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Mining Tasky Data 7

This is a report on a project funded by the Criminology Research Council. The original title of the project was 'Attitudes toward employability of non-violent ex-offenders: employer, corrective services worker, employment support worker and offender perspectives'. The study described in this report investigated attitudes of employers, employment services workers, corrective services workers, and prisoners and offenders toward the employability of ex-prisoners and ex-offenders. The investigation involved conduct of a large scale survey in Queensland and Victoria. Respondents from all four stakeholder groups rated the probability of a number of hypothetical persons with different forensic histories obtaining and maintaining employment, in comparison to other disadvantaged groups. Respondents also rated the importance of several employment-related skills and characteristics to employability and the likelihood of members of the general workforce, ex-offenders, and ex-prisoners exhibiting those employment-related skills and characteristics. Several remarkable findings emerge from the study, which concludes that attitudes toward the employability of ex-prisoners and ex-offenders cannot be understood in simplistic terms. The study found that attitudes differed, not only in relation to the two questions that were investigated, but also in relation to particular stakeholder positions and other characteristics of respondents. Employability ratings for people with forensic histories were found to be comparable with those of other disadvantaged groups, despite the probability of employers and employment services workers (at least) having less 'sympathy' for them than for other groups. Members of the general workforce were rated significantly higher, but not very highly, and ex-prisoners and ex-offenders were not rated very poorly, rather, they were rated 'fairly likely' to exhibit each of three employment-related skills and characteristics. These results are more positive than what is generally suggested in the literature. Previous experience with employment of ex prisoners or ex offenders also proved to have a significant effect on ratings of employability, as did reported quality of previous experience. It appears that exposure has a generally positive effect, and moreover, that positive exposure has a predictably positive effect on attitudes. The study concludes by suggesting that action is required in three areas in order to promote positive attitude change on the part of all stakeholder groups and to promote greater workforce participation by ex-prisoners and ex-offenders. These areas are: the provision of specialist employment assistance for ex offenders in obtaining and maintaining employment; skills training for prisoners and people serving community corrections orders with a specific focus on development of the employment-related skills and characteristics considered important to employability; and broad community-wide promotion of reintegration of ex prisoners and ex offenders.

http://crg.aic.gov.au/reports/200203-26.html

What Types of Temporary Work Visas are Available? H visas are broken down into several categories. There are limits on the number of each type of H visa available in any given year. Employers may be required to file for labor certification from the Department of Labor prior to petitioning the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for H visas for temporary workers. H-1B visas are available for specialty workers, which are defined as workers in occupations that require some degree of theoretical or practical application of specialized knowledge. Those acquiring H-1B visas must have a bachelor's degree or other advanced education degree. H-1C visas are available to foreign nurses who are willing to work in medically underserved areas in the U.S. Nurses may remain in the country for up to three years. H-2A visas are available to temporary or seasonal agricultural workers. Employment is restricted to one year or less or to certain times of year, such as harvesting season. H-2B visas are available to nonagricultural temporary workers who perform one-time, seasonal, peak load or intermittent employment. The temporary employment must be full-time to qualify. H-3 visas are available to trainees, including those in the field of special education. Trainees may remain up to two years in the U.S., with the exception of special education trainees, who are restricted to 18 months total training. Medical and academic trainees are not eligible for H-3 visas. L visas are available for intracompany transferees. To be eligible, the individual must have been employed abroad for at least one year within the last three years, must be entering the U.S. to work at a subsidiary, branch, parent or affiliate of the foreign company employer and must be fulfilling an executive or manager position or a position that requires specialized knowledge. Specialized knowledge may include knowledge of the employer's product, its application in international markets or an advanced understanding of the employer's processes and procedures. O visas are for those with extraordinary ability in the arts, science, education, business or athletics, or extraordinary achievement in movies or television. To be considered "extraordinary," the individual must have earned national and international praise. Chefs, directors and choreographers may be included in this category. Those who assist one of these individuals may be able to obtain a visa to join them in the US as well as spouses and minor children. P visas are reserved for athletes and entertainers. Those qualifying for P visas must perform at a level that is internationally recognized and may be individually applying or as part of a group or team. If the entertainer is part of a group, the group generally must have been formed at least one year prior to applying for the visa. As with O visas, those assisting the athlete or entertainer may apply for a P visa to join them, as well as spouses and minor children. Q visas are available to foreign nationals to come to the US as cultural exchange visitors and receive practical training and employment while sharing their history, culture and traditions with US employees. US employers must file a petition to sponsor a cultural exchange visitor with the USCIS. Individuals can remain in the US initially up to 15 months on a Q visa. For more information on applying for a temporary worker nonimmigrant visa, contact an experienced immigration attorney today. The application process can be difficult and time-consuming. A knowledgeable attorney can explain the requirements to you and help you complete the process correctly.

https://www.beancard.com/FAQ-Immigration.shtml

Wireless networking using the 802.11 standard, also known by its trade name, Wi-Fi, has become common in the home and has a significant and growing role in corporate settings. But the existing standard, 802.11g, was ratified in 2003 and is increasingly seen as inadequate as applications become more complex and require more bandwidth. For instance, streaming video -- whether it's a feature-length movie at home or videoconferencing at work -- is a dicey proposition with 802.11g. So-called "g" products have a theoretical maximum throughput speed of 54Mbit/sec. but real-world speeds of half that or even slower, which isn't quite enough for video. To the rescue, eventually, will be 802.11n, which promises significantly higher speed and range. Here's the lowdown of what to expect with 802.11n and when to expect it. How is 802.11n different than current generations of Wi-Fi? The 802.11n standard uses some new technology and tweaks existing technologies to give Wi-Fi more speed and range. The most notable new technology is called multiple input, multiple output (MIMO). MIMO uses several antennas to move multiple data streams from one place to another. Instead of sending and receiving a single stream of data, MIMO can simultaneously transmit three streams of data and receive two. This allows more data to be transmitted in the same period of time. This technique can also increase range, or the distance over which data can be transmitted. A second technology being incorporated into 802.11n is channel bonding, which can use two separate nonoverlapping channels at the same time to transmit data. This technique also increases the amount of data that can be transmitted. A third technology in 802.11n is called payload optimization or packet aggregation, which, in simple terms, means more data can be stuffed into each transmitted packet. So, what are the benefits of 802.11n? Users will notice two things about this new and improved wireless technology: significantly greater speed and range. Both Intel Corp., which has a vested interested in 802.11n because it manufactures wireless chip sets, and independent reviews indicate that the claims of greater speed and range for 802.11n are true. Specifically, 802.11g products, which have a theoretical maximum throughput speed of 54Mbit/sec., typically provide real-world speeds of 22Mbit/sec. to 24Mbit/sec. In contrast, Intel says it's seeing real-world speeds of 100Mbit/sec. to 140Mbit/sec. for 802.11n equipment. Those results were confirmed in a recent Computerworld roundup review of several Wi-Fi products based on Draft 2 of the 802.11n standard. Range is harder to quantify because it's affected by many variables, such as barriers that could block the signal. However, Intel reports that 802.11n equipment typically delivers more than twice the range of 802.11g equipment, at any given throughput speed. Those results were confirmed anecdotally in the recent Computerworld review. "At the very end of an open field with no interference, where you could get 1Mbit/sec. with "g" equipment, you'll net 14Mbit/sec. to 16Mbit/sec. with "n" equipment," reports Ashish Gupta, an Intel product manager. What's in it for business users? Consumers are increasingly buying equipment based on draft versions of 802.11n. However, few businesses will deploy 802.11n products until the standard is fully ratified and business-focused vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. offer products based on the ratified standard. When that happens, however, the role of wireless networking is expected to significantly increase in corporate settings. Wireless networking in many companies often fills specific niches, such as providing networking in conference rooms, lunch rooms or in temporary or under-construction office space. That lack of full deployment of wireless is understandable given that Ethernet provides greater reliability and speeds (theoretical maximums of 100Mbit/sec.) and is switched, while wireless LANs offer slower speeds and the bandwidth is shared. The new 802.11n technology will solve the throughput problem for business users, opening the way to far more applications, such as wireless voice over IP and more videoconferencing.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2544290/faq--802-11n-wireless-networking.html

There are several ways in which F.A.T. can save you time and money. What? No, I don't mean the cellulite on the backs of your thighs, I mean "Foolproof Advertising Techniques" -- in ezines. 1. Why advertise in ezines? Ezines are one of the best forms of advertising because of your ability to target who YOU want to read your ad. You don't have to hunt your prospects down -- all you have to do is make sure you target your market correctly. When I say "target," I mean to make sure that the people that you're showing your ad to have a DEFINITE interest in whatever you're advertising. For example, advertising your website design service in a Web design ezine is *good.* You know that Webmasters reading that ezine are looking for ways to clean up their website, or their design skills. However, advertising your website design service in a business opportunity ezine is *bad.* Sure, some of the opportunity-seekers MIGHT have a website, and they MIGHT be looking for someone to design it for them ... but why take the chance? Ezine advertising is also one of the FASTEST ways to get results. Within minutes of subscribers reading your ad, you can be making more sales, getting more traffic to your website, or getting new subscribers to YOUR ezine. Whatever your goal is by placing your ad, it can be accomplished almost instantly. 2. What kind of advertising budget do you need to advertise in ezines? (c) Crazy! Why else would a publisher waste a chance to make a few honest dollars from selling their ad space? -> TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT EZINE! (a) How many ads run in each issue? If your ad is going to be competing with 20 or 30 others, it's not worth your time or your money. Your advertising dollars will get lost in the sea of advertisements -- just like your ad will. 10 to 15 ads should be the ABSOLUTE maximum number of ads you're willing to compete with, or you won't get any exposure. (b) Where are the ads located? If all of the ads are stuck at the very end of the ezine after all of the useful information, forget it. I know that this is the standard place for ezine ads, but it's also the most overlooked. If the ads are at the end of the ezine, make sure there's a reason for the subscriber to scroll down that far. Is there advertising info, a contest announcement, etc.? If there's nothing there but the copyright info and disclaimer, you're in trouble! (c) How good is the actual ezine? Before you advertise in a specific publication, request a sample issue. This is your last chance to make sure that you're targeting your prospects right, and to find out if the ezine is even worth the advertising dollars. If the ezine doesn't have any useful or interesting content, chances are, the subscriber won't be too eager to read it. And, they'll most likely skip right over your ad. (d) How many subscribers do they have? This one isn't as important as the others, but you still need to consider it. If the first three rules are followed, this one won't make or break your ad campaign -- but, be cautious! If the ezine has 650 subscribers, excellent content, features three ads per issue, and puts the ads close to the top, more than likely, it's going to be a good investment. Just make sure that ad space is reasonably priced. Likewise, if an ezine has 10,000 subscribers, features 40 ads an issue, they're all at the bottom, and the content leaves more than a little to be desired, your ad results probably will, too! (e) Are there usually high-quality ads featured in the ezine? If the editor of the ezine doesn't edit out things like spelling and grammatical errors, hype, and known scams, their subscribers probably skip right over the ad section. Careless errors make both the advertiser AND the publisher look bad, and readers may get annoyed by this carelessness, thus conditioning themselves to ignore those ads. On the other hand, if subscribers have had positive experiences with the ads in a publication, and aren't given the impression that they're just a bunch of hype and scams, they're likely to continue to pay attention to them. This type of ezine is your BEST advertising choice. (f) How can you get FREE ezine advertising? The easiest and most common way to get free ads in ezines is to run ad swaps with other publishers. This is when you and another ezine publisher both offer to run each other's ad in your respective ezines at no cost. BUT, if you don't have an ezine, this method could create a problem. :-) In this situation, you would simply barter for a free ad. You can offer the publisher a service or product of equal or *greater* value in exchange for his or her ad. For example, if you run a submission service that usually costs $45, and you barter with an ezine publisher that charges $35 per ad, they'll likely take you up on the offer. You may want to offer them that's a little more valuable than what you're asking of them. This makes your proposal more attractive, thus making them more likely to accept it.

http://rightstuffhosting.com/FoolProof.html

Will branded VR content change digital advertising for the better? While virtual reality might take years to go mainstream, this medium is already opening up new territories for advertisers and brands. The New York Times is showing how VR can revolutionize journalism, while Lockheed Martin’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JTb_7qv78" target=_blank"> “Field Trip to Mars” exemplified the medium’s educational capabilities. Will brands use VR for purely for entertainment or for more utilitarian purposes? Audi is already experimenting with virtual reality showrooms, and last year, Thomas Cook introduced <a href="http://visualise.com/case-study/thomas-cook-virtual-holiday" target=_blank"> “Try Before You Fly”, an initiative allowing consumers to virtually visit their dream destinations. By providing true value to consumers, will branded VR content change digital advertising for the better? "I think digital advertising has a huge opportunity through virtual reality. The ability to create entire worlds and to develop completely immersive experiences has been something totally new and exciting to consider when working through the creative process with our clients. We are already having to think about things in a completely different way. I think this immersion can be a bridge to developing brand’s stories with their consumers, to levels and places that traditional advertising could not ever reach." "Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, television took 14 years, and the Internet took 4 years. As current technology news indicates, VR is on a much quicker trajectory. Estimates predict there will be more than 12 million VR headset sales by the end of 2016 and by 2020, the VR industry will have shipped 30 million headsets globally, according to Juniper Research. It’s a fast growing and exciting new opportunity for advertisers. In terms of an experience that can transport someone in a completely unique new way, there is nothing like VR. It's an opportunity to put consumers inside your brand. It's the next generation of storytelling; so much more immersive than any other digital experience people have known. For advertisers wanting to use VR, it should be about facilitating useful or unique experiences, not about interrupting and breaking an immersive experience with a VRC (VR commercial). It’s not about slapping a logo on something or re-creating a TV ad in VR. VR content, whether that’s 360 degree video or an interactive VR experience, needs to be used for the right reasons, in the right way. Consumers might turn a blind eye to a poorly made TV advert, but due to its immersive nature, consumers will be much less forgiving of a bad VR ad. VR doesn’t make bad content good, it fact it’s likely to make it worse, and there’s no escaping it! At REWIND we are seeing many brands harnessing the power of VR and delivering bespoke experiences that build profound connections with consumers. As long as brands use VR to add value - whether that’s by allowing people to ‘try’ before they buy, transporting people to another place they wouldn’t otherwise be able to go to, entertaining or educating - then it has the potential to be the ultimate marketing tool and will supersede other mediums in terms of building brand awareness, loyalty and ultimately brand love." "Leveraging VR pays off. It’s almost as though you’re speaking individually to the masses when you have the opportunity to make branded content in VR. It’s a story you can’t get away from but it has to be GOOD. While entertainment is one of the easiest use cases, it’s also the easiest and will have the shortest impact. Creating an experience in VR is where the real win comes in. Social experiences, gamified ordering systems and interactive episodes are ways that you can make something last. Yes, it’s more expensive but it does pay off. Through consulting with restaurants, theme parks, video game companies, traditional film studios and directors I’ve helped develop some very impactful pieces but that impact has no purpose unless it drives action. It’s not the time to wait until the next tipping point. Right now it is time to make content so you can learn how to most effectively have a voice in one of the most disruptive mediums that humans have or will ever see."

https://magazine.onbrand.me/vox-pop-will-branded-vr-content-change-digital-advertising-for-the-better/

A drink driver has been jailed for six years for a fatal hit and run where he mowed down a police worker's mother at speeds of up to 100mph. A court heard Paul Tomlinson, 33, was speeding and swerving in and out of traffic and driving so badly at the time of the crash that another motorist called police shortly before he hit and killed Susan Smythe. The crash took place at a pedestrian crossing as she made her way home from playing bingo at around 9.45pm on September 9 in Stretford, Greater Manchester. Callous Tomlinson has today been slammed by the victim's family after gave a thumbs up from the deck before he was led away to begin his prison sentence. A court heard despite the call by the concerned motorist officers were unable to locate Tomlinson's VW Golf and 45 minutes later he ploughed into Mrs Smythe, 59. Tomlinson left her dying in the road after hitting her at what witnesses estimated to be 70mph to 100mph and, at the least, more than 60mph, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard. His girlfriend, Shelby Keedy, who had been screaming and begging him to slow down and stop, fled his house to a nearby police patrol and told officers her boyfriend had been driving the car which killed Miss Smythe. When police tracked him down the victim's son, a forensic crime scene investigator, was deployed to work on the suspect's car - only to discover the victim was his own mother. The court heard Tomlinson claimed to have had a single drink of vodka, although his girlfriend - a passenger in the car who had begged him to slow down - said she could smell alcohol on his breath. An initial screening test by police at his home in Sale Moor an hour after the crash showed him to be four times the drink-drive limit. Tomlinson said he had been drinking after the crash but he refused to give a breath or blood test when arrested and taken to the police station. He was not charged with drink-driving but the father of one pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to causing death by dangerous driving, failing to stop after a road accident and failing to provide a specimen of breath. He was banned from driving for eight years. Passing sentence Judge Stuart Driver QC said: 'Susan Smythe was an innocent pedestrian. The sudden and unnecessary end to her life is a terrible loss to her family and friends. 'No words of this court can soften the bereavement and no sentence imposed can change what has happened. Earlier the court heard Tomlinson had picked up his girlfriend near Manchester city centre and was weaving in and out of traffic, travelling at 'motorway speeds' through built-up areas of the city. As his passenger begged him to slow down he 'smirked' at her and began to race another driver, the court heard. Police traced him quickly after the crash when a witness passed on a partial registration plate for his vehicle, and also used CCTV images. Richard Littler, mitigating, said the defendant had only a single previous conviction and only three points on his licence and was otherwise of good character and from a respectable family. Mr Littler added: 'This is an offence which is totally out of character. This will be his first experience of a prison sentence and he will inevitably find that difficult. Gail O'Brien, senior crown prosecutor for CPS North West, said: 'Tomlinson partook in a series of dangerous manoeuvres, overtaking and undertaking other vehicles at speed and had a near-miss with a car a short time before he hit Mrs Smythe. 'He showed no signs of slowing down as he approached the crossing and even after his car threw her in the air, he proceeded to drive at speed from the scene, leaving her on the road with catastrophic head injuries which proved to be fatal. Today in court he thanked the judge and gave a thumbs up to his family from the dock as he learned he could free in just three years. He was also banned from the roads for eight years. The maximum sentence he could have faced is 14 years in jail. After the case Ms Smythe's sister Kathleen Condon, 59, said: 'I don't feel like Susan's got any justice - the fact this man put his thumbs up in court is about as disrespectful to us as you could be. She added: 'The case all seemed to be about him and his family. Susan was not spoken about at all in court. 'She was a lovely, bubbly person. She would have turned 60 in January and we would have had a family party but we will just have to go out on our own and celebrate her life.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4059292/Drink-driver-33-killed-barmaid-hit-run-police-forensics-expert-discover-mother-victim-went-examine-scene-jailed-six-years.html

Buying 20 pct of electronics chain Suning is a backward step for the Chinese e-commerce giant. Its motive may be gaining access to a delivery network. Yet Alibaba’s appeal has been its asset-light model. Defending its near-monopoly online will require more offline investment. A man talks on the phone as he surfs the internet on his laptop at a local coffee shop in downtown Shanghai November 28, 2013. Breakdown: What's driving China's latest web boom? Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba announced on Aug. 10 that it would invest 28.3 billion yuan ($4.63 billion) in electronics retailer Suning in return for a 19.99 percent stake. At the same time, Suning will acquire 27.8 million newly issued ordinary shares of Alibaba for 14 billion yuan, giving it a 1.1 percent stake in the e-commerce giant. As part of the deal, Suning will open an online storefront on Alibaba’s Tmall shopping platform. Meanwhile, Alibaba will gain access to the retailer’s logistics network, which includes 65 national and regional distribution centres. Alibaba will pay 15.23 yuan per Suning share, a 5.76 percent premium to the average 20-day trading price. Suning will pay $81.51 per Alibaba share, roughly 3 percent above the company’s closing share price of $78.82 on Aug. 7. Alibaba has been investing heavily in so-called “online-to-offline” e-commerce, which connects web shoppers to traditional retailers. In March last year, Alibaba purchased a 2 percent equity interest in another major electronics retailer, Haier, as well as a 9.9 percent stake in Haier’s logistics subsidiary, in a deal worth HK$2.8 billion ($361 million). Around the same time, Alibaba invested $692 million in Chinese department store operator Intime Retail Group.

https://www.breakingviews.com/considered-view/alibaba-46-bln-retail-deal-dulls-web-only-charms/

I've been sat up - on/off, all night thinking about this and really need some advice over what to do. Basically, my best friend introduced me to a guy (25 and just come out of a long term relationship with a girl I know after being cheated on) on Friday. He's a nice guy and we did get along very well so he asked me for my number and asked me out on a date - which surprised me... oh and basically begged me to go to his house party that my best friend was going to anyway. Confused by it all (and I suppose kinda interested), I agreed. Couldn't really be bothered going to the house party last night, but I got persuaded to go in the end by my friend - who didn't want to go alone (even though she's moving in with him in September) and by this guy who was obviously desperate for me to go and said he'd pick me up outside my house after the start of the party. At the party he was quite possessive of me - which kind of freaked me out - kept putting his arms around me and kissing my shoulders and stuff; which I let him having had a drink and just being unsure of what I wanted. Obviously he didn't want me to particularly talk to his mates (called them players etc) which, to be honest, was quite annoying for me because I'm so used to being free to do what I want. I'm really not the settling down type. Anyway, he took me to the side and his mum came in and mentioned some birthday party for a baby that he asked whether I would accompany him to. Not knowing what to say, I just said yes. And then he's like: 'what are you doing tomorrow?' I tried to make up some excuse but again he's going out of his way to meet me - even suggesting he'll meet my sister with me! On the sweet side, my friend decided to ditch me and stay at the party (she copped off with one of his mates), and he got his dad to drive me home - which he accompanied me in and opened all the doors etc. I mean, he is incredibly sweet and I genuinely think he really likes me (hasn't properly gotten over his ex though) but I have a bad history with relationships and, to be honest, he's starting to really get on my nerves. He texts me all the time which is just getting on my nerves. Won't drop the meeting up thing and seems to be totally invading my space - which is strange for a guy I've known for 2 days! What role would/should a MHoC House of Lords play? I don't mean to sound rude but it kind of sounds like he's using you as a rebound.. you should be careful, and I think it's good that you aren't all over him so you don't fall it. But then I think you should tell him that you guys should "take it slow", even if you don't have too many feelings for him, atleast it wont hurt him but it'll let him know, right? If your not interested, just say so. Your gonna hurt him more by leading him on. If your are interested, be careful yes, but don't automatically assume he's using you as a rebound. Tell him to back off a bit until you're sure how you feel. He's being way too clingy, especially considering you just met. I have no REAL friends. I am lonely af, my plea for advice. I have been accused of being a racist. Is House of Lords dead in the water?

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=621273

What is it that comes to mind once the town Cambridge pops up? It may be fair to say that the university would be of some importance when it comes to this, considering how it is portrayed in the media and in general. Leaving this aside, then what can be said about the town without taking a dive into a Wikipedia article and without consulting Google? Furthermore, are those five utilities mentioned in the title associated in any kind of way with either of the aforementioned places or is it supposed to be understood in metaphorically? However one is supposed to interpret these three words from the title of the release, the music is complacent in creating a certain shroud of mystery regarding this output. Five tracks -- naturally -- appear on the tape and the music is quite adapt in providing the proper atmosphere for some kind of relaxation and contemplation. Being rather inoffensive and flowing along gently, the undisturbed melodies fill the space with a mixture of calm ambient, noise elements and the vague sound instruments. Naturally, it does not demand something from the listener and does not attempt to obtrude itself. Rather, all is somewhat distant and slightly inaccessible. The cover presents to the curious person an inversion of a photography. Should someone care to take the effort and flip the image once more, then a desert-like landscape is being presented to the viewer with a pyramid at the back and a lone piece of rock on the right side. It has something artificial to it, something not entirely real and this impression is increased through the background and its paper-like touch. The visual facets attempts to lure the listener into a certain realm -- desert, oasis, sacred, Egyptian -- while the composition in its entirety does not attempt to overshadow the artificial nature of the arrangement. The supposition of the speciality or even the superiority that is common in the portrayal of something as mystic, is being subverted by the way the band has dealt with the background. Somehow this definite impression stands in contrast to what the music actually tries to create. It does not come over as being comprehensible in the sense as the listener might get an immediate visual representation of the person responsible for the sounds. Somehow being in this pyramid is like being in a church and someone would be playing an organ in a special chamber or location that is generally prohibited from access and therefore also from the visual aspect. All that actually remains is the music. And it does a good job in leading the listener through tiny specs of calmness and atmospheric pleasantries. Vague memories of something sacred that is now being presented in a different kind of way and for a different purpose. Is this how the cover artwork and the sounds fit together? Is there a link after all? As usual, there are more questions than answers. Nevertheless, the music on this tape has its own touch and fascination. Definitely good for a spin now and then. This page was last modified on 25 July 2016, at 18:40.

http://adsol.oneyoudontknow.com/index.php/wiki/L%27eoscombu_Couti_--_Five_Cambridge_Utilities

For retailers and CPGs alike, the billion-dollar question is: How can the eCommerce shopping experience be optimized to better drive sales and increase shopper satisfaction? To win in traditional retail, the focus was largely on capturing a shopper’s attention within a defined space – the physical store. Within this world, marketers strived to fully understand how shoppers made decisions. With proper spend and precise execution, outcomes were near certain – thanks to shopper insights gained via Consumer Decision Trees. Within the eCommerce world, however, the physical definitions and space are lifted. Understanding how shoppers make decisions in the online channel, and getting them to their final purchase decision, can be vastly different than in the physical store. The key question now becomes, can the tools and methodologies used in Brick & Mortar provide the insight needed for marketers to gain insight into eCommerce? The answer is a resounding No! Both traditional CDTs and D-CDTs provide a deeper understanding of shopper behavior and motivations – but the playing fields are wildly different. The physicality of Brick & Mortar stores – the aisles, shelf layouts, checkout stands and overall space design – have a tremendous impact on shopper behavior. In the digital shopping world, physical limitations – and the familiar marketing tools of bricks and mortar – vanish. Online, shoppers define categories as they choose – and their category definitions may not be driven by a product’s physical characteristics as in Brick & Mortar. Without aisles, shoppers often use broader criteria – such as occasion and need state. Online, consumers may shop for Breakfast – not RTE Cereal; or Snacks – and not necessarily those limited to the salty kind. The disruption of traditional retail through the emergence of eCommerce has been significant. And, its capricious impact on business – with little regard to size or category-longevity – has been well documented. Clearly, eCommerce presents great challenges – and great opportunities. To better identify both, Decision Insight has developed D-CDTs, a proprietary digital shopper research tool designed to provide clients greater insight into the shopper product-selection process – while also identifying the key attributes that most influence the online shopping process. What should a given category taxonomy (click-path) be? What guiding principles for assortment, based on substitution and walk rate, should be in place for an Online category? What Search words should be used for the manufacturer’s product pages so the retailer’s algorithm places them high in the path? How does a manufacturer get their products placed in multiple locations to increase presence? Decision Insight’s proprietary Digital Consumer Decision Tree approach is both forward-looking and shopper-focused. DI’s unique methodology not only brings the context of the online store directly into the exercise, it also measures substitutability – and allows for the inclusion of next generation innovations. Decision Insight’s D-CDTs deliver a framework of category attributes. This unique approach informs both online taxonomy and assortment – and also innovation and marketing opportunities. Potential solutions are then tested in Decision Insight’s proprietary Digital.IQ™ Test & Learn platform – quickly, efficiently, and effectively – producing projectable sales results and shopper metrics to maximize eCommerce sales – at the speed of today’s business world. With DI’s Test & Learn platform, participants enter a simulated website where they shop as they would in real life, interacting with digital store pages and a full range of available products. The virtual shopping experience measures what shoppers buy in real-time, reliably projecting and providing deep understanding of the impact of specific online strategies on real-world sales. A Decision Insight client in the Baby Care category had questions concerning the taxonomy for one of their primary subcategories. Our research provided thought leadership and valuable insight for the client’s internal marketing personnel – and ultimately their retailers – with a recommended solution to optimize eCommerce placement and reduce the click-to-purchase path by 50% – to provide a shopping cart win for both the client and their retailers. eCommerce Research from Decision Insight enables manufacturers and retailers alike to increase sales while optimizing the consumer’s online shopping experience. Click here for a copy of our latest paper, Research Solutions for eCommerce Category Leadership, which outlines strategic and tactical recommendations for winning at eCommerce. Contact Leslie Downie at (816) 437-9852 to learn how we can help optimize your company’s digital strategies to win at traditional retail and eCommerce. Craig Hodnett is SVP, Client Solutions. He can be reached at craigh@decisioninsight.com or (706) 416-0039.

http://decisioninsight.com/building-a-playbook-for-ecommerce-success/

Am Baug7/G# | C/G D/F# | Faug7 | Am/B Am Faug7 Am Baug7/G# C/G D/F# There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold Faug7 Am/B Am And she's buying a stairway to heaven. Faug7 Am Baug7/G# C/G D/F# When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed Faug7 Am/B Am With a word she can get what she came for. C D Faug7 C G Dsus4 D Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven. Am Caug7 D Faug7 Am There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure Am C D Faug7 'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. Faug7 Am Baug7/G# C/G D/F# In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings, D/F# C Am/B Am Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven. Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it makes me wonder, Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it makes me wonder. D C G/B Asus2 Am There's a feeling I get when I look to the west, Am C G/B Faug7#11 Am And my spirit is crying for leaving. Am C G/B Asus2 Am In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, Am C G/B Faug7 Am And the voices of those who stand looking. Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it makes me wonder, Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it really makes me wonder. D C G/B Asus2 Am And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune D C G/B Faug7#11 Then the piper will lead us to reason. D C G/B Asus2 Am And a new day will dawn for those who stand long D C G/B Faug7#11 And the forests will echo with laughter. C G/B Am Am/B If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, C G/B Faug7 Am It's just a spring clean for the May queen. C G/B Am Am/B Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run C G/B Faug7 Am There's still time to change the road you're on. Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it makes me wonder, Am7 Am Dsus2 D Am7 Am Em D C D Ooh, it really makes me wonder. C G/B Am Am/B Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, C G/B Faug7 Am The piper's calling you to join him, C G/B Am Am/B Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know C G/B Faug7 Am Your stairway lies on the whispering wind. C G D Dsus2 D Dsus4 Dsus2 D Dsus4 Dsus2 D Dsus4 Dsus4 D Cadd9 Am Am7 Faug7 x8 Am G F G/G# And as we wind on down the road Am G F G/G# Our shadows taller than our soul. Am G F G/G# There walks a lady we all know Am G F G/G# Who shines white light and wants to show Am G F G/G# How everything still turns to gold. Am G F G/G# And if you listen very hard Am G F G/G# The tune will come to you at last. Am G F G/G# When all are one and one is all Am G F G/G# To be a rock and not to roll. Am Am7 x4 Faug7 And she's buying a stairway to heaven. alice • Oct. 24, 2015, 2:08 p.m. Smith • Oct. 24, 2015, 2:08 p.m.

http://ilias952.pythonanywhere.com/song/stairway-to-heaven/

Will VW's Tennessee workers say yes to the UAW? Let's hope so. Thursday is the second of three days of a union-organizing vote at Volkswagen's Tennessee auto assembly plant, and it's being tracked like a congressional special election. Is it a bellwether for the state of modern labor? Or is it a one-off that says nothing of significance beyond the confines of the VW factory floor? It’s a bit of both. The vote has attracted an extraordinary amount of outside interest and pressure, including misleading public billboards, bizarre claims on local talk-radio stations and a general frothing from the anti-union right that worker-management cooperation is the first step toward Stalinism. The organizing vote also seems to have brought out the worst in some Republican state politicians, who have threatened future financial help for VW projects if the United Auto Workers wins the election. As my colleague Jon Healey wrote Wednesday, that is an inappropriate threat. But I go further: The politicians are wrong to oppose this (especially those who usually condemn government meddling in private business; why are they meddling now?). As is the Grover Norquist-led Americans for Tax Reform, which has been spending heavily to try to persuade the VW workers to remain unorganized (it's mystifying what a private labor agreement has to do with tax reform). VW has a history of using worker-management committees to help run its factories, resolve disputes and keep everyone involved in making its cars vested and happy. Similar labor-management committees cropped up in the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s. Under U.S. laws barring company-directed unions, if VW wants to establish a worker committee like the ones in Germany, the workers must first be represented by an independent union. VW has said fine, if that's the law and what its employees want, welcome to Chattanooga, UAW. This is between VW and its workers, but the fear of a reinvigorated labor movement clearly has goaded the anti-labor right into action, which makes this an important election. If, against this headwind of propaganda and political opposition in a state with anti-union "right-to-work" laws, the UAW can win an organizing battle, maybe we're seeing a turning of the tide. It's probably quixotic, but I'm hoping for a union win and fresh energy in the labor movement. (Full disclosure: I once spent 18 months on a picket line in Detroit in the 1990s, supported in part by UAW members). We often hear comments that the good-paying blue-collar union jobs of the past are gone forever, and they probably are. But it's not as if they evaporated into thin air; the work is being done, just in other countries. Federal labor and trade policies enabled that collapse. Steel is still being made, but not as much of it is being made here. That industry followed the off-shoring of the textile and shoe industries (which notably moved from labor-friendly Northeastern states to the anti-union South before going to lower-wage foreign factories). These days, it's call centers, technical assistance and research work that is moving to cheaper labor markets. Unions didn’t kill those industries, and by extension the American middle class. This is the result of Washington’s near-religious embrace of global free markets, and it’s a shared faith among Republicans and Democrats, even those who win elections with union backing. Remember Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council? That helped bring about NAFTA, and marked a shift by both major parties to a political focus on corporate profits, not the quality of life for American workers or the health and stability of our communities. Organized labor needs to regain its organizational footing and rethink its political engagements, particularly on the national level. In Tennessee, the issue is whether VW workers will adopt the UAW as their bargaining agent, a specter that outside agitators say will lead Chattanooga down a long slope to a Detroit-style collapse. There's even a billboard with a photo of a battered Detroit street. But that too is a chimera. As I've written before, Detroit's collapse was the result of decades of federal and corporate policies (including sticking with gas-guzzling cars when the public turned its back on them), the intentional de-industrialization of the city, endemic regional racism, a lack of political vision and will, and the crumbling of public institutions as the tax base walked away. The UAW might be powerful, but it's not powerful enough to do all that. There's no doubt that unions have their share of problems and issues, including a lack of flexibility and occasional lack of accountability to their members. But most institutions grapple with these problems. Still, unions were largely responsible for the rise of the American middle class, for job safety measures, for the eight-hour day and 40-hour workweek (which has been eroded in recent years), and a long list of other benefits that modern workers — including anti-union folks — take for granted. And they remain the best mechanism we have for establishing and defending rights in the workplace, even with hostile public opinion engendered by corporate America (and the occasional public relations misstep), as well as weakened legal protections for organizing. Will the vote this week turn that tide? Likely not, but one can hope. At the very least, I look forward to the day when I'll be able to buy a VW with a union label on it. And I hope that day comes soon.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-uaw-labor-vw-norquist-right-to-work-globalism-20140213-story.html

Which Retirement Income Option would you have taken? So, as you know I read quite a few blogs and I came across this one that posed an interesting question: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/04/03/retirement-income-option/?utm_source=feedburner&u...|+A+BiggerPockets+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It started me thinking: Anyone have some great investment stories? Any properties that you bought that exceeded your hopes or ones that didn't turn out so great that you'd like to offer advice to everyone else on how to avoid the situation? Just curious.

http://www.landlordstation.com/community/buying-selling-investment/which-retirement-income-option-would-you-have-taken/

Look at the two Leaning Towers of Pisa. Does one lean more than the other? The tower on the right seems to lean more, so it is surprising, that these are actually two identical pictures of the tower side by side! The Leaning Towers Illusion was first published the journal Perception in 2007. The illusion also won the Best Illusion of the Year contest in 2007. The illusion occurs because of the nature of perspective. Two tall structures that are actually parallel, like two towers, will actually converge on the two-dimensional surface of the photo when photgraphed from below. One can see this in the photo below of the Petronas Towers. Kingdom et al. (2007a) claim that our brain corrects for this distortion and represent the towers as parallel. Thus, if two towers do not converge on the surface of a photo or image, as they do not in the Leaning Tower Illusion, our brain interprets the towers as diverging in real life. The mechanism that usually works so well when interpreting the world breaks down when interpreting two photos side by side. One can also see this in the two identical photos of the left-hand Petronas tower side by side below. Kingdom et a.l (2007a) suggest that our brains go wrong because they treat the two images as if they were part of a single scene, when they are not. The fact that we cannot overcome this suggests that there is some degree of cognitive impenetrability in our vision. In other words, our belief (indeed knowledge) that the two towers are identical does not affect our visual experience of them such that we come to experience them as identical. We continue to experience one as more leaning than the other. For an examination of the general issue of cognitive penetration, see Macpherson (2012). Kingdom et al. (2007a) also point out that this effect is not limited to photos of tall things photographed from below. One gets the same effect from many photographs that involve parallel lines. One can see this illustrated by the pairs of photographs below. Finally, Kingdom et al. (2007b) produced a figure that shows that the leaning tower effect does not accumulate. This means that if many leaning towers are next to each other, while each subsequent figure to the right seems more leaning than the one to its left, the effect does not add up so that a figure more than one to the right of another does not look more leaning than the one to its immediate right. That this does not happen can be seen in the image below. Although each tower looks to be more leaning than the one to its left, the rightmost tower looks no more leaning than the second left tower does when contrasted with the leftmost tower. This means that the series appears somewhat paradoxical. There could not be a series of six towers where the one to the right was always more leaning that the one to its left, and yet the rightmost tower was not more leaning than any of the other towers. This image then is a form of impossible figure. There are many such figures in the Illusions index that you can search for and read about in more detail. Kingdom, F.A.A., Yoonessi, A.and Gheorghiu, E. 2007a. "The Leaning Tower Illusion: A New Illusion of Perspective", Perception, 36(3): 475-477. Kingdom, F.A.A., Yoonessi, A.and Gheorghiu, E. 2007b. "Leaning tower illusion", Scholarpedia, 2(12): 5392. doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.5392, accessed 30 August 2017. Macpherson, F. (August 2017) "The Leaning Tower Illusion" in F. Macpherson (ed.), The Illusions Index. Retrieved from https://www.illusionsindex.org/i/leaning-tower-illusion.

https://www.illusionsindex.org/i/leaning-tower-illusion

I've been prescribed a statin for secondary prevention. What should my cholesterol be? What if my cholesterol is already at this level? Do I need a statin? All the medical trials show that people who already have a low cholesterol but still have heart attacks benefit from being on a statin. In this case the aim is to achieve a cholesterol level at least 30% lower than it was before the heart attack. The same targets are used for all patients who are prescribed statins for secondary prevention. This to get to a total cholesterol level of 4 mMol/L or less and an LDL level of 2 mMol/L or less or a 30% reduction from your highest levels whichever is lowest. What dose of which statin should I take? There is excellent scientific evidence of benefit in clinical trials for all the statins listed below. Any of these drugs can be used as long as the target cholesterol is achieved. These drugs have different dose ranges and are listed above in an ascending order of their efficacy (ability to lower cholesterol levels for a given dose strength). Again, however, I would stress that the right drug is the one that suits you. That is the one that achieves the target cholesterol level without giving you any side effects. Some people have to accept lower doses of statins despite not getting to the target cholesterol levels, either because of side effects at higher doses of the drugs, or because for them the targets simply cannot be achieved. In either case if they can take some statin then they will have lowered their future risk of cardiovascular events - principally heart attacks and strokes. If the target cholesterol levels cannot be achieved, then other lipid lowering drugs may be useful, either alone, or in combination with statins. Amongst these you may be prescribed Ezetemibe, Fibrates or nicotinic acid derivatives. I have been prescribed a statin for primary prevention:- What should my cholesterol be? With primary prevention there are no recommended target cholesterol levels. As someone without any known vascular disease (but with a higher than average risk of developing problems in the future) the treatment aim is to significantly reduce the risk of you developing heart attacks and other vascular problems. Therefore it is recommended that you should be prescribed Simvastatin 40mg daily which typically will reduce your cholestrol enough (about 30 to 40%) to lower your risk of future cardiovascular events (heart attack and strokes) by around 30%. I've heard about 'good' cholesterol and 'bad' cholesterol - what is this about? This is because whilst total cholesterol levels are related to the risk of vascular diseases it is the LDL component that is deposited in the walls of the blood vessels causing the narrowing that produces the symptoms and the heart attacks and strokes. As LDL is the largest component of the total cholesterol in most people, total cholesterol is a reasonable measure of risk if this is the only measurement available. Most modern laboratories now automatically measure HDL and LDL as well as Total Cholesterol on all their lipid tests and if these are available the complete lipid profile will give a more accurate prediction of potential for cardiovascular disease. Whilst LDL is a relatively small molecule that is deposited in the arterial wall, HDL is a large molecule which circulates within the blood stream and to which LDL can attaches. This allows the LDL to be transported away from the sites where it might otherwise be deposited, to the liver where it can be metabolised (broken down). Therefore, the more HDL that you have, the less damage is likely to be caused to the blood vessels for any given level of LDL. An analogy might be where you can think of the LDL be the amount of rubbish that you put out in the dustbins each week and the HDL being the number of times the rubbish collected. Clearly even where you are putting out more rubbish if the dustmen come more frequently less rubbish will accumulate than where you produce less rubbish but the dustmen hardly ever call! This is why the levels of HDL are very important and the ratio between this 'good' cholesterol and the 'bad' LDL cholesterol matters. Clearly,therefore, there will be some people with higher cholesterol levels than others but they will still be at relatively less risk because they have higher HDL levels meaning that they deposit less of their LDL cholestrol in the blood vessel walls. If I'm on a statin I don't need to watch my diet as the drug will sort out my cholesterol - that's right, isn't it? Whilst statins reduce your cholesterol dramatically there are many other benefits of a healthy diet that are not related just to an improvement in the lipid levels circulating in your blood stream. Reducing the total amount of fat in your diet will not only help improve your lipid levels but will undoubtably also reduce your calorie intake making you lighter, fitter and more able to exercise. This may make you feel better and will also have added benefits in reducing the likelihood of later developing Type 2 diabetes which is strongly related to being overweight and not taking enough exercise. Exercise also increases the amount of HDL ('good') cholesterol therefore again reducing your cardiovascular risk. Are these 'cholesterol lowering' spreads that are advertised any good? Commercially available dairy products (usually butter substitute spreads such as Flora pro active or Benecol) contain stanols and sterols which are found naturally in plants. These, when ingested in high levels, block some of the absorption of cholesterol in the gut and lead to a reduction in both total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. They have no effect on HDL cholesterol. The likely reduction is about 5-10% in most people which would be expected to give a health benefit, although there have been no properly conducted clinical trials to show that the improvements in lipid profiles achieved in this way have reduced cardiovascular events. Whilst the most commonly prescribed doses of statins typically reduce the total and LDL cholesterol by 30-40% the effects of sterols and stanols should in most cases be additive to this reduction as the effect is on absorption from the gut rather than on cholesterol metabolism in the liver as with the statins. High levels of sterols and stannols are found in extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil and wheat germ.

http://rbain.org.uk/Cholesterolquestions2.html

At what point will my heart stop? Attached is some basic data that I've gathered (never mind wasn't allowed to post an attachment). I've been in the severe hypertrophy range since between 2015 and 2017. The next time I go in for a measurement will be in about 4-6 months. Given the rate of growth in the thickness of my inter-ventricular septum (currently 21mm) and posterior left ventricle wall (currently 19mm); will this growth plateau, or will it just continue to thicken? I'm guessing that if it continues to thicken, I'll be lucky to survive to be forty years old. Hello Patrick, I see that you live in Minnesota. Are you being followed by the HCM Specialty clinic at Mayo, Rochester? If not, it would be a good idea to go there and get an in depth assessment of your condition for many reasons. In general, HCM heart muscle does not just keep getting thicker and thicker and then your heart stops. The whole reason to even have a diagnosis is to apply the best medical and surgical interventions at each stage of the disease for maximum longevity and quality of life. By going to a center of Excellence , like Mayo, you can. Ask all your questions, learn about your disease and prognosis and work together on a plan with your cardiologist for a full life. Your question hints to me that you really don't have a full grasp of your condition ..... which can lead to a lot of fear and conjecture. You might benefit by reading the book on HCM offered on this website and calling the HCMA office to discuss your concerns. Right now your septum and wall measurements are not outrageous....also, medical treatment is based on your symptoms more so than numbers on an echo. ...... Knowledge is Power! You are young, and the more you understand your own body, the better your future can be. Jill has given you solid advice. I'll add another thing, as someone who uses statistics a lot professionally. Never, ever, ever extrapolate from data outside the range measured. Ever. And especially don't do it linearly. As a really obvious bad example, imagine that if I projected my current height (I'm 65) based on my growth rate between ages 13-15. I'd be, well, really, really, really tall, right? OK, in that case, we *know* (and I knew at 13) that my growth wouldn't continue after age 17 or 18 or so. But even if we hadn't known it, it's just logically wrong to assume that something like that will continue undisturbed. So put your feet up, relax, and tomorrow make a call to Mayo, or any one of the recognized centers of excellence for HCM.

https://messageboard.4hcm.org/forum/hcma-general-forums/hcma-discussion/226030-at-what-point-will-my-heart-stop

Despite the sanctions recently passed by the United Nations Security Council, Iran’s prospects for becoming a nuclear state are still quite real. A new series of working papers published by The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) through a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York examines the options that the United States has should Teheran develop a nuclear weapon. Most discussion--in the media, think tanks, the U.S. government, and elsewhere--has focused on how to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability. This is not surprising. Like its predecessors and U.S. allies in Western Europe and the Middle East, the Obama administration has said that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be "unacceptable." Yet a real prospect remains that efforts to prevent Iran from going nuclear will fail. CFR's "Deterring a Nuclear Iran" Program focuses on U.S. options for containing a nuclear-armed Iran should that country obtain nuclear weapons. The brings together analysis from numerous experts about whether effective deterrence would be possible, what it would require, and what the regional effects of an Iranian nuclear weapon and American deterrence activities would be. Given the nature and structure of its government, is it possible to contain an Iran with nuclear weapons? In this Working Paper, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Frederick W. Kagan explores the applicability of deterrence—from a historic and theoretical perspective—to the Iranian regime. Kagan concludes that for numerous structural and strategic reasons, it is impossible to assess with any confidence that the Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons could be contained or deterred. From a military perspective, what would be required for a containment scheme to successfully deter a nuclear Iran? In this Working Paper, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Kenneth M. Pollack presents formal and informal structures requisite to effectively deter a postnuclear Iran. Pollack's robust recommendations take into consideration important lessons learned during the Cold War. How would an Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability affect U.S. policy in the Middle East? In this Working Paper, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Mitchell B. Reiss enumerates several strategic choices that would face U.S. regional allies and the adverse implications for U.S. interests. How would the Arab states of the Middle East react if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapons capability? In this Working Paper, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Michael Young explores the possible impact of a nuclear Iran on Arab governments’ self-perceptions, relations with Iran, relations with one another, and relations with non-Arab actors in the region such as the United States and Turkey. Young concludes that an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten to drastically alter the regional status quo, empower Iran and its allies, and provoke sectarian reactions from some Arab states. Note: Contributors were not asked their views about the possibility that Iran may develop nuclear weapons nor about the most effective U.S. policies to avoid that eventuality. Rather, they were told to assume that despite U.S. efforts, Iran had developed nuclear weapons, and they were asked to help assess U.S. options at that point.

https://www.carnegie.org/news/articles/what-if-teheran-goes-nuclear-new-carnegie-corporation-supported-working-papers-focus-on-us-options/

Borderline Personality Disorder - An Intractable Brain Disorder? There is considerable stigma and a prevalent attitude among many professionals, let alone people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), that BPD is intractable and cannot be recovered from. The truth is, however, Borderline Personality Disorder does not, by any means, have to be a life sentence of pain and suffering. There are many theories as to the cause of BPD that are being forwarded by professionals. There is even an on-going debate about what BPD should really be called. There is this energy invested in all of the theories, all of the ideas about what this mental illness challenge is called or should be called to the point that the related distractions for those with BPD may in fact be blocking their chances for recovery. Being forwarded more and more is the idea that BPD is a "brain disorder". That it is all-biological. There is no conclusive evidence of this. Professionals who forward this theory/cause/argument have essentially no conclusive proof. Do you feel like waiting for them to figure it out? Do you feel like putting off your future or prolonging your suffering right now until they figure it out, assuming that they really ever can or will in any conclusively proven way? Are you willing to mortgage your mental health to the notion that there will some day be a magical cure-all pill? I was even given this rather lame answer, in 1987, when I asked a psychiatrist I was seeing if and when I would ever get better. His response to me was, that I would get better, "when we find the better pill". I wasn't on any psychiatric medication. What pill was going to be better than no pill? What sense could this possibly make? I never went back to see him again. I did not believe his conclusion. I refused to. My refusal to just accept the careless and negative words of a less than stellar psychiatrist made all the difference in the world to my journey and process and made my recovery possible. If I had of believed that psychiatrist my life could have been doomed to the pain and suffering of the active throes of BPD. I certainly wasn't going to be limited by his negative and perhaps self-serving beliefs. I didn't accept his response to my question. I found a way to continue to believe in possibility and to have hope despite all odds and despite how lost I was. I worked hard. I held out hope for my own recovery. I had skilled professional help. I recovered despite some professionals on my journey who sought to have me believe as they believed. I refused to accept their limiting negative and either incompetent or burned out belief that recovery from BPD was not possible. I moved on and found therapists who supported my belief, encouraged my belief, and worked with me from the shared belief that recovery from BPD was possible. Do some people with BPD benefit from taking certain prescribed medications? Likely, yes. If you are currently on medication your doctor has prescribed please do not make any changes without consulting him or her first. But taking prescribed medication to help with some symptoms is far from a cure-all. The brain is a very complex thing. The brain is not just affected by our genetic code or our biology. The brain is also very much affected by emotional trauma - at the heart of which is often abuse and/or the core wound of abandonment in those who go on to be diagnosed with BPD. The brain is affected by what a human being experiences and/or perceives in his or her environment. The brain is affected by lack of nurture. It is affected by lack of secure attachment. Traditional psychotherapy - talk therapy - in and through the various modalities it is offered, can and does address issues that are "brain-deep". BPD is referred to as a personality disorder. In my past experience with BPD I came to know it as a relational disorder. I do not believe there can or will ever be a pill that can control or change a person's thoughts or feelings or ways of relating. I do not believe this is just a matter of biology at all. There likely is a neurological component to BPD but as I know since I have recovered from BPD it is not something that can't be overcome. Ironically enough a mental health system that focuses on the polarized, more often than not, negative thinking patterns of those with BPD, itself exhibits these very same tendencies when it (and not all professionals fit this mold) makes the claim that borderlines cannot recover. Could this be a case of a systemic-borderline-like-thinking? What ramifications does this cast upon the stigma and resultant disservice being done to many with BPD when they do seek treatment? What each and every person with BPD must know right now is that they can get better. You can change your suffering, at the very least, into manageable pain. You can make progress. You can get on and then stay on the road to recovery. To whatever degree you can navigate your way through the intrapsychic narcissistic injury of what I refer to as "the core wound of abandonment" is the degree to which you can create healthy change in your life. It is the degree to which those with BPD can find and re-claim the lost authentic self. Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder hinges upon this quest for the lost authentic self. The gateway to the finding of this self is the dissociated from inner child. Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder is possible and can be achieved. It takes a lot of hard work in therapy with a therapist who believes that you can get better. It takes accepting and exercising personal responsibility for yourself, your feelings, your thoughts, you actions and your behaviour, without excuse. Recovery from BPD also requires gut-wrenching honesty with yourself. Borderline Personality Disorder is not some "brain disorder" that leaves you, the borderline, helpless in its grips and doomed to a lifetime of pills in the quest for the magical combination or magical cure-all pill. The reality is that you are your own best chance for recovery. Your choices are much more powerful tools on your journey and in your process than any pill could ever hope to be. In order to get on the road to recovery those with BPD must learn how to make the choice to open up to the vulnerability of learning and to lay down the closed relational style of constant vigilant protection. You cannot learn and protect at the same time. If you have BPD, you have a choices to make. Among those choices also is the choice to believe in your ability to find your way to recovery. Recovery from BPD is not possible at all unless and until the borderline opens up to risking holding and accepting the belief in this possibility. What you think is what you will experience. What do you believe? What will you choose in your own life? Hi, A.J..... am pleasantly surprised to stumble on your site (and hear about your own journey), while I was looking for info. and some personal experience about the "push/pull" phenomenon in BP's & NP's. Am reasonably sure I'm experiencing the same pattern while getting to know a woman who often seems to be "late" for our get-togethers (usually by several hours, along with little or no explanation when she finally arrives)! And I notice they seem to occur mostly after we've just had a period of greater emotional intimacy. She also has some other behaviors & history that match the BPD/NPD "profile". My kudos to 'ya, and it's encouraging to hear that there are folks who're able to come to some awareness of Borderline behaviors in themselves, and can overcome it (because I keep reading that it's "incurable")! But however difficult it is for all involved to deal with sometimes, personally I think it's important to still remember that nobody ever asked to be a BP or NP, and so rather than just assigning various "victim" and "perp" labels, I think we all share some responsibility in helping each other to try to work thru our respective "stuff". In any case, nice work, and thank you!

https://borderlinepersonality.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/borderline-pe-1.html

LTE, unlimited data, and tablets: Can German operators make 4G pay? Germans know what LTE is, but many are reluctant to pay extra for it. Could 'all you can app' plans offer a solution? Not too long ago, almost one in two German mobile users didn't even know what LTE was. But after substantial infrastructure investment , speed increases , and marketing by Germany's mobile carriers, the majority of users are now aware of the technology and would adopt it — even if they're not so keen on paying for it. "Germans are not reluctant to take LTE, but they are quite reluctant compared to others to pay for it," said Klaus Böhm, Deloitte Consulting's director of technology, media, and telecommunications in Germany. Deloitte recently completed a study, which looked at mobile consumer behaviour of people in over 20 countries across the world, including Germany as well as the UK and France, Russia, and the US, among others. Böhm says that German smartphone users are quite aware of LTE and its benefits, but that for many, the decision to adopt it simply comes down to cost. The Alcatel One Touch Fire is now headed to Deutsche Telekom's Congstar brand. "Germans are willing to use LTE, and the LTE infrastructure will be successful here in Germany, but the network operators will not be successful in upselling from 3G to LTE," Böhm said. In fact, Germany was an early adopter of LTE — regulators in the country saw it as a great way to supplement limited broadband service in rural parts of the country, and carriers started rolling out the service for this purpose in late 2010. Because of these initial conditions of the early launch, "the uptake is going to be relatively slow, if you compare it to the initial rate of uptake in the UK, where it launched on a completely different basis," said Rosalind Craven, senior research analyst at IDC. Indeed, mobile carriers began offering LTE-capable smartphones in 2012, which means that German mobile users haven't had all that much time to adopt the service — especially because Germans tend to be a bit slower to replace their old, non-LTE phones than mobile users in some other countries. "There is a generalisation to be made that German consumers are a bit more prudent and cautious, and so the renewal cycle has been a bit slower than in other markets in Europe," Craven said. However, prudence doesn't explain everything. In fact, according to the recent Deloitte report, a majority of current LTE users in Germany are not actually paying extra for 4G, but were either grandfathered into it, or got the service through promotions or by negotiating with their mobile providers. Many German smartphone users, it seems, are not willing to pay extra for LTE — at least not yet. In terms of current smartphone plan options in the country, the main selling point of LTE connectivity is of course increased speed compared to 3G. For example, for its 3G packages, Vodafone advertises speeds of up to 7.2Mbps, while its advertised speeds of LTE plans start at 21.6Mbps, at an added cost of €10 per month. A main reason that smartphone users in Germany are less willing to pay the extra €10 (or more) for LTE packages may be the way in which mobile carriers introduced the technology. In other countries where LTE has been launched, mobile providers often created clean breaks between 3G plans and their LTE equivalents — in effect forcing customers to pay extra for the service if they wanted it — rather than adding it to existing contracts through promotions, as was done for many German smartphone users. Or, it may be that many mobile users in Germany are simply satisfied with the speeds of the country's current 3G networks, and see no need for faster service, at least compared to users in other countries. "The German operators have been quite aggressive in upgrading their 3G, so that the service is pretty good," IDC's Craven said. "In some other markets, operators have been sort of sluggish in upgrading to the latest 3G technologies that provide better speeds." In any case, it probably won't be until the end of 2013 until a clear picture of LTE adoption rates in the country emerges. At that time, "I might expect Germany to be a little bit slower than some other markets, but I wouldn't be expecting a significant lag," she said. Whether they're on 3G or LTE, many consumers across the globe want plans that offer unlimited data, but carriers are generally not willing — or are unable — to provide them. This is a bit more complicated in Germany, where in the past, some mobile providers tended to market data plans as 'unlimited,' even though they would include caps where once users reached a certain threshold, their speeds were throttled, often substantially. This miscommunication might have left some mobile users in the country confused — or even unsatisfied — as the carriers stopped branding these plans as 'unlimited'. Indeed, in the recent Deloitte report, over 40 percent of respondents who had data plans had no idea of how much data they could actually use per month, and because of this, many said they are cautious about their data usage. The Surface 2 and Lumia 2520 need to prove there is really a Windows RT tablet market big enough for both Microsoft and Nokia to play in. One way that carriers could meet a demand for more data — in Germany and in other countries — would be by selling plans that offer unlimited data for specific usages or applications. As an example, last year, Deutsche Telekom partnered with Spotify to offer a plan that included unlimited data specifically for music streaming through the app. Notably, this service is exempt from any data caps. Similar offerings, where users could have unlimited data for apps that they use a lot, could be bundled into mobile contracts and successfully sold at a premium — although whether this kind of arrangement will hold up against evolving network neutrality laws will remain to be seen. In any case, "there's a huge potential here on the German market," Deloitte's Böhm said of what he called "all-you-can-app" plans. But where are the tablets? In general, smartphone adoption in Germany has lagged behind other countries, but "the gap is closing," according to IDC's Craven. "It's not that Germans are refusing to adopt smartphones, they're just a bit slower in converting." The same might be said for the country's tablet adoption rate, which is again somewhat lower than other countries like the US and the UK. "We see tablet penetration here in Germany on a much lower level," Deloitte's Böhm said, because German consumers see tablets as complementary to other devices, like smartphones and PCs, rather than a replacement for them. "Tablets are a very healthy, niche market [in Germany], but they will never see the massive sales as in other markets," he said.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/lte-unlimited-data-and-tablets-can-german-operators-make-4g-pay/

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who challenged me to do something others in my class were not doing simply because I was kind of bored with the regular stuff we were learning. I am not a genius or anything, so don't think I was "gifted" in some way and they had to accelerate me in my classes. I just finished my work ahead of schedule most of the time because I enjoyed learning. So, in my free class time, she challenged me to learn more about sentence structure and grammar. She taught me how to diagram sentences, taking them apart into the various phrases, sentence parts, etc. In time, I became quite proficient with this study of the written word. You will probably think I am kind of "out there" when I admit we made a game of it! She'd write the most challenging sentences, or find them in some writings of great authors, and then she'd set me loose to figure out the structure. There were a couple of times she stumped me simply because "words" can have different meaning depending on how they are used. Sometimes they might be a verb (an action word), while other times be an auxiliary verb (one that accompanies the action word and adds tense, for example). I think even this task of taking sentences apart to figure out their many parts helped me recognize the value of words and the various aspects of their meaning depending on how they were used. Sometimes we need to really stop to consider the words we speak, hear, or read - simply because we gloss over some pretty important meaning if we don't! In this passage, there are a lot of "words" which would otherwise be overlooked if we were to just take a cursory read over them. For example, the "action" described in the first sentence is twofold - be and think. Be suggests to us this idea of allow or cause to happen something which doesn't occur automatically. It has the meaning of continuing in or remaining in some fashion - here defined as "alert". So we are called to occupy ourselves with an alertness - a sense of vigilance, readiness, and even caution. The action of thinking straight describes first the action of bringing to the conscious mind what will allow us rational thought which should help to guide our steps. If you hadn't stopped to really think about it, rational thought is not by accident. It is purposeful and accomplished by us bringing to the forefront various sets of "information" we wish to bring to bear to solve the problem or task at hand. Alert minds have a greater capacity for rational thought. If you don't believe me, recount the last time you were a little preoccupied with something else, heard someone talk to you and then answered without really giving it any thought. You might have actually found yourself granting the kids permission to go out somewhere, hang out with some kids you probably would not want them to, or found yourself being stared at by a totally disappointed spouse who looks at you aghast because of the foolishness of your answer! The next action is that of "putting" our hope in the grace God has extended into our lives. There is something quite engaging in any action which leads us to "putting" anything into it. When we play dominoes with the intent of staying away from the bone pile and being the first one to go "out", we play in a manner which suggest to all those around that we are intent on winning. If we pick up every discard in a game of canasta, making "book" after "book" of cards in order to run up a huge score with each hand we play, most would say we are playing in a pretty cutthroat manner. We are "putting" ourselves into the games we are playing - maybe because we want to "win", or because we simply love the challenge of the games. Either way, we are "engaged" in them. When we are engaged in something, it is evident in our lives. I think this is what is being described here when we are told to put our hope in God's grace - to actually engage in the display of this grace in our lives because it will point others to Christ and it gives a dynamic testimony as to the intensity of God's love for his kids. The next action suggested is that of behaving. Now, we all know we can "behave" rather well, or we can be a little "risky" in our behavior depending on how the "mood" hits us, right? We find ourselves edging toward obedience when we are surrounded by those who challenge us to behave well, then almost as quickly we can be edging in the opposite direction when no one is looking! Don't believe me? Just remember the last time you cheated on your diet and you will have your proof right there! The next word in our sentence is "like" - behave like obedient children. This is a word which describes relationship we have with Christ - we are children, but the type of children we are to be is obedient. We all know children have a tendency to go one way or another - never perfectly obedient, and usually never perfectly disobedient! There is this "mixture" of behavior. If we truly "put" ourselves into this pursuit of obedience, we will find our actions leaning more toward "perfect obedience" than "occasional, imperfect obedience". Engagement again plays a huge part in the outcome. At the very end of these actions describing how we should "engage", there is this idea of "disengaging" from something - any actions which are controlled by our own desires. Now, this may not seem significant at first, but when we consider how this passage has developed, realizing the various words used suggest specific actions we are to take in order to edge closer to perfect obedience, we will also see the actions we are to take in order to keep from edging in the opposite direction! The idea of "avoiding" certain actions doesn't come naturally to us, so this is why we are instructed to move toward certain positive actions, and move away from other actions which are not consistent with producing positive outcomes. Our own desires are fickle most of the time - so relying upon them will get us a little closer to the edge of gray areas in our lives - gray being closer to darkness than light! The closer we stay to light, the less we tend to see the outcomes of darkness! Just sayin!

http://www.plumbheart.com/2014/11/take-action-toward-as-much-as-away.html

Article number: 300074077 Product: Paint Jar Stand Rotating two-tier paint jar stand lets you organize your paints clearly for easy access. It can store up to 7 jars of acrylic "mini" or 9 jars of enamel paints per tray. Each tray has a small groove along its edge, allowing you to also use this as a drying stand simply by using alligator clips (4 included) to hold newly painted parts. *PAINT NOT INCLUDED Paint Jar Stand Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074017 Product: Paint Stirrer Metal (2) This stainless steel tool is designed for stirring bottled paints, and for blending different color shades. One end is shaped like a small spoon, while the other is flat, like a spatula. Tool length is 15cm. Includes two stirrers. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074124 Product: Plastic &amp; Soft Metal Scissors These versatile scissors are a must-have addition to every modeler's tool kit - not only can the high-quality blades cut through plastic such as the polycarbonate used on many Tamiya R/C model bodies, they can also handle softer metals and other materials/thicknesses above and beyond the capabilities of standard scissors. Length: 170mm; blade length: 40mm. Blade material: anti-rust treated stainless steel. Features a stylish navy blue grip. Suitable material thicknesses that may be cut: Note: materials and thicknesses are intended as a guideline only. Tamiya Pla-plate: up to 1.2mm Tamiya Clear Pla-plate: up to 0.5mm Polycarbonate: up to 1.0mm Other plastics: up to 1.0mm Aluminum: up to 0.5mm Copper/Brass/Nickel: up to 0.3mm Leather: up to 2.0mm Paper: up to 2.0mm Cardboard/Rubber sheeting: up to 5.0mm Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074091 Product: Plastic Scriber II This tool is perfect for tasks such as scoring and cutting plastic sheets, creating mold lines on model parts, and modifying Mini 4WD machines. The blade can be retracted after use and two spare blades are also stored inside the handle. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074001 Product: Side Cutter for Plastic This is a precision side cutter for removing parts from sprue without damaging them. Developed exclusively for plastic modeling, the impact resistant chrome vanadic alloy material was chosen for long life. High quality vinyl covering assures good grip. Side Cutter for Plastic Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300069923 Product: Side Cutter α Purple These modeler side cutters are designed to cut plastic parts from model kits and other assembly items. The cutter's blades will remain sharp for a long period of time as they are made of hardened carbon steel. This particular set comes in a Limited-Edition purple color for its grips. • For use with plastic parts. • Laser inscribed "FOR PLASTIC" • The cutter's blades will remain sharp for a long period of time as they are made with carbon tool steel. • Comfortable purple elastomer grips with the famous Tamiya twin star logo and product name imprinted on them. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074123 Product: SP Side Cutter (Slim Jaw) This tool is designed to remove scale model plastic parts from the parts sprue. The sharp jaw blades offer an excellent cutting edge, and they have a slightly slimmer jaw than previous Tamiya plastic cutter products, enabling easier removal of smaller parts which have less clearance. •Length: 115mm. •Easy-to-use tool features slim jaw with an excellent balance of durability and cutting edge. •PVC grip covers ensure that the side cutters stay firmly in your hand during use. •The tool is marked with the twin star logo and TAMIYA CRAFT TOOLS FOR PLASTIC Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074046 Product: TAMIYA Basic File Set (3) This set contains three types of files; flat, round and half-round, specially developed for modeling use. Files are suitable for working plastic and soft metals. Each file features a compact size of approximately 16cm in length. Basic File Medium Double-Cut Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074016 Product: Tamiya Basic Tool This set contains the basic, indispensable tools for model and craft work: A pair of side cutters for plastic, angled tweezers, small (+) and (-) screwdrivers, a craft knife and a file, all neatly packed in a handy plastic case. Tamiya Basic Tool Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Tamiya Craft Knife Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300087112 Product: Tamiya Craft Spatula Width 20mm This Craft Spatula features a new shape which allows for easy mixing and application of paints. This spatula is made from POM (a polyacetal resin) which makes it highly resistant to water and chemical damage and can also be used with the application of Epoxy Cement and putty. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074080 Product: Tamiya Craft Tweezers - These are craft tweezers that are most suitable for papercraft work. - The foremost part has an original TAMIYA design. - The design helps improve effectiveness in gluing and the bending of the paper, as well as the drying process. - It can also be used with the application of stickers and decals. - Length: 140 mm, has a SUS410 stainless hairline finish. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074005 Product: TAMIYA curved Scissors for PC These quality scissors come in handy when trimming polycarbonate R/C car bodies. The curved blades enable easy access to body curves, and are made of high quality stainless steel for durability and long life. Curved Scissors Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074118 Product: Tamiya Cutting Mat DIN-A4, Green Every modeler needs a suitable surface upon which to create their masterpieces, and now Tamiya offers a great solution. This green version of the popular Tamiya Cutting Mat Beige (Item 74056; please note new name) offers excellent visibility of a wide range of colors of plastic part, and at just larger than A4 is a handy size. About the Item • 3-ply material with a harder core sandwiched by softer outer layers. Surface is easy on your knife blade but does not sustain cut marks easily. • Features one unmarked side and one side with a range of markings including 1cm grid, 1mm interval ruler, curves and circles. • Mat is made of dark green material. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074097 Product: Tamiya Fin.CraftSaw PE-Blade 0,1mm (2x3) These scribing saws are ideal for remaking details that are lost when cleaning up seam lines or deepening existing panel lines. Compared with Item 74094, the teeth of these saws are smaller and have a finer pitch. Both straight and rounded saw blades are included. The grips can be folded over for the saws to be used as they are, and they may also be attached to a Modeler's Knife (Item 74040). Made from 0.1mm thick stainless steel. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074051 Product: Tamiya Fine Pin Vise (0,1-1,0mm) Model assembly often calls for the drilling of holes of various sizes and these Fine Pin Vises are the ideal tools for the job. The Fine Pin Vise D is compatible with 0.1mm-3.2mm diameter drill bits while the Pin Vise S is designed for use with drill bits under 1 mm diameter. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074048 Product: Tamiya HG Straight Tweezers These precision made stainless steel tweezers are ideal for handling small, delicate plastic model parts. An angled type which can access hard to reach areas and a straight type which directly transmits finger movements to the tip for optimum control are available. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074078 Product: Tamiya Model Cleaning Brush Anti-Static Dust Be Gone! This new Model Cleaning Brush has been specially designed to help keep your display models looking sharp. Its fibers not only remove dust and debris, but also static electricity to prevent dust build-up. The long fibers of the main brush makes cleaning around delicate parts easy, while the mini brush lets you get to those hard to reach areas. This brush is not just perfect for maintaining the look of plastic models, it's also great for cleaning other household items. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074098 Product: Tamiya Modeler's Knife Pro reinf. Handle This professional knife is ideal for precision tasks. Set includes Straight blade (3pcs.), Curved blade (2pcs.), and Chisel blade (2pcs.). The body features an elastomer grip and a metal chuck to secure the blade. Protective cap for the knife and a plastic spare blade case are also included. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074093 Product: Tamiya Modelers Side Cutter Gray/Plastic This Modeler's Side Cutter is designed for use with plastic parts and is ideal for scale models and Mini 4WD products assembly. The cutter's blades are made with hardened carbon steel and will remain sharp for a long period of time. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074101 Product: Tamiya Modeler´s Blade Pro chisel (10) - Chisel blade x 10pcs. - 0.55mm thick. - Suitable for chiseling, engraving, and removing protrusions from flat surfaces. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300075100 Product: Tamiya Modeler´s Blade Pro curved (3) - Curved blade x 3pcs. - 0,45 mm thick. - Suiteable for cutting soft fabric such as film, Cloth, and Japanese paper. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074099 Product: Tamiya Modeler´s Blade Pro straight (5) Straight Blade x5 Pcs. 0.5mm thick Suitable for very precise and detailed work. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074086 Product: Tamiya Modeling Drill Chuck This modeling drill chuck handle comes in very handy in times where a normal pin vise does not have what it takes to do the job and where an electric drill is too powerful. About the Item Comes with a easy gripping blue handle. The chuck is compatible with 1.5-6.5mm drill bits. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074068 Product: TAMIYA Modeling Scissors for PE-Parts Adding photo-etched parts is one of the best ways to give your model a professional-level finish, ensuring that it stands out from the pack. However, we all know that working with stainless metal parts can be trickier than with standard plastic parts. Tamiya is offering the following 3 craft tools to make using photo-etched parts easier than ever before. Purchase all 3 tools to vastly simplify your modeling work; it's as easy as 1-2-3! 1 - Cutting Out Parts - Use Modeling Scissors 2 - Removing Flash - Use Diamond File 3 - Bending/Shaping - Use Bending Pliers About the Scissors - Small size (1cm) blades last longer than modeling knife, perfect for cutting out small parts. - Easy-to-use shape suited to precision photo-etched part work (canot cut thicker surfaces) - Includes special cap to preserve blades. Modeling Scissors Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074522 Product: TAMIYA Painting Stand Set The Spray-Work Painting Stand Set makes airbrushing and spray painting so easy! A multipurpose painting stand set with 2 easy to use stands. Both stands can be adjusted and used for a wide range of sized and shaped pieces. The 16cm diameter turntable has different sized holes to affix various parts to the stand. Parts can be painted easily while still on the sprue or can be affixed to something like a pencil or chopstick inserted into the larger holes. Comes with 4 spring clips. Fixing a model body to the stand from the inside, the body stand is perfect for spray painting1/24 scale cars. The width of clips can also be adjusted to obtain the most stable hold. Can be used with Model Painting Booths Both body and turntable stands can be used with separately sold painting booths available at model hobby shops and art stores. By using these items, you can make your painting sessions easier by leaving your hands free. Painting Stand Set Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074094 Product: Tamiya PhotoEtched 0,1mm Saw Blade (5) This set of thin craft saws is made from photo-etched metal to enable extremely fine cuts. The blades feature grips which can be folded 011er to increase support and this feature also allows them to be fitted onto the Modeler's Knife's handle for greater ease of use. Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074069 Product: Tamiya Plastic Model.File Flat 6mm width 6mm wide file features wave pattern teeth, and special design to prevent teeth from clogging with shavings, ensuring continued high quality finish. Conventional flat shape will provide professional finish for any form of areas Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years. Article number: 300074023 Product: Tamiya Screwdriver Assortment This is a set of 8 screwdrivers of assorted types and sizes. Set consists of three sizes of (+) screwdrivers, two (-) screwdrivers, two nut drivers and a hex wrench, plus a detachable grip. Packaged in a handy plastic carrying case. """BUILDER'S 8""""Screwdriver"" """ Warning! Not suitable for children under 14 years.

https://shop.tamiya.de/tamiya_en/accessories/accessories/tools/

During Thursday night's GOP debate NJ Governor Chris Christie attacked Sen. Rand Paul's criticism of warrantless NSA data gathering, saying that he would "make no apologies, ever, for protecting the lives and safety of the American people." But when it comes to his anti-terrorism record, few people know that it was on Christie's watch as U.S. Attorney in Newark, that in, 2003 he threatened a local NJ Sheriff who uncovered a plot in which a Jersey City check cashing store (Sphinx Trading) provided the fake ID's for two of the 9/11 hijackers. In fact Christie, who reminded Republicans during the debate that he'd been appointed by President Bush the day before 9/11, went so far in '03 as to actually threaten to arrest that Passaic County sheriff (whose office uncovered the fake ID scandal) and "shut down" his department. Such was the embarrassment to the FBI that Christie seemed bent on protecting -- despite the massive counter terrorism failure that the ID lapse revealed. I first reported the significance of that counter terrorism breach in a 2006 Huffington Post headlined "Al Qaeda and The Mob: How The FBI Blew It on 9/11." The piece tells the story of how the FBI's New York Office (NYO) was onto Sphinx Trading, the al Qaeda-linked New Jersey check cashing store as early as 1990 when they discovered that El Sayyid Nosair, the killer of Rabbi Meir Kahane had a mailbox there. In fact, in a 2010 piece for Tablet Magazine I argued that the assassination of Kahane, a conservative rabbi, may have been the first blood spilled by al Qaeda on American soil. Sphinx was located in the same building as the al-Salaam mosque, dominated by Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called "prince of Jihad" who was convicted in the 1995 "Day of Terror Trial, an al Qaeda funded plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, the U.N.; even the building at 26 Federal Plaza which houses the Bureau's NYO. Flash forward to the summer of 2001 when Khalid AlMidhar and Nawaf AlHazmi, two of the "muscle hijackers" who flew AA Flight 77 into The Pentagon, got their fake ID's from Sphinx Trading. Query: where was the FBI all those years and why didn't they keep a closer watch on what Emad Salem, the heroic ex-Egyptian Army officer who was the star witness against Sheikh Omar in the "Day of Terror" case, called "a nest of vipers?" While investigating the murder of Rabbi Meier Kahane, the FBI had discovered that El-Sayyid Nosair, Ali Mohamed's trainee, had kept a mailbox in Jersey City on the premises of Sphinx Trading, that check-cashing business at 2828 Kennedy Boulevard. Sphinx, which each year moved millions of dollars in funds between Islamic residents of northern New Jersey and the Middle East, was incorporated on December 15, 1987. The original incorporators were Mohamed El-Atriss, a forty-six-year-old Egyptian, and Waleed Abu al-Noor. who was No. 130 on a list of 172 unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial in 1995 and thus well known to the federal prosecutors in that case, Andrew McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald. While El-Atriss later claimed he had nothing to do with Sphinx after the incorporation, he admitted under oath in a New Jersey state hearing after 9/11 that he had sold fake IDs to two of the 9/11 hijackers through his company All Services Plus, including the one (above) to Khalid al-Midhar: It lists a fictitious address on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Testimony at that same hearing suggested that El-Atriss may have been in contact with another senior hijacker in addition to the ones to whom he sold the IDs. "The FBI... provided information that indicates... (9/11 hijacker) Hani Hanjour, had contacted All Services Plus prior to the events of September 11th. It's not indicated what those conversations contained, only that phone records between a prepaid cellular phone owned by Mr. Hanjour, had contacted Mr. El-Atriss on seven occasions." The fake credentials were sent to mailboxes the hijackers maintained on the premises of Sphinx Trading--located four doors down from the blind Sheikh's al-Salaam Mosque at 2824 Kennedy Boulevard. 2824 was also the location of the "Jersey Jihad" office where al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed had screened his Fort Bragg training tapes for Nosair and the other World Trade Center bombing cell trainees back in the summer of 1989. "The fact that this same location was where AlMidhar, in particular, got his bogus credentials, is not only shocking, it make me angry," says a former agent with the FBI's New York office. "The JTTF in the NYO had this location back in 1990. In the mid-'90s they listed al-Noor, the co-owner, as a co-conspirator, unindicted in the plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels. And now we find out that this was the precise location where the most visible of all the hijackers in the U.S. got his ID? Incredible. All the Bureau's New York office had to do was sit on that place over the years and they would have broken right into the 9/11 plot." But in testimony at that bail hearing, Detective Ernst indicated that the U.S. attorney's office in Newark had been openly hostile to the sheriff's investigation. In fact, on the day Ernst and fellow detectives had obtained search warrants and were planning to raid El-Atriss's home and business, Christopher Christie, the Newark U.S. Attorney telephoned Ernst's boss, Passiac County sheriff Jerry Speziale, and threatened that if he held a press conference attendant to the raids, he "would be arrested and the U.S. Attorney would...shut down the Sheriff's department." Was this another attempt by the Feds to cover up an earlier embarrassment--their failure to connect the dots on Sphinx and thus uncover the hijackers? In 2010 Jerry Speziale abruptly resigned as Passaic County Sheriff during a re-election campaign in order to accept a $199,00 job as Deputy Superintendent of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- the agency at the heart of the "Bridgegate" scandal. Passaic County Democrats later called for a federal investigation to determine whether the new job (brokered by Christie's office) was a payoff to induce Speziale to leave the race. According to this report by new jersey.com "In the immediate aftermath of Speziale's departure, Assemblyman Scott Rumana of Wayne, told The Record that he helped arrange the Port Authority job with the Christie administration. Rumana, who is also chairman of the Passaic County Republican Party, said he first met with Speziale around the time Governor Christie took office in January. Rumana said he and Speziale later met with Christie in his transition office in Trenton." Could the appointment of the outspoken Speziale, a former NYPD detective, have been an attempt by Christie's camp to defuse any embarrassment the Sphinx Trading scandal might have in Christie's upcoming bid for the White House? That's a story we'll drill down on in the months ahead if Christie gains any real traction in the campaign.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-christies-hypocrisy_b_7953990

Generate an effective, well-formatted, and error-free resume with our accounts payable specialist resume sample, and use the helpful writing tips as well. Accounts Payable Resume Sample Three is one of three resumes for this position that you may review or download.Here are the top 25 Accounts Payable Specialist profiles on LinkedIn.Accounts Payable Job Description. Skills to Put on a Resume.Find recruits with accounts payable clerk job description templates from Monster.If youre looking for free, Accounts payable tasks for resume, youve arrive to the right place. View hundreds of Accounts Payable Clerk Resume Objectives resume examples to.Use this Sample Accounts Payable Resume example to help you improve your resume and get noticed by hiring managers. Accounts payable specialists are a type of accounting clerk who work for companies to make sure bills are paid. Resume sample of an accounts payable clerk with extensive experience in accurate preparation, analysis and reporting of financial performance.Search CareerBuilder for Accounts Payable Manager Jobs and browse our platform. People with this job have responsibilities in processing invoices as well as in.Accounts Payable Job Description. monitor company accounts to ensure. Each resume is hand-picked from our large database of real resumes. If youre looking for free, Accounts payable description for resume, youve come to the right place. Whether youre an entry-level, professional, or management level. The Accounts Payable Manager is responsible for managing all Triumph.Use this accounts payable clerk job description sample when posting a job.Resume Distribution-Post your resume to over 85 job boards automatically. Accounts Payable Specialist. Find the best Accounts Payable Clerk resume samples to help you improve your own resume.

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LETTER: Did Laurel and Hardy 'die' on stage? SIR - The new movie Stan and Ollie is highly enjoyable, with both Steve Coogan and John C Reilly first rate in these two respective roles. In the film, the duo come over to the UK in the 1950s for a tour, in the twilight of their careers. As another letter writer (and last week's T&A feature) pointed out, the Alhambra in Bradford was on their schedule. I was particularly interested to watch the scene where they appeared at the famous (or should that be 'infamous') Glasgow Empire. Many well known comics have told stories of how they 'died' in front of a mercilessly, unforgiving audience here. Laurel and Hardy however, according to this film, not only 'survived' but were given a great reception - the second date of the tour.

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/opinion/17361883.letter-did-laurel-and-hardy-die-on-stage/

Personal agendas will give way to the greater good in the NFL this week. They will if the league is going to achieve a 2002 realignment during its three-day owners' meetings, anyway. Much of the structure of the new eight-division, 32-team setup is in place. At least four divisions are already firmed up -- the NFC East and North, and the AFC East and West. Left for the most contentious debate is which teams fill out the NFC West, AFC North and AFC South. That debate renews itself today in a Rosemont, Ill., hotel near Chicago. The key figures are the Ravens, Seattle Seahawks, Indianapolis Colts, Arizona Cardinals and the expansion Houston Texans, who will join the league in 2002. The Ravens, Texans and Colts all want to be the fourth team in the AFC North with Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The Seahawks and Cardinals are headed for -- but don't want to join -- the NFC West. Obviously, some teams will have to sacrifice for the good of the league, just as Ravens owner Art Modell did in 1969, when he agreed to shift his Cleveland Browns to the AFC with Pittsburgh and the Baltimore Colts. Wrestling with the NFL-AFL merger, the owners were deadlocked on realignment for the 1970 season. "It was a tremendous sacrifice because we had great rivalries. [But] I had to break that logjam." Although the Browns, Colts and Steelers received $3 million apiece to relocate, Modell insists it did not influence his decision. "The money was incidental," he said. "The $9 million [total enticement] was on the table for four months. Anybody could've had it if they wanted to make a move." In this realignment, one AFC team -- almost certainly the Seahawks -- will have to switch conferences. The bigger skirmish appears to be over which team will complete the AFC North. Modell wants to stay with his old rivals, but doesn't have a vote. Houston's Bob McNair, who paid $700 million for his franchise and doesn't have a vote, either, wants to revive the old Oilers' rivalries in that division. In all, commissioner Paul Tagliabue holds four proxy votes from expansion and relocation -- those belong to Houston, the Ravens, St. Louis and Tennessee. Passage of any plan will require 24 votes. The Colts' interest in the North is for geographical reasons (Indianapolis is 90 miles from Cincinnati). Two of those teams will wind up in the AFC South, instead, with the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars. Here are two delicious new rivalries for the Titans: the Colts, with former Tennessee Vols quarterback Peyton Manning, and the Texans, who replaced the Titans in Houston. Only problem is, Tennessee doesn't want to be in the same division with Houston. The league expects to eliminate several of the seven realignment proposals on the table today, then have a final vote tomorrow.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2001-05-22-0105220263-story.html

Seller: antiquiti (5,463) 99.6%, Location: Didcot, Ships to: Worldwide, Item: 153420331956 SCARCE CIRCA 300-400AD ANCIENT ROMAN BRONZE CHARIOT MOUNT HORSE HEAD COMBINED POSTAGEIF YOU HAVE PURCHASED MORE THAN ONE ITEM AND REQUIRE COMBINED POSTAGE,PLEASE SEND US A MESSAGE AND REQUEST THE INVOICE AND IT WILL BE PROVIDED FOR YOUPAYMENTSPLEASE MAKE PAYMENT WITHIN MAXIMUM 7 DAYS OR A UNPAID ITEMS CASE WILL OPEN AUTOMATICALLYSHIPPINGALL ORDERS ARE SENT TRACKED, IF THERE ARE ANY ISSUES WITH YOUR ITEM NOT ARRIVING PLEASE CONTACT US WE WILL ASSIST YOURETURNSIF YOU HAVE A ISSUE WITH ANY ORDER FOR ANY REASON YOU CAN RETURN IT WITHIN 30DAYSIN SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES WE ALLOW UP TO 60DAYSANY LONGER THAN 60DAYS AND YOU ARE NO LONGER ENTITLED TO A REFUNDIF YOU ARE UNHAPPY WITH AN ORDER PLEASE CONTACT US FOR A RESOLUTION WE WILL RESOLVE IT FOR YOU SWIFTLYOTHERWE ARE SELLING ONLY AUTHENTIC ITEMS HERE UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE IN THE FORM OF 'STYLE' OR 'REPLICA'IF YOU HAVE ANY REASON TO DOUBT A ITEM THAT YOU HAVE PURCHASED, EVEN IF WE ARE NOT IN AGREEMENT, YOU MAY RETURN IT WITHIN 60DAYSIF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT AN ITEM FEEL FREE TO MESSAGE US WE WILL GET BACK TO YOU SWIFTLYTHANK YOU FOR PURCHASING HERE AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR BUSINESS DISCLAIMERWE ARE TRYING OUR BEST TO PROVIDE THE BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE ON A PERSONAL LEVEL TO EACH CLIENT, IF YOU HAVE ANY ISSUE PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US, IT IS OUR TOP CONCERN TO MAKE SURE YOU THE CUSTOMER IS 100% SATISFIED.PLEASE CONTACT US BEFORE LEAVING ANY NEUTRAL OR NEGATIVE FEEDBACK IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY, WE WILL TRY OUR BEST TO RESOLVE THE SITUATION FOR YOU. WE HAVE BEEN SELLING ANTIQUES AND ANTIQUITIES FOR SEVERAL YEARS AND HAVE BUILT UP A GOOD KNOWLEDGE BASE, WE ARESELLING HERE TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IF YOU ARE IN ANY DOUBT ABOUT THE AUTHENTICITY OF A PIECE, YOU ARE MOST WELCOME TO SEND IT BACK TO US, WE WILL REFUND YOU IN FULL. WE HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON AND WE HOPE TO SATISFY EVERY VALUED CUSTOMER. Popularity - Super high amount of bids. 118 views, 3.8 views per day, 31 days on eBay. Very high amount of views. 1 sold, 0 available. Super high amount of bids. 118 views, 3.8 views per day, 31 days on eBay. Very high amount of views. 1 sold, 0 available.

https://picclick.com/Scarce-Circa-300-400Ad-Ancient-Roman-Bronze-Chariot-Mount-153420331956.html

How Family-Friendly are The BFG and The Legend of Tarzan? There is plenty in Kung Fu Panda 3 that echoes the first film and the sequel, but it's not tired recycling. Instead, the movie deftly reinforces and extends what has gone before. The film is simultaneously sweet, simple and savvy. Decent, generic fun for all the family. Nothing short of a tranquilliser dart or a polo mallet to the back of the head is apparently going to stop the gobsmackingly successful Kung Fu Panda franchise. Starting in the exploding mountains of the spirit realm and concluding with a spectacular musical set piece - what else but Kung Fu Fighting? - this third instalment of the animated children's franchise knows how to impress. So vividly immersive is Kung Fu Panda 3 - so vibrant, so tactile - it will make you feel as if you've stepped into a fully realized world. And then once you've stepped out, you'll be craving dumplings. It's exciting, funny, sweet and I was consistently entertained. I want to give a special congrats to director Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Powered by humour, a plethora of colours, textures and - most importantly - a strong story, Kung Fu Panda 3 is a film that ensures the panda himself has a legacy. "Kung Fu Panda 3" is very well done, the characters fun, and the fight that Po has to handle, both personal and otherwise, make for an enjoyable animated feature that teaches good lessons, while still remaining entertaining. [Kung Fu Panda 3] is a film that, while undeniably familiar, still manages to retain a bit of freshness. Kung Fu Panda 3 may not have the same emotional impact as the first two films or the higher-level Pixar productions, but is still a solid bit of family entertainment. Thankfully, Kung Fu Panda 3 is just as fresh and frothy the third time around. Quite frankly, this infectious kiddie karate chop to the giddy soul is rather charming. The animation is gorgeous and the action is fun, as before. But neither the plot nor the jokes are as on point as in the first two films. The panda village is adorable of course, so kids will hardly notice. They will have difficulties with the very spiritual finale, I imagine. Who'd of thought this franchise would get this far? A silly fantasy about a kung fu panda and various other martial arts skilled animals, all guided by the wise old Master Shifu. The wacky adventures of Po and his plucky band of ninja-esque warriors across the wild east. All along his destiny has apparently pointed in one direction, to become the chosen one. He's trained to become a kung fu master, battled a muscular snow Leopard, a powerful Peacock, and now he must defeat a mighty Yak with the help of his new found family. Yep so in this third instalment Po is given the reins of teacher by Master Shifu as he retires. Rather predictably Po finds his new undertaking harder than expected and begins to question whether or not he is right for the role, or whether he even wants it. This straight away conjures up the rather tired old formula of the underdog scenario, with Po struggling with his requirements at first but slowly gaining momentum as he goes. Of course Shifu completely believes in him and stands by him all the way, a typical [i]Rocky[/i] type scenario basically which we saw in the first movie of this franchise. Anyway Po goes home and bumps into another panda called Li Shan who amazingly turns out to be his dad, something that surely must have triggered suspicion in Po considering he hasn't come across another panda before, I think. The whole panda village concept also seemed rather odd because it seems unusual that no other pandas have ever come through Po's region before. I have always kinda got the impression that Po might be the last panda, but all of a sudden there's an entire village! that apparently never travel much because we have never seen any up to this point, well that's how I've always seen it. Anywho, Po and the panda village must all band together and fight against the evil Kai who happens to be a vicious spirit warrior from the, errr...Chinese spirit world. This large yak has defeated all the other masters in the realm by taking their chi and...umm, absorbing it or something. He is able to turn each master into a statue made of jade and control them in a zombie like state so he can...return to the land of the living? I think. Once back he will presumably take control and rule the land. But before he can do this he must obtain the Dragon Masters chi, the chi of Po, luckily Po has the strength of many panda children, elderly pandas and middle aged pandas to help him. Question is why he would actually need their help seeing as he's the bloody Dragon Master but anyway, don't question it eh. K, no surprise the movie looks gorgeous, a sumptuous, vividly coloured spectacle of eastern tropes set within the typical Hollywood blockbuster vehicle. The scenery is easily the best element of the visuals with some stunning sprawling landscapes on display, some really lovely fantastical locations that just make you wanna pack up and go there. Naturally all the characters are again visualised well with plenty of detail, including realistic fur and shiny bright eyes. Most have their own distinct look but you can't help but sense a Disney vibe going through them all (or at least I could), nevertheless they all look great with some having the added bonus of some great costume design too, looking at Tigress mainly. My fave character would probably have to be Master Mantis mainly because of his size and cuteness factor, dare I say there's an Ant-Man vibe going on there, lots of vibes folks. I wasn't so sold with the main villain this time though, in all fairness he looked kinda lame and just felt sorta dull. I mean, how can you make a yak look exciting? maybe they should of chosen a different animal? He didn't really seem menacing enough to me, I know its a kids film but still, he could of been a bit more dangerous methinks. I did really like his jade blades and the fact he turned the other Masters into jade statues or jade warriors. The striking green of the jade just looked really nice, it really popped out of the screen and was a nice visual highlight. The same can be said for the saturated colours of the spirit world which were a feast for your eyes, somehow this films colour palette made me hungry. The weak point of the movie was the plot for me. Lets be honest there is nothing new here, we've seen this type of stuff so many times, even in the earlier movies of this franchise. Once again you have the underdog premise with Po, the self pity and self-loathing aspect of his character which tends to get a bit repetitive. Its not all the same for Po though as here he must use his skills and training to train all the other pandas in the village. So finally we see a more confident Po who is actually utilising the stuff he's been learning over the last two movies, he's a totally loveable doofus of course, but now a doofus with skills. The cheesy, cliched stuff comes in the form of the training of the pandas to fight back against an evil force, something that has been used in so many movies over time. The fact that Po must find each pandas skill or talent and somehow transform that into an effective method of attack against Kai, is sooo dated! So all the kids utilise their juggling/balancing skills, a female panda utilises her dancing skills, some pandas utilise their rolling/tumbling skills and a strong panda enhances his hugging/strength skills. But again, those visuals, oh boy! love the training montage visuals and colour scheme, it looks like a traditional Chinese/Japanese painting come to life. As expected the visuals are the most impressive aspect as with all animated movies, mainly because they just get better and better. This film doesn't disappoint with that, nor does it disappoint with eastern promise, mythology and ancient Chinese culture, perfectly blended in with American/western nerd culture. In other words traditional Chinese/Asian culture is respected and accentuated in all its forms with great detail and much tender loving care. Every aspect from the native structures, temples and terrain, to the costumes and to aspects such as traditional philosophies and of course martial arts. Now add to that the more traditional American comicbook stylings with a hint of superhero kickassery and you have a wild mix of chopsocky fantasy. Still I can't deny that this is probably the weakest of the trio mainly because its just unoriginal, like I said already, we've seen it all before. Yeah to a degree they have gone along the lines of, if it ain't broke don't fix it, which is fine and it works, but there's only so far you can take that. How many times do we need to see these stereotypical, Karate Kid-esque, underdog/hero tales? The voice cast are all solid but there's nothing special here, the humour is a bit flat I think, a bit stale now, and the plot is tepid with an uninteresting baddie and a weak finale. Like I say if it wasn't for those jaw-dropping visuals...I dunno. Still this just manages to keep its head above the waves and round off a very good trilogy, just leave it at this though, any more will most definitely spoil from here on. As a third film, KFP3 just doesn't live up to the stakes and complexities that were progressively built up from its previous installments. If anything the movie was a huge step backwards for the franchise. The script is much less mature, pandering to younger audiences. The message simplistic and the threat of some ancient kung-fu master come-back-to-life turning martial artists into Jade statues just didn't have the grandeur of KFP2; Where all of fictitious China was under threat by a conqueror who didn't blink twice at Panda genocide with an army at his command plus a technological super weapon. There are less martial art sequences with fights being too few and far in between. With the story's key "epic battles" being a bunch of children and seniors fending off masters in a comical fashion and the final showdown looking more like an overuse of special effects than well thought out choreography. Po's existential struggles with discovering himself and "who he is" parallels to what was already done in 2, rendering that entire subplot redundant. To top it off, less creative set-pieces and also the Furious 5 were utterly useless, with even Master Shifuu turning into "fodder" for Kai. However, it is probably one of the most visually stunning animated films I've seen in a long time. Just the sheer bold use of color and 2D stylization was quite a marvel to look at. A visual spectacle for sure but just a massive narrative disappointment after what we were given in 1 & 2. Mr. Ping: Sometimes we do the wrong things, for the right reasons. Shifu: If You only do what you can, You will never be more than you are now. Po: Listen closely because I'm only going to repeat this ten times.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kung_fu_panda_3/

One of Those Days! is a book that provides strategies for those days when everything feels just "a little bit too much." A day where one challenge leads to another; where there are simply too many things to juggle. Using colourful images and simple statements, it describes a day that every reader should be able to relate to; after all, don't we all come up against such days from time to time? Having set the scene for a typical stressful day, we are challenged to STOP, take a moment and THINK. We are asked to consider what we can do to take charge of our day once more. Suggesting a range of techniques, the book describes ways that the reader can gain control of their day, ways to alleviate the stress that they are feeling. One of Those Days! aims to provide the reader with "tools in their tool box" for helping them cope with the inevitable stressful days that they will come up against in the future. Whilst this book is aimed at a younger audience with its colourful pictures, it is written in a way that should resonate with anyone who reads it.

https://www.thinkingbooks.co.uk/buy/one-of-those-days!_225.htm

What to do with support functions? What happens to the role of support functions as you transition to self-management? Support functions are often an integral part of the "power over" in traditional hierarchies, so prepare for some profound changes. To answer these questions, I find it helpful to disaggregate what support functions do into four different roles they play. In this video, I'll share how each of these roles naturally adapts to self-management. And I'll share how people who work in support functions might end up with less "power over" but more joy in their work.

https://thejourney.reinventingorganizations.com/4211.html

One of the most common ways to make a martial art decidedly less effective would be to add unnecessary extra motions. What would be the best way to define an extra motion? Basically, this would be any type of motion that does not contribute to economy of motion, and slows down the ability to actually deliver an effective offence. The problem here is that there will also be times when movement is required. For example, when someone is charging on you and a kick would be a preferred technique, you might not be able to kick from where you are. You might have to move in order to deliver the kick. Would this be unnecessary extra motion? It may or it may not be. There are certain factors that come into play when trying to define whether or not it is extra motion. What is unnecessary motion in martial arts? If you move two feet out of the way of an incoming attack, you may be moving far too much. Six inches or so may have been enough. The extra movement is exactly that. It is extra and it is unnecessary. Intelligent martial arts training and working on improving distance would cut down on any excessive movement. Over time, as your skill develops even further, your martial arts skills will allow you to have greater timing, speed, and overall attributes. This could lead to you being able to perform that kick without sidestepping at all. A common misconception about cutting down on unnecessary motion is that it must start on day one. This likely is not possible. A beginner can only do their best based on their current level of martial arts skill. With good commitment, that skill level will improve to the point of smoothness, and a sense of logic will lead to cutting down on moves that are not necessary. Of course, training methods will also play a critical role in whether or not the student will be able to avoid performing a lot of unnecessary movement. Martial arts training methods that put an emphasis on the volume of techniques will never aid someone looking to cut down on the amount of movement required to perform a technique in the simplest and most economical manner. This is a critical point because simplicity and economy of motion are the only way to make techniques work in both sport martial arts and self-defense.

https://function-first-lincoln.co.uk/cut-out-unnecessary-motions-to-make-your-martial-arts-more-successful/

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei offered Germany a "no-spy agreement" designed to address security concerns that Germany has over Huawei's involvement in building Germany's next generation 5G mobile infrastructure, a German magazine has reported. US authorities gathered information on Huawei Technologies through secret surveillance obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to use in a case that charges the company with violating US sanctions against Iran. The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei announced that last year its revenues increase by 20 percent to $105 billion. At the same time profit rose by 25 percent to 8 billion. The European Commission has recommended that EU countries should cooperate together to deal with cybersecurity issues especially in connection with 5G networks. The Commission did not suggest a ban on Huawei products for which the US has been pushing. Vancouver - When arrested in Canada on a US order, Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was carrying a 12-inch MacBook, an iPhone 7 Plus and an iPad Pro all premium products of Huawei's US competitor Apple. Berlin - Germany launches its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei. Op-Ed: How big a security threat is Huawei? Many countries worry that Huawei poses a security threat because it could be exploited by the Chinese government for espionage. Berlin - The United States on Monday warned Germany about future "information sharing" if it uses "untrusted vendors" in its 5G telecom infrastructure amid debate over whether Chinese IT giant Huawei is an espionage risk. Huawei has declared its intention to sue the Trump administration over a ban if its telecommunications products and devices into the U.S. market. This is based on the principle of unfair trade. Bejing - China threw its weight behind Huawei's legal battle against the United States on Friday, saying the telecom giant will not be a "silent lamb to the slaughter" and vowing to defend the rights of Chinese companies. Dongguan - Chinese telecom giant Huawei insisted on Wednesday its products feature no security "backdoors" for the government, as the normally secretive company gave foreign media a peek inside its state-of-the-art facilities. The Canadian government will allow the extradition process to the US of Meng Wanzhou Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Chinese tech giant Huawei to proceed after what it called a thorough and diligent review of the evidence in the case. Shanghai - Chinese telecom giant Huawei has issued an unusual invitation to foreign media outlets to visit its facilities and meet staff as the company pushes back against global pressure arising from US accusations that it spies for Beijing. Barcelona - US representatives at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona Spain are busy trying to convince European countries to ban the Chinese tech giant Huawei from 5G Internet networks. The Huawei Matebook X Pro was released last year. According to an article by Dan Seifert it has the right mix of performance, portability, ports and price. Barcelona - Huawei unveiled a new foldable smartphone on Sunday on the eve of the world's top mobile fair in Barcelona and hit out against Washington's campaign to bar it from developing next-generation 5G wireless networks. Barcelona - Even though the Mobile World Congress (MWC) has yet to begin a leak of a banner shows the Huawei Mate X foldable phone that will be announced at this year's show on Sunday. Bejing - The founder of Chinese telecom giant Huawei has hit back at US efforts to blacklist the company and denied there are any "backdoors" in its technology to spy for Beijing. Bejing - The founder of Chinese telecom giant Huawei has hit back at US efforts to blacklist the company, saying defiantly that the world cannot do without Huawei and its "more advanced" technology. Apo - US officials are fanning out across Europe to warn about the security risks of allowing Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to help build 5G mobile networks, a US diplomat said Tuesday. Apo - German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Tuesday for safeguards to ensure Chinese firms do not hand over private data to Beijing amid mounting security concerns over equipment made by telecoms giant Huawei. The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is known for mobile innovations. It will continue this tradition by introducing a foldable phone device promised for this year. The device will be introduced at the Mobile World Congress. Bejing - Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei survived food shortages during China's Cultural Revolution, but now the reclusive billionaire identified as "Individual-1" in a US indictment faces an existential fight for his family and company. Shanghai - Fraud, obstruction of justice and cloak-and-dagger trade theft -- a US rap sheet alleging systematic skullduggery by Chinese telecom giant Huawei has deepened the company's problems just as it sought to win back global trust. Bejing - China on Tuesday decried the "political manipulations" behind the US case against Huawei as Washington indicted the tech giant's chief financial officer and levelled sweeping charges against the company. Huawei unveiled at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona new watches: Huawei Watch, TalkBand B2, and TalkBand N1. The news of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, came as a real shock to media all around the world.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/topic/Huawei

Justice League Dark Animated Film On The Way? While most of the attention as of late has been directed toward DC's tumultuous live-action extended film universe and its ever-growing line-up of superheroic TV dramas, one shouldn't forget about the equally robust world of direct-to-video animated films based on the company's comic book properties. The current focus of DC's animated movie arm is Sam Liu and Bruce Timm's upcoming adaptation of the classic Alan Moore graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, which features the return of iconic voice actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill to the roles of Batman and The Joker, and is also the first animated DC project to receive an R rating from the MPAA. Fans have wondered whether The Killing Joke would signal a darker direction for the DC animated film universe going forward, and a new bit of info suggests that a darker path is indeed where things are headed. As first noticed by an eagle eyed Redditor named Andyporras, the BBFC has recently approved and classified something called A Sneak Peak [sic] at Justice League Dark, which will seemingly be a near 8-minute video preview that appears as an extra feature on the DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Killing Joke. Odd spelling error aside, this classification by the BBFC serves to effectively confirm that a Justice League Dark film is next on the animated DC film slate, despite no prior mention of such a project's existence by either DC or Warner Bros. For those unfamiliar, Justice League Dark was a monthly comic book series that ran from November 2011 to March 2015, and featured a team of DC's more supernaturally inclined heroes that handled bizarre situations not exactly tailored for folks like Superman or The Flash. The Justice League Dark roster changed occasionally as time went on, although a few of the more prominent members included John Constantine, Swamp Thing, Zatanna, Madame Xanadu, and Frankenstein's Monster. The arrival of Justice League Dark to the film landscape will be the culmination of a fairly long journey, as writer/director Guillermo Del Toro had been trying to get a live-action movie adaptation of the series off the ground since 2012, only to see his project continue to end up back in development hell. Presumably due in part to the endless delays, Del Toro eventually abandoned the film in 2015, although DC and Warner Bros. maintain that it's still coming regardless. At least some members of Justice League Dark were also planned to make an appearance on the recent Constantine TV series starring Matt Ryan, but NBC saw fit to cancel the show before those plans could come to fruition. While animation and live-action are certainly too very different branches of filmmaking, at least it looks like readers will finally get to see Justice League Dark hop out of the comic pages and onto their TV sets. With that said, one wonders how long it'll take fans to create a petition urging DC and WB to bring in Ryan as the voice of Constantine. The existence of a Justice League Dark animated movie has yet to be officially confirmed, but we'll keep you updated on any further news.

https://screenrant.com/justice-league-dark-animated-film/

When we built Eidolon last year, Swift was still pre-1.0 and we couldn't rely on the wide variety of available Swift libraries we enjoy today. I wanted to build it using functional reactive programming, because that's how I believe everyone should write software, but there were no Swift-based FRP libraries at the time. As a compromise, I used ReactiveCocoa's Objective-C API (the Swift API was months away from an alpha). Swift 2's guard statements helped clean this up, but the fundamental problem was that we were using an FRP library not suited for Swift. While we had built replacements for the Objective-C runtime features that weren't available in Swift, we knew that a migration away from RAC's Objective-C API would eventually be necessary. I used a bit of down-time recently to tackle the problem, starting with some small bits and pieces before dedicating two weeks to finish it. Here we go! Using the type-checker to catch bugs at compile-time. Writing fewer lines of code. Having fun with the type checker and protocol extensions. When Apple announced Swift, they stressed how safe of a language it was. Now that we were moving to a Swift-based FRP framework, we would finally benefit from those safety features. This makes new features easier and faster to build. It gives me more confidence when I make a new deploy that things won't break. And like I mentioned above, it's just a lot more fun to write Swift with Swift-based frameworks. When we wrote Eidolon, ReactiveCocoa was more-or-less the only iOS FRP library around. That's fine, because ReactiveCocoa is awesome. But today, there are a variety of frameworks and they're all awesome. So we have a choice to make. Sticking with ReactiveCocoa would mean that we could make a gradual transition (there's a bridge between the Objective-C and Swift APIs). This is kind of a benefit, but also kind of a drawback. I don't really trust myself enough to move off of Objective-C's API completely if a bridge is there – it's just too tempting to leave some parts of the app using the old API. So instead I decided to not consider the existing code. I asked myself: "If I were choosing an FRP library today for a brand-new app, which one would I choose?" The answer to that question is RxSwift. RxSwift is a Swift implementation of the ReactiveX APIs, which bring a few great benefits. The API is well-defined and unlikely to include breaking changes, there are reference implementations for Rx in other languages, and tutorials/resources for other Rx frameworks apply directly to this library. There is some extra overhead from having to interact with a larger community, and there are technical distinctions that might influence your decision. Ultimately, though, I chose RxSwift because I've found their community much more pleasant to interact with. I started the process by removing ReactiveCocoa and adding RxSwift to our Podfile. Of course, that made the entire app break, which was fine. I was working off a "develop" branch, so having the app in an uncompilable state for a few weeks would be no problem. Then the remaining process was simple: find a compiler error, fix it, and find a new one. 27 days later, we merged the changes into master. Get the app compiling again. Get the app more-or-less working (no crashes for common use cases). Get the unit tests compiling again. Get the unit tests completing without crashing. Get the unit tests passing (locally and on CI). Thoroughly test the app to verify it still works properly. We're currently wrapping up the final stage, but I expect to release a new build for production use later this week. The biggest challenges were keeping an eye on the end result. When you go for so long without being able to see the benefits of your work, it's easy to get discouraged. This is the first major app I've written in Swift with FRP, so there were new patterns and practices I had to learn. Checking in with the RxSwift team helped a lot, with a lot of assistance from Junior in particular. Making the changes in the open also let others provide feedback on our progress. One of the biggest challenges was the structure of the existing code. Our bid-fulfillment process shares a lot of state – much of it in ways that we wouldn't write today. But I didn't want to increase the scope of the transition to RxSwift to also include removing all shared state from the app – scope creep is really dangerous when your project already spans weeks. It was hard to resist this temptation, but I feel it worked out for the best. I tried to get rid of dynamic properties in views, controllers, and view models, but left them on models to use KVO with rx_observe. I tried not to use KVO a lot, and instead rely on Variable properties, which wrap a value in a type that can be observed. I'm still finding a balance between these two approaches, but this is largely a personal preference. A common pattern became defining a private Variable and a public Observable, which would constrain the state (a common theme in FRP). _password is now the read/write property accessible only within the type, while password is a publicly read-only Observable. This pattern takes a bit of typing, so I'm still looking for a way to further abstract it. Maybe a Swift preprocessor would help. So I wrote an extension to the ObservableType protocol that would abstract this unit-testing code into a reusable function and operator. This is just one example – one that we will be moving into its own library. Swift's type system is really, really powerful. Here are some RxSwift-specific extensions we added to UIKit, and here are some general Swift extensions that we've found helpful. There's a danger in going overboard, of course. A few times, I was tempted to make an extension on string-convertible Variables to make them themselves string-convertible, for example. That might make writing code easier, but its functionality would not be obvious when reading it later on. I tried to keep changes like this as obvious and simple as possible, and every addition was peer-reviewed by Orta. Throughout the course of the transition to RxSwift, I made a few contributions to the framework, but the things I wanted to add were outside the immediate scope of the project maintainers' vision. Totally understandable. With their assistance, Orta and I and others helped to create a new organization for community-run, RxSwift-based libraries. Now RxSwift can stay lean and focused while the community has a dedicated space to improve all of our ideas, together. One library I wrote during this project is already under the organization's umbrella, with another on the way. Helping to create a new organization gave me an opportunity to practice my community-building skills. It was exciting to re-apply Moya's contributor guidelines in a new setting, helping to set a positive tone for a growing community. I had a lot of guidance from Orta and Eloy, who of course have done this before. Making positive changes to the developer community – and, on a larger scale, to the world – is something I've decided to pursue as my career. I wouldn't have come to that conclusion if it weren't for the thoughtfulness and generosity of my colleagues and of the RxSwift community. This transition project has been exciting, but at times it has been exhausting, too. While I'm glad it's over, the past few weeks have impacted my life in a significant – and positive – way. I've never been more excited to be doing what I'm doing, and to be working in the growing open source Swift community. Thank you, everyone.

https://artsy.github.io/blog/2015/12/08/reactive-cocoa-to-rxswift/

The slap shot is an important part of any hockey game. When performing a slap shot, the hockey stick is aggressively slapped (nearly as hard as you can) and bent on the ice. Tension builds up in the stick as it flexes, and this tension is then released against the puck in the direction of the intended target. Even though this technique can generate a puck speed of over 100 mph (160 km/h), it's not as accurate or as convenient as the wrist or snap shots. Decide when to take a slap shot. Slap shots are used primarily by defensive players when in position near the point (the spot where the blue line intersects the boards on the defensive side of the rink). Although slap shots are flashy and can impress a crowd, they're not used very often during a hockey game. The vast majority of the time, something simpler will work better. That said, any time you can use a slap shot to your advantage in a hockey game, take the shot! Point your feet towards the puck. At this point, the puck should be about 3 feet (0.9 m) in front of your skates. Do not point your skates at your target (i.e. the net); this is a common mistake made by beginners. Stand perpendicular to the net, so that your shoulders are pointing towards it. Once you're feeling more comfortable performing slap shots, you can take a shot with your feet a little crooked. This stance can be useful if you're short on time during a play, or cannot position yourself correctly for the shot. Locate your hands shoulder-width apart on the stick. If you're right-handed, place your left hand at the top of your stick. Place your right hand lower than where you would normally carry it when stick-handling or skating: so, about shoulder-width apart. As the stick reaches its highest point during the slap shot, your hands will separate a little more and move down the shaft. Then, as you finish the shot, your hands should end up back at shoulder-length apart. A majority of left handed hockey players shoot on the left making these instructions completely backwards. Your right hand would be on the top of the stick because you would use your dominant hand for best control. Take an athletic stance. When preparing to take a slap shot, stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart. Also bend your knees slightly; this will give you greater control over the distribution of your weight as you lean forward during the slap shot. It's impossible to take a slap shot while you're skating. You need to be static on the ice, even if only for a few seconds. Raise your stick behind you to wind up. Pull the stick back to the level of your waist. As you wind up, let the weight of your body shift backwards, until most of your weight is resting on your back leg. Winding up this way will allow you to build up momentum as you swing the stick forward toward the puck. Don't wind up to an extreme degree; winding up way above your head doesn't add power and sacrifices time and accuracy. Especially as a beginner, while trying to learn the overall movement, during the windup don't bring the blade of your stick any higher than your waist. Once you become more proficient at slap shots, you can start to increase your windup. Many pro players wind up as high as their shoulders. Take a look at the goal and aim as you wind up. If you're aiming for the opposing team's net, you should aim for a particular spot on the net, not just the net itself. Aiming for a very specific spot on the net will allow your greater accuracy, and you'll be more likely to make the shot. If you're taking a slap shot from across the hockey rink, it's unlikely that you'll put the puck in the goal. In hockey games, many players rely on their teammates to "tip" the puck into the opponent's goal. Keep your eyes on the ice and on your teammate's stick side. Shift your momentum to your forward leg. As you start to swing your stick down towards the puck, transfer the weight of your body forward, onto your front leg. This will give your slap shot plenty of momentum, and you'll be able to drive the puck farther and with more speed. Shifting your weight forwards will add to the energy and power of your shot. Make contact with the ice inches before you hit the puck. Many mistakenly hit only the puck, thinking the ice will slow their shot. If performed correctly, however, hitting the ice with your stick just before contact with the puck will cause your stick to "flex" and build up energy. Once your stick hits the puck, it will straighten out and transfer the energy from the "flex" into the puck itself. Aim to his the ice between 3 and 5 inches (8-13 cm) before the puck. This takes practice, but it's arguably the single most important part of a slap shot. Turn your wrists upward as you swing. Just at the point when your stick contacts the puck, roll your wrists so that the thumb on your dominant hand (right hand if right-handed, left hand if left-handed) turns down towards the ice. This is where most of your accuracy comes from and will give you the ability to aim the direction in which the puck flies. Even if you point your stick, the aim of your shot will be inaccurate if you don't roll your wrists during your contact with the puck. Follow through with your shot. After initial contact, follow through with your stick, arms, and torso, in the direction you want the puck to go. This makes for a more accurate shot, and it also helps keep your puck stable in the air. Your shoulders should finish facing the net, your hips should twist towards the direction of the shot, and your front foot should turn towards the direction of the shot. After following through, your stick and body should be pointing (gliding) towards the direction of your shot. Roughly speaking, the direction that the blade of your stick points in during follow-through shows where your shot will end up. If your blade is high off the ground, your shot will end up high; if your blade is low, the shot will be low too. How do I tape my ears to my helmet? Head to your local hockey store and buy some high quality stick tape. (The more expensive the better.) Make a little roll out of the tape, so that the sticky side is facing outwards, and firmly press it to your ear. Proceed to put on your helmet as usual. I can't take a slap shot to save my life with the stick I have, but when I use my friend's, I can rip clappers all day. Why? There could be a few factors. Could be the loading zone, could be the amount of flex, could be length. How do I get a slap shot high off the ice? Follow through higher. Note: This is usually a bad thing. Keep your shots down low. How do I put my helmet back together? I got hit with a slap shot in the head and my helmet cracked. It's best that you get a new helmet if this happened. A cracked helmet will no longer provide you as much protection as before. Is it the same for roller hockey? Yes, you'd perform a slap shot in roller hockey just as you would in ice hockey. Why do players hit the ice with the stick before taking a slapshot? Because that "loads" tension on the flexible stick. The stick can then whip back into shape, thus adding a lot of power to the shot. What if my stick has very little flex and I weigh 75 pounds? Your stick flex should be half your weight to have a good slap shot. The ideal for you would a 35-40 flex. Try to hit the puck with the exact center part of your blade. Focus on accuracy first, then power; this is a great tip for young players. Don't worry about power at first. Instead, practice aiming your shots. Once you become more adept at the slap shot, you can begin speeding up the motion of your swing, and the speed of the shot will follow. The distance between where you hit the ice (to flex the stick) and the puck varies from person to person. If you’re having a hard time getting the puck in the air, hit the ice further back. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 223,728 times. "The slap shot how-to was good."

https://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Slapshot-in-Ice-Hockey

Which of the following statements as regards cash journal is/are correct? It is a tool for managing cash that supports posting of cash receipts and cash payments. You can create a cash journal for each currency. You can post to customer, vendor and G/L accounts. You can run several cash journals in each company code. Cash journal identification is a six-digit alphanumeric key. You have to enter the appropriate values for the following fields in setting-up new cash journal for a company code. These are: Company code Cash journal identification key G/L accounts Currency Name of cash journal identification key Language key Document types. You have to enter document types in setting-up new cash journal for a company code for the following: G/L account postings Outgoing payments to vendors Incoming payments to customers Outgoing payments to customers Incoming payments to vendors. The standard business transaction categories offered by the system that you have to set up before you process different transactions within the cash journal are the following: Revenue postings Expense postings Accounts Receivable postings Accounts Payable postings Cash transfer from bank to cash journal Cash transfer from cash journal to bank Accrual postings. Which of the following statements as regards creation of business transaction is/are correct? You can only define the new cash journal business transaction in Customizing. Set the co. code in which the business transaction should be created. You could always indicate the G/L account for a particular business transaction. You don't have to specify tax codes for business transactions E (Expense) and R (Revenue). You can indicate whether G/L account or tax code for the business transaction to be changed when the document is entered. You can set an indicator that blocks the business transaction for further postings. Upon saving, a number is assigned to the newly created business transaction. This number can be called up during document entry aside from its name. Which of the following statements as regards cash journal posting business transaction is/are correct? You can process cash journal bus. transaction in a single screen (hence, Enjoy). You can save cash journal entries locally in the cash journal subledger, and copy or delete them. Entries saved are then posted to the G/L for example, at the end of the working day. You can print the cash journal entries you have saved and the entries posted in the time period displayed. You can copy and/or delete cash journal entries saved, but once deleted, you cannot display it anymore. You cannot enter checks in the cash journal. Which of the following statements as regards cash journal document is/are correct? You can enter it with a document split. It can contain several items with different tax codes and/or account assignments relevant to cost accounting. When it is forwarded to Financial Accounting, only one accounting document is created. You can create a business transaction that is linked to a one-time account.

https://www.daypo.net/sap-tfin50-part-1-unit-6.html

A critical look at some of the major changes happening to social housing in the UK—and its likely effects on tenants and those in housing need. The Demolition of Social Housing? Social housing in the UK provides homes for 8 million people - but its prospects appear increasingly grim. With the decline of a manufacturing base and the rise of financial capital in western economies social housing has appeared to the ruling class as an under-capitalised asset; its potential 'real' value remaining unrealised by its protection from full exposure to market valuation. Since the 1970s successive governments have shown a growing hostility to the concept of state-subsidised housing for the lower orders. Earlier Tory regimes had implemented limited 'right-to-buy' schemes for some council tenants, and a 1970s Labour government had considered similar schemes but abandoned it as too controversial and potentially divisive a policy for the Party(1). Coming to power in 1979, Thatcher's Tories had no such qualms or obstacles and tenants snapped up their council homes at knock-down prices in this first wave of mass buy-outs (with the discounts offered at the time for many tenants mortgage payments worked out cheaper than continuing to rent). In tandem with the share options offered in the sell-off of other state assets, eg energy and telecommunications companies, the populist myth of the property-owning, share-owning democracy was formed; the democratisation of speculation for the masses. In the past 25 years Housing Associations (HAs) have been promoted by successive governments as a more tolerable provider of social housing who could be more easily steered towards a market-orientated approach(7). Despite a nominal official charitable status(8), HAs are often large commercial enterprises, paying their Chief Execs six-figure salaries, having large incomes and accumulated 'reserves' (as 'charities', they can't call it profit). Taking both state subsidies and commercial loans, HAs have become the main providers of 'part-buy, part rent' schemes. 70 percent of homes in new build projects are for sale or rent at market prices, with only 30 percent for social housing rental. So HAs often use their social housing stock as assets to guarantee the bank loans that fund their property speculation(9). Many have sister companies/wings that are solely commercial property developers. Despite being the main providers of so-called "affordable housing", the part buy-part rent schemes are far beyond the affordability of those most in housing need and appear to mainly provide a first foot on the property ladder for young single professionals. With 5 million on social housing waiting lists nationwide, one can see that the needs of the property market, as always, take precedent over satisfaction of needs. There are over 700,000 empty homes in the UK(10). An artificially induced housing shortage maintains high prices, with the poorest exploited the most. Restricting access to social housing. At present anyone can apply for social housing and will be assessed, under nationally recognised legal guidelines, for priority according to need. But under the new Bill councils will be able to draw up their own criteria of eligibility for applying to join the housing waiting list; this is apparently intended to be a means testing even of being considered for housing. An end to security of tenure. Councils and HAs will have the option to issue only fixed-term tenancies (minimum two years) to new tenants. This is despite the government claims to want to create 'sustainable communities'. Means testing is also proposed for new tenancies; so if a tenant's income rises above a certain level they must leave social housing. When the last Labour government considered in 2007 a similar attack on tenancies 37 Lib Dem MPs voiced their opposition in Parliament, "opposing both the stigmatisation of council housing as housing of last resort and proposals to means test or time limit secure tenancies". Two of these two-faced MPS are now cabinet ministers and another six are junior ministers in the coalition government now implementing the present 'time limited secure tenancies'. "an Australian model used in New South Wales ... found that fewer than 1% of fixed-term tenancies had actually been terminated by the scheme - a complete reversal of what the government hopes to achieve by freeing up housing stock for the most vulnerable. Fixed-term tenancies could also prove costly, as landlords would be forced to undertake lengthy resident reviews every two years. For a government pushing aggressively for reduced unemployment figures, the scheme could become a disincentive for tenants who do not wish to move every two years as the result of an improved income. The government has also recently suggested that subletting by social housing tenants may be made a criminal offence. Local authorities will be able to discharge their duty to the homeless by providing private sector accommodation. Currently the homeless can refuse council offers of private accommodation and insist on being offered council accommodation. But, under the new changes, rather than providing eventual permanent social housing council Homeless Persons Units can 'allocate' the homeless in the direction of a private landlord and in so doing all their obligations are fulfilled. This could mean the end of access to social housing for many of those most in need, for example, with various health problems - instead some of the most vulnerable will be permanently dumped into the insecurity of the private rental sector, often at the mercy of unscrupulous and unsympathetic landlords. The costs for social landlords of revising their allocations and tenure procedures are estimated at a whopping £123 million (Inside Housing, 4 June 2011). The option for councils and HAs to charge 80% of market rent levels on new tenancies. Again, this suggests the end of access to social housing for many. The main effect of this policy would be in London and the south-east. In the north, where there is often a surplus of available housing in both the public and private sector, the government was surprised to find that if this policy was applied northern HAs would in many cases have to reduce their rents! But in other areas this policy, combined with new benefit caps, will make housing access harder for the poor. This policy seems designed to encourage HAs to evict more tenants; in doing so, they immediately increase rental income and also qualify for government development grants otherwise denied. The most vulnerable tenants, without the know how to legally defend themselves, would probably suffer most. Massive cuts in legal advice services only increase this effect. "A key element of the coalition's housing policy - that of charging new tenants 80 percent of the market rate - could be stymied by the Charity Commission. The commission has told the 1,236 charitable housing Associations (HAs) in England and Wales they risk losing charitable status if they implement the new rent regime, reminding them that to preserve their status they must act in a manner that furthers their charitable objectives for the public benefit. Charging 80 percent of the market rate is not seen as particularly "charitable" - not least as many families will find themselves in severe difficulty when they are hit by the £500 benefit cap that is being introduced (Eye 1287). The dilemma facing HAs is that if they lose charitable status, they will lose benefits such as relief on business rates and tax breaks. But though not all local councils intend to immediately enforce these measures - nearly half have stated they won't introduce fixed-term tenancies - what politicians say now and what policies their councils actually enforce later may well differ. Family Mosaic have the dishonour of being the first Housing Association to introduce Assured Shorthold Tenancies for new lets; these are the same tenancies as used by private landlords, giving no security and making it possible to terminate the tenancy with only a few weeks notice. This is a move towards the likely 'social housing' tenancy of the future - ie, not social housing as we know it. Future tenancies may be time-limited, insecure, means tested and at or close to market prices. The government claims to want to encourage greater mobility in tenants so they will be willing to move to where the jobs are (what jobs?) and to move to smaller properties when they find themselves with spare rooms after their children leave home. But who will want to move if their new tenancy is insecure/fixed term, means tested and at up to 80% of market rent? Tenants claiming Housing Benefit (HB) who have spare rooms will be penalised; they are likely to lose around 14% of HB for one spare room, 25% for two unused bedrooms. There are also proposals to means test the income of social housing tenants and for the state to give HAs legal powers to snoop into the financial details of tenants' income. This will likely be a cap not on income of the individual whose name is on the tenancy, but on overall household income. Hammersmith & Fulham council have recently (Oct 2012) announced an earnings cap of £40,200 on households. Their new tenancies will be for a fixed term of 5 years and those exceeding the earnings cap after that time will have to move out. Other suggestions are for a general earnings cap of £60,000; so if a husband earns £20,000, his wife earns £25,000 and their son earns £16,000 they may have to pay up to 80% of market rent. Hardly an incentive for anyone to increase earnings if it means the result is to lose your home and be forced into the poorly regulated, insecure and more expensive private sector. Therefore an 'increase' in income could lead a household to have to move into a more expensive property where the higher rent actually decreases their overall income. Further suggestions are that on reaching a certain income level tenants will be given the 'options' of moving out, staying and paying up to 80% of market rent or getting a mortgage via a part buy/part rent scheme run by HAs. These part-ownership schemes can be a poor deal - purchasers can be subjected to high costs and massive overcharging for maintenance works they are contractually obliged to pay for. These policies are being justified as 'freeing up properties for those more in need'. But one can imagine the moral outcry if the same 'logic' was applied to the homeowner and their sacred private property; e.g., that those with spare rooms should be forced to scale down to make way for larger households or that those who can afford to move into more expensive homes should be forced to do so - so that poorer first time buyers can 'get on the property ladder'. A cap on the total amount of benefit received will be imposed; expected to be around £350 a week for a single person and £500 for families with children. This will probably be administered via Housing Benefit until the new Universal Credit benefit regime begins in 2013. This cap will only apply to people of working age. Again, the effects of high rents - as a proportion of total benefits received - will be likely to influence where benefit claimants can live. There will also be cuts in Council Tax Benefit(CTB). Until now central government has funded CTB by giving money to local authorities to pay to claimants. From 2013 the government will only give town halls 90% of this money; local councils will have to decide how they will deal with the 10% shortfall. This is likely to mean claimants will have to pay a few pounds each week out of their benefits to cover the shortfall. And the general prospects for those in the private sector on benefits? The housing charity Shelter predicts that "most inner-London boroughs are likely to become almost entirely unaffordable to low income tenants on housing benefit by 2016" (Evening Standard, 24 Jun 2011). Apart from redrawing the map of the city's class divide even more sharply, this will have its knock-on economic effects - eg, the service economy that the wealthy property owning elite depend on will face labour shortages and/or wage demands to compensate for increased travel costs for workers (high fares, parking fees and congestion charges make London's transport system one of the world's most expensive). Many housing benefit claimants are low paid workers. London may eventually become to resemble Paris; the city centre a playground for the rich and tourism, encircled by banlieue-type suburbs housing concentrations of the poor. "A third of England will become unaffordable for low-income households within a decade, according to a study by two leading housing organisations. A report by the housing charity Shelter and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) claims that government plans to overhaul housing benefit would price low-income households out of a third of local authorities in England, pushing them into areas of high unemployment. The changes, to be introduced in 2013, were outlined in last month's welfare reform bill, which established that future increases to local housing allowance for private tenants will be linked to the consumer price index of inflation rather than the cost of local rents. "Labour-controlled Southwark decreed last week that the rich need no longer suffer from poor neighbours in new housing developments in the north of the borough. But the decision to take £9 million in cash from the builders of 197 flats behind the Tate Modern, rather than force them to sell 34 of the units to social housing providers, is simply the latest brick taken from the wall of a London-wide policy designed to encourage mixed communities. Another example of the degradation of a plan to ensure that between 35% and 50% of the homes on large sites were sold to government-aided housing associations for rent or part-buy is Chelsea Barracks. Half the 638 flats in the long-abandoned Richard Rogers scheme were to be subsidised, but not because the developer was feeling benevolent. It was a rule insisted upon by Ken Livingstone. Boris Johnson has softened the conditions, dropped the 50% target, and now lets the boroughs decide. Here is how it's working. This week Kensington & Chelsea Council passed plans by Qatari Diar to build 448 homes on the 13-acre site. Poorer folk will not be living in 224 of the homes; instead there will be 123 "affordable" units. The price the Qataris are paying not to have an extra 101 subsidised homes on the site is £78 million. A huge amount, but it gives some indication of the lengths developers will now go to avoid mixing rich and poor. Why do they pay so much? The £772,000 per unit offset price at Chelsea is an extreme exception. The £264,000 per unit being paid by the Duke of Westminster's property company, Grosvenor, at Bankside is high. So, in the geography of a class society, not having social housing tenants as neighbours adds value to property. This city geography is potentially set to shift toward both more "gated communities" of the security-conscious rich hiding behind CCTV and concierges - and also more socially-cleansed street areas gentrified, cleared of social housing and of private sector housing benefit claimants priced out by benefit caps. “So One Housing Group is slashing the pay of its workers (Staff face sack and a wage cut - Tribune, 10 Aug) - with some losing 30% of their income, and this after a 4-year pay freeze! (Note that this freeze was not applied to OHG executives' pay.) OHG workers report that management are also increasing their workload, leading to increased workplace stress, economic insecurity and a decline in services for tenants. It's sadly ironic that a 30% pay cut is likely to make some OHG workers homeless. Yet OHG claims to be in good financial health with millions in the bank as reserves. Meanwhile the six-figure salaries of those OHG executives at the top remain in place; no "austerity" there. OHG try to justify these cuts by claiming 'savings' will help improve their care services - but cutting staff wages by up to 30% is unlikely have such an effect. It will, though, aid OHG in their bidding wars for care contracts as wages, working conditions and quality of care are driven down in a race to the bottom. Housing Associations(HAs) are often seen as charitable bodies, some even having a legal charitable status. But OHG, like many HAs, focus much of their activity on building for sale and rent at market prices. But even the minority of so-called "affordable" housing they include in new-build projects is out of reach of those most in need; eg, it was recently reported that OHG was selling an "affordable" Islington property for £705,000! With HAs happily lobbying for and implementing the government's new insecure time-limited tenancies and new lets rented at up to 80% of market value (all of which are arguably part of a process of effective privatisation of social housing), OHG and other HA management are showing clearly their real attitude towards both their workers and their tenants - and where their business practices are heading. It's time for tenants and workers to resist - and for a more general movement against the appalling housing policies of this government and their collaborators. With the rental market having failed to behave as some politicians claimed it should and 'adapt itself ' to Housing Benefit caps by lowering rents, some London councils are already talking of having to house local homeless people hundreds of miles away in more affordable areas. Politicians of all colours claim to want to promote "sustainable communities" (but for who?). Yet, with homelessness growing, the effects of the Localism Bill will actually mean less connection to any locality for those in most housing need; the weakening of secure tenancies and decreased access to permanent housing contained in this Bill (alongside housing benefits caps) will ensure that. 1) See 'When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies' - by Andy Beckett; Faber & Faber, UK 2009, p. 422. 3) But the effect of numerous complaints to the European Commission by the European Property Federation and by private landlords since 2000 has resulted in the rolling back of rent control and security of tenure in the rented sector. In Holland since 1 Jan 2011 the state can no longer supply social housing to anyone earning more than €45,000 pa and even this compromise with the EC is under review. 7) The 1988 Housing Act encouraged social housing landlords to seek private funding and the 2008 Housing & Regeneration Act encouraged private commercial investment and ownership in social housing. 9) But most HA property development is, for the moment, still subsidised by government via Housing Corporation, Homes & Community Agency Social Housing Grant and grant-in-kind (gifts of cheap urban land). Typically this grant has been around 50%, but under the new Localism Bill it will be as low as 15% - and only available if HAs contract to deliver 80% market rents in return. 15) http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/a-poor-way-to-integrate-as-housing-rules-are-relaxed-6415040.html Note in the “Shameless” picture and caption accompanying the article the snobby use of stereotypes of social housing tenants as thieving neighbours. 17) Ironically, the recent proposal to restore paying housing benefits directly to all tenants may make rent strikes easier - though this would depend on what kind of tenancy one holds. Good, interesting text; I presume you had a hand in it. Have you sent links to it to tenants association and squatting sites? What do you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of tenants associations in your experience? I know it's pretty much a guess, but do you think they'll fight, and if not, what might prevent them from doing so? And why, apart from a less atomised working class generally, do you think past tenants movements succeeded, or when they didn't, why do you think they failed? Big questions, not likely to have a ready answer, I know, but they're worth looking into. This is a really good summary of the situation. Also worth mentioning are the changes to housing benefit being implemented or proposed. Some of these changes will directly affect people in social housing e.g. from April 2013 the government want to cut 15% of housing benefit for social housing tenants with a spare room (25% cut for tenants with 2 or more spare rooms). And some will affect the demand for social housing e.g. i'm sure a lot of large families in private housing who have had a massive cut to their housing benefit (when the 5 bedroom rate for local housing allowance was cut in April) will apply for social housing. In my experiance in Newcastle, tenants associations are pretty hopeless - the Newcastle Tenants Federation seems to encourage local council tenants associations to invite officials (e.g. housing managers, police) to all their meetings resulting in groups which have no fight to them whatsoever (and putting plenty of people off attending / speaking at their meetings). There's plenty of anecdotal (but unfortunately not much concrete) evidence about systemic knobbling of tenants associations by the city council / labour party too. The situation for tenants of housing associations is even worse because their houses are less concentrated on estates so its harder to organise against a common landlord. That's not to write off all tenant association members or even all local associations, but any organised resistance is often very localised and isolated often late in the day (and often involves new groups rather than established tenants associations). Have you sent links to it to tenants association and squatting sites? What do you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of tenants associations in your experience? I have, but with little expectation - as my experience is similar to Rosa's above. TAs seem to be now mainly made up of older tenants still hanging in there from the heyday of TAs when they had some militant clout. Or a few younger ones - some who have political/career ambitions (it looks good on their CV) and/or are flattered by some patronising attention from bigwigs in their HA landlords who put them on some irrelevant cosmetic 'tenant consumer panel' or whatever. TAs tend to be pretty conservative these days - while googling for TA sites to send a link to, the first was proudly announcing their Chair's OBE award, the second emphasised 'we are non-political' etc... They can also be controlled by tight cliques and uptight busybodies, those types who want to play at political self-importance. They function as mediator between tenant and landlord - and, even when TA activists don't encourage it, other tenants often impose that role by assuming that's what the TA's for, another official body to do things for them rather than something to involve themselves in. These are my impressions anyway, reinforced by what others have told me of their experiences. More widely among tenants, though there's much dissatisfaction about poor services/repairs, arrogant and snotty-nosed HA officials, rising rents etc - in my experience there's a general apathy about being able to do much about it. Tenants and TAs are also worn down by the fact that, even if you use complaints procedures - the final stage being the Housing Ombudsman - the Ombudsman is notorious for being blatantly biased in the landlord's favour. I know it's pretty much a guess, but do you think they'll fight, and if not, what might prevent them from doing so? I think they are usually so isolated from the majority of apathetic/resigned tenants that there's not much fight in them. That may change as the screw is tightened, who knows? And why, apart from a less atomised working class generally, do you think past tenants movements succeeded, or when they didn't, why do you think they failed? I would have to do some reading/thinking to give a proper answer; but I think housing struggles tend to occur as a component of wider working class confidence and assertiveness in struggle, which tends to make the link between wages and housing costs, relative class distribution of resources etc more visible and explicit, so more contested. But changes in the property market have changed the possibilities of struggle; eg, in the 70s there was so much empty property around squatting was really easy for years. Now, with its centrality to the financial markets, every square inch of urban space is capitalised to the max, so there is far less long-term squattable empties with a good life on them. £100,000 income needed to buy a home in most of the south-east, 5 million on the waiting lists, most of whom will never get social housing, kids staying at home till they're 30 to save on rent costs, rural holiday homes turning places into ghost villages and pricing out locals etc. Yet as more mortgage defaulters are repossessed, overcrowding increases and families fall apart the image of property-owning domestic bliss is intensified - as the property boom grew, UK TV has become saturated with property and cookery programmes - and remains so. TAs are very much officially controlled and slickly managed, we need to avoid officialised ones made by the HAs/government/local council chairs. Independent action/organisations are needed and unofficial meetings (which are probably illegal by some technicality) where tenants can decide on collective action. This is a good in depth piece and I'll come back to it in more detail, but I think some councils (Lewisham?) are already restricting access to the Housing Register to those who earn less than £16000 a year ( *) or have savings less than that. To my mind, while painted as a strategy driven by high demand for a scarce resource, the net effect is to further allow the demonisation of social housing and those who live in it as people who rely on benefits. * For comparison someone on minimum wage working a 40 hour week would earn £12334.40 a year. £16k pa equates to £7.69 an hour. Bump - this article has been updated and expanded.

https://libcom.org/news/demolition-social-housing-29062011

 Who is sabotaging your public speaking? Who is sabotaging your public speaking? 1. The saboteur who holds you back Consider the attractive looking person the other side of the bar. You're feeling pretty positive and are about to make a move. Then. Out comes the saboteur to remind you... you're not wearing the right clothes, you don't know what to say, s/he might think you're strange/ too forward/ not intelligent enough. Instead, you turn back and hunch your shoulders around your drink You hate the saboteur for it, you wish you were stronger, but the result is there. Too much thinking and your saboteur has talked you out of it. 2. The saboteur who makes you lazy Even more tricky is the saboteur who keeps you 'stuck' and you don't even notice. This is a voice that's subtle and deep rooted. It encourages you not to bother, or not to look for new solutions - 'It's easier to stay how you are' or 'stick to what you're good at.' It tells you that you're too old / busy / experienced to change and that you couldn't even begin to learn to paint / dance / speak in public. This is the voice that thinks it knows what we're capable of. And it's the voice that keeps us firmly kept in our comfort zone, doing the same things as we've always done. 1. The first step is to become aware that a saboteur is present. In your daily activity, start to notice the energy levels in your body and the language that's knocking around in your head. Watch out for slumped body language and a feeling of being squashed, restricted or pushed down. Listen out for thoughts or words like "I should..." or "I have to..." or "I'm supposed to..." coming out of you, which are all signs that you're acting out of obligation, rather than choice. This is the environment a saboteur likes to create for themselves, as they feed from insecurities. 2. Once you think you've found a saboteur, it's time to investigate it. Shine a strong light on many saboteurs and you realise they were just like a little dog with a big bark. By inviting the negative part of your mindset a chance to air its frustrations and concerns, you can get some distance to those thoughts, rather than risk being controlled by them in a moment when you can do little else. As those thoughts come out, we often see how unreasonable and unnecessary they are. 3. Now that you're starting to know more about your saboteur, you can study the triggers for them showing up. What leads you into this pattern of thought and what can you do next time to stop it from happening? 4. Understanding and visualising an image of your saboteur can help you to undermine it. By having a (frankly ridiculous) image of my own saboteur, I'm able to treat him light-heartedly - like a difficult relative - and say "Oh, that's just Jeremy's way, don't worry about him, he'll be finished soon." 5. Soon you'll learn that you choose which thought processes you put energy into. Do you want to spend time indulging the negative pattern of a saboteur, or would you prefer to let those thoughts pass in favour of something more encouraging and energising? More information on how to challenge your inner saboteur? You betcha! If you're eager to become a more power filled speaker, Ginger has a multitude of courses just right for you! From freebies to e-courses, books to workshops, jump in to Ginger. Click here for a full list of Ginger courses and resources. To have a vision…? Your holiday leadership challenge. What if my audience hates me? Why you should stop saying sorry! The Anatomy of an Inspiring Speaker: Jill Bolte Taylor - "My Stroke of Insight" Anatomy of an Inspiring Speaker: Anthony Robbins - "Why we do what we do"

https://www.gingerpublicspeaking.com/article/who-is-sabotaging-your-public-speaking

The regional status of Hezbollah has markedly improved since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. What does their bolstered footing mean for Lebanon and the region? The reality of Hezbollah's position within the Lebanese system and the regional political order is a result of a number of sectarian and political factors. The group owes much if its success to its Twelver Shi'i supporters and allies domestically and internationally, but its secular politics are essential to its survival within the multiethnic and religiously pluralistic Lebanese society. Hezbollah's alliances with Syria's Assad and the Iranian regime have provided it with the arms it requires to maintain its status, but Hezbollah's domestic political strategy has earned it a prominent position in the Lebanese political system. Although it's part of a coalition government with seats in Lebanese parliament, its real power comes from the status of its paramilitary wing. Almost overshadowing the Lebanese military, Hezbollah's armed forces provide the group an appeal among many facets of society. Anti-Israeli sentiment is ubiquitous since the 2006 war, and Hezbollah's role in combating the Israeli military earned it a seat that is unlikely to be given up any time soon. Now, with the most brutal phase of the Syrian war winding down, Hezbollah's status as a regional bulwark against Sunni terrorist groups is further legitimizing the Shi'ite Islamist group's position as a powerful actor within Lebanese politics. The civil war in Syria, which initially appeared to be a popular revolution, was overwhelmingly influenced by foreign actors. The regime's strategic and natural allies changed the tide of the war with their military support, including Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese Hezbollah troops. The regime's opposition was also highly influenced by outside forces. Obviously, foreign fighters joining ISIS in both Syria and Iraq had an effect on the war, but Sunni Lebanese fighters flocked to Syria in order to join more moderate rebel groups, too. At the outset of the conflict, there were several rebel factions seeking to bring democracy to Syria to improve life for the masses, who were Sunni. Before and after the radicalization of the Syrian opposition, Lebanese Sunnis saw it necessary to join and fight for the rights of their Sunni "brothers." The radicalization of Sunni rebel groups was partly a natural process in the war of attrition, but it was aided and encouraged by the Assad regime in order to detract from any democratic ambitions in the opposition. Assad's regime released influential jihadists from its prisons, while Salafi groups in Lebanon were recruiting Sunnis to kill the "apostate" Shi'ites across the border. The sectarian divide will not subside in post-war Syria, nor will it soften in Lebanon while Hezbollah continues to gain power. The ongoing spat with Israel over offshore oil and gas exploration has allowed Hezbollah to take the front seat in any conflict or negotiations, sidestepping the legitimate Lebanese government officials in the conduct of that country's foreign policy. Hezbollah's role in the current diplomatic crisis will help to generate public support among non-Shia Lebanese, particularly as the Sunni-Shia rift deepens. The group's role in support of Assad's regime is a break from its traditional role as an anti-Israeli organization. Its formation and its past operations have been in support of destroying the Israeli state in order to establish an Islamic Palestine. However, Hezbollah's active role in killing Sunni rebels in Syria have galvanized Lebanese Sunnis against the group. Tension have been running high in Lebanon, particularly in cities like Tripoli, where firefights have become commonplace once again since the start of the Syrian war. The growing power of Hezbollah's Shia militancy, in combination with extremist Sunni elements within Lebanon, threatens to reignite internal sectarian conflict. In the context of worsening Sunni-Shia relations, the dispute between Lebanon and Israel over hydrocarbon exploration rights is a perfect opportunity for Hezbollah to take a bold stance. It sends a message to the Lebanese people that Hezbollah acts on their behalf against the common enemy, Israel, while also showing the Lebanese and Israeli governments that it is a heavyweight that must be respected. Hezbollah's growing arsenal from its foreign allies, Iran and Syria, is of great concern to Israel, which is responding with the construction of a wall on its Northern border with Lebanon. Hezbollah's status in Lebanon will continue to be a thorn in the side of Western, Israeli, and Sunni interests in Lebanon and the region as long as sectarian conditions allow for it to grow. Shi'ite hegemony is on its way in, and the apparent newfound relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia's crown prince may serve to bolster Hezbollah's status as the legitimate Islamic representative in the region. I don't suggest that Sunnis will convert to Twelver Shi'ism, but they may support the opposition to what they see as a corrupt Saudi regime working with Israel against Arab and Islamic interests. The more likely outcome, however, is that Sunnis will continue to radicalize and join extremist groups in order to counter the corruption and lack of legitimacy among the supposed Sunni representatives in the region.

https://www.thestatesman.ca/our-latest/hezbollah-revitalized

Horace Mann Award recipient later this month. The news tip that changed Jack Hamann's life came from a rather mundane assignment. It was 20 years ago and Hamann, then a reporter for KING 5 TV, was covering a story on the expansion of a sewage treatment plant in Discovery Park when a park employee approached him with the sort of tip many journalists would dismiss: check out a little military graveyard, the employee told Hamann, and you'll find a story there. Little did Hamann know that this tip would lead to the biggest investigative story of his life – and to the eventual clearing of 28 African American soldiers wrongly convicted by the U.S. government for lynching an Italian prisoner of war during World War II. The case began in 1944, right here in Seattle, when 43 African American soldiers were accused of rioting and three were charged with the lynching murder of Private Guglielmo Olivotto on a military obstacle course at Fort Lawton, which was located just north of downtown Seattle, in the area now called Discovery Park. "I was totally stunned because I've lived in Seattle for a very long time and didn't think of or know Seattle of being a place where there was a history of lynching. I had no idea there were ever prisoners of war in Seattle, but most shocking was that the suspects apparently were African American and I have never in my life heard of Black men being accused of lynching," Hamann said. For years Hamann, 52, thought about the case. "I thought, 'How could such a large trial go unnoticed?' Something is wrong here," Hamann said. "I kept thinking this just doesn't make sense, no one could ever find another case in the history of the United States where Black men had stood trial for the alleged lynching for anybody, White or Black." Eventually, after years of researching the case, Hamann managed to locate four of the defendants and two of the defense attorneys, one of whom was living in Bellevue. Then, in 2001, after the youngest of his two children left for college, Hamann and his wife, Leslie, looked at the possibility of writing a book. To do it, they would have to do more research, including a month-long trip across the United States to cities like Chicago and Detroit and to small towns in the Deep South, to the defendants' homelands to talk to whomever they could about the case. At the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., Leslie found a report, which became the basis of Hamann's book, "On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of WWII," that said the Army knew the African American men were innocent even before they went on trial. "These men rarely had a constituency. They were from very poor environments. Many of their families members had no idea what had happened to them," Hamann said. The soldiers had people lobbying for them — the NAACP Legal Fund and Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice, wrote letters to the Army complaining about the trial — but it was the 1940s and people didn't demand things from Congress like they do today, Hamann said. "Even though it was all over the newspapers, including The New York Times, nothing much came of it." Hamann's story, however, even though it was written six decades after the fact, got the attention of some influential people. After reading "On American Soil," Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, introduced a bill in Congress that would reopen the trial. McDermott then urged Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from San Diego and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee to reexamine the convictions. As a direct result of Hamann's book, the Pentagon has reviewed the convictions of the African American soldiers and has cleared 28 of them. Today, of the 43 original defendants, only two are still alive. Hamann said his book is the "story of people and how they deal with the kind of crisis" he couldn't even imagine going through. "Here are these guys, they know they didn't kill anybody, they certainly know they didn't lynch anyone and they certainly know a Black man's not gonna lynch somebody, especially back in 1944," Hamann said. "They were the scapegoats; there were the convenient ones, they didn't have anyone backing them, there were obvious signs it was somebody else who did this but the Army just blew right past them … the power and the weight of the United States military was coming down on them." This past summer, Hamann received a call from the Pentagon saying that the convictions will be overturned and justice done for the men and their surviving families. Hamann estimates there are still about 15 to 20 families he and the Pentagon have been unable to find who may be eligible for benefits. "I hope this becomes part of the discussion in more classrooms and churches because this is a moral issue. What lessons were learned from this?" Hamann said. "It was actually the churches that first wrote to President Roosevelt and said 'You're wrong, something went wrong here.' They turned out to be right, but never knew that in their lifetime. Someone had to stand up for these men and their voices just weren't heard when they should have been." Hamann recently found out that he is one of three Horace Mann Award recipients to be honored March 29 in the Crystal Ballroom at the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle. Presented by Antioch University, the award honors those who have won significant victories for humanity through their work or volunteerism. At the awards ceremony, Hamann will give a voice to those who weren't heard "when they should have been," by reading letters written in 1944 by people trying to tell the president that something was wrong, including one from a mother of one of the defendants that pointed out what was wrong with the trial – a letter than went unanswered and unnoticed, until now. Profession: Journalist and Author of "On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of WWII." He has won numerous journalism honors, including 10 regional Emmy awards, and is a former correspondent and documentary producer for CNN and PBS. Family: Married to Leslie Hamann. The couple has two grown children, who both graduated from Garfield High. Hometown: Originally from a rural town in southern California, Hamann and his wife moved to Seattle in 1981 after graduating from the University of Oregon School of Law. Education: Bachelor's of arts degree in economics from University of California, Los Angeles and law degree from University of Oregon. Coach Hamann: A youth sports coach for almost 30 years, Hamann is passionate about the students he coaches. "The kids are amazing, you get so much out of it. In our community now, so few kids really get challenged the way that sports can challenge them," Hamann said. He has spent the past 10 years as an assistant girls' volleyball coach along side his wife, Leslie, who has been the head volleyball coach at Garfield High School for eight years. "On American Soil": The book is available at local bookstores and online, in hardcover for $24.95, published by Algonquin Books. The University of Washington Press has published a paperback version, which will be out next week. The Hamanns recently finished a documentary, which aired on Channel 9 in Seattle, about women's sports, and Jack Hamann is researching another book. For more information, visit www.jackhamann.com.

https://www.theskanner.com/news/northwest/1939-on-american-soil-2007-03-22

Language Log: Habermas the conservative? I'm glad that Sally Thomason is in Hamburg, because I need help. I've just gotten a nice note from Germany, but the more I think about it, the more confused I get. Visiting the University of Hamburg, Sally is in a good position to do some linguistic anthropology to map out the intellectual territory that I'm lost in. I am the owner webmaster of kerneuropa.de. I noticed you mentioned my website in your blog on Hambermas, though you mentioned you were not sure whether our site has anything to to with the kerneuropa debate started by Habermas and others. Some friends and I secured the domain because we completly disagree with the whole notion of a European core that conservatives want to create: an idea that has unfortunately been endorsed by some German intellectuals. We wanted to counter this idea with a weblog on European Politics and Sports. Therefore, we spent most of June and July on the Euro 2004. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for noticing us, since you were our #2 referrer url (only beaten by google). I wish Mr. Leidecker and his associates well. At least I think I do. How can you not like a site that has posts on sports entitled "Portugal wird Europas Meister" [ translate] and "Latvia, oder die Band auf der Titanic spielte auch bis zum Schluß" [ translate]? But the thing is, I have to confess that I find European intellectual politics baffling, and so I'm not completely sure what I'm supporting here. Is Habermas being viewed as a conservative? or is he just one of the German intellectuals who have unfortunately endorsed a conservative initiative? Are "conservatives" and "German intellectuals" disjoint sets of people, who occasionally make alliances for convenience? Is the kerneuropa development that motivated Leidecker to get started the same Habermas statement that I blogged about, or something else? Is the idea of "core Europe" being rejected because of opposition to all regional identity politics, or because of support for more local regional identity politics? On May 31, 2003, philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas published a joint statement in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and France's La Liberation, calling for the formulation of a common European foreign policy in order to "balance out" US global hegemony. A greater show of solidarity between the members of "Kerneuropa" or "core Europe," they contend, and the empowerment of intergovernmental organizations like the UN, the World Bank, and the IMF, is the only way to contain (and perhaps combat) the recent "pre-emptive" foreign policy initiatives of the United States. So is this the "European core that some conservatives want to create"? or just evidence that the "idea ... has unfortunately been endorsed by some German intellectuals"? What does "conservative" mean in this connection? Is it the old meaning of "someone who wants to prevent change", or the new meaning of "someone who wants to change things"? Or one of the many other current meanings, such as "someone who generally dislikes government intervention", or "someone who supports the wealthy and powerful"? Mr. Leidecker has kindly written to me in English rather than in German, so perhaps he has tried to translate some European political terminology into its American equivalent. Another piece of evidence here is that kerneuropa.de links to Daily Kos and politics1. If so, I'm afraid that the translation didn't work. In the US these days, "conservatism" spreads its tent widely, over many values of many social and ideological variables, but I don't think you could stretch it to cover Habermas. Of course, I'm in no position to complain about the irrationality of European politics, being myself a citizen of a country in which Ralph Nader has been variously allied with Pat Buchanan, Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani, and the Oregon Republican Party. But the sad fact is that politicians -- and other humans -- are like words. Their meanings shift in ways that make local sense but combine over time to create bizarre large-scale trajectories. And some politicians, like some words, are what Roman Jakobson called "shifters" -- their meanings involve contextual references that land on completely different things on different occasions. Nationalists, for instance. Anyhow, I look forward to more information, in the naive hope that it will make me less rather than more confused.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001263.html

- 'From The Inside' was performed for the first time since 2012.6.10 Maxidrom. There was a break between 'Given Up' and 'From The Inside' (almost 30 seconds) to switch guitars. The "Extra Note" after the 'Given Up' outro was removed from the setlist as well. - The Wall Of Noise Outro for 'Waiting For The End' was dropped from the setlist after being performed for every performance since its debut at the Music For Relief + Power The World Benefit on 2012.5.18. - Mike's solo portion of the show featured a hybrid verse of 'Wretches And Kings', the chorus of 'Remember The Name' (by Fort Minor), and Mike's verse from the Nick Catchdubs remix of 'Skin To Bone'. He was off beat during the 'Remember The Name' chorus. - Chester accidentally began to sing the 2014 Version of 'Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You' over the transition from Mike's Solo Medley into 'Numb'. - 'A Place For My Head' was added to the setlist to open the encore. This was the first public performance of the song since the band performed at Warped Tour on 2014.6.22, though it was also played during the soundcheck at the Amsterdam, NH summit. Brad played a new guitar solo intro to the song. - The studio intro of 'What I've Done' was performed instead of beginning of the short ticking intro. The intro, however, was still shortened. - During the bridge of 'Bleed It Out', the band sang a refrain from 'The Catalyst'. Although a drum solo was listed on the setlist, it was not played. - This was Linkin Park's first show in Orlando since July 2003. - Due to the Magic vs. Houston Rockets game being held the day before the show at the venue, the band could not do a production rehearsal as they usually do before tours start. Instead, they rehearsed at Third Encore until the afternoon before the show.

https://lplive.net/shows/2015/20150115/

Processed Foods: Did You Think They Process Them to Make Them Healthier??? Can you name the following mystery food, based on its ingredients? Corn, Vegetable Oil, Buttermilk Solids, Salt, Tomato Powder, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Corn Syrup Solids, Corn Starch, Whey, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Monosodium Glutamate, Cheddar Cheese (Cultured Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Nonfat Milk Solids, Sugar, Dextrose, Malic Acid, Sodium Caseinate, Sodium Acetate, Artificial Color (Including Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5), Spice, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Sodium Citrate, Disodium Inosinate, and Disodium Guanylate. If you guessed Ranch Flavored Doritos...you're right! We didn't evolve to eat Doritos. We evolved to eat carrots!! Whatever happened to eating real, whole, unprocessed foods regularly? You know, the foods grown in orchards, gardens, or greenhouses. The ones that have naturally vibrant colors, flavors and textures. ...we forgot about them because they receive very little advertising. No big food processor is making a fortune on broccoli. Why? Because broccoli doesn't need processing! ...packaged foods are so much more convenient than whole foods. No washing, no cutting, no slaving over a hot stove, no mess in the kitchen. You can even shop less frequently if you eat packaged foods because they last an indefinite amount of time in your cupboard. Unfortunately, we can't say the same of whole foods. Q: Why do food manufacturers process foods anyway? A: Because they're interested in shelf, not health. Shelf life that is. Not exactly an ingredient list necessary conducive to optimal health! Processed foods also tend to have a higher "glycemic index" than whole foods. That means they digest and get into your bloodstream more quickly, causing your blood sugar to shoot up. The subsequent "crash" causes you to crave.. ..."I don't care! I like processed foods. They taste so good!" I know, I know. I like them too. So, if avoiding them completely is out of the question, why not consider improving your ratio. If you currently eat an 85:15 ratio (processed foods:whole foods), consider reducing the processed stuff by 10% and increasing the good stuff by 10%. Your new ratio would be 75:25 (processed foods:whole foods). If processed goods currently make up 100% of your diet (fast food for breakfast, cheeseburger, fries and coke for lunch, potato chips and soda for afternoon snack, pasta and garlic bread for dinner), start by reducing your consumption of processed foods to 90% and adding 10% whole foods. It could be as simple as substituting whole foods for some of your processed snack foods. Try bringing 5 pieces of fruit to work on Monday morning so you have at least one piece of fruit for every day of the week (and don't have to remember on a daily basis to pack it)! Wanna get a better handle on your current ratio of processed foods to whole foods? Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. In the first column, list all of the whole foods you eat. ...make some decisions about how to add more foods to the whole foods column while cutting out some foods from the processed foods column. More on detoxing your diet.

http://www.personal-nutrition-guide.com/processed-foods.html

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease is a common debilitating dementia with known heritability, for which 20 late onset susceptibility loci have been identified, but more remain to be discovered. This study sought to identify new susceptibility genes, using an alternative gene-wide analytical approach which tests for patterns of association within genes, in the powerful genome-wide association dataset of the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project Consortium, comprising over 7 m genotypes from 25,580 Alzheimer's cases and 48,466 controls. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In addition to earlier reported genes, we detected genome-wide significant loci on chromosomes 8 (TP53INP1, p = 1.4×10-6) and 14 (IGHV1-67 p = 7.9×10-8) which indexed novel susceptibility loci. SIGNIFICANCE: The additional genes identified in this study, have an array of functions previously implicated in Alzheimer's disease, including aspects of energy metabolism, protein degradation and the immune system and add further weight to these pathways as potential therapeutic targets in Alzheimer's disease.

http://orca.cf.ac.uk/74887/

JANUARY 24 -Image caption -The networks of fake accounts can be used to boost followers or post junk messages The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics. MANILA, JANUARY 30, 2017 (BBC, UK) 24 January 2017 - The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. "It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots," said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a computer scientist at UCL, who uncovered the massive networks. Mr Echeverria's research began by combing through a sample of 1% of Twitter users in order to get a better understanding of how people use the social network. However, analysis of the data revealed some strange results that, when probed further, seemed to reveal lots of linked accounts, suggesting one person or group is running the botnet. These accounts did not act like the bots other researchers had found but were clearly not being run by humans. His research suggests earlier work to find bots has missed these types of networks because they act differently to the most obvious automated accounts. The researchers are now asking the public via a website and a Twitter account to report bots they spot to help get a better idea of how prevalent they are. Many bots are obvious because they have been created recently, have few followers, have strange user names and little content in the messages. It was "amazing and surprising" to discover the massive networks, said Dr Shi Zhou, a senior lecturer from UCL who oversaw Mr Echeverria's research. "Considering all the efforts already there in detecting bots, it is amazing that we can still find so many bots, much more than previous research," Dr Zhou told the BBC. Twitter deserved praise for its work on finding and eliminating bots, he added, but it was clear that skilled hackers had found ways to avoid official scrutiny and keep the bots ticking over. The pair's most recent work had uncovered a bigger network of bots that seemed to include more than 500,000 accounts. "Their potential threats are real and scary due to the sheer size of the botnet," he said. It was hard to know who was behind the collections of fake accounts, said Dr Zhou, although there was evidence that a small percentage of the accounts had been sold or rented as they were now following Twitter users outside the main bot network. "What is really surprising is our questioning on the whole effort of bot detection in the past years," said Dr Zhou. "Suddenly we feel vulnerable and don't know much: how many more are there? What do they want to do?" A Twitter spokesman said the social network had clear policy on automation that was "strictly enforced". Users were barred from writing programs that automatically followed or unfollowed accounts or which "favourited" tweets in bulk, he said. Automated responses "degraded" the experience for other users and was prohibited, he added. "While we have systems and tools to detect spam on Twitter, we also rely on our users to report spamming," he said. A woman from Brighton who was mistaken for Ivanka Trump on Twitter by none other than the US President-elect himself has told the BBC it has been a surreal start to the day. Ivanka Majic, a digital consultant, said she and her husband were woken at 06:00 by calls from the media. They told her she featured in a tweet to Donald Trump's 20 million followers. Mr Trump was quoting praise for his daughter from another Twitter user, who had used the wrong username. Ms Majic, who has worked for the Labour Party in the past, said she discovered what had happened when a news agency texted her husband. "I came downstairs to check my phone and I had so many notifications," she told the BBC. "It's very unusual to be speaking to both ITV and the BBC 45 minutes into your day." She said she has regularly been mistaken for Ms Trump on Twitter over the past year, but never on such a scale. "Without Donald Trump it's a steady simmer of mentions," she said. "I am kind of like that @johnlewis bloke but John Lewis is probably nicer to be associated with." "During the election I had a Twitter bot for everyone who accidentally mentioned me encouraging them to vote for Hillary [Clinton]". "Ivanka is an incredibly boring and popular Slavic girls name. The other one I get confused with is an Hungarian concrete company called Ivanka concrete," she added. "I'm still undecided about whether to change my username. I don't use Twitter very much partly as a result as having so many mentions. Tweets from normal people get lost in the mix." "I'm someone who has used twitter since 2007. A new thing comes along and you create a username never thinking that one day Ivanka Trump's dad will be President." Matthew Braga is the senior technology reporter for CBC News. a business and technology reporter for the Financial Post. In the waning months of 2016, two of the world's biggest tech companies decided they would do their part to curb the spread of hoaxes and misinformation on their platforms — by this point, widely referred to under the umbrella of "fake news." Facebook and Google announced they would explicitly ban fake news publishers from using their advertising networks to make money, while Facebook later announced additional efforts to flag and fact-check suspicious news stories in users' feeds. How successful have these efforts been? Neither company will say much — but Google, at least, has offered a glimpse. In a report released today, Google says that its advertising team reviewed 550 sites it suspected of serving misleading content from November to December last year. Of those 550 sites, Google took action against 340 of them for violating its advertising policies. "When we say 'take action' that basically means, this is a site that historically was working with Google and our Adsense products to show ads, and now we're no longer allowing our ad systems to support that content," said Scott Spencer, Google's director of product management for sustainable ads in an interview. Nearly 200 publishers — that is, the site operators themselves — were also removed from Google's AdSense network permanently, the company said. Not all of the offenders were caught violating the company's new policy specifically addressing misrepresentation; some may have run afoul of other existing policies. In total, Google says, it took down 1.7 billion ads in violation of its policies in 2016. No additional information is contained within the report — an annual review of bad advertising practices that Google dealt with last year. In both an interview and a followup email, Google declined to name any of the publishers that had violated its policies or been permanently removed from its network. Nor could Google say how much money it had withheld from publishers of fake news, or how much money some of its highest-grossing offenders made. Some fake news site operators have boasted of making thousands of dollars a month in revenue from advertising displayed on their sites. The sites reviewed by Google also represent a very brief snapshot in time — the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election — and Spencer was unable to say how previous months in the year might have compared. "There's no way to know. We take action against sites when they're identified and they violate our policies," Spencer said. "It's not like I can really extrapolate the number." Companies such as Google are only part of the picture. "It's the advertisers' dollars. It's their responsibility to spend it wisely," said Susan Bidel, a senior analyst at Forrester Research who recently co-wrote a report on fake news for marketers and advertisers. That, however, is easier said than done. Often, advertisers don't know all of the sites on which their ads run — making it difficult to weed out sites designed to serve misinformation. And even if they are able to maintain a partial list of offending sites, "there's no blacklist that's going to be able to keep up with fake news," Bidel said, when publishers can quickly create new sites. Until advertisers have more insight into where their ads run, Bidel said, it's left to advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook to weed out offending sites. In an email, Facebook declined to answer specific questions on its efforts — specifically, how many fake news publishers it has suspended or taken action against, the names of publishers or the amount of revenue Facebook has withheld from publishers of fake news. Instead, the company provided a statement, attributed to an unnamed spokesperson: "It is still early days, but we're looking forward to learning and continuing to roll this out more broadly soon" — "this" referring to its previously announced tools and efforts to address fake news. "I always say the bad guys with algorithms are going to be one step ahead of the good guys with algorithms," Bidel said. "I don't know that you're ever going to be able to eradicate this form of fraud, or any other form of fraud. But it can be brought to some acceptable level — and that level needs to be determined by the industry." If Facebook is to be believed, Hillary Clinton has deep ties to satanic rituals and the occult. The post in question has nearly 3,000 shares, and links to a story on a conspiracy-laden political site. It is most definitely fake. But like many of the stories that were posted to Facebook in this U.S. election cycle, it was written specifically for those with a right-leaning partisan bias in mind. For this particular group of voters, it just begged to be shared. And share they did. In an election dominated by the sexist, racist, and generally outrageous invective of America's president-elect Donald Trump, Facebook proved the perfect social platform for the sharing of fake, too-good-to-be-true style news. At the end of August, The New York Times' John Herrman reported on the subtle shift in Facebook feeds across America, many of which were increasingly filled with questionable news sources and fake stories specifically designed to be shared. More recently, BuzzFeed's Craig Silverman took on the daunting task of debunking fake news stories in near-real time. Democrats and Republicans alike clicked and shared on what they hoped to be true, whether or not there was any underlying truth. In both the run-up to the election and its immediate aftermath, there have been arguments that Facebook helped make a Trump presidency possible — that, by design, Facebook helps breed misinformation and encourage the spread of fake news, and that it can shape voter opinion based on the stories it chooses to show. Whether or not this is true is practically impossible to say because of how little insight we have into how Facebook's myriad algorithms work. "I think that if we were to learn how, for example, networks of disinformation form, that would give people a lot more information of how to create networks of information," said Frank Pasquale, a law professor at the University of Maryland, and author of The Black Box Society, a book on algorithms. "But because the algorithms are a black box, there's no way to study them." Facebook is notoriously tight-lipped about how its algorithms are designed and maintained, and has granted only a handful of carefully controlled interviews with journalists. We know that signals such as likes, comments, and shares all factor heavily into what Facebook shows its users, but not which signals contribute to a particular post's appearance in a user's feed, nor how those signals are weighted. "Anything that gets clicks, anything that gets more engagement and more potential ad revenue is effectively accelerated by the platform, with very rare exceptions," Pasquale said. Inevitably, posts that hewed to partisan beliefs proved especially popular, whether or not they were true. And how much of an impact these voices had on the voting public, only Facebook knows. For us to have any insight would require a level of algorithmic transparency, or algorithmic accountability into systems that few understand, though they increasingly shape the way we think. "Election information is one of those domains where there's a pretty clear connection between information that people are being given access to and their ability to make a well informed decision," says Nicholas Diakopoulos, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's journalism school. He says algorithmic transparency is "one method to increase the level of accountability we have over these platforms." Both Diakopoulos and Pasquale believe that Facebook is actually a media company — despite its repeated claims otherwise — and as such needs to take more responsibility for the quality of news that appears on its site. One concern is that Facebook has so much power and influence over the content its nearly 1.2 billion daily users see that it could conceivably influence the outcome of an election. In fact, Facebook actually did something to this effect in 2012, assisting academic researchers with a "randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 U.S. congressional elections." The study's authors concluded that, both directly and indirectly, the Facebook messages increased voter turnout by 340,000 votes. Without more insight into how Facebook places news stories in its users' feeds, no one would ever know if a viral political hoax site was responsible for doing the same. There is little insight into how Facebook identifies trustworthy sources of information and penalizes those that are not. But in light of past censorship squabbles — such as Facebook's removal and subsequent reinstatement of a photo from the Vietnam War of a young, napalm-burned Kim Phuc — the question is whether users will feel comfortable with Facebook having that role. "Do we really want Facebook deciding what's misinformation or not?" asked Jonathan Koren, who previously worked at Facebook on the company's trending news algorithm, and is a software engineer at an artificial intelligence company called Ozlo. "And that's why they don't want to do it, because they don't want to be responsible for it. But at the same time, there's nobody responsible."

http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/si/si003080.htm

When it comes to selecting a surgeon, I'll take skill over personality anytime. But the $64,000 question is - how do you assess a surgeon's skill? The nurses see the surgeon's results - they see the successes and they see the mistakes - and they know the difference. Ask to speak to the Nursing Director. Let him or her know you have questions for the operating room (OR) nursing staff and anesthesia personnel, and ask for help gaining access to them. Also ask to speak to nurses who work on the floor where surgeon's patients usually go after surgery (they see the recovery experience of that surgeon's patients vs. other surgeon's patients). If you needed this surgery, who would you have do it? Would you send one of your parent's to this surgeon? Can you share a great success story about this surgeon? Of course the nurses usually won't come right out and say, "That surgeon is terrible." But you can usually pick up on their overall opinion of the surgeon through your discussion anyway (e.g. by what they don't say or with their facial expressions). For example, if the nurse says, "I sent my dad to him" that's about the highest praise there is. Conversely, if the nurse says, "He's such a nice guy" but declines to comment on his surgical skills, that is a red flag. If you're still not sure, you can ask to speak with the Risk Manager of the hospital, who is usually a supervisory nurse. Again, he or she will give you just basics but the tone in which he or she talks with you might allow you to pick up on subtleties. Ask for references from three patients, but don't ask the surgeon for these. Ask the physician who referred you to the surgeon (this will typically be your primary care physician). That way you're more likely to get a balanced view. Then, provided those patients give the surgeon good marks, ask your surgeon for two more references, and this time ask for references only from patients who have had your specific surgery for the same diagnosis. For those of you who are wondering, yes, you can ask your doctor for references from other patients. A good surgeon will be happy to give you references and does this sort of thing all the time. A good surgeon will have plenty of patients who are happy to serve as references. And a good surgeon knows that if you're confident about your decision to have surgery and your choice of surgeon, then you'll do better after the surgery. You really can't do too much of this. If you have any friends who work in the healthcare field, see if they can find out about your surgeon. The healthcare universe is actually quite small when it comes to surgeons, and often it just takes a couple phone calls for someone who works in health care to find out about the reputation of a surgeon. Internet sites like RateMD.com, HealthGrades.com, and Vitals.com are tapping into the collective wisdom of thousands of patients, allowing them to rank and rate physicians based on their individual experiences. These sites don't have that much participation from patients. Many physicians only have one or two ratings. It's human nature for mainly the dissatisfied patients to go online and complain - the ones who were happy with their surgery typically don't comment on these sites. It doesn't hurt to check to see what other people are saying about the surgeon in question, but be sure to take the comments with a grain of salt. Consumer Reports and Medicare are starting to score doctors on their actual outcomes. Consumer Reports recently launched ratings of surgeons based on their heart bypass outcomes, but more specialties are sure to follow. Medicare also rates physicians based on outcomes, but if your surgeon does not take Medicare he or she will not be included. Also, consider doing a background check (using Doctor Background Check or MD Nationwide) to review any history of malpractice or to discover if the surgeon has been subject to any disciplinary actions. When you ask your surgeon questions, make sure you have an opinion about the correct answer to some of the questions so that, even though you don't have an MD or DO, at least you will be able to gauge the credibility of some of their answers. To do this, look up everything you can about your surgery - such as on the Spinal Fusion and Back Surgery sections of this site). Use the knowledge you gain as a basis for an interview with your surgeon. For example, if your surgeon is recommending an ALIF for lumbar degenerative disc disease, look up the principal risks of this surgery on Spine-health.com and then ask the surgeon what they are. If he or she fails to mention one or several of the main risks, this is a red flag. At the very least, confirm that he or she is board certified or board eligible in his or her specialty by visiting American Board of Medical Specialties. Visit Federation of State Medical Boards to make sure he or she is licensed in the state. All of the above takes time, but when you consider the magnitude of the potential risks and the potential upside of having surgery, then it is definitely worth the time and effort. Special thanks to the collective insights and experiences of Spine-health's active and vibrant Pain Forums for contributing most of the above points.

https://www.spine-health.com/blog/how-pick-good-surgeon

The latest: The chart above is one small part of Equinor's annual Energy Perspectives report out Thursday, a wide-ranging look at what global energy systems — electricity, transport, industry and more — might look like in the future. Equinor (formerly Statoil) breaks their outlook to 2050 into three umbrella categories, which are . . . The new Equinor energy outlook also offers more grist for the mill on the question of when global crude oil demand will peak. Crude question: They don't exactly offer a central outlook, but the date is 2030 in their "reform" scenario, where demand peaks at 111 mbd and then falls to 105 mbd in 2050. For comparison, it's currently in the 98–99 mbd range. Go deeper: S&P Global Platts delves into the crude oil analyses in the report here. "Equinor's energy outlook painted a more pessimistic picture for oil than the International Energy Agency and BP, which estimate, respectively, that oil demand could peak after 2040 or in the late 2030s," they report. The Energy Department says it's not dissing the gas industry as the administration weighs plans to aid economically struggling coal-fired and nuclear plants. Why it matters: New comments signal how the potential intervention in power markets is causing friction with an industry that has typically had a good rapport with Republicans. Natural gas has taken substantial market share from coal, and bountiful cheap gas is a big reason why the coal and nuclear industries are struggling. The latest: The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group representing gas pipelines, issued a strongly worded statement yesterday attacking claims in a leaked administration memo about pipelines' vulnerability to cyber and physical attacks. The memo lays out security justifications for preventing retirements of "fuel secure" facilities, i.e. coal and nuclear plants. Quoted: INGAA said it's "deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s apparent move to scapegoat natural gas to prop up uneconomic coal and nuclear plants," and accused the administration of a plan to "punish" gas. DOE response: Shaylyn Hynes, a DOE spokesperson, said yesterday evening saying that it's "absurd" to argue the administration is seeking to punish gas. "DOE views natural gas as a vital part of our energy mix," she said, and touted administration efforts to bolster production and exports. But Hynes noted, "DOE also recognizes that there are serious threats and vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure nationwide, including pipelines." The context: The White House is eyeing a plan to ensure purchases of generation or generation capacity from coal and nuclear plants while it reviews electricity system vulnerabilities. But critics say the administration is grafting a security rationale onto a plan to nakedly prop up coal. Out today: A new analysis says policymakers should consider alternatives to a common tool for estimating damages from carbon emissions — the "social cost of carbon" (SC-CO2) — when setting CO2 taxes and clean energy subsidies. Noah Kaufman, an economist with Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, instead suggests crafting CO2 prices based on what cost-effectively puts countries on a pathway toward long-term "net-zero" emissions. Between the lines: While carbon taxes are a non-starter in Washington right now, the paper is part of the think tank's wider effort to generate analyses that can guide policy decisions if a political window opens in the future. The details: Kaufman compares the benefits and drawbacks of the SC-CO2 versus setting prices based on a "net zero" target in the latter half of the century. Better still, he writes, is a near-term — perhaps 10-year — emissions target that creates an initial pathway to the "net-zero" goal. The paper lays out reasons why the all-encompassing SC-CO2 can be ill-suited to creating tangible policy, noting there's less uncertainty involved with creating carbon prices to achieve a specific emissions outcome. "[M]odeling the economy of one jurisdiction over a handful of decades is inherently easier than modeling the climate and economy of the world over centuries," he writes. One level deeper: "The presumption that today’s CO2 prices should reflect a start-to-finish solution to the climate problem may give disproportionate influence to the most uncertain aspects of the climate problem," Kaufman writes. "Instead, like the doctor who tells her patient to take two pills and call her in the morning, a humbler approach to developing CO2 prices could enable a focus on the aspects of the problem that we understand well and a willingness to adjust our strategies as we learn more," he adds. Speaking of carbon dioxide, Axios' Andrew Freedman reports that the amount of CO2 in the air exceeded 411 parts per million during the month of May, which was the highest monthly level ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Why it matters: Based on studies of historical levels of greenhouse gases in the air, this is also the highest level in human history. The big picture: CO2, is the most important long-lived greenhouse gas and human activities, primarily via burning fossil fuels for energy, are adding more of it with each passing day. Scripps and NOAA monitor CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii as well as other locations. This year, the May average peaked at 411.31 ppm, according to Scripps researchers, the organization reported in a press release. NOAA’s reading was 411.25 for the month, according to a press release. In addition, the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, NOAA data shows. The rate of growth averaged about 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s, and 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s, but it has climbed to 2.3 ppm between 2016 and 2017. This was the sixth straight year-to-year increase above 2 ppm, scientists said. Offshore: Per The Wall Street Journal, "The world’s largest energy companies lined up Thursday for a major auction of coveted Brazilian oil fields, even as Brazil’s government rolled back some market-friendly policies that would have made its oil industry more competitive." Their piece and other reports note that companies together paid over $800 million for access to the huge resources off the country's coast in the so-called pre-salt formations. U.S. shale: Bloomberg has the latest on the effect of pipeline constraints in the prolific Permian basin. "Eight of the Permian’s so-called pure-play drillers lost $15.6 billion in combined market value in the 15 days through Tuesday, as shipping constraints devour the profit they can fetch for a barrel of crude," they report. Aramco IPO: The BBC writes about efforts by financial regulators to land the planned (though uncertain and delayed) IPO of Saudi Aramco and offerings from other state-owned companies. "A new category has been approved for companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, which will allow oil giant Saudi Aramco to list shares in London. London has been accused of watering down corporate governance rules in order to accommodate the huge listing," they report. Errands, part 1: Per The Washington Post, Pruitt "asked members of his 24/7 security detail to run errands for him on occasion, including picking up his dry cleaning and taking him in search of a favorite moisturizing lotion, according to two individuals familiar with those trips who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly." Errands, part 2: Via The Daily Beast, "According to four sources familiar with the work environment at the Environmental Protection Agency, its scandal-plagued EPA administrator has regularly sent his subordinates out during the workday to pick up his favorite snacks and treats."

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-generate-87af9240-b2d8-4d09-8651-deb8904c2b4a.html

Add these two entries to the list of time travel tomes; a slim, veritable novella by screenwriter Stanley Shapiro, and a longer, more eclectic work by Ken Grimwood. Fiction makes strange bedfellows. Or something. Shapiro, writer and producer of a flurry of popular movie classics like "Pillow Talk," "Operation Petticoat" and "Touch of Mink," briskly tells the tale of David Russell, a man obsessed with saving John F. Kennedy to prevent his brother's subsequent death in Vietnam. Obsession meets opportunity when David crosses paths with an eccentric scientist named Koopman who claims to have invented a time machine. One thing leads to another, David zips back to 1963 Dallas to stop Kennedy's assassination, but arrives too late to thwart Oswald and moreover is mistakenly fingered as the presidential assassin. Tragicomic misadventure ensues, as David's girlfriend and Koopman travel back to try and save David (each time changing everything that happens later --as if history is penciled in, and all reality is relative). Shapiro's tale unfolds swiftly and deftly, not unlike a screenplay, never lingering too long with any one insight or emotion as if for fear the audience will get up and leave. There are marvelous passages and some strong, visual writing. But it all tumbles forward too neatly and inevitably, and David's narration is so terribly passionate and earnest it seems almost satiric. It's a weird book; unapologetically pro-Kennedy (although the fine Collier/Horowitz biography "The Kennedys" even quotes Robert Kennedy to the point that, had his brother John lived, he would have continued the Vietnam War). You keep feeling Shapiro's gift for light, romantic comedy struggling up through the overwrought prose. You keep wishing it would surface. "Replay," a Literary Guild selection, similarly involves time travel back to 1963, and a passing attempt to save Kennedy, but it is a broader, sturdier, more traditional novel. Grimwood tells the story of Jeff Winston, a beleaguered journalist who dies in 1988 only to be mysteriously reincarnated at age 18 in 1963, with his life to live over again. He makes millions this time betting on things like the World Series and the Kentucky Derby, he lives an even emptier (but wealthier) life than he did before, and then dies again in 1988 and goes back to 1963 to . . . "replay" it all over again. Unlike Shapiro's protagonist, Winston never radically changes the world's history, but each time he replays his life he does it differently, striving all the while to understand why he's caught in the cycle, what he's supposed to learn from it. It's a fascinating premise, yet aside from some sharply drawn socio-historical references and backdrops, Grimwood seems content to construct a series of pithy pulp experiences for his protagonist, and an encyclopedia of pulp romances: the hedonistic sexual tigress, the frigid heiress, the pure college sweetheart, the brilliant true love who's also replaying her life. . . .

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-12-vw-9227-story.html

My question is where can I find a well known and trusted website to order such an adapter from? Or is the website in the link above, pchub.com, a trusted enough place to order from? I am currently in Jamaica. I am not sure this is where this should be but it's under mobile computing so I hope I'm right in posting here. That adapter should work fine... As far as PCHUB being good, or trustworthy, who knows. Have you been "burned" buying online before? I am using Dell XPS L501x. I have to replace the adapter. Please tell me can I replace it with 130W ac adapter. Explain why you think the adapter has failed. Have you tested the battery and checked the bios? Do some investigating before wasting any money on the old 2010 laptop. You might not need an adapter. It would be better to replace the computer with a newer model. Here is the adapter for your model-- www.dell.com/.../pc-accessories Consider putting the $70 towards a new laptop. and I probably won't find a cheap universal one on Ebay. Looks like the model # of the Power Supply is a Samsung AD-3612S or BN44-00139C. I did find this place, but it was the only online store I could see that had the product. I need a replacement for an AC adapter, and I wonder if there's a more general option than the direct thing I need which is: https://www.amazon.com/GEP-Replacement-S24D590PL-Touchscreen-27MP35HQ-B/dp/B00NTCKCYA I already have the power cord portion of this, but anything that could work with the monitor will do. I can't use that one because I need it in the next two days. Thank you. Any converter will work if it outputs the same voltage and amps. Personally, I would only use a manufacturer branded model, especially if the monitor is still under warranty. Otherwise, as noted, any will work. As to that specific one, priority shipping. Or try to find one locally. I was about to get a new ssd to replace the broken hdd in my hp 18-5221 but I noticed the power adapter is missing. I looked everywhere in my apartment and made a big mess of it and I still couldn't find it. Will this (https://www.amazon.com/replacement-Pavilion-Touchsmart-EliteBook-Notebook/dp/B00QIBWB3Y) adapter work with my machine or where can I get a good, cheap, compatible replacement? Hello, I need to buy an ac adapter for my laptop. I've visited the HP Parts Store, but it doesn't recognize the serial number of my notebook: CNF111D3KN.I lost the original adapter, so I don't know it's characteristics, and the user manual of my laptop mentions two different ac adapters, but it's either "65-W AC adapter 609939-001" or "90-W AC adapter 609940-001". How can I buy an adapter from hp that I can use on my laptop? Thank you. Hello everybody!I bought a new graphics card (Radeon R7 250) and PSU (EVGA 600W Model No. 100-W1-0600-K1) for my Lenovo A10-7800 H50-55 desktop. What I didn't know whas that the motherboard uses a 14 Pin ATX plug. The PSU that came with the computer is a HuntKey HK280-25FP (180W) which also uses a 14 pin ATX plug. This seems to be an unusual format, as most PSUs I looked at had 20+4 pin ATX connectors. Even the HuntKey website lists their comparable 180W PSU as having a 20+4 pin ATX connector. (http://www.huntkey.com/en/products/d499/index.html) Unfortunately the HuntKey website does not list the HK280-25FP, so I thought that because most of their other 180W products use 20 pin connectors, so did the HK280-25FP, and thus my Lenovo H50-55 would use a 20 pin ATX plug. The hardware manual for the h50-55 DOES NOT specify how many pins the power plug on the motherboard has. I did not know that my Lenovo used a 14pin plug until after I bought the power supply and attempted (unsuccessfully) to plug it in. I have found a variety of 20-to-14 pin ATX adapters on the market, my question is if anyone here has used any, if their are any they can recommend, are their any that work well? Thank you! My old adapter has broken, it came with my laptop, my question is Can my replacement can I deviate in voltage/ amps from the one it game with (within reason, i'm not going to put 1000v of p.d though my laptop, just wondering if i can get an 18v one as apposed to a 20v one). If you buy a quality universal laptop power adapter, you should be okay. I'm trying to find a replacement AC adapter for my HP Pavilion All-In-One. I can't figure out which one I need, where I can buy it, which ones might be compatible with it, etc. TIA. @iamcidercat, welcome to the forum. Your best option is to use HP Partsurfer to find the part. Just follow the instructions in the link that I provided. Please click the Thumbs up + button if I have helped you and click Accept as Solution if your problem is solved. I am trying to locate for purchase a: HP (P106) Notebook Battery HP Spare 710417-001 CT: 6DGAR13CF5SNDZ Does HP offer this battery for sale or no? The battery in my daughter HP PAVILION NOTEBOOK (M4C64UA) has failed. HP does not have any. They gave me two authorized retailers to call and see if they have the battery (part number 800049-001). I called the first one - Depot International and they do not have it. I tried calling the other, Masterworks International and i was "waiting" for a total of about 45 minutes to talk to someone.. Where can I buy a replacement battery? Any assistance is greatly appreciated. 17-g020nr is the Model Number. (21) Battery (4-cell, 41-Whr, 2.8-Ah Li-ion) 800049-001 Genuine: https://www.amazon.com/Genuine-800049-001-battery-Pavilion-800009-241/dp/B01N4DH2XG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UT... https://www.amazon.com/HP-800049-001-Pavilion-800009-241-N2L84AA/dp/B01FLMR8RO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qi... 3rd party compatible: https://www.amazon.com/Baturu-KI04-800049-001-800010-421-hstnn-lb6s/dp/B01N7K7K9Z/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8... HP stops offering batteries at its online store after about a year. There is a vigorous aftermarket in both genuine and "compatible" batteries. Genuine is better, but for an older laptop a "compatible" battery can be a good option when there are budget concerns. If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as Solution" to help others find it. I need to replace my battery (HP Pavilion m6-1045dx). The battery is a MO06 (mo 06) 11.1 V, 5225 mAh battery; says to replace with "HP Spare 671731-001", but i'm finding no matches on Amazon/New Egg (most things that are close say they're for an HP Envy). Any suggestions for a new battery? Thanks. ok for a replacement for my System Model HP Pavilion TS 11 Notebook PC? I have a hp pavilion dv6-3040us Entertainment Notebook. The battery wasn't holding a charge anymore so I used it plugged in. It would charge but die if unplugged with 5 mins. I ordered a replacement from the partstore.com thru Best Buy. The rep used the suggested replacement hp spare part number from the back of my original battery 593554-001. The original has the date 2010/06 the replacement has 2015/10. I put the new battery in and am using the laptop now plugged in but the power has a red x and says No Battery Detected and isn't charging. Please help! Thanks! I need to order a replacement battery but don't know what info I need to do that!! I have a HP 15AC-120TX Notebook PC, and I need to replace its battery. But I am not sure what kind of battery should I buy and where can I find it. I want a battery which can last as more hour as possible, with more life cycle. Need help getting product number to order replacement battery. Search has been useless. I need to find a replacement battery for my HP Pavilion dv7-4273us Entertainment PC. Searching online has not found an exact match. is an exact match important? or where I can locate a duplicate battery? Tag on battery says : Replace with HP Spare 593550-001 the ones I find have different voltage than the original, does that matter?

http://thewikipost.org/topic/a5AtKLjpUThp0Z1yndVMhsNNBvWiXaYP/AC-adapter-and-battery-replacement.html

North America's oldest Bornean orangutan has died at Phoenix Zoo aged 52, after a weeks-long battle with an aggressive form of cancer. Duchess, a popular primate considered the matriarch of the zoo since its opening in 1962, was euthanized on Sunday after her condition worsened. She had been suffering from lymphatic cancer. 'The cancer was incredibly aggressive and over the past few days, Duchess became increasingly weak and more lethargic,' Gary West, executive vice president of animal health, said in a statement. Duchess had been diagnosed with the cancer two weeks ago after zoo officials noticed she had a loss of appetite and lethargy. An ultrasound test revealed the cancer. West said efforts were made to make Duchess 'as comfortable as possible' in her final days. She could be seen peeking from underneath her blanket in her enclosure, too weak to get up. Duchess was born in the Borneo jungle, where she was orphaned at a young age. She arrived at the Phoenix Zoo when she was two, and was one of the park's first animals when it opened in 1962. In the zoo's early days, she would tour local businesses as part of fundraisers and became comfortable with human contact, officials said. A mainstay of the zoo and one of its most popular attractions, Duchess was feted with an all-day celebration in March 2010, marking her 50th birthday. She was given a frozen treat with her favourite fruit inside, a giant birthday card signed by zoo-goers and a 'Happy Birthday' song from visitors. It kicked off a fundraising campaign for a $4 million orangutan exhibit, which opened in April 2011. In her life, Duchess gave birth to seven offspring who are now at zoos across the country. She outlived four of her children. She leaves behind a daughter, Bess, a granddaughter, Kasih, and the lone male, Michael, at Phoenix Zoo. Among her other offspring across the country, she leaves behind a great grandchild. Officials at the zoo mourned the passing of Duchess, but noted that it is common for orangutans to live 30 years in the wild and an estimated 40 years in captivity. 'Although we are deeply saddened by Duchess's passing, she long surpassed the number of years that orangutans live in zoos and preserves, as well as in the wild,' the zoo's president, Bert Castro, said in a statement. Keepers at the zoo became emotional as they talked about their relationship with Duchess. 'I spend more time in a day, in a week, in a month than I do any human in my life,' senior keeper Bob Keesecker told News 12. 'What I remember really is my relationship with her. Everyone that works at the zoo pretty much knows I had a special relationship with her. Fans flocked to the zoo's Facebook page to pass on their condolences and memories. 'I've been taking my students to observe primates at the zoo for 5 years,' wrote Lisa Marsio, a teacher from Scottsdale. Zoo president Bert Castro added in a statement: 'We have been grateful for the outpouring of memories and stories about Duchess through our social media outlets over the past week. A celebration to honour Duchess will be held on Saturday between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the zoo.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2164560/Duchess-North-Americas-oldest-orangutan-captivity-dies-aged-52-cancer-battle.html

tl;dr: they are functionally the same, and even use the same protocol. I see this debate all too often, so I am going to clear it up. I am obviously biased, being an avid BungeeCord user, but I also do not advocate fearmongering, so I have decided to break things down. This post is based primarily on reading the source code of both proxies. Arguments thrown around by both camps are half-truths or down-right lies. Misconception: BungeeCord does not scale. This has little basis in reality. Often it is plugins that end up causing these scalability issues, which are not BungeeCord's fault. Half-truth: BungeeCord is not efficient. It depends on your definition of efficient. While BungeeCord can exhibit high CPU usage, it does so in a parallel fashion, which spreads the load across cores. In fact, you will notice that LilyPad also exhibits these characteristics. The common cause of "inefficiency" is bad plugin code running in the network I/O threads. Misconception: LilyPad is used by some of the largest networks. If you are willing to stretch the definition of "large networks", you would be correct. But this is a fabrication with even the most liberal definition (which would be over 3,000 players or so). All the five major minigame networks use BungeeCord, including Mineplex. Half-truth: LilyPad uses its own network protocol to connect to backend server. This is a a half-truth. LilyPad uses the Minecraft protocol to connect to backend servers, just like BungeeCord, and therefore incurs all the overhead of it. The only thing that is custom to LilyPad would be the LilyPad connect protocol, which maintains state. Misconception: LilyPad allows you to keep online-mode enabled. LilyPad only offers pseudo-online mode. Previous to this commit, LilyPad turned off online mode using reflection. Both are functionally the same, but they follow different design patterns to achieve their goals. BungeeCord is written in Java and has a plugin system not unlike Bukkit's. It is considered to be very highly flexible, owing to its use by large networks. However, long-running plugin code on the main Netty I/O threads can lead to issues. As an external application, BungeeCord does not easily integrate with Bukkit plugins: the primary interface to BungeeCord from Bukkit is the plugin messaging channel, which many beginning developers do not grasp well. LilyPad is split in three parts: a central server, a proxy (all using Go), and a Bukkit plugin. It does not have a plugin system, but instead relies on the Bukkit servers to communicate with LilyPad, which considerably limits its flexibility. It has an Java API (called from Bukkit) that is simple to use. However it does not see much adoption (limiting support), requires a backend server plugin, has all the same potential security issues as BungeeCord, and potentially more. My personal opinion is to use BungeeCord. It has a wider community, better support, and is actively updated.

https://minimum.io/bungeecord-vs-lilypad-what-should-i-use/

Luke 16:19-31 presents us with a parable from Jesus about two men: a nameless rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. I turn to this parable because many of the parables give a signal that they're a simile with phrases along the lines of, "the kingdom of heaven is like." This parable, however, does not. So how do I know this passage is a parable? To be honest, I don't, but this passage functions like a parable in that Jesus tells a story to make a point that would be harder for us to hear if it were directly stated. So I think Luke 16:19-31 is a parable because it feels like one when I hear it or read it. I also turn to this parable when thinking about dead metaphors because of the image of heaven and hell Jesus presents. How we make sense of this image is all about biblical interpretation—do we read this image of heaven and hell literally or as metaphor? Surprise! I think it's a metaphor. Why? Because the Bible presents different images of heaven and hell that if taken literally would contradict each other—starting with whether or not there is a hell. The afterlife described in this passage sounds like torture for those on both sides of the chasm. Those in hell want help, but cannot get it. Those in heaven want to help, but cannot give it. Understood literally, this passage is a nightmare for both the rich man and Lazarus. This drives me to the conclusion of the parable, the message we would not otherwise hear, that those who are comfortable in this life will not change their ways even if someone comes back from the dead to warn them. We know this because Jesus has come back from the dead to warn us, and the issue is still how comfortable we are. Do we have everything we could hope for and so look to earthly things for happiness? Do we hope for something that we cannot attain because only God can give it? Are we willing to change for the sake of God's work in others? Questions like these seem to me to be more faithful than questions about a literal chasm between heaven and hell. Ineed, if the claim of Christianity (and many other religions) has any efficacy, then what God wants for us is to be willing to change for others because of the hope God has given us. I believe that a big part of God's call into relationships finds new life in rediscovering the metaphors in our language of faith so we can rearticulate what we believe in a way that makes sense to others today.

http://theothru.net/blog/2015/2/25/dead-metaphores-part-4

For fans of Ariana Grande, these last few days have given way to a whole roster of questions, and comparatively fewer answers, about the state of the singer's personal life and professional endeavors. Again, still not many answers on those fronts. That said, audiences wondering if Ariana Grande was going to cancel her upcoming Wicked performance in light of recent events can probably let out a collective sigh of relief. Choosing not to perform would have been completely understandable, but per Grande's first tweet following rumors of a breakup between her and Pete Davidson, it doesn't sound like that's the case. "honored to be included in this celebration of 15 years of my favorite musical of all time [heart] wouldn't miss it for the whole universe" Appropriately, given the context, Grande finished up her Monday morning tweet with a hashtag celebrating the musical and its widely praised Broadway legacy: "#wicked15." Back in September, pop music fans and musical theater aficionados alike were pleased to learn that plans for a televised Wicked anniversary concert (celebrating 15 years of fantastical, foot-tapping goodness on the Broadway stage) were well underway at NBC. Aptly titled, A Very Wicked Halloween: Celebrating 15 Years on Broadway, the show will feature a string of Wicked-y performances from former cast members as well as additional musicians, like Grande. NBC's anniversary concert program is set to air the weekend before All Hallow's Eve, on Oct. 29. Judging by Grande's tweet, it seems pretty safe to say she's doing everything she can to make sure this particular performance (which seems to hold special import to her) comes to fruition the way she intends it to. Plus, judging by the tweet's accompanying photo, it looks like Grande might've offered fans a little pre-show teaser ahead of NBC's actual Wicked concert to amp up the excitement. What's that? Well, nothing's been confirmed, but the script pictured in Grande's tweet does seem to suggest pretty strongly that she's going to perform "The Wizard and I" — Elphaba's iconic opening song in the musical — at the upcoming anniversary show. OK, so the question of whether or not Grande is planning to cancel her Wicked appearance seems to be, more or less, taken care of. But, alas, a medley of additional ones still remain. Like, did Grande and Pete Davidson break up? When is she returning to the stage for good? Is Grande OK? Over the weekend, the singer's fans were concerned when she cancelled her performance at a F--k Cancer fundraiser, after having taken some time off professionally in the aftermath of her ex and close friend Mac Miller's untimely death in September. Then, hardly a day later, reports surfaced that Grande and Davidson split up. As fans of the couple know, Grande and Davidson first started dating around five months ago, around May 2018. By mid-June, the pair had announced their engagement via Instagram. And while neither Grande nor Davidson has commented on the recent wave of breakup rumors, according to an unidentified source who spoke to People, "[The relationship] was way too much too soon. It's not shocking to anyone." Again, it seems important to reiterate that neither Grande nor Davidson has commented publicly on the breakup rumors just yet, so it still feels possible that the rumors are just that. However, if those reports do turn out to be true, then let's hope that Grande is focusing her energy on what's most important: Taking care of her physical, mental, and emotional health. If she's able to croon her way through a Wicked banger on national TV in the process, far be it for her fans to complain.

https://www.bustle.com/p/ariana-grandes-first-tweet-post-breakup-rumors-confirms-shell-perform-at-the-wicked-halloween-special-12270216

Andy Rubin, the father of Google's mobile software, also says the industry needs to start figuring out how to interact with devices that don't have a screen -- like washing machines. HALF MOON BAY, Calif. -- The next major phase of computing will be artificial intelligence, the creator of Google's Android software predicted Wednesday. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion. Kevin Weil, Twitter's senior vice president of product, made the comments during the Code Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, But he declined to give any details on reports Twitter may allow people to write more than 140 characters in a tweet, "Great feeling blue iphone case product teams should always be challenging their own assumptions," Weil said, Weil also declined to say when -- or if -- Twitter would allow users to edit tweets after they've been posted, He said it's more complicated than just changing the technology, For instance, if people edit tweets to change the meaning, it could have repercussions for media outlets that based a story on the tweet or embedded it in a story.. "Suddenly if they change the meaning and you put it on Recode, you're representing an entirely different thing than you thought you were," he said. Weil has been in his position as head of product for a year after being the fifth person in the job in five years. His task is to help attract more users and money through Twitter's various products. In this time, Weil has overseen a new Twitter home page designed for those who not logged in. The social network's 316 million users can now send a direct message to multiple people at the same time and have their direct messages to go beyond Twitter's signature 140-character limit. The company is reportedly looking to remove the 140-character limit altogether. Weil on Wednesday stressed how happy he is to have Dorsey return to Twitter as CEO, "We're super feeling blue iphone case excited to have Jack back," he said, "There's something special Jack brings."He added that Dorsey never treated the CEO role as temporary, even before he officially had the role, "There's no way in which he acted like an interim CEO."Weil also said Twitter "absolutely" plans to remain an independent company, "Our goal is to stay independent," he said, "Twitter is a force in the world."--Terry Collins contributed to this report.. Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman, speaking Wednesday at the Code Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, said Jawbone has invested a lot of time and money into developing sensors. And the fitness wearable maker has looked at sensors you'd swallow or implant -- like something that would stay in your bloodstream to monitor your circulation and other factors -- for use in certain scenarios. "The real role of wearables is all these smart things around you have no idea what's happening with you," Rahman said. "My smart thermostat has no idea if I'm cold." But your smartwatch or fitness band knows what your temperature is, he said, and it can communicate to the items in a smart home.

http://www.famcomalluminio.it/feeling-blue-iphone-case-en-f10079.html

Investigators from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Broad Institute, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute used the genetic analyses of more than 1,200 colon cancers from the Cancer Genome Atlas, the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Dr Harold Burnstein, from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said: "This study will transform care immediately, and for the better". 'I'm delighted. I've been anxious for a long time about unnecessary treatment for cancer, and unnecessary side effects from chemotherapy, ' Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society who was not part of the study, said. Commenting on the findings, Dr Simon Vincent, director of research at Breast Cancer Now, said the research was "world class". A 2017 study showed that for breast cancer that hasn't spread to the lymph nodes, the rate of chemotherapy has dropped from around 27 percent in 2013 to 14 percent in 2015. If a patient is considered at "low risk" for recurrence, does she still have to get endocrine therapy? The second study tested a form of immunotherapy against chemo, in the most common lung cancer worldwide, known as non-small-cell lung cancer. The test looks for 21 specific genes associated with breast-cancer remission. The genetic testing gives cancer a "score" from 0 to 100. "Women with a higher recurrent score, there's some doubt about whether these results are fully implementable in the women under 50, just because it's a different hormone environment and they haven't yet gone through menopause and it may be that the chemotherapy helps to bring about a change in their hormone environment". Doctors were unsure, however, whether women in the medium-risk range were benefiting from chemotherapy or just experiencing the side effects. Simply put, the side effects are awful: In addition to nausea, vomiting, hair and weight loss, chemo drugs can damage the heart and nervous system, and in rare cases, even cause different types of cancer. In the long term, it can cause early menopause, bone loss, chronic pain, kidney damage, and heart failure. Professor Boyle said several immunotherapy trials for triple negative breast cancer are about to start in Australia. The patients then went on to receive either hormonal therapy alone or the combo of hormonal therapy plus chemotherapy. It took place over the last ten years and followed over ten thousand women. But experts caution that the treatment has only proved itself in one woman and that the clinical trials are needed to see how effective the therapy could be in other cancer patients. After nine years, the study found that the two treatment groups had similar survival rates and freedom from disease recurrence. Oncotype DX costs around $4,000, which Medicare and many insurers cover. The Institute of Cancer Research said: "This fascinating and exciting study in a single breast cancer patient provides a major "proof-of-principle" step forward, in showing how the power of the immune system can be harnessed to attack even the most difficult-to-treat cancer". Thirty percent of the women in the trial did have evidence of cancer hiding in their bodies. These womenrandomly divided into two groups: One group received only hormone therapy after surgery, and the other group received both hormone therapy and chemotherapy. "It also helps identify those women with this disease who really do benefit from the chemotherapy", he said.

http://luisandradehd.com/2018/06/05/study-finds-women-with-early-breast-cancer-may-avoid/

Above, the headline of Christine Hauser's article in today's New York Times about the curious case of one Virgilio Cintron, whose two best friends pushed him in a wheelchair into the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store in New York City on January 8 of this year. Long story short: NYPD detective Travis Rapp, eating lunch at a nearby restaurant, noticed a commotion and saw Cintron's feet bouncing on the sidewalk and thought to himself, "Well, this is a dead guy." He then arrested Cintron's two "enablers," who were charged with forgery and larceny for attempting to cash Cintron's $355 Social Security check. Here's the story of why those charges were dismissed yesterday by Judge Evelyn Laporte of the Manhattan Criminal Court. That Virgilio Cintron was dead that day is not in doubt. But no one can say precisely when he died, and that is why his friends have gone free. Was Mr. Cintron breathing when his buddies, James P. O’Hare and David Daloia, pushed him in a chair to the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan on Jan. 8? That’s what they said. Never mind that in a detective’s judgment, he was unresponsive, flopped around unsteadily in the chair, and appeared to show early signs of rigor mortis. The police said those clues indicated that Mr. Cintron, 66, had died earlier that day, and that Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia had wheeled their friend’s stiffening corpse to the office in a bold, if poorly thought-out, scheme to cash his $355 Social Security check. The medical examiner performed an autopsy on Jan. 9 and determined that he had been dead, of complications of Parkinson’s disease, for less than 24 hours, an assistant district attorney, Courtney Groves, said on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court. But the medical examiner could not state the time of death with certainty, Ms. Groves conceded. Since prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Cintron had died before leaving the apartment en route to Pay-O-Matic, Judge Evelyn Laporte dismissed the forgery and larceny charges against Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia. They were free, ending a gritty and macabre Hell’s Kitchen tale of three longtime friends who relied on each other in many ways to get out of fixes and to survive the streets. Mr. Daloia and Mr. O’Hare returned to the apartment at 436 West 52nd Street where they had last cared for Mr. Cintron. They said again that they thought their friend had been alive. “If the medical examiner couldn’t tell his time of death, and they are the professionals, then how could we?” Mr. Daloia asked, standing on the stoop of his building. He said he picked up Mr. Cintron off the couch a few weeks before his death and carried him to the same check-cashing store, where he was able to wave at the attendant. But he hadn’t been taking his medication, and his condition was getting worse. “What did we do? We didn’t do anything, except what we normally do,” Mr. Daloia said. “All charges were dismissed, the record has been sealed and it is the end of a very sad story,” he said. On Jan. 8, Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia dressed Mr. Cintron in his apartment, carried him downstairs and propped him up in a computer chair on wheels. Then they pulled and dragged the chair east to the Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue near 52nd. The spectacle drew a crowd. A detective at a nearby restaurant looked up from lunch and noticed Mr. Cintron’s feet bouncing off the edge of the sidewalk. “Well, this is a dead guy,” the detective, Travis Rapp, recalled thinking to himself. He confronted them. “Oh my God, my friend is gone?” they said, Detective Rapp recalled later that day. Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia have said there was nothing unusual about what they did. For a long time before Mr. Cintron died, the three of them depended on one another, they and their lawyers have said. They pooled money, nursed one another through sickness and shared food and the shelter of the small apartment where Mr. Cintron had grown up and where he and Mr. O’Hare lived. The friends said Mr. Cintron had been ill for some time from Parkinson’s disease, weak, at times unresponsive and unable to care for himself. That Tuesday morning was no different, they said.

https://www.bookofjoe.com/2008/04/case-of-a-check.html

Can IOP drop significantly without medication or surgery? Is it possible for intraocular pressure to lower from 25 to 15 without medication or surgery? That is a large change but it is possible. There is a variation of intraocular pressure throughout the day. This is called diurnal variation. Also, different methods of measuring intraocular pressure may yield different results. The change mentioned above can be due to these variables. You must also consider that one of the intraocular pressure readings may have been measured incorrectly. You also might see a large drop in intraocular pressure when there is inflammation in the eye (usually with symptoms of redness, pain, and reduced vision) or a retinal tear or detachment (usually will occur with symptoms of floaters and flashes). I would suggest that in this case, there be additional measurements taken at different times of day.

https://www.aao.org/eye-health/ask-ophthalmologist-q/can-iop-drop-without-medication-surgery

Aristote Nsiala headed a last minute winner as Shrewsbury boosted their chances of staying in League One by beating AFC Wimbledon 2-1. The central defender powered home a header from Shaun Whalley's corner to seal a fourth successive home win for Paul Hurst's side. Wimbledon applied much of the early pressure, forcing a number of corners, but chances were initially in short supply at either end.. Tom Elliott was first to threaten with an overhead kick off target for Wimbledon before Shrewsbury striker Freddie Ladapo's low 20 yard shot was comfortably gathered by visiting goalkeeper James Shea. Wimbledon almost took the lead on the stroke of half time but a powerful 25 yard shot from midfielder Tom Soares cracked against a post. The visitors struck the woodwork again early in the second half, Elliott denied by the bar from close range, and then home keeper Jayson Leutwiler had to be alert to keep out a shot from Soares. Shrewsbury broke the deadlock in the 65th minute when a 25 yard free kick Tyler Roberts, on loan from West Brom, took a deflection on its way in. Wimbledon were level within four minutes as Andy Barcham's low shot from 15 yards beat Leutwiler at his near post for the London club's first away goal in League One in nearly 13 hours of football. But Shrewsbury had the final word with Nsiala's first goal for the club wrapping up three more points.

http://www.afcwimbledon-mad.co.uk/news/tmnw/shrewsbury_21_afc_wimbledon_report_903972/index.shtml

Why Do AMEB Grades & Exams on the Piano? The Australian Music Examination Board (AMEB) is a professional music institution, designed to provide graded programs to musicians (and in this case pianists), to achieve a globally recognised standard or qualification. Each syllabus is designed by performers and scholars, who undertake studies and research to ensure that each graded level is in keeping with the standard and expectations of performing arts within Australia. The AMEB also aims to re-produce and publish practical pieces and technical work books at a competitive price, to keep musical resources within fiscal reach of each student. AMEB piano grade levels are designed to cover 3 main sections of learning; Beginner (Level 1), Intermediate (Level 2), and Advanced (Level 3). In order to be awarded a pass for a specific practical grade level, you must have achieved the equivalent written theory (musicianship) grade. Following an examination, students are given a mark by the examiner from D though A, with A+ being the highest possible mark. At the advanced level, students are not actually given a mark. Instead, they are simply presented with 'No Award', 'Award', or 'Award with Distinction'. The current pass-rate for candidates at the Associate level is 30%, giving an indication of the level of difficulty and overall expectation. Students who achieve the first 5 grade levels (preliminary through to grade 4), will have sufficient technical ability to be able to confidently read music and play piano. The majority of students who choose to learn piano via the AMEB syllabus, often complete (at the very least) the first 5 grade levels. Students who make the decision to progress beyond the Beginner Level, will continue to develop their techniques and abilities to a much higher level. The intermediate level (often termed the 'development' level), prepares students for performance, whilst focusing on a more refined suppleness, interpretation, agility, endurance and playing integrity. The Certificate Level (C.MusA - Certificate of Music Australia'), is the last of the intermediate (or developmental) levels, and provides students with a transitional music certificate (just below that of undergraduate level in a conservatorium), as they prepare for the challenges of Associate Level. The Associate Level (A.MusA - 'Associate of Music Australia') is considered to be the equivalent of an undergraduate qualification at a conservatorium, and prepares students for professional performance. During an examination, the student must deliver a music program that exceeds 30 minutes in duration, and is no longer than 40 minutes. All music selected by the student must be committed to (and performed from) memory, whilst two (2) examiners are present. The Licentiate Level (L.MusA - 'Licentiate of Music Australia') is the highest possible level achievable through the Australian Music Examination Board, and requires students to have achieved near-perfect mastery of the piano. With a rigorous examination process (often termed a 'federal' examination) and a program that is approximately 1 hour in duration, the Licentiate qualification is the holy grail of piano qualifications, with a national pass-rate of just 10%, once again giving an indication of the level of difficulty and overall expectation. As with the Associate Level, all music selected by the student must be committed to (and performed from) memory, whilst two (2) examiners are present. The Fellowship Level (F.MusA - 'Fellowship of Music Australia') is considered to be more of an honorary title, generally acknowledging the outstanding mastery of a particular musician on a particular instrument. It is expected (although not a requirement) that honorary members have achieved their A.Mus A or L.Mus A. The AMEB publishes a Manual of Syllabuses each year, in order to maintain relevance, and to avoid courses becoming stale. As a result the piano syllabus is updated annually, with a range of fresh new works and pieces. The general format of the piano syllabus is such that, pieces are selected by students or teachers from a range of suggested sources and publications. Musical works are grouped into categories or lists (List A, List B, List C etc.), and are generally categorised according to their chronological period in history, or their technical difficulty. For example, List A pieces may be from the Baroque period. What Grade Level Should I Start At? Technically speaking, you can commence AMEB grades starting at any level. However, this can be a trap for students who are looking to climb the music ladder quickly, since it is the earlier grades that provide the musical grounding for tackling the higher grade levels. The Manual of Syllabuses provides grading information regarding music theory, including information about when each theory grade should be undertaken. Unlike the practical syllabus, there are fewer theory exams, with exams being designed to accompany specific practical grade levels. For example: Students playing specific practical piano grades, cannot officially be awarded their certificate (if they pass), until they have completed the correlating theory grade. AMEB exams take place several times each year and are split into two distinct sections, regional and metropolitan. You can select either section to do your exams, the main difference is that the examination venues vary between regional and metropolitan. It is also important to book your preferred examination date well in advance, to ensure that you get your selected venue and examination date.

http://pianoteacher.wysiwyg.net.au/AMEB-Exams/

Q. Where can I locate the books for Judy Rector's course? The books for Judy Rector's course are located on the last shelf of the Reference section.

https://libraryanswers.berea.edu/faq/9962

When should I use Bisolvon Chesty Tablets? Bisolvon Chesty Tablets are small and easy to swallow, making them ideal for treating chesty coughs when on the go. When you have a productive, chesty cough, you need to get rid of that thick, sticky mucus effectively. Bisolvon Chesty Tablets are easy to use and their non-drowsiness formula means they are safe to take even when you're working or driving. Following a review of active ingredients in cough and cold medicines by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), all major cough and many cold products are to transition their labelling to indicate that the products are not to be used for children under 6 years of age. For children between 6 and 12 years of age, the advice of a pharmacist, doctor or nurse practitioner should initially be sought before giving the products. This change will occur for labelling of Bisolvon products sold in pharmacies over a 12 month period from June 2012. Please note there has been no change in the products themselves, no change to where you can buy them and no change to the adult dosing. As with all other medicines, it is important to take note of the instructions on the label and only use the products as directed. You should read labels carefully, strictly follow all the directions and, if symptoms persist, consult a pharmacist, doctor or nurse practitioner. How do Bisolvon Chesty Tablets work? The active ingredient in Bisolvon Chesty Tablets is bromhexine that makes the mucus thinner and more liquid. Bromhexine helps your body's natural airway-cleaning system to work more effectively. Easy-to-swallow Bisolvon Chesty Tablets get right to the cause of your cough without making you drowsy. Bromhexine is a mucolytic: that is, it increases the production of serous mucus in the respiratory tract and makes the phlegm thinner and less sticky. This contributes to a secretomotoric effect: it helps the cilia - tiny hairs that line the respiratory tract - to transport the phlegm out of the lungs. Thanks to this mucus-clearing effect, Bisolvon Chesty Tablets make it easier for the respiratory tract to eliminate phlegm. They ease productive cough and help you recover fast. Use in children 6 - 11 years only on the advice of a doctor, pharmacist or nurse practitioner.

https://www.yourdiscountchemist.com.au/bisolvon-chesty-forte-100-tablets.html

People are seen looking at a jukebox - and making a selection - its called a scopitone machine as it has a screen, which shows members of a group, Sandra Barry and Her Boyfriends - the boys are seen trying out guitars in a guitar shop, and the group are then seen performing 'Really Gonna Shake'. This is a fabulous pop item - I think that the band is actually called "Sandra Barry and Her Boys" - really good for swinging sixties stuff, the beat group scene, pop groups, groovy girl dancing and a great song. Sandra's "Boys" try to persuade her to do the shake and she repeats, "No, no, I don't want to shake!" several times. They eventually get her to "Shake", she gets off her stool, takes off her gold fringed poncho and grooves to the beat - I love it! I guess that the scopitone was a prototype video jukebox. The Boys went on to be known as "The Action" - they had a strong mod following - JH. "The Boys" seen here were Reg King on vocals, Roger Powell on drums, Mike Evans on bass and Alan King on Guitar.

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/age-aka-slot-machine-age/query/Sixties

Bangladesh again played "like Bangladesh play". It was a dismal performance after so many efforts, practice matches and high expectations, expressed in the press conferences. Bangladesh again played "like Bangladesh play". It was a dismal performance after so many efforts, practice matches and high expectations, expressed in the press conferences. The whole performance by our team was just unacceptable, disappointing, unprofessional, dreary and miserable. There were plenty of mistakes and blunders at all stages of the game like final team selection, captaincy, batting, bowling and fielding. Let's review all these in brief. It was surprising to find that the final team was formed keeping the most experienced bowler for ODI's Khaled Mahmud as 12th man. It was proved during the practice matches that Bangladesh faced much problem by keeping him on rest. It is quite understandable for practice matches to find the best combination for the real big game. But there is no merit in keeping him outside and opting for Mushfiq. And Bangladesh has paid for this to some extend: Mushfiq could neither score a single run, nor prove himself a worthy bowler. Rajin Saleh in his very first decision as a captain did a blunder by choosing batting, which was totally unconventional in those conditions. It was a suicidal decision, for which cricket experts expressed their surprise. The TV commentators were expressing their surprise for this decision very often during the game and cricket media also expressed the same in the reports. The match report by Wisden Cricinfo is captioned as "Bangladesh hand South Africa welcome win" and the report starts with the sentence: "Bangladesh's gamble to defy convention and bat first came unstuck as South Africa skittled them out for 93 and then knocked off the runs for the loss of one wicket with more than 32 overs to spare." Rajin might be young enough not to understand the impact of those conditions, but there were experienced people around him to guide him in advance. If the decision of batting was taken just to avoid chasing high scores, then that was totally unproved by our fragile and collapsing batting line. This department was a total failure and did injustice to our growing reputation. The way most of the batsmen were being dismissed was unacceptable by any norms. Most of them were batting, as it appeared, in utter inconfidence. They were batting defensive, with a sort of stiffness and without any footwork. It was very upsetting to watch that most of our batsmen lack of understanding the merit of individual balls and apprehend their fight. Most of the time they react very late when the ball is just going out with a flick, which ultimately resulted in a large number of catch outs by slip and the wicketkeeper. The most impressive and easy batting was performed by the young blood Nafees Iqbal. It was unfortunate to see him out after getting set only due to not controlling his temptation of big hitting, which was trapped by N. Boje. Khaled Masud's role as a supporter to Nafees and play in the front line after his departure is also very praiseworthy. But the way batsmen like Ashraf, Rana, Rafique, Mushfiq and Aftab were out is totally unacceptable. Aftab was leaving a lot of ball outside off stamp, which was appreciable, but I cannot understand why he wanted to hit a bouncer to end his innings. Bangladesh team was selected with an unbalanced pace attack, as I mentioned earlier. Nazmul as a debutant did well during his 6 over bowling conceding 2.83 runs per over. He was unfortunate not to get his maiden wicket when Ashraf dropped the catch, which was the main fault of Bangladesh fielding during the short stay of 18 overs. The most lousy and miserable bowling was done by Mushfiq, who in my opinion does not deserve to be kept in ODI squad. His bowling was quite slow, missing the lines and of a little shorter length, which made it easy for the batsman to have enough time to see the flight of the ball and hit it comfortably. It is not acceptable to concede a run rate nearly 8.5, where other bowlers bowled with an average of 4.1. Bowling record for last ten matches revealed that Khaled Mahmud got 11 wickets with BA (Bowling Average) 29.54 having BB (Best Bowling Figures) as 4/19 against Mushfiq's record of 7 wickets with BA 41.0 having BB as 2/21(Source: Wisden: Stats Guru). One significant observation about our fielding is that, at the time of bowling, fielders closer to the batsman were found not much attentive even with their postures. This is one of the main reasons of dropped catches. They just drop it because they are not prepared for it. The replay of Ashraf's dropped catch also revealed this fact. We have high quality Coach, Trainer, Action Analyst etc, to take care of all these stuff, at least, to give the team a professional look and practice; but why our players cannot perform properly, why their weak points are getting exposed to even amateurs like us? How long we shall have to watch this type of heartbreaking episodes, this is today's question. Note: This review was written immediately after the match before any interview with Bangladesh Captain and Coach was published , which might reveal some facts in controversy with the contents of this article. This page has been viewed 6696 times.

http://banglacricket.com/html/features/article.php?item=244

What Percentage of Small Business Expenses Should Go to Payroll? A business has high variable costs when many of its costs change depending on the amount of business it does. Because a car wash requires more supplies, utilities and employees when it's doing a high volume of business, car wash owners can expect high variable costs. In fact, almost all of the costs associated with running a car wash are variable ones. Your employees are a significant source of costs. Salaries, benefits and employee training can cost thousands of dollars each month. If your business is successful, you may need to hire more employees or promote part-time employees to full-time status. The costs of paying overtime -- one and a half times the employee's hourly rate -- and covering your share of payroll taxes can creep up steadily as you gain more business. You can't run a car wash without soap, wax, cloths, car fragrances and similar items. The amount you'll spend on these items is directly tied to how much business you're doing. A successful car wash will have to invest much more in cleaning supplies and may decide to operate a small convenience store stocked with cards, foods and similar items. This can cut into your profits, but buying in bulk may help reduce the amount you spend. Car washes can quickly run up high utility bills. You'll have to pay the costs of electricity and water, and if you offer hot-water treatments, your costs can go even higher. The more cars you service, the more utilities you'll use. You might opt to pay for cable or Internet service as your client base increases, but because these utilities usually charge a flat fee, your costs won't vary after you sign up. Successful businesses have to review and revise contracts and may even face lawsuits from customers or employees. The more business you do, the more likely it is that you'll run into a legal problem, and the cost of an attorney can become a variable business cost. Likewise, you may have to contract with advertising agencies, and the amount you spend can depend on how much business you're doing. The costs of most professional services will generally increase along with your customer base.

https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/car-washes-high-variable-costs-28009.html

Often inconsiderate and impatient with Thomas, Victor reluctantly agrees and the two of them begin the journey that will ultimately help Victor learn to live with his past. This movie accomplished some nice things in in the beautiful region that it was shot in. It's a film for the ages. Evan Adams, diminutive and shy as Thomas Builds-the-fire, was not so lucky despite his masterful performance. Beach plays Victor Joseph, a Couer d'Alene Indian in Idaho whose father Arnold Farmer quit reservation life and headed out in his prized yellow pickup truck 10 years back, when Victor was a young boy. The title Smoke Signals also plays into and subverts an Indian stereotype. The jokes barely evoke a chuckle, the flashbacks are clumsily positioned and poorly executed, and if the wooden acting doesn't put you to sleep, the sappy dialogue will. The movie concerns two Couer d'Alene Indian guys who have to travel to Phoenix to collect the ashes of the father of one of them, and the ambivalent relationship between the two friends and Victor's struggle to come to terms with his father having moved away when Victor was still a child. Later, the characters are well described. Victor is a basketball player while Thomas is a storyteller. The identity of the Native American is studied deeply in Smoke Signals. The supporting cast was equally magnificent, and each lends credibility and energy to the movie. The main characters, Thomas and Victor, deal with discrimination, life on a reservation, preservation of their culture, and economic problems. This was a day in his life that Victor wanted to erase form his memory. How many see, that intellectually, the film is as valid for its philosophical depth? Thomas is unnervingly talkative with a smiling naivete and a decidedly bookish appearance. What I found in this film was culture, religion and what it means to be human regardless of our racial heritage. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. When Arnold dies years later, Victor and Thomas have to travel to phoenix to collect his remains. The acting, particularly Gary Farmer as Arnold Joseph Victor's father and Evan Adams Thomas Builds-the-Fire are outstanding. That, I believe, is the underlying theme in Smoke Signals. You are forced to sit through numerous bad movies, forced to lose faith slowly and surely in the film industry until it is almost gone. The final scenes, driven by Adams' narration and haunting Native American chant and music, are nothing short of miraculous. Smoke Signals the efforts of Sherman Alexie, Chris Eyre and the cast of fabulous actors shows in rich, humorous detail what life is like for young Indians today. I opt not to speak of my own relationships with others, nor my own personal demons and hauntings. In one scene, Victor accuses Thomas of learning everything about being an Indian from watching Dances With Wolves. The humor is almost exclusively Native American in its dry and sarcastic tone. And it needs no dispensation for novelty: it stands beautifully on its own merits. I like it when stuff blows up, and I'm not into dramas, because well, you know how it is. The issue of identity is of the most prominent. I also saw that the family life of the Native Americans in the film had many of the same problems that my family had undergone in the past years such as fighting and not telling along. Each time I am left in silent awe as I reflect on my own life, family, and philosophies. He marvels at the beauty of the creation that surrounds him and dreams of what new wonders the future might bring. The first big difference is that in the short story Thomas and Victor are cousins,. When his mother was finally tired of the drinking, Arnold fled and never went back. It is an insider's view of reservation basketball games and the rituals of frybread. A couple of years after I saw it I drove through the American Southwest for the first time, and images of the film kept coming into my head. It was fast-paced enough to engage me, despite being a drama, and there is plenty of comedy, which is a refreshing change for a guy like me who's always wanted to see past the one-dimensional Indian stereotype of suffering and learn more of their culture. The audience was predominately Native American. Thomas may have thought that this was a way to pay him back for saving his life. The film then goes into 1998 where Victor and Thomas are grown up. The film can easily be describe as a ethos and pathos type of film. I wanted them to see a movie with various role models, and as I had never seen this movie, I thought it would be a treat for all of us. Victor's resentment for his father is also revealed to us through flashbacks depicting the early years and the memories some good, some bad that the two shared. I intend to view this film many more times. At Sundance, Eyre was free to make mistakes and try ideas that did not work out before embarking on the actual production of the film. He leaves behind his son Victor Joseph. It tackles issues of family, culture, and tradition as well as friendship. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains, but only if Thomas can also go with him. A voice over by Thomas says that Victor and he were born of fire. In a brief scene with his mother, Victor kids- 'What do you want a contract? That feeling that the film is personal is universal with Smoke Signals, which means different things to different people but is always a powerful and personal story to everyone. While that kind of pandering to popular taste may appear racist-making a film accessible through thematic resemblances to the 'white' experience-Smoke Signals has the potential to break the 'color' line for Native American filmmakers. Not being able to forgive someone may lead to many different outcomes. When Victor was an infant, several neighbors and friends were killed in a fire at the Joseph home after an Independence Day party. Watching this movie as a seminary student I was drawn to the concepts of sin, alienation and reconciliation as seen through Native American eyes. Victor was about to embark on a reluctant journey to bring his father's remains back home bring these two men together and ever closer.

http://vandgrift.com/smoke-signals-movie-review.html

How should we interpret this? We know an actual particle will be represented by a wave packet: a sum of wavefunctions, each with its own amplitude ak and its own argument θk = (Ek∙t − pk∙x)/ħ. But… Well… Let’s see how far we get when analyzing the elementary wavefunction itself only. According to mathematical convention, the imaginary unit (i) is a 90° angle in the counterclockwise direction. However, Nature surely cannot be bothered about our convention of measuring phase angles – or time itself – clockwise or counterclockwise. Therefore, both right- as well as left-handed polarization may be possible, as illustrated below. In my previous posts, I hypothesized that the two physical possibilities correspond to the angular momentum of our particle – say, an electron – being either positive or negative: J = +ħ/2 or, else, J = −ħ/2. I will come back to this in a moment. Let us first further examine the functional form of the wavefunction. We should note that both the direction as well as the magnitude of the (linear) momentum (p) are relative: they depend on the orientation and relative velocity of our reference frame – which are, in effect, relative to the reference frame of our object. As such, the wavefunction itself is relative: another observer will obtain a different value for both the momentum (p) as well as for the energy (E). Of course, this makes us think of the relativity of the electric and magnetic field vectors (E and B) but… Well… It’s not quite the same because – as I will explain in a moment – the argument of the wavefunction, considered as a whole, is actually invariant under a Lorentz transformation. 1. The argument of the wavefunction is invariant. There is a primed time (t’) but there is no primed θ (θ’): θ = (Ev/ħ)·t – (pv/ħ)·x = (E0/ħ)∙t’. 2. The E0/ħ coefficient pops up as an angular frequency: E0/ħ = ω0. We may refer to it as the frequency of the elementary wavefunction. This is interesting, because we can look at the period as a natural unit of time for our particle. This period is inversely proportional to the (rest) energy of the particle, and the constant of proportionality is h. Substituting E0 for m0·c2, we may also say it’s inversely proportional to the (rest) mass of the particle, with the constant of proportionality equal to h/c2. The period of an electron, for example, would be equal to about 8×10−21 s. That’s very small, and it only gets smaller for larger objects ! But what does all of this really tell us? What does it actually mean? We can look at the sine and cosine components of the wavefunction as an oscillation in two dimensions, as illustrated below. Look at the little green dot going around. Imagine it is some mass going around and around. Its circular motion is equivalent to the two-dimensional oscillation. Indeed, instead of saying it moves along a circle, we may also say it moves simultaneously (1) left and right and back again (the cosine) while also moving (2) up and down and back again (the sine). We can now do some calculations. We already know the angular velocity (ω) is equal to E0/ħ. Now, the magnitude of r in the L = r×p vector cross-product should equal the magnitude of ψ = a·e−i∙E·t/ħ, so we write: r = a. What’s next? Well… The momentum (p) is the product of a linear velocity (v) – in this case, the tangential velocity – and some mass (m): p = m·v. If we switch to scalar instead of vector quantities, then the (tangential) velocity is given by v = r·ω. Note that our frame of reference is that of the particle itself, so we should actually write ω0, m0 and E0 instead of ω, m and E. The value of the rest energy of an electron is about 0.510 MeV, or 8.1871×10−14 N∙m. Now, this momentum should equal J = ±ħ/2. We can, therefore, derive the (Compton scattering) radius of an electron: Substituting the various constants with their numerical values, we find that a is equal 3.8616×10−13 m, which is the (reduced) Compton scattering radius of an electron. The (tangential) velocity (v) can now be calculated as being equal to v = r·ω = a·ω = [ħ·/(m·c)]·(E/ħ) = c. This is an amazing result. Let us think about it. Hence, we should actually have titled this and the previous post somewhat differently: the speed of light appears as a tangential velocity. Think of the following: the ratio of c and ω is equal to c/ω = a·ω/ω = a. Hence, the tangential and angular velocity would be the same if we’d measure distance in units of a. In other words, the radius of an electron appears as a natural distance unit here: if we’d measure ω in units of a per second, rather than in radians (which are expressed in the SI unit of distance, i.e. the meter) per second, the two concepts would coincide. Two to twenty times. Not 1 or 0.5 to 20 times. No. Two times. As I’ve explained a couple of times, if we’d define a new effective mass which would be twice the old concept – so meffNEW = 2∙meffOLD – then such re-definition would not only solve a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies, but it will also justify my interpretation of energy as a two-dimensional oscillation of mass.

https://readingfeynman.org/tag/structure-of-an-electron/

Will Congress OK highway money before it hits the road? I once worked for a company that was waaaaaay into scheduling. I mean years and years ahead scheduling. It always cracked me up when I was asked to put such long-term appointments in my datebook. Sure, I'll mark my calendar and be around then…maybe. Dates, however, are crucial to taxes. Miss one and, if you owe Uncle Sam, you'll owe him even more. Tax Day 2016 is April 18: So it's no surprise that the Internal Revenue Service is already announcing a tweak in connection with the 2016 tax filing deadline. At issue is a confluence of tax deadlines and state and federal holidays. It's a complicated mix, but the bottom line is that all of us get a little more time to file our taxes next year. Most taxpayers will have until April 18, 2016, to file our 2015 tax returns and to make our first 2016 estimated tax payment. That third Monday in April next year also is Patriots Day, a state holiday in Maine and Massachusetts. Because of that, taxpayers in those two states will have until Tuesday, April 19, 2016, to file their federal tax returns. But the Patriots Day holiday has no effect on estimated tax payments by Maine and Massachusetts filers. They still must get that first estimated payment for the 2016 tax year to the IRS by Monday, April 18, 2016. Deciphering the IRS calendar: Here's how the IRS came up with the 2016 tax filing schedule adjustments. You might want to take a deep breath. I'm about to quote, highlighted, some tax speak from Revenue Ruling 2015-13 issued by the IRS today. Section 7503 of the Internal Revenue Code provides that, when April 15 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, a return is considered timely filed if it is filed on the next succeeding day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday. So that usually means when April 15 falls on a holiday or weekend day, we have until the next Monday to file. Now back to another tax code for the federal filing implications of another special day. The term "legal holiday" includes a legal holiday observed in the District of Columbia. … Emancipation Day, April 16, is a legal holiday in the District of Columbia [D.C. Code §28-2701 (2010)]. When April 16 is a Saturday, the preceding day is the observed holiday, and when it is a Sunday, the succeeding day is the observed holiday. Got that? By Washington, D.C. law, in some years Emancipation Day is April 15 and in others it's April 17. And since the Emancipation Day holiday affects federal tax schedules, by falling on Saturday next year, that means it is moved back to Friday, April 15, 2016, the usual federal Tax Day. That shift therefore means we all get until the next Monday, April 18, 2016, to complete our 2015 tax year returns. While the route to get there was twisty, I'll always take some extra time to deal with my 1040 or file Form 4868 to get a six-month extension. Calendar calculations for New Englanders: The calendar shifting doesn't stop there if you live in a couple of New England states. Patriots Day, an official state holiday in Maine and Massachusetts, is the third Monday in April. This commemoration of the Revolutionary War battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, sometimes coincides with federal Tax Day. That happens again in 2016, thanks to the move of Emancipation Day and the subsequent shift of the federal filing deadline to April 18, 2016. And that calendar convergence means that taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts get until next April 19, 2016, to file their 2015 federal returns. The reason for this extra day is because the IRS federal offices in those two states also close for Patriots Day. And although IRS restructuring means that Maine and Massachusetts returns are now processed at the agency's Kansas City, Missouri, campus, federal law also allows for taxpayers to file their annual returns in a timely manner by hand delivering the forms to their local IRS office. Again, here's the official IRS word on the matter. Pursuant to Treasury Regulation § 1.6091-2(d)(1), individuals who reside in Massachusetts and Maine may elect to file their returns by hand at their local IRS Office located in Massachusetts or Maine. When the last day for residents of those states to file their returns by hand falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, section 7503 extends the due date to the next succeeding day which is not a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday. We interpret this rule to extend the due date for filing income tax returns for all residents of Massachusetts and Maine pursuant to section 7503, including those who do not elect to file by hand. That means all Massachusetts or Maine residents, even those who snail mail or e-file their tax returns instead of dropping it off at an IRS facility, still get the extra day. Estimated tax payment exception: They don't, however, get an extra 24 hours to pay if they also are filing estimated taxes. Estimated tax payments are dealt with separately and have different filing and processing addresses than do regular 1040s. Form 1040-ES filings by Maine and Massachusetts taxpayers now go to Hartford, Connecticut. And there's no notation for hand delivery. Since Patriots Day isn't a holiday in the Nutmeg State, Maine and Massachusetts estimate tax payers must get that voucher to the IRS' Hartford office (or postmarked) by the April 18, 2016, deadline. So is your tax calendar appropriately annotated? Don't worry. The IRS and the ol' blog will remind you again as the 2015 filing deadlines in April 2016 get closer. But just in case you're a bit obsessive-compulsive about long-term planning like my former employer, I wanted you have as early a heads-up as possible. Thanks for catching my geographic and historical error, Sammy. Corrected! "Patriots Day, an official state holiday in Maine and Massachusetts, is the third Monday in April. This commemoration of the Revolutionary War battles at Lexington, Massachusetts, and Concord, Maine, sometimes coincides with federal Tax Day. " Lexington, MA= correct. Concord, ME= incorrect. The two MA towns are historical notes in most school books regarding the days of revolt which are considered the beginning of the revolutionary war.

https://www.dontmesswithtaxes.com/2015/05/tax-calendar-alert-2015-returns-are-due-monday-4-18-2016-maine-massachusetts-taxpayers-get-an-extra-.html

The marijuana lobbyists want to “mainstream” marijuana and call for its regulation to be like alcohol. Let’s make it equal to alcohol, they say. Why are they asking for addiction equality? When they compare its illegal status to alcohol, they don’t mention that Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935, the year after a 13-year Prohibition era ended. When the marijuana community decries the nationwide prohibition of marijuana in 1937, they forget to mention that it happened much earlier, state-by-state, 1911 in MA, 1913 in CA, 1914 in NY, etc. These same marijuana lobbyists keep suggesting that people who drink too much booze or take pain pills should switch to marijuana. As much as addiction is hard to overcome, the suggestion of substituting one addiction or bad habit for another can just get you back to square one. Why are we making a second vice, pot, totally legit for those 21 and over while keeping it illegal for those under 21? The minimum age for alcohol purchase is 21, yet the US already has a problem with underage drinking. Why duplicate this problem with marijuana? The only obvious reason is that there is a business and a marijuana industry that wants to make profits. Like with alcohol and tobacco, 80% of those profits will come from those who are addicted or over-indulgent. The growing industry wants and needs to get young users to keep a steady stream of buyers; the younger they start, the greater likelihood of getting hooked. An experiment with lowering the beer and wine age to 18 in much of the US in the 1970s did not work. The national law needed to be changed back to age 21. Elsewhere teens do not go to the extremes that are common to American culture. We simply are not a modest or temperate culture, like the Netherlands. “Wouldn’t you rather have your teenage son driving stoned, rather than drunk?” Both practices are very dangerous, and even more dangerous when stoned and drunk at the same time. “I support legalization so marijuana can be on equal footing with alcohol.” Pot users don’t have addiction equality yet, but statistics and studies show that 9% of marijuana users will be come addicted (approximately same rate as drinkers) and that rate jumps to 17% if they begin before age 17. “No one has ever died from marijuana.” The advocates claimed in the campaign for legalization in Colorado and Washington. There have since been 2 deaths in Colorado this year directly attributed edible marijuana and many child-abuse deaths caused by the parents’ usage of marijuana. Simplistic soundbites don’t tell the whole story. Marijuana is not safer than alcohol, but it is used less frequently by Americans than pot. Leah Allen’s account of growing up with a marijuana-addicted father is similar to what it would be like having a chronic alcoholic dad: negligent, irresponsible, violent to the mom and prone to anger when he could not have it. Pot users could be 7% of adult Americans, vs. at about 66% who drink. They’re asking us to change a law for the 7%, and Parents Opposed to Pot disagrees. More people die from alcohol because it is and has been a larger part in society. We’re better at recognizing who might be susceptible to alcoholism. We have little idea who is most at risk for mental illness and other negative effects from marijuana. Certain teens haven’t thought about it, either. Tobacco cannot affect brain function, memory and mental health the same way marijuana can. The risk for mental illness caused by marijuana alone is too great not to be noticed.

http://poppot.org/2014/07/08/marijuana-vs-alcohol/

1. 1 Biological Science Canadian 2nd Edition Freeman TEST BANK Full download at: https://testbankreal.com/download/biological-science-canadian-2nd-edition- freeman-test-bank/ Biological Science Canadian 2nd Edition Freeman SOLUTIONS MANUAL Full download at: https://testbankreal.com/download/biological-science-canadian-2nd-edition- freeman-solutions-manual/ Biological Science, Canadian Edition., 2e (Freeman et al.) Chapter 2 Water and Carbon: The Chemical Basis of Life 1) How many electrons are involved in a single covalent bond? A) one B) two C) three D) four Answer: B Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 2) How many electrons are involved in a double covalent bond? A) one B) two C) three D) four Answer: D Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 3) How many electrons are involved in a triple covalent bond? A) two B) three C) six D) nine Answer: C Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 3. 3 B) single and double only C) four single bonds only D) two double bonds only Answer: A Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 4. 4 9) When are atoms most stable? A) when they have the fewest possible valence electrons B) when they have the maximum number of unpaired electrons C) when all of the electron orbitals in the valence shell are filled D) when all electrons are paired Answer: C Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 10) What holds electrons in a covalent bond? A) It is the fact that two electrons are paired in the same orbital. B) The electron sharing that occurs makes the atoms involved smaller and more compact. C) An increase in potential energy, caused by electrical repulsion of the electrons in the bond, holds the electrons. D) The negative charges on the electrons are attracted by the positive charges on both nuclei. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 11) How can you determine the approximate mass of an atom in atomic mass units? A) Add up the number of protons, electrons, and neutrons. B) Add up the number of protons and neutrons. C) Add up the number of protons and electrons. D) Take the number of protons minus the number of electrons. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 12) When one of the atoms involved in a covalent bond has a much higher electronegativity than the other atom, what type of bond results? A) a double bond B) a hydrogen bond C) a nonpolar covalent bond D) a polar covalent bond Answer: D Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 5. 5 13) When the atoms involved in a covalent bond have the same electronegativity, what type of bond results? A) an ionic bond B) a hydrogen bond C) a nonpolar covalent bond D) a polar covalent bond Answer: C Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 14) The difference between a polar covalent bond and an ionic bond is that electrons are shared unequally in a polar covalent bond, but are completely transferred (i.e., not shared) in an ionic bond. A) true B) false Answer: A Explanation: A) This would be a good classroom discussion question to drive home this important but subtle point. Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 15) Nitrogen (N) normally forms only three covalent bonds because it has a valence of five. However, ammonium has four covalent bonds, each to a different hydrogen (H) atom (H has a valence of one). Make a sketch of this molecule. Count the number of electrons in your sketch. Compare this number to the number of valence electrons in one N and four H's. What is the charge on this molecule most likely to be? A) +1 B) -1 C) +2 D) -2 Answer: A Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Applying LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 6. 6 16) The structural formula for a certain molecule includes a group symbolized -O. The dash next to the oxygen atom means that a single bond exists to another atom, such as a carbon. Based on the valence of oxygen and the number of bonds it normally forms, what is the charge on the oxygen atom in this case? A) +1 B) -1 C) +2 D) -2 Answer: B Explanation: B) This question is rather difficult, and easy to misinterpret. Instructors should use it as an exam question only if they have emphasized this concept in class. Otherwise, it would make an excellent in-class question to promote discussion on why certain atoms in molecules have a charge and others do not. Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Applying LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 17) You need to write down information about a molecule, but need to indicate only which atoms it contains and how many of each. Which representation would work best? A) molecular formula B) structural formula C) ball-and-stick model D) space-filling model Answer: A Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 18) You need to write down information about a molecule that gives the most accurate picture of the relative sizes of the atoms involved and their relationship in space. Which representation would work best? A) molecular formula B) structural formula C) ball-and-stick model D) space-filling model Answer: D Explanation: D) In-class discussion could be accompanied by pictures of ball-and-stick and space-filling models to stress the advantages of space-filling models. Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 7. 7 19) There are four elements that make up 95% of all matter found in organisms. Which of the following is not one of these? A) nitrogen B) calcium C) hydrogen D) oxygen Answer: B Reference: Section 2.1 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-1. Explain how and why atoms interact to form molecules. Sketch examples of how electrons are shared in nonpolar covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and ionic bonds. 20) Why is water capable of forming hydrogen bonds? A) The hydrogen atoms carry partial positive charges. B) The oxygen atom carries a partial negative charge. C) It is highly polar. D) All of the above apply. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 21) Why is water such a good solvent? A) Most polar and charged substances dissolve in it. B) It is highly polar. C) It can participate in hydrogen bonds. D) All of the above apply. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 22) Which of the following is not a property of liquid water? A) Its density is greater than ice. B) Its specific heat is higher than that of most other substances. C) Its heat of vaporization is lower than that of most other substances. D) It is polar. Answer: C Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 8. 8 23) Which of the following true statements can be attributed to water's high specific heat? A) Oil and water do not mix well. B) Our body temperature takes a long time to change because it is composed mostly of water. C) Ice floats on water. D) Sugar dissolves in hot tea faster than in iced tea. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 24) The ability to sweat or pant is considered an adaptation. Why? A) It allows a body to release excess water. B) It allows a body to absorb heat, due to water's high specific heat. C) It cools a body off, due to water's high heat of vaporization. D) It is an important signal to others that an individual is too hot. Answer: C Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 25) The cities of Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, are at about the same latitude, but Minneapolis has much hotter summers and much colder winters than Portland. Why? (Portland is near the Pacific Ocean; Minneapolis is near a number of large lakes.) A) They are not at exactly the same latitude. B) The ocean is so large that it has a highly moderating influence on temperature. C) Freshwater is more likely to freeze than saltwater. D) Minneapolis is much windier, due to its location in the middle of a continent. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 9. 9 26) To act as an effective coolant in a car's radiator, a substance has to be a liquid at the temperatures found in your car's engine and have the capacity to absorb a great deal of heat. You have a reference book with tables listing the physical properties of many liquids. In choosing a coolant for your car, which table would you check first? A) pH B) density at room temperature C) heat of vaporization D) specific heat Answer: D Explanation: D) This would make a good question for in-class discussion to clarify the difference between specific heat and heat of vaporization. Use on an exam only if the distinction was strongly emphasized in class. Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 27) Doctors used to recommend that parents sponge feverish children with rubbing alcohol to lower their body temperature. Rubbing alcohol has a lower heat of vaporization than water does. Which of the following is true? A) Rubbing alcohol will evaporate faster than water. B) Rubbing alcohol will evaporate at the same rate as water. C) Rubbing alcohol will evaporate more slowly than water. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 28) While water has many exceptional and useful properties, which is the rarest property among compounds? A) Water is a solvent. B) Solid water is less dense than liquid water. C) Water has a high heat capacity. D) Water has surface tension. Answer: B Explanation: B) This question appears simple, and is. But the biological importance of bodies of water freezing from the top down, and cells rupturing from inside out due to water freezing, are important and worth noting now. Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 10. 10 29) A pH of 7 is neutral due to the dissociation of water molecules in pure water. How many molecules of water have broken down into a hydroxide ion and a hydronium ion at pH 7? A) 1 in 1 million B) 1 in 10 million C) 1 in 100 million D) 1 in 1 billion Answer: B Explanation: B) no other questions on pH, this questions makes student recast the information in different units Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 30) A solution with a pH of 5 has how many more protons in it than a solution with a pH of 7? A) 5 times B) 10 times C) 100 times D) 1,000 times Answer: C Explanation: C) Introduces log nature of pH scale Reference: Section 2.2 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 31) Consider the following reaction at equilibrium: CO2 + H2O ↔ H2CO3. What would be the effect of adding additional H2CO3? A) It would drive the equilibrium dynamics to the right. B) It would drive the equilibrium dynamics to the left. C) Nothing would happen, because the reactants and products are in equilibrium. D) The amounts of CO2 and H2O would decrease. Answer: B Explanation: B) This would be a good question to stimulate discussion on equilibrium and starting dynamics, ratios, and absolute quantities. Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-2. List the unusual properties of water. Explain how these properties relate to the structure of water molecules, and how they make water important for life. 11. 11 32) Which of the following is a violation of the first law of thermodynamics? A) The amount of energy stored in a plant's cell as sugars after undergoing photosynthesis is less than the amount of sunlight it absorbed. B) A hydrogen bomb can destroy a large city with only a few pounds of explosive material. C) All of the energy in the universe today was present when the Big Bang occurred. D) The universe will eventually die, and it will have no energy left in it. Answer: D Explanation: D) This question could generate a lot of classroom discussion. Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 33) Which reaction is most spontaneous? A) a reaction that is slightly exothermic and leads to a slight increase in entropy B) a reaction that is slightly endothermic and leads to a huge decrease in entropy C) a reaction that is highly exothermic and leads to a huge decrease in entropy D) a reaction that is slightly exothermic and leads to a huge increase in entropy Answer: D Explanation: D) This would be a good Classroom Response System (CRS) question. Wrong answers on this question can be very instructive. Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Comprehension/Remembering LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 34) Why are some reactions exothermic? A) The products have lower potential energy than the reactants. B) They are spontaneous. C) They are nonspontaneous. D) The products have higher entropy (are more disordered) than the reactants. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 12. 12 35) Ice melts spontaneously at room temperature, even though the process is endothermic. How is this possible? A) ΔH is small, so melting still obeys the second law of thermodynamics. B) The Gibbs free-energy relationship does not apply to phase changes such as melting. C) Water has a very high specific heat. D) There is a large increase in entropy. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 36) What does it mean to say a system has a ∆G equal to zero? A) The system does not release or absorb heat. B) The system is perfectly ordered (no entropy). C) The total amount of potential energy in the system is zero. D) The system is at equilibrium. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 37) In the Gibbs free-energy relationship, why is the T term necessary? A) The free-energy change caused by a change in entropy is a function of temperature. B) The free-energy change caused by a change in potential energy is a function of temperature. C) The free-energy change caused by a change in electrical charge is a function of temperature. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-3. Define energy, and describe the major forms it can take. Explain why chemical bonds can be considered a form of energy. 38) Which statement best summarizes the essence of chemical evolution? A) Energy in the form of sunlight or heat was transformed into chemical energy. B) Instead of being radiated back to space, energy in the form of sunlight or heat was retained in the oceans and atmosphere because of water's high specific heat. C) Entropy increased. D) An increasing number of exothermic reactions occurred. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 13. 13 39) Why do chemical reactions tend to speed up when the reactants are heated? A) The reactants move faster. B) The reactants collide more often. C) The reactants have greater energy. D) All of the above apply. Answer: D Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 40) Why do chemical reactions tend to speed up when the concentration of the reactants is increased? A) The reactants move faster. B) The reactants collide more often. C) The reactants have greater energy. D) All of the above apply. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 41) During chemical evolution, which of the following occurred in the molecules involved? A) Entropy decreased while potential energy increased. B) Entropy increased while potential energy increased. C) Entropy stayed constant while potential energy increased. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 14. 14 42) Chemical evolution refers to which of the following? A) Large molecules tended to break apart because of the intense sunlight and heat from volcanoes. B) Water condensed to form the first oceans. C) Small molecules reacted to form larger, more complex molecules. D) Earth's crust solidified, even as massive bombardment from outer space continued. Answer: C Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 43) You've been asked to analyze a reaction that took place at 300°K. ∆H was -150 and ∆S was +0.4. Is the reaction endothermic or exothermic? A) endothermic B) exothermic C) You cannot tell unless you know the potential energy of the reactants and products. D) You cannot tell unless you know the amount of disorder in the reactants and products. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 44) The Q10 rule states that, within their survivable range, the rates of biochemical processes of many ectothermic organisms approximately double with every 10-degree (C) rise in temperature. Why would this be true? A) Warmer molecules interact faster. B) There are more vibrational harmonics with greater temperature. C) Organisms move faster when they are warmer. D) Sunlight warms all organisms. Answer: A Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Comprehension LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 15. 15 45) Why would the spontaneous formation of formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide not take place on Earth today as much as on the prebiotic Earth? A) Microorganisms break these down immediately. B) The sun has changed its output. C) Atmospheric conditions on Earth, such as the presence of oxygen, have changed. Answer: C Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 46) The first chemicals that provided potential energy on Earth may have been formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. While these were produced by sunlight-driven reactions, they also occur around deep-sea vents. If the first organisms on Earth evolved around these vents, the first life on Earth was A) photosynthetic and obtained energy from the sun. B) chemosynthetic and obtained energy from chemicals. C) herbivorous and obtained energy from plants. D) carnivorous and obtained energy from animals. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.3 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. 47) Which of the following tends to make chemical reactions spontaneous? A) The reactants have lower potential energy than the products. B) The reactants are more ordered than the products. C) The temperature is low. D) The pressure is low. Answer: B Reference: Section 2.4 Bloom's Level: Remembering LOs: Chp2-4. Explain, both in mathematical terms and in plain English, how changes in entropy and potential energy determine whether or not a reaction is spontaneous. Understand under what conditions a nonspontaneous reaction can occur. These presentations are classified and categorized, so you will always find everything clearly laid out and in context. You are watching Biological science canadian 2nd edition freeman test bank presentation right now. We are staying up to date!

http://www.slidesearchengine.com/slide/biological-science-canadian-2nd-edition-freeman-test-bank

How can be add discount for products if quantity is more then one? How can we add additional field at the time of signup. Unfortunately such feature is not possible with the current MP version but we do have it on our to do list and hoping to add it in future updates. Easiest way would be to use BuddyPress and BuddyPress Xprofile fields plugins that will allow you to create custom login form. Now in Membership add-ons simply enable BuddyPress integration add-on and for that add-on enable use of buddypress registration page. We activated both buddy press and xprofile but no option available as membership > Add on. We are using Membership Premium. Am I understanding correctly that you're not using Membership 2 Pro plugin? My colleague @Predrag Dubajic assumed that you've already upgraded to Membership 2 Pro as we encourage all members of our community to do so. The feature is part of Membership 2 Pro and in order to make use of it you'd want to perform an upgrade. That said, have you considered switching to Membership 2 Pro? I think this could be beneficial in future as we no longer develop Membership Premium, so all bug/security fixes and new features are added to Membership 2 Pro. if we have to upgrade Membership Premium to Membership 2 Pro plugin, is there any option to upgrade or we have to do it manually by adding plugin. Also is all settings etc that is there in Membership Premium plugin will be there or we have to do all work again. "WPMU DEV" -> "Updates" page and an update should be shown there. If it's not, please click on "Update now" blue link at the bottom of this page. You may then be asked to "unlock" upgrade but that's just to make sure that you really want to perform upgrade. The plugin should guide you through the process and should pick up all the members and settings. I would however recommend taking a full backup of the site (including files and database) prior to update as this will be a huge "jump" skipping some releases of the plugin so it's always better to secure a way to quickly restore site in case anything went wrong. We updated the plugin but it lost all the data from there and asked for configure membership from start. Please advice how can we upgrade without loss of membership data and rules. One question though, on your site info I don't actually see either Membership Premium or Membership 2 Pro plugin installed on your site, do you use our Membership Premium plugin? Yes this is there, please check and advice. Am I correct? If so, please visit "Memberships" and create new membership of "Standard" type - just give it a name (any name) and save. This should bring all previous settings and options back and you should be then able to safely remove that additional membership. Let me know if this was the case and if it helped, please! It didn't work, I can provide you login details to check. Please reply here once the access has been granted. I see that all M2 settings are visible on your installation. Can you go to Membership 2 > Settings > Import Tool tab, select Membership (WPMU DEV) option and click on Preview Import button, check notes and if the imported data mentioned there is correct and if it is click on Import button. We did the same but member only page is opening with asking for login, please check attached screenshot. It is showing the Shortcode. You can also check once you click on members in main navigation and it should ask to login or register. Membership shortcodes have changed between versions and old shortcodes need to be replaced with new ones. Can you direct me to the updated shortcode help, where I can find the same. Additional shortcodes can be found under Membership > Help > Shortcodes panel. 1) When some one is registering it is not showing in list of users under membeship2 users. 3) How can we add captcha on registration form? Since these issues are not related to your original question and there are quite a few responses in this thread already could you please open new threads for your questions, you would want to keep questions that are not closely related in separate threads, this will allow us to keep better track of everything.

https://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/membership-and-market-press-plugin

Airline maps asks "did Aeroflot not have an aircraft that could fly nonstop from Moscow to Vladivostok in the 1970s?." Because I'm that kind of nerd, I looked into it. The distance from Moscow (SVO) to Vladivostok (VVO) is just about 6425km (4,000mi). Russia's pride, the Tu-144 (aka "Concordski") could just barely make it: it's published range is also just about 6,425km. After that, the selection of airplanes which Aeroflot had that could make the non-stop flight was pretty small. Only the IL-62, with a range of 10,000km, could do it. Surprisingly, Aeroflot's newest wide-body jet, the IL-86 couldn't make it (3,100mi range, which seems curiously short; that's barely trans-Atlantic range.) Nor could the workhorses, the Tu-154 or the Yak-42 make the flight non-stop. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, by the mid-1970s, there were three airplanes that could consistently deliver: the then-still-Douglas DC-10-30 (1972, 10,600km range), the Lockheed L-1011 (1972, 7850km), and the Boeing 747 (1970, 8550km). Airbus was producing airplanes equivalent to the IL-86 at the time; not until 1985 and the A310-300 (9550km range) did Airbus make an airplane that could do SVO-VVO non-stop.

http://markjhandel.com/index.php/posts/range-of-1970s-soviet-commercial-airplanes

The Predator is the sixth film in the series. As The Predator hits theaters, it's crazy to think the oversized heat-vision-seeing, guttural-purring alien with an ugly crab face has been hunting people for 31 years across six films, numerous comic books and over a dozen video games. That's a lot of blood -- red and green. The through line for all the films is the mythology, twisted moral code and violence that surround the character of the Predator. But according to star Keegan-Michael Key, The Predator is not a sequel. "What we're doing is a chapter of a larger story that we could call The Predator Universe," Key told CNET Magazine. "You could watch them in any order you want because they all exist in their own right." You could even see The Predator without watching any other film in the franchise. But, if you have time and some popcorn, watching a few of them will make the new one all the better. Here's how I prioritize the movies. This is the original 1987 popcorn film, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator, True Lies), Carl Weathers (Rocky) and Jesse Ventura (WWF). It starts out as a cliche '80s action flick in the vein of Rambo: First Blood Part II and Commando, with former military types hired for a secret mission. The characters display their over-the-top machismo in different ways: One obsessively shaves using a safety razor on bare skin and others have cut-off sleeves revealing their challah-bread-like muscles. Pretty much all sport ridiculously large guns that never seem to run out of ammunition. What makes Predator so fantastic is the Wizard of Oz-like "reveal" halfway through that finds our elite soldiers as prey, pivoting the film into a psychological and violent alien hunter story. It holds up well to a viewing today, especially Schwarzenegger's performance. Some of the humor is dated and truly foul-mouthed (like when a character tells a joke about his wife's anatomy). Interestingly enough, this character was played by Shane Black, director of the new film. The special effects, which were nominated for an Academy Award, look a tad rough by today's standards, but still work well. For example, the visual effect that makes the Predator "look" invisible is incredibly believable and badass. There's an outstanding behind-the-scenes video of Jean-Claude Van Damme, who originally played the Predator, running around a jungle in what looks like a red dinosaur costume before the special effects are applied. Van Damme was later let go for being too short and replaced by the 7-foot, 3-inch Kevin Peter Hall. Predator is consistently ranked as one of the best action films of all time. It introduced one of the best, ugliest-looking alien characters ever on screen -- though in my book Alf is a close second. The film also stars two then-future state governors -- Schwarzenegger would be California's governor from 2003 to 2011 and Ventura was Minnesota's from 1998 to 2002. Coming out when Schwarzenegger was at peak star power, Predator is filled with amazing Arnold one-liners that are still quoted today. "You are one ugly motherf-----!" While this one's technically the third film in the series, I recommend watching it second. Predators is to the original Predator film what Aliens is to the original Alien film. At least that's what producer Robert Rodriguez (Alita: Battle Angel, El Mariachi, Spy Kids) envisioned. Where the original film had two governors in it, this one stars two Academy Award winners: Adrien Brody (The Pianist, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Mahershala Ali (Luke Cage, Moonlight). Other cast members include Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Danny Trejo (Machete) and Topher Grace (That 70's Show). In what might be one of the most fascinating openings to a film, the first image shows Brody free-falling from a high altitude. We are literally being dropped into action from the film's first frame. The movie's story starts out similar to the original, with soldiers (and some other dangerous guys) fighting in a foreign jungle only to have their world literally turned upside down about a third of the way through the movie. Predators emulates the dripping manliness of the original and inevitably builds up to a shirtless bulked-up Brody yelling and running with a knife surrounded by the flames of a raging fire. As the title infers, there are multiple Predators in the film and they now have predator hunting dogs, who are even uglier than their dog-dad. "They weren't meant for us. He was hunting something else. Something a lot bigger." "We're gonna need a new plan." "This is its jungle. Its game. Its rules. We run, we die." [in Russian] "You are one ugly motherf-----!" Even though it's the second movie, watch this one third -- it's the sleeper of the series. Starring Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon, Sorry To Bother You), the film's action moves from the actual jungle of the first film to the concrete jungle of the then-futuristic 1997 Los Angeles -- it came out in 1990. It starts out as an '80s police and drug cartel movie similar in tone to Scarface and Cobra. Like the original film, Predator 2 juxtaposes bloody action sequences with the Predator's chess-master-like hunting. However, none of the characters from the first movie are in it, not even Schwarzenegger. In one way, this is disappointing, but in another, it adds to the mythos of the franchise, expanding what we know about the high-tech alien hunter and his brethren. It's enthralling to see the Predator hunt and adapt to a dense urban setting, especially as Gary Busey (Point Break), at his Busey-est, tries to outsmart him and foil Glover's character. Also, Bill Paxton shows up, with a dash of Chet from Weird Science, to provide a few needed laughs. The tagline for the film is "He's in town with a few days to kill." "You can't see the eyes of the demon, until him come callin'." "OK everybody, just take a deep breath. Loosen your sphincters. We don't need any rush hour Rambos here." "You are one big ugly motherf-----!" Do you have taxes to do? Perhaps some dental work you've been putting off? If you have absolutely nothing better to do and like the other Predator movies, AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2010) might provide some satisfaction. But just know going in: These films make the other three look like arthouse masterpieces. Both films have a Metacritic score of 29, while Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (AVPR) earned a very low 11 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The tagline for AVPR is "This Christmas there will be no peace on Earth." Horrible, I know. OK they're not a complete dumpster fire -- after all, you get to see two legendary badass movie aliens go toe-to-toe (make that toe-to-tail). Also, it ties the Predator universe with the Alien universe, and by extension the Blade Runner univ erse. Some of the action sequences are really entertaining. But the films lose the focus and psychological elements that make the other three so good. If you want to enjoy the mind-blowing crossover between the Predator and the xenomorph from the Alien franchise, I recommend taking a look at the comic Alien vs. Predator, which brings the epicness you hope for without the B-movie story and production.

http://www.bestsellermagazine.com/2018/09/before-seeing-predator-watch-these.html

front of the second object, as in "I gave you money. => I gave money TO you." >John drove Mary crazy. => *John drove crazy TO Mary. >John called the dog Spot. => *John called Spot TO the dog. sentences aren't any sort of object: instead they're _predicatives_. *Crazy is seemed by Mary. *A dog is been by Spot.

https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0811b&amp;L=CONLANG&amp;P=43375

An Ethernet is primarily a group of LAN technologies which are covered in IEEE 802.3 u standard. The ethernet is easily maintained and managed and considered to be low-cost network implementation solution. It comes in three variations, 10Base-T ethernet, fast ethernet and gigabit ethernet. The main difference between fast ethernet and gigabit ethernet is the contradicting speed where fast ethernet provides at maximum 100 Mbps of data transmission speed whereas gigabit ethernet offers high-speed data transmission up to 1 Gbps. Basic Offers 100 Mbps speed. Provide 1 Gbps speed. Delay Generate more delay. Less comparatively. Configuration Simple Complicated and create more errors. Coverage Can cover distance up to 10 km. Has the limit of 70 km. Relation Successor of 10-Base-T Ethernet. A successor of fast Ethernet. The fast Ethernet was devised under the name of 802u to contend for LAN protocol FDDI. It is completely based on 10-Base-T ethernet as it is a successor of 10-Base-T Ethernet. It was popular because it is simple to implement, manage and maintain. The fast ethernet has the advantage of backward compatibility. It is ten times faster than its successor and is capable of providing data speed of 100 Mbps. There are three varieties of fast ethernet – 100Base-T4, 100Base-Tx and 100Base-Fx. MAC layer of fast ethernet is different from the standard ethernet where the data rate and collision domain are altered. The data rate is incremented by the factor of 10 and collision rate is decremented by the factor of 10. Although, there exhibit no change in frame format, then how did it achieve ten times faster speed without changing frame format? To accomplish this, the RTT (Round trip time) has reduced from 57.6 to 5.76 microseconds. The time needed for a signal pulse or a packet to traverse from a certain source to a particular destination and return from there again is known as Round trip time or Round-trip delay. The Gigabit Ethernet was devised to provide a higher rate of transmission up to 1 Gbps. The prior intention was to develop a technology that can properly work on existing networking equipment. It is constructed on the top of the Ethernet protocols such as CSMA/CD. Both the modes full duplex and half duplex are supported by it, similar to fast ethernet. In the beginning single-mode, multi-mode fibre and short-haul coax cable are used. After that, twisted pair cable standards were also included. Gigabit rates are achieved by using physical channel technology as a standard over the optical fibres. The fibre optic cable is majorly used instead of coaxial cable and twisted pair cable. MAC layer has also modified in gigabit ethernet. It uses carrier extension to detect frames coming from a larger distance. To manage flow control the X-on/X-off protocols are used, that work over any of the full-duplex Ethernet. This helps in stopping the transmission when a switch buffer is near to its capacity. The quality of service (QoS) is supported by gigabit ethernet with the help of signalling scheme so that the real-time packets get the better treatment. The data rate provided by fast ethernet is up to 100 Mbps. On the other hand, gigabit ethernet offers up to 1 Gbps speed. As the speed is increased in Gigabit ethernet, so the delay is decreased whereas the fast ethernet generates more delay. The configuration of fast ethernet is simpler than gigabit ethernet. The distance covered by fast ethernet is at most 10 km. On the contrary, the gigabit ethernet covers 70 km. Round trip delay of fast ethernet is 100-500 bit times. As against, gigabit ethernet has the delay of 4000 bit times. Fast Ethernet and gigabit ethernet are the types of ethernet where fast ethernet is slower than gigabit ethernet and provide maximum data speed up to 100 Mbps. On the other hand, the gigabit ethernet has extended its speed at maximum to 1 Gbps by improving cabling technology, MAC layer, flow control protocols and quality of service.

https://techdifferences.com/difference-between-fast-ethernet-and-gigabit-ethernet.html

If blacks do not like the “N” word so much, why do they use that word in their music, movies and speech, but they get upset if a white person uses it? This question generates varied responses. There is no question that some blacks use this racial slur when addressing each other or describing other blacks. There are also many blacks who do not use the word, however the focus is on the ones who do. What could be their motivation or rationale? The usage may be one that minimizes the word because it is only a word. If this is the reason for usage, the user may be attempting to “claim” or “reclaim” the word in an attempt to neutralize its original malicious intent as a weapon for denigration. The assertion is that the familiar usage may cause it to lose its sting, however those who adhere to this philosophy are often irritated, offended and outraged when a non-black utters the same word. These people may follow the old adage that sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Unfortunately, names can be very painful. Another explanation for the use of this word is similar to a “family” thing. In the nuclear family, you can criticize or call each other the cruelest of names (fat, ugly, stupid), but no one outside your family can make the same comment or there will be serious consequences. It’s the familial protectiveness that emerges and defends because you know your comments are not truly meant to harm or degrade your family, however anyone else’s comments are automatically suspect. This “family” thing is similar to some blacks’ usage of the “N” word because no true harm is meant. Would a black person really intend to harm someone in his race by using a word that has been used to demean and humiliate their shared race? In this situation the intent is not questioned, however a white person is not given the benefit of the doubt when our nation’s history is considered. Singer John Mayer recently found this out. His usage of the “N” word in a recent interview was met with disappointment and anger in the black community. He had attempted to prove his acceptance within the black community, and the word fell flat. Consequently, Mayer discovered a black person’s usage of the “N” word is not received in the same vile way than an “outside” race would be perceived as using it. This phenomenon is not confined to blacks, as other races use racially derogatory terms that pertain to their group. As mentioned earlier, some blacks contend the “N” word should not be used by any race, including their own, because it is offensive and counterproductive. Further, they state it is lunacy to expect others to refrain from using the word when the people it is intended to humiliate and subjugate commonly use the word. Obviously, this is not held by all blacks because there are many who use the “N” word, and of those, virtually 100% would be offended if a white person were to refer to them as such. Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck sparred on The View over this very issue on July 17, 2008. So is it an acceptable word? What are your thoughts? Let’s engage with straight talk!

http://prejudiceanddiscrimination.com/hello-world/

Why is it that glaciers do not contain salt? Glaciers form from accumulation of snow over time. When water evaporates from oceans (salt water), the salt is left behind because it cannot evaporate. The evaporated water turns into clouds and there is no salt when the snow precipitates.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00ACli

Should a Storm Window Design Match my House? The storm window selection process is an important one because you want to ensure that you not only spend a reasonable amount of money on the design that you end up selecting but also that the window looks as great as possible when paired with the rest of the property. As such, when you are first comparing the options that are available to you to purchase from window manufacturers, it can help to consider how well each one will look when combined with the other elements of the property. One question many property owners ask during this process is whether they should select a window design that matches or contrasts with the other elements of their houses. As such, here are some different options to help answer this question. The decision regarding which design of storm windows to select is really going to be based on your personal preferences and sense of style. In truth, some home owners regularly choose storm window designs that contrast with the other elements of their homes while other property owners prefer to select designs that match appropriately with the other elements of their houses. A great way to determine which look you will prefer is to compare both those designs that complement the other aspects of the house as well as those that contrast with the house design. By doing this, you will begin to gather ideas on which styles you prefer and will be able to make a decision from this point. Be sure to note any restrictions that may be placed on you by a home owners association if you belong to one to ensure that you don't violate any rules with the storm window design selection. One special consideration that many people must take into account is when they own a historic type of house. In this type of situation, it is usually best to select a storm window design that will match your house rather than one that will contrast with it. This decision is usually made for historic purposes since you won't want anything to detract with the historic appeal of the property. Thankfully, there are many storm window styles that are made to be practically unnoticeable so that you won't need to worry about people noticing them when visiting the property. This storm window purchase can be particularly beneficial for you if you own an older house because the windows that are already on the property probably aren't working as well as they did in the past. Again, the best thing you can really do when buying storm windows is compare as many offers as possible before selecting the one that you would like to purchase. By comparing several different options, you will likely find the one that catches your eye the best and that you feel will work well with the other elements of the house that you own. Additionally, when you compare several different storm window offers, you may end up saving more money since you will be able to determine how the prices are varying from one manufacturer to the next. Overall, this purchase of a storm window can be very beneficial for your house in many different ways, regardless of which house matching storm window design you decide to select. Not only can the window help to protect the interior of the house from storm damage but it can also help you to feel more comfortable in the home because of such things as increased energy efficiency and also for reduced noise entering the house from outside.

https://www.stormwindows.org/house-matching-storm-windows.html

In English, there is an idiom, as comfort as an old shoe. It is a known fact that an old shoe is most comfortable to wear. However, old shoe wears off, eventually you can’t wear it any longer. So, what is the most comfortable shoe other than your old shoe? Of course it is a new shoe that is exactly the same as your old shoe! I have been wearing the Nike ACG hiking boots for many years. It has been so long that I couldn’t keep track of how many pairs I had, probably 8 or 10 pairs. On average I wear out a pair every year, so I need to get a new pair every year. Shoes are on sales at Foot Locker, buy one and one half prince. Since I will need a new pair every year, why don’t I buy an extra pair and save it for next year? Not only I got a great discount, but also save me the trouble to shop for shoes next year. I wonder what should I wear if Nike discount the ACG hiking boots. I guess I don’t have to worry about this question for the foreseeable future. I heard from the sales at Foot Locker, Nike ACG hiking boots are one of their best sellers. It would not make much business to discontinue a popular model. The last sentence could be rephrase to read “It would not make any business sense to discontinue a popular model. Thanks for pointing out the mistake. Believing it or not, I was thinking “It would not make much business sense to discontinue a popular model”, but somehow it became “It would not much any busines to discount a popular model” when I wrote it down. i need this pair any one can help me? I too desperately are looking for a pair of this model. It is such a good build. I no longer wear Nike ACG boots. I found better ones, Palladium boots. Nike discounted this model a few years ago. I switched to wear Palladium boots now.

http://www.horace.org/blog/2007/11/15/nike-acg-hiking-boots/

How will the court decide on custody? The court will decide custody based on the best interests of the child. In every case, the court will keep that main issue in their mind. Many factors will play into what the judge deems the best interest of the child. For example, they may believe that it is best for the child to get equal time with each parent, or that one parent is not suitable to have physical custody, but can share legal custody. What factors does a court look at when deciding on custody? The child's wishes and more. Other factors they may look at include instances of domestic violence or abuse. How will a parenting plan be decided on? A parenting plan is started by a judge. It will give equal time with children to both parents. From this standpoint, they will then adjust as necessary. This does not mean that a finalized parent plan will include equal time! While the judge must approach a case this way, they will use many other factors to determine the best parenting plan. They will consider parents' work schedules, schooling, commute, transportation abilities, living area, and much more. Can emails, text messages, or other social media be used in a custody case? This is a very tricky question. With the way society is changing and growing in technology, text messages, emails, and other forms of social media may now be presented in court as evidence to sway a judge's opinion on child custody. That being said, some evidence can be debated. Regardless, you should keep in mind that a judge can access any of your social media account, prior to and during the trial. This means you should be very aware of the information and language you post. How do I get child custody modified? Whether you are moving closer or just want to spend more time with your children, getting an order modified is important. However, you will need to show substantial reason for the order to be modified in order to get the changes you are seeking. Even then, the court may not grant the exact request you ask for. For example, you should have a geographic change, financial change, marital change, health change, or more to be granted a custody modification. Related: How do I Modify my Child Custody Arrangement in Florida? How can I get more custody of my child? There is no way to guarantee that you will be given sole or joint physical custody of your child. However, there are a few things you can do to prove your devotion and dedication to being the best parent you can be to your child. By demonstrating that you spend time with your child, invest in their lives, and support their interests, you may increase the likelihood of receiving custody. Having a safe home in a clean, respectable area can play a big factor into child custody as well. You may also be given a better parenting plan if you show that you can get along peacefully with the other parent. My spouse has physical custody and is trying to move the kids. What should I do? If you fear that you spouse will try to move your children and prevent you from seeing them as you did before in your parenting plan, you may need to take legal action. The court will likely not grant a move-away order or relocation to your spouse if you strongly contest it. If they still wish to move away, they may lose some of their custody rights. Have more questions? Give my firm a call to discuss your child custody concerns.

https://www.jaxdivorce.com/child-custody/child-custody-faqs/

Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word Check. "he paid all his bills by check" "they made an assay of the contents"; "a check on its dependability under stress" "he asked the waiter for the check" "they made a check of their equipment"; "the pilot ran through the check-out procedure" "as he called the role he put a check mark by each student's name" "she wore a skirt with checks" "check the brakes"; "Check out the engine" "check into the rumor"; "check the time of the class" "She checked for an instant and missed a step" "Please check each name on the list"; "tick off the items"; "mark off the units" "The brain damage will retard the child's language development" "The two stories don't agree in many details"; "The handwriting checks with the signature on the check"; "The suspect's fingerprints don't match those on the gun" "Parents must discipline their children"; "Is this dog trained?" "check your luggage before boarding" "Check your coat at the door" "check the spelling of this word"; "check your facts" "He checked the flow of water by shutting off the main valve" To leave (something) in the temporary custody of another; as, to check baggage; to check one's firearms at the door; to check one's coat at the cloakroom. To accept (something) for temporary custody from another; as, to check a customer's baggage; to check a customer's coat. To make a checkered pattern upon. To put a sudden restraint upon; to stop temporarily; to hinder; to repress; to curb. Hence, (Ice Hockey) To obstruct the motion of an opposing player by contacting him with one's body. To verify, to guard, to make secure, by means of a mark, token, or other check; to distinguish by a check; to put a mark against (an item) after comparing with an original or a counterpart in order to secure accuracy. Hence, To compare with an original or with some standard, to insure correctness; as, to check an account; to check with a supervisor about procedures. In games such as chess, shogi, and xiangqi, a check is a threat to capture the king on the next move turn. A king so threatened is said to be in check. On the very next move, the player whose king is in check must remove their king from check, if possible. Either the threat must be stopped or the king must be moved to a square where it is no longer in check. If the player has no move out of check, the game ends in checkmate and the player loses. A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. E.g., a parity check is the result of a hardware-detected parity error. Recorded here because the word often humorously extended to non-technical problems. For example, the term child check has been used to refer to the problems caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens when s/he presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course, this particular problem could have been prevented with molly-guards). You have to check that. It is not a blank check. "Check." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2019. Web. 21 Apr. 2019. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/Check>.

https://www.definitions.net/definition/Check

Like Big Data? How about container-based virtualization? MapR thinks these are two great tastes that taste great together, and is introducing the Converged Data Platform for Docker to make it all work. If virtual machines are what made the cloud possible, then containers are what will make the cloud elegant. Think about it this way: as a computing entity, an entire virtual machine is a pretty coarse, hefty resource if what you're really looking to do is distribute a single application. Containers, on the other hand, let you deploy an application, its dependencies and its environment in an efficient vessel that fits pretty tightly around them and can be pushed into both cloud and on-premises environments very efficiently. This notion of easily deployed applications is pretty meaningful to Hadoop ecosystem vendor MapR. That's because its "Converged Data Platform," beyond go-to-market rhetoric, focuses on the use of clusters running MapR-FS (an HDFS-compatible File System), MapR-DB (an HBase-compatible NoSQL database) and MapR Streams (a Kafka-compatible streaming data engine) as distributed application platforms. In other words, instead of setting up a cluster running a full Hadoop/Spark distribution, with all of its companion projects and tools, MapR targets a scenario where just the file system, database and streaming data infrastructure are in place, serving as the core runtime for mission-critical applications (MapR calls them "converged apps") that run right on top. Apps running on these clusters sure sound like they'd be perfect for containerized operation, don't they? Yes, but there's a catch. To make the persistent resources of a Hadoop cluster be visible to apps running in containers, you need some hooks, from the latter to the former. And so MapR has attacked that very problem. With the Converged Data Platform for Docker, which MapR is announcing this morning, running containerized apps on MapR clusters can apparently work quite well. The combination of a POSIX client for containers and the new MapR Persistent Application Client Container (PACC) allow converged apps in Docker containers to see running MapR clusters, just as if the apps were deployed directly to a virtual machine or physical server. Containerized converged apps can run on-premises or in the cloud. And the MapR clusters they target can run in either environment as well. You can even mix and match, for hybrid environments (for example, having the container running on-premises against a cloud-based MapR cluster, or vice-versa. With this release, MapR is making clear that its model is very different from Cloudera and Hortonworks. Rather than selling a mere customized Hadoop distribution, the company instead sees itself as selling an enterprise application platform for data-centric computing. Yes, that platform happens to be based on Hadoop and YARN and, yes, it mixes in proprietary technology. But whereas at one time, it seemed like that cocktail of open source and home-grown Hadoop technology was the story, now that approach really seems like a means to an end. The real goal for MapR is to be an Enterprise data company. Big Data, small data, streaming data, the cloud -- and now containers -- are pieces of that puzzle. But MapR isn't selling the pieces, it's integrating them, and aims to help its customers do likewise.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mapr-gets-container-religion-with-platform-for-docker/

Every rabbit knows what to do in case of a flood. All you need to do is to get to a point above the water level and wait for Mazai. But when the actual flood happens, rabbits start to panic. That’s why we ask for your help to create an optimal evacuation plan for rabbits. Let’s describe the flood as a game between a rabbit and water. Game takes place in a rectangular grid with n rows and m columns. Let’s say that a point in a row i and a column j has coordinates (i, j). It is known, that for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n, 1 ≤ j ≤ m a cell with coordinates (i, j) has height hij. The rabbit starts at a point with coordinates (r1, c1), water starts at point with coordinates (r2, c2). Moreover, the rabbit has a property named jump height. The rabbit and water take turns, the rabbit makes the first move. After each move the rabbit either doesn’t move or jumps to any adjacent cell. Cells are adjacent, if they have a common side. In addition to this, the rabbit cannot move to a cell, which height exceeds the height of a current cell more than on jump height. Water just fills all the cells that have adjacent cell filled with water of greater or equal height. Both water and the rabbit should stay within the game grid. Rabbit can only survive in the cells not filled with water. The game doesn’t ever stop. Your task is to find the minimum jump height the rabbit needs to have in order to survive for infinite time. First line of input contains 2 integer numbers n and m separated with a space (1 ≤ n, m ≤ 100, n · m ≠1 ) — size of the game grid. The next n lines describe grid cells. Each of n strings contains m integer numbers, separated with a space hij (0 ≤ hij ≤ 105) — heights of cells. The next line contains two integer numbers r1 and c1, separated with a space (1 ≤ r1 ≤ n, 1 ≤ c1 ≤ m) — initial location of the rabbit. The last line contains two integers r2 and c2, separated with a space (1 ≤ r2 ≤ n, 1 ≤ c2 ≤ m) — initial location of water. It is guaranteed, that the rabbit and water start in different cells. Columns are numerated from 1 to m from left to right. Rows are numerated from 1 to n from top to bottom. If the rabbit cannot survive in any case, in a single line output -1. Otherwise, in a single line output a single number — the least jump height that rabbit should have in order to survive for infinite time.

http://acm.timus.ru/problem.aspx?space=717&num=3

What is a single word for something that takes on shape slowly? I am looking for a single word describing something that takes on shape slowly (such as a silhouette in the night that gets more defined the closer you get to it). It would be great if the word could be used for the process of getting to know someone better (their character would be taking on shape slowly the more you get to know them). For years, I wondered who had signed up for all of the slots, and eventually a character started to crystallize in my imagination. There may be an even better word for it, only it seems to escape me just now. "resolve", opposite of "dissolve". "the outlines of his true character resolved only gradually..." Source - "materialise. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/materialise (accessed: April 16, 2017). Synonyms: become clear, become definite, become tangible, crystallize, gel, come together, fall into place. The Free Dictionary lists takes shape as an idiom, which is kind of like one word ... if you're willing to stretch it. If not, I'll go with gel, which hasn't been mentioned yet. Addendum: More examples from OD in response to @Tonepoet's comment. These examples generally show that taking shape occurs over time, gradually, slowly, in the OP's sense. Taking shape does not occur immediately or abruptly; it implicitly requires time, as per emphasis added and prevalence of various forms of "begin". take shape or coalesce, especially to form a satisfying whole. "the ballet failed to congeal as a single oeuvre" grow by accumulation or coalescence. form (a composite whole or a collection of things) by gradual accumulation: "the collection of art he had accreted was to be sold" This is not the best fit for the scenario given in the OP, but the verb struck me upon reading the OP title. After many sessions, the features of his psychosis accreted into something recognizable: sociopathy. OP: It would be great if the word could be used for the process of getting to know someone better (their character would be taking on shape slowly the more you get to know them). "Blossom" evokes flowers and gentle development during a special time of growth. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. Our friendship (grew, evolved) from common interests. verb (used with object), evolved, evolving. It's very basic but the verb usage of "form" "the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another" to make more acute; strengthen or sharpen. Consider also emanates and emanation--good for a ghost, perhaps not so good for a person. "to make more fine, subtle, or precise, or to improve or perfect by pruning or polishing". Realize it's not so befitting considering the requirement you raised in the second paragraph but my first instinct when I saw the question was to answer with the word primordial, provoked by my thoughts of the slow, sprawling transformation of early Earth. Stew. Seems to me all of the below definitions of its use as a verb from Dictionary.com could easily be described as states of change resulting in a new form, tangible or intangible. He stewed about his chaotic state of affairs all day. Stumbled through this site in the past but your question prompted me to sign up with that, thought it was an interesting non-standard use of the word. Warp. Although it means to twist out of shape, when used to describe a character of a person, it could mean transform into a new less appealing shape. Maybe transform can be used in a more neutral (ie, less negative) way. An adjective for something that 'takes shape slowly' could be viscous. Although this mainly refers to liquids that can't pour easily, for example honey, mud and crude oil all are a all viscous. If you pour a viscous liquid on a flat table, it will indeed take shape slowly. You could use this metaphorically, I suppose like any other adjective in the English language however someone would need to have a very good grasp of the English language to understand. With rarely-used words like these it may be best to simply take two simple words and combine them. I.e. just say slow-forming and everyone will understand perfectly. in·cho·ate inˈkōət,ˈinkəˌwāt/ adjective just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary. "a still inchoate democracy"

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/384606/what-is-a-single-word-for-something-that-takes-on-shape-slowly/384609

"Testimony by Diana Sprouse re Mark Bowles" Mary Neal What sentence did Mark Bowles receive for having an "illegal" epileptic crisis, Diana Beth? You talked to Mark and he told you about the latest brutality he endured? Diana Beth He received 33 months and another 63 for a total of 99 months in St Cloud Prison. Diana Beth They keep beating him in the head. I'm filling criminal charges against them for both counts. My son is a vulnerable adult, Mary Neal with brain injuries and brain atrophy. They don't care. Diana Beth I haven't spoken to my son, but the prison tells me that Stearns County sheriff's did this because my son wouldn't get on his knees. He has a titanium plate in his spine and a spacer where his L-1 Vertebra was shattered. He cannot get on his knees. He wouldn't be able to get up again. They took his cane away too. We believe that the way Mark Bowles was and is being treated violates the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), the Civil Rights Act, the Convention Against Torture, and Executive Order 13107, implementing human rights treaties. Diana Beth Thank you Mary Neal for doing this for my son. He called for the first time tonight and said they had slammed his face into the cement when he refused to get on his knees and wasn't walking fast enough for them earlier with his shackles cutting into his ankles. He had been in that restraint chair all day with the shackles breaking through the skin because they were so tight. I hope everyone contacts Governor Mark Dayton about this. You can see the fresh bruising on Mark Bowles' face. His right cheek is red and swollen, and his left eye looks like it is going to be a black eye. His mother, Diana Sprouse, said that Mark was beaten in the Stearn County Sheriff's Office when he refused to get down on his knees. This is something Mark cannot do because of his back injury and operation, wherein discs in his back were replaced with plastic. He literally cannot get down on his knees, even if he must die for noncompliance. It is not a matter of disobeying orders but physical inability. Please call authorities for Mark Bowles. Even if they do nothing and continue to kill him, YOU will feel better for speaking out against the continued persecution of Mark Bowles for being mentally ill and having an epileptic crisis. Thank you in advance.

http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com/2015/04/mark-bowles-99-month-sentence-for.html

The URL identification code is accessing untrusted input and running it through programs I don't understand. During fetch, this code is isolated from the GUI (but not the database). During playback, this code runs in the GUI. Move this code into its own process and look for ways to deny it access to the database, window system, etc. The URL identification code is accessing untrusted input and running it through programs I don't understand. During fetch, this code is isolated from the GUI (but not the database). During playback, this code runs in the GUI. The URL identification code: - must _not_ have any access to the database - must _not_ have any access to the GUI Move this code into its own process and look for ways to deny it access to the database, window system, etc.

https://gitlab.peach-bun.com/jortjams/jortjams/issues/153

I recently bought a new construction condo, and, now that I've moved in, I'm seeing serious problems with the way the apartment was built. How can I make the developer fix this? "The first thing I would do is find out if other people in the building are having the same issues," says Jeffrey Rendin, a new partner at the real estate law firm Wagner Berkow who, until recently, supervised enforcement of condo development issues at the New York attorney general's office. "There is power in numbers. If it is an issue that affects more units, it could be indicative of larger issues in the building." The next pressing task, according to Rendin, is pulling up the condo offering plan to find what are called the notice provisions. "Oftentimes when it comes to latent or patent defects, the plan spells out a specific time limit for bringing these issues to the attention of the developer," Rendin says. Depending on how long it's been since the developer started selling apartments in the building, the developer (or, "sponsor") could still control the building's board, as it still owns most of the units. In that case, your band of disaffected apartment buyers would need to meet on your own and retain a lawyer. If the board is resident-controlled, the board could go through its usual lawyer, but Rendin recommends making sure that lawyer is versed in condo and construction defect law, particularly if things progress beyond the initial complaints to actual litigation. "You want your litigation counsel to be very savvy, very knowledgeable about the Martin Act," the New York securities law governing condo development, "which is very antiquated, and rarely litigated," Rendin says. "Consumers are being done a disservice when they don't have knowledgeable counsel." Before suing, though, you have some options, and you need to decide a few things first. Any sort of formal action is going to require an engineering or architectural analysis by a professional, so your group and your lawyer will need to figure out what that might cost, and whether it's worth it in light of what it could cost to fix the problems. Also, lawyers cost money, so you'll need to figure out whether the conditions and the timing are such that it makes sense to file a complaint with the attorney general, which could shift much of the burden of fighting to the state. Otherwise, you could end up spending thousands more to have someone show up in court for you. "Legal action is a business consideration as much as a legal one," Rendin says. "If it's going to cost $200,000 in legal fees to get $100,000 worth of work done, it's probably not worth it. If it's $10 million worth of problems, that's another thing." The Attorney General's Office has the most leverage when the developer is still midway through selling the new apartments, as regulators there can actually hold up additional sales until problems are addressed. Developers, often under intense time pressure to meet budgets, repay loans, and reward investors, care primarily about selling units, so they take impediments to doing that especially seriously. The more time has passed, the less luck you'll have with the attorney general, and the more of a potential defense the developer might have in arguing that the issues are due to improper maintenance, rather than the initial construction work. For this reason, you'll want your engineer's report to specifically address the causes of the problems, and what the analysis turns up will further inform what your options are. If you're considering a lawsuit, another test will be the likelihood of the suit surviving a first motion to dismiss. Rendin explains that New York law favors developers, so it's all too common that aggrieved condo buyers have their lawsuits thrown out just out of the gate. "If a lawsuit survives a first motion to dismiss, that's usually when settlement talks begin in earnest," he says. As disheartening as all of this can be, Rendin says that often the threat of a lawsuit or an attorney general complaint can be enough to spur indifferent developers to action. "They don't want to go to trial, they don't want the legal fees, and they don't want that damage to their reputation," he says. "Generally they want happy purchasers. They don't want you going to the attorney general complaining about construction defects." The lawyers at Wagner | Berkow have decades of experience representing co-ops, condos, and individual apartment owners and shareholders. To submit a question for this column, click here. To ask about a legal consultation, send an email or call 646-791-2083.

http://host.brickunderground.com/buy/construction-defects-condo-what-options-buyer

BOSTON -- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on all charges Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing by a federal jury that now must decide whether the 21-year-old former college student should be executed. Tsarnaev folded his arms, fidgeted and looked down at the defense table as he listened to one guilty verdict after another on all 30 counts against him, including conspiracy and deadly use of a weapon of mass destruction. Seventeen of those counts are punishable by death. The verdict -- reached after a day and a half of deliberations -- was practically a foregone conclusion, given his lawyer's startling admission during opening statements that Tsarnaev carried out the attack with his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan. The two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that exploded near the finish line on April 15, 2013, killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 other people, turning the traditionally celebratory home stretch of the world-famous race into a scene of carnage and putting the city on edge for days. Tsarnaev was found responsible not only for those deaths but for that of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was shot days later. In the trial's next phase, which could begin as early as Monday, the jury will hear evidence on whether Tsarnaev should get the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in prison. In a bid to save him from a death sentence, defense attorney Judy Clarke has argued that Tsarnaev, then 19, fell under the influence of his radicalized brother. "If not for Tamerlan, it would not have happened," Clarke told the jury during closing arguments. Prosecutors, however, portrayed the brothers -- ethnic Chechens who moved to the U.S. from Russia more than a decade ago -- as full partners in a plan to punish the U.S. for its wars in Muslim countries. Jihadist writings, lectures and videos were found on both their computers, though the defense argued that Tamerlan downloaded the material and sent it to his brother. Tamerlan, 26, died when he was shot by police and run over by his brother during a chaotic getaway attempt days after the bombing. The government called 92 witnesses over 15 days, painting a hellish scene of torn-off limbs, blood-spattered pavement, ghastly screams and the smell of sulfur and burned hair. Survivors gave heartbreaking testimony about losing legs in the blasts or watching people die. The father of 8-year-old Martin Richard described making the agonizing decision to leave his mortally wounded son so he could get help for their 6-year-old daughter, whose leg had been blown off. In the courtroom Wednesday, Denise Richard, the boy's mother, wiped tears from her face after the verdict. The boy's father, Bill Richard, embraced one of the prosecutors. In Russia, Tsarnaev's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told The Associated Press in recent days that he would have no comment. The others killed in the bombing were Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Chinese graduate student at Boston University, and Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager. MIT police Officer Sean Collier was shot to death at close range days later. Some of the most damning evidence included video showing Tsarnaev planting a backpack containing one of the bombs near where the 8-year-old boy was standing, and incriminating statements scrawled inside the dry-docked boat where a wounded and bleeding Tsarnaev was captured days after the tragedy. "Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop," he wrote. Tsarnaev's lawyers barely cross-examined the government's witnesses and called just four people to the stand over less than two days, all in an effort to portray the older brother as the guiding force in the plot. Witnesses testified about phone records that showed Dzhokhar was at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth while his brother was buying bomb components, including pressure cookers and BBs. A forensics expert said Tamerlan's computer showed search terms such as "detonator," ''transmitter and receiver," while Dzhokhar was largely spending time on Facebook and other social media sites. And an FBI investigator said Tamerlan's fingerprints -- but not Dzhokhar's -- were found on pieces of the two bombs. Clarke is one of the nation's foremost death-penalty specialists and has kept other high-profile defendants off death row. She saved the lives of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two children in a lake in 1994. Tsarnaev's lawyers tried repeatedly to get the trial moved out of Boston because of the heavy publicity and the widespread trauma. But opposition to capital punishment is strong in Massachusetts, which abolished its state death penalty in 1984, and some polls have suggested a majority of Bostonians do not want to see Tsarnaev sentenced to die. During the penalty phase, Tsarnaev's lawyers will present so-called mitigating evidence they hope will save his life. That could include evidence about his family, his relationship with his brother, and his childhood in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and later in the volatile Dagestan region of Russia. Prosecutors will present so-called aggravating factors in support of the death penalty, including the killing of a child and the targeting of the marathon because of the potential for maximum bloodshed.

http://www.bentoneveningnews.com/article/20150408/news/701240823/

Find the related word/letters/numbers to complete the analogy? 1. 1 : 1 :: 25 : ? Answer - (b) 625. 12 = 1, 252 = 625. 2. French : France :: Dutch : ? 3. Problem : Solution :: Task : ? 4. Cuba : Havana :: Cyprus : ? 5. Wall : Brick :: Roof : ? 6. Ink : Pen :: Paint : ? 7. Australia : Kangaroo :: Siberia : ? 8. ACEG : JLNP :: BDFH : ? Answer - (a) KMOQ. A --> B, C --> D, E --> F, G --> H, thus, ACEG --> BDFG. Similarly, JLNP --> KMOQ. Answer - (c) 4. 82 = 64, 42 = 16, 22 = 4. 10. Rashtrapati Bhavan : India, Downing Street : UK, White House : USA, Kremlin : ? 11. Amnesia : Memory :: Paralysis : ? 12. AFKP : BGLQ :: CHMR : ? Answer - (a) DINS. A + 1 = B, F + 1 = G, K + 1 = L, P + 1 = Q, hence, CHMR = DINS. 13. PREMONITION : MONITIONERP :: LINSEEDOIL : ? Answer - (c) SEEDOILNIL. First 3 letters move last in reverse order. Hence, LINSEEDOIL = SEEDOILNIL. 14. 18 : 162 :: 36 : ? Answer - (d) 648. 18 * 18 = 324, 324/2 = 162. Hence, 36 * 36 = 1296, 1296/2 = 648. 15. 9536 : 6203 :: 5873 : ? Answer - (a) 2540. 9536 = 5873, In 9536, 9 - 1 = 8, 6 + 1 = 7, thus, 9536 becomes 8537, now 8 and 5 interchange their places, and 3 and 7 interchange their places. Similarly, 6203 = 2540. 16. Vigilant : Alert :: Viable : ? 17. 112 : 222 :: 442 : ? Answer - (c) 64. 23 = 8, 32 = 9, 43 = 64, 52 = 25. 19. Produce : Waste :: Contrast : ? Answer - (c) Similar. Opposite of Produce is Waste, similarly, opposite of Contrast is Similar. 20. Knife : Chef :: ? Answer - (b) Plough : Farmer. 21. FILM : ADGH :: MILK : ? Answer - (a) HDGF. F - 5 = A, I - 5 = D, L - 5 = G, M - 5 = H. Following the same pattern MILK gives HDGF. 22. NIATRUC : CURTAIN :: ENILUCSAM : ? 23. Wine : Grapes :: Whiskey : ? Answer - (b) 5600. 20 x 30 = 600, 40 x 50 = 2000, 70 x 80 = 5600, 90 x 100 = 9000. 25. XZG : CAT :: DOG : ? Answer - (b) WLT. The pairs of letter have same positions from the beginning and the end in the English alphabet. 26. Eye : Cataract :: Skin : ? Answer - (c) Eczema. Cataract is the disease of eye, Eczema is the disease of skin. 27. Vitamin A : Carrot :: Vitamin C : ? Answer - (d) Orange. Carrot is the source of Vitamin A, Orange is the source of Vitamin C. 28. ACF : GIL :: MOR : ? Answer - (a) SUX. A + 6 = G, C + 6 = I, F + 6 = L, Similarly, MOR = SUX. 29. 32 : 66 :: 134 : ? Answer - (c) 270. 32 x 2 + 2 = 66,, 134 x 2 + 2 = 270. 30. Waves are related to Air in the same way as Ripples are related to? 31. Distill is related to Whiskey in the same way as Brew is related to? 32. Earth is related to Axis in the same way as Wheel is related to?

https://www.playquiz2win.com/reasoning/word-letter-number-relationship.html

When making a cocktail dispensing robot, peristaltic pumps are clear winners. You can read more about why in our previous post. We've designed and manufactured several of our own peristaltic pumps, and now understand the design nuances and trade-offs. We've spent hundreds of hours researching, dissecting and testing both home-made and off-the-shelf varieties. Why are some pumps $300 and others $100? What does that extra money get you? Which ones are good enough? Like most engineering problems, this one is multi-variable and application specific. But generally, from what we've found, there are at least 8 things to understand when looking for a great pump. 1. Flow Rate / Number of Rollers 2. Occlusion (fixed vs variable) 3. Ease of Maintenance / Tube Replacement 4. Tubing Catch Mechanism 5. Motor Selection 6. Encoder Capability 7. Material of tubing, rollers, pump housing etc. 8. Cost While I could practically write a book on the subject now, I'll distill these ideas into a few sentences each: 1. To maintain a seal, the minimum number of rollers is 2, although there are exceptions to this. The more rollers there are, the slower the flow rate, but the less "spurty" the flow. We used to think that an odd or even number mattered, but they don't, flow rate and flow smoothness are the factors. 2. Occlusion. This one is tricky and really the heart of the whole design. As a positive displacement pump, we rely on every revolution of the motor being a known volume. Occlusion refers to how much squeezing is happening to the tubes. So, if a tube's wall thickness is 0.125", sandwiched together it's 0.25." The space between the roller and the internal wall of the pump needs to be smaller than this, say 0.242." That means there is an occlusion of 0.008." There is a rather large range for this number and that is determined by a host of things, namely tubing material, pump housing material, pump roller material and type of motor. Friction is playing a large role here and cannot be discounted. Some pumps have a spring loading down the "shoe" or surface that the tube is pressed against. This insures that over time, as the tube wears, or as lower tolerance tubing is used, there will be enough occlusion for proper operation and no leaks. 3. Some pumps make tube replacement a breeze by not requiring extra tools. Those pumps typically require more moving parts making them considerably more expensive. A nice option, but not mandatory. 4. That sneaky friction guy that we just mentioned is a real pain when you discover that the tube tries to walk out of the pump by inching with every revolution. There needs to be something in place to prevent the tubing from moving during operation. 5. There are DC, AC and stepper motor options with variable controlling complexity. DC motors are typically the easiest to use. 6. With the exception of one, none of the pumps we've seen support encoders. Encoders count the number of motor revolutions, for accurate monitoring and control. Optical and magnetic are the most common. 7. Tubing Material will likely be its own post one day, for now, just know that options are vast and usually liquid dependent. We've done our homework to make sure you get the best results. For rollers and pump body the concerns are coefficient of friction, wear life, cleanability and cost of manufacturing. Metals like stainless steel are easy to autoclave and will last a very long time. Plastics are lightweight, usually give more visibility and are more economical. 8. Which brings us to cost, an important item to consider especially if you intend on multiplying by 15 to build a big cocktail robot. Medical pumps have several things going for them like decades of testing, FDA approvals, numerous adjustments and guaranteed life-critical operation. We're just having fun here, so if there are a couple of extra drops of vodka in our drink, we'll live! Cost is also, as always, volume dependent. For example, one Watson Marlow pump (on the left) is $239 and that's not including a motor or control electronics...just the pumphead. In volumes of 100 they cost much less at $135, but still way more than is reasonable. There are a couple of low quality peristaltic pumps out there in the $25 dollar region, but you are loud, slow and don't have encoders, so your dispensing won't be repeatable. More great reading about Peristaltic Pumps at the Wikipedia page. The pumps we've evaluated are made by (from left to right) Watson Marlow, Masterflex, Anko Products and Welco. Care to share any of your peristaltic pump experiences? What other methods have you used to dispense liquids of varying viscosity and chemistry?

https://partyrobotics.com/blogs/blog/tagged/pumps

(CNN) -- The CIA has in its hands the critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology -- parts needed to develop a bomb program -- that were dug up in a back yard in Baghdad, CNN has learned. The parts, with accompanying plans, were unearthed by Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi who said he had hidden them under a rose bush in his garden 12 years ago under orders from Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein's then son-in-law, Hussein Kamel. But U.S. officials emphasized that this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking. The parts and documents Obeidi gave the CIA were shown exclusively to CNN at CIA headquarters in Virginia. Obeidi told CNN the parts of a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium were part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to hide to be ready to rebuild the bomb program. "I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them, and I don't want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists," said Obeidi, who has been taken out of Iraq with the help of the U.S. government. Obeidi also said he was not the only scientist ordered to hide that type of equipment. "I think there may be more than three other copies. And I think it is quite important to look at this list so they will not fall into the hands of the wrong people," he said. David Kay, who led three U.N. arms inspection missions in Iraq in 1991-92 and now heads the CIA's search for unconventional weapons, started work two days ago in Baghdad. CNN spoke to him about the case over a secure teleconferencing line. "It begins to tell us how huge our job is," Kay said. "Remember, his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden. "There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it." Kay said he had mixed emotions when he saw the centrifuge components: "It was a realization that I hadn't gotten all the parts [of Iraq's nuclear program]. So there was a moment of regret, but there was also an exhilaration that now maybe we have a chance to take this to the very bottom." CNN learned of the discovery last week but made a decision to withhold the story at the request of the U.S. government, which cited safety and national security concerns. The U.S. government told CNN the security and safety issues have been dealt with and there is no risk now in telling the story fully. The gas centrifuge equipment dates to Iraq's pre-1991 efforts to build nuclear weapons. Experts said the documents and pieces Obeidi gave the United States were the critical information and parts to restart a nuclear weapons program, and would have saved Saddam's regime several years and as much as hundreds of millions of dollars for research. David Albright, who was a U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, said inspectors "understood that Iraq probably hid centrifuge documents, may have had components, and so it is very important that those items be found." "What it is that Obeidi was ordered to keep was all the information and some centrifuge components, so that if he was given the order, he could restart the centrifuge program," said Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "In a sense, the program was in hibernation. He was the key to the restart of this centrifuge program, and he never got the order. So in that sense it doesn't show at all that Iraq had a nuclear program. And Obeidi told me that he never worked on a nuclear program after 1991." Obeidi said he felt unsafe in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion and that he was getting pressure from different corners of the country. He also said other Iraqi scientists were watching to see if he was safe after he cooperated with the U.S. government. Now that he and his family are safely out of Iraq, Obeidi said he believes other scientists would come forward with other components of Iraq's weapons program. Before the Iraq war, U.S. officials said Iraq tried to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges that enrich uranium. U.S. officials, including President Bush, also had cited British intelligence documents indicating Iraq may have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the IAEA said the documents were obvious fakes. CNN correspondents Mike Boettcher and David Ensor and producer Maria Fleet contributed to this story.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/26/sprj.irq.centrifuge/index.html

Hi, I'm trying to port the SX60HS (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/SX60HS). As this is D6, I'm taking the work done for the sx270/280 as a starting point. Currently I'd like to boot the camera and make some LEDs blink without any success so far, so I hope someone could help here. Is there any way to confirm which flavor of dancingbits works with the SX60HS, or if a new flavor would be needed? Currenly I'm trying (blindly) with 13 and 14, as, according to dancingbits.h, they could work with r55, but I'm not able to boot even the simplest thing. I've modified entry.S in order to scan memory for LED address around 0xc0220000 which looking at the dump seems quite reasonable, but again no results (but not sure the probl is my code or just the incorrect encoding of diskboot.bin). I'm not an ARM expert, could someone confirm the following entry.S looks good for scanning LEDs? The dancingbits _words_ should be around the end of the bootloader (IIRC), try searching for the known sequences. I've modified entry.S in order to scan memory for LED address around 0xc0220000 which looking at the dump seems quite reasonable, but again no results (but not sure the probl is my code or just the incorrect encoding of diskboot.bin). Question: which entry.S is that? You should start at the loader (loader/sx60hs). There's a good chance that the LED addresses can be found that way. Also note that the old 0xc022xxxx GPIO range is gone, DIGIC 6 uses the MMIO range above 0xd20b0000 for GPIO control. Does this mean that, for flavor 10 for instance, I should be able to locate byte sequence 3,6,7,2,4,5,1,0 (or reversed order) in the dump? Is this assumption correct? The numbers are 32 bit ints, with the first at the lowest address. Next I'll try to boot camera through the CHDK sequence, without the "_my" hooks. "MCR p15, 0, R0,c6,c2, 0\n" "MCR p15, 0, R1,c6,c1, 0\n" "MCR p15, 0, R1,c6,c1, 2\n" "MCR p15, 0, R1,c6,c1, 4\n" "MRC p15, 0, R0,c1,c0, 0\n" "MCR p15, 0, R0,c1,c0, 0\n" : : "r"(MEMISOSTART), "r"((blob_chdk_core_size+3)>>2) : "memory","r0","r1","r2","r3","r4" In this configuration, whenever I start the camera, the LED starts blinking indefinitely, indicating that the camera is entering an infinite loop of restarts. asm volatile ( "mov r1, %1\n" Any idea about what could go wrong here? Thanks in advance! - you will need to call that "caching related routine" for the loaded CHDK core area, otherwise there will be some corruption in the core. Please look at this and do the same fix, as I forgot to complete the size alignment in my "original" version. Since you don't have any CHDK core code at the moment, this does not matter much. - the 0x12345678 magic value is a flag that means "the camera was rebooted". It will be checked by the so called "startupchecks" routines. You're getting a boot loop because you did not remove the call that starts the diskboot file. You can try booting with the firmware update method (unlock the card if you do that). You have a typo, the function's address (including the thumb bit) is 0xfc1161cf. Finally I'm able to start the camera through the CHDK boot process . I've just commented out the CreateTask_spytask call and the registration of capt_seq_task and task_ExpDrv in boot.c and camera seems to boot fine. I was hoping to be able to pull up the CHDK GUI, leaving out for now capt_seq_task and task_ExpDrv, would this be possible? If so I'll focus my next steps in trying to address all the GUI/menu stuff, otherwise I'll port the capture sequence first. Something wrong in the file i/o routines called? Totally possible. And a good idea too. If so I'll focus my next steps in trying to address all the GUI/menu stuff, otherwise I'll port the capture sequence first. You can probably comment out conf_restore() for now. If you can get spy_task running well enough that the CAM_CHDK_PTP stuff runs, then you can start downloading images over USB rather than swapping your SD card in & out all the time. That will really speed things up (although of course you'll still need to swap the SD card in & out if you make a change that causes a crash on startup).

https://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=12532.0

Sidney Stone is a hiker, deer whisperer and non-pretentious wine connoisseur. An addicted reviewer on Yelp, he is also creator of affordable housing (although technically he is homeless part-time), thinks The Replacements are the best band of the Eighties and loves to boost his LinkedIn count with people he doesn't know. He lives in both Northern and Southern California while constantly traveling to Orange County to visit his son, who can now beat his father at ping pong and chess rather easily (and is charmingly arrogant while doing it). A graduate of UC Irvine and Pepperdine University, Sidney wishes he chose at least one university to attend that had a college football team to root for. The first scene Sidney thought of for Jennifer Ainsley: The Final Demon War included a rather large massacre (take that for what it is worth). However, inspired by the works of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Clive Barker; the book's violence is offset by dark humor and deep human emotion just like in real life where Sidney's darkness is offset by creatively placed sarcasm and an overwrought romanticism. For example, while Jennifer Ainsley: The Final Demon War is a Fantasy-Horror novel, Sidney also still tears up at the end of both Field of Dreams and An Officer and a Gentleman. For centuries Demons have waited and bided their time for mankind to develop the technology that could be used against them. They have infiltrated our organizational systems and seduced wealthy and powerful men with promises of ruling beside the Demons in the aftermath of the Third World War. With China and Russia forming an alliance against the West, a personal tragedy experienced by the first female US President begins the preparations for a war that could destroy us forever. Jonathon Tait, whose demon-enhanced 170 year old life has helped make him the richest man in the world, secretly renounces his alliance with the demons in order to save his twins and redeem himself in the eyes of his loved ones. Jonathon has visions that Jennifer Ainsley, his beautiful adopted daughter, may be the key to humanity's survival and works with a secret underground movement to fight back against both the demons and the human leadership that is guiding our civilization towards total destruction. Can Jennifer fulfill her destiny even as the planet hurtles towards its destruction? Is she mankind's only hope and can Jennifer save everyone that she loves or is she destined to experience greater sorrow. Jennifer Ainsley: The Final Demon War is a fast-paced tale that combines horror and fantasy to tell a story of love, loss, sacrifice and redemption.

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/-sidney-stone.html

kaç? how much? or how many? Gazete çıkarmak zor bir iş. Bu gazeteyi çıkarmak zor bir iş. -li with or with the quality of or belonging to sulu = "with water" -siz without susuz = "without water" -çi, -ci The professional gazeteci = "journalist", çaycı = "tea seller", dişçi = "dentist" -[y]ici The habitual yazmak = "to write", so yazıcı = "writer" -çe -ish or as for çocukça = "childish[ly]" bence = "as for me" -(i)msi, -(i)mtrak, -si -ish or -like duvarımsı = "wall-like" -daş fellow- okuldaş = "schoolmate" -lik abstract noun formation büyüklük = "largeness" or "size" susuzluk = "waterlessness" or "thirst" Granted, susuzluk is rather stilted, a Turk would more likely ask "Susadın mı?" for "Are you thirsty?" -sel abstract adjective formation tarih = "history", tarihsel = "historic" -ki abstract adjective formation sabahki hava = "morning weather" Bu kalem benimki değil. = "This pencil is not mine (I do have a pencil, but this one is not it)." Bu köpek benimki. = "This dog is mine." -çik, -cik, -ceğiz, -ce Diminutive Ahmetçik = "my pal Ahmet" Köyceğiz = "the dear little village" and a lakeside town in southwestern Turkey. -[y]iş Add to a verb stem for the noun form girmek = "to enter", so giriş = "entrance" çıkmak = "to exit", so çıkış = "exit" -leyin by or at geceleyin = "by night" -ken while yazarken = "while writing" -oğlu son of Köseoğlu Bey = "Mr Son-Of-The-Bald-Man" ablative measure benden büyük = "bigger than me" benden iyi = "better than me" close to the speaker Bu köpek benimki. further away Şu dağ Ağrı Dağı. That mountain is Mount Ararat. o that O Ağrı Dağı. burada here orade there nerede? where? buradan from this place oradan from there nereden? from where? buraya to this place oraya to there nereye? to where? Filim büyük. = My elephant is big. Bu benim büyük filimdir. = Hey, this is my big elephant, get your own! filim would mean "my elephant", while benim filim would very adamantly make the case that the elephant was, in fact, mine, and not anyone else's. Sahip means "owner" or "master", and halı means "rug". Note the logic of "the owner of the rug", where the rug has an owner, and thus "rug" is the possessor (of an owner) and the owner is the thing possessed (by the rug). Thus halının sahibi for "the rug's owner". Finally, note that çocukların bahçeleri is ambiguous, it could mean either "the garden of the children" or "the gardens of the children". It must be derived from context (about the number of gardens), or by intentionally malforming the possessed item as çocukların bahçesi to explicitly mean the one garden of the multiple children. They work somewhat as prepositions do in English, and fall into three classes depending on the declension of the modified word. Kebapçıdan içiri girdik = We went into a kebap shop. Cumadan itibaren her gün, kebapçıya gideceğiz. Every day starting from Friday, we will go into a kebap shop. Bu yol İstanbul'a doğru gitiyor. Gazeteye göre, hava güzel olacak. According to the newspaper, the weather is going to be nice. Bir saat kadar otobüse bindim = I rode the bus for one hour. Halk İndiana'da filler kadar şişman. = People in Indiana are as fat as elephants. Kediye nazaran filim daha büyük. = Compared to a cat, my elephant is larger. Elmayı kilo ile satıyorum. = I sell apple by the kilogram. bazı, kimi some bazı adam, kimi adam = "some man" bazı adamlar, kimi adamlar = "some men" her every Bu tren her gün Istanbul'a gidiyor. = "This train goes to Istanbul every day." from az, little Az şarapı içerim. = I drink little wine. Ahmet Bey dedi, "Biraz içerim". = "Mr. Ahmet said, 'I drinks a bit'". or no one in the negative Bir kimse size arıyordu. = "Someone was looking for you." Kimse aldırış etmiyor. = "No one is paying attention." veya or Kedisiniz kara veya ak? Is your cat black or white? de too, also Biz de mi gidelim? Shall we too go?

https://turkofoni.org/tr/basics-of-turkish

Among the deluge of complaints and criticisms the three establishment candidates are demeaning themselves by showering on the People's Jeremy. The daftest, apart from the accusation that he met Hamas and the IRA almost as many times as Blair, is that his policies are a return to the past and totally out of date. They never stop to consider a) that some of these policies like re-nationalising the railways are popular with the public or b) that if the policies which replaced the older Labour policies haven't worked it might be a good idea to go back to the originals not as a matter of ideology but simple sense.. I'm not sure that we should allow the Tory press to choose Labour's leader but if we choose to do that in our desire to be loved by them we should notice two things. One is that the criticisms of Corbyn are all (apart from attacks on his beard) criticisms which the Tory party brings against Labour: spending too much, borrowing,frightening British business which seems to spend more time trembling in fear than it does competing in the world. Out of the mouths of the Blairites these Tory truths have poured giving credence to the Tory programme and killing hope among our supporters. Second the establishment never offers an alternative. Its prescriptions are all generalities such as facing a changed world, future proofing, adjusting to a new society etc. How we do all this and what Labour's specific policies should be are never spelled out. This is because they don't want to face up to the fact that Blairism, (diluting the policies with soft soap) is also a thing of their past which probably won't work in harder times. Blair came to power in an election we'd have won anyway at a time of growth and economic buoyancy with tax revenues rising and unemployment falling. He'd exhausted his repertoire of good moderate policies like the minimum wage, Sure Start and expanding investment in the NHS by the end of his second term and became messianic thereafter and by 2008 his new mates the financial interests which he and Brown thought had created a new paradigm of perpetual growth through asset inflation and debt killed the whole improvement by their unrestrained greed. None of this is easy stuff and it will have to be sold as a nationalist programme to rebuild national strength and pride but clearly it has to be thought about rather than just making idiotic assertions that we must adjust to the future but not how.The future will be too hard for the easy measures of the Blair era.

http://austinmitchellblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/give-us-less-abuse-and-more-policy.html

The UK will take part in May's European elections and British MEPs could sit for "months or even longer", European Council President Donald Tusk has said. But Theresa May needs to get her withdrawal deal - which has been rejected three times by Parliament - approved by MPs. Cross-party talks between the government and the Labour Party are continuing this week to find a way through the impasse. On the European elections, Mr Corbyn said he was "very confident" that Labour would win support for its message that the UK needed a close economic relationship with the EU. "They (the UK) will have to decide what they want by October," he said. "You cannot drag out Brexit for a decade." Speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Tusk insisted that if British MEPs were elected in May, they should be treated as "full members". Image caption European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Brexit was "not the future of the EU" "One of the consequences of our decision is that the UK will hold European elections next month," he said. "We should approach this seriously as UK members of the European Parliament will be there for several months - maybe longer." "I have strongly opposed the idea that during this further extension the UK should be treated as a second category member state. No, it cannot," he said. He said the EU had not given into "fear and scaremongering" that the UK would act in an obstructive way, saying the UK had been a "responsible and constructive member state". BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said this was a "clear swipe" at French President Emmanuel Macron and others who had warned the UK could disrupt the functioning of the EU during a long extension. The extension of Article 50 - the process by which the UK leaves the EU - gave the UK time to cancel its departure if that was what the British people wanted, Mr Tusk said. He said he knew both sides of the Channel were "exhausted with Brexit" and this should not be "an excuse to say, 'Let's get it over with,' just because we are tired". "We must continue to deal with Brexit with an open mind and in a civilised manner," he said. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reiterated that there would be no renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement. "Brexit is not the future of the EU," he said. "The future of the union will go well beyond Brexit." He urged the UK government and the Labour Party to reach a cross-party consensus in the "coming days". Works and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd told BBC Radio 5 Live that "leaving the EU is harder than a lot of people thought it was going to be". She said the prime minister was right to request a Brexit delay and had "done the right thing in reaching out to Labour" for cross-party talks. "You can't just give up, you have to find a different approach," she said. Amid speculation about Theresa May's future, Ms Rudd said it was "entirely possible" she could be a candidate in a future leadership election, telling BBC Radio 5 Live "I don't rule it out". Earlier in the interview, she said: "I'm not planning to run" but "I've kept the door slightly ajar."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47946256

For whom must this information be reported? For purposes of this program, who is considered to be an employee who must be reported? What information must be reported for each newly hired or rehired employee? What is the "hiring date" considered to be? Can employers substitute either manually- or computer-produced listings of newly hired employees in place of copies of federal Form W-4s and Forms IT-2104? Must the employer submit Form IT-2104 in addition to the federal Form W-4? The requirements state that an employee's name must be provided in the following order: first name, middle initial, last name. Can employers provide the name in a last name, first name, middle initial order? Must employees who discontinued services within 20 days of being hired still be reported? Employers sometimes transfer employees working in other states to New York State. Must these employees be reported for the new hire reporting program? Can employers submit a report of all new employees hired anywhere in the country with an indicator of the state in which they work? Must all employees be reported as new hires in the case of takeovers, mergers, and consolidations by employers? What do employers report for non-U.S. resident (nonresident alien) employees who do not receive social security numbers (SSN)? Can a new hire report be submitted without a SSN? What date does the Tax Department use for determining timeliness - the postmark or the received date? How can an employer obtain a federal employer identification number (EIN)? 1. For whom must this information be reported? See New hire reporting for the definition of newly hired or rehired employee working in New York State. 2. For purposes of this program, who is considered to be an employee who must be reported? 3. What information must be reported for each newly hired or rehired employee? See New hire reporting, Information you must report. 4. When must this information be filed? See New hire reporting, Due dates. 5. What is the "hiring date" considered to be? See New hire reporting for the hiring date definition under Due date. 6. Can employers substitute either manually- or computer-produced listings of newly hired employees in place of copies of federal Forms W-4s and Forms IT-2104? Yes. Employers may substitute listings or other written formats that include all required information. See New hire reporting, Reporting methods. 7. Must the employer submit Form IT-2104 in addition to the federal Form W-4? Yes, Form IT-2104 (or Form IT-2104-E) includes the required information regarding employee dependent health insurance benefits, and the hire date. Therefore, it must be submitted in place of, or in addition to, the federal Form W-4. 8. The requirements state that an employee's name must be provided in the following order: first name, middle initial, last name. Can employers provide the name in a last name, first name, middle initial order? Yes. The order of the name as stated in the requirements corresponds to the order specified for federal Form W-4. Employers who provide this information in a listing or other written format may provide the name in the alternative order. 9. Must employees who discontinued services within 20 days of being hired still be reported? Yes. You must report them because they were still employees. 10. Employers sometimes transfer employees working in other states to New York State. Must these employees be reported for the new hire reporting program? No. These employees are not newly hired or rehired by the employer, but merely transferred from another state. 11. Can employers submit a report of all new employees hired anywhere in the country with an indicator of the state in which they work? Multi-state employers who report electronically may designate one state (in which he or she has employees) to report newly hired employees. For employers who do not report electronically, only newly hired employees working in New York State must be reported, and employees who do not work at all in New York State must not be reported. 12. Must all employees be reported as new hires in the case of takeovers, mergers, and consolidations by employers? No, not if the employees were previously reported through the quarterly wage reporting system. 13. What do employers report for non-U.S. resident (nonresident alien) employees who do not receive Social Security numbers (SSN)? See New hire reporting “Note” under Due dates. 14. Can a new hire report be submitted without a Social Security number SSN? No. See New hire reporting “Note” under Due dates. A post office box is sufficient for an employee's home address, because we do not intend to modify the W-4 process. We recognize the main purpose of the W-4 is to provide federal income tax withholding information to employers. 16. What date does the Tax Department use for determining timeliness - the postmark or the received date? For reports delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, we use the postmark date for determining if the report was submitted in time. Taxpayers can use certain private delivery services, in addition to the U.S. Postal Service, with the assurance that reports mailed on time will be considered filed on time. For rules for determining the "postmark dates" when using a designated delivery service, refer to Publication 55, Designated Private Delivery Services. If neither the U.S. Postal Service nor a designated delivery service is used, we use the received date. 17. How can an employer obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN)? The IRS has a web site where new employers can obtain an EIN. Employers must inform the New York State Tax Department when they obtain an EIN and use that number as their Withholding Tax Identification Number.

https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/wt/newhire_faq.htm

Why Do I Experience a Long Delay During the "Configuring Networking" Phase while Booting? When booting a system running Cumulus Linux, Cumulus RMP or Cumulus VX, when the system reaches the "Configuring Networking" phase, I experience a very long delay. Because they are all Linux distributions, Cumulus Linux, Cumulus RMP and Cumulus VX leverage the normal Linux initialization scripts, including the standard one for configuring network interfaces. During this phase of the system boot, the script reads the /etc/network/interfaces file and attempts to apply the network configuration that is defined there. One of the supported methods for doing so is to set an interface to attempt to get its IPv4 address via DHCP. By default, the eth0 interface is set to be a DHCP client, as it's often the default in other Linux distributions. This setting an interface to be a DHCP client can lead to a long delay in processing of this boot phase. When an interface is set to be a DHCP client, the client will wait the full timeout period before continuing on to the next interface. Anything that might cause the DHCP process to fail to complete, such as a link down, the DHCP server being offline or network reachability to the DHCP server being impacted, will result in the script waiting for this full timeout. Once the DHCP client timeout has been reached, the system will proceed to the next interface on the list. If it too is set to be a DHCP client, a similar delay may also be the result if it too cannot obtain an IPv4 address from the DHCP server. For interfaces that are not going to be active, remove the DHCP client configuration option. This is especially important for the eth0 interface. By removing inet dhcp from each configuration stanza, the interface reverts to the default of inet static, which stops the DHCP client from starting on the given interface. For interfaces that are intended to be DHCP clients, anything that may impact the ability of the system to get an IPv4 address via DHCP should be made resilient so as to not impact the system configuration time.

https://support.cumulusnetworks.com/hc/en-us/articles/207207357-Why-Do-I-Experience-a-Long-Delay-During-the-Configuring-Networking-Phase-while-Booting-

Independent market analysis firm Kantar Worldpanel has published its latest monthly data for several key smartphone markets around the world, including the US, China, and the EU5 - the top five European Union markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The latest data, for the three months ending in June 2016, shows Android holding more or less steady compared with where it was a year ago, while iOS has returned to growth in the US and the EU5. Given the state of Microsoft's mobile business, you can probably guess which way Windows phone market share has gone. Let's take a look at some of these key markets in a bit more detail. Android sales market share slipped very slightly in the United States, by 0.6% year-over-year (YoY) down to 65.5% of smartphone sales. But there was good news for Apple, with iOS growing 1.3% YoY to 31.8% share in the US. Apple's iPhone 6s and 6s Plus grabbed a combined share of 15.1%, according to Kantar, with Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 edge racking up a total of 14.1% of US sales. The 4-inch iPhone SE - which Apple launched at the end of March - grabbed 5.1% of American smartphone sales, following immediately behind those devices. BlackBerry's share increased very slightly from 0.4% to 0.5% YoY, but Windows phone sales almost halved YoY, down to just 1.6% - although the good news is that its share hasn't declined there since last month's report. In Great Britain, Windows phone sales share fell from 11.3% a year ago to just 4.9% most recently, which also represented a 0.2% drop compared with the previous month. Both iOS and Android posted healthy gains there, growing by 3.1% and 4.1% respectively. The iPhone SE was Britain's best selling smartphone of the quarter, with 9.2% of sales, followed closely by the iPhone 6s, which accounted for a further 9.1%. In France, Windows phone sales more than halved YoY, and BlackBerry sales fell by two-thirds. Android grew its quarterly share by 2.3%, but the greatest gain was for iOS, which increased by 3.4% to 20.2%. In Germany, iOS sales saw their first year-over-year increase since the third quarter of 2015, rising by 1% to 14.2%. Android posted a hefty 4.1% rise in sales market share compared with a year ago, while Windows phone sales almost halved to 5.4%. Android continues to dominate in Spain, having risen by 3.1% to 91.2% YoY (although it actually fell by 1.6% compared with last month's report, for the three months ending in May). Windows phone sales rose by 0.2% over last month, but its current sales market share of 0.4% lags far behind that of iOS on 8.2%, despite Apple's YoY decline of 0.6%. Italy remains the market that exemplifies the worst decline for Windows phone sales. Having peaked at 17.1% in December 2013, Microsoft's mobile OS had dropped to 14.2% a year ago - even higher than iOS. Now, Windows phone market share there is just 5.6% - although that's still far better than in some markets. iOS declined by 0.8% YoY, but Android has exploded in popularity in Italy over the last twelve months, rising by a massive 10.6%. There was bad news for Apple in China, where its share fell by 2.2% YoY to 17.9%, while Android rose by 2.4% to 81.4%. While the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus remain China's top-selling individual smartphones, Apple's overall sales market share now lags behind Chinese manufacturers Huawei (25.7%) and Xiaomi (18.5%). And finally, in Japan, Apple suffered an even greater decline of 4.2% YoY, dropping to 38%. Android rose by 6.6% over the same period, and now stands at 61%. Meanwhile, Windows phone sales increased to 0.3% from the statistically insignificant 0.0% of sales a year ago. You can check out the smartphone sales market share over time for these markets, and others, with the interactive Kantar Worldpanel ComTech visualization tool, and you can find commentary from some of their analysts on the latest stats here.

https://www.neowin.net/news/kantar-ios-rises-in-us-and-eu5-android-gains-too-while-windows-phone-sales-fall-further

Anuradha Jetty has been practicing Classical Homeopathy since 1993. She has received BHMS from Osmania University, Hyderabad after completing 6 years of college education in Homeopathy. She is nationally certified by the Council for Homeopathic Certification and North American Society of Homeopaths, accrediting organizations that are dedicated to maintaining high standards of Homeopathy in North America. Her career includes working in a Homeopathic Hospital, Hyderabad as a resident Homeopathic Doctor, junior medical officer at Venibhushan memorial clinic, Hyderabad and Institute for Advanced Studies in Homeopathy, Bengaluru. What do the letters after Anuradha's name mean? BHMS: stands for Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery, India that is awarded after successfully completing 6 years of medical education at college level in homeopathy. HMD: stands for Doctorate in Homeopathic Medicine through the British Homeopathic Institute, London, UK. This is a designation from having completed 1-year intensive postgraduate education in Homeopathy. CCH: stands for Certified Classical Homeopath through Council for Homeopathic Certification. It means that Anuradha has successfully met all the educational, clinical experience requirements and that she demonstrates excellent skills and competence in practice of classical Homeopathy. RSHom: stands for Registered Member of the North American Society of Homeopaths. Requirements are proof that Anuradha has completed 6 years of college education in homeopathy and more than 5 years of clinical experience in classical homeopathy. Anuradha works as an honorary member for Case Review Committee, CHC the committee that reviews cases submitted by the Homeopaths seeking Certification in Classical Homeopathy. As a member of Case Review Committee, CHC, she had reviewed a number of applicant's cases (3rd phase of the certification exam) and interviewed candidates (final phase of the certification exam) to grade the candidate's success in the certification process.

http://suhithomeopathycenter.com/anuradha-jetty/

In related hydrogen breakthrough news, a team of scientists from Melbourne's Monash University has developed a new fuel cell prototype that could pave the way for a generation of much cheaper, more efficient fuel-cell vehicles. The results of their project, which was led by Maria Forsyth, a professor of materials engineering at the Australian Center of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, are published in the current issue of Science (sub. required). The main obstacle to the mass production of hydrogen fuel cells has always been the high cost of platinum nanoparticles -- the small quantity contained within each cell typically adds $3500 to $4000 to the car's sticker price -- which are used to build the cell's air electrode. The electrode reduces oxygen and is thus a vital component of the fuel cell, helping in energy generation and storage. Aside from its high cost, platinum nanoparticles are also extremely difficult to find and have a nasty tendency to become inactivated by contact with carbon monoxide or by clumping together. To get around these problems, Forsyth and her colleagues used an alternative oxygen reduction catalyst, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or PEDOT, for short (a type of polymer). Unlike its platinum counterpart, the PEDOT-based electrode did not become inactivated upon being exposed to CO; it was able to run continuously for 1500 hours and demonstrated oxygen conversion rates similar to those of Pt-based electrodes. Could cheaper fuel-cell vehicles be on the way? Not only did the new electrodes run well, they were also much cheaper to build and were more stable. Forsyth estimates that the cost of a PEDOT-based electrode would only add a few hundred dollars to the price of a fuel-cell vehicle. The scientists next plan on building a fuel cell prototype in 3D to maximize its surface area -- and thus the amount of current it can generate. Another application for the electrode would be in zinc air batteries, which are being used to store energy in vehicles.

https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/new-electrode-design-could-make-much-cheaper-fuel-cell-possible.html

Chiller plants provide a cost-effective cooling solution for medium and large buildings. A centralized air conditioning system requires less capital than a separate unit for each building area, and modern chillers with variable-speed compressors surpass the efficiency of most air conditioning alternatives. However, even lower operating costs are possible when a chiller plant is equipped with ice storage. Commercial buildings, which typically use chillers, are not only billed for the kilowatt-hours consumed. They also pay a power demand fee, which is based on the highest kilowatt demand value measured in a billing period. The yearly demand peak normally happens on a hot summer day where the chiller has to run at full capacity. Electricity consumers subject to time-of-day rates pay the highest kWh prices during peak hours, when the grid is burdened. Frequent chiller usage in hours with peak kWh prices guarantees a hefty power bill. Note that these conditions are not mutually exclusive: some electricity consumers have tariffs that include both demand charges and time-of-day rates. However, the electricity tariff structure can also work in your favor if you reduce chiller usage during grid demand peaks and building consumption peaks. Find out the potential savings from ice storage in your building. To reduce chiller output without compromising space cooling, you can equip your chiller plant with an ice storage tank. The chiller can be turned off to trim demand peaks or to minimize consumption during peak-rate hours, and the required space cooling is obtained by melting ice. How Does a Chiller Plant with Ice Storage Work? Under most tariffs, electricity is much cheaper during low-demand hours. There are two reasons for this: utility companies shut down their most expensive power plants at this time, and network losses are low because power lines are lightly loaded. Chiller plants can use their cooling capacity to freeze and store ice when electricity is cheap (off-peak hours), and meet cooling demand by melting ice when electricity is expensive (peak hours). Even buildings subject to a fixed kWh price can benefit from ice storage, trimming down their own demand peaks and minimizing the corresponding demand charge. Without ice storage, you need a 200-ton chiller plant. On the other hand, if you have an ice storage system capable of delivering 75 tons of cooling, you only need a 125-ton chiller plant. Note that a smaller chiller also brings a reduced electrical load. This way, you can use smaller conductors, electrical protections and transformers. Cooling output during blackouts: If the electric service is interrupted, you can continue delivering space cooling while the stored ice lasts. You still need a backup generator for HVAC pumps and fans, but the load on the generator is much lower when you subtract the chiller! No disruption during maintenance: You can use ice for space cooling whenever your chiller is under routine maintenance, providing comfort for building occupants. Using more power from renewable sources: You cannot run cooling systems with wind turbines and solar panels, since their energy output is variable. However, if you have an ice storage system, surplus generation from wind turbines or solar arrays can be used to make ice. With ice storage, you may also have the chance to benefit from incentive programs. Some utility companies, including Con Edison in NYC, have programs where they reward you for lowering demand at times when the power grid is burdened. This can be easily accomplished by ramping down your chiller output and relying completely on ice for space cooling. A chiller with ice storage offers you more operational flexibility, while reducing your space cooling expenses. Just keep in mind that each project is unique, and the potential savings from ice storage strongly depend on your electricity tariff. You can get a professional energy audit and energy modeling for your building to identify the most promising upgrades.

https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/chiller-plants-with-ice-storage