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Terminate terrorism: framing, gaming, and negotiating conflicts
Paradigm Publishers, Feb 28, 2010 - Political Science - 261 pages
American policy on terrorism and homeland security since the events of 9/11 reflect well-intentioned efforts to manage and eliminate major international threats. The government has deployed an impressive array of resistance strategies and reform initiatives but without achieving definitive, desired results. International terrorism today still poses a major problem for U.S. security. How do threats of terrorism subside? The United States as a superpower has experienced four major episodes of international terrorism: the Cuba skyjacking epidemic (January 1968-February 1973); the Iran hostage crisis (November 1979-January 1981); the Beirut kidnappings in Lebanon (1982-1991); and the Al Qaeda suicide bombings that commenced with attacks overseas in the late 1990s, graduated to the dramatic events of 2001, and continues with threats today. All these incidents reflect global ideological tension, high drama, and extreme frustration for policymakers who attempted to resolve these conflicts quickly and easily. In the first three cases, once defense and deterrence strategies were in place, terrorism was brought under control with mutual agreements between disputants: The U.S. decided to negotiate with terrorists in violation of stated policy. To reach that point, decision-makers shifted their view of the conflict and of their opponent. A new perspective motivated parties to seek resolution through interest-based bargaining. This study develops a framework of termination dynamics drawn from conflict resolution theory and research and applies it to the three concluded cases and the current Al Qaeda problem, offering a method for tracking progression of terrorist conflict.
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Terminate Terrorism: Framing, Gaming, and Negotiating Conflicts
Karen A. Feste
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abduction Action Afghanistan agreement aircraft aircraft hijacking airplane to Havana Algiers Accord American hostages anti-American anti-American terrorism attempt of U.S. bargaining Beirut Carter cognitive framing compliance Sources conflict resolution Cuba Cuban airplane Cuban Exiles demands diplomatic fight forces foreign freed global groups Havana Outcome Hezbollah hijacker apprehended Hijacking attempt Hijacking of Cuban Hijacking of U.S. hostage-taking hostages released Initiator Style interest-based Iran releases Iran's Iranian assets Iraq Islamic issue January jihadi Khomeini Kidnapping killed leaders Lebanon military million Muslim mutual hurting stalemate negotiated settlement negotiation readiness November October October Surprise officials Pakistan Palestinian parties perspective political President problem Qaeda Recipient reciprocal exchange regime releases all American resolve response Saudi Arabia Shah side skyjacking strategy suicide bombing Taliban target government Teheran terrorism conflict terrorist terrorist campaign threat turning points U.S. airplane U.S. citizen U.S. Embassy U.S. government U.S. plane U.S. Proposal United violence


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Notting Hill Rentals Penthouse Apartments
In this proper row housing with Grecian features of sculpted architecture, you will find a nice bright studio on the inside of this stately entrance way. The street offers ample parking in the front and the light brick and concrete features make this building a beauty from the moment you arrive. Notting Hill rentals like this apartment on the well-known avenue of Cornwall Crescent is so ideally located that within a month you will know and recognize area merchants and serving staff at the walking distance cafes.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to my stop on the YAmazing Race with MGnificent prizes, a crazy whirlwind blog hop featuring over 50 debut authors and prize packs featuring ARCs, gift certificates, swag, and more! If you haven't yet been to the Apocalypsies website, please click here to start from the beginning and read the complete rules. Now on to the race!
UNRAVELING by Elizabeth Norris
But her reincarnation, and Ben's possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. While snooping in her FBI-agent father's files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something—but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what's right in front of her: Everything that's happened—the accident, the countdown clock, Ben's sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it. As the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she's needs to uncover Ben's secrets—and keep from falling in love with him in the process.
UNRAVELING is a gripping story of one girl's fight to save her family, her world, and the one boy she never saw coming.
Got all that?
Store it away in your brain for the quiz ahead! And remember, you must complete ALL FIVE quizzes to be eligible for a prize pack.
But before you go – bonus contest! Simply leave a comment with your email address to be entered to win a pre-ordered copy of UNRAVELING!
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CSB/SJU wins internationalization award
Honor recognizes outstanding achievements in internationalization
March 7, 2012
By Mike Killeen
The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University have received the 2012 Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization by NAFSA: Association of International Educators. The award was announced March 6 by NAFSA.
Named for the late senator from Illinois, the award recognizes outstanding and innovative achievements in campus internationalization. Simon was a strong supporter of international education and foreign language learning.
Besides CSB/SJU, four other schools also received the award - Juniata College (Huntingdon, Pa.), Northern Arizona University, San Francisco State University and the University of Michigan.
"We are being recognized for 'comprehensive internationalization,' " said Joe Rogers, director of the Center for Global Education at CSB and SJU. "This is another way of saying the degree to which we have built international ideas, perspectives and learning opportunities into all aspects of our campus community and into all phases of our students' four-year experience. This is reflected in the support we receive from institutional leadership, the committed and internationally minded faculty, our international education staff and our globally engaged student body."
Internationalization at CSB and SJU has achieved great success. CSB and SJU has been the top-ranked baccalaureate institution for the number of students enrolled in semester-long study abroad programs for the past two years. During the 2009-10 school year, there were more international students attending CSB and SJU than any other private college in Minnesota.
With the launch of the Center for Global Education in 2010 and the establishment of the Global Center Advisory Council - a group composed of faculty from all four academic divisions and administrators from Academic Affairs, international student admissions and programming, Education Abroad and Fine Arts Programming - CSB and SJU have created a structure to support and sustain this comprehensive approach to internationalization.
CSB and SJU internationalization initiatives are focused in three areas: developing a globally competent faculty, a curriculum which is embedded with intercultural and global content and students who graduate prepared for life in an interconnected and globally competitive world.
One-third of the CSB and SJU faculty have led a school-sponsored international trip. During the last five years, more than 75 faculty members have participated in 14 school-sponsored faculty development trips to 11 countries.
Recent curricular developments have included the launch of a new Asian Studies major in 2009, and the reshaping of the Business Management department following a two-year review, making global leadership the focus of the new major and changing the name of the department to Global Business Leadership.
CSB and SJU will be featured in NAFSA's report, Internationalizing the Campus: Profiles of Success at Colleges and Universities, to be published this fall. CSB and SJU will also be honored at an event during International Education Week in November in Washington, D.C.


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Scary moment in the USA-New Zealand game when Alex Morgan obliterated New Zealand's goalie with a knee to the face.
Morgan looked to be trying to hop over the goalie, but she didn't quite make it. Here's the GIF. Just brutal:
Luckily, they were both okay. The goalie was checked for concussion symptoms, but she stayed in the game:
Morgan needed to be helped off, but she also looked okay:


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Even NFL network is calling out manish AKA bagdad bob
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap100...lle-revis-repsWhile the media generally pump the breaks on the significance of teams meeting with agents at the combine, the Daily News report flips that script, speculating that Johnson would rather not pay his star defensive back.
we think some people are reading too much into the team's top execs rooming three-tenths of a mile from Revis' agent in Indianapolis and not arranging a meeting. They are always just a phone call away, which is zero-tenths of a mile.


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An old metal security shed on the Portland State campus has been transformed into a flourishing public garden that doubles as an outdoor research lab.
On July 10, the PSU Department of Architecture unveiled the Shattuck Hall Ecological Learning (SHEL) Plaza on the corner of Southwest Broadway and College Street. The public plaza will be used as a green testing ground for designing and researching sustainable building materials and methods.
"It truly exemplifies what PSU wants to be about," said President Wim Wiewel. "It's about the learning, it's about the research, it's about the teaching."
Currently, the space features an experimental sloped green roof system and vertical gardens—or green walls—equipped with solar-powered tools to monitor their potential for storm water mitigation. There are four green walls featuring different vertical planting systems and facing either north, south, east, or west.
But in a couple years, when the current experiments are concluded, those vertical gardens and green roof will be removed and replaced by another sustainable building research project.
"There will always be one constant," said architecture professor and project lead Jeff Schnabel. "This will always be a public space."
As the crowd huddled in the cool shade of Shattuck Hall, Schnabel acknowledged "a list of people who said yes" to making the plaza a reality. Partners for the project include Metro, PSU Facilities and Planning, the College of Engineering, the Green Building Research Lab, local businesses, and various student groups that did much of the design work and construction of the plaza.
"Those students have dedicated—and this is no exaggeration—thousands of hours," Schnabel said.
In addition to the experimental garden systems, the plaza features a permeable cobblestone floor to naturally capture and filter water runoff, demonstration landscapes to test both native and exotic plants for water usage, and custom furniture created by architecture students.
"The furniture went in yesterday morning," said Clive Knights, chair of the Department of Architecture, "and already today there were people—including me—having lunch in the plaza."
Metro provided much of the initial investment in the project, describing the SHEL Plaza as exactly the type of community project they like to support. "Green building and green research is one of the future exports of the Portland metro region," said Metro Council President Tom Hughes. "This is a key economic development tool
for us."


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SALT LAKE CITY — Imagine Rob Bishop with his head under the hood of a car and a line of people behind him telling him the best way to fix it.
That's the scenario for the Utah congressman, the "car" in this case the delicate issue of federal lands oversight in Utah, and few would dispute the current system is a junker, rife with lawsuits, stalemates and uncertainty.
Bishop, a Republican, has spent the past 20 months as the fixer mechanic, brokering a public lands initiative process that attempts to meld a legislative solution to land use issues in seven Utah counties.
"Everybody is going to get something, but not everything they demand," he said. "That is the beauty of doing it big."
Bishop's bill will propose solutions for some 18 million acres in the extreme eastern part of Utah, with possible wilderness designations that number in the millions of acres. At the same time, it would carve out certainty for recreationers, the oil and gas industry, coal mining interests, potash extraction and more.
This is no minor tune-up.
Wednesday Bishop met with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at her request. He said she wanted to know how his "grand bargain" legislative effort was coming along.
"It was positive," he said. "She wanted a quick update of where we were in the process...We did go through in detail over the kind of things we would be putting on the table. She actually seemed very positive about it going forward."
Positive and optimistic
"Positive" is the key word that swirls around any discussions on Bishop's public lands initiative. It is the oil that keeps this engine running, even in the face of such disparate interests.
"It's quite encouraging to see the stakeholders still hitched," said Kim Christy, deputy director of Utah's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which manages lands conveyed at statehood and held in trust for financial benefit of school children.
"I am the first to admit it is a long shot." But it is a shot.
The stakes are high for Utah.
Bishop's bill, which he hopes to ready to be introduced in January, involves land swaps — it could be SITLA's largest in its history — and would mean it could trade out high-value cultural or wilderness quality lands in exchange for acreage with potential for development.
It leaves the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument off the table and it attempts to solve disputes in this swath of Utah that arise over oil and gas development, endangered species, off-roading, grazing and more.
Bishop believes faith in the continuing negotiations is helping to keep a possible monument designation in Utah by President Obama at bay, although no outright promises have been made.
"What they have said is they are positive about the process and as long as we seem to be making progress toward the solution that this would be the preferable solution where everyone is involved, as opposed to the president making a political statement," he said.
Bishop said each side can gain something and the threat of losing everything keeps everyone involved in the process.
"What we are seeing is everyone sees a potential win out of this process and that encourages them to continue on," he said. "It is important to say that unlike maybe a few years ago, when other people were less successful in trying this same kind of stuff, that everyone also views the potential of defeat."
Strange bedfellows
He said, "There have been times...that there was one side or the other who thought they had the guaranteed, safe upper hand as it was and if they stood pat, and stuck with the status quo, they would come out OK." He said now the threat of losing something provides a healthy détente.
This lands process, as a concept, has forged like positions for two unlikely bedfellows — Emery County and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).
Representatives of both say they prefer a wilderness bill to a monument designation.
"The impetus for us doing this is to have some local control for what gets designated as wilderness," said Ray Petersen, Emery County's public lands coordinator. "SUWA's Red Rock Wilderness deal or a monument designation is totally out of control, so if we can maintain some input, and some control in this process, why would we not want to do that?"
And from Scott Groene, SUWA's executive director: "I would rather we reach agreement on wilderness legislation. It would affect a much larger amount of wilderness and there could be greater certainty with legislation. We could resolve more issues."
Working the deal
Bishop is working with each of the seven counties to come up with individual public lands management proposals that contemplate wilderness designations and zones where oil and gas development, mining and recreation occur. It could be that all seven counties are part of the final package. It could be that all are not.
"All of them are just looking for certainty," Bishop said, who is still months out from having maps that detail what that proposal ultimately will look like.
Emery County is farther along in the process than the others, having submitted its plan to Bishop two years ago.
"We have negotiated a compromise over time, since this latest effort, going back a couple of decades," Petersen said.
When the Bureau of Land Management abolished cross-country motorized travel and instead designated only specific routes where it was allowed, Petersen said it was a rancorous and dramatic change for residents.
"It was the most painful process, a big change. For some of the users, it was nearly the end of the world to have to be confined to ride on trails."
The decision closed hundreds of miles of trails and was not well received, Petersen said. But within a couple of years the locals decided they could live with it.
"It took a lot of time to go through that. The end result is that we have better management of the resources."
Park expansion?
He said that same idea is at play with the idea of expanding Goblin Valley State Park by 136,000 acres. Such a move involves a transfer of BLM-managed lands and could be accomplished through Bishop's bill.
"The east side of those canyons, day in and day out, are the busiest slots on the swell. It is the farthest away from the BLM's Price field office and it really needs management now; the BLM acknowledges that."
So how is it accomplished?
"My advice is to start 15 years ago," Petersen said. "It takes time. You have to be committed to it. You cannot do it quickly and it is not going to be easy. You have to commit to collaborate, understanding that you are not going to get everything you want."
Groene said his group is waiting to see what the individual county plans look like and what ultimately is laid out on the bargaining table.
"We have said all along the only way we will reach agreement is everyone will have to make concessions, including ourselves."
Reaching agreement on a sensitive environmental issue in which industry and advocates have to compromise is not without precedent in Utah.
SUWA, the state of Utah, Bill Barrett Corp., and a host of others forged concessions in a programmatic agreement in 2010 hailed by then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as historic for what it gave up, and for what it allowed in the Nine Mile Canyon area.
Then, as in the process unfolding now, no one got what they wanted, but they got enough.
Petersen said ideally, public lands planning involves looking beyond one's own hood ornament as you're traveling toward your destination.
"There is plenty of resource, but every resource will not be used for every reason," Petersen said. "The big picture is we have to make land use decisions about what is best for the land, and sometimes that is not what is best for me, and I am not always going to get what I want. "
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Obama ducks transportation pay-fors
President Barack Obama's new budget for transportation is as ambitious as it is unachievable and indicates the White House has little appetite this year for engaging in the usual bloodsport of finding new revenues for transportation.
Obama's fiscal 2014 budget again proposes tens of billions of dollars in additional transportation spending, sketching a vision for a bolstered multimodal transportation network with large investments in freight and passenger rail as well as highway and bridge maintenance.
Story Continued Below
But the budget again whiffs on how to pay for it all, resurrecting the flaccid so-called peace dividend that Congress has passed over in various ways.
(PHOTOS: What's in Obama's 2014 budget)
From a budgetary scoring standpoint, reallocating war savings to other things is considered revenue-neutral, but Republicans have decried the tactic as gimmickry. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already called the new budget "just another left-wing wish list."
That means unless the administration changes its mind by next year and puts forward another revenue source, it'll be up to congressional leaders to find a way forward on the next transportation bill, as they did with MAP-21, which expires next year.
Of course, as long as the possibility for a grand bargain on fiscal matters is still in play, a funding fix for transportation could still hitch a ride. But for now, it means another round of uncomfortable budget hearings on Capitol Hill for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood or whoever might replace him. Last year, lawmakers relentlessly poked LaHood for using the peace dividend as a pay-for.
The budget calls for $77 billion in total spending for the Transportation Department in fiscal 2014 alone, with highway funding set at $41 billion, a slight drop from last year's enacted total of $41.9 billion but consistent with MAP-21. Transit would receive $10.9 billion — close to what it got last year.
The budget also gives the most detailed breakdown for what the administration wants to do with the $50 billion "immediate investment" Obama has proposed in various venues over the years.
The bulk of the money, $27 billion, would be used for highway repair and construction, including $2 billion for border-crossing infrastructure. The rest would be doled out in single-digit bites for airport capital grants, NextGen, rail capital, Amtrak, transit grants and other items.
The budget also contains traces of the administration's transportation reauthorization preferences again, though this year, instead of specifically consolidating programs, it mostly follows the road map laid out by MAP-21.
The administration again reprises its call to create a beachhead for rail funding within transportation's dedicated trust fund regime. The Highway Trust Fund, which also pays for federal transit programs, would be renamed the Transportation Trust Fund, with rail included under its auspices — though the budget contains no hint about how the expanded trust fund would be paid for in the long term.
The budget instead assumes a transfer of $214 billion over six years to "maintain trust fund solvency and pay for increased outlays associated" with the transportation bill that will follow MAP-21 and the addition of rail into the trust fund along with its boosted spending. Those would be paid for by the savings from winding down overseas wars.
Beyond the funding problem, the substance of the reconfigured trust fund faces a tough road in Congress, which was aware of the administration's proposal but declined to restructure the trust fund as part of MAP-21.
The plan sticks with Obama's past budgets that called for a large rail investment, though it's no longer termed "high-speed rail," which has taken on a political tinge in recent years.


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IFLA is happy to announce the name of the winner of the Trophy Competition for the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award. The Jury also wishes to give a round of virtual applause to all the entrants for their thoughtfulness and imagination.
Desirable practical qualities were that the trophy should be pleasing to handle, which included having a certain weight; hard to break; easy to clean and simple in massing. Mariano Filippini's proposal had excellent qualities, simplicity, elegance and force which led to an unanimous vote from the jury. The members found it very appealing, particularly the examples where the concrete base is inlaid with coloured glass fragments. The dual wood box too is a delightful feature.
Mariano Filippini is an Industrial Design student at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and will be granted with €5.000 sponsored by the German nursery Lorberg.
IMAGES | Courtesy of IFLA


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By Betsy Taber
While the phrase "musical theatre" tends to conjure up images of kick-lines, corny love songs and those distressingly perky "theatre-geek" kids, Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five Years" does a lot to redeem the art form.
The Thingamajig Theatre production of themusical is currently playing at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts.
The 2001 musical charts the romance between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising writer, and Catherine Hyatt, a struggling actress, from its giddy beginnings to its painful end five years later.
The twist is that Cathy's side of the story is told in reverse, starting with a broken heart and moving back to first love, while Jamie's follows the conventional laws of time and space, only meeting in the middle to duet at their wedding.
In the hands of a lesser dramatist, this could be a gimmick, but Brown uses it to provide the narrative an edge of brutal inevitability that elevates it to the level of tragedy.
What's perhaps even more impressive is, given the countless love stories swamping our bookstores and cinema screens, it's rare to find a work that deals honestly with the way most love stories end: suddenly, inexplicably and unequally.
Other than a few phone calls, there's little dialogue to speak of, something atypical in your standard book musical. Fortunately, both performers are skilled musicians who handle Brown's challenging score with incredible talent.
With charisma and confidence to spare, Tim Moore (Jamie) is quite comfortable with his character, pulling off his earlier comic numbers as well as heartbreaking ballads near the show's end.
As it is, both he and co-star Rachel Saul Pollack (Cathy) go far beyond the surface of their characters. Pollack's cabaret background gives her a sparkling comic touch, and she's got the voice to handle Brown's stunning music. While her Cathy has a snarky charm that makes her eminently watchable, it's Pollack's personality we see that clearly shows us the lingering scars that drive her all too rapidly into a doomed romance.
These two performers are clearly not working outside their comfort zones, as they explore a full range of emotions over 14 "show-stopping" songs. Moore is heartrendingly good in the central love duet, "The Next Ten Minutes," whereas Pollack brings down the house with the show's most conventional showstopper, "A Summer In Ohio."
If you're a musical theatre skeptic, "The Last Five Years" just might be enough to convince you to give it a second chance, if not outright convert you.
Pollack and Moore have the makings of fine performances, and with a director (Laura Moore) who pushed them to explore the characters' depths, this production stands as a great one and a solid production of a remarkable piece.
"The Last Five Years" runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Sept. 30. Regular show tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Tickets can be purchased online at www.pagosacenter.org or by calling 731-SHOW.


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Untreated glaucoma can put pressure on and damage the optic nerve, causing visual field loss which can progress to blindness. One person may develop nerve damage at a relatively low pressure, while another person may have high eye pressure for years and yet never develop damage.
Chronic glaucoma has been nicknamed the "sneak thief of sight" because the loss of visual field often occurs gradually over a long time with no other symptoms, and may only be recognized when it is already quite advanced.
When acute glaucoma occurs, however, one often has severe throbbing pain in one eye and blurred vision, the pupil not getting smaller when you shine a light on it, and sometimes nausea and even vomiting. This uncommon form of glaucoma is a medical emergency, and must be treated surgically immediately (preferably within 12 hours) to prevent blindness — so get to the eye doctor or emergency room immediately if this occurs.
Paradoxically, while synthetic adrenal steroids like prednisone (especially in high dose) can cause glaucoma, natural adrenal support may help lower the eye pressure.
Eye pressure is easily checked at your local eye specialist (including opticians) by simply blowing a puff of air on the eye, and should be checked each 2 years during regular eye exams.
Treatment For chronic glaucoma:
Take vitamin C powder (preferably buffered, such as Perque or powdered Ester-C vitamin C ) at a dose of 7,000-35,000 mg a day (divided through the day — less if uncomfortable diarrhea). A dose of about 250 mg per pound of body weight has ben shown to decrease eye pressure an average of 16 mm.
If you have symptoms of inadequate adrenal function (see Adrenal Exhaustion) such as low blood pressures and irritability when hungry (low blood sugar), consider a trial of Adrenal Stress End for adrenal support as well as treating low thyroid if present.
Recheck eye pressures after 6-12 weeks of treatment.
Your eye doctor has a host of reasonable medications that can lower pressure as well, and using these can also help protect your vision.


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Dr. Christian Spielvogel of the Hope College communication faculty didn't have experience in programming or a model to follow when he developed "Valley Sim," an educational, multi-player, web-based roleplaying game set during the Civil War.
Spielvogel created "Valley Sim" through a start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and a fellowship from the Virginia Endowment for the Humanities. Now, through a major new grant from the NEH, the only one to a liberal arts college through the endowment's "Digital Humanities Implementation Grants" program, he is leading a three-year effort to turn the framework that runs "Valley Sim" into a tool that other educators can easily use to develop games of their own. And then he'll give it away.
Spielvogel has been using "Valley Sim"—short for "Simulation"--in his classes at Hope since 2009, and has also shared it with college, university and high school instructors around the country. The response has been enthusiastic, with Spielvogel finding many teachers wishing that they had a similar resource for other eras and topics as well.
"No digital tool exists that makes it possible for nonprogrammers to easily develop their own humanities games and simulations," said Spielvogel, an associate professor of communication. "While similar applications have been created across a variety of commercial publishing contexts to enable individuals to create their own course, social website or textbook, this will be the first authoring workflow for humanities games and simulations that allows teacher/scholars with no programming background to develop and scaffold their own multi-player simulations in five simple steps."
The new project, "Scaling Digital Gaming to Humanities and Praxis," has received $299,221 from the NEH that will provide support through 2016. The award is one of only six nationwide announced by the NEH in July through the "Digital Humanities Implementation Grants" program. The other five recipients were at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the New York Public Library, Stanford University and Washington State University.
In "Valley Sim," students take on the identity of one of 25 real-life citizens of two communities that were on opposite sides of the Civil War. The students then interact, in character, via Internet chat as they learn about and respond to the events of the war through information featured in an online database. The emphasis is on helping students reflect together on the motivations and perspectives of those who lived through the events.
Spielvogel includes "Valley Sim" as one component of his "Communication and Conflict" class at Hope. It has also been used by more than 100 other college, university and high school instructors, reaching a total of 2,000 students.
The project has been featured in national publications such as "Campus Technology Today" and "Education Week," as well as on C-SPAN2 and in two articles by Spielvogel that were published in refereed journals.
In a precursor to the new initiative, the "Valley Sim" framework was adapted for use with "Marriage of Cultures," created by cultural anthropologist Dr. Laura Ginsberg Spielvogel of Western Michigan University, who is Spielvogel's wife, with students playing members of either a Japanese or Italian American family in the weeks leading up to a fictionalized cross-cultural wedding.
"The authoring portion of the project was challenging because the 'Valley Sim' was a customized digital tool," Spielvogel said. "However, 'Marriage of Cultures' has been so incredibly successful that it has spurred our project team to redesign the platform for widespread scalability."
The new project will involve nine teacher/scholars in the humanities, at colleges and universities around the country as well as in South Africa, in developing simulations of their own using the "Valley Sim" framework. Three will be developed each year, with topics ranging from the Salem witch trials, to the Russian Revolution, women's rights, slavery in the United States, and the tension between traditional and democratic forms of governance in South Africa.
Beyond helping the scholars create their modules, the grant will be used to incorporate a peer-review process to validate the quality of humanities games, develop community features so instructors can share and rate supplemental simulation content, and host nine hands-on workshops at the authors' home institutions to demo each completed sim and provide training to allow attendees to use the authoring wizard to create their own simulations. Ultimately, all of the materials developed through the grant, including the platform and the individual simulations, will be made available for free, unlimited use during the grant period.
In addition to Spielvogel, the staff for the three-year project includes Ginsberg; Andy Mink, executive director of LEARN NC, a program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill that focuses on K-12 education; and Dr. Megan Mullins, a senior research associate with the Carl Frost Center for Social Science Research at Hope. TekWorkforce, a web-application firm that worked with Spielvogel on earlier iterations of "Valley Sim," will be in charge of technology development for the project.
Spielvogel received crucial help in developing the platform for "Valley Sim" from Hope colleague Dr. Ryan McFall, who is a professor of computer science and chairperson of the department, and Hope computer science students. Hope students will play an important role in the new initiative as well, with students in the college's Mellon Scholars Program working with Spielvogel and other project collaborators on various aspects of the grant, such as creating animations, original videos and marketing materials, providing graphic design, and conducting administrative work.


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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Handhelds, Women, Men, Techies, Under $250, Under $500,
The next item in Gear Live's 2012 Holiday Gift Guide is the Kindle Paperwhite. Why? well, as great as e-ink readers have been (and they've been pretty stellar,) since the original Amazon Kindle was released, their one tragic flaw has been that they become pretty useless in the dark. You either simply can't read them, or have to use a small light attachment accessory. Enter the Kindle Paperwhite. Amazon has designed what we consider to be the best e-ink reader to hit the market. It's flagship feature is the front-lit display, which works great when you're in the dark and want to read your latest ebook purchase without using a backlit tablet that's hard on the eyes, or an awkward clip-on light accessory. It also supports new features like telling you how much reading time you have before you finish your current chapter, and an all-touch display with virtually no lag. Check out our Kindle Paperwhite review, unboxing gallery, and video after the break for more, and head on over to Amazon to pick up the Kindle Paperwhite for $119 for that bookworm in your life.
Honorable mention: Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight
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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: iPod touch 5th generation
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Techies, Teens, Under $250, Under $500,
Apple's focused on the iPod touch as being the "funnest iPod ever" for a while now, but the introduction of the fifth generation model put it over the top. You've got the new 4-inch Retina display, FaceTime HD video chat, 5 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video recording, and built-in gyroscope all packed into the thinnest iPod touch ever--and now it's available in a bunch of colors - silver, pink, green, blue, black red, and yellow. Of course, you need great software running on hardware like this, and the App Store fits the bill with over 700,000 apps available. A great gift for teens who don't need an iPhone, or anyone who wants a mobile iOS device that isn't a phone. Prices start at $299 (or $295 on Amazon) for the new 5th generation model, and $199 (or $195 on Amazon) for the older 4th generation version:
Be sure to check out the rest of the stuff in our 2012 Holiday Gift Guide, we're adding new suggestions every day!
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Accessories, Features, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Family, Techies, Under $100, Under $500,
The Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB is one of the cooler items we're featuing in our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. It basically turns your computer into a fully-functional live TV DVR. We know that features like Media Center exist on PCs, but the problem is that, until now, it's been hard to get a good signal into your computer. The InfiniTV 4 USB fixes that. It's a CableCARD adapter that plugs into your machine using USB. So all you need to do is insert a CableCARD from your cable provider, plug in your cable cord, and plug in to your computer. From there, you'll have access to all of the cable channels that you subscribe to, and you can record up to four different channels at once. See? We told you this was cool. Great for rooms where you only have a computer and no television, but also great if you want to incorporate a Mac or PC into your home theater setup, as it eliminates the need for a cable box, meaning you save on that montly rental fee. The Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB sells for $299, but you can get one on Amazon for $269, saving yourself 10%.
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2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Eye-Fi Pro X2
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Accessories, Cameras, Features, Techies, Under $100, Under $250, Under $500,
We bet a few of you are wondering what an SD card is doing on our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide, but give us a moment to explain. Eye-Fi cards are the bomb. What you're getting here is freedom and convenience, as these cards will sync and upload the content stored on them without the need for a cable. In other words, put this thing into a camera and snap away. When you get back home to your Wi-Fi network, the images will be transferred to your computer right over the network, over the air. You can also optionally tell it that you'd also like the images uploaded to your favorite social network, like, say, Facebook. Even better? Your images get geotagged too by the Eye-Fi card. These things are straight up awesome, and you can get one on Amazon for $88 (a 17% discount.)
2011 Holiday Gift Guide Giveaway: Microsoft Touch Mouse
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Accessories, Features, PC / Laptop, Peripherals, Women, Men, Techies, Teens, Under $100, Under $250, Under $50, Under $500,
This 2011 Holiday Gift Guide entry is targeted at making computing a little more fun and futuristic - and we're even giving this one away! The Microsoft Touch Mouse is made exclusively for use with Windows 7. It's got a multitouch surface, allowing you to use natural touch gestures to perform common tasks. Basically, think of it as the Apple Magic Mouse, but for your Windows PC. It's got support for one-, two-, and three-findered gestures, and runs on 2 AA batteries. They sell for $79, but you can get one on Amazon now for $41, which is a whopping 48% discount.
Or, you can win one here! We are giving one of these Microsoft Touch Mouse prizes away as we continue our holiday giveaway series. Simply use the widget below to enter to win. We've got a lot of ways for you to enter, but don't check off any that you don't actually perform. If you do, you'll be eliminated:
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Desk Pets TankBot
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Features, Toys, Men, Techies, Under $100, Under $250, Under $50, Under $500,
Here's a 2011 Holiday Gift Guide entry aimed at the office workers in your life. We know that robotic helicopters and dinosaurs win all the points for flash, but we're here to tell you that the Desk Pets TankBot helps you conquer by force. You charge up the TankBot using its USB connection, and then you use your smartphone to control it. How cool is that? You can also set it to random, letting it wreak havoc on all your co-workers with its light-up eyes and sound effects. They're available in multiple colors, and you can get one for $50 on Amazon.
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: GeeksRiot Steve Jobs Tribute Shirt
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Apple, Wearables, Features, Techies, Under $100, Under $25, Under $250, Under $50, Under $500,
Steve Jobs will definitely be missed, and today's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide entry honors his memory, while also helping a great cause. What you see above is the GeeksRiot Steve Jobs Tribute t-shirt. All proceeds from the $25 purchase go towards Movember and the fight against cancer. Aside from all that, though, the shirt looks ridiculously cool. Seriously, we've seen 'em in person, and they're high quality. Go check them out, and grab a couple for the Apple fans in your life!
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Star Wars: The Blueprints
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Design, Features, Movies, Techies, Under $500,
We know how many of you are Star Wars geeks, so we had to get some love for you in our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. As you know, there are enough Star Wars books out there--enough to line the walls of the Jedi Academy. But these...these are a collection by J.W. Rinzler, executive editor at LucasFilm, where he's brought together amazing content from all six films. Yes, that includes original sketches of the Death Star. This is enough to make any fan tingle with glee. The set normally sells for $500, but you can get it on Amazon for $450, a 10% discount.
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Lomography Sprocket Rocket 915
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Cameras, Features, PC / Laptop, Techies, Teens, Under $100, Under $250, Under $500,
Here's a more unique entry for our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. This is the Lomography Sprocket Rocket. The plastic-bodied Rocket camera has a wide-angle frame that exposes the film all the way to the edges, out past the sprocket holes. It also lets you rewind the film for those cool double exposures. They typicalls sell for $89, but you can grab one on Amazon for $78.50, a 12% savings.
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: 11-inch MacBook Air
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Apple, Features, Hot Deals, PC / Laptop, Women, Men, Techies,
Apple's smallest notebook is the MacBook Air, and all signs are pointing to this being the best-selling Mac this holiday season, so we had to include it in our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. The 11-inch MacBook Air packs in speedy flash memory that is soldered directly onto the motherboard, resulting is lightning-fast performance. It also means no moving parts, so you get five hours of battery life from the tiny little wonder, and it even sports a full-sized keyboard, which we feel is a must (and is one of our main complaints with other netbooks.) The price starts at $999 from Apple, but hey, if you go with Amazon then its $994 with free shipping, and MacMall has them starting at $799--a full $200 off! Not bad for the most portable Mac out there.
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Today's Hot Topics
- The balance of power in the US Senate hangs in the balance.
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? Small cells are low-powered radio access nodes that may operate in both the licensed and unlicensed spectrum and that have a range of 10 meters to 200 meters, as compared to macrocells, which might have a range of a few kilometres. Small cells have long existed in the network with the purpose of filling in coverage gaps. The recent resurgence in interest in these small cells is being driven primarily by market demand for higher network capacity to host existing and new data services. Cell coverage continues to be an issue due to limited indoor penetration at higher transmission frequencies. For such cases, small cells are likely to play a vital role in providing indoor coverage and capacity. While small cells hold the promise of a faster deployment, deeper reach, and a much lower cost, there are significant challenges associated with their deployment. In order to overcome these deployment challenges, small cells must coexist with macro cells and other small cells located in the same vicinity, satisfy backhaul connectivity issues, and provide programmability to ease deployment and management to contain the operational complexity that they add to the wireless networks. In parallel, macro cells have been evolving from a monolithic architecture to a distributed architecture, with a significant increase in investments to remote radio heads and active antenna technologies. This opens the door to using alternative architectures to increase network capacity and coverage. Therefore, the question of small cell adoption how fast and how many depends on how quickly the wireless industry overcomes the deployment hurdles for small cells as well as on the level of adoption of distributed macrocell architectures. This article discusses base station trends and their evolution, the rationale for using small cells, and the backhaul challenges that the growth of wireless networks will face in the coming years. Traditional wireless infrastructure relies on a monolithic base station chassis sitting at the foot of the tower feeding signals back and forth to passive antennas mounted on the top of the tower. The connection between the base station chassis and passive antenna components is via a coaxial cable as shown conceptually in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Conceptual depiction of power savings in distributed base station architecture. A major shortcoming of this architecture is that the signal power transmitted by the base station cabinet to the passive antennas encounters a loss of approximately 3dB signal power. In other words, only half of the signal power transmitted by the base station chassis is received by the antennas. In order to solve this problem and conserve power, the industry has transitioned to a distributed base station architecture in which the radio cards (that host the power amplifiers) are removed from the base station chassis and mounted directly on the towers adjacent to the antennas. These radio cards are called remote radio heads (RRH). Use of RRH avoids the loss of signal power due to the power amplifiers residing in close proximity to the antennas. The RRH are connected to the channel cards in the base station chassis using optical fiber. The Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) is one of the most commonly used protocols to transfer low power modulated baseband signals from the channel cards to the radio. Signal loss in a fiber link is negligible for low power signals when compared to transferring a high power signal over a coaxial cable. Despite significant benefits in reducing operational costs, the transition to a distributed base station architecture has been gradual. Mounting RRH on top of the tower results in installation (higher weight and wind loading), maintenance, and reliability concerns. Truck roll becomes more expensive and the skill set of the repair crew has to change. Improvement in technology, higher integration, remote field-programmability an control, size, and weight reductions in the equipment are helping to overcome these hurdles. In addition, the potential of a distributed base
station architecture has opened an avenue to solve another pressing problem faced by wireless network operators that is expected to accelerate the adoption in coming years. A distributed base station architecture offers a significant value in solving network capacity crunch by providing a highly flexible architecture to reach service hot spots effectively. Wireless network operators have to continuously add capacity to the network to meet perpetual demand for higher data rates. Limited availability of new spectrum is a big hurdle in meeting growing demand for network capacity. Improved communication technology and use of multiple transmit and receive antennas (diversity, spatial multiplexing, beam forming) such as in LTE and LTE Advanced technology and increasing use of Wi-Fi offload provides ways to increase network capacity. Another technique is active antenna systems (AAS), an incarnation of RRH that have the same tower footprint as the existing antenna, support multiple active antenna elements for beam forming that help improve coverage and capacity. However, a boost in network capacity with improved technology may not be sufficient. Use of cells with smaller radius serving smaller number of users appears to be necessary to scale network capacity, particularly in dense urban areas where capacity crunch is most severe. New sites need to be located to roll out new base stations on an ongoing basis. The acquisition of a new base station site (to locate the tower along with adjacent space to place the base station cabinet) is becoming an expensive and lengthy process due to the arduous complexities of attaining approvals from local/ municipal governments. A major part of the expense in installing a base station is in acquiring real estate and the costs associated with the civil works. In a typical installation, electronic equipment constitutes less than 20% of the total cost of installing a base station. Besides the scarcity problems associated with finding space for cell towers in congested urban/sub-urban areas, the visual impact of these towers is making matters worse and causing increasing hurdles in obtaining city approvals. The distributed base station architecture allows for locating the base station cabinet miles away from the RRH, thereby providing a much higher flexibility in mounting smaller RRH units on the side of buildings, electric poles, etc. The RRH units reduce visual impact and improve reach (proximity to end users) significantly. Eventually, a centralized site hosting a bank of base station cabinets far removed from RRH units (also called CloudRAN) may become viable, opening an opportunity to use high-performance hardware shared by multiple operators via virtualization. As a futuristic vision, this would allow base stations to be located inside a data center leveraging close proximity to application servers and application/user data to gain network efficiencies and create new possibilities/services. On the other hand, remote radio heads would continue to move closer and closer to the end users.
Figure 2. Distributed base station architecture showing RRH mounted on the side of the buildings. Distributed base station architecture deployment does have a shortcoming in scaling the front-haul network and connectivity between the base stations and remote radio heads. Currently, dedicated fibers are being laid out to connect RRH to base station chassis. Technology innovations need to happen to allow sharing of a common media by incorporating class of service prioritization to maintain appropriate levels of deterministic latency and end to end delay management. While distributed base station architectures have been making a gradual progress in providing a viable solution for network capacity, small cells have arisen as an alternative recently generating a new wave of industry hype and
series of innovations. No industry standard definition exists for small cells. In general terms, a small cell is a complete base station in small and compact form factor enclosure that can be easily deployed on light poles and on the sides of buildings. The transmit power of a small cell is in the range of 250 milliWatts to 5 Watts, with cell range varying from 50m to 5 km. A small cell radius of 100s of meters supporting 32/64+ users is likely to be most common in dense urban settings. A small cell is extremely low cost and is expected to be in the range of 1/10th of the cost of a typical macrocell. A cluster of 5 to 10 (or higher numbers) of small cells are expected to exist within a macrocell as an underlay to enhance network capacity, primarily expected to cater to data services. A small cell gateway is expected to control small cells to work cooperatively with neighbors and with the mother macrocell. Load balancing and inter cell interference management are expected to be crucial parameters controlled by the small cell gateway.
Figure 3. Small cell deployment as a cluster underlay to a macrocell. While small cells have a lot of benefits and are generating a tremendous excitement fueling innovation within the industry, there are considerable challenges for wider deployments. Small cell backhaul is a major hurdle. Based on deployment scenarios, the ability to choose a backhauling solution from among a toolkit of backhaul solutions is critical to ease deployment. This creates a considerable challenge in integrating backhaul into small cells. A solution using two boxes, one for the small cell and other for the backhaul, may not be viable in the long run. Small cell radio access network (RAN) creates an additional layer in the mobile backhaul hierarchy, further stressing an already constrained mobile backhaul access network. Another significant barrier for small cells is the need for an industry standard and a truly interoperable framework to ascertain coexistence of a small cell with neighboring cells. Small cells are expected to work as well-behaved, self-optimizing network entities. Inter-cell interference coordination and dynamic load balancing are issues; if not properly managed and controlled, they can lead to poor overall network performance. Despite all the challenges, small cell technology holds tremendous promise in providing a good solution to perpetual growth in demand for network capacity. In Summary, small cell deployment numbers and the speed of deployment will depend on how quickly the industry comes up with solutions to the challenges associated with small cells and the extent of distributed base station architecture adoption and penetration. Remote radio heads and active antenna systems, being an extension of the existing macrocells, are equally attractive in many situations. There is no doubt that both forms of innovation distributed base station architectures and small cells will be deployed and coexist in increasing network capacity, be they based on FPGAs, ASSPs or ASICs. Ease of deployment, cost of installing and maintaining a small cell backhaul network, and overall performance of small cell clusters in conjunction with macrocell network are some of the main factors that are expected to influence small cell adoption and volume in the coming years.


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HSLDA believes that nearly all of the federal government's spending on education is unconstitutional and must be eliminated. While we support the position that the federal government should not be involved in education at any level, we also support measures that incrementally reduce the control of the federal government over education.
The U.S. Department of Education was established by Congress in the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88 of October 1979). General provisions in PL 96-88 outlined the role of the Department of Education as:
1) Strengthening the federal commitment to assuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual;
2) Supplementing and complementing the efforts of states, the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the states, the private sector, public and private nonprofit educational research institutions, community-based organizations, parents, and students to improve the quality of education;
3) Encouraging the increased involvement of the public, parents, and students in federal education programs;
4) Promoting improvements in the quality and usefulness of education through federally supported research, evaluation, and sharing of information;
5) Improving the coordination of federal education programs;
6) Improving the management of federal education activities; and
7) Increasing the accountability of federal education programs to the president, the congress, and the public.
Originally, supporters of PL 96-88 promised that the Department of Education would have a relatively small budget of only $14.5 billion and fewer than 100 employees. Today, however, the Department of Education enjoys a hefty budget of over $63 billion and employs approximately 4,900 people.


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But Ours Go to 11 As August gave way to September, two announcements rocked the standalone duplication world—at least, those in that world who were ripe to be rocked. First came the new CopyWriter tower from MicroBoards (www.microboards.com), the self-proclaimed World's First 10-drive standalone CD/DVD duplication tower. The product may be new but the brand is not—at least one ancestor of the new CopyWriter snagged an EMedia cover and Editor's Choice Award in the late 1990s. The new CopyWriter is also available in a daisychainable dual-tower configuration, which brings the target-drive total up to 16.
Not to be outdone, crosstown rival Condre, Inc. (www.condre.com) shot back roughly 45 minutes later with its own announcement: the new GV 11, developed in conjunction with Go Video, boasting—you guessed it—eleven CD/DVD recorders in a single tower. For those of you keeping score (and I know at least two guys who are), the Condre incorporates 16X/52X DVD/CD recorders vs. the Microboards' 8X/24X; but at what speed do you really expect to use these things? (At least the 52X CD speed is more than a number at this point.) Condre's unit has a published MSRP, too: $1,199; I've also seen a Web price for the MicroBoards DSR DVD-D8810 of $2,695, although it's well worth noting that the MicroBoards unit has an 80GB hard drive, which changes the value proposition entirely. But Condre's duplicators go to 11.
Daily Doubles At presstime for this issue we also saw what seemed like almost daily announcements in the double-layer DVD recording space, suggesting that in spite of its rocky start, this technology just might go mainstream after all, if only by sheer market saturation. Few drive manufacturers seem to be following Plextor's example of staying out of the DL game until the odds improve; but the good news is that the latest round of drives seems so far to have improved on the first generation's two main shortcomings: speed and compatibility.
In this month's Driving Range, Hugh Bennett reports a 65% success rate for burned DL disc playback in DVD players and drives, up from 35% a few months earlier. The new drives also bump the speed from 2.4X up to 4X. HP, of course, led off the second generation by asserting that its 90% compatibility claim (same as Sony's in the first round) was the genuine article; one advantage is that most of the latest entrants seem more willing to switch the book time from the unfamiliar DVD+R9 to ROM, which makes players much more comfortable with DL discs.
The latest 4X contenders (or pretenders, depending on how the compatibility claims shake out) include LaCie, Sony, and TEAC. Most of these drives also boast 16X recording to compatible discs, and the announcements have come with plenty of ambiguity in the height that might lead more credulous audiences to believe DL speed had jumped to 4X as well. And not everyone seems to be in step with the prevailing 16X/4X combo; for example, Memorex' latest combines cutting-edge 16X SL with old-school 2.4X DL and no Book Type-switching.
Recent weeks have also seen a spate of 16X media announcements from the likes of Verbatim, Philips, Imation, and Traxdata; here's hoping those discs actually materialize in the near-term. (And it's anyone's guess when 16X or DL media might ship in sufficient quantities that 16X or DL recording becomes practical in duplication spheres.)
Finally, we also saw announcements of DL support in a variety of consumer video tools like Ulead's Video Studio 8, and two new releases, NewSoft Presto! DVD PowerSuite 2.0 and Sony Pictures Vegas MovieStudio+DVD—yet more evidence of DL's approaching mainstream move, ill-advised or not.
Studio Set Early September also brought news of a new round of sawed-off software from Sony Pictures Digital Networks: Vegas Movie Studio+DVD, ACID Music Studio 5, and Sound Forge Audio Studio. This is where it all began for Sonic Foundry and Sony Pictures, using the consumer Screenblast channel to sell these feature-reduced, hobbyist-oriented versions of Sonic Foundry's prosumer-to-pro digital media tools.
It was and is a good match—Sonic Foundry was never a consumer software company, even though ACID was an especially good fit for the home audio crowd. Movie Studio has always seemed a slightly tougher sell; version 3.0 looked an awful lot like Vegas when you opened it up, which seems pretty opaque if more consumer-transparent tools like Pinnacle Studio and Ulead Video Studio are more your speed.
What's especially interesting about this Movie Studio release is that it adds DVD authoring support, with a presumed kinship to Vegas-mate DVD Architect. Like just about everything from of Sony Pictures Media Digital (www.mediasoftware.sonypictures.com, the former Sonic Foundry software unit), Movie Studio+DVD, ACID Studio 5, and Sound Forge Studio are certainly worth a look, especially since they're the only Sony Pictures Digital tools you'll see for under $100.


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The morning was quiet on Wednesday. The afternoon was not, when a nor'easter swirled across Nassau County, dumping heavy, wet snow on roads, causing congestion on numerous thoroughfares.
When all was said and done, the storm had dropped four to six inches of snow across Nassau, with higher totals on the North Shore.
School districts and universities across Nassau County canceled classes Wednesday ahead of a major nor'easter that was rolling into the region — the second one in less than a week.
The National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Warning for all of Nassau. The service was predicting snow before 2 p.m. and potentially a slushy mix of snow and freezing rain after that. Daytime accumulations could reach four inches, with more to follow overnight. Wind gusts to 25 miles per hour were expected.


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Dag Hammarskjold
In order to stay happy and healthy, your soul needs nourishment, just as your body does. Many meditation forms are popular today because they are so nourishing. They aid in relaxation, concentration, and an attunement to deeper, more spiritual aspects of your self. Meditation is a process of locating your center of being, your temple of inner wisdom, your truest self, and learning to live, consistently, from that place. It is a way to re-collect your scattered parts. The word "meditation" comes from the Sanskrit word medha, which literally means "doing the wisdom."
Begin to Meditate
1. Set aside at least ten minutes a day, and eventually longer, in a quiet and private place. (Most meditation forms range in length of practice time from twenty minutes to an hour.)
2. Be prepared to encounter numerous mental distractions. Let them rise and fall or float away like leaves in a moving stream. But don't get washed away with them. Develop an attitude of passive acceptance.
3. Select a centering device. This can be a sound or word or phrase - a mantra - that is repeated. (For example: "One" or "Peace" or a phrase like "There is only love.") Or use a candle or devotional picture to keep your attention focused. You can sing an inspirational song, recite a favorite poem, or use a repetitious bodily movement like swaying or rocking to create a similar centering focus. Concentrating on the breath as it rises and falls or simply counting breaths are other common forms of centering.
4. With extraneous thoughts now in the background, the body and mind are free to rest deeply. For some people, this naturally evolves into a time of wordless gratitude. Others find they more clearly hear or perceive their intuition or inner voice.
5. Keep bringing your attention back to your center. As your mind wanders, and it always will, imagine that you are taking it gently by the hand and leading it back - the way you might lead an exuberant child back to the sidewalk on the way to school. Let gentleness be the guiding principle.
Dr. Mitchell Levy
6. Use resources as you need them. There are many books available that will teach you simple meditation practices. In many cities there are groups devoted to teaching and practicing meditation techniques. Energy is greatly intensified when meditation is done with a group. You will be amazed at how many people privately practice some form of personal spiritual practice like meditation. Start asking and listen to what people have to say.
Finding a center, a home, a place of balance within makes almost anything easier to face. The universe, from this perspective, seems friendly, and your place in it feels blessed. Since your life energy emanates from your center, being there regularly means being in greater harmony with yourself, your brothers and sisters, and the cosmos.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Finding Center
People commonly speak of being "off center," meaning imbalanced in some way. Finding a center within your body, a place you can attend to when you are stressed or upset and need to draw your fragmented parts back together, can be helpful. Where would you locate your center? Unsure? Try one or more of these suggestions:
1. If you imagine that your soul exists in your body, where would it be? Touch that place now.
2. Imagine that your body is a building with a hidden chamber located somewhere within it. In that chamber you meet your inner wisdom or guide. This is a place in which no lies can exist. Where is that place?
3. Imagine that you want to balance your physical body. Where is the fulcrum, the point of contact at which you will balance?
4. Take a few slow and very deep breaths. From what place does the breath originate? What place does the deepest breath reach?
5. Say "I am me" several times as you point to yourself. Where do you point? Which place feels truest?
You may have found several different places that felt like your center, your internal home. Decide which one is your favorite for now and experiment with it for at least a week before you try out another one. Use that place within as a point of focus that you can return to even in the midst of chaotic activity. Meditation will become a way of life, not just something you do for a set time every day. This form of self-remembering is a powerful means of heightening your awareness of your life, reducing stress, altering the way in which you see the world, and consequently enhancing your overall health and wellness.
The online version of Dr. Travis' Wellness Inventory may be accessed at (www.WellPeople.com). The Wellness Inventory may also be licensed by coaches, health and wellness professionals, and organizations.


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The Menu: A satisfying bowl of vegetarian noodle soup filled with mushroom, cauliflower, snap peas, broccoli, red peppers, carrot, celery, tofu, and rice noodles paired with a small order of brown rice—all of which I covered in a generous amount of soy sauce. And washed down with a Diet Coke.
The Goods: I live right across the street from Sunflower, so you could say that I'm somewhat familiar with its vegetarian noodle soup, in that I eat it all the time. On top of being a totally tasty way to warm up a very chilly Friday afternoon, this delicious meal—which, due to generous serving sizes, is easily two meals in one—was a mere $7. Does that mean I'll have some extra cash to throw at the East Bay Vegan Bakesale this weekend? You bet it does.


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Finally, we come to the CHI Smart Volumizing Styling Iron and Sarah Potempa Beachwaver Rotating Curling Iron part of our Best Hair Tools test drive for the QVC Customer's Choice Beauty Awards. Voting ends tonight so if you're a fan of any of the products we've covered today, show the brands some love and vote. The winners will be revealed online throughout the day on October 17 and on air during a special show from 9pm–Midnight ET. A lot of my favorites are nominated, are yours?
A styling iron is just an essential these days and CHI is one of the best brands on the market making flat irons, they are one of the originals. A CHI is iconic really, I remember a CHI styling iron being a tool that only stylists had because they were so expensive. Thankfully they are accessible to everyone thanks to a more affordable price tag… and the occasional Easy Pay offer on QVC. Then we have a new twist on the traditional curling iron, one that makes curling your hair less of a challenging task. I say this being one of those women who has always struggled with curling my hair and making it look GOOD. Now beach worthy waves are easier than ever.
Continue reading CHI Smart Volumizing Styling Iron & Sarah Potempa BEACHWAVER Rotating Curling Iron


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Penzion U Černého potoka
Vápenky 262, Nová Lhota
Fast reservation
Pension U Cerneho Potoka is part of Nova Lhota near Hodonin. This family-run guesthouse offers comfortable, quality and affordable accommodation suitable for fans of both active and quiet rest.
- Free internet
- Breakfast
- Free parking
- Pets
- Credit card not required


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Manufacturers are really keen on making self-driving cars a reality!
When we're driving, we want to DRIVE. But certainly it would be nice to let the computer take over during bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic.
We won't get there for a while, but Toyota and Audi showed off the state of the technology at CES last week with some demos.
Nevada has already legalized autonomous vehicles for public roads, issuing Google the first license of its kind last year.
More companies undoubtedly will follow suit.
These computer-controlled vehicles use visual indicators, artificial intelligence software (which is what they'll use to take over the world!), GPS and various sensors to navigate their way.
Check out more on the robot-driven cars from CNET here.


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Cable Assemblies
Insulated electrical conductors of varying colors, lengths, and diameters that are terminated on one or both ends with connectors.
|View all Coaxial, RF
|View all Flat Flex Cable (FFC, FPC)
|View all D-Sub
|View all D-Shaped, Centronics
|View all Barrel
|View all Rectangular
|View all USB
|View all Between Series Adapter Cables
|View all Power, Line
Pluggable Cables with pluggable interconnects on one or both ends. The types of interconnects used on these devices include various forms of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI), SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment), SFP (Small Form Pluggable), PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), and more.
|View all Pluggable
|View all Modular
|View all Circular
|View all Smart Cables
|View all Jumpers, Pre-Crimped Wires
|View all Video, DVI, HDMI, WECo
|View all Fiber Optic
|View all Specialized Cable Assemblies
|View all Solid State Lighting
|View all IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
|View all LGH Cables


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If you have a reservation at our hotel, we can reserve tickets
for the Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau Castles for you.
Tickets for the castles
Neuschwanstein Castle
Inspiration for Walt Disney's Cinderella castle and a world wonder
Visit our 8th world wonder! Schwangau – The village of castles with a great historical and cultural meaning. 1,3 million people visit the Neuschwanstein hotel per year. It is worldwide a tourist attraction! We can arrange the tickets for a sightseing-tour of this castle. Just let us know !
The castle offers guided tours in english and in german. The tours are about 35minutes long. There are also Audio-Guide tours in other languages like japanese, portuguiese, russian, etc.
If desired, we can arrange the tickets for our guests (minimum of 48 hours before the date)
Opening Times of the Neuschwanstein castle
|April - September: 9.00 am to 6.00 pm
|Ticket-Service: 8.00 am to 5.00 pm
|Open every day
|October - March: 10.00 am to 4.00 pm
|Ticket-Service: 9.00 am to 3.00 pm
|Open every day
|closed on: 1st of January, 24th., 25th and 31st of december
Hohenschwangau Castle
Romantic neighbour to the castle of Neuschwanstein
The beautiful Castle Hohenschwangau is also located at the village of Schwangau near Fuessen directly across from Neuschwanstein castle. The romantic castle was built between 1832 and 1836. Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, Ludwig's father lived here during summer. König Ludwig II. spends lots of lucky days during his childhood and adolescence. The castle is nearly unchanged, well restored and can be visited daily!
If desired, we can arrange (with a minimum of 48 hours) the tickets for this tour for our guests.
Opening Times
01.04. -30.9.
Open every day
9:00 am - 6:00 pm
01.10. -31.03.
Open every day
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Linderhof Castle
Monumental Castle in Graswangtal
This castle was finished in year 1878 by King Maximilian II., Ludwig's Father.It is about 45 km away from Hotel Rübezahl. Linderhof castle presents itself with shiney gold everywhere, crystal flambeaus, lots of velvet and porcelain to the visitors.
Impressive places of the ornate landscape garden are the "Old king lime tree" under wich the king once had breakfast, the Mauri house with the throne of peacock, the Moroccan house as well as the Hundings cabana. You can also see a man-made grotto with cascades and a lake, hidden behind a rock face. This Grotte can be heated and lit up electrically. On the lake artificial waves can be produced. The latest technology, in order to realise the royal dreams!
More informations about the Linderhof castle you can find here.
Museum of the Bavarian Kings
Located below the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles on the shores of the Alpsee lake, this must be one of the most beautifully situated museums in GermanyThe Museum of the Bavarian Kings was opened in Hohenschwangau in September 2011. It relates the history of the Wittelsbach dynasty from its beginnings to the present day.
At the centre of the exhibition is King Maximilian II who commissioned the conversion of Hohenschwangau Castle into his summer residence, and his son, King Ludwig II, creator of Neuschwanstein Castle.
Opening times
1/4 until 30/9 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
1/10 until 1/10 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
The region of the Bavarian Alps & German castles
Welcome to the land of the lakes, mountains and castles, the Allgäu
The Allgaeu is situated at the most southern side of the Germany boarder (to Austria) and at the same time the most south-western point of Bavaria.
Here is an excellent base for excursions to nearby Oberammergau (35 km), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (50 km), Munich (100 km), Lindau on lake Constance (110 km) and some Austrian cities like Innsbruck (100 km). The third castle of Ludwig II. called Linderhof castle is also very close to our hotel (50 km). Our village Schwangau lies close to the southernmost point of Germany's famous Romantic Road and is considered by many as its highlight. The beautiful Allgaeu coutryside runs from Bodensee (Lake Constance) to the Bavarian Alps! The world-famous Neuschwanstein castle is located in the east of Allgaeu and is one of the most well-known sights of this region. Visit us in Bavaria and experience the beauty, the uniqueness of our countryside, and the naturalness of this region. Bavaria offers all of our guests many options to keep them busy throughout the day. From skiing, cross-country and snow hikes in the winter to different water- and sport activities, like hiking, biking, climbing, and Nordic walking in the summer.


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India is officially on the moon. After a couple of tense moments, the Lunar Impact Probe which was launched by the Chandrayaan planted the Tricolour on the moon at 8.31 pm.
The mood was upbeat at Bangalore after the Indian tricolour marked it presence on the moon on Friday night after having flown 3,86,000 km from the earth.
India becomes the fourth nation after the US, Russia [Images] and ESA to have the national flag painted on the moon. The moment of pride was very obvious at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Peenya, Bangalore.
Madhavan Nair, ISRO chief, had tears in eyes and said, "India can achieve anything. It sure is a proud moment for us. He further said that the Moon [Images] Impact Probe had impacted at the designated point at 8.31 pm near the Schakleton crater. The impact probe was released from the Chandrayaan was released at 8.06 pm from the equator of the moon. The 20-20 dream has been realised and Chandrayaan-2 and an Indian man on the moon will be galvanised."
Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, former President of India, whose idea it was to plant the Indian flag on the moon, was seen punching his fist in happiness.
"India has the flag on Mount Everest [Images] and now it is on the moon. I congratulate ISRO on this remarkable achievement," he said.
A beaming project director Mylswamy Annadurai said, "The impact probe crash-landed on the moon's lunar surface and disintegrated. But the fact is that we have made an impact with the tricolor.The tricolor which is now successfully painted on the moon, was painted on all sides of the 29-kg Moon Impact Probe and was attached to the main orbiting spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1."
The impact probe weighing 29 kg was riding piggyback on the top deck of the main orbitter and was released at a predetermined time after the orbiter reached the final 100 km orbit and impacted at the designated location. The main objectives of this mission comprise design, development and demonstration of technologies required for impacting a probe at a desired location on the moon. Qualify technologies required for future soft landing missions and exploration of the moon from close range.
The moon impact probe comprises three major payloads. They are the radar altimeter, video imaging system and mass spectrometer.
The Radar Altimeter will measure the altitude of the moon impact probe above the lunar surface and qualify technologies for future landing missions.
The video-imaging system which comprises of an analog CCD camera along with a video decoder will acquire images of the surface of the moon from the descending probe. The Mass Spectrometer will measure the constituents of tenuous lunar atmosphere during descent.
Image: Scientists witness the release of the Moon Impact Probe. Photographs: KPN Photos
India's Moon Mission
First pictures by Chandrayaan-1


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|Cundari is helping create Mt. A's new website. Help Mt. A by providing your input to them.
I'd like to relay a message sent this afternoon to all students in case you're not checking your webmail often this summer. There's a chance to provide input to the website design firm who was hired to help create a new website for the school. Your views will help form, at this early stage, how the website will be built. I'm leaving Sackville on May 15th so I cannot attend but I really hope you can. It's a really important project for the school, you get Mt A swag, and the free coffee is a great boost to any morning. Providing my input to the University's branding project was my first interaction with the communications department and look where it got me. I really hope you'll help:
At 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, May 16, representatives from Cundari, the consultants hired to work on the project, will be on campus to facilitate a 1.5-hour session designed to help understand how you (students) use our web, the information and services you want, and the challenges you face with the current site.
Your input is critical to providing a web site that is effective for current and prospective students.
We expect an interesting and lively discussion and, of course, will we will provide refreshments. To ensure adequate time to express yourselves, participation is limited to 12 registrants. As a thanks for your help, you can have your pick of swag: A Mount A pen, coffee mug, or t-shirt.
To register, please send an e-mail expressing your intent to participate to: email@example.com. Include your program, year, and hometown. The deadline for registration is Thursday, May 10.
More information on the project is available at www.mta.ca/web.
Tony Frost
MA, Communications
Director of Marketing and Communications
Mount Allison University – Ranked #1 in Canada
65 York Street
Sackville NB E4L 1E4
tel: (506) 364-2345 | fax: (506) 364-2262


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DNA, like houses and cars, needs ongoing maintenance. Rays of ultraviolet sunlight, chemical pollutants and normal biochemical processes in the cell can damage it. Cells routinely repair this damage before making proteins or copying DNA for cell division. The repairs are remarkably accurate in normal cells but cancer cells make far more mistakes in fixing their DNA.
Alan Tomkinson, University of New Mexico professor of Internal Medicine and associate director of Basic Research at the UNM Cancer Center, wants to understand why and how these repair mechanisms go awry in cancer cells. This understanding could lead to new targets for cancer drugs. Tomkinson was recently awarded a four-year, $1 million grant renewal to continue his 18-year research investigation on DNA ligases, the enzymes that repair DNA strands.
DNA ligases fuse the backbone of a DNA strand. The strand is a long string of nucleotides that structurally resembles one half of a ladder sliced lengthwise through the rungs. Each nucleotide consists of a deoxyribose molecule with a phosphate molecule on one side and a base molecule on another. The phosphate of one nucleotide attaches to the deoxyribose of the adjacent nucleotide, forming the alternating phosphate-deoxyribose DNA strand backbone—the side of the ladder. In a DNA molecule—a full ladder—each base attaches to a complementary base on the mirror strand to form the rung-like structures that encode genes.
Products of normal cellular chemical reactions and DNA repair proteins that replace damaged bases can break the phosphate-deoxyribose backbone. If only one strand is broken, the overall DNA structure remains intact because the bases of the broken strand still attach to those of the second, unbroken strand. It is relatively simple for DNA ligases to fuse such single-strand breaks. The DNA molecule falls apart, however, if both strands are broken at the same time and in the same place. In this situation, the cell has several different options to repair these breaks, all of which end with a DNA ligase rejoining the DNA backbone. Tomkinson studies how DNA ligases work with other DNA repair proteins to repair damage to DNA.
These repair mechanisms are not perfect, though. "You can measure the frequency at which the cell will make a mistake," said Tomkinson. This error rate is very low in normal cells but the DNA of cancer cells has many changes. "The error rate is so low in normal cells that you would not expect to see cancer normally. In the process of a normal cell turning into a cancer cell," he explains, "a certain number of changes must accumulate. So at some stage it appears that the mechanisms that normally repair DNA become abnormal," he added.
In fact, these processes become so abnormal that DNA in cancer cells is vastly different from DNA in normal cells. Normal cells have 46 chromosomes; cancer cells frequently do not, a condition called aneuploidy. Normal cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes and the chromosomes of 22 of those pairs resemble each other. Cancer cells, in contrast, have many chromosomes that look vastly different and researchers can see these differences through modern staining techniques that allow them to stain each chromosome a different color. In normal cells, the chromosome pairs retain their color and stay monochromatic; cancer cells become multicolored because the cell links part of one chromosome to part of another. Called translocation, this shuffling of DNA pieces is common in some cancers.
"A lot of leukemias have single translocations and they're stable events that you can see easily by cytogenetics," says Tomkinson. "In some breast cancers you see almost a complete shuffling of the genetic information. The chromosomes look more like a rainbow than like a single color and the sizes are mismatched."
So, Tomkinson is studying the enzymes that complete the repair of DNA, the DNA ligases, to learn how the process becomes abnormal. Humans have three types of DNA ligases named ligase I, ligase III, and ligase IV. Tomkinson is able to measure each ligase's activities in a cell. He has found that the type of ligase that is most active differs between a normal cell and a cancer cell. Normal cells have more ligase IV activity while cancer cells have more ligase III activity. omkinson's grant renewal will further investigate what each of these ligases do and how their activity differs between normal and cancerous cells.
"If you know that cancer cells have an abnormality in how they handle DNA damage," he says, "you can selectively target that abnormality so that you kill the cancer cell without harming normal cells."
UNM Researcher Finds Abnormal DNA Maintenance Related to Cancer
December 14, 2012
Categories: Health Sciences Center