurgency began.
The government then placed him at the Newton school for free. This year, as he finds out on the board, he has been placed in a public school in the popular Adjame neighborhood.
The young boy says goodbye to his friends, and heads off to his new school.
Out of about 500 students enrolled at Newton, 200 will be from the north. They all will be paying some tuition. Last school year, Newton had about 700 students, 400 of them from the north.
Some children are unable to find their name on the registration board, even though they went to Newton last year. Others have arrived in Abidjan recently to live with family or friends, and they're not on any list either. Some of those will find no school to go to.
One mother, Francoise Kone, says the war has made childrens' education more expensive and complicated for everyone, even southerners.
"Many children won't be able to go to school," she said. "It's very difficult and it's expensive for some. You have to pay transport, tuition; it's going to be difficult.
"I'm from Abidjan, but because of the crisis I had to leave my home and go live at my sister's so I had to place my son in a different school and it's further away so it's been difficult for everyone, even for me," added Ms. Kone.
Her son is in a private school, so he is one of the lucky ones.
Thousands of young northerners who have made it to Abidjan hoping to get into a school are being turned away.
Education Minister Michel Amani N'Guessan tells VOA it's impossible to find a classroom for every child from the north.
It's not that we don't want to take all the children, he said. But, he added that, we have to put a limit of 70 per classroom.
That's about double the classroom size before the war.
Mr. N'Guessan says it's impossible for half the country to take over the entire school system. He says he hopes peace can return, so northern children can have a normal school year.
Some teachers from the north have started teaching in the south, but others remain in rebel-held areas. Some schools reopened there last year, but until now the government has no control over them.
For now, the start of the next school year in the north is being planned for January. The education minister was due to visit Bouake this week to start preparations, but he now says he's heard reports of shooting at rebel headquarters. So he has postponed his trip indefinitely. |
warc | 201704 | Everything You’ve Heard About Trendy Baby Names Is Wrong
Met any Paisleys lately? How about Bellas? Or maybe Zaccarys? When it comes to naming their future children, U.S. parents cannot get enough of a good trend. And as Vocativ found in February, the “Oscars Effect”—naming kids after Academy Award winners—is a real, mathematically valid thing for expecting parents. But just as the Internet lost its mind over all the potential Khaleesis entering pre-K in 2016, the
actual trendiest popular baby names are a lot more standard that headlines would suggest.
Blogger and biotechnologist David Taylor set out last week to determine baby name trendiness the only way he knew how: via chromatography, which takes into account the speed at which something reaches peak volume versus its overall volume. Only this time, instead of breaking down liquids and gases, Taylor used data from the U.S. Social Security Administration’s baby name database.
Coupling a given name’s acceleration in popularity (in chromatography, its peak height) with its length of popularity (peak width), Taylor calculated the winners: Linda and Shirley for girls, and Jason and Mark for boys. “It’s a little esoteric,” Taylor says of his project, “but at least you can see it.”
While Social Security keeps tabs on annual naming data, determining the most popular names appears to be a fairly competitive enterprise. FlowingData published its own version last year of a most-popular list, defining the trendiest names in U.S. history as those with the quickest rises and falls. The site identified Catina and Jalen as the pinnacle of trendy for girls and boys, respectively, and determined that spikes in boys’ names were far less volatile than those for girls.
However, as Taylor notes in his post, Catina’s “flash-in-the-pan” victory accounts for only .00097 percent of all girls’ names; measuring year-over-year gains doesn’t incorporate overall name use. Taylor’s trendiness methodology, on the other hand, makes sense of both “size and sharpness.” And the difference between these two techniques is particularly clear in graph form, where Linda dwarfs Catina and Deneen—the second most trendy girl’s name, according to FlowingData:
“[FlowingData’s] technique is totally statistically valid,” Taylor says. “But I think mine better captures the idea of trendiness. If a name was really, really obscure and was quickly a little less obscure, that doesn’t sound like trendiness.”
Then again, putting math to the madness of baby naming goes only so far. As Taylor puts it: “There’s no official mathematical definition of trendiness.”
Well, this sounds like a start. |
warc | 201704 | Poverty- what is it?!
Victor Brown Omovbude
Se registró el día 9 de febrero de 2014
38 Artículos Edad 24
If we begin to fragment, or set apart the notions holding the foreground, then we have completely lost the essence why we have them. Poverty is the lack of knowledge and not the lack of funding! To kick out poverty, the importance of becoming wealthy (socially and economically) must be induced by a high proportion of a relevant education. Education is not just classroom work only, but it is a viable act set in place to trigger that unique part every poor individual has. There are youth - millions of them, wandering, suffering. They are trying to sort things out! How many have you talked to? |
warc | 201704 | If you are planning to work from home, then consider
jobs in healthcare. Working from home appeals to all the moms, as it allows you to decide your work hours, be home with your children and enjoy family life. One of the most popular industries for work-at-home moms is healthcare. Healthcare Jobs
Some of the work-at-home jobs in healthcare sector are
Telephone Triage Nurse Healthcare Writer Medical Transcription Healthcare Trainer Medical Coder Telephone Triage Nurse
Traditionally, the nursing profession means working long hours on your feet all day. As a telephone nurse triage, you have the opportunity to guide a patient over the phone and help the patient's family to address the medical issue.
Health insurance companies are also using part-time nurses for telecommuting positions. Occasionally, you might need to visit a patient at their home, but most of the interaction is done via telephone.
Healthcare Writer
If you have experience with both healthcare and writing, then you can try healthcare writing. Depending on your experience, the topics could include pregnancy, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, teens, young adults, and general health topics.
Medical Transcription
Medical transcription requires you to transcribe medical records which many include patient history, physical reports, clinic notes, operative reports, discharge summaries, psychiatric evaluations and lab reports. These are usually dictated by doctors and other medical professionals.
There is a level of knowledge and experience needed to be a medical transcriptionist, as you will need to be able to decipher the medical language used on the tapes.
Healthcare Trainer
As a healthcare trainer (or coach) you can teach people about healthy eating habits and the importance of physical activity.
Other areas you can specialize in are:
First-Aid Basic Food Hygiene Geriatric care Medical Coder
If you are good with numbers and have an eye for detail then the job of medical coder is for you. As a medical coder you will perform administrative jobs like reviewing, processing, and submitting medical claims to billing offices.
Occasionally, you may have to interact with the physicians or any other medical professional for additional information. You also may need to contact insurance companies to inquire about claims.
Where to Look For Jobs
Internet is the best way to scour the job openings. Just type in the keyword and you can find jobs. Here are a couple of websites to get you started:
Other option can be to search the local media, like a region specific healthcare magazine or newspaper. You can also advertise in the magazines of your area, or you can drop a copy of your resume at your nearby health insurance companies.
These are just a few of work-from-home jobs in healthcare sector. If you have a background in the medical field, there are lots of great opportunities for you to work from home. |
warc | 201704 | A sixteen year old girl in Miami wakes up on a normal day, showers, dresses, eats breakfast, and is off to school, filled with thoughts of friends and classes. Seven hundred miles away in Haiti, sixteen year old Vidjinia Methelus begins her day at dawn with a 30 minute walk to an irrigation stream where she will bathe without privacy and collect water for her family’s cooking and bathing needs.
Vidjinia balances a full water bucket on her head for the walk home, which sometimes gives her a headache or soreness in her head and neck. But after her morning ordeal, Vidjinia is off to school, and like the sixteen year old in Miami, Vidjinia too is filled with thoughts of friends and classes. Later in the day, as teens in Miami attend to homework and after-school activities, Vidjinia makes her second trip to the stream for her family’s water needs. A new episode of CNN’s “Vital Signs with Dr. Sanjay Gupta” highlights Haiti’s water crisis through Vidjinia’s daily routine, and discusses some of the technological solutions that are easing the burden of securing safe water in that troubled nation.
“We Need a Revolution to Occur”
Clean water is the lifeblood of society, and societies without clean water cannot function successfully. Dalebrun Esther, “foot soldier on the ground” in Haiti for the nonprofit International Action, says, “Once we solve the drinking water problem in Haiti, we will solve 50 percent of health-related illnesses…We need a revolution to occur to save the Haitian people, who in 2014 still cannot have access to safe drinking water.”
A revolution is what it will take, but nations like Haiti can build on a public health revolution that already occurred in the US 106 years ago. That historic revolution is chronicled in Michael J. McGuire’s book, “The Chlorine Revolution: Water Disinfection and the Fight to Save Lives” (review). In the years before widespread drinking water chlorination, tens of thousands of Americans died every year from waterborne illnesses like typhoid fever and cholera. In 1908, a courageous New Jersey physician, Dr. John Leal, initiated a bold effort to reduce typhoid fever levels in Jersey City, New Jersey by adding very low levels of chlorine disinfectant to the city’s drinking water. The effort was so successful that chlorination spread rapidly across the country, and waterborne typhoid was virtually eliminated in the US by 1941. Now, thanks to the efforts of International Action chlorination is starting to transform lives in Haiti.
Enter the Chlorinator
New water tank and chlorinator at Haiti Clinic for Women Photo courtesy of International Action
According to CNN, since it started working in Haiti in 2005, International Action has provided over 250 water “chlorinators” serving some 300,000 people from community water kiosks in both urban and rural areas. Chlorinators are helping to provide clean drinking water in Haiti until permanent water treatment infrastructure becomes a reality there.
Chlorine is applied to raw water in a chlorinator in the form of “hockey puck” tablets of solid calcium hypochlorite. By destroying bacteria, viruses and some parasites in the water, chlorine helps control outbreaks of waterborne illnesses, such as cholera, typhoid fever, and hepatitis. A helpful feature of chlorination is the measurable presence of a chlorine “residual,” a low, protective level of chlorine that remains in drinking water.
Needed: A Meaningful Global Safe Water Goal
These are not care-free years for young Vidjinia and her peers in Haiti, and the problem is not limited to Haiti. As told in the CNN episode, “it is estimated women and girls worldwide spend more than 150 million hours every day fetching water for their families, a collective loss of productivity that is staggering.” Meanwhile, at United Nations headquarters in New York, an “Open Working Group” is formulating a new set of Sustainable Development Goals for the post-2015 UN agenda. It is likely that one of these goals will address global water and sanitation issues. That goal should go beyond the Millennium Development Goal of increasing access to “improved water sources,” and include a measurable indicator of drinking water quality, such as a verifiable chlorine residual and water free of
E.coli. The recontamination of water supplies is greatly reduced when there is a World Health Organization recommended level of chlorine in water. 1 Chlorinators are one positive step in the right direction for families like Vidjinia’s in places like Haiti. But like Vidjinia’s daily trek to the irrigation stream, there are many more steps to be taken. Joan B. Rose, PhD, is the Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University and a member of the Water Quality and Health Council. 1According to the World Health Organization, the optimum chlorine residual in a small, communal water supply is in the range of 0.2 to 0.5 mg/l. |
warc | 201704 | As financial advisors and wealth managers, our readers keep the best practices and strategies for their clients top of mind – but how do they invest their personal funds? We take a peek into the portfolios of some of the industry’s most successful wealth professionals.
Bhim Asdhir, CEO of Excel Funds, isn’t afraid of a global market shakeup. In fact, he relishes the opportunity to go on a buying spree amid a steady bull market-focused strategy.
“Look for bull markets, look for portfolio managers that are adding alpha, and whenever there are dips, double up. That’s what I do, and I find it’s not difficult to make money,” he says, adding that the Brexit is a prime example.
“With the Brexit I scrambled almost all my cash and I invested in the Excel India fund on the Friday, because I did my analysis and the Brexit was not going to impact India and many of the emerging markets,” he says. “It was going impact Europe, and it was going to impact England, but it wasn’t going to impact the other countries - so I actually deployed most of my money and it’s already up more than 10% since then.”
However, when Asdhir isn’t taking advantage of market dramatics, he takes a much calmer- and simpler – approach to his portfolio.
I believe that money is made in the long term. Market timing and short-term investing has not worked out for me,” he says. “My thinking on investing from day one is to look for long-term bull markets. Most markets, whenever there’s a world event, give you opportunity to buy, and I look forward to doubling up at that time.”
A big champion of emerging markets, Asdhir puts a great focus on India via mutual funds, working with a portfolio manager on the ground there. “Specifically, I’ve been investing in the Excel India Fund and since induction, it’s multiplied more than six times,” he says.
“That’s the trick in emerging markets – you need to have people on the ground, and that’s where you can add value.”
When it comes to fixed income, he eschews domestic bonds and U.S. Treasuries altogether for higher-yielding emerging market bonds, currently offering coupons between 7 – 8 %.”Emerging markets bonds’ rating have improved significantly over the last 10 years, and interest rates are coming down, so when we’re looking at developed countries, you’ve got negative and zero coupon, whereas in emerging markets, you can pick up yield at 7-8%,” he says, adding it “makes no sense” to him why anyone would pile into zero-yield bonds at this time.
Finally, he adds that it’s important to remain partially liquid, in order to take advantage market blips.
“It’s always good to have some cash on you, and whenever you see the valuations going up, it’s a good idea to take some money out. I’m taking some money out on the North American side and I’m deploying it in areas that are undervalued.”
Related Stories:
Excel releases new India fund
How ETFs can give insight on market risk appetite |
warc | 201704 | By: Brittney Bodden
World Education Services
It's no surprise that the United States is a top destination for international students who want to study abroad. As a result, the U.S. hit a record high of 974,926 international undergraduate and graduate students in 2014–2015, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). And, although it may be a top destination for education, it’s also one of the most expensive countries for tuition.
Many international students are interested in studying abroad in the U.S. but can’t afford the expenses that come along with it. On average, tuition can range from $15,000–$60,000 a year, depending on the university’s status: private, public, community, or 4-year institution. Let’s not forget transportation, textbooks, and additional fees that may apply. As a result, many international students are forced to reconsider studying in the U.S.
Given the barrier of financing an education in the U.S., it can be discouraging and overwhelming to many international students. But all is not lost—there are many universities that offer generous funding to international students.
The following infographic lists the top 10 institutions that offer financial aid to international students compiled by the U.S. News and World Report during the 2014–2015 school year, ranked by the average award amount granted per student.
Here are links to each of the universities listed above, as well as their locations:
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut Columbia University, New York, New York Stanford University, Stanford, California Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Don’t forget, there are also outside sources for funding such as scholarships, grants, your current employer, personal and family funds, and funding by your home country.
Here is a list of other sources to help finance your education in the U.S.
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warc | 201704 | User Reviewed
Dental loupes are important equipment for the dentistry working fields. This article explains how to choose loupes.
Steps 1 Choose the correct magnification and working distance in order to ensure that you work in complete ergonomic harmony with your new loupe.Assuming the correct working posture reduces eye strain, back / shoulder / neck tension, and the related stress-induced headaches. Less known but no less important is the psychological impact: good ergonomics improve information processing and decision-making. 2 Look at an object with straight black lines.The most common signs of poor quality loupes are low resolution, chromatic aberration and spherical aberration. Resolution is defined as an optical system's ability to form distinguishable images of objects separated by small distances, or to recognize fine detail. When comparing different loupes, look at the testing objects and select an area of tiny details that can only be seen with magnification. Chromatic aberration refers to color distortion. Because each color has a different wavelength, uncorrected optics cause the various wavelengths to focus at different points in space. The first color that generally comes out of focus is blue; when looking at black lines on white paper, poor quality loupes will display a blue haze just to the side of the black lines. Spherical aberration refers to the flatness of the image. When viewed through loupes, an object that exhibits spherical aberrations would appear to be curved or spherical. The lines would not be straight. Viewing colorful or complex objects such as anatomical models or the inside of your hand does not give you the opportunity to evaluate loupes for their true optical performance, as most people are not trained to see the differences on such complex images. A simple piece of graph paper, however, can reveal the difference between mediocre and high quality loupes. 3 Test the magnification.The level of magnification used is most often based on personal preferences. However, there are a few guidelines which could help in choosing the best magnification for your specific needs. Choose the lowest comfortable magnification level, as this would provide the widest field of view. Experience shows that the most commonly used and recommended magnification for loupes in different dental fields are as follows: Specialty Magnification General dentistry, Dental hygiene, Implantology: 2.5x .3.0x. 3.5 Endo, Crown and Bridge work: 3.5x - 4.0x Lab work, Technician: 4.0x . 5.0x .6.0 4 Test the working distance.The working distance refers to the distance between your eyes, and the patient's mouth. You can measure this while assuming your normal working position, making sure you are comfortable, that your back is straight, and that you are not leaning forward too much. Perhaps you could ask someone to assist you in this procedure. You can also use the following table to help determine the best working distance for your personal needs: Height <170 cm (5ft 7 in) 170-190 cm (5ft 7 in to 6ft 4 in) >190 cm (6ft 4 in) Sitting 340 mm (14 in) 420 mm (16 in) 500 mm (20 in) Standing 420 mm (16 in) 500 mm (20 in) 550 mm (22in) 5 Check the field of view.The field of view is the area that is visible and in focus, while looking through the loupes. A larger field of view is preferred, as there is a larger area visible through the loupes, and there is less need to move your head around .The size of the "field of view" also corresponds directly to the magnification factor. Simply stated: A loupe with a lower magnification factor, will have a larger field of view, and vice versa. All loupes utilize high performance lens systems that provide an extra wide field of view (up to 125mm / 4.9 inch). 6 Check the depth of view.The depth of field is the depth of the area that is visible & in focus, while looking through the loupes. A larger depth of field is preferred, as there is a deeper area visible through the loupes. The size of the "depth of field" corresponds directly to the "working distance". A loupe with a longer working distance, will have a larger depth of field, and vice versa. The size of the "depth of field" also corresponds directly to the magnification factor. A loupe with a lower magnification factor, will have a larger depth of field, and vice versa. All loupes utilize high performance lens systems that provide an extra large depth of field (up to 120mm / 4.7 inch). 7 Compare with prescription lenses.If you use glasses with prescription lenses, it is important that you have the option of fitting your loupes frames with the correct prescription. Otherwise, the loupes will not perform according to specifications. The standard frames, can easily be fitted with prescription lenses by your optician. Loupes are also available in a "clip-on" option, which can be clipped on to your regular glasses. 8 Test the weight of the loupes.Weight is an important factor when choosing a new loupe. Especially if the loupe is to be used for longer periods of time. Lightweight loupes are more comfortable, and in the long term, will reduce tension and other complications. Ultra light weight loupes, offer the maximal comfort. All loupes utilize extremely light weight materials. Loupes weigh as little as 36-42 grams (not including frame). Regarding the Galilean loupes, these loupes are not as heavy as Prismatic. Headbands are not usually required unless using a light, but these can also weigh as little as 6 grams. |
warc | 201704 | IBM Research has developed a new way of creating contacts for carbon nanotube that it claims will open "a pathway to dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful computer chips beyond the capabilities of traditional semiconductors". The process involves rolling nanoscale tubes from sheets of graphene measuring just one atom thick and could give new life to Moore's Law.
The results, published in the journal Science, describe a new method for creating contacts for carbon nanotubes that -- unlike existing methods for both carbon and silicon transistors -- doesn't suffer from the problem of increased electrical resistance as the contact is reduced in size. Increased electrical resistance in a transistor results in performance reductions, meaning that, until now, smaller contacts would result in slower processors.
To overcome the problem, IBM developed an entirely new metallurgical process that chemically binds metal atoms to the carbon atoms at the end of the nanotubes. IBM said that this 'end-bonded contact scheme' allowed "the contacts to be shrunken down to below 10 nanometres without deteriorating performance of the carbon nanotube devices". This means we could see carbon nanotube processors "within the decade."
But the company isn't there yet. In a Q&A posted on the IBM Research blog, Nanoscale device and technology manager Shu-Jen Han explained what still needed to be done in order to use carbon nanotube transistors in a viable processor: "We've developed a way for carbon nanotubes to self-assemble and bind to specialised molecules on a wafer. The next step is to push the density of these placed nanotubes (to 10 nm apart) and reproducibility across an entire wafer."
The problem with existing silicon-based transistors -- the tiny switches that carry information on current computer chips -- is that the material properties of silicone limit the degree to which transistors can be reduced in size. IBM has built functional silicon-germanium transistors at 7 nanometres, but say that this pushes the limits of what the can be done with the material, while Intel has stated that it won't be using silicon beyond the 10nm scale -- current Intel CPUs are at 14nm, and the next generation will be 10nm.
The properties of carbon nanotubes make them ideal for use in computing: they conduct electricity faster than silicon, use less power and, measuring just one nanometer thick, are much thinner than current silicon, which makes them less prone to unwanted electrostatic discharge.
IBM has been investing heavily in carbon nanotube research, and has already shown that carbon nanotube transistors can be used as excellent switches at channel dimensions of less than 10nm: "the equivalent to 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair and less than half the size of today’s leading silicon technology", the company explained.
Writing on IBM's A Smarter Planet blog, vice president of science and technology Dario Gil said the new technology could extend the life of Moore's Law. Coined in the 1960s, Gordon Moore's fundamental axiom of modern technological development postulated that the number of transistors that can be put onto a computer chip will double every two years. And with silicon reaching its physical limits, the success of carbon nanotube research will be essential if that trend is to continue. |
warc | 201704 | 12/28/2010 // Chicago, IL, USA // Mesothelioma Lawyers – Cooney & Conway // Cooney & Conway
A West Virginia couple has named 95 defendants—ranging from manufacturers to power companies to insurers—in an
asbestos-contamination lawsuit, according to court filings with the Kanawha Circuit Court in Charleston, W.Va., The documents claim that all are responsible for the husband’s mesothelioma, an aggressive, incurable form of cancer that is almost always caused by asbestos exposure.
Mesothelioma lawyers say the large number of defendants is not unusual in asbestos lawsuits. They say that in an industrial setting like the one in which the husband, William R. Henthorn, worked, asbestos can be found in many places, with dozens of companies having, but failing in, a duty to warn and protect against potential dangers.
Known for its heat- and fire-resistant qualities, asbestos was long used in a wide range of products, ranging from insulation to automobile brakes to pipes. Its risks, too, have long been known. When asbestos particles are released into the air and inhaled, they can lodge in the lungs and trigger deadly diseases like mesothelioma and lung cancer.
The development of asbestos-related disease can take decades, but once diagnosed, the victim’s prognosis—particularly in the case of mesothelioma—is typically grim.
While mesothelioma lawyers have been able to recover large jury awards and settlements for asbestos victims, physical recovery is unlikely: Mesothelioma has no known cure, and even the most sophisticated treatment typically extends a patient’s life by a matter of months, at most.
In the West Virginia case, Henthorn and his wife, Eva Louise, of New Martinsville, allege that his mesothelioma resulted from asbestos exposure over the course of employment at the PPG Natrium Plant, also in New Martinsville, from 1959 to 1977.
Mesothelioma lawyers say that many mesothelioma lawsuits follow a similar pattern—a worker was exposed to asbestos over a long period of time, even though many manufacturers, employers, and suppliers were aware of the presence of asbestos in parts handled by the worker or within the environment within which he or she worked, but they said and did nothing to protect that individual.
The Henthorns, who filed their asbestos lawsuit in late October, are seeking both compensatory and punitive damages. Mesothelioma lawyers say that this, too, is not unusual, because mesothelioma is a painful disease that can be catastrophic financially and emotionally, as well as physically.
Among the 95 defendants named in the asbestos suit—which has been assigned to a visiting judge—are: Armstrong International, Inc.; Bayer Corporation; Consolidated Aluminum Corporation; FMC Corporation; General Electric Company; Honeywell, Inc; Honeywell International, Inc.; Ingersoll-Rand; Insul Company, Inc.; ITT Corporation; Metropolitan Life Insurance Company; Monongahela Power Company; Ohio Power; Owens-Illinois, Inc.; Sunbeam Products, Inc.; Union Carbide Corporation; and Virginia Electric and Power Company, Inc.
This news story was brought to you by the mesothelioma lawyers at Cooney & Conway. For more than half a century, we have been advocates for those injured due to the wrongful actions of others. We have litigated and resolved some of the nation’s most significant asbestos lawsuits, bringing justice—and compensation—to victims of asbestos exposure and the lung cancer, mesothelioma, and other deadly diseases it can cause.
Media Information: Address: 120 N. Lasalle Street, Chicago, IL Phone: 888 651 1850 Url: Mesothelioma Lawyers Chicago |
warc | 201704 | New Treatment Modalities for Allergic Disease Future Directions in Allergy Therapy Bruce S. Bochner, M.D. Professor of Medicine, and Director Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland Objectives Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to: Understand the rationale for targeting IgE, cytokines, chemokines, adhesion molecules and other immune molecules for therapeutic purposes. Review the strategies used to target these molecules. Discuss the status of clinical trials of each of these agents as they relate to the treatment of asthma and allergic diseases. Summary The newest approved drug for the treatment of moderate to severe allergic asthma in patients age 12 and older is omalizumab, a 1-2 time/month sq injection of anti-IgE antibody. Novel therapies selectively targeting mast cells, basophils, eosinophils, T cells, and others are now being tested in humans for the treatment of allergic diseases including asthma. Some of these therapies focus on cytokines (IL-4, IL-5, IL-9, IL-13, TNF?), while others focus on IgE, adhesion molecules (e.g., VLA-4, LFA-1), chemokine and related receptors (e.g., CCR3, CCR4, CCR8, CRTh2), or use of adjuvant molecules to enhance immunization responses (e.g., CpG-containing allergen vaccines). The rationale for each will be discussed.
Among these therapies, some are soluble forms of the natural receptor (sIL-4R); others are monoclonal antibodies (anti-IL-4, anti-IL-5, anti-IgE, anti-VLA-4, anti-CD11a), receptor antagonists (VLA-4, IL-4R, CCR3, CCR4, CCR8, CRTh2), or Th1-promoting immunostimulants (CpG). Because of the nature of each therapeutic agent, some can be given via inhalation; others are delivered orally or via injection. Most of the above agents are in early clinical trials, and where available, data from such studies will be discussed along with the potential strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
References Bochner BS. Verdict in the case of therapies versus eosinophils: the jury is still out. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2004; 113:3-9 Bochner BS, Schleimer RP. Mast cells, basophils, and eosinophils: distinct but overlapping pathways for recruitment. Immunol. Reviews 2001; 179:5-15. 1 Bochner BS. Leukocyte recruitment in allergic pulmonary inflammation. In: T.Eissa, Huston D, editors. Therapeutic Targets of Airway Inflammation. New York : Marcel Dekker, Inc.; 2003. p. 223-47. |
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Drug-Induced Parkinsonism
Worst Pills, Best Pills Newsletter Article, October 2010
One recent study found that more than 1 out of every 10 people who went to a Parkinson’s disease center had been found to have drug-induced Parkinsonism. These people were misdiagnosed as having the more common illness, Parkinson’s disease, which is irreversible and has unknown causes.
Here are a few explanations and patient examples:
Table 1, adapted from an article in
Postgraduate Medicine in 2009, points out some of the important differences between Parkinson’s disease and drug-induced Parkinsonism.
In another recently published study in
Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, researchers carefully examined 1,528 people with symptoms of Parkinsonism and found that 7.9 percent (120 patients) had clear, unequivocal evidence of drug-induced Parkinsonism. To qualify for this group, the second largest in their study, (outranked only by Parkinson’s disease), the patients had to meet all of the following three criteria:
Occurrence of Parkinsonism while the patients were being treated with drugs known to be potential inducers of this syndrome
Absence of the symptoms of Parkinsonism before the introduction of the causative agents
Clinical improvement within six months after drug withdrawal
Thus, the good news is that drug-induced Parkinsonism is reversible. The bad news, however, is that too many doctors do not know about the diseases’ differences, are inadequately aware of drug-induced Parkinsonism and therefore do not get a careful history from the patient about what drugs they started before the onset. Doctors then mistake drug-induced Parkinsonism for the more commonly occurring Parkinson’s disease.
Unfortunately, this means that instead of suspecting a drug-induced origin and stopping the offending drug, doctors may actually mistakenly treat drug-induced Parkinsonism with another drug — as though they were treating Parkinson’s disease — while leaving the patient on the drug that caused the illness in the first place.
Hard to believe? Here is a real-life example:
Larry was an otherwise healthy 58-year-old man with diarrhea, which was believed to be due to irritable bowel syndrome. He was given trifluoperazine (STELAZINE), a powerful antipsychotic, to calm down his intestinal tract. STELAZINE is not even approved for treating such medical problems, and he was not psychotic. Six months after starting STELAZINE, Larry developed severe Parkinsonism, a neurological condition characterized by tremors, limited movements, rigidity and postural instability (see postural tremor in Table 1). To correct this, Larry was started on L-dopa (also known as levodopa [LARODOPA]), a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Presumably, the doctor did not realize the Parkinsonism was drug-induced, and the STELAZINE was continued. For seven years, Larry took both drugs until seeing a Parkinson’s specialist. The specialist recognized the real cause of his problem, stopped the STELAZINE and slowly withdrew the L-dopa over a six-month period. Larry’s severe, disabling Parkinsonism cleared completely.
The same Parkinson’s specialist who “cured” Larry of his drug-induced Parkinsonism saw, in just three years, 38 other patients with drug-induced Parkinsonism and 28 with drug-induced tardive dyskinesia, a syndrome of involuntary movements also often caused by drugs.
It is increasingly clear that drug-induced Parkinsonism is a well-documented disease entity.
Other important points:
Risk factors for drug-induced Parkinsonism include increasing age and the fact that older people may be especially sensitive to drug-induced Parkinsonism from antipsychotic drugs. Also, almost 100 percent of people with HIV infection will get drug-induced Parkinsonism if given antipsychotic drugs.
Many primary-care physicians do not realize that the commonly used antacid and anti-nausea drug metoclopramide (REGLAN) and anti-nausea drug prochlorperazine (COMPAZINE) are major causes of drug-induced Parkinsonism. The former is more likely to cause drug-induced Parkinsonism in patients younger than 50 whereas the latter causes it more in older people. However, both have caused drug-induced Parkinsonism in people young and old.
The duration of treatment with the causative drug before drug-induced Parkinsonism begins can range from a few days to more than six months.
What You Can Do
If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with and treated for Parkinson’s disease, check Table 1 , which shows the distinctions between drug-induced Parkinsonism and Parkinson’s disease. The list may be consulted as a first approximation to determine whether the disease was preventable based on the differences between Parkinsonism and Parkinson’s disease. Particular attention needs to be paid to what drugs, other than those being used to treat the alleged Parkinson’s disease, are being used and whether the onset of the disease followed the initiation of any of these drugs. Then, consult the list of 49 drugs that are linked to drug-induced parkinsonism to see the most likely candidates.
Many of the drugs that are linked to drug-induced parkinsonism are grossly overprescribed or misprescribed. For example, an increasing proportion of drugs used to treat psychoses such as schizophrenia are unfortunately and dangerously prescribed to people who do not even have schizophrenia (especially older adults, like Larry in the aforementioned example). Other common causes of drug-induced Parkinsonism include drugs such as metoclopramide or prochlorperazine, which are often prescribed when safer drugs could be used or dietary changes might suffice.
Another important thing to know: the authors of the first-mentioned study stated, concerning COMPAZINE, that it is mainly used for “trivial indications and for which alternatives are readily available.” In their study, the drug responsible for one-third of the cases of drug-induced Parkinsonism was prochlorperazine (COMPAZINE).
Table 1. Drug-Induced Parkinsonism vs. Parkinson’s Disease
Drug-Induced Parkinsonism
Parkinson’s Disease
Symptoms typically symmetrical (same on left and right sides)
Symptoms typically asymmetrical
Usually reversible once offending drug is stopped
Chronic and progressive
Tremor commonly postural: the tremor occurs when you try to hold your body motionless, such as extending your arm horizontally, pointing at objects, sitting erect without support of the upper body
Tremor commonly when resting, inactive
Subacute onset after starting the drug
Slow, progressive course
Not responsive to anti-Parkinson’s disease drug treatment
Excellent and sustained response to anti-Parkinson’s disease drug treatment
Caused by drug(s)
No known cause
No degeneration in the brain
Brain degeneration in specific area |
warc | 201704 | New Breakthroughs, Treatments Highlight Year In Medicine
Posted December 27, 2001
RALEIGH, N.C. — Every year, there are major medical advances and breakthroughs in treatments. But this year, our attention was brought to new and previously unthinkable things.
Bioterrorism is, by far, the biggest health story of the year. Before Sept. 11, we did not worry too much about it. Then came those anthrax-laced letters.
Five people died from inhalation anthrax and more than a dozen other people have been exposed. The anthrax scare taught everyone a lot about bioterrorism. It also raised concern over another possible form of attack -- smallpox. Experts say smallpox would be far more deadly than anthrax.
"Because in my mind, if this was released anywhere in the world, it would be severely difficult to contain," said UNC infectious disease expert Dr. David Weber.
The government is now stockpiling doses of smallpox vaccine.
The
stem cell controversy
also got people talking. As the government wrangled over stem cell funding, people wrestled with the ethical debate over using embryos to cure diseases like Parkinson's.
In November, two biotech companies announced they cloned human embryos, adding more fuel to the controversy that is sure to follow into 2002.
Duke scientists seem to be on the right track to finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes. They transplanted insulin-producing cells from a pig pancreas into a diabetic baboon. To date, that baboon has been making its own insulin for over a year.
"I think it is going to be a tremendous change in the lifestyle of patients who have diabetes," said researcher Dr. Emanual Opara.
New techonology is helping more people hear again. In August, Mac Montogomery received the first
double cochlear implant
at UNC Hospitals. He now wears an implant on each side of his head instead of just one.
"If you have two inputs, then your brain can process both bodies of information, and you actually understand a higher percentage of those words," said UNC Head and Neck surgeon Dr. Harold Pillsbury.
WRAL's Health Team also brought you the story of
Corkey Boyette
. This year, Boyette lost more than 500 pounds. Just two years ago, he weighed 735 pounds and was going into heart failure. Now he is set to reach his weight goal of 200 pounds.
"I feel great. I've never had so much energy," he said.
Boyette plans to go skydiving in the spring to celebrate his accomplishment. |
warc | 201704 | Global Macro Practice � PAGE �1�
Global Macro Practice in Human Services
Monique Cone and Ayeisha Johnson University of Phoenix
BSHS302
Denna Atkinson
October 19, 2009
�
Global Macro Practice in Human Services
How is it that in the country where formal slavery was abolished with the Civil War, slavery still exists with an estimated 50 thousand people and the number is growing. The slaves come from Africa, Asia, India, China, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and from the ranks of native born and citizens of the United States. They are 'property' of the most prominent and respectable Americans, particularly new citizens who recruit the poor and helpless from the countries they escaped from to live the happy life. The lives these new citizens led are of utter misery, poverty, slavish work, and sexual harassment. Brought over by diplomats, coyotes, and on their own, they never climb out of poverty (Browne, 2009).
Most people in this country are totally ignorant to the fact that some form of slavery exists, not only in the United States, but also around the world.
Trafficking in humans comes in various forms; children are also trafficked for purposes of child labor and child soldiers. Men are also being trafficking, but it is more women and children. Between one and two million women and children are trafficked each year worldwide for forced labor, or sexual exploitation (Devi, undated). Trafficking women and children has become one of the most illegal thing that is going on in the economic right now (Salt, 2000). The nature of this 'business' is hard to pinpoint. Studies show that most of the women and children being put into servitude or modern day slavery are from poor or non-industrialized countries (Okojie, 2009).
The trafficking may have been stemmed from the... |
warc | 201704 | One controversial topic among high school students today is the subject of school uniforms. The question is whether the uniforms truly help the student body. There are arguments for both sides of the issue. The arguments for the issue are just as strong as those against the issue. There are two main points surrounding school uniforms, performance in schools and, uniformity.
The arguments for school uniforms argue that school uniforms decrease violence in the schools. People who argue this side of the issue state that when the students of the school wear school uniforms, that the number of infractions on the rules are decreased. The arguments against the issue argue that there are other programs that the schools can undertake that produce the same effect with out the school uniforms. There is also the argument that by putting students in a uniform, the students are suppressed of their individual expression.
Over all the argument of decreased violence is a weak argument to reinforce school uniforms.
Another argument for school uniforms is that the uniforms improve the academic performance of the students. Arguments state that when the violence of the school is under control that the students are able to concentrate. The arguments also state that when the students are dressed alike in uniforms that the students are not distracted by the different clothes that the students wear when they do not wear the uniforms. Arguments against the issue argue that at Phoenix Prep School after 2 ý years of the students wearing uniforms that the academic scores of the students are still in the 30th percentile. There are also the arguments that uniforms change the way teachers and other adults perceive the students who wear them. Also there is the argument that uniforms do not rule out the backpacks, jewelry... |
warc | 201704 | Nelson Mandela once said, "The millions of graves strewn across Europe which are the result of the tyranny of Nazism, the decimation of the native people of the Americas and Australia, the destructive trail of the apartheid regime against humanity-all these are like a haunting question that floats in the wind: why did we allow this to happen?" Throughout its history, the Republic of South Africa has translated inherent racism into national policy, resulting in a society, which promotes white domination in politics, economics, and daily life. Though white supremacy has been a constant in South Africa, the term Apartheid only became relevant in the late 1940s. Today, at the end of the Apartheid regime, the question is "Why?" Racial discrimination has been an inherent part of South Africa's culture and politics for over 300 years.
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that, when translated into English literally means 'apart-hood.' In South Africa Apartheid was a political policy that separated the development of the races.
However racial segregation has been a constant part of South Africa's past since the late 1600s. The Dutch were the first Europeans to see the importance of South Africa's cape on the way to India; and built their colonies on the principles of slave labor. These principles were brought into the newly colonized area not because of necessity, but rather because it served to please the Dutch people. The natives of South Africa were the first people to experience racial discrimination. They were sold in slave trades and, if they were 'unfit' for slavery, they were sent to the least livable area of the country. Slaves became, in a short period of time, a labor force that transformed a small cluster of immigrants into a prosperous colony. On paper, they had no existence. They were... |
warc | 201704 | On-the-spot report Unemployment, wage cuts destroy living standards of millions in Greece By our reporters 17 March 2012
Plastered on the windows of the unemployment office in the Neos Kosmos district of Athens are posters with slogans denouncing the austerity measures of the unelected Greek government of Lucas Papademos. One of these is from the employees of the unemployment office. Another, from members of the physicians’ union, demands free health care for all.
Posted on the door is a sheet of paper stating that the basic level of unemployment benefits has been reduced from €460 a month to just €360. That is the total amount an unemployed person receives in government benefits.
The supervisor of the office told the
World Socialist Web Site that the number of unemployed has increased enormously in the local area, but he would not give any concrete figures, explaining that he had been instructed not to.
Young people entering the building to register as unemployed were visibly angry. A woman told us, “It is a terrible situation. I just want to say one thing to you and that is that the politicians just lie. All of them just lie.”
One of the main features of the recession in Greece, now in its fifth year, is the enormous increase in youth unemployment. More young people are now unemployed than have jobs, with 51.1 percent of youth unemployed.
Dr. Kostas Dimoulas, a lecturer in industrial sociology at Panteion University, told the WSWS that even this is an underestimation. The real figure is as high as 60 percent. Dimoulas is a senior consultant with the Labour Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE).
More than 1 million people are now unemployed. For December 2011, the rate was 21 percent, up from 14.8 percent for the same month in 2010.
Dimoulas forecasts a massive rise this year, saying that by the end of 2012, it will probably increase by at least 300,000, to 24 per cent. “Most of the companies are already using a new law that allows employers to dismiss 5 percent of their staff per month,” he said.
At the unemployment office, Dimitra, 29, said she was used to working for very low wages. She worked for years in a call center for €700 per month, as she was unable to find a job in her field of education, the agricultural sector. One year ago, she was dismissed.
In Greece, unemployment benefits are strictly limited to 12 months. “This month, I get my very last unemployment payment,” Dimitra said. “Fortunately, I have found at least a temporary job in a hotel on Crete for the next six months.”
When her contract ends, she wants to leave Greece to find employment.
Charilaus, 65, is a former hotel cook. He cannot find work. In his last job, he worked part-time for one year. In a year, he hopes he will receive his state pension. “Hopefully, I will get €500 per month, but I don’t think so, since there will be further cuts in June,” he said.
Charilaus is a father of three children and has five grandchildren. He has sometimes had to ask his children for money to buy food or clothes, but “they also don’t have enough money,” he said. One of his daughters is a professor but is still unable to get a job. “It’s hard when you don’t even have a few euros to buy chocolate for your grandchildren. At the same time, there are 10 rich families in Greece that are living at our expense.”
Unemployment is also hitting sections of the middle class. Irene is married and has a daughter. She previously worked as a freelancer in event management. In the last two years, she has hardly received any contracts. For a year, she tried to handle the situation without resorting to registering as unemployed, but she had to register to receive benefits for the last four months.
When her business was going well, she was earning up to €3,000 a month. Her husband, a TV journalist, has had pay cuts every two or three months. His salary has been cut by about €1,500 a month to just €2,000. “We don’t know how to make the loan payments for our house,” she said. “We’ve already had to cut our expenses sharply.”
She continued: “You can say that at least one person per family is unemployed, and then other people in the family have had big wage reductions. The next year will be even more difficult.”
“It is now very commonplace for businesses to reduce work days to four per week and cut wages accordingly,” Dr. Dimoulas said. “The employers use the high unemployment rate to push through wage cuts.”
Half a million workers are not receiving their full pay, with many employers delaying paying salaries for months until they dismiss the workers outright. As many as 25 percent of Greek employees now have a part-time contract and get paid on this basis, but are working full-time hours.
Zana, a single parent, migrated 20 years ago from Albania to Greece in the hope of a better life. She has two children in her adopted country, 14 and 18 years old. She previously worked as a cleaner, but was laid off. “Now I get just €360, but I have to pay €250 just for my rent and €100 for electricity and gas,” she said. “I have to ask relatives for money in order to feed my children.”
After working for 13 years as a computer technician, Takis was dismissed two months ago. His employer cut staff levels by 10 percent. Takis used to receive €1,000 per month and is now down to the €360 unemployment payment. His wife is working at Athens airport and earns just €900 a month, after having her wages cut by 10 percent. They have a two-year-old daughter. “Life is becoming more and more difficult,” he said.
He has been on many of the demonstrations over the last three years against the government. “The rich have used this crisis to get even more money and to exploit the poor,” he said.
Takis was skeptical about both the trade unions and the pseudo-left parties in Greece, such as SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left). “The strikes and demonstrations were led by the left parties, but they don’t really want to change anything,” he said. “People should organise themselves independently—not only in Greece, but throughout Europe. Greece is just the testing ground to implement similar measures in every European country.”
In an article published in the daily
Ta Nea this week, Robolis Savvas, professor of economics and social policy at Panteion University and director of the Labour Institute of the GSEE, estimates that wages will decline by 40 percent by 2015.
Dr. Dimoulas said that negotiations are currently being held between the Greek government, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle and German companies to create “special economic zones” in the north of Greece, where unemployment is particularly high. In these zones, a cut in the corporate tax rate from 20 percent to 2 percent is being considered, along with a minimum wage of just €300. |
warc | 201704 | Compost Bins or Piles- Depending upon how much compost you will make (which is limited to the amount of composting materials you have available, such as leaves, plant parts from your garden, food scraps, etc.), you can have two or more compost bins. You can even start with one, but two works better because the ingredients (stuff) you put in firston the bottom of the pilewill decompose first. So, to get to the finished compost on the bottom, youll need to remove the partially decomposed materials on the top. Simply transfer those partially decomposed materials to the second bin, where they will continue to rot. Add more raw material on top of them, and they will then be the next in line for black gold to go in your garden. - Turning the pile in this manner will aerate the pile and help to quicken the composting of the materials. Adding earthworms to the pile will also aid in the aeration and decomposing process. (Ask your garden center expert for sources, or try entering garden worms in an online search engine.) - Do-it-yourself bins may be constructed of various materials, including two-by-fours (untreated), concrete blocks, recycled wooden pallets, and heavy-duty wire. Ready-made compost bins, made of recycled plastic can be purchased at many garden centers. Also available for purchase are the more expensive drum-tumbler systems. - Go binless by simply building a compost pile in a convenient spot on the ground; it may take the compost longer to ripen, but it will work as long as you keep it moist and aerate it by turning it occasionally.
Caring for your Compost PileA compost pile is a living thing; it needs air, water and food. Provide those needs and youll be rewarded with rich compost to spread throughout your garden. - Air:The microbes in the compost pile are aerobicthey must have air to do their job, or non-air needinganaerobicmicrobes will take over the pile. And if they do, the result will be a slow rotting, stinking mess! So, make sure you cause plenty of air passageways by adding ingredients that dont mat down, such as straw, in amongst the matting grass clippings. Also, make it a habit to routinely fluff-up the pile with a garden fork or spade. - Water:Not enough moisture or too much water is not good for your compost pile. Ingredients in the ideal compost pile should remain about as moist as a wrung-out spongethat is, a thin film of water should coat all ingredients in the pile. If your pile gets too dry, the good microbes slow down. If your pile gets too wet, the ingredients become water-logged and mat down, pushing air from the pile, and the bad microbes will begin to take over. So, moisten dry ingredients as you add them to the pile. Grass clippings and kitchen fruit and vegetable wastes usually have enough moisture in them when you add them to the pile. In rainy season, you can cover your pile with a tarp, as needed. In a dry season, water your pile as necessary to maintain proper moisture. - Food:Feed your compost pile with browns and greens. Browns are dry materials: pine straw, wheat straw, corn stalks, autumn leaves, and wood chips or sawdust (not treated). Greens are fresh plant materials from the garden, grass clippings, green leaves, fruit and vegetable scraps from the kitchen, and even coffee grounds and tea leaves. Since browns are dry and greens are moist, a good mix of the two will help to keep the pile moist and aerated. There must be a mix of the two because the greens contain more nitrogen, which is needed as a protein source for the billions of microbes in the pile. Do Not Feed Bad Things to your Compost PileThe following items may be toxic, contaminated with plant or human diseases or could result in weed problems. Do not add them to your compost pile. -Pet wastes - Human wastes - Most weeds, unless they are completely dried out (brittle) so that their seeds are killed. - Meat, bones and any fatty food wastes. They could attract rats or other animals. They will also slow down the composting process. - Diseased plants. - Chemically-treated wood chips or sawdust. Uses for your CompostMost experienced gardeners know the smell of good soil. Thats what finished compost smells likesweet and earthy. Its dark and crumbly. It may still have bits of hard-to-decompose materials visible, such as straw, but you can use it at that point. Following are some ideas for its use to enhance your yard. - Soil Amendment:Turn compost into your soil in spring as soon as the ground can be worked. If you live in a warmer climate and garden during the fall and early winter, dig in a little more compost when changing out your beds for the season. You can also top dress the soil during the growing season. - Soil Improvement:Compost benefits the soil in several ways that synthetic fertilizer cannot. It adds organic matter, which improves the way water flows through the soil, and thereby creates a habitat for the good microbes. The microbes extract nutrients from the minerals in the soil and pass these nutrients on to the plants. - Compost Tea:Combine equal parts of finished compost with water, let it sit for a day or two, then add it to ailing plants, seedlings or transplants for a quick dose of medicine. - Compost Mulch:When you mulch your established plants with compost, it not only protects the soil from erosion and from the drying effects of the wind and sun, it adds immediate nutrients to the soil. Although good for coverage of the soil, pine bark and straw are very slow (many months) to break down and provide additional nutrients to the soil. Remember, a successful garden depends upon the earth itself. Soil needs to be loose so that it can breathe and water can flow through it. Keep your share of the earth healthy with compost; its organic matter that feeds the soil and creates air spaces. |
warc | 201704 | This article throws light upon the three major alternates for ocean shipment. The alternates are: 1. Charter Shipping 2. Liner Shipping 3. ‘Multi-modal’ Transportation. Ocean Shipment: Alternate # 1. Charter Shipping:
For shipment of bulk cargo, such as grain, coal, ores, fertilizers, and oil, which are to be carried in complete ship-loads, charter shipping is often used. It is also known as trump shipping. The charter vessel does not have any fixed itinerary or fixed sailing schedule. These can be hired or engaged to ship the firm’s cargo on charter basis as per the terms and conditions of the Charter Party.
The contract made between the charterer and ship-owner is known as charter party that contains details of the ship, routes, methods of cargo handling, port of call, etc. A shipper may pay charter rates either on the basis of amount of cargo shipped or fixed prices. The chartering services are generally offered in auction markets. The rates are negotiated with the help of brokers or charter agents to get the lowest market price.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Forms of chartering : Various forms of chartering the ships for carriage of bulk cargoes follow: Voyage charter:
Contract of carriage in which a vessel is hired for transport of a specified cargo from one port to another port is termed as voyage charter. The ship owner pays for all the operating costs of the ship, while payment for port and cargo-handling charges are the subject of agreement between the parties.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Freight is generally paid per unit of cargo (per ton) based on an agreed quantity or as a lump sum, irrespective of the quantity loaded. Terms and conditions are set down in a document, which is called a Charter Party. The ship is said to be on ‘voyage charter’.
Time charter:
Time charter refers to hiring of a ship from a ship owner for a period of time, whereby the ship owner places the ship with crew and equipment at disposal of the charterer, in exchange of hire money.
Subject to restrictions in the contract, the charterer decides on the type and quantity of cargo to be carried and ports of loading and discharging and is responsible for supplying ships with bunkers and for payment of cargo handling operations, port charges, pilotage, towage, and ship’s agency. The technical operation and navigation of the ship remain the responsibility of the ship owner. The ship is said to be on ‘time charter’.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Bare boat charter (demise charter or charter by demise):
In a bare boat charter, the hiring or leasing of a ship is for a period of time during which the ship owner provides only the ship, while the charterer provides the crew along with all stores and bunkers and pays for all operating costs. The ship is said to be on ‘bare boat’ or ‘demise’ charter.
Back-to-back charter:
This involves a contract between a charterer and a sub-charterer, whose terms and conditions are identical to the contract (charter) between charterer and ship owner. Identical terms mean any money for which the charterer may be liable to the sub-charterer and which is recoverable from the ship owner.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Trip time charter:
A charterer hires the vessel for a single voyage or a round trip on terms and conditions similar to that of time charter.
Contract of affreightment:
A contract of affreightment is a long-time agreement to carry a certain amount of cargo between two ports. The choice of vessel and timing will usually be at the ship owner’s discretion. Alternatively, the contract may specify a certain amount of shipping that must be completed within a specific time period.
Contract terms used in vessel chartering :
Various alternative arrangements for loading and unloading of cargo between the vessel owner and the charterer used in Charter Party are as follows:
Gross terms:
As per gross terms, the ship owner is responsible for the cost of loading, stowing, trimming, and unloading of the vessel.
Net terms:
The ship owner is not responsible for cost of loading and discharge. Typically, net terms are used in voyage charter parties, as the ship owner has no control over loading and discharging. There are suitable clauses for lay time and demurrage to allow for delays at the loading and discharging ports.
The specific terms used for net terms are as follows: Free in and out (FIO):
It confers the responsibility to the charterer or shipper to arrange the stevedores and to load/discharge the cargo on the charterer’s own account, i.e., free of expense to the ship owner, who is still accountable for the port charges.
Free in and out stowed and trimmed (FIO57):
This is similar to FIO, but here, the charterer is also responsible for bearing the expenses of stowing and trimming, i.e., free to ship-owner.
Shared responsibilities:
The charterer and the ship owner both have shared responsibilities in the following terms
Free in liner out (FILO):
The ship owner is not responsible for the cost of loading but is responsible for the cost of unloading.
Liner in free out (LIFO):
The ship owner is responsible for cost of loading but not for vessel unloading.
Lay-time:
In addition, the charterer’s responsibility in terms of agreed timeframe known as ‘lay-time’ is included in the charter party. This can be expressed in days, hours, tons per day, etc. The charterer has to pay ‘demurrage’ to the ship-owner by way of financial compensation for delays for exceeding allowed lay-time.
However, accomplishing loading and/or discharge in less than the agreed time is often rewarded financially by the ship-owner by a payment called ‘dispatch’. Usually dispatch is paid at half the demurrage rate. As a matter of shipping trade practices, certain terms are used for accounting lay-time in a charter party.
Sundays and holidays are generally excluded for calculation of ‘lay-can’ in most countries where Sunday is a weekly public holiday. However, in case of Middle-East and some other Islamic countries where Friday is a holiday, it is excluded for computing ‘lay-can’. The terms used in charter party for such exclusions are as under.
Other terms :
SHEX: Sundays and holidays excluded
SHINC: Sundays and holidays included
FHEX: Fridays and holidays excluded
FHINC: Fridays and holidays included
The other terms used in charter party are: i. As fast as the vessel can (FAC):
Maximum rate at which a vessel can load/unload
ii. Notice of readiness (NOR):
Formal advice that the vessel is ready for loading/ unloading.
iii. Running days:
Days that run consecutively after each other
iv. Weather permitting:
Inclement weather is excluded from lay-time
v. Weather working day (WWD):
A day or part of a day when weather does not prevent loading/unloading
i. Free along Side (FAS) requires the seller to place the goods alongside the vessel whereas Free on Board (FOB) requires the seller to load them. When the vessel is chartered by the buyer, the seller generally prefers FAS as s/he is often unwilling to become involved in vessel loading.
Whereas a buyer who is not very familiar with the port of loading may ask the seller to arrange loading by requesting FOB. Besides, sellers may prefer to arrange vessel loading by them if they control or own their own loading facility at the port of shipment.
ii. In cases where the seller charters the vessel and goods are sold on the basis of ‘Delivered Ex Quay’ (DEQ) and ‘Delivered Ex Ship’ (DES), the seller is responsible for unloading in DEQ contracts whereas s/he is not responsible for unloading in DES contracts. As sellers have little familiarity with the port of discharge, they generally prefer DES and the buyer has to take care of and bear the expenses of unloading operations.
Ocean Shipment: Alternate # 2. Liner Shipping :
Regular scheduled vessel services between two ports are termed as liner shipping. Generally, liner shipping is used for cargo with higher unit value and manufacture and semi-manufacture goods. The shipping lines offer speedier shipping services, i.e., services useful for goods that are prone to market fluctuations due to changes in fashion, designs, season, technology, etc.
In liner shipping, for determining responsibilities of shipper and ship owner regarding cargo loading and discharge. Liner Terms are used. Under Liner Terms, shippers have no responsibility to the ship other than to have cargo delivered to the terminal, ready for loading prior to cut-off date and the consignees are responsible for collecting their arrived cargo in a timely manner.
The major differences between charter and liner shipping are given in Exhibit 16.5. Liner’ or ‘shipping’ conferences :
When two or more shipping companies collaborate to operate vessels in the same trade lanes, legally agree not to compete on price, and charge the same freight for the same type of cargo and the same voyage, it is referred to as ‘liner’ or ‘shipping conference’.
Thus, under a ‘conference’, the members agree to a set of tariffs, conference terms and conditions of carriage, the number and type of ships, each member will contribute, and the timetable for sailing. Besides, setting the freight rates, the shipping conferences also adopt a wide number of policies, such as allocation of customers, loyalty contracts, open pricing contracts, etc. A secretariat, often run by one of the members, coordinates the activities.
Cost calculations for liner shipping :
For liner shipping, the cost of freight is calculated from the commodity-based published price list of shipping companies. These lists indicate the cost of pure freight, also known as ‘base rate’ and any applicable surcharges, i.e., ‘accessorial charges’.
The base rate is often commodity-specific, calculated on a billing unit known as a revenue term. Revenue terms are calculated by comparing a shipment’s size (measurement terms) vs. its gross shipping weight.
Various methods used for determining the total number of revenue terms in a given shipment are as follows: Metric ton (MT):
A unit of weight equivalent to 2205 pounds or 1000 kilograms.
Short ton (ST):
A unit of weight equivalent to 2000 pounds or 907 kilograms, generally used in the US. Also known as net ton.
Long ton (LT):
A unit of weight equivalent to 2240 pounds or 1016 kilograms, used in the UK and a number of other countries too. Also known as gross or imperial ton.
Measurement ton:
A unit of volume used in transportation by sea, generally equal to 40 cubic feet or 1.13 cubic meters. Also known as shipping ton.
Freight ton:
A unit of volume for freight that weighs one ton, varying with the type of freight measured, as 40 cubic feet of oak timber or 20 bushels of wheat.
The major surcharges include: i. Bunker Adjustment Factor (BAF):
It reflects the cost of fuel (called bunkers). It is handled separately, as fuel is subject to frequent price fluctuations.
ii. Currency Adjustment Factor (CAF):
It reflects changes in the exchange rate of the currency in which the freight costs are billed. It is handled separately because exchange rates fluctuate more often than freight costs do.
iii. Port Congestion Surcharge:
It reflects additional expenses that ship lines incur when calling at congested ports.
iv. Terminal Handling Charge (THC):
It covers vessel-loading and unloading and cartage within the port area. It is handled separately as such costs are port specific.
v. Container Positioning:
It is an additional fee for the use of the carrier’s container, imposed for destinations with little return cargo or high risk of loss or damage to the container.
vi. Arbitrary:
It is an additional fee that shipping lines charge for serving markets outside the hinterlands of their normal ports of call. For instance, an Irish arbitrary is often applied to shipments made through hub ports in the UK.
Ocean Shipment: Alternate # 3. ‘Multi-modal’ Transportation :
International ‘multi-modal’ or ‘inter-modal’ transport means transport of goods by at least two different modes of transport, such as rail, road, sea, or air on the basis of a multi-modal transport contract, from a place in a country at which the goods are taken in charge by the multimodal transport operator (MTO) to a place designated for delivery situated in different countries.
Multi-modal transportation has revolutionized the carriage of goods in international trade. It covers the door-to-door movement of goods under the responsibility of a single transport operator. Multi-modal Transportation of Goods Act, 1993, and Amendment Act, 2000 provide a regulatory framework for use of containers and multi-modal transportation of goods in India.
MTO means any person who on his/her own behalf or through another person acting on their behalf concludes a multimodal transport contract and who acts as a principal and not as an agent or on behalf of the consumer or of the carriers participating in the multimodal transport operations and who assumes responsibility for the performance of the contract.
Multi-modal transportation of goods developed with the container revolution initiated in the late 1950s by Malcom McLean and his trucking operations. Containerization accounts for over 50 per cent of the world merchandize trade and is expected to grow up further.
Informational and technological progress has contributed to rapid growth of container traffic facilitating transnational movement of highly perishable goods. The Asian region has emerged as a major hub with around 48.1 per cent share of world container traffic, followed by Europe (21.8%), North America (16.6%), and others (13.5%).
Major benefits offered by transportation through containers include:
i. Substantial reduction in risk of damage to the goods during transport due to pilferage or mishandling
ii. Cargo arrival in good condition at final destination creating a positive impact on the buyer’s perception
iii. No cargo damage due to mishandling during trans-shipments
World’s top containership companies as shown in Fig. 16.18, reveals that APM- Maersk, with 17.05 per cent share, is the largest container ship company in the world followed by Mediterranean Shipping Company with 10.81 per cent share, CMA CGM Group with 7.83 per cent, and Evergreen Line with 5.47 percent in Twenty-Feet Equivalent Units (TEUs).
APM-Maersk also owns the highest number of 539 containerships in the world, followed by CM A CGM Group (377 containerships), Mediterranean Shipping Company (374 containerships), Evergreen Line (177 containerships), and COSCO Container Ltd (141 containerships).
Types of containers :
Containerization has been the most significant development in transportation of goods that has made ‘multi’ or ‘inter’-modal transport of cargo possible.
Containers may be classified into two main categories: ISO containers:
Since these containers conform to the specification of International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Geneva, these are also referred as ‘standard’ or ‘inter-modal’ containers.
ISO containers are manufactured in standard sizes as follows:
i. Width: 8 feet
ii. Heights: 8 feet 6 inches and 9 feet 6 inches
iii. Lengths: 20 feet and 40 feet
Besides, some less common lengths of standard containers include 24, 28, 44, 45, 46, 48, 53, and 56 feet.
Principle configurations of ISO containers are as follows: Dry containers:
These are totally closed box-type containers used for general purpose transportation. Manufactured with a standard height of 8 feet 6 inches, these are also known as ‘cube’ containers. These can also be extended to 9 feet 6 inches height, known as ‘high cube’ containers.
Insulated’ or thermal’ containers:
Such a container has thermal insulation of its walls but does not have its own refrigeration unit. Such containers are used to transport products sensitive to temperature, such as food products, sensitive pharma products, etc., in chilled or frozen conditions.
‘Refrigerated’ or ‘reefer’ containers:
These containers have their own refrigeration units so as to maintain a constant temperature during the voyage. An outside power source (electricity) is required for their functioning during the course of their multimodal transportation.
Most container-ships nowadays have got power facilities to accommodate ‘reefer’ containers. Such containers are required for transport of highly perishable food products, such as meat, fish, fresh fruits, and vegetables, etc.
Open top containers:
In order to hold cargo which is larger than the standard container size of 8 feet, open top containers are required. These containers are designed to hold cargo too large to fit through the doors of a regular container. Therefore, the cargo needs to be loaded in open top containers from the top and then covered with a tarpaulin.
Since another container cannot be stacked above an open top container, these containers are always stacked at the top of the stack either above or under the deck.
Liquid bulk container:
Such containers are designed in the shape of a cylindrical tank mounted within a rectangular steel framework to transport liquid cargo. They have the same standard dimension as other inter-modal containers and can also be stacked with standard containers.
Dry bulk container:
In order to save packaging space in drums or bags, such containers are designed to hold dry bulk cargo, such as food grains or polymer pallets which may have the same dimensions as standard containers.
Flat racks and platforms:
To transport heavy machinery, open-sided containers are used that have no side walls but may have end bulkheads than can be folded down when the rack is empty. Nowadays, flat rack containers, which are collapsible, are also available.
Swap bodies :
In most of Europe, ‘swap bodies’ are used, which have many characteristics of inter- modal containers but are not the standard ISO containers. A strong bottom and a minimal upper body constitute their major characteristics.
These can also have an open top that allows them to be transferred from road to rail mode. Swap bodies cannot be stacked and can only be bottom-lifted. They also have bottom fittings so they can be locked onto either a road chassis or a rail car.
FCL vs. LCL containers :
A shipper has option either to use an entire container, known as full container load (FCL) or partial space in a container, known as less than container load (LCL) of a liner operator.
The major advantages of FCL over LCL container are as follows:
i. The freight cost of FCL is more economical than LCL
ii. As the FCL has the common origin and destination there is no loss of time once the FCL is loaded and sealed
iii. FCL provided ease of handling as the final destination is one
iv. Much lower chances of mishandling and pilferage of cargo in FCL as handling is only at the time of loading at origin
v. As there is no transit handling, FCL facilitates in avoiding transit damages
vi. Effective utilization of container both in weight as well volume terms
vii. Easy tracking of FCL cargo
However, certain limitations associated with FCL cargo are as follows:
i. FCL is cost-effective only when the cargo is more than 75 per cent of load availability
ii. Since container is to be stuffed and sealed at factory in presence of a local excise official, firm’s responsibility becomes much higher
iii. The utilization of the FCL container by weight and volume must be to the maximum for attaining the freight efficiencies. |
warc | 201704 | Dear Francine, My parents have read or are reading your book,
They're Your Parents Too! I am concerned that as they become less independent, they will ask me or my sister to care for them. Here's the rub... Any contact (email, phone, but especially in-person (which is rare)) is both physically and mentally painful for my sister and myself. Both my sister and myself have made it clear to them that neither of us will be caring for my mother. Their life choices have resulted in destitution in their "golden years" and they are not able to pay for private care. My father has repeatedly spoken of his role as a buffer between her and us. His "plan" has always been to outlive her (even at one point making a suicide pact). Unfortunately for all concerned, he continues to have more serious health problems and will probably die before my mother. While I would care for my father alone, I have little connection with my mother and do not feel any obligation to help her now or in the future.
Can you revise your next book (or blog) to include topics such as:
* How to change your phone numbers so your parents can't find you
* How to ease parents into being wards of the state
* Reflecting on your life choices that have led you to the point of being alone
* What states have assisted suicide laws
* How to contact Dr Jack Kevorkian
Maybe a title for a new book could be "They're Not Your Parents Anymore" (or alternately, "They're Not Your Kids Anymore").
I am, most seriously (going to hell), Brian
###
Dear Brian, What a refreshingly honest letter. There are more people who feel this way than will say so out loud. They usually feel “guilty” for having such “bad” feelings. I think that being realistic about your family and your relationships is a much better way to deal with the challenges of your parents’ aging.
But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook! Before the advent of social security, there were very few old people, and most of them were poor. Their children were not only expected by society to take care of them, but many states had laws requiring adult children to support indigent elderly parents. Some still have these laws on the books, and there is talk at least of enforcing them again!
Right now, you are imagining what you will feel if your mother is left on her own. You may never like your mother or want to spend time with her, but, if she is suffering and alone, you may be surprised by the complexity of your feelings. Compassion may be one ingredient. Or you may find yourself asking yourself, “What’s right for me to do to order to feel okay about myself as a person?”
That doesn’t mean that you have to do what your mother wants you to do, but you might consult with someone from your local area agency on aging (or a geriatric care manager or eldercare attorney)—while keeping a comfortable distance from your mother—to figure out some strategy so that she doesn’t die alone in a ditch by the side of the road. Whatever you say, I don’t think you’d feel good about yourself if an equivalent scenario ensued.
Although I wrote my book! primarily for adult children, some elderly parents have also read it. Other have come to hear me speak. The wisest have gained insights into how the arrangements they make (for their care, money, etc.) can affect their children positively or negatively. But a few have focused on just the sections that enforce their own positions and are using it to bludgeon their kids into feeling guilty. As they say, even the devil can quote scripture. If you read the book yourself, you will find in Chapter Two (“Acknowledging Our Parents’ Aging”) a story about a man named Larry who felt pretty much as you do about “MOM.” Here’s a brief passage:
“Something in her age and aloneness moved this polished player with a caustic wit. “I have a responsibility,” he told me. “I don’t know what it is, but I have it. I have a fifty-six year history with this woman. And,” he added significantly, “I no longer need her approval.”
So I recommend you “steal this book” (mine, not Abbie Hoffman’s) from your mother, and, in addition, you might want to check out a book by Jacqueline Marcell:
Elder Rage, or Take My Father... Please!: How to Survive Caring for Aging Parents. On the other hand, this author did choose to care for her parent; you might choose to flee to another jurisdiction—without extradition. |
warc | 201704 | The ability to multitask is touted as a virtue in the business world, but it is difficult to perform well. However, new research suggests that multitasking can be done successfully with a little help from some quiet meditation.
University of Washington professors David Levy and Jacob Wobbrock compared workers who received meditation training to those that received no relaxation techniques at all. Individuals who were trained in meditation reported being better able to multitask throughout the workday without getting stressed.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore how meditation might affect multitasking in a realistic work setting,” Levy says in a statement. “We are encouraged by these first results. While there is increasing scientific evidence that certain forms of meditation increase concentration and reduce emotional volatility and stress, until now there has been little direct evidence that meditation may impart such benefits for those in stressful, information-intensive environments.”
The research is published in the
Proceedings of Graphics Interface [PDF].
Levy and Wobbrock recruited three groups of human resource managers that work in information. The first group received eight weeks of meditation training alongside work, the second received eight weeks of body relaxation training and the third received nothing. At the beginning and end of each eight week period, participants took a stress test related to their multitasking abilities. Researchers measured the speed and accuracy with which participants switched between various office tasks including filing, sending emails, scheduling appointments and answering phones. Participants also self-reported their level of stress and memory while performing these tasks.
Futurity reports:
"The results were significant: The meditation group reported lower levels of stress during the multitasking test while those in the control group or who received only relaxation training did not. When the control group was given meditation training, however, its members reported lower stress during the test just as had the original meditation group.
"The meditation training seemed to help participants concentrate longer without their attention being diverted. Those who meditated beforehand spent more time on tasks and switched tasks less often, but took no longer to complete the overall job than the others, the researchers learned.
"No such change occurred with those who took body relaxation training only, or with the control group. After the control group’s members underwent meditation training, however, they too spent longer on their tasks with less task switching and no overall increase in job completion time.
"After training, both the meditators and those trained in relaxation techniques showed improved memory for the tasks they were performing. The control group did not, until it too underwent the meditation training.
Over the past decade more and more companies are turning to meditation as a way to bring a sense of peace to the workplace while increasing productivity. Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine says that companies are "being won over, in part, by findings at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Massachusetts, and the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard University that meditation enhances the qualities companies need most from their knowledge workers: increased brain-wave activity, enhanced intuition, better concentration, and the alleviation of the kinds of aches and pains that plague employees most."
Google's "Search Inside Yourself" program started in 2007 and is now being used as a template for other technology companies to follow. General Mills, Google and Apple also offer forms of meditation and relaxation in the workplace.
“Many research efforts at the human-technology boundary have attempted to create technologies that augment human abilities,” Wobbrock says. “This meditation work is unusual in that it attempts to augment human abilities not through technology but because of technology—because of the demands technology places on us and our need to cope with those demands.”
So perhaps we can expect to see yoga mats and relaxation tapes in the break room from now on.
Do you think this trend is going to keep growing? And if so, is this a good thing for the workplace?
via
Futurity
Photo via freedigitalphotos.net
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com |
warc | 201704 | January 18, 2010 — Vol. 26 No. 3
The Department of Educational Foundations in the College of Education at Idaho State University recently was awarded more than $133,000 in scholarship grant funding for academic year 2009 – 2010.
Those funds will benefit ISU College of Education undergraduate teacher education students seeking to work in Idaho school districts as bilingual education, English, English as a Second Language (ESL), English Language Learners (ELL), and Native America teachers.
Since 2002 the state of Idaho has awarded over $900,000 in funding to ISU for this grant.
The scholarship program, part of the Idaho State Board of Education’s Grow Your Own (GYO) Scholarship Program, seeks to increase the availability of highly qualified teachers, and especially in high-need areas of Idaho.
The emphasis of the program is on assisting para-educators in Idaho to obtain an associate and/or baccalaureate degree with a Bilingual or ESL endorsement. Another goal of the program is to assist Native American para-educators to obtain an associate and/or baccalaureate in early childhood, elementary or secondary teacher education.
The scholarship program also serves as catalysis for undergraduate action research on the diverse needs of the ELL student population in southeast Idaho.
“A growing need in both Bilingual and ESL programs is the publication of teacher action research. The ESL teacher’s voice is grossly underrepresented in refereed research journals,” said Alex Rosborough, ISU assistant professor of ESL.
GYO scholars, though the classes and experiences they have in the ISU Teacher Education Program, are learning the skills necessary to become classroom-based action researchers.
Twenty-six students currently are participating in the scholarship program as members of ISU College of Education undergraduate programs in Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and Twin Falls. In Twin Falls the ISU College of Education collaborates with the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) to transition their GYO graduates into our baccalaureate programs.
“In exchange for their scholarships, GYO students work in ESL classrooms in the local region,” said Beverly Ray, chair of the ISU Department of Education Foundations and ISU interim principal investigator (director) for the scholarship program.
“During the fall semester,” continued Ray, “GYO scholars volunteered time in eight school districts in southern and southeastern Idaho. Through these efforts GYO scholars are able to strengthen the connections between what they are learning in COE classrooms and what they are able to do in their classroom placements.”
She noted that GYO scholars can completely alter the dynamics of a classroom.
“Frequently they are catalysts for learning, the ones who can effectively relate to and motivate /ELL and other learners,” Ray said.
Alea Peters, a GYO scholar in the Twin Falls Teacher Education program, sees the benefit of the program for her future success.
“I hope to personally make this scholarship less of a ‘donation’ and more of an ‘investment’ because my education will help me be able to teach numerous ELL students, which will in turn help their families and help society as a whole,” Peters said.
In reflecting on her experiences as a GYO scholar, Peters also noted, “I really want to teach ESL. I am looking forward to continuing my education so that I can become more knowledgeable about how to meet my students’ diverse needs.”
Once graduated, many GYO scholars remain in Idaho where they work in Idaho school districts as highly qualified teachers who also serve as mentors and role models to underserved and minority students.
The scholarship program is seeking applicants for fall 2010 with the screening of applicants occurring in April 2010.
For more information about this program, contact Alex Rosborough at (208) 282-4392 or e-mail rosbales@isu.edu. |
warc | 201704 | by Kanife, Ejike Alphonsus
While buying the much I could, I joked some with the attendant concerning the prices of petroleum products and asked him if they have removed the subsidy from PMS too. His reply was apt and quite punchy: “Subsidy oshi ewo ni yen?”
A litre of black market fuel in my area costs between 150 and 180 naira so I reckoned if I took the time and the pain to visit a filling station I would get it cheaper. So wielding my jerry can, I blew a bike (thank God they didn’t ban those ones in my area) to the closest filling station where my heart jumped with glee because the signboard still read 97/litre.
Kpata-kpata (Eventually) it would be 100 naira or 110. With that on my mind I bounced into the filling station like I wanted to buy a whole tanker of fuel. The attendant quickly told me, “one-forty ni o.” What? So why didn’t I spare myself less stress and time and just search out a 150 naira-selling black marketer instead of taking bike and yet buying at 140? Wouldn’t I be spending more now?
While buying the much I could, I joked some with the attendant concerning the prices of petroleum products and asked him if they have removed the subsidy from PMS too. His reply was apt and quite punchy: “Subsidy
oshi ewo ni yen?” (What subsidy?)
Well, I gave his reply a big thought and concluded that we indeed needed to ask the Federal Government that has been ranting about the need for total removal of fuel subsidy that same question, which useless subsidy are we even talking about? With prices ranging from 120 to 150/litre in many filling stations and 150 to 200/litre in black markets, one can’t help but ask which subsidy they want to remove that hasn’t already been removed or that Nigerians haven’t been suffering from. Subsidy is supposed to cut down the price of a commodity or service, so if we are still enjoying the said subsidy yet we don’t even see the fuel and even when we do, it comes at a pocket-tearing price, then we should ask the questions; where is the subsidy? What is the subsidy doing? Is it supposed to reduce or increase the price of PMS? If it is supposed to reduce it as its name suggests, why then are we still paying so much for it? If with the said subsidy still in place and the price of fuel still sky-rocketing, yet we still buy the product for so much, when the subsidy gets totally removed and the price of the commodity reaches God-knows-how-high, how does the government really expect the average Nigerian to buy and use fuel?
Yet we still need to know, whatever happened to the funds accrued from the partial removal in January of subsidy? What is the SURE-P doing? Where are the said alternatives that were supposed to cushion the effects of the partial (and total) removal? The cost of transportation is on the rise, where are the diesel-powered buses and what-nots? Where are the rail lines and trains? The waters have receded and water level is going down. Consequently, power supply has reduced drastically and the season of darkness (which happens to be the dry season when power is most needed) is upon us again. With fuel getting scarcer and costlier by the day and the average man finding it hard to fuel his I-pass-my-neighbour, where is the 20 hour electricity promised us before the removal? Where are the good roads and hospitals and schools they promised to build with the partial subsidy funds?
Again, if the government isn’t fooling us and if Nigerians are really still enjoying the subsidy which should leave PMS price at 97 naira, where are the taskforce that are supposed to make sure filling stations sell at the recommended PPPRA price? Why are filling stations hoisting 97/litre on their sign boards while selling at over-bloated prices? What is happening with the said oil thieves whom have been caught? I thought the more oil thieves we caught, the more funds will be retrieved and made available to real importers and more fuel into the system. How come we’re catching more oil thieves yet suffering worse? What is happening to the urgent need to build one or more world class, state-of-the-art refinery which a country as big and as blessed as Nigeria so rightly deserve?
This whole charade reeks of a plot by the FG and their thieving friends to break Nigerians and force us to yield to their ungodly and inhuman plan of removing a subsidy most analysts agree doesn’t exist in the first place. But no matter what the president and his cohorts do, they will never justify any removal of fuel subsidy nor the hike in pump prices and the attendant sufferings it had subjected the masses to. The president vowed to catch oil thieves and make them return all they stole but the reverse has become the case as so-called oil marketers have somehow turned the table on the president and the country at large, insisting instead, and strongly too that it was the country that was in their debt and demanding that the government pay all they owe. Isn’t that a tragedy? So tragic that the president even confessed that the oil people are effectively holding the country to ransom, so who be the police and who be the thief?
This is definitely a plot, deliberately planned, meticulously executed and tactically sustained to gradually and systematically hike the price of PMS, so that the masses will subliminally adapt to the changing trend without attributing it to subsidy removal. If it is not, why would the president who has always been a die-hard advocate for subsidy removal, within days of his most recent advocacy that subsidy must go for the country to survive (November 15 when he received the report of the graduating participants of the Senior Executive Course of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Jos) had gone ahead to announce during his infamous media chat that subsidy remains in 2013 and that provisions have been made for it in the 2013 budget? I don’t know about you, but I think something stinks fishy in all that hot and cold doublespeak. Sadly, true to the Nigerian characteristic to adapt well to demeaning and otherwise unacceptable standards, we are already bearing with the president, withstanding long queues under the sun and in the rain only to be extorted of our hard-earned cash in the name of purchasing a supposedly subsidized product.
I ask again, subsidy
oshi ewo ni yen?
————————–
Kanife, Ejike Alphonsus is a Lagos based creative writer, trained journalist and partner at www.Teksmobile.com. He tweets from @AktivIngredient
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija. |
warc | 201704 | Evidence-Based Program Directories
Multiple federal agencies have put together registries that list evidence-based programs as a way to disseminate information about programs and their level of effectiveness. Registries list programs and categorize them, similar to a consumer guide. This process allows users to identify programs that best meet their needs and have a body of research behind them. Registries vary in the programs they include, how they define evidence, the depth of evidence they require, the criteria they use for classifying evidence-based programs, and their area of focus. View the range of directories and resources available by Department and Agency below.
Institute of Education Sciences
What Works Clearinghouse The What Works Clearinghouse reviews research on a range of education topics, including students with disabilities, dropout prevention, education technology, school organization and governance, student behavior, and teacher and leader effectiveness. The site includes a searchable research directory of interventions that can be filtered by topic/outcome domains, grade, effectiveness rating, extent of evidence, and the delivery method.
Youth.gov
Program Directory This searchable directory features evidence-based programs whose purpose is to prevent and/or reduce delinquency or other problem behaviors in young people. This directory filters by key word, risk factor, and protective factor.
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
This searchable database lists Evidence-Based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Models or programs that have shown impacts on teen pregnancies or births, sexually transmitted infections, or sexual activity. The model programs are also included in the Youth.gov Program Directory.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP) This searchable online registry lists more than 280 interventions supporting mental health promotion, substance abuse prevention, and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Community Guide The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource to help choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in communities. Systematic reviews are used to answer questions such as these: Which interventions have been proven effective? Are there effective interventions available that are right for my community? What might effective interventions cost and what is the likely return on investment?
Prevention Research Synthesis The PRS Project identifies evidence-based HIV behavioral interventions (EBIs) to help HIV prevention planners and providers in the United States select interventions most appropriate for HIV prevention within their communities.
Administration on Children and Families
Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness The HomVEE initiative provides a thorough and transparent review of the home visiting research literature and an assessment of the evidence of effectiveness for home visiting programs models that target families with pregnant women and children from birth to age 5.
Assessing the Evidence of Effectiveness of Home Visiting Program Models Implemented in Tribal Communities, Final Report, August 2011 To assess the evidence of effectiveness of culturally relevant models that have been implemented in Tribal communities, a systematic review of the home visiting research literature focusing specifically on studies relevant to tribal communities is presented. The approach was similar to that of the HomVEE review.
Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse The Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse provides access to materials related to self-sufficiency programs, practice, and research. It can be searched by keyword, topic, category, area of interest, publisher, year, reference type, research methodology, geographic focus, and target population.
Strengthening Families Evidence Review The Strengthening Families Evidence review involved a systematic review of research on programs serving low-income fathers or couples. A searchable tool allows users to search all studies included in the review and filter by key words, study rating, program goals and outcome domains, and program components.
Proven and Promising Responsible Fatherhood and Family Strengthening Initiatives - Evidence Review, 2010-2012 The initiative includes reviews that catalogue the quality of the evidence from studies of programs serving low-income fathers and couples.
Office of Justice Programs
Crime Solutions This directory covers topics including drugs and substance abuse, juveniles, crime and crime prevention, victims and victimization, law enforcement, technology and forensics, corrections and reentry, and courts. Programs are assessed by an evidence rating of effective, promising, or no effect.
Bureau of Justice Assistance collaboration with the Council of State Governments
The National Reentry Resource Center What Works in Reentry Clearinghouse The Clearinghouse offers easy access to research on the effectiveness of a wide variety of reentry programs and practices. Information is categorized by focus area, and a customizable search feature is available.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
OJJDP Model Programs Guide The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP’s) Model Programs Guide (MPG) contains information about evidence-based juvenile justice and youth prevention, intervention, and reentry programs. It is a resource for practitioners and communities about what works, what is promising, and what does not work in juvenile justice, delinquency prevention, and child protection and safety.
MPG uses expert study reviewers and CrimeSolutions.gov’s program review process, scoring instrument, and evidence ratings. The two sites also share a common database of juvenile-related programs. |
warc | 201704 | I suspect the problem might be the focus on objects instead of actions. If I may quote from Steve Yegge's Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns:
Verbs in Javaland are responsible for all the work, but as they are held in contempt by all, no Verb is ever permitted to wander about freely. If a Verb is to be seen in public at all, it must be escorted at all times by a Noun.
OOP focuses primarily on the object and expresses actions in terms of the object's abilities. A airplane object can be flown (Airplane.fly()). A door object can be opened (Door.open()). But we really don't view the world in terms of objects and what actions can be done to them. It's backwards. We view the world in terms of ourselves and our abilities. We are the
ultimate object. (And no, I don't mean a God object.)
Imagine you are returning from a trip to the local flower garden. Would you say "I smelled the flowers" or "The flowers were smelled by me?" Now you want to tell a friend to go and smell the flowers. Would you say "Go and smell the flowers" or "The flowers must be smelled by you?" When we convey instructions, we give them in terms relative to ourselves. What is programming but conveying instructions to a computer process how some sort of work should be done on our behalf.
How to make a Peanut Butter Sandwich:
Get Jar of Peanut Butter Get Loaf of Bread Get Knife ... class PeanutButterJar extends Jar ...Express them as such and they take on methods. PeanutButterJar.open() Knife.spread(PeanutButter, Bread)Whoa! In my world, peanut butter doesn't do anything but sit there and taste yummy. And I'd start looking for a good exorcist the moment a knife starts performing actions all by by itself. A more realistic transcription of the instructions would be: You.open(PeanutButterJar) You.spread(Knife, PeanutButter, Bread)Specifying You as a universal object would seem rather redundant as the scenario progressed, so a good language designer would remove the need to expressly identify it. This would yield open(PeanutButterJar) spread(Knife, PeanutButter, Bread)which starts to look vaguely procedural.
The truth is, procedural and OOP paradigms languages express the complexity of their problem space in different ways. Procedural code is flat and wide with functions. OO code is hierarchical with inheritance. OO-code is not inherently better organized than procedural code merely because it is encapsulated in objects. A reusable library can consist of functions just as easily as a collection of objects.
The way some OOP languages (like Java and C#) force objects on the programmer borders on the absurd. If I'm writing a library of reusable code that needs to maintain its own state, then of course writing classes with proper encapsulation and dating hiding makes sense. On the other hand, If I'm generating a web page with some data stored in a database, then some procedural code and a handful of function calls makes more sense. One of the things I like about PHP so much is that it allows the programmer to decide which paradigm is best suited for the task at hand.
Sadly though, that decision isn't left to the programmer who has been tasked with developing and maintaining a system. Management can tend to focus too much on buzzword compliance. A procedural programming language designed today would never receive wide-spread adoption if it didn't offer some sort of OO construct despite both paradigms having produced successful libraries and applications. And the programmers that don't learn to think beyond themselves will be unfairly left in the dust. |
warc | 201704 | Higher Order Improvements for Approximate Estimators
Title: Higher Order Improvements for Approximate Estimators Author(s): Kristensen, Dennis Salanie, Bernard Date: 2010 Type: Working papers Department(s): Economics Persistent URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:9187 Series: Department of Economics Discussion Papers Part Number: 0910-15 Publisher: Department of Economics, Columbia University Publisher Location: New York Abstract: Many modern estimation methods in econometrics approximate an objective function, through simulation or discretization for instance. The resulting "approximate" estimator is often biased; and it always incurs an efficiency loss. We here propose three methods to improve the properties of such approximate estimators at a low computational cost. The first two methods correct the objective function so as to remove the leading term of the bias due to the approximation. One variant provides an analytical bias adjustment, but it only works for estimators based on stochastic approximators, such as simulation-based estimators. Our second bias correction is based on ideas from the resampling literature; it eliminates the leading bias term for non-stochastic as well as stochastic approximators. Finally, we propose an iterative procedure where we use Newton-Raphson (NR) iterations based on a much finer degree of approximation. The NR step removes some or all of the additional bias and variance of the initial approximate estimator. A Monte Carlo simulation on the mixed logit model shows that noticeable improvements can be obtained rather cheaply. Subject(s): Economic theory Item views 279 Metadata: text | xml Suggested Citation: Dennis Kristensen, Bernard Salanie, 2010, Higher Order Improvements for Approximate Estimators, Columbia University Academic Commons, http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:9187. |
warc | 201704 | Programme: Personal Effectiveness Course: Working with Others; Fair treatment and respect - for Managers Description: Who is this course for?
This course is suitable for all staff who manage others
Overview
When we are working together its is vital that we treat each other fairly and with respect.
As part of the 2012-13 Staff Survey, 15% of staff felt that they had personally experienced behavior that they considered to be bullying or harassment in the two years before the survey.
All employers are responsible for taking all reasonable steps to prevent bullying of staff. Managers require specific skills and behaviours to ensure that all staff are receiving fair treatment and respect as well understanding both LSE policy and employment legislation. Managers need the skills to appropriately support their staff. If claims of bullying or harassment are made, there is an inevitable cost in terms of morale, motivation and possibly financial.
This one day programme is designed to address the challenges facing Managers at LSE when communicating and working with others to reduce the risk of bullying and harassment occurring. The programme will also ensure that all employees are aware of both the legislative and corporate policies in place to protect them. Often, behaviour that is perceived as bullying or threatening is unintentional and, therefore, we will offer practical solutions that address communication and interaction to support real behavioural change. The Workshop is designed to be relevant and fun – whilst addressing key issues facing all organisations.
The course will cover By the end of this course you will Prerequisites:
none
Event information: No courses currently scheduled for your role. Additional Resources:
none
Training Provider: |
warc | 201704 | The President will flesh out details of his proposals in a speech at the port, which is undergoing $2 billion in upgrades paid for with government and private money. Obama, in the quick trip to South Florida, will try to show that the economy remains his top priority in the midst of high-profile campaigns on immigration reform and gun control.
Among the proposals Obama will call for:
-Higher caps on “private activity bonds” to encourage more private spending on highways and other infrastructure projects. State and local governments use the bonds to attract investment.
-Giving foreign pension funds tax-exempt status when selling U.S. infrastructure, property or real estate assets. U.S. pension funds are generally tax exempt in those circumstances. The administration says some international pension funds cite the tax burden as a reason for not investing in American infrastructure.
-$4 billion in new spending on two infrastructure programs that award loans and grants.
-A renewed call for a $10 billion national “infrastructure bank” – a proposal from his first term that gained little traction.
The administration official was not authorized to discuss the proposals before they were announced publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The President made private-sector infrastructure investment a key part of the economic agenda he rolled out in his State of the Union address last month. He also called in his address for a “Fix-It-First” program that would spend $40 billion in taxpayer funds on urgent repairs.
Obama’s focus on generating more private sector investment underscores the tough road new spending faces on Capitol Hill, where Republican lawmakers often threaten to block additional spending unless it is paid for by tax cuts or other measures.
The official said any increased spending associated with the proposals Obama was outlining Friday would not add to the deficit. But the official did not detail how the costs would be paid for, saying only that more information would be included in the president’s budget.
Obama will release his budget April 10. |
warc | 201704 | Lesson 15: Dwarfed by Discontentment
My neighbor Claudine's face was always set in a mask of discontent. For years, I'd see her out my kitchen window as she would water her garden, carry in her groceries, or talk to her children, and I couldn't help but notice that a deep frown was a permanent fixture on her face. Her mouth was set in a long, hard line that rarely curved into a smile.
When I talked to Claudine over coffee, I quickly learned that nothing was ever good enough for her. Her house might be attractive, but it needed paint and her husband was too lazy to paint it. Her kids might be polite, good students, but they were too much like her in-laws to suit her taste. The weather might be nice, but if all this sunshine kept up, we'd soon be facing a drought.
Claudine was unable to enjoy anything fully because there always was a fly in the ointment. If she didn't see it immediately, she'd find it eventually. The poor woman was chronically dissatisfied. Her discontentment was like an ulcer that gnawed away at her sense of gratitude, her peace of mind, and her enjoyment of life.
A Hindrance to Spiritual Growth
Discontentment is an emotion that is capable of dwarfing us spiritually because it is directed against the Lord. If we are discontented with His will for us, then we're not going to grow in our faith.
The people of Israel on their journey from Egypt to Canaan provide a rich source of illustrations for this particular emotion. We've already seen how their complaining affected their leader, Moses. They often discouraged him and angered him. As we move forward, we'll see how their discontentment affected their own lives and brought God's judgment upon them.
None of us will ever be able to imagine what it must have been like for at least two and a half million people who had been slaves for four hundred years to be set free from their bondage. For one thing, their freedom wasn't provided by a presidential emancipation paper. Their deliverance was a spectacular demonstration of the sovereignty and power of the Most High God who had chosen them to be His people.
God totally devastated Egypt, a proud nation that had ruthlessly oppressed the Hebrews. He humiliated the Pharaoh, who had arrogantly asked, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"
Now the Israelites were gathered safely on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, which they had crossed on dry ground. Egypt lay in ruins behind them. "And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant" (Exod. 14:31).
Take a few minutes to read Exodus 15—it is the song the people sang to celebrate God's victory. They sang and danced in joy and freedom. They were on a mountaintop, dizzy with the wonder of it all. If God could deliver them from Pharaoh, He could do anything!
But it didn't take long for their point of view to change. First came three days without water. Then they found a spring that only poured forth bitter water. Soon came the ominous words that stamped their character throughout their journey: "The people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'What are we to drink?" (Exod. 15:24).
The principles God demonstrated to the discontented Israelites so long ago are still strategic to us as we seek contentment in today's world.
Discontentment Comes When We Focus on What We Lack
The solution was so simple. The Lord had no intention of abandoning His people. He just wanted their trust. When Moses appealed to the Lord, He showed Moses what to do: "Then Moses cried out to the LORD and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet" (Exod. 15:25).
Less than a month later, we find the people not only grumbling but looking back to Egypt with nostalgia. "In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron" (Exod. 16:2).
The food they had brought with them was gone. Already they had only a selective memory of their slavery in Egypt, recalling not their bondage but the meals provided by their masters. They whined, "There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted." So they accused their leaders of wrong motives, saying, "You have brought us out into this desert to starve."
In response, Moses and Aaron put the right perspective on the Israelites' discontent. The two leaders told them, "Who are we, that you should grumble against us? . . . You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD" (Exod. 16:7-8).
Discontentment Is Directed Toward God
The Israelites were dissatisfied with God and the way He was handling things. Whenever they came to an obstacle that required faith in the Lord who led them, whether it was thirst or hunger, they complained. They could have encouraged each other by saying, "God has brought us this far; He must have a plan to take care of us the rest of the way." But they never did. Their immediate response was to question God's motives and to doubt His goodness and his power. They were never content to just rest in Him.
What about us? How do we react to difficulties? Do we angrily add them up as examples of the way God has let us down? Is the glass half-full or half-empty for us? Do we shake our fists at heaven and say, "Why did You let this happen to me?" Do we withdraw from God, refusing to read our Bibles or pray?
Or do we say, "Lord, You have cared for me so far, I trust You to supply the wisdom and the resources I need for this situation. I am content to leave it in Your hands." Our attitudes make all the difference in the way we face our circumstances.
Need Teaches Us to Trust God More
Of course, as far as His people were concerned, God had a plan. And His plan was something they never could have even imagined. He knew they had to eat. He knew there were no supermarkets in the Sinai wilderness. He knew they couldn't plant gardens and wait for food to grow and still travel at the same time. So He just sent fast food—bread from heaven that contained all the nourishment they required. All they had to do was to go out every morning and pick it. The manna fell wherever they were every day.
But the Israelites never seemed to learn from these incidents. Their faith didn't grow with each demonstration of God's provision. They seemed determined to be discontent. Manna was not enough to satisfy them. For example . . .
"They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, 'Give us water to drink'
"Moses replied, 'Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?'
"But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, 'Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?'
"Then Moses cried out to the LORD, 'What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me" (Exod. 17:1-3).
They continually quarreled and grumbled, and Egypt was looking better all the time. Of course, they had forgotten a few small items regarding Egypt: bondage, oppression, cruelty, and death. However, God was still patient with them. He satisfied their thirst by supplying a river of water from a rock.
Discontentment Distorts the Past and Destroys the Present
Do you look back on the "good old days" of your life and think you were happier then than you are now? Stop and ask yourself whether you were really content back then. Wasn't there always something else you wanted to make you happy? Discontentment casts a dark shadow on our lives. It's a worm that nibbles away at our peace and joy.
Israel's dissatisfaction reached its zenith when God brought the people to Mount Sinai. He spoke in an audible voice that thundered from the mountain. Then he called Moses up to Him, and for forty days He gave Moses the Law His people were to live by and the plans for the tabernacle, where He would dwell among them. Unfortunately, forty days was too long for those chronically discontented people.
"When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, 'Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him"' (Exod. 32:1).
It's rather hard to believe, but the people weren't satisfied with what God had already done. And since their circumstances weren't exactly the way they wanted them to be, they decided to exchange God for a golden calf.
This time God was infuriated, and He punished many of them with death. But when Moses interceded for the people, God forgave them, and they continued on their journey. However, God's patience was finally wearing thin. Each time their discontent erupted, the punishment was more severe.
"Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the LORD, and the fire died down.
"The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, 'If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna" (Num. 11:1-2, 4-6).
First the Israelites complained about the hardships of their journey; God sent fire to consume some of them. Then they complained about the steady diet of manna; God sent them quail enough to eat for a month, and many of them died as they ate it. Then came the last straw—they refused to enter the wonderful land God was giving them as a gift. Ten of the twelve spies discouraged them from obeying God and taking possession of the land. They reported huge, dangerous inhabitants of the land who seemed to grow larger and more menacing with each telling of the story. They said, "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes and we looked the same to them. . . .
"That night all the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, 'If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert! Why is the Loiw bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? . . . We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt" (Num. 13:33b and 14:1-4).
Discontentment Results in Rebellion
After two years of seeing God miraculously meet their every need, the people were dissatisfied with His care and His purpose for their lives. Their hearts yearned for Egypt. Egypt was their homeland, not Canaan. They had blanked out the agony of slavery; they lusted for the food of Egypt. They were still slaves in their hearts—slaves to their cravings. Their constant dissatisfaction and complaining led to rebellion. This time God was finished with them.
When Moses pled with God to forgive them the Lord responded, "I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times—not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it" (Num. 14:20-23).
Discontentment Prevents God front Giving Us His Best
It was all over for the discontented. They wandered in circles for thirty-eight more years like one long funeral procession as that generation lived their lives without anticipating anything but death. The people's dissatisfaction with God's purpose for them, their disdain of His bountiful provision, their disregard of His mighty power, and their distrust of His great love brought them to a point of no return. God had no more patience and provided no more second chances. It was all over. They were alive, but they looked at a bleak future that led nowhere but to the grave.
Why should we study this ancient story? Maybe you've already noticed that it bears a striking resemblance to our own emotional behavior. Discontent lurks in each person's heart. If it existed in Eden, it exists everywhere. That's why God tells us we need to carefully study Israel's experiences with God. As Paul wrote, "Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: 'The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry! We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test the LORD, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel" (1 Cor. 10:6-10).
Discontentment Is Sin
The temptation to sin usually begins with discontentment about what we are or what we have. For instance, consider financial sins. How much grief would be avoided if we were satisfied with our income? if we didn't crave more and more of the things money can buy, would we enslave ourselves to creditors? "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income" (Eccles. 5:10).
Another example of discontent involves emotional and sexual adultery. Immorality and the devastation it brings on families, individuals, and society would never happen if men and women were satisfied with their mates. As the wise Solomon wrote, "May you rejoice in the wife of your youth. . . . May her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love" (Prov. 5:18-19).
Sinful actions always spring from ungodly thoughts and attitudes. An ungrateful, discontented spirit is an open door to unholy behavior, causing us to turn our backs on God and take matters into our own hands. This kind of rebellion doesn't have to happen. God is faithful, and we don't have to yield to the temptation to be discontented with our families, salaries, jobs, and life in general. Temptation is not a sin, but yielding to it is. What should be the attitude of a woman who is a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit? We find the answer in Paul's letter to the Philippians:
"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life" (Phil. 2:14-16a).
"Do everything?" Does this mean the housework, the carpool, the visits to parents, church work, or community service?
Do everything without complaining? Yes, that's what God's Word says.
Naturally, we don't develop this kind of positive attitude without some instruction. For example, I used to hate to fold clothes. With five children, there was always quite a lot of it. Then I heard someone say that while she folded clothes, she thanked God for each person in her family and prayed for him or her. What a difference that simple attitude adjustment made!
You Can't Be Godly and Discontented
When I studied the word
content as it is used in the New Testament, I found something very interesting. In other places the same Greek word is translated, "enough," "sufficient," and "to be strong enough." Obviously, godliness and contentment go together like hand and glove. And "godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that" (1 Tim. 6:6-8).
The woman whose heart is filled with Jesus will be grateful for every blessing, and she will trust Him through every difficulty. We won't like to admit it, but we really can live with just the bare necessities—food, clothes, and shelter. In fact, in many parts of the world, people are relieved to have that and can't imagine having anything more. And we have so much more than just the essentials—we have a heavenly Father Who will not abandon us. He knows what we need, and He has promised to supply it. What He wants most from us is simple, childlike trust. But that's not always easy for us because it doesn't come naturally.
Contentment Most Be Learned
The apostle Paul
learned to be content. His physical circumstances did not determine his attitude or control his emotions. He wrote, "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength" (Phil. 4:11-13).
He said the secret to being content is knowing that Jesus Christ gives us the strength we need to do whatever He wants us to do. The secret of being content is believing that Jesus is sufficient.
In another familiar passage, Paul had a physical infirmity that he pleaded with God to remove: "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness! Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me" (2 Cor. 12:8-9).
The Lord told Paul, "Don't be upset and discontented because you are limited by this infirmity. My grace will make you strong enough to bear it. You'll have to depend on Me every day, and I'll be here. So you can be content because I will be enough for all your needs."
We Can Be Content Because God's Resources Are Limitless
We are instructed to be more than grateful—God wants us to share our blessings with others. Paul wrote, "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work" (2 Cot 9:7-8).
The phrase "having all that you need" is represented by the same Greek word that is translated "content" in other places. Are you getting the picture? We don't have to greedily hang on to our possessions, fearful that we won't have enough for our own needs. We can give cheerfully and generously to the Lord, knowing He will see to it that we always have enough for ourselves and enough to give away.
We Can Be Content Because God's Presence Is Constant
God's Word tells us to be content, satisfied with our material resources and physical condition because the Lord is with us: "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (Heb. 13:5).
How can we possibly depend on health, money, and possessions for our security when we have the Lord, and He promises never to forget, neglect, nor abandon us? We are precious to Him. We are His children, and He is our perfect Father.
Facing Frightening Possibilities
This lesson of trusting God became a part of my life in a way I will never forget when, after a breast examination, I had a call from the diagnostic center. There was something irregular about my mammogram, and the doctor wanted me to come in the next day for further tests. Maybe you know just how I felt. You can't help the thoughts that crowd your imagination.
Suppose it is cancer. Has it spread? Do I have to look ahead to surgery, chemotherapy, and death?
During that time, I was studying the meaning of the Greek word used for "content," and it was a revelation to me in a new way. I'm always telling people to look at the worst-case scenario and then tell the Lord you trust Him no matter what. Now it was my turn.
I began to see that no matter what the additional tests might reveal, the Lord would be with me and He would be enough. He would be sufficient. He would make me strong, whatever the verdict was. Having Him is better than health, better than wealth, better than any form of security or happiness we depend on. And what is death for a child of God? It is nothing but a dark valley we walk through, our hand in His, as He ushers us into His glorious presence for all eternity.
I can't tell you the joy and peace all this gave me. When my children called and asked if I was worried, I said, "No. No matter what happens, the Lord is enough. I can't complain. I've had very good health for all these years. I'm not immune from any disease." That peace stayed with me all day, all through the further exams. Even when I waited in the examining room for the doctor, looking at the picture on the sonogram of this dark, alien thing in my breast, there was peace. Then the doctor came in, and I asked, "May I call my husband in?"
The doctor replied, "Well, all I want to tell you is that it's a benign cyst filled with fluid."
Of course, I was happy. But I know the day may come when the news will not be good. I only hope that I will still be satisfied and contented because I have the Lord and He is enough to meet my every need. His grace is sufficient. But it's only there when we need it. God's grace is not available to us when we envision the future, imagining trouble ahead of time.
The Fear of the Lord Brings Peace
"The fear of the LORD leads to life: Then one rests content, untouched by trouble" (Prov. 19:23).
Fear of the Lord means a loving reverence for God, and that includes submission to His Lordship and His Word.
Do you see how revering God, being content with your life and enjoying its blessings, and trusting Him through its difficulties will bring stability to your emotions? You won't be at the mercy of every new circumstance.
To be "untouched by trouble" doesn't mean we won't have troubles. This is a fallen world, and trouble and suffering are part of life here on earth. "Untouched by trouble" does mean trouble will never touch the inner core of our being where we live with God. Troubles will not devastate our faith—on the contrary, they will give us endurance and maturity. We can be content, even in our trials, because God is sufficient. Is discontentment your problem? If so, gratitude to God for His faithfulness is your solution.
Related Topics: Women's Articles |
warc | 201704 | What matters with a new venture or business is that you’re not adding to the clutter, the noise. You’re adding something of importance. But what does that mean exactly?
If you’re bringing a new product to market, which is what we did with ECOBAGS Brand 22 years ago, these are the things that we think are important. They keep evolving every day.
It matters that your products are produced by people earning a fair wage and are working in fair labor conditions. Lots of promises can be made, overseas and domestically, but it takes building personal relationships which includes meetings face to face to be sure these basic principles are in place. And, there are things like SA8000 certifications, production facility reviews, that can give you that added comfort of knowing everything is good. But you still need to be diligent.
It matters that your product addresses a real need and not a made up need. Now, this is a tricky one since everyone has different perceptions of need and want. You have to figure this out for yourself. My personal litmus test is can I use it multiple times? Does it contain only natural or organic materials? Who made the product and where was it made? |
warc | 201704 | Share This :
It’s summer and temperatures across the country are soaring into the triple digits. Most of us are doing everything we can to stay cool and indoors, out of the scorching heat, but it’s ‘high season’ for sports tournaments. That means hoards of young and teenage athletes are participating in baseball, soccer, lacrosse, softball, and other field sport games from early morning until sundown—and often even later, with lighted fields.
While some of these tournaments are held on natural grass fields, most are not. In fact, the growing number of field complexes built specifically for tournament hosting (e.g., the ‘Big League Dreams’ sports parks across California, Texas, and Arizona) all use artificial turf throughout their facilities.
A few weeks ago I mentioned how artificial turf fields, which can be nearly 86 degrees hotter than natural grass fields, can be a contributing factor in heat-related illnesses among young athletes (You can view the post here: Staying Hydrated, Happy, and Healthy For the Summer Sports Season). Experts call this the ‘heat island’ effect, and, interestingly, these synthetic turf fields not only impact the players
on the field, but the spectators as well: the turf causes a rise in the temperature of the stadium surrounding the field too! So, it’s important to think about staying hydrated at these complexes, even if you’re just watching from the stands.
If your child – or team – is playing on artificial turf, there are two other important factors to consider. One, injury rates – to legs and feet – have been shown to rise in players who play on artificial turf. Researchers studying National Football League (NFL) injuries found that players were 27 percent more likely to injure a lower extremity when playing on artificial turf (FieldTurf, in this case) instead of on natural grass. Even more concerning, especially for parents of soccer players, was that the researchers found an 88 percent increased risk of an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury and a 32 percent greater risk of an ankle sprain, when the athletes played on synthetic turf.
A final factor to think about when your child is playing on artificial turf is that the turf can harbor biological contaminants – blood, sweat, saliva, and animal droppings – unless sprayed down and cleaned on a regular basis. “While natural grass self-cleans, synthetics, on the other hand, have moisture and heat with no microbial system. They are a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, viruses, mold, and mildew,” says Cassy Aoyagi, president of FormLA Landscaping, a sustainable landscaping firm in Los Angeles, CA.
Many experts recommend that, at a minimum, the turf fields should be washed down prior to and after each game to reduce the transmission of contaminants and germs, but we all know that’s highly unlikely. Some experts even suggest a daily intensive scrubbing with bacteria-killing cleanser to reduce the spread of germs. Again, our friends at the NFL are leading the way in research, having funded a University of Toledo study to determine the link between staph infections and synthetic turf fields.
At the very least, parents should take “turf burns” and “strawberries” seriously, making sure to disinfect them immediately after play. Wash uniforms after every game and, of course, make sure your athlete washes his or her hands well after playing on synthetic turf. Good old-fashioned hand-washing is still the best prevention for the spread of germs, on and off the field.
This post was originally published on August 5, 2011 on TeamSnap. Emily Cohen is a freelance writer living in Berkeley, California. An avid tennis player and swimmer, Emily has a son who plays varsity high school baseball and a daughter who plays Class I soccer and middle school volleyball. She has been a team manager for a number of her children’s sports teams. You can find Emily’s blog about team management and youth sports parenting here at blog.teamsnap.com. Follow her on Twitter at @emilygcohen or email her at [email protected] |
warc | 201704 | The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change
In his latest book, Vaclav Smil tells the story of the Earth's biosphere from its origins to its near and long-term future. He explains the workings of its parts and what is known about their interactions. With essay-like flair, he examines the biosphere's physics, chemistry, biology, geology, oceanography, energy, climatology, and ecology, as well as the changes caused by human activity. He provides both the basics of the story and surprising asides illustrating critical but often neglected aspects of biospheric complexity.
Smil begins with a history of the modern idea of the biosphere, focusing on the development of the concept by Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky. He explores the probability of life elsewhere in the universe, life's evolution and metabolism, and the biosphere's extent, mass, productivity, and grand-scale organization. Smil offers fresh approaches to such well-known phenomena as solar radiation and plate tectonics and introduces lesser-known topics such as the quarter-power scaling of animal and plant metabolism across body sizes and metabolic pathways. He also examines two sets of fundamental relationships that have profoundly influenced the evolution of life and the persistence of the biosphere: symbiosis and the role of life's complexity as a determinant of biomass productivity and resilience. And he voices concern about the future course of human-caused global environmental change, which could compromise the biosphere's integrity and threaten the survival of modern civilization.
What people are saying - Write a review
This is an excellent book! A kind of modern update to Vernadsky's 1928 original.
The topic is immensely broad, but is covered with minute details. Lots of history of science; lots of tantalizing facts. An excellent reference
Evolution of the Idea
1
From Vernadsky to a Science of the Global 8 The Biospheres Dynamics and Organization
199
Life in the Universe 9 Civilization and the Biosphere
229
Lifes Diversity and Resilience 10 Epilogue
263
Energizing the Biosphere References
289 329 335 Other editions - View all
Globalisation and Sustainable Development: Environmental Agendas
Vladimir F. Krapivin
Limited preview - 2007 |
warc | 201704 | IATA director general and CEO Tony Tyler addressed (17-Oct-2013) the FIATA World Congress in Singapore on the subject of the global air freight industry. Mr Tyler acknowledged the importance of air cargo to the airline business and as an essential driver of the global economy. He noted that when measured by value, a third of goods traded internationally are transported by air, accounting for USD6.4 trillion worth of business and 57 million jobs. Mr Tyler outlined how air cargo has stagnated since 2010, with the market share for air cargo decreasing and revenues shrinking. In 2010, air cargo attributed for 11.4% of airline revenues. The forecast for 2013 is that it will be 8.3%. In tandem with these factors, patterns of development, innovation and business intelligence have eroded much of the value that shippers see in speed. [more - original PR] IATA: Air cargo shrinking as a proportion of airline revenue
18-Oct-2013 10:10 AM
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© CAPA |
warc | 201704 | Boris Johnson likes to label himself as the “cycling mayor” who wants to kick-start a cycling revolution in London. 2010 was supposed to be “the year of cycling”. However, a lot of cyclists have the impression that their needs aren’t really respected by traffic planners in London.
Interestingly, figures released by Transport for London in their latest “Travel in London” report compellingly show that they have a point. According to data published in Chapter 9 (“Transport and quality of life: Customer satisfaction and perception”), cyclists in London are by far the least satisfied users of roads in the capital.
The authors of the report put it this way:
“Satisfaction levels were similar for users of all road modes except cycling, where satisfaction was significantly below average at 67 out of 100.”
How severe the level of frustation is becomes clear if you compare the statisfaction of cyclists to the statisfaction of Tube users. There is a lot of moaning and complaining going on about the Tube: fares, punctuality, crowding. However, the average cyclist in London is significantly less happy with the road network than the average Tube passenger is with the Tube. According to the report, the overall satisfaction of Tube users is at 79 out of 100. Even with regard to train crowing, Tube users are more satisfied than cyclists are with London roads (72 out of 100).
This frustration of cyclists is confirmed by other results. For example, the conditions of cycle lanes get the worst marks at all. Amazingly, this aspect even fares below traffic congestion! The satisfaction with the availability of cycle lanes and advanced stop lines is also significantly below average.
Here’s another evidence that London is massively neglecting cyclists:
Taken together, from my perspective these results are pretty devastating.
The report states that
“the Mayor has made it a particular priority to improve the quality of Londoners’ overall daily travel experiences. The substantive outcomes of these policies should be visible, in due course, in the various formal and informal performance measures considered elsewhere in this report”
If this pledge, the fuss about the “cycling revolution” and the results in the report were taken seriously by London’s policy makers, improvements to the cycle infrastructure would be of utmost priority. Why do I have a hunch that this is not the case?
Thanks to the “Love London, Go Dutch” campaign we talk a lot about making London more like Amsterdam. However, judged by the low satisfaction of cyclists with the road network, it would be nice to make London (for cyclists) at least like London (for cars).
Asked about our general satisfaction with their most recent journey, we are happier than the users of public transport and cars. This proves the vast benefits of cycling: It is quicker and cheaper than most other means of transport.
Even the wretched road network and the biased priorities of London’s traffic planner cannot botch this! |
warc | 201704 | Suggested Reading:
This post can be read along with the post titled Carl Jung’s experience with the Pueblos Indians. It relates Jung’s experience during his trip to Kenya and Uganda in 1925, one year after the trip he had in New-Mexico.
The two passages quoted here are also from the autobiography of
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe.
I am planning in a next post to share with you what these two experiences of Carl Jung in Africa and New Mexico evoke in me. I will speak about the loss of containing myth for the modern human being in the light of History of religions and Jungian Psychology. I also will point out the differences between Jungian psychology and the teaching tradition of Vedanta/Non Duality with reference to the purpose of human existence .
Before that, I would love to have your feedback on these excerpts !!
From Nairobi we used a small Ford to visit the Athi Plains, a great game preserve. From a low hill in this broad savanna a magnificent prospect opened out to us. To the very brink of the horizon we saw gigantic herds of animals: gazelle, antelope, gnu, zebra, warthog, and so on. Grazing, heads nodding, the herds moved forward like slow rivers. There was scarcely any sound save the melancholy cry of a bird of prey. This was the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world. I walked away from my companions until I had put them out of sight, and savored the feeling of being entirely alone. There I was now, the first human being to recognize that this was the world, but who did not know that in this moment he had first really created it.
There the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear to me. “What nature leaves imperfect, the art perfects,” say the alchemists. Man, I, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which, along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world, and God; there is no “new day” leading to “new shores” but only the dreariness of calculated processes.
My old Pueblo friend came to my mind. He thought that the raison d’etre of his pueblo had been to help their father, the sun, to cross the sky each day. I had envied him for the fullness of meaning in that belief, and had been looking about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, heads nodding through hundreds of millions of years, it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.
Further in this biography, Carl Jung explains what is the ‘destiny’ or the ‘task’ of human existence:
“Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.” |
warc | 201704 | Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/2934
Document Type: Working Paper Title: An appraisal of media weight tests Authors: Corkindale, David Kennedy, Sherril Issue Date: Oct-1973 Abstract: This report considers the topic of media weight testing: that is,the examination of the effect of different levels of media advertising spending on behaviour in the market. In a simple test, for example, the level of expenditure is increased above normal in one area and the sales, brand shares or attitudes in that area are compared to those in other, comparable areas where normal weights of advertising are maintained.
Although media weight tests are a much practised marketing exercise they would seem rarely to produce conclusive, or useful results. The MCRU has found that within the body of experiences of Sponsor companies only about
one in twenty media weight tests have produced conclusive results. Similarly, discussion with other market researchers has suggested the same order of magnitude for the success ration. Also a study reported by Clancy (1972,1638) suggests the situation is not much better in the U.S.A.
In order to formulate guidelines for successfully conducting media weight tests, it is necessary to establish, illustrate and understand the reasons giving rise to the usual failures. These reasons can be categorised in two ways:
A - statistical, quantifiable reasons
B - conceptual and managerial reasons, which tend to be less easily quantifiable
After the problem has been defined, this report is set out in three parts:¬
Part A considers and establishes why the circumstances of the market place may render it unlikely that many media weight tests will produce any detectable changes in the market place;
Part B considers the market and organisational context in which this sort of exercise is usually conducted and against which it has to be assessed; and
Part C discuss the implications of these findings and presents guidelines for successful media weight tests. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1826/2934 Appears in Collections: SoM Working and Occasional Papers
Items in CERES are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. |
warc | 201704 | Europe’s largest battery capable of storing 10MWh of energy has been installed in Bedfordshire as part of a two-year trial aiming to protect the UK’s power grid from renewable energy fluctuations.
Consisting of 3,000 individual lithium-ion batteries, the complex in Leighton Buzzard is operated by UK Power Networks as part of its Smarter Network Storage project.
The £18.7m smart-battery system, built for UK Power Networks by S&C Electric, Samsung SDI and Younicos, will store wind and solar energy at times of generation surplus to be used later when demand exceeds production.
"Energy storage can play a major role in balancing the grid as it solves the problem of renewable intermittency by absorbing surplus power and releasing it when needed,” explained Andrew Jones, managing director, S&C Electric Europe, at the launch event on Monday.
“This function simultaneously helps to securely balance capacity and supply and protects the grid from stress events, such as power outages.”
The project partners believe the trial will prove that energy storage could further reduce costs for power network operators as it would remove the need to invest in traditional forms of grid reinforcement including building new transformers and laying cables.
“We will be testing a wide range of different services that storage can deliver to the network, and the wider electricity system,” said UK Power Networks’ director of Strategy and Regulation and chief financial officer Ben Wilson.
“The project will allow us to explore and improve the economics of electrical energy storage and assess the potential benefits to the electricity system in a number of sustainable and flexible ways. We have also been developing a first-of-a-kind platform to help us optimise and manage a wide range of different services that the storage can provide.”
The project was awarded £13.2m from Ofgem’s Low Carbon Networks Fund, to which UK Power Networks added £4m supplemented by a further £1m by the other project partners.
Berlin-based Younicos contributed custom-built intelligent software architecture and components. By providing frequency regulation as well as load shifting, the project will stabilise the grid more effectively than traditional thermal generators, providing more space on the grid for clean but intermittent renewable energies. |
warc | 201704 | Avondale Irrigation Dist. v. North Idaho Properties, Inc.
Citation: 8 ELR 20458
No. Nos. 12174, 12482, 577 P.2d 9/99 Idaho 30, (Idaho, 03/15/1978)
Consolidating and deciding two cases, the court concludes that the non-consumptive water rights, reserved by the United States, to the natural flow of several streams in two national forests are limited to the amount necessary to accomplish the purposes of timber and watershed protection. Reviewing congressional legislation relating to the creation of national forests and recent court decisions, the court finds that the water reserved by the United States in the national forests in question does not include amounts needed for the protection and improvement of the entire forest ecosystem, including fish and wildlife, and the forests' aesthetic and recreational opportunities because these purposes are not among those for which the forests were created. The United States may lay claim to the entire natural flow of a stream without exact quantification as a reserved right under federal law if that volume of water can be shown necessary for the accomplishment of the congressional purposes of timber and watershed protection. If, however, the United States cannot prove a strict need for the entire natural flow of the streams for these two purposes, the volume needed will have to be precisely quantified and any remaining water in the streamflow will be available for appropriation. On remand, the trial court must therefore determine the necessary minimum flow to achieve the statutory purposes of the forests in second feet or acre feet so that any excess may be made available for used and appropriation.
A partial dissent argues that it is error to hold that under federal statute the entire natural flow can be a sufficient quantification of the rights of the United States to the waters of the streams; the federal government must state its claimed reserved water rights in specific quantities.
Counsel for State Parties
Wayne L. Kidwell, Attorney General; Josephine P. Beeman, Ass't Attorney General 210 State House, Boise ID 83720 (208) 384-2400
Counsel for United States
Paul L. Westberg, U.S. Attorney Rm. 693, Federal Bldg., Box 037, 550 W. Fort St., Boise ID 83724 (208) 384-1211
Larry G. Gutterridge
Land and Natural Resources Division Department of Justice, Washington DC 20530 (202) 739-2740
McFADDEN and BISTLINE, JJ., concur.
SHEPARD, C.J., and DONALDSON, J., concur in Parts I through V. |
warc | 201704 | ERIC Number:ED136851 Record Type:RIE Publication Date:1977-Feb Pages:6 Abstractor:N/A Reference Count:0 ISBN:N/A ISSN:N/A
Does Enjoyment Accompany Learning (A Student Perceptions Inquiry).
Blai, Boris, Jr.
A study was conducted at Harcum Junior College in order to ascertain what modes of learning students preferred and to determine which of these learning modes afforded the students the most enjoyment. A survey was distributed to the student body; a 50% rate of response was achieved. Results indicated that students felt they learned most from class discussion, lectures, and field trips, in that order, while independent study, movies, readings, and non-class rap sessions were ranked lower in terms of how much students felt they learned. For learning modes which offered students the most enjoyment, a plurality of students ranked field trips as being the most enjoyable, followed by movies and class discussions; independent study, non-class rap sessions, readings and lectures were ranked as being less enjoyable. Overall, the survey data did not reveal that student levels of enjoyment regarding the various modes of learning were congruent with their preferences among these learning modes. A number of teaching/learning techniques were perceived by students to be either a preferred mode of learning and/or of preferred enjoyment value, thus indicating that a variety of teaching techniques is the expressed group preference of students. (JDS)
Publication Type:Reports - Research Education Level:N/A Audience:N/A Language:N/A Sponsor:N/A Authoring Institution:Harcum Junior Coll., Bryn Mawr, PA. |
warc | 201704 | ERIC Number:ED210609 Record Type:RIE Publication Date:1981-Aug-25 Pages:9 Abstractor:N/A Reference Count:0 ISBN:N/A ISSN:N/A
Anxiety and Performance: Each Affects the Other One.
Ferguson, Eva Dreikurs
Investigators assessing the effect of motivation on performance rarely report the effect of performance on motivation. College students (N=48), preselected by anxiety scores, were tested on adjective pairs lists; additionally, anxiety was measured before and after task performance. Results showed that anxiety had a marked effect on verbal learning performance. In a second study of 24 subjects, the anxiety variable did not significantly alter verbal learning performance. Subjects (N=60) preselected on the Spielberger trait anxiety test were tested on a high-speed tachistoscopic task and were given the Spielberger State Anxiety test following performance. Tachistoscopic recognition was not significantly altered by trait anxiety, but a significant correlation occurred between state anxiety and performance. Subjects (N=40) preselected on the Spielberger state anxiety scale were given the scale again immediately preceeding the tachistoscopic task to reveal the effect of anxiety on performance. Results showed that anxiety had no significant effect on tachistoscopic recognition. While only one investigation obtained clear evidence that pre-performance anxiety significantly altered performance, subjects' anxiety was altered significantly as a function of task performance in all four investigations. The findings suggest that anxiety may not remain at a constant level for the duration of an experiment. (NRB)
Publication Type:Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers Education Level:N/A Audience:N/A Language:English Sponsor:N/A Authoring Institution:N/A Note:Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (89th, Los Angeles, CA, August 24-26, 1981). |
warc | 201704 | ERIC Number:ED423122 Record Type:RIE Publication Date:1998-May Pages:64 Abstractor:N/A Reference Count:N/A ISBN:N/A ISSN:N/A
Improving Primary Student Motivation and Achievement in Mathematics.
Adami-Bunyard, Eppy; Gummow, Mary; Milazzo-Licklider, Nicole
This report describes a program for increasing student readiness for and achievement in mathematics. The targeted population consists of third grade students in an expanding suburban community and kindergarten students in a culturally diverse urban community, both located in Northern Illinois. The problems of achievement in and attitudes towards mathematics is documented through published and teacher-made assessments and checklists focusing on motivational behavior. Analysis of probable cause indicates that student confidence, past success rate, and ability are deficient and impact student motivation. The professional literature reveals that teachers have not successfully matched math objectives with effective strategies to promote relevant learning and student-valued activities. A review of solution strategies suggested by knowledgeable others, combined with an analysis of the problem setting, has resulted in the selection of two major categories of intervention: (1) establishing goal setting with students; and (2) implementing a cross-age mentoring program to reinforce mathematical concepts and skills. Post intervention data indicated an increase in academic achievement in mathematics, an improvement in positive behaviors during math instruction, and a reduction in the number of off-task behaviors during math instruction. (Contains 27 references and 12 appendices.) (Author/DDR)
Publication Type:Dissertations/Theses; Reports - Research Education Level:N/A Audience:N/A Language:English Sponsor:N/A Authoring Institution:N/A Note:Master's Action Research Project, Saint Xavier University and IRI/Skylight. |
warc | 201704 | Peer reviewed
Download full text
Download full text
ERIC Number:EJ1068997 Record Type:Journal Publication Date:2009 Pages:10 Abstractor:As Provided Reference Count:34 ISBN:N/A ISSN:ISSN-1938-0399
Physically Active Play and Cognition: An Academic Matter?
Sattelmair, Jacob; Ratey, John J.
American Journal of Play, v1 n3 p365-374 Win 2009
The authors discuss the growing evidence that strenuous physical activity is not only healthy for students but improves their academic performance. Based on such research, they argue that schools in the United States need to stop eliminating physical-education programs under the current political pressures to emphasize academics and instead to reform traditional physical education. Modern physical education should move away from its competitive-sports approach to one that employs a wide range of play involving strenuous physical activity for every student.
Descriptors: Physical Activities, Physical Activity Level, Physical Health, Academic Achievement, Physical Education, Child Health, Play, Brain, Cognitive Development, Cognitive Ability, Child Development
The Strong. One Manhattan Square, Rochester, NY 14607. Tel: 585-263-2700; e-mail: info@thestrong.org; Web site: http://www.thestrong.org
Publication Type:Journal Articles; Reports - Research Education Level:N/A Audience:N/A Language:English Sponsor:N/A Authoring Institution:N/A |
warc | 201704 | I presented an api for location entity recognition and geocoding at fosdem 2016 Geocoding the World with openaddresses.
This API can extract and geocode locations from Wikipedia articles or microblog posts with a high confidence score in places where the data is available. The EU version running at geocode.xyz covers some countries pretty well (eg, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark) and others not so well (Poland, Slovakia, Estonia) because in the later case openaddresses.io is missing street address names.
If you have your own address data get a copy of the server on the AWS and load it up on the local Mysql server. Then build your own real time twitter feed location tracker, or map the news of the day.
Or better yet, contribute to openaddresses.io to improve this tool.
A minimal location entity set is an alphanumeric description of a location which maps to a single point (Latitude, Longitude) without ambiguity, and is the shortest such description.
For example: La Fàbrica del Sol, Passeig de Joan Salvat Papasseit, 1, 08003 Barcelona, Spain
can be reduced to 1 SALVAT PAPASSEIT, BARCELONA, ES
While many geocoding systems attempt to return as much data as possible (such as alternative road names, neighborhood name, timezones, geohashes, Ordnance Survey gridrefs, calling codes, what3words, sunrise/sunset, and more) all this seems unnecessary since you may get this additional information of you perform a reverse geocoding lookup on the point.
Returning so much redundant information on an address lookup seems like a waste of space to me.
Let’s build a two step geocoding system, one that a) returns the most minimal info on the first request and b) returns all the rest of location details on the second.
http://geocoder.ca/?sued=1#updates
Geocoder.ca Lawsuit Update
CanadaPost’s lawsuit, now in its 4rth year, is ongoing and it looks like it is finally getting a court date soon (they have been quiet for a while, probably wishing to keep this under wraps until after the Federal Election.)
Either way, we are still here, and we are still providing a free database of postal addresses and postal codes that is bigger and better than ever.
The main database has grown considerably in the last 4 years, further proof that crowdsourcing works! As of the last update on 2015-09-30, 12613 new postal codes were added, with the total now approaching 1 million.
You may download all these data for free at http://geocoder.ca/?freedata=1 (under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.)
Will keep you posted as to the latest developments from the federal court. All the best and thank you for your support.
Ervin Ruci Geocoder.ca
@Yapc::EU 2015 explaining fuzzy geocoding with Geocode.xyz
I gave a talk at State of the Map openstreetmap.org conference on crowdsourcing. (The slides are posted on my twitter feed https://twitter.com/geolytica/status/531501476708114432 , also available on Vimeo)
One observation I took home from the conference is that the state of public data around the word is similar to that in Canada, in the sense that governments and their affiliate entities hold on to the data for as long a possible, despite the fact that doing so, adversely affects the state of their economies and goes against the public good. (According to OSM France “Bano” project, a country loses up to 0.5% of its GDP due to lack of publicly available addressing data. Source)
Crowdsourcing the data is not an optimal solution, in the face of the lack a data feed from its authoritative source, because it results in datasets that contain errors. Still, this seems the only way to open up the data in my view, when the decision makers are convinced that keeping the data closed is better for their budgets (an interesting figure of 0.5 billion pounds was thrown around as the value of a closed post code list by the Royal Mail CEO Moya Greene, in her arguments for keeping the dataset closed. She also happened to be Canadapost’s CEO at the time they started their legal efforts aimed at enforcing CP’s alleged intellectual rights over Canadian postal codes.)
In France on the other hand they don’t have such problems, as they have not yet made the effort to create a post code system like the Canadian or the British ones, hence it is hard to make the half billion dollar argument there, still that does not mean that whatever system they have is open. People from the “Bano” project had to lobby hard to get the list of up to 1000 postal codes created by the French postal service open to the public, and when they actually did it was full of errors. Not only that but the French postal service has 4 different street address datasets (one for regular mail, one for advertising mail, one for parcels and another one for a purpose I can’t remember now.) All 4 have quality issues, and the 4 different departments that created them do not talk nor cooperate with each other to improve their respective datasets. Funny stories of government inefficiency at the public’s expense. The Economist also wrote a piece on this topic a month ago.
In closing, public data all around the world is at various stages of unavailability because certain people of influence are convinced they are worth a lot of money. Nobody has yet shown how much money they are actually making from licensing this data. I doubt it is half a billion. Or 0.5% of the GDP.
I am certain it is more akin to a hidden tax we all have to pay.
11 of the 17 years I’ve been in Canada I’ve resided at this postal code: “K2C 1N5.” It is the only otherwise meaningless alphanumeric string I remember most clearly, having written it over the years on countless letters, web forms, tax forms, applications and the like. As of today I can no longer call it my ‘postal code.’ Because as of today I have been personally sued in federal court over the use of the trademarked word combination: ‘postal code.’ So, I am taking the personal decision to just call it my ‘zip code.’ You’ll still know what I mean.
Sounds incredible right? Wrong!
The Canadapost corporation has just amended their statement of claim against my company, geocoder.ca, to name me personally as a defendant in their ongoing legal action to assert copyright over everything ‘postal code.’ (Both the Amended Statement of Claim and the Amended Statement of Defense will be posted here soon).
These people do move slowly (it has been over a year since their original claim) but they do just when I thought they were ready to drop their claims, which were ridiculous to begin with. It is funny because just a few days ago I was reading in the news about the financial woes of the crown corporation that enjoys the position of monopoly in certain areas. It is also fitting though for a mismanaged company to spend their last dollars on lawyers, we’ve seen it before (remember SCO?)
Other than filling my mailbox with junk mail, misusing the legal system to pursue absurd claims appears to be to be the way those overpaid pencil sharpeners see as the way out of the woods.
Maybe they envision a world where every website that mentions the word ‘postal code’ or uses the postal code to identify a location, pays a fee to the corporation. They want me to be the first one to do so.
They even extended their claim to other websites I own, namely foodpages.ca, to sieze any profits this website makes by having people type various location entities (address, intersection, city, postal code) to find a nearby restaurant. Perhaps in their ideal world, these profits belong to them because of the ‘postal code’ option.
Alas, there are thousands of websites that let users look up information associated with a postal code. Some of them use the geocoder.ca free XML port. There are lots of other alternatives too. Those websites would operate just fine if they stop accepting postal codes mind you. The user would simply have to type in a few more letters te enter their address instead.
In my case though they overdo it a bit. The revised statement of claim also mentions as targets the so called “Ruci Websites”, (FoodPages.ca, FoodHouse.com, AussieSalon.com, Yelpus.com, DineHere.us, FoodPages.us and SalonPages.com)
This is just absurdly funny. Their $1000 an hour lawyers can not even muster the competence of a simple whois query which would reveal that at least three of these websites have nothing to do with me, indeed they are not websites at all, just domain names registered by some unknown spammer and plastered with ads. I just verified that.
Maybe someone at Canadapost just heard the proverbial sentence that “there is money on the internet” and they unleashed their lawyers to get it. Maybe they think that their ‘postal code’ (if the courts decide it is ‘theirs’ in the first place) is the backbone of the internet and these websites can not exist without this ingredient. So, they must pay the ‘postal code’ tax!
Seeing no end to this madness I am taking the following preemptive action. I am renaming the ‘postal code’ to ‘zip code’ on every website, blog, application or other publication I write.
I will also kindly ask the federal government to stop asking me about my postal code on tax forms, and any other communications they have with me. Due to copyright reasons I might not be able to answer that question and I also hold them responsible for bringing this situation to a head.
Finally, like I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, it is unfortunate that the corporation is facing financial problems. It is tough being short of a $1 billion a year. They will never get it from me though. From a very very large number of people in my position, maybe, but I doubt it. Taxpayers who cover their $1b shortfall, CIPPIC who is representing me pro bono, myself and those who have donated to my legal defense fund will bear the cost of such legal action.
A company founded and still operating on the mentality of the pre-internet age, or even the pre-transistor age, has to understand the realities of new technologies. Starting with the simplest fact that a ‘postal code’ is not solely for the purpose of sending mail via Canadapost’ as they claim. There are opportunities for this old company to make money in this new environment and they are much better positioned than a one-man company like geocoder.ca, to do so.
I do not know who advises the Canada Post CEO on all these matters, but I do have one advice for him. Fire them!
Or better yet. Fire Yourself! |
warc | 201704 | Golf course accessories play a vital role in any golf course’s playing conditions. They are seen and touched by golfers on every hole, they can create lasting impressions, they can reinforce your course’s reputation and they are the most
affordable way to immediately improve course conditions.
Unfortunately, when not maintained properly or replaced when worn, they can leave an unfavorable impression of your course as a whole.
If you want to allocate your budget in the most strategic way, consider these 5 tips that your golfers will notice. These are the places where the impact accessories make is most immediate and works out to be the greatest in relation to your overall budget.
1.) On The Tee FOR LESS THAN $20 – Any of your worn spike brushes can be replaced throughout your course. 2.) Practice Green FOR LESS THAN $250 – Makeover your practice green with all new Jr. Flagsticks, Jr. Flags and Practice Green Cups. 3.) Bunkers FOR LESS THAN $500 – Replace your 25 oldest bunker rakes with new Accuform Ace II or AccuCurv Bunker Rakes. 4.) Greens FOR LESS THAN $700 – Freshen up the most touched and seen accessories on your course with 18 new regulation cups, flagsticks and flags. 5.) On The Tee FOR LESS THAN $1000 – Switch out 4-5 of your most worn ball washers with new Par Aide Master or Deluxe models.
Golf course accessories are the only area of your facility where improvements to your course conditions can be literally be made overnight…and without a big hit to your budget. They contribute to golfer satisfaction and make your course more playable, enjoyable and beautiful.
“Because Golfers Notice”. Continue reading |
warc | 201704 | What are Natural Hazards An extreme natural event or process that causes loss of life and/or extreme damage to property and creates severe disruption to human activities. Tectonic Hazards-These are natural hazards caused by the movement of tectonic plates e.g. volcanoes and earthquakes Climatic Hazards-These are caused by the weather, they include tropical storms and drought. Constructive/Divergent Boundaries When plates . MOVE APART When the crust is pulled apart, it typically breaks along parallel faults that tilt slightly outward from each other. As the plates separate, the block between the fault cracks and drops down in to the mantle. The sinking of the block causes a rift. Magmaseeps upward to fill the cracks. New crustis formed along the boundaries.
EXAMPLE:
EURASIAN plate and the NORTH AMERICAN plate are moving apart at the mid Atlantic Ridge.
Destructive Boundaries Where two plates COLLIDEwith each other. Oceanic plate collides with a CONTINENTALplate, the OCEANICplate is forced downwards into the mantle forming a SUBDUCTIONzone. This forms a DEEP TRENCH, the edge of the continental plate is folded upwards into a mountain range. Repeated folding will cause plates to break and slip causing earthquakes.
EXAMPLE: Oceanic
NAZCA plate crashing with continent of SOUTH AMERICA. Crash formed the ANDES mountains, the long strings of volcanoes along the mountain crest, and the deep trench off the coast of PACIFIC OCEAN.
Conservative/Transform Boundaries Plates SLIDE PASTeach other, or are moving in the SAME DIRECTION. They dont slide past each other smoothly, often get stuck. PRESSUREbuilds up until suddenly the plates jump forward, sending out a shock of WAVESthat cause an Earthquake. EXAMPLE: SAN ANDREAS Fault. The area of California to the WEST of the fault is slowly moving north relative to the rest of CALIFORNIA
.
Hurricane/Cyclone
1)
EVAPORATION for the surface of the ocean, because of the usually HIGH ocean TEMPERATURES of 27 degrees.
2) Fast-rising, warm, moist air rises creating an area of very low pressure-the
EYE OF THE STORM-which sucks air in.
3) The
ROTATING WINDS cause LOW pressure close to the EQAUTOR and absorb the moisture from the oceans, creating hurricanes. FEATURES: Sea temp must exceed 27 degrees, 60m deep. Time of year- May to Novemberin the Northern Hemisphere, November to Aprilin the southern Hemisphere. Typical size 700kmin diameter and can exceed 13kmin height. Areasof the world-Carribean, Central America, South East Asia, indian subcontinents. Primary Effects of Hurricanes Buildings and bridges are destroyed. Riversand coastal areas flood. People drown, or are injured by debris. Infastructuredamaged. Crops are damaged and livestockis killed. Heavy rain causes landslides. Beaches are erodedand coastal habitats damaged. Secondary Effects of Hurricanes People are left homeless Shortage of clean water and a lack of proper sanitation-making it easier for diseasesto spread. Roads are blocked or destroyed making it difficult for aidto get through. Businnessesare destroyed causing unemployment. Shortage of food because crops and livestock are short. People may suffer psychologicalproblems from traumor. Human Causes of Drought Overgrazingreduces vegetation in an area. Makes soil erosioncaused by drought even worse-with fewer plants, the soil isnt held together as strongly making erosion easier. Excessive irrigation- Irrigationis where water is artificallysupplied from rivers or lakes to farmland to increase crop production, Excessive irrigation depletes rivers and lakes, increases impactof drought when there is no water. When irrigation water evaporates, salts are left in soil- SALTATION. Crops dont grow as well. Drought Drought occurs when there is less than normal rainfall over a set period of time also when evaporationis higher than precipitation.
Primary:
Vegetationdies People and animals die from dehydration Aquatic animals die when lakes and rivers dry up Soil dries out and is easily erodedby wind.
Secondary:
Animals die from starvationdue to lack of vegetation Shortage of food (no crops) and water Conflictover food and water supplies. Farms close causing unemployment |
warc | 201704 | As more and more of working life becomes virtual, there’s one bastion of face-to-face interaction that seems least likely to go remote – the executive off-site. If for no other reason than it’s hard to imagine the higher-ups giving up the chance to gather in Aspen or Miami, many folks a bit lower on the corporate ladder would have a hard time picturing their bosses exchanging their plane tickets for web cams, but at least one high-profile pundit thinks it’s time to rethink the annual executive get-together.
Keith Ferrazzi, author of bestseller
Never Eat Alone, reflected on his past experiences at off-sites on his blog recently. And while a visit to Orlando may sound pleasant, Ferrazzi recalls the actual events as often less than enlightening. He writes:
I remember people practicing their presentations far into the night, and the next day we’d sit for hours in uncomfortable chairs in a huge room listening to our leadership talk about the future of the business. Looking back at those meetings, I have to wonder, were they truly effective?
Today, I am convinced that videoconferencing and other virtual technologies give us a much better way to conduct strategic off-sites.
Ferrazzi’s interest in virtual off-sites isn’t just a matter of saving money, but instead the idea is to give the whole concept a top-to-bottom rethink to make these events accomplish more for organizations. “Just replicating traditional physical off-sites remotely results in a ‘poor man’s’ version of the real thing, like online training courses that consist of nothing more than a video recording of an instructor followed by a test,” he says. “Instead, companies need to be much smarter about how they conduct virtual off-sites.”
If they’re conducted properly, Ferrazzi goes on to say, virtual off-sites can involve more strata of the organization, which allows the top leadership to “get a better feel for the real challenges from all angles and levels.” Leaders should then candidly report back on which recommendations and ideas they’re moving forward with and which their rejecting (and why). “Such transparency and candor as the strategy is being modified and finalized can go a long ways in building true consensus for the final strategic initiative,” says Ferrazzi, who even suggests a follow-up contest where teams compete to offer the best idea to implement the strategy with the winner receiving an award at a social event (thus taking care of the bonding portion of an off-site).
It’s an interesting proposal and one that takes into account the need for occasional all-hands, in-person meetings reported by several of the managers of remote teams we’ve spoken to for our ‘Tales from the Trenches’ series.
What do you make of Ferrazzi’s rethink of the traditional leadership off-site? Image courtesy of Flickr user jeanine&preston. |
warc | 201704 | Chances are unless you’ve already had some problems with your pancreas you don’t know a whole heck of a lot about this often overlooked organ. But we promise once you understand how critical it is to your health you’ll have a whole new appreciation for your pancreas, not to mention a lot of ... Read More ›
pancreatic cancer
December 15, 2016
September 14, 2016
Pancreatic cancer. If those two words don’t strike fear into your heart, you probably don’t personally know anyone who has battled this deadly disease. Pancreatic cancer is a true killer. In fact, it’s one of the deadliest cancers slaying over 41,000 folks a year. This sneaky disease… the same ... Read More ›
June 27, 2016
If you’re an average American you’re not getting enough magnesium. In fact, a staggering 80 percent of us aren’t. You may already know how important this mineral is for your heart. But that’s far from magnesium’s only job. The mineral also plays an important role in bone health, and it can ... Read More ›
July 18, 2016
It’s enough to turn your stomach. The tale of an industry so committed to putting profits before people that it’s willing to literally feed us food so hazardous it isn’t even fit for humans to eat. The meat industry (and make no mistake about it, it IS an industry and not some collection of ... Read More ›
September 26, 2016
I don’t know about you, but in my house we have a kitchen cabinet that’s practically overflowing with delicious aromatic herbs and spices. We love how adding a dash of this and a sprinkle of that can totally change the taste of a meal. But what many people don’t realize is some of those very same ... Read More ›
February 9, 2016
Could a food additive you’re eating every day mean the difference between recovering from a stroke…or not? Would you be able to walk, talk and remember new things again -- or just be confined to a wheelchair, needing help with basic everyday activities? New research out of UCLA has found that ... Read More ›
February 9, 2016
They're called "trace" elements for a reason: Tiny amounts of the right stuff can boost your health and save your life... while even a drop of the wrong stuff can end it. Now, the latest research shows how these same trace elements can play a major role in your risk of getting or avoiding one of ... Read More ›
February 9, 2016
As it turns out, fat tissue isn't just a dormant storage depot for calories. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, more than 100,000 cancer cases in the U.S. are linked to excess body fat - most of them are preventable. The data shows that on top of the list of obesity-linked ... Read More ›
February 9, 2016
One minute, you're battling back pain... the next, you're fighting off cancer. When it rains, it pours, right? But this isn't just some run of freakishly bad luck -- because the treatment that was supposed to FIX your back may have actually CAUSED your cancer! A new look at the data on spinal ... Read More ›
February 8, 2016
I'm sure that by now you've heard the incredibly sad news of Apple Founder Steve Jobs's death from pancreatic cancer. And although he's been sick for a long time and it doesn't exactly come as a surprise, it's still a devastating loss. Jobs was a brilliant visionary and his insights and ... Read More › |
warc | 201704 | I have no credentials or medical training to recommend any therapy but the arena of bacterial infections using Bacteriophage Therapy looks interesting for the subset of immunocompromised patients that have intractable bacterial infections, refractory to antibiotics. Accessibility, cost and appropriate application are major factors to consider if exploring this path makes sense but progress is being made in the use of viral Phages in light of the growing threat of many pathogenic bacteria that are or have become antibiotic resistant. This path needs careful appraisal in concert with trusted medical professionals. Thanks to CLLer Lisa for bringing Phage Therapy to our attention. The following research papers I found with one discussing Phage use in an immunocompromised context supplied by Lisa. Never give up exploring possible options when you are up against a wall.
Wikipedia article - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage...
WWW |
warc | 201704 | Weak-form Efficient Market Hypothesis, Behavioural Finance and Episodic Transient Dependencies: The Case of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange
This study utilizes the windowed-test procedure of Hinich and Patterson (1995) to examine the data generating process of KLSE CI returns series. Unlike previous studies, the present one relates the evidence to the popular weak-form EMH and behavioural finance, with the hope of offering some plausible explanations to the controversy arises between these two camps. Our econometrics results indicate that linear and non-linear dependencies play a significant role in the underlying data generating process. However, these dependencies are not stable as the results suggest that they are episodic and transient in nature. Along the line of our interpretations, we are able to offer some plausible explanations as to why weak-form EMH generally holds in KLSE, though the presence of linear and non-linear dependencies implies the potential of returns predictability. Specifically, these significant dependencies show up at random intervals for a brief period of time but then disappear again before they can be exploited by investors. Looking from a micro perspective, we are able to rationalize the co-existence of weak-form EMH and behavioural finance in KLSE when the statistical properties of random walk, linear and non-linear dependencies, which also co-exist in the time domain, are interpreted in the framework of information arrival and market reactions to that information.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: Hinich, Melvin J & Patterson, Douglas M, 1985." Evidence of Nonlinearity in Daily Stock Returns," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(1), pages 69-77, January. Booth, G. Geoffrey & Martikainen, Teppo & Sarkar, Salil K. & Virtanen, Ilkka & Yli-Olli, Paavo, 1994." Nonlinear dependence in Finnish stock returns," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 273-283, April. Venus Khim-Sen Liew & Terence Tai-Leung Chong & Kian-Ping Lim, 2003." The inadequacy of linear autoregressive model for real exchange rates: empirical evidence from Asian economies," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(12), pages 1387-1392. David McMillan & Alan Speight, 2001." Nonlinearities in the black market zloty-dollar exchange rate: some further evidence," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 209-220. Francis X. Diebold & James M. Nason, 1989. " Nonparametric exchange rate prediction?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 81, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). Kian-Ping Lim & M. Azali & M.S. Habibullah & Venus Khim-Sen Liew, 2003. " Are Non-Linear Dynamics a Universal Occurrence? Further Evidence From Asian Stock Markets," Finance 0308001, EconWPA. Hyun-Jung Ryoo & Graham Smith, 2002." Korean stock prices under price limits: variance ratio tests of random walks," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(8), pages 545-553. Hsieh, David A, 1991." Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics: Application to Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1839-1877, December. Scheinkman, Jose A & LeBaron, Blake, 1989." Nonlinear Dynamics and Stock Returns," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(3), pages 311-37, July. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003." A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128 Elsevier. Hirshleifer, David, 2001. " Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," MPRA Paper 5300, University Library of Munich, Germany. Brooks, Chris & Hinich, Melvin J., 1999." Cross-correlations and cross-bicorrelations in Sterling exchange rates," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 385-404, October. Abhyankar, A & Copeland, L S & Wong, W, 1997." Uncovering Nonlinear Structure in Real-Time Stock-Market Indexes: The S&P 500, the DAX, the Nikkei 225, and the FTSE-100," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, January. Hamilton, James D. & Susmel, Raul, 1994." Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and changes in regime," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1-2), pages 307-333. Tom Doan, ." RATS programs to estimate Hamilton-Susmel Markov Switching ARCH model," Statistical Software Components RTZ00083, Boston College Department of Economics. Tom Doan, . " Ramsey, James B. & Zhang, Zhifeng, 1997." The analysis of foreign exchange data using waveform dictionaries," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 341-372, December. Abhyankar, A & Copeland, L S & Wong, W, 1995." Nonlinear Dynamics in Real-Time Equity Market Indices: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 864-80, July. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985." Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July. Fama, Eugene F, 1970." Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May. John Barkoulas & Nickolaos Travlos, 1998." Chaos in an emerging capital market? The case of the Athens Stock Exchange," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 231-243. Ammermann, Peter A. & Patterson, Douglas M., 2003." The cross-sectional and cross-temporal universality of nonlinear serial dependencies: Evidence from world stock indices and the Taiwan Stock Exchange," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 175-195, April. Ritter, Jay R., 2003." Behavioral finance," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 429-437, September. Schachter, Stanley & Gerin, William & Hood, Donald C. & Anderassen, Paul, 1985." I. Was the South Sea Bubble a random walk?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 323-329, December. Full references(including those not matched with items on IDEAS)
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warc | 201704 | The ROI on Learning is a frame that sheds light about the organization-learning relationship. At one end, there is an “organizational mission statement,” which is oftentimes simply profit. At the learning end, it’s not so clear cut because the possibilities are diverse and, seemingly, endless. As examples, we could pursue:
Skill Acquisition Service Quality Improvement Process Efficiency Improvement Staff Actualization Onboarding Requirements
… and these just scratch the surface of possibilities.
There is a clear, and significant, gap between learning and organization nodes. Analytics could be an bridge between them, but an investment in analytics could be wasted if there is also coordination, harmony and synergy. In a word: Alignment.
Zoola Analytics, by Lambda
Zoola wants to fix reporting for LMS (Learning Management Systems). Based on the finding that an important segment of users think their LMS has a “limited ability to access and analyze the wealth of [their] data” (23.2% according to Lambda), Zoola provides cloud-based, near-time reporting with robust visualization and sharing options.
Key Zoola features, as enumerated by Lambda are:
Control over data access, visualization, analysis and distribution. Crowd-sourced, out-of-the-box yet configurable reporting. Ad Hoc analysis capabilities, in sorting, filtering, and charting options. Tracking of students’ time spent in Moodle. Interactive dashboards. Data export to file. Automated scheduling.
The value of Zoola lies in its ability to create that bridge between the missions of different parts of an organization. Zoola seeks to become the beginning of a daily routine to train your organizations’ analytics muscle, giving you a way to evolve analytics as you match learning with performance.
Find out more about Zoola on their website. Information on pricing is available via contact form only. |
warc | 201704 | English français Lentivirally delivered glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor increases the number of striatal dopaminergic neurons in primate models of nigrostriatal degeneration
The primate striatum contains tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-immunoreactive (ir) neurons, the numbers of which are augmented after dopamine depletion. Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) strongly modulates the viability and phenotypic expression of dopamine ventral mesencephalic neurons. The effect of GDNF on TH-ir neurons intrinsic to the striatum has yet to be investigated. In the present study, stereological counts of TH-ir striatal neurons in aged and parkinsonian nonhuman primates revealed that GDNF delivered via a lentiviral vector (lenti-) further increased the number of these cells. Aged monkeys treated with lenti-GDNF displayed an eightfold increase in TH-ir neurons relative to lenti-beta-galactosidase-treated monkeys. Unilateral 1-methyl-4-phenyl- 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine treatment alone in young monkeys resulted in a bilateral eightfold increase in TH-ir striatal cells. This effect was further magnified sevenfold on the side of lenti-GDNF treatment. These cells colocalized with the neuronal marker neuronal-specific nuclear protein. Some of these cells colocalized with GDNF-ir, indicating that an alteration in phenotype may occur by the direct actions of this trophic factor. Thus, GDNF may mediate plasticity in the dopamine-depleted primate brain, which may serve to compensate for cell loss by converting striatal neurons to a dopaminergic phenotype.
LEN-ARTICLE-2002-014 View record in Web of Science
Keywords: 1-Methyl-4-phenyl-1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 6-tetrahydropyridine/pharmacology ; Aging ; Animals ; Antiparkinson Agents/*metabolism ; Cell Count ; Corpus Striatum/*cytology/drug effects/enzymology ; Dopamine/*metabolism ; Dopamine Agents/pharmacology ; Fluorescent Antibody Technique ; Gene Therapy ; Genetic Vectors ; Glial Cell Line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor ; Haplorhini ; Lentivirus/genetics ; Microscopy ; Fluorescence ; *Nerve Growth Factors ; Nerve Tissue Proteins/*genetics ; Neurons/cytology/drug effects/enzymology ; Parkinson Disease/enzymology/*pathology/therapy ; Substantia Nigra/*cytology/drug effects/enzymology ; Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase/analysis/immunology ; 3
Note:
Department of Neurological Sciences, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois 60612, USA.
Reference
Record created on 2008-08-27, modified on 2016-08-08 |
warc | 201704 | Finding the right forex trader for you can be a test of patience and frustration. The rapidly changing forex market produces more traders faster than it can dump discouraged ones right back on the street. With all this confusing action, it may seem that a good trader is as hard to find as becoming one […]
Anyone interested in the forex trading market is surely aware that it can be a daunting place of business. Books, movies and magazines are filled with tales of the many aspiring traders that are driven back in fear of the risks associated with stock markets. Truly great traders hear these tales and feel inspiration. They […]
The Reality of Day Trading In many recent interviews with academy teachers, such as Tim Sykes and Cameron Fous, we received a growing number of requests from students regarding interviews with real traders who weren’t marketers. Although there is nothing wrong with marketing your trading success, there is also a bit of bias information out […]
If you’re an investor, whether you’re managing daily trades or simply keeping track of a long-term portfolio, odds are the bulk of your assets are tied up in stocks. Indeed the most traditional ways to invest are to open an account through a broker and make your own trades or buy into a mutual fund […] |
warc | 201704 | Archive for May 2008
I started out bravely enough. Three weeks without the Internet, how bad could it be?
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the Net. For every good thing it brought me, there was an equal measure of pain. The Internet brings us news, jokes and instant communication. It also brings us spam, paranoia and intimate contact with crazy people.
So when a medical emergency forced me to move in with my dad for a while, I figured it was no big deal.
The Internet has made me smarter, but it’s also wasted a lot of my time. So when the AT&T guy said installation would take three weeks, I wasn’t scared. I saw it as an opportunity. I wouldn’t spend hours wilting in front of a computer screen; I would exercise and read books. I would immerse myself in the real world and emerge, like Thoreau, from the woods.
I looked on this as the beginning of a spiritual journey. For three weeks, I would turn my back on technology and spend my days reading, walking and basking in the sun.
I would hang up my iPod and turn off the radio. For the duration, I wouldn’t even watch TV. I could rediscover the joys of conversation and get closer to my dad.
And that’s where things started to go wrong.
My father is a very curious man. He’s curious about everything, and he loves to ask questions. Religion, politics, philosophy, physics – my father wants to know everything. And somewhere down the line, he decided that I was smart.
I’m not sure when this happened. I thought I was pretty smart from the ages of 14 to 19, but I seem to get dumber with each successive birthday. By the time I hit 40, I’ll need a diagram to tie my shoes.
But every night I would sit at the dinner table and dad would ask me questions.
“Who invented the toilet?”
“How big is the universe?”
“Does the Bible contradict Texas marriage law?”
“Where can I find Woody’s Cook-In Sauce?”
I don’t know the answer to those questions, but Google does. I could look like a genius and answer all of dad’s questions; all I needed was an Internet connection. And that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t just taken a three-week vacation from the Internet, I had cut off access to an essential part of my brain.
I thought of Net access as a luxury, but trying to live without it was like trying to live without a dishwasher or a vacuum cleaner or a microwave oven. These devices may be luxuries in one sense, but they are an essential part of modern life.
The Internet gives me access to the collective store of human knowledge. With it, I’m as smart as an army of Ph.Ds. Without it, I’m just a dumb guy who can type fast.
Yes, the Internet can be a waste of time. It can disrupt relationships and deliver inappropriate material to children. But it’s also a tool, and just like a dishwasher or a vacuum cleaner, once you get used to it, it’s very hard to give it up.
I don’t use instant messaging as much as I used to, but I’m addicted to e-mail, and I can’t live without my RSS feeds. My desktop is like a NATO command center, constantly streaming in news alerts and live video. My day job keeps me immersed in local news, but stuck at home without a Net connection, all my usual sources were cut off. I didn’t know we had a new mayor until dad took his sign down. Is Bush still president? I should probably look that up.
Oh, and for the record: The flush toilet was invented by J.F. Brondel in 1738; human beings can measure the universe to a diameter of 28 billion light years; Romans, Chapter 13 says men should obey their rulers; and the best barbecue sauce ever made can now be found at United Supermarkets.
Thank God I have Net access at work. |
warc | 201704 | Since the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and
New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman shows us why.The search for hope is most urgent at the patient's bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bringing us into the lives of people at pivotal moments when they reach for and find hope, or when it eludes their grasp. Through these intimate portraits, we learn how to distinguish true hope from false, why some people feel they are undeserving of it, and whether we should ever abandon our search. Can hope contribute to recovery by changing physical well-being? To answer this hotly debated question, Groopman embarked on an investigative journey to cutting-edge laboratories where researchers are unraveling an authentic biology of hope. There he finds a scientific basis for understanding the role of this vital emotion in the outcome of illness. Here is a book that offers a new way of thinking about hope, with a message for all readers, not only patients and their families. "We are just beginning to appreciate hope's reach," Groopman writes, "and have not defined its limits. I see hope as the very heart of healing."
"In this provocative book...Groopman successfully convinces that hope can offer not only solace but strength to those living with medical uncertainty." (
Publishers Weekly) "[Groopman] enters the paradoxical hope of cancer patients with a different sort of sympathy. His project is to dissect it meticulously, to find patterns behind it, and to understand its biology....Groopman contends that hope itself is in effect a vital organ, an entity that desperately needs sustenance, and that this sustenance is as essential to living as 'the very oxygen we breathe'." ( The New York Times Book Review)
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An elegant treatise on the power of hope
- S. Marie "S. Marie"
ONLY read the book narrated by the author
- Nicholas Grimaldi |
warc | 201704 | There are over 50 quarries that are either operational or likely to have further working in Devon, and there is a similar number that have planning permission but are unlikely to re-open. Devon’s diverse geology is reflected in the wide range of mineral resources that are produced in the county, ranging from construction aggregates and building stone to internationally important industrial minerals such as ball clay and china clay.
We have the responsibility of setting out how and where minerals should be worked in Devon, and ensuring that minerals sites are managed and restored to protect Devon’s environment and communities.
The Devon Minerals Local Plan was adopted in 2004, and sets out the current planning policy for mineral working in Devon.
We are in the process of replacing the adopted Plan with the Devon Minerals Plan which will cover the period to 2033.
Local Aggregate Assessment
The Local Aggregate Assessments prepared for Devon can be found here
South West Aggregates Working Party
The South West Aggregates Working Party includes representatives of the region’s mineral planning authorities, minerals industry and other organisations, and provides advice on the supply of aggregate minerals. As the South West Aggregates Working Party is currently chaired by an officer of Devon County Council, the Council is hosting the Working Party’s Documents here.
In 2031, it is estimated that over 1,800,000 tonnes of waste will be produced in Devon, made up of household, commercial, industrial, construction and hazardous waste.
We have a responsibility to produce the planning policy framework for the facilities that are needed to manage this waste, guiding the amount, their location and the type of management while also ensuring the protection of Devon’s environment, communities and businesses.
The Devon Waste Plan was adopted in December 2014 sets out the current policy framework for waste management facilities in Devon and covers the period to 2031.
Following adoption of the Devon Waste Plan, we have published the Waste Management and Infrastructure Supplementary Planning Document to assist in the Plan’s implementation.
This sets out the programme of production of the emerging Devon Minerals Plan, the Devon Waste Plan and any other document the Council is looking to produce. The Fourth Revision of the Scheme was published on 20th July 2015.
We produce Monitoring Reports annually to assess the performance in implementing the Minerals and Waste Development Scheme and the adopted policies. All Monitoring Reports that have been produced are listed below. From 2004/05 to 2012/13, each Annual Monitoring Report addressed both minerals and waste and covered the period from 1 April to 31 March. However, from 2013, separate reports have been produced for minerals (covering the calendar year) and waste (covering the financial year) to reflect the different periods for which the relevant data are collected.
A core principle of the National Planning Policy Framework is that local people should be empowered to shape their surroundings, with the Framework advocating “early and meaningful engagement and collaboration with neighbourhoods, local organisations and businesses”.
To ensure effective involvement of local communities in the preparation of its Plans, together with consideration of planning applications, we have prepared a Statement of Community Involvement which sets out the methods of involving the community. This was approved by the County Council’s Cabinet in March 2013. A summary bulletin was also produced. |
warc | 201704 | If I had to guess, he wasn't weighing it against the plea bargain, he had already decided not to take the plea bargain on principle and was weighing it against the cost of taking charity and bankrupting all his friends and family to fight it and even after all that still possibly losing and going to prison for multiple years. In other words, taking the plea would have had the additional cost to his integrity, which even in this day and age still means a lot to some people.
I don't know if I would go so far as to say that the decision was rational (and I know the suicide prevention people hate it when people talk about stuff like this), but I can see the road he took to get there. Being human isn't always rational and we have to make policies under the understanding that people will have feelings and principles rather than making all decisions as rational automatons.
>Would that it were--we'd save a fortune on federal prisoners by executing them all!
No we wouldn't. It costs more to execute someone than imprison them because of the cost of all the appeals and safeguards we have for death penalty cases.
But even though you're kidding, I think it raises a pretty reasonable point: Why do we even have prisons at all, other than as detention facilities for pending death penalty cases? If someone commits a sufficiently serious crime (or re-offends sufficiently many times), put them to death. If their crime was less serious than that, make them pay back their ill gotten gains, subject them to a fine or make them do community service 20 hours a week for however many hours or years. What good does it do to imprison someone if you ever intend to let them back out again? Prison costs the state money, it takes the convicts out of the economy and makes them parasites, and when they get out they have no skills and no job history which is one of the many reasons the recidivism rate is so high. Prison is a profoundly broken institution. I think there is a very strong argument for just getting rid of it as a method of punishment.
That's a great insight.
I would point out that prison is still an acceptable in-between for community service and death. E.g. what happens if the convict simply doesn't show up for their community service?
Depriving someone of their own free use of their time is a powerful motivational tool (just ask anyone who's ever had to "hurry up and wait" in the military).
However any possible positive effect you would get from prison, either for rehabilitation or non-recurrence, would be had within the first year, two at the most.
Any prison sentence beyond that and you have to wonder what the marginal additional value is (I would think none).
I'm not sure if you're entirely serious about the death penalty for sufficiently serious crimes, but the normal argument is that even if that were acceptable in theory, that it's been proven not implementable in practice, and we'd rather optimize for not accidentally putting something to death who is innocent.
This itself could be fleshed out further though... governments all the times do things (or don't do things) that may indirectly lead to fatalities later on. Things as simple as redirecting a road away from a cliff face to prevent people from driving over the edge at night can save lives, but we as a population generally accept that there is an economic reality that government can't pay to completely prevent all foreseeable accidents. So could you argue from there that if we already let people drive off of cliffs because it's cheaper, that we could let government accidentally execute innocents if it had a net positive outcome?
I don't know... even I'm pretty leery of that logic. Personally if I were to be fradulently convicted I'd rather a lifetime of prison than to be put to death (assuming I could still read, program, etc.)
It's possible he rejected the plea bargain out of hand, though Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and Mandela would all question the assumption that going to prison diminishes the integrity of someone with a noble cause. If he thinks his integrity was better preserved by hanging himself in his apartment and leaving his body there for his girlfriend to discover, he wasn't really thinking clearly at all, was he? |
warc | 201704 | Hurricanes can physically cool coral reefs but they can also save them, by cooling the surrounding ocean and reversing the effects of bleaching.
In 2005, corals in the large reef off the coast of Florida were saved by four hurricanes. Tropical storms seem to be unlikely heroes for any living thing. Indeed, coral reefs directly in the way of a hurricane, or even up to 90km from its centre, suffer serious physical damage. But Derek Manzello from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administation has found that corals just outside the storm’s path reap an unexpected benefit.
Hurricanes can significantly cool large stretches of ocean as they pass overhead, by drawing up cooler water from the sea floor. And this cooling effect, sometimes as much as 5°C, provides corals with valuable respite from the effects of climate change.
Rising temperatures, dying corals
As the globe warms, the temperature of its oceans rises and that causes serious problems for corals. Their wellbeing depends on a group of algae called zooxanthellae that live among their limestone homes and provide them with energy from photosynthesis. At high temperatures, the corals eject the majority of these algae, leaving them colourless and starving.
These ‘bleached’ corals are living on borrowed time. If conditions don’t improve, they fail to recover their algae and eventually die. But if the water starts to cool again, they bounce back, and Manzello found that hurricanes can help them to do this.
Together with scientists from the Universities of Miami and the US Virgin Islands, he measured the extent of bleaching in reefs off Florida and the US Virgin Islands over the course of 2005.
By September, both reefs were suffering from equal amounts of bleaching. But while the situation continued to worsen in the storm-free Virgin Islands, the advent of four hurricanes in Florida turned the tide in the reefs’ favour.
Hurricanes vs bleaching
The storms – Dennis, Rita, Wilma and the infamous Katrina – each left behind an imprint of cooler water and the seas within 400km of their paths cooled by up to 3.2°C and stayed that way for up to 40 days. Two weeks after the fourth hurricane, Wilma, had passed, the corals had almost completely recovered.
Manzello’s study shows that the benefits of hurricanes on coral reefs can sometimes outweigh the localised physical wear and tear they cause. The question now is whether this is an isolated incident or a common occurrence.
Manzello isn’t sure. Based on the numbers of bleaching events and hurricane landfalls in Florida since the 19
th century, the odds of both happening at the same time (as in 2005) is about one in seven. But the actual probability is likely to be higher especially since the same factors that cause bleaching, such as warmer water, also encourage the growth of hurricanes.
Even so, it would be extremely foolish to expect hurricanes to bail corals out completely – only conservation projects and addressing rising temperatures can do that.
Reference: Manzello, Brandt, Smith, Lirma, Hendee & Nemeth. 2007. Hurricanes benefit bleached corals. PNAS doi.10.1073/pnas.0701194104. Related posts on the hidden effects of climate change: Icebergs are hotspots for life Human nitrogen emissions indirectly capture carbon by fertilising forests When the heat is on, male dragons become females Climate change responsible for decline of Costa Rican amphibians and reptiles |
warc | 201704 | Report (OEI-04-11-00680) 09-03-2013
Medicare Recovery Audit Contractors and CMS's Actions To Address Improper Payments, Referrals of Potential Fraud, and Performance
Complete Report
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Summary WHY WE DID THIS STUDY
Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) are designed to protect Medicare by identifying improper payments and referring potential fraud to CMS. Prior Government Accountability Office work has identified problems with CMS's actions to address improper payment vulnerabilities, and prior OIG work has identified problems with CMS's actions to address referrals of potential fraud. Further, OIG has identified vulnerabilities in CMS's oversight of its contractors. Given the critical role of identifying improper payments, effective oversight of RAC performance is important.
HOW WE DID THIS STUDY
We collected RAC Data Warehouse (i.e., electronic database) files from CMS and data from RACs to determine their activities to identify improper payments and refer potential fraud in fiscal years (FYs) 2010 and 2011. We also collected data from CMS regarding activities to address vulnerabilities (i.e., improper payments exceeding $500,000 that result from a specific issue) and referrals of potential fraud. Finally, we collected RAC performance evaluations and performance evaluation metrics from CMS and determined the extent that RAC performance evaluations addressed these metrics. We also compared performance evaluation metrics to contract requirements to determine the extent that these metrics addressed contract requirements.
WHAT WE FOUND
In FYs 2010 and 2011, RACs identified half of all claims they reviewed as having resulted in improper payments totaling $1.3 billion. CMS took corrective actions to address the majority of vulnerabilities it identified in FYs 2010 and 2011; however, it did not evaluate the effectiveness of these actions. As a result, high amounts of improper payments may continue. Additionally, CMS did not take action to address the six referrals of potential fraud that it received from RACs. Finally, CMS's performance evaluations did not include metrics to evaluate RACs' performance on all contract requirements.
WHAT WE RECOMMEND
We recommend that CMS (1) take action, as appropriate, on vulnerabilities that are pending corrective action and evaluate the effectiveness of implemented corrective actions; (2) ensure that RACs refer all appropriate cases of potential fraud; (3) review and take appropriate, timely action on RAC referrals of potential fraud; and (4) develop additional performance evaluation metrics to improve RAC performance and ensure that RACs are evaluated on all contract requirements. CMS concurred with our first, second, and fourth recommendations. CMS did not indicate whether it concurred with our third recommendation but noted that it has reviewed the six RAC referrals of potential fraud in our review.
Copies can also be obtained by contacting the Office of Public Affairs at Public.Affairs@oig.hhs.gov.
Let's start by choosing a topic
Compendium
Priority recommendations summarized.
FY 2017 Work Plan
OIG projects planned for 2017.
Semiannual Report
Significant OIG activities in 6-month increments. |
warc | 201704 | In print or on dead trees, there's money in long-form journalism
Like others who got into journalism while print media was fading, I have been offering my theories about what has been going wrong. (Hint: newspaper circulation has been declining since the 1960s, so industry executives might want to stop blaming the Internet.)
Among the multiplicity of problems afflicting print is its failure to understand its role in a wired world. I keep saying thing that the Internet is for breaking the news.
Who won the game? What happened to stocks?
Print, on the other hand, is made for long-form analysis.
Why should you care about what happened? What will happen next? What does it mean?
As things stand, long-form journalism — essays over 2,000 words — is pretty much dead. Websites, obsessed with quick clickbait, don't run it. For the last 10 or 15 years, newspapers and many magazines have bought into the conventional wisdom that bytes go best in bits. At
The Los Angeles Times, for example, the number of pieces over 2,000 words has declined 86% during the last decade.
Now
Fast Company is out with something close to scientific proof that I've been right.
Publications that are thriving relative to their competitors, such as
The Economist and The New Yorker, are consistently committed to long-form feature writing. We love our tablets, but they can't compete with print's portability and lower eyestrain when it's time to delve into 8,000 words about whatever.
"Newspapers should stop trying to break news," I wrote a few years ago. "They can't compete with websites. They should publish a daily version of what
Time or Newsweek could be: lengthy analyses with charts and graphs, and opinions across the political spectrum." For the most part, however, editors still don't get it. Time and Newsweek are case studies in how not to run a weekly magazine in the online era. Post-Time-Life Time and the Newsweek even more ruined by Tina Brown have reduced their cultural imprints and circulations by trying to Web-ify themselves with those crummy short bits at the front of the book, Buzzfeed-inspired charticles and listicles, and lots of oversized photos. Why pay $5 for that shit when you can get it better online — in abundance, and free? Conversely, when I want a detailed 10,000-word analysis of the factors that contributed to the current state of disintegration in Iraq, I'll turn to The Economist, not Time next week. So will everyone else.
What makes
Fast Company's analysis interesting is its conclusion that long-form works online too.
"We decided to experiment with a new, super-long article format akin to 'slow live blogging,' Chris Dannen writes in
Fast Company. "When we looked at the traffic charts… our jaws dropped. Here's what we learned about long form stories — and why quality, not velocity, is the future of online news." (Go check out the charts. They're amazing.)
Dannen continues:
In mid-April, we went live with a half dozen articles which we call 'stubs.' The idea here is to plant a flag in a story right away with a short post--a 'stub'--and then build the article as the story develops over time, rather than just cranking out short, discrete posts every time something new breaks. One of our writers refers to this aptly as a 'slow live blog.'
Stub stories work like this: You write the first installment like any other story. But when more news breaks, you go back to the article, insert an update at the top, and change the headline and subheadline (known in our business as the "hed" and "dek") to reflect the update. Our system updates the story "slug" when the headline changes--check the URL of this story, and you'll see words from the headline in the URL:
/this-is-what-happens-when-publishers-invest-in-long-stories. But the number preceding the slug--on this article, it's 3009577--is a unique node ID which never changes. So essentially, every time we update an article, we get a fresh URL with a fresh headline, but pointing back to the same (newly updated) article. So, it's like having many URLs and many headlines which lead back to the same big, multi-faceted article. We called these 'Tracking' stories.FastCo's "bounce rate" plunged when it ran long-form pieces with updated information. Rather than come in, find themselves unintrigued and thus immediately leave, readers were attracted. They stuck around. Average visit duration jumped. Advertisers love this.
Dannen does offer a caveat, however:
Big-time disclaimer here--it's too early to tell how permanent these effects will be, and we can't know for sure that the changes are attributable to these stub articles. But we've racked our brains to think of other factors at work here--some big boost in inbound links? Some external event? A technical change? But after about a month, we've seen these changes stabilize, and we haven't been able to isolate any other contributing factors. We'reLong-form features are an important part of the journalistic mix. Yet many print editors continue to snub the format despite strong evidence, such as the success of Kindle Singles, that they've been mistaken. notsaying this is causation, because there's no way to be sure. But it sure as hell looks like it's working.
Now that online media is beginning to see the profit potential in going long, the Internet may be about to kick print's ass in a form that ought to have been print's natural advantage.
[illustration by Hallie Bateman] |
warc | 201704 | In Praise of Worry
Dear Belladonna Rogers,
I'm a worrier. My husband says worrying does no good, wastes time, and won’t help. Is he right?
Worried in Wyoming
Dear Worried,
No.
While too much worry creates stress, which
is hazardous to your health, too little worry can be just as dangerous. The anthem of the International Association of Worriers -- which doesn't exist, but one day might -- could be the popular song by Randy Newman in the YouTube clip above.
We all worry. The difference is not between worriers and non-worriers but between people who acknowledge they worry and those who don't. The second group may think they’re not worrying, but they’re unaware that they are. To err is human, as is to worry. Those who say they're not worried show their inner turmoil in many ways, from hair-pulling to beard-tugging, to drinking in excess, to sleeping or eating too little or too much.
Neurotic worry, or obsessive, repetitive thinking about a problem
is counterproductive. But wisely directed worry can solve problems and lead to vastly improved outcomes.
People who claim not to worry enjoy mocking those who recognize they do, calling them worrywarts, fussbudgets, fusspots, handwringers, and Nervous Nellies.
Even the otherwise judicious Roman rhetorician, Marcus Annaeus Seneca, said, “There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it in expecting evil before it arrives?”
Right. Guess he never had to prepare for a hurricane, a blizzard, a flood, or a child’s college tuition payments.
Echoing Seneca, some people prefer to be what they consider “tough,” “mature,” “realistic,” or “stoic,” boasting, “I never worry because it serves no purpose. If something is out of my hands, there’s no point in my worrying about it.” Both assertions are inaccurate but the second sentence is more so. Rarely are situations completely beyond our ability to improve their outcomes. Believing that something is out of our hands doesn’t make it so: we can make an enormous difference for the better through actions we take after some beneficial worry.
But no situation will bend to our efforts to improve it if we believe “nothing can be done” and “it’s out of my hands.” Those responses aren’t merely dismissive of the benefits of worry, they’re hostile to the notion that worry can produce positive consequences. Such passive attitudes are far more detrimental to your health and happiness than is worrying.
Worrying
constructively can change the outcome of the troubling situation for the better. The productive worrier is often thinking about what options are available in difficult circumstances, choices that could make the source of worry less threatening -- less worrisome.
Case in point: after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Sigmund Freud’s daughter, the gifted psychoanalyst Anna Freud, was deeply and justifiably worried about her father’s safety. Both she and her 82-year-old father had been questioned at Gestapo Headquarters in Vienna, a terrifying experience that could have led to an immediate deportation order to transport them to a death camp. By worrying and using her worrying to come up with a successful escape to London, Anna Freud was able to save her mother and her father, as well as herself from certain death in concentration camps, which was the tragic fate of all of Sigmund Freud’s four older sisters.
More recently, Andrew Grove, the retired co-founder and CEO of Intel, the pioneering microchip company, titled his classic business book
Only The Paranoid Survive. He would know: while he and his mother, Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary, were sheltered by friends during World War II, Grove's father was imprisoned in a concentration camp, which he survived.
Grove’s book focuses on the need to stay competitive in business, where sudden changes in regulation, innovation, and market forces require pivoting on a dime. Worry in business and at many places of employment is essential: competition from other companies and from others within your workplace create the necessity for worry. Others are trying to surpass, supplant, and outdo you or your enterprise. Unruffled, over-confident complacency is unwise.
To skip through life with nary a care may seem to be an agreeable way to go, but you probably won’t go far. In his penetrating book,
The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker illuminates the critical importance of being realistically worried about the dangers that surround us.
While necessity is the mother of invention, worry is the parent of prudence. Not only in business, but also in our daily lives, being on the
qui vive can prevent disaster.
When you’re driving, for example, worry is as functional as knowing how to brake. If it never occurs to you on a Saturday night or on New Year’s Eve that other drivers could be drunk, you will be more likely to conclude your evening in an accident, a hospital emergency room, or on a marble slab at the morgue than if you’d worried and been hyper-alert.
If you’re in the woods and are happily unconcerned about poison ivy, you could discover the shiny three-leafed plant has left you with some maddeningly irritating souvenirs.
A happy-go-lucky unmarried man with a “What Me, Worry?” tattoo can go condomless as often as he pleases, until a gnawing itch is diagnosed as herpes, or other symptoms turn out to be syphilis, gonorrhea, or worse.
Being worried enough to wear a condom isn’t being a fussbudget. It’s being smart.
In family finances, not to mention the federal budget, worrying about disaster compels the prudent person or government to put aside money for a rainy day. Worry is the cause of saving, which can be the difference between having a home and being homeless, having a Triple A bond rating, or being downgraded.
In political life, if we weren’t worried, we wouldn’t vote at all.
Forward-thinking worry is part of a realistic person’s intellectual and emotional suit of armor in dealing with what Hamlet called the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Do not ask for whom worrying is indispensable. It's indispensable for you.
Worry isn’t just for worrywarts: it’s for us all.
-- Belladonna Rogers
Do you have questions? Belladonna Rogers has answers. Send your questions or comments about politics, personal or cultural matters, or anything else that’s on your mind, and Belladonna will answer as many as possible. The names, geographic locations and email addresses of all advice-seekers will be kept confidential. Names and places and other personal information will be changed to protect the identity of the questioner. Send your questions or comments to: [email protected]
https://pjmedia.com/blog/in-praise-of-worry/ |
warc | 201704 | Kees van der Pijl, author of
The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion (Pluto, 2010) and Nomads, States and Empires (Pluto, 2007) has written an article for the New Left Project, ‘State Capture and the Democratic Movement’, in which he considers the need for (and absence of) a powerful democratic movement at a juncture where the neo-liberal project seems to have failed.
Van der Pijl’s analysis is a timely and astute one. We’ve reproduced an extract of the article below. For the full piece, go to the
New Left Project, here.
* * *
We are currently witnessing the collapse of the neoliberal project and yet, in the absence of a serious, purposeful democratic movement, it looks very much as if the combined forces of neoliberal capitalism are consolidating their hold on Western society. The last crisis, in the mid-seventies, was resolved only with Thatcher’s election in 1979 and Ronald Reagan’s a year later, and the launch of the neoliberal project. Prior to this, European society resisted this change of tack. NATO’s decision to deploy missiles in Western Europe and the Cold War response to Soviet support for its client modernisers in Afghanistan met with popular resistance and governmental scepticism, respectively. Moreover financial liberalisation, at the heart of the neoliberal project, was still regarded by most European and American policy-makers as ‘voodoo economics’.
However as Nikos Poulantzas argued in 1973, all capitalist states must necessarily adopt the practices of the most advanced centre in order to compete.[1] In addition, as Craig Murphy and Enrico Augelli note, the steady inflow of people trained in neoclassical economics surreptitiously created a mass base for Neoliberalism—whilst the hedonistic culture that was one part of the May 1968 post-war youth revolt also prepared the ground for a sea-change.[2] One by one the ruling blocs of Fordist mass production industry, in state-monitored class compromise with labour, were dislodged as post-war corporate liberalism unravelled.
Neoliberal financialisation is an Anglo-American project. It gives the state/society complexes of the Lockean heartland an advantage over societies in which the state historically has guided social development. ‘Contender states’ resisting the liberal West, especially those (Germany and Japan, Austria and Italy) that emerged when second-generation heavy industry made its appearance, lacked the capital to compete with the City and Wall Street, the centres of global finance. German investment banks, as well as their Austrian counterparts and the Japanese
zaibatsu, typically combined with national industries under state auspices into what Rudolf Hilferding in 1910 famously called ‘finance capital’.[3] So for over a century, people in these societies have looked to the state to ensure general well-being; this was only reinforced in the Fordist era. Seeing banks operate independently in global speculative ventures will still, even today, raise eyebrows.
Yet from the 1980s onwards the trend everywhere was to break up existing bank-industry combinations, liberalise finance, and privatise assets. The Anglo-American neoliberal drive profited from the Lockean antecedents of their state/society-complexes, property-focused political culture, and in the final analysis, their greater readiness to use force. These structural advantages of the Anglophone West in launching footloose finance gave it the upper hand in the transformation to neoliberalism. So did the vehemence with which its strategy of abrogating the class compromise with organised labour was executed—the miners’ strike in Britain, the air traffic controllers’ strike in the United States, and many other instances of provoked class struggle. A full analysis would also include the way in which the attacks of 9/11, unintentionally but not unwelcome, cut down to size what appeared at the time to be developing into a full-fledged anti-globalisation movement.
The contender state economies, including those of continental Europe, underwent a much more painful and intensely contested process of adjustment. In the first decade of the new century, Germany also launched a veritable assault on its working class to allow its strongest capitals to join the drive to world markets of their Anglo-American counterparts. Dutch, German and French banks were prominent players in the dubious sub-prime mortgage business, and like them were packaging titles into securities in the inter-bank market and other speculative operations. But in 2007-8, with the first signs of a slowdown, the transnational circuit of money capital ground to a halt, affecting banks on both sides of the Atlantic.
At the G-20 in London in May 2009 there was general acknowledgement that the crisis was a banking crisis. But the strong rhetoric about banks, bonuses and greed was not matched by serious surveillance measures. Instead the financiers demonstrated that they had a hold on policy-making that would not easily be dislodged. As François Chesnais writes in his book
Illegitimate Debts,
‘The massive aid extended to the banks and the investment funds in September-October 2008 expresses the social and political power of the shareholders and owners of the banks and the industrial groups, of fund managers and directors paid in stock options.
The success of the rescue operations has allowed them to preserve their domination.’[4]
Taking on a large slice of bank losses and translating them into sovereign debt, the states involved (including the Eurozone) helped transmute the crisis of speculative banking into a debt crisis. In 2009 the public debt of the ten richest countries was expected to rise from 78 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 114 per cent in 2014. Costas Lapavitsas and his co-authors, in their recent book on the Eurozone crisis, show how in the EU alone, sovereign debt in 2009 jumped by almost a trillion euros, whilst the level of debt of monetary financial institutions has declined proportionally.[5]
For the rest of the article, go to the New Left Project , here.
Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume I
‘Pioneering and ambitious … Kees argues [in favour of] a reformulation of IR theory and history as a whole.’ Fred Halliday, LSE |
warc | 201704 | Selenium in ecosystems within the mountaintop coal mining and valley-fill region of southern West Virginia-assessment and ecosystem-scale modeling Professional Paper 1803 By: Theresa S. Presser Links AbstractCoal and associated waste rock are among environmental selenium (Se) sources that have the potential to affect reproduction in fish and aquatic birds. Ecosystems of southern West Virginia that are affected by drainage from mountaintop coal mines and valleys filled with waste rock in the Coal, Gauley, and Lower Guyandotte watersheds were assessed during 2010 and 2011. Sampling data from earlier studies in these watersheds (for example, Upper Mud River Reservoir) and other mining-affected watersheds also are included to assess additional hydrologic settings and food webs for comparison. Basin schematics give a comprehensive view of sampled species and Se concentration data specific to location and date. Food-web diagrams document the progression of Se trophic transfer across suspended particulate material, invertebrates, and fish for each site to serve as the basis for developing an ecosystem-scale model to predict Se exposure within the hydrologic conditions and food webs of southern West Virginia. This approach integrates a site-specific predator’s dietary exposure pathway into modeling to ensure an adequate link to Se toxicity and, thus, to species vulnerability. Site-specific fish abundance and richness data in streams documented various species of chub, shiner, dace, darters, bass, minnow, sunfish, sucker, catfish, and central stoneroller (Campostoma anomalum), mottled sculpin (Cottus bairdii), and least brook lamprey (Lampetra aepyptera). However, Se assessment species for streams, and hence, model species for streams, were limited to creek chub (Semotilus atromaculatus) and central stoneroller. Both of these species of fish are generally considered to have a high tolerance for environmental stress based on traditional comparative fish community assessment, with creek chub being present at all sites. Aquatic insects (mayfly, caddisfly, stonefly, dobsonfly, chironomid) were the main invertebrates sampled in streams. Collection of suspended particulate material acted as an integrator of organic-rich, fine-grained biomass present in streams. The base-case food web modeled for streams was suspended particulate material to aquatic insect to creek chub, with comparative modeling of a direct particulate-to-stoneroller food web. Model species for a reservoir setting were based on an earlier study of bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus), green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus), and largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). Several reservoir food webs were considered based on a variety of invertebrates (insect, snail, clam). For stream and reservoir settings, predicted Se concentrations in exposure scenarios showed a high degree of correlation (r 2= 0.91 for invertebrates and 0.75 for fish) with field observations of Se concentrations when modeling was initiated from suspended-particulate-material Se concentrations and model transfer parameters defined previously in the literature were used. These strong correlations validate the derived site-specific model and establish sufficient confidence that the predictions from the developed model can be quantitatively applied to the ecosystems in southern West Virginia. An application of modeling used a metric describing the partitioning of Se between particulate material and dissolved phases (K d) to allow determination of a dissolved Se concentration that would be necessary to attain a site-specific Se fish body burden. The operationally defined K dquantifies the complex process of transformation at the base of a food web on a site-specific basis. The magnitude of this metric is known to vary with such factors as Se speciation, particulate-material type, and hydrology. This application (1) ties dissolved Se concentrations to fish tissue concentrations; (2) allows consideration of different choices for intervening site-specific exposure steps that set Se bioaccumulation, partitioning, and bioavailability; and (3) generates implications for management decisions that define protection through different regulatory pathways and guidelines. The range of model outcomes accounts for critical sources of variability and establishes whether site and food-web characterization were adequate to represent the dynamics of the system with certainty. This is especially true in terms of particulate-material phases at the base of the food web and utilization of K din different hydrologic settings. For streams, a range of field-derived K dds were applied to food-web exposure scenarios within a framework of locational and hydrologic variables (area of stream basin; stream gradient and discharge) that may affect the magnitude of K d. Overlaying even a coarse temporal scale that acknowledges variability in stream dissolved Se and Se speciation, such as through seasonal derivation of K d, can substantially narrow model uncertainty. Modeling that constrains the place and time of greatest ecosystem Se sensitivity within a specified food web gives insight into Se risk and identifies controlling management alternatives within a watershed or stream basin. If there is a range of hydrologic settings, specificity is needed to establish a hierarchy of in-stream and off-stream habitats for a watershed approach that takes into account Se-enriched water moving through different K dand food web environments. If there is a range of predator vulnerabilities (measured as a combination of food-web Se biodynamics and response in Se toxicity tests) within the site-specific community of fish species to be protected, then choice of fish species is critical to protection because it determines the food web and, hence, the magnitude of biotransfer through which Se is modeled. Whether creek chub is representative of the vulnerability to Se of all fish species encountered within the study-site ecosystems will require additional species-specific data and analysis. A range of site-specific scenarios illustrated here set model outcomes, but the final quantitative evaluation of alternatives and their implications will be those generated through choices and guidance formulated by state and other agencies in their decisionmaking processes. Proposed additions and refinements to the ecosystem-scale site-specific approach developed here include consideration of: measurement of temporally matched pairs of dissolved and suspended-particulate-material Se concentrations across a broader range of stream sites to expand the stream K ddatabase and to test the representativeness of a suspended-particulate-material sample within a stream; characterization of different phases of particulate material across seasons to better define the base of the food web and connect to invertebrate feeding; refinement of model assumptions concerning dietary preferences and composition for fish to develop additional trophic transfer factors (TTFs) (for example, calculation of TTFinvertebrate composite for mixed diets); expansion of modeling of fish species and their food webs to include Se-vulnerable species; temporal characterization of a predator’s life cycle and habitat use as additional model layers to integrate with Se biodynamics in streams; investigation of the effect of stream gradient on K dbased on a finer scale than presented here in terms of such variables as residence time, watershed dilution, and physical habitat attributes (for example, amount of ponding versus run or riffle within a stream); and linkage to discharge through use of stream gaging to record variability and enable model organization within water-year types and discharge seasons. Investigating the presence and variability of prey and predator species in demographically open systems such as streams also is key to model outcomes given the overall environmental stressors (for example, general landscape change, food-web disruption, recolonization potential) imposed on the composition of biological communities in coal mining and valley-fill affected watersheds Study Area Additional publication details Publication type: Report Publication Subtype: USGS Numbered Series Title: Selenium in ecosystems within the mountaintop coal mining and valley-fill region of southern West Virginia-assessment and ecosystem-scale modeling Series title: Professional Paper Series number: 1803 DOI: 10.3133/pp1803 Year Published: 2013 Language: English Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey Publisher location: Reston, VA Contributing office(s): National Research Program - Western Branch Description: vi, 86 p. Country: United States State: West Virginia Additional Online Files (Y/N): N |
warc | 201704 | I like learning languages, even if they’re not likely to be useful to me specifically. I may not visit the country, but if the language is fun, why not enjoy picking it up? I mean, I go running even though nothing I do for money requires running. It just makes me feel better and makes my body work better. I think that’s useful. Likewise, I think learning languages is useful, even if I don’t learn very much of a given language.
But what is a good way of learning a language? What things are useful? Different people will tell you different things and offer different approaches. It is likely to vary from person to person and depending on how the person intends to use the language. For instance, some people swear by audio-based acquisition methods – learn just by listening. However, if you’re in another country, my experience is that you will need the language most for reading signs and other instructions; spoken communication is both more flexible and longer in development. And if you have a strongly visual memory, having written forms to hang the words on may be a big plus.
I
have found that getting used to the sounds of the language helps a lot – listen to it in videos, music, et cetera. In fact, learning songs in the language can be very useful and memorable… but for some languages, the sung version departs notably from the spoken version. If I’m going to actually use the language in another country soon (as for instance Portuguese on my recent vacation), it is best to learn things first that I am most likely to use: buying drinks, buying tickets, finding bathrooms, getting through airports… But if I just want to learn the language for literary purposes, and to get to know the culture, well, it makes sense to learn the standard cultural literary background, doesn’t it? Or at least selected highlights? A chrestomathy? Chrestomathy. There’s a word you won’t see often; it is unlikely to show up in a chrestomathy of English. It is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable (and with the ch said as /k/). It means, per Oxford, “A collection of choice passages from an author or authors, esp. one compiled to assist in the acquirement of a language.” It has tastes for me of chrysalis, that intermediate form leading to a butterfly, and crest, a ridge point one must pass over, and stoma, which is basically a hole or a tube, and math, although this is more about language (still, why not be a polymath too if you can be a polyglot?), and more distantly of mastery and stretch and a few less pertinent things such as matches and Chester and torch.
But it comes from χρηστός
khréstos ‘useful’ and μαθεια matheia ‘learning’. There is a related word, chrestomathic, which means (again per Oxford) “devoted to the learning of useful matters.” It’s a bit presumptuous to hold choice literary passages to be the epitome of useful learning, more than songs, say, or “Excuse me, where are the washrooms?” This is a basis not in the business of life – perhaps this is a vision for thelemites, who have servants to see to such little things – but in the standard references of culture. Famous scenes from movies? Snippets of children’s books? Apparently we should think more of scenes from Shakespeare and lines by John Donne and Alexander Pope and (if there is any justice at all) Edna St. Vincent Millay. Or even a single-author chrestomathy (perhaps Hemingway for the introductory readers, Nabokov for the more advanced, and Joyce or Faulkner or Pynchon for the exceptionally odd).
Well, whatever. If I were to christen my own chrestomathy for English, my choice of passages certainly would include music (“There are places I remember…”), children’s books (“The night Max wore his wolf suit…”), movie clips (“…We’ll always have Paris…”), comic strips (“…Tyrannosaurs in F-14s!!”), and perhaps even an ad or two (“Where’s the beef?”), to go alongside “To be or not to be…” and “No man is an island…” and “A little learning is a dangerous thing…” and “I burn the candle at both ends…” (and perhaps “…yes I said yes I will Yes” and “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins…” and “A screaming comes across the sky…”).
Or, you know, just some paragraphs from my blog. |
warc | 201704 | No one would have thought that the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) Gas Pipeline project would come to life again after a gap of 20 years. The project, however, got a decisive push from all the involved parties on December 13 when the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the President of Turkmenistan, the President of Afghanistan, and the Vice President of India
gathered in Mary, Turkmenistan for the ground-breaking of this mega project. All leaders showed commitment from their respective countries to complete the project. The 1,800 km long TAPI pipeline will export 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India for over 30 years. Though concerns from critics still exist that are skeptical whether or not this project is viable, the TAPI gas pipeline project is a dependable, accessible, and manageable scheme.
It’s been more than a decade and Afghanistan is still facing a brutal insurgency and political disorder. President Ashraf Ghani is irrefutably an elected president, yet his government is not meeting the demands of all the ethnic factions in the country. The Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, is another mainstream political leader in the government but is less vibrant in state affairs. His silence may bring a storm in a tea cup once he starts applying his authorities to a larger extent, the constitution may
stop him from exercising those because already Mr. Abdullah’s position was created by extra-constitutional arrangements.
Ghani’s strength withers when the Taliban rejects the central government and calls him an illegitimate president. Still, Ghani has put in considerable efforts for a peaceful political settlement. Earlier this month, the Afghan president
traveled to Pakistan and met Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif in GHQ and found full support of the Pakistan Army. This exercise, along with other political meetings with the Pakistani leadership, is intended to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. However, a complete process still remains unresolved.
As such, the security maze of Afghanistan is an irritation that multiplies the reservations regarding the TAPI project. Just when President Ghani was preparing to attend the TAPI groundbreaking ceremony, the Taliban stormed a guesthouse near the Spanish embassy in Kabul and killed
5 people. Prior to the guesthouse attack, the Taliban also launched a massive attack on Kandahar Airport leaving 70 people dead. A major portion of the pipeline has to travel through Afghanistan; therefore, attacks from the Taliban could disturb the gas supplies.
Another issue which triggers concerns regarding the TAPI project is the nature of the Indo-Pak relationship. The countries have never had cordial ties, and misunderstandings and discord have increased since the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to power in India. There are, however, gradual positive changes in the bilateral relationship. The National Security Advisors of both sides met last month. A secret meeting of Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi held in Nepal and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Sawaraj’s visit to Islamabad. The Prime Ministers also met during Prime Minister Modi’s
surprise visit to Lahore last Friday. All these late developments show the ice is melting which can eventually facilitate the timely completion of TAPI project.
TAPI is a significant project for India because it provides Delhi an alternate to the
Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline. The continuous demand for energy from homegrown industry compelled the Indian government to hunt for other cheap and viable options. TAPI can be a significant contributor to India’s energy supply in a very short span of time. India has maintained good relations with Afghanistan over the last decade, thus transporting gas from Afghanistan would not be a major political challenge. The real issue, however, is India’s relations with Pakistan.
The pipeline is a win-win for all associated parties, but specifically for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It could not only bring the entire region under the vortex of economic integration, but could also address the deficit of trust between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Moreover, Islamabad and Delhi can work collectively to reshape the Afghan peace process to ensure the project is completed – both have dire need of cheap and uninterrupted energy to feed their burgeoning energy shortfalls.
This month, Islamabad hosted the 5th
Heart of Asia Conference and addressed the security and political issues of Afghanistan. Happening coincidentally at a time when the TAPI project was about to kick off is indeed a welcoming step for regional economic activities and for the stable future of Afghanistan. The successful completion of the TAPI project in 2018 would show that economics can outmaneuver security challenges in the modern, globalized world.
***
Image:
Reza, Getty |
warc | 201704 | January 17, 2008, 4:08 am
Free trade creates new opportunities, jobs, and value for consumers. Now will someone please tell Congress? As it begins its new session, Congress’s agenda includes ratification of trade deals with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. However, the Democratic majority has made no effort to push these through. And now their excuse is wearing thin.
Free trade allows nations to focus on those goods and services over which they enjoy a competitive advantage and can produce most efficiently at lower cost. This creates value for consumers by increasing their purchasing power. It also creates jobs as capital is directed to where it can produce the best results.
Yet for organized labor and their allies in Congress, this isn’t enough. If they get their way, the days of trade agreements dealing with trade, and trade alone, will be long gone.
Hill Democrats, heeding the call of organized labor and environmental lobby groups, are demanding that any new trade deals include enforceable labor and environmental standards. Such provisions are included in the recently ratified U.S.-Peru free trade agreement.
Currently, all of the pending free trade agreements include the labor and environmental provisions outlined in the Bipartisan Trade Deal that the White House and Congress agreed to last summer. But now, that’s not considered strict enough.
How strict is strict enough? And what price would trade critics be willing to extract to get their way?
Some Democratic lawmakers are prepared to scuttle the pending Colombia, Panama, and South Korea trade deals,
. even though they include enforceable labor and environmental standards
WHY ARE ORGANIZED labor and its congressional allies so hostile to free trade agreements? The primary reason given by the unions is that countries would weaken their labor laws to obtain a comparative advantage. They contend that because capital is more mobile than labor, and because it seeks the highest profits possible, it will flow to wherever the standards are the lowest.
Similarly, environmental activists argue that poor countries will use laxer environmental regulation as a comparative advantage, which would force American companies to weaken their own standards in the U.S. to keep up.
Critics contend that stringent provisions in trade agreements are needed to avoid this “race to the bottom” in labor and environmental standards.
In the aftermath of the Bipartisan Trade Deal, this would amount to making the enforceable provisions even stricter, which in practice would require developing countries to adopt labor and environmental regulations similar to those applied to Western industrial nations.
This view of trade agreements is not only misguided, but dangerously wrong. Burdening trade agreements with so much additional baggage could well undermine the very goals of higher labor standards and improved environmental quality.
Free trade is one of the best tools to improve labor and environmental standards in the long run. It is with rising wealth, and rising productivity, that wages rise and labor conditions improve. Wealthier is also healthier; wealthier societies are better at taking care of their environment.
MOREOVER, THE “race to the bottom” is a myth. Consider the highly debated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the enactment of NAFTA, the U.S. unemployment rate fell from an annual average of 6.9 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in 2000.
If the doomsdayers were right, we would have seen either gigantic job losses to Mexico following NAFTA’s enactment, due to the lower wage costs prevalent there ($2.63 compared to $23.65 hourly compensation in the U.S., in 2005), or weakened labor and environmental standards in the U.S. Neither occurred.
The same is true of manufacturing. The decline in manufacturing’s share of U.S. employment simply means that American productivity is increasing. Between 1993 and 2006, manufacturing output per hour increased by 73.8 percent.
Instead of protecting manufacturing jobs by force, the economy can develop and become more innovative, which can then lead to the creation of new jobs in other sectors of the economy.
Mandating and enforcing more stringent labor and environmental standards would price workers in developing countries above what their labor will earn in the market — thus shutting them out of the market altogether. This will drive out foreign investors, leading to increased unemployment.
However, even with these labor and environmental provisions, scrapping these trade deals now would be a bad idea, since opportunities from increased trade would be lost.
It would also hurt U.S. national security. Colombia, a steadfast U.S. ally, faces deteriorating relations with the authoritarian, belligerent, anti-American government of Hugo Chavez in neighboring Venezuela. Likewise, the U.S.-South Korea trade agreement could bolster the relationship with that country, which faces a nuclear-armed Kim Jong-Il.
Open trade is one of the best tools to promote prosperity in societies both rich and poor. Of course, the road to a better future is often bumpy, and fraught with possible disruptions. Such disruptions should be taken into account, but to focus on them at the expense of the greater goal of liberalized trade is to lose sight of the forest for the trees. |
warc | 201704 | You still have five days left to comment
The last post to this blog was about the proposed replacement of the Massey Tunnel by a massive bridge. A small group of people have been getting together to try and co-ordinate activity opposing the province’s proposal. This is what we have so far:
Urgent Deadline for Public Comments on George Massey Tunnel Replacement Project Please Act Now DEADLINE FEBRUARY 15, 2016
The B.C. Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) is requesting public comments on the
valued components in the environmental assessment for the Massey Tunnel Replacement Project.
Click on the RealMasseyTunnelHearings link below. There is a form for you to submit your comments. You can write your comments there or prepare ahead and copy and paste into the space provided. The site provides some information for you consider and there is more below.
Visit Real Massey Tunnel Hearings to get a quick overview of some of the concerns people have identified with this project. You can send your comments to the EAO directly through the website, and they will be automatically forwarded to our municipal, provincial and federal elected representatives. This is our best chance for building awareness of public concerns about this proposal.
Some Points:
The impacts of this Project are far-reaching and should include a Review Panel federal environmental assessment. More information is needed and there should be a future opportunity for input on Scoping and Valued Components before the Application is allowed to proceed, The Project is too large and too expensive Traffic Congestion will increase at the Oak Street and Knight Street Bridges The Project information fails to recognize the national and international significance of the Fraser River Estuary for salmon, sturgeon, eulachons, endangered whales and migratory birds of the Pacific Flyway. A 45% percent increase in truck traffic in this region is unacceptable and credible alternatives are available. The Project will have a negative impact on regional air quality.
The following are more specific points for your information.
Definition of Valued Component
“For the purpose of environmental assessment in BC,
Valued Components (VCs) are components of the natural and human environment that are considered by the proponent, public, Aboriginal groups, scientists and other technical specialists, and government agencies involved in the assessment process to have scientific, ecological, economic, social, cultural, archaeological, historical, or other importance.”
Page 4: EAO: Guideline for the Selection of Valued Components and Assessment of Potential Effects
Valued Components Commentary
The Open Houses and public information document, ‘ Project Description and Key Areas of Study’have failed to provide sufficient information for the public to make informed comments on the Scope and Valued Components of the George Massey Tunnel Replacement Project (GMTR).
The B.C. Environmental Assessment process states scoping should be prepared by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office prior to request for public input on the scope and valued components:
“Issues scoping should begin early in project planning, before initial regulatory submissions, such as the Project Description and draft AIR, are made, as the information gained during issues scoping will inform not only the selection of VCs but also the determination of the scope of the assessment…”
(Note: AIR – Application Information Requirements) Page 8: EAO: Guideline for the Selection of Valued Components and Assessment of Potential Effects http://www.eao.gov.bc.ca/pdf/EAO_Valued_Components_Guideline_2013_09_09.pdf There needs to be a future opportunity for public comment on a credible document which clearly outlines the Scope and Valued Components as identified by the Proponent; the BC Ministry of Transportation; the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office; the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency; Transport Canada; the Canadian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change; and Health Canada; and Public Safety Canada.
While the document claims engagement has taken place with Provincial and Federal regulatory agencies, no information is provided as to Scope and Valued Components. It states that will come later. The public and municipalities cannot be expected to comment on Scope and Valued Components without any substantive information from the government agencies. As Scoping and identification of Valued Components are essential to the environmental assessment, the public must be afforded an opportunity to provide comment once these have been credibly identified with supporting documentation.
The information is incomplete as it does not include the requirement of environmental assessment pursuant to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.Due to the importance of the Fraser River Estuary and the cumulative impacts of this Project and several other past, current, and planned projects, a Review Panel Environmental Assessment should be required., Some reasons for the requirement of a federal assessment:
Ø Decommissioning of the Massey Tunnel
Ø Length of the new bridge
Ø Requirements under the
Fisheries Act, Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, Navigation Protection Act, Species at Risk Act, Migratory Bird, Environment Protection Act etc.
Ø Ecological and social upstream and downstream effects – scour and infill processes
Ø Endangered and threatened streams critical to viable fish habitats and migratory birds
Ø Watercourses that support fish and fish habitat
Ø Effects on the salt wedge
Ø Impacts on interactive, interdependent riparian habitats between the shoreline and the Fraser River critical to viable fish habitats and species at risk
Ø Impacts to water quality of the Fraser River and adjacent communities
Ø Permits and approvals that are required for the Project – need to identify and list
Ø Effects on navigation in the Fraser River and the shipping route to the open Pacific
Ø First Nations interests, information, land use, Fraser River use and claims
Ø National, provincial and international designations recognizing international ecological significance of the Fraser River Estuary
Ø Cumulative effects of past, current and planned Projects on the South Arm of the Fraser
Ø Hydro technical impacts
Ø Health of fisheries and potential impacts on commercial fishing
Ø Need for a risk analysis to address uncertain residual effect predictions
National and international significance of the Fraser River Estuary for fish species, migratory and resident birds and endangered whales needs to be included. The lower Fraser Estuary is a declared RAMSAR site which means it is an internationally- recognized Wetlands. The area is also a designated site in the Western Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve Network as well as the site of the top three Most Important Bird Areas in Canada.
The information is incomplete as it does not identify federal, provincial, regional and municipal land plans, codes, regulations, standards, and initiatives such as Official Community Plans, Regional Growth and Sustainability Strategies, Climate Action Plans, archaeological information and numerous other initiatives. The document states it is reviewing some of these documents but no specifics are provided.
The information is incomplete as it does not identify effects on cross boundary agreements and initiatives which may be affected by the Project.
The Project Rationale should include information on alternative options – continue upgrading and retaining the Massey Tunnel; twinning the tunnel; or building a much smaller bridge.
The section on traffic congestion claims truck traffic will double by 2045. This reason should not be supported in terms of air pollution and safety. Alternatives to increased truck movements (such as inland transloading at Ashcroft)should be presented to the public.
The section on traffic congestion should include the problem of moving congestion from the Massey Tunnel to the Oak Street and Knight Street Bridges.
Project Benefits are just descriptive. They need to be substantiated with credible studies. They ignore many public valued components such as clean air, protection of farmland, and use of tax dollars.
Impacts of Bridge Height should be included – safety, ice, interference with migratory birds of the Pacific Flyway, Sandhill Cranes, night hunters and the largest number of wintering raptors in Canada.
Impacts of preloading, highway construction, and decommissioning of the tunnel are descriptive and fail to identify valued components.
Specific information on the installation of pilings and potential impacts should be included – depth, procedures, safety, noise pollution and impacts on fish and wildlife habitat.
A safety risk assessment for the Massey Tunnel during construction needs to be included. Continuous drilling and vibrations have the potential to impact the tunnel making it potentially unsafe.
Project costs of $3.5 billion should be itemized with information of how the Project will be funded. A Cost/Benefit Analysis and a Feasibility Study should have been provided at the earliest stages of this assessment. Use of tax dollars is a valued component that needs to be transparent.
While the document claims Aboriginal Group Engagement, no information is provided for the opportunity to comment on valued components.
Changes in Fraser River hydraulics, water quality and sediment are identified. These valued components should include permits required by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the need for a federal environmental assessment.
Fish and fish habitat are not correctly identified. This section should include studies done over the years by the Fraser River Estuary Management Program that include habitat classifications. Areas of the bridge project include important riparian habitats. These are coded red which are shoreline areas having highly productive habitat. Credible evidence needs to be provided for blanket statements of “low aquatic habitat values.”
Species at Risk such as the White Sturgeon and Coho Salmon should be identified and included. This should trigger a federal environmental assessment.
Underwater noise may affect marine mammals. This section should include recent studies that find noise effects whales more than previously understood.
There will be negative Impacts on wildlife from noise and light pollution during construction and as a result of the Project. Night hunters will be permanently impacted. This is a valued component.
Vegetation in the area of the Project is varied. Ditches, old streams and water courses support rare or at-risk species. These valued components should have been identified in this section.
Habitat for endangered Pacific Water Shrew and Barn Owl will be impacted. This project will add to the ongoing loss of critical habitats in the Fraser River Estuary.
The following statement on air quality is an opinion:
“The Project is expected to result in an improvement in air quality, especially in the vicinity of the Tunnel, as a result of improved traffic flow, since vehicles driving at highway speeds consume less fuel and generate lower emissions. In addition, the new bridge is elevated above ground level, allowing airflow over the top and beneath the bridge, which contributes to improved dispersion of pollutants.”
Congestion will move to the Richmond bridges causing pollution in other areas. Doubling truck traffic by 2045 is not going to improve air quality as stated in this section.
Air quality is a valued component that needs more information than is provided here to the public. With all the studies and work over the past few years, the public deserves specific, credible, referenced information.
Impacted farmland and environmentally sensitive areas should be specifically identified. Anticipated no net loss of farmland and expected benefits are meaningless without substantive information.
Impacts on human health should include stress with ongoing construction: congestion, air pollution, light pollution, noise pollution.
An environmental risk assessment is a valued component that should be included.
The information provided to the public fails to meet the principles of transparency, participation, credibility, and purpose that have been established by the International Association for Impact Assessment. |
warc | 201704 | Surveyors comments generally Surveying steel vessels:
Most plate and frame material I inspect on steel yachts is low carbon mild steel and occasionally I will see core-ten steel. The welding techniques differ as mild steel cannot be welded hot and fast and core-ten cannot be continually welded as it can distort. So you will see more starts and stops and this type is much more difficult to weld. I use a welder’s chipping hammer often in my inspections to explore corrosion. Don’t be surprised if you happen to go through on older vessel, and be sure to have written permission from owners before and after to prevent some costly embarrassment. A metal hull inspector needs to know where to look and what to look for. You need to know how to identify three basic problems: deterioration, defects and damage. Deterioration is the largest single defect you will have to identify. This inherent problem is due more often than not to age. The older the vessel is, the more likely you are going to see this type of deterioration, be it rust or pitting. The next largest problem is lack of proper maintenance. The largest inherent problem with steel yacht construction, be they auxiliary sail or power, is the fact that most are not constructed with maintenance in mind. Cabin soles, ceilings, and insulation cover so much of a vessel’s structure and totally restrict internal inspections in many areas. Many steel yachts have integrated tanks--water, fuel or waste--and most do not have inspection plates to allow entry and most of your inspections will not involve entry. Hull defects are often easier to identify because they may be more readily evident. Plate deformation is reflective in nature. If you have plating deformation, you should suspect and look for reflective internal framing defects. Severe point loading from impact or hard grounding can cause cracking or tearing of the plate, frames or welds. A strong light and a keen eye are your best weapons here. |
warc | 201704 | Abra, a remittance service built on top of the Blockchain, has closed $12 million in Series A funding. Investors in the round include Arbor Ventures, RRE Ventures, and First Round Capital. Total funding to date by the company now totals $14 million.
The company’s app, which will launch soon to the general public, lets users around the world transfer funds denominated in any currency at a cost-effective rate.
Abra achieves this by instantly converting deposited currency to bitcoin, which are stored locally on the user’s device. This means that unlike services like Venmo, the company never actually touches any funds, meaning it isn’t required to deal with the regulatory issues of transmitting money.
Here’s how Abra works: Users can deposit money into the app either via a linked bank account, or by utilizing Abra’s network of Abra Tellers, which are like human ATM machines.
After setting their own fee, Tellers meet a user in person to accept a cash deposit and credit the user’s account with funds (or vice versa, if the user wants to cash out).
After a user’s account is credited with funds, the money is instantly converted to bitcoin behind the scenes, but still denominated in a traditional currency.
The important question is how does Abra combat bitcoin’s extreme volatility to allow the digital currency to always be pegged to fiat currency?
Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra, explained that Abra instantly creates self-settling contracts for users, which are built on the Blockchain and assigned to a counter-party that will share in the hedge.
Basically, users are given a short contract to protect the price, while the assigned counter-party is going long on the hedge. Barhydt explained that the company has found willing counter-parties from across the bitcoin ecosystem, and they range anywhere from exchanges to mining companies.
While the behind-the-scenes work is complex, Barhydt stressed that users will be able to use the service without knowing (or even seeing) any of the complexities of bitcoin and the Blockchain. So two users could send each other $100 USD, and even though bitcoin is actually being transferred, both will just see the transaction denominated in dollars.
The company generates revenue by charging a .25 percent fee to a user whenever they transacts with an Abra Teller, and by charging a small fee to the counter-parties involved with the smart contracts.
The company, which will launch soon, is currently accepting Teller applications, and says it currently has Tellers signed up in over 80 countries.Featured Image: Julia Zakharova/Shutterstock |
warc | 201704 | I’m reading through Yochai Benkler’s argument for a spectrum commons in
The Wealth of Networks, and so far I’m not impressed. His footnotes pointed to this fantastic working paper by Gerald Faulhaber and David Farber that I think makes the case better than I could:
Establishing property rights in spectrum is often portrayed as eliminating the commons (Benkler (1997), Reed (2002), Ikeda (2002)); this is not the
case. Commons (and more generally sharing) can exist within an ownership regime; our recommended ownership regime with an easement for non-interfering uses establishes such a commons via the easement. Should it be necessary to have a commons for potentially interfering uses, the most obvious avenue is for the Federal government can purchase a block of spectrum (which it then owns) and open the band to general use under terms and conditions similar to Part 15 (for example). In fact, any state or local government can do the same thing, establishing a “park” in which users are completely free to use the spectrum without permission provided they follow the rules laid down by the owner of the “park.” This is perfectly analogous to public lands, such as National and State Parks, National and State Forests, and municipal parks. Further, private foundations could establish such “parks;” for example, there are many horticultural parks open to the public that are maintained by private foundations. Local neighborhood cooperatives could achieve the same end, possibly requiring a one-time or monthly fee for use. Similarly, private firms could establish such “parks,” charging a one-time or monthly fee for use. We would expect that manufacturers of mesh network devices, for example, may choose to “prime the pump” by establishing spectrum parks in various localities to increase their equipment sales.
Any or all of these mechanisms would permit mesh networks to flourish. The authors cited above have alleged that an ownership regime is fundamentally incompatible with the deployment of mesh networks. In the paragraph above, we count at least six ways in which mesh networks can flourish in the ownership regime with non-interfering easement. While we agree with these authors that mesh networking is an exciting new technology that may well shape the future of communications, we have demonstrated that their assertion regarding mesh networking’s incompatibility with an ownership regime is incorrect.
If Benkler is right that new technologies will allow costless sharing of spectrum, then adopting a property regime will simply mean that society bears some unnecessary transaction costs as the manufacturers of equipment have to purchase spectrum rights for their products. The market value of a non-scarce resource tends toward zero, so we would expect the price of obtaining such a license to fall rapidly once efficient sharing technologies came onto the scene. You would still be able to do everything under a property regime that you would under a commons regime, the costs of administering the system would just be somewhat higher.
In contrast, converting the entire spectrum to a commons rules out many traditional uses, such as traditional radio and television broadcasting. If we adopted a commons regime all at once, and commons-based wireless technologies turn out to be inferior to exclusive uses for some purposes, there will be no easy way to reintroduce exclusive uses. Our only alternative will be to lobby Congress to change the rules.
With that said, I think Benkler’s concrete recommendations, laid out here, are fairly sensible. He understands that a “Big Bang” conversion to a commons regime would be disruptive and risky, and so he advocates gradual experiments with unlicensed bands. Benkler also agrees with Farber and Faulhaber that the law should permit anyone to transmit on any frequency provided the transmission does not interfere with the license holder on that frequency. That strikes me as sensible–analogous to allowing anyone to fly their airplane above anyone else’s property provided it doesn’t cause any harm to the property owner below. Most importantly, Benkler
also advocates that the FCC “increase the flexibility of current spectrum licensees to experiment with market-based allocation of their spectrum.”
I think it’s important to keep in mind that property and commons regimes are not inherently in conflict. Land in the United States is primarily privately owned for private use, but there are also roads, parks, shopping malls, and other public spaces managed as commons by the government or various private entities. Libertarians and leftists can debate exactly what fraction of spectrum should be propertized and how much should be held as a commons, just as we argue about whether there are too many or too few government-owned parks. But the existence of state parks doesn’t undermine the property rights of private owners.
Most importantly,
everyone agrees that flexible property rights would be superior to the command-and-control system we’ve got now. The disagreement seems to be simply a quantitative one, over what fraction of the spectrum should be propertized and what fraction should be unlicensed. Although it’s important to get that question right, it’s far more important to quickly and decisively dismantle our current, Soviet-style system. |
warc | 201704 | Developed the new structure of mobility, on the basis of the concept of the physical environment. This environment is through the concept of context. This is the basis of the modelling language, the properties of the mobility and the behavior of the application. In other words, you can say it is like a cross between the life of digital, social, physical and mobile world. It is a Supplement to the position data. The place can be used as a factor for the processes of the inhabitants, but in context can be applied more flexibly with mobile Computing and mobile agents, and carriers with intelligent communicators. The term comes in the time of Ubiquitous Computing, or complex calculations, trying to decide what changes in the environment with computer systems,
There are several context-dependent Mobile agents, which are suitable in the best case, for the realization of mobile applications. This type of calculations formed the System architecture of the Trend, aiming to constitute an integrated and interacting devices, databases, and Services, to communicate, to photograph, queries, and users. The context-specific calculations give millions of dollars per year in the possibility of making a profit for a number of industries, including travel and retail. In the context of the awareness for the relevance sharpens, if the device or service is responding to user-initiated action, such as, for example, search for products and Support calls. It also provides a quick link through an analysis of the conditions of operation and behavior. Such an active transmission of information, warnings, and advertising, offers significant commercial opportunities for all types of providers of services and content. The technology is GNAT experience of Mobile users beyond a simple search for information, and also about the current location-based Services, which will fit only the remnants of the broader context.
This Mobile Computer is completely different from a simple Sensor applications seen on Smartphones. For example, user applications such as yelp on the iPhone to search for nearby Restaurants and the kitchen, as well as place and order. Device context, would know a similar function, the know Restaurants, the user in the past, that the food of the user. Based on these preferences, the device offers for the surrounding Restaurants. He would even be in the cards built-in and other programs on your device.
In the context of the environment is known, many wireless devices such as environmental sensors, RF id Tags and Smartphones send the availability, location, and other information about the state of the entire network. A special Software, collected and analyzed the data and send it back to the grid, the necessary context at the end of the device. According to the computer industry, in the context of understand the phone can.for an optimization of the use of energy on the basis of what he knew about the everyday life of the user
In future devices know about the user, their day is, where you are, what you want, and even use the device to know likes and dislikes of the users. The main objective of awareness of the context, to show how the rules of multi-sensor information for Business applications, so that it can be correlated with the existing Business. Finally, it is what can help the people in making the decision faster.
Try developed many successful applications for many Fortune 500 companies around the world and is the most preferred, the company for the development of mobile applications for their valued customers. Customers of this approach, efforts for the deployment of Enterprise Mobility solutions were satisfied with the services you received. The leading newspaper of Satire from the us, the onion has congratulated pursuit of technical Team for their work on the newspaper App that is successfully launched in the Google Play market and iStores. The efforts produced some of the highest quality of mobile Apps in the world, but we also have the experience and possibilities for the Integration of mobile solutions on different platforms. |
warc | 201704 | In a metropolis of hierarchies – of prestige, glamour and chic – Queens has always come third, trailing Manhattan and Brooklyn in proximity, glamour and real estate prices. While this unofficial mid-range spot looks like comfortable turf for some time to come, some industry observers suggest that Flushing is leading Queens County out of the Archie Bunker doldrums and into the high-end luxury living arena.
Multi-use developments in Flushing, which is the borough’s largest densely settled neighborhood, are planned for the community over the next couple of years. The addition of 2,000 residential units, many of them at eyebrow-raising prices for the area, will mark another step in Queens’ evolution.
“Flushing for a very long time was considered a B-class neighborhood where prices were substantially lower than in the city and substantially lower than other parts of the boroughs,” said Michael Shvo, president of Shvo Marketing Group, which is set to work on an undisclosed project in the area. “Now Flushing has become the new affordable place. Neighborhoods evolve because, going down the food chain, there always has to be a place to go when people can’t afford pricier places.”
Indeed, high-rise buildings in Flushing with uninterrupted city views go for about $500 per square foot – a fraction of Manhattan and Brooklyn prices, but significantly higher than surrounding Queens neighborhoods, and much steeper than Flushing itself just a few years ago.
Thirty minutes away via the No. 7 subway train, Flushing is home to the largest Asian community in the city – a fact that has attracted the dollars and attention of Manhattan developers who say the inherent cultural characteristics of the local population make it immune from any bubble that may burst.
“The Asian population loves to own – that is our base market,” said Andy Gerringer, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s development marketing group. In 2004, Douglas Elliman bought the 100- agent Goldmark Realty, and is involved in a major development in bordering College Point. “Flushing will draw other people for its affordability and location. But the first customer is local.”
Shvo adds that the pan-Asian population tends to have a lot of cash on hand, which also makes the area attractive to developers.
Unlike other hot development areas like Dumbo or the West 30s in Manhattan, Flushing has long supported a commercial center. The area is replete with shops and gyms, and its restaurants get regular mentions in the New York Times and New York magazine.
Developers expect more of the same in the area, as large mixed-use properties get under way. Much attention has been paid to Boymelgreen Development’s plan to overhaul the landmarked 1927 RKO Keith’s Theater on Northern Boulevard. The $200 million, 18-story project will feature 200 condos, 10,000 square feet of retail space, a senior center, and 260 parking spots.
While the theater project is aimed to incorporate a rare architectural gem into the community’s vast expansion, Muss Development Co.’s Flushing Town Center on a 14- acre property has a more suburban feel. The $600 million, 3.2-million-square-foot expanse will include an 800,000-square-foot shopping center with anchor stores, 1,000 residential units and parking for 2,850 cars, all a five-minute walk to the No. 7 train.
Jim Jarosik, senior vice president for Muss, said that his company is confident that the market for both its residential and retail properties is tight, as Flushing families are doubling up in single-family homes in the face of 2 percent vacancy rates and retailers have been crying for more space. “There is such a scarcity of sites in New York, you have to be creative in integrating multiple uses on one site,” Jarosik said.
“Development can take 20 to 30 years for a project to come to fruition,” Muss Development president Joshua Muss told the New York Sun recently. The combination of a proposed new stadium for the Mets and the redevelopment of Willets Point as well as the waterfront are all factors driving the project forward now, he said.
The Rockefeller Group is spearheading another important project in the area and is in discussions regarding a 1-million-squarefoot development on what was a city-owned parking lot in Flushing’s downtown. The planned project includes retail, condos and affordable housing.
Prudential Douglas Elliman’s College Point project includes 86 town homes, which are expected to fetch $900,000 to $1.2 million and be available by the end of February, Gerringer said. While the two-family structures are typical of the building styles in Queens, the gated waterfront community should appeal to those who might otherwise shop in Manhattan.
Gerringer’s description of what’s been named Sound View Point mirrors that of other developers with area projects: “This is nothing like Queens has seen.” |
warc | 201704 | [Warning: Spoilers for the series finale of Breaking Bad ahead]
AMC’s award-winning and groundbreaking drama
Breaking Bad is, although complemented by a number of highly intriguing and well-played characters, primarily the story of its lead protagonist Walter White, a disillusioned high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer, who turns to cooking crystal meth in order to provide for his family’s financial security after he will have passed away. Thus, Breaking Bad is a reflection on the destructive potential of masculinity in our society.
Even though we as viewers start out as sympathetic to Walt, over the course of the show, we realize just how problematic Walt’s actions and motives are, and that – although he tries to justify his actions as selfless and as rooted in his commitment to serving his family – what really drives him are notions of masculinity deeply entrenched in our society. Even if we accept that his willingness to become a producer of illegal substances (and eventually kill repeatedly) stems from his urge to set his family up with a financial safety net in anticipation of his imminent deaths, this ability to put aside all moral convictions for the sake of achieving his goal is clearly more than a simple act of one man’s altruism but rather embedded in hegemonic notions of masculinity. Despite shifts in the gender order, our society still expects men to take on the role of the provider and rewards those men who can, while shaming those that cannot. It is no surprise then that Walter White would make a desperate if illegal final attempt at living up to this standard, given that he appears to be running out of time. In addition to these internalized self-identification as the provider of his family – even beyond his grave – the social arrangements and gender relations in our society, and those within the White family more specifically, exert very real and material pressures on Walt to take steps to ensure the financial future of his wife and kids. The White family adheres to dominant social scripts about family life in the US, with Walt filling the role of the primary breadwinner, while his wife Skyler is a mother and homemaker first, working odd jobs and in later seasons being employed as an accountant. Clearly, due to these unequal gendered relations of production – and against the backdrop of a healthcare system that is failing Walt, and a social security system that would most likely fail the White family sans Walt – the possible death of Walter will put the family in deep financial problems, prompting him to find a solution for these economic pressures.
The more we learn about the protagonist over the course of the series, however, the more we understand that Walt’s motives are, at least in part, darker and rooted in additional notions of masculinity. After having lied to his family, the viewers (and possibly himself) that he had committed all these atrocities and had put his family into danger only in order to provide for them, Walt finally admits in the series finale what the viewers have figured out a long time ago: He built his meth empire because he was was the best at what he did, because he took pride in his achievements and because the power it provided him with validated his sense of self. Or put differently, it made him feel like a man. Walt’s character can be described as what RW Connell calls an exemplar of complicit masculinity: Our society upholds hegemonic notions of masculinity, that are only ever achieved by a small minority of (white, upper/ middle class, powerful, able bodied, straight, Western, …) men, who reap the most benefits from these gendered arrangements, while other men relate in different ways to these hegemonic masculinities. However, it is not as though men outside the hegemonic position reject the hegemonic notions. Rather a majority falls within the category of ‘complicit masculinities’: These men hold on to the goal of achieving hegemonic status, buying into dominant conceptions and thereby legitimizing and reproducing them, while at the same time shouldering the dangers inherent in these constructions of masculinity. At the same time, by being complicit with hegemonic masculinities they receive at least some of the benefits of a gender order that overall privileges men vis a vis women. The Walter White we meet in the pilot episode is far from being able to lay claim to hegemonic masculinity: His work as a high school teacher is far below his aspirations and potential as a scientist, he has just been diagnosed with a disease that will make his 50 year old body weaker and weaker (and will ultimately prevent him from even fulfilling the most basic requirement of masculinity in our culture, that is, providing financially for his wife and children), and his sex life has been reduced to the occasional hand job by his wife – while she monitors her ebay auctions on the laptop screen.
It is being involved in the meth business (and the dangers and violence that comes with it) that, for the first time in years, enables Walt to approach hegemonic notions of masculinity. Walt takes pride in his meth cooking craftsmanship, and in the power his new profession provides him with. It is no coincidence that after Walt comes home from one of his first meth cooking sessions and the killing of a rival drug crew, he approaches his wife with a new found passionate-aggressive sexuality, feeling masculine for the first time in a long time.
The more we learn about Walt’s back story, the more we realize that Walt’s motive for entering (and later on choosing not to leave the drug business despite having made enough money to set his family up for life) is rooted in his repeated pattern of feeling emasculated. Before settling for a teaching profession at a high school, Walt had been a brilliant chemist and had co-founded a company that was soon to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits with his graduate school friends Elliot and Gretchen, his girlfriend at the time. Although Walt claims his two friends have betrayed him, we learn that it was Walt who had walked out on Gretchen; a decision clearly rooted in his claim to notions of masculinity as he was unable to cope with having a partner professionally his equal and superior in her class background. It is Walt’s adherence to and insecurity about masculinity that thus lead him to adandon his girlfriend and the opportunity to become rich and successful (and later blaming her for it), which, of course, results in an even deeper feeling of emasculation as he finds himself stuck in a mundane life, ultimately setting forth his transformation from Walt to the larger-than-life drug kingpin Heisenberg as a last ditch effort to achieve the standards of masculinity he buys into.
That these notions of masculinity matter culturally far beyond the fictional Walt’s individual motivations is also obvious in the audience’s response to Walt’s trajectory. Even though it is safe to say that many fans watching the show transitioned from empathizing with Walt to strongly feeling he deserves to die or end up in cuffs, the internet is nevertheless populated by a significant number of fans intrigued by his Heisenberg persona; as exemplified by the vast amount of paraphernalia adorned with Heisenberg’s face and his catchphrases. Rather than judging Walt for what he has done, these fans continue to root for him because of his badass masculinity and the fact that he is playing the game according to his rules, bowing to no one.
And like us viewers, even the show’s writers and producers ultimately cannot escape the appeal of Walt’s story of achieving masculinity. Although Walt has been stripped of everything that was once dear to him (his family, his meth empire, even avenues of providing his family with the remainder of his drug money), and is bound to find his fitting end and succumb to his cancer alone in a cottage somewhere in the New Hampshire backcountry, the show ultimately is not able to tell a story of his lonesome demise or the humiliation of his turning himself in to the police. Instead, we are presented with one last stand of Walt in Heisenberg-mode, as he not only comes up with a plan for secretly providing his family with his drug money but also executes Todd, the psychopath meth cook and his uncle’s white supremacist drug crew – probably the only form of antagonist that could be construed as clearly even more morally objectionable than Walter White – leaving Walt to go out on his own terms and perpetrating one more act of heroic-tragic vengeful violence. As Vince Gilligan, producer of the show, pointed out on the Breaking Bad Insider podcast, the writers felt that Walt had earned being able to die
‘like a man’, and, although redemption at this point is impossible, we thus get the closest thing to it: Although Walter is never able to achieve all-out hegemonic masculinity – since working toward it by building a meth empire comes with high risks, violence, murder and ultimately results in his own death – we are presented with an ending that shows the protagonist dying a relatively honorable death, at least given the alternatives, glossing over the fact that it was Walt’s hyperidentification with notions of masculinity that lead him down this road in the first place.
Ultimately, understanding Walter White as a character stuck in a hopeless version of complicit masculinity makes clear that the title of the show conveys more than it seems: Over the course of the show, Walter White’s masculinity is
breaking bad, transforming him from the average father and husband into a manipulative serial killer and drug kingpin. Rather than suffering from a case of inherently broken masculinity, it is hegemonic notions – and complicit embodiments – of masculinity in our society that are necessarily structured in a way that allow for this process of breaking bad, carrying with them the potentiality of destruction, violence and death. Walter White is not automatically and inherently Heisenberg. But the toxic notions of masculinity dominant in our society and the unequal class and gender orders that prevail at the very least carry the potential of him transitioning from one to the other.
Further Reading: |
warc | 201704 | commuting made cheaper and easier...
Here at
trentbarton we know it’s really important to keep the cost of travelling to and from work at a manageable level. That’s why we’ve created our super commuter range of money-saving ticket options to give you savings on bus travel.
We all know that driving to and from work can be a hassle. There’s the cost of fuel and parking, not to mention sitting in traffic and finding a parking space when you get there. Your time can be better spent somewhere else.
There is an alternative – catch the bus instead! We run high frequency bus services right across the East Midlands to get you to work quickly and comfortably. More and more of our buses are being fitted with the latest creature comforts, including fast, free 4G WiFi and USB power points, meaning that you can be surfing the web whilst gliding down the bus lane.
Our super commuter programme looks at the individual needs of each organisation and its employees to offer travel planning and the best options on ticketing to pay for bus travel to and from work, whether you work full or part time.
the benefits
How an organisation can benefit:
reduce parking problems, with fewer employees needing a parking space
doing your bit for the enviroment with less cars on the road reducing carbon emissions
offering staff perks with discounted travel may help to attract new staff and keep existing ones
How an employee can benefit:
make better use of time - catch up on work and emails rather than sitting in a traffic jam
savings on the cost of travel
employees arrive at work feeling relaxed and refreshed
saver offers unlimited travel at evenings and weekends when you're not at work
keep fit and healthy with your daily walk to and from the bus stop
getting started
We've got a range of ticket options to make sure employees and employers get the best deal.
saver
12 month travel cards paid for up front with a further discount for your company. These can also be used at evenings and weekends to give further discounts when travelling for leisure.
MANGO
A pay-as-you-go smart card loaded with credit to allow travel - 15% off single bus fares every time you travel. Load on credit for employees to use. You can even use MANGO on NET trams in Nottingham.
MANGO pool card
A MANGO loaded up with credit which employees can share between them with 15% off single bus fares every time you travel. You can even use MANGO on NET trams in Nottingham.
How do I pay?
We will invoice you after you have placed an order, you can pay by cheque, direct transfer or in person at a travel shop.
How much paperwork or admin is involved?
There’s not that much paperwork at all! We want to make applications as simple as possible, so all we need is a list of names and we’ll take it from there.
How much will it cost my company?
There are no set-up fees or minimum orders. You just pay for the zones or credit you require. The more employees that sign up to the scheme,the cheaper it becomes!
For more information...
To find out more or to get the scheme set up at your work place, please contact Stuart Booth on 07826 946418 or email stuart@trentbarton.co.uk. |
warc | 201704 | The curious collection of a slightly mad scientist
In the weeks after the Fukushima nuclear plant was destroyed by a triple meltdown in March 2011, the plant’s owner turned to three of Japan’s largest construction companies for a quick fix to store radiated water that was pooling in the disaster zone.
The result was a rush order for steel tanks supplied by Taisei Corp, Shimizu Corp and Hazama Ando that were relatively cheap and could be put together quickly, according to the utility and three people involved in the project.
The tanks, which stand as tall as a three-storey building, were shipped in pieces and bolted together as makeshift repository for the cascade of water being pumped through the reactors of Fukushima every day to keep fuel in the melted cores from overheating.
The bolted tanks were sealed with resin and designed to last until about 2016 – long enough to buy time for Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, to work out a more permanent solution. But at least one of the tanks has already failed, leaking 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water that may have seeped into a drainage ditch and into the Pacific Ocean.
The discovery of the leak – which Tepco said on Friday was the fifth from the same type of tank – prompted Japan’s first declaration of a nuclear incident since a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns and hydrogen explosions that spewed radiation around Fukushima in 2011.
It has also focused attention on the uncomfortable end-game for the radiated water collecting at Fukushima.
Some 330,000 tonnes of contaminated water – enough to fill more than 130 Olympic swimming pools – has been pumped into storage pits and above-ground tanks at the crippled facility.
The sheer scale of the build-up has prompted some experts and officials to warn that in order to focus on containing the most toxic waste, less contaminated water will have to be dumped into the sea.
“Think about it in simple terms. If you don’t release the water, there’s nowhere to store it. So we also think it may have to be released,” said Shinichi Nakayama, deputy director of the Nuclear Safety Research Center at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and a member of a regulatory panel on Fukushima’s problems.
Before the latest leak, Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s minister of trade and industry, and Shunichi Tanaka, the top nuclear regulator, both indicated support for releasing water with low levels of radiation from Fukushima. No one has given any timeframe for such a move….
Officials say the immediate priority is to figure out why the bolted storage tank failed less than two years since it was installed. They are also looking at adjusting plans for the more than 400,000 tonnes of additional water storage Tepco plans to build by 2016.
When Tepco commissioned the first bolted tanks the advantage was the relative speed with which contractors could finish the job just a few hundred meters from the wrecked reactor building. “These could be quickly built,” said Masayuki Ono, a manager at Tepco’s nuclear division.
Tepco spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said a joint venture of Taisei, Shimzu and Hazama Ando won the first contract to build storage tanks at Fukushima in April 2011. She declined to say whether the contractors built the tank that began to leak. Tepco has not identified the cause of the leak, and has consistently declined to give details on the value of contracts it has awarded or winning bidders, citing a need to protect “corporate secrets”. The Fukushima decommissioning is projected to cost at least $11 billion and take at least 30 years to complete.
Taisei, which built the structure around Japan’s newest reactor at Tomari in Hokkaido in 2009, was heavily involved in the construction of the Fukushima tanks, according to three people involved, who asked not to be named. Workers and engineers at Fukushima have been put on an “emergency” footing to work on the storage tanks this week, they said.
Shimizu, which also has experience in building nuclear plants in Japan, had technology needed to build the bolted tanks and brought in experts, one of the sources said.
Taisei said it could not comment on individual client projects. Shimizu and Hazama Ando declined to comment.
There are 350 of the bolted-style tanks in place at Fukushima, and another 710 welded tanks, a more expensive design that takes longer to assemble. Nuclear Regulation Authority Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa said on Friday that regulators also needed to examine the environmental risks posed by any failures of those tanks, especially in cases where they have been lined up directly on the ground rather than a concrete foundation.
Tepco plans to more than double the current storage capacity by 2016, but doesn’t have a plan beyond that point. The math is daunting. The utility has to find space for an additional 400 tonnes of radioactive water each day because of the need to keep the reactors cool for the next seven years. … |
warc | 201704 | There’s a lot of news media about the Green Party’s push for recounts. Some is accurate, some is wildly alarmist, but most of what I’ve read misses a
really key point that you need to understand, in order to make up your own mind about these issues, especially claims of Russian hacking.
For example, University of Michigan’s Dr. Alex Halderman is advising the Green Party, and is considerably quoted recently about the possible attacks that could be made on election technology, especially on the “brains” of a voting system, the
Election Management System (EMS) that “programs” all the voting machines, and collates their tallies, yet is really just some fairly basic desktop application software running on ancient MS Windows. Though sometimes complex to explain, Halderman and others are doing a good job explaining what is possible in terms of election-result-altering attacks.
In response to these explanations, several news articles note that DHS, DNI, and other government bodies take the view that it would be
“extremely difficult” for nation state actors to carry out exploits of these vulnerabilities. I don’t doubt that DHS cyber-security experts would rank exploits of this kind (both effective and also successful in hiding themselves), as on the high end of the technical difficulty chart, out there with hacking Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges. Here’s the Problem: “extremely difficult” has nothing to do with how likely it is that critical election systems might or might not have been penetrated.
It is a completely different issue to compare the intrinsic difficulty level with the capabilities of specific attackers. We know full well that attacks of this kind, while high on technical difficulty, are totally feasible for a few nation state adversaries. It’s like noting that a particular class of technical Platform Diving has a high intrinsic difficulty level beyond the reach of most world class divers, but also noting that the Chinese team has multiple divers who are
capable of performing those dives.
You can’t just say “extremely difficult” and completely fail to check whether one of those well known capable divers actually succeeded in an attempt — especially during a high stakes competition. And I think that all parties would agree that a U.S. Presidential election is pretty high stakes. So …
10 out of 10 points for security experts explaining what’s possible. 10 out of 10 points for DHS and others for assessing the possibilities as being extremely difficult to do. 10 out of 10 points for several news organizations reporting on these complex and scary issues; and 0 out of 10points for news and media organizations concluding that because some attacks are difficult, they probably didn’t happen.
Personally, I don’t have any reason to believe such attacks occurred, but I’d hate to deter anybody from looking into it, as a result of confusing level of difficulty with level of probability.
— John Sebes |
warc | 201704 | My colleagues and I have just published a paper on the genetic diversity and population history of contemporary Iñupiat peoples (the indigenous inhabitants of the North Slope of Alaska) in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. It’s open-access for at least a few months, so you can read it in its entirety here, our collaborator Dr. Anne Jensen ‘s thoughts on it here, and Archaeology Magazine’s article on the paper here. I’ve also summarized our findings below.
Archaeological research has shown us that humans have been living in the North American Arctic for about 5,000 years, and that during this time there have been two major cultures. The Paleo-Eskimos, the most ancient inhabitants of the Arctic, occupied the northern Arctic coast from Alaska to Greenland for about 3,000 years. The Neo-Eskimo Thule first appeared in Alaska around 750-800 years ago, and spread along the coast as far as Greenland in just a few generations. The Thule introduced many of the same technologies (dogsleds, snow houses, umiaqs) and lifeways (bowhead whale hunting) that we see used by Inuit and Iñupiat peoples living in these regions today, and so the Thule have long been considered their direct ancestors.
But where did the Thule come from? Were they related to the Paleo-Eskimos, or were those two groups biologically distinct from one another? And how are different groups living in the Arctic today related? What are their shared and individual histories and prehistories? These are the questions that our research team has been working on for several years, in partnership with Iñupiat peoples. Although genetic research has been done to characterize the Eskimo and Inuit of Greenland and Canada, and the Aleuts, nothing is known about the genetic diversity of the Iñupiat. Archaeological and genetic work in the Arctic has led us to believe that all Eskimo, Inuit and Iñupiat peoples are closely related, and that both the Paleo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo migrations began in the North Slope.
We are trying to answer these questions by genetically characterizing peoples of the North Slope in Alaska. We are doing this in close collaboration with a research team from the University of Utah, who are helping locate and rescue burials at the Nuvuk site, in danger of being destroyed by coastal erosion. The peoples of Barrow agreed that genetic testing of the Nuvuk ancestors would be of interest to their community.
While this project was being planned with the Elders in Barrow, they also suggested that we might also collect genetic information from communities across the North Slope, because it would help us understand how modern communities are related to each other, and to their ancestors. We agreed and designed the project with permission from the Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation, the Native Village of Barrow, and the Senior Advisory Council of Barrow (Elders). The project was funded by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. 181 adults from the communities of Atqasuk, Anaktuvuk Pass, Barrow, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay, and Wainwright agreed to participate in this study, and generously donated saliva samples to our research team. They also provided us with genealogical information about where their parents and grandparents were born, so that we could better understand the histories of each family that participated.
This research has been done in a number of stages to address different questions, and we have returned to these communities several times over the last few years to share our results with the communities and to learn what they think about our findings. We are able to incorporate important community feedback and knowledge into our final research reports, the first of which was recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Thus, our research is the result of an ongoing partnership between researchers and community members. We hope that community members will share with us their further interpretations, comments and questions.
In this paper, we focused on what we could learn about the prehistory of the Iñupiat (and Arctic peoples in general) by using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). mtDNA is only inherited from mother to child, so it can tell us the history of women. In this paper we tried to answer several questions:
What maternal lineages are present in the North Slope? How do they compare with other groups in the Arctic? Can we see any evidence to support the idea that the North Slope was the staging ground for the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo Thule migrations further eastward towards Greenland? Do we see any evidence that the Paleo-Eskimos might have left some genetic lineages in the North Slope, or was there a complete population replacement of the Paleo-Eskimo by the Thule in this region (as appears to be the case elsewhere in the Arctic)? How do individual communities within the North Slope relate to one another? Do we see evidence for the movement of women between these communities, or do they appear to be genetically isolated from one another?
Results
We found all Arctic-specific
(groups of closely related maternal lineages) present in the North Slope communities. These haplotypes are known as A2a, A2b, D4b1a. The ages and patterned distribution of these haplotypes within the North Slope, compared to Canada and Greenland, fits with the archaeological model that the Peopling of the Arctic began in the North Slope. Surprisingly, we found evidence that we think suggests there may have been some migrations of Greenlandic Inuit haplotypes backto the North Slope. We would like to explore this question further in the future with additional genetic markers.
We also unexpectedly found two haplotypes that have never before been seen in contemporary Arctic populations. C4 is a haplotype that is seen in Native Americans. Its geographic distribution suggests that it might have been one of the haplotypes carried by the earliest peoples to enter the Americas. We don’t know yet why we see it in the North Slope (which was peopled by a separate ancestral group than the rest of the Americas). Perhaps it is because of recent marriages between Native American and Iñupiat families. Or perhaps it is a remnant of a much more ancient contact between these groups. The second surprising haplotype—D2—has only been found in this region in ancient Paleo-Eskimos, never in contemporary Eskimo or Inuit groups from Canada or Greenland. Does its presence in villages on the North Slope mean that the Paleo-Eskimos were also ancestors of the North Slope Iñupiat? We think so, and we will be further exploring these questions in the future with additional genetic markers.
In looking at individual maternal lineages, and comparing their geographic distributions, we were able to learn more about the relationships and histories of North Slope communities. We found that there were many lineages shared between villages along the coast, suggesting that women traveled frequently between these communities. In fact, when we compared the genetic composition of all the communities in the North Slope, we found that they were all so closely related that they could be considered one single population. This fits well with what the Elders have told us in their stories and traditions about Iñupiat history.
Thus, we have learned a great deal about Iñupiat history from these results. But they only reflect the population history and movement of women. We are currently writing a paper on our results looking at genetic markers on the Y chromosomes from men in the North Slope. In this paper we will be able to discuss the population history of men, as well as how contact with outsiders in the 19
th century affected the Iñupiat peoples. We will write a summary of this paper as soon as it is finished, and in the meantime, we invite people to share their stories and thoughts on this research. |
warc | 201704 | Measurement of dissolved helium in ground water
To arrange for sampling of dissolved helium start with the sampling page.
There are many reasons to measure helium in ground water, but as it applies to ground-water dating, there are two important reasons:
Helium accumulation in ground water can be an indicator of ground water age (see for example: Andrews and Lee, 1979; Heaton, 1984; Torgersen and Clarke, 1985; Andrews, 1985; Stute et al., 1992; Solomon et al. 1996; Castro et al, 1998a,b; Castro et al, 2000; Busenberg and Plummer, 2000). If a local helium accumulation rate can be determined, it may be possible to estimate ages of waters that exceed 100 years to tens of thousands of years based on helium accumulation.Helium analyses can be used to screen samples collected for
3H/ 3He dating that may contain large excesses of terrigenic helium (helium of mantle and/or crustal origin), and ultimately cannot be dated. This problem occurs primarily in samples that are mixtures of old water and recent recharge. The 3H/ 3He method can be applied to date the young fraction only if the sample is not contaminated with a large excess of terrigenic helium from the old fraction (see for example Plummer et al, 2000). The relatively low-cost gas-chromatographic analysis of helium prior to submittal of samples for 3H/ 3He analysis can result in a significant cost savings.
For samples with high terrigenic helium, the
3He/ 4He ratio of the terrigenic helium must
be known for the sample within 1% or
better to permit reliable 3H/ 3He dating of
the young fraction. Water in equilibrium with air normally
contains about 4.6x10 -8 ccSTP/g water of helium.
Depending on the source, helium excesses
of even 50% over air-water equilibrium can
create large uncertainties in 3H/ 3He
dating, such as in areas where the old fraction contains mixed
mantle and crustal helium sources (Plummer et al, 2000). In
other cases, the excess helium may be primarily of radiogenic
origin (typically the 3He/ 4He ratio of
2x10 -8 can be assumed) and samples containing helium
excesses of even several hundred percent may be datable by the
3H/ 3He method.
Comparison of dissolved helium determined by mass spectrometry on samples collected in pinch-off copper tubes with helium determined by gas chromatography on water samples collected in septum bottles without headspace and analyzed at the Reston GW Dating Laboratory. Agreement of the GC measurements is generally within 20% of the mass spectrometric measurements.
Selected References
Andrews, J. N., The isotopic composition of radiogenic helium and its use to study groundwater movement in confined aquifers, Chem. Geol., 49, 339-351, 1985.
Andrews, J.N., and Lee, D.J., 1979, Inert gases in groundwater from the Bunter Sandstone of England as indicators of age and paleoclimatic trends. Jour. Hydrology, v. 41, p. 233-252.
Busenberg E., and Plummer, L.N., 2000, Dating young ground water with sulfur hexafluoride: Natural and anthropogenic sources of sulfur hexafluoride. Water Resources Research, v. 36(10), 3011-3030.
Castro, M.C., Stute, M., and Schlosser, P., 2000, Comparison of 4He ages and 14C ages in simple aquifer systems: implications for groundwater flow and chronologies. Applied Geochemistry, v. 15, p. 1137-1167.
Castro, M.C., Jambon, A., deMarsily, G., and Schlosser, P., 1998a, Noble gases as natural tracers of water circulation in the Paris Basin, 1. Measurements and discussion of their origin and mechanisms of vertical transport in the basin. Water Resour, Res., v. 34(10), p. 2443-2466.
Castro, M.C., Goblet, P., Ledous, E., Violette, S., and de Marsily, G., 1998b, Noble gases as natural tracers of water circulation in the Paris Basin, 2. Calibration of a groundwater flow model using noble gas isotope data. Water Resour, Res., v. 34(10), p. 2467-2483.
Heaton, T.H.E., 1984, Rates and sources of 4He accumulation in groundwater. Hydrological Sciences - Journal, v. 29, 29-47.
Plummer, L.N., Rupert, M.G., Busenberg, E., and Schlosser, P., 2000, Age of irrigation water in ground water from the Eastern Snake River Plain aquifer, south-central Idaho. Ground Water, 38(2), 264-283.
Solomon, D.K., A. Hunt, and R.J. Poreda. 1996. Source of radiogenic helium 4 in shallow aquifers: Implications for dating young groundwater. Water Resources Research 32, no. 6, 1805-1813.
Stute, M., Sonntag, C., Deak, J., and Schlosser, P., 1992, Helium in deep circulating groundwater in the Great Hungarian Plain: Flow dynamics and crustal and mantle helium fluxes. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, v. 56, p. 2051-2067.
Torgersen, T., and Clarke, W.B., 1985, Helium accumulation in
groundwater, I: An evaluation of sources and the continental flux
of crustal
4He in the Great Artesian Basin,
Australia. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, v. 49, p.
1211-1218. |
warc | 201704 | New Orleans is a hopping city full of good food, music, and rich culture. Located on the Mississippi River, this city is the birthplace of jazz and a melting pot of French, African, and American cultures.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans, striking a devastating blow to the livelihood of every resident. Nearly 80% of the city flooded, leaving a trail of destruction. Overnight, thousands of people became homeless and unemployed.
The nation rallied around relief efforts in the early days following the hurricane, but slowly national attention shifted further away from those whose lives were destroyed.
Residents of New Orleans feel discarded, and many struggle with loneliness and depression.
It takes far more than bricks and lumber to rebuild a devastated city. You can partner with those who are helping rebuild lives and restoring hope in New Orleans.
Ministry:
While in New Orleans, you will partner with two pastors who have made homeless and low income advocacy part of their daily routine the last 20 years. They will give you a firsthand look at the issues effecting homelessness in New Orleans. Ministry opportunities will include:
Homeless Feeding and Ministry: New Orleans has a high homeless population in different pockets of the city. You’ll have a chance to serve and engage with them through food servings and water distribution. This is a great way to hear people’s stories, learn from them, and offer encouragement when possible.
Rehabilitation Facility: Participants may also assist individuals in their daily responsibilities at a rehab center. Those who work and live at the center are recovering from a former addiction. You’ll assist either in facility projects (maintenance, painting, etc.) or alongside individuals at the thrift store in their daily job duties.
Katrina Relief: Even a decade after the hurricane, there are still areas of the city needing repair and people who are displaced, trying to start a new life. You might have the opportunity to help restore their homes while touching their lives.
Urban Plunge: This is a great chance to get to know the city and the different groups of people that are there. You’ll jump on the trolleys and head into the city. While on the trolley you’ll have chance to start conversations with people. Then you jump off and spend time in downtown NOLA, meeting people and learning their stories.
If you walk the streets of New Orleans with your prayer team, you may meet people who feel overwhelmed and abandoned. You’ll connect with these people’s pain as you listen to them share their stories.
Will you join those sharing the healing truth of God's love in a city seeking restoration?
Interested in reading more stories about what Adventures is doing in New Orleans? Click here to visit our blog and see the impact. |
warc | 201704 | I did not have enough cash to pay the laundry boy. I was frantically looking through every drawer in my house when my little girl said, “Don’t worry mom, I have money which you can use.” My face lit up suddenly, and I asked, “Where”? She said, “In my Barbie piggy house.” I asked, “How much do you have?” “Lots,”was her quick reply. “Tell me the exact count, I said impatiently “Five rupees.”
Though I was worried about my worthless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the innocence of my four-year-old daughter. On any other day, that amount may look meager, but now the scenario has completely changed.
Thanks to our Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, the notes of Rs 100, Rs 50, Rs 20 and Rs 10 have become more important now. Those coins which we earlier used to drop in our kids’ money bank have suddenly started playing an important role in the household budget. This whole episode of demonetization has taught me some important financial lessons that I almost forgot in the hustle and bustle of life.
Build a contingency plan
Having a contingency plan is the first step that you should take towards building a strong financial future. You may have often seen that people don’t plan for their liquidity requirements. Mainly, it happens because most of the investments are made without considering needs and in most of the cases, it is done in a sporadic manner.
It is pertinent that people build a contingency fund with an amount equivalent to your minimum six months’ expenses in investments that can easily be converted into cash in a day’s notice, and generate better returns as compared to a saving bank account. You can invest in liquid funds of mutual funds which offer dual benefits of liquidity and returns.
Learn to live within means
We all have curbed our expenses after demonetization to ensure that we are left with enough funds to meet daily needs. If this could be practiced in life on a daily basis and the savings could be channeled into good investment options, then achieving financial freedom would no longer be a dream anymore. Be happy with what you have and don’t indulge in extravagance, as you never know, another demonetization might occur in future!
Ready to face the life’s unpredictability
Nobody saw it coming or had any idea. The 8 pm announcement meant no way to make last minute transaction at jeweller’s shop. The punters who were betting thousands of crores on the USA election were caught unaware. Now when you go to the bank to deposit cash more than Rs 2.5 lakhs, the IT department will keep a record of your transactions.
While we know that life is unpredictable, what we don’t realize is that it may catch you unaware. Therefore, it is inevitable to have two insurance policies— term insurance and health insurance— to curtail the impact.
While a term insurance policy pays benefits to your family so that they don’t have to face any financial hardship after your death, a health insurance policy ensures that you have sufficient money to fight against hefty medical expenses. It is imperative to have a comprehensive health insurance for the entire family, which could help with services like uninterrupted medical facilities, cashless payments, etc.
In case you already have a health insurance and want to expand your coverage, you can go for a super top-up policy that offers extra coverage at nominal rates. In the past few years, there has been a rise in the medical cost. As a result, the current health cover may not prove sufficient. Super top-up policies cover medical expenses when they cross the threshold limit. Also, there is no compulsion to get the policy only from the one you have purchased the health insurance policy. You can buy a super top-up policy, even if you don’t have any mediclaim.
Emphasis on tax planning, never on tax evasion
As said by Sojourner Truth, an African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist, “Truth is powerful, and it prevails”, so no matter how much you try to evade, the truth finally comes up. A bold move by Modi to curb the shadow economy sets off a knee-jerk reaction among people who have black money in abundance.
It is imperative to understand that as the citizen of India, it is our duty to pay taxes on time. Once we pay our taxes, we are free to invest the remaining amount in instruments which would give us the high-risk adjusted returns. It is necessary to plan your taxes well and invest the post-tax income into instruments which help achieve your financial goals over the period of time. In any circumstances, never try to evade taxes. After all, it pays well if you follow the rules.
Small is big
In the current situation, a person with a Rs 100 note is much richer than a person with Rs 500 or Rs 1000 notes. When it comes to investing, we always procrastinate things, citing reasons like ‘I don’t have sufficient income, or I will start savings from the next month, etc.’. However, what we often tend to neglect is that the time is an essence and by delaying our investment plans, we are ultimately affecting the corpus. You should start investing as soon as you are employed, even with a small amount, without straining your finances and putting the burden on your responsibilities. More importantly, you will be able to gain from the power of compounding.
*Retirement age is computed as 50 years and rate of returns like 8%
Diversify your investment portfolio
Every portfolio should have a good mix of physical and financial assets to tide over unforeseen circumstances and yield good returns. However, most of the people invest heavily in physical assets like real estate which do not offer immediate liquidity. Thus, it could turn out to be a costly decision, especially in the situation of financial scarcity.
No investment is risk-free; only a proper diversification can mitigate the risks of market cycles. Even Warren Buffett, an American business investor, warned against putting all eggs in one basket. If one part of your portfolio is doing better than the other, the natural tendency is to load up on the part giving best results and forsake other investments. But it means an under-diversified and volatile portfolio.
Also, proper diversification doesn’t only mean mutual funds or stocks, but a proper allocation among equity, fixed assets, debts, and other investments. It also includes making diversification within the investment sections. For instance, your stocks should have a proper mix of equities and debts to safeguard your investment from the market downturns.
Conclusion
Narendra Modi’s surgical attack on black money caught everyone by surprise. It is a strategy that will go down the annals of history. The government believes that pulling out Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes from the market will weed out a lot of black money from the market; while those aligned with the opposition, including Congress and AAP, believe that it is a gimmick and is adversely affecting the poor section of the society. Those who tread the middle path want to wait to see the effects.
Unforeseen financial events could either be personal or regulatory in nature. It is necessary that one should be ready for all situations through effective finance planning. Whether the demonetization has achieved its goals or not, only time will tell. But one thing that you need to do for sure, ‘Dig out those coins from your handbags,’ as every penny is counted! |
warc | 201704 | Campaign shames breast-feeding moms who eat doughnuts and burgers Most mothers wouldn't voluntarily feed their babies junk food—or allow them to sip on sugary beverages. But if a woman chows down on unhealthy foods while pregnant or nursing, is that what she may be doing?
That's the gist of a provocative advertising campaign for the Pediatric Society of Rio Grande. The ads, which were created for the public health organization by Brazilian agency Paim, each depict a baby suckling on an unhealthy food instead of a breast.
One ad features a baby nursing on a burger, the second has an baby feeding on a doughnut, and the third has an infant nursing from a cup of soda. "Your child is what you eat," reads the campaign's tagline in large cursive letters across the woman's chest. "Your habits in the first thousand days of gestation can prevent your child from developing serious diseases," it continues. The society did not respond to TakePart's request for comment.
Diana West, a spokesperson for La Leche League International, the organization that promotes breast-feeding, expressed surprise and dismay over the ad's message. "It's absolutely not true that what you eat equals what the milk is," said West. "The underlying premise is just completely wrong and not supported by any science. It's just kind of shocking that the medical community would put this out."
Women are commonly advised to skip liquor, cigarettes, and double espresso shots while pregnant or nursing—alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine all cross the placenta and pass into breast milk. Recent studies have suggested that moms who indulge in fast food or processed crap while pregnant or breast-feeding might be elevating the risk of their children being obese later in life. Another study from 2009 found that eating junk food while breastfeeding cancels out its asthma-prevention benefits.
But while pregnant women are encouraged to eat a well-balanced diet in order to prevent low birth weight and birth defects—and breast-feeding is known to have numerous positive benefits for babies—West said that the body's milk production is designed to be relatively consistent so that the nutrients in whatever food a mother consumes go first into the milk. If there is any nutritional deficit, then it'll be experienced by the mother. "She's the one that gets robbed, not the milk," said West.
Indeed, a 1996 study published by Georgetown University Medical Center confirmed the findings of more than a dozen other previous studies. "Even when a mother's own supply of nutrients and energy is limited, she still is able to produce breast milk of sufficient quantity and quality to support the growth and health of her infant," the Georgetown researchers wrote.
RELATED: Women Are Going Wild for Target's Pro-Breast-Feeding Stance
The ad campaign comes as Brazil is battling a burgeoning obesity problem. In 2014, 54 percent of men and 48 percent of women in the South American country were overweight. Last fall health officials there revealed new dietary guidelines and a public education campaign designed to inform the public about the dangers of eating too many processed foods.
But if the ad campaign is successful in Brazil, it could end up producing an unwelcome result. "If you eat junk food, yes, it affects obesity. But breast-fed babies overall have considerably lower rates of obesity than formula fed babies." said West. "Doing something that drives people toward formula, epidemiologically they're going to see higher obesity rates in the population."
Another breastfeeding controversy arose last week after female soldiers posted this photo on their Facebook page. Watch the video below for more: |
warc | 201704 | July/August 2009
Building a Road Map E55 Navigates Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
In 2008, pharmaceutical sales in the United States totaled approximately $189 billion while global sales reached more than $288 billion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved close to 100 new drug applications, and spending on pharmaceutical research and development was an estimated $65.2 billion.
When it comes to pharmaceutical manufacturing, a global industry whose products can literally mean the difference between life and death, quality and efficiency are major concerns. ASTM International Committee E55 on Manufacture of Pharmaceutical Products is working to help improve on the current level of quality and efficiency by introducing standards for the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.
“We’re creating a road map of standards, a foundation that companies can build upon,” says David Radspinner, chair of Subcommittee E55.03 on General Pharmaceutical Standards and head of marketing, cell culture and bioprocessing business, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Logan, Utah. “Having international standards in manufacturing will help save money, simplify jobs, gain consistency and allow for more predictability during audits,” he says.
By encouraging consistency, simplicity and agreement, E55 standards will help streamline the pharmaceutical manufacturing process and ensure the quality of potentially lifesaving products. The work begins with a trio of standards published by the committee:
It’s PAT
The E55 standards are an expansion of the Process Analytical Technology Initiative, a program developed by the FDA to overhaul pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.
“The word analytical in PAT is broadly used to include chemical, physical, microbiological, mathematical and risk analysis conducted in an integrated manner,” says Chris Watts, Ph.D, team leader, standards and technology, Office of Pharmaceutical Science, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA, Silver Spring, Md. “Simply put, PAT is based on the idea that quality cannot be tested into a product — it should be built in, included by design. Once the PAT guidance was published we recognized the need for more specific recommendations for companies wanting to implement the guidelines. That’s where ASTM and E55 entered the picture.”
The Standards
E55’s newest standard, E2476, has a clear purpose: to identify and eliminate risk at the earliest point of the manufacturing process, during its initial design. “This is a very timely standard,” says Duncan Low, Ph.D, chair, Subcommittee E55.01 on PAT System Management and scientific executive director, Amgen, Thousand Oaks, Calif. “It’s going to be very helpful for companies who are incorporating risk management into their quality by design efforts.”
Like E2476, E2500 focuses on risk. In fact, E2500 is being heralded as representing a “new paradigm” in standards. “The paradigm shift is in the risk-based approach to equipment specification,” says Radspinner. “In the ‘classic’ approach, each piece of equipment is viewed the same way, using a standard protocol relating to that piece of equipment with limited consideration for the end product. But, the risk-based approach says that if my equipment is being used in a specific way, then I should qualify my equipment based on that specific use and address the risks to my process based on that specific use.”
“E2500 has proven to be a very successful and significant standard,” says Bruce Davis, principal consultant, Bruce Davis Global Consulting, Surrey, United Kingdom, and member, board of directors, International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering. “It puts in place science and risk-based principles supported by good engineering practices. It clarifies what is essential to verify to ensure product quality.”
The third standard, E2503, specifically relates to the mechanical testing equipment used by tablet manufacturers. Are my tablets a consistent dosage? How quickly and completely do they dissolve? How do changes in my process affect these and other properties? How do I accurately test my product to get these answers? These are the types of questions addressed by E2503.
“During testing, there are many variables to consider — equipment setup, test methods, etc. — and every product will have a different sensitivity to those variables,” says Lucinda Buhse, Ph.D., director, Division of Pharmaceutical Analysis, FDA, St. Louis, Mo. “Identifying and minimizing the variables caused by equipment and test methods will help increase confidence that the resulting data is an accurate picture of the product’s properties and not a function of the testing process or equipment.”
As an added benefit, following this standard should also lead to reduced costs, notes Buhse. More accurate test results mean less repeat testing, fewer “good” batches being discarded because of inaccurate test data and fewer “bad” batches slipping through quality control.
While each standard is a separate entity, they work well in combination, notes Radspinner. “If I wanted to produce a product in tablet form, I would start by using E2476 to design a manufacturing process that addressed questions such as ‘What are the critical attributes of my product? What is its intended use? How do I design my process to reduce risk?’” he says. “Next I would refer to E2500 to determine exactly what equipment I needed and how I should set up and test that equipment so that my end product would have all of the qualities I wanted. Finally, when my tablet was ready I would use E2503 to make sure my testing process was sound so that when I tested my product I could be confident that the data was as accurate as possible.”
Changing The Industry
Both Radspinner and Low have seen a lot of interest in the E55 standards.
“It’s evident both in the number of people requesting copies of the standard, and in the number of people referring to them during conferences, presentations, meetings, etc.,” says Radspinner.
“The interest from my European colleagues has been high, and representatives from the EMEA, the European version of the FDA, have attended E55 meetings,” remarks Low.
Both also agree that even with such high interest it will be some time before the full effect of these standards is realized.
“Although there are some large companies using the standards as a base for their own operating procedures, it’s still too early to say that there have been definite improvements in pharmaceutical manufacturing,” Low says. “Since the development of a pharmaceutical product takes 10 to 15 years, the result of changes in process may not be quick to reveal themselves. However, there’s no question that E55’s standards will facilitate the adoption of changes, which in turn will allow for better quality and manufacturing efficiency.”
Davis agrees, “It’s not easy to provide quantitative evidence, but the standards certainly appear to have helped provide more clarity and hence potentially more efficiency for the industry.”
Low believes that the use of standards will also open the door for additional benefits, such as the development of new manufacturing technologies. “The pharmaceutical industry has been quick to embrace new ways to develop and create drugs, but its ability to develop more modern manufacturing technology has lagged behind by comparison,” he says. “I think E55’s work will encourage the implementation of newer technologies which in turn will lead to even greater efficiency.”
Another potential benefit should be increased confidence in decision making, notes Radspinner. “If companies follow these standards they’ll have the added benefit of knowing that should they ever need to defend their actions to a regulatory body, those actions are backed by an accepted international standard.”
In Development
“This is just the beginning for E55 standards,” says Davis. “There are a number of anticipated standards still in the development stage.”
One such standard in progress is WK5935, Practice for Process Understanding Related to Pharmaceutical Manufacture and Control. This standard will build on PAT protocols and encourage a holistic approach to process understanding. “Why do things happen, or not happen in a process?” says Radspinner. “When completed, this standard will challenge companies to examine the concepts behind their processes and force them to look beyond basic approaches to product development. That’s not to say that companies don’t understand their processes, but this will provide a standardized way for them to consider what they need to know about their process and how they might go about gathering that information.”
Traditionally, pharmaceutical products have been produced in batches, but switching to continuous processing should lead to greater efficiency in the manufacturing process, according to Low. “In principle it should work,” he says, “but in practice there are issues around how it might be implemented.”
WK9192, Guide for the Application of Continuous Processing Technology to the Manufacture of Pharmaceutical Products, will attempt to address those issues by helping companies identify and neutralize any potential problems with the transition to continuous processing without adversely affecting their end product.
For more information on Committee E55 and its standards activities, visit the ASTM Web site at www.astm.org/COMMITTEE/E55.htm, or contact Pat Picariello, director of developmental operations, ASTM International (phone: 610-832-9720). |
warc | 201704 | Ethics in Business Darba fragments Aizvērt
Ethics and Human Resources Ethics commonly refer to the rules or principles that define right and wrong conduct. In the United States, many believe we are currently suffering from an ethics crisis (Ricklets, Robbins & Coulter, 1996). Behaviors that were once thought unacceptable -- lying, cheating, misrepresenting, and covering up mistakes -- have become in many people's eyes acceptable or necessary practices. Managers profit from illegal use of insider stock information and members of Congress write hundreds of bad checks. …
Ethics in Business Structure, Conduct, and Performance Approach of the Public Transportation Industry Tribal Body Techniques
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https://www.atlants.lv/w/428020 |
warc | 201704 | Advice for Parents of Young Autistic Children (2012, Revised) - Part 1 | Jump to Part 2
By James B. Adams, Ph.D., Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D., Autism Research Institute, San Diego, California Temple Grandin, Ph.D., Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., Autism Research Institute, San Diego, California
Jane Johnson, Autism Research Institute, San Diego, California
Authors’ Note:
James B. Adams, Ph.D., is the father of a daughter with autism, and has served for twelve years as the President of the Greater Phoenix Chapter of the Autism Society of America. He is also a materials engineering professor at Arizona State University, where much of his research is focused on finding the biomedical causes of autism and effective treatments for it. In 2013 he released a Summary of Dietary, Nutritional, and Medical Treatments for Autism based on over 150 published research studies. His website is http://autism.asu.edu
Stephen M. Edelson has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, and has worked in the field of autism for over 30 years. He is the director of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego, CA. ARI’s main website is: http://autism.com. Dr. Edelson is on the Autism Society of America’s Professional Advisory Board. He has conducted research in many areas of autism including biomedical, sensory, cognitive, and behavioral.
Temple Grandin, Ph.D. is associate full professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and a person with autism. She is the author of several books, including Emergence: Labeled Autistic, Thinking in Pictures, The Way I See It, and Different – Not Less. She is also a leading designer of livestock handling facilities. Half of the cattle in North America are handled in facilities she has designed. She is a popular speaker at colleges and autism conferences.
Bernard Rimland, Ph.D. passed away in November, 2006. He founded the Autism Research Institute (ARI) in San Diego in 1967, and served as its director until 2006. He also founded the Autism Society of America in 1965, and served as an honorary board member until 2006. Dr. Rimland was the author of the prize-winning book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, which is credited with debunking the “mother-blaming theories of autism prevalent in the 20th century. He was also the father of an autistic adult. He contributed significantly to two earlier versions of this paper.
Jane Johnson is on the Board of Directors of ARI and the Johnson Center for Child Health and Development. She is the co-author of Dr. Bryan Jepson's "Changing the Course of Autism; A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians," and the co-editor of "Families of Adults With Autism; Stories and Advice for the Next Generation" and "Siblings: The Autism Spectrum Through our Eyes."
Introduction
This paper is geared toward parents of newly diagnosed autistic children and parents of young autistic children who are not acquainted with many of the basic issues of autism. Our discussion is based on a large body of scientific research. Because of limited time and space, detailed explanations and references are not included.
Receiving a diagnosis of autism can be devastating to some parents, but for others it can be a relief to have a label for their child’s symptoms. Some parents can be overwhelmed by fear and grief for the loss of the future they had hoped for for their child, and joining parent support groups and talking to other parents may help. However, these strong emotions also motivate parents to find effective help for their children. The diagnosis is important because it can open the doors to many services, and help parents learn about treatments that have benefited similar children.
The most important point we want to make is that autistic individuals have the potential to grow and improve. Contrary to what you may hear from out-of-touch professionals or read in old books, autism is treatable. It is important to find effective services, treatments, and education for autistic children as soon as possible. The earlier these children receive appropriate treatment, the better their prognosis (though it’s never too late to improve overall quality of life). Their progress through life may be slower than others, but they can still live happy and productive lives with appropriate support.
What Is Autism?
Autism is a developmental disability that typically involves delays and impairment in social skills, language, and behavior. Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it affects people differently. Some children may have speech, whereas others may have little or no speech. Less severe cases might fit the DSM-IV criteria for Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or Asperger’s Syndrome (these children typically have normal speech, but they have many “autistic” social and behavioral problems).
Autism literally means “aloneness,” or living in one’s own world. In severe cases, young children may not interact with others, or treat people as objects. In milder cases it involves difficulty understanding and relating to others, and difficulty understanding other people’s perspectives and emotions.
Left untreated, many autistic children will not develop effective social skills and may not learn to talk or behave appropriately. Very few individuals recover completely from autism without any intervention. The good news is that there are a wide variety of treatment options which can be very helpful. Some treatments may lead to great improvement, whereas other treatments may have little or no effect. No treatment helps everyone. A variety of effective treatment options will be discussed below.
It is important to understand that autism is a label for people who have a certain set of symptoms (impairments in social skills, language, and behavior). The label of autism does not explain the cause of autism, and it is likely that multiple factors can contribute to the symptoms of autism.
What is the difference between Asperger’s Syndrome and Autism?
Asperger syndrome is usually considered a subtype of high-functioning autism. Most of the individuals with Asperger syndrome are described as “social but awkward.” That is, they want to have friends, but they do not have the social skills to easily begin and/or maintain a friendship. While high-functioning autistic individuals may also be “social but awkward,” they are typically less interested in having friends. In addition, high-functioning autistic individuals are often delayed in developing speech/language. Those with Asperger syndrome tend not to have speech/language delays, but their speech is usually described as peculiar, such as being stilted and perseverating on unusual topics. Diagnosis
Possible symptoms of autism may be observed by a parent, pediatrician, or teacher, and screening tests such as the M-CHAT can help determine if a child is at risk of having autism. However, a formal diagnosis of autism requires an evaluation by an experienced psychiatrist, psychologist, neurologist, or developmental pediatrician (a pediatrician who specializes in developmental disorders). Some individuals are easy to diagnose, but in milder cases or cases with other co-occurring symptoms it can be difficult to obtain a diagnosis. Some children are initially misdiagnosed with other disorders, such as speech delay or ADHD. A clinician should base their diagnosis on both a personal interaction with the child and a discussion with the parents of their behavior in other settings.
Two common misconceptions are that if a child can talk or is affectionate then they cannot have autism. That is not true. Some people with autism or Asperger’s have normal language, and many are affectionate to friends and family. However, the common core of all types of autism spectrum disorders are delays or impairments in social understanding and social relationships.
Onset of Autism: Early Onset vs. Regression
Autism develops sometime during pregnancy and the first three years of life. Some parents report that their child seemed different at birth. These children are referred to as having early-onset autism. Other parents report that their child seemed to develop normally and then had a major regression resulting in autism, usually around 12-24 months. These children are referred to as having late-onset or regressive autism. Some researchers argue that the regression is not real or the autism was simply unnoticed by the child’s parents. However, many parents report that their children were completely normal (e.g., capable of speech, appropriate behavior, and social interaction) until sometime between 1 and 2 years of age.
A study published in 2003, conducted by the first author, compared 53 autistic children with 48 typical peers. The parents of the early-onset autism group reported a significant delay in reaching developmental milestones, including age of crawling (2 month delay), sitting up (2 month delay), walking (4-5 month delay), and talking (11 month delay or more). Thus, there appeared to be a delay in gross motor skills as well as of talking, so many children with autism also need physical therapy. In contrast, the late-onset autism group reached developmental milestones at the same time as typical children.
Several brain autopsy studies have been interpreted as suggesting that brain damage occurred sometime during the first trimester of pregnancy, but many of these studies involved individuals who were born prior to 1990. Thus, these findings may not apply to what appears to be the new population of people with regressive autism.
Causes of Autism
Autism appears to be due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, but it is generally unclear which genetic and which environmental factors are important. About 5-10% of autism cases involve a single severe genetic defect or disorder, such as Fragile X or tuberous sclerosis, and many of those individuals develop the symptoms of autism. However, 90-95% of cases do not involve a single severe defect, but instead appear to involve a complex set of many genetic variations and environmental factors.
The largest recent study (Hallmayer 2011) of 192 twin pairs in California found that when one identical twin has autism, the other co-twin often has autism (50-78% chance). However, siblings can also be normal or even exceptional. The Hallmayer study found that the co-occurrence of autism in fraternal twins was much lower, about 21%-36%. Based on those results, the researchers estimated that genetics accounts for about 38% of autism, and that environmental factors account for about 58%. Another interpretation is that certain genetic variations result in greater vulnerability to certain environmental factors, but it is generally unclear which genetic factors and which environmental factors are important.
If parents have a child with autism, there is roughly a 19% chance that their future children will also develop autism. The siblings of a child with autism are also at much greater risk of speech impairments and cognitive disabilities, which sometimes go undetected. Siblings should be evaluated for possible speech delays, developmental delays, and learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, which occur in about 25% of siblings.
There is no general consensus on which environmental factors increase the risk of autism. Since the word “autism” is only a label for people who have a certain set of symptoms, there are likely to be a number of factors that could cause those symptoms. A few of the suspected environmental causes for which there is some scientific evidence include: food allergies, pesticides, heavy metal toxicity, excessive use of oral antibiotics, deficiencies in essential nutrients, prenatal ultrasound, and many more.
One study found that about 12% of mothers of children with autism have antibodies to fetal brain tissue, and those antibodies have been shown to disrupt normal development in animals. Many children with autism have abnormalities in their immune system, and these abnormalities likely contribute to their symptoms. About 70% of the immune system is based in the gut, and children with autism often also have major gut problems.
One study found that about 40% of mothers of children with autism have abnormalities in both their methylation capacity (turns proteins on/off) and their ability to manufacture glutathione (important antioxidant and defense against toxic metals). Those problems are treatable with folinic acid (a special form of folic acid) and vitamin B12, and may reduce the risk of having a child with autism. These problems are also very common in children with autism, and treatment with folinic acid and vitamin B12 has been shown to improve them.
Prevalence of Autism
There has been a rapid increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism. In the 1970’s the incidence of autism was 2-3 per 10,000. Today, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the estimated prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in the U.S. is 1 in 88 children.
We do not know why there has been a dramatic increase in autism over the past 25 years, but there are several reasonable hypotheses. Since there is more than one cause of autism, there may be more than one reason for the increase. A small portion of the increase of autism may be due to improved diagnosis and awareness, but a report from California (King 2009) reveals that this only explains 25% of the increase. The major reason for the increase is certainly due to environmental factors, not genetics, since there is no such thing as a ‘genetic epidemic.’ Some possible environmental factors were discussed in the previous section, and an increased occurrence of one or several of those factors probably accounts for the rapid increase in autism
Common Co-Occurring Conditions in Autism
Mental Retardation: The fraction of people with autism who also meet criteria for mental retardation has been reported as anywhere from 25% to 70%, a wide variation illustrating the difficulty of assessing intelligence when language delays are present. Parents should request non-verbal intelligence tests that do not require language skills, such as the Test for Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI). Regardless of the result, realize that autistic children will develop more skills as they grow older, and that appropriate therapies and education can help them reach their full potential. Seizures: It is estimated that 25% of autistic individuals eventually develop seizures, some in early childhood and others as they go through puberty (changes in hormone levels may trigger seizures). These seizures can range from mild (e.g., gazing into space for a few seconds) to severe, grand mal seizures.
Most people with autism have subclinical seizures which are not easily noticeable but can significantly affect mental function. A short one- or two-hour EEG may not be able to detect any abnormal activity, so a 24-hour EEG may be necessary. Although drugs can be used to reduce seizure activity, the child’s health must be checked regularly because these drugs can be harmful.
A recent large survey of treatment effectiveness (Frye and Adams, 2011) found that standard anti-seizure medications do control seizures but often worsen other symptoms, some more so than others. That study also found that special diets (ketogenic diet, modified Atkin’s diet, and a gluten-free, casein-free diet) were beneficial in controlling seizures and actually improved, not worsened, other symptoms.
There is much evidence that certain nutritional supplements, especially vitamin B6 and dimethylglycine (DMG), can provide a safer and more effective alterative to drugs, for many individuals.
Chronic Constipation and/or Diarrhea: A large-scale survey of over 1,000 individuals on the autism spectrum found that 45% had gastrointestinal problems; and the older the individual, the more likely they had these problems. Note: Diarrhea may actually be due to constipation—i.e., only liquid is able to leak past a large stool mass in the intestine. Manual probing often fails to find an impaction. An abdominal x-ray is a simple method to check for hidden constipation, but needs careful interpretation. Children with significant gastrointestinal problems should see a pediatric gastroenterologist. Unfortunately, gastrointestinal problems are often ignored and untreated due to autism, but it is important for parents to persevere and seek medical help. .
Sleep Problems: Many with autism have sleep problems. Night waking may be due to reflux of stomach acid into the esophagus, often caused by food intolerances. Placing bricks under the mattress at the head of the bed may help keep stomach acid from rising and provide better sleep; possible dietary issues should be discussed with a knowledgeable professional. Many rigorous studies have shown that melatonin is often useful in helping autistic individuals fall asleep. Other popular interventions include tryptophan or 5-HTP (nutrients which the body converts to melatonin). Implementing a regular bedtime routine (taking a bath, brushing teeth, reading a book) can help induce sleep. Vigorous exercise will help a child sleep, and other sleep aids include a weighted blanket or tight fitting mummy-type sleeping bag. Pica: 30% of children with autism have moderate to severe pica. Pica refers to eating non-food items such as paint, sand, dirt, paper, etc. Pica can expose the child to heavy metal poisoning, especially if there is lead in the paint or in the soil. Discuss zinc supplementation with your clinician. Low Muscle Tone: A study conducted by the first author found that 30% of autistic children have moderate to severe loss of muscle tone, and this can limit their gross and fine motor skills. That study found that these children tend to have low potassium levels. Increased consumption of fruit and vegetables (good sources of potassium) may be helpful. Occupational and physical therapy, implemented on a daily basis, can help. Sensory Sensitivities: Many autistic children have unusual sensitivities to sounds, sights, touch, taste, and smells. High-pitched intermittent sounds, such as fire alarms or school bells, may be painful to autistic children. Scratchy fabrics may also be intolerable, and some children have visual sensitivities. They are troubled by the flickering of fluorescent lights. If the child often has tantrums in large supermarkets, it is possible that he/she has severe sensory oversensitivity. Sensory sensitivities are highly variable in autism, from mild to severe. Even though a pure tone hearing test may imply normal hearing, the child may have difficulty hearing auditory details and hard consonant sounds.
Some children have very high pain thresholds (i.e., they are insensitive to pain), whereas others have very low pain thresholds. Interventions designed to help normalize their senses, such as sensory integration, Auditory Integration Training (AIT), and Irlen lenses, are discussed later in this paper.
Medical Testing and Treatments
Routine medical tests are usually performed by traditional pediatricians, but these exams rarely reveal underlying medical problems that are often associated with autism, such as gastrointestinal problems, nutritional and metabolic deficiencies, toxic metal burden, and immune dysfunction. Unfortunately, many physicians believe, though incorrectly, that the only useful medical treatments are psychiatric medications to reduce seizures and behavioral problems.
Genetic testing for Fragile X syndrome can help identify one possible cause, and this testing is typically recommended when there is mental retardation in the family history.
The Autism Research Institute supports an integrative medical approach to treating individuals on the autism spectrum. This approaches often includes:
Nutritional supplements, including certain vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids Special diets totally free of gluten (from wheat, barley, rye, and possibly oats), free of dairy (milk, ice-cream, yogurt, etc.), and free of soy. Testing for hidden food allergies, and avoidance of allergenic foods Treatment of intestinal bacterial/yeast overgrowth Detoxification Psychiatric Medications
The various topics covered in this overview paper for parents of young autistic children represent, for the most part, a consensus of the views, based on research and personal experience, of all four authors. However, the authors differ in their opinions on the role psychoactive drugs should play. We will present you with the conflicting opinions, so you can decide for yourself.
Grandin has a relatively accepting position on the use of psychiatric medications in autistic children. She feels that it is worthwhile to consider drugs as a viable and useful treatment. Rimland and Edelson, on the other hand, are strongly opposed to the use of drugs except as a possible last resort, etc. – They feel the risks are great and consistently outweigh the benefits. Adams has an intermediate view.
Grandin
There are no psychiatric medications for “autism,” but there are many psychiatric medications used for treating specific symptoms often found in autism, such as aggression, self-injury, anxiety, depression, obsessive/compulsive disorders, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These medications generally function by altering the level of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in the brain. There is no medical test to determine if a particular medication is called for; the decision is based on the psychiatrist’s evaluation of the patient’s symptoms. This is a “trial and error” approach, as dosages need to be adjusted differently for each person, and one medication may be ineffective or have negative effects while others are helpful.
For some classes of drugs the doses which are successful for reducing symptoms, such as aggression or anxiety, are much lower for those with autism than for normal people. For the SSRI drugs, such as Prozac (Fluoxetine), Zoloft (Sertraline), and other antidepressants, the best dose may be only one-third of the normal starting dose. Too high a dose may cause agitation or insomnia. If agitation occurs, the dose must be lowered. The low-dose principle also applies to all drugs in the atypical or third generation antipsychotic drug class, such as Risperdal (Risperidone). The effective dose will vary greatly between individuals. Start low and use the lowest effective dose. Other classes of drug, such as anticonvulsants, will usually require the same doses that are effective in normal individuals.
Antidepressant drugs such as Prozac or Lexapro often work best for anxiety and panic attacks. Antidepressants stopped my constant panic attacks and my colitis cleared up and stopped. I have been taking a low dose of desipramine, an old tricyclic, for over 30 years. The medication stopped debilitating panic attacks. The atypical antipsychotics have much more serious side effects than antidepressants. Medications such as Risperdal and Abilitfy should be reserved for severe aggression problems in older children and adults. They should not be given to young children as sleep aids or to reduce hyperactivity. The side effects of the atypical antipsychotic class of drugs are high weight gain, diabetes, and tardive dyskinesia (movement disorder). For more information consult the 2nd edition of my book, “The Way I See It.”
Psychiatric medications are widely used to treat the symptoms of autism, and they can be beneficial to many older children and adults. However, there are concerns over their use. There is relatively little research on their use for children with autism. There are almost no studies on the long-term effects of their use, especially for the newer medications, and there is a concern that their long-term use in children may affect their development. They treat the symptoms, but not the underlying medical causes of autism. One must balance risk versus benefit. A drug should have an obvious positive effect to make it work the risk. In order to observe the effect of a drug, do not start a drug at the same time as you start some other treatment. There are far too many powerful drugs given to young children for trivial reasons. In young children, special diets, vitamins, and fish oil supplements should be tried first.
Rimland and Edelson
ARI has, for many years, encouraged research on those medical interventions that treat the underlying problems rather than on therapies that simply mask or inhibit the resulting symptoms. An integrated medical approach is ideal since it considers overall function of the whole body, not just the brain. This approach often involves restricted diets and nutritional supplements as well as the reduction of accumulated toxins, such as pesticides and heavy metals. In contrast, ‘standard practice’ offered by traditional pediatricians, child psychiatrists, and child neurologists often relies on prescription drugs which can have rather severe side-effects.
The Autism Research Institute (ARI) has collected data from many thousands of parents about their experiences with psychiatric medications and other treatments. In general, parents report that the medications are about equally likely to cause problems or to help, with some being worse than others. This is in contrast to other treatments for which ARI has collected data, such as nutritional supplements, special diets, and detoxification, which were more likely to help and very rarely caused problems. The results of this ongoing collection of parent survey data is available at www.autism.com
Here are the parent ratings from March 2009 of the three most often used drugs and the three most often used nutrients:
Three most used drugs
Got Worse
No Effect
Got Better
Better:Worse
No. of cases
Ritalin
45%
26%
29%
0.6:1
4256
Benedryl
24%
50%
26%
1.1:1
3230
Risperidal
21%
26%
54%
2.6:1
1216
Three most used vitamins
Got Worse
No Effect
Got Better
Better:Worse
No. of cases
Vit. B6 & Mag.
4%
46%
49%
11:1
7256
DMG
8%
50%
42%
5.3:1
6363
Vit. C
2%
52%
46%
20:1
3077
Note: These data pertain only to behavioral effects. The drugs, but not the vitamins, often cause significant physical problems.
We feel that psychoactive drugs should not be used at all on your children, and should be used only as a last resort, not as an initial treatment, on autistic teenagers and adults. ARI has collected information from parents of autistic children on their evaluation of various treatments, including drugs, since 1967.
Some adolescents and adults are helped by anti-psychotic drugs, such as Risperdal, or anti-depressants, such as Tofranil, but the risk of side effects is significant. When psychoactive drugs are used with autistic teenagers or adults, it is often found that a very low dose, perhaps one-fourth or one-fifth of the usual dosage, is sufficient.
Adams
Psychiatric medications are not well-tested in young children with autism, especially for long-term use, and often have significant side-effects. An integrated medical approach (nutritional support, diet changes, detoxification) is much safer and addresses core problems rather than symptoms. Whereas psychiatric medications generally function by altering neurotransmitter levels/function, nutritional supplementation with vitamins, minerals, and amino acids allows the body to make its own. So, I think an integrated medical approach should be tried first, especially in young children, because it generally has far fewer side-effects, and addresses the underlying core problems. However, there are some children and adults who have benefited from psychiatric medications, so they are reasonable to consider after an integrated medical approach has been tried. In young children, they should be used only very cautiously, and beginning with low doses.
Speech Development
One of the most common questions parents ask is: Will my child develop speech?
An analysis of ARI’s data involving 30,145 cases indicated that 9% never develop speech. Of those who develop speech, 43% begin to talk by the end of their first year, 35% begin to talk sometime between their first and second year, and 22% begin to talk in their third year and after. A smaller survey conducted by the first author found that only 12% were totally non-verbal by age 5. So, with appropriate interventions, there is reason to hope that children with autism can learn to talk, at least to some extent, and non-verbal older children and adults can sometimes learn to talk or communicate in other ways.
There are several ways to help autistic children learn to talk, including:
Teaching speech with sign language; it is easy for parents to learn a few simple signs and use them when talking to their child. This is referred to as ‘simultaneous communication’ or ‘signed speech.’ Research suggests that the use of sign language increases the chance of children learning spoken language. Teaching with the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), which involves pointing to a set of pictures or symbols on a board. As with sign language, it can also be effective in teaching speech. Applied Behavior Analysis: described in more detail later Encouraging a child to sing with a videotape or audiotape Vestibular stimulation, such as swinging on a swing, while teaching speech Several nutritional/medical approaches have been associated with dramatic improvements in speech production, including dimethylglycine (DMG), vitamin B6 with magnesium, and the gluten-/casein-free diet. (To be discussed further below.) Use of other augmentative communication devices, such as picture boards coupled with sound, or keyboards for typing. Educational/Behavioral Approaches
Educational/behavioral therapies are often effective in children with autism, with Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) usually being the most effective—ABA has significantly more published scientific support than any other form of educational therapy. These methods can be used together with dietary and medical interventions, as together they offer the best chance for improvement.
Parents, siblings, and friends may play an important role in assisting the development of children with autism. Typical pre-school children learn primarily by play, and the importance of play in teaching language and social skills cannot be overemphasized. Ideally, many of the techniques used in ABA, sensory integration, and other therapies can be extended throughout the day by family and friends.
Applied Behavior Analysis: Many different behavioral interventions have been developed for children with autism, and they mostly fall under the category of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). This approach generally involves therapists who work intensely, one-on-one with a child for 20 to 40 hours/week. Children are taught skills in a simple step-by-step manner, such as learning colors one at a time. The sessions usually begin with formal, structured drills, such as learning to point to a color when its name is given; then, after some time, there is a shift towards generalizing skills to other situations and natural environments.
A study published by Dr. Ivar Lovaas at UCLA in 1987 involved two years of intensive, 40-hour/week behavioral intervention by trained graduate students working with 19 young autistic children ranging from 35 to 41 months of age. Almost half of the children improved so much that they were indistinguishable from typical children, and these children went on to lead fairly normal lives. Of the other half, most had significant improvements, but a few did not improve much.
Today, ABA programs are widely accepted, and the American Medical Association and the US Surgeon General recommend ABA therapy for children with autism. ABA programs are most effective when started early (before age 5 years), but they can also be helpful to older children. They are especially effective in teaching non-verbal children how to talk.
There is general agreement that:
behavioral interventions involving one-on-one interactions are usually beneficial, sometimes with very positive results the interventions are most beneficial with the youngest children, but older children can benefit the interventions should involve a substantial amount of time each week, between 20-40 hours depending on whether the child is in school the program should include as much prompting as necessary to achieve a high level of success, with a gradual fading of prompts the program should include properly trained therapists and ongoing supervision there should be regular team meetings to maintain consistency between therapists and check for problems most importantly, the sessions should be fun for the children in order to maintain their interest and motivation; if your child isn’t happy to see his/her therapist, find a new one
Parents are encouraged to obtain training in ABA, so that they can provide it themselves and/or help supervise other providers. Board-certified behavior analysts (BCBA’s) are often available, and there are often workshops on how to provide ABA therapy.
Sensory Integration: As mentioned above, many people with autism have sensory problems, which can range from mild to severe. Sensory integration focuses primarily on three senses — vestibular (i.e., motion, balance), tactile (i.e., touch), and proprioception (e.g., joints, ligaments). Many techniques are used to stimulate these senses in order to normalize them.
Speech Therapy: This may be beneficial to many autistic children, but often only 1-2 hours/week is available, so it probably has only modest benefit unless integrated with other home and school programs. As mentioned earlier, sign language and PECS may also be very helpful in developing speech. Speech therapists should work on helping the child to hear hard consonant sounds such as the “c” in cup. It is often helpful if the therapist stretches out and enunciates the consonant sounds.
Occupational Therapy: Can be beneficial for the sensory needs of these children, who often have hypo- and/or hyper-sensitivities to sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste. May include sensory integration (above).
Physical Therapy: Often children with autism have limited gross and fine motor skills, so physical therapy can be helpful. May also include sensory integration (above).
Auditory Interventions: There are several types of auditory interventions. The only one with significant scientific backing is Berard Auditory Integration Training (called Berard AIT or AIT), which involves listening to processed music for a total of 10 hours (two half-hour sessions per day, over a period of 10 to 12 days). Research has shown that AIT improves auditory processing, decreases or eliminates sound sensitivity, and reduces behavioral problems in some autistic children.
Other auditory interventions include the Tomatis approach, the Listening Program, and the SAMONAS method. There is little evidence to support their efficacy [sme1] Computer-based auditory interventions have also received some empirical support. They include Earobics (www.cogconcepts.com) and Fast ForWord (www.fastforword.com). These programs have been shown to help children who have delays in language and have difficulty discriminating speech sounds. Earobics is less expensive (less than $100) but appears to be less powerful than the Fast ForWord program (usually over $1,000). Some families use the Earobics program first and then later use Fast ForWord.
Computer Software: There are many educational programs available for typical children, and some of them may be of benefit for autistic children. There is also some computer software designed specifically for children with developmental disabilities. One major provider is Laureate (www.llsys.com).
Vision Training and Irlen Lenses: Many autistic people have difficulty attending to their visual environment and/or perceiving themselves in relation to their surroundings. These problems can include having a short attention span, being easily distracted, excessive eye movements, difficulty scanning or tracking movements, inability to catch a ball, being cautious when walking up or down stairs, bumping into furniture, and even toe walking. A one- to two-year vision training program involving ambient prism lenses and performing visual-motor exercises can reduce or eliminate many of these problems. See www.AutisticVision.com. More information on vision training can be found on the Internet website of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (www.pavevision.org).
Another visual/perceptual program involves wearing Irlen lenses. Irlen lenses are colored (tinted) lenses. Individuals who benefit from these lenses are often hypersensitive to certain types of lighting, such as florescent lights and bright sunlight; hypersensitive to certain colors or color contrasts; and/or have difficulty reading printed text. Irlen lenses can reduce one’s sensitivity to these lighting and color problems as well as improve reading skills and increase attention span. See www.Irlen.com
RDI
This is a method for teaching children how to develop relationships, first with their parents and later with their peers. It directly addresses a core issue in autism, namely the development of social skills and friendships. It involves extensive training of the parents by a certified RDI consultant, so that they become much more able to effectively interact with their children. The parents typically spend 1 hour/day doing formal therapy with their child, but integrate RDI concepts throughout the rest of the day. There is limited data on its efficacy. |
warc | 201704 | 1. Is it illegal to drink beverages and drive in South Carolina?
NO. In South Carolina, it is not illegal to consume alcoholic beverages and then drive a vehicle. To be convicted of DUI, a judge or jury must be unanimously convinced beyond every reasonable doubt that your ability to drive was both materially and appreciably impaired by excessive alcohol consumption. Mere proof of a person's consumption of alcoholic beverages is not enough for a DUI conviction.
2. If I register over .08 on the breathalyzer test, am I automatically guilty of DUI?
NO. The breathalyzer reading is simply a piece of evidence a judge or jury can consider during the trial of the case. Our office is familiar with issues related to the breathalyzer machine that may prohibit a reading from being received as evidence during a trial. Under the South Carolina 2009 DUI Reform Act; penalties, potential incarceration or jail time, and fines have been increased based on the breath test results.
3. Is it my legal right to refuse to take the field sobriety tests?
Yes. An officer may be reluctant to advise you of this right, but you do not have to take field sobriety tests.
4. Is it my legal right to refuse to take the breathalyzer test?
Yes. However, a refusal can result in a six month administrative suspension, but
we can help restore your driving privileges. You must act quickly, however, as time constraints are in place. 5. Do I have the right to remain silent when I am stopped for or investigated for DUI?
Yes. Any person who is the subject of a criminal investigation has the right to remain silent at all times.
6. If I am stopped for DUI, am I being video and audio recorded?
Yes. South Carolina has a mandatory video taping law and everything you say and do from the time you are pulled over until the process is complete is being video and audio recorded.
7. How can I get a license to drive (if it was seized or forfeited during your arrest)?
You must request an administrative hearing within thirty days of your arrest and apply for a temporary license.
Contact our office. We will walk you through the process. 8. How serious is a DUI charge? It was written on the same type of blue ticket that speeding charges are written.
Under the South Carolina 2009 DUI Reform Act, the consequences of a DUI in South Carolina are some of the strongest in the nation. Penalties and potential jail time have drastically increased. Repeat offenders can face mandatory jail time, as well as mandatory ignition interlock devices being placed on their vehicles for at least two years.
9. What is the punishment for a DUI conviction? For first offenders: For a second offense: For a third offense: A DUI conviction stays on your criminal record forever, and can be used against you for ten years for punishment enhancement if you are charged again. 10. What are the "non-judicial" punishments for a DUI conviction?
These can include travel restrictions outside of the United States, employment difficulties regarding background checks, etc.
11. Can I have a lawyer to represent me in a DUI charge?
Yes. This is a serious charge. Your freedom and financial situation could change dramatically if you are convicted of a DUI. I strongly recommend that you retain an attorney experienced in DUI defense. On many occasions, there are legal defenses to a DUI charge that only an experienced DUI defense attorney can spot on your behalf. The attorney who handled your divorce or house closing is most likely not your best option.
12. I was arrested/charged with DUAC. What's that?
Driving with an Unlawful Alcohol Concentration (DUAC) simply means the officer perceived a moving violation and a breathalyzer result of .08 or higher was obtained. The penalties are the same as a DUI.
13. Can't I enroll in Pre-Trial Intervention (PTI) and have this removed or expunged off my record?
No. This is not an option for a DUI or a DUAC charge.
Divorce DUI DUI defense Field sobriety test for DUI Breathalyzer test for DUI DUI arrest DUI and driver's license penalties Ignition interlock device DUI and criminal records DUI and employment consequences SR22 license liability insurance Criminal defense Civil penalties for DUI Crimes against society Criminal arrest Criminal record Employment Moving violations Government law |
warc | 201704 | The California College of Ayurveda is pleased to introduce the Ayurvedic Health Practitioner Interns 2016. Interns have completed their academic studies and work under the supervision of experienced clinical instructors. This semester's talented group of interns comes from throughout the United States, Canada and United Kingdom.
Ayurvedic Health Practitioner (AHP) interns work on supporting patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle that is in harmony with their constitution. Patients learn about their constitution as well as the nature of any imbalances. They will also receive support to adjust their diet and lifestyle accordingly and to normalize your digestion and elimination. As part of the Ayurvedic program, an intern can include ayurvedic herbs, aromatherapy, color therapy, sound and mantra, and Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy. This is is the best of preventative health care! For those who have a specific condition and are looking for clinical management through Ayurvedic Medicine, they should consider having a consultation with an Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist intern or graduate.
From a young age I have been playing with plant medicine, making mint tea as a child from our garden and collecting wild plants to eat in salads. I was introduced to Ayurveda five years ago from a friend who went to the school in Albuquerque, the concept just sounded familiar in a way that I could not describe, I was drawn by the appropriateness and individuality of the process. Ayurveda is a medicine for all people who want to live in health by bringing harmony to their bodies and aligning with the elements of nature.
An Ayurvedic practitioner is a warm and gentle professional friend, they are your life counselor in more than just diet and lifestyle. Seeing an Ayurvedic practitioner in the west will give you an anchor for the business of life. It is appealing because the simplicity of the medicine. This system of Ayurveda is based on the elemental qualities that we all can relate to in one way or another, and the treatments bring clarity to the root cause of disease rather than masking the symptoms.
The future of Ayurveda is sitting in the palm of our hands. In the center of our palm sits the seeds for bountiful knowledge and healing to be sowed throughout the world. I see people choosing to pursue balance through Ayurveda and other ancient healing sciences, and these healing modalities changing the way healthcare is practiced and provided. We need to teach health rather than profit.
The therapy I adore is the self application of oil massage called abhyanga, this lymphatic massage nourishes dry skin and tonifies the nervous system, bringing rejuvenation and serenity to the entire body system. |
warc | 201704 | A number of case studies were developed as part of BCG's Creating People Advantage 2010 report, a global survey undertaken to explore HR practices and methodologies that enable companies to create competitive advantage. The studies examine how individual companies have addressed particular HR issues. Below is the first in the series. HR for “Googlers”: How a Giant Company Aims to Remain Intimate
Google has an impressive track record and an enviable reputation for people management. It routinely ranks first or near the top in “best places to work” reports. What ingredients account for Google’s success as an employer—beyond, of course, its financial and market success?
Google’s value proposition as an employer combines a laser focus on innovation and smart business practices with a small-company feel that includes direct access to top management. For instance, no one hesitates to pose questions directly to the founders at the weekly all-hands meetings.
The HR management system plays a critical role in keeping this value proposition well tuned and relevant for each successive generation of employees by embedding Google’s mission into daily work life. As Laszlo Bock, vice president of people operations at Google, said in an interview with BCG: “If you talk to anybody at Google and ask them what the mission is, they’ll say, ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ It’s rare to find a place where everyone knows the mission—and then actually believes it.”
Google’s benefits and compensation packages, renowned for their largess, have a threefold purpose, Bock pointed out. First, to create a community—hence the microkitchens sprinkled around the offices, where people can interact informally. Second, to drive innovation: the more people interact, the higher the likelihood of creating serendipitous sparks of innovation. And third, to promote efficiency: on-site oil changes and dry-cleaning services help hard-working employees save time in their personal lives.
To keep a pulse on how “Googlers” are feeling, which informs talent-management and development programs, HR undertakes a variety of analyses, Bock said. The company monitors retention and attrition and looks for patterns. An annual employee survey plus focus groups throughout the year provide ample qualitative feedback. On the basis of this analysis, upward management feedback gets put into practice. “Every member of our executive team has goals for the year,” Bock said. “These are not amorphous goals, like ‘make the company feel more engaged,’ but very specific, like ‘there were three issues in the sales organization that we will address this year.’” |
warc | 201704 | Creativity, from the Individual to the Organization How do the tools to create ideas differ if they are used by only 1) one person, 2) a small group, or 3) a large audience?
One could argue that the fundamental tools are similar—doubt your preconceived notions; explore the world in front of you; diverge and then converge, etc.
But, of course if you’re one person, it can be much harder.
One tool that I find works well for a single person (other than finding a couple of trusted friends to join you) is to try putting yourself in the shoes of someone else, or even yourself at a different time. How would I have tackled this problem on my first day out of university? How would my grandmother tackle it? How would the CEO of Apple tackle it? And so on.
I do prefer small groups in general if the goal is to solve a specific problem: you want some diversity. But as with individuals, changing perspectives and trying new combinations or analogies are really at the root of all of the infinite number of ways to run a creative exercise.
In all cases, though, being very clear about the problem statement and any criteria and constraints before you get into any brainstorming is actually a really good thing (in contrast to the general attitude of “we need an unconstrained session”). It makes the brainstorm somewhat harder, I concede, but it dramatically increases the probability of the output being useful.
How can you get a generally conservative industry to view a nagging problem differently when there are no trend-setting companies willing to lead the way?
It is easy to say we need to foster a climate of doubt, where people are willing to challenge their perspectives and look at things through fresh lenses. That’s step one, which many people often skip in the traditional “blue sky” brainstorm—and missing this step can practically ensure that the end result isn't great. But, if you’ve ever tried to get someone you love to lose weight or quit smoking, you understand that you cannot simply tell them to do so. You have to understand their rationale and incentives, and then appeal to that.
It’s the same in business:
why is it that no one is willing to lead the way, to challenge the status quo? Is it because companies are making sufficient profits under the current system? Is it risk aversion? Is it because individuals aren’t willing to think about the long term? Or something else? Once you understand the underlying “boxes” driving the human beings who are at the center of the problem, you can begin to make progress.
There is a common conception that the “next big thing,” the disruptive solution that you are alluding to, comes from the likes of Zuckerberg in the dorm room, or Hewlett-Packard in the garage: and of course that’s anecdotally true! But I have a very firm belief that if people take the time to understand and thoughtfully challenge, or doubt, their existing “boxes,” then the next big thing can just as easily come from massive companies, like many of my clients. It just takes a willingness to challenge boxes such as “this has always worked for us” and “this is the way we do things around here.”
What are your thoughts on how—if at all—the creative process needs to be adapted to different contexts, such as the public and private sectors?
This is a great question. And of course, as a consultant, the answer is “it depends!” I believe that the five-step process outlined in
Thinking in New Boxes applies to a wide range of problems: professional/personal, public/private sector, and so on. But I also very naturally have to tailor what I do to the specifics of the situation—getting someone to lose weight and getting someone to adopt a new strategy require different tactics!
But it really does boil down to mental models or “boxes,” though. If people at a certain Indian client, or Japanese client, have a different approach or way of doing things than my New York-based clients, then I need to adapt if I want to get the job done. The same holds when it comes to the public and private sectors. I’m about to overgeneralize significantly, but sometimes in the public sector the pace is different, the type of employee is different, the overall objectives are different, and so on. Differences exist among government agencies, family businesses, traditional corporations, nonprofits, and others. The key is to understand, to the extent possible, the “boxes” of the people you are dealing with, and then adapt and challenge them accordingly.
That last comment, incidentally, is one of the strongest arguments I’ve seen in favor of diversity in the workplace—and I mean diversity along as many dimensions as you can think of! Kant taught that we don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. That is, we each see the world through the lens of our own box or boxes. And so if you try to be creative with people who have a different academic background, work experience, ethnicity, gender or country of origin, so much the better because you’ll broaden the range of perspectives, which helps push people outside of their usual ways of thinking.
One more thought along those lines. One of my favorite stories is about BIC. It was founded as a pen company and was doing well as a pen company. You can imagine that if somebody told BIC employees to “think outside the box” they might propose ideas like four-color pens, erasable pens, or customized pens with a customer’s logo. But if someone came up with the idea of lighters or razors the reaction might be, “You’re crazy—we’re a pen company!”
Indeed, if you are boxed in by the idea that “we’re a pen company,” then lighters and razors are bad ideas. But consider what happens if you shift your “mental box” entirely and adopt a new outlook—something like, “we make disposable plastic items.” When you look at BIC’s business capabilities from the perspective of “plastic items,” lighters and razors are perfectly logical ideas, and they lead to expanding profits and revenues.
But what about the
people at BIC? What had to happen in order to make that shift happen? Maybe the head of manufacturing needed to think about retooling the machines to make other plastic items. Maybe the head of sales needed to think about distribution channels. Maybe the CEO had a very emotional connection to the “pen company” box. My point is that even in a place where they held to the “we are a pen company” box, they came at it from different ways, and so to get them to make change happen, they had to be convinced in different ways, they had to come to the “new box” in different ways.
Also, just to be clear, I am well aware that it was reportedly the CEO of BIC, le Baron Bich himself, who had the original idea of moving beyond pens to disposable plastic objects. He was open to new boxes in a way that not all CEOs are!
Shifting “Boxes” and the Role of the CEO Could you explain your unequivocal statement “no idea is good forever”?
The logic behind that statement is as follows: our mental models or boxes change periodically, in a step function sort of way; for example, we see movement from “we are a pen company” to “we are a disposable plastic items object company,” or from “our strategy is x” to “our strategy is y.” But the world changes gradually, sometimes faster and sometimes slower, and it doesn’t stop. And so by definition, any one of our boxes will at some point be out of date. And hence no idea is good forever, not Ford's Model T, not the iPhone, not penicillin, not anything else. It’s just a question of when.
Which leads me to a thought exercise I often try with my clients: imagine a perfectly run company in which everyone in every department is doing his or her job well. In that case, what is the job of the CEO?
My answer is simply that the job of the CEO, then, is to determine what the next “new box” should be, and when. The timing is critical. For example, if the people who created YouTube had done so five years earlier, it would have flopped, since most people didn’t have access to a lot of bandwidth on their computers and devices. But if they had come up with it five years later, we’d be calling it something else—since someone else would have come up with the idea first.
Managing Creativity in Practice How do you balance creativity with the aims of operational excellence?
This is a beautiful and very practical question! Of course we should all think creatively, we should all challenge our perspectives, we should all think in new boxes. But we still must face earning pressures, day-to-day activities, and so on.
One part of my answer goes back to BIC again: when the company shifted to lighters and razors, it didn’t stop making pens—indeed the pens continue to be an important part of their revenues 40 years after their new box emerged! And so the point, within the creative process, is to balance both the incremental and the transformational, since they can both be valuable. Think of the first iPhone: it was relatively transformational and money-making; but the subsequent generations are arguably less transformational but very money-making.
But the question is also broader—it’s not just about incremental versus transformational creativity; it’s creativity versus operational goals. And the best answer I have is balance. We need to balance inductive and deductive thinking. We need to balance left brain and right brain, thinking and doing, however you want to phrase it. The balance will tilt in different directions at different points in the business cycle—and different people will be more comfortable with different sides of the equation. But in all cases it’s about balance.
That’s also why so many of the great partnerships—such as Hewlett-Packard, Gates and Allen, Rolls and Royce—generally feature people with different approaches and different strengths. To really succeed in business, I believe all of us need a bit of both.
What are the most common mistakes that companies or even managers are making that inadvertently stifle individual creativity?
The opposite of mistakes, I think, are companies that allow individuals to “speak truth to power”—to disagree with someone regardless of hierarchy—are off to a good start. They should value ideas regardless of where those ideas come from. They should methodically source ideas from a lot of different places, and give everyone (or almost everyone) room to experiment.
Not fearing failure can make you more creative—but is it a very practical approach?
Linus Pauling (who won two Nobel prizes, so he should know) said that the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. This is logically true as well. Simply by the law of large numbers—whatever the criteria you set for a “good idea”—if you have a lot of ideas, you’ll have a lot of average ones and some lousy ones as well.
Even BIC, which had such phenomenal success with lighters, razors, and now disposable mobile phones (part of their “disposable plastic items” box) has also had some failures—I don’t think disposable plastic underwear or surfboards went over very well.
Again, for most of us it will come down to balance. If one goes to the extreme in terms of not fearing failure, then one might occasionally come up with something disruptive, do very well, and become famous. Last week I was speaking at a conference with Richard Saul Wurman, who founded TED and is the person furthest along that no-fear-of-failure spectrum I have ever met. But more likely, you will not become famous or change the world. Which is why for most of us, a healthy skepticism, a healthy dose of doubt, is a much more practical approach.
Can you give examples of how companies encourage creativity by rewarding so-called good failures?
Let me start by saying I agree that this kind of culture is critical to fostering a culture of creativity, one in which failure is not punished if it is the result of a thoughtful creative process.
One company that does this is LEGO (like BIC, the company likes its name to be capitalized). Its CEO has said that people should be rewarded not for failure, but for failure to help when asked, or for failure to ask for help. My friend and colleague Yves Morieux talks a lot about them in his exploration of cooperation and simplicity in organizations—but of course it’s relevant to creativity as well.
Another illustrative example is to think about R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. If a scientist spends years on a compound that ultimately doesn’t make it through the funnel of clinical testing and the like, that generally doesn’t torpedo her career; it’s seen as a natural part of the process. Can tech companies, consumer goods companies, and others say the same?
Conclusion Would you say that today ’ s companies are in a period of great creativity—or a period of great creative crisis?
My answer is simply “yes!” Like many questions (especially in social media), this is a false dichotomy.
To elaborate: there is certainly a lot of world-changing creativity taking place, but we need more of it. Whenever old ideas come into contact with a new world, or a new environment, it creates conflict and potentially a creative crisis. A good example is sustainability and climate change. There is certainly a “creativity crisis” there—caused by conflicting perceptions and outdated assumptions that are not keeping up with a changing world.
Some people just say, “Well, we’re just not sure yet about the science,” and use that as an excuse for not responding. Of course we’re not 100 percent certain that the earth will be uninhabitable in five years or ten years or twenty. Yet the problem has more to do with mental models and creativity. We are not doing enough to question current belief systems and to open ourselves up to new possibilities, which would help us be better prepared for whatever the future may bring.
There are many more of those types of crises where old mental “boxes” are no longer useful and need to be replaced to better fit a changing world. So it’s a crisis—but also a moment where things are changing faster than ever before, and hence there are a lot of new possibilities out there. |
warc | 201704 | Search has become embedded in our routines, and is continually expanding to simplify the process of locating information, products and services. Recently at the consumer electronics show, the topic of search stole the show-as it becomes integrated into nearly every device connected to the internet.
New search strategies include a Ford F150 model that allows contractors to check service manuals by browsing the web from an in-dash computer. There are also new televisions being introduced by Samsung, LG and others that allow viewers to watch movies from internet sites and Netflix.
Smart phones enable users to search for anything they encounter during their busy day, at the touch of a button. Palm Pre phone aims to make it easy to call your friends by looking up their phone numbers via social networking site Facebook. Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony projects that within two years 90 percent of all Sony products will connect to the internet.
Television is becoming a web browser, evolving into a user controlled environment, rather than a broadcasting platform. It is speculated that television will include web browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome within a relatively short period.
With search being integrated into an increasing number of products, it is vital that your website appear in the top search engine results in order to generate leads and expand your clientele base. When you are ready to drive new business to your website through search engine optimization, contact Blue Interactive Agency. Blue Interactive Agency is your Fort Lauderdale SEO friendly web design and interactive marketing firm, working diligently to ensure the success of their clients through search results placement. |
warc | 201704 | Application of the In Vitro Diagnostic Directive Training Course
This three day course has been designed to enable participants to explore the IVD Directive, gain a greater understanding of the requirements and thus enable IVD devices to be placed on the European market.
Who should attend?
Regulatory & quality personnel
People new to companies or roles impacted by the IVD Directive
Distributors of IVD’s
Virtual manufacturers
Start-up companies
R&D personnel
Internal auditors
Become an IVD Directive implementation expert today,
What will I learn?
On completion of this training, participants will be able to:
Explain the European CE marking approach for IVD’s including its legal and operational basis
Describe the structure and scope of the IVDD including classification and conformity routes
Apply the essential requirements including labelling and develop suitable technical documentation
Identify the regulatory significance of risk management and process validation
Combine knowledge gained from the course with audit qualifications to conduct compliance audits of their organization and suppliers
Explain the role and importance of performance evaluation including application of the Common Technical Specification (CTS)
Interpret the criteria for reporting adverse incidents under the vigilance system
Define the manufacturers regulatory responsibilities, including reporting of changes to products and QMS system to the Notified Body
How will I benefit?
Participants will be able to apply the requirements of the directive to create technical documentation to support the product throughout its lifecycle. Managers and quality/regulatory professionals responsible for all aspects of IVD CE marking as well as internal and external auditors, will benefit from attending this course.
What's included?
You will gain 24 CPD points on completing the course
Training course notes
Lunch
Refreshments |
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