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The Son of Suns
A returning motif in Lucas's films, found throughout his student films as well as in THX 1138 and Star Wars, is that of the sun.
The in-depth look at the creation of everyone's favorite walking carpet. From the earliest idea, and the word 'wookie' in THX 1138, up through his visual development, through an unexpected twist.
The creation of Star Wars is a comprehensive mythology onto itself, populated by rarely documented anecdotes, like how The Millenium Falcon was inspired by a hamburger, with the cockpit being an olive off to the side" [1] (took me years, but I finally disproved that one) or "My original inspiration for Chewbacca was my dog Indiana." [2], compelling enough to be repeated until they're so prevalent that they must be true, and are accepted even by hardcore fans and Lucasfilm itself. Unfortunately sometimes they're embellished truths or half-truths, sometimes entirely false and in pretty much all cases oversimplifying a truly interesting, and luckily exceptionally well documented creative process.
And that's what this is about; the creative process. Cultural touchstones like Star Wars might seem to have sprung fully formed from the minds of their lauded creators, but as in all creative endeavors, movie making, web design or this very post, nothing could be further from the truth. Creation is a process, and strangely, by looking at how everyone's favorite plushy first-mate sprang into existence, we can learn a lot about any collaborative creative endeavor.
Unfortunately, perhaps because of the verisimilitude of the disciplines needed to make a film like Star Wars come together, the making-of narrative is surprisingly fragmented and often incomplete. A quick look at the bibliography needed to put together this post should give a good idea of just how fragmented. And once you're down the rabbit hole, you quickly learn that nothing found there can be taken at face value. Quotes, drawings, photos and diagrams lack sources, are undated, some old, some new, some so distorted as to be pure fiction and most of it entirely out of context.
But while the official sources are often great, compiling from many different sources to dispel myths about Boba Fett's ship, Slave 1 or tell in staggering detail the creation of the film from beginning till end as in the case of books like The Making of Star Wars, there are still plenty of dim, and in some cases even seemingly purposefully blacked out areas in the development of Star Wars.
The story of how Chewbacca came to be is one of these. A fascinating look at what happens in the space between idea, page and screen.
We start our story with George Lucas' silver screen directorial debut, THX 1138, a simultaneously proto- and an anti-Star Wars. It's probably early 1970 and Walter Murch and George Lucas are taking turns day and night editing picture and sound on the film in the upper floor of Lucas' Mill Valley home, to get it ready for what will be a disastrous screening for studio executives, all but sinking Coppola's just formed American Zoetrope studio [p. 42, 3].
Walter Murch: "[We] got hold of some improv actors, and among these was Terry McGovern who was also a radio DJ. We would sit them around the table and give them each an identity, and in the middle of this dialogue you can hear Terry McGovern say "I think I just ran over something back there, I think I ran over a wookie". This is the first emergence of the word Wookiee as we know it today. And the small wookiees in THX who lived in the shell of this environment became the large wookiee that we all know in Star Wars." [4]
There is no direct connection made on film between the off-hand wookie remark and, as they are more commonly known, shell dwellers. But following the assumption that they are the same, it's still hazy where the concept came from. Laden with overt social and political commentary, the hairy dwarf-like creatures may have sprung into life as a reflection of fringe existences, sacrifices of the consumer society and so on. Maybe at the hand of Lucas, maybe Murch, the two having written it together. But aside from the nickname and some unkempt hair, there is little else binding them to the latter-day wookiees of Star Wars, though both seem to have sprung from monkeys in some way.
"And later on after the recording I asked Terry 'What's the Wookie?' and he said 'Oh that's a friend of mine who lives in Texas, Ralph Wookie, and I just threw his name in there as I always want to stick it to him and thought he'd get a kick out of hearing his name in a film'. Little did Terry know what kind of thing he was creating, this off-hand phrase has since become a character that literally billions of people probably know about." [4]
A few years later, in early 1973, as American Graffiti — a considerably less obtuse film, and with the possible exception of Wolfman Jack, devoid of wookiees — is taken away from Lucas by the studio and hangs in limbo, the first confused step towards Star Wars — then named The Journal of the Whills — introduces the name Chewie. Or more accurately, Chuiee, the writer of said journal.
Chewbacca, the character, also started his life in the rough draft (May 1974) as a kind of barbarian alien prince on the jungle planet of Yavin:
[…] five Wookees, (huge grey and furry beasts) […] The eight foot Chewbacca, who resembles a huge, grey bushbaby with fierce baboon-like fang […] [][5]
Wookees communicate in grunts and whines and are in some respects close in character to what ended up on the screen, but far from in role. Also, there's some stuff about a bonfire party and yodeling (seriously).
Furthermore in the rough draft, Chuiee permutes into the Chewie we know, though here it's attached to 'a young hotshot [fighter pilot] of about sixteen years', who for the following draft has his named changed to Boma Two instead, presumably because Chewie and Chewbacca were too alike.
Boma Two dies by the way, spoiler alert.
Ralph McQuarrie: "[George Lucas] visited with his friends at my place and talked about a big space-fantasy film he wanted to do. It didn't have a title yet." […] "Well, a couple years went by and George did American Graffiti. I never thought I'd see him again, and then one day he called to see if I'd be interested in doing something for Star Wars." [6]
Ralph McQuarrie was hired by Lucasfilm Ltd. in November 1974, though he didn't start working until January the following year, just as Lucas was putting the finishing touches on the second draft.
Ralph McQuarrie: "I'd sit with a pencil and dream about whatever I could imagine, sort of grotesque imagery. George would come by every week and a half or two weeks, look at what I'd done, and talk to me about what he'd like to see. I was reading the script to start with, but the script sort of got waylaid — the story was changing in his own mind — so George would just come and talk to me about what he wanted to see." [6]
Ralph McQuarrie: "George thought of [Chewbacca] as looking like a lemur with fur over his whole body and a big huge apelike figure. I took another track, added an ammunition bandolier and put a rifle in his hands. I had shorts on him and a flak jacket and all kinds of gear, but that was edited out." [p. 44, 7]
It's remotely possible that McQuarrie got in early and influenced the script, though unlikely, and his statement actually clashes with the second draft, which quite explicitly states what Chewbacca is wearing:
Han turns to his companion, CHEWBACCA, an eight foot tall, savage-looking creature resembling a huge gray bush-baby monkey with fierce "baboon"-like fangs. His large yellow eyes dominate a fur-covered face and soften his otherwise awesome appearance. Over his matted, furry body, he wears two chrome bandoliers, a flak jacket painted in a bizarre camouflage pattern, brown cloth shorts, and little else. He is a two-hundred-year-old "WOOKIEE", and a sight to behold. Han speaks to the Wookiee in his own language, which is little more than a series of grunts. The young pirate points to Luke several times during his conversation and the creature suddenly lets out a horrifying laugh. Han chuckles to himself and turns back to Luke. [Scene 43, 8]
None of McQuarries drawings in this article are dated, but we can infer some rough dates from looking instead at his production paintings. Here the second draft rescue of Deak, in which Chewbacca is still a lemur, dated March 28th, 1975 [p. 43, 9].
And again in this poster dated April 1st, 1975 [p. 41, 9].
Chewbacca then goes on the back burner for a while. It's even quite possible that he was considered 'done', awaiting production to ramp up. At least he doesn't show up in any other pieces of artwork, until suddenly…
Ralph McQuarrie: "George also gave me a drawing he liked from a 1930s illustrator of science fiction that showed a big, apelike, furry beast with a row of female breasts down its chest. So I took the breasts off and added a bandolier and ammunition and weapons, and changed its face so it looked somewhat more like the final character, and I left it at that." [6]
As is obvious from the following side-by-side comparison, the illustration McQuarrie is referring to wasn't decades old, but months, being none other than this one by Dune legend John Schoenherr, from the July 1975 issue of Analog:
The drawing, as the cover below, was for a Hugo-nominated novelette by George R.R. Martin which: "[…] deals with the "realities of a very rigid society conflicting with what looks like a pushover primitive tribal society; and we find out where the strength really lies. It's called 'And Seven Times Never Kill Man' (red. drawing its title from a Jungle Book poem by Rudyard Kipling)." [10]. A story which in itself is pretty familiar to the nature vs machine conflict surfaced in the early scripts and again in Return of the Jedi (although that's a theme so common by then that it's hard to say that this particular story had any explicit influence on Star Wars.
And as if that wasn't enough, in another interview around the same time as the 2004 StarWars.com interview McQuarrie actually ends up contradicting himself:
Ralph McQuarrie: "We had an old 30's illustration showing a hairy ape-like creature that George kinda liked." … "We started out with the idea of him looking sort of like a lemur, and then I did one creature that had breasts down the front of him. I removed the breasts because it wasn't to be a female, and I put a bandolier on there and gave him a weapon." [2]
Here a clarification is in order, as several sources have pointed excitedly back to this post and summarizing this as: "Lucas told McQuarrie it was from the 30's!". There is no indication anywhere of that being the case. McQuarrie refers to it as being from the 30's or from a 30's illustrator, that is all.
While it is remotely possible that McQuarrie drew a wookiee with six breasts, unless kept in a vault in the exceptionally well-stocked Lucasfilm Archives, for fear of even more direct comparisons with Schoenherr's work (it's hard to get any more direct than the above I'd say), a 1975 drawing of a female wookiee would truly be a find!
In reality it's more likely that McQuarrie over the years simply forgot the sequence and origins of things. Both of the contradicting statements are from interviews released in 2004; the featurette interview having possibly been done in 2003 or even 2002, and it's possible that McQuarrie remembered in the interim more details of the creation.
Whatever the case, it's hard to say what prompted the visual do-over. Perhaps Lucas — who devoured sci-fi books, comics, pulp magazines and spectacle action movies ad nauseum trawling for ideas — came across the magazine and simply found it a more compelling look. Most likely, he wanted to soften up the design now that Wookiees would no longer play their old role of barbarian jungle creatures, as Han Solo turned from being a green-skinned alien, an underground operative, in the first draft, to a human 'free lance tough guy for hire' in the second:
George Lucas: "[Han Solo] did start out as a monster or a strange alien character, but I finally settled on him being human so that there'd be more relationship between [Luke, Leia and Han]. That's where Chewbacca came in as the kind of alien sidekick." … "My original inspiration for Chewbacca was my dog Indiana. She was the one that sat there with me as I was writing the script all the time. She'd ride with me in the car as a co-pilot. And as she'd sit in the car, she'd be as tall as I am. She's an Alaskan malamute, she's very big. I thought that was a funny image." [2]
This anecdote's probably true—except Indiana was Marcia's dog, not George's—it fails however to mention that Chewbacca was first an alien tribal prince on a jungle world, until the second draft, where the whole wookiee subplot has been excised, leaving a 'creature' vacuum to be filled, which is why he then became the first-mate to Han Solo. Strictly speaking Lucas isn't bending the truth (his use of the word 'originally' is a bit far-fetched perhaps), but in the absence of the full history of the character, his anecdote might seem a plausible enough explanation.
As an aside, it's interesting to note that Lucas rarely talks about bushbaby Chewie, perhaps because he knows that if he starts down that road, he might have to try and bridge the gap from that to the post-Schoenherr Chewie, which he can't do without admitting that it was essentially borrowed wholesale.
Regardless Lucas obviously found the Schoenherr creatures a good match, and the influence is obvious; down to the crossbow come bowcaster (which seemingly has no design iterations to speak of, having probably been done ad hoc by the prop department). Aspects of it changed for the final film, as we'll see shortly, but it's clear that with the exception of a single surviving bandolier, Chewbaccas design from here on out was clearly based on Schoenherrs work.
As the drawings are all undated, it's hard to pin down when this change took place. But in late November, 1975 [p. 66, 9] McQuarrie painted the following production painting in which, though small and with his back turned, Chewbacca appears almost as on screen. McQuarrie could turn around a painting like that in a few days, so the change could have happened as late as early November.
Notice that as in the scripts, and McQuarries previous paintings (and coincidentally also on Schoenherrs cover), Chewies fur in the above painting is still grey.
Costume designer John Mollo and creature designer Stuart Freeborn came onboard in January 1976. Freeborns first project was Chewbacca, which implies that the following (poorly scanned by me) drawings by Mollo, were probably done right as they came onboard. Mollo most likely decided on the palette change to make Chewie stand out next to Han and the Falcon, both of which are kept in neutral tones. This is the first time he sports his brown and grey coat of hair, but other than that, there's little change in design (any differences should probably be probably be attributed to Mollo's rendering, not to new design directions).
Interestingly, despite all of these changes to the design, the revised fourth draft from March 15th, 1976 — the shooting draft — still uses the now outdated bushbaby description, though the wording has softened up his fearsome looks slightly:
Ben is standing next to Chewbacca, an eight-foot-tall-savage-looking creature resembling a huge grey bushbaby monkey with fierce baboon-like fangs. His large blue eyes dominate a fur-covered face and soften his otherwise awesome appearance. Over his matted, furry body he wears two chrome bandoliers, and little else. He is a two-hundred-year-old Wookiee and a sight to behold. [11]
Notice that the fur color has been removed. And while it's odd that the flak vest and brown shorts are missing, but two bandoliers and the bushbaby face remain, by this time the chaos of the ramping production and the impending shooting schedule probably made such matters trivial.
For his first three or four weeks, Freeborn worked alone on the movie's most important prototype, Chewbacca, creating concepts and masks based on McQuarrie's design. He was joined by his family and assistants as the load increased week by week. [p. 111, 9]
McQuarrie notes on the changes between his ultimate sketch and the final design:
Ralph McQuarrie: "Well, to me it seemed [Stuart Freeborn] added a jawbone from one of the ape creatures he did for 2001: A Space Odyssey in the creation of Chewbacca's chin. Mine doesn't have a chin and his does, which is very important to the way it ultimately appears." [6]
Interestingly, Lucas has a more holistic view of the final design:
George Lucas: "We didn't really have the ability to do animated characters at that point, so I made the decision with Chewbacca that he would be a large man in a suit. So [Stuart] tried to take what Ralph had drawn and interpret it to use Peter Mayhew, and he is a certain structure, has a certain way of walking, he has certain eyes and taking his actual skeletal structure and turning that into a costume and a face that would mechanically work, and that changes the design, just by the nature of the reality it changes it. Whenever you have a design concept, and you put it into reality, most of the time, especially in the early years, it would change everything." [2]
But more than that, it sounds like the design was kept fluid up until the last day:
Lucas would often pop in to see how Stuart Freeborn was doing on his first project, Chewbacca the Wookie, which he was making from straight yak hair (Freeborn's sketches, which bear some resemblance to the man, also below). "I would go in there every day and push the nose around a little bit and push the chin up," Lucas says. "I kept pulling the nose out and pushing it back. It was difficult, because we were trying to do a combination of a monkey, a dog and a cat. I really wanted it to be cat-like more than anything else, but we were trying to conform to that combination."
"Chewbacca was a fascinating one," Freeborn says, "because he had to look nice, though he could be very ferocious when he wanted to be. It was fun making a monster that looked friendly and nice for a change, instead of being menacing. I had seen a sketch [by Ralph McQuarrie] and I based it on that because it was very good, and it looked just right to me." [p. 113, 9]
In the early morning hours on Monday, April 12th, 1976 on stage 3 of Elstree studios in England, then the home of Mos Eisly's Docking Bay 94 (and later rebuilt into the Death Star docking bay) and one certain Corellian hunk o' junk, Peter Mayhew and Harrison Ford stepped in front of the camera for scene AA53, 'Jabba and Han Solo in docking bay', their first.
The rest is history.
But then that scene was reshot the following Wednesday and then subsequently cut, probably for technical, maybe for budgetary concerns. Then mauled by horrific special effects in the special edition re-release. And again the 2004 DVD release. And then lovingly restored to its original state from scraps by Garrett Gilchrist, a fan.
But the rest is history.
Have you ever noticed how Chewbacca doesn't actually do anything in Star Wars (much like Leia, the human McGuffin)? As a prince on Yavin in the early drafts, he had a role to play, but even Lucas admits openly that he was a 'kind of alien sidekick'. And other than being the point man as Han picks up chicks in fringe star systems, Chewie does little more than tag along and man the Falcon while Han is off playing hero at the guns. He could be replaced with an autopilot, and the story would unfold largely the way it did with him in it (provided that Han himself hooked up with Obi-Wan).
The real reason he's there at all, is simply to provide flavor, since as the story evolved there was no longer use for aliens outside of the Mos Eisley cantina.
But Star Wars without Chewie? What a bore.
Star Wars is well known for its more famous sources of inspiration — Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Flash Gordon — but even so there are many touches about it that are often thought of simply as blessed (a karma account brutally balanced out by the prequels). I wrote this post first because I thought I'd found a covered-up missing link in John Schoenherr's work for Analog — still conveniently 'forgotten' — but as I started writing and researching the story, aside from the occasional comparison with between Chewie and Schoenherrs creatures, it struck me that while this wasn't something that had seen a lot of exposure, more strikingly I had in fact never read a proper chronology for how Chewbacca came together, not from fans, not from official sources.
And by putting this together, more importantly, I suddenly found myself in familiar territory.
Chewbacca didn't spring to life out of nowhere, fully formed when Lucas saw his dog in the passenger seat of his car. That's the soundbite. A single step. The reality is complex and human. From vague names floating around, the kernel of an idea, changing purposes and roles of characters, major restructuring, the design hopping from person to person, scrapping the existing concept and going down a different path, seeing existing things in a different light and having to conform a range of ideas to complement and enrich one another.
The familiar territory I found myself in was the creative process. I saw the struggles we've had on the games I've worked on, how some influences would change entirely and others would cruise straight on through to the final product and even the decision making process I've gone through on my own projects. It's a never-ending series of often mundane and very down-to-earth practical decisions, often enough to make you lose sight of the big picture.
It's makes one breathe a sigh of relief; Star Wars wasn't a mystical, muse-favored event; an all-powerful force of unbridled inspiration. It puts its pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else.
But where it differs, is in having the talent, the vision and more importantly, the willingness to say: "This isn't good enough. This isn't what I'm looking for", while keeping the larger picture in mind. It happened with Chewbacca, the Millennium Falcon (a story for another time) and even the scripts themselves. All one has to do is take bushbaby chewie, green-skinned Han, Cantwell's first Millennium Falcon and the first drafts, and Star Wars would be all but forgotten today.
It seems fitting for an article built on other people's work to finish with someone else's conclusion. And a friend of mine, and fellow McQuarrie-fan, Kiel Bryant upon reading this wrote to me in a mail:
Kiel Bryant: I'm dismayed by the cult of originality — it sets up impossible, false expectations which fail to grasp what art is. Innovation is good, exploration is to be encouraged — they build on what's gone before — but more often than not it's enjoyable to simply experience an idea well-conceived, regardless of that idea's source or its "originality." And in the final analysis, were Star Wars or [Raiders of the Lost Ark] ever intended to be wildly original? No, they're pastiche — valentines to the swashbuckling genres of yore. Kids, especially millennials, make a simple and honest mistake borne out of youth: they see Star Wars before they've seen its inspirations and assume it came that way fully assembled, direct from Lucas' head. They witness result, not process. Then, growing as artists or cinephiles, their awareness gradually enlarges, the supporting armature begins to show — and because the film wasn't what they'd originally dreamt (a total creation, which is an impossibility), they decide George Lucas isn't worth the praise they originally foisted on him. Absolutely circular, and absolutely pointless.
It is far easier to destroy than to create.
Luckily the pendulum of discovery swings both ways, and as easily as it can alienate the easily dissuaded, it can also send people down the road of discovery a film like Star Wars deserves. Uncovering the story and creative process behind it, is what keeps taking me back to this 33-year-old film, which you'd think by now had given up all of its secrets to the world.
And in that, I see myself, the people around me, our story and struggle with the same creative process and day-to-day problems. But to find those things, you have to look beyond the noisy anecdotes and creation-mythology it's surrounded by, and you'll find that any act of 'creation', from writing this post, to designing a website or even creating an iPhone, requires much of the same that went into creating a wookiee for a galaxy far far away.
Happy life day.
It's worth noting that despite McQuarrie saying that: "While it may appear that the character was derived from my early Chewbacca designs, it was really taken from my cat" [p. 34, 12] about his designs for the cover of the non-Star Wars-related The War for Eternity, published in 1983, it is nonetheless hard to look at it and not see it as the final resting place of bushbaby Chewie.
I first saw the Analog cover on Skiffy and found the interior illustration at Flooby Nooby.
And remember, Good artists borrow, great artists steal and Everything is a remix.
The official Star Wars website Millennium Falcon databank entry.
The Characters of Star Wars featurette from the original trilogy DVD set. Lucasfilm, 2004.
Marcus Hearn. The Cinema of George Lucas. Harry N Abrams Inc, 2007.
Artifact From the Future: The Making of THX 1138 on the THX 1138 DVD. Lucasfilm, 2004.
George Lucas. The Star Wars: Rough Draft. May, 1974.
Ron Magid, Ralph McQuarrie on Designing Star Wars. The official Star Wars website, September 20, 2004.
Laurent Bouzereau. Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays. Titan Books, 1997.
George Lucas. The Adventures of The Starkiller (Episode One). "The Star Wars, Second Draft". January 28, 1975.
J.W. Rinzler. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film. LucasBooks, April 24, 2007.
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Volume 95, Davis Publications, 1975.
George Lucas. The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, As Taken From the 'Journal of the Whills' (Saga 1), Star Wars, Revised Fourth Draft, Shooting Script. March 15, 1976. It rolls off the tongue.
Ralph McQuarrie. The Art of Ralph McQuarrie. Dreams and Visions Press, 2009.
Celebration V photo (2010) by popculturegeek.com
George Lucas. The Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller, Third Draft. August 1, 1975.
Deborah Fine & Aeon Inc. The Star Wars Chronicles. Virgin Books, 1997.
Edited by Carol Titelman. The Art of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope. Ballantine Books, 1997.
Art by John Schoenherr. Analog Magazine. Candé Nast, July 1975.
George Lucas. THX 1138. Lucasfilm, 1971. (Screengrab from the laserdisc edition).
Michael Kaminski. The Secret History of Star Wars. Legacy Books Press, 2008.


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A resource for informing patients and caregivers about Multiple Sclerosis, its possible causes, effects, and treatments. Get the most current information on new developments, clinical trials and other important matters for anyone dealing with MS.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Fluoxetine Shows Promise in Multiple Sclerosis
News Author: Thomas S. May
CME Author: Laurie Barclay, MD
October 16, 2007 (Prague, Czech Republic) — Fluoxetine (Prozac) may help reduce the number of new brain lesions in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study presented here at the ECTRIMS 2007: 23rd Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis.
The study, which was conducted by Jop P. Mostert, MD, and colleagues at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, shows a trend toward a reduction in new enhancing lesions with fluoxetine treatment in patients with relapsing-remitting or relapsing secondary progressive MS.
Why Fluoxetine?
Fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1987 and is frequently prescribed for the treatment of various psychiatric disorders, including major depression. However, fluoxetine also has a number of immunomodulatory effects, and previous studies have indicated that it might be beneficial for patients with MS, Dr. Mostert said in his presentation.
One of these earlier studies, which was first presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Neurology, showed that fluoxetine reduced disease activity in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the animal model of MS, Dr. Mostert noted. "Furthermore, psychiatrists already reported in 1991 reduced MS in patients using fluoxetine," he added.
Previous research has also found that astrocytes in patients with MS lack beta-2 adrenergic receptors, and this leads to decreased cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) production, which in turn contributes to the initiation of the inflammatory cascade that eventually results in demyelination, Dr. Mostert explained. Because fluoxetine is able to increase the amount of cAMP in the astrocyte, the researchers hypothesized that the drug could help compensate for the loss of beta-2 adrenergic receptors and thus, reduce the amount of inflammation in MS.
Fewer New Lesions
To test their hypothesis, Dr. Mostert's team enrolled 40 patients (age 18 - 65 years) with relapsing-remitting or relapsing secondary progressive MS in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, with a duration of 24 weeks. Half of the patients were given fluoxetine (20 mg/day), whereas the remaining subjects received placebo.
The primary end point was the cumulative number of new gadolinium-enhancing lesions on T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain performed at weeks 4, 8, 16, and 24. Secondary outcome measures included changes in the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and in the Multiple Sclerosis Self-Efficacy Scale (MSSE) from baseline to week 24.
The investigators found that the study drug was generally well tolerated, with only 1 patient dropping out because of adverse effects (nausea) in the treatment group. One patient also dropped out from the placebo group, leaving 19 completers in each group.
Regarding the primary end point, the results show that there was a trend toward a reduction in the number of new enhancing lesions in patients treated with fluoxetine. The mean (SD) cumulative number of new enhancing lesions during the 24 weeks of treatment was 1.84 (2.9) in the fluoxetine-treated patients and 5.16 (8.6) in the control subjects (P = .15).
At week 4, the cumulative number of new enhancing lesions was "quite comparable" in the two 2 groups, pointed out Dr. Mostert. He emphasized, however, that in the latter part of the trial, there was a steady increase in new lesions in the placebo group, while the number of lesions in the fluoxetine-treated patients remained relatively stable. Restricting the analysis to the last 16 weeks showed a "nearly significant" reduction in the cumulative number of new enhancing lesions and a higher number of patients without new enhancing lesions (63% vs 26%; P = .02).
Commenting on the study, session cochair Roland Liblau, MD, PhD, from Toulouse University Hospital in France, noted that the researchers used "a very interesting approach," because fluoxetine has a very good safety profile.
"It has been used in hundreds of thousands of patients, so we know it's safe," he told Medscape Neurology and Neurosurgery. "The possibility that it has even a slight effect in multiple sclerosis would be very interesting," he added. "The data showed a trend toward efficacy in MS, and I would strongly encourage further trials involving more patients."
This study was an investigator-initiated trial, with no pharmaceutical industry funding.
Medscape Medical News 2007. ©2007 Medscape
Legal Disclaimer
The material presented here does not necessarily reflect the views of Medscape or companies that support educational programming on www.medscape.com. These materials may discuss therapeutic products that have not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and off-label uses of approved products. A qualified healthcare professional should be consulted before using any therapeutic product discussed. Readers should verify all information and data before treating patients or employing any therapies described in this educational activity.

subset: commoncrawl


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Box Score
SEGUIN, Texas – After a lightning-shortened game last Saturday against Sul Ross where McMurry University only ran 32 plays, the War Hawks made up for lost yardage Saturday setting the NCAA Division III single-game record for total offense with 848 yards in a 60-16 thrashing of Texas Lutheran at Matador Stadium. Jake Mullin set the American Southwest Conference and single-game school record with 614 passing yards and the War Hawks moved to second place in the ASC by improving to 5-2 overall and 4-1 in league play.
Mullin had 438 yards at halftime as McMurry led 32-16. Texas Lutheran stalled a McMurry drive in the second half at the TLU 15-yard line when the War Hawks turned it over on down. From there, the Bulldogs drove the field to the McMurry 9-yard line, however, one fourth-down and three, Mitchell Bunger was sacked by Chris Williams and Kyle Kelley preventing TLU from cutting the lead to within striking distance.
From there, the rest was literal history. McMurry gained 171 yards on the ground and 677 yards as a team through the air on 94 plays. The War Hawks' 848 yards passed Westminster's (Mo.) previous mark of 823 yards set Oct. 17, 1998 against Principia.
McMurry set conference and school records for total offense and team passing yards while Mullin set ASC and school records for passing yards and total offense (657). The War Hawks set team records for 933 all-purpose yards and team passes completed (48) while Mullin also set a school record for most passes completed with 43.
Mullin finished the day 43 of 57 for 14 yards and no interceptions. He rushed for 43 yards on eight carries and his fourth and final touchdown pass of the day to R.J. Long was his 80th career touchdown pass and Long's 30th career touchdown grab.
The War Hawks defense limited Texas Lutheran to 297 yards of total offense and intercepted to Bunger passes. Will Morris and Austin Cleere each had interceptions; Morris pick was the 11th of his career tying him for the career lead in the NCAA era (1996-pres.) with C.J. Villegas. However, Morris left the game with an apparent shoulder separation, and his status is unknown for a return.
Corey Hall had one of his better games with seven tackles, four tackles for a loss and 2.5 sacks to accompany a forced fumble. D.J. Baiza and M.D. Daniels each had six tackles and Baiza broke up two passes.
On the offensive side, the War Hawks spread the ball around to 15 different players passing with Delfonte Diamond leading with 12 receptions and 195 yards. Gerg Livingston had eight receptions for 112 yards, Long finished with six catches for 110 yards and two touchdowns. Eric Shaffer caught a 42-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter, Simeon Neal had a 14-yard touchdown reception in the third and Huston Truminello caught his first-career touchdown pass from backup quarterback Stephen Warren with 32 seconds remaining.
Christ Simpson had 51 yards on seven carries, Justin Johnson had 39 yards and two touchdowns on nine carries and Austin Brooks had three carries for 17 yards and a touchdown.
In the losing effort, Bunger completed 13 of 30 passes for 143 yards, a touchdown and had two interceptions. Bunger gained 32 yards on 12 carries and Dominique Hardaway led the Bulldgos with 50 yards on nine carries.
TLU scored in the first quarter on a 30-yard run by Charles Cooper, score on a team safety in the second quarter and Ryan Jones caught a 29-yard touchdown pass from Bunger for the final scoring play of the first half.
The Bulldogs fell to 4-2 overall and 3-1 in conference play. With three games to spare, McMurry heads into its off week with a half-game lead for second place behind 4-0 Mary Hardin-Baylor.
The War Hawks will face Hardin-Simmons Oct. 29 at home, Louisiana College in Pineville, La. Nov. 5 and Mississippi College Nov. 12 in Abilene. McMurry will need to run the table to hope for an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III playoffs if UMHB wins out.
War Hawks set NCAA Division III total offense mark in 60-16 win over TLU
|No. 19 McMurry (4-3)
|Texas Lutheran (4-2)
Box Score


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@Esiphas and @mrpineapple
There is an awkward pause after Guy speaks as everyone seems to be thinking.
It is actually Petani who is the first to "speak" into Holly's mind. "Dey said there were girls in the fancy dinning room, and they were taking food there. Maybe that's where he is, with...new... Anyway maybe we can somehow get there from belowdecks. I don't know the ship so well... it was supposed to be a fun cruise..."
After that the old guy speaks up, after staring at the creatures bodies. "Well. Maybe we can run and hide. If any smart dead find us, we'll just say some scary things came by doing all sorts of flashy things that killed the dead. And that we just got scared and hid. We don't have anything that would do THAT to anybody, so hopefully they wouldn't think we rebelled or something. "
The little carribean guy goes over to the "leader" creature and picks something off the body. "Here. It's a walkie talkie. It works off the wireless LAN down here. We've got some, so this would let you talk to us as you hunt around the ship or whatever. "


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Interlochen's financial aid program is intended to help provide outstanding young artists some assistance to further their artistic development. No family should be discouraged from applying to Interlochen Arts Camp because of lack of funds. We welcome a broad cross section of families who believe in their children and in their ability to succeed.
Need-Based Aid
The Financial Aid Committee determines eligibility for need-based aid through a review of a family's income documentation. Aid amounts vary depending upon the length and cost of the program and the family's income level. Available funding is limited and need-based financial aid will cover only a portion of the tuition cost.
Applicants are encouraged to research grants and loan programs offered by their local governments, foundations, banks, and employers, as well as artistic and educational organizations to help supplement the assistance offered by Interlochen.
Financial aid is not available for one-week Institute programs.
How to Apply for Need-Based Aid
- In the financial aid section of the camp application for admission, indicate your interest in applying for financial aid.
- Upload a copy of your 2017 or 2018 Federal Income Tax Return Form 1040 (International applicants must submit an official Verification of Salary for each parent. This document must be in English.)
Admission decisions are need-blind, however failure to upload income documentation at the time of application may result in significant delays and could affect eligibility for financial aid. It is recommended that applicants who are seeking financial aid have a .PDF copy of their tax documents ready before beginning the application for admission.
Merit Scholarships
Interlochen provides partial-tuition merit scholarships for a limited number of its most qualified candidates. No financial documentation is required. Only applicants for admission to programs requiring an audition or portfolio will be considered for merit scholarships. To apply, simply check the box pertaining to merit scholarship on the application for admission. Merit scholarships are not available for one-week Institute programs.
Merit Scholarships for High School Orchestra and Wind Symphony
Interlochen Orchestral Scholars Program: The Interlochen Orchestral Scholars Program awards up to a full tuition scholarship for string, woodwind, brass, harp and percussion musicians from across the country to attend the high school music division in an orchestral program.
Fennell Scholars Program: Musicians who excel in woodwinds, brass or percussion are eligible to earn up to a full scholarship to America's premier wind symphony (band) program at Interlochen Arts Camp. The Fennell Scholarship is named after Interlochen alumnus Frederick Fennell, who was one of the world's most distinguished wind conductors and a life-long friend of Interlochen.
Interlochen Orchestral Scholars and Fennell Scholars are chosen from candidates who complete and submit application materials by the priority application deadline of February 1, 2020. It is recommended that string, woodwind, brass, harp and percussion applicants who require financial aid submit tax documentation in the event they are not selected for these highly competitive scholarships.


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Liquidize the Assets
When you return to visit John at the hospital in Broker off of Cassidy Street, you'll find him accompanied by a familiar face. Remember the mysterious paper company with the shady guy in glasses who sent you on all sorts of miserable missions, seemingly for no reason? Well, here he is, and he appears to know your dying friend John pretty well. The two men tell Niko about the Russians and a rival Italian family that seem to be working together. This isn't good for the interests these men oversee, and they dispatch you to take care of the problem.
Just like the last job you undertook for John, this job takes place clear across the city in Alderney. Boost a car and head westward as your GPS on the HUD brings you along. When you arrive in Alderney, you're looking for Farnsworth Road, a non-discrete road in an industrial area of the overly-industrial borough. Upon arriving at the predestined location, the game will show you some great shots of the compound you have to sack. There are five vans you have to destroy in your sacking of the compound (represented by red dots on your HUD), and there are a plethora of enemies guarding the compound. All-in-all, this is going to be a fairly difficult mission. But that's to be expected, as we are quite near the end of the game at this point.
There are a number of ways you can go about this mission, including utilizing techniques that are a bit unnecessary (such as scoping out an area around the building and killing from afar). We recommend a much more straight-forward approach. Instead of holding back, simply bust through the fence blocking the only way in or out of the small compound, using your car to run over some foes and thin out the enemies on the ground. Make sure to be quick, though, because enemies here are well-armed and shooting to kill. When you've seemingly-exhausted your ability to kill foes with your vehicle, park it in such a way that you can use it as a barrier, and get out with guns blazing.
Now, your options are numerous here. There are five vans in the area that must be destroyed, and making matters more difficult, the vans can be driven off, effectively eliminating your ability to destroy them and forcing the mission to end in failure. The idea, therefore, is to run around and kill all of the enemies in the area to make sure there are no enemies left to drive those vans. Then, they can be destroyed at your leisure. Enemies are everywhere here, armed with all sorts of various weapons that can cause massive damage and destruction. Utilize cover wisely, and be sure to clear the roofs of the buildings of their numerous enemies as well (there are ladders and a staircase leading up to some of the roofs). From those high vantage points, you should also be able to clear remaining enemies from the high ground if you choose to climb up to them.
When the enemies are severely thinned in numbers (or, better yet, completely eliminated), you can then concentrate on taking out the vans. Naturally, the easiest way to destroy them is by using RPGs or Grenades. If you have either weapon, get into the vans and bunch them together so only one or two rockets or grenades will eliminate them all. Otherwise, if you're without explosives, you can just as easily equip a powerful weapon (we used an Uzi) and pump a clip into the front of each van. A clip should make it start smoking and firing. When that happens, walk away, moving onto the next van, and watching the previous one eventually explode. When the destruction is over, you're in the clear with another completed mission under your belt.
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An fps with both high fantasy and hard core scifi elements bringing together traditional RPG And FPS mechanics into a multiplayer experience like no other.
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An elite US-trained Indonesian police unit set up to combat Islamist terrorist networks is back in the spotlight after a hardline preacher, Abu Bakar Bashir, was arrested Monday and charged Wednesday with helping plan terrorist attacks.
His arrest for allegedly helping set up and support a terrorist training cell in Aceh Province could not have happened, analysts say, without years of counter-terrorism work by police unit Detachment 88. In recent months, the counterterrorism cops have killed or captured dozens of militants, including a bomber who trained in Afghanistan. The militants' alleged targets included Western embassies in Jakarta and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
But Detachment 88 has also been deployed against a different enemy: peaceful protesters in eastern Indonesia. Critics say that Indonesia has blurred the line between political dissent and extremist violence under the banner of counterterrorism, raising questions about the United States' support for allied security forces engaged in counterterrorism.
Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed to restore ties with Indonesia's military special forces, which were severed in the late 1990s over human rights abuses, including the disappearance of political activists. After 9/11, the US turned to Indonesia's police as an ally in fighting Islamic terrorism and in 2003 helped set up Detachment 88, but Indonesia's military has lately been pushing for a larger role in combating terrorism, too.
Past abuses
This raises alarm bells for human rights groups. On Aug. 2, on the eve of a high-profile visit to Maluku province by President Yudhoyono, police in the provincial capital Ambon arrested as many as 15 activists accused of separatist activities.
Yudhoyono had traveled to Ambon to inaugurate a government-sponsored sailing contest to promote tourism in the Banda Sea, a region that first drew European merchants in the 17th century in search of spices. Police and military personnel were deployed at the harbor where Yudhoyono appeared. "There's a heightened level of security when the president visits," says Josef Benedict, a campaigner in London for Amnesty International.
While Indonesian media reported that the activists were linked to a banned separatist group, known as RMS, Human Rights Watch said that the detained were merely planning to float balloons with political messages to draw attention to injustice under Indonesian rule.
Officials at Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that witness accounts indicate the direct role of Detachment 88 personnel in the arrests, and the rights groups warn that the arrested activists may be facing torture in custody based on the treatment meted out to activists in the past.
"The core of the problem is that Indonesia continues to prosecute political aspirations that are peacefully annunciated. These activists [in Maluku] are peacefully demonstrating," says Phil Robertson, deputy director in Asia for Human Rights Watch.
Brig. General Tito Karnavian, the national commander of Detachment 88, denies that his officers took part in the latest arrests. "It's not my unit. It's the local police," he says.
Detachment 88 has in the past arrested and allegedly tortured peaceful political protesters in Maluku. Human rights groups allege that Detachment 88 officers were involved in the arrest and torture of 22 activists in Maluku province who raised a banned independence flag in June 2007 in front of President Yudhoyono. In prison interviews, activists told rights groups that they had been beaten, whipped, and forced to crawl over hot asphalt during their pre-trial detention. All were subsequently convicted of rebellion and sentenced to long jail terms.
The US government responded in 2008 by suspended training of Detachment 88 units in Maluku, according to Paul Belmont, a spokesman for the American embassy in Jakarta. "We continued to emphasize our strong support for an open and transparent legal system to look into any claims of excessive use of force," he wrote by e-mail.
Changing mandate
Detachment 88 was formed with US and Australian support following the 2002 Bali bombings and is credited with breaking up terror networks and hunting down wanted militants. Some of its officers are assigned to provincial police commands, such as in the Maluku islands, where Muslim-Christian tensions erupted into all-out sectarian fighting from 1999 to 2002.
Security analysts say that Indonesian officials have privately acknowledged that some Detachment 88 officers have recently been diverted from counter-terrorism to local priorities, such as investigations into illegal logging. In June, security officials announced a restructuring of the unit that would put it directly under the police chief and centralize its operations.
However, this restructuring would reportedly broaden Detachment 88's aim to include 'ethno-nationalism,' a reference to separatist activity in eastern Papua province and in Maluku, where an armed Christian-based rebellion flared in the 1950s. Indonesia is sensitive to breakaway sentiment and still smarts over the loss of East Timor, which voted to secede from Indonesia in a 1999 referendum.
Ironically, Detachment 88 has attracted some criticism in Indonesia for being too lenient with detainees in terrorist cases. Muslim militants who recant have been given favorable treatment, as part of a program to de-radicalize other recruits. Police officers and prison guards often treat militants favorably in order to counter their indoctrination that Indonesian authorities are their enemy. But some of those militants released and classified as rehabilitated later rejoined terrorist networks, calling into question the program's effectiveness.
In Papua province, on the Indonesian half of New Guinea island, Human Rights Watch has also documented cases of torture of suspects in police custody, though not involving Detachment 88. A banned separatist group, the Free Papua Movement, known as OPM, has struggled for decades in the heavily militarized and resource-rich region. Last December, police shot dead Kelly Kwalik, an OPM leader, who was accused of organizing armed attacks on a gold mine owned by US-based Freeport-McMoran.


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Stereos and Studebakers
The start of Mad Men's fifth season this week on cable TV is fortuitous. Though the series spawned a new appreciation for slick Madison Avenue Modernism of the early 1960s — not to mention accompanying cocktails — it wasn't easy to see
where part of that esthetic came from (photo courtesy shinyshiny.tv). But now you can, thanks to the exhibition running through June at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930-1965 curated by Wendy Kaplan. In fact, the advertising firm that the character Don Draper runs, seen above at his desk with drink in hand, ought to be developing campaigns for many of the products in the exhibition, like the Studebaker Avanti of 1961-2 by Raymond Loewy, below.
California — and especially Los Angeles — became a remarkable incubator of modern design during the middle of the 20th century. The benign climate, burgeoning post World War II economy and population, and movie mystique attracted imaginative designers and take-a-chance clients. I toured the exhibit recently and was impressed with the way it explores connections between popular and high style design, from furniture and clothing to houses and cars while bringing the Left Coast side of the Mad Men era to life.
Time here begins in the 1930s, quite literally, with one of the first digital clocks,
the Zephyr clock by Lawson Time, from around 1938 (photo courtesy LACMA blog). My uncle had one of these and I always admired it — when the numbers turned over they bounced slightly before resting in place (perhaps a metaphor for hanging fire?). Time did appear to be hustling as new tracts developed across
the LA basin. Modern architects were designing houses and filling them with furniture like this 1931 bent plywood chair by Richard Neutra or this squared off
corner grouping by A. Quincy Jones from 1961 and Mondrian-esque glass coffee table of c. 1950 by Milo Baughman for Glenn of California — which look like they belong in one corner of Don Draper's office. Living In A Modern Way shows how California designers celebrated the casual indoor-outdoor living that
the California climate made possible, as in this promotional image for a development called Monarch Bay Homes at Laguna Niguel by delineator Carlos Dini, from 1961 (image courtesy LACMA). My favorite part of the exhibit juxtaposes two elegant designs from 1961 by LA's most minimalist architect,
Craig Ellwood: a superb elevation of his Rosen house and the Rosen's custom stereo cabinet. Now this takes Machine Age abstraction to its logical extreme: house and stereo are extensions of each other, if not virtually indistinguishable — do I live in the stereo or does the stereo live in me? Talk about surround sound! The only real difference, besides scale and some plumbing, is that the stereo has four bays while the house has only three. Clearly the sort of house where you would expect to hear Frank Sinatra, not to mention the architect, crooning My Way — and sotto voce "or the highway." (Images courtesy LACMA.)
Even Barbie went modern, and her Dream House of 1962, shown below, is fun to
to see. The largest element in the show is a replica of the loft-like living room of the Charles and Ray Eames house of 1949, the most famous structure in the
Case Study House Program of the late 1940s and early 1950s sponsored by Arts + Architecture magazine (photo courtesy NY Times). It functions both as a frame for nature and an elegant specimen box for the Eames' collection (1,869 items in this space alone!). Which reminds me: Case Study House #3 shown below, by William Wurster and Theodore Bernardi is not in the exhibit but is in the
Houseplans.com Signature Studio and is Plan 529-1. See how it too blends indoor and outdoor space into a seamless whole: the house is the lot. Our Eichler Plans offer further variations on the modern living theme. They're all part of the Mid-Century Modern design history you can own.
So, Don Draper — time to put down that highball and get back to work. You have a lot of selling to do!


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Not long after I started this blog, I started hearing from speaker coaches and speakers asking for good examples of speeches by women other than Eleanor Roosevelt and Barbara Jordan. Now, 100 speeches in, you don't have to hunt for a wide range of notable speeches by women.
So what's next?
I could stop doing the series, having long ago proved the point that there are plenty of famous speeches by women. But lots of readers tell me "I look forward to Famous Speech Friday" or "this is such a great way to learn about women and their issues." At the same time, the Index gets more unwieldy the larger it becomes. Readers report that they roam the Index looking for inspiration, historic examples, speeches on a particular topic, individual speakers and other slices of information.
As a result, 2013 will see the start of some new twists and takes on the series and the Index:
- Famous Speech Fridays will continue, in part because there are just too many great speeches and speakers to cover, in part because there are yet more varieties of topics, types of speeches and types of speakers to include. There are plenty of FSF posts in the queue, and I just know new examples will be popping up on my radar this year. But FSF posts won't appear every Friday, so that we can introduce this next option.
- The Index will get more useful, as we introduce hashtags for topics, themes, types of speakers and types of speeches. You'll also start seeing Friday posts that compile subgroups of speeches from the Index, such as speeches about failure, or by women in politics, or by kids and teens, or extemporaneous speeches. I'm hoping these tools will help you better search and use the Index. Posts that help compile the Index in this way will be alternating with regular Famous Speech Friday posts. We'll start next week with the Index's collection of speeches by African-American women.
- The Eloquent Woman YouTube channel is now available, with all the speeches in the Index that are available on video, plus other videos from the blog. It's your ready-made channel of great examples of women speaking, whether you need it for practice, ideas or inspiration.
- I'm assembling the Famous Speech Friday bookshelf, which will collect books about each of the speakers (and where possible, the speeches) featured in the Index, so you can learn more about these eloquent woman. Stand by for bookshelf posts and a page devoted to the shelf coming this year.
- We'll keep on pinning Famous Speech Friday posts on The Eloquent Woman board on Pinterest, and quotes from the series on the Great quotes by eloquent women board. The quotes board also can be accessed from The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, too!
- I'll keep asking for your leads and suggestions, since some of the best FSF posts have been brought to me by readers and fans. If you have a suggestion for a speaker, famous speech, type of speaker or type of speaking example you'd like to see in a Famous Speech Friday post, please email me at info[at]dontgetcaught[dot]biz. And if you've sent a suggestion, stay tuned...more are coming.
- famous in some way, via news coverage, social media feedback, or some other measure
- given by a female speaker, but she need not be famous--some of the best entries have been from women made famous by the speech, instead of the other way around
- speeches that incorporate women's issues in some way, and that yield practical examples that any speaker can put to use
If you found this post useful, please subscribe or make a one-time donation to help support the thousands of hours that go into researching and curating this content for you.


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The Obama administration is set to unveil a proposal this week that would overhaul the method by which the National Security Agency collects and stores data.
The news was first reported by The New York Times' Charlie Savage. A senior administration official confirmed the planned proposal early Tuesday morning.
The coming legislative proposal would eliminate perhaps the most controversial aspect of the NSA's collection methods — the government's routine collection of America's calling data. The proposed changes would serve as the biggest change to the agency since the massive disclosures about government surveillance from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year.
Under the legislation, which will have to be passed by Congress, the NSA would no longer collect and store so-called metadata from Americans' phones in bulk. The federal government would be required to obtain individual orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to get records from phone companies. The NSA currently retains phone data for five years, but under the proposal, phone companies would only be required to hold the data for 18 months.
As part of the proposal, the Obama administration would renew the collection program until Congress passes new legislation.
"As the President made clear in his speech on these issues in January, he directed his administration to explore all options available for ending the government's role in holding this metadata while still maintaining as many capabilities of the program as possible," a senior administration official said in an email.
"The President considered those options and in the coming days, after concluding ongoing consultations with Congress, including the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, will put forward a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified. Until Congress passes new authorizing legislation, the President has directed his administration to renew the current program, as modified substantially by the President in his January speech.
The administration's legislation will be introduced around the same time as a proposal from leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, which is expected to unveil its legislation on Tuesday.
In a January speech outlining NSA reforms, Obama called for an end to the NSA's ability to store metadata while preserving its capability to access data when needed. As part of that, he instructed the Justice Department and the intelligence community to come up with a plan by March 28 — Friday.
Late last year, independent panel put forward a series of more than 40 recommendations of changes to existing surveillance programs. The panel recommended the government's collection be replaced by a third party or the phone companies.
This post has been updated. It was originally posted at 10:30 p.m. ET on March 24.


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Poor air quality has plagued central and southern Taiwan for many years. Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan and lawmakers held a joint press conference on Sept. 12 at which they criticized the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), saying that the ministry has not adhered to the Air Pollution Control Act by not joining up with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to announce that the air pollution emissions in central and southern Taiwan is controlled through a total quantity control system. They also said that this was one of the main causes of the air pollution problem in the region.
Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan deputy secretary-general Wang Min-ling says that the act was promulgated in 1975, and even though an amendment which included a total quantity control system was added in 1999, it stipulates that the EPA and the MOEA must announce the measures together. Central and southern Taiwan has many factories that are causing serious pollution, and once a total quantity control system is enforced they would have to reduce the amount of pollution they are emitting. Wang said that the MOEA's passive attitude has allowed the region's air pollution problem to grow increasingly serious over the years.
The pollution standards index (PSI) is based on the density of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and ground-level ozone in the air on a particular day, all calculated as subsets, while the largest subset value is the given PSI for that day.
Wang says that from January to August this year the pollution index in the center and south was poor as much as 73.91 percent of the time. Looking at last year, Greater Taichung, Changhua, Nantou, Yunlin and Pingtung counties had good air to breathe less than 50 percent of the year, while Chiayi County, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung were all below 30 percent, meaning they only had good air to breathe on three out of every 10 days, posing a serious threat to people's health in the region.
1. criticize v.
批評 (pi1 ping2)
例: Instead of always criticizing everyone, maybe you should try balancing praise with criticism.
2. pose a threat v. phr.
造成威脅 (zao4 cheng2 wei1 xie2)
例: The bacteria pose no immediate threat to the species.
3. toll n.
損失 (sun3 shi1)
例: Inflation has already taken its toll on the average consumer.
Lawmakers Lin Chia-lung and Chao Tien-lin say that during the next legislative session they will work hard to push amendments to the act, abolishing the section of the act which states that emissions caps must be enforced in conjunction with the MOEA.
The MOEA's Industrial Development Bureau said on Sep. 12 that the EPA currently exercises partial control over emissions, and that the MOEA is not opposed to adhering to the act and enforcing emission cap regulations, but says that the government agencies involved must equally weigh all factors concerning the environment and economic development. If total control over emissions went into effect, the toll on industry development and society as a whole would be formidable, the MOEA says.
(Liberty Times, Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat)


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You can now conveniently book an appointment with one of our Registered Dietitians/Nutritionists online! Just Click the apple icon below!Many people don't know that Nutrition Counseling is a covered health benefit under many insurance plans! We are in network with: Highmark Blue Cross IBC Personal Choice Keystone East Out of State IBC Aetna Amerihealth Aetna Cigna United Healthcare Keystone East and Personal Choice cover 6 visits with a Registered Dietitian per calendar year! Other plans vary per individual plan, some require a physician referral or a copay.
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text: The image shows a portion of the Human Task Drop Handler. The upper left pane shows the Data Controls pane with the Project1_HelpDeskRequestHumanTask node expanded and the Task node selected. The lower left pane shows the taskDetails1.jspx - Structure tab with the jsp:root node expanded. The right pane shows the Create drop-down menu expanded with the Human Task menu item selected and expanded showing the following sub-menu items: Complete Task with Payload, Complete Task without Payload, Task details for email, Task Header, Task Action, Task History, and Task Comment and Attachment.


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Welcome to the American Hockey League Hall of Fame!
The American Hockey League has a history virtually unmatched outside of major-league sports, and is proud to be represented by more than 100 alumni who are honored members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. The creation of an AHL Hall of Fame in 2006 allowed the league to recognize, honor and celebrate individuals for their outstanding achievements and contributions specifically in the AHL.
Each class of inductees is officially enshrined during the league's annual All-Star festivities.
The Class of 2019 was inducted as part of the AHL All-Star Classic in Springfield, Mass., on January 28.
The first class of inductees honored for their outstanding achievements and contributions in the American Hockey League were Johnny Bower, the winningest goaltender ever in the AHL; Willie Marshall, Fred Glover and Jody Gage, the top three scorers in American Hockey League history; Frank Mathers, all-star defenseman and long-time coach, general manager and president of the Hershey Bears; Eddie Shore, architect of the storied Springfield Indians franchise; and Jack Butterfield, successful general manager and the AHL's longest-serving president (1966-94).
In a unique effort to make the rich tradition of the AHL available to the widest possible audience, the AHL Hall of Fame is housed online at www.ahlhalloffame.com and is accessible to fans worldwide with the click of a mouse as a member of the AHL Internet Network.


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- Nov. 15, 2012
Building owners, designers and contractors considering a geothermal heat pump system can now easily determine the associated federal tax credits, using Carrier's new white paper, Geothermal Heat Pump Systems and Federal Tax Incentives. The free paper, available on Carrier.com, provides an overview of the federal tax credit along with a payback analysis for new construction, retrofit or replacement installations, which can deliver tax benefits up to 50 percent of the original project cost in just five years. Carrier, the world's leader in high technology heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration solutions, is a part of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX).
The Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 expanded the Investment Tax Credit to include geothermal heat pump systems. Under this program, a tax credit of 10 percent of dollars spent can be claimed for geothermal heat pump systems placed in service before the end of 2016.
"A renewable source of energy makes the geothermal heat pump system one of the most efficient heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems available," stated Greg Alcorn, vice president, commercial sales and marketing, Carrier. "Federal tax credit and depreciation deduction incentives increase the appeal of these cost-effective, flexible systems even further."
Carrier offers a comprehensive line of geothermal heat pump systems. Carrier® Aquazone™ water source heat pump products can be used in all types of water loop, ground water, and ground loop type systems. The units meet or exceed ASHRAE 90.1 efficiencies and boast extended ranges of operation from 20 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit along with a wide variety of options.
"Saving energy and reducing cost are at the forefront of our customers' needs," added Alcorn. "Customers are looking for investments that have immediate as well as long-term benefits, and our Aquazone geothermal heat pump systems deliver."
To learn more about Carrier Aquazone water source heat pumps and to download a free copy of the new white paper, visit www.carrier.com.
About Carrier
Carrier is the world's leader in high technology heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration solutions. Carrier experts provide sustainable solutions, integrating energy-efficient products, building controls, and energy services for residential, commercial, retail, transport and foodservice customers. Founded by the inventor of modern air conditioning, Carrier improves the world around us through engineered innovation and environmental stewardship. Carrier is a part of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp., a leading provider to the aerospace and building systems industries worldwide. Visit www.carrier.com for more information.
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Here you will find our selection of little handmade tableware accessories that will make your table look unique and interesting.
So, if you need Tea Glasses, you are at the right place.
With these items, you will add a rustic flair to your everyday life and receive compliments every time you use them.
Items are hand finished and hand carved by artisans. Each piece is unique in its design and is prepared with a great attention to details. The technique takes a lot of time, patience and above all, a lot of experience.
Choose an item that you like and make your surroundings wonderful, comfortable and pleasant.


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Google image search "packer fan" sometime and you get over 80,000 results that overload the green and gold spectrum with chaos and hilarity. You'll also find several pictures of this guy, whom I have dubbed "Geoff Largefan."
Now I'm not sure whether he loves the Packers or just loves having fun, but these pictures tell a great story. With his homemade helmet, keg belly and strategically placed stickers, this guy not only makes me laugh and want to party, he also makes me want to be a better Packer fan.
He makes me want to cheer even more. He makes me want to let loose and throw caution to the wind, completely enveloping myself in uber-ultra-Packer-zealousness. We could all take a note from Geoff Largefan. He is so inspiring that he makes me realize that I need to step up and create a good gameday outfit.
If he ever wanted to sell that bomb shelter he calls a helmet, his Packer fan celebrity would lend him quite the negotiating power to the right buyer. I would have to commit a petty crime just to get locked up and remove myself from the table for fear I might lose everything I have in the process.
Understand, readers. I would use this helmet to do great and wonderful things – the smashing of the bottles and the headbutting of the obknoxious Vikings fans come to mind – but its power/weight would simply too great to be wielded by a mere mortal, even one with his own blog. In fact, in the hands of anyone of than its rightful owner, there's no telling who would get hurt. If he can't have it, than it must be destroyed!
No, my Packers glory will have to come in another form…that of baby clothes!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Geoff Largefan
Posted by Robert Greenfield at 3:26 PM
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The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species
by Aaron G. Filler MD, PhD
with a foreword by
David Pilbeam
Dean of Harvard College & Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
He...provides an excellent general outline of some of the history and historic trends in evolutionary thought while laying out detailed evidence to support his theory...his ideas come across clearly, and he puts forth a compelling argument.
Thought-provoking and bold."
"The Upright Ape" is a thought provoking journey into, not only science and philosophy, but also how one thing does or does not change into something else."
"For a book with only 260 pages, Filler manages to pack an amazing amount of information into it. ... At the same time the book doesn't suffer in terms of readability because of that. ... This is a challenging and provocative book well worth reading."
-- Posted by afarensis at scienceblogs.com
"A compelling and well-presented analysis of the story of life. With an in-depth examination of evolutionary pioneers and their influences on today's research, Dr. Aaron Filler presents a convincing theory of evolution that will educate, stimulate, and challenge our perceptions of the history of life. I highly recommend the book not only to science students, but to readers who enjoy engaging and well-researched books that inspire debate and reflection."
View "Hominiform Progression" Video
A dramatic 25 minute video on the evolution of movement in the hominiforms - apes and humans. A baby siamang ape teaches himself to walk bipedally like his parents and humans show off their arm swinging. Chimp and Gorilla knuckle walking and orangutan four limbed clmbing as well as the future of human movement are covered.
Human Origins Revolutionized
An Upright Ancestor for the Apes
The discovery of an ancient fossil in Moroto, Uganda from 21 million years ago was the first sign of a major flaw in our models of human evolution. It is almost identical to a modern human lumbar vertebra.
But it was just one fossil against a world full of scientific opinion that humans, with their upright bipedal walking did not emerge until the chimpanzee-human split 6 million years ago.
Then fossils of another upright bipedal ape - Oreopithecus - were found. Then another - Pierolapithecus. And then Sahelanthropus.
First there was one. Now there are four upright bipedal species of apes before the chimp-human split.
Paleoanthropology as a field has not yet come to grips with the revolutionary implications. The first "human" was probably Morotopithecus and probably lived 21 million years ago. The existing apes have a human ancestor.
For fifty years we have defined the first humans by the acquisition of upright bipedal posture in creatures like Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) who had brains like other apes. However, it now appears that based on this definition human history must reach back to the Miocene of 21 million years ago.
History Philosophy and Science
A Shared Intellectual Stake in Human Origins
How did biological scientists explain similarity among animals before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species? Remarkably, the leading theory was proposed by a poet - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - the famous 18th/19th century writer and author of Faust.
Goethe's ideas overturned Aristotle's reigning idea of a world populated by perfectly designed but entirely distinct creatures. Goethe proved that humans were in the same continuum as the other animals with his famous paper on the intermaxillary bone in the 1790's. Then he suggested that repeating fundamental elements could be identified - the leaf for plants and the body segment for animals - out of which any conceivable organism could be assembled. This was his proof of shared origins for the major types of life.
In his 6th edition, Darwin finally acknowledged Goethe's priority, but questioned his conclusions. Modern Hox genetics now shows that Goethe the poet was closer to the scientific truth than Darwin the zoologist.
We tend to assume that objective science must be widely separated from the realm of poetry and philosophy. However, what if a poet saw and understood the most basic truths in science when reductionist biologists took 200 years to be able to appreciate what he had seen and understood.
Evolutionary Biology
Evo-Devo and Mutationism
Can natural selection and Darwinian adaptation fully explain all of the major events in biological evolution? Since the 1870's leading scientists including William Bateson - the founder of modern genetics, and Stephen Jay Gould - the most widely read evolutionary theorist of the 20th century have argued that major sudden changes that do not involve the classic Darwinian mechanisms may also be important.
Now, modern Hox genetics shows some of the major events in the history of life involved what may be called non-Darwinian mechanisms. Two examples are the origin of the bilaterally symmetric bilaterians (including all the insects and vertebrates). The first bilaterian group did not gradually develop a left side under the pressure of natural selection over millions of years - this was an abrupt left/right mirror duplication.
We now understand that vertebrates emerged from invertebrates by a 180 degree flip of the body. This did not involve gradual change of one or two degrees at a time under adaptation pressure over millions of years, but was a sudden morphogenetic change.
Yet another non-Darwinian sudden change may have been responsible for the appearance of the first upright hominiform (human) 21 million years ago.
Molecular Biology & Genetics
Environmental Mechanism for Mutational Acceleration in the Cambrian Explosion
The term "Cambrian Explosion" refers to the sudden appearance of most of the modern phyla and classes of animals in the fossil record about 525 million years ago in the early part of the Cambrian geological epoch. The very existence of such an explosion has been questioned because there has been no obvious biological mechanism to explain the rapid generation of new body plans in multiple lineages and the equally puzzling cessation of this rapid mutational process.
This book demonstrates how Dr. Filler's work in cationic manipulation of the fidelity of DNA and RNA copying could finally explain this critical event in the evolution of animals. As a result of global warming at the beginning of the Cambrian era, massive changes in the metallic cations pouring into the oceans took place. The role of cationic changes in resetting the fidelity of DNA replication appears to finally explain the mass evolutionary acceleration that apparently took place during this time period.
The environmental changes that served as the on switch and the off switch for this astonishing event have now been identified in the relevant geologic strata.
Religion and Science in Creation & Evolution
Links Between the Evolution of Western Religion & the Roots of Modern Biological Thought
The literal Christian biblical creation story is just one of hundreds of creation myths known from the various cultures from around the globe. However, creation myths of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Hindu Veda, and the ancient Sumerian and Semitic myths all track back to the powerful impact of the creation myth of Ancient Egypt. This myth has a fascinating intersection with modern biological thought because it implicates the assembly of biological segments in the origins of human society.
The central feature of much of Egyptian religion is the ressurection of Osiris. This was accomplished by his wife and sister Isis, along with the help of Thoth - inventor of medicine and science by the reassembly of his vertebral column. The resurrection of Osiris was commemorated in the middle east for 3,500 years by the annual erection of the djed cross that symbolized the spine of Osiris.
Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire developed his spinal theory of animal life and discovered the critical Polypterus - a fish that could walk on land and breathe air with its lungs - while exploring Egyptian ruins as part of the same Napoleonic expedition that discovered the Rosetta Stone.
Comparative Anatomy
The Role of the Spine in the Evolution of the Vertebrates
The most prominent repeating structure in the body of vertebrate animals is the spinal column with its embryological somites and adult vertebrae. The first proposals that vertebrae were critical to understanding the relationships among the anatomy of various kinds of animals were made independently by Goethe, Oken and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1807.
Now the advent of Hox genetics has revealed that somites and vertebrae are organized by the same homeotic Hox genes that organize body segments in insects and other invertebrates. Nonetheless, very little attention has been paid by science to the evolutionary history and biology encoded in the spine.
The phenomenon of homology proposed by Sir Richard Owen in the 19th century relied on the elaboration of a vertebral archetype that was emraced by both theologists and biologists in the decades before Darwin.
Modern analysis of vertebrae has revealed a prominent role for homeotic and Pax/dorso- ventral reorganization of the vertebrae in the origin and diversification of dinosaurs, mammals and even in the origin of the upright bipedal human lineage.
Related recent academic work from Dr. Filler:
Homeotic Evolution in the Mammalia: Diversification of Therian Axial Seriation and a Morphogenetic Basis for Human Origins: PLOS ONE (2007)
Evolution of Back Pain: Neurosurgical Focus (2007)
Humanian Model of Human Evolution: AAPA (2008)
Implications of Djed Spinal Symbol: Neurosurgical Focus (2007)
Axial Character Seriation in Mammals (1986/2007)
Molecular evidence for environmental trigger of mass evolutionary acceleration: An experimental model for the Cambrian explosion (2007).
|Recent Blog Posts:
A Human Ancestor for the Apes (anthropology.net)
|Related older courses and presentations by Dr. Filler:
Primate Form and Function - Antrho 215, Harvard University (1980)
Sir Richard Owen, Sir Arthur Keith, and the lost styloid process: Serial homology and the evolution of the human spine. (Royal Society of Medicine (1992)
|Related older publications from Dr. Filler:
Anatomical Evidence for the "hylobatian" model of hominid evolution. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 52:226 (1980).Anatomical specializaions in the hominoid lumbar region. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 54:218 (1981).
Evolution of the Sacrum in Hominoids. In: Surgical Disorders of the Sacrum, JR Doty and SS Rengachary eds. Thieme Medical Publishers, New York pp.13-20, (1993).
Home page figure credits
Apes - from: Schultz, A. H. (1933). Die Körporproportionen der erwachsenen catarrhinen Primaten, mit spezieller Berüchsichtigung der Menschenaffen. Anthropologischer Anzeiger 10: 154-85 and Schultz, A. H. (1969). The Life of Primates. New York, Universe Books. Drawings reproduced by permission of Orion publishing and by permission of the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zurich. Vitruvian man - from: Davinci, L. (1492). Canon of Proportions. Academy of Fine Arts, Venice.
|Photographs by Nina Leen
|Vereecke, E. E., K. D'Aout and P. Aerts (2006). Locomotor versatility in the white-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar): a spatiotemporal analysis of the bipedal, tripedal, and quadrupedal gaits. Journal of Human Evolution 50(5): 552-67. Photograph and drawings reproduced by permission of Elsevier.


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Whether you're craving some pork belly or shoofly pie, a pint of pilsner or a tall glass of pinot grigio, Pennsylvania's food and drink options are among the keystones that make this state unique.
Pennsylvania's rich culinary heritage has been simmering for years. The blockbuster dishes, of course, include the Philly cheesesteak, Hershey chocolate and the Pittsburgh pierogi, but did you know that the state boasts more farms and agriculturally devoted acres than any other in the nation?
Dive deeper into Pennsylvania menus, u-picks and farmers' markets for items that celebrate that rich heritage: apples from York, blueberries from Allenwood, Concord grapes from Presque Isle, summer squash from Port Royal and yellow peppers from Nescopeck, not to mention the locally raised meats, fresh cheeses and eggs, fragrant herbs and much more that inspire its chefs and set its tables.
Wine connoisseurs have grape expectations of Pennsylvania's award-winning wineries (home to more than 200!). Cultivate your palate with free tours and tastings, or to get a flavor of the entire state, find a designated driver and tour one of Pennsylvania's 14 wine trails — each a distinctive experience. You can also visit the oldest operating brewing company in the United States or sip and savor some suds at Pennsylvania's independent craft breweries.
Sweet tooth? Pennsylvania maple is an experience that you simply cannot miss. From maple queens to tree tapping, maple production plays a sweet role in the Keystone State.


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White Kraft Bubble Mailer - 12.5 X 19 Be3D16
White Kraft Bubble Mailers is an ideal, low cost, high efficient source for commercial and residential shipping/mailing tasks
We at PackagingSuppliesByMail.Com, specializes in equipping our buyers with the best possible brands of Kraft Mailers on the market so that they're packaging procedures are fluent and productive
What make's White Kraft Bubble Mailers so effective are three components: savings, savings and more savings! Due to their featherweight construction, these mailers allow users to ship items either first class mail or priority mail at a low cost
Another advantage to why they add much savings too user's accounts is their durability.
From a firsthand basis, we understand the need for users to be equipped with quality shipping devices, so we have a full knowledge of what is cheap and what is superb in regards to deciding the right mailer


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In this fifth post of my series on notifications, I'll start looking at each of the notification delivery mechanisms (local, scheduled, periodic, and push) in turn. The structure and mechanics of creating notification content, which I covered in a previous post, are for the most part independent of the delivery method, so the posts that follow assume a basic understanding of accessing and customizing the various types of notification templates.
Let's kick it off with Local Notifications!
Bookmark-worthy References
for Local Notifications
Tiles guidelines and checklist
Toast guidelines and checklist
Badges guidelines and checklist
Quick and Easy
Local notifications are the simplest of the four delivery mechanisms and something that every application should consider leveraging. Even if you use a local notification to simply update your tile each time the user opens the application, it highlights your app as being fresh and alive.
For content-focused applications, like photo albums or recipe managers, updating the tile with an image from the last accessed photo, recipe, or whatever can take your application's Start screen experience from flat to fun!
Design Considerations for Local Notifications
Local notifications for Badges and Tiles: an Oxymoron?
One irony about local badge and tile notifications is that the user cannot, by definition, see them right when they happen! That's because local notifications only occur while the application is in a running state, and if you're looking at the Start screen, that app is in a suspended state (or possibly not running at all); check out the Application lifecycle if this has you scratching your head!
The way to interpret this is not that local badge and tile notifications are pointless, but rather that they should be used to deposit information to entice the user to revisit your application every time they view the Start screen. Since there isn't a definitive application 'close' event to rely on (you can only programmatically detect when an application is suspended), don't save badge and tile updates for some wrap-up process, because there isn't one!.
You can certainly use the suspending event as a place to make a tile or badge update; however, it's generally better to include the notification as part of the overall application's UI workflow versus within a lifecycle event. For example, in that recipe application, update the tile with a photo of grandma's awesome lasagna when a user selects that recipe in the context of the application, not because it's the currently loaded recipe when the suspending event occurs.
No Toast for You!
There's a converse argument to be made about local toast notifications. They can only be triggered and appear while the application is running, and if the application is right there in the foreground on your screen, do you need a toast – or should the application itself organically incorporate that content?
For a Twitter application (granted they wouldn't be local notifications), I typically don't want or expect to see toast notifications and my timeline updated, likewise for incoming e-mails while viewing my in-box. Toast is superfluous and can be annoying in that context.
In fact, the Guidelines and checklist for toast notifications explicitly includes the following recommendation:
Don't raise a toast notification when your application is in the foreground. In that case, consider notifying the user in the context of your app with a Flyout, dialog, app bar, or other inline element. ….
That is a recommendation though, not an edict, which could actually have been enforced by Windows not providing an API for local toast notifications at all. One specific example that I can think of where local toast 'works' (although it's not a Windows 8 application) is the Visual Studio Achievements gamification add-in to our favorite IDE.
The APIs
Determining Notification Settings
Recall that whether a tile will update or a toast will appear is ultimately at the discretion of the user, so never rely on these mechanisms to relay critical information. You can detect the permissibility of notifications – perhaps to forego network service calls or other costly operations required to construct a notification that will never been seen – via the TileUpdater and ToastNotifier classes.
Each exposes a setting property that returns a NotificationSetting value indicating how notifications will be treated:
- enabled (0): notification is allowed
- disabledForApplication (1): user has disabled notification for given application
- disabledForUser (2): user or administrator has disabled notifications for current user on the computer
- disabledByGroupPolicy (3): notifications have been disabled by group policy (overriding user's setting)
- disabledByManiifest (4): application's manifest setting doesn't indicate that it's "Toast Capable"
Triggering the Local Notification
Once you have your notification template content assembled (see my prior post for a primer on doing so), it's a simple call to one of three methods depending on the notification type:
ToastNotifier.show triggers a toast notification.
TileUpdater.update updates the application tile (possibly a secondary tile) immediately, or, if the notification queue is enabled, adds or replaces a tagged notification with the new tile.
BadgeUpdater.update updates the badge on the application's main or secondary tile.
Clearing the Notification
Since local notifications are programmatically triggered on demand by the application, cancelling them is tantamount to not triggering the notification in the first place. That said there are few things to keep in mind, since the effects of some notifications can linger beyond their relevancy.
Tile and Badge notifications expire after three days by default, but you can specify an alternative expiration time (see TileNotification.expirationTime and BadgeNotification.expirationTime). Depending on the needs of your application, you may want to explicitly clear either or both - based on new information at launch time. For instance,
- You can use TileUpdater.clear to reset the tile to what was declared in the application's manifest. You might do this if you determine that the previous content is no longer relevant, but there is nothing new to replace it.
- Similarly, BadgeUpdater.clear removes the badge from the targeted tile; you might use this when activating a subscription-type application to reset the number of unread articles, e-mails, tweets, etc.
It is possible to programmatically hide a toast, but the guidelines counsel you shouldn't do so "unless absolutely necessary." A valid scenario might include a long running toast inviting the user to a VOIP chat, but the initiator hangs up before the user responds to the request.
Sample Code
Check out the App tiles and badges sample and the Toast notifications sample on the Developer Center to see the APIs in action.


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shaxs needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 59 designs submitted by 15 freelance designers.
I already had a logo and brand created for an earlier project. I have a new product in the works and need a company logo. So, you will keep the logo colors and ideas the same, just change the text and an appropriate icon for the new logos.
I need two logos updated. Price for one is $125. I will be picking two winners.
Clever Technology / Clever Help Desk
Web Solutions That Are Clever / up to designer
Desired Color Scheme:
See attached logo
Desired Style:
See attached logo
Accepted File Formats:
Standard Web Formats (.jpg, .gif or .png); Vector Formats (.eps, .pdf or .ai)
Please see the attached logo. There is a thought bubble with an tool, hence the name Clever Tools. For this contest, all I need you to do is add an appropriate icon to the thought bubble and change the text. Thats it. Super easy. Attached is an EPS which I believe gives you a source file to work with. The new logos need to stay in vector format and keep the same style and feel.
Logo 1: Clever Technology - I need a general logo for the company. So, replace the icon with something that depicts technology. Change the text to Clever Technology and change the tagline to 'Web Solutions That Are Clever'.
Logo 2: Clever Help Desk. This new software service is going to be a hosted solution for help desks. After trying many different help desk and encountering nothing but bloated software that never works, I am creating my own for me and also to provide it to other people who need a high quality, web 2.0 help desk. So, the icon needs to depict getting help. You will need to change the title to 'Clever Help Desk'. I will leave the tagline up to you as I am drawing a blank.
So in review. I will be picking 2 winning logos. You could win both, or you could win one. Each winning logo will get $125. Again, you will not need to do too much work to get these changed, so I think the compensation is fair. Also, I reserve the right to pick a winner before the contest ends. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.