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Northwest Beanpole Project I
- 1 The Northwest Beanpole Project:
- 1.1 Introduction
- 1.2 Northwest Beanpole Project History
- 1.3 Timeline
- 1.4 Outcomes
- 1.5 Infrastructure and Bandwidth Access
- 1.6 Economic Development
- 1.7 A Local Study
- 1.8 In the Broader Context
- 1.9 Summary
- 1.10 Success Factors
- 1.11 NW Beanpole Project Participants
The Northwest Beanpole Project:
The Northwest Beanpole project was one of 4 multi-county telecommunications infrastructure projects funded under HB 99-1102, a 1999 Colorado legislative act commonly referred to as the "Beanpole Bill."
The $4.7 million Beanpole Project was a parallel effort to the implementation of the State's Multi-Use Network, the MNT. By design, the project was an effort to leverage the State's "anchor tenant" investment by aggregating and connecting public users (schools, local government, and hospitals) to extend the benefits of Colorado's statewide network infrastructure. Actual funding, with additional amounts from Energy and Mineral Impact funds, was noted to have been $5.3 million by a 2002 State audit. The funding was considered the first of two phases, with a $5 million second phase expected to follow in 2002 (and an estimate of $25 million in need, statewide). There were also three single county implementation grants and (over a period of years) eighteen assessment and planning grant recipients (representing 36 counties). Seven communities representing sixteen counties received implementation grants totaling about $4.6 million.
The Implementation Grant recipients and their award amounts were:
|Routt Rio Blanco, and Moffat -- $1,375,000
|Kit Carson and Cheyenne -- $167,200
|Montezuma and La Plata -- $1,375,000
|Morgan -- $258,000Sedgwick -- $204,000
|Otero, Prowers, Bent, Crowley and Kiowa -- $750,000
|Summit -- $472,688
Five of the seven implementations were successful. The Sedgwick and Summit County implementations were able to provide wireless services in the implementation period but were eventually unsustainable in their original form due to vendor business failures.
It is difficult to evaluate and compare outcomes of the Beanpole implementation communities in part because each implementation community dealt independently with the characteristic resources and setbacks of its own environment. Three criteria for evaluation of outcomes are
- Was additional infrastructure built as part of the project to extend the reach of high-bandwidth connectivity in the communities?
- Has there been a measurable and lasting impact of this access on the communities?
- Has this change been sustainable?
For Northwest Colorado, as with many of the other implementation communities, the answers to all three criteria have been "yes."
There were many external events and changes that affected the Beanpole Implementation. The MNT network contract was executed with US West the day before they were acquired by Qwest. There was also a change of administration in State Government between Democratic Governor Roy Romer and Republican Governor Bill Owens, resulting in changes in all appointive state agency positions.
The national and state economic downturn early in the MNT implementation also led to changes in many departmental management and technical professional positions through hiring freezes, downgrading of positions, attrition and incented retirement. Thus, over the course of the Beanpole/MNT implementation, many that were aware of the initial concept and goals of the MNT were replaced by others who had access only to operational information about the project.
The bursting of the "Internet Bubble" and economic shocks which followed 9/11 caused both a significant decline in Qwest's stock price and a fiscal crisis for Colorado State Government. Although funding was in place for the MNT, there was less financial margin for contingencies available to either the State or Qwest in the network implementation. There were also many gradual implementation changes and adjustments based on practical findings, budget limitations, policy decisions, and affects of participation decisions by local and county government entities and other potential public users.
Northwest Beanpole Project implementation plans between Meeker and Grand Junction were also adversely affected by the bankruptcy of Adesta, a firm that was contracted via what was called the "Shared Resources Initiative" to allocate fiber for the Colorado Department of Transportation's Intelligent Transportation System project. Adesta was a partner with NC Telecom (the NW Beanpole Project vendor) in the construction of fiber from Meeker to Rifle.
As a pioneering a statewide "public/private partnership" networking model, the combined efforts of Beanpole Project and the MNT amounted to a great deal of learning by doing and a lot of practical experience in the value of stakeholder aggregation and program coordination. It must be noted that, even with all of the financial and management dislocations, the MNT and the Beanpole Project were successful in improving statewide bandwidth access and significantly reducing its cost in the period 1999-2006. This benefit continues, although the MNT has ceased to be an influence on pricing and availability of services in most of the State.
Today, the Beanpole Project is largely done. The MNT 2005 Annual Report noted that the total of non-state agency direct customers of the MNT was 67 in 2005 vs. 105 for 2004 (a 36% decline). Direct customer base fell by 57% over the period. The report cited service pricing and MNT network security requirements as reasons for the decline.
As of September 2005, for example, only 19 of Colorado's 178 school districts were connected to the MNT and four of those were planning to switch to another provider in the fall of 2007. The MNT, however, is engaged in planning its future. The MNT 2005 Annual Report included a seven-item list of future plans:
- Continue to make MNT access available to non-state agencies;
- Convene [a] state-wide planning group to plan for the transition of the MNT. Migration from today's megabit per second networks to gigabit per second will be key;
- Work with the Department of Local Affairs to be sure that all local governments have access at adequate bandwidth to meet minimum state standards;
- Aggressively support direct-connection to MNT from public sector fiber optic MANs (Municipal Area Networks);
- Reduce network operating costs involved with core network circuits and switches;
- Engineer the Core of the MNT to support the constant bit rate requirements of video and voice;
- Expand the use of the MNT for voice applications
The MNT and Qwest's CHSDN, its commercial parallel service, and MNT partner CenturyTel have had a significant impact on broadband access in Colorado. As of the MNT 2005 Annual Report, 85% of all county seats have one or more DSL providers associated with their ANAPs. Ten county seats, however, do not yet have DSL deployments paralleling the MNT's ATM services locally. These are: (for Qwest) Clear Creek, Elbert, Gilpin, Grand, Lake, Park, San Juan, Sedgwick, and teller counties; and (for CenturyTel) Baca and Bent counties.
Northwest Beanpole Project History
The history of the regional planning for telecommunications development that led to and made possible the Northwest Colorado Beanpole Project is notable for its longevity and the breadth and steadfastness of its participation.
The history of broadband infrastructure development efforts in the Northwest dates to 1992, when the Yampa Valley Economic Development Council (YVEDC) formed the Yampa Valley Telecommunication Coalition, with a 5 year plan.
In 1993, an online bulletin board and e-mail service was started and a grant funded an experiment in videoconferencing.
In 1994 the Yampa Valley Telecommunications Coalition (YVTC) provided support to the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute's (CATI) Colorado Rural Technology Project (CRTP). The CRTP program, under the direction of Dr. Jeff Richardson, was the direct precursor of what eventually came to be called the "Beanpole Project." Dr. Richardson was the author of the "Beanpole" metaphor to describe the utility of a common shared infrastructure upon which community use of network services could grow and flourish.
The CRTP was funded at approximately $330,000 per year by Colorado's state legislature as a way to spur rural development. The CRTP, through local and statewide grants and technical assistance, facilitated rural development through the use and expansion of Colorado's rural telecommunications infrastructure from 1991 to 1999, investing in projects in over 35 projects in 27 rural communities. Dr. Jeff Richardson, the Director of the CRTP project at CATI, was contracted as a part-time consultant to DOLA for the Beanpole Project implementation, as was Dr. Flo Raitano, Executive Director of the Colorado Rural Development Council (CRDC). Dr.Raitano had several years of experience providing information programs on economic development impacts of rural telecommunications development.
The YVTC worked closely with the CRTP from the program's inception. The YVTC pioneered the use of Web-based communication in hosting the CRTP website its evolution into the AERIE rural telecommunications resource website (now an archival site, hosted at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/aerie)
The 1990's was the boom decade of Internet development and many state initiatives and grant programs worked collaboratively, in parallel, or converged in its growth and extension. In 1991-92 SuperNet, a higher-education cooperative for network service development, made Internet connectivity available, first for business and research organizations and then for consumers, becoming one of the first Internet Service Providers in the country. In 1998 SuperNet would be sold to US West and the State's portion of the sale, approximately $3 million, would partially fund the Beanpole Project.
In 1994, the Colorado State Library received $2.9 million dollars in federal grants to build a statewide library network, the Access Colorado Library Network (ACLIN). ACLIN became the "anchor tenant" for the expansion of SuperNet points-of-presence (POPS) beyond the front range and into the western slope and other areas of rural Colorado.
In 1995 a $4.3 million rural service settlement by US West was distributed as rural telecommunications project grants.
In 1996, a higher-education/K-12 network planning group called "Connect Colorado" helped pass $20 million of State funding for a program which was called the "Technology Learning Grant and Revolving Loan Program." The largest grant in this 1996-1999 program funded a fiber optic network in the Arkansas Valley, which eventually also received support to expand beyond its educational services as one of the Beanpole implementations. The second largest grant, $2.7 million, funded an educational network project on the Western Slope called WESTCEL. WESTCEL was a cooperative digital network connecting thirty-three communities from Walden to Rangely to Ouray for data and video transmission. Both of these programs were groundbreaking and well-regarded developments for educational networking for the State of Colorado.
Between 1994 and 2004, there were also $4 million in Technology Opportunities Program (TOPS) grants in Colorado, including a CATI grant project titled "GIS and the NII: A Tool for Rural Growth Management," in which YVEDC was a partner.
Part of the legacy of all these technology development projects was a history of partnerships and wide-area collaborations as well as experimentation, knowledge, and increased awareness which was to provide the basis for the successes of the Beanpole Project implementation in later years.
The value of collaboration/aggregation of users and previous experience in a development project was recognized early. The 2000 report on the Technology Learning Grant and Revolving Loan Program (January 31, 2000) noted:
Several of the larger projects had tremendous geographical scope. These led to the formation of alliances that will have a lasting legacy in the history of technological advance in Colorado. Already it is apparent that the planning occurring with regard to House Bill 99-1102, the "Beanpole Bill," is based on the regional alliances developed through this program.
In 1996 Moffat County applied for a regional Telecom Center for the Colorado State Patrol, which would require DS-3 connectivity (up to 45 Mbps) for telecom infrastructure. The proposed center would combine five agencies in a single location.
In early 1997, roughly contemporaneous to the State of Colorado's telecommunications infrastructure strategic planning process, YVEDC began a new regional telecommunications planning effort (initially 5 counties) that ultimately knit together the Colorado State Patrol infrastructure development project and the Beanpole Project into the three-county (Moffat, Rio Blanco, and Routt) Northwest Colorado Beanpole Project.
The Mission Statement of the early planning group was:
To facilitate the cooperative development of a sound telecommunications infrastructure in NW Colorado that will remain technologically competitive while promoting regional economic development and addressing the needs of public and non-profit organizations, private enterprise, and individual residents.
Over the next two years, cost and service availability negotiations would take place with US West and a consulting organization (Media Management Services, Inc.) would prepare a Telecommunications Strategy and Plan (1999).
In February of 1998, the State of Colorado published its "Strategic Plan for a Statewide Telecommunications Infrastructure, one goal of which was the "establishment of a Community Incentive Funding Program to enable communities to aggregate local demand and assist them in connecting to the statewide telecommunications infrastructure." (p.3) The 'Community Incentive Funding' requirement of the Strategic Plan became the basis of the legislation which established the Beanpole Project and its funding.
Also in June of 1999, Moffat and Rio Blanco County began to consider an intergovernmental agreement to build fiber backbone from Craig to Grand Junction, agreeing not to develop local government infrastructure, but to encourage private industry to build. In July, Moffat County released an RFP for one DS3 for CSP and for "enhanced telecom services for NW Colorado." Among the bids received was a bid from a partnership of the White River Electric Association and/ UBTA, a rural independent telecommunications provider in Northeast Utah. This bid for services described the business entity which eventually became NC Telecom, the Northwest Beanpole project service provider.
Moffat county received a $600,000 Energy and Mineral Impact Assistance grant in 1999 to support the DS-3 connectivity requirement the Colorado State Patrol Communications Center. Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties each committed to $1.25 million of support for telecommunications infrastructure development, with much of the sum allocated for prepayment of services from a winning bidder (Moffat funding included the DOLA $600K). In March of 2000 the Beanpole Project grant award to the partnering Northwest counties of Routt, Rio Blanco, and Moffat added $1.375 million to the regional infrastructure development budget.
March 1999, Moffat County receives $600,000 DOLA Energy and Mineral Impact Fund grant to help complete the telecommunications redundant loop to the Colorado State Patrol communication center.
June 1999, Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties consider an intergovernmental agreement to build fiber backbone from Craig to Grand Junction.
July 1999, Moffat County RFP released for one DS3 for CSP and 'enhanced telecom services for NW Colorado.' Bids received from MFS Technologies, US West, Amigo.Net, and WREA/UBTA Communications (soon to be incorporated as NC Telecom).
August, 1999 NC Telecom was awarded the State of Colorado's RFP to provide a fiber link for the Colorado State Patrol, linking the CSP communication center in Craig to Grand Junction.
October 1999 - The Beanpole Project releases its first request for proposals for technical planning grants.
December 1999, CSP contract signed (with NC Telecom)
March 2000, Northwest Beanpole project funding of $1.375 million is announced.
September 2000, Beanpole Project contract awarded to NC Telecom
October 2000, the Northeast Beanpole Project receives its implementation funding
November 2001, Colorado State Patrol fiber link connected
February 2002, RUS loan closed
August 2002, Beanpole Master Agreement executed
September 2002, YVEDC sponsors the NW Colorado Technology Summit in Steamboat Springs, used as training for IT and education for Beanpole participants. Development of a Technology Resource Guide at www.yampavalleypartners.com.
October 2002, fiber backbone 90% completed
November 2002, first data circuits lit
September 2003, completing Beanpole connections in the three counties, adding wireless services to Yampa, Oak Creek, and Phippsburg. Routt County supplies $25,000 additional funding to enable service to South Routt.
November 2002-June 2003, participants begin to receive services (35 participating entities, 96 circuits)
October 2005 NC Telecom files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, unable to service debt on an $11 million loan from the USDA Rural Utilities Service
April 2006, Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties sign an agreement with NC Telecom to preserve prepayment credits in the form of a 50% discount on services until prepaid funding is exhausted (estimated to be a decade or longer)
April 2006, participant services end two months before end of original Beanpole service commitment.
As of the writing of this paper (July 2006), NC Telecom is expected to emerge from Chapter 11 reorganization and continue as a service provider to the region. Long term impacts of the Bankruptcy filing and the limitations it may place on NC Telecom's future infrastructure development capabilities are unknown.
Measured by the three criteria for evaluation of Beanpole Community success noted above, the Northwest Beanpole Project was successful:
Was additional infrastructure built as part of the project to extend the reach of high-bandwidth connectivity in the communities?
Yes. New fiber optic infrastructure connects Moffat and Rio Blanco county communities with network resources in Grand Junction and redundant connection to Utah. Meeker, in part, and Rangely have extensive municipal fiber infrastructure as a result of the project. Routt County has improved network access in many formerly underserved communities, as well as upgraded capabilities in its Steamboat Springs vendor central office and service locations elsewhere in the county (as do the other counties). In the past year, Rangely has continued infrastructure development by installing conduit for future fiber installation in all road construction for 'water trunk lines.'
Has there been a measurable and lasting impact of this access on the communities?
Yes. The project has provided improved access to bandwidth as well as an awareness of its benefits and the benefits of aggregate development. In addition, both national and local research have shown positive economic development outcomes for communities with broadband access. Also, there is the evidence of the increased utility of network connectivity for many users. For example, a request for success stories of the Northwest Beanpole project generated this e-mailed comment about the Meeker municipal area network (MAN):
The Beanpole spawned an interesting development in Meeker. It helped us to form the MAN cooperative that we continue to use. The MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) includes the school district, county, town, road and bridge, CSU extension agency, hospital, and public library. We are all on the same fiber MAN with the front end located in our court house. The Beanpole helped reduce the cost of connecting the MAN to the MNT so that all of our agencies could redirect technology funds into paying for the connections to the fiber MAN (originally owned by the school district). Now, as a MAN, all 7 techs meet monthly to share information, technology, best practices, and more. This personal networking has been invaluable. We also share technology costs such as purchasing antivirus in bulk as a cooperative. The county and school districts have split the costs of an e-mail server to the benefit of both entities. The school district received a grant to implement an Avvid phone system and, by placing it at the head of the MAN, other agencies were then given the opportunity of using this system which can handle about 4000 phones. The county has now implemented Avvid Phones throughout their organization. The county also purchased a device that filters out spam, viruses, and can block certain web sites. By placing this at the front of our equipment, all entities benefit from this single purchase. The stories of cooperative benefit go on. Currently the county is heading up a project to place a wireless redundant network over the top of our fiber.
It should be noted that the Meeker fiber optic municipal area network is largely the product of earlier work by the White River Electric Association, the local electrical cooperative and start-up partner with UBTA in creating NC Telecom.
Has this change been sustainable?
Yes. The improved telecommunications infrastructure, competitive services, and increased community experience with broadband will not go away. The majority of Beanpole entities have indicated a desire to continue service with NC Telecom, but they also have access to an array of many other competitive service options that were not available before the Beanpole Project.
Notable Outcomes
- The Northwest Beanpole Project was the only BP project to leverage a public safety investment (by Moffat County Government) to locate the Colorado State Patrol Regional Telecommunications center in Craig.
- It provided three years of subsidy funding ($760K) supporting 96 sites for 35 qualified entities (county, cities and town governments, libraries, schools, colleges, fire districts, hospitals, nonprofit public health agencies, and special government districts) in Routt, Moffat, and Rio Blanco counties.
- It provided more than $500K in equipment upgrades (primarily routers and modems) for participating sites.
- The newly built fiber infrastructure significantly extended fiber optic capability and access in the region.
- It established for the State and the northwest region a redundant path to internet infrastructure in Utah in addition to the fiber infrastructure available along the I-70 corridor, an asset to the State and a protection of service continuity for the region.
- It provided the population of Rio Blanco County one of the most complete rural fiber optic infrastructure implementations in the State, with long-term advantages for government, education, and health care services.
- It was partially responsible for an acceleration of DSL implementation in the region by increasing market competition and bandwidth availability.
- It provided significant cost reductions (greater than 50%) and improved access to high bandwidth connectivity to public users in the region.
- It significantly reduced the barrier of added "backhaul" charges and other distance sensitive costs and technical limitations for network connectivity.
- It sustained, through the efforts of the Yampa Valley Economic Development Council (YVEDC) and Yampa Valley Partners, a decade-long aggregation of stakeholder activity and attention toward development issues and consideration of economic impacts of telecommunications resource access.
- It proved a market for state-of-the-art telephony and network resource access in the region, against long-held vendor claims to the contrary.
- It has excellent continuity of participation. Early indications show a very high percentage (87%) of end-users continuing service beyond the subsidy period.
Infrastructure and Bandwidth Access
The most significant outcome of the Northwest Beanpole Project was its success in dramatically increasing access to broadband connectivity in the region. The average cost of T-1 connectivity in the region dropped to less than half of what it had been previously, and so-called "backhaul costs" were almost entirely eliminated.
The project resulted in significant build-out of fiber optic connectivity in the region, extending far beyond what had previously been available. Rio Blanco County is now has one of the most extensive rural fiber optic implementations in Colorado. NC Telecom's fiber infrastructure:
Not all positive outcomes regarding increased bandwidth access in the region can be attributed to the Beanpole Project investment. Aggressive and well-run competitive ISPs, such as SpringSips have played a strong role in extending the awareness and use of DSL and wireless connectivity in the region. They, too, have benefited from increased availability and lower cost of bandwidth locally that resulted from MNT/Beanpole development in the region.
Due in part to the stimulus of the Beanpole Project and the CSP related investments in the region, there has been an estimated $15 - $18 million capital investment in telecommunications infrastructure upgrades in Rio Blanco, Moffat, and Routt Counties since the year 2000. This includes NC Tel investment, CSP investment, competitive vendor investment, equipment upgrades by participants, and upstream equipment and infrastructure upgrades to provide MNT and CHSDN services. More than two thirds of this investment may not have happened without the stimulus of the Beanpole Project grant. This estimate does not include infrastructure specific to cellular telephony, which in its growing popularity, also resulted in a significant, though unknown, investment in the region in the same period. Statewide, the total investment represented by grant funding, government subsidies, and government supported telecommunications development projects was approximately a third of a billion dollars in the period 1995-2005.
Economic Development
Both national and local research support positive economic development outcomes for the Northwest Colorado Beanpole Project. However, the Project cannot alone lay claim to a causal relationship between its efforts and any economic gains in the region. In the half-dozen years since the project implementation began, the bursting of the "dot-com bubble," 9/11, the ongoing State fiscal crisis, and the impacts of the Iraq war on Federal programs and funding are all externalities which have affected local and regional economies in the State. Also, the Beanpole Project was not the only telecommunications infrastructure development activity in the region. Even so, there are observations of positive outcomes for the regional economy.
Just recently, an MIT/Carnegie Mellon study measuring broadband impact on local economies was published, based on actual public econometric data (principally census and FCC form 477). The study reported, "The results support the view that broadband access does enhance economic growth and performance, and that the assumed economic impacts of broadband are real and measurable." These results were also obtained in a rural subset of communities examined as well. [Measuring the Economic Impact of Broadband Deployment; S.E. Gillet, W.H. Lehr, C.A.Osorio: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; M.A Sirbu, Carnegie Mellon University, February 28, 2006; http://cfp.mit.edu/groups/broadband/docs/2006/Measuring_bb_econ_impact-final.pdf ]
The Executive Summary of the report concluded with this line: "Broadband is clearly related to economic well-being and is thus a critical component of our national communications infrastructure."
Specifically, the study found that communities with broadband access, when compared to communities without broadband access, in the period 1998-2002, experienced more rapid growth in employment, number of businesses overall and businesses in IT intensive sectors. Broadband communities also showed higher property values.
|Economic Indicator
|Employment (Jobs)
|Broadband added about 1-1.4% to growth rate, 1998-2002
|Business Establishments (proxy for number of firms)
|Broadband added about 0.05-1.2% to growth rate, 1998-2002
|More than 6% higher in 2000 in zip codes where broadband was available by 1999
The study noted:
Broadband's impact on the number of jobs and business establishments was particularly large relative to our expectations. While increases on the order of 1% may not appear large at first glance, the fact these figures represent increments to growth rates that are typically in the single digits. For example, in the overall example of communities we tested, jobs grew on average by only 5.2% between 1998 and 2002. Thus even a 1% increase attributable to broadband represents a noticeably large impact. (p.4)
The most important outcome of this study, however, may be it demonstration that public econometric data can be used to measure and track this rural economic development issue in future years.
A Local Study
Closer to home, the effects of such incremental increases in growth may also be seen in the shift toward what is called "Location Neutral Businesses" (LNBs) and "Location Neutral Employees" (LNE) in the Yampa Valley recently reported by the Routt County Economic Development Cooperative (March, 2006; RCEDC), noting a shift toward LNBs in the region. Location Neutral Businesses, i.e, businesses whose clients may be anywhere in the world, are made possible by broadband network access. These businesses do not necessarily have traditional physical business places such as storefronts or office buildings, and as such, are more difficult to track and measure by traditional econometric means.
The study estimated that there may be as many as 700 households (10% of all households in Routt County) that are either wholly or in part engaged in "remote working." The study notes that this is made possible by the accessibility and affordability of broadband in the area. The study estimated that Location Neutral Businesses (LNBs) and Location Neutral Employees (LNEs; people who work for companies located elsewhere but live in the county) contribute an annual $35 million to the local economy, generating $600,000 in sales tax revenue. The LNB/LNE sector is expected to grow, by one consultant's prediction quoted in the study, to 40% of the workforce nationally by 2012. [Location Neutral Businesses, Survey Results -- March 2006; Routt County Economic Development Cooperative; http://www.yampavalley.info/downloads/lnb_master_050606.pdf ]
Longer term impacts are can also be related to improved broadband availability. Rio Blanco Pioneers Hospital and Moffat County Memorial Hospital received DOLA Energy and Mineral Impact Fund grants in 2005 to upgrade their digital radiology systems, the remote uses of which are enabled and facilitated by broadband access, resulting in improved healthcare technology resources in these communities. The Yampa Valley Medical Center has also received DOLA funds to upgrade their digital radiography capabilities. Community College campuses in the area will benefit from participation in a new IP video distance learning system funded by an RUS grant to Mesa State College this year as well. Current plans to relocate the Moffat County Memorial Hospital to the edge of the Northwest Community College Campus will provide a fresh opportunity to upgrade access to bandwidth connectivity for that hospital. These are just a few recent examples of ongoing community benefits of improved broadband access.
In the Broader Context
Although the Northwest Beanpole project experienced the bankruptcy filing of its provider late in its implementation, the benefits of its subsidy and infrastructure investment remain largely accomplished.
Bankruptcy as a complication of the Beanpole implementation process was not unusual. Four of the seven implementation projects experienced business instability, failures or bankruptcies during their tenure or worked with reorganized vendors emerging from a bankruptcy. One single-county Beanpole Project failed. The Sedgwick County Beanpole Project implementation, using wireless technology by a small start-up businesses, was able to provide services during the implementation period, but was ultimately unrecoverable business failures. The Summit County Beanpole Project implementation has endured a series of business failures, but the County has retrieved the assets and is working to identify an operator for the system. They expect it to be operational in the future.
Even though several of the communities encountered difficulties in their Beanpole implementations, spokespersons for all Beanpole implementation communities (without exception) reported positive outcomes for their project, one saying that the project was "one of the better things that the state has ever done."
Montezuma and La Plata
The Montezuma and La Plata County Beanpole Project benefited from the development of a 420 mile fiber optic network between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Grand Junction, Colorado by a broad partnership of rural electric associations. This project, called Pathnet orREAnet declared chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001. It emerged from bankruptcy as FastTrack Communications, a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) that operates from within Qwest central offices in a number of southwestern Colorado communities. FastTrack is a subsidiary of the Durango-based La Plata Electric Association (LPEA; providing electrical power to La Plata, Archuleta, Mineral, and Hinsdale counties) and the Cortez-based Empire Electric Association, serving Montezuma county. Beanpole funding was used to contract for a 20 year IRU (Indefeasable Right of Use) to the fiber infrastructure, purchase of equipment, and subsidized connectivity for the project participants. Leveraged with Beanpole funding, city and county government offices and other participants have fiber optic connectivity that supports the use of state-of-the-art videoconferencing and VOIP applications.
The infrastructure has been fertile ground for service development. LPEA, and electrical cooperative, has used 'unclaimed capital credits' to support the Montoya Education Network, an interactive video distance learning service that links five school districts in the region. In addition to its support of sharing courses such as foreign language for high school students, the network is the most active in middle and elementary school uses of distance learning in the state.
In Montezuma County, the City of Cortez operates the Cortez Community Network (CCN) a fiber-optic municipal area network that has OC-3 (155 Mbps) connectivity, one DS-3 of which is allocated to supporting its Beanpole project participating sites, with a subsidy that is expected to last into 2007. The Beanpole project also is providing continuing support for connectivity in some outlying communities near Cortez. The City of Cortez Community Network may be the most robust rural example of municipal fiber optic development and connectivity in the state.
Otero, Prowers, Bent, Crowley and Kiowa
This Beanpole community, was able to extend its fiber optic network, originally built with $3.3 million of Connect Colorado grant funding in 1998, to government offices and subsidize use with the additional Beanpole funding. The expanded network is in place and operational, with the educational portion now known as the Arkansas Valley Network Association (AVNA) a 501 3c non-profit organization. The original network was built by SECOM, the telecommunications subsidiary of the Southeast Colorado Power Association (SECPA), the regional electrical cooperative, consisting primarily of 630 miles of aerial fiber optic cable mounted on the cooperative's electrical transmission towers and poles. The 36 strands of fiber optic cable, 12 were reserved for the use of Otero Junior College, schools, and local non-profit agencies, with SECPA keeping 24 strands for commercial use. With the addition of Beanpole funding to connect government agencies, county governments, and other users, some of the remaining 24 strands were used for Beanpole project/MNT connectivity. Today Otero Junior College and Southeast BOCES are providing a full schedule of courses on the AVNA distance learning network to school districts in nine counties.
Kit Carson and Cheyenne
The Kit Carson and Cheyenne County Beanpole Project implementation (once referred to as TRECC) provided subsidized MNT connectivity to its participants, some of whom remain connected via the MNT today.
The Morgan County Beanpole project encountered difficulty with its RFP process and eventually managed to complete a fiber network within Fort Morgan, providing shared connectivity (at 6 Mbps) for county and local government users and the school district. Although early plans to extend the network to outlying communities such as Brush have not happened, the existing network is functioning well.
The Sedgwick County Beapole Project was a wireless implementation that was provided by a company called EduQuest, which also benefited from another DOLA grant to rehabilitate a former retail property in Julesburg as a community computing center. The effort was ultimately unsustainable, probably due to the inability to support the level of staffing initially attempted. A spokesman for the Sedgwick County project reported the positive outcome of stimulated interest in competition among telecommunications providers in the county.
The Summit County Beanpole Project was also a wireless implementation initially contracted to a company called NetBeam. When NetBeam and then its sister company Peak Speed filed for bankruptcy, the county appointed a trustee for the Community Wireless effort, but service problems in the fall of 2005 resulted in the county stepping in to retrieve the assets and seek a new operator. The county expects a new operator to be in place and services to be available in the coming year. Overall, an assessment of the seven Beanpole implementation communities would report that four developed continuing and sustainable infrastructure that extended the impact of the MNT in their areas; one provided access to improved, more affordable bandwidth access (Kit Carson and Cheyenne Counties); and two provided improved bandwidth access during their implementation periods but for business reasons did not result in a sustainable resource for their communities.
A state official involved with Beanpole Project oversight indicated that the more successful projects generally had very strong community leadership with skills in bringing diverse groups together to further the project. When project leadership was handed over to start up companies looking to build their companies, projects didn't fare so well. Also, DOLA staff were generally deferential to local decision-making by the BP communities, even when they had doubts and concerns about the decisions. Any future effort should be more prescriptive, based on what has been learned from the more successful projects, he recommended.
The "Beanpole -- Addressing Last Mile Access" chapter of the MNT Final Report noted several lessons learned, including (ellipses supplied):
A 2002 State audit of the Beanpole Project, sparked by concerns about the slow pace of implementation and concern for community benefit, recorded the mistaken judgement of assuming the program could be started and run in parallel with the MNT implementation. Actually, the Beanpole Project was started significantly in advance of the MNT implementation. The audit also noted the administrative error of failing to staff technical support and failing to establish an administrative coordination between the two programs.
A primary concern of the audit was early payments of the grant funds, which in many instances then took up to two years or longer before service contracts were established or purchases made. Unknown to the auditors, an early MNT implementation proposal would have established seven switch locations around the state (improving technical capabilities of local routing performance) each with a staffed local technical support center for the implementation. This proposal, dependent on a relationship with higher education to support the regional centers, was dropped in favor of a smaller number of switches that would be easier and less costly to manage and make secure.
The May 2002 State audit concluded:
Coordination and communication problems between the beanpole project and the MNT have existed since the beginning of the Beanpole Project. These problems have impacted the overall success of the Beanpole Project by delaying the ability of local communities to connect to the MNT. The Beanpole Project began awarding grants to communities a full year prior to the development of the MNT. As a result, several Beanpole grant recipients were ready to enter the implementation phase long before the MNT capability existed in their area. In addition, only in the last six months has the Division of Information Technologies MNT Program Office assigned staff to aid local communities in solving the technical problems that prevented their connection to the MNT. Our work indicates that having state employees dedicated to assisting local communities has helped some beanpole recipients move toward the final goal of connecting to the MNT. [p.3, Beanpole Telecommunications Project Performance Audit, May 2002; Office of the State Auditor, State of Colorado)
The audit report is probably the best history and summary of the problems in execution and coordination experienced by the DOLA, PDP/DOIT, and the communities in the program implementation. Future efforts will benefit from attention to its observations and conclusions.
The direct dollar benefit of the Northwest Beanpole project funding was more than $700,000 in subsidized access to greater bandwidth by the project's 96 end users and more than $500,000 in connectivity equipment upgrades. Together with connectivity funding from Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties, the project leveraged infrastructure investment for the region measured in the tens of millions. The project was one of the more successful Beanpole Project implementations, distinguished by its collaborative planning and administration.
While the actual economic development benefit to the region is difficult to identify in general economic statistics of the communities, both national and local research have recently noted positive economic development results for community bandwidth access. Historically, the region was well prepared for the opportunity of the Beanpole Project and made good use of it.
As a closing observation, this assessment shows that continuing preparedness and attention to telecommunications development issues is necessary if future development benefits are to be assured. The most successful Beanpole communities were those with project and planning experience in place. The YVEDC should continue to address telecommunications development as a core issue for the economic future of the three counties.
The future of the MNT and DOLA involvement in rural telecommunications development is not clear. It is questionable whether the MNT will ever again be a factor in rural telecom service development. Many compromises in its implementation have never been acknowledged or addressed. Its early pricing advantage has disappeared and its increasingly restrictive security policies have driven away many users. The MNT also has never resolved its failure to deal with rural independent telephone companies as extenders of its services. As a result, many rural communities remain at a disadvantage in technology access. The rise of wide area fiber networks in the state (primarily by schools and cities) has not been accommodated by the MNT, and its relationships to other state networks, such as the CDOT fiber initiative, higher education's advanced network technology initiatives, and the judiciary appear to remain distant. The MNT's future may be as a network service provider solely to state agency clients.
The recent energy development boom has generated an increase of Energy and Mineral Impact funding for DOLA (one of the sources of the original Beanpole funding). However, DOLA still lacks technical expertise on its staff to provide rural telecommunications development assistance at the level it provides to its more traditional infrastructure issues such as water system upgrades.
Future infrastructure development initiatives in the State can find documentation of the many lessons learned about rural telecom infrastructure development in the MNT final report, its annual reports, and the 2002 State Audit of the Beanpole Program. The world is different now and the planning that resulted in the Beanpole Project is almost a decade in the past. The resource environment has changed, the technology has advanced, and subsequent telecommunications-related legislation such as SB-152 of 2005 (Concerning Local Government Competition in the Provision of Specified Communication Services), a bill limiting government entity participation in telecommunications development, has established new protections of commercial vendor business interests. Any new development initiative or a renewed Beanpole phase II would have to adjust to this new environment.
This assessment of the Beanpole Project outcome for Northwest Colorado must acknowledge that DOLA and the MNT, however flawed their implementation of the program may have been, did provide significant advantages and opportunities to the participating communities. The State of Colorado should note the many positive outcomes of the Beanpole development effort in any future programs planning for rural development assistance. Communities that have not yet received telecommunications development assistance should find encouragement in this history and the following "Success Factors."
Success Factors
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Telecommunications infrastructure development favors the prepared community. Is a community regularly addressing telecommunications infrastructure in a public setting via a task force, committee, or meeting of elected officials?
Regular attention to the topic of telecommunications infrastructure development by community groups also helps develop understanding of technology and spread awareness of developmental issues and potential remedies.
Historically, successful communities have fared best in areas where there has been involvement of local/regional stakeholders such as electrical cooperatives that have infrastructure development capabilities and mutual interests.
Funding opportunities come earliest to initiatives that have documentation of early and ongoing planning on telecommunications development issues.
Apply for grants/participation in State programs of any size as often as possible to gain experience with grant projects and participation (and visibility) in state initiatives.
Where collaborations exist, document and expand them; where they do not exist, develop them. A history of collaboration is one of the success factors of wide area development projects.
Identify and support or develop knowledgeable political leadership (community, regional, and state level champions for development investment).
Take risks. Risk taking or progressive behavior by local governments was one of the fundamental success factors of the Beanpole implementation communities.
NW Beanpole Project Participants
The NW Colorado Beanpole Project provided a total of 96 beanpole service connections to 35 qualified governmental entities. Participating entities included counties, cities and towns, libraries, schools, colleges, fire districts, hospitals, nonprofit public health agencies, and special government districts in Routt, Moffat, and Rio Blanco counties:
The NW Colorado Beanpole Project provides a total of 96 beanpole service connections to 35 qualified governmental entities. Service connection consist of DSL, wireless, and T1 services. Qualified entities include counties, cities and towns, libraries, schools, colleges, fire districts, hospitals, nonprofit public health agencies, and special government districts in Routt, Moffat, and Rio Blanco counties. Agencies participating consist of:
· Steamboat School District (1 circuit)
· Hayden School District (2 circuits) · South Routt School District (1 circuit) · Meeker School District (1 circuit) · Rangely School District (1 circuit) · Rio Blanco Fire District (1 circuit) · Craig Rural Fire District (1 circuit) · Hayden Fire District (1 circuit) · Oak Creek Fire District (2 circuits) · Memorial Hospital (3 circuits) · Rangely District Hospital (1 circuit) · Pioneers Hospital (1 circuit) · Visiting Nurses Association (1 circuit) · Colorado NW Mental Health (4 circuits) · Yampa Valley Medical Center (2 circuits) · Horizons Specialized Services (4 circuits) · Eastern Rio Blanco County Parks and Recreation District (1 circuit)


text:
Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Eclipses feed
The Moon will pass in front of the Sun, creating a total eclipse of the Sun visible from Chile and Argentina between 12:56 and 17:49 EDT.
From United States, no eclipse will be visible (change location ).
The simulation to the right shows the path of the Moon's shadow across the Earth.
The red line shows the edge of the Moon's shadow: all places inside the red circle will see the Moon covering some part of the Sun's disk. Within this, contours show where various fractions of the Sun's disk is covered.
The green cross in the centre of the Moon's shadow traces out the point of central eclipse, where the Moon appears to be exactly centered on the middle of the Sun's disk, and where a total eclipse will be seen.
The eclipse path
The total eclipse will be visible from:
|Time span
A partial eclipse will be much more widely visible, from countries including:
|Percentage of
Sun eclipsed
time (UTC)
time (UTC)
|French Polynesia
|Cook Islands
|Falkland Islands
According to Fred Espenak's Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses, totality will last for a maximum of 4m33s. at the point of greatest eclipse. [1]
The map below shows the parts of the world where the eclipse will be visible, which are highlighted within the red contour. The yellow contours show the maximum extent of the eclipse, where the Moon appears to cover 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of the Sun.
This map is also available as a KMZ file which can be imported into Google Earth, Google Maps, or other mapping software, and overlaid upon more detailed maps than the one shown below. Alternatively, the map can be downloaded as a non-interactive image in PNG, PDF or SVG formats.
Below, an animation of the path of the Moon's shadow across the Earth's surface is projected onto map of the world. As above, the red contour shows the edge of the Moon's shadow, and encloses everywhere where the eclipse can be seen. Within this, yellow contours show where various fractions of the Sun's disk is covered.
The eclipse geometry
Solar eclipses occur when the Sun, Moon and Earth are aligned in an almost exact straight line, with the Moon in the middle, such that the Moon passes in front of the Sun. The diagram to the right shows this geometry, though for clarity the Moon is drawn much closer to the Earth than it really is.
The Moon passes close to the Sun in the sky every month, at new moon, but because the Moon's orbit around the Earth is tipped up by 5° relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the alignment usually isn't exact.
In the diagram below, the grid represents the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. As it circles the Earth, the Moon passes through the Earth–Sun plane twice each month, at the points on the left and right labelled as nodes. A solar eclipse results when one of these node crossings happens to coincide with new moon, which happens roughly once every six months. At other times, the Moon typically passes a few degrees to the side of the Sun at new moon.
Even when a solar eclipse does occur, it will not be visible from the whole world.
The Moon is much smaller than the Earth, and so the shadow that it casts onto the Earth is never more than a few hundred miles across. As the Moon moves relative to us, the shadow sweeps across the Earth, so that different places see the eclipse at different times.
The diagram below shows the Moon's shadow, with the Earth, Moon, and distance between them, drawn precisely to scale. The pink region shows the region of space where the Moon would appear to completely cover the Sun, creating a total solar eclipse. The blue region shows where the Moon would appear to partially cover the Sun, creating a partial solar eclipse.
The Earth is drawn twice on the right hand side, once at its closest possible distance from the Moon (left), and then again at its furthest possible distance from the Moon (right).
The cross marks the maximum distance from Moon at which a total eclipse is possible. Beyond this, the Moon appears too small to entirely cover the Sun.
For comparison, the geometry of lunar eclipses is also shown below: the Earth's shadow is by contrast to the Moon's shadow, amply large enough to cover the whole Moon at once, as happens in a total lunar eclipse.
Eclipse safety
Observing the Sun can be very dangerous if it is not done with the right equipment. The Sun is the brightest object in the sky, and looking directly at it can cause permanent eye damage within seconds. Viewing it through any optical instrument – even a pair of binoculars or the finderscope on the side of your telescope – can cause instant and permanent blindness.
If you have any doubts about whether your equipment is safe, it is best not to risk using it. By far the safest thing to do is to go along to a public observing event. Many astronomical societies are likely to be hosting observing events on the day, and they'll be sure to welcome newcomers. You may meet some new people at the same time as seeing the transit.
Many astronomy suppliers sell special special filters which are made for safe solar viewing. These include aluminised mylar filters, or black polymer filters, identified as suitable for direct viewing of the Sun. Check that the filter has a CE mark, and a statement that it conforms to European Community Directive 89/686/EEC. Alternatively, you can use a welder's glass rated at No. 14 or higher. Always read the manufacturer's instructions carefully.
Never attempt to make your own filter. In addition to visible light, the Sun also produces prodigious amounts of infrared and ultraviolet radiation which cannot be seen yet can still damage your eye. Even if a homebrew filter appears adequate, it may allow this unseen radiation to pass.
Projecting an image of the Sun
Another safe way to view solar eclipses is to buy a purpose-built solar projection box.
These typically consist of a cardboard box with a small lens on one side. They project an enlarged image of the Sun onto a white cardboard sheet inside the box. Once the transit is over, they're also great for observing sunspots. They are safe to use, quick to set up, and ideal for use with children and groups.
Further details
This eclipse is a member of Saros series 127. The position of the Sun at the moment of greatest eclipse will be:
|Right Ascension
|Angular Size
|Sun (centre)
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
|The sky on 02 July 2019
29 days old
All times shown in EDT.
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
These eclipse predictions were computed using EclipseSimulator, an open-source tool for producing animations of eclipses written by the author and freely available for download.
They are based on the DE405 planetary ephemeris computed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The position of the Sun, Earth and Moon were extracted from the DE405 files using EphemerisCompute, which was also written by the author, and is also freely available for download.
They assume that the Earth and Moon are both ellipsoids with fixed polar and equatorial radii, and do not take into account the irregular topography of either body. All eclipse predictions are made at sea level. In practice, this means that the predictions presented here are inaccurate by at most of few seconds.
The list of countries from which the eclipse is visible was computed on the basis of shape files available from DIVA-GIS.
Additional information was taken from:
[1] – Espanak, F., & Meeus, J., Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000, NASA Technical Publication TP-2006-214141 (2006)
You may embed the animations and images above in your own website. They are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which allows you to copy and/or modify them, so long as you credit In-The-Sky.org.
You can download them from:
Related news
|02 Jul 2019
|– New Moon
|05 Jul 2019
|– The Moon at perigee
|09 Jul 2019
|– Moon at First Quarter
|16 Jul 2019
|– The Moon at aphelion
Image credit
None available.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Q&A with Senior Midfielder Brandon Yee
Related Links
Q: After a rough start, the UC San Diego Men's Soccer team is undefeated in its last six games. What has been the difference and was there a specific turning point?
YEE: I think we had a slow start because it took us a little while to gel as a team. Once we got a solid win under our belt, we've gained a lot of confidence and this has helped us produce more cohesive play on the field.
Q: When you weren't getting the results early, what was the coaching staff's message to the team?
YEE: The coaching staff emphasized that the season is a marathon, not a sprint, and in order for us to succeed this season we would just have to continue to get better each and every week for us to get the results we were looking for.
Q: As a player in a team sport, what do you try to do individually to help when things aren't going well for the team?
YEE: When things aren't going well, I try and be the sparkplug for the team. What I mean by that is that I try and lift the team's morale with a lot of energy and making plays to change the momentum of the game, whether that be a big tackle or taking a chance at goal.
Q: What are some of the things you like the most about playing soccer?
YEE: This is such a difficult question to answer because soccer is so meaningful to me both on and off the field. The difficulties of soccer such as injuries, not being selected to be on a team and so forth have helped me grow as an individual. I think I'm a much stronger individual from my experiences of learning to persevere during difficult times. I also love soccer but also almost every sport because of the competition. Lastly, the thing I love most about soccer is the development of the friendships that I've created over the years.
Q: Talk about how you got started playing and what kept you involved with the game for so long.
YEE: I don't know why but I've always had an affinity for playing all sports. My mom tells me I was throwing a tennis ball for fun before I could even walk! I started out playing soccer like everyone else, playing in a recreation league for boys and girls and then moved on to a competitive team at around eight years old or so. I've played pretty much every sport there is, but it wasn't until my junior year in high school where I focused my energy primarily on soccer.
Q: You've battled through a number of injuries during your career at UCSD. How difficult has that been and is the physicality a part of the sport that most people don't understand?
YEE: Battling through injuries has been rather tough to deal with. When I had to sit out the rest of the season my junior year it was difficult to watch and know that you couldn't be out on the field to help your team out. For me, that was probably the most difficult time I've had playing soccer.
I think the physicality of the game is hard to understand for most people because, quite frankly, it is too hard to see from far away. There is a lot of battling that goes on, such as people stepping on your feet, elbows to the stomach and so forth, that people just don't see from for away.
Q: What's one thing in soccer that you've never done that you'd like to do?
YEE: I've never scored on a bicycle kick in a game. I love doing it in practice but I wish I could do it in a game sometime.
Q: On this year's Triton squad, which player is the toughest, which player has the best ball skills and which player has the hardest shot?
YEE: This is a real tough question because I think everyone on our team can display all of these qualities. But if I had to pick the toughest, I would have to pick Jared Kukura. He may not be the brightest individual but he sure has guts. He plays through nagging injuries, never complains and always throws his body into tackles. The player with the best ball skills would have to be Alex Portela. Our team plays this game called the "trash can game," where you need to have the ability to juggle with the best touches and he seems to win almost all the time. Lastly I think Shane Micheil has the hardest shot. He works really hard in the gym, maybe that's one of the contributing factors to his hard shot.
Q: What do you consider your best skill and which is the one you'd most like to be better at?
YEE: I think my best skill is my defending. If I had to be better at anything, I hope to gain a better killer instinct in front of goal. I want to score more goals.
Q: If you could change one thing about soccer, what would it be?
YEE: If I could change one thing about soccer it would be to allow for more physicality in the game. I wish referees wouldn't call so many fouls and would just let the game continue.
Q: You're a management science major at Sixth College. What do you plan to do after finishing up at UCSD? What are your career aspirations?
YEE: I plan on graduating in June. I've been actively engaged in a few internships in the past few months in the financial industry. Maybe I'll be an investment banker? Who knows? I'm playing it by ear for now.
Q: You listed watching movies as one of the things you do away from the field? What are a couple of your all-time favorites? What are some good ones you've seen recently?
YEE: My all time favorite would have to be Zoolander. I don't know why I like that movie so much, but I do. Maybe deep down inside I wouldn't mind becoming a male model. I also really like Robert De Niro as an actor. So any movie with him, I probably like. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything that good recently.
Q: If there were a movie made about Brandon Yee, what actor would get the lead role?
YEE: I'd say Brad Pitt. I think we have a very similar persona.
Q: Your team is starting to head into the home stretch of the 2010 regular season. What do you think it is capable of before your career is completed?
YEE: I hope we can still make the playoffs. We have some catching up to do but if we have the right mentality and stay undefeated, I like our odds of making it.
Previous Q & A Articles
Bryce Madsen (Men's Water Polo) September 23, 2010
Annette Ilg (Women's Soccer) September 9, 2010
Ricci Luyties (Women's Volleyball Head Coach) August 24, 2010
Kevin Messey (Head Athletics Trainer) July 7, 2010
Dan O'Brien (Baseball Head Coach) June 18, 2010
Christine Merrill (Women's Track & Field) June 14, 2010
Vance Albitz (Baseball) May 11, 2010
Erik Elliott (Men's Tennis) May 3, 2010
Kelly Fogarty (Women's Track & Field) April 23, 2010
Liz LaPlante (Women's Tennis Head Coach) April 15, 2010
Kirby St. John (Baseball) March 24, 2010
Dan Perdew (Men's Swimming) February 28, 2010
Calvin Ross (Men's Volleyball) February 20, 2010
Nicole Saari (Softball) February 4, 2010
Brad Kreutzkamp (Women's Water Polo Head Coach) January 18, 2010
Tyler Acevedo (Men's Basketball) January 4, 2010
Dr. Cliff Kubiak (UCSD's Faculty Athletic Rep) December 18, 2009
Chelsea Carlisle (Women's Basketball) December 9, 2009
Carianne Cunningham (Women's Swimming) November 23, 2009
Elena Inouye (Cross Country) November 6, 2009
David Morton (Men's Water Polo) October 28, 2009
Juan Pablo Carillo (Men's Swimming) October 19, 2009
Sara Spaventa (Women's Soccer) October 10, 2009
Karen Reis (Women's Volleyball) October 2, 2009
Daniel Pavitt (Men's Soccer) September 23, 2009
Daniel Anderson (Cross Country) September 11, 2009
Peter Gresham (Men's Water Polo) September 2, 2009
Alexia Zatarain (Women's Soccer) August 24, 2009
Elaine Chen (Women's Volleyball) August 12, 2009
Jared Kukura (Men's Soccer) July 30, 2009
Dawn Lee (Former Women's Soccer Standout) July 8, 2009
Rob Mamula (Director of Athletic Performance) June 18, 2009
Garrett Imeson (Baseball) June 8, 2009
Leon Baham (Men's Track & Field) May 21, 2009
Kristyn Lesovsky (Softball) May 8, 2009
Kazumi Negishi (Men's Tennis) May 5, 2009
Laiah Blue (Women's Track & Field) April 16, 2009
Ryan Andre (Men's Crew) April 2, 2009
Josh Tanner (Baseball) March 24, 2009
Anju Shimura (Women's Swimming) March 7, 2009
Stephanie Bocian (Women's Water Polo) February 20, 2009
Lauren Chastain (Softball) February 5, 2009
A.J. Maulhardt (Men's Basketball) January 28, 2009
Annette Ilg (Women's Basketball) January 22, 2009
Steven Hardy (Men's Swimming) January 13, 2009


text:
Third in a six-part series
VANCOUVER — Ruby was not eating. And not only was she not eating, she was also very lethargic. That was how Denzil Ford knew something was wrong with her pet dog several years ago, just after they returned to Vancouver from a trip.
Not that Ruby is any stranger to ailments — she has hypothyroidism and is prone to getting sick from eating dead animals — but Ford was worried.
It turned out Ruby had got a thorn stuck in her esophagus after chasing a lizard under a cactus in Arizona. That was discovered after dozens of veterinarian and specialist visits and X-rays. Coupled with the antibiotics that the vets prescribed (as it was too dangerous to operate on Ruby), Ford ended up with a bill of about $5,000.
That was when she and her former spouse decided it was time to buy pet insurance for Ruby. They also insured their cat, Montgomery.
"I decided this animal (Ruby) was so prone to accidents and regular coughs, we needed insurance," she said.Ford got the highest level of accident and illness coverage for Ruby from PetSecure, which offers multiple levels of coverage for dogs and cats and which offers a range of payout limits. The monthly premiums are usually around $30 for cats and $55 for dogs, and can vary depending on where in Canada the pet lives and its breed.
"It depends on if you live in a large urban centre like Vancouver or Toronto, where veterinary care is more expensive than somewhere like Saskatoon or in Quebec," said PetSecure chief veterinarian Colleen Skavinski. "We have different levels based on a person's postal code, and the breed of the dog or the cat. Some breeds that have more of a propensity for a certain type of diseases, you may see a higher premium in those dogs."
Ford, a Ph.D student of history at the University of B.C., said the policy gave her some peace of mind as her dog got older. It covered 80 per cent of most costs associated with checkups, surgeries, X-rays and medication.
Without pet insurance, Ford said, the bills can add up quickly.
"They make you pay for everything," she said. "If they give you a prescription, they make you pay for that. X-rays, in-office procedure — those have charges. Sometimes I've been to other vets and they'll say, 'I just won't charge you for this thing because I'm charging for these seven other things.' "
Nils Deubler, hospital manager for the Arbutus West Animal Clinic in Vancouver, says many people don't think about insuring their pets because they are so used to taking their own monthly coverage for granted. But she says in a dense urban area such as Vancouver — where dogs and cats are exposed to more traffic, parasites and infections — the risks of accidents and illnesses are high. And so are the costs.
"If an animal's been injured, an X-ray may be the first thing, but there may be a surgery involved and there may be fluids involved if they have to go under anesthetics," she said. "Somebody may say 150 bucks is not too bad for a couple of X-rays, but when you throw in other things involved with an X-ray in the first place, you realize very rapidly the taxes and everything can add up."
Not all pet owners, however, feel the need to buy a policy. Amy Yeung does not insure her lab-cross puppy now, but she used to help insure the pit bull-boxer cross that she and an ex-boyfriend had. They paid a monthly premium of about $60. It eventually helped cover some medical expenses when their dog Simon required stitches after running through a glass window. Simon also needed surgery once when the vet suspected he had cancer.
In retrospect, Yeung says she's not sure if the insurance premiums were worth it.
"At the end of the day, (Simon) lived until he was 11, and we bought insurance for him when he was about three or four," she said. "The amount of money we would have saved anyway had we put away $25 a month would have equated to the same we would have paid for the vet bills."
Yeung said Simon also had lots of gastrointestinal problems, but any procedures or medication associated with those were never covered by the policy they bought.
That's because pre-existing conditions are generally not covered by most pet insurance companies, including PetSecure and Trupanion. Preventive care such as dental care also tends to be separate. And while both companies say they offer extensive coverage, there are exemptions and maximums.For example, with PetSecure, if a single pet is claiming for multiple conditions in a year, the percentage of the coverage may decrease.
"So let's say the dog has $5,000 per year for a respiratory condition," said Skavinski. "If in a given year, that same dog also develops arthritis, and he also needs a surgery because he ate a toy … he would be covered for each of those things up to $5,000. But if he's at the top of how much we pay out at a given year, what we may elect to do is we're now going to cover him at 70 per cent of those claims."
At Trupanion — which says it offers 90-per-cent coverage, no limits on the number of claims filed and coverage of congenital or hereditary conditions — premium rates vary depending on one's deductible. The deductibles can be anything from $0 to $1,000. However, the premiums may rise to reflect inflation or new services and technology that become available in the world of animal care.
For Ford, insuring Ruby as well as her cat Montgomery was a no-brainer. Montgomery, 7, is no longer on a policy now that Ford and her former spouse are separated. However, Ford said it made sense to buy insurance for him too at the time even though he's always been a fairly healthy cat.
"Really at the end of their life is when it starts to become an issue, where you're doing a juggling act between how much do you want to spend and (how much) I want to spend to save this animal's life, who's been with me for a decade," she said. "Whatever animal you have, you're always going to have something, and they live really short lives compared to us. In a 10-year animal lifespan, you can deal with two life issues — which isn't very much but it can set you back $20,000."
Before you buy:
What kind of coverage do you need? According to PetSecure, 85 per cent of claims tend to do with illnesses, not accidents.
What does the policy cover? Most plans cover veterinary visits, surgeries, prescription, and X-rays and MRIs associated with illnesses and accidents, but some illnesses — such as hip dysplasia — may not be covered.
When to start insuring? The younger — and hence the healthier — you start insuring, the better, because most companies do not cover pre-existing conditions.
Are there payout limits? This varies from company to company and plan to plan.
What are the deductible and premium ranges? Some plans look at paying for one deductible per year for all conditions, whereas other plans may have a deductible per claim. Deductibles and premiums may also increase as your pet ages, or to keep up with inflation.


text:
My first exposure to Riverdale Road was an article from my high school paper dated October 25th, 1995 which told of myths about a man who went insane, murdering himself and his family in a house fire he started, leaving only the chicken coops and an ominous iron gate. Teens spread the urban legend for years, claiming the chicken coops were Gates to Hell, and it became quite the young tourist attraction. My school paper also warned of a phantom drag racer who would challenge you in his pickup, and would run you off the road whether you won or lost.
As soon as I was licensed to drive, I spent almost every year since exploring the road, and introducing the curious to its grisly legends.
Along the way, Ive met others whod heard gory details about the roads frightening past.
Ive discovered reports about Riverdale Roads early history, suggesting that much slave labor occurred in the surrounding area. Found on the historic Cherokee Trail, the land was inhabited by Native Americans long before Europeans set foot in the area now known as Thornton.
In a report researched and written by High School teachers and students in the 1970s, we are told of a historic mansion on Riverdale built by David Wolpert. He came into the area while following the gold rush. He married, had children (two who were deaf mutes), and settled down on 9190 Riverdale, in his home, the Wolpert Mansion.
Years later, tenants would report floods (no damage reported), and in May 1975 the chicken barn was burned to the ground. Later that year, the Mansion was also destroyed in a blaze.
This may have alluded to tales about the area called The Gates of Hell. Its said to be much further north than the Wolpert Mansion, but the legends tell of a man who went insane and burned his house to the ground, with his family and himself within. It was said that his chicken coop was where had been provoked by demons to commit the murder/suicide. For years, the chicken coop was guarded by a large fence to deter the curious from exploring, and the mischievous from vandalism, hence the term The Gates of Hell.
Aside from legends regarding the Gates of Hell, there is a story about a young boy who was walking to school and was hit by a car along the way. It is said that he walks the street at night, smearing his blood on the street signs as he goes.
Riverdale has the scariest signs Ive ever seen. Sometimes the shapes on the signs resemble handprints and dried blood splatters. The thing is, Ive never seen any such signs anywhere else. And these signs arent just weathered signs that have been posted for the last 20 years. As two new bridges have been recently constructed, new signs have been added on the street. These new signs also contain the blood-like markings. If you visited today and then visited a week from now you might still see the markings, but they would vary from the ones you saw today.
I have yet to find evidence of this childs identity, accident, or death.
I have, however, uncovered many accident reports and online testimonials that would suggest automobile accidents, often not resultant of drugs or alcohol. And whats more, there werent other vehicles involved. It sounds as though the driver saw something and swerved to avoid it Or perhaps outrun it
I once explored the road with a friend who had heard stories about demons who take animal form and haunt Riverdale Road. Likely stemming from Native American Legend, it was said that if you witness three forms of life (not counting other drivers or insects, of course) between entering Riverdale on 104th ave, reaching the end, and returning, then you would certainly die before reaching the bridge on 104th.
In my many years of exploration, I havent seen more than two. Anticipating a third is scary as Hell.
My friend also spoke of two animal guardians in constant battle. A demon, or the devil himself, is said to take the form of a gray fox. His evil will consume you, should you encounter him.
His rival, a coyote, is said to be an Angel sent to protect you on your journey. I have seen a red fox twice before, but have yet to see the gray fox or coyote.
People have often reported seeing an Old Woman with a grocery cart, or a disembodied jogger along the side of the road. Other classic spirits like a ghostly hitch hiker, and a woman who was just in an accident, but disappears when you stop have also been supposedly seen.
Perhaps scariest of all are the reports of Satanist cults who hold black masses in the fields. And worse yet, stemming from a history of tragedies, is it possible that spirits of the dead, the damned, and the cursed are enough to drive wanderers to the brink of madness and murder?
Search. Explore. Investigate. And Please let me know what you've found.
"Wolpert House" - Dr. Hugo Rodeck


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* Western Violin Class: Learning to Play with Ease with Michael Braudy
Sun, Jul 29
Tuition $40
This class of Western violin is open to beginning, intermediate and advanced players 10 years of age and up. Michael Braudy emphasizes ease in playing, openness in bowing and relaxation of the left hand. From his background in Indian and Celtic violin, his teaching also brings an added awareness and flexibility to shifting and bow changes. The music you will play includes compositions by Michael and traditional classical and folk music. Improvisation can be explored if students desire.


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Have you guys checked out Team B.o.B's tumblr yet? It's hot. And hilarious. Check it ASAP.
Looks pretty fancy... It's weird that I've never seen this tumbler before. Thanks for sharing!
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Nice Band B.O.B.
But i like it more when they sing with someone else, when they mix and match :) i'm subscribing
mp4 to avi converter free http://freemp4toaviconverter.com/
oh yeah i'll follow!
fell in love with them summer 2010 (airplanes :) )
the developer of free audio editor


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In response to the recent survey about sexual harassment in anthropology, reported by Kathryn Clancy (U Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Katie Hinde (Harvard), Robin Nelson (U California, Riverside), and Julienne Rutherford (U Illinois, Chicago) the American Anthropological Association has issued the following statement on behalf of its more than 11,000 members.
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is shocked and dismayed to learn about the results of a recent survey reported at the April 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Knoxville, TN. The AAA has zero tolerance for sexual harassment in academic, professional, fieldwork or any other settings where our members work. While the AAA does not have adjudicatory authority over these matters, our Statement on Ethics: Code of Professional Responsibility sets out our clear expectation that anthropologists "…have a responsibility to maintain respectful relationships with others. In mentoring students, interacting with colleagues, working with clients, acting as a reviewer or evaluator, or supervising staff, anthropologists should comport themselves in ways that promote an equitable, supportive and sustainable workplace environment."
We deplore the reported incidents of sexual harassment, and expect employers and institutions of higher education to enforce the law as well as their specific anti-harassment policies for implementing the law. While sexual harassment is an issue that affects men and women alike, women bear the greatest burden of these incidents by far. The AAA has a long-term commitment to monitoring the status of women in anthropology through the Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology, renamed in 2011 the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology. We encourage harassment victims who do not feel that adequate protections are available through their employer or home institution to contact the Association's Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology confidentially for advice.


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City of Lincoln
Mayor's Office
2004 Media Releases
Mayor Coleen J. Seng today said the City will begin enforcement of the voter-approved smoking ban on January 1, 2005.
In last Tuesday's general election, 62 percent of Lincoln voters approved the city-wide smoking ban ordinance. The ordinance will go into effect when the election is certified by the Lancaster County Election Commissioner later this month. Normally, enactment and enforcement of a new ordinance begins 15 days after City Council approval. In the case of an election, the Mayor has latitude on when enforcement of the ordinance begins, according to the City Attorney.
"With a January 1st start date, we will begin the new year with this new ordinance as a smoke-free community," said Mayor Seng. "The January 1st start date will be easy for everyone to remember and also allows the places of employment and public places about one month after the election is certified to prepare before the enforcement of the smoking ban begins."
The Mayor said this will be a major change in Lincoln. The smoking ban ordinance applies to all indoor places of employment and public places. Employers, employees and residents who have questions about the smoking ban ordinance can contact the Lincoln Lancaster County Department's Health Promotion and Outreach Division at 441-6225.
The smoking ban ordinance is available for viewing or printing on the home page of the City of Lincoln Web site at lincoln.ne.gov.


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Copper, Heal Thyself
By Fenella Saunders
Nanocrystalline structures help materials self-repair radiation damage
Nanocrystalline structures help materials self-repair radiation damage
A single particle, such as an atom or a neutron, when fired into a piece of copper, causes a fountainlike cascade of disturbance, knocking countless copper atoms out of their positions in the metal's crystalline structure. A few trillionths of a second later, most of the atoms settle back into the crystal's lineup, but a handful are permanently displaced, misaligned and unable to fit back in anywhere. If that material is in an environment with radiation, such as part of a nuclear reactor, over time those wayward atoms migrate and build up on the part's surface, leaving behind voids that can make the material brittle. "After irradiation the size can increase up to 10 percent because of the atoms moving to the surface," says Blas Uberuaga, a materials scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "And that's bad because if you make parts that all fit together, and then they swell, nothing fits together like it's designed to."
With the development of new fusion and fission reactors, researchers are looking for more radiation- resistant construction materials. It's known that materials with a nanocrystalline structure often resist radiation damage better than regular, "bulk" versions of the same compounds. In the former, the material is made up of tiny grains, each one of which is a single crystal. When the grains are agglomerated, their crystal lattices don't line up, so there are boundaries between the grains. Such grain boundaries are undesirable in some applications, such as in electronics, where they impede electron flow, but they are known to make substances stronger as well as more resistant to radiation damage. However, until recently the complete mechanism behind this radiation resiliency was not well understood on the atomic scale.
As Uberuaga, Xian-Ming Bai and their colleagues report in the March 26 issue of the journal Science, the group performed computer simulations of nanocrystalline copper undergoing radiation damage to figure out what happens inside the metal. The loose atoms, a type of defect known as interstitials, are attracted to the grain boundaries because there's a little more room there than in the rest of the crystal. "Conventionally it has been assumed that once a defect gets to a boundary it just disappears, it gets very quickly to the surface or something like that," says Uberuaga. However, their simulations found something new, as Bai explains: "We found that some of the absorbed interstitials at the grain boundary can come out to annihilate vacancies. So this is a new mechanism behind the self-healing phenomenon."
Rather than just acting as a transport route to the surface, the grain boundaries seem to be a temporary sink for the loose atoms. The vacancies diffuse through the material much more slowly than the interstitials. But in a nanocrystal material, the chances are good that a grain boundary is relatively nearby, which can hold the atom until it finds a vacancy. "If the interstitials just got swept away somewhere else, that healing would not be able to occur. So that local trapping is crucial," says Uberuaga.
In addition, the large number of grain boundaries in nanocrystalline materials gives the vacancies a shorter finish line for their catch-up race. "The vacancies don't have to diffuse all the way to the boundary. There's this extra zone in our simulation of about a nanometer or so where the interstitials can come out and directly zap the vacancies," says Uberuaga.
Bai and Uberuaga suspect that the self-healing mechanism they've found will work with certain other metals and ceramics, and could reopen the consideration of whole classes of structural materials thought not to be sufficiently radiation resistant for use in reactors. Radiation does tend to make the crystal grain size grow over time in some metals such as copper, but using an alloy of two materials that don't mix, and therefore can't create larger crystals, could solve that problem. A bigger roadblock may be that nanocrystalline materials are not yet mass-produced. "There are a number of challenges like that before any kind of reactor material is really designed from the nanoscale," says Uberuaga. "But these results give some insight into what kind of interfaces you might need to get some benefit in nuclear environments, both for fission and fusion reactors."
Click "American Scientist" to access home page


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Larry David, at least judging from his cranky TV persona, doesn't seem like an awards ceremony kind of guy. And notching lifetime-achievement honors would appear to be enough to send him into a neurotic spiral over mortality (though one perk of death, as imagined by David in a memorable "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode, is getting your hair back in heaven).
Whether he likes it or not, the man who wrote the classic "Seinfeld" episode about a very private kind of contest, has won the Writers Guild of America's Paddy Chayefsky Laurel award for television, Variety reports.
Nobody deserves more to get something for shows about nothing.
In two decades since the premier of "Seinfeld," David has established himself as TV's kvetcher-in-chief, blowing up the smallest details of daily human interaction and conflict into comedy. (Or as David's TV stand-in George Costanza put it in his sitcom pitch to NBC executives: "Nothing happens on the show. You see, it's just like life.")
News of David being honored for getting laughs "from our most human, awkward, and revealing moments" follows perhaps the best season yet of "Curb," which featured a "Seinfeld" reunion where his two creations collided.
The big question, at least for fans, is what will David do after the collecting the award Feb. 20?
David has yet to announce whether he'll return for an eighth season of "Curb" on HBO. In the meantime, he's set to guest star on the upcoming Seinfeld-produced show "The Marriage Ref." He'll be part of a panel that helps real-life couples settle disputes – calling, no doubt, on his experience as creator of the eternally bickering Frank and Estelle Costanza.
David follows some pretty, pretty, pretty good past winners of the Chayefsky award – among them Steven Bochco ("Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue"), Susan Harris ("Soap," "The Golden Girls") and Stephen J. Cannell ("The Rockford Files").
Perhaps it's appropriate that David is getting an award named for the man who wrote the line "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore" for the scathing and amazingly prescient 1976 TV news satire "Network."
But instead of shouting it out his window in a fury, Larry David has proven himself award-worthy by mining the sentiment for laughs.
Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former City Editor of the New York Daily News, where he started as a reporter in 1992. Follow him on Twitter.


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NuForce NE-700M Sound-Isolating In-Ear Headphones Review/
Oh boy! Our good friends over at NuForce are at it again with a fresh new line of in-ear headphones just in time for the warmer days ahead. It seems NuForce blesses us all with superior products this time a year and it usually brings a smile to our faces. I was fortunate enough to have Nuforce send me out a pair of their latest noise-isolating NE-700M in-ear headphones. Not to be confused with the NE-7M in-ears, but if the 700m are equivalent to the older versions, we are in for a very nice treat. Big sound in a small package is what I am expecting from the 2013 version sent my way for review. What's fabulous about Nuforce is their price point for these types of in-ear headphones. Coming in at under $80 sounds like a great value to me, so lets get right into this review!Read More


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Considered to be one of the most valuable and recognized brands on the planet, Google has grown from humble beginnings to literally take over the world.
The go-to search engine, it is a company that has become synonymous with the Internet itself. Since 1998, the company has continued to grow, expanding into new territories.
Google was originally founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University, incorporating the company on Sept. 4, 1998. According to the founders, the purpose of Google is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The domain of Google was actually registered on Sept. 15, 1997, one year previous to the founding of the company.
The first funding for the company came in August of 1998 when Andy Bechtolsheim, who was the founder of Sun Microsystems, provided $100,000. This occurred one month before the company even incorporated. One year later, the founders felt that the company was taking up too much of their time and their academics were suffering. They offered to sell it to Excite CEO George Bell for $1 million but he refused. To put this in perspective, 15 years later Google earned $50 billion in annual revenue.
The founders continued to work with the company and on August 19, 2004, it officially went public, earning $1.67 billion and giving Google a market capitalization of over $20 billion. This number has continued to grow, and Google is now believed to be worth nearly $400 billion. Many Google employees owned shares in the company, with the majority of the 271 million shares staying within Google. As a result, many employees at the company became instant millionaires when the company went public.
Today, the company runs millions of servers all over the world, processing one billion search requests, and 24 petabytes of user-generated data on a daily basis. Google is the most-visited website on the entire planet, and there are over 100 other Google sites in different languages. In addition, Google owns Blogger and YouTube, and the company has dominated the Internet market like none other before or since.
In all, Google has 57,756 employees, consisting of 10,000 software developers in 40 offices around the planet. The CEOs have a base salary of one dollar per year, down from $250,000 a year previously. That being said, they are billionaires many times over due to owning so many Google shares.
Google has also changed the way that employees are treated. Engineers at the company are encouraged to spend 20 per cent of their work time on projects that they are interested in. This method of employee motivation has helped to create Gmail, Google News and AdSense.
The company uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, roughly 25 per cent of the output of a nuclear power plant. As a result, Google has pledged to become carbon neutral.
The company has several services that it provides to consumers, including:
1. Search Engine: This is the main service and what Google is so famous for. Currently, Google has a market share of 65.6 per cent, indexing billions of web pages. In all, Google Search handles roughly three billion searches every single day.
2. Advertising: The company makes roughly $10 billion a year from advertising and advertising makes up 96 per cent of its revenue. Google Analytics allows website creators to track where and how people use their websites. Google advertisements are placed in search engines when searches are done, and AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements within the network of Google.
3. Gmail: Launched as a beta-program in 2004, and available to the public in 2007, the service has 146 million monthly users, providing one gigabyte of storage to its users.
4. Google Apps: These are apps that can be used for education, business and more, with Google Docs being the most famous of these.
5. Google News: Launched in 2002, this provides summarized news articles from throughout the Internet.
6. Google Translate: This is a server-side translation service that allows for the translation of most websites into 35 different languages.
7. Android: Google released its Android operating system in 2007 and has released several high-quality phones including the Nexus One. In addition, Google currently controls 64 per cent of the smartphone market.
8. Google Glasses: Launching in 2014, these glasses will give users the ability to literally surf the world right in front of their eyes, accessing a wide assortment of data in their day-to-day lives.