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Virtual Grid Adapts X-rays Contrast to Improve Image Quality Sans a Grid
Category : CR/DR
Fujifilm Medical Systems will introduce a new X-ray image processing tool called Virtual Grid at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago, Ill. The Virtual Grid intelligently adapts contrast to improve image quality for exams that are taken without a grid. The Virtual Grid automatically adapts its processing to replicate grid use to reduce degradation of image quality caused by scatter radiation. This new feature analyzes the image for scatter effect based on exam menu and selected parameters and offers automated, selectable grid ratios to further adapt image quality to site preferences. Physical add-on grids are commonly required for mobile imaging of large anatomy to help focus radiation to reduce scatter and blurring. Virtual grid processing will be a great benefit to technologists for mobile imaging in emergency room (ER), operating room (OR), bedside, wheelchair and other exams where they may not have the optimal grid or any grid on hand. Use of Virtual Grid also eliminates artifacts typical from misalignment of the tube to detector/grid angle. For more information: www.fujimed.com
"Back To Basics" campaign launched by Image Gently to reduce radiation dose in paediatric DR exams
Category : CR/DR
Paediatric dose reduction in Digital Radiography can be achieved by encouraging radiographers to : 1. Measure the thickness of a pediatric patient to select the most appropriate imaging technique. 2. Avoid relying on digital image processing to correct for over- or underexposure. 3. Avoid using grids whenever possible, and when imaging a body part less than 10- to 12-cm thick, such as a wrist or a foot. 4. Ensure only the indicated area is exposed to radiation, with proper collimation and shielding, instead of only using electronic cropping after the exposure.
Image artifacts degrade digital radiography performance
Category : CR/DR
New forms of image artifacts
can compromise the performance of digital radiography (DR) equipment, say researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. The group described its experience with DR artifacts and how to correct for them. Artifacts featured in the Mayo paper were produced by flat-panel DR detectors with an amorphous silicon thin-film transistor array, coupled to a phosphor layer of either cesium iodide or gadolinium oxysulfide. Specific equipment models in the study included DRX-1 from Carestream Health, Definium 8000 from GE Healthcare, DigitalDiagnost from Philips Healthcare, and Axiom Aristos MX from Siemens Healthcare.
Exploring X-ray Phase Tomography With Synchrotron Radiation
Category : CT
X-ray phase tomography is an imaging technique that uses penetrating X-rays to create volumetric views through "slices" or sections of soft biological tissues, such as tumors, and it offers strongly enhanced contrast compared to conventional CT scans. Yet scientists still do not know which X-ray phase tomography methods are best suited to yield optimized results for a wide variety of conditions. To answer this question, a large group of researchers in Europe compared three different X-ray phase tomography methods at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility's (ESRF) beamline ID19 in France — X-ray grating interferometry, propagation-based phase tomography with single-distance phase reconstruction and holotomography. Led by Irene Zanette, a scientist affiliated with both ESRF and the Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany, the researchers examined cancerous tissue from a mouse model and an entire rat's heart, which they report in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. Along with colleagues Bert Müller, group leader of the Biomaterials Science Center in Switzerland, and Timm Weitkamp, a scientist at the Synchrotron SOLEIL in France, the team explored which method performs best in terms of spatial resolution and visualization/quantification of relevant features in the samples. They also investigated other related factors such as the simplicity of the setup, and the data acquisition and analysis involved in each method. The researchers chose to exploit synchrotron radiation, which produces significantly higher-quality X-rays than conventional X-ray generators such as those found in hospitals. "Think of synchrotron radiation as being analogous to the sort of monochromatic, collimated and intense light produced by lasers, while conventional X-ray generators in hospitals are more analogous to light bulbs we use within our homes," explained Zanette. Zanette explained that while their study was performed using synchrotron radiation, the same techniques are amenable to both polychromatic and divergent beams and can also be implemented at conventional X-ray sources. The researchers used an advanced X-ray technique known as "phase-contrast imaging." This type of imaging works by making the X-ray beam interfere while it propagates from sample to detector, according to Zanette. "This interference is fundamental because it encodes precious information on the phase of the X-ray waves." By comparison, conventional X-ray imaging — of the sort performed at hospitals and airports — does not use phase information. Rather, it relies only on the attenuation of the amplitude (reduction in intensity) of the X-ray waves by the object under study to generate image contrast. "More detailed information is contained in the phase than the amplitude, so it enables us to obtain images with much greater contrast and clearly differentiates cancerous tissue from healthy tissue," Zanette said. The researchers were able to show that for each specimen, the spatial resolution derived from the characteristic morphological features is about twice as good for holotomography and single-distance phase reconstruction compared to X-ray grating interferometry. They also found that X-ray grating interferometry data generally provide much better contrast-to-noise ratios for anatomical features, excel in fidelity of the density measurements, and are more robust against low-frequency artifacts than holotomography. The researchers regard all three of the phase tomography methods as being complementary. "The application determines which spatial and density resolutions are desired for the imaging task and dose requirements, so it really comes down to a choice between the complexity of the experimental setup and the data processing," noted Müller. "It's important to choose the ideal technique for your specific purposes." Since synchrotron radiation is of higher quality than the radiation at conventional sources, measurements at synchrotrons represent benchmarking experiments when translating these tomography techniques to clinical practice — especially X-ray grating interferometry, which is attracting attention for use in hospitals. The article, "Experimental comparison of grating- and propagation-based x-ray phase tomography of soft tissue," is authored by Sabrina Lang, Irene Zanette, Marco Dominietto, Max Langer, Alexander Rack, Georg Schulz, Geraldine Le Duc, Christian David, Jürgen Mohr, Franz Pfeiffer, Bert Müller and Timm Weitkamp. The authors of the paper are affiliated with Technische Universität München in Germany, Biomaterials Science Center in Switzerland, and Synchrotron SOLEIL in France. For more information: www.jap.aip.org
Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRLs) in CT
Category : CT
Diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) are a practical tool to promote the assessment of existing protocols and appropriate development of new and improved protocols at each CT centre by facilitating the comparison of doses from present practice. DRLs were first successfully implemented in relation to conventional X rays in the 1980s and subsequently developed for application to CT in the 1990s.
Read more information
Future development of contrast media
Category : CT
CT nanoparticle-based
contrast agents are all investigational; and at this point all preclinical but they're out there. In a few years, the tiny contrast agent delivery vehicles, which work well in animals, could greatly affect the diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans. That's according to David Cormode, PhD, assistant professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Do you know what is meant by "apple core sign"?
Category : Fluoro
An apple core sign is usually found in the Barium enema studies to describe a constriction of the lumen of the colon by a stenosing annular colorectal carcinoma.
Study indicated adding tomosynthesis to full-field digital mammography improved cancer detection rat
Category : MG
Breasts are considered dense if they have a lot of fibrous or glandular tissue but not much fatty tissue. Research has shown that dense breasts are more likely to develop cancer, a problem compounded by the fact that cancer in dense breasts can be difficult to detect on mammograms. Other imaging modalities like ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are often used to help find cancers that can't be seen on mammograms, but both modalities have higher rates of false-positive findings. This higher false-positive rate often results in more tests and unnecessary biopsies, making MRI and ultrasound expensive to implement in high-volume screening programs, according to study lead author Per Skaane, M.D., Ph.D., from the department of radiology at Oslo University Hospital in Oslo, Norway. Skaane and colleagues have been studying tomosynthesis as a promising breast cancer screening option that addresses some of the limitations of mammography by providing 3-D views of the breast. "Tomosynthesis could be regarded as an improvement of mammography and would be much easier than MRI or ultrasound to implement in organized screening programs," Skaane said. "So the intention of our study was to see if tomosynthesis really would significantly increase the cancer detection rate in a population-based mammography screening program." The researchers compared cancer detection using full-field digital mammography (FFDM) versus FFDM plus digital breast tomosynthesis in 25,547 women between the ages of 50 and 69. Breast density was classified based on the American College of Radiology's Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). The BI-RADS breast density scale runs from 1 to 4, with 1 being the least dense and 4 being the most dense. There were 257 malignancies detected on FFDM and a combination of FFDM and tomosynthesis in the study group, including 105 in the density 2 group and 110 in density 3. Of the 257 cancers, 211 — or 82 percent — were detected with FFDM plus tomosynthesis, a significant improvement over the 163 — or 63 percent — detected with FFDM alone. FFDM plus tomosynthesis pinpointed 80 percent of the 132 cancer cases in women with dense breasts, compared to only 59 percent for FFDM alone. "Our findings are extremely promising, showing an overall relative increase in the cancer detection rate of about 30 percent," Skaane said. "Stratifying the results on invasive cancers only, the relative increase in cancer detection was about 40 percent." Tomosynthesis not only improved the cancer detection rate in women with dense breasts, it also helped increase detection for women in the "fatty breast" BI-RADS categories. The addition of tomosynthesis to FFDM improved the cancer detection rate from 68 percent to 84 percent in women with BI-RADS density 1 or 2 breasts. For more information: www.radiologyinfo.org
PET/MR Superior for Verifying Coronary Arterial Disease??
Category : MR
Ischemic heart disease, a narrowing of the arteries supplying blood to the heart, is a leading cause of death throughout the world. A hybrid molecular imaging technique called positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MR), which tells doctors vital information about cardiac and arterial function, has been found to be an effective molecular imaging tool for detecting coronary artery disease (CAD), say researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2014 Annual Meeting (SNMMI). Often patients suspected of having CAD undergo a stress test called myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) to smoke out areas of arterial ischemia and risk of myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Many undergo a molecular imaging scan called single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), but in recent years PET/MR has emerged as a potential alternative due to its superiority for imaging the structures of soft tissues and the physiological function of the heart. This clinical study showed that PET/MR is consistently accurate using coronary angiography as the reference standard for detecting CAD. "By combining two advanced imaging modalities, PET and MR, cardiac PET/MR imaging allows a union of anatomic information with MR and functional information with PET for a comprehensive view of the of the heart," said principal author Jeffrey M.C. Lau, M.D., Ph.D., from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "This allows us to predict or rule out coronary artery disease with more certainty, and in some instances, it allows us to detect disease processes such as areas of hibernating heart muscle that would not have been detected using conventional stress testing methods like SPECT." In addition, cardiac perfusion PET/MR can be performed in a shorter timeframe than SPECT and is associated with a lower dose of radiation per procedure, and MR can be used to produce an almost of disease in the arteries of the heart when compared to industry standard cinematic, multiple-frame sequence of the motion in specific regions of the heart muscle, most notably the left ventricle, which pumps oxygenated blood back into the body through the aorta. PET also provides quantitative data about blood flow in addition to the visual interpretation of disease. The study involved 10 patients with reversible ischemia as indicated by SPECT-MPI. Scientists administered a radionuclide PET imaging agent called N-13 ammonia plus an MR contrast agent called gadolinium and the pharmaceutical Regadenoson, which imitates the stress of exercise. The researchers optimized the cardiac PET/MR imaging protocol in order to register areas of reduced perfusion of blood using MR with PET data about myocardial blood flow. The results showed that PET/MR imaging was very accurate in diagnostic coronary artery diseases. In this small sample, PET/MR had 100 percent sensitivity, 80 percent specificity and 100 percent negative predictive value. Those numbers compare favorably to SPECT in this study group. This study was conducted in conjunction with Siemens Medical Solutions and funded in part by Astellas Pharma Inc. For more information: www.snmmi.org
ESUR updates guidelines to prevent NSF
Category : MR
Contrast Media Safety Committee of the European Society of Urogenital Radiology (ESUR) issued updated guidelines regarding Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF). Patients with Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR) below 30mL/min/1.73m2 bear an increased risk of developing NSF.
New Fluoroscopy Initiative
Category : Others
Image Wisely.org now offers online educational materials for fluoroscopy, computed tomography (CT) and nuclear medicine exams. Fluoroscopy is the latest addition to Image Wisely, which helps radiology providers optimize radiation dose and provide safe, effective imaging care. "Fluoroscopy can deliver one of the higher radiation doses in medical imaging. This new initiative will help radiology providers deliver quality patient care and optimize radiation dose and image quality during fluoroscopic procedures," said Richard Morin, Ph.D., co-chair and American College of Radiology (ACR) representative to Image Wisely. The materials cover a broad array of topics including: principles of radiation safety for patients and the teams performing fluoroscopy procedures; dose monitoring; teamwork; organizational culture; checklists and other tools from the process improvement perspective. Also included are protocols and techniques on principles for diagnostic fluoroscopic procedures, interventional procedures and cardiac procedures. "Careful planning and execution of fluoroscopically-guided interventional procedures can reduce procedure risk as well as radiation exposure to the patient and hospital staff," said William Mayo-Smith, M.D., co-chair and Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) representative to Image Wisely. While fluoroscopy is the third largest source of medical radiation exposure behind CT and nuclear medicine, it provides tremendous diagnostic and treatment value. Fluoroscopy is used in many types of examinations and procedures, including barium enemas, cardiac catheterization, arthrography, angiography and biopsies. "Our goal is to ensure that every facility uses appropriate dose reduction techniques when performing fluoroscopic procedures," said Donald Peck, Ph.D., American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) representative to Image Wisely. "The new Image Wisely webpage is a one-stop location to find advice and links to credible resources to help facilities reduce the incidence of adverse reactions to the patient due to excess radiation and improper technique." "Radiation safety during fluoroscopic procedures depends on an extensive network of people working together as a team," said Greg Morrison, MA, RT (R), American Society of Radiologic Technologist (ASRT) representative to Image Wisely. "High-performing teams greatly exceed the capabilities of individuals, no matter their skill, intelligence or dedication." For more information: www.acr.org
Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2015
Category : Others
To help hospitals reduce technology-related risks, ECRI Institute publishes an annual list of Top 10 Health Technology Hazards. The 2015 hazards list highlights 10 safety topics and details a variety of technology hazards that put patients at risk. Each hazard includes an overview of the issue and recommended action steps to aid healthcare facilities in their efforts to maintain a safe environment for patients and healthcare workers. Topics include: 1. Alarm hazards: Inadequate alarm configuration policies and practices 2. Data integrity: Incorrect or missing data in electronic health records and other health IT systems 3. Mix-up of IV lines leading to misadministration of drugs and solutions 4. Inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments 5. Ventilator disconnections not caught because of mis-set or missed alarms 6. Patient-handling device use errors and device failures 7. "Dose creep": Unnoticed variations in diagnostic radiation exposures 8. Robotic surgery: Complications due to insufficient training 9. Cybersecurity: Insufficient protections for medical devices and systems 10. Overwhelmed recall and safety alert management programs This year, the report draws particular attention to alarm configuration practices. ECRI Institute is aware of several deaths and other cases of severe patient harm that may have been prevented with more effective alarm policies and practices. Recall management points to overwhelmed recall and safety-alert programs as a potential for serious consequences for healthcare facilities and patients. ECRI experts are concerned that existing hospital recall tracking programs are not keeping pace with the growing number of medical device recalls issued each year. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that the annual number of medical device recalls nearly doubled between 2003 and 2012, from 604 recalls to 1,190 annually. For each topic, ECRI Institute describes the hazard, presents recommendations for minimizing the risks, and lists helpful resources that readers can access to learn more about the topic. To develop the annual list, ECRI Institute's multidisciplinary staff of engineers, scientists, nurses, physicians and patient safety analysts draw on the resources of the Institute's 45-year history, as well as expertise and insight gained through testing and analyzing healthcare technologies. This includes examining health technology-related problem reports from hospitals and health systems worldwide, and reports received through ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization. For more information: www.ecri.org
Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of Ebola virus disease
Category : Others
INTRODUCTION — The family Filoviridae consists of two genera, the Ebola and Marburg viruses, which are among the most virulent pathogens of humans [1]. The Zaire species of Ebola virus, discovered in an outbreak in Zaire (the present Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976, is the causative agent of the 2014 epidemic in West Africa, where the case fatality rate is estimated to be as high as70 percent [2]; rates in earlier outbreaks reached 80 to 90 percent [3]. Epidemics of Ebola virus disease are generally thought to begin when an individual becomes infected through contact with the body fluids of an infected animal. Once the individual becomes ill or dies, the virus then spreads to others who come into direct contact with their blood, skin, or other body fluids. On rare occasions, Ebola virus disease has resulted from accidental laboratory infections, and there is concern that the virus might be used as an agent of bioterrorism. The clinical manifestations and diagnosis of Ebola virus disease will be reviewed here. The epidemiology, pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention of this disease are discussed elsewhere. (See "Epidemiology and pathogenesis of Ebola virus disease" and "Treatment and prevention of Ebola virus disease".) For more details, please refer to this link: http://www.uptodate.com/contents/clinical-manifestations-and-diagnosis-of-ebola-virus-disease
Agfa e-Literature
Category : Others
Agfa Healthcare Publications include THERE magazine which is published 4 times per annual -
Agfa e-Literature
Conducting clinical research and principles of evidence-based practice
Category : Others
Check out this compilation from journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences on how to conduct clinical research and principles of evidence-based practice
Post-Operative RT Improves Survival for Patients with Resected Non-small Cell Lung Can
Category : RT
Patients who received post-operative radiation therapy (PORT) lived an average of four months longer when compared to patients who had the same disease site, tumor histology and treatment criteria but did not receive PORT, according to research presented at the 2014 Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology. The symposium is sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and The University of Chicago Medicine. This study reviewed the records of non-small cell lung cancer patients treated from 2004 to 2006 from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint endeavor of the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The study authors acquired the data for patients who had surgically resected non-small lung cancer with pathologically involved N2 (pN2) lymph nodes (tumors had spread to the lymph nodes in the center of the chest) and who received chemotherapy. The database was further queried to exclude patients with positive margins, incomplete survival data, those who did not receive adjuvant chemotherapy, histology other than NSCLC, and patients treated with Cobalt-60, non-beam radiotherapy or neoadjuvant radiotherapy. Two thousand one hundred and fifteen patients (2,115) met all of the study criteria. Forty-three percent of patients (918) received PORT; 56.6 percent of the patients (1,197) were not treated with PORT. Factors associated with overall survival (OS) were assessed through a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) using the propensity score was also implemented to reduce biased treatment selection. Using an adjusted Kaplan-Meier estimator and the weighted log-rank test based on the IPTW, patients treated with PORT had an improved overall survival (median survival time) of 42 months compared to 38 months for the patients not treated with PORT (p=0.048). Multivariable analysis revealed that female gender, adenocarcinoma histology, higher income, urban/rural setting vs. metropolitan setting, lower T state, 1-2 involved lymph nodes vs. =3 examined and involved lymph nodes, and younger age correlated to better OS (p<0.05). No direct relation was found between the effects of PORT and the number of involved lymph nodes. "These results reinforce the value of PORT for non-small cell lung cancer patients with involved mediastinal lymph nodes. Our data indicates that with modern radiotherapy equipment and treatment techniques, PORT can improve survival for these patients," said John L. Mikell, MD, lead study author and chief resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Emory University Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta. "The data in this study, the largest, most recent cohort of patients with involved mediastinal nodes treated with chemotherapy reinforce that PORT should be considered in addition to chemotherapy following resection of non-small cell lung cancer." For more information: www.astro.org
Brainlab Celebrates 625th installation of ExacTrac X-Ray Monitoring System
Category : RT
Brainlab announced the installation of the 625th ExacTrac X-Ray. ExacTrac X-Ray provides sub-millimetric precison and a unique approach for solving the complexities associated with intra-fractional patient motion by internally verifying the patient's position with stereoscopic X-ray at the time of treatment, even at non-coplanar couch positions. ExacTrac X-Ray monitoring is especially valuable for cranial stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and spinal stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) treatments. Clinicians are able to use ExacTrac X-Ray technology for patient setup as well as patient monitoring throughout treatment delivery. It allows the continuous verification of the patient's position—at any point during treatment—based on internal anatomy and regardless of technique or couch position. ExacTrac can be installed on any linear accelerator system complementing the LINAC with the unique ability to detect intra-fractional motion based on the patient's internal anatomy. The 625th ExacTrac X-Ray was installed in September 2014. For more information: www.brainlab.com/exactrac
Hong Kong Medical Center Unites Radiotherapy Systems with Elekta OIS
Category : RT
New system integrates separate systems for seamless radiotherapy planning and treatment In their efforts to better integrate the radiation therapy treatment and planning systems of multiple providers, clinicians at Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital replaced their Varian ARIA oncology information system (OIS) with Elekta's Mosaiq OIS. Integrated with the hospital's Varian and Accuray linear accelerators and treatment planning systems, Mosaiq went live at the medical center in August. "Radiotherapy planning and treatment need to be seamless processes, but that can be difficult to achieve when operating radiation treatment systems and planning systems from multiple vendors," says George Chiu, head, department of radiotherapy at Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. "In 2011, when we began to explore how we could integrate the different systems under one database, we discovered that Elekta had a solution for that in Mosaiq." In its evaluation, Chiu led a team that visited the Mosaiq installation at the National Cancer Centre Singapore. After that, a project team was assembled to gather more information at additional sites in Taiwan, Singapore, Toronto (Canada) and New York City. "In April 2014, we set up a Mosaiq test environment in our hospital to evaluate hardware and software connectivity with our diverse array of systems," Chiu says. "Everything went smoothly, so we were able to go live with Mosaiq in August." He adds that the open connectivity to all systems means that patient information is no longer stored in separate systems. Clinicians at Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital can now track patient treatment, clinical outcomes and quality measurements with more ease and efficiency. For more information: www.elekta.com
Communication Radiation Risks in Pediatric Imaging by WHO
Category : Radiation Protection
We want to inform that WHO has just published the document "Communication radiation risks in paediatric imaging: Information to support health care discussions about benefit and risk" This document is intended to be a tool for health care providers to communicate about risks associated with paediatric imaging procedures. The document is freely available at this link
, where you will find the pdf full report version plus three separate pdf files for end-users to be able to download separately the chapters 1, 2 & 3.
FDA approved first ultrasound imaging system for dense breast tissue, to help detect breast cancer
Category : US
Mammograms of dense breasts can be difficult to interpret. Fibroglandular breast tissue and tumors both appear as solid white areas on mammograms. As a result, dense breast tissue may obscure smaller tumors, potentially delaying detection of breast cancer. Ultrasound imaging has been shown to be capable of detecting small masses in dense breasts. The results of the approval study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when Automated Breast Ultrasouond System (ABUS) images were reviewed in conjunction with mammograms, as compared to mammograms alone. More Information from
FDA link
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2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI Autobahn 25/31 City/Highway MPG
Gerald Jones Volkswagen is committed to providing you with the best car-buying experience possible. We carry an extensive inventory of new Volkswagen models, as well as a vast collection of quality pre-owned vehicles of all makes and models. Our finance department is at the ready to assist you in securing the best possible finance options for you. We carry a wide selection of manufacturer-recommended parts and accessories available to you for replacement or enhancement of your vehicle. And our factory-trained technicians can help you with everything from the simplest maintenance needs to more complex repair work. Whatever your needs, Gerald Jones Volkswagen is here to serve you.
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What is VexFlow?
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Where Do I Start?
If you're not a programmer, there are many ways to use VexFlow to create, share, or publish your music online:
- The VexTab Google Docs add-on lets you add music notation right in your Google Documents.
- You can use the VexTab Chrome Extension to write and share musical snippets hosted on imgur right from your browser.
- The VexTab Playground is a simple online application to quickly create and post music notation to imgur.
It sings, it dances, it does your dishes. Actually it does none of that. But it can render a mean score. Have a look at the tests page for a comprehensive list of features.
What is VexTab?
VexTab is an easy-to-use language to quickly create, edit, and render standard notation and guitar tablature. Follow the tutorial on the VexTab Tutorial page to get started using VexTab.
The Code
VexFlow is distributed under the MIT license, and all the code is available at the VexFlow GitHub Repository. VexTab is an open specification and the reference implementation is open source. This implementation is free for non-commercial use. See details at the VexTab GitHub Repository.
More Stuff
We're always building and experimenting with new things related to music and audio on the web. Try these out:
- VexWarp - An online tool for slowing down, stretching, pitch shifting, and looping music and audio. Great for practising and transcribing.
- VexWarp Chrome App - An offline version of VexWarp bundled as a Google Chrome Application.
- VexChords - Guitar Chord charts rendered right in the browser, with source code.
- VexTab Chrome Extension - Paste music notation in your blog and forum posts, documents, and messages.


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'Little Treasures' Toddlers' Group
July 15, 2019 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Every Monday morning, from 10.00-11.30am, mums, dads and toddlers are invited to join us for a time of relaxation and fun.
Toddlers can play in the Children's Corner located next to the entrance of the Vestry (where colouring books, toys and games are provided) while parents enjoy coffee, tea and biscuits.
All are welcome!


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BOULDER, CO - October 12, 2010
When it comes to safeguarding personal information online, many people leave their virtual keys in the front door. New research commissioned by Webroot, the first Internet security service company, uncovers common password practices that are putting consumers' identities and wallets at risk.
In a survey of more than 2,500 people from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, Webroot found the most commonly used password-protected sites among consumers are banks (88 percent), personal email accounts (86 percent), and Facebook (72 percent) – all of which are rife with sensitive information.
Among the findings:
- 4 in 10 respondents shared passwords with at least one person in the past year.
- Nearly as many people use the same password to log into multiple Web sites, which could expose their information on each of the sites if one of them becomes compromised.
- Almost half of all users never use special characters (e.g. ! ? & #) in their passwords, a simple technique that makes it more difficult for criminals to guess passwords.
- 2 in 10 have used a significant date, such as a birth date, or a pet's name as a password – information that's often publicly visible on social networks.
"We're seeing between 40,000 to 100,000 new samples of malware emerge daily, and in most of those cases the motivation behind the malware is financial," said Jeff Horne, Director of Threat Research at Webroot. "In fact, earlier this month the FBI reported that Zbot, a Trojan that steals passwords, led to the loss of $70 million from its victims. Using good password and security practices will help thwart similar attacks: Make a common practice to never store your password in a browser or FTP site, and have reputable, up-to-date antimalware protection in place."
Summary of Key Findings:
Younger people are especially likely to take online security risks. Webroot found that among 18 to 29 year-olds:
- 12 percent have shared a password in a text message (vs. 4 percent overall).
- 30 percent logged into a site requiring a password over public WiFi (vs. 21 percent overall).
- Over half (54 percent) have shared passwords with one or more people in the past year (vs. 41 percent of people overall).
The number of Web sites that require an extra layer of security has proliferated, driving careless habits:
- Three quarters (77 percent) of consumers have five or more accounts with online services that require passwords.
- One-third (35 percent) have 10 or more password-protected accounts. Only 10 percent ensure they never use the same password on different accounts.
- Passwords are forgotten occasionally, often or always by over half of consumers (51 percent).
Contradictions among consumers' password practices are prevalent:
- Half (50 percent) of people feel their passwords are very or extremely secure, yet:
- 86 percent do not check for a secure connection when accessing sensitive information when using unfamiliar computers.
- 14 percent never change their banking password.
- 20 percent have used a significant date in a password.
- And 30 percent remember their passwords by writing them down and hiding them somewhere like a desk drawer.
In addition, poor online password practices put consumers in danger of hacking and identity theft:
- 41 percent use the same password for multiple accounts.
- Only 16 percent create passwords with more than 10 characters in length.
- 4 in 10 people (41 percent) have shared passwords with one or more people in the past year.
- Almost half of Facebook users (47 percent) use their Facebook password on other accounts and 62 percent of Facebook users never change their password.
What Can You Do?
The threat experts at Webroot provide the following six Internet safety tips for developing passwords that will keep their information secure:
- Make Your Password Unique – As a critical line of defense, choose passwords wisely. Incorporate numbers, letters and special characters (such as punctuation marks) to strengthen your password. Form a password using letters, numbers and figures in a memorable sentence, such as "Webroot educated me in 10/10." Additionally, password management features in products like Webroot® Internet Security Complete can both help you select a secure password and protect you from online threats.
- Use one password for one site – Once you've created a unique password, use it only for one Web site or one service. If you use the same password everywhere, you open up a gateway to the information stored on each of your password-protected sites if one of them is compromised. In addition, don't write down passwords and store them for your own recall on a notepad or in a Word document, both of which leaves them vulnerable to prying eyes. For help, use a password management tool.
- Not Sharing is Caring – Never share any password with anyone: Not your boss, your best friend, your cousin, your significant other or your spouse. Once a password is out of your control, you don't know how it will be used. If you've shared a password, to regain control of your account change the password.
- Change your passwords periodically – Change the passwords you use most frequently, and never keep the same password on any account for more than a year even if you rarely use the site. For help, a good password manager feature will remind you when it's time to switch it up.
- Say no when browsers offer to save your password – Web site browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer have a feature which lets users save passwords for later use. The most widely distributed password stealing Trojans, including Zbot and SpyEye, know where to look and how to steal that information if you get infected. This also applies if you use an FTP client.
- Any account can be valuable to a criminal – Criminals use other people's identities for many purposes other than draining your bank account. Any old, unused free account on a message board, Web mail service, or social network can be hijacked for fraud. When you plan to quit a service or forum, change your password so criminals can't use your account for clickfraud, black hat SEO, or to try to convince your friends and family that you're stuck far from home and need a wire transfer to return.
About the Research
Between September 9, 2010 and September 12, 2010, Webroot sponsored an online survey of Internet users. Invitations to participate were emailed by e-Rewards to consumer panel members in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Respondents qualified for the survey if they spent at least one hour online at home each day and had at least one online account that requires a password. At the 95 percent confidence level the margin of error is ±1.9 percentage points for the full sample of 2,552 respondents, ±3.1 points for the US sample of 1,007, ±3.2 points for the UK sample of 924, and ±3.9 points for the Australian sample of 621.


text:
Craziest Republican of the Day: Lee Bright
|South Carolina's
Republicans really seem to miss the Confederacy. And they certainly seem to hate America. For yet another example of secessionist, anti-Washington thinking, let's head down to South Carolina, one of the craziest states in the union:
Continuing a pattern of attempts to assert South Carolina's independence from the federal government, State Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, has introduced legislation that backs the creation of a new state currency that could protect the financial stability of the Palmetto State in the event of a breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.
"If there is an attempt to monetize the Fed we ought to at least have a study on record that could protect South Carolinians," Bright said in an interview Friday.
"If folks lose faith in the dollar, we need to have some kind of backup."
The legislation cites the rights reserved to states in the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings in making the case that South Carolina is within its rights to create its own currency.
Um... really? I'm hardly an expert on constitutional law, but Article I, Section 10 states no state shall "coin Money" or "emit Bills of Credit," which is to say, no state may have its own currency. Yes, a state may allow "gold and silver Coin" to be "a Tender in Payment of Debts," but as Madison explained in Federalist 44, "it may be observed that the same reasons which shew the necessity of denying to the States the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium in the place of coin. Had every State a right to regulate the value of its coin, there might be as many different currencies as States; and thus the intercourse among them would be impeded." That's pretty clear, it seems to me.
Labels: Craziest Republican of the Day, James Madison, Republicans, South Carolina, U.S. Constitution, U.S. currency, U.S. Federal Reserve, U.S. Founding Fathers


text:
Anaheim Ducks take 2-1 lead over Detroit Red Wings
- Red Wing Justin Abdelkader hurts own team with ill-advised hit
- Anaheim%27s Toni Lydman woozy%2C did not return
- Game 4 scheduled Monday
DETROIT – Justin Abdelkader's attempt to deliver a big hit to spark the Detroit Red Wings ended up harming his team in addition to Anaheim defenseman Toni Lydman.
Abdelkader received a five-minute penalty and an ejection in the second period for charging Lydman. Nick Bonino then scored on the ensuing power play to break a scoreless tie and get the Ducks rolling to a 4-0 win in Game 3 of their Western Conference quarterfinal.
"(The hit) got the guys a little angry," Bonino said. "Nobody wants to see a teammate take a hit to the head. It gives you a little jump in your step."
The No. 2 Ducks now own a 2-1 lead over the No. 7 Red Wings in the best-of-seven series with Game 4 scheduled for Monday in Detroit.
"That (hit) got us going as a group," said Anaheim defenseman Cam Fowler. "When we scored right away it gave us confidence."
BOX SCORE:Ducks 2, Red Wings 1
Abdelkader's penalty came at 15:11 of the second period, and Bonino scored on a rebound at 15:29. Because it was a major penalty, the Ducks spent the rest of the period with the man advantage. They weren't able to score any more goals, but it was clear they were a different team after Lydman went down.
"Getting the lead before the end of the period was vital to us," said Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau.
The Ducks won 89.5% of their games this season when they led after two periods.
Lydman was woozy after the hit, but did leave the ice under his own power. He did not play in the third period. "Right now he just has a headache," Boudreau said. "He is not feeling like celebrating right now."
Boudreau didn't want to make any predictions about Lydman's status going forward in the series.
"I would like to see him back on the ice tomorrow, but I don't think that is going to happen," Boudreau said.
The Red Wings had a shot to tie in the third period when they received a power play opportunity, courtesy of an interference penalty to defenseman Luca Sbisa. But they couldn't find the net, and when their power play chance was winding down, Detroit forward Damien Brunner turned over the puck in his own zone, and Anaheim captain Ryan Getzlaf transformed the mistake into a shorthanded goal.
"When you have a 1-0 lead, and you get the second goal, it means the world," Boudreau said.
Boudreau said he was particularly thrilled to see Getzlaf score. He had tongue-lashed Getzlaf after the last game because of his penalty killing.
"He is a leader in every sense of the word," Boudreau said.
That goal seemed to end Detroit's comeback hopes. "We came unraveled after that," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "We made tons of mistakes after that."
Neither Babcock or Boudreau weighed in on whether they thought Abdelkader would be suspended, although Babcock said he believed it was a shoulder-to-shoulder hit.
"He's a big guy, and he hit him hard," Babcock said.
There was no immediate signal of a penalty when the play happened, but after a discussion among officials, the major penalty was assessed.
"I think it's a hockey hit," said Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg.
It would be a significant blow for Anaheim if Lydman can't play Game 4.
"He's a solid veteran, and he plays the game smart," Boudreau said. "He doesn't look too big out there, but he's strong as an ox."
Likewise, it will weaken Detroit if Abdelkader is suspended. He plays on Detroit's top line with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. He's the muscle on that line.
"We don't have anyone (else) with any kind of weight to play there," Babcock said.
The only other option would be to use Johan Franzen as Abdelkader's replacement. "Then we are a one-line team," Babcock said.
Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller made 23 saves to record his third career playoff shutout. Emerson Etem scored to give Anaheim a 3-0 lead in the third period . Matt Beleskey added a power play goal later in the period to make it a four-goal game.
The Red Wings were 0-for-6 on the power play.


text:
I'm a technician at a big ol' pharmaceutical company. A damn good technician, if I do say so myself.
My posts are presented as opinion and commentary and do not represent the views of LabSpaces Productions, LLC, my employer, or my educational institution.
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text:
Collection Of Hard Facts, share anything u consider "undebunkable"
Dec 19 2006, 02:02 PM
Post #1
Group: Administrator
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Member No.: 49
If anyone believes something fits the description of an "undebunkable" incriminating fact, list it (them) here in a post. Links to source material, it may even be something already in this Library, are requested. This thread is open, anyone can reply in it. Some of the members may even try and compile something with teeth from the info that finds its way here.
This post has been slightly edited by painter
Dec 19 2006, 02:28 PM
Post #2
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Member No.: 242
Multiple videos, audio recordings, transcripts and eyewitness statements prove a
four engine White Jet ( suspiciously similar to the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center)
was flying near the White House and Capitol Buliding between 9:40 am and 9:50
am September 11, 2001. Yet the air force denies knowledge of any aircraft being there in the letter I have from the Pentagon dated November 8, 2006 which was sent to my Congressman in response to a request for information he made on my behalf.
This is an undeniable conflict between the news media and the US air force. I have sent copies of this letter to several journialists and asked them to investigate why "air force officials" have
in effect said that major news media persons like Peter Jennings, John King, Katie Couric and many others were reporting about an aircraft that did not exist.
You would think they would have a stake in defending the accuracy of the free press
which accurately reported this aircraft on September 11, 2001 and then never mentioned it again.
Instead they ignore the factual data and question why I would bring up such a glaring
and well documented issue that they have failed to investigate for five years.
I have no particular theory to push but as a taxpayer I just want to know who sent
that plane into restricted airspace during a terrorist attack, what advance information did they have that enabled them to get there 20 minutes before the first jet fighters arrived, and why has the US air force and the 9/11 Commission refused to acknowledge it's existence for more than five years?
Dec 19 2006, 02:31 PM
Post #3
aka Oceans Flow
Group: Respected Member
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From: Oregon
Member No.: 108
Osama bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for 9/11. I can't find that article by the guy who noticed that and called the FBI and was told there was no evidence linking OBL to 9/11.
[Edit] FBI says:No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11
This post has been edited by Tarya: Apr 12 2007, 03:21 AM
Dec 20 2006, 03:16 PM
Post #4
Senator Dayton: NORAD Lied About 9/11
Sunday, August 1, 2004
Mark Dayton has become the first U.S. senator to challenge the rush to consensus that "The 9/11 Commission Report" settles the open questions of Sept. 11, 2001.
In hearings last Friday, Sen. Dayton (D-MN) raised an obvious point: if the timeline of air defense response as promoted in the Kean Commission's best-selling book is correct, then the timeline presented repeatedly by NORAD during the last two years was completely wrong. Yet now no one at NORAD is willing to comment on their own timeline!
@ Infowars
The transcript of Senator Dayton's remarks has been removed.
I'm noticing this more and more lately, especially with particularly incriminating information
edit: I found it
and 911Truth.org's print of the same article
Dec 20 2006, 03:59 PM
Post #5
Group: Respected Member
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Member No.: 242
Not only has Osama bin Laden not been indicted for the 9/11 attacks but niether has
Ayman al Zawahiri. This may be a legal loophole that allows the government to ignore them since
the Congressional authorization to use force was supposedly aimed at the "perpetrators" of 9/11
and indicting them might make it necessary to actually go after them, which we apparently don't want to do.
It does seem that somebody would indict these guys if the evidence is so strong that they did it, just for appearances sake, but it has not happened yet.
It does seem weird that Bush publicly blames Osama for 9/11 all the time but won't even try to get an indictment as was done against members of his own administration for far lesser
Dec 20 2006, 11:55 PM
Post #6
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and every link on that site...
Dec 21 2006, 07:22 PM
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From: south london, uk
Member No.: 114
i think the discrepencies between the times, and the seizmic reports are pretty much hard facts.
Jan 13 2007, 12:33 AM
Post #8
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From Kristen Breitweiser's book Wake Up Call....
"The widows fought, and won, on the principles of the inquiry's independence and its right to summons witnesses and documents. And then they went head to head with the White House's first candidate as head of the investigation - the fabled Henry Kissinger. The veteran Republican warrior and contemporary Washington lobbyist invited the Jersey Girls to his office for coffee, over which he was somewhat taken aback when they demanded to see his client list, to ensure that there was no conflict of interest.
Breitweiser writes: "Kissinger told us to trust him. We told him we couldn't Kissinger seemed stunned He didn't understand the fuss about his client list - they were all reputable people, he said.
"Kissinger seemed stricken and became unsteady. In reaching for his cup of coffee he bobbled, knocked the pot, spilled his own cup and nearly fell off the couch." Kissinger never answered their question and the next day he resigned from the chairmanship of the September 11 commission."
Jan 28 2007, 01:15 AM
Post #9
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This was e-mailed to JDX, was posted by him elsewhere on the board, I think it should be noted here as well for reference
Jan 28 2007, 06:19 AM
Post #10
Polymeta.com search Sibel Edmonds bradblog
Group: Library team
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Member No.: 77
QUOTE (Sanders @ Jan 28 2007, 05:15 AM)
This was e-mailed to JDX, was posted by him elsewhere on the board, I think it should be noted here as well for reference
I dunno. Dick Cheney in the PEOC well before 9:58, I agree with. One of the 9/11 CONmission's many lies. But, here's my take on what the orders may have been. Not saying were, just saying may have been.
Orders for SS agents to shoot down the incoming plane using SAMs. But the plane didn't get close enough to the White House. I wouldn't call the stand down scenario undebunkable evidence based on that overheard conversation. We just don't know what the order was that "still stands". We do know that we need a new investigation bcause of this and many other lies by the 9/11 CONmission.
Feb 16 2007, 07:49 PM
Post #11
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Member No.: 242
I don't know what it means but it is an undebunkable fact that many of the
people who were in the hijacked planes on 9/11 are not listed
in the Social Security Death Index as having died on September 11, 2001.
Many of the names appear with different dates, and some names do not appear at all.
A large number of crew members are not listed and many of phone callers are also not shown as having died on 9/11.
The SSDI has about 80 million names
and is constantly updated.
Mar 30 2007, 08:53 PM
Post #12
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Pakistani wire transfer to Atta's bank account, and the fact that reference to the ISI General was deleted from the official transcripts of a press conference where an Indian Journalist asked Condi Rice about the money and the General's visit to Washington the week of 9/11??
At least it's evidence of a cover-up.
And of course the BBC reporting the collapse of WTC7 23 minutes too early. That's a smoking gun that is hard to argue with.
Apr 10 2007, 05:19 AM
Post #13
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courtesy of jo56:
Apr 11 2007, 04:44 PM
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This is an edited version of Chapter 4 from the explosive 400-page exposé, "The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001", by the leading British political scientist and human rights activist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in Brighton, UK. This book was featured on Barry Zwickers MediaFile documentary series, The Great Deception: The War on Terrorism An Alternative View?, Vision TV, Canada (February 4, 2002): "The most complete book I know of, at this time, summarizing the relevant background and foreground intersecting upon the events of September 11, 2001."
This post has been edited by MichaelMR: Apr 11 2007, 04:45 PM
May 20 2007, 04:27 AM
Post #15
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Steven Jones, X-ray spectrometry evidence from samples taken at the WTC site.
Perfect match with thermate.
May 14 2008, 03:58 PM
Post #16
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Guns encased in melted concrete.Temperatures had to exceed 3000 degrees to obtain results.
May 15 2008, 01:15 AM
Post #17
Group: Administrator
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That's the first time I heard that the,
"Fire temperatures were so intense
that the concrete melted like lava
around anything in its path."
"A special pretreatment procedure was adopted for DTA experiments with mixtures containing 10 wt% concrete because of concerns
that (1) these samples would not melt sufficiently to provide good contact with the thermocouple because of their high liquidus temperature ( >2500 C) and (2) the samples, if not pretreated at a high temperature, would not contain equilibrium phases. Thererfore, these samples were heated for up
to an hour under flowing Ar-3%H (at 15 kPa) at temperatures as high as 2500 C for limstone-concrete and 2200 C for siliceous concrete."
"The U.S. Customs House stored a large arsenal of firearms at its
Six World Trade Center office."
What building was the U.S. Customs House in, at the WTC?
WTC Building SIX!?
These must be holographic melted concrete covered guns...
I'm not really into smoking guns...
but these guns have already been smoked...
imo, lunk
May 15 2008, 01:25 AM
Post #18
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I thought you might like that.You don't have to be a Phd to see that there is nothing in the OCT fires that could create this amount of heat.
May 15 2008, 03:26 AM
Post #19
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May 15 2008, 03:54 AM
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Do you have any "non-conspiracy" links to the concrete encrusted guns? It certainly is a bizarre sight.
Hi KP50,
Mike Rivero's site says "THESE GUNS ARE ON DISPLAY AT THE NEW YORK POLICE MUSEUM"- maybe one of our NYC friends could verify (cetainly NOT me, by any stretch). It certainly looked like a "proper" museum photo to me.
I could fairly confidently identify a "fossilized" Beretta and Sig Sauer [probably both 9mm Parabellum by the 2001 date, or else .40 Smith & Wesson caliber (later LE use in MOST of the US)] by the "fossilized" slides. That "revolver" looked like a volcanic rock to me, though.
FWIW on the model numbers- the 9mm Beretta is an M92... the .40 Beretta is an M96, and the "squared" 9mm Sig is a P226 from what I recall (again- please verify- don't quote me here).
Dunno if this helps,
|Lo-Fi Version
|Time is now: 28th January 2020 - 09:13 AM


text:
Finance & Development, September 1998
- Economic Policy and Equity: Should Equity Be a Goal of Economic Policy?
- Economic Policy and Equity: Conference Participants Agree on Key Issues
- Economic Policy and Equity: Public Spending on Human Development
- How Has the Asian Crisis Affected Other Regions?
- Mitigating the Social Costs of the Asian Crisis
- Ten years of Transition: A Progress Report
- The Post-Communist Transition: Patterns and Prospects
- Energy Tax Reform in Russia and Other Former Soviet Union Countries
- Dealing with Azerbaijan's Oil Boom
- Harry Dexter White and the International Monetary Fund
- The IMF Meets Civil Society
- Development FOCUS: Poverty and Economic Policy in the Philippines
- Books
- Letters
Development FOCUS: Poverty and Economic Policy in the Philippines
- International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.
- Published Date:
- January 1998
Show Summary Details
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text:
We are very honored to welcome Tex and Lucky to the Matador family. Tex and Lucky emerged on the local Atlanta music scene in December 2008, where they were contemporary to bands such as The Wig and The Babycakes, and later followed by Shiva's Headband and The Conqueroo. The band was formed when Tex left his group The Spades, and joined up with Stacy Sutherland, Benny Thurman, and John Ike Walton who had been playing Texas coastal towns as The Lingsmen.[3] Tommy Hall was instrumental in bringing the band members together, and joined the group as lyricist and electric jug player. Ultimately Lucky joined on vocals and the rest, as they say, is history.
It has been noted that the letter "M" (for marijuana) is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.


text:
Michael Matthews Wins Giro d'Italia Stage Six in the Maglia RosaThu 15 May 2014
ORICA-GreenEDGE's Michael Matthews survived a crash-marred finale to win the sixth stage of the Giro d'Italia. The maglia rosa was part of an eight rider group that formed in the wake of a yet another pile-up in the opening week of the Italian Grand Tour. It is the fourth Grand Tour stage victory for Matthews, who won two Vuelta a España stages in his Grand Tour debut last year and the opening stage team time trial at the Giro d'Italia last Friday.
"Today was completely unreal," said Matthews. "I owe so much to the team for bringing me in the position to win a hilltop finish in the pink jersey. They all worked hard. I specifically need to mention Luke Durbridge and Ivan Santaromita. I wouldn't have won if it wasn't for him. He rode his heart out for me at the moment the race was decided."
A massive crash proved the most decisive moment of the day as nearly the entire peloton hit the ground or was caught behind the mayhem in the run in to the final climb. Svein Tuft and Brett Lancaster were amongst the heavy fallers. Lancaster's crash is race ending. He broke his hand and will require surgery in the coming days. Tuft suffered significant abrasions and will continue to be assessed throughout the evening before it is determined if he will start stage seven tomorrow.
"It's a really unfortunate incident for all those involved," said Sport Director Matt White. "We never like it when accidents like this happen. We were in the right position to avoid the crash with most of our guys, but we obviously know that there's also a degree of luck involved. We had a couple of our guys involved as well. No one likes to see races impacted this way by crashes."
Matthews, Santaromita and Durbridge were three of the eight riders to emerge from the chaos to contest the stage in Montecassino. The ORICA-GreenEDGE trio were joined by BMC teammates Cadel Evans, Steve Morabito and Daniel Oss, Tim Wellens (Lotto Belisol) and Matteo Rabottini (Neri Sottoli – Yellow Fluo). Not fully aware of the carnage in their wake, ORICA-GreenEDGE and BMC drove the pace into the final climb.
It had been a fairly uneventful day up until the race-defining incident. Four riders broke away from the bunch, amassing a 14 minute maximum advantage. With the gap approaching dangerous proportions, ORICA-GreenEDGE, Team Sky, Trek Factory Racing and Katusha shared tempo-setting duties to steadily reel in the leaders.
"We had a very hard day yesterday," said White. "It's been a massive week for the team. We knew we needed to do work today, but we also looked to other teams for some help. We weren't in a position where we wanted to control it alone. Our guys did what they needed to do and remained well-positioned throughout the entire stage."
The catch was timed the to perfection. Twelve kilometres from the line, it was gruppo compatto. Two crashes in quick succession immediately followed the catch. Matthews and company quickly gained 30" on those caught out. The maglia rosa had the stage win in mind. Evans was concerned with his general classification ambitions. A spirited chase eventually formed behind the leading eight, but their efforts were not enough to bridge the gap.
Matthews was sitting pretty on the run in the to the finish. Perfectly positioned on Evans' wheel, Matthews handily overcame his compatriot in the dash to the line. Wellens outsprinted Evans for second.
"I felt really good coming into the climb," said Matthews. "When BMC hit the front, it was all about being in the right position. I knew I had the chance to win when we came into the last kilometre and still felt pretty good."
"It means so much to me to be able to pay the guys back with the win," Matthews added. "It makes all the hard work they've done really worth the effort."
With bonus seconds for the win, Matthews extends his hold on the maglia rosa by 21" over Evans. Rigoberto Uran (Omega Pharma – Quick-Step), caught out by the crash, sits in third overall at 1'21.
Unrelated to the crash, Cameron Meyer may also be amongst the non-starters on Friday. Meyer fell ill Wednesday night and soldiered through stage six. Should his condition not improve by the morning, he will not start stage seven. Look for updates on our social media channel ahead of the start of stage seven on both Tuft and Meyer.


text:
Hello, Teacher and Librarian WORLD CHANGERS!
A TOAST! To you.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, TEACHERS AND LIBRARIANS! Welcome to my third annual Middle Grade Authors Love Teachers and Librarians Giveaway!
It's no secret to those of you who know me that I just adore and respect teachers and librarians who are out there every day with kids–reaching out to them with just the right book or just the right conversation and changing lives. As is often said in children's literature circles, books offer both mirrors and windows to readers. We often discover things about ourselves and/or who we want to be through reading (mirrors). We also learn about the world–other cultures, ways of life, opinions and learn to empathize with others (windows) which is more important than ever. For some, a book offers a friend and the ability to revisit that friend as needed. Yes, we write the books. but YOU put those books into the hands of kids every day. We are a TEAM.
So…to express this appreciation and love for ALL of you heroes/teachers/librarians out there, I have banded together with some author friends (HUGE THANKS to these authors for their kindness and generosity!) to offer one GIANT giveaway for one lucky winner. The winner of this giveaway will receive a signed copy of every single book below–each mailed to you in separate packages by their authors/illustrators. There are many you'll recognize, I think 🙂 Please feel free to click on each cover to see more information about the book and its author.
Directions for entering are at the bottom.
AND – IN ADDITION TO ALL OF THESE, PUFFIN BOOKS (Penguin) will donate a box (unsigned) of Penguin Classics! You won't be sure what's inside. It will be like a delivery from Santa 🙂
So a pretty cool line-up of signed middle grade novels, huh?
Okay–so to enter the MIDDLE GRADE Giveaway to win ALL of these books:
1) Make a comment on this blog about anything book-related or kid-related. Or teacher/librarian related. Or anything-under-the-sun related. *Please provide twitter handle or e-mail address with your comment* Also, if you share elsewhere online (Facebook, Google+, etc.) please let me know here.
2) Share to Twitter with the hashtag #MGAuthorsLoveTeachers I know–long hashtag But it will help us find your entry! Please include link, if possible!
Rules: ***Giveaway ends on Monday, February 20 at 11:59PM. Winner will be announced the following morning.
1) This is to show our appreciation for teachers and librarians, specifically. Therefore, the winner must have a school mailing address and be presently employed at that school. (Sorry–only US and Canadian winners this time.)
***2) We know that teachers do not always get the appreciation they deserve. (They deserve parades and serenades and major awards.) This giveaway is a reminder that WE appreciate you. Yes—we write the books, but YOU are in the trenches every day. YOU get the books into the hands of our readers. Together, we are creating life-long readers. For that…we are most grateful.
THANK YOU for visiting our giveaway!
Lynda and the gang 🙂


text:
Energy efficiency starts at the drafting table... How architects and designers can help buildings reach high-performance standards.
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When it comes to trying to define "to be energy efficient" or "energy efficiency", there does not seem to be a single commonly-accepted definition of energy efficiency. it is generally thought that…Continue
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Make Money Recession proof Business Energy deregulation brought more than just the ability to save on your gas and electric bills. You can now make money…lot's of money.The competition is fierce. New…Continue
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In 1997, I helped my parents design and build their home. Early…Continue
Tags: Science, Building, Architecture, Design, Integrated
In responce to a Comment by Chris . Most architects whether Commercial and/or residential and in Most municiplaities have to certify as to the energy efficeincy as defined by The DOE in the Permit Appliction Process. The two platforms that are required are "RESCHK" & COMCHK" free downloads are available at the DOE site.
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Muslims Recognize Temple's Existence
From a letter to the editor, Jerusalem Post, Oct 31, 2007:
Sir, - I read with interest "Jerusalem mufti: Western Wall was never part of Jewish temple" (October 25).
The kind of denial by former mufti Ikrema Sadi is somehow disputed by no more and no less than the institution he represents: the Supreme Muslim Council. In an official guide published by the council in 1930, it states: "This site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. It's identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings' from 2 Samuel XXIV, 25."
The rest is here.
UPDATE (11/21): Reader Sean Q has located a copy of the guide and has scanned it. You can download it in pdf format here.
Labels: Jerusalem, Temple Mount


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A bubbling melting pot of religion and cultures where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony. Rugged mountains reach dramatically for the sky while their rainforest-clad slopes sweep down to floodplains teeming with forest life. Cool highland hideaways roll down to warm, sandy beaches and rich, humid mangroves.
Get a real taste of Malaysia with Trafalgar.


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Isn't it frustrating when you have found a piece of music you really love, yet have no idea what it is? Here is the perfect place to help one another.
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Veterinarian Reviewed on June 22, 2012 by Paulina Nelega, RH
Posted in Uncategorized
What are Seizures?
Dysfunction of the electrical system of the body may cause seizures. Normally, a multitude of tiny electrical signals are generated by the nerve cells of the brain or other body parts. So a seizure can be defined as a short temporary disturbance of the electrical system of the brain similar to power outage.
What Causes Seizures?
Causes of a seizure may be diverse. The irregular electrical flow of the brain may be due to infection, low blood sugar, poisoning, head injury, or even a d r u g overdose. Serious medical condition such as a brain tumor or oxygen deficiency may also result in a seizure.
Diagnosis of a seizure depends on the symptoms, a physical check up and medical background of the patient. Various tests may be done, including:
• Electroencephalogram (EEG)
• CT scan or MRI scan
• Blood tests
• Lumbar puncture
• Toxicology screening
Signs and Symptoms of Seizures
Seizures are manifested by uncontrollable changes in body movement, behavioral changes, consciousness or sensitivity. Before a seizure takes place there is a precondition known as an aura –unusual smells, tastes or sensations. After a seizure a person usually suffers a headache, confusion, tiredness, sore muscles and again unusual sensations- a state referred to as a postictal state. If a seizure recurs, the condition is categorized as epilepsy. An epileptic seizure, also called a fit, is a transient symptom of abnormal excessive activity in the brain. The visible effect can be as dramatic as a wild thrashing movement (tonic-clonic seizure) or as mild as a brief loss of awareness (absence seizure).
It can manifest as an alteration in tonic or clonic movements, mental state, convulsions, and various psychic symptoms. At times it is not accompanied by convulsions but a full body slump, where the person simply loses body control and slumps to the ground. The medical syndrome of recurrent, unprovoked seizures is diagnosed as epilepsy, but seizures can also occur in people who do not have epilepsy. Statistically, about 4% of people will go through an unprovoked seizure by the age of 80 and the chance of experiencing a second seizure is between 30% and 50%. Treatment practices may reduce the chance of a second one by as much as half. Most single episode seizures are managed by primary care physicians (emergency or general practitioners), whereas investigation and management of ongoing epilepsy is usually done by consultants in neurology. Difficult cases of epilepsy may require consultation with an epileptologist-a neurologist with an interest in epilepsy.
Classical Treatment of Seizures
Simple partial seizures do not necessitate emergency response, but complex partial seizures are symptomatically treated with adequate medicines. Such medications include anti-epileptic d r u g s and anti-convulsants, which minimize the onset and severity of seizures. These d r u g s effectively treat symptoms of the seizure, but on the other hand cause some adverse effects such as vertigo, trembling and stuttering, moodiness, confusion and depression, appetite loss, weight variations, skin responses, digestion problems and even hair loss.
Holistic Treatment of Seizures
However, the same treatment effect can be achieved with some herbal and homeopathic preparations. These natural formulas contain a mixture of safe herbal ingredients which do not cause unwanted or dangerous side effects. The two well known herbs, Passiflora or Passion flower and Scutellaria laterifolia or Scullcap, have excellent soothing properties and can prevent seizures. Moreover, homeopathic components such as Cuprum metallicum (30C) and Cicuta virosa (30C) can help keep seizures under control as well as alleviate symptoms of sleepiness, vomiting and breathing problems.
Our Expert
Paulina Nelega, RH, has been in private practice as a Clinical Herbalist for over 15 years. She has developed and taught courses in herbal medicine, and her articles on health have appeared in numerous publications. She is very passionate about the healing power of nature. Ask Dr. Jan


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Job preparation classes are FREE to NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS who are immigrants, refugees, or citizens living in BELLEVUE. Students must be interested in finding work now or in the near future. All applicants will be assessed and placed in the correct class depending on availability and level of ESL literacy. New classes begin in January, April, June and September.
HOW TO REGISTER: Check the class schedule. Come to the first day of class to register. For more information visit Frequently Asked Questions (see above), click on Registration, or call 425-564-2723, or e-mail: email@example.com For more information download the Flyer other ESL and English Language programs in the Arts and Humanities Division at Bellevue College.


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Back To Heroes
Joe Weatherly was a leading AMA racer of the late 1940s and early 1950s. During his brief, five-year professional motorcycle racing career Weatherly won three AMA nationals, including the prestigious Laconia Classic 100-Mile road race in 1948 and 1949. Weatherly became even more famous after his motorcycle racing career as a NASCAR champion. He won the NASCAR Grand National (now Winston Cup) Championship in 1962 and 1963.
Born on May 29, 1922, Weatherly grew up in the Norfolk, Virginia. During high school, he became interested in motorcycling. As a young man, Weatherly took a job working as a motorcycle deliveryman for a pharmacy. He began racing in local events in the early 1940s. After serving in the Army in World War II, he returned to racing.
Weatherly first raced AMA nationals in 1947 and had some promising results his rookie year, including a sixth at Laconia, New Hampshire.
Weatherly's breakthrough win came at Laconia in 1948, when he beat fellow Harley-Davidson rider and Laconia veteran Babe Tancrede by almost a full minute. It was a surprising win for the then little-known rider from Virginia, but he proved it was no fluke by winning the race again the next year. Weatherly had proven himself to be one of the finest road racers in the country.
The 1949 season proved to be Weatherly's most active. In addition to winning at Laconia that year, he also earned podium finishes at nationals on the half-miles of Jacksonville, Florida, and Reading, Pennsylvania, and took third in the Langhorne (Pennsylvania) 100-Mile National.
In 1950, he won the AMA 10-Mile National held at one of his home state tracks in Richmond, Virginia.
By 1951, Weatherly was scaling back his motorcycle racing efforts in favor of racing stock cars. By 1952, he had totally committed to racing automobiles but made a few more appearances in the Daytona 200 motorcycle classic through 1954.
The move to stock cars proved to be a good one for Weatherly. He started winning frequently on the NASCAR circuit and won his two NASCAR titles in the early 1960s.
Weatherly was a likable person and won NASCAR's Most Popular Driver Award in 1961. Weatherly, Lee Petty, and Johnny Beauchamp were the three drivers in the famous inaugural Daytona 500 three-wide finish in 1959.
Weatherly's life was cut tragically short after he succumbed to injuries received at a NASCAR race in Riverside, California, on January 19, 1964.
Weatherly was one of the few that won on the national level in both motorcycles and cars. His accomplishments have been duly recognized. In 1994, he was named to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Alabama, and a stock car racing museum adjacent to Darlington Raceway in South Carolina is named in his honor.


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Mechanically or electrically operated piston pumps for multi-line lubrication systems
The RA multi-line pump is a unique radial piston pump with stackable pump elements. The modular pump design allows up to five pump elements, each with one, two or four outlets. A later outlet reduction or outlet extension is thus possible. The displacement of all outlets from a pump element is adjustable by a common setting device, setting range 33–100%. Several different mechanical or electric motor drives are available.Features and benefits
- Modular pump-to-point solution for 1 to 20 lubrication points
- Depending on the drive speed respective of selected drive ratio, RA pumps cover feed rates of some droplets until 36 cm³/min (2.2 in³/min)
- Drive direction left or right
- Compatible with mineral- and synthetic-based oil
- Vibration-proof, marine and ATEX versions available


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Italian Double Border Sateen Sham
The artisans of Carlo Bertelli's famed family atelier produce our bedding with expertise perfected over three generations. Using meticulous care, they tailor our white cotton-sateen bedding with a wide appliquéd border of rich color that creates an illusion of variegated stripes. The result is understated bedding with a smooth, sumptuous feel.


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BACKGROUND IMAGE: iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
- FeatureLights, camera, storage!
- FeatureQuality Awards IV: It's a tie--EMC and NetApp share enterprise array honors
- FeatureReliability questions plague solid state
- FeatureOur View: Seek and ye shall not find
- FeatureBreaking news: Excel not top storage management tool
- FeatureGet a grip on encryption keys
- FeatureAsk the Experts: Tape media failure
- FeatureGreen shops take MAID for a spin-down
- FeatureEnterprise-ready VTLs
- FeatureStorage at your service
- FeatureKeep it or can it?
- FeatureWhy aren't you encrypting your backup tapes?
- FeatureServer virtualization adoption by the numbers
- FeatureStorage Bin 2.0: The life and death of information
- FeatureGet your iSCSI game on: Best Practices
- FeatureThe big pipe: Editorial
- FeatureBackup gets a boost: Hot Spots
iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Storage at your service
Storage-as-a-service (SaaS) companies learned from the mistakes of their dot-com era predecessors. Today, SaaS is being driven by economic factors, as well as runaway data growth, compliance requirements, security issues and disaster recovery mandates. And a few well-established storage heavyweights entering the market hasn't hurt any.
- Ellen O'Brien, Executive Editor
| Storage-as-a-service (SaaS) companies have changed how they operate compared to the storage service providers of the last decade. Is SaaS a good fit for your company's data?
Remember eStorage? It was for eBusiness during the eEconomy. Ten years ago, a bunch of storage service providers (SSPs) popped up, ready to store dot-com data. Not long afterward, most first-generation SSPs closed their doors when their new-age business customers went belly-up and more established businesses couldn't adjust to the idea of handing crucial data to firms just a year or two old. StorageNetworks Inc., perhaps the best known SSP at the time, finally gave up the ghost after its stock price dropped from $154 per share to less than $1.50. When the dust settled, most storage managers never wanted to hear from an SSP again.
Today, sporting a new moniker, storage-as-a-service (SaaS) companies have learned from the mistakes of their SSP predecessors. And a handful of well-established storage heavyweights, EMC Corp. and IBM Corp. to name just two, have made key SaaS acquisitions in recent years. SaaS is being driven by economic factors and IT realities that didn't exist a few years ago: an explosion of electronic data, compliance requirements, a tight rein on capital spending and stringent disaster recovery (DR) mandates, all of which are making storage services more appealing to small and large businesses.
"We're seeing an increased level of sophistication on the supplier and customer side," says Doug Chandler, research director, infrastructure services at IDC, Framingham, MA. "[SaaS is] a very dynamic market right now."
So what's changed? The following broad trends are making SaaS more attractive to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprise companies:
Today's SaaS offerings differ from their first-generation predecessors in that many companies are now focused strictly on online backup business, and aren't trying to expand too quickly into providing suites of offerings, says Mike Riegel, CEO at Arsenal Digital Solutions USA Inc., an IBM company, and VP of information protection services at IBM. Also, today's SaaS competitors have "expertise on how to run and service and architect a complex data center ... I think a lot of the xSPs underestimated what it takes," adds Riegel.
John Lewis is the director of IS at Geokinetics Inc., a Houston-based geophysical services company that has more than 3,000 employees around the globe. He was looking into products from CommVault for data management last year when someone suggested SaaS.
"For us, it was a compliance crunch," says Lewis. Fifteen months after a company merger, "I had to get all these diverse locations unified under a single strategy--with no capital investment--and I had to do it pretty rapidly," he says.
Lewis decided on Iron Mountain Inc.'s LiveVault, and now ships approximately 750GB of data, from applications such as SharePoint and accounting, daily to Iron Mountain. It's collected first on local appliances at headquarters and remote offices, and then delivered via the Internet to the Iron Mountain Underground storage site. "You have to think outside the box to understand the advantages of the platform," says Lewis.
Much of Lewis' environment is virtualized, which helps him with quick restores. "Right now, if I've got a Bogota, Columbia, site that goes down and I need to restore their backup, I can take that image from Iron Mountain, restore it on my hardware and make it available over the VPN to them," he says. Before Lewis started using Iron Mountain, if a server in Bogota crashed, staffers there would normally have to wait for a pre-loaded server to be shipped to them. "If you're doing international business and waiting on shipping, that's something tough to figure in an ROI," he says.
Is SaaS a good fit?
When considering costs, there's almost always no investment in hardware or software needed to start doing business with a SaaS provider, says Balaouras. The average pricing for online server backup today is approximately $7.50 per gigabyte per month, according to a recent Forrester report on backup software as a service, although some companies are offering lower prices to lure new business. Capacity pricing, where a vendor charges a fee for each gigabyte of capacity per machine per month, has the advantage of being predictable; however, a pricing model based on vault capacity is probably a less-expensive option for users, says Balaouras. For example, under the vault capacity pricing model, if you have a file server that has 100GB of capacity and you achieve at least a two times compression ratio, you would be charged for only 50GB in the first full backup (see "SaaS negotiating tips," below).
Geokinetics' Lewis figured out that over five years, the SaaS model will likely be more expensive than keeping his backup in-house. But the cost analysis doesn't take into account that new hardware investments and upgrades will be required after five years, he says. Also, there's the cost of possible human error, which is tough to nail down.
"I don't have anyone swapping tapes," says Lewis. "I don't have to monitor all those humans who [occasionally] make mistakes."
When considering the efficiency of your current backup system, find out whether backups and restores are completed within specified recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) windows, and determine whether routine testing of backups is occurring. There are also the costs of moving and tiering data, and supporting a remote DR site. In addition, you should factor in the cost of the average number of staffing errors that occur each quarter. Finally, add in the cost of personnel, hardware and software. Most of this information should be readily available for your yearly budget process, and it will serve as a good benchmark to compare a SaaS vendor's prices with what it costs to provide similar service levels in-house.
Forrester Research's Balaouras says the first question she's asked by potential SaaS clients is whether it's possible to perform backups over the Internet. "The answer is yes; with some caveats, of course," she says.
"The real challenge is the restore," writes Balaouras in a 2008 report titled Market Overview: Backup Software-As-A-Service. "For large restores, the vendor will quickly ship a DVD, removable drive or network attached storage (NAS) appliance to the customer site to conduct the restore locally." (This is what Lewis is trying to avoid if he has a server go down in Bogota.)
All SaaS players emphasize their restore capabilities; each one will tell you that their centralized Web dashboards, remote troubleshooting features, online restores to any location, continuous data protection capabilities and ability to perform delta restores to recover block changes whenever possible makes them better than the other guys. For example, according to a recent Stamford, CT-based Gartner Inc. report, Mozy Inc. (an EMC company) sends the customer a DVD or an external drive via FedEx or zip files via the Internet; IBM's Arsenal Digital Solutions offers online restores to the same site or an alternate location, and has quick-ship restores for databases, file servers and PCs.
Storage as a service is still geared primarily to the needs of SMBs, and no one is trying to convince large enterprise customers to ship hundreds of terabytes over the Internet. "If you talk about having to back up a data center and mission-critical applications, you can't back that up over the Internet," says Balaouras. "People have trouble backing [that amount of data] up over their high-speed corporate LANs."
However, SaaS companies are increasingly backing up corporate PC data over the Internet. "There's a growing realization that there's a lot of critical information stored on laptops," says Balaouras. Many companies, large and small, are using the Internet to ship data to the SaaS and a local backup appliance supplied by their SaaS vendor that's wired directly to the SaaS center's vault. Balaouras tells clients that a local appliance is sometimes preferable for clients with RTOs of less than 24 hours.
Data security
"It's still an objection," admits John Clancy, president at Iron Mountain Digital. "But it's much easier to overcome that objection than it has been in the past," he notes, adding that they use "the same level of encryption the federal government uses to wire funds."
Adam Couture, principal research analyst at Gartner, says industry veterans such as EMC and IBM are helping more customers rest easy when it comes to shipping data over the Internet to remote hosting facilities. "They won't send it to a Mozy, but they'll send it to an EMC Mozy," says Couture. "To me, that's the big difference--that the storage OEMs want to be service providers themselves."
Perimeter eSecurity isn't as well known in the online backup space as Seagate Technology's EVault or Iron Mountain, or even smaller competitors like Incentra Solutions Inc. or Intronis Technologies Inc., but Doug Howard, Perimeter eSecurity 's chief strategy officer, says they entered the space specifically to compete with companies for whom encryption isn't an everyday business.
"If you look at most of the online backup providers, they have an option for individual encryption on a key basis," he says. "We do a double key. It means that every encryption has two keys. You can choose to let some people have limited access to elements of information so you couldn't access all the text or Word docs, but you could see the headers or file names. That gives you some flexibility." Most SaaS vendors offer a customer the option of holding their own encryption key or putting it in escrow with the SaaS vendor.
James Cosgrove, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Computer Resource Corp. (CRC), chose the option of allowing Intronis Technologies to hold his encryption key. "The reason we don't manage the key is because if that one little key gets lost or misplaced, then I don't have that customer data," says Cosgrove. His clients are mostly dental offices in the Seattle area. Many were using Symantec's Backup Exec before they adopted an online strategy, he says. "They would say the tapes got dirty or the backups didn't run last night ... we were getting tired of these phone calls."
Making the case
Currently, IBM Arsenal pushes Neighborhood Centers' data changes out overnight, averaging 400GB, across the Internet to a location in North Carolina. When Comella arrived at Neighborhood Centers three years ago, the organization relied on tape backups, but some of the tapes weren't rotated when the task was left to non-IT professionals at the community centers. When you add in Neighborhood Centers' hurricane-prone location, says Comella, it didn't take much convincing for him to embrace a new data protection strategy.
"The first [online] backup [to Arsenal] took quite a bit of time--a weekend," he says. "Now it's only backing up things that change. They have a nice GUI interface and if they have a problem, like they don't get a good backup, they call and let us know," says Comella. "The point is that they do check [and call]."
Jenny Lorenz is IT director at the Linn Area Credit Union in Cedar Rapids, IA, and a Seagate Technology EVault customer whose IT shop is just outside a 10 square-mile radius that was flooded following severe June rainstorms. One of her locations lost power for a few days and an ATM machine was submerged in the floodwaters. For Lorenz, the benefits of sending her data far away to a dry location are pretty obvious. In addition, her industry requirements were met without heavy lifting from her strained IT staff.
"Seagate's EVault is SAS 70 certified," which is an independent verification that the company has a stable control environment, and "that was a selling point," she says. Before negotiating her SLAs, Lorenz determined which volumes on a particular server made sense to back up and those that didn't. "They charge by the gig and we didn't want to back up everything over and over again," she says. When testing the product, Lorenz found she could schedule backups throughout the day so she didn't have to tax her Internet connection during peak hours.
With Seagate EVault, she gets 24/7 monitoring and notification, a standard offering among most SaaS vendors; however, EVault doesn't offer user trouble-ticket integration, according to the recent Gartner report. In comparison, EMC's Mozy allows tickets to be created through 24/7 customer service, while IBM's Arsenal can integrate with a customer's trouble-ticket systems.
Perhaps what draws users to a remote SaaS firm is the built-in DR that comes with the service. During the flooding in downtown Cedar Rapids, Lorenz was running her EVault product through a routine annual restore test. "It went well," she says. "We've been able to restore backups remotely, use browser technology transmissions of direct deposits and access the data we need." The credit union's servers are 10 miles away from the flood zone and a nuclear facility is also 10 miles away. Says Lorenz: "Theoretically, we could go anywhere in the country if we needed to get away from a disaster, and I could manage the data."
Related Resources
- Cloud Storage for Primary or Nearline Data –SearchStorage.com
- 3 Common Cloud Challenges Eradicated with Hybrid Cloud –SearchStorage.com
- 8 Decisions to Make Before Using Cloud Storage –SearchStorage.com
- How Consumerization Affects Security and Compliance –SearchSecurity.com
Dig Deeper on Cloud storage
Experts call IT resiliency 'the future,' as expectations rise
CA ARCserve SaaS adds SMB backup cloud offering
Data backup software: Selection, implementation and optimization advice for Indian businesses
Data backup software: Selection, implementation and optimization advice for Indian businesses


text: Join us for Summer Play Days at our Childs Garden Campus in Montpelier for ages 3-5! Camp begins the week of June 17. Carefree summer days of outdoor play in field, forest, and the large play yard await your child. They'll explore, climb, dig, plant, swing, form friendships, and be... (Read more)


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Find us on:
14750 Sweitzer Lane, Suite 100
Laurel, MD 20707-5906
1-800-638-5352 (Voice - Toll-free)301-498-4100 (Voice)301-498-4450 (FAX)
The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) is the only major medical society in the United States devoted entirely to education and research in medical diagnostic ultrasound. Founded in 1951, AIUM works to coordinate the efforts of researchers, clinicians, and engineers by providing a forum for interaction among these groups. The Institute is supported through yearly dues from its over 8,000 members. AIUM dues provide educational materials on the various applications of ultrasound in medicine, including uses for diagnosis, and biological research.
AIUM produces over 200 abstracts, monographs, guidelines, and books dealing with safety standards, quality control, and patient information pertaining to ultrasound. Serial publication: Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, monthly. In addition, AIUM produces educational videotapes and designates this CME activity for one credit hour per hour of viewing time in Category I.
Thursday, Feb 05, 2009
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