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warc | 201704 | Posts
Things You Should Know About AntifreezePosted on: 15, November, 2010
Do you remember that fairy tale where a lion insults a mouse only to get caught in a trap? The mouse returns to chew the ropes and help the lion become free again? That story taught us the important lesson that even small things can be very useful in the long run.
The same is the case with maintenance of the family vehicle as well. We spend so much time focusing on the engine, transmission and other important and expensive components in the truck that we forget the role of antifreeze in the maintenance of your cars, trucks, motorcycles and vans as well.
To prepare your vehicle for the winter season, make sure your antifreeze is mixed properly, or you could see serious damage to your vehicle’s radiator. Often in Summer, water is the only component used in radiators to ensure the engine remains cool. As Winter approaches, many forget to remove the water when the seasons change and add antifreeze. Temperatures reach thousands of degrees in automobiles and the proper mixture of antifreeze and water is required to keep the engine cool no matter how cold it is outside.
If the mixture is not at the right levels, the water freezes inside the engine, ice will expand and the internal parts of the radiator shall crack. The water will flow out when the engine is running and you end up in a scenario where there is no water left to cool the engine. The end result is that your engine will get overheated even in the middle of a snowstorm and you will get stranded. Antifreeze ensures that this problem does not arise. The water shall be prevented from freezing up and will always remain flowing no matter how cold it is on the outside.
Robert’s Auto Repair is here to serve you and make sure your radiator and engine coolants safely see you through each journey. Call us at 831-373-1534 to schedule an appointment to check your antifreeze levels anytime before or during a service check-up or an oil change. You will receive a FREE automobile safety inspection if you mention this blog before the end of November. |
warc | 201704 | Someone important asked me to write about the biosciences in Phoenix and Arizona as the effort marks its tenth anniversary. This is fitting because I vividly remember the day I was called to the office of then Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza where he laid out the opportunity that the city had to lure star researcher Jeff Trent and the International Genomics Consortium. As a columnist for the
Arizona Republic, I wrote dozens of articles to explain and advocate for this unique chance to leapfrog out of an economy that had become dangerously dependent on housing and population growth, and was falling behind on almost every measure of economic and social well-being. One column was an open letter to Dr. Trent — both of us are natives and this was from the heart — that he later told me played a big role in his decision to come home and establish T-Gen.
With Mary Jo Waits, then of the Morrison Institute, I worked to develop a "meds and eds" strategy to leverage biosciences and education; government, non-profits and eventually for-profit organizations, to create a major bio hub. As Waits repeatedly said, what if we could lay claim to the cure for cancer being discovered in downtown Phoenix? I mention my role for the sake of those who constantly yowl that I "hate Arizona," do nothing constructive, am a "quitter" or some guy in Seattle who spends his time picking on Phoenix.
The Flinn Foundation led the development of a strong strategic roadmap, as well as providing $50 million in funding. Gov. Janet Napolitano was supportive and the Legislature was dragged aboard a statewide push including leaders in Tucson and Flagstaff, as well as the Gila River Indian Community. At City Hall, Deputy City Manager Sheryl Sculley marshaled the bureaucracy to assemble land for the venture on the old Phoenix Union High School campus and oversee its redeployment. More land north was available for expansion; it had been set aside for the abortive attempt to win the NFL stadium that instead went to a cotton field west of Glendale. New ASU President Michael Crow instantly grasped the potential and soon the U of A was planning a medical school on the site. When ground was broken for the T-Gen building, even then Rep. J.D. Hayworth, hater of all things gub'ment, showed up to bask in what appeared to be a moment of history on par with the CAP. Hard as it is to believe now, it was a time of breathtaking hope.
The plan was to use T-Gen and evolving research on the human genome to create a dense "(lab) bench to bedside" node on the Phoenix Biosciences Campus. Trent understood that the model should be the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the largest such complex in the world. It includes research, medical schools and other educational institutions, and hospitals in 280 buildings on a 1,300 acre site. Eventually, the Phoenix campus could also lure pharmaceutical and medical device companies, too. Nearby was land for "blue collar tech" sectors such as biomedical manufacturing that would have been relatively easily poached from California.
The usual "veto elite" weighed in against even trying to attract T-Gen and the IGC, prominent among them a
Republic columnist and former political operative. Among their complaints, aside from anything involving gub'ment, was that the effort would not create many jobs. True, only a small number of scientists initially went to work at T-Gen. But the wider meds-and-eds and biomed manufacturing strategies promised very large employment gains, and much better wages than are typical in Phoenix. In Houston, the TMC alone employs 92,500, as well as having 34,000 full-time students.
The anti faction — which is typically against everything that improves Phoenix but somehow is never blamed for "hating Arizona" — had little understanding of what the venture would require for sustained success. For example, the need and relatively long timeline to gain federal grants for the scientists who were leaving existing institutions to take a chance in Phoenix. Or the need for predictability in policymaking: Every time the Legislature balked at consistent funding and incentives for bio research, it sent a message that would make a scientist, entrepreneur or other innovator worry about the state's commitment. Few policymakers understood the competitive challenges or why the "cluster strategy" adopted after the 1990 real-estate crash had failed — and the lessons that were critical to apply to the new endeavor. Why sustained public-private partnerships and focus were essential (it took North Carolina decades of public funding to bring Research Triangle Park into the big leagues). Nor did most of the congressional delegation understand the need to steer federal research dollars to Phoenix. The antis never came around.
Still, not only did the project move ahead, but the Legislature was also strong-armed into helping establish Science Foundation Arizona and recruiting Bill Harris from Science Foundation Ireland to run it. The mission was to fund promising science, including that beyond biotech and biomedicine.
Two influential groups were never on board: The Real Estate Industrial Complex. And, especially as far as the downtown biomedical campus, the big hospitals: Catholic Healthcare West, which operates "Mr. Joes," and Banner, owner of Good Samaritan Hospital and many more. This would have profound consequences.
Ten years later, some progress has been made. But it has been agonizingly slow, especially for the downtown Biosciences Campus. Phoenix has not made the leap we hoped, where it would be at least within striking distance of Boston, San Diego, Seattle, Research Triangle Park and other leading bio centers.
What happened, why, and whether the situation can change for the better are topics I will discuss in a future column. |
warc | 201704 | The Open Door Web Site
The Agricultural Revolution Index
The Industrial Revolution Index
Introduction to the First Industrial Revolution
Robert Bakewell by F. Engleheart
TWO CENTURIES OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
Custom Search
The Agricultural Revolution
Improvements in Farming in the 18th century
Between 1693 and 1700, the harvests were poor due to the exceptionally wet weather. Wheat prices were higher than 48 shillings per quarter. However, from 1700 until 1765, the harvests were much improved and the price of a quarter of wheat averaged around 40 shillings. In fact, between 1730 and 1740, wheat prices fell to an all time low. People found themselves better off and had more money to spend on consumer goods. Prices did start to become higher than 48 shillings once again, around 1770, when the population increase turned England into an importer of wheat rather than an exporter.
The years 1700 to 1770, however, had seen some interesting changes in livestock farming caused by the improved harvests and the introduction of the four year rotation method. Previously, most cattle and sheep were slaughtered before winter set in, since there was no food to feed them and they provided meat during the coldest months. Harvesting turnips meant that livestock could now be fed during the winter. This increased the number of animals and this, in turn, provided a good supply of manure which could be fed back into the soil to improve its nutrient content.
Cattle, Normandy, France © Shirley Burchill
Some livestock experts, such as Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke, introduced selective breeding programmes to improve the quality of the animals. Bakewell crossed different breeds of sheep to select their best characteristics. At the time, this was known as "breeding in and in". His experiments in selective breeding of sheep produced the Dishley, or New Leicester breed in 1755.
Information from the records of Smithfield market showing the average weight, in pounds,
This sheep had long, coarse wool and produced a high quality and yield of meat. Bakewell also experimented with breeds of cattle. In 1769, he produced the Longhorn; a breed that was a good meat producer but gave a poor milk yield. Bakewell was also the first to hire his animals out for stud. His farm, in Dishley, Leicestershire, became a model of scientific management. Thomas Coke, farming in Norfolk, used similar methods to Bakewell's to produce breeds such as the Southdown sheep, Devon cattle and Suffolk pigs.
Bakewell was one of the first to breed both cattle and sheep for their meat value. Before his breeding programme, these animals were kept for either wool and milk production or for working on the farm. The result of selective breeding was livestock with more market value.
The Open Door Web Site is non-profit making. Your donations help towards the cost of maintaining this free service on-line.
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warc | 201704 | Important Documents Designed for national policymakers, ASA's Medical Cannabis Update keeps you informed about the rapid development of medical cannabis law and public policy. The issue before Congress is whether to continue the federal prosecution of medical marijuana patients and their providers, in accordance with the federal Controlled Substances Act, or whether to relax federal marijuana prohibition enough to permit the medicinal use of botanical cannabis products when recommended by a physician, especially where permitted under state law. Updated April 2, 2010 People living with HIV/AIDS have long used cannabis as an aid to help them with symptoms of HIV related illnesses ranging from wasting and loss of appetite to adherence to medications. The anti-emetic and analgesic properties of cannabis have been particularly useful to HIV/AIDS patients. Consequently, it is estimated that as many as 1 in 4 AIDS patients are using cannabis for medical purposes. AIDS Action and many members of the HIV/AIDS community have long supported the ability of patients to use cannabis for medical purposes along with research on such use of cannabis. ASA's policy recommendations for President Obama and his Administration ASA Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson has been talking to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers' (D-MI) staff and other Democratic leadership to encourage them to oppose DEA tactics and stand up for patients in states where medical cannabis is legal. On December 7, 2007 Chairman Conyers issued at a statement deploring DEA actions. Then on April 29, 2008 Chairman Conyers sent a letter to DEA Director Michele Leonhart demanding an explanation of DEA tactics by July 1, 2008. |
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If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we've been so credulous. —Carl Sagan
In the 1997 movie
Contact, Jody Foster plays Dr. Ellie Arroway, a scientist in a quest to establish contact with extraterrestrials. Written by the late Carl Sagan, this creative and entertaining film is an apologia for scientific materialism—the naturalistic worldview where everything is understood as a product of physical laws, interpretable through the rubric of science. Thus, Ellie’s journey is chartered through the empirical realm of matter and energy, where things like spirit, soul, and the supernatural exist only along paths of the human imagination.
In the story, Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) is Ellie’s romantic interest who also happens to be a theologian; and it is through their strained relationship that the viewer is exposed to the clash of worldviews between naturalism and theism. In one edgy dialogue, Palmer challenges Ellie’s skepticism about God and the supernatural, which triggers Ellie’s response: “I hold to Occam’s Razor that when various solutions are offered to a problem, the simplest is the preferred.”
Though Palmer could have gone for the “slam-dunk” at this point, his passive dissent comes as no surprise, given that this is Sagan’s
tour de force for naturalism. So indulge me in picking up where Palmer left off—in a fantasy dialogue, if you will.
Regis:Dr. Arroway, it is certainly an honor to speak with such a scientific authority as you. I’ve read your work and admire your passion. But if you’ll forgive me, it seems that your passion has an almost religious fervor to it. I mean, this fevered search for extraterrestrial intelligence seems to be a quest to find ultimate answers. You know, to solve all of the world’s problems and make sense outta life.
Dr. Arroway:In a way you’re right, Regis. I guess you could say that my SETI project isa religious pursuit. With the infinite expanse of the universe, billions of galaxies and billions upon billions of stars, there has to be life out there; it’s almost ridiculous to think there wouldn’t be. And surely there must be advanced life—far beyond what we have achieved here—intelligent beings that have evolved and survived all of the struggles and horrors civilizations endure to reach their full potential. My belief is that we willmake contact with these beings—it’s only a matter of time, ifwe apply ourselves to the task. They hold the answers up there, answers for avoiding our own destruction and the annihilation of the planet, answers to put us on the fast track of progress toward peace.
Regis:Wow, that would sure be great, I must agree! But, but . . . huh.
Dr. Arroway:Yes?
Regis:Oh nothing. Say, do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Dr. Arroway?
Dr. Arroway:Sure, go for it!
Regis:I was wonderin’—just wonderin’, mind you—have you ever given any thought to the possibility of a Creator-God?
Dr. Arroway:Oh, yes, when I was a kid. But science is beautiful. It’s a liberator. You’ve heard of Occam’s Razor?
Regis:Oh yeah. Let me see now. I know we covered that in physics at Catholic High: “When various solutions are offered to a problem, it’s usually the simplest that’s correct.” Right?
Dr. Arroway:Right! Isn’t it wonderful that science has taught us we don’t need superstition or the supernatural to explain those things we can’t understand? Which only makes sense. Just think about it. Since everything is the product of natural processes, everything should eventually be explainable by science, right? That’s why science has been such a successful tool in bettering society through technological advancement.
Regis:Gee, Dr. Arroway, I can’t say as I’ve thought about it quite that way before. By the way, I read the other day that scientists now acknowledge that the universe had a beginning, what they call the “Big Bang," some 15 billion years ago. It got my curiosity rollin’ and spun this idea in my head that I couldn’t shake. That is, what do they think existed beforethe “Big Bang?”
Dr. Arroway:Why, nothing!
Regis:Nothing? Seriously? That’s odd. I mean, how did the massive expanse of the cosmos come into being out of nothing? I dunno . . . it seems to me that would violate the first law of thermodynamics: you know, that matter or energy can’t be created or destroyed. I learned that in high school physics, too, from Sister “Wizard”—that’s what we called her.
Dr. Arroway:How interesting?! Well, now, it all makes sense when you understand the principle of quantum uncertainty. Because of uncertainty at the quantum level, energy is allowed to pop into existence, as long as it disappears before its creation is “noticed.” It exists only for a blink of time so that the law of conservation can be maintained over measurable time lapses. The larger the energy, the faster it must vanish.
Regis:Wow! You’re kidding, right?
Dr. Arroway: Not at all.
Regis:It’s just that it sounds so magical, quite contrary to intuition and common sense, dontcha think? Hmm. So what “drives” this quantum uncertainty?
Dr. Arroway: You’re right, Regis. Quantum theory is very counter-intuitive. As to its “engine,” quantum uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of the quantum field that is infinitely extended throughout the cosmos. It is something that . . . just is!
Regis:Sounds like Aristotle’s uncaused Cause to me. Which, by the way, Aquinas later said was God—the Creator-God, that is. So my question is this: How does all this happen withoutsuch an intelligent agent?
Dr. Arroway:The latest narrative of cosmogenesis says that the wild, fluctuating probabilities of quantum uncertainty caused all of the matter of the universe to appear, suddenly, in a tiny “space-nugget,” much smaller than an atom.
Regis:Now that’s downright spooky! But, come to think of it, wouldn’t that colossally dense nugget immediately collapse under its own gravitational pull? Good ol’ Sister Wizard taught me something about gravity too!
Dr. Arroway:Well, yeah, normally that would be true. But, you see, something else happened in that brief moment of time: inflation. Once that cosmic nugget was formed, the frenetic environment caused “mutations” in physical laws, resulting in something like anti-gravity. And that allowed the universe to instantaneously expand beyond the point of gravitational collapse.
Regis:Gee, now that’s something! But help me understand a little detail I’m having trouble with here. I remember Sister Wizard telling us that Einstein’s theory of relativity says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Wouldn’t instant expanse break that cosmic “speed limit?”
Dr. Arroway:Um . . . a . . . well! You see, relativity says that nothing can travel faster than light in space-time. But during inflation it is space-time itself that is expanding.
Regis:You know, I almost see that. But there’s something strange about it. I mean, doesn’t Einstein’s gravitational theory tell us that space-time is merely the cosmic fabric of matter and energy? If that’s so, I don’t see how inflation avoids breaking the speed of light barrier.
Dr. Arroway:Well, you probably wouldn’t understand all the technicalities of Einstein’s field equations, but trust me—that’s the way it works out!
Regis:You don’t say!
Dr. Arroway:Anyway, the universe exists, and we’re here; what better explanation could there be?
Regis:Just one more thing, Dr. Arroway. Has this phenomenon of inflation or anti-gravity ever been observed or experimentally reproduced?
Dr. Arroway:I can’t say that it has. But it’s our best account for how the Big Bang was sustained and why the universe appears to be so uniform in every direction.
Regis:Dr. Arroway, you could be right. But, as I see it—as a layman, mind you—is that your explanation requires at least two rather strange phenomena, one of which has never been directly observed or replicated. Your explanation also requires unique exceptions to the well-accepted principles of thermodynamics and relativity. It would certainly seem to me that if an experimenter witnessed any one of these phenomena, he could rightly call it a miracle, couldn’t he? But your explanation depends on four such miracles.
Ya know, Dr. Arroway, Sister Wizard also taught me one more thing. Something that explains the universe with only one miracle:
God spoke and it was!According to Occam’s Razor, wouldn’t that explanation be simplest?
Dr. Arroway:( Under her breath) Oh, God—what a throwback!
Regis:What'd you say?
Dr. Arroway:Oh, I gotta go back . . . er . . . a . . . to review the SETI datalogger. I really need to run, but we can talk about this at length another time.
Regis:Oh yeah? I’d really like that. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been to chat. Well, you have a good day, Dr. Arroway.
Dr. Arroway:Yeah, see ya around. •
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warc | 201704 | Despite being in a seemingly insurmountable deficit, the great state of California has signed a new bill into law to allocate $200,000,000 new dollars toward aCalifornia tax credit for first time home buyers and new construction home.
This California tax credit will be for up to $10,000 for people that close escrow after May 1st of this year. If timed correctly, California home buyers will even be able to double up the California tax credit with the $8,000 federal tax credit for a whopping $18,000 on contracts that are signed by April 30th and close by June 30th.
Something to take note of is that the new California tax credit is for a set amount of money, in this case $200,000,000. Of that money, $100,000,000 is earmarked for first time home buyers and the other $100,000,000 is set aside for buyers of new construction. When this money has been exhausted that will be the end of the program. The first come first serve structure is intended to have the effect of creating...
Over the last few weeks I have had many people ask me questions regarding short sales and the different terminology that usually goes along with it all. I thought it would be good use of all our time for me to lay out some of the more common questions with answers so they can be used as a reference. I will be happy to answer any additional questions left as comments.
Q: What Exactly is a Short Sale?
A: In very simple terms, a short sale is when a home owner sells their home for less than what they owe the bank. It's that simple. For example, if somebody owns a property that is worth $500,000 but they owe $700,000, which is quite common in today's market, the only way they could sell it would be to either come up with an additional $200,000, or to have the bank agree to a pay off $200,000 short of what they are owed. The latter would be a short sale.
Q: Does the bank own the property in a short sale?
A: No. The owner and seller of a short sale is the private...
In the last few months I have had many investors approach me about purchasing a San Diego income property with two to four units. Some wanted to find something that was fully rented out and keep it that way. The really nice thing about that approach is that it is not hard to find properties that are fully rented and for what amount. That means that much of the cash flow guess work is eliminated for you and you can just judge it based on the math. At that point the numbers decide for you. It's hard to argue with math.
However, I have also been approached by plenty of potential investors that are also looking for a place to live and figure they can kill two birds with one stone. At first glance it almost seems like a no brainer to find a four unit property where the rent from the first three units will pay for your living expenses in the fourth unit. You get to live for free!.
But not so Fast. See what many potential investment...
Amazing new Listing. Call 858.337.7409 To View This San Diego Condo.
All we need is at least a two hour notice and we will arrange for you to have a private viewing of this luxury waterfront condo. There were many great custom modifications that were done to this already fabulous property that you will want to see in person.
...
There is a reason that real estate agents shouldn't count their commissions until they actually get the check and that's because sometimes real estate transactions fall apart when you least could expect it. Granted the advice and guidance of an experienced agent can help you avoid most jams and keep deals together, but that plays right into one of the top 6 reasons why real estate transactions fall apart (clients don't always listen).
If your list is different or you think I left anything out please let us know. We'd love to hear your thoughts and personal experiences!
Now for the list:
Man vs. Woman In the current market environment buyers have too many options, which can cause some indecision. This is just a simple function of human psychology. Trust me, I know because I am in the market to buy a home with my new fiancee myself. You would think that as a real estate agent with years of experience I would be able to avoid a simple issue like this. Well let me tell you, having...
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of confusion among San Diego home buyers as to what it means when a short sale is in contingent status. The goal of this post will be to clarify what is means exactly for a property to be reported as contingent status, as opposed to pending. You can also visit our short sale questions and answers for more information on other related topics.
What Is A Short Sale?
Also known as short pays, a short sale takes place when a property is sold that is worth less than what is owed. Its that simple. For example, if has a market value of $300,000 but the loan against it is for $500,000 then the owner will need to attempt to sell it through a short sale, unless they were to pay the bank the $200,000 to make up the difference, which clearly most people do not have the ability or often the desire to do. Another way to look at it is when a property is sold that has negative equity. Understood? Good....
San Diego Home Finder is very proud to report that Daniel Beer, the site’s founder, has just been awarded theSan Diego Five Star Real Estate Agent Award for client satisfaction as reported in the March issue of San Diego Magazine for his service helping people buy and sell homes and investment properties in the greater San Diego area. Winner's of the San Diego Five Star Real Estate Agent Award are considered to be the best agents in San Diego County.
The award is given to agents that receive the highest marks for customer satisfaction from their clients. In essence, it is a people’s choice award, which really makes it that much more special.
The San Diego Five Star Real Estate Agent Award is given after an extensive survey across the county. The Best San Diego Real Estate Agent in each part of the city with the highest marks wins the award. Some of the larger areas will have more than one winner. Agents are judged on criteria that is meant to help future clients predict who is the Best San Diego... |
warc | 201704 | Georgia Ports Authority Infrastructure: Port of Savannah / Georgia Ports Authority
Georgia’s deepwater ports and inland barge terminals support more than 369,000 jobs throughout the state annually and contribute $20.4 billion in income, $84.1 billion in sales and $1.3 billion in state and local taxes to Georgia’s economy. (Georgia Ports Authority)
The Port of Savannah The Port of Savannah is the largest single container terminal in the United States. In FY2015, it handled 3.7 million TEUs (Twenty Foot Equivalent Units) in throughput. FY2015 had the highest volume in the Port of Savannah’s history. The Port of Savannah moved 8.2% of total U.S. containerized loaded cargo volume and more than 18% of the East Coast container trade. The port handled 10% of all U.S. containerized exports in FY2014, a total of 1.3 million loaded TEUs. The port serves approximately 21,000 companies in all 50 states, more than 75% of which are headquartered outside of Georgia.
The Port of Savannah offers its customers many advantages:
The most global services among U.S. Southeast & Gulf ports Asian transit times as low as 22 days and 11-day express service to and from Europe GPA is owner & operator of the largest single-terminal container facility (Garden City) in the U.S. which also features the longest contiguous dock in the U.S. – 9,693 feet Largest Southeast refrigerated container export terminal • One-of-a-kind infrastructure featuring two intermodal container transfer facilities located on a single terminal served by CSX Transportation & Norfolk Southern Railroad Inspection offices for U.S. Customs & Border Protection and Dept. of Agriculture are on-terminal Immediate access to two major interstate highways – I-95 (North/South) and I-16 (East/West) • Largest concentration of retail import distribution centers (DCs) along the East Coast Client Relations Center – one-stop customer solutions group for all port users
The Georgia Ports Authority operates two deepwater terminals in Savannah – Garden City and Ocean Terminal:
Garden City Terminal: A 500-foot channel width and a secured, dedicated 1,200-acre single-terminal container facility 1.4 million square feet of covered storage, including 722,000 square feet of cold storage off terminal Ocean Terminal: A 200.4 -acre general cargo terminal features 9 berths totaling 5,768 linear feet Handles RoRo, breakbulk, containers, heavy-lift and project cargo Over 1.4 million square feet of covered storage
For More Information contact the Georgia Ports Authority, www.gaports.com.
912.964.3855 / 800.342.8012
Forecast: The Ports
The Georgia Ports Authority experienced a year of record growth across the board in FY2015: the Port of Savannah moved more than 32 million tons (8.2% of all U.S. containerized cargo), 3.7 million twenty-foot equivalent cargo units (TEUs), and 714,000 vehicular units. TEU growth was about 17% on an annual basis (fiscal year). Although growth declined in the third quarter of 2015, this is attributed to the easing of labor strife at west coast ports, a stronger dollar, and moderating economic growth overseas. Nonetheless, third quarter data remain on-trend and therefore, more likely to be sustainable in 2016 and into the longer-term. In data through September, over-the-year growth is 7.4%.
By deepening the Savannah River channel to 47 feet, the port be able to more efficiently serve the larger vessels expected to call in greater numbers after the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed. Deeper water will allow the larger Post-Panamax vessels to operate more efficiently and experience fewer delays, thereby reducing transportation costs by 20% or more. The nation’s economy is expected to recoup construction cost in four years, according to the Army Corps’ economic impact assessment. According to the Georgia Ports Authority, the 21,000 businesses that rely on the Port of Savannah are projected to save $174 million a year through increases transportation efficiency. It is finally happening! Dredging of the harbor’s outer channel, located 17 miles from Ft. Pulaski, began in September of 2015 and is expected to be completed by July 2018. Currently, there are 40 workers living on the dredge and operating the equipment 24 hours a day. Additionally, several harbor deepening mitigation projects commenced in 2015. Recovery operations for the confederate ironclad, CSS Georgia, are yielding exceptional artifacts, including a 9,000 pound Dahlgren rifled cannon, leg-irons, and unexploded munitions, among other things. The effort is expected to cost from nine to fourteen million dollars. Additionally, a $100 million contract was awarded to install oxygen bubblers in the Savannah River to maintain ecosystem-healthy oxygen levels during the summer months. Lastly, a $40 million contract was awarded to construct a 17 acre reservoir on Abercorn Creek in Effingham County to supplement the City of Savannah’s water supply. Construction will begin in 2016. For More Information contact the Georgia Ports Authority, 912.964.3855 or 800.342.8012. |
warc | 201704 | The number of San Diegans employed by foreign-owned firms nearly doubled over the past 20 years, rising from 25,600 in 1991 to 48,730 in 2011, said a report released Friday by the Brookings Institution and JP Morgan Chase Bank.
But those workers still account for 4.8 percent of private-sector employment in San Diego County, putting it in 48th place among the nation's top 100 metro areas and 23rd place for its overall number of workers.
"Foreign direct investment (FDI) matters because the U.S. operations of foreign firms contribute inordinately to the economy," the report said. "While accounting for only 5 percent of private sector employment (nationwide), FDI accounts for 6.7 percent of total compensation, 12 percent of productivity growth, 15.2 percent of capital investment and 18.9 percent of corporate research and development."
Not all foreign-owned companies are high-paying centers of R&D investment.
The largest driver of foreign-backed employment nationwide — and the second-largest in San Diego — is in food chains, including the German-owned Trader Joe's and the Dutch-owned Stop-and-Shop convenience stores. Foreign-owned food chains employ 288,000 people nationwide, including 3,000 in San Diego.
But other local foreign employment is more tech-oriented, with foreign-owned precision instrument companies employing 9,700 workers; semiconductors, 2,500; communications equipment, 2,400; and pharmaceuticals, 1,600.
Britain is the biggest foreign employer in San Diego, with 11,900 workers, including more than 1,500 at the shipyards owned by British defense manufacturer
BAE Systems, whose other local operations include a center for geospatial intelligence systems in Rancho Bernardo.
Japan is the second-largest foreign employer with 8,700 workers, led by Sony Electronics. Several large Japanese firms have long had back-office operations in San Diego for their manufacturing plants in Tijuana, but the Japanese have also been acquiring local firms, such as
Hydranautics in Oceanside and Althea Technologies in Sorrento Valley.
"It's no coincidence that our top two FDI-generating cities, Tokyo and London, are also the two direct international flights out of San Diego," said Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., who has been working closely with the Brookings Institution on ways of drawing more foreign investment to the region.
But San Diego lacks direct air access to several other investment centers in the world, such as China, which has recently been engaged in a wave of foreign investment.
A study by the UCLA Anderson Forecast release last week says that China has been targeting most of its investments in the West Coast cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle — partly because of their direct flight links across the Pacific.
530 B St. Ste., 700
sa, CA 92101 |
warc | 201704 | The Security Industry Association (SIA) has stepped in to help broker a deal between the electronic security industry and environmental groups concerned over the energy efficiency of security devices. October 25, 2009
ADT Security Services has put together a list of tips to help prevent carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning this winter season. With the increased use of fuel-burning space heaters and portable generators during the colder months comes an increased need for CO poisoning prevention. October 22, 2009
If a leading fire-safety association prevails, automatic sprinkler systems would be code-required across the country for new construction of single-family and two-unit dwellings. The requirement would open a new business opportunity for companies that install fire protection and life-safety systems, sources tell
SSI. October 18, 2009
Fire and life safety provider SimplexGrinnell highlighted its emergency planning and preparedness capabilities at ASIS 2009 Seminar and Exhibits in Anaheim, Calif. October 05, 2009
NOTIFIER of Northford, Conn., releases its high-speed NOTI-FIRE-NET fire alarm network, which operates nearly 40 times faster than its standard network platform while supporting twice as many nodes, according to the company.
SSI Staff · October 04, 2009
Mull over the safeguarding of a casino and instantaneously video surveillance comes to mind. But how about considering the fire/life-safety perspective? A Reno, Nev., facility serves as an example of what it takes to provide casinos with solutions that satisfy both codes and the unique demands of these customers. October 04, 2009
The National Burglar & Fire Alarm Association (NBFAA) has taken another step toward securing congressional approval of its life safety alarm installation language for colleges. The House Committee on Education and Labor passed H.R. 3221, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, in late July. July 29, 2009
For a business owner, responding to a disaster - be it natural or man made - begins with careful preparation long before the calamity ever strikes. Having a detailed disaster preparedness plan to implement when called for can mean the difference between getting a business running again quickly or rendered entirely ineffective for an extended period. Or even worse. By Rodney Bosch · June 30, 2009
PERS is a term that is gathering familiarity in the electronic security industry vernacular. Known as personal emergency response systems, these monitored devices are designed to summon help in the event of various urgent situations such as when an elderly person falls. May 31, 2009
The Oklahoma Blood Institute called on STAMPSCO Fire & Security to design and overhaul its fire/life-safety system to accommodate multisite operations in two states. The integrator provided a solution that includes voice evac, expandable networking and remote monitoring. April 30, 2009 |
warc | 201704 | Closing Of The Frontier, The: A History Of The Marine Fisheries Of Southeast Asia C. 1850-2000
by Butcher, John G.
About This Book
This book is the first on the history of the marine fisheries of Southeast Asia. It takes as its central theme the movement of fisheries into new fishing grounds, particularly the diverse ecosystems that make up the seas of Southeast Asia. This process accelerated between the 1950s and 1970s in what the author calls "the great fish race". Catches soared as the population of the region grew, demand from Japan and North America for shrimps and tuna increased, and fishers adopted more efficient ways of locating, catching, and preserving fish. But the great fish race soon brought about the severe depletion of one fish population after another, while pollution and the destruction of mangroves and coral reefs degraded fish habitats. Today the relentless movement into new fishing grounds has come to an end, for there are no new fishing grounds to exploit. The frontier of fisheries has closed. The challenge now is to exploit the seas in ways that preserve the diversity of marine life while providing the people of the region with a source of food long into the future.
Please note that this book may not be in stock. We will confirm availability upon receipt of your order. * Actual charges are made in Singapore Dollars (SGD). SGD1.00 = US$0.72 |
warc | 201704 | Capped data plans can be great for saving money, but not if you regularly incur hefty overage charges. Not sure how to track your minutes, texts and data usage? Just download DataMan or VoiceMan apps for iPhones or DroidStats for Android phones and you can track your usage with the touch of a button. Need a little more handholding? You can also set up helpful alerts to warn you when you are getting close to reaching your max.
They say you can’t get something for nothing, but, believe it or not, in some cases you can. Many major cell phone companies offer family and friends plans that allow you to talk to anyone on the same cell phone carrier for free. That means if you can round up enough of your family and friends to get the same carrier as you have, everyone saves money.
It always pays to negotiate when you are working out a new plan with your phone company. Oftentimes, you can get a better deal than what you find advertised on the internet. Even better? Try bundling your internet, home phone, cable, cell phone and any other services together and you can get deeper savings by using the same company for all your communication needs.
Got a teenager in the house who can’t seem to stay within reasonable limits? A prepaid phone could work wonders on your monthly bill. The perfect combination of freedom and control, a prepaid cell phone simply doesn’t make calls after prepaid amount is used up. This is a great way to teach teens how to budget their time and money.
On the other hand, it often pays to keep all the cell phones in the family on the same plan. Family plans offer significant discounts for having multiple phones on the same bill. Adding additional lines is cheaper and you can even share minutes and data plans.
Do you have trouble sticking within your monthly limit for minutes, texts or data? An unlimited plan might be the answer for you. Sure, it might cost a few extra bucks a month, but overall you’ll still save money by avoiding overage charges.
If it’s been a while since you’ve chatted with a representative from your phone company, now’s the time to give them a call. Plans change fairly often and you might just have an outdated plan that costs more than what’s currently being offered now. Feel like you’re getting the shaft? Don’t be afraid to shop around and check out what other companies have to offer.
And you'll see personalized content just for you whenever you click the My Feed .
SheKnows is making some changes! |
warc | 201704 | By John Brown
One of the many things that the NFATCA continues to monitor are the statistics and particulars on NFA transfers. Many of you remember the days of transfers that took, on the norm, 10-12 months. The last thing in the world you would do is call and check the status of your own transfer because you didn’t want to disturb the process. Those days made you feel helpless. Thank goodness those days are long gone.
When the NFA Branch moved to Martinsburg and Ken Houchens, as the new NFA Branch Chief, took this bull by the horns and things seemed to change overnight. Most of us went from being scared of our examiners to developing a good relationship with them. At that time the NFATCA actually went to Martinsburg and presented the examiners with a special plaque recognizing them for their excellence in getting a better handle on transfers for the entire community. At the height of the best times that we have seen, Form 3 transfers were taking a mere 5 days and Form 4s were handled in 22 days, once at the Branch. Did we get spoiled by all of this? You bet we did!
If you had the occasion to go to Knob Creek in October last year you would have seen the new NFA Branch Chief Ed Saavedra explain that Form 4s were holding at 4 months in 2009. In a later article I will detail an interview with Ted Clutter who has taken the lead as the NFA Branch Supervisor and is holding the line of this tidal wave that takes transfers 4 months as best possible with the resources that are available.
Prior to the Knob Creek meeting, resources at ATF and the NFATCA pondered on why the transfer times are running at the rate they are. We all knew that with a new President that the rush was on. NFA purchases went through the roof and purchases of the AR family of rifles were unprecedented. After the election panic and with the fall of the economy everything came to a screeching halt. Not only did the panic purchases come to a full stop but prices began to fall. The decline of disposable income and the fear of a complete collapse in the economy caused an interesting phenomenon in purchasing. Most of the NFA community decided not to spend their disposable income on high end items and instead spend their money on more affordable items, such as suppressors, short barreled rifles and similar more affordable items thereby holding on to as much cash as possible. At least that’s what appeared to be happening. To verify this, we decided to study the overall numbers and present those to our readers on what was actually happening with the types of NFA transfers during the last five years.
If you carefully look over the statistics in the following chart there are some amazing conclusions that can be drawn on how the presidential election and the economy have affected our community.
It is especially interesting to see that the more economical NFA items have increased dramatically. Also of note is how the pace in purchasing machine guns has drastically slowed as compared to any of the other five years. Additional surprises are also apparent in silencer purchases and short barreled rifles over previous years. Take into consideration that short barreled rifles and silencers are more affordable and still being made, it is no wonder that machine gun purchases have fallen off over the last year.
The last point of interest is how this work load has affected the ATF examiners in Martinsburg. Since 2006 their job has been, with the same number of resources, almost unmanageable. Taking a look at what happened for the total in 2009, it is no wonder that the NFA Branch has been forced to institute a multitude of new practices to keep pace with the increases in form processing. It is also important to understand that this chart only addresses Form 4s. This combined with the many other forms that are processed by the NFA Branch has put the NFATCA and ATF at the table together on many occasions to address how the NFTCA can better communicate issues to the community to assist the Branch. Working together has proven to help us both in better managing submission and processing.
On multiple occasions since the inception of the NFATCA we have had the privilege and the honor of working closely with the NFA Branch to better understand and assist the Branch whenever possible.
Still wondering what we do for our community? Continue to follow our updates in future articles to see exactly “What we have done for you lately,” or come join us and make a difference at www.nfatca.org.
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warc | 201704 | Claim:Any car equipped with a remote keyless entry system can be unlocked via cell phone.
FALSE Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004]
If someone has access to the spare remote at your home, call them on your cell phone (or borrow one from someone if the cell phone is locked in the car too!)
Hold your (or anyone's) cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the other person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the phone.
Your car will unlock. and it works. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk, or have the "horn" signal go off, or whatever!)
Origins:Most new cars now come equipped with "Remote Keyless Entry" (or "Keyless Remote" or "Keyless Entry" or "Remote Entry") systems (also known as RKE systems), a mechanism which allows automobile owners to lock and unlock their car doors remotely (from up to about
But what if you accidentally lock your remote entry device in your car along with your keys? (A plausible scenario, as many people carry them together on the same keyring.) If you own a car equipped with a system such as OnStar you can contact an operator and have OnStar unlock your vehicle remotely through a signal sent via a cellular network, but otherwise you have to call a locksmith or get a friend or relative to bring an extra set of keys out to you.
Enter the idea of the poor man's OnStar. No need to pay for a fancy car-unlocking service: just use a cell phone to call someone who has access
Relaying remote entry system signals via telephone might work if the signals were sound-based, but they're not. An RKE system transmits an encrypted data stream to a receiver inside the automobile via an RF (radio frequency) signal, a signal that can't be effectively relayed via cell phone. (In any event, RKE systems and cell phones typically operate on completely different frequencies; the former in the
(More than a few people have inadvertently fooled themselves into believing the cell phone method of unlocking car doors actually works because they tried it and achieved the desired
It's possible this method might work with cars that use something different than standard RKE systems, but it doesn't work with the vast majority of models.
As an owner of a vehicle equipped with an RKE system, I've found that it has reduced the likelihood of my locking my keys in the car in an unexpected way: Since I quickly became accustomed to always locking and unlocking the car with the RKE device, and I carry the RKE device on the same ring as my keys, I have to be standing outside the vehicle with my keys in my hand in order to lock it. Now if I only had something to keep me from losing my cell
Additional information:
Remote Keyless Entry Systems Overview How Remote Entry Works Last updated:13 March 2015
Sources: Partlow, Joshua. "Keyless Remotes to Cars in Waldorf Suddenly Useless." The Washington Post.5 July 2004 (p. B1). Associated Press."Mysterous Force Knocks Out Keyless Entry Systems." TheWBALChannel.com.6 July 2004 (p. B1). Consumer Reports."Myth Busters." September 2013 (p. 9). |
warc | 201704 | Taking a moment aside from MLK’s birthday and the Presidential inauguration I want to bring forward a much discussed topic: Radical Social Work. My dislike for the term stems from the negative connotation I have against it. That doesn’t mean I’m right. Matt, very thoroughly depicted what radical social work means, the textbook definitions, and the historical context of which our entire profession subscribes to. When thinking upon the issue myself, a memory stirred from Les Miserables. A lot of people hate on Javert, the police inspector who seems to have no better hobby than prevent our lead protagonist, and his lovely ward from living a charmed life. He just so happens to be one of my favorite characters in literature. Growing up with Les Mis, I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard the songs, seen the plays, and watched the movie. It is one of those stories that will mold and give forth something different each time you view it.
My understanding of the messages have grown as I have grown, as the play as grown in my mind. Javert is the “bad guy” in the play, and yet, a “textbook” good man. His limitation is that his own view of the world is so cut into black and white, that he cannot accept there can be goodness outside the accepted law. Valjean emphasizes this multiple times, a fact that stood out in the most recent film adaptation. Valjean reiterates the phrase “you’ve done your duty, nothing more,” in what seems a compliment to Javert, is a blatant insult otherwise. Much like Marc Antony’s funeral speech against Brutus to the Romans where he turns “noble” into the darkest of slurs, Valjean turns “duty” into a slap. Going further than duty calls for is how I think radical social workers must be. It is going beyond the norm in order to do what is right and moral, even if it does not seem to abide by the strictures of the day. While far from a cry to become lawless, I think that is the sentiment missing from the title radical social work. What we’re looking for is an ability to go above and beyond what is expected of us, what is asked of us, in order for us not just to do our duty but for us to change the world. |
warc | 201704 | GroupManagementReport management-relevant figures monthly to the Management Board. In addition, both operational and strategic risks are analyzed by means of a structured reporting system. It shows developments in all relevant departments using KPIs and reports them quarterly to the Management Board. b) Finance All accounting decisions relevant to the Company’s financial statements as well as the revenue calculation process are monitored and/or executed by the global Corporate Finance department. This ensures compliance with IFRS accounting regulations throughout the Company. c) Treasury The Corporate Treasury team creates daily cash and weekly hedging transaction reports for the Management Board. All high-risk foreign-currency and hedging transactions may be conducted only by the Corporate Treasury team, which is directly below the CFO. The national subsidiaries are forbid- den by a global treasury policy from engaging in any high- risk transactions with derivatives. Regular internal audits monitor compliance with this policy. d) Internal Audit Software AG’s Internal Audit is an active component of the Company’s risk management system. Through a systematic and targeted approach, it ensures the effectiveness of risk management along with the evaluation and continual im- provement of the internal control systems and the manage- ment and supervision processes. It is also geared to the creation of added value for Software AG by optimizing busi- ness processes. Internal Audit reports directly to the CEO and operates worldwide. Risk management in the financial reporting standards process The risk of financial reporting errors was largely eliminated through implementation of the following processes: for ongoing monitoring of the risk areas identified, which address the development of the entire Company as well as department-specific issues. The Management Board receives ongoing information as to current and future risks and op- portunities as well as the aggregated risk and opportunity situation via established channels. Software AG updates and monitors the applicable specifications for preventing and reducing threats on an ongoing basis throughout the Group. Central responsibility for Group-wide processes Risks and opportunities throughout the world are managed and controlled by the teams at corporate headquarters re- sponsible for risk management for both Software AG and its subsidiaries. Corporate headquarters compiles risk and op- portunity reports, initiates further development of our risk management system and elaborates risk-mitigating guide- lines for the entire Group. We constantly review the func- tioning and reliability of the system as well as the reporting. Software AG’s internal control system has operationalized business risks by way of internal policies on business policies and practices, as well as Group-wide specification of effective internal controls, compliance with which are continually monitored. The defined policies regulate internal procedures and areas of responsibility at the global and local levels. They are designed to provide information for management and to monitor the operating business risks of the Software AG Group. In order to enhance transparency, administration, communication and compliance assessment of the policies are carried out centrally. Another component of risk and opportunity management is the transfer of operating risks to insurance carriers. The General Services department at corporate headquarters coordinates this function globally. Structure of the risk management system a) Controlling Controlling—which is under unified global leadership— monitors operating business risks in real time and reports 99 Corporate Governance Report of the Supervisory Board Consolidated Financial Statements Notes Additional Information Group Management Report Business and General Conditions Economic Report Events after the Balance Sheet Date Risk and Opportunity Report Remuneration Report Forecast Takeover-related Disclosures Statement on Corporate Governance |
warc | 201704 | Open letter to Mr Denis Coderre, Mayor of Montreal
Dear Mr Coderre,
Your decision to lose weight and get into shape in order to participate in the upcoming Tour de l’île de Montréal on May 31 is very inspiring.
We congratulate you for being a “champion” of the 5/30 Health and Wellness Challenge, the awareness campaign that my company SOSCuisine.com contributes to by proposing menus full of fruits and vegetables for the six weeks of the challenge so as to achieve the “5” goal of the challenge.
Hats off to you for having already lost 15 pounds since January 19. We understand that your plan is to lose another 38 more before May 31. Again, it’s very inspiring but perhaps a bit unrealistic, especially if you don’t want to surrender to the yoyo effect that afflicts all those who want to lose lots of weight in little time.
Instead, I suggest that you develop better eating habits that will last even after May 31. If you exercise regularly and follow our personalized menus, you can easily lose 15-20 pounds by May 31. The extra 15-20 pounds will follow naturally and most importantly… you won’t regain them!
It will be a pleasure and an honour for our Montreal-based SME to help you achieve your goal, as we have already done for thousands of other people throughout Quebec and elsewhere. In fact, the CHUM, the Montreal Heart Institute’s EPIC Centre and the Médecins francophones du Canada have all recommended us.
Don’t give up, Mr Mayor! You’re the best mayor that Montreal has had in a very long time and we’re going to help you stay on longer and in good health!
So, please
contact us before the start of the Challenge and our nutrition team will take care of you.
Cinzia Cuneo
President and Co-founder SOSCuisine.com Proud partner of 5/30 Health and Wellness Challenge
Author Latest posts by Cinzia Cuneo (see all) What’s Happening with the Price of your Shopping Basket? – January 16, 2017 How to Cook the Perfect Turkey in a Few Simple Steps – December 18, 2016 Duck Festival – September 18, 2016 |
warc | 201704 | A Times Editorial A question of fairness answered
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 7, 2003
During Thomas Joe Miller-El's murder trial, Texas prosecutors used their peremptory challenges to eliminate 10 of the 11 potential African-American jurors. Miller-El, a black man, was later convicted and sentenced to death. And for the next 17 years he tried challenging the fairness of a trial before a jury stripped of African-Americans. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court finally gave him a friendly ear.
In an 8-to-1 ruling, the court said Miller-El's claims of discrimination should get a hearing. The court did not grant him a new trial, just an opportunity to question whether his initial trial was fair.
The decision in Miller-El vs. Cockrell could have widespread implications for prisoners both on and off death row. The court directed federal appellate courts to be more generous to prisoners who are challenging the constitutionality of their trials. In effect, the high court reasserted the role of federal courts in policing the fairness and legality of state court proceedings.
The question before the court involved its interpretation of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Congress passed the law because it was tired of the way death row inmates were using habeas corpus in what it viewed as frivolous challenges. The law sets up roadblocks to habeas petitions, one of these being an end to the automatic right of a prisoner to appeal a denial of habeas relief in a federal district court. Inmates who seek to appeal the lower court's judgment must first obtain a "certificate of appealability." Various federal appeals courts, including the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, had set a high bar before granting a certificate, essentially requiring the inmate to prove the merits of his case.
In a decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court reminded the lower federal courts that a certificate of appealability is not the same as an inquiry into the merits of a habeas petition. The court said a certificate should be granted whenever the constitutional claim being made by the inmate has a reasonable basis, not necessarily a winning one.
Opening federal appellate courts to more claims by inmates will reintroduce a layer of review and scrutiny to state court processes that has been missing in recent years. The court's decision was a victory for fairness for Miller-El and the justice system as a whole.
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 727-893-8111
From the Times
Opinion page
Editorial: A question of fairness answered Editorial: Medicare disservice Editorial: Unwelcome surprise at Perkins Letters: Law school at FAMU will be racially diverse |
warc | 201704 | I think the database developer role is on the rise and that it's better suited for agile practices - but guidance is needed make that infusion of agile practices a success. Here's why.
My impression is that fusing agile practices into the DBA role is inherently awkward since administration differs significantly from development. A DBA might be involved in development occasionally or might bundle together a series of items into a project where a SCRUM sprint could apply - but commonly a DBA is frequently interrupted by a broad spectrum of issues and must also attend to routines of ongoing maintenance and support where they're taken out of development.
That said, there are signals that database development is becoming more formalized into its own role unique from that of the DBA - with both roles overlapping each other to some extent of course. One signal is that Database development now has its own separate Microsoft certification with the 70-433 test offering the MCTS certification in Database Development.
Mind you, I'm talking about the broad-sweeping trends. No need to argue about individual cases. I'm suggesting that out in the wild, more places are cropping up for a separate database developer role - and that role could be more suited for the infusion of agile practices.
Another signal is Oslo - an upcoming approach to development involving collaborative modeling. The goal is to get the various IT professionals to work together more effectively which includes getting someone from the database side of the equation into the collaborative development space. That person I suspect is the database developer primarily and the DBA secondarily.
I think that adoption of agile practices are coming to the database world later then the world of software development at large. That's hard to prove. One hint though is that articles relating to test-driven development practices (one area of agile practices) on SQLServerCentral are not frequent and are more recent. It's somewhat of a new conversation. The question is, if agile practices are late in coming to database development, is that an advantage or a disadvantage? An important question is will we learn from the mistakes already made, or will we be doomed to repeat them? It depends, of course, but on what?
To help answer that, let me take a quick step back. I've been talking so far about agile "practices," lumping things together whereas Alistair Cockburn, one of the very founders of the entire Agile movement keenly separates out the "procedures" used in agile from the "properties" of an agile environment. In his influential book Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodoligy for Small Teams, Cockburn suggests that if a small team ensures that their environment has certain properties such as "reflective improvement," then the practices used to foster that property will follow.
That said, we can clarify here that it's the specific practices like teaming up programmers to run in dual-code mode, setting up a walking skeleton and using incremental rearchitecture and so forth, might be more awkward for the database world. The properties, however, are not as awkward.
For instance, one of Cockburn's properties is "personal safety" - (which could end up being one of the most important agile team properties of all) I think can be set up in the database world with no inherent impedance. Personal safety in a nutshell is "being able to speak about something bothering you, without fear of reprisal" (Cockburn). It can lead a developer for instance to admit that an aspect of a project is beyond their ability. They'll get help sooner and the project will move forward.
At this point I think I should lay down another impression about the whole agile movement that is taking hold of software development - because I think it can serve as a warning signal for the database world. I think there are forces acting on the agile movement from the business world to change it into a sort of magical "get something for nothing" proposition. In order to sell an agile methodology, the technical personnel and others emphasize speed and success and tend to leave out everything else.
I think developers are being talked about as if they were processors on a motherboard. Extreme programming is like working in dual-processor mode. The discussions are about efficiency, throughput and keeping developers at maximum productivity.
What doesn't get mentioned or emphasized is the human-powered side of the equation. The result can be project-seizing turnover and morale drain. Set up a series of intense sprints with little time to come up for air, adjust the methodology so that the developers aren't coming up with the timelines, and what do you think will happen?
Here's where I think the database world can sidestep some thorny issues by going back to the beginning and embracing some of the values that were discussed at the conception of the agile movement.
The history, some of which is kept at agilemanifesto.org, is that some experienced developers set up a meeting one late winter day in 2001 at a ski lodge in the Wasatch mountains of Utah. One of the original signatories of the movement, Jim Highsmith, made a statement that I think we should take particular notice of. Highsmith says "I believe Agile Methodologists are really about the 'mushy stuff' about delivering good products to customers by operating in an environment that does more than talk about 'people as our most important asset' but actually 'acts' as if people were the most important, and lose the word 'asset'."
From the beginning, the agile movement was concerned about not just the success of software projects but also about the human sustainability of the software development profession. There is a concern for the developer community. There are costs and trade-offs to be made. So to create a sustainable and humane development environment, an agile methodology can't be sold to the business segment as a cost-free trade-off free proposition. From the get-go, the signatories of the agile manifesto laid out the key trade-offs that they perceived should be made, which can be reviewed here. One of them is "individuals and interactions over processes and tools" where individuals and interactions are valued more.
I'd like to venture one last speculative point in this entry - the validity of which I think doesn't negate the other points I've made. Non-database developers seem to wield suprisingly little political power in general. They're struggling to get control over setting their own sprint timelines. I think the database developers and DBAs might have a little stronger bargaining chip. They preside over not just an RBDMS these days - but with SQL Server and the likes, they've got the reigns on an entire data-centric business platform that handles a gambit of technological needs. If that added leverage exists, perhaps database professionals will become more successful at creating the agile environment that was and is actually intended by the founders.
Lastly, I recommend Cockburn's book, which reviews both the ideal properties of small agile teams, but also reviews some of the successful practices and techniques like walking skeleton, process miniature and so forth. |
warc | 201704 | The private jets have lifted off. The giant congress centre has fallen silent. Tens of thousands of canapés have been consumed. Hundreds of millions of Swiss francs have been injected into the economy of an Alpine town. But what was it all for? What has the world learned from this year's gathering of the planet's economic, political and academic elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos?
Well, we learned that the eurozone patient has been given a massive dose of painkillers by the European Central Bank but talk of a cure is woefully premature. The optimistic blustering of bankers at the beginning of the week about a corner having been turned quickly gave way to gloom after Angela Merkel's negative opening address. The German chancellor said the answer is "more Europe" but her body language suggested she wished it would all just go away. Was this the saviour of the eurozone speaking, delegates asked themselves. Few came away reassured. "These politicians - Sarkozy, Merkel - are too concerned with getting re-elected to do what is necessary," Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium magnate complained to me.
Greece was on the minds of many. Was a deal on debt restructuring really imminent? Should the European Central Bank take a haircut on its Greek bond holdings? Was Germany's apparent bid to control the Greek budget a necessary step, or disastrous over-reach? No one - not politicians, officials or bankers - could provide a convincing answer to any of these questions. Despite the insistence of the politicians present that Greece would be a special case, there were gloomy private predictions from several quarters that Portugal would be next to need debt forgiveness.
Davos taught us that capitalism is in crisis (with news of record unemployment in Spain filtering through to the conference on the same day as confirmation of Stephen Hester's bonus - which he has now rejected), but that no one, not even the Occupy protesters in their igloo camp, have a clear idea of what to replace the system with. One Occupy member who was invited to take part in a panel on the subject tried to get the audience to provide their own answers. The audience said that they'd rather hear from the panel. We learned at Davos that a big liberalisation of world trade would be a boost to flagging global growth but that it's not going to happen. Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organisation, admitted as much. World Bank chief Robert Zoellick even warned of protectionist forces stirring.
We learned that the super-rich think that philanthropy is a good thing and are worried about rising inequality. However, we also found out that they still don't want to pay more tax. One participant at the Confederation for British Industry dinner harangued Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne about the unfairness of the UK's 50p tax rate.
Some were less than impressed with the charity talk from the super-rich too. "They always talk about philanthropy when they're under pressure, it's really just a smokescreen" one well-connected Davos veteran told me.
But was Davos useful in a practical sense? The World Economic Forum organisers claim Davos enables politicians to meet in a convivial and neutral setting and lay the groundwork for diplomatic breakthroughs. But one UK government minister had a more sceptical take: "You can meet a lot of people who you normally wouldn't bother travelling to meet."
And how about the private sector? Did "Davos man" - the hyper-connected, super-confident, global business leader - have a productive time, locating promising new investment opportunities? The general feeling seemed to be that there is simply too much uncertainty out there (mainly thanks to the eurozone mess), to strike any big deals. Money is hunkering down for safety.
There was the usual confident talk about the investment opportunities arising from the economic expansion of Asia and the internationalisation of China's yuan. But this felt more like a security blanket for the economic movers and shakers of Davos than genuine bullishness.
As the conference wound down, one business delegate blundered into a lift where some of the congress centre's catering staff were wrestling with a trolley. "Where am I?" he asked, a little desperately. Yes, Davos man is lost. What hope, then, for the rest of us?Reuse content |
warc | 201704 | If you find yourself feeling anxious, jumpy, and panicky mid-afternoon, or lethargic, uncomfortable and sluggish, it could be that it's not your job that's stressing you out, but your lunch.
The midday meal for busy workers should be a time to recharge and rest. But the wrong lunch can make you feel worse than ever. Here Stephanie Zinser, whose book, The Good Gut Guide, is out this week, gives her tips on how to eat the perfect lunch.
1. Don't rush your lunch. The faster you eat, the more likely you are to swallow air, which can cause wind, bloating and abdominal pain. People often swallow too much air as a reaction to stress. Smoking, chewing gum, sucking hard sweets and wearing badly-fitting dentures are also hazards.
2. Try to sit quietly during and after lunch. A huge amount of blood - some 40 per cent of your blood supply - passes through the digestive system after a meal, allowing the nourishment to be absorbed and distributed throughout the body. You shouldn't even shop, let alone exercise, after eating because activity will divert most of the blood from the digestive system to help muscles perform.
3. Chew each mouthful slowly, at least 15 times. Saliva contains important enzymes such as amylase, which breaks starch down. The more you chew, the more easily your food will be digested, and the less likely it is that you will suffer indigestion - the classic curse of the stressed-out executive.
4. Although stress is often associated with stomach ulcers, what you eat may be a more important factor. Avoid excessively spicy or acidic foods (such as tomatoes), and lower your alcohol intake.
5. A great lunch is pasta with pesto sauce - basil, pines nuts and garlic. Basil can help relieve sadness, tension and boost the nervous system, and sage can combat post-viral fatigue and nervous exhaustion.
6. A brain booster is a vegetable stir-fry with ginger. Ginger eases headaches and improves memory.
7. You'll pay for eating fast food like burgers and chips. Fatty foods take longer to digest, making you feel lethargic and hampering your productivity.
8. Avoid colas and highly-caffeinated "energy" drinks. Apart from containing caffeine, a stimulant that can worsen feelings of anxiety or panic if you're already stressed, fizzy drinks may make you feel bloated and uncomfortable.
9. Be careful how you drink hot drinks. If you gulp your coffee or tea while it's very hot, you can damage the sensitive lining of your throat and oesophagus. This can contribute to chronic problems such as heartburn and gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (Gerd).
10. Steer clear of chocolate, sweets and cakes. These boost your blood sugar levels, but plummet quickly, leaving you more under pressure than before. Instead, choose snacks such as oat flapjacks, wholemeal sandwiches, brown rice or pasta salads that release sugars into your bloodstream at a slower, more constant, rate.
11. Treat your stomach to a mixed salad with alfalfa sprouts. Fruit, vegetables and pulses provide long-lasting energy, and they help prevent constipation - a common problem if you're stressed. Fibre helps reduce cholesterol by binding to it in the bowel, preventing it from being reabsorbed into the blood.
12. Drink at least eight glasses of water a day. Dehydration causes headaches, performance problems and memory failures.
The Good Gut Guide, by Stephanie Zinser, is published by Thorsons, £10.99.Reuse content |
warc | 201704 | Introduction
America is a complex and diverse web of individuals marked by social stratification, a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy (Macionis, 2011, p.204). The film People Like Us: Social Class in America discusses the class system, social stratification based on both birth and individual achievement, which the American people use to define others (Macionis, 2011, p.206). It explores the many variables that contribute to the determination of a person’s class; such as, ancestry, education, and money. Ancestry will be a main focus because it has such a strong influence on the class system of today. The film provided an informative and entertaining basis for understanding inequality within our nation. Description
Part 1-Bud or Bordeaux
The film introduces the concept of Bud or Bordeaux. The meaning of this title displays how language can invoke a “feeling of class” (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). According to the film, individuals defined class as having money, how you were raised, and your state of mind (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). In many cases we use status symbols in order to show others were we should be within the social hierarchy. Status symbols can are displayed through what is known as conspicuous consumption, or buying and using products because of the “statement” they make about social position (Macionis, 2011, p.216). In society, the items that we buy may lead to the determination of our social class.
This first part of the film took us through the contrast of classes based on products. We were able to see the pattern of consumption of our nation, such as buying products that are not necessarily needed like a specialty blender. It also discussed the battle between classes when a co-op supermarket took over a Shaw’s supermarket in a working class community. The co-op food was organic and did not sell white bread which exposed the class differences (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). The working class people tend to be less tolerant and therefore did not want to be told what was good for them to eat (Macionis, 2011, p.225) Part 2-High and Low
The next part of the film, takes the viewer through the visual of the high society and low society of our nation. It reveals the inside life and thoughts of the WASPS and takes us into their world of the inherited rich. The next section displays the relationship between race and social class in the Bourgeois Blues. It’s a glimpse into the black-middle class and the idea that attaining success means losing your roots in African American U.S. society (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). After that, the film tells the story of Tammy, a single mother struggling in poverty and working at a low-income job. Part 3-Salt of the Earth
Salt of the Earth showed the values and traditions of the working and middle class people. An owner of a lawn ornament shop discusses why American’s like to dress their yards up. She simply states that “It’s America and who has the right to look down on anybody” (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). It then transitions to the city of Baltimore, where the people value their blue-collar lifestyle and have a street festival. One man said that the working class does 80% of the work and gets 10% of the pay (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). Many people feel a prejudice against them as being part of the working class. The section closes with a woman named Dana who is native to Kentucky, but now lives in Washington DC. It discusses her problems that she must deal with while trying to belong to the working class people of her hometown and the white-collar people in her new city. Part 4-Belonging
The final part of the film focused on how to gain acceptance into the upper classes of society. The main idea was that “all you need is cash” in order to fit into the most elite communities and that money will only get you “in”, but it will not get you “accepted” (Alvarez & Kolker, 2001). The message is also conveyed that... |
warc | 201704 | OCS is a police recorded measure of crime. One could argue that the police play a key role in how much crime there is in society. Police dispersal is much greater, and targets extra resources in particular localities, such as urban inner city areas, or target areas consisting of working class or ethnic minorities. This can then relate to the police discretion, the interpretations and meanings that the police attach to behaviour and social groups when deciding to make an arrest, this could also be associated with social characteristics of the police officer. This shows that the OCS can be deemed as unreliable, due to the police discretion.
Marxist view OCS as a bad measure of crime and deviance, as most laws are enforced to focus on the lower and working class. This means that there is less focus placed on white collar crimes, which are rarely prosecuted and the law does not define the crimes for the ‘rich’ criminals. Crimes such as embezzlement is most likely dealt with out of the public eye, and in house. Marxists argue that the working class is criminalised and that sociologists’ use of these statistics will only serve to maintain ruling class deception. OCS are seen by Marxists as a part of the ideological weaponry of the bourgeoisie. The Marxist view further highlights the negativity of people in higher status created OCS, in... |
warc | 201704 | “Building Value: Driving Wholesaler Returns through Strategic and Tactical Investment.”
The use of value in management is mostly as a concept and often found in the statement(s) value added or value chain. Wholesalers add value in their services surrounding the products they distribute and as exemplified in the classic service cycle of purchasing, receiving, picking, sales, shipping, payment, credit, warranties and returns.
Within the last decade, however, there has been a growing body of knowledge that measures tangible value and relates it to the market price of the firm. This research has been done in the public markets where data is available and linked to the share price and market capitalization of the going concern.
The output of the logic, as it affects supply chain entities, including wholesalers, is that measuring value is the single best way for wholesaler owner/operators to improve financial returns. Value far and away is superior to focusing on operating profits and variants of earnings or net profit before tax (NPBT).
The issue with value, in supply chain firms, is that service value is the relevant entity under production and worthy of measure. Service value, however, is found in the operating expenses of the income statement. Hence, operating profits have to be assigned or allocated for insight into where value is generated. Too, value is the primary product of two entities: returns and growth. The measure of Return on Invested Capital or (ROIC) needs to be gathered for each investment and where ensuing returns for discrete value are evaluated for their attractiveness and future growth.
The problem with value, for distributors, is that the measures and management process for value generation and creation don’t exist. Distributors overwhelmingly use financial accounting data for management of future value and, in the process, tend to destroy value as fast as they generate it. Our research over the past five years has been to help distributors use new measures with new knowledge of where value exists, what to do about it and how to increase the market value of the wholesale firm.
Fundamentals of valueValue is defined as ROIC of individual investments and the growth prospects of said investments. Distributors invest service labor in fulfilling transactions and investments can be measured by individual transaction, customer, sales territory, market segment and marketing program. Distributors must consider that these entities are investments and the ROIC must be measured specific to the investment to be confident it produces value.
The allocation of operating expenses to investments has been around wholesaling circles for two decades. The predominant problem in allocating expenses is that many allocation models don’t give an accurate picture of how labor is consumed by the investment. In 2006, Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School and inventor of Activity Costing in the 1980s, developed new standards for cost allocations including the ability to accurately measure labor capacity, usage of terminology that is actionable in the industry and use of a singular baseline logic.
At Benfield Consulting, we follow Kaplan’s standards and start with base transactions of stock, non-stock transfer, non-stock special, drop ship, counter or retail and rep order. Our work with the model, over the past five years, finds that transaction type is an accurate and actionable singular logic on which to allocate costs. The labor for individual transactions differs and we add components of outside sales coverage or not covered, inside sales entered or e-commerce, shipped to customer or pick up at branch, etc., to each base transaction ending up with 12 to 20+ transaction types for the typical wholesaler.[i] We allocate all costs that have to do with fulfilling the transaction and typically leave out fixed costs of branch overhead and executive salaries.
For all intents and purposes, approximately 80% of the allocated costs represent labor used by the wholesale firm. The explanation of allocation logic is important as we continue to find where the predominance of existing allocation models doesn’t follow Kaplan’s standards and, hence, these models are not recommended for measuring value.
We continue to find outdated and inaccurate concepts such as Average Order Size and Average Order Cost used in certain models. Our work in the costing of transaction types finds that there are significant variations in transaction costs, often exceeding $100, and using the concept of “average” in measuring value is best described by the metaphor, “An average person has one breast and one testicle.”[ii]
The Value Equation, once allocations have been measured, is: Capital Returns/Capital Investments, expressed as a percent and less than the weighted average cost of capital. For example, Bayou Plumbing Wholesaler has as an account, Thibideaux Gator Processing, with purchases of $189,663, margins of $38,829 and margin percent of 21%. These figures are secured from the financial statements of the wholesaler and while of some importance, they
don’t come close to measuring value.
Bayou Plumbing, after developing a transaction-based costing model, finds that the cost to serve is $36,110, which leaves $2,719 ($38,829-$36,110) in transaction profits. The concentration on transaction profits of $2,719, or transaction profits as a percent of sales at 1.4%, has
no meaningful correlation to the value producing ability of the account.
Returning to our definition of Capital Returns/Capital Investment, the ROIC of Thibideaux is $2,719/$36,110 or 7.5%. If the weighted average cost of capital for Bayou Plumbing is 8.5%, then the account destroys value by 1%. Hence, to accurately measure the ROIC on an investment, wholesalers need to
create two new measures, which are not found in financial accounting with a modern-day cost allocation logicand this must be compared to the weighted average cost of capital for insight. Using value for improving the value of the wholesale firmMany wholesalers don’t measure the weighted average cost of capital and consider the measure of limited use. While we find this position in need of change, we accommodate clients by referring to value investments with color codes of red, yellow and green as used in the common traffic signal.
Red Investments are some 40% of customers, transactions, sales territories, segments, etc., that have a negative value or a negative ROIC. We say they literally destroy value.
Yellow investments are typically 20% of investments that have an ROIC below the weighted average cost of capital. In essence, they yield a positive but low return.
Green investments are 40% of customers, transactions, sales territories, segments, etc., that have a positive ROIC above the weighted average cost of capital.
Many wholesalers, when measuring value, are too often “deer in the headlights” struck and fail to move toward a working logic on how to rectify the situation of investing in Red and Yellow entities. From our work, several quick and easy rules apply to improving value and they are included in the wrap-up of this blog entry.
Generating value in wholesale distributionTo create a higher than average ROIC and growth prospects in wholesale distribution, we recommend the following steps: Don’t concern yourself with differentiation between shareholder and customer value. These constructs, when used in tandem, have no technical definitions that we can find and are not actionable.The best value research uses ROIC and investing in growth areas, specific to the firm, as the best means to generate value. In essence, the companies that produce the highest ROIC with the best growth provide value to themselves and to their customers; hence, there is no measurable difference in shareholder and customer value because good shareholder value is good customer value.
A value approach to managing wholesale firms takes the use of a modern-day cost allocation logic and usage of ROIC specific to common investments of transactions, sales territories, customers, segments and marketing programs. The field is new and offers significant hope where most wholesalers, using financial accounting, tend to destroy value almost as fast as they generate it and as evidenced by research that finds 50% to 60% of wholesale firms sell for asset value.
[i] Benfield Consulting’s transaction costing model is Labor Differential Transaction Costing and is filed in the US Patent Office with Patent Pending status. [ii] Attributed to Des McHale, Assoc. Prof. of Mathematics at University College, Cork, Ireland. |
warc | 201704 | FIND EXCLUSIVE JOBS FROM €60,000 SKF: SKF launches aggressive new climate strategy and partners with WWF to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Press release published at The Swedish Wire
SKF today announced targets for their new climate strategy and have partnered with the WWF in their Climate Savers Programme. The SKF climate strategy includes aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for SKF, its suppliers and logistics operations, as well as from its customer solutions. To support its customers, SKF also announced the launch of the BeyondZero portfolio including products and solutions which will both improve energy efficiency and support more environmentally friendly energy production.
"With our new climate strategy, we intend to be a leader in our sector to reduce emissions from both our own operations, but also to lead the way in helping our suppliers and customers reduce their emissions," says Tom Johnstone, SKF President and CEO. "We are very proud to join with WWF as the first industrial engineering company to be accepted into the Climate Savers program and look forward to continue using our engineering knowledge to make the world a cleaner place for us all."
SKF and WWF agree that there is a substantial role for the business community to play as a driving force behind the transition to a low-carbon economy and intend to work together in the Climate Savers Programme to reduce SKF's emissions of GHGs, with particular focus on carbon dioxide (CO2).
"SKF is in a unique position as an industrial engineering company to influence the emissions of many companies within a range of segments. They show their level of commitment through their targets, which go beyond the direct emissions of the company itself and also drive positive change across their entire supply chain. We are particularly encouraged by the way in which SKF is willing to take the lead on quantifying and communicating environmental benefits enabled by their products and solutions," says Håkan Wirtén, Secretary General of WWF Sweden.
SKF's updated climate strategy includes the following targets:
· Reduce the total annual energy use of the SKF Group by 5 % below the 2006 level by 2016.
· Reduce the energy use per production output by 5% year-on-year during the period (2012-2016).
· Require that 100% of our energy intensive suppliers are certified according to the new Energy Management Standard ISO 50001 by the end of 2016.
· Reduce CO2 emissions/tonne-km for all transport managed by SKF Logistics Services by 30% below 2011 level by 2016.
· Increase the revenue from the BeyondZero portfolio from SEK 2.5 billion in 2011 to SEK 10 billion in 2016.
The WWF Climate Savers program works with leading companies to cut CO2 emissions. The partnerships between WWF and corporations aim at delivering real, measurable and additional reductions in CO2 emissions. The targets set must be demonstrably more ambitious than previous targets communicated by the company, and should place the company ahead of its competitors in terms of reducing greenhouse gases. Outside experts monitor and verify compliance with these agreements.
Gothenburg, 08 May 2012
Aktiebolaget SKF
(publ)
For further information, please contact:
PRESS: Rebecca Ehlinger-Janzon, SKF Group Communication, tel: 46 31-337 2400, mobile: 46 727-173880, e-mail: Rebecca.janzon@skf.com
IR: Marita Björk, SKF Investor Relations, tel: 46 31-337 1994, mobile: 46 705-181994, e-mail: marita.bjork@skf.com
SKF is a leading global supplier of bearings (http://www.skf.com/portal/skf/home/products?contentId=876709&lang=en), seals (http://www.skf.com/portal/skf/home/products?contentId=238358&lang=en), mechatronics (http://www.skf.com/portal/skf/home/products?contentId=447144&lang=en), lubrication systems (http://www.skf.com/portal/skf_lub?lang=en), and services (http://www.skf.com/portal/skf_lub/home/services?contentId=867934&lang=en) which include technical support, maintenance and reliability services, engineering consulting and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has 15,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2011 were SEK 66,216 million and the number of employees was 46,039. www.skf.com
This information was distributed by Cision |
warc | 201704 | People wash their hair and go swimming more often in the summer, and with more water entering the ears along with damage caused by improper cleaning, symptoms, for example, pain, itching, secretions and odors, can also occur more frequently.
Otolaryngologists, or ear, nose and throat doctors, have recently seen a 30 percent increase in cases of acute otitis externa, or swimmer’s ear, which if left untreated could get worse and cause the eardrum to rupture, do damage to the middle ear, and possibly affect one’s hearing.
Swimmer’s ear is very common during the summer months. Wu Sih-wei, director of Taichung Hospital’s Department of Otolaryngology, says that around 90 percent of swimmer’s ear cases are water-related. Water can easily enter the ear when washing one’s hair, rinsing off in the shower or taking a dip in the pool to cool off. When the inside of the ear is wet and moist, people will usually want to dig around in their ears, but because the skin inside the ear canal is quite thin, damage can easily be done, causing inflammation if the water inside the ear is unsanitary.
Many people this summer with ear infections are exhibiting the symptoms of pain and itching, and subsequently digging moist, odorous secretions out of their ears. In severe cases, people are not going to the doctor until pus starts running out of their ears. Most of the cases that doctors are seeing are swimmer’s ear. If the condition grows worse, it could cause the eardrum to rupture or otitis media, commonly called middle ear infection.
Aside from swimmer’s ear, many people are also getting chronic infections due to outer ear infections caused by mold, which also causes pain, itching and secretions.
今日單字
1. inflammation n.
發炎 (fa1 yan2)
例: Inflammation can be caused by infection.
(感染可引起發炎。)
2. symptom n.
症狀 (zheng4 zhuang4)
例: A runny nose and a sore throat are typical symptoms of the common cold.
(感冒常見的症狀包含流鼻涕與喉嚨痛。)
3. cotton swab n. phr.
棉花棒 (mian2 hua1 bang4)
例: Using cotton swabs is not a medically recommended method for removing earwax.
(用棉花棒掏耳垢不是醫界推薦的方法。)
Wu suggests wearing earplugs when swimming to keep water from entering the ears, and says people should not use cotton swabs or Q-tips to clean their ears after taking a shower or washing their hair to avoid doing damage to the ear canal and causing infection. Wu also adds that people should not use the same cotton swabs or Q-tips that have been used by other people when visiting hair or beauty salons.
(Liberty Times, Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat)
夏季洗頭、游泳機會多，耳朵容易進水加上不當掏耳受傷，出現耳朵痛、癢、分泌物濕臭等不適，耳鼻喉科醫師觀察急性外耳炎患者增加三成，如果惡化，耳膜破損、傷及中耳，可能影響聽力。
夏季常見民眾罹患急性外耳炎，台中醫院耳鼻喉科主任吳思緯指出，約有九成患者與耳朵接觸水有關。洗頭、沖涼或是游泳消暑，都使得耳朵容易進水，當耳朵悶濕就會想掏耳朵，耳道皮膚薄，常因不當掏耳造成破皮，一旦水質不潔就容易感染細菌發炎。
今夏許多患者的耳朵出現疼痛、發癢症狀，又動手掏耳朵掏出又濕又臭的分泌物，有人嚴重到耳朵流出膿液才就醫，大多數是罹患急性外耳炎，再惡化可能造成耳膜破裂、中耳炎。
除了急性外耳炎，也有許多患者外耳感染黴菌造成慢性發炎，一樣又痛又癢，出現分泌物。
吳思緯建議，游泳戴耳塞，以避免耳朵進水，洗澡、洗頭後也盡量不要用棉花棒或用掏耳棒挖耳朵，以防耳道彎曲受傷造成發炎，也不要到理髮廳或理容院，與其他人共用掏耳棒清耳朵。
（自由時報記者蔡淑媛） |
warc | 201704 | A cancer-stricken judge in New York has become an unlikely voice in support of legalizing the use of medical marijuana, with the admission that he smokes pot to ease the side-effects of his treatments.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach, who is being treated for pancreatic cancer, wrote in a New York Times article on Thursday that he had been using marijuana provided by friends at “great personal risk” to help him cope with the nausea, sleeplessness and loss of appetite from chemotherapy treatments.
“This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue,” wrote Reichbach, 65, who has spent 21 years on the bench in Kings County Supreme Court and continues to hear cases even as he receives cancer treatment.
In the past, admitting to taking a few puffs of marijuana has been enough to derail some judges’ careers. US appeals court Judge Douglas Ginsburg saw his nomination for the US Supreme Court go up in smoke in 1987 after admitting he had used marijuana several times in the 1960s and 1970s.
Last year, a Georgia judge was removed from the bench for various infractions, including publicly admitting to smoking pot regularly.
New York is not among the US’ 16 states and the District of Columbia that allow medical marijuana. Cannabis remains an illegal narcotic under federal law.
Under New York’s Code for Judicial Conduct, judges are required to “respect and comply with the law.”
First-time possession of less than 25g of marijuana is punishable by maximum fine of US$100.
While Reichbach’s editorial amounted to an admission he broke the law, his story is more likely to elicit admiration than condemnation, judicial ethics experts said.
“It’s brave and wonderful, but it’s heart-wrenching,” said Ellen Yaroshefsky, a law professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. “There are key moments in history where a judge makes a bold stand. This is one of the moments, and we should be proud of it.”
In New York, disciplinary actions involving judges are handled by the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, which reviews allegations of criminal activity and other wrongdoing and decides on an appropriate reprimand. That could range from a confidential cautionary letter to dismissal, although more serious forms of punishment require approval from the state’s chief judge.
Counsel for the commission Robert Tembeckjian declined to say whether any inquiry could or would be opened into Reichbach’s statements.
“Information relating to the conduct of judges that appears in newspapers is routinely reviewed by the commission,” he said.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office did not immediately comment on whether any action was being contemplated against the judge, but first-time possession of a small amount of marijuana is classified as a civil offense.
State court system spokesman David Bookstaver also declined to address whether Reichbach might face consequences for the editorial, saying only that “everyone’s thoughts in the court system are with Justice Reichbach as he battles a very serious disease.”
One potential conflict that could arise from Reichbach’s comments is his ability to hear cases involving marijuana possession said Monroe Freedman, a law professor at -Hofstra University.
“He has admitted to unlawful conduct,” Freedman said. “Ordinarily, that could be a problem, but it is a very narrow, specific situation and I would hope nothing would come of it that would be adverse to the judge.” |
warc | 201704 | Tefillin is among the most potent mitzvahs in the Torah. We are commmanded to bind them on the head and arm: “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes” (Deut. 6:8).
We bind the tefillin close to the heart, as a reminder to devote our intellect, feelings and actions to the service of G‑d. Buying a a set of bar mitzvah tefillin allows your son to fulfill this important mitzvah every day.
Although all tefillin consist of the same basic components — carefully formed leather boxes, parchments inside and leather straps — the price of set of tefillin varies considerably, depending on the type of construction, the caliber of the writing on the parchments and the type of straps. Purchasing a first pair of tefillin can be a bit daunting for the uninitiated.
Types of Tefillin for the Bar Mitzvah Boy
All tefillin look pretty much the same to the untrained eye, but they are divided into three categories based on the way the leather boxes are constructed and how the materials used. If you come across a tefillin referred to as “bar mitzvah tefillin,” chances are they are either tefillin peshutim or tefillin peshutim mehudarim.
Tefillin Peshutim – Tefillin made from several pieces of leather glued together are known as tefillin peshutim. They are relatively flimsy, do not hold up over time and their kashrus is often questionable. Tefillin Peshutim Mehudarim – Tefillin crafted from two separate pieces of leather are known as tefillin peshutim mehudarim, specially folded like origami. Tefillin Dakkot – Tefillin made from a single piece of thin leather are called tefillin dakkot (or tefillin dakkot ohr echad). Tefillin Gassot – Tefillin formed from one a single piece of thick leather are known as tefillin gassot, thick tefillin. These are the most durable (and expensive) type.
Tefillin peshutim are often problematic and in recent years tefillin dakkot have been phasing out of the market, so most people buying a set of bar mitzvah tefillin choose between tefillin peshutim mehudarim and tefillin gassot.
Celebrating a bar mitzvah can be expensive, even for parents who budget sensibly, so many parents are looking for tefillin under $300 for their bar mitzvah boy. But keep in mind that if you spend $500 for tefillin gassot, in many cases you are getting a much better value over time. Not only do tefillin gassot often hold up well for decades, but even if they take a bang or somehow get a dent, usually it can be repaired, whereas in the case of tefillin peshutim mehudarim, the tefillin expert might tell you there is nothing that can be done. Also, the caliber of the parchments on the inside and the level of finishing work on the outside is generally superior. |
warc | 201704 | By Teachers, For Teachers
Provided by the K-12 Teachers Alliance
I recently had the enriching opportunity to collaborate with author Marc Prensky whose term “digital native” has become the moniker for today’s students since 2001 when it was first coined. Marc watched me teach a lesson and helped me guide my Mandell Prep students through a discussion regarding digital citizenship.
In our reflections afterwards, he challenged me to rethink the way I was using technology to enhance the learning experience with this question: Are we using technology to do old stuff in new ways, or are we using technology to truly transform learning?
Until he posed that question to me, I could have sworn I was doing the latter. In many ways I was, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I probably was not doing enough of that transformative stuff. In the week following our conversation, I was stuck. I asked myself,
How can we take the solid knowledge of what digital citizenship means live and make it truly action oriented and transformative?
The answer occurred to me one beautiful Saturday when I headed outside with the goal to explore new places all day. I started posting inspirational pictures from around the city spaces to Instagram, and I watched as my two new student followers liked and commented on nearly all my posts. Then came an email from them suggesting I use some popular hashtags to gain more “likes” on my posts and a bigger following.
This experience on a Saturday was an ah-ha moment for me in a number of ways. I realized that we adults, or to use Prensky’s term, we “digital immigrants” spend a great deal of energy discussing content management with our young natives. Mostly we stay in the finger-pointing mode indicating what they should and should not post lest they be immortalized online in a negative light during their teen days; at best, we coach them on designing their image to market who they are. On the other hand, despite an often blatant disregard or naive understanding of content management, our youth counterparts have an insatiable desire to learn the most effective way to increase their reach and bring attention to their posts. These are skills I do not have...which led me to the conclusion: we could form a great partnership.
I had been listening to my students discuss how to increase awareness of their service project Finding Green, a documentary call to action focused on creating and preserving green space in our urban environment. They were reaching out by phone and email to local representatives and groups to tell them about the initiative and were very actively promoting it to friends. While promoting it via our social media profiles had been a noted goal, none of us thought of using the power of social media to create a profile for the cause itself. It was relatively easy to meet, discuss parameters of involvement, and set up a FindingGreenNYC profile on Instagram, Twitter, and Foursquare.
It started like this:
And it quickly led into this:
Three weeks later, we have reached several milestones. We have our feeds live with a growing following, we have participated in two city park events, including one planting event and one post-Sandy clean up, we have presented at one EdCamp event (the native & the immigrant together) and are speaking at the upcoming TEDxYouth@TheSchool conference. I’ve watched the students grow in their roles as citizens, native both to New York City and the digital world; I’ve seen leadership emerge and creativity ignite.
In short, the question posed to me by Marc Prensky is a tough one to think about. I’m still stuck in many areas, and the digital immigrant in me cries out frequently, “Some old stuff is good!” However, this one project has illustrated for me the importance of transformational design in our use of technology. The best applications of technology will not only inform students on the proper use of tools but will erase boundaries between the digital and offline world, merge social, learning, and community spaces, and build agency in the the development of accountability standards in our shared digital world. They were born into it, and they will lead from it. |
warc | 201704 | President calls for concerted efforts to save the planetJune 26th, 2008 - 11:31 pm ICT by IANS
Mumbai, June 26 (IANS) President Pratibha Patil Thursday called for concerted efforts to save the planet for the future generations and tackle problems of poverty, terrorism and disasters. Inaugurating an international conference on “Responsibility to the Future: Business, Peace, Sustainability” here in the evening, Patil said in the contemporary world, technology horizons are expanding fast, providing unparalleled opportunities for creating wealth and prosperity.
At the same time, issues like poverty, terrorism, disasters, pandemics, energy security, food security and climate change confront humanity. The approaches adopted to tackle them would be fundamental for peace, development and sustainability.
The president pointed out that though the World Domestic Product achieved a level of over $48 trillion in 2006, the distribution of wealth and income is becoming more distorted.
“Two percent of the world’s richest people own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth, while the poorest 50 percent of people own one percent. This situation is unsustainable. Such a large proportion of the world’s population cannot be left on the periphery,” she said.
Calling for the need to address disparities, Patil said this would mean including women into the process of development - they constitute half of the world but their potential remains largely untapped.
“Without women’s empowerment and their participation in all areas of human activity, there cannot be sustainability in any sphere of human endeavour,” the president pointed out.
Discussing technological advances that have changed the concept of physical distances, she said more revolutionary developments are likely to happen in the next 25 years in the fields of biotechnology, nano-technology, robotics, genetics and space technology.
She said it must be considered what this would mean for life on earth, negative fallouts and whether the new technologies would be chanelised for global welfare. In this regard, she mentioned how cost-effective technology could be employed for de-salinating seawater since the world is facing a water stress situation.
President Patil said that our planet belongs to all of us and to sustain it as well as to preserve it for the future generations requires action by all of us.
Present on the occasion were Maharashtra Governor S.C. Jamir and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
Tags: climate change, concerted efforts, contemporary world, creating wealth, distribution of wealth, energy security, fallouts, fields of biotechnology, future generations, half of the world, human endeavour, life on earth, physical distances, president pratibha patil, revolutionary developments, space technology, technology horizons, time issues, unparalleled opportunities, wealth and prosperity |
warc | 201704 | I Gusti Ngurah Semarajaya, 34 and a Mengwi native, is a lifeguard on the island’s iconic Kuta Beach. He shared his day with The Bali Times.
I wake up at 5am, usually before my alarm clock goes off. Before I even get out of bed I do some stretches. After that I wash, and pray.
I’m from Mengwi, but I live in Batubulan. My wife, Eratnawati, works in a spa. We have a little girl called Danti. She’s three and a half, so she’s not at school yet. If both my wife and I are working we leave her with my in-laws.
I have breakfast at home – bread and water – then I leave. I come to work by motorbike, and I’m usually at the beach by about 6.30. There are six lifeguard posts on Kuta Beach, each of them with eight lifeguards. Each post is responsible for about 500 metres of beach.
The first thing I do when I arrive is check the situation, how the tides and the waves are. It’s different every day, and we have to know where to locate the flags. The red and yellow flags are the swimming area; the red flags are the places where you shouldn’t swim.
After that it’s just a case of doing my job and keeping a check on people. Being a lifeguard is really about giving people information. People who get into difficulties are usually people who can swim, but who don’t know about the conditions here. The other main cause of accidents is collisions between swimmers and surfers.
If we spot someone in difficulty we assess how best to rescue them. If they are in deep water we’ll use the rescue board. Occasionally we pull people out of the sea unconscious. I’ve had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before.
I am very happy doing this job because I love sports, and I really love the sea. Many Indonesian people are scared of the water, but not me. When I was a small child growing up in Mengwi I often played around the river. When I fell in I had to get myself out; no one would help me. That’s how I learned to be confident in the water.
I have lunch at about 12pm. Usually I bring a packed lunch from home, some rice and whatever else we have. After that I’m on duty for a couple more hours. If I start work at 7, I finish at 2pm. I have to brief the lifeguards coming on for the afternoon shift about what’s happened so far in the day, and then I usually just relax and chat with my friends at the lifeguard post for a while.
People say that lifeguards must get a lot of attention from the girls, because it’s some kind of heroic job, and that maybe lifeguards are playboys. But that’s just a perception. The truth is that to be a lifeguard you should just be someone who likes to help people. Our goal is for people to come to the beach with a happy heart, and to leave with a happy heart. The perfect day is when there are no incidents – nothing, zero – for a whole 24 hours.
You have to be strong and healthy to do this job. You have to like sports, and you have to be prepared to take responsibility. But if any young person wants to become a lifeguard, the first thing they need to do is the basic lifeguard training. It takes about 10 days.
I get home at about 3pm. I have a drink of water as soon as I get in, and I look to see where my daughter is, and then I chat with my wife about what’s happened during the day.
We usually eat at home. There must be rice, and usually we have tempeh or tofu with it; but my favourite is fish. I like anything to do with the sea, including food! I drink water with my dinner. I don’t like tea or coffee, though I’ll have a beer on special occasions.
After that I read, or help to teach my daughter. I prefer reading books about life to watching TV.
Last thing at night I take a look outside to make sure everything is safe and secure, and I’m in bed by midnight. The last thing I think before I fall asleep is how happy I am with my life and the job I do, but I also worry a little about the idea of losing it.Filed under: One Day |
warc | 201704 | Islamist terrorists have exploited the lawless Sinai to perpetrate vicious attacks on Egyptian Christians there, as reported recently by the
New York Times. Indeed, throughout Egypt, the Copts continue to be targeted and scapegoated for the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As defenseless and abandoned as Mideast Christians seem today, it is worth remembering their historical roots, and recognizing just how much the plight of Middle East Christians has deteriorated. Over 2,000 years ago, Christianity was born as a religion and spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Levant, including territories in modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The Christian faith flourished as one of the major religions in the Middle East until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.
Despite Muslim domination of the region, Christians comprised an estimated 20% of the Middle East population until the early 20th century. Today, however, Christians make up a mere 2-5% of the Middle East and their numbers are fast dwindling. Writing in the Winter 2001 issue of Middle East Quarterly, scholar Daniel Pipes estimated that Middle East Christians would “likely drop to” half of their numbers “by the year 2020” because of declining birth rates and a pattern of “exclusion and persecution” leading to emigration.
The “Arab Spring” has only worsened conditions for the indigenous Christians of the Middle East. Like the Kurds, Middle East Christians are a stateless minority, struggling to survive in the world’s toughest neighborhood. But the Kurds at least have enjoyed partial autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991 and most of them are Sunni Muslim, making it easier for them to survive in the Muslim-dominated Middle East. Christians, on the other hand, are a religious minority that controls no territory and is entirely subject to the whims of their hosts. These host countries – with the exception of Israel – offer a grim future to Middle East Christians.
Home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East, totaling 8-12 million people. But because Christian Copts make up only about 10-15% of Egypt’s estimated 80 million people, they have for decades lived in fear as second-class citizens, subjected to attacks on churches, villages, homes, and shops; mob killings; and the abduction and forced Islamic conversion of Christian women compelled to marry Muslim men. Such abuse took place under the staunchly secular regime of Hosni Mubarak, but grew much worse under the rule of Mohammed Morsi, the jailed Muslim Brotherhood activist who succeeded Mubarak, and they are now being blamed for Morsi’s ouster.
In Lebanon, Christians represent a bigger portion of the population, so their fate is for now less precarious than that of their Egyptian coreligionists, but their long-term prospects are worrisome. The Christian population is estimated to have dropped from over 50% (according to a 1932 census) to about 40%. Over the last few years, the de facto governing power in Lebanon has become Hezbollah, the radical and heavily-armed Shiite movement sponsored by Iran. With all of the spillover violence and instability produced by the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah’s open involvement in it, and/or the next war that Hezbollah decides to start with Israel, the emigration of Christians out of Lebanon will probably only increase in the coming years, leaving those who stay increasingly vulnerable.
In Syria, 2.5 million Christians comprised about 10% of the population and enjoyed some protection under the secular and often brutal regimes of the Assad dynasty. But as jihadi groups fighting Assad extend their territorial control, the past protection of Christians is often the cause of their current persecution by resentful Sunnis who revile the Assad regime and seek to impose Sharia law wherever they can. Christians have been regularly targeted and killed by rebels, and the sectarian chaos and violence that will likely prevail in Assad’s wake will only increase the number of Christians fleeing Syria.
In Iraq, the bloody aftermath of the 2003 invasion demonstrated how dangerous life can become for a Christian minority when a multicultural society in the Middle East explodes into sectarian violence. By 2008, half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians were estimated to have left, rendering those remaining even more insecure. In 2010, Salafist extremists attacked a Baghdad church during Sunday Mass, killing or wounding nearly the whole congregation. Such incidents turn any communal gathering into a potential massacre, forcing Christians across the Middle East to ask the ultimate question of faith: “Am I prepared to die for Christian worship?”
The so-called “Arab Spring” threatens to exacerbate matters in much of the Middle East, as Islamists now either control the government or influence it enough to persecute Christians with impunity. As new Islamist regimes in the Middle East condone religious intolerance and introduce Sharia and blasphemy laws, the long-term trend for Christians in their ancestral lands will only grow bleaker.
The one bright spot is the state of Israel – “the only place in the Middle East [where] Christians are really safe,” according to the Vicar of St. George’s Church in Baghdad, Canon Andrew White. Home to Christianity’s holiest sites and to a colorful array of Christian denominations, Israel has the only growing Christian community in the Middle East.
Because Israel is the only non-Muslim state in all of the Middle East and North Africa, it represents a small victory for religious minorities in the region, and serves as the last protector of freedom and security for Jews, Christians, Bahai, Druze, and others. Without Israel, how much more vulnerable would Christians in the Middle East become?
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis , an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and current geopolitical issues in the Middle East. |
warc | 201704 | The percentage of U.S. teenagers in grades nine through 12 who reported having had sex remained stable between 2001 and 2003 at 45.6% and 46.7%, respectively, according to the CDC
's 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, which was published in the May 21 issue of the agency's
Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report
, the
Washington Times
reports (Wetzstein,
Washington Times
, 5/21). The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
monitors six categories of health risk behaviors among U.S. teens, including behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence; tobacco use; alcohol and drug use; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical activity. The report summarizes the results of a survey administered to teens in grades nine through 12 between February and December 2003 (Grunbaum et al.,
MMWR
, 5/21). The report, which includes findings from 15,214 completed surveys, presents national data and results from 32 states and 18 large cities (CDC release
, 5/20). YRBSS has conducted the anonymous survey every two years since 1991, according to the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(McKenna,
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, 5/21).
Gender Differences, Condom Use The percentage of teenage girls who reported having had sex increased in all ethnic groups and in most grades, according to the survey, the Washington Times reports. Compared with results from the 2001 survey, the percentage of black teen girls who reported having had sex increased by 7.5 percentage points to 60.9% in 2003, and the percentage of white and Hispanic teen girls increased two percentage points to 43% and 46.4%, respectively, over the same time period. However, the percentage of teen boys who reported having had sex declined among whites and Hispanics and increased only among black teen boys, according to the survey. Among teen boys, sexual activity among whites fell 4.6 percentage points between 2001 and 2003 to 40.5%, and the rate among Hispanics dropped 3.8 percentage points to 56.8% over the same time period. The sexual activity rate among black teen boys increased five percentage points between 2001 and 2003 to 73.8%, according to the survey ( Washington Times, 5/21). Although boys historically are more likely to have intercourse for the first time at a younger age than girls, there was a decline between 1991 and 2003 in the percentage of boys having sex before age 13, the Chicago Tribune reports. In 2003, 10.4% of male teens said they had started having sex before age 13, compared with 15.1% in 1991 (Graham/Miller Rubin, Chicago Tribune, 5/21). Overall, the study found that teen condom use during last intercourse increased five percentage points between 2001 and 2003, with 63% of teens surveyed in 2003 reporting having used a condom during their last sexual encounter ( Washington Times, 5/21). Since 1991, teen condom use during last intercourse has increased almost 17 percentage points, according to the survey ( Atlanta Journal Constitution, 5/21). In addition, the percentage of teens who reported having had sex with more than four partners in their lifetime dropped from 19% in 1991 to 14% in 2003, the New York Times reports (O'Connor, New York Times, 5/21). Reaction CDC Director Julie Gerberding said, "Too many young people still engage in activities that place them at risk for serious injury, sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection, and chronic disease such as heart disease and cancer," adding, "We need to continue to provide them with the information and skills that can help them make the right choices today so that they can live a long and healthy life" (CDC release, 5/20). Kristin Moore, president of the Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit research group Child Trends, said that the survey findings show that "[w]e can't just inoculate kids and they will avoid alcohol, sex and drugs. We really have to focus on this continuously" ( Washington Times, 5/21). National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy spokesperson Bill Albert said that the reasons behind the survey results are "[l]ess sex, fewer partners, more contraceptive use" ( Chicago Tribune, 5/21). Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States President and CEO Tamara Kreinin said, "The overall decline in sexual activity and increased condom use among high school students since 1991 is a healthy and positive trend, but we still have a long way to go," adding, "Parents, lawmakers, community leaders and educators must recommit themselves to giving young people what they want, need and deserve -- medically accurate, life-saving sexual health information, communication skills and the relationship skills to help them become sexually healthy adults" (SIECUS release, 5/20).
Back to other news for May 21, 2004
AdvertisementReprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/hiv. The Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of the Kaiser Family Foundation, by The Advisory Board Company. © 2004 by The Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved. |
warc | 201704 | There are naked people at Harvard and they're not just posing for a figuredrawing class. "Oh, "you may scoff, "I haven't seen all that many of my classmates naked" (or "nekkid" if you're from the South). All I can say is, they may not show up in the buff to the Omelet Station at Special Dinners, but there are nudists among us and their name is Legion.
Actually, one of their names is Kitt. Kitt Hirasaki '96 is most comfortable sitting around his room or running up and down the halls not completely nude, but clad only in his tighty-whities. "It's a pretty recent development," he said, speaking of his penchant for pantlessness. "I guess since I came to college. I'm from Texas, where it's not that socially acceptable to sit around in your underwear in public. Still, I used to walk around in my underwear all the time when I was at home and when I came here I didn't see any reason to change that and I figured, the whole place is my home. My roommates don't seem to mind."
Mitch McClure, '96, one of the roommates in question, upholds Hirasaki's assertion. "It doesn't bother me," he says of his roommate's exhibitionistic tendencies. "But I hate to be naked. I always wear clothes, especially in the shower."
It's not just a few aberrant personalities like Hirasaki who frolic around the houses half-dressed (or undressed). Some entire sub-groups embrace nudity as a bonding ritual. The First-year Outdoor Program, in particular, has a reputation for exhibitionistic excess.
I once attended a party where four men and one woman, wearing bobby socks, penny loafers and a red scrunchy in her hair, danced completely naked. When I brought up the subject in a later conversation, the person next to me said "Oh. FOP people were there." Although skinny-dipping is a ritual part of the FOP experience, some FOPpies like to preserve the magic by getting naked whenever they're together.
Certain sports teams also like to undress en masse, to various degrees of nudity. Gaelen B. Phyfe '96 says that the women's sailing team falls into this category of athletes with a penchant for taking their clothes off. "Sailors get topless more than they get naked--at least at Harvard," Phyfe reports. "Usually late at night at a party, one person starts it...by taking another person's top off."
When asked why sailors shed their tops, Phyfe conjectured, "People are probably comfortable in their bodies. I don't know why they do it, but I don't know why they wouldn't. Everyone's pretty mellow and self-assured." After all, if you've got it, flaunt it. Many do.
Still, it's not quite as simple. There are more important issues here, questions that must be answered. For example, why are some of us more likely to enjoy getting naked than others? There are those who think that in such a diverse community, cultural background may have something to do with it.
Julia E. Starkey '95 supports those theorists who think that enjoyment of nudity, gymnophilia, may have cultural roots. "I'm naked a lot," she says. "I'm perfectly comfortable being naked when most people aren't because my mom's Swedish and in Sweden kids run around naked until they're 10. My mom never raised me to think it was wrong."
Upon arriving at Harvard, Starkey was dismayed to discover that not everyone shared a similar nonchalance Puritanical. I walk from the shower to my dorm room in my towel. She changes in the shower a lot."
As promised in the admissions brochure, Starkey and her roommate learned from each other's cultural differences. "Now she's not as traumatized if I run around half-naked. Or what she'd consider half-naked-a T-shirt and my underwear."
Starkey's ideas of what is appropriate in terms of public exposure have been modified with time, she explains. "It never occurred to me until I was in middle school that you're not supposed to run around naked."
"You're not. You are NOT," added a shocked Nathan Lump '96. Clearly Lump is not among the Harvard minority which believes that clothing is a harmful artificial construct that is far better avoided in favor of the purity of nudity, the ultimate in meta-fashion.
Starkey, on the other hand is strongly in favor of mass nudity. "I think it's weird that people don't walk around naked. If more people were naked more, it would be a better society. At this point we've all taken bio, we've all see people naked, or at least a picture of someone naked. I refuse to believe that people make it to college without ever seeing a person naked, at least obliquely if not personally."
That's tough logic to dispute, but there are those who love their clothes and believe that only the select few should exhibit their wares. Even Hirasaki, for all his love of lounging in lingerie, admits, "We thought about having a naked party, a party where everyone would have to come completely naked, but then we realized--most people, you just don't want to see them naked."
FM could not disagree more.
*Editors' Note: As true menschen, it is our Duty to inform you about fashion. |
warc | 201704 | The House GOP’s Big Immigration Fail
Despite a string of embarrassing and disheartening mistakes, the Obama administration does not have to worry about a suddenly resurgent Republican Party. The GOP has its hands full. Even with this year’s primary season behind them, sharp divides between insurgents and establishment remain. The door is sliding closed on replacing Obamacare, and Republicans won’t get another shot at running our foreign policy until at least 2017. Just because the president has lost the initiative does not mean the GOP has regained it.
Now, Republicans are held captive by narratives, not just events. And the main narrative staring them down for the rest of Obama’s term is “obstructionism.”
It’s an old story, but this time it has some bite, because now, Republicans are obstructing themselves. What’s more, they’re doing it on what leading political and media figures want to be the next big marquee issue for sweeping, top-down reform.
A critical mass of influential figures now demands the GOP act on immigration, one way or the other. And that means the House GOP.
House Speaker John Boehner has stalled on immigration with great vigor. This year, however, something’s got to give. In the Senate, big-time personal politics forged a team of Republican egos that can’t tolerate playing second fiddle to mere Representatives. They know that if there’s no vote by August, immigration is dead for the year—and the Senate will have to pass it again next year if it’s ever to return. The pressure is on from the left, as well. Democrats have given activist groups their marching orders: “Train all your fire on House Republicans from now until August,” as Politico sums them up.
As part of the Democrats’ offensive, the Center for American Progress has dutifully whipped up a survey showing that almost half of Latino respondents would blame the GOP for Congressional inaction on immigration, while just 16 percent would blame Democrats.
Those sorts of numbers are just the start of the House’s troubles, as Majority Leader Eric Cantor knows all too well. This election year, he was caught in a withering crossfire of immigration criticism from right and left alike—slammed for being pro-amnesty on the one hand and anti-reform on the other.
The justifiable concern this spectacle raises is that Republicans stand to lose no matter what they do. That same CAP poll puts a spotlight on the pitfalls: 45 percent of respondents said they’d be more “favorable” toward Republicans in general, and 61 percent more “open” to their ideas, if only the House GOP would “support immigration reform.”
Like many polls, CAP’s was carefully tailored to encourage the results desired. But the dilemma for Republicans is clear enough. Chasing after mere favorability and openness is an unbecoming act of desperation. The nightmare scenario for the GOP is a marginally more GOP-friendly Hispanic population that still breaks strongly Democratic, cycle after cycle. And there’s just no indication that, politically speaking, the Senate approach to reform will yield anything but that.
What House Republicans need, but do not have, is a cohesive approach to immigration that can be stacked up against the Senate’s. It’s got to be an approach that doesn’t go full remember-the-Alamo, like the grassroots’ preferred approach, or full dollar-sign-eyes, like the Chamber of Commerce wing of the party. But it’s also got to avoid the cloying, off-putting sentimentalism of the RINO wing that sees government as a salvific, nationalistic Santa Claus, bestowing the blessings of full American-ness on a people stuck in the “shadows.”
Now would seem like a strange time for a dispassionate, de-politicized immigration solution to emerge from the House. But there’s one waiting to be cobbled together, if only Boehner and company would think it through.
It would take shape in accordance with a three-step acknowledgement of the basic realities we confront on the issue. First, the “illegal immigration crisis” is over. Whether we keep border security about where it is or whether we ramp it up dramatically, there just isn’t going to be the kind of massive influx that got us where we are today. A future economic boom might bump up the numbers, but right now they’re around net zero—a figure that has more to do with Mexicans and Mexico than it does with the U.S. economy.
That means, second, that we’re dealing with a finite, specific population of undocumented immigrants. They’re not going to clone themselves. Like all of us, they’re going to get old, and they’re eventually going to die. The political and legal problem posed by “illegal immigration today” is only going to get smaller over time. In fact, as we all know, the American-born children of those undocumented immigrants are all going to be citizens from Day One.
And third of all, and in sum, the “immigration problem” boils down to a far more specific and narrow situation than so many of us have allowed ourselves to think. Although the Obama administration has done an energetic job of deporting some people, there just isn’t a strong enough consensus to kick out the finite population of undocumented. On the other hand, although a blanket amnesty is a far more elegant, enforceable, and principled policy than a patchwork of half-measures that plays favorites on the basis of ethnicity or education policy, there just isn’t a strong enough consensus to deliver that outcome, either.
So one thing we know for sure is that we’re not going to give the boot or give amnesty to the finite, specific population of undocumented immigrants who crossed the border illegally. And another thing we know is that birthright citizenship means we don’t have to worry about their kids’ status.
Critics of immigration reform harbor one of two justified fears. Some critics worry that reform would be like an on/off switch—suddenly and irreversibly changing America forever. Others worry that reform would be the opposite—a never-ending morass of bureaucracy, legalese, and special status, hardwiring yet more regulatory complexity and intrusive government into everything we do.
By focusing solely on the actual humans whose legal status needs to be finalized, however, we can act swiftly, safe in the knowledge that a policy tailored to them won’t transform America or make implementation a permanent process.
Give the undocumented some documentation, but not citizenship. Let them pay some back taxes. Let them learn English if they like. And let their American-born children be American citizens.
Is that a “perfect” approach? Is it “comprehensive?” More importantly, do we need to care? It sidesteps most of our political and culture-war drama, attending to our present needs in a way that wins us back the most valuable commodity of all in a democracy: time to think and talk in relative peace and quiet. |
warc | 201704 | BRUNSWICK — The School Board received updated costs for building a new school or doing repairs as it decides how to update aging schools.
Coffin Elementary School and Brunswick Junior High School were built in 1959, and have never had major renovations, according to a report for the School Department by PDT Architects. The result is that both buildings fail to meet basic standards for fire safety, accessibility and hazardous materials.
The School Board initially voted to send a $12.5 million bond to repair the schools and update portable classrooms to the Town Council, but the council blocked it from going to a public hearing in August.
Since then, the School Board has resurrected the possibility of building a new school on the site of the former Jordan Acres Elementary School.
Architect Lyndon Keck of PDT presented updated costs for that project at the board’s Nov. 12 meeting.
The price of building a new, 99,000-square-foot, 660-student school for kindergarten through second grade at Jordan Acres would be just more than $27.7 million, Keck reported, up from a previously estimated cost of $26.3 million.
Keck also presented two more “simplified” floor plans, which could still house 660 children, which would cost $24 million and $24.5 million, respectively.
The cost of “light” renovations at Coffin went up to just under $17 million, “major” renovations went up to more than $19.5 million, and a new building was estimated to cost $25.2 million.
For BJHS, light renovations and small additions ranged from just over $16 million to just under $20 million, a large addition was estimated at $22.8 million, and a new building would be $34 million.
Board members did not expressly endorse a plan, and sent the numbers to the facilities committee for a recommendation.
At that committee’s meeting Tuesday, Nov. 17, board members struggled with the baggage of the past attached to the newly updated plan.
The original Jordan Acres floor plan was presented to the public at a meeting in January 2014, where it was widely criticized. Many in attendance argued its K-2 grade structure would break up educational “continuity,” compared to a K-5 school.
Board member Sarah Singer worried that the revised plan for Jordan Acres would be shot down if sent to a bond referendum.
“(The January 2014) meeting, if anything, showed that we did not have support for this,” she said. “I cannot be convinced that rushing (this plan) … will not blow up in our faces.”
Board member Rich Ellis agreed that the plan needed substantial public support to pass, but argued that delaying the decision further could be dangerous.
“We’ve been meandering through this for four years,” he said.
The four-year meander started in 2011, when the original Jordan Acres Elementary School was closed.
An inadequately designed connection caused a ceiling beam to crack that year, but was quickly stabilized. However, facing a $4 million budget gap due to declining enrollment after the closing of Brunswick Naval Air Station and the loss of high school students from Durham to Regional School Unit 5, the board voted to close the school to save $800,000, according to Superintendent Paul Perzanoski.
Brunswick now has a new elementary school, Harriet Beecher Stowe, that is over capacity to accommodate the loss of Jordan Acres, Perzanoski said at the facilities committee meeting Tuesday, and another elementary school that needs significant repairs.
“We have to do something,” he said. “Otherwise there will be another 4 1/2 years of chasing our tail, and getting nothing done, and continuing to have schools which are falling apart.”
Committee members Singer and Ellis agreed not to endorse a specific proposal for a new school Tuesday, but to go back to the board for a discussion on how to get public involvement on the plan through a workshop or series of workshops.
“I am OK with a new K-2 school (at Jordan Acres), but it has to be something special … to get a groundswell” of public support, Singer said.
“What if (the public) is supportive of a new school,” Singer asked, “but this is not the school they want?”
A preliminary rendering of a new elementary school at the site of the former Jordan Acres Elementary School in Brunswick. |
warc | 201704 | If you met the man of your dreams and he was HIV positive, would his HIV status keep you from dating him?
Tyler responds:
However, you asked how you could reject someone because he is HIV-positive in a polite manner. In order to do so, you need to inquire about a person’s status during the first meeting if not sooner. It is not up to the person to disclose their status to you before sex enters into the equation, so if you are trying to weed out HIV-positive folks, you need to screen your date as early as possible. Ask what their HIV-status is in a text or give them a call so that you can turn the situation into a friendly vibe before letting the romantic feels set in.
But before you relax and proceed to your dating life as normal, it is important to figure out why you are against dating someone who is HIV-positive. If it is to protect yourself from getting HIV, it’s my obligation to warn you about your false sense of security. The truth is,91 percent of new infections stem from a person who is either unaware of their HIV status or has yet to begin treatment. And from someone who knows a thing or two about reading into statistics, it would be safe to assume that a person who has yet to start treatment
would also be hesitant to disclose their HIV status when asked. It’s not science, but I’d put 20 bucks on it anyway.
You may think this next thing I am going to say is just a ploy to convince you to date poz guys, but you and your sexual health would be remiss to dismiss it. A person who willingly discloses their HIV status to you and who has achieved an undetectable viral load through treatment is probably your safest bet for two reasons. One, because they gave you the information you need to take the proper steps to protect yourself, whatever your method of protection may be. Two, because there has never been even one reported case of a person with an undetectable viral load transmitting the virus.
If, however, the reasons you don’t want to date an HIV-positive person have nothing to do with the safety of your sexual health, then by all means, avoid them. Maybe you don’t want people thinking that you are HIV-positive. Maybe you are too afraid to be with someone who has dealt with such hefty life issues. Don’t feel bad about it; you do you. It doesn’t matter, because any self-respecting person with HIV probably wouldn’t want to be with you either.
There is one thing, though, that you may be surprised to find. As more people become educated about HIV and invested in fighting the stigma that comes with living with it, you may find HIV-negative guys who are turned off by your “negative only” mentality.
But I digress… Find out their status right away and end things before they begin. That way, you save yourself from getting to know someone who has a disease that has nothing to do with the person he is, and he can find someone who is worth his time.
Do you agree with Curry’s response? Let us know below.
h/t: Instinct |
warc | 201704 | A memorable moment in the gangster film
Pulp Fiction finds Uma Thurman’s character near death from a heroin overdose, then speedily revived when an adrenalin-filled syringe is plunged through her breastbone and into her heart.
That’s not at all how Toronto Public Health’s new opiate-reversal kits work – their antidote can be shot into any muscle. Nonetheless, distributed under the auspices of the city’s needle-exchange program, the kits’ results have been almost as dramatic in cities such as Chicago where they have been put to use.
The kits contain naloxone, an injectable antidote for overdoses of heroin, morphine, oxycontin and other opium-based narcotics that is highly effective and has long been deployed in hospital emergency rooms. Now it has a wider, buddy-system use. Toronto physician Philip Berger, who has spent decades administering to drug addicts and other street people, applauds the city’s new initiative, launched Aug. 31. So far about 75 of the kits have been handed out, worth about $25 apiece, comprising two new syringes and two 1-cc doses of naloxone.
Years ago, a patient of Dr. Berger was charged with manslaughter (later acquitted) when his girlfriend died of an accidental heroin overdose. Had naloxone been available, Dr. Berger suggests, the woman’s life might have been saved.
“It’s part of a general approach for reducing the harm, illness and death associated with drug use, rather than trying to eliminate drug use, which is totally hopeless.”
Shaun Hopkins oversees Toronto’s needle-exchange program, which dates back to 1989, and reaches perhaps a few thousand (recipients do not have to supply names) of Toronto’s estimated 10,000 to 25,000 intravenous drug-users.
Since naloxone distribution began, she’s aware of at least four instances where an addict in serious trouble was revived with a shot of the drug, also known by its brand name Narcan; two went to hospital for observation, two did not. Roughly 100 people die in Toronto from drug overdoses each year, chiefly heroin-related, and the hope is to dent those numbers.
So why now?
“I was hearing more and more about these programs and how important they’ve been in other cities,” Ms. Hopkins said.
These include Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Boston, and naloxone is also used at Vancouver’s InSite drug clinic, which last month got a green light from the Supreme Court (Toronto is currently studying the feasibility of a similar project, which Mayor Rob Ford strongly opposes. Mr. Ford’s office said he was unaware of the naloxone program).
The only other Canadian needle-exchange program that distributes naloxone is the Edmonton agency Streetworks.
“It has been very successful, we are seeing lives saved,” said Ashley Cherniwchan, the registered nurse attached to Streetworks who oversees naloxone distribution. Since the full program began in 2007, she’s aware of eight instances of successful intervention, but is sure many more have been unreported.
Junkies usually overdose for two reasons – they underestimate the strength of the drug, or they’ve resumed injecting after a break – and administering the antidote is not complicated.
Drug users are coached in spotting the warning signs: slow, shallow breathing, bluish lips, general unresponsiveness. The naloxone is injected into the muscle, even through clothing, rather than into a vein, and revival starts within one to four minutes.
The partner is also instructed to do chest compressions, roll the person on to their side to facilitate breathing, and call 911 – whether they stick around for the ambulance or not.
Naloxone has no side effects, but its main function – rapidly purging the system of opioids by blocking receptors in the brain – can be cathartic.
“The only problem is that it puts the person receiving it in a state of acute withdrawal, so they’re going to wake up and feel like using,” Dr. Berger said. “But it gives them an opportunity to use judiciously and carefully.”
---------------------------------------
Naloxone's success in Chicago
The first street agency in North America to distribute naloxone was the Chicago Recovery Alliance, and as in Toronto and Edmonton, several years of groundwork came first.
In a city whose population is slightly larger than Toronto’s, more than 22,000 overdose prevention kits have been distributed by the CRA since 2001, and executive director Dan Bigg knows of a remarkable 2,720 instances in which a heroin or morphine overdose was reversed.
“It’s such a model of hope, even UN Global Fund has caught on to it,” he says of naloxone, which he has personally administered many times.
“It strengthens everything you do in outreach: Safer injections, safer sex, all of a sudden you have a consistent, life-affirming approach.”
In a program built around one drug user saving another with a quick, easy shot, one particular do-it-yourself client stands out: A bricklayer from Cicero, Ill., who would shoot up heroin while in the other hand holding a syringe of naloxone as he drifted off, in case he needed it.
“He just plunges it in, and he says he’s done that two or three times and revived himself,” Mr. Bigg said. “But that’s very unusual.”
As for that overdose scene in Pulp Fiction – fiction it truly is, Mr. Bigg says.
The adrenalin ostensibly used to revive Uma Thurman’s character is principally used for heart-attack victims.
“And when you overdose on opiates your heart is fine initially, the people I revived, their hearts were beating rapidly. The problem is, you don’t breathe enough, although finally with a lack of oxygen your heart will begin to stop and then you die. So keep the person breathing, that’s the primary thing we teach.”
Timothy Appleby
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warc | 201704 | The top Republican tax writer in Congress has proposed cutting the U.S. federal tax on business profits to 25 per cent, a pitch that would narrow Canada’s advantage over its biggest competitor for international investment.
Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, also would simplify the tax code by replacing the current seven personal tax brackets with two. American taxpayers who currently pay between 25 and 39.6 per cent on their income would pay 25 per cent, and those who currently pay between 10 and 15 per cent would pay 10 per cent under Mr. Camp’s plan.
The corporate- and personal-income tax cuts headline a 979-page bill that stands as the most ambitious attempt to overhaul U.S. tax law in three decades. Odds are slim that the bill will move forward quickly, but Mr. Camp’s proposals could shape a debate that both Democratic and Republican leaders say they want to have.
“There are a couple of reasons to be optimistic about it,” Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told Bloomberg News. At the same time, “there are some aspects of this proposal that we do not agree with,” Mr. Earnest said.
When measured against the size of its economy, the United States collects relatively little tax revenue. The tax code is loaded with a myriad of tax breaks and loopholes that economists say hurt productivity because companies devote energy to lowering their tax bills that could be put to more productive uses. Yet the U.S. corporate rate – at 39.6 per cent – is the highest among developed countries, discouraging international companies from claiming profits in a country that often is the source of the bulk of their revenue.
“If we don’t act, we will continue to fall behind,” Mr. Camp said at a press conference in Washington, singling out Canada as a country that has lowered corporate taxes to become a more competitive place to do business.
Canada’s federal corporate tax rate is 15 per cent, while provincial and territorial rates range from 10 per cent in Alberta to 16 per cent in Nova Scotia. U.S. states tax corporate profits at rates that range between 3 per cent and about 9 per cent.
Predictably, lobbyists swarmed to attack various aspects of Mr. Camp’s plan that would hurt the industries they represent.
Banking associations, especially, were incensed over a provision that would add a levy on the assets of the country’s biggest banks. The American Petroleum Institute took issue with Mr. Camp’s intention to end an accounting method favoured by oil producers. Charles Schumer, a leading Democratic senator, called Mr. Camp’s plan “dead on arrival” because it would end taxpayers’ ability to deduct state and local taxes from their federal tax returns.
Mr. Camp also had his supporters, as lowering the corporate tax rate is broadly popular with U.S. business. The politics are working against him in the short term because Republican and Democratic leaders are reluctant to attach themselves to something as potentially controversial as tax reform ahead of midterm elections.
The political backdrop will change after the midterms, and many in Washington say tax overhaul is possible in 2015. Barack Obama has advocated lowering the corporate tax rate for much of his presidency. He differs with Mr. Camp on the need to lower individual rates, and the president also wants the richest Americans to pay higher taxes. Mr. Camp’s plan is revenue-neutral.Report Typo/Error
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warc | 201704 | The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and 12 other accounting institutes have sent an open letter to political leaders at the Copenhagen conference calling for universal accounting standards for relevant financial reporting on climate change.
The 15 organisations come from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Honk Kong, Japan and South Africa. Among the signatories are the UK’s Accounting for Sustainability project, which has been pushing for standards for several years.
The open letter is a call for a single set of universally accepted standards for climate change disclosure in mainstream financial reports. The letter maintains that an independent, stakeholder-led body with appropriate links to public authorities should be established to develop and adopt the accounting standards.
There are de-facto standards out there, including the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) surveys and in 2007 the World Economic Forum created the Climate Disclosure Standards Board which proposed a framework for climate risk-related reporting by corporations in May 2009.
It’s clear that some sort of minimum standard is required, as any sift through the annual reports from corporations shows. There are too many ways that information can be interpreted and comparisons can be well-nigh impossible.
As far as the IT implications go, most carbon management and reporting solutions offer a number of ways to slice and dice the data and even more formats for reporting, so it’s probably not going to have much of an impact on the market (except, perhaps, to lower the market entry barrier for new suppliers). |
warc | 201704 | Career focused education proposed as solution for Louisiana’s failure rates
NEW ORLEANS, La. – A new Harvard School of Education study, “Pathways to Prosperity,” recommends that educators place a stronger focus on vocational education and apprenticeships, rather than aim to send every high school student to college.
“We are the only developed nation that depends so exclusively on its higher education system as the sole institutional vehicle to help young people transition from secondary school to careers,” says Robert Schwartz, academic dean of the college and co-author of the study.
The study sought to address the failure of young adults to either finish four-year degrees or find fitting vocational opportunities.
Currently, 70 percent of American students fail to earn a four-year degree and face limited employment prospects. However, Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, cited in the Harvard study, projects that by 2018 nearly half of all job openings that require post-secondary education will go to people with an associates degree or occupational certificate.
The implication is that students failing out of four-year programs would find better prospects in these targeted professional programs. The study also calls for elementary and high school educators to develop a curriculum with these alternative programs in mind.
Louisiana typifies the observed educational mismatch. According to the Southern Regional Education Board, 70 percent of Louisiana’s high school graduates enter college within one year, but only 38% graduate within six years. That compares to a national average of 55 percent. Louisiana students who fail out of college have almost four times the unemployment of those who graduate.
While concerned about low graduation rates, Penny Dastugue, president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, notes record numbers of students in Louisiana’s community colleges – in her view a positive trend worthy of encouragement.
“We need to do a better job exposing our students to different career pathways so that they understand what options are available to them after graduation.” However, she is resistant to students being “tracked on a certain pathway as early as middle school that limits their options upon graduation.”
Frederick Hess of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, claims that it is not a lack of opportunities available for students, but rather a problem of education institutions lowering their standards.
“A given credential does not have an absolute meaning. For instance, a high school diploma 50 years ago doesn’t represent the same amount of learning as a diploma does today.”
He continues, “Someone can assert that an employee will need a two year degree for certain employment opportunities in 2015 or 2035, but what really matters is what skills and knowledge are represented by that degree – and that can vary across institutions and over time.”
Click here for a transcript of the interview with Penny Dastugue.
Robert Ross is a researcher and social media strategist with the Pelican Institute for Public Policy. He can be contacted at rross@pelicaninstitute.org, and you can follow him on twitter. . . |
warc | 201704 | Sell in May and go away could be the oldest stock market adage but new research indicates that it is not the most fruitful strategy — if only because you will forego the interim dividends paid by many companies. A study from Bestinvest, a wealth management group, shows that investors who kept their money in the market in the summer enjoyed average annualised market returns of 10.9 per cent — including dividend payments — over the past 25 years. Those who left received an average return of 9.8 per cent.
The “Sell in May” advice harks back to the era when City boys |
warc | 201704 | “Work used to be tiring and my legs would ache and swell. Now I have more energy and no longer have pain and swelling in my legs after work.”
– T. A. What is postpartum swelling?
Postpartum swelling is normal following delivery. Symptoms may last up to several weeks and slowly resolve.
Possible Symptoms Swelling in extremeties High blood pressure Severe headaches Upper abdominal pain Nausea What causes postpartum swelling?
During the delivery, not all the extra blood leaves the body. A combination of this extra blood, hormonal changes, and fluid retention make hands, legs, and ankles swell post-pregnancy. It is known as postpartum edema or postpartum swelling.
DIAGNOSIS & TREATMENTS
Persistent swelling of the lower extremities following delivery may be a sign of a more advanced underlying cause such as venous insufficiency. Ultrasound diagnostics are used to determine the cause. |
warc | 201704 | A MAJOR national conference on the uplands will be held at Newton Rigg College next month.
The event aims to address challenges thrown up by the current consultation on CAP payments and its potential impact on the way upland farms, moorland and forestry are managed.
The influential list of speakers includes Defra’s deputy director Mike Rowe, National Trust director general Dame Helen Ghosh, National Sheep Association chief executive Phil Stocker and Lake District National Park Authority chief executive Richard Leafe.
Organisers say the conference provides a forum for debate on ‘the many different and sometimes conflicting’ issues faced by uplands. Newton Rigg, near Penrith, is home to the National Centre for the Uplands (NCU) and the only UK college to have its own upland farm and grouse moor.
It is also unique in offering a specialist degree course in uplands agriculture with land management.
Douglas Phillips, who leads the National Centre for the Uplands, said: “The conference could not come at a more opportune moment, as policy makers across the UK look to finalise changes regarding the re-distribution of CAP funds, which could have a huge impact on how we manage our uplands and on the rural communities that rely upon them economically."
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Mr Phillips continued: “It will doubtless be a lively and informative two days, given the diverse range of speakers which includes practitioners, policy makers, researchers and planners. Our aim is to provide an opportunity for debate that will increase awareness of the different perspectives and thus encourage greater understanding and co-operation.
“We need to ensure that we build a vibrant and sustainable upland economy based on agriculture and positive land management that will ultimately protect some of the most vulnerable and precious landscapes in the United Kingdom for future generations.”
Entitled ‘Future Upland Management: Balancing environmental, social and economic demands’, the conference will take place on May 13 and 14. To register and for further details please contact Michaela Dixon – michaela.dixon@newtonrigg.ac.uk or call 01768-893508. |
warc | 201704 | RUTH SUNDERLAND: Lawsuit against Barclays over 'dark pool' operations in US yet more evidence of scale of Antony Jenkins' task
Thrown in at the deep end
Antony Jenkins can have been under no illusions when he took over from the unlamented Bob Diamond as chief executive of Barclays that changing the culture of the bank would be a gruelling effort.
The lawsuit filed against Barclays by the New York Attorney General alleging fraud, deceit and misrepresentation in its ‘dark pool’ operations in the US, is yet more evidence of the scale of his task.
The accusations are particularly damaging because, if true, Barclays will have been once again caught red-handed in undermining the integrity of markets, as it was in the Libor scandal.
Mountain to climb: Antony Jenkins knew that when he took over from Bob Diamond, changing the culture of the bank would be a gruelling effort
Defenders of Barclays are suggesting there might be political motivation by attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who is up for re-election this year and going after a big bank, particularly a foreign one, is seen as an easy way of courting popularity.
Be that as it may, Barclays will not be helped by the fact that the dark pool operation was known internally as ‘The Franchise’, which sounds like the title of a John Grisham novel.
Whatever the merits of its case, the odds are that Barclays will hand over a large sum to settle it, as Standard Chartered did over sanctions-busting, because the US officials hold all the cards.
Despite the sinister name, dark pools are not necessarily a bad thing in themselves.
They can provide better liquidity and pricing particularly at times when the dealing spreads on conventional markets have widened.
During the Crimea crisis in the spring, for example, the dark pool service run by trading platform Turquoise – owned by the London Stock Exchange and a group of investment banks – saw a surge in activity in Russian names such as Sberbank, as traders could deal at a more advantageous price than on the main exchanges. Allowing predators to lurk in the depths is a different matter entirely.
Barclays is unlikely to be the only bank in the firing line for this. US regulators are taking a long hard look at dark pools, which have proliferated in the past five or ten years as electronic trading has become ever faster and more sophisticated.
The old-fashioned idea that shares are always traded on a national stock exchange is far from reality: in the US there are 13 public markets – the Dow Jones, the Nasdaq and so on, but around 50 alternative trading systems, most of them unknown to the public.
This level of complexity can only make it easier for predators to game the system at the expense of ordinary investors.
According to market aficionados, between five and ten per cent of the 30-40bn euros of daily equities trading in Europe splashes through the pools. On Wall Street, the figure is around 40 per cent, making any malpractice a major concern to large and small investors.
Yet there is no single set of standards laying down common rules on investor protection and keeping out predatory high frequency traders.
As a consequence, some pools are distinctly murkier and more brackish than others. Regulators need to throw a strong searchlight on the dark pools, and not just at Barclays.
Carney’s curbs
The Bank of England’s first attempt at deflating the housing market bubble turned out to be something of an anti-climax.
There were fears that the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) might unleash draconian controls on mortgage borrowing.
In the event, the banks have been given plenty of headroom before they hit the new cap, which stipulates only 15 per cent of their total loans can go to people borrowing more than 4.5 times their income.
At present, only just over a tenth of the market is for loans that high, though the proportion is higher in London.
The impression created is that there is not an undue problem with high loan-to-income borrowers. The reality depends on the definition of ‘high.’
If the benchmark were brought down to four times income – still a very punchy multiple by historic standards – then we are talking about a much higher proportion: around a fifth of the market.
Another fascinating statistic in the Financial Stability Report is that last year almost a quarter of new mortgages taken out will run for 30 years or more, instead of the conventional 25-year term, meaning that more people will be in debt for longer.
Add to that the fact that people with large mortgages in relation to their income are also likely to have significantly higher unsecured debts such as credit cards and personal loans, and you have a chunky minority of people who are very vulnerable to an increase in rates.
Mark Carney’s belief is that household indebtedness is not an immediate risk to financial stability, but these numbers indicate he can not afford to be too sanguine. |
warc | 201704 | Vein opening is unlikely to help regenerate damaged myelin, which causes the movement difficulties, Dake said, but opening blocked veins looks like it may help alleviate fatigue, at least in people with relapsing-remitting MS. "It's a stretch to think opening up veins is going to deal with or reverse an injury that is due to demyelinating plaque, whereas the symptoms that are more general, such as fatigue and brain fog that are much more related to an obstruction in venous outflow from the brain -- those could potentially be reversed," he said.
The above comes from Dr. Dake himself fro, this article.
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/c ... 48915.html
So what about the people who claim to be able to throw their wheel chairs to the curb after receiving this procedure? According to Dr. Dake opening blocked veins is unlikely to help with movement difficulties so is Dr. Dake incorrect? |
warc | 201704 | heya
i don't have hypothyroidism. my thyroid levels like free t3 etc were tested during the diagnostic process and came back all right. not sure what end of the ranges i was in so i might dig out those results and have a look.
zinc nutrition is important for optimal thyroid function.
research shows zinc deficiency is associated with constipation, loss of libido, tinnitus, eyesight, hair loss, and skin issues.
ms patients tend to have zinc levels in the low end of the normal range. healthy controls have average levels in the high end of the normal range (around 18 umol/L).
here's a study comparing thyroid hormones and high and low zinc levels in apparently healthy controls:
Effect of Zinc on Some Biochemical Indices of Metabolism
Riitta Hartoma, E.A. Sotaniemi, J. Määttänen
Abstract
The role of zinc in some metabolic functions in man was investigated in 14 healthy male volunteers with primarily high or low serum zinc
. In all the subjects, results of laboratory tests reflecting
blood picture, metabolism of carbohydrates, fats and proteins and thyroid function
as well as serum calcium and phosphate levels varied within the normal range
. Significant differences between the subjects classified by serum zinc were found in α1-globulins. Serum thyroxine [JL edit: thyroxine is T4]
, effective thyroxine ratio and the immunoglobulins IgA showed a tendency to lower levels in subjects with low serum zinc
. Substitution with zinc sulphate resulted in an increase of
α1 -globulins, serum thyroxine
and effective thyroxine ratio, and a decrease of albumin. Other tests remained unchanged by the therapy. The results suggest that there is a relationship between zinc and some metabolic functions in healthy subjects without symptoms of zinc deficiency. |
warc | 201704 | Did you know that we are living on a smarter planet? People today are smarter than people who lived before us! Nah, that’s not true, brilliance and intellect has been with mankind since the beginning, but what has changed are the tools, technologies and ways to share information.
In tourism, marketing is a huge part of our business, sharing the right information to the right audience, via the right distribution channels, with the right message, image, video and/or audio – to make a sale! For the longest time if you could master this you were in good shape. That’s no longer the case!
Enter the world of INTER! Today’s travellers are looking towards companies that can demonstrate they skills related to their
INTER connections– how businesses link together to create a stream of opportunity that makes vacationing easy (e.g. weaving together itineraries connected by a theme focused on the visitors interest, or including FIT options within a travel package based on the connections company A has with B, and the list goes on) INTER relations– how are you connecting to, and relating to both your visitors (b2c) and your suppliers/partners/DMOs (b2b). Are you optimizing technology to create open and transparent ways to strengthen relationships, respond in real time and show the ‘human side’ of your business? INTER actions –how are you engaging your visitors? Engaging the senses to interact with people, places, and cultures is vital to differentiating your tourism product in today’s world. There are lots of kayak operators, hotels, restaurants with great chefs, festivals — but what types of interactions are you purposefully staging for your guests that are entertaining, educational, exclusive, exciting, escapist that differentiate you from the masses?
So if you haven’t stopped to think about you INTER – now’s a good time! |
warc | 201704 | Dumb Idea of the Day: Washington State's Electric Vehicle Fee Terrible Idea (At Least for Now)We all know about the concept of "win-win", an action that provides benefits to both parties. Well, Washington State's legislators seem to be more inclined to pass "lose-lose" laws... The state senate has passed a bill that would charge a $100 annual feel to electric car drivers to "to compensate for the lack of gas taxes they pay." The general concept is not without merit and the amount is not that big - after all, electric cars also use the roads and cause some wear & tear - but the timing is bad.
They're acting at cross-purpose with other governmental (state & federal) tax credits for electric vehicles. What's the point of giving on one side and then take away on the other? They'll only raise very very small sums because its so early in electric car adoption, so it won't really help maintain roads. I'm not even sure if they'll raise enough to pay for what it cost to pass that law and enforce it... In fact, the random variation in miles driven by big trucks on any given day probably causes more wear & tear on Washington's roads than all electric cars combined over 10 years. Big trucks cause exponentially more damage (ie. a truck 100 times heavier than a car might cause 1,000 or 10,000X more damage to a road).
So not only won't they raise much money and do anything for roads, but they'll also slow down electric vehicle adoption -- that's what taxes do, when you tax something, you get less of it, which is why it's better to tax bad things like pollution than good things like work. This is too bad because in a state with lots of hydro power, electric cars are particularly clean. |
warc | 201704 | What drives small and mid-sized companies (SMEs) to incorporate sustainable practices into their business? Knowing the answers to this question will aid trade associations and other trusted advisors in developing their outreach and support programs aimed at the SME market. Sustainability4SMEs identified in a previous post that trade associations and a variety of other advisory organizations (e.g. chambers of commerce, economic development agencies) are the primary go-to sources of sustainable business information.
In the largest U.S.-based study to date on sustainability adoption and hurdles to implementation for SMEs, Sustainability4SMEs asked survey respondents to identify the drivers to implementing sustainability. Recognizing that there are myriad reasons influencing company decisions, the participants were allowed to check multiple responses.
The results of the question, shown in the figure below, were startling; inverse to what was expected.
Regulatory Compliance was the least often cited as a sustainability driving factor in spite of ever increasing regulations at all levels of government. This shows that government can impose as many onerous requirements on SMEs as it desires, but it remains unimportant in encouraging them to build sustainable practices into their ongoing operations.
From a carrot-stick perspective, adding more and more regulations for businesses only contributes to a business faltering or worse, failing. Regulatory compliance is an overhead cost adding to business’ balance sheets, certainly not a motivator for the income statement.
Upstream Supply Chain Imperatives and Financial Incentives also reside in the category of least frequently cited driving factors.
Upstream Supply Chain Imperatives include the ability to obtain a steady source of raw materials for a company’s outputs. This data is consistent with an earlier question in the survey identifying the type of business responding to the study. Respondents weigh heavily in the professional services sector (e.g. accounting, legal) which are knowledge-based industries. Raw materials are not a concern to this demographic.
Financial Incentives should have been a strong driver for implementing sustainability initiatives in small and mid-sized firms. A common market perception is that going green is expensive so one might think that the availability of a wide variety of incentives (block grants, utility rebates, federal, state and local rebates, etc.) would be a major consideration. However, based on this body of research, money is almost the least of a business’s concerns when it comes to sustainability. This may be due to a lack of knowledge of available funding sources to pursue. Here is another opportunity for trade associations, chambers of commerce and other trusted advisors to add value to their constituents.
The bulk of the remaining response options all fall within 15 percent of each other. Clearly there are numerous factors driving SMEs to implement sustainability initiatives, with Customer Demand being at the higher end of the scale.
Our study bifurcates between those implementing sustainability initiatives and those who are not pursuing a green strategy. This particular question was answered only by those who are pursuing sustainability. Our last post addressed the hurdles and barriers for those not implementing sustainability.
No matter which side of the fence your company is on regarding sustainability, we’d like your input into this body of work. Click here to complete the 28-question survey. Thanks for reading, participating and engaging with great comments. We look forward to sharing additional data from this research project. |
warc | 201704 | Written by
Staff Reports
The church needs the influences of both, so how do we reconcile the differences?
In the United States today, no two terms are more polarizing in the English lexicon than the words "conservative" and "liberal."
Time Magazine recently reported that political polls reveal an even split among conservatives and liberals. Each now claims 45 percent of the electorate, while only 10 percent remains undecided. Never before has this nation been so polarized, the article said.
What is true in the political landscape is readily apparent in the religious realm as well. While the terms can be used in descriptive ways, all too often they are used in a pejorative fashion. ("You must be one of those liberals!" or "What do you expect of those conservatives!") Both become code words for those other people who don't think or act like us.
Unfortunately, when this happens in the church, such stereotyping not only fails to build up the body of Christ, but it makes communication more difficult between people who usually have far more in common than they have differences. Furthermore, it also implies that truth can be found with only one faction or another when, in fact, the threads of both conservatism and liberalism are woven throughout the history of the Christian tradition.
The church of Jesus Christ—be it the UCC or known by another name—is by definition a conservative institution. The church is, quite literally, a conserver of values and beliefs. As such, part of its DNA is to maintain and resist changing traditional or existing views or beliefs. Anyone who has been part of a church for long understands this. It is by tradition that we are grounded, shaped and nurtured.
But the church of Jesus Christ is also a liberal institution. If we define liberal, as Webster does, as "one who is open-minded in the observance of orthodox or traditional forms," then who was more liberal than Jesus? Not only did Jesus challenge the purity codes of his day (talking to women, eating with Gentiles, healing on the Sabbath), but he also advocated a radical new understanding of God that welcomed outsiders—often at the expense of insiders—and shook Judaism to its roots. It certainly wasn't adherence to existing traditions and beliefs that led to Jesus' death. To this day, the church has been a liberating religious and social force through the world.
The church is both conservative and liberal. To insist otherwise is to ignore the contradictions of human life and the context of each local congregation.
Rather than using these terms as weapons to separate the sheep from the goats, should we not view them as gifts that can help us understand and appreciate how the God revealed in Jesus Christ speaks to so many people in so many different circumstances?
After all, the primary question for the church—including the UCC—is not "Are you liberal or conservative?" The primary question is "Do you know and have a relationship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ?"
The Rev. Stephen C. Gray is Indiana-Kentucky Conference Minister. |
warc | 201704 | Radovan Zak, PhD, 1931-1999
September 21, 1999
A distinguished scientist and a popular teacher, Radovan Zak, PhD, 68, a pioneer in the study of heart and skeletal muscle, died September 21, 1999 at the University of Chicago Hospitals. He was treated for several years for heart disease and died from a thrombosis that occurred after a surgical procedure. Zak was a professor in three departments at the University of Chicago: medicine; neurobiology, pharmacology and physiology; and organismal biology and anatomy. He was also a member of the committee on cell physiology.
Professor Zak was a world authority on the biology and biochemistry of contractile proteins, the building blocks of heart and skeletal muscle. He studied the factors that control muscle-cell growth and differentiation and the genes that code for muscle proteins. His laboratory discovered two of the eight genes responsible for the different forms of myosin, one of the most important components of heart and skeletal muscle. He also mapped out the natural history of cardiac myosin production, charting how different combinations of contractile proteins are produced by the heart of a fetus, a child, an adult, and in response to cardiovascular disease.
His research was particularly important in helping cardiologists understand the abnormal growth and thickening of the heart wall that can occur in response to elevated blood pressure or partial blockage of the aorta.
"Radovan Zak was a wonderful colleague, a brilliant teacher and an exceedingly clever scientist," said cardiologist, Rory Childers, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. "His research, although it involved very basic science, was immediately real and valuable to practicing doctors. He was someone we often turned to when we had difficult questions."
"He was one of the best loved and most versatile professors in this University and a delightful and sought-after speaker," added Ernest Page, MD, professor emeritus, in the departments of medicine and of neurobiology, pharmacology, and physiology at the University of Chicago, who collaborated with Zak in research projects.
"Professor Zak was a brilliant scientist, a mentor and teacher of the first rank who nurtured generations of students, and a wonderful, gentle man," recalled cardiologist Morton Arnsdorf, MD, professor of medicine. "He was among a core of basic and clinical scientists who brought basic laboratory research to the bedside, making the University of Chicago's cardiology section a powerful national and international force in investigating heart disease. Despite his respected position and busy schedule, he was a modest man and always had time to teach, to listen, and to help other scientists deal with important problems.
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on June 15, 1931, Zak earned a BS degree in chemistry and physics from Prague University in 1952 and an RN Dr. in biochemistry in 1954 and taught chemistry at the Prague University Medical School and later physiology at the Czechoslovakia Academy of Science while he completed his PhD in biochemistry from the Academy.
He came to the United States in 1961 as a research fellow at Northwestern University Medical School, then, in 1963, began a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Murray Rabinowitz, at the University of Chicago, where he developed his interest in the molecular biology of contractile proteins. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1965 as an instructor, set up his own laboratory and rose through the ranks to become a full professor in 1978. He won the Quantrell Award for outstanding teaching in 1989 and the University's Gold Key Award, which recognizes faculty for loyal and outstanding service, in June 1999.
The author of more than 200 papers in distinguished scientific journals, Zak also served as an associate editor for several journals, including
Circulation Research and Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, and was a member of the editorial board of several other journals.
He is survived by his wife, Emilia, of Chicago; two sons, Joseph, of Santiago, Chile, and Patrick, of Oakland, California; and one grandson, Patrick's son Nicholas.
A memorial service is being arranged for January at the University's Bond Chapel.
The University of Chicago Medicine Communications 950 E. 61st Street, Third Floor Chicago, IL 60637 Phone (773) 702-0025 Fax (773) 702-3171 |
warc | 201704 | Annelids have radiated into a number of niches. Some are parasitic, notably the leeches and myzostomarians; others filter-feed or prey on other invertebrates. However, probably the most significant ecological role played by annelids is reworking of soil and sediments. Many polychaetes and oligochaetes, and even a few leeches, are burrowers that constantly rework the sediment through which they burrow; in addition, they may ingest and excrete large quantities of sediments or soils. Robison (1987) notes that some sandy beaches may harbor 32,000 burrowing annelids per square meter, which collectively may ingest and excrete 3 metric tons of sand per year. The tubes sticking up from the sand in this picture, taken on a beach at Bahia de las Animas, Baja California, give some idea of how common polychaetes can be in such environments.
Soils may harbor 50 to 500 earthworms per square meter; they keep soils aerated, and their castings fertilize the soil.
Most earthworms and leeches are
hermaphroditic
with both male and female gonads.
Polychaetes
usually have separate sexes;
many polychaetes hatch into a particular type of planktonic larva,
the trochophore, which later metamorphoses into a juvenile annelid.
Some polychaetes, however, can reproduce asexually, by budding. |
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RedStone
Based on the paper "RedStone: Curating General, Code, Math, and QA Data for Large Language Models" and the official GitHub repository, I have replicated the processing of the general-cc dataset in Redstone.
I followed the processing steps outlined in the official repository with minimal modifications.
The final processed dataset is similar in scale to what is presented in the paper, but I have not yet used this data for training to verify its quality.
The release is under the Redstone's license. If any data within it infringes on your copyright, please contact me for removal.
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