text: Extremely Powerful, Extremely Reliable! ASUS Extreme Quad ASUS True 16-phase Power Design ASUS Express Gate SSD ASUS EPU-6 Engine ASUS Drive Xpert 100% Japan-made Solid Capacitor VRD11.1 CPU support (backward support VRD10.X CPU) Shop Modal header CPU, Chipset and Graphics features LGA775 Intel® Core™2 Processor Ready This motherboard supports the latest Intel® Core™2 processors in LGA775 package. It also can support Intel® 45nm Multi-Core CPU. With new Intel® Core™ microarchitecture technology and 1600/1333/1066/800MHz FSB, Intel® Core™2 processor is one of the most powerful and energy efficient CPU in the world. PCIe 2.0 Double Speed; Double Bandwidth This motherboard supports the latest PCIe 2.0 devices for double speed and bandwidth which enhances system performance. Memory Features Dual-Channel DDR2 1200 The motherboard supports DDR2 memory that features data transfer rates of 1200/1066/800/667 MHz to meet the higher bandwidth requirements of the latest operation system, 3D graphics, multimedia, and Internet applications. The dual-channel DDR2 architecture doubles the bandwidth of your system memory to boost system performance, eliminating bottlenecks with peak bandwidths of up to 19.2GB/s. ASUS Extreme Quad 1. Quad VGA Cards Support - Maximum graphics capability - Up to Quad VGA cards support- 2 slots thermal design 3. Quad Hardware RAID Ports - 2x2 Hardware RAID ports for RAID 0, 1 - Automatically real-time backup- 4x faster hard drive transfers - No driver & BIOS setup needed, just use friendly GUI to configure 5. Quad Security (1) Electrostatic Discharge Protection (ESD): ESD protection devices divert a potentially damaging charge away from sensitive circuitry(2) Overcurrent Protection: Installed polyswitch as fuses to prevent excessive or dangerous temperature rise in conductors(3) ASUS Data Guardian (TPM) Double protection—Hardware module + Software keys Create a virtual folder that is protected by an encryption key(4) Anti-virus software bundled Bundle Norton Internet Security anti-virus application *The bundled software is 90 days trial version 7. Quad-Core CPU Support Supports Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processors with FSB up to 1600 MHz 2. ASUS True 16-Phase Power Design (Quad Quad-Phase Power Design) Unprecedented Innovation with the best quality component for best performanceThe breakthrough technology of 16-phase VRM design is bringing to the ASUS motherboards. 16-phase power design can reach the power efficiency up to 96%+, and dispel heat generated by VRM module effectively, and lower temperature compared to other VRM solution. With all Japan-made best quality power components such as low RDS (on) MOSFETs, Ferrite core chokes with lower hysteresis loss, and high quality conductive polymer capacitors, ASUS 16-phase VRM design also ensure longer component life, minimum power loss, and help to reach the superior overclocking score ever than before. 4. 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Quad BIOS Backup 3 BIOS duplicates + 1 original BIOSAllowed BIOS recovery through support DVD, USB flash, or hard disk ASUS Exclusive Features ASUS Express Gate SSD 0 to Internet in Seconds!Express Gate™ is an ASUS exclusive OS that provides you with quick access to the Internet and key applications before entering Windows®. Best Quality Power Components 100% High-quality Japan-made Conductive Polymer Capacitors! (5000 hrs VRM)Low RDS (on) MOSFETs with min. switching loss & lower temperature, Ferrite Core chokes with lower hysteresis loss, and 100% Japan-made high quality, long life conductive polymer capacitors. ASUS Power Saving Solution ASUS EPU-6 Engine System Level Energy SavingThe new ASUS EPU - the world´s first power saving engine, has been upgraded to a new 6 engine version, which provides total system power savings by detecting current PC loadings and intelligently moderating power in real-time. With auto phase switching for components (which includes the CPU, VGA card, memory, chipset, hard drives and CPU cooler/system fans), the EPU automatically provides the most appropriate power usage via intelligent acceleration and overclocking - helping save power and money. AI Nap Minimize noise and power consumption when temporarily away! With AI Nap, users can instantly snooze your PC without terminating the tasks. System will continue operating at minimum power and noise when user is temporarily away. It keeps downloading files or running applications in quietest state while you´re sleeping. Simply click keyboard or mouse, you can swiftly wake up the system in few seconds. ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution Up to 20°C(36°F) Cooler - Stack Cool 2 Effective Fanless Heat Dissipation at 0dBStack Cool 2 is a fanless cooling solution offered exclusively by ASUS. 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This innovative and groundbreaking fanless heat pipe design effectively lowers temperatures by up to 10°C without having lifetime problems that a normal chipset fan has. Furthermore, it provides options for users to install side-flow fans or a passive cooler. This Heat Pipe design is the most reliable fanless thermal solution to date. ASUS EZ DIY ASUS Drive Xpert Plug & Safe!Without drivers or BIOS setups, the ASUS exclusive Drive Xpert is ideal for anyone who needs to secure data on their hard drives or enhance hard drive performances without the hassles of complicated configurations. With Drive Xpert´s user-friendly graphical user interface, users can easily arrange hard drive backups or enhance their hard drive transfer rates - making sure that data is looked after every moment, every day. Q- Shield Easy and Comfortable InstallationsThe specially designed ASUS Q-Shield does without the usual "fingers" - making it convenient and easy to install. 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This unique adapter eliminates the trouble of plugging in one cable at a time, making connection quick and accurate. EZ-Flash 2 Simply update BIOS from a USB flash disk before entering the OSEZ Flash 2 is a user-friendly BIOS update utility. Simply launch this tool and update BIOS from a USB flash disk before entering the OS. You can update your BIOS only in a few clicks without preparing an additional floppy diskette or using an OS-based flash utility. Other Innovative Features MyLogo2 Personalize your system with customizable boot logoYou can convert your favorite photo into a 256-color boot logo for a more colorful and vivid image on your screen. RoHS GreenASUS The motherboard and its packaging comply with the European Union´s Restriction on the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This is in line with the ASUS vision of creating environment-friendly and recyclable products and packaging to safeguard consumers´ health while minimizing the impact on the environment.


text:
I'm opening a thread for newcomers to signify their intent to "friend" others on steam so that you guys can set up friend matches in friend mode and be all friendly (yes I'm overemphasizing FRIEND)
Btw, those new to the forums may not know that you can link your forum account/ID to your steam account using your profile settings on the forums. You'll see them both together like on the left of this post if you link em up.
Anyhow, either show your steam ID via the profile link and leave a post, or use a post to leave your steam ID...
Now get out there and get friendly!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
On the money: Danone eyes expansion in Russia, China
French food giant Danone said it will look at entering into new markets in 2010, with particular emphasis on eastern Russia and new regions within China.
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Early snow on Friday, messy mix on Sunday
Light snow just in time for the morning commute. With temperatures in the teens, the snow is light and powdery. It accumulates to about 1/2" for most spots with around 1" possible across Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Dodge and northern portions of Washington and Ozaukee Counties. Salters are on the roads-but there may be slick spots for your morning drive.
Good looking weather Saturday with blue skies and highs in the low 20s. Winds stay light and clouds fill in later day. Good weather to hit the sledding hills!
We'll watch low pressure develop over the southern Plains this weekend. It passes to our south Sunday and spreads comparatively warmer air into Wisconsin. There is a good chance for a sloppy, slushy mix of precipitation Sunday. For now, it appears we will see wet snow, sleet and potentially a period of freezing rain. The forecast track and temperature profile is still uncertain for Sunday. There will be changes to the Sunday forecast. We'll keep you posted here, on our WISN 12 and Weather Watch Updates Facebook page.


text:
Manage, Assess & DebriefSimulation & Training
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The Circle of Learning is a systematic approach to learning and teaching. It can be used to help organize and prioritize the areas of learning most relevant to your educational objectives.
Improving competence and confidence
Research shows that healthcare providers' skill retention declines as soon as three months after training. However, training in short, frequent intervals allows for continuous improvement and helps to maintain competence over time.


text:
Intel® Celeron® Processor G5900
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text:
This weekend I'm going to be participating in the Boston Haskell hackathon. I'm very excited about it and I have a couple idea for projects to work on. If any of these sound interesting or you are thinking of something similar, I'm looking for people to collaborate with! Send me an email or come talk to me in person! I think I'm going to get there sometime in the late afternoon to early evening on Friday and I'll be around all weekend.
Evaluation strategies for Haskell that don't leak space
The first project is doing some research / prototyping of an alternate evaluation strategy with the same termination properties as normal order evaluation, but with much easier reasoning about space usage. For lack of a better name, I'm calling it specializing, strictness-propagating evaluation. In this model, calling a function is something like two communicating coroutines. When calling a function, the callee begins evaluating its body, yielding control back to the caller when it needs its first argument, and also indicating whether that argument should be strict or lazily passed, using whatever information is available at runtime. Subsequent arguments work similarly. As a result, functions are automatically specialized as arguments are passed, and we do not construct thunks if they are going to be consumed strictly by a subsequent callee. This can be implemented efficiently using just two call stacks, and there are various optimizations to the scheme. It is intended to augment, not replace, the existing static strictness analysis and argument passing.
Here's an example working through this for the
if function, which let's assume has the following implementation:
foldl f z l = case l of
[] -> z
h:t -> foldl t f (f z h)
I'm also going to assume we've done some static strictness analysis to determine that all branches evaluate
z and that therefore the
h:t branch evaluates
f (since all branches evaluate
z and in the
h:t case,
f appears at the head of an expression passed as
z). Suppose we call this with
foldl (+) 0 [1,2,3,4].
- Caller pushes
foldlonto the call stack.
foldlbegins evaluating with no arguments. It gets as far as the
case l. It will then request
lstrictly, since it is about to evaluated it anyway.
- To request the argument,
foldlpops its currently running frame from the call stack and pushes it onto the save stack. It then resumes the caller now at the top of the call stack with an argument of
- The caller passes the argument as requested - if the caller were itself receiving these arguments as function parameters, it would propagate the strictness request of
foldlto its caller.
- To resume
foldl, it pops
foldlfrom the save stack and pushes it onto the call stack, giving it the (strictly evaluated) list it requested.
- Now we hit the interesting case: inside the
h:tbranch, we know that
zis strict (this is known statically). We also know that
fcan now be evaluated, so we request this argument strictly from our caller. With
fnow evaluated, we can propagate its stricness information. We know we will be evaluating
f z h- what we did not know until runtime was that
fwas plus (let's just say it was
+specialized to
Int), and therefore static SA has no choice but to pass
f z has a thunk. We now know that
fis strict in both its arguments, so the call to
f z hmeans we can fully evaluate
z(which we do by requesting
zstrictly from our caller),
h, and then
f z h.
Each step of the iteration works similarly and
foldl ends up running in constant space. I'm handwaving a lot here, but in general I want an evaluation order that is totally predictable in its space usage - values are immediately forced as soon as their consuming functions are known at runtime. The consuming functions tell us if an argument will ultimately be forced so we find out sooner rather than building up enormous thunks.
This needs some serious whiteboarding, but assuming it is at all sensible, here's what I propose doing:
- Come up with an instruction set for this evaluation model, and write a simple interpreter for it
- Write a compiler for a toy functional language to this instruction set, including the basic static analysis needed to kickstart the dynamic analysis
- Try writing some programs with it
Some other interesting ideas - I wonder if there's some way to embed this evaluation model in GHC itself.
A code database for Haskell and refactoring combinators
The other project I'm interested in working on is a code database for Haskell, and a Datalog interpreter to go with it. Using this database and the datalog query language, I then want to implement a set of refactoring combinators. A "refactoring" is simply a compilation-preserving function from one code database to another. I've started tinkering with a set of combinators that individually preserve compilation and can be composed to allow arbitrary code transformations. I wrote up some ideas for that here:
... Refactoring times in this new model will go from weeks or months to hours, and writing code to transform a codebase will become a separate but critical skill, distinct from the usual act of programming. That is, programmers do not simply conceive of a refactoring (which is often quite simple to express to another programmer), then begin a tedious, manual and error-prone process of text munging to implement it. Instead, the programmer conceives of a refactoring, then conceives of a code transforming program to implement the refactoring, then applies this transformation to the code database, all in the span of a few hours.
... First, I am not advocating for datalog syntax. I don't care about that. The key functionality enabled by datalog over and above the relational algebra is the ability to express transitive closure and mutual recursion guaranteed to terminate. Together these features enable many of the common queries we'd like to express in transforming and querying our codebases. For instance, here is a hypothetical query to find all references to a given function id, fid. Don't worry if the syntax looks alien or doesn't make sense. The key is more that this query is just a few lines of code to express, and it can be reused and built upon.
-- propagate reference to containing apply refs(Id) :- apps(Id, fid, _). refs(Id) :- apps(Id, _, fid). refs(Id) :- refs(X), apps(Id,X,_). refs(Id) :- refs(X), apps(Id,_,X). -- any lambda whose body is or contains fid -- is considered to reference fid return(Id) :- lambdas(Id,_,Id1), refs(Id1). return(Id) :- lambdas(Id,_,fid).
Much of the analysis required to implement refactorings has this sort of "transitive-closure" feel to it - you need to do something to the "direct" callers, then do some transformation for their callers as necessary, and so on.
Here's what I propose for this project:
- Implement datalog, possibly backed by just in-memory data structures, or maybe tied to something like SQLite. Or if there's an existing free datalog interpreter and backend for it somewhere, let's see if we can use that.
- Come up with the normalized datalog representation for the Haskell AST and type information - besides just the AST I think you'll need to know all the type information. Is there some way to use the GHC API to get the type of all expressions in the
- Implement or steal a Haskell parser, and write code to translate this to the normalized datalog representation. As a proof of concept, take some existing Haskell project and "code-database-ify" it.
- Come up with a good set of refactoring combinators. Implement them using datalog. As a proof of concept, use the combinators to express some nontrivial refactoring (like - make this value monadic rather than pure, and propagate the change in calling convention to all direct and indirect callers as needed - this is exactly the sort of refactoring that is trivial to describe to another Haskell programmer, and is totally mechanical, but is still done via a tedious process of text munging)
If all this is too much, I propose not doing this for Haskell but instead for a toy functional language with a very simple AST and type system.


text:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's ... ted_States
I've been reading this book lately. I like it better than most history books I've picked up. I prefer to think about things in a way I can relate to it. I tend to relate to the underdogs and this connects me with history from that POV.
Unlike Lies My Teacher Told Me, it doesn't feel as arrogant.
I just wanted to share this find!
A People's History by Howard Zinn
Discuss Greece or ancient Rome - or maybe the history of the United States.
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text:
PALMER PARK, Md. (AP) — Two Prince George's County police officers have been charged with kidnapping and misconduct for allegedly detaining two teens and assaulting one of them.
Police say the officers were charged Thursday. They are identified as Christopher Michael Perry, 27, and Michael Rowe, 26.
An attorney for one teen says the officers were off duty, in plain clothes and driving a police cruiser during an incident May 28 when they arrived in Waldorf and apparently tried to scare three teens who had been accused of stealing alcohol from a party. The officers handcuffed one teen, and another escaped. One teen was beaten.
Charles County officials investigated the incident. Sheriff's office spokeswoman Diane Richardson says both officers were
released Thursday on personal recognizance. They were also charged with false imprisonment and second-degree assault.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


text:
This post shares the video from the talk presented on 15th August 2012 by Dr Andrew Robinson on S3 Classes at Melbourne R Users. S3 classes are baked in to R; their influence permeates the language and how we interact with it. This talk introduces S3 classes, and why they are relevant to all R users. The talk covers their definition, interpretation, construction, and manipulation.
Andrew Robinson is deputy director of ACERA and senior lecturer in applied statistics at the University of Melbourne. He is co-author of 2.95 books on R: "Forest Analystics with R" and "Introduction to Scientific Programming and Simulation Using R", and the hopefully soon to be completed "Methods of Statistical Model Estimation".
Additional Resources:
- Slides for the talk
- Melbourne R Users Meetup page
- Andrew Robinson's Home Page
- Andrew Robinson's 150+ page introduction to R "IcebreakR" available as PDF
- Complete play list of Melbourne R User videos here


text:
When "Castle" went looking for a guest star to stir the pot in the show's latest murder-mystery, they found an expert in Jack Wagner – the handsome star that's been shaking things up on sudsy dramas like "General Hospital," "Melrose Place" and "The Bold and the Beautiful" for three decades.
Wagner, 53, who plays a golf pro suspected of murdering his wife (Nancy Lee Grahn, another "GH" alum) on the Jan. 7 episode "Significant Others," reveals how he popped into the hit ABC series for a one-off appearance and how his stint on "Dancing With the Stars" opened new career doors.
Tell me about how you fit into 'Castle's' mystery of the week.
He's sort of the suspect – it's his ex‑wife that was murdered, so when they do get to him, they're locked into his history with her. And I have a monologue to really capture everything, and I sort of have to get that monologue nailed – the accusation, pretty much telling his side of the story. And then by the time he throws them out of his house, verbally subtly, you get the take this guy's pretty much wrecked inside and probably didn't do it – but maybe.
Was it your soap opera bona fides that made you a good fit these parts? Is there a soap opera homage or pastiche happening in the episode?
Honestly, it comes down to the best actor gets the part – that's it. I really don't think it has anything to do with being on a soap opera or not. Maybe it did because of the television Q-rating or something like that. Probably if I was casting, and it was close, I would probably give it to an actor that maybe is well-known or something like that. But Nancy's a really good actor, and that's how I look at it. Just because we've been on soap operas – and Nathan Fillion's been on a soap opera – we're all actors, and that's what it all boils down to: who's going to do the job best.
You got a nice little spotlight when you did 'Dancing with the Stars.' What's been happening for you career-wise since?
U.S. & World
I've had an interesting year. I was on 'Bold and the Beautiful' for nine years, and right out of that went right into 'Dancing with the Stars' which was so intense – It sort of was a whirlwind, and then to kind of get back in the night time spotlight again.
I just finished a story arc on 'Hot in Cleveland,' and I just was in New York doing an episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice' – Susan Lucci and I did a task. So I've done some things this year that for me were not only fun, but at least I'm getting out of daytime a little bit, which is okay – but I also love to work! So it's really more about working, and I have a couple things on the plate right now I can't really talk about that are kind of cool – you know, just kind of in a place where we'll see where it goes.
It's been a long time for me that I haven't been under contract, like years and years, so I've been very fortunate, to have gone basically from 'General Hospital' in the 80s to 'Melrose Place' in the 90s and 'Bold and the Beautiful' in the 2000s. I'm enjoying my little window here.
You've always had a nice little side gig as a musician. Anything cooking on that front?
I'll write two or three songs a year, and I'll still do a concert or two at a couple casinos I've played year after year. But I don't chase a record deal anymore. I'm not looking to follow that music career. The business has changed from the 80s when I had my hit ['All I Need'] and toured. And the whole process of getting a record deal or getting some sort of song out there is just something that's foreign to me. Music's pretty much just a personal thing right now.
What was it about that sport that really gives you a lot of joy?
It's just unpredictable. You can do everything right, and for some reason everything goes wrong. And you can just do everything wrong and for some reason, everything goes right. It's one of those things. I always compare it to a woman or a relationship: you've just got to wake up and go, 'Huh – I wonder how it's going to be today? Wonder what's going to be on the plate today?'
Bringing it back around to 'Castle', give me your best behind-the-scenes story from this particular guest shot. Did you have an especially fun day?
An especially fun day: after five minutes Nathan and I were like 'Okay, dude – tell me what it was like having a hit record, the whole 80s thing with "General Hospital…"' 'Tell me what it was like when you did "Days of your Lives" and you came from Canada and you were totally broke?' 'And what happened in L.A. was I was ready to move back to New York, and then the phone rang…' 'Wow – so tell me what it was like for "Melrose Place…'" I mean we were like two little kids. It was hilarious.
I hear that about Nathan. He sounds just endlessly interested in everybody's pop culture pathway.
I think all of us actors are. I mean, when we get to a place where we've actually had a window of 10, 15, 20 years under our belt – and it's not just actors, directors, crew members, even yourself – how did you get to where you are now? It's a pretty interesting story. It has when you travel and what has to happen for this to happen. I find it quite fascinating, especially in the entertainment business.


text:
Last week, the Toronto International Film Festival announced the movies playing in its Special Presentations and Galas programs. Today, they've provided the line-up for their other programs including Midnight Madness. This is where the more genre-oriented films come out to play, and can break out in a big way. Last year's TIFF Midnight Madness included the world premiere of The Raid, and the buzz never died down. Judging by the line-up, this year's Midnight Madness will have the same frenzy. The line-up includes the horror short-film anthology The ABCs of Death, Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh's follow up to In Bruges), Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem, Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End, and Pete Travis' Dredd.
Hit the jump for the full line-up and brief synopses. The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 -16th.
The ABCs of Death World Premiere
Kaare Andrews, Angela Bettis, Adrián García Bogliano, Bruno Forzani & Hélène Cattet, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, Jason Eisener, Xavier Gens, Jorge Michel Grau, Lee Hardcastle, Noboru Iguchi, Thomas Cappelen Malling, Anders Morgenthaler, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Simon Rumley, Marcel Sarmiento, Jon Schnepp, Srdjan Spasojevic, Timo Tjahjanto, Andrew Traucki, Nacho Vigalondo, Jake West, Ti West, Ben Wheatley, Adam Wingard, and Yûdai Yamaguchi
Twenty-six directors… 26 ways to die! The ABCs Of Death is perhaps the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived, featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film. With each director assigned a letter of the alphabet, they were then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving a tale of mortality. It's an alphabetical arsenal of destruction orchestrated by some of the most exciting names in global horror including Ben Wheatley (Kill List), Ti West (House of the Devil), Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Adam Wingard (You're Next), Xavier Gens (Frontieres), and Nacho Vigalondo (Time Crimes).
Aftershock Nicolás López, USA/Chile World Premiere
In Chile, an American tourist's vacation goes from good to great when he meets some beautiful women travellers. But when an earthquake ravages the underground nightclub they're in, a fun night quickly turns to terror. Escaping to the surface is just the beginning as they face nightmarish chaos above ground. Starring Eli Roth and Selena Gomez.
The Bay Barry Levinson, USA World Premiere
A brutal and harrowing film about a deadly parasite, The Bay chronicles the descent of a small Maryland town into absolute terror.
Come Out and Play Makinov, Mexico World Premiere
Beth and Francis vacation before the birth of their child. Francis insists on venturing to a more serene island, Beth hesitantly agrees. They set out to a beautiful island, but soon discover it's mysteriously abandoned, and the only people on the island are children. Beth and Francis are left to uncover the mystery of the disappearances, and a day in paradise quickly turns into a struggle for survival. Cast includes Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vinessa Shaw and Daniel Gimenez Cacho.
Dredd Pete Travis, USA/United Kingdom/India World Premiere
The endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later) and director Pete Travis bring the iconic masked police officer Dredd to life in this futuristic neo-noir action film. Filmed in 3D with stunning slow-motion photography sequences, the film returns the celebrated comic book anti-hero to his dark, violent and visceral roots. Starring Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey.
Hellbenders JT Petty, USA World Premiere
Hellbenders, an R-rated 3D exorcism comedy, follows the Order of Hellbound Saints (Brooklyn Parish), a highly secretive and profoundly blasphemous men of God, as they battle demonic forces too terrible to be cast out by traditional Vatican-approved methods. Cast includes Clancy Brown, Clifton Collins Jr., Robyn Rikoon and Andre Royo.
John Dies at the End Don Coscarelli, USA Canadian Premiere
In John Dies at the End, it's all about the Soy Sauce, a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. Users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly, a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John (Rob Mayes) and David (Chase Williamson), a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't. Adapted from David Wong's audacious trans-genre horror novel, John Dies at the End is written and directed by Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep) and also stars Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti.
The Lords of Salem Rob Zombie, USA/United Kingdom/Canada World Premiere
Heidi, a radio station DJ, receives a wooden box containing a record. Heidi listens and the bizarre sounds within the grooves immediately trigger flashbacks of Salem's violent past. Is Heidi going mad or are the Lords of Salem returning for revenge on modern day Salem?
No One Lives Ryuhei Kitamura, USA World Premiere
From the director of Versus and The Midnight Meat Train, No One Lives is a smart and original horror movie with, at its heart, a killer in the grip of a dark and twisted love affair. A ruthless criminal gang takes a young couple hostage and goes to ground in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. When the captive girl is killed, the tables are unexpectedly turned. The gang finds itself outsmarted by an urbane and seasoned killer determined to ensure that no one lives. Featuring Luke Evans, Adelaide Clemens, Derek Magyar, Lee Tergesen and America Olivo.
Seven Psychopaths Martin McDonagh, USA/United Kingdom World Festival Premiere
Written and Directed by Academy Award® winner Martin McDonagh, the comedy Seven Psychopaths follows a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster's (Woody Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu. Co-starring Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Zeljko Ivanek.


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Main content
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DFG Research Training Group 2013
Opening Colloquium
DFG Research Training Group
"Combinatorial Structures in Geometry"
Friday, 1st November, 2013
|10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.
|Welcome Addresses by Wolfgang Lücke, President, and Matthias Reitzner, Spokesman
|10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
|Bernd Sturmfels (University of California, Berkeley)
|Maximum Likelihood for Matrices with Rank Constraints
|Abstract: Maximum likelihood estimation is a fundamental computational task in statistics. We discuss this problem for manifolds of low rank matrices. These represent mixtures of independent distributions of two discrete random variables. This non-convex optimization problems lead to some beautiful geometry, topology, and combinatorics. We explain how numerical algebraic geometry is used to find the global maximum of the likelihood function, and we present a remarkable duality theorem due to Draisma and Rodriguez.
|11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
|Tea/coffee break
|12:00 p.m.-01:00 p.m.
|Anita Schöbel (Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen)
|Locating Hyperplanes and Hyperspheres: Combination of Geometric and Combinatorial Methods
|Abstract: We consider the problem of approximating a set of m points in a normed space by a hyperplane or by the surface of a hypersphere. More precisely, the goal is to find a hyperplane (or hypersphere) which minimizes the sum of distances to the given points. This problem is well known in location theory where it has mostly been treated for two dimensions, in computational geometry, and it has also applications in robust statistics. In the talk we focus on the underlying structure of the problem: We present a dual interpretation of the problem and show that quasi-concavity of the objective function yields discretization results. Based on these results we develop algorithmic approaches. For the case of block norms and polyhedral gauges, we propose a linear programming formulation. We also show more specific results for the Euclidean case and for the case of the Manhattan norm.
|01:00 p.m.-02:30 p.m.
|Lunch break
|02:30 p.m.-03:30 p.m.
|Peter Gritzmann (Technische Universität, München)
|Discrete Tomography
|Abstract: Discrete tomography deals with the reconstruction of finite sets from knowledge about their interaction with certain query sets. The most prominent example is that of the reconstruction of a finite subset F of ℤd from its X-rays (i.e., line sums) in a small positive integer number m of directions. Applications of discrete tomography include quality control in semiconductor industry, image processing, scheduling, and statistica data security. After a short general introduction to the field of discrete tomography, we addresses the following questions. Does discrete tomography have the power of error correction? Can noise be compensated by taking more X-ray images, and, if so, what is the quantitative effect of taking one more X-ray? Our main theoretical result gives the first nontrivial unconditioned (and best possible) stability result. On the algorithmic side we show that while there always is a certain inherent stability, the possibility of making (worst-case) efficient use of it is rather limited. Then we deal with the discrete tomography of quasicrystals that live on finitely generated ℤ-modules in some ℝs. Focussing on aspects in which the discrete tomography of quasicrystals differs from that in the classical lattice case, we solve a basic decomposition problem for the discrete tomography of quasicystals. More generally, we study the problem of existence of pseudodiophantine solutions to certain systems of linear equations over the reals and give a complete characterization of when the index of Siegel grids is finite. The results on stability are joint work with Andreas Alpers, TU Munich, that on Siegel grids are joint work with Barbara Langfeld, U Kiel.


text: Main Content Committee Bill Records Search printer friendly Click here if you would like to refine these Committee Bill Records by sponsor, meeting, status and more! Selecting from the following options and click "Search Committee Bill Records". Representatives Afendoulis, Lynn Albert, Thomas Alexander, Julie Allor, Sue Anthony, Sarah Bellino, Joseph Berman, Ryan Bolden, Kyra Harris Bollin, Ann Brann, Tommy Brixie, Julie Byrd, Wendell Calley, Julie Cambensy, Sara Camilleri, Darrin Carter, Brenda Carter, Tyrone Chatfield, Lee Cherry, John Chirkun, John Clemente, Cara Cole, Triston Coleman, Kevin Crawford, Kathy Eisen, Gary Elder, Brian Ellison, Jim Farrington, Diana Filler, Graham Frederick, Ben Garrett, LaTanya Garza, Alex Gay-Dagnogo, Sherry Glenn, Annette Green, Phil Greig, Christine Griffin, Beth Guerra, Vanessa Haadsma, Jim Hall, Matt Hammoud, Abdullah Hauck, Roger Hernandez, Shane Hertel, Kevin Hoadley, Jon Hoitenga, Michele Hood, Rachel Hope, Kara Hornberger, Pamela Howell, Gary Huizenga, Mark Iden, Brandt Inman, Larry Johnson, Cynthia Johnson, Steven Jones, Jewell Kahle, Bronna Kennedy, Sheryl Koleszar, Matt Kuppa, Padma LaFave, Beau LaGrand, David Lasinski, Donna Leutheuser, Eric Liberati, Frank Lightner, Sarah Lilly, Jim Love, Leslie Lower, James Maddock, Matt Manoogian, Mari Marino, Steve Markkanen, Gregory Meerman, Luke Miller, Aaron Mueller, Mike Neeley, Cynthia Neeley, Sheldon O'Malley, Jack Pagan, Kristy Paquette, Brad Peterson, Ronnie Pohutsky, Laurie Rabhi, Yousef Reilly, John Rendon, Daire Robinson, Isaac Sabo, Terry Schroeder, Andrea Shannon, Nate Sheppard, Jason Slagh, Bradley Sneller, Tim Sowerby, William Stone, Lori Tate, Joseph VanSingel, Scott VanWoerkom, Greg Vaupel, Hank Wakeman, Rodney Warren, Rebekah Webber, Michael Wendzel, Pauline Wentworth, Jason Whiteford, Mary Whitsett, Karen Wittenberg, Robert Witwer, Angela Wozniak, Douglas Yancey, Tenisha Yaroch, Jeff Senators Alexander, Betty Jean Ananich, Jim Barrett, Tom Bayer, Rosemary Bizon, John Brinks, Winnie Bullock, Marshall Bumstead, Jon Chang, Stephanie Daley, Kevin Geiss, Erika Hertel, Curtis Hollier, Adam Horn, Kenneth Irwin, Jeff Johnson, Ruth LaSata, Kimberly Lauwers, Dan Lucido, Peter MacDonald, Michael MacGregor, Peter McBroom, Ed McCann, Sean McMorrow, Mallory Moss, Jeremy Nesbitt, Aric Outman, Rick Polehanki, Dayna Runestad, Jim Santana, Sylvia Schmidt, Wayne Shirkey, Mike Stamas, Jim Theis, Lana VanderWall, Curtis Victory, Roger Wojno, Paul Zorn, Dale House Committees Agriculture Appropriations Commerce and Tourism Communications and Technology Education Elections and Ethics Energy Families, Children, and Seniors Financial Services Government Operations Health Policy Insurance Joint Committee on Administrative Rules Joint Select Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic Judiciary Local Government and Municipal Finance Military, Veterans and Homeland Security Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Oversight Regulatory Reform Select Committee on Reducing Car Insurance Rates Tax Policy Transportation Ways and Means Only items with status Only items with meetings Sort by BillSort by SponsorSort by Committee OVERSIGHTSorted by: SequenceNo Committee Home Page: OversightChair: Matt HallClerk Phone: 5173737256 Click for a list of only bills that are currently in committee. All bills ever referred to this committee. PLEASE NOTE: Meeting dates reflect that bill was on agenda, but does not insure that it was taken up at that meeting. Bill/ResolutionCommitteeSponsorSubjectMeetingsStatus HB 4148 of 2019OversightCherry, JohnCivil rights: public records; certain boards and commissions; require to record and post meetings. Amends 1976 PA 267 (MCL 15.261 - 15.275) by adding sec. 9a.2019-04-25, 2019-05-02 HB 4177 of 2019OversightCherry, JohnPublic employees and officers; ethics; office of government accountability; create. Creates new act. HB 4178 of 2019OversightNeeley, SheldonCriminal procedure; sentencing guidelines; sentencing guidelines for violating the government accountability act; enact. Amends sec. 11a, ch. XVII of 1927 PA 175 (MCL 777.11a). TIE BAR WITH: HB 4177'19 HB 4336 of 2019 (PA 156 of 2019)OversightJohnson, StevenLegislature; auditor general; authority and process to obtain confidential or electronic data; codify. Amends title & sec. 1 of 2003 PA 1 (MCL 13.101).2019-05-16, 2019-05-23 HB 4386 of 2019OversightPohutsky, LaurieAdministrative procedure; rules; prohibition on adoption of rules by state agencies from being more stringent than federal regulations; eliminate. Amends secs. 32 & 45 of 1969 PA 306 (MCL 24.232 & 24.245). HB 4435 of 2019OversightReilly, JohnCivil rights; speech and assembly; campus free speech act; create. Creates new act.2019-04-18, 2019-05-16 HB 4436 of 2019OversightReilly, JohnCivil rights; speech and assembly; safeguards for exercise of free speech rights on community college and university campuses; provide for. Creates new act.2019-04-18, 2019-05-16, 2019-08-29 HB 4444 of 2019 (PA 37 of 2020)OversightJohnson, StevenCivil rights: public records; publication by electronic means; allow. Amends sec. 11 of 1976 PA 442 (MCL 15.241).2019-04-25, 2019-05-02 HB 4445 of 2019 (PA 38 of 2020)OversightIden, BrandtCivil rights: public records; fee for public record provided on nonpaper physical media; clarify scope of nonpaper physical media. Amends sec. 4 of 1976 PA 442 (MCL 15.234).2019-04-25, 2019-05-02 HB 4468 of 2019 (PA 36 of 2020)OversightJohnson, StevenCivil rights; public records; method of correspondence used for freedom of information requests; modify. Amends sec. 5 of 1976 PA 442 (MCL 15.235).2019-04-25, 2019-05-02 HB 4574 of 2019 (PA 155 of 2019)OversightLaGrand, DavidLegislature; auditor general; provisions allowing auditor general access to records; clarify. Amends 1846 RS 1 (MCL 8.1 - 8.9) by adding sec. 6a. TIE BAR WITH: HB 4336'192019-05-16, 2019-05-23 HB 4575 of 2019OversightHoitenga, MicheleState agencies (existing); executive office; contents and reporting of certain memoranda of understanding; modify. Creates new act. HB 4831 of 2019OversightLightner, SarahState financing and management; purchasing; bids on certain options on certain procurement contracts; allow. Amends sec. 261 of 1984 PA 431 (MCL 18.1261).2019-11-07, 2020-01-16 HB 5015 of 2019OversightBerman, RyanPublic employees and officers: state; list of employees, position title, classified or nonclassified civil service distinction, and salary for each state department; require monthly internet posting. Amends sec. 1 of 2016 PA 370 (MCL 15.451).2019-11-07, 2020-01-16 HB 5217 of 2019OversightIden, BrandtHigher education; other; preventing a student athlete from receiving compensation for the use of his or her name, image, likeness, or reputation; prohibit. Creates new act.2020-01-23 HB 5218 of 2019OversightTate, JosephCrimes; other; criminal and civil provisions related to prohibited conduct of an athletic agent; repeal. Repeals sec. 411e of 1931 PA 328 (MCL 750.411e) & repeals sec. 2968 of 1961 PA 236 (MCL 600.2968). TIE BAR WITH: HB 5217'192020-01-23 HB 5312 of 2020OversightGarrett, LaTanyaCivil rights; public records; freedom of information act requests; eliminate fees for production of records, and modify number of days public body has to respond to request. Amends title & secs. 4 & 5 of 1976 PA 442 (MCL 15.234 & 15.235) & adds sec. 4a. HB 5426 of 2020OversightHall, MattState agencies (existing): technology, management, and budget; Michigan cyber civilian corps act; modify. Amends secs. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 of 2017 PA 132 (MCL 18.222 et seq.). TIE BAR WITH: HB 5427'202020-02-06, 2020-02-20 HB 5427 of 2020OversightVanWoerkom, GregState agencies (existing): technology, management, and budget; Michigan cyber civilian corps advisory board duties; modify. Amends secs. 9 & 10 of 2017 PA 132 (MCL 18.229 & 18.230). TIE BAR WITH: HB 5426'202020-02-06, 2020-02-20 SB 0686 of 2019OversightBarrett, Tom Public employees and officers; other; state agency or department disciplining an employee for communicating with a legislator; prohibit unless the communication is prohibited. Creates new act.2020-03-05, 2020-05-19 SCR 0029 of 2020OversightNesbitt, AricA concurrent resolution to request that the Auditor General conduct a financial and performance audit of the Unemployment Insurance Agency within the next 6 months and provide recommendations to address any organizational deficiencies.


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- Status : Released
- Release Date of film : 2001-06-17
- Original title : The Fast and the Furious
- Tagline : Live life 1/4 mile at a time.
- Movie Genre : Action, Crime, Thriller,
- Languages spoken : English
- Film Note : -movie_rating-
- Societies of production : Universal Pictures
- Vote Count : 1660
- Duration of movie : 106
- Average rate : 6.2
- Youtube Id : -youtube_id-
- Paul Walker Character (Brian O'Conner)
- Vin Diesel Character (Dominic Toretto)
- Michelle Rodriguez Character (Letty)
- Jordana Brewster Character (Mia Toretto)
- Rick Yune Character (Johnny Tran)
- Chad Lindberg Character (Jesse)
- Johnny Strong Character (Leon)
- Matt Schulze Character (Vince)
- Ted Levine Character (Sgt. Tanner)
- Ja Rule Character (Edwin)
- Vyto Ruginis Character (Harry)
The Fast and the Furious Synopsis:
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text:
Donald Trump is bringing back 13 players fired from past "Apprentice" contests, plus one notable winner, in the first-ever "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice."
The group includes: country music star Trace Adkins, actors Stephen Baldwin and Gary Busey, magician and illusionist Penn Jillette, DJ artist and rap star Lil Jon, NBA Hall-of-Famer Dennis Rodman, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, actresses and authors Marilu Henner and Lisa Rinna, singer La Toya Jackson, TV personality and actress Claudia Jordan, reality star Omarosa, who competed in the first, pre-celebrity edition of "The Apprentice," Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick — plus Poison frontman Bret Michaels, who in 2010 emerged as the winner despite life-threatening ailments that included a brain hemorrhage and hospitalization for what doctors called a warning stroke.
"We wouldn't have done the 'All-Star' concept unless we were able to get the right contestants back," said Trump, the host and boardroom boss who once again will be pronouncing each contestant's fate.
U.S. & World
The series begins shooting the new season Monday for a March 2013 premiere.
"They're all very smart, and I think they learned a lot from their last go-around," Trump told The Associated Press of the group. "This time, some of them will change their game to fool their rivals — some for better, some for worse."
The winner, as usual, will collect $250,000 to donate to his or her chosen charity.
"This year is going to be insane," Bret Michaels said Friday on NBC's "Today" show. "The competition is going to be insane. The level is going to be crazy."
With returning contestants comes renewed hostilities. Season seven stars Trace Adkins and Stephen Baldwin had several altercations during their stint on the show.
"It's been sweet and calm so far. That's kind of scary," Baldwin said on "Today." "I think we have a few zingers in us. It's going to be exciting."
Adkins sees things a bit differently.
"I hate him," he said in his trademark southern growl.
The upcoming season will be the 13th for the overall "Apprentice" franchise, a track record that amazes Trump.
"Who would have thought?" he marveled in an AP interview. "When we first signed for it, they didn't even take an option (for more seasons). No one thought it would go any further."
It did, catching on with its debut in winter 2004, as Trump introduced "You're fired" to the treasury of TV catchphrases.
Since then, he said, it's been lucrative and fun.
"My business is real estate, but the show has been an amazing experience," he said, "good in every way."
It's also been, in some fashion, a learning experience.
The main thing he's learned? "You can never predict," he replied. "I'll see a contestant come out, and you would say they're going to win, on the first day. And then they're the first one fired."
But there's been one other thing he's discovered: the impact of his exposure on TV.
"I was very well-known before the show," he said, "but, frankly, I used to be able to walk outside. I can't even walk outside now! Overall I think the show's great, but there are times when you'd like to have a little bit of privacy."
Then Trump laughed at a reporter's facetious suggestion that he consider donning a disguise.
"I could put on a real wig," Trump joked. "A lot of people say, 'He wears a wig.' I don't. But maybe I should wear one: a big black sucker!"
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


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This kits have everything pre-cut and include the borders and binding fabrics exactly like the quilt pictured here. The quilt is even already laid-out with the squares pre-stacked in labeled rows and ready to pick-up and sew together quickly.
Red and White Pennant Banner & Etsy De-stash
16 Comments
Michelle BellJanuary 22, 2011 at 8:04 am
Have you tried the Shout Color Catchers in your washing machine? I had read how great they are-especially for quilts. I got some, and to test them I threw one in the wash with my maroon scrubs which never fail to turn something pink if it gets in there with them. I threw in a white sock who lost it's friend-and it was still white when it came out! The shout sheet was pink instead. I threw
MelissaJanuary 22, 2011 at 10:02 am
I love the pennant! Red is my favorite color, you could use that for so many things! It would be really cute for a birthday party!
DeAnnaJanuary 22, 2011 at 10:17 am
Perfect timing! Last night I spent a good hour scouring online looking for a pennant idea and voila! This morning it is here all ready for me to begin!! I know what I am doing with my Saturday night!! Thank you, it's super cute!
KristieJanuary 22, 2011 at 10:41 am
I am seriously tempemted to buy up all those squares…that quilt you made your daughter last year is probably my most favorite ever. But I tol myself no more fabric! Dilemma….we'll see what happens 🙂
Connie204January 22, 2011 at 11:36 am
Love your baby quilt and the valentine fabric is really fun.
Connie204
JenniferJanuary 22, 2011 at 11:42 am
Question on the pennant. Do you put a stabilizer on them so they hang well?? I did a birthday pennant banner, but I did a back and batting in between to make them puffy.
BizJanuary 23, 2011 at 8:24 am
Amy I don't think I can say this enough!
Everything you touch is purely amazing to me!
I agree with Michelle, have you ever tried the shout color catchers, I love them!
I start my beginners quilting class in about 4 weeks!
Yipee!
Biz
HecketyJanuary 23, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Love your pennants! So jolly, and the cute birds, but I've just been reading Michelle Bell's Comment at the top and I'm thinking maybe I'll dig out some runny fabrics and try that trick for myself. The place does tend to look bare when the decorations come done, true enough.
Like the pastel colours in your baby quilt too…I'm off to check out your Etsy shop to seeeee…
JessicaJanuary 24, 2011 at 8:41 am
I'll vouch for the Shout Color Catchers too, I never wash a quilt without one since I ruined one about two years ago.
I'm loving your red and white banner, I think I need to make one too!
amy smartJanuary 24, 2011 at 10:18 am
Yes! I totally agree with all the Shout Color Catcher love. I'd never heard of them until I had the disaster with that red bird fabric – I used them for the first time trying to salvage that quilt and they worked!! Now I throw them in with every quilt as an insurance policy just in case.
Beverly @ FlamingoToes.comJanuary 24, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Your pennant is so sweet! I love those fabrics!
I am stopping over form Quilt Story – I'm one of the other judges and I had to come over and say hi! 🙂 I Checked out your tutorials and saw so many great projects. So I'm following along now! So glad I found you. 🙂
Nanette Merrill and daughtersJanuary 24, 2011 at 1:30 pm
very very cute, I'm making 2 baby quilts kind of like this.
JulieJanuary 24, 2011 at 3:27 pm
I love the look of the fireplace, pilows so cute, the banner, and the cute baby quilt. You are amazing I love it. You are the best. I finally washed the quilt today…it went well, looks great.
love Julie =)
QuiltstoryJanuary 31, 2011 at 12:59 am
As alway, so adorable. Love the pennant!!
SharonFebruary 11, 2011 at 7:38 am
I bought your valentines pennants from your etsy shop & got them in the mail. Thanks! Would love to know how you put yours together. Do you use a second layer of fabric under the triangles?
SharonFebruary 11, 2011 at 9:10 am
Hi! I've been following your blog lately & love all you do. I bought your valentine's triangles from etsy & I'm wondering how your put yours together. Do you use a second layer of fabric under the patterned fabric?

Thanks!


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Programmable DNA, the software of Life, is finally here! Twist Bioscience is developing a disruptive Synthetic DNA technology that will change the world, enabling widespread health and sustainability. Synthetic biologists will use our products to engineer how organisms produce cures to diseases, everyday chemicals are made using the atmosphere as the carbon source, plants make their own fertilizers, in-vivo diagnostics will alert us when we are sick, and many more applications.
Here at Twist Bioscience we hold three things paramount to success in our organization. Passion, for the careers that we foster using our talents, drive and goals. Teamwork, displayed by how we interact, engage and collaborate to create the best in class products. Technical prowess, being the absolute best at what we do in our work. We seek the same who possess these character traits to apply and be considered in becoming part of the Twist story.
At Twist we offer:
- Best-in-class compensation and equity depending on experience
- Comprehensive benefits including health, dental, vision, disability insurance, life insurance, 401k and personal time off
We are located and have:
- San Francisco, CA
- Mission Bay / Dog Patch area
- Walking distance from Caltrain (4th and King), free shuttle available from Caltrain
- On KT line, UCSF/Mission Bay stop


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People with autism experience a more extreme version of the world than the rest of us. For more than 90%, sounds are louder, colors are brighter, and touch can be a disturbing intrusion. The reason, according to a new study, may be that many autistic people also have synesthesia, a condition of intertwined perception in which one sense stimulates another.
Most people with synesthesia don't find the condition disturbing; many enjoy it. It certainly makes the world a more interesting place. Synesthetes may see the sound of a symphony as a skein of rippling lines, for example, or a black letter "A" as bright red. People with synesthesia say their experience is not the same as imagination, but they also realize their perceptions are in their own mind and not part of objects in the outside world. "Their experience is somewhere in between, neither imaginary not external, an extra layer in the mind," says cognitive neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who led the study.
Synesthesia has been linked to autism in a few isolated instances. But Baron-Cohen, who studies both conditions, felt that the underlying similarities warranted closer scrutiny. Scientists believe synesthesia is caused by an overabundance of connections between neurons. Curiously, a similar surfeit has been proposed as the cause of autism. While these interconnections may provide synesthetes with a rich intermingling of sensory experience, people with autism might find the blending of the senses distracting—sometimes to the point where they become withdrawn or soothe themselves with monotonous movements, such as rocking.
So Baron-Cohen and Donielle Johnson, who was studying autism for her graduate work at Cambridge, along with a few colleagues, sent online questionnaires to a group of adults, with and without autism or Asperger syndrome. Because autistic people often have trouble relating to others, respondents' ratings of their social skills—like the ability to empathize with a fictional character or judge from another person's tone when it was their turn to speak in a phone conversation—were used as a gauge of the disorder. Tests for synesthesia included questions like, "Do you see colors when you hear musical notes, or read individual (black) letters?"
People with autism were almost three times as likely to have some type of synesthesia, the researchers report online this week in Molecular Autism. Of the 164 adults with autism, 31, or 18.9%, met the criteria for synesthesia, compared with only seven (7.2%) of the 97 "typical" respondents. The most common types of synesthesia reported were "grapheme-color" synesthesia, in which black letters appear in color, and "sound-color," in which sounds evoke colors.
"We were surprised at the size of the difference—almost a fifth of people with autism had synesthesia as well. It is remarkable that this link hasn't been documented before," Baron-Cohen says. One explanation may be that the study was limited to people with autism capable of answering online questionnaires, he surmises; many people with autism may not be able to understand or explain their experiences.
According to Baron-Cohen, the mixed senses in each condition may result from extra neural connections that are usually pruned away in infancy, as the brain's wiring develops. In autism and synesthesia, he explains, this pruning may not occur in the typical way, so the interconnections persist even into adulthood.
Baron-Cohen says that brain imaging protocols used to study synesthesia could now also be used for autism. He also suggests that genetic investigations into the overlap between the two conditions might help the hunt for "autism genes."
"This is a very clever study that provides important new information," says neuroscientist David Amaral, the research director of the Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute at the University of California, Davis. He feels it's too early to draw conclusions about the neurobiological basis of autism from responses given by a small group of high-functioning people with autism. But, he says, "it will be interesting to see whether the individuals with autism and synesthesia differ in some fundamental way from those with either condition alone—whether they have different brain organization, for example."
Johnson adds that the work may point to ways of helping caregivers to figure out which colors and stimuli may be distracting or soothing, resulting in more autism-friendly environments.


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Megan Hilty & Sean Hayes: NBC's Summer TCA Tour Panel!
Megan Hilty and Sean Hayes attend the cocktail reception following NBCUniversal's 2013 Summer Television Critics Association Tour event held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Saturday afternoon (July 27) in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The actors were there to support their new show Sean Saves the World alongside co-stars Linda Lavin, Thomas Lennon, Samantha Isler, and Echo Kellum.
Michael J. Fox and Betsy Brandt were in attendance that day to promote their new series The Michael J. Fox Show!
35+ pictures inside of Megan Hilty and Sean Hayes at the panel…


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text:
I encountered a weird problem with ReflectionFunction, described in ticket 44139 of PHP Bugs.
If for some reason you need to call with invoke, or invokeArgs, a function like array_unshift (that accepts internally the array by reference) you could use this code to avoid the generated warning or fatal error.
function unshift(){
$ref = new ReflectionFunction('array_unshift');
$arguments = func_get_args();
return $ref->invokeArgs(array_merge(array(&$this->arr), $arguments));
I don't know about performances (you can create an array manually too, starting from array(&$this->something) and adding arguments). However, it seems to work correctly without problems, at least until the send by reference will be usable with one single value ...


text:
|McClung, Anna
|McClung, Anna
Submitted to: American Society of Agronomy Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/5/2008
Publication Date: 10/5/2008
Citation: Tabien, R.E., Samonte, S.B., Mcclung, A.M. 2008. Crop improvement gains in Texas rice cultivars released from 1944 to 1992. American Society of Agronomy Abstracts. Paper No. 552-7.
Interpretive Summary:
Technical Abstract: Information on the contribution of plant breeding to changes in grain yield and agronomic traits is useful in optimizing selection gains and in estimating the breeding value of the germplasm used. This study was conducted to determine the contribution of crop improvement to changes in Texas rice cultivars during the 48 years since the release of Bluebonnet in 1944. Field experiments of 23 released cultivars were conducted in three environments, which included two plantings at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Beaumont, TX, and one planting at the research station in Eagle Lake, TX. Replicated experimental plots were arranged in a split-plot design with nitrogen (N) levels (95 and 190 kg ha-1 N) as whole plots and cultivars as subplots. Data on number of days to heading, plant height, whole and total milled rice percentages, and grain yield were determined and analyzed using ANOVA and LSD. Cultivar trait parameters were regressed against year of cultivar release in each N level to determine the direction and rate of change due to cultivar improvement. Significant variation among cultivars was found for all traits evaluated. N affected all traits except milled rice percentages. There was a significant decrease in number of days to heading and plant height of cultivars released since 1944. Both whole and total milled rice percentage increased at 0.06 and 0.03% yr-1, respectively. There was a significant linear increase in the grain yield of rice cultivars released from 1944. The rate of increase due to the rice breeding was 42 and 26 kg yr-1 for the 190 and 95 kg ha-1 N treatments, respectively. The positive slope demonstrated the significant progress that rice breeding has achieved in increasing intrinsic cultivar yield potential regardless of fertilizer inputs and in developing cultivars that respond favorably to additional fertilizer inputs.


text:
This archive contains the distribution HTML-FormFu-Model-DBIC,
version 2.00:
Integrate HTML::FormFu with DBIx::Class
This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Carl Franks.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
This README file was generated by Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Readme v5.015.


text:
Historic Properties
|Historic Properties
|"Dutch" Queen Anne
|610 Monroe Street
|1261, 1295 Jackson Street
|1261, 1295 Jackson Street
|A. A. Warren House
|1160 Jackson Street
|Berryessa Adobe
|373 Jefferson Street
|Daniel Moody House
|1111 Harrison Street
|Dr Paul's House
|1116 Washington Street
|Dugdell-Pinkham House
|1061 Fremont Street
|Elim German Community Church
|1298 Homestead Road
|Franck House
|1179 Washington Street
|George L. Sullivan House
|725 Madison Street
|H.L. Warburton House
|1191 Fremont Street
|Harris Lass Historic Preserve
|1889 Market Street
|Headen-Inman House
|1509 Warburton Avenue
|Henry Warburton House
|716 Main Street
|James Lick Mansion
|554 Mansion Park Drive
|Jamison-Brown House
|1505 Warburton Avenue
|John C. McPherson House
|561 Washington Street
|Johnson House
|1159 Main street
|Kiely House
|1588 Homestead Road
|Lewis Gardner House
|1210 Jackson Street
|Luis Arguello House
|1085 Santa Clara Street
|Mission Santa Clara de Asis
|500 El Camino Real
|Morgan House
|1380 Lincoln Street
|Morse Mansion
|981 Fremont Street
|Newton Jackson House
|1409 Lexington Street
|Palmer and Shoemaker Homes
|1195 and 1142 Main street
|Robert Menzel House
|1191 Benton Street
|Russell-Robinson House
|1184 Washington Street
|Santa Clara Railroad Depot
|1005 Railroad Avenue
|Semas House
|1543 Franklin Street
|Trogden House
|1669 Catherine Street
|Wilson House
|610 Jackson Street
|Women's Club Adobe
|3260 The Alameda


text:
I received Leah's ornament from the Prairie Schooler exchange. Isn't he amazing! She did a fantastic job with the stitching, he's actually quite a tiny thing as he is stitched on what looks like 40 ct fabric. I'm so happy with this exchange and I hope Leah receives the ornament from me soon.
I edited this post to change the original pic to one that I swiped from Leah. And I included the PS ornie I stitched for her.
Thanks for everyone's comments on my Blackbird finish! These are great designs to work on, and not as time consuming as most of what I take on. Barbara, if you are interested in joining our SAL, please leave your e-mail and I'll have Eva (moderator exceptionale) send you an invitation to the forum.
As Vonna mentioned, I think I have high octane on my turbo-needles (I love that comment!) as I'm just finishing up with Lynn's RR. I hope to have a picture of the finished piece by the weekend. Now just 2 more RR's to catch up with....my Guild one, which is still in the early stages so should be quick to do, and Ann's Neighbourhood, and I already have the design picked out and ready to start.
It was definitely a great day for good news ~ Carrie was offered a job at the new Durham Regional Cancer Centre as a radiation therapist. This was her first choice for jobs actually so she is absolutely thrilled! This is a new centre that is opening up in the spring of next year, so on the downside, she won't be starting until sometime between March and May, but on the upside, its only a 10 minute drive away. No worries about commuting to Toronto for a job! And on top of that, she was also offered a position on a scrapbook design team. I don't have the details of the name, but I'm sure its all on her blog. So she will have something to keep her busy until the paying job starts!
Thursday, November 30, 2006
An ornament and Great News!
Posted by Wendy at 8:08 am 13 comments
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
When This You See
When This You See, by Blackbird Designs
Stitched on 32 ct Antique Ivory Belfast with DMC, GAST and WDW threads.
August 1st-November 26, 2006
I'm one of the last ones in our SAL to finish this.....but its done! This was a very pleasant piece to stitch on and I'm hooked now on Blackbird Designs. The more I see of them, the most I like. Well I guess that can be said for most cross stitch designers, at least where I'm concerned. I'm hoping to get this in to be framed next week along with a couple of other pieces....
Our next Blackbird SAL starts in January, its still up in the air if we start on January 1st or later on, to give everyone a chance to get their materials. The next piece is going to be Garden of Life. And since I joined Needlecraft Corner's Loose Feathers Club, I already have all my supplies so I'm ready to start. All others interested in joining us?
Posted by Wendy at 7:22 am 17 comments
Thursday, November 23, 2006
A Finished Finish
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends!
Kelly and Chris made the 13 hour drive to New York from North Carolina yesterday to visit with Chris' family. And of course mother that I am, I was very happy to get the phone call that they had arrived safely. I'm sure they are feeling very full right now after a big turkey dinner.
My Noah's Ark bellpull was finally completed and handed off to baby Scarlett the other day. My sister had a family lunch at her new house for all the 'girls' and it was a perfect chance for me to give my niece the baby gift I had made. Being a cross stitcher herself, she was very pleased and I was very relieved!
And I finished up all the sewing on the Christmas towels I had been working on. I made 8 in total and gave 5 of them as gifts to my sisters and cousins. So that leaves 3 left, one for me and Carrie and Kelly.
And I have to post this picture of Scarlett. She is just such a sweetheart with the biggest blue eyes ever. As you can see from the picture, Carrie really just didn't want to put her down!
Tonight is 4 Saisons night - I'm hoping to get a little more accomplished so I can show an update.
Posted by Wendy at 7:09 pm 12 comments
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
A Finish!
Bent Creek Snappers
on 32 ct Platinum linen, using DMC, GAST and WDW thread.
Started on January 1st, 2006 ~ Finished on November 18, 2006
Whew, a larger finish for me! I'm very happy with the way this turned out. I used two sets of buttons from Dress It Up sets, hearts around the border and teeny tiny buttons in the blocks themselves, instead of using the snaps that came with the patterns. These are really sweet and I will have to use them again.
And I got my parcel mailed out for the Prairie Schooler board ornament exchange. I took a scan of the ornament also and as soon as the recipient receives it, I'll post it.
I'm still looking for 4 more people for my Pay it Forwards. I'm afraid I joined in this too late and everyone has already signed on. Vonna has suggested a sideways swap, so even though you have already signed on with someone, feel free to join mine also!
Posted by Wendy at 7:29 am 16 comments
Monday, November 20, 2006
Paying it forwards
I've been bitten! I've been reading about this for a while, on everyone's blog, but with Christmas just around the corner, I decided it was time for me to plunge in too.
I signed up on Rachel's blog to receive a handcrafted item. Now I'm going to "pay it forward" to the first 5 people who comment here and tell me that they would like to receive something from me. I will send you some form of needlework, and in return, you will add this same offer to your blog. Most folks are giving themselves a 365 day deadline to complete all five gifts, which sounds reasonable (though hopefully we won't need the whole year!).
Please comment, then email me (wjbolduc @ rogers.com) with your snail mail address so I will know where to send your gift, then quick like a bunny go post your own pay it forward offer! This will be a fun exercise in stitching and giving.
Posted by Wendy at 4:48 pm 5 comments
I love a parade
On Saturday night, we went to the local Santa Claus parade. We have no little children in the house any more to see Santa and pass along their letters, but it is so much fun to see all the floats and everyone who takes part. I love the night time parades, with all the lights and the music.
Here are Carrie and Jean-Francois, bundled up as it was a little chilly.
I love a pipe band, and there were a couple of brass bands too.
And what's a parade without clowns on scooters?
But it was definitely getting very cold so we were very glad to see Santa finally show up!
Brrrr, we even have snow this morning. Winter is definitely on the way.
Posted by Wendy at 9:20 am 2 comments
Friday, November 17, 2006
Project Bag
I picked this cool pattern up the other day at the local quilt shop. It was to make a project tote bag and the kit actually included all the fabrics that I am using for my Guild sewing box. So ... well of'course I had to buy it!
I decided to make it first with some fabrics from my stash, because I didn't trust myself to make it with the sewing box fabrics, figuring I would destroy the whole thing and then wind up having to buy another metre of two of fabric.
But this thing sewed up so quickly and easily and its so cool!
There are 2 pockets on the outside of the tote, for storing scissors and assorted other goodies. On the inside, you actually sew in 6 of the large size Ziploc baggies (have I mentioned how much I love Ziploc baggies?) and these are great for keeping all your threads and miscellaneous goodies needed for a project.
There are Velcro ties to hold everything all in together, and voila! you're good to go! I love it. Now that I've made it once, I feel comfortable making it with the good fabric, but I love the batiks that I used for the first one too. Well I usually have more then one project on the go at a time, so I really need several more....;-D
Posted by Wendy at 5:29 pm 9 comments
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The Graduate
We attended Carrie's graduation ceremony at the University of Toronto yesterday. What a wonderful moment for parents to see! The ceremony was held at Convocation Hall, a 99 year old building, which was also thankfully very warm, since I spent the previous 50 minutes waiting outside for Rick to come from work, try to find a parking place in downtown Toronto (a near impossible task) and find the hall where I was waiting with his ticket.
Really the ceremony was over too fast, given that Carrie had spent the past 5 years studying so hard. So now she officially has her Bachelor of Science Honours degree, with her diploma in Medical Radiation Sciences. Here is a picture of the graduates - Carrie in the centre with her friends Deb and Joanna.
And of course a picture with her mum and dad, too!
Posted by Wendy at 7:57 am 11 comments
Friday, November 10, 2006
My letter K
I read this on Christine's blog and thought it would be a fun thing to try. She kindly assigned me a 'K' and I copied the instructions pretty much directly from her site (sorry :-)
Comment to this message and I will assign you a letter of the alphabet. Then go to your journal and post a list of 10 words that begin with this letter and what they mean to you.
Here goes:
1. K ~ Kelly, of course, my almost 21 year old daughter, is the very first person who comes to mind.
2. K ~ Kids, and I have 3 of 'em!
3. K ~ Karen, my oldest sister, who started me off on quilting and whom I have finally managed to drag over to the dark (but enlightened) side of cross stitch.
4. K ~ Kelsey, daughter Carrie's doggy who lives with us now. She is a Schnoodle and a wonderfully loving doggy, except that hubby keeps threatening to have her 'barker' removed.
5. K ~ Kitty cats, I love 'em but can't have them in the house because of hubby's dreadful allergy to them.
6. K ~ Kits, meaning cross stitch ones, that is, I still buy them even if it means I swap out the fabric and even the floss sometimes.
7. K ~ Knit, another hobby which I love to do but too many other things just get in the way.
8. K ~ Kangeroo, do you know I have never actually seen one of these guys in real life? Well not at any zoos, that is.
9. K ~ Knees, which I am starting to feel a little more tonight, especially since I started back on my 30 minute walks.
10. K ~ Kiss, this one thanks to Carrie, because you know all I seem to be able to think of are C-words? But this one means a lot to me too, so its best left for the end.
Whew .... I did it, and it was harder than I thought. I think its time for bed!
Posted by Wendy at 10:50 pm 8 comments
Thursday, November 09, 2006
My house
Its finished and ready to pass along this weekend at our stitching get-together. This is my house for the neighbourhood RR that my stitching friends are starting up. It is a Prairie Schooler design, of course, as that's all I seem to be stitching these days.
And last night I finished the stitching on my PS ornament for the exchange that's due out in another 10 days. Now I'm sure its going to take me the rest of the 10 days to figure out exactly how to finish it. No pictures, the recipient may be reading this!
And I'm back on to B is for Blackbird, 22 blocks complete....4 left to go.
But today is Thursday which means its "Saisons" night. The past 2 weeks I've been working on the tree which means it looks like very little progress has been made, so no pics on that one recently either, sigh, its such a huge piece but I love it.
Posted by Wendy at 7:31 am 17 comments
Monday, November 06, 2006
Scrapbook Layouts
I had a great weekend - scrapbooking with my sisters. Here are pics of the 2 layouts I managed to get accomplished. I'm slow - I think I only have about 9,999 pictures left to do! My sister Elaine and I drove to our sister Karen's house in Kitchener and spent the entire day in her new craft room (complete with a well stocked fridge).
We spent the night and then went to Len's Mill where I picked up some absolutely gorgeous fabric to use for my Prairie Schooler blocks that I want to make into a quilt. I'm so excited to get going on this quilt finally, but I still have 4 blocks left to finish in the series. Where are those turbo needles when you need them? Len's Mill is such a great place for fabrics, there is just an endless assortment of everything you can think of sewing-wise. Now they have also increased their scrapbooking section as well, so we ended up spending a fair bit of time (and money) there before we headed out to come back home.
And stitching-wise I got a good start on my Prairie Schooler ornament for the exchange coming up!
Posted by Wendy at 7:47 am 11 comments
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Two New Finishes
My latest Prairie Schooler 2 finishes ~ C and D. I finished up C last night at the Guild meeting, I finally had a missing skein of floss that was needed for the grassy areas. And I did make some rather drastic changes to the 'D' block, to make it suit my taste a little more.
I'm so excited to see the end of this series - 2+ years and counting later. I have only A, B, Y and Z left to do (I started with X is for Cross Stitch and worked my way backwards since Y and Z were not released yet). That means 20 blocks! Do you think its time to start shopping for fabric to make these into a quilt?
Meanwhile I have become a crazed Prairie Schooler fan and can't wait for any of their new releases to come out. Which reminds me, I have a Christmas ornament to make for the PS Board, and the deadline is fast approaching.
Posted by Wendy at 8:08 am 13 comments


text:
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Shout out to Mr. Exclusive
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text:
ISLAMIST fighters seized dozens of Western and Algerian hostages in a dawn raid on a natural gas facility deep in the Sahara
ISLAMIST fighters seized dozens of Western and Algerian hostages in a dawn raid on a natural gas facility deep in the Sahara on Wednesday and demanded France halt a new offensive against rebels in neighbouring Mali.
Three people, among them one British and one French, were reported killed, but details were sketchy and numbers of those held at Tigantourine ranged from 41 foreigners - including perhaps seven Americans as well as Japanese and Europeans - to over 100 local staff, held separately and less closely watched.
What is clear is that with a dramatic counterpunch to this week's French build-up in Mali, the region's loosely allied, al Qaeda-inspired radicals have set Paris a daunting dilemma and spread fallout from Mali's hitherto obscure civil war far beyond northwest Africa, challenging Washington as well as Europeans and shutting down a major gas field that pumps energy to Europe.
The attack, which Algeria said was led by a veteran, Afghan-trained holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence, came just as French ground troops in Mali launched their first assault after six days of air strikes.
The United States, which like European powers endorsed France's decision to intervene last week against Islamists who have seized vast tracts of northern Mali, confirmed Americans were among the hostages and said it would work to "secure" them.
Western and African governments have been alarmed by a flow of weapons and fighters across the unmarked Sahara borders following the end of Libya's civil war in 2011 and fear that Mali, where Islamists drive the national army from the north nine months ago, could become an Afghan-style al Qaeda haven.
The militants, who said they had dozens of fighters in the gas field, issued no explicit threat but made clear to media in neighbouring Mauritania the hostages' lives were at risk.
"We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement from the group, which called itself the "Battalion of Blood".
In other comments carried by the Mauritanian news agency ANI, the group said its fighters had rigged explosives around the site and any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end". The unusually large numbers of gunmen and hostages involved pose serious problems for any rescue operation.
After dark, ANI quoted a militant source saying fighters had repelled a raid by Algerian troops. He added that the hostage-takers' weaponry included mortars and anti-aircraft missiles.
The militants said seven Americans were among the 41 foreign hostages - a figure U.S. officials said they could not confirm.
Norwegian energy company Statoil, which operates the gas field in a joint venture with Britain's BP and the Algerian state company Sonatrach, said nine of its Norwegian employees and three of its Algerian staff were being held.
Also reported kidnapped by various sources were five Japanese working for the engineering firm JGC Corp, a French national, an Austrian, an Irishman and a number of Britons.
The Algerian government, which fought a bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990s, said it would not negotiate.
French media said the militants were also demanding that Algeria release dozens of Islamist prisoners from its jails.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: "I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation."
He said he lacked firm information on whether there were links to the situation in Mali. Analysts pointed to shifting alliances and rivalries among Islamists in the region to suggest the hostage-takers may have a range of motives.
In their own statements, they condemned Algeria's secularist government for "betraying" its predecessors in the bloody anti-colonial war against French rule half a century ago by letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali. They also accused Algeria of shutting its border to Malian refugees.
Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia told the state news agency APS there were about 20 hostage-takers led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian who fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and set up his own group in the Sahara recently after falling out with other al Qaeda leaders.
Some of those held at the facility, near the small town of In Amenas, close to the Libyan border and about 1,300 km (800 miles) inland, had sporadic contact with the outside world.
The head of a French catering company said he had information from a manager who supervised some 150 Algerian employees at the site. Regis Arnoux of CIS Catering told France's BFM television the local staff were being prevented from leaving but were otherwise free to move around inside and keep on working.
"The Westerners are kept in a separate wing of the base," Arnoux said. "They are tied up and are being filmed. Electricity is cut off, and mobile phones have no charge.
"Direct action seems very difficult ... Algerian officials have told the French authorities as well as BP that they have the situation under control and do not need their assistance."
Mali offensive
Just days after a bold deployment of French troops to Mali, another former colony, that had largely silenced critics questioning his leadership after eight months in office, French President Francois Hollande faced a possible further escalation of the conflict, with Western targets at risk across Africa.
He has called for international support against insurgents who France says pose a threat to Africa and the West, and admits it faces a long struggle against well-equipped fighters who seized Timbuktu and other oasis towns in northern Mali and have imposed Islamic law, including public amputation and beheading.
Islamists have warned Hollande that he has "opened the gates of hell" for all French citizens.
French army chief Edouard Guillaud said ground forces were stepping up their operation to engage directly "within hours" the alliance of Islamist fighters, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and Mali's home grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA.
Residents said a column of some 30 French Sagaie armoured vehicles has set off toward rebel positions from the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital Bamako.
A Malian military source said French special forces units were taking part in the operation. Guillaud said France's strikes, involving Rafale and Mirage jet fighters, were being hampered because militants were sheltering among civilians.
Many inhabitants of northern Mali have welcomed the French attacks though some also fear being caught in the cross-fire.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian acknowledged that France faced a hard slog, particularly in western Mali where AQIM's mostly foreign fighters have camps: "It's tough. We were aware from the beginning it would be a very difficult operation."
Hollande said on Tuesday that French forces would remain in Mali until stability returned to the West African nation. Hollande said France hoped, however, to hand over to African forces in its former colony, "in the coming days or weeks".
West African military chiefs met for a second day in Bamako to hammer out details of a U.N.-mandated deployment that had been expected to start only in September but was suddenly kick-started by French intervention. They said their aim was to send in the first units of a 2,000-man emergency force on Thursday.
Hollande's intervention in Mali brings risks for eight French hostages held by AQIM in the Sahara as well as the 30,000 French citizens living across West Africa. A French helicopter pilot was killed on Friday, France's only combat death so far.
The conflict in Mali, a landlocked state of 15 million twice the size of France, has displaced an estimated 30,000 people and raised concerns across mostly Muslim West Africa of a radicalisation of Islam in the region.
"There is a great hope," one man said from Timbuktu, where he said Islamist fighters were trying to blend into civilian neighbourhoods. "We hope that the city will be freed soon."
Sahara Islamists take hostages, spreading Mali war