text:
Pick PICS for peace of mind.
PICS (Partners in Community Supports) has offered self-directed care options to individuals and families for over 20 years. Our customer-service focus means that you spend less time worrying about the financial aspects of self-directed care and more time caring for your loved one. PICS is ready to support you as a Financial Management Services (FMS) provider.
Español | Hmoob | Soomaaliga


text:
Doctors remove a rubber grip of a moped handle that was inserted into a woman's private parts at MY Hospital, Indore, on May 15.
Add to Lightbox DownloadBy Sudipto Maity in India A man was arrested by police in India's central Madhya Pradesh state after reports emerged of him inserting a rubber grip of a moped handle into his wife's privates. The heinous crime took place two year's ago, but hit the headlines after the victim reached hospital in Indore city, unable to bear the excruciating pain. Fortunately for her, doctors at the Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital were able to extract the handle out of her body after a grueling four-hour-long operation, but, her condition still remains critical. The grip reached the 30-year-old victim's urine bladder, uterus and small intestine, causing an infection that had spread into the area as the rubber remained stuck. Doctors said if not operated, the infection would have spread to other body parts as well. The said operation was led by Dr S Bhattacharya. Others, included Dr. R K Mathur, Dr. S Moses, Dr. S S Sharma, Dr. S Verma, Dr. S Joshi, Dr. A Solanki, Dr S Memon, Dr. K S Tiwari, Dr. D Shukla, Dr. P Dayal, Dr. K Arora and Dr. P Jain. The man had committed the crime after the couple got into an argument over his alleged extra marital affair. Reports said the accused was so angry with the wife's behavior, he decided to get her drunk and insert the rubber grip. Strangely, the woman kept the incident hidden till the pain became unbearable for her and had to take help of doctors. Earlier, she had even complained to the police against her husband's unruly behaviour, which she alleged fell into deaf ears. The victim had also contemplated checking up with the doctors, but refrained as she fell short of cash. However, when the infection spread and made it difficult for her to walk, she decided to get herself treated. The accused has been identified as Prakash Bhil. The couple fell in love and tied the knot in 2005. Together, they have six children, five daughters and a son. Prakash works in a band. The woman said she grew suspicious after reports of her husband dating another woman, Ra
- Filename
- MEGA419773_001.jpg
- Copyright
- The Mega Agency RTI
- Image Size
- 768x1024 / 142.9KB
- http://TheMegaAgency.com
Dr. R K Mathur husband inserts rubber grip Dr S Bhattacharya heinous crime 30-year-old victim's urine bladder Dr. S Moses India's central Madhya Pradesh state long handle woman husband's unruly behaviour Dr. S S Sharma small intestine reports of her husband grueling four-hour-long operation doctors reports help of doctors wife's behavior man woman's uterus victim infection spread drunk wife's privates Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital body parts Dr. S Verma police excruciating pain infection deaf ears Dr. S Joshi Dr. K S Tiwari centimetres rubber grip India hospital uterus incident Dr. A Solanki place headlines body nerves couple crime grip pain fidelity such behaviour argument rubber Dr. D Shukla children operation Radha Dr. P Dayal area love Prakash condition daughters cash knot son band Dr S Memon Indore city Dr. K Arora Prakash Bhil wife's privates alleged extra marital affair Sudipto Maity Dr. P Jain time accused husband drunk Madhya Pradesh 15 centimetres four-hour two years two year 30-year
- Contained in galleries
- Cheating husband inserts rubber grip of moped handle into drunk wife's private - 15 May 2019

subset: commoncrawl


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I clearly remember the first time I dived an offshore platform. The structure towered above our dive boat like an enormous factory, sitting atop huge, weather-beaten legs that disappeared into the blue Gulf of Mexico. From the surface, it wasn't terribly attractive. But within the mazelike structure underwater, I discovered a marine wonderland. There were corals, sea fans, sponges, large schools of jacks and snapper, four- and five-foot barracudas, sharks, tiny reef fish, crustaceans and even sea turtles. The marine life ranged from splash to 100 feet and beyond, where blue faded to deep purple. It was a natural aquarium with no bottom in sight.
Islands of Life
The northern Gulf of Mexico contains the vast majority of the nation's platforms (almost 3,000), and there are another 23 off southern California. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a rig is a derrick that drills a well, and a platform is the structure that's built once a well is completed. The number of platforms began to climb rapidly in the 1960s, and they quickly became de facto artificial reefs. Government scientists estimate that a typical four-legged platform is equivalent to two to three acres of marine habitat.
"We've done quite a bit of research, and these structures are even more important than we first imagined," said Greg Stuntz, Ph.D., chair of Ocean and Fisheries Health at Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. "We see elevated abundance of fish and high diversity. We're confident at this point saying platforms do increase productivity in the Gulf."
According to marine biologist and filmmaker Soames Summerhayes, estimates of fish populations around individual platforms range from 12,000 to 30,000. "Extrapolate that number using the number of existing rigs, and you could hazard a guess of between 40 and 100 million additional fish as a result of these platforms in the northern Gulf."
Despite that potential value to the marine ecosystem, U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) rules require companies to remove nonproducing structures within one to five years, depending on location and drilling lease status. More than 4,000 platforms have already been removed from the Gulf, and the pace accelerated after a September 2010 notice from the DOI reminding offshore operators of the rules. At least 359 platforms are scheduled for removal in 2013.
Legitimate reasons for removing nonproducing platforms include the possible hazard to shipping and the potential for spills or leaks from aging structures — risks that increase if platforms are damaged or toppled by storms. Some environmental groups also support removal as a way to return the Gulf to a more natural state. But many divers, fishermen and scientists want to keep these oases of life right where they are.
Rigs of Reefs
It's possible to preserve these structures by officially converting the platforms to artificial reefs. The process requires approval by the DOI's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, environmental review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federally endorsed, state-run rigs-to-reefs programs exist in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and California. These programs are funded by donations from platform owners of an amount equivalent to half of what removal would cost. To date, approximately 420 platforms (10 percent of those removed) have been converted in the Gulf. Most were moved to a designated reef site and dropped on the sea floor, although some were cut off below the surface and left in place. In Texas, of 133 platforms converted to reefs to date, only 34 were reefed in place, and all of those were cut off at 85 feet or deeper.
Rigs to reefs isn't a perfect solution. Offshore companies say the lengthy process can be more trouble than it's worth. Many of the reefs are too deep for divers, while others lie on silty bottom with poor visibility. Efforts are afoot to solve these problems; these include two bills currently before congress (see info box) and official requests by various elected officials and interest groups to DOI Secretary Ken Salazar requesting a moratorium on platform removal.
Treasures or Trash?
Standing platforms make the best dive sites because of their vertical profiles. A prime example is High Island 389A, a platform erected in 1989 that fell inside the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) when the sanctuary was designated in 1992. In January 2012, 389A went on the government list for removal.
Jesse Cancelmo, who first dived at the Flower Gardens in 1977, calls 389A a world-class artificial-reef dive. Cancelmo chairs the FGBNMS sanctuary advisory council's artificial-reef working group, which is investigating alternatives to full removal of platforms in the sanctuary. Proposed expansion of the sanctuary could put several more platforms within its boundaries. The working group recommended partial removal of 389A: cutting the platform off 60 feet below the surface — the depth at which natural reef in the sanctuary begins. This would allow an additional 25 vertical feet of structure compared to the depth (85 feet) at which rigs subject to cutting are usually cut off. The sanctuary advisory council endorsed that recommendation.
"We've always said we're open to the reefing-in-place option," said G.P. Schmahl, sanctuary superintendent. "But there are many issues, primarily financial and legal, that make it difficult." The platform owner doesn't want the ongoing liability, and Schmahl said the government doesn't either. Putting 389A under the Texas rigs-to-reefs program is one potential solution.
There are still negatives to leaving platforms in place, however. "Platforms aren't actually good habitat for coral, and most of what is on them is invasive," Schmahl said. "Platforms are essentially vectors for invasive species." While other scientists agree that is true, some also say invasions would happen with or without platforms.
A larger issue is that platforms will eventually corrode and collapse. "We don't know if that's a problem," Schmahl said, "but from a management point of view, it's an important question. We also should be looking at the bigger picture of marine spatial planning. How many platforms should we save? Is it better to place them in aggregations in designated locations? Those are some of the questions we need to answer."
Cancelmo would like to see each individual platform assessed for its value as marine habitat before removal. "We don't have a one-size-fits-all solution," he said. "There are platforms out there that probably don't merit being left in place, but there are many that do. As long as the structure poses no hazard and liability can be adequately addressed, there's no reason whatsoever to not leave the platforms in place." And, from a diver's perspective, there are plenty of reasons to do so.
What Can You Do?
Let your federal (and, if applicable, state) representatives know these structures are important to divers. Two bills before Congress would make decommissioning rules more favorable to artificial reefing: S1555, the Rigs to Reefs Habitat Protection Act, and S3525, the Sportsmen's Act of 2012.
Go diving on an offshore platform. You won't be disappointed.
© Alert Diver — Q1 Winter 2013


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Staff Council for Academic Staff
The Staff Council for Academic Staff - PRWiss for short - is represents the interests of academic, medical, and artistic staff at RWTH Aachen.
Staff Council for Academic, Medical, and Artistic Staff
Staff Council For Academic, Medical, and Artistic Staff at RWTH Aachen
- work
- +49 241 80-98111
- Send Email
Term of Office
Members of the PRwiss began their term on July 1, 2016, for a duration of four years.
In accordance with the State Staff Representation Act or LPVG, the Staff Council represents employees' interests. These include:
- Contractual matters – hiring, job description
- Continued employment and termination of employment
- Workplace – design, occupational safetty - office and work equipment
- Fire safety, escape routes
- Occupation – responsibilities and their scope
- Qualification – doctoral studies, medical residency or habilitation (postdoctoral qualification to lecture)
- Health – workplace ergonomics, work with dangerous substances
- Bullying – emotional stress in the workplace, bullying from colleagues and supervisors
The Staff Council meets Fridays. A crucial component of its meetings is advising and a decision about the hiring and continued employment of all academic employees.
Meetings with the rector and the head of the human resources department regularly take place in accordance with the State Staff Representation Act.
Further Information
From within the RWTH network, on the PRwiss (de) intranet pages, your can find out more about how the PRwiss can assist you in further improving your situation at RWTH Aachen.
We are there for you. Do not hesitate to contact us!


text: With keypad(...) enabled, getch() will return a code defined in .h as KEY_* macros when a function key is pressed. When ESCAPE is pressed (which can be the beginning of a function key) ncurses will start a one second timer. If the remainder of the keystroke is not finished in this second, the key is returned. Otherwise, the function key value is returned. (If necessary, use notimeout() to disable the second timer).


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"For his outstanding contributions to plasma physics made possible by his development of a world-class spheromak laboratory at Swarthmore College, and for his energetic mentoring of undergraduate students."
Background:Michael Brown is a professor of physics at Swarthmore College. Brown's work in plasma physics has focused on fundamental astrophysical processes accessible in laboratory experiments (such as magnetic reconnection, plasma turbulence, and ion energization) and innovative schemes for magnetic confinement fusion.
Brown has established the Swarthrmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX) at Swarthmore College with the assistance of 16 senior honors students and over $2.5M in grants from the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. His former students include one APS Apker winner and two finalists. He has given invited talks at APS conferences as well as international conferences in Australia, Norway, and Japan. He has given invited lectures at over 50 institutions. He has published over 40 articles in refereed journals with more than 16 undergraduate coauthors.
Brown is a past member of the executive committee of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics and a winner of the Department of Energy Junior Investigator Award. Brown currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences Plasma Sciences Committee. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Pomona College in 1981 and his PhD in physics from Dartmouth in 1987. He was a senior research fellow at Caltech before joining the Swarthmore faculty in 1994.
Sally Koutsoliotas (Chair), J. Price, W.K. Wootters, J. Mateja, M. Thoennessen


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Note: There is a new version of JointPushPull, called JointPushPull Interactive Edition 3.0. It includes new extrusion tools and is more interactive.
So you should consider migrating to this new version.
See this post.
Here is the link to the starting post of this new resurrected plugin.
JointPushPull Classic is a script that performs push pull on multiple faces in one operation. Unlike the native Sketchup push-pull tool, JPP Classic can maintain the continuity of the offset surfaces (mode joint push pull). This is useful to thicken non-planar surfaces.
JPP also includes two additional modes: Vector and Normal working with multiple faces.
- Language: English, French, Spanish (Defisto), Italian (Defisto / COSEDIMARCO)
- Menus: by default, it is installed in Tools > Join Push Pull. There is also a Joint Push Pull menu in the selection contextual menu when one or several faces are selected
- Icon toolbar: Joint Push Pull (5 icons are available)
- The plugin is free, for private and commercial usage.
Although the plugin is obsolete now, this old version is published on the Sketchucation PluginStore under the name JointPushPull Classic.
IMPORTANT: This version can co-exist with the NEW version JointPushPull Interactive.
It is advised to
- install the rbz extension from the Sketchucation PluginStore page for JointPushPull Classic
- or Auto-install JointPushPull Classic with the ExtensionStore plugin distributed by Sketchucation
The footprint in the SU Plugins Directory must be:
- Fredo6_JointPushPullClassic.rb file
- Fredo6_JointPushPullClassic folder
In case you had the old JoinPushPull v2.1 already installed on your computer, it is advised to remove:
- the folder JPP_Dir_21
- the file jointpushpull.rb
- the file LibTraductor.rb
CAUTION: NEVER rename or move files from their folders. If you are unsure of your unzip operation, do it in a neutral folder and check that you reconstruct the right footprint. Then transfer the folders and files to the SU Plugin Directory.
- Select one or several objects (faces, edges, groups or components). Only faces are taken into account.
- Click on the icon of one tool, for instance Joint Push Pull
- Pick a face and gently move the mouse to visualize the offset in wireframe. Keep SHIFT pressed to skip inferencing
- You can type the offset value in the VCB (in model units)
- Type TAB to access options (thickening, continuity parameter, etc…)
- When OK with the parameters, Double-click or press Return to launch the calculation
- The calculation cannot be interrupted. On large models, you may thus get a blank screen for the time the script is computing. Do not panic, just wait, it may take several minutes!
JPP also includes 2 additional buttons:
- Undo - reselect faces (as precisely the original faces could have been erased)
- Redo last Push Pull, allowing executing the last push pull on a new set of faces, with the same parameters.
version 2.2a - 26 Apr 17: same as version 2.1a but certified for all SU version, including SU2017. Published on PluginStore as JointPushPull Classic
version 2.0b - 17 Jul 11: same as version 2.0a but with Italian translation. This version does not work beyond SU13.
Here is the file, just in case
See [url=http:http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=6708&p=342359#p342359]http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:this illustration[/url].
version 2.0a - 16 Jul 11: refix a bug signaled by Thomthom for some complex shapes (typically with vertices having 5 edges or more). Version 1.9 had some problems left.
version 1.9a - 12 Jul 11: fix a bug signaled by Thomthom for some complex shapes (typically with vertices having 5 edges or more).
version 1.8a - 01 May 11: Better respect of specified distance now working when doing a Joint Push Pull with an imposed plane direction. See discussion in [url=http:http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=36403&view=unread#p325069]http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:http:this thread[/url].
Here is the previous version, just in case
version 1.7a - 25 Apr 11: Fix a major bug (causing a freeze of SU in some situations).
version 1.6 - 22 Apr 11: Updated the algorithm to better respect the value of the offset when the surface is composed of sharp angles. THIS VERSION HAD A FREEZE PROBLEM.
version 1.5 - 02 Sep 10: maintenance release for SU8
- Suppress some warning (though harmless) messages in the Ruby console
- JPP now installs itself as an extension of Sketchup (can be disabled / enabled via the Windows > Preferences > Extension dialog
- Spanish translation - Thanks to Defisto
12 Jun 10: stable version, with encapsulation of calculation to skip some known problems on texturing.


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- Many large brands are already actively studying the skin microbiota, looking at implications in skin development as well as to more fully understand body odor.
- There is a concept to apply the principles of prebiotics, stimulating the growth of bacteria, to beauty products.
- Learning how to interact with the metabolism of bacteria that lead to bad odors, so as to avoid the need to use bactericidals, is one long-term goal.
Do you know that only 10% of the cells in your body are human?
It's hard to believe, but if you took an inventory of any healthy human being's cells and analyzed each cells' genome, only 10% would carry the same human genome. Turns out, humans are mostly made of bacteria—plus some fungus and viruses. As unappealing as this may sound, we have to come to terms with the fact that humans, in our own bodies, are not alone. A human is only partly human. A human being exists only because it is unto itself an ecosystem. Or rather, a multitude of ecosystems.
Think of the body as a planet with many different climates and geographies. Each part of the body is colonized by different bacterial, viral and sometimes even parasitic populations. The reason why humans function the way we do is, of course, physiology—the way our own human cells' molecular biology allow them to work, how they're organized in tissues or organs, and so on—but the way humans function is also positively impacted and aided—and even made possible—by the bacteria in and on the body. We live in symbiosis. For each body part, this population is called the microbiota, while the microbiome is the multitude of genomes represented by this huge and diverse microflora.
Microbiota, In Brief
The study of the microbiota is a field emerging from the successive coming of age of genomics, which allows a close examination of bacteria from a genomic standpoint, as well as a staggering amount of data and analytics. And we're just at the beginning. There is so much data generated from this field that even with the best analytics tools, it is still very difficult to even know where to start.
In December 2011 at the Microbiota conference held in Paris, a number of scientists explored the topic of microbiota. Specialists in genomics, in vaginal flora, in human gut microbiome, in skin health, in olfactory sciences, and on and on, talking about the new findings this research generates in human health, nutrition and beauty. Although still in its infancy, the microbiota field of study is developing rapidly and holds huge promise for the future. Already, researchers are finding the microbiota impacts diseases such as obesity, diabetes, atopic dermatitis and even stress. The bacteria in the gut or on the skin actively participate in the health of the immune system, which is paramount to general human health. The microbiota fight bad bacteria but also educate the immune system, balance food metabolism, and regulate many processes.
In the beauty industry, many large companies and brands are already actively studying the skin microbiota. Researchers are looking at everything from the microbiota of babies, to learn about its implications in skin development, to adult skin microbiota, to better understand acne, as well as to more fully understand body odor and more. For now, direct applications of the research are not yet ready for product development implications, but a host of studies are being performed that are getting the industry much closer to actual realizations.
Experts and Their Research
At Johnson & Johnson, France-based research fellow Georgios Stamatas, PhD and his team study the skin microbiota of babies. Using sophisticated tools such as genomics and biosequencing, they are seeking to understand the process of baby skin maturation, with the goal that the findings will add new elements to the fundamental understanding of baby skin, in addition to an understanding of preservation of both products and microflora.
"The study of microbiota will also answer other questions on the nature of commensal microorganisms, their evolution and their impact on skin health," Stamatas explains. "It will give us indications on how to preserve the product while preserving the precious microflora. We will now have to find a balance between the safety of the product and its efficacy—how to preserve the good bacteria upon application while keeping the bad bacteria from contaminating the products or the skin.
"The study of microbiota brings to light the fact that everything we do affects the body, and that practices like overcleansing, for instance, the obsession with keeping clean may be detrimental to our health," Stamatas continues. "It forces us to rethink the development of products that are mild and gentle so as not to disturb the normal skin development and equilibrium."
Stamatas also studies the impact of the mode of delivery on the baby's skin's future. Whether a baby is delivered naturally or via C-section will impact the nature of his microflora. They've learned that C-section babies may be at greater risk of developing some allergies or asthma, and the practice of cleaning up babies right after birth has some negative impact as it affects the lipids that are on the skin and how skin gets colonized. "It also seems that the diversity of the microflora helps develop healthier skin," Stamatas also observes.
At Henkel, the focus is on acne and body odor, and Henkel microbiologist Rainer Simmering studies how to move away from antimicrobials that are unselective and kill all skin bacteria regardless of their function, and how to rebalance the skin microbiota using antimicrobials with selective action.
Simmering's idea is to apply the principles of prebiotics—stimulating the growth of bacteria—to beauty products. The use of prebiotics in cosmetics is not new (Solabia currently commercializes a complex aimed at strengthening the skin's flora and has had similar products in its catalog since the mid 1990s), but it is evolving with the ability to evaluate their efficacy by monitoring the details of the bacterial populations, going above and beyond simply observing dermatological clinical outcomes.
Simmering's team also works on body odor, and there the metabolism of bacteria comes into play. First, they very accurately identified the make-up of the bacterial populations present in both men and women and studied the differences. Then they correlated flora and odor and further analyzed the DNA and RNA profiles of these populations. What they found is that the most predominant bacteria might not be the most active ones, leading them to simulate complex microbial mixtures and test different formulas in order to identify the one that fought bacteria most homogeneously so as to maintain a well-balanced bacterial flora.
The innovation in that research is threefold: it facilitates long-term effectiveness against body odor, it allows gender specific claims, and it offers a triple action aimed at bacteria reduction, enzyme inhibition and fragrance performance.
Focusing on Odor
Also at the Paris Microbiota event, Firmenich's Christian Starkenman presented research undertaken to gain a better understanding of the role of bacteria in malodor. His focus is on decrypting the interactions between bacteria and precursors of thiols—an organosulfur compound responsible for some of the more pungent qualities of onion, garlic and human sweat.
In human adults, smell associated with sweat originates from apocrine glands located in the armpit, and the odor results from the degradation of the excretion of these glands by bacteria in armpit. (Note that these glands aren't solely located in armpits, but that hot and humid environment allows for a much greater bacterial activity.) The sweaty odor of humans is also comprised of acids, thiols and steroids, and to find the precursors of the particularly pungent sulfur compounds, Starkenman literally uses liters of sterile sweat collected from his colleagues after they spend time in an exercise room or sauna. His long-term goal is to learn how to interact with the metabolism of bacteria that leads to bad odors so as to avoid the need to use bactericidals.
Starkenman also works on bacteria found in the mouth, which also has a wet and warm ecosystem, and discovered that sulfur compound precursors in onion, grapes and bell pepper are slowly transformed in thiols in a similar way as compared to armpit malodors. With this, he presented an interesting hypothesis that if the same bacteria are present both in the mouth and in the armpit and can transform certain molecules, the compounds produced will be the same in both places. One of these compounds is a thiol, which is unique to the human species, and the precursor of thiol should be present in breast milk. Therefore, by tasting that compound early in life, a baby is equipped with a chemical/sensorial imprint that tells her that she is human. This hypothesis was confirmed by the work of food chemist Andrea Büttner.
Starkenman's research clearly goes beyond the scope of fragrance and deodorants, but because such research is in its infancy, it seems to be going many directions, with an abundance of both data and potential applications. "Microbiome research is extremely important," Starkenman says. "We now finally can analyze it fully; it is producing huge amounts of data and, in truth, we are not sure yet what to do with it. The future will be a new way to classify living organisms, based on their bacterial ecosystems."
Marie-France de la Cochetière—a researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), a public scientific and technological institute that operates under the joint authority of the French Ministry of Health and French Ministry of Research—agrees. "The greatest challenge that we face today is to remain focused and pursue concrete objectives," she says. "We have to ask one question and keep at it. There are so many ways to exploit the microbiome—phylogeny, metabolism, host response, cellular response, etc.—that it is easy to get lost. What the microbiome tells us, or rather reminds us of, is that all the inhabitants of our body are interconnected; the interactions between the diverse bacterial flora are a very important area of research, but we don't know yet how to study them very well."
Where the Research Goes Next
As of the writing of this article, no products issued from such research have seen the light of day. But discovering the importance of the microbiome is bringing about a small revolution in human health sciences. It reminds us that everything is a question of ecosystem. In the same way that humans evolve in an environment that we have to take into account not only for its preservation but for our own sake (as epigenetics have demonstrated), we realize that we ourselves are ecosystems of our own and that we need to think in those terms when considering our health.
It is clear that it is highly beneficial, if not critical, to maintain health for all the cells that constitute "us," and that implies computing in the presence of billions of bacteria that are interdependent and have, with our body and the human cells that constitute it, the same interdependent relationship. (And, of course, are impacted by the environment in which we chose to live.)
It forces us to question our use of bactericidal products—antibiotics especially—in foods that we ingest daily, and even to reconsider the preservation of certain products. But it also emphasizes that everything humans do has consequences: what we eat, the air we breathe, our level of stress. These all impact us in two ways: through our human cells through the epigenome and also through our microbiome, the guardian of many aspects of our health.
Moving ahead, there will be major hurdles to the implementation of bacteria-friendly products.
In the case of probiotics, how do we market a product with living organisms in it? How do we handle that from a regulatory standpoint? How do we practically formulate these products, and most of all, how do we talk about it to consumers? Many consumer studies show that although the use of bacteria in food products is now widely accepted, the notion of microbial flora in the body is linked to its presence in the colon. When asked about skin microflora, most panelists are turned off.
However, the skin microflora is not going anywhere. It is here, and there is nothing we can do about. Our role in the beauty industry is to educate consumers about that fact, showing how positive these findings are in the sense that they open doors to new, more effective, more gentle treatments and products. We have to help consumers to understand that these little microorganisms they host are part of themselves—permanent guests that they have to treat with deference because so much depends on them.
Opening up communication on this topic is an opportunity for the beauty industry to help open a debate around a fact that is now a common trend to most civilizations: We are all interconnected and our physiology is a reflection of that fact. In the same way that we have to take care of our environment for our immediate benefit and for the generations to come, we have to foster a healthy ecosystem for our wonderful, delicate and superbly designed human cells, including those of our skin.
The next Micriobiota event is scheduled for Feb. 5–6, 2013.
Marie Alice Dibon, PharmD, is the principal at Alice Communications, Inc., helping companies in the life science sector to develop innovative technologies.


text:
Talk:RPi Low-level peripherals
Save old header pinout table
Header Pinout:
Top Row | 5V0 | DNC | GND | UART0_TXD | UART0_RXD | GPIO1_PWM | DNC | GPIO4 | GPIO5 | DNC | GPIO6 | SPI_CE0_N | SPI_CE1_N |
Bottom Row | 3V3 | I2C0_SDA | I2C0_SCL | GPIO7 | DNC | GPIO0 | GPIO2 | GPIO3 | DNC | SPI_MOSI | SPI_MISO | SPI_SCLK | DNC |
Colour legend |
Do not connect |
Donster2k: "Kernel boot messages go to the UART at 115200bps." - This should be configurable as a kernel parameter. It is the bootloader that will always output to the uart on the header, correct?
Donster2k: What will be the power-on states of the GPIO pins?
Donster2k: USB2 spec states that the max current draw from a port (either powered hub or PC's usb) is 500mA. Does this mean that the revB module will need to be powered via a usb charger?
Donster2k: Most of the reference links to the forum are broken. Probably happened when they moved the forum.
naicheben: The color legend is fine for the table "Header Pinout" but it does not correspond to the GPIOs.gif as stated below the GIF. Shouldn't we better use same color "coding"?
Russell: I was just reading the datasheet "BCM2835 ARM Peripherals" and found that section 1.3 requires memory barrier operations to be used when accessing peripherals. This says to me that use user space access to the GPIO or any other peripheral is somewhat dangerous/error prone. Unless the kernel stopped from using any other peripheral, these registers would have to be accessed atomically, with barrier instructions, from a kernel driver.
What is this "1k8" referenced several times throughout the page? Do we mean to say "1kΩ"? If so, any objection to changing all those eights to ohms? Or if for some reason we're not comfortable using the ohm (omega) symbol, even just "1k" would be clearer to me than "1k8". Jstrout 13:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
- No, it doesn't mean 1 kOhm. It is a standard syntax meaning 1.8 kOhm. It is written that way because when writing values, especially if writing very small, a decimal point could easily be rubbed off or missed, whereas a k is much clearer. If it is confusing, I don't think anyone would object to writing 1k8 Ohms, though the context normally makes it clear. --Polymerheart 21:14, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Answers from Grumpy Mike From Donster2k: What will be the power-on states of the GPIO pins? ..... They are all inputs except GPIO 14 & 15 which are serial input / output and can be used to log in. From Jstrout What is this "1k8" ...... it is short for one point eight K ohms. It is so you can't accidentally miss the decimal point.
The pin out on this page is very bad, it should referee to all the pins as GPIO numbers. Most of the alternative pin functions are only one possible out of 6 and they initialise as inputs anyway.
I can't recall seeing designations like top row, bottom row, left and right on a pinout for a connector. This would be because there is much ambiguity (in general) about which of the four sides of the board should be top (more typically top would refer to the through hole component side of the board). More typically everything is referenced relative to a key like the pad for PIN 1. Since the connector is at the board edge there could be a great deal more clarity for the novice if the board edge were marked in the diagram. I notice now that if I click on the source link under the pin diagram I am taken to another diagram that actually includes enough of the board that it is clear which row is at the board edge. For novice users I suggest adding a photo with superimposed pin numbers. The photo should show the corner of the board containing the connector and nearby parts. --danpeirce 9:49 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I'm thinking something like this could be useful (I combined part of an RPi image from this site File:RPi-Front-JPB.jpg) with the pin information on this page. see http://danpeirce.net46.net/dokuwiki/lib/exe/detail.php?id=raspberry_pi&media=rpi:gpio_pins.png
--danpeirce 18:49 20 August 2012 (UTC)
That diagram is OK apart from the line that says "The Alt 0 function is defined at boot time" It is not! --Grumpy Mike 18:49 28 August 2012 (UTC)
GPIO C driving example
There are quite a few examples found on the web showing memory access using /dev/mem but with the same error of allocating a block of (page-aligned) user memory to pass as the 1st parameter to mmap().
setup_io() could be rewritten as follows:
// // Set up a memory regions to access GPIO //
void setup_io() {
/* open /dev/mem */ if ((mem_fd = open("/dev/mem", O_RDWR|O_SYNC) ) < 0) { printf("can't open /dev/mem \n"); exit (-1); }
/* mmap GPIO */
// Now map it gpio_map = (unsigned char *)mmap( NULL, // was (caddr_t)gpio_mem, BLOCK_SIZE, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, // was MAP_SHARED|MAP_FIXED, mem_fd, GPIO_BASE );
close(mem_fd); // no need to keep fd open after mmap
if ((long)gpio_map < 0) { printf("mmap error %d\n", (int)gpio_map); exit (-1); }
// Always use volatile pointer! gpio = (volatile unsigned *)gpio_map;
} // setup_io
- I've updated the C code example with your suggestions,a pruning of unnecessary includes and compilation with `gcc -Wall gpio.c` fixing a minor cast error. Code has been tested on a Raspberry Pi and seems to work fine. --Jamesmiller5 (talk) 17:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing that! I noticed the same thing and came back here to fix it.
Example code section should be split to another page
All the examples are great, but they clutter the page and can be a bit overwhelming. I suggest moving them to their own page and replacing them here with a section explaining the different methods of accessing external I/O.
Feel free to make that happen. --Wmat (talk) 01:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Methods of writing to external I/O
- 1. Directly write to the memory mapped control registers from your application.
- Pro's / Cons of this approach
- Link to C mmap example
- Links to libraries that use this method.
- WiringPi https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi
- BCM2835 C library http://www.open.com.au/mikem/bcm2835/
- Quick2wire https://github.com/quick2wire/quick2wire-python-api
- 2. Use the provided driver a control the I/O pins with the Linux kernel /sys/class interface.
- Link to http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/gpio.txt
- Directions how to enable the kernel module in Raspian
- Link to bash script to export gpio pin
- [View source↑]
- [History↑]


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Find university Clearing places now with our live
and our free
It's A level Results Day, eagerly anticipated for students across the country. For those of you who are in Clearing this year, we've produced this interactive graphic to give you an overview of which universities have places, the types of institutions that have places, and how many courses are on offer.
Each bubble represents a higher education institution in the United Kingdon – hover over (or click if using a tablet) to find out which university or college each bubble represents.
Turquoise bubbles are those with Clearing places, while red bubbles indicate universities which are not in Clearing this year. The size of the bubble shows how many courses each institution has available in Clearing.
The bubbles can be sorted in the following ways:
• selecting 'Russell Group' separates those universities which are members of the elite 24-member group of research-intensive institutions from those which are not
• by the male:female ratio of undergraduates
• by the student:staff ratio of the university as a whole
• by the percentage of students who are in employment or further study within six months of graduation
• by the average Ucas points score of students at that institution (calculate your Ucas points score)
Data is correct as of 00.01am on the morning of Results Day 2014. To search for up-to-date vacancies, and find out which specific courses are available – as well as contact details for their admissions offices – you'll need to visit our live Telegraph Clearing search and our free Clearing 2014 app for iPhone and Android.
Please note colleges which do not have university status are excluded from some functions of this graphic due to a lack of data. This graphic may work slowly on older browsers.
(Data provided by Ucas and the Higher Education Statistics Agency - the Hesa data is from 2012)


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In the early 1980s, Gordy Mengel served as a Peace Corps volunteer in an isolated community in what was then called Zaire, now Congo.
"I was placed somewhere in the middle part of the country," says Mengel. "And in the small community where I lived there was no post office, so getting letters out, which was basically the only means of communication, was very challenging.
Letters would take weeks, or months, to arrive.
Hi-tech times
But now, thanks to technology, that is no longer the case. Computers, cells phones and the Internet have changed the way Peace Corps volunteers do their work and stay in touch.
Now a Peace Corps Programming and Training Officer in Rwanda, Mengel says improved communication technology has changed how people serve in the Peace Corps.
Back when he was a volunteer, he lost track of friends and family back in the United States so he had no choice but to integrate into the community.
"These days, with the advent of the internet and cell phone service and so forth, I still see volunteers having some of that experience but again, when they go back to their homes, instead of turning out the kerosene light and going to bed," says Mengel, "they can get on Skype and they give a quick call to mom and dad back at home. And that part of the experience has changed."
Staying in touch
Sonia Morhange is one of about 100 Peace Corps volunteers now serving in Rwanda. The San Diego native works at an organization in Kigali called Never Again Rwanda, organizing plays about the country's 1994 genocide that left 800,000 dead.
She catches up with friends in California over Skype, talks on the phone with her mom and emails her dad. She hasn't mailed a single letter through the postal system and can't imagine waiting months for one to arrive.
"I know, I can't believe it. I can't imagine having been a Peace Corps volunteer in the 70s or the 80s or even the early 90s," says Sonia Morhange. "I'm just so used to everyone having a cell phone that works internationally. I'm very, very lucky in the fact that where I live I have wireless internet and that makes it a lot easier."
This week, Sonia's parents visited her in Rwanda. Her mother, Beverly, is proud Sonia joined the Peace Corps but worries about her daughter's health and safety. But she's been able to keep tabs on her daughter since they talk regularly by phone. Like Sonia, Beverly thinks waiting for letters would be too slow.
"That would be horrible, torture," says Beverly. "I'm very close to her and it would be very difficult."
Helping hand
Communication technology in the 21st century has done more than provide an easy way to call home.
Peace Corps Rwanda country director John Reddy was a volunteer in 1967 in the tiny, land-locked African nation of Lesotho. Since then, he's spent nearly a quarter of a century working for the Peace Corps in Africa.
He says easy access to the Internet allows today's Peace Corps volunteers to research subjects that can help their communities, from online teaching resources to information on gardening, irrigation and construction.
Volunteers also exchange project information and success stories quickly over the phone and the Web. And, they can get donations for their projects online from around the world through the Peace Corps Partnership Program.
Support system
But still, 24-year-old Sonia Morhange says it's nice to know that her friends and family are always just a phone call or a few clicks away.
"Peace Corps is full of ups and downs and I mean you're thrown into an environment that you're not familiar with. You're out of your element. No matter what, you're going to have breakdowns and moments of...just moments where you need help and you need support."
John Reddy agrees that the added connectivity provides volunteers with a support system that wasn't available in the early days of the Peace Corps. For the volunteers, he says, it's helpful.
"It's not always helpful to Peace Corps staff," says Reddy. "If a volunteer is telling their family they're having a bad day or a bad week, and then the family member calls Peace Corps Washington and Peace Corps Washington calls me and I have to find the volunteer and see what the problem was."
Reddy says Peace Corps staff used to have more independence and admits he sometimes longs for the days before the internet and good phone service.


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Tea tree oil sounds like something you steep in a cup of hot water, but it's really a powerful tool around the home. Tea tree oil is a natural antibacterial and disinfectant. According to the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the essential oil comes from the leaves of a tree native to Australia, where the aboriginal people have been enjoying the benefits of this powerful, natural oil for thousands of years. Discover the top 10 uses for tea tree oil.
1. Acne treatment. Tea tree oil is very helpful in reducing the skin irritation, infection and inflammation found in acne. A drop of the essential oil directly onto the affected area is all that's needed to begin the healing process. Tea tree oil also relieves other skin infections like boils and carbuncles.
2. Nail fungus. Whether you're a fan of acrylic nails or suffer from toenail fungus, tea tree oil is a healthy and effective treatment. A drop or two on the nail with the fungal infection should clear up the problem in a few days.
3. Sinus congestion. Tea tree oil steam can help relieve the discomfort of sinus congestion. Simply add a few drops to a bowl of very hot water or in the sink filled with hot water and inhale.
4. Wound disinfectant. Skin injuries can be treated with tea tree oil to prevent or induce healing.
5. Lice. Tea tree oil has been used to treat and prevent infestations of scabies, ringworm and lice. Mix water and tea tree oil in a spray bottle and mist hair once a day to prevent and treat lice. Try mixing 10 drops of tea tree oil in your normal shampoo to treat lice as well. The Lice Treatment Center has several suggestions for using tea tree oil in lice prevention and treatment.
6. Thrush (candidiasis). The antifungal properties of tea tree oil make it a natural for treating fungal infections of the skin, such as oral thrush, jock itch or vaginal yeast infections. A highly diluted tea tree oil and water solution (such as a one-to-five part solution) can be used for these types of fungal infections; however, everyone's health needs are unique, so check with your doctor to be sure tea tree oil is safe for your use.
7. Cold sores. The healing process is enhanced and infections cleared when cold sores are treated with tea tree oil. A few drops on the affected area two or three times a day is usually enough to clear up the lesion.
8. Dandruff. Tea tree oil shampoo, or about 10 drops of tea tree oil in your usual shampoo, can help manage dandruff.
9. Household mold and mildew. The home also needs mold and mildew treatment. Tea tree oil can help. Mix a teaspoon of tea tree oil and a cup of water in a spray bottle. Clean and then spray the tile, grout or other area with mold and mildew. Let the area air-dry.
10. Laundry mildew. Clothes can get a mildew-like smell if left in the washer too long. Rinse out or rewash that smell right out of clothes with a tea tree oil and water cycle. About a teaspoon per load is effective in freshening your clothes and machine.


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The LH-319 begins with a solid hand-carved and hand-graduated spruce top accompanied by select maple back and sides.
Hayward, CA (January 24, 2013) – The Loar LH-319 is hand-assembled in The Loar design studios, the birthplace of the best-selling LH-309 archtop guitars. The LH-319 begins with a solid hand-carved and hand-graduated spruce top accompanied by select maple back and sides. The mahogany neck has a traditional V-profile familiar to aficionados of classic Golden Age instruments. The fretboard is rosewood and the compensated bridge is ebony. With a 16" lower bout and a classic 24-3/4" scale, the LH-319 is designed from original Golden Age archtop specs.
Historically, one of the challenges to electrifying an archtop has been finding the correct pickup location on the body of the instrument. Over the past 80 years, builders have experimented with various placements, some closer to the neck, some further, in the attempt to harness the ideal complement of hollowbody resonance to archtop projection. Building on these years of research, we've placed our dual P-90 pickups in what we believe are the perfect spots for great tone and versatility. The classic high output and articulate treble response of P-90s are an ideal match to the spruce top and maple back and sides, giving players a wide variety of tonal options for a broad spectrum of musical styles.
With a classic Fleur-de-Lys headstock inlay, bone nut, open-geared Grover butterbean tuners, a historically accurate sunburst finish and two great-sounding P-90 pickups, we've built a guitar that will inspire you with vintage vibe.
The LH-319 has a street price of $699.99 and comes with The Loar's industry-leading lifetime warranty.
For more information:


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P-clamps for mounting cables and hoses
Ratchet P-Clamp will streamline your cable management
Metal and plastic p-clamps have evolved. Take a look at the Ratchet P-Clamp!
At HellermannTyton we thrive on taking established design conventions for fixing parts and improving on them. So when we received a request for a more versatile way to mount and clamp cables and hoses on construction machinery we rose to the challenge.
We applied our extensive cable tie design know-how to solve all the mechanical limitations of the conventional p-clamp that our customers told us about.
The result is the Ratchet P-Clamp. It's the most user-friendly, versatile, and rugged p-clamp for fastening and fixing cables, wires, pipes and hoses on the market. Like a clip, you can also re-open and re-use it hundreds of times.
Design makes the difference: how you benefit from our Ratchet P-Clamp
As the name says, we added a ratchet mechanism to the p-clamp. It gives users the power to fix the clamp separately from the fastening stage. A great additional feature is that you can release the ratchet mechanism, re-open the clamp and re-use it.
We matched the Ratchet P-Clamp features to the following usability requirements:
- Freedom of choice: separate pre- and final assembly stages.
- Easy installation: close with one-hand.
- Eliminate pinching: rifling centres the bundle automatically.
- Re-open, re-use: easy release with a flathead screwdriver.
- Reduce part inventory: four flexible sizes (6.2 mm - 51 mm diameter).
- Configure flexibly: multiple mounting plate dimensions available.
- Maximise durability: toughened, UV-resistant PA66 and corrosion-free steel.
- Optional extras: soft inserts and tension tab for repetitive quality.
Advantage 1: you can pre-install the p-clamp before you close it
With the Ratchet P-Clamp you can now determine the desired route for your cables, hoses or pipes before the cables, pipes or hoses have even been delivered!
This two-stage operation also gives you the freedom to split the fastening and the fixing task in the time sense, or between different installers or contractors. You can even attach the clamps to the harness before it is installed.
The Ratchet P-Clamp can easily by closed with one hand to the optimal diameter. The audible clicking as the ratchet assures the user that the clamp has closed securely. See how easy it is to work with in our video clip.
The Ratchet P-Clamp also meets the quality assurance needs of process engineers. An optional tension tab and HellermannTyton's EVO series cable tie gun enables installers to close the p-clamp with exactly the same tension every time.
Advantage 2: you can re-open the clamp any time for maintenance
In contrast to plastic omega snappers, push-in clips or two-piece fixing clamps, we designed the Ratchet P-Clamp so that it can be reopened simply without having to dismantle the bundle from the fixing points.
This is a huge benefit for maintenance engineers, especially when cable harnesses need to be adapted or modified to fit new connection points.
Simply insert a flathead screwdriver in the slot and lever out the ratchet closure. The plastic material is especially toughened so that you can re-open and re-use the clamp time and again.
Advantage 3: reduce the number of clamps and clips in your inventory
The Ratchet P-Clamp is available in four sizes that are all adjustable.
Part inventories can be significantly reduced and installers no longer need to carry a wide range of clips in different fixed diameters.
With just four Ratchet P-Clamps and optional soft inserts you can do without dozens of aluminium clamps and metal or plastic p-clips.
All four Ratchet P-Clamps (for bundle diameters from 6,2 mm to 51 mm) are easy to combine on a single mounting point.
The zinc-plated stainless steel mounting plates are available in different lengths and with four different mounting hole sizes (M6, M8, M10 and M12).
The robust stainless steel mounting plates also come in four different angles (offset 180° and 90° or raised 30° and 15°). This makes it possible to combine several clamps on one fixing point by stacking the mounting plates. Spacing your cable clamp mounting couldn't be easier.
The variety of angles and mounting plate lengths and dimensions of the Ratchet P-Clamp make an endless number of alignments and configurations possible. Here are some of the most popular configurations that our customers are using:
Two clamps fixed face-to-face on one mounting point and two piggy-backed clamps on one mounting point.
Different angles for routing around obstructions and two clamps stacked on one bolt using a spacer.
Soft silicone inserts are also available for additional protection of sensitive cable insulation. Simply push them into the walls of the clamp before closing. The soft inserts are much easier to apply than rubber grommets on aluminium p-clamps.
Our designers also thought of something on top, which is literally on top!
A saddle on top of the p-clamp makes it easy to attach hoses or leads with regular cable ties. So routing multiple cable bundles in parallel or alongside pipes and hoses is now simple.
You can see this neat feature in this introductory video:
Where are Ratchet P-Clamps being used?
Renewable energy sources, digital information systems and the electronics behind them continue to evolve in every aspect of our lives. The complexity of the wiring schemes is increasing as a consequence.
The Ratchet P-Clamp is being used by our customers on photovoltaic installations and wind turbine towers, in trains, on ships and on all kinds of heavy duty vehicles like mobile cranes or agricultural machinery.
Check out our blog story to discover more about how customers are using the Ratchet P-Clamp in their installations.
The clamp is robust and reusable and will not let you down - even in the most demanding environments or at temperatures ranging from -40 °C to +105 °C.
Selection guide
How to select the correct Ratchet P-Clamp for your installation
With the Ratchet P-Clamp, HellermannTyton gives you maximum freedom to configure your cable and hose routing just how you need it. There is no need to compromise.
Here's a guide to help you choose the right Ratchet P-Clamp for your application.
1: What bundle diameter do you have?
You can choose four sizes ranging from small (A) to large (D):
2. What angles do you need to route around?
HellermannTyton Ratchet P-Clamps are available in 180° straight, 15°, 30° or 90° angle variants.
3. What mounting plate length is right for you?
Choose from short, medium or long stainless steel mounting plates.
Please note that the holes are always equidistant to the centre of the clamp, but some angle variants are not available in all three lengths.
4. What hole size do you need for your mounting point?
As Ratchet P-Clamps are designed with heavy duty applications in mind, we offer four different hole sizes for use with standardised bolt sizes. You can choose between:
- M6 (6 mm)
- M8 (8 mm)
- M10 (10 mm)
- M12 (12mm)
All our clips
Our complete range of cable clamps and clips
Cable clamps are an inexpensive means for attaching cable bundles - often in parallel to hoses or pipes. Conventional p-clamps are one-piece clips made from metal or plastic that mechanically fasten electrical cables, hydraulic hoses or pipes along their route.
Whether it is manufactured from steel, aluminium or nylon (polyamide 6.6), all these mounting clamps have one thing in common: they look like the letter 'P' from the side when closed, which is how they got their name.
What is a p-clamp or p-clip? How does it work?
P-clamps lock cables and hoses in place and help ensure that machinery, vehicles and equipment keep running. They bracket wires, cables or hoses together mechanically and are fastened securely to an anchor point – usually with a screw or a bolt.
Product engineers at HellermannTyton decided it was time to evolve the p-clamp design – especially for customers with heavy-duty needs. The inherent design limitations of the traditional p-clamp include the following:
- The clamp is not securely closed until the fixing screw or bolt is applied.
- P-clamp diameters are inflexible, so you have to carry lots of sizes.
- Damage to wires can be caused by poorly fitting or misaligned clamps.
- Traditional p-clamps can only be reopened by dismantling the entire assembly.
Our solution to the requirements of industrial customers for a rugged clamp that adapts to different bundle diameters is the Ratchet P-Clamp.
Traditional p-clamps still have their place
We understand that when it comes to selecting clamps and clips, it's often like the choice between the simple shoelace or the sophisticated buckle on a ski boot. Both do an excellent job at what they are designed for.
So if the Ratchet P-Clamp seems more like rocket science, take a look at our comprehensive range of traditional metal clamps, plastic clips and p-clamp types.
By the way, we also offer lacing cord and lacing tape if that's what you're looking for.


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Assess and improve the way patient care is delivered
With the growing emphasis on eHealth, value-based reimbursement and population health, providers must rethink the way they plan and deliver care – while also continuing to manage costs and promoting patient engagement.
Clinical transformation has been around long enough to have been reinvented a number of times, and for each cycle both scope and complexity have increased. The situation today is no exception, with challenges such as accelerating digitalization, healthcare costs growing more rapidly than general inflation, implementation of thematic organizations and increased focus on population health.
Clinical transformation means assessing and creating sustainable change in care delivery to improve quality, safety, service, production and financial outcomes at all levels in a care delivery organization. It is necessary for the organization to reject existing practice patterns that deliver inefficient or less effective results. They must embrace a common goal of patient safety, better outcomes, and quality care through process redesign and the implementation of adequate IT/MT solutions.
We help healthcare organizations reach sustainable improvement of the way care is delivered across facilities, departments and clinical fields of expertise by effectively combining holistic industry expertise with extensive functional knowledge across three key areas:


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There are good reasons that survivors of COVID-19 have taken to calling themselves long haulers. All of those reasons are debilitating symptoms of the disease.
Long after the health care system has deemed them recovered, past COVID-19 patients are still burdened with the long-term effects of the illness. There's the extreme fatigue, chronic coughs, colds and respiratory troubles, headaches, brain fog, body aches, unexplained high heart rates, chest pains, dizziness, kidney problems, and on and on.
Audrey Vanderhoek, an RN who lives in Chilliwack, is one of those survivors. As a long hauler who struggles day after day, she wants everyone to know what "recovered" really means.
For her, and countless thousands of others, it doesn't mean you're actually better.
"I want people to start thinking a little differently about COVID," she says. She's doing her daily walk and talking on her cell phone for the interview, but it sounds like she's been running. She gasps, takes deep breaths every few words, and sometimes even struggles with her train of thought.
Her symptoms began at the end of April and she was diagnosed positively with COVID-19 at the beginning of May. Her acute phase of shedding the virus lasted the entire month, until she had her first negative result.
"And I've been chronic until now. I would be considered one of the completely healed cases in terms of statistics."
She thought she was alone at first, but Vanderhoek reached out online and found a whole network of long haulers who are struggling post-infection. As their struggles grow month by month, they are getting connected and getting louder.
READ MORE: Survivors who missed out on polio vaccine hope for breakthrough against COVID-19
They want health authorities to recognize the long-term effects they are collectively seeing. Because COVID-19 is so new, the focus has largely been on understanding its spread, and stopping it. The long haulers are hoping researchers will look to them to learn just how harmful the virus is.
In addition to being a nurse in another city, Vanderhoek has a background in alternative medicine. She has been seeing a naturopath recently, and has been focusing on healing, staying positive, and keeping as active as possible. She is currently able to walk about two hours a day, but needs to keep inclines and speed to a minimum so she doesn't go beyond her physical limits. If she pushes herself too hard, symptoms like a sore throat will come back.
Still, she's finally starting to feel a bit better.
"Right now, I have to say as of about two weeks ago, I feel like I've turned a corner. Up until two weeks ago, I was still having daily chest pains, my heart rate was elevating for no reason, I had day-to-day shortness of breathe, fatigue, brain fog and memory issues. Now I feel clearer."
But it could be a year or more before she really heals, she's been told. She's not sure if she will get back to running and martial arts and all of the other high-energy activities she once enjoyed. Yet, she's hopeful.
And that positivity is something she wants other long haulers to embrace if possible. On the Facebook groups where she has found support, she has read "an incredible array of experiences." And while she had no underlying health issues prior to COVID-19, and is expected to fully recover one day, she says others aren't so lucky.
"I feel that COVID is highlighting the areas in our bodies that are weak, but not only the areas in our bodies, because it's a global experience. I think it's opened a Pandora's box of systemic problems as well."
She says the whole pandemic may change how we look at health care, for individuals and for larger communities and the world.
"We can choose the type of change we want to create, and for myself, I'm choosing health, a whole new level of health."
READ MORE: 'We're the pioneers': Canadian COVID-19 survivors share their stories
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Michael Goldfarb is a nice guy. We've met at least once, and chatted for a few minutes: even then his quick wit and jovial nature—that broad smile on his Twitter profile isn't merely of the circumstance—were on proud display. None of that charm came through in the front-page, Sunday New York Times profile of Goldfarb, perhaps because the pugilistic commentator and foreign lobbyist refused to meet with the Times reporter in person. Other than that, the profile does a decent job capturing Goldfarb and the way he does business, with one major omission: that he cares so little for facts or any accepted version of truth when they get in the way of his latest attack. Goldfarb plays and has played roles in some of Bill Kristol's various enterprises: the pro-Iraq-war Project for a New American Century, the Weekly Standard and, lately, the Emergency Committee for Israel (which is already pushing for an Iran war). It's no surprise, given Goldfarb and some of the other central players, that ECI gets called out again and again for "mostly false" salvos against political enemies. Goldfarb, in other words, represents Bill Kristol's worst instincts.
But Goldfarb doesn't aspire to be another Bill Kristol—let alone the right-wing don's father, the neoconservative intellectual Irving. Writing in 2011 about neoconservatives' intellectual history, Daniel Luban made a trenchant observation about Goldfarb's place in the evolution of an ideology: "If there is an emblematic member of the youngest generation of neoconservatives, the successors to William Kristol and Robert Kagan, it is the ubiquitous political flack Michael Goldfarb, former PR man for the McCain presidential campaign and member of the Palin brain trust." Luban concluded: "The neoconservative hold on mainstream conservatism appears firm, at least in the short term, but will anyone write intellectual histories of neoconservatism's development from this point forward? At the moment it seems doubtful. The movement has an interesting past, but it is unlikely to have an interesting future." Yet Goldfarb, largely due to his flame-throwing anti-intellectualism, is anything but boring.
There was, in the Times profile, a stunning admission from Goldfarb. The Times' Jim Rutenberg got Goldfarb to comment on a story in the right-wing Free Beacon, whose parent Goldfarb chairs, about a reshuffled masthead at the New Republic. The headline in the Beacon read "Hughes Drops Jews"—a reference to new TNR owner Chris Hughes—and its clear implications were captured nicely by former TNR staffer Jonathan Chait at New York: "Hitler Alive and Well, Owning Liberal Magazine." What was the deal with this rather stunning accusation—presented without a byline—of anti-Semitism at the vaunted magazine? Just a joke, it turns out: "We're true believers, but we're also troublemakers, and if you look at the work we do, a lot of it has a sense of humor," Goldfarb told Rutenberg. So even while attacking Chuck Hagel as anti-Semitic on the basis of a few impolitic comments about the undoubtably real influence of pro-Israel organizations in Congress—of a piece with attacks from around the Kristol empire—Goldfarb concedes here that his group's accusations of anti-Semitism are just for laughs. (Abe Foxman is notoriously humorless on these matters; one wonders if the Beacon is in line for a letter from the ADL.) Honest? No. Intellectually sound? No. Attention-grabbing? Definitely.
Then there's Goldfarb's apparent views on killing children. During Israel's brief 2008 to 2009 war with Hamas, Goldfarb wrote of an upside to an Israeli strike that killed a Hamas leader's 12 children: "To wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause." When ECI board member Rachel Abrams blogged a genocidal screed against Palestinians in Gaza, Goldfarb defended her by telling press that critics were "accusing her of directing her words at all Palestinians when she was clearly speaking about the terrorists." Of course, Goldfarb ignored that Abrams also called for sending the children of Palestinian terrorists—referred to in the item as "devils' spawn"—to become "food for sharks." (Responding to a joke from Goldfarb, Abrams, presumably joking herself—see a pattern here?—said she had the same fate in mind for this writer.) Has there ever been a clearer example of the moral taboo of visiting the sins of the father on the child?
His omission of the breadth of Abrams's blogpost hints at Goldfarb's most salient feature: that he goes after his targets with all the zeal of the ideologues with whom he's associated—which is to say with no fealty whatsoever to facts or basic standards of journalistic integrity. Take the recent example of Goldfarb tweeting that the left-wing anti-war Code Pink was funded by the anti-nuclear group Ploughshares (full disclosure: my former employer, the Center for American Progress, received funding from Ploughshares). It took only a few minutes for the JTA's Ron Kampeas to find that the allegation was completely false, and that Goldfarb had plucked his conspiracy theory—meant as an attack on the latest neocon bête noire and Ploughsares adviser, Chuck Hagel—from "a couple of conservative researchers who target the left made the connection: Aaron Klein here, Discover the Networks, here." Klein works for WND, a cite best known for relentlessly peddling the theory that Barack Obama is not American and a secret Muslim, and Discover the Networks is a project of David Horowitz, known these days mostly for his anti-Islam views. That's not exactly great company. Perhaps that's why Goldfarb didn't comment any further on his yarn.
It is precisely Goldfarb's history of playing fast and loose with facts—a modus operandi on stark display in the Hagel flap, where Goldfarb and his colleagues threw whatever they could, no matter the merits, at Hagel just to see what'd stick—that makes him so dangerous for journalists. And so the kicker of Rutenberg's story quotes BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith saying: "There's something to be said for stabbing people in the front in a town where everybody goes around all day stabbing each other in the back." One would think a fine journalist like Smith might note that there's something to be said for not stabbing people at all on the basis of unfounded rumors, the worst kinds of innuendo, and outright lies. The conservative Washington Examiner, after the Chuck Hagel/"Friends of Hamas" flap, recently ran a thoughtful item critical of fellow conservatives for not hewing to journalistic best practices. It'd be nice if either the Times or Smith had noted that Goldfarb, in both his lobbying and journalism, embodies this failure. This is what neoconservatism has become; even a critic can lament.


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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
A new isolationism is metastasizing in the American body politic. At its heart lies not an urge to avoid war, but an urge to avoid contemplating the costs and realities of war. It sees war as having analgesic qualities—as lessening a collective feeling of impotence, a collective sense of fear and terror. Making war in the name of reducing terror serves this state of mind and helps to preserve it. Marked by a calculated estrangement from war's horrific realities and mercenary purposes, the new isolationism magically turns an historic term on its head, for it keeps us in wars, rather than out of them.
Old-style American isolationism had everything to do with avoiding "entangling alliances" and conflicts abroad. It was tied to America's historic tradition of rejecting a large standing army—a tradition in which many Americans took pride. Yes, we signed on to World War I in 1917, but only after we had been "too proud to fight." Even when we joined, we did so as a nonaligned power with the goal of ending major wars altogether. Before Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Americans again resisted the call to arms, looking upon Hitler's rise and other unnerving events in Europe and Asia with alarm, but with little eagerness to send American boys into yet another global bloodbath.
In the decades since World War II, however, "isolationism" has been turned inside-out and upside-down. Instead of seeking eternal peace, Washington elites have, by now, plunged the country into a state of eternal war, and they've done so, in part, by isolating ordinary Americans from war's brutal realities. With rare exceptions (notably John F. Kennedy's call for young Americans to pay any price and bear any burden), our elites have not sought to mobilize a new "greatest generation," but rather to keep a clueless one—clueless, that is, as to war's fatal costs and bitter realities—unmobilized (if not immobilized).
Such national obliviousness has not gone unnoticed. In a recent New York Times op-ed headlined "The Wars that America Forgot About," former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw asked the obvious question: Why, in an otherwise contentious political season, have our wars gone so utterly undebated? His answers—that we're in a recession in which people have more pressing concerns, and that we've restricted the burdens of war to a tiny minority—are sensible, but don't go quite far enough. It's important to add that few Americans are debating, or even discussing, our wars in part because our ruling elites haven't wanted them debated—as if they don't want us to get the idea that we have any say in warmaking at all.
Think of it this way: The old isolationism was a peaceable urge basic to the American people; the new isolationism is little short of a government program to keep the old isolationism, or opposition of any sort to American wars, in check.
Americans Express Skepticism about War… So?
When you're kept isolated from war's costs, it's nearly impossible to mount an effective opposition to them. While our elites, remembering the Vietnam years, may have sought to remove US public opinion from the enemy's target list, they have also worked hard to remove the public as a constraint on their war-making powers. Recall former Vice President Dick Cheney's dismissive "So?" when asked about opinion polls showing declining public support for the Iraq War in 2008. So what if the American people are uneasy? The elites can always call on a professional, non-draft military, augmented by hordes of privatized hire-a-gun outfits, themselves so isolated from society at large that they've almost become the equivalent of foreign legionnaires. These same elites encourage us to "support our troops," but otherwise to look away.
Mainstream media coverage of our wars has only added to the cocoon created by the new isolationism. After all, it rarely addresses the full costs of those conflicts to US troops (including their redeployment to war zones, even when already traumatized), let alone to foreign non-combatants in faraway Muslim lands. When such civilians are killed, their deaths tend to take place under the media radar. "If it bleeds, it doesn't lead," could be a news motto for much of recent war coverage, especially if the bleeding is done by civilians.
Only the recent release of classified documents and videos by WikiLeaks, for instance, has forced our media to bring the mind-numbing body count we've amassed in Iraq out of the closet. If nothing else, WikiLeaks has succeeded in reminding us of the impact of our vastly superior firepower, as in a now infamous video of an Apache helicopter gunship firing on non-combatants in the streets of Baghdad. Such footage is, of course, all too personal, all too real. Small wonder it was shown in a censored form on CNN.
Where's the benefit, after all, for corporate-owned media in showcasing others' terror and pain, especially if it's inflicted by "America's hometown heroes"? Our regular export of large-scale violence (including a thriving trade in the potential for violence via our hammerlock on the global arms trade) is not something Americans or the American media have cared to scrutinize.
To cite two more willful blind spots: Can the average American say roughly how many Iraqis were killed or wounded in our "liberation" of their country and the mayhem that followed? In mid-October, US Central Command quietly released a distinctly lowball estimate of 200,000 Iraqi casualties (including 77,000 killed) from January 2004 to August 2008. That estimate (lower by 30,000 than the one compiled by official Iraqi sources) did not include casualties from major combat operations in 2003, nor of course did it have any place for the millions of refugees driven from their homes in the sectarian violence that followed. The recent WikiLeaks document dump on Iraq held at least another 15,000 unacknowledged Iraqi dead, and serious studies of the casualty toll often suggest the real numbers are hundreds of thousands higher.
Or how about the attitudes of those living in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan subject to the recent upsurge of US drone strikes? Given the way our robotic wars are written about here, could most Americans imagine what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Zeus-like lightning bolts?
Here's what one farmer in North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal borderlands had to say: "I blame the government of Pakistan and the USA… they are responsible for destroying my family. We were living a happy life and I didn't have any links with the Taliban. My family members were innocent…I wonder, why was I victimized?"
Would an American farmer wonder anything different? Would he not seek vengeance if errant missiles obliterated his family? It's hard, however, for Americans to grasp the nature of the wars being fought in their name, no less to express sympathy for their victims when they are kept in a state of striking isolation from war's horrors.
Analgesic War
Once upon a time, America's Global War on Terror was an analgesic. Recall those "shock and awe" images of explosions that marked the opening days of Iraqi combat operations in 2003. Recall as well all the colorful maps, the glamorous weapons systems, and the glowering faces of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein interpreted and explained to us on our TV screens by retired US military officers in muftis. In this curiously sanitized version of war, weapons and other military arcana were to serve to ease our pain at the tragedy we had suffered on 9/11, while obscuring the "towers" of dead we were creating in other lands.
In fostering analgesic war and insisting on information control, our elites have, yet again, drawn a mistaken lesson from the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, even if it took years, free-to-roam and often-skeptical reporters finally began to question the official story of the war. Violent images came home to roost in American living rooms at dinnertime. Such coverage may not have stopped the killing, at least not right away, but it did contribute to a gutsy antiwar movement, as well as to a restive "silent majority" that increasingly rejected official rhetoric of falling dominoes and lights at the end of tunnels.
Iraq and Afghanistan, by way of contrast, have been characterized by embedded (mostly cheerleading) reporters and banal images of US troops on patrol or firing weapons at unseen targets. Clear admissions that our firepower-intensive form of warfare leads to the violent deaths of many more of "them" than of "us"—and that many of them aren't, by any stretch of the imagination, our enemies—are seldom forthcoming. (An exception was former Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal's uncommonly harsh assessment of checkpoint casualties: "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.")
"We don't do body counts on other people," said a cocky Donald Rumsfeld late in 2003 and, even though it wasn't true (the Pentagon just kept its body counts to itself), an obliging Pentagon press corps generally fell into line and generally stayed there long after our new wars had lost their feel-good sheen. Clearly, military and political elites learned it's better (for them, at least) to keep vivid images of death and destruction off America's screens. Ironically, even as Americans seek more lifelike and visceral representations from ever bigger, brighter, high-def TVs, war is presented in carefully sanitized low-def form, largely drained of blood and violence.
The result? Uncomfortable questions about our wars rarely get asked, let alone aired. A boon to those who want to continue those wars unmolested by public opposition, even if a bust when it comes to pursuing a sensible global strategy that's truly in the national interest. In seeking to isolate the public from any sense of significant sacrifice, active participation in, or even understanding of America's wars, these same elites have ensured that the conflicts they pursued would be strategically unsound and morally untenable.
Today, Americans are again an isolationist people, but with a twist. Even as we expand our military bases overseas and spend trillions on national security and wars, we've isolated ourselves from war's passions, its savagery, its heartrending sacrifices. Such isolation comforts some and seemingly allows others free rein to act as they wish, but it's a false comfort, a false freedom, purchased at the price of prolonging our wars, increasing their casualties, abridging our freedoms, and eroding our country's standing in the world.
To end our wars, we must first endure their Gorgon stare.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. His books and articles focus mainly on the military, technology, and society. Listen to a Timothy MacBain TomDispatch audio interview with Astore on what it felt like to come out of the military and learn how to write honestly about wars by clicking here, or download it to your iPod here. He welcomes reader comments at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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In 1882 Donald Currie's Castle Line began regular mail services as far as Durban (i.e. not terminating at Cape Town) and by 1887 both the rival companies, Union and Castle, were providing this service from England to Durban.
These mail ships still had to anchor outside the port in the 'roads' or 'roadstead'. This was due to the existence of the Bar, a sandbank across the entrance to the Bay of Natal, and a significant obstacle in the way of development of the harbour. It was a matter of vital concern because without a port the Colony could not have continued its existence - trade, immigration etc would be impossible.
The depth of water over the Bar depended on certain factors - the quantity of sand or silt built up, onshore winds, currents, tidal scour. During the history of the port, several harbour engineers were employed to remedy the situation, with varying degrees of success.
For passengers, it meant that at the end of a long voyage and with Natal in sight from the deck of their ship, they could have a long wait before they disembarked on dry land. Not only that, but the process of disembarkation was far from easy. It took place in the outer anchorage - by basket. This contraption was made of wicker, with a door in the side through which the passengers would enter. The door would be secured on the outside and the basket winched up then lowered to the deck of the waiting tender (small ship for ferrying passengers in and out of the port). When the passengers emerged from the basket, it would go back for another group. Approximately eight to ten people could be carried each journey, depending on their size.
It wasn't an exercise for the squeamish, particularly in a strong wind and with a choppy sea causing the tender to bob up and down, not necessarily synchronised with the movements of the larger incoming vessel.
Passengers entering the basket at Durban, postcard 1901


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Urban Enterprise Zone certifications are good for one year. You need to recertify every year. The recertification form is mailed to you about a month before your year is up.
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The Urban Enterprise Zone is a State of New Jersey program that was established for a limited number of cities in 1983. In Passaic the UEZ program began in August of '94. The program has been expanded a number of times whereas it now covers 34 NJ cities. The UEZ provides qualified businesses in designated zones certain state tax benefits as detailed herein. The program also provides a revenue source for the cities containing the UEZ's. The revenues can be used by the cities for a variety of locally initiated programs to further help the UEZ businesses. Passaic currently receives about $1.2 million per year in these revenues.
The municipal UEZ is administered by a special entity set up specially for that purpose. In Passaic, the UEZ is administered by the Passaic Enterprise Zone Development Corporation.
The UEZ boundary has to be both contiguous and contain under 30% of a city's land area. Passaic's UEZ boundary encompasses approximately 95% of all businesses within the city. It includes all the industrial areas and all the retail corridors.
Just fill out an application. You can download and print out the form on the Applications and Forms page. Once you submit it to the Passaic Enterprise Zone Development Corporation office in Passaic City Hall, the local coordinator will review the application and verify that your business is within the zone. Finally, your application is forwarded to the state for its review and approval.
About six weeks after you submit the application, the New Jersey Division of Taxation will send you a certificate allowing you to charge the 3.5% sales tax (if applicable) and tax-exempt forms to use to buy goods and services for your business tax free.
The process is simple. All you have to do is fill out the proper form (which you can get on the Applications and Forms page), send it to the UEZ and they will work with you on the rest. For more information, check out the Programs and Services page.
It is rare that a business that appropriately applies for recertification is denied. In those instances it is typically due to a lack of employment increases. Most businesses need to increase the number of people they have working for them after two years in the program.


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Thursday, November 08, 2012
Review: Disgrace by Jussi Adler-Olsen
4 comments:
- Maxine Clarke said...
Good review - I agree with your take, and found this book sadly disappointing after the excellent Mercy. I quite enjoyed the bits about Kimmie on the run (as you didn't quite know how awful she was then, I think, from memory)....but I think that theme was done better in Missing (Karin Altvegen) and The Girl Who Played With Fire (S Larsson).
- 1:10 pm
This is called The Absent One in the U.S. It is way too violent for me. One of the attractions of his first book was the relationship of Carl and Assad. I miss it in this book.
Barbara Lorentz - 7:48 pm
- Bill Selnes said...
I appreciated your thoughts. I did not find as disappointing as yourself and Maxine. I did not consider it as good as the first book but still enjoyed the book. I saw Kimmie as remarkable. I believe a character can be both bad and a victim. Her duality challenges readers.
- 3:22 am
Oh, gosh, if it's disappointing as a sequel to the excellent Mercy, and lacks the relationship between Carl and Assad, and it's extremely violent, I'm leaning towards skipping it.
The animal cruelty just tipped it over to a do not read. I would NOT enjoy this book with this element. - 4:26 am