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UCSF's Gail Martin, Allan Balmain Admitted to Royal Society
Two UC San Francisco faculty members were formally admitted as new members of the Royal Society, the world's oldest continuously operating scientific society, and honored in a ceremony earlier this month.
Gail Martin, PhD
Gail Martin, PhD, emerita professor of anatomy, was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society through a peer review process based on scientific excellence. Across scientific disciplines, this rare honor is awarded to only 10 individuals worldwide each year.
Martin was recognized by The Royal Society as a "world-leader in understanding the function of Fibroblast Growth Factors (FGFs) in vertebrate embryos." She was among the first to recognize the role of growth factors in mediating how cells interact during development. Her pivotal contributions helped establish the role of FGFs as well as how their signals are controlled. Martin was the first to coin the term "embryonic stem cells," and was among the first to isolate pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryos.
Over the course of her career, Martin has received several other honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Edwin Grant Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology, the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, and the FASEB Excellence in Science Award. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991 and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2002.
Allan Balmain, PhD
Allan Balmain, PhD, who is the Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor in Cancer Genetics at UCSF, was formally elected as a 'Fellow of the Royal Society,' one of up to 52 new fellows each year, for his pioneering work using mice as a model system to study cancer. His "wide ranging, innovative use of mouse genetics has generated new approaches for visualizing the genetic architecture of cancer pathways," according to the Society.
Balmain was the first to link exposure to a carcinogen with the initiation of cancer and identified many of the genetic events that cause cancers or make them progress after exposure to chemical mutagens or radiation.
The Royal Society recognition is "testament to Allan's huge achievements and the esteem in which he is held by his peers," said Alan Ashworth, PhD, president of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
For more campus news and resources, visit Pulse of UCSF.


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Star Wars is precious. At least, this is what most fans of the long-lasting series believe. It makes sense, though. It was a creative outlet for fans of all ages. It captured our imagination. It made the hair on the back of our necks rise. It even brought families together and gave them something to bond over. Therefore, when it's criticized, it can be a bit of a sore subject for some. This is what contributed to the incredibly divisive redirect from the fans on the recent film, The Last Jedi. Although it may not seem like it, The Last Jedi's polarized opinions actually stem from what J.J. Abrams and Disney did with the first movie in their new trilogy, The Force Awakens.
The Force Awakens was a 2015 film that brought back the original stars 30 years after The Return of the Jedi. Additionally, it introduced us to an assortment of new heroes and villains, some of which have gone down as just as good as the originals while others are strongly disliked. Regardless, fans were so pumped about seeing a new Star Wars film that was better than George Lucas' prequel trilogy that many found poorly written and riddled with overwhelming CGI. Although The Force Awakens did avoid some of the traps of the prequel series, there were a number of things that fans completely overlooked about it.
Now that it's been a few years, as well as The Last Jedi has taken most of the heat, it's time to go back and see the 20 Things Wrong With The Force Awakens That We All Chose To Ignore.
20 It Was a Remake Of A New Hope
There's a difference between remake and homage. An example of an homage would be the shot of Kylo Ren trying to take the lightsaber out of the snow via the Force. An example of a remake is basically the entirety of The Force Awakens.
The similarities between the two are far-reaching. Not only are there a number of glaring character similarities between Rey and Luke, as well as BB-8 and R2, Kylo and Vader, and more, but the structure of The Force Awakens and A New Hope are almost identical. Sure, it diverges in places, which is a nice way to subvert expectations, but, for the most part, they follow the exact same beats. This is something most of us totally ignored just because we were so excited to see a new Star Wars film after so long.
19 Anakin's Lightsaber Still Exists
Since J.J. Abrams is currently directing the final film in the Skywalker Saga, chances are we'll finally learn how Maz Kanata got ahold of Anakin's lightsaber after Luke lost it during his battle with his father. Regardless of how she got it, fans should be annoyed at the fact that it survived Luke's fall during the duel in Cloud City. If you can't recall, the blue lightsaber was knocked into oblivion when Vader removed Luke's hand.
The odds that it didn't crack when it fell hundreds of feet are pretty slim. Not to mention, the garbage disposal would have dumped it out into open air after it hit the bottom. Honestly, this entire story thread seems outlandish at best.
18 Luke Became A Myth In Just 30 Years
Luke Skywalker saved the galaxy thirty-years before the events of The Force Awakens and yet, he's constantly referred to as a "legend". Do you know anyone who refers to the events of thirty-years-ago as "legends", or actually believes them to be? Chances are, you don't. This is because it takes far more than thirty-years for important events, such as saving the ENTIRE galaxy to fade away and become a debatable fact. Additionally, Luke didn't disappear after the events of Return of the Jedi. He left around ten years before the events of Force Awakens. So, why are Rey and Finn surprised that he's real?
Adding this detail into the film was a cute way to get the younger audience excited for something that happened long before they were born. However, as a story decision, it contained little to absolutely zero logic.
17 Maz Kanatta Was Poorly Animated
It's not that Maz Kanata was poorly animated altogether, it's that her animation was poorly integrated with the rest of the film. One of the best elements of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi is that they brought Stars Wars back to its roots in terms of the use of alien animatronic, puppets, and costumes. However, Maz wasn't one of these characters.
She was given extended scenes where she was the focus, therefore it became increasingly obvious that she didn't hold the physical weight like the animatronics and real-life actors surrounding her. She moved like a CG character, whereas the others did not. This made it even more difficult to get into her character who wasn't particularly engaging, to begin with.
16 Han Lost The Falcon
It seems inconceivable that Han Solo would part ways with The Millenium Falcon for an extended period of time. Sure, it makes sense for Han to have lost it in some deal gone wrong, but wouldn't he have stolen it back? This is also assuming that you buy the fact that he left The Republic/Resistance to begin with and reverted back to his smuggler persona. This does take a bit of a leap of faith.
However, if we go with this story thread, we have to believe that Han would have done everything possible to track down and steal back the Falcon. It's his baby, after all. Han is also fully capable of doing this. Instead, he completely left it, only to get extremely lucky one day when Rey flew it off of Jakku.
15 Poe Got Off Jakku
Poe Dameron is often referred to as "the best pilot in the Resistance". However, after his escape from the desert of Jakku, it seems like he should have been on Survivorman or Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls.
Not only did he survive the crash landing, as well as possibly the sinking sand, but he also navigated himself to a village where he was able to either call for help or board a ship that took him back to the Resistance. Given the fact that the Resistance is underground, it also seems highly risky to ask for help to contact them. Frankly, there are just too many unlikely elements at play here. It's just too farfetched. Therefore, it feels like the writers just wanted him to find his way back, versus making a legitimate story decision.
14 Where Was The Republic?
The only moment we get of the Republic in The Force Awakens is when they are being wiped out by The First Order's superweapon. Although most fans were happy not to receive an overload of politics as they got in the prequels, the Republic felt noticeably absent in the movie.
In fact, they're nowhere to be seen. The Republic neither supported the First Order nor openly supported the Resistance. It just hangs out while the two parties battled for its soul and future. This is really odd since the Republic consisted of a United Nations-esque union of planets who were there to uphold democracy. One would think that they would have sent armies to help the Resistance defeat The First Order. Additionally, they seemed oddly unaware of the awful things The First Order had been up to.
13 Captain Phasma Did Nothing
There comes a point where a blockbusters desire to sell merchandise overtakes the story. This is precisely what happened with Captain Phasma. The character was shown in a lot of promotional material, as well as on lunchboxes, in games, and as a toy. However, she basically did nothing in the story. In fact, her two or three scenes were mostly treated as a joke.
Additionally, they cast Gwendoline Christie and hid her behind a silver mask the entire time. They didn't even give her more than a handful of lines. Do to her physical design, she often gets compared to Boba Fett. However, Fett actually had an important role to play in The Empire Strikes Back. His presence impacted the plot, while hers did no such thing. This begs the question, why was she really there?
12 R2-D2 Woke Up At a Convenient Time
It made sense to have Luke hide part of the map to his whereabouts inside his trusty droid, R2-D2. However, it didn't make sense for the Resistance to wait until the end of The Force Awakens to access it. Of course, a reason why they couldn't access it could be because the droid shut himself off. This was due to the fact that he was depressed that his master had vanished. He remained this way for the vast majority of the film's runtime.
Well, luckily for the Resistance, R2 decided to wake up right when the Resistance needed him to. It wasn't for any particular reason. The plot just needed him to do so. This was such a manipulative and downright lazy decision on the part of the writers and studio.
11 The First Order Became Powerful In The First Place
If the Resistance supported the Republic and the Republic had the power in the galaxy, how did the two not stop The First Order? How did the splinters of the shattered Empire reform in such a way that didn't overthrow the Republic, but yet gave them the upper hand?
Frankly, there are just so many questions surrounding this topic. Questions that came up at the beginning of The Force Awakens when we read it in the opening crawl. These are completely valid questions to have, and yet none of them were answered within in the film. In fact, none of them were even alluded to. It was a smart decision to have most of the politics happen off-screen, but we needed some information on how there was suddenly an exact copy of The Empire roaming around.
10 Kylo Even Cared That Finn Betrayed Him
There just no way that Finn was the only Stormtrooper to quit The First Order. What are the chances of that? Even if he was, it didn't make sense for Kylo Ren to be as angry as he was when the two met face-to-face in the snowy forest. Kylo didn't even know Finn. He made eye contact with him once. It's not like the two were buddies before the events of the film. If they were, it would have made sense for Kylo to scream, "traitor".
Even though Kylo was emotionally triggered during the forest scene, chasing after Rey and the lightsaber was his priority. Instead, he made a big deal about Finn before finally engaging Rey. Was this just to give Finn something to do in the scene? Regardless, it was pretty silly.
9 Rey Could Understand Chewie
Although some see the "Mary Sue" title that Rey often gets may anger some for a variety of creative and political reasons, there is some fairness to the criticism. Although some fans can defend how Rey mastered the Force so quickly, it's harder to understand how she was able to do a host of other things. For example, Rey has no problem piloting the Millenium Falcon despite never flying it, or any other spaceship before. Additionally, she can completely understand Chewbacca's dialect.
It's not like Rey spent a lot of time on Kashyyyk with all the Wookies. Nor did we see her with any Wookie language books. So, just how could this incredibly isolated young woman know how to understand Chewie at all? It seems awfully convenient.
8 The Knights Of Ren Was A Thing
For some reason, The Force Awakens made sure to put Kylo Ren in a category of villains other than the Sith. Instead of being a member of the Sith, he was a member of the Knights of Ren, which is an organization that works alongside the First Order. However, very little more about them is revealed. Unlike the Sith who have an entire lore, nothing about The Knights of Ren is revealed in The Force Awakens or in The Last Jedi. The only thing we get is a rainy flashback of Kylo and his group after the attack on Luke's temple.
Unless there was a specific plot reason why The Knights of Ren needed to exist, there's no need for them. It just hangs around to be another element that confuses the audience.
7 The First Order Didn't Really Have A Viable Plan To Rule
We expect more from our villains nowadays. We need to truly understand their psychology. We need to know what exactly they'd do if they won. The truth is, we have no idea what The First Order would do if they won the battle. This doesn't make them very compelling, nor does it make the stakes very high. In short, we don't know why it's so bad if our heroes lost the war. This is a humungous story error.
Sure, we get that The First Order is bad. Look how they dress, after all. Do they just not like democracy? Why? What would they do differently? Just another dictatorship. The fact that we don't know is a big missed opportunity.
6 Han Left Leia
A lot can happen in thirty years. It makes sense that things wouldn't be exactly the same as they were at the end of Return of the Jedi. But the reasons why Han left Leia seem muddled at best. In the film, it seems like Han left because he was hurt after Ben turned to the Dark Side. But wouldn't that push him and Leia closer? If not, wouldn't it send him on a mission to try and redeem Ben? Instead, Han went off to smuggle again and left Leia to battle to her possible demise at the hands of their son. That's pretty cold.
Not only is it cold, it just doesn't seem like Han. Even though he can be difficult, he has always loved Leia. It doesn't make sense that he'd abandon her like that.
5 Rey's Character Design Was Problematic
The first time we see Rey, we learn that she was abandoned on Jakuu by her parents. She also believes that they will return and take her away. However, none of this impacts the plot, nor does it receive a payoff beyond her being sidetracked by another adventure.
Some would argue that this wasn't needed as it the first film of a trilogy. But, without it, Rey just appears to go with the flow. With the exception of one moment in Maz's castle, her desire to return home and wait for her parents doesn't impact the plot. She merely tells other characters what she wants to do and carries on with their own desires for her. If you look at the design of Luke's character in A New Hope, you won't find these problems.
4 Han and Leia's Scenes Are Purely Exposition
Fans waited for thirty-years for Harrison Ford's Han Solo and the late-great Carrie Fisher's Leia Organa to be reunited on screen. The pair had such electric chemistry throughout the original trilogy and if they had the right writing, they'd undoubtedly have it again. Unfortunately, the few scenes they shared in The Force Awakens were entirely expository. There wasn't any character building, romantic tension, or tension between the two. They merely discussed their son, wished each other luck and that was the end of it.
The fact that these two legends didn't have the story they deserved in Ford's last Star Wars outing is terrible. Yet fans completely overlooked this because Ford was given a lot to do elsewhere.
3 A Chasm Conveniently Opened During The Lightsaber Duel
How does one end a climactic fight that can't end in the demise of either the protagonist or antagonist due to their presence in sequels? There's no easy answer to this, but many great films have found solutions. An option that a film probably shouldn't explore is to create a giant chasm to separate the two.
Sure, the entire planet was imploding. But for a chasm to open up precisely between Rey and Kylo Ren feels pretty unlikely. In fact, it feels like the writers almost literally drew a line between them. This is what we call a "Deus Ex Machina" as something pretty unrelated stopped Rey from finishing Kylo. This is disappointing since this fight is one of the best in the series.
2 Luke Left A Map To Find Him
As much as fans disliked the fact that Luke abandoned his sister, friends, and the Resistance to become a hermit on some hidden rock, not to mention renounce his Jedi status, we think they should be more irritated by the fact that he left behind a map. If he truly didn't want to be found, he wouldn't have left behind a map. This map, by-the-way, was split into two and seemed particularly complicated to understand. Therefore, Luke just comes across as a bit of a jerk who wanted to play mind-games with his allies.
Perhaps his reasoning was that he had it as an option only to use in a dire situation, but wasn't the dire situation when The First Order first started to become a problem in the first place? Frankly, none of this makes sense.
1 Rey Was The Only One To Bring Luke Back
Luke Skywalker was seen as the Messiah. The man who would definitively shift the balance in the war against The First Order. Prior to the start of The Force Awakens, General Leia Organa and the Resistance spent years attempting to find Skywalker, but then some Force-using stranger comes along and helps them find the map that leads to him. Afterward, she's chosen to go and bring Luke back herself. But why her?
Doesn't it make sense for Leia to go? After all, she has the closest connection to him. Sure, R2 and Chewie may have helped convince him to return, but another Force-user seems like an odd choice. Especially since he became angry with The Force. Even if Rey did go, Leia would have been the right person to send with her.
What do you think is something about The Force Awakens that we purposefully ignored? Let us know in the comments below!

subset: commoncrawl


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Baytree Bakery
The Angel Inn
The Angel Inn is just 300 yards from Golden Square in the centre of Petworth. The inn, which has medieval origins, has recently undergone a complete refurbishment. The unspoilt bar boasts ships beams, wooden and slate floors, stone walls and three fireplaces, one of which is used to spit roast joints of meat.
The Angel Inn is a warm and welcoming Inn; an idyllic base set in the South Downs National Park with much to see and do in the town or from which to explore the many interesting places nearby.There are six comfortable bedrooms, all with an n suite bathroom or shower room. Guests also benefit from free on-site parking.


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Politics & Government
House renews effort on adoption reform
FRANKFORT - The House yesterday unanimously approved a bill designed to afford more protection to biological parents in danger of having their parental rights terminated.
The bill ensures that proposed foster care adoptions are thoroughly reviewed.
"It puts some continuity into how adoptions are done," State Rep. Tom Burch said as he argued for the bill on the House floor.
State officials have spent the last year investigating complaints that some children are inappropriately removed from their biological parents and placed in foster care to facilitate state adoptions.
The Cabinet for Health and Family Services Inspector General found that some state social workers committed crimes as they removed children from their biological families.
When it was clear earlier this week that the original foster care adoption bill --Senate Bill 141 -- was stalled in the Senate, Burch took another bill that had already passed the Senate and attached new language to it.
That language calls for a panel of top state child protection officials to review every recommendation to terminate parental rights before that recommendation is sent to a judge.
For the bill to continue to pass through the General Assembly, the Senate must concur with the changes made in the House.


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Kalimantan (Borneo)
Tanjung Puting National Park with bizarre proboscis monkeys, orangutans, clouded leopards,with bizarre proboscis monkeys, orangutans, clouded leopards,sun bears, six primate species, walking mudskipper fish, rare and colorful birds includingStorm's storks, Bulwer's pheasants, and famous for Birute Galdikas' Camp Leakey Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. This center, founded in 1986 and funded by Orangutan FoundationInternational (www.orangutan.org), is the most important in Indonesia for conservation andrehabilitation of the red apes. Also Kutai National Park with Sumatran rhinos, proboscis monkeys,bantengs, 300 bird species; Kayan Mentarang, Borneo's largest remaining rain forest, with sunbears, pangolins, clouded leopards, spectacular wild pig migrations; and a new 2,660-squaremile(6,880-km2) area cooperatively reserved since 1994 joining Bentuang-Karimum here withLanjak Entimau in Sarawak (see p.615), with important populations of rhinos, leopards, orangutans,bear-cats, and six entirely new species discovered on the Sarawak side, including a new snake and terrestrial crab but, at least until recently, few visitor facilities.


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NEW YORK — An 11-year-old boy from Iraq underwent lifesaving heart surgery Monday in New York, the first of four ailing children who will be treated this week after their families sought help from the U.S. military.
Wsim Rabea was vulnerable to sudden death from heart valve stenosis, a narrowing of the area beneath his aortic valve, until the early morning operation by Dr. Samuel Weinstein, director of pediatric heart surgery at the Children's Hospital of Montefiore Medical Center, officials said.
Weinstein said the surgery went smoothly and Wsim was soon awake.
"When I left him he was arguing with his father about when he could play soccer," Weinstein said.
Before the surgery, Weinstein said, Wsim would faint after any kind of exertion.
Wsim and the three other Iraqi children arrived in New York on Friday with their fathers in what the hospital is calling "Operation Iraqi Hearts."
The children's families were among 60 who had sought help from the American military's Civic Assistance Command in Baghdad. They came to the attention of Army Reserve Sgt. Marikay Satryano, a teacher from Tarrytown, N.Y., who was stationed in Amman, Jordan.
With help from the service group Rotary International, Satryano arranged for the children to be taken from Baghdad to Amman for treatment, and it was determined that several children with life-threatening defects needed surgery in the United States.
"Without her participation and involvement none of this would have happened," said Montefiore's chief medical officer, Steven Safyer, at a hospital news conference.
Weinstein plans to operate on two boys, ages 6 and 14, on Tuesday and a 12-year-old girl on Wednesday.
Rotary's Gift of Life program had contacted Weinstein, who agreed to donate his services. The Rotary program was helping pay for the Bronx hospital stays, along with another group, the Rachel B. Cooper Foundation.
Wsim's father, Rabea Senda, said through an interpreter, "I have been happy since Day 1, when you decided to bring my son here. ... This is not easy to happen to any child in my country."
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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1957 porsche 356a coupe
Article Navigation:
Photo RM Sotheby's - Porsche A Carrera GS Coupé by Reutter | London Video RELATED PAGES
The stunning GS Coupé offered here, bearing chassis no. , left the Porsche factory at Zuffenhausen in March of , wearing Silver Metallic paint.
Results 1 - 15 of 19 PORSCHE A SUNROOF COUPE --Anthracite Metallic with Red Leather Interior, Tan Square Weave Carpeting, showing 72,
PORSCHE A SUNROOF COUPE --Anthracite Metallic with Red Leather Interior, Tan Square Weave Carpeting, showing 72, total miles from new.
Although the used numerous components, Porsche did not intended for the to replace the Almost There Please check the email to complete your registration. The class win at Le Mans in was a factor. By late the divided windscreen was gone, replaced by a V-shaped unit which fit into the same opening. A subsidiary of Volkswagen Group.
Porsche - Wikipedia
It was Porsche's first production automobile. Engineering innovations continued during the years of manufacture, contributing to its motorsports success and popularity. In the factory relocated to Zuffenhausen , Germany, and general production of the continued until April , well after the replacement model made its autumn debut.
Of the 76, originally produced, approximately half survive. In the mid-engine , [3] tubular chassis prototype called " No. This led to some debate as to the "first" Porsche automobile, but the is considered by Porsche to be its first production model. The was created by Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche son of Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the German company , who founded the Austrian company with his sister, Louise. The chassis was a completely new design as was the 's body which was designed by Porsche employee Erwin Komenda , while certain mechanical components including the engine case and some suspension components were based on and initially sourced from Volkswagen.
Ferry Porsche described the thinking behind the development of the in an interview with the editor of Panorama , the PCA magazine, in September I had always driven very speedy cars. By the end of the war I had a Volkswagen Cabriolet with a supercharged engine and that was the basic idea.
I saw that if you had enough power in a small car it is nicer to drive than if you have a big car which is also overpowered. And it is more fun. On this basic idea we started the first Porsche prototype. The first was road certified in Austria on June 8, , and was entered in a race in Innsbruck where it won its class.
Fewer and fewer parts were shared between Volkswagen and Porsche as the s progressed. The aluminium bodied cars from that very small company are what are now referred to as "prototypes". Porsche contracted Reutter to build the steel bodies and eventually bought the Reutter company in Little noticed at its inception, mostly by a small number of auto racing enthusiasts, the first s sold primarily in Austria and Germany. It took Porsche two years, starting with the first prototype in , to manufacture the first 50 automobiles.
By the early s the had gained some renown among enthusiasts on both sides of the Atlantic for its aerodynamics, handling, and excellent build quality. The class win at Le Mans in was a factor. They introduced the four-cam racing " Carrera " engine, a totally new design and unique to Porsche sports cars, in late Increasing success with its racing and road cars brought Porsche orders for over 10, units in , and by the time production ended in approximately 76, had been produced.
To distinguish among the major revisions of the model, s are generally classified into a few major groups. The A was the first road going Porsche to offer the Carrera four-cam engine as an option.
Although the used numerous components, Porsche did not intended for the to replace the When the decision was made to replace the , the later was the road car designed to carry the Porsche name forward. The was developed as the "standard version" of the at the 17,DM price of a SC, while the complex but faster and heavier six-cylinder was priced more than fifty percent higher.
By late the divided windscreen was gone, replaced by a V-shaped unit which fit into the same opening. In late Max Hoffman , the sole US importer of Porsches, convinced Porsche to build a stripped down roadster version with minimal equipment and a cut-down windscreen.


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Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
Stock index futures as of 7 a.m. EDT suggest that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) could open lower by 0.36% this morning following mixed trading in world markets. Overnight, European stocks fell from their 10 -week high after Japanese economic data showed surprising weakness in the world's third-largest economy. Japan grew at a 2.6% annualized rate in the second quarter, slower than the 3.6% economists had expected. The country's Nikkei index finished the day down by 0.7%.
But it wasn't all bad news overseas. China's Shanghai Composite index leapt 2.4% overnight to notch a two-month high. Economic data continued to point to stabilization in the world's second-largest economy and perhaps even a return to more robust growth in the quarters ahead.
That could provide further lift to Dow component Alcoa (NYSE:AA), which was among the index's best performers last week after logging a 3.13% gain on strong trade data out of China. The Chinese market is a significant source of global demand for aluminum, as well as other commodities, and Alcoa would be pleased to see a reversal of the slowdown in economic growth there.
Disney (NYSE:DIS) could also see active trading today, as the shares might attract bargain seekers after ending last week down nearly 3%. The House of Mouse just wrapped up a three-day convention for fans over the weekend that included hints to a possible Star Wars expansion at its theme parks. After Disney bought Lucasfilm last year for $4.1 billion, investors and fans alike have been watching closely for signs of how Disney plans to use the powerhouse brand ahead of its first new film release in 2015. Also on Disney's radar is its upcoming launch of a major new video game, Infinity, due to hit shelves later this week.
Finally, shares in Home Depot (NYSE:HD) may see some interest today after rival Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) was upgraded by Canaccord and given a raised $48 price target. Home Depot is trading at a slight discount to Lowe's on a P/E basis, but both stocks have ridden the rising housing market higher and are sitting near their year-to-date highs. They're up 30% so far in 2013, versus the 19% that the broader market has logged.
Those solid returns help put last week's 1.5% market drop in context: Even if the mild Dow sell-off continues into its second week, long-term investors are looking at impressive returns just seven months into the year.


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- Five Congress lawmakers appear to be out of contact with their party
- HD Kumaraswamy claims they are continuously in touch with him
- He also dismissed any threat to his coalition government
A group of 'missing' Congress lawmakers in Karnataka is the biggest clue that the BJP has set "Operation Lotus" in motion, the party said today even as its partner, Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, dismissed any threat to his coalition government.
The Congress has called a meeting in Bengaluru in the backdrop of its worry about "Operation Lotus", which describes allegations that the BJP is trying to draw away ruling coalition lawmakers and take power in the state. The term was first used in 2008, when the BJP was accused of inciting several opposition legislators to defect to ensure the stability of its government headed by BS Yeddyurappa.
Five Congress lawmakers appear to be out of contact with their party, though ally Mr Kumaraswamy claimed they were in touch with him.
"All of them (Congress MLAs) are continuously in contact with me. They went to Mumbai after informing me. My government isn't under any threat," the Chief Minister said indignantly.
Mr Kumaraswamy, who took charge as chief minister in May after his Janata Dal Secular and the Congress formed an alliance, added: "I know who all the BJP is trying to contact and what they're offering. I can handle it..."
His deputy G Parameshwara of the Congress echoed him: "BJP leaders are saying this government will fall. But it won't happen. Some of our MLAs have gone, they can go for temples, holiday, family outings, we don't know. Nobody said that they're going to join BJP and destabilise the government. All our MLAs are intact."
Among the 'missing' lawmakers is Ramesh Jarakiholi, who was dropped recently by Mr Kumaraswamy in a cabinet shuffle and had threatened to quit the Congress.
The others are Anand Singh, B Nagendra, Umesh Jadhav and BC Patil.
The Congress's troubleshooter in Karnataka, DK Shivakumar, who played a big role in keeping the party's lawmakers together in the race for numbers after a fractured verdict in last year's polls, said yesterday that all of them are at a hotel in Mumbai in the company of BJP leaders.
"Horse trading is going on in the state. Three of our MLAs are in Mumbai in a hotel with some BJP MLAs and leaders. We are aware of what has transpired there and how much has been offered to them," he said.
More damningly for the ruling coalition, Mr Shivakumar, a minister, also said the chief minister "is a bit lenient" towards the BJP. "By lenient I mean he is not exposing the facts he knows. All the MLAs conveyed to the chief minister about the ongoing conspiracies. They also told Siddaramaiah (former Congress chief minister) about it... If I was in his place, I would have exposed it within 24 hours," Mr Shivakumar said.
Many Congress lawmakers in Karnataka have claimed that they were approached by the BJP leaders to quit their party and join them.
The BJP has trashed the charges, saying the coalition partners were hiding their weaknesses and internal conflict by making false accusations.
"There is no truth to all these rumours. This is between the Congress and JDS. We are not in touch with any of their MLAs. We are only focused on keeping our MLAs energised," said former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa of the BJP.
Daily activity of @hd_kumaraswamy government- BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) January 14, 2019
Morning : Make fake promises in media get full coverage & enjoy breakfast
Afternoon : Cry operation Kamala, hide failure to run govt by blaming BJP
Night : Fight among themselves for power & go to sleep
Next day : repeat..
Sources, however, say while the party is not in favour of making any major move in Karnataka before the national election due by May, Mr Yeddyurappa has other ideas.
In the 224 member Karnataka Assembly, the BJP has 104 lawmakers and is far short of the halfway mark of 113 needed for a majority. Even if the lawmakers quit the Congress, the coalition government will still have the numbers to survive.
Follow NDTV for latest election news and live coverage of assembly elections 2019 in Maharashtra and Haryana.
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Mark C. Rom: A Fair Vote
MARK C. ROM: On November 6, the citizens of Florida enacted Amendment 4, which automatically grants the right to vote to most convicted felons who have served their terms. This means that about 1.5 million Floridians, who previously had been disenfranchised, will be eligible to vote in future elections. This includes about 400,000 African Americans, or not quite 1-in-5 black adults in the state.
This is a remarkable vote for fairness.
Prior to the election, convicted felons in Florida had to petition the governor to regain the right to vote. In the eight years between 2010 and 2018 that Republican Rick Scott held that office, only about 3,500 felons had their voting rights restored.
This extension of the franchise is remarkable in a couple of ways.
First, Florida is the quintessential swing state. Donald Trump defeated Hilary Clinton by 1.2 percentage points. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than one percent. George W. Bush edged Al Gore by 537 votes.
In this week's election, the races for both Governor and Senator are subject to recounts, with the Republican candidates (Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott, respectively) leading their Democrat opponents (Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson) by less than 0.5 percentage points. Florida has 27 members of the House of Representatives: after Tuesday, 14 will be Republicans and 13 will be Democrats. No state is swingier.
Given that Republicans favor tighter voting restrictions, and Democrats more expansive rules, we might have predicted that the contest over Amendment 4 would
also be closely fought, with each side seeking partisan advantage while demonizing their opponents.
But it was not. Amendment 4 was approved in a landslide, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. If a hypothetical election were held between Amendment 4 and either major party candidate for Governor or Senator, the amendment would have won by nearly one million votes.
We do not know how the re-enfranchising of felons will affect the outcome of the 2020 elections. As always in politics, it depends on who actually turns out on election day. Perhaps those voting for it believed that their party would benefit in the coming years.
Or maybe, just maybe, the citizens of Florida voted to grant the right to convicted felons because they believed that it was the fair thing to do. One can hope.
Mark C. Rom is a professor at Georgetown University. He has served as a legislative assistant for the Honorable John Paul Hammerschmidt of the US House of Representatives, as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, as a senior evaluator at the US General Accounting Office, and as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Mark studies American politics and public policy, especially social welfare policy, including health, education, and welfare. His dissertation, The Thrift Tragedy: Are Politicians and Bureaucrats to Blame?, was the co-winner of the 1993 Harold Lasswell Award from the American Political Science Association as the best dissertation in the public policy field.


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hourglass wax seal pocket mirror - TIME IS SHORT
Reminiscent of the old celluloid advertising mirrors from days gone by, an hourglass wax seal pocket mirror with the image taken from a Victorian era (1837 - 1901) wax seal so it, and the text TIME IS SHORT is in the reverse as the wax seal would be.
The image on the front of the pocket mirror is sealed behind a glossy protective plastic with the glass mirror on the other side - the mirror does not open - and it measures 2 1/4"
It will arrive in a little organza bag.
Keep one in your purse, handbag, tote bag, make up bag, travel bag or give as a gift to a dear friend or dog lover.
Here is the hourglass TIME IS SHORT wax seal necklace which was impressed with the actual wax seal of this mirror image.
Here are a few more wax seal pocket mirrors.
Impressed with history!


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Helen Thomas Should Go Back to Mordor or the Star Wars Cantina and Get Out of Reporting
**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers
And yet, there she'll be in the front row of the next White House press conference:
White House press corps dean Helen Thomas — on the day that the White House hosted a Jewish Heritage Celebration, no less — said that Jews who live in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go "home."
When asked where home was for Israeli Jews, Thomas offered "Poland, Germany… and America and everywhere else" that the founding generation of the State of Israel originally hailed.
Just think what she'd say if she wasn't clinging to her unbiased journalistic instincts.
Click play if you dare — just looking at the still can haunt your dreams:
Update: Thomas issues a statement of regret for what she said.
From Allahpundit:
I'm satisfied. Who among us hasn't innocently stumbled into a statement of support for ethnic cleansing when we didn't really mean it?
Helen Thomas has become one of those octogenarian dinner guests soiling themselves at the table in ever increasing amounts who nobody has the guts to lock in the bathroom.
**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
Return of the feckless Chick-fil-A-phobes
April 18, 2018 08:47 AM by Michelle Malkin
The war on JROTC resurrected…by unhinged liberal media
February 20, 2018 12:49 AM by Michelle Malkin
Memo to Dan Rather: Shut up about memos
February 7, 2018 08:18 AM by Michelle Malkin
Dare to dream: Newsweek renews hope for Hillary fans
January 18, 2018 06:57 PM by Doug Powers
Confirmed: Simone from Ferris Bueller's Day Off had more reliable sources than 'Fire and Fury' author
January 14, 2018 11:43 AM by Doug Powers
Categories: Donald Trump, Media, Media Bias


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A Toolbox Talk is an informal safety meeting that focuses on safety topics related to the specific job, such as workplace hazards and safe work practices. This form is used to record toolbox talks that have happened in the site.
To update your submission, do the following steps:
1. There are two(2) ways on how to access the page:
- From your project page, go to Risk Management tab > View on Toolbox Talk tile.
- From your projects dashboard, click the Reports button. Locate the Toolbox Talk Report then click View Report. This can be found under All or Risk Management tab.
2. You will be redirected to Toolbox Talk Report page where you can view all the submissions.
3. Click Update to apply changes to your submission.
4. You will be directed to the form where you can view your current data. Update the fields you want to modify.
5. Click Save. Your updated submission will now be called V2 if you updated the V1 of your submission.


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- Aesir
- Bank
- Battle for the Throne
- Blacklist
- Boosts
- Buildings
- Clan Stronghold
- Clans
- Clans Battle
- Competitions
- Equipment
- Gems
- Ghosts
- Global Map
- Gold
- Hero
- Influence
- Invaders and Uber Invaders
- Items
- Jarl's info
- Jarl's Palace
- Jarl's Town
- Jotunheim
- Kingdoms Battle: Fury
- Knowledge
- Marches
- Materials
- Onslaughts
- Quests
- Ranking
- Recommendations for contacting support
- Resources
- Reward for Loyalty
- Runes
- Shamans
- Tasks
- The Kingdoms Battle
- The Kingdoms Battle: Revenge
- The Place of Power
- VIP Status
- Warriors
The Battle for the Throne is a legendary Competition that takes place in Jotunheim. Within this icy world, Jarls from all Kingdoms fight for the Throne of Jotunheim Fortress and the honorific of King. You can find all the necessary information (the time of start and end of the Competition, the tasks, and so on) in the Events window, the Battle for the Throne block.
The Battle for the Throne lasts for 2 days. In order to win, you need to capture and hold the Throne of Jotunheim Fortress for the longest duration, the time of all capture attempts is added together. During the Competition, the results of other Jarls will be hidden and they will become available only when the event ends.
Only Jarls who are Clan members with a Palace of level 21 or higher and an account older than 30 days can participate in the Battle for the Throne.
You can view the map of Jotunheim, info on the events, or go to Jotunheim by using:
- The "Jotunheim" button in the game Menu
- The icon for the active "Battle for the Throne" legendary Competition on the Global Map
- The Jotunheim icon on the Kingdoms Map
- The Competitions block in the Events window marked "Jotunheim"


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Star Trek Online
is set during the original series timeline of Star Trek history, and takes place twenty years after the events that sent Spock back in time (a facet that played a large role in the recent Star Trek film). This is a universe in chaos, with Romulus being destroyed, the Cardassian Union fragmented, the Borg having returned to assimilate worlds, and the Federation and Klingon Empire are on the brink of war once again. Into this tumultuous time, players choose to be either a Federation or Klingon captain, fighting and exploring through the galaxy as they see fit. Like other MMOs, players won't be forced to complete the main storyline of the game, but those choosing to see the story of their side play through will experience a series of adventures that Cryptic is calling "episodes," with content similar to the older television shows. This means that you'll participate in tasks such as delivering an ambassador to a planet, beaming down to ensure their safety, and then returning to space to potentially repel incoming raiders from nearing the planet to kidnap the VIP.
see deal
Star Trek Online (PC)£30.71on Amazon
Each episode is tuned for up to five players to group together and complete (scaling difficulty based on the "fleet" or party that is taking on a mission), and eventually culminate in a major milestone at a galactic hub known as a season ender, which frequently require larger groups of fleets to accomplish, which is known as a fleet action. For example, repelling a Borg Cube or two from entering Sol and attacking earth is a large scale fleet action for the Federation.
But before you can engage in these activities, you have to build your ship and select your path. Every player will start out with a light cruiser, but will quickly be given the option to determine what kind of ship they want to command, from a cruiser, science or escort vessel. From there, they are given the ability to manipulate their ship's configuration, down to the placement of the nacelles, material that it's made from and its overall geometry. These decisions impact some of the elements regarding the direction of your character: choosing to specialize in being a cruiser captain doesn't prevent you from flying the other classes, but it does give you some advantages to commanding those ships.
The decision of which ship you want to command also affects the crew that you can have manning your ship. Each ship has slots for Science, Engineering and Tactical officers, although based on the class, a ship may have more use for a particular "seat" that another. For example, a science vessel will have multiple science seats, perhaps an engineering seat or two and maybe no tactical seats at all. Seats are important because they allow crewmembers to use their skills (or powers) to affect the performance of your ship, such as providing a beam that can strip away an enemy ship's shields, faster photon torpedo firing or faster impulse power during combat. I was told that there would be hundreds of these skills to match the hundreds of potential recruits that you can acquire over the course of your adventures.
I had a chance to check this out as I was able to control a vessel in battle against a group of raiders, who were trying to destroy a Federation space station. Controlling the cruiser under my command was slow, even at full impulse power; however, I was told that this was to allow me to tactically determine how to use my phaser arrays and photon torpedoes to strip away enemy shields for a lethal strike. Maneuvering was controlled with the WASD keys, while the mouse could be used to allocate power for your systems in battle. For example, if you're going into battle against faster ships, you may want to sink a lot of power into your phasers so you can respond to their quick maneuvers with fast weapon fire. On the other hand, if you're facing off against slower, more powerful ships, you may want to power up your forward shields to defend against direct assaults. You can control these factors with basic presets, or continually boost your weapons on the fly as the battle commands.
After blasting through the vessels and beaming aboard, I was able to take on four other crewmembers to help me explore the station and see if there were any survivors. The crewmembers were interesting because not only was I able to direct them individually in battle (like a pet from other MMOs), but I could tailor the crew to my own specifications. See, every player will have the ability to select a crewmember from the various known alien races in the galaxy, like Trill, Bajoran or Vulcan, but you can choose to abandon these standards and choose to create your own species, creating their look, history and other features. From there, you can save and send out your newly created aliens to other crews, allowing them to populate the universe. On top of that, you can adjust their individual "kits," profession specific traits that give then different abilities in battle, like a Bones kit that lets them heal nearby characters, or a Kirk kit that gives attack bonuses. These can be further manipulated by weaponry, allowing characters to engage in what Cryptic calls their expose and exploit system during ground battle.
The system plays out like this: players can use one of their weapon skills to potentially expose a weakness in an enemy's defense. For example, my captain held a rather powerful photon gatling gun that could hit multiple targets at once and instantly stun them based on proximity. This would instantly leave the enemies vulnerable for a follow up attack from my captain or a crewmember. That led to the exploit phase, where characters could cause critical damage and potentially end the battle faster. What I discovered is that some battles would require these tactics, as you'd be forced to fight against large numbers of enemies at once (again, scaling in number and difficulty based on the number of human players in your party).
While I saw an early version, Cryptic Studios is hard at work making sure that the experience is ready for Star Trek fans when the game is launched in February 2010. There are still a number of questions that I had which couldn't fully be answered, such as how guilds will operate within the confines of Starfleet or the Klingon Empire, as well as some of the trading and crafting elements, but I was told that those answers would be coming rather soon. For now, however, Star Trek fans should start to imagine how boldly they will choose to explore space, as their skills will soon be needed.
If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, learn more.


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This course offers everything you need to know to take advantage of the great things that G Suite for Education offers to teachers and students. Getting Going With G Suite is a webinar series designed for teachers and administrators who are new to using G Suite for Education. This is a five week course covering everything you need to know to integrate Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Calendar, and Google Sites into your practice.
Course highlights:
- Streamline your workflow with Google Classroom.
- Get control of your inbox with Gmail hacks.
- Create self-paced, self-grading assessments in Google Forms.
- Develop an classroom website with Google Sites.
- Organize meetings with Google Calendar.
- Keep track of bookmarks and notes with Google Keep.
- Make beautiful presentations in Google Slides.
- Create guided reading activities in Google Docs.
Getting Going With G Suite costs $147. (Subscribers to the Practical Ed Tech newsletter receive a discount code to save $15).
You'll need an account to access this in our app. Please create a password to continue.
Download from the App Store or text yourself a link to the app
Good news! Since you already have a Gumroad account, it's also been added to your library.Tweet Share
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Cause undetermined in fire at Kent building
Investigators are trying to determine what started a fire Wednesday at a commercial building in Kent.
Firefighters were called at 4:25 p.m. to a building in the 300 block of Lincoln Avenue South and found smoke pouring from the structure. The blaze, which started in the loft area, took about 20 minutes for crews to extinguish.
Capt. Kyle Ohashi said it did not appear that a business was being operated inside the building, but the department could not locate the owner.
It's believed that squatters periodically stayed in the building and brought several items inside with them, Oshashi said. It's unknown whether those items contributed to the fire.
A city employee spotted a person leaving the area near the blaze and reported it to police, who interviewed the person. No arrests were made.


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Environmental variation is an essential part of population dynamics, and two characteristics of such variation—variance and the temporal autocorrelation termed 'noise colour'—are essential for determining the persistence of a population. In addition, the spatial correlation of local environmental variation between habitat patches (i.e., synchrony) is equally important in subdivided populations connected via dispersal. The research underlying this thesis explored the effects of noise colour and synchrony on population dynamics. The dynamics were studied primarily in single-species models with fast or slow population responses to environmental changes, and several-species systems (i.e., food webs) with different stability properties were also considered. Populations were spatially subdivided with local dynamics in discrete patches, and patch positions were modelled either implicitly or explicitly, with different landscape configurations in the latter case.
It has previously been shown that the effect of increased environmental redness on extinction risk in nonspatial models depends on population responsiveness, seen as increased and decreased risks for fast and slow responding populations, respectively. Here, increased redness of noise decreased the extinction risk for fast-responding populations (in accordance with non-spatial studies) in a simple implicit landscape model (Papers I and II). Slow-responding populations in some cases showed a raised extinction risk for intermediate noise colour values (Paper I), which does not agree with earlier results. However, increasing the spatial complexity evened out the differences that were caused by responsiveness (Papers III and IV). Thus, in general, the explicit landscape models displayed a decrease in extinction risk with increasing environmental redness regardless of whether the populations were fast or slow in responding to environmental variation.
Still, fast and slow responsiveness of populations differed in relation to the following: overall levels of extinction risk (Papers I, III, and IV), synchrony of population variations (Paper II), colour of population variations (Paper II), and response to landscape structure (Papers III and IV). For fast-responding populations, the degree of synchrony of population variations was similar to the synchrony of environmental noise (Paper II). Local populations of a model organism that responded slowly to environmental variation were more synchronized than the environmental variation itself, and the largest shift between the environment and the populations was seen for intermediate red noise colours (Paper II). This indicated that dispersal-induced population synchrony could be enhanced by reddened noise.
Landscape configuration proved to be important for the general levels of extinction risk. This effect was most pronounced for fast-responding populations (Papers III and IV) and became even more distinct when distance-dependent synchrony was added between the environmental variations (Paper IV). Adding explicit landscapes led to an decrease in the differences between fast- and slow-responding populations, when considering the influence of noise colour on extinction risk. Also, landscape configuration affected the importance of degree of synchrony through its impact on distances between patches, which resulted in configurations where extinction risk depended solely on noise colour. The effects on stability exerted by populations embedded in food webs were investigated in an implicit landscape model (Paper V). Three types of food webs with different properties of inherent stability all showed a decrease in stability at increased environmental variance and increased redness of environmental variation.
In conclusion, the single-species models showed that the survival conditions of populations that were near extinction were improved by all of the following: decreased synchrony, reddening of noise, and aggregation of patches. The results of the web simulations indicate that we need better understanding of how findings obtained using single-species models can be used to reveal the effects of noise colour on species communities. From a management perspective, altering landscape structure may compensate for increased extinction risks caused by changed noise colour of environmental variation, which is a predicted outcome of climate change.
The autocorrelation of environmental variation, also called noise color, influences the population dynamics and the probability of extinction risk. Increasing the distance, the variations over time for two sites will become more unsynchronized. Thus, both degree of synchrony and noise color are parts of the same environmental variation affecting population dynamics in a spatial setting. We present a novel method of generating environmental noise controlling for its noise color and synchrony. We apply these time series to carrying capacity (K) or (indirectly) to growth rate (r), and altered the population regulation response between over- and under-compensatory. A novel finding is that the qualitative effects of noise color on extinction risk do not differ with degree of synchrony. Our results for highly responsive dynamics (large growth rates and overcompensatory dynamics) agree with previous non-spatial studies by showing that the redder the noise, the lower the extinction risk. The results for less responsive dynamics are more complex, indicating that intermediate noise color causes a larger extinction risk compared to whiter or redder color. To explain this hump-shaped response, we use classical descriptions of how means and variances of population density depend on noise color. These results allow a new straightforward interpretation of how extinction risk depends on population dynamics, noise color, and synchrony.
Environmental variation is a major force driving fluctuations in population densities. Here, we investigated the impact of such variation on population dynamics by studying noise color and synchrony of environmental variation compared to noise color and synchrony of variation of local population densities. We used Ricker models with over- or undercompensatory density-dependent regulation, and local populations were connected by dispersal. For both noise color and synchrony, we measured the shift between environmental variation and fluctuations in population densities. We also analyzed how the shifts were affected by dispersal rate and type of density regulation. Populations with undercompensatory dynamics showed the classical picture of increasing positive shifts in synchrony with increasing dispersal rates. The color of the environmental variation also affected the positive shift in synchrony, which was increased by reddened noise in populations with undercompensatory dynamics. Populations with overcompensatory dynamics showed no shifts in synchrony regardless of dispersal rates. Shifts in noise color exhibited the same pattern: populations with overcompensatory dynamics displayed only minor shifts in noise color, whereas those with undercompensatory dynamics had distinct positive shifts that increased with dispersal rates and also depended on the degree of synchrony. These findings demonstrate that noise color and synchrony are determined by and equal to synchrony and close to the color of environmental variation in populations with overcompensatory dynamics, but differ from the corresponding aspects of environmental variation in populations with undercompensatory dynamics. The shifts in populations with undercompensatory dynamics are determined by several factors: degree of population responsiveness, dispersal rates, and both the color and synchrony of environmental variation.
We studied interplay between landscape configuration and two characteristics known to affect population extinction risks: environmental fluctuations and population dynamics. Specifically, we tested effects of noise colour (i.e. the temporal autocorrelation) and the synchrony (i.e. spatial correlation) of environmental fluctuations by simulations using models of populations with overor undercompensatory dynamics. The results demonstrated that landscape configuration has a profound effect on extinction risks. Interaction between landscape configuration and environmental fluctuations was seen as stronger effects of noise colour (decreased extinction risk with increased redness) in random landscapes and more evident effects of synchrony in aggregated landscapes. The impact of landscape structure was more striking for over- than undercompensatory dynamics; showing strongly reduced extinction risk in aggregated landscapes compared to random configurations. Results on extinction risks using data on geographical positions of old oaks (Quercus robur) concurred with those of generated landscapes. Our findings indicate that a population on the limits of its existence is extremely sensitive to both spatial configuration and temporal variation of resources. The results underline that there are no shortcuts in ecology. Correct characterization of landscape configuration, environmental fluctuations, and population dynamics is necessary when estimatin and analysing the causes of extinction risks.
Local populations in patches close to each other would probably be influenced by similar environmental conditions. When increasing the distance between the patches the local population will experience less synchronized environments. Since, the degree of synchrony is important for the overall extinction risk it is probably likewise important to include distance dependence in environmental variation when studying environmental forcing on spatially subdivided populations. Thus, we will investigate the importance of including such distance dependent synchrony when studying coloured environmental variation applied to populations in explicit landscapes. We will introduce a method based on controlling the phases when generating 1/fnoise. The results showed large differences between fast or slow density regulation responses in populations. Extinction risk was several magnitudes larger when including distance dependent synchrony compared to randomly distributing environmental time series for overcompensatory dynamics. There was one exception; it is not necessary to include distance dependent synchrony for landscape with random patch distribution. For undercompensatory dynamics the effect from distant dependent synchrony was only apparent in the most aggregated patch configurations.
In times when climate change is expected to cause an increased environmental variability it is important to understand how species respond to disturbances. We explore how the stability of species respond to changes in environmental noise by introducing noise colour to different spatial and multi-trophic model systems: (1) a diamond shaped food web with stable oscillations, (2) a stabilized diamond shaped food web, and (3) a food web with stable dynamics. We conclude that adding space and additional trophic levels makes species response to environmental noise colour consistent. All three food webs and species decreased in stability with increased redness, positive temporal autocorrelation, of the environmental noise. Hence, interactions between noise colour and species responsiveness previously found in single- and multi-species models were not found when comparing more natural food webs differing in stability properties. When adding a spatial dimension, all food webs and species increased in stability. Both the diamond shaped and the stabilized diamond shaped food web were significantly more stable than the food web with more typical stable dynamics when existing in a variable and spatial setting. The major route to explain stability and the existence of a diverse world may then be the variable and spatial complexity of nature.


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Ventura Auto Center sign clears first hurdle
Behold, citizens of and travelers through Ventura: Soon there will be a new bright, illuminated sign along the 101 Freeway depicting a bounty of vehicles available within the Auto Center, after the city's Planning Commission gave the go-ahead.
By a 5-2 vote on Wednesday, June 14, the commission approved construction of the sign as part of an update to the Ventura Auto Center's specific plan, which includes new roadways, rules for signage and uses for land that exists off Johnson Drive.
The City Council has final say-so on the sign's approval, however, and will hear arguments on July 10.
Commissioners added 7.5 acres of land to the specific plan along with the 82-foot-tall sign, roughly 220 feet from the freeway. The sign would feature a 20-foot-tall by 60-foot-wide screen.
As part of the approval, the Design Review Committee will have final say over all signage at the Center. Also, the specific plan removes a regulation that all used vehicles sold at the Center must be five years old or newer and requires that graffiti must be cleared within 72-hours.
The city had agreed to pay for the cost of the sign, to the tune of $750,000, but under the new plan, those funds will not be available. The auto center would cover the cost of construction and installation under the new agreement.
The City Council will meet on Monday, July 10.
Charges dropped against Ojai MJ co-op owner
The odyssey that has been the prosecution of Shangri-La Care Cooperative President Jeffrey Kroll has seemingly flipped the script, with all charges dropped.
Jeffrey Kroll, 66, had been arrested in April 2016 to face multiple felony charges, including conspiracy to sell marijuana and manufacturing concentrated cannabis, in addition to facing four counts of failing to file a tax return and three counts of filing false returns, just a few of the 34 original charges.
On Wednesday, June 21, Kroll appeared before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Michael Lief on a motion to dismiss charges, filed by Kroll's defense attorney Zenia Gilg, claiming that the prosecution had failed to file charging documents within 15 days of a holding order, thereby invalidating it.
Kroll has vigorously defended himself and his cooperative, as well as his partners and members, over the course of the investigation. He had been the subject of several no-knock warrant searches, with many personal belongings, including cash and computers, confiscated.
Shangri-La Co-Director Robert Hoffman and delivery driver William MacNeil still have court dates scheduled, however, in September and August, respectively.
Attorneys for Kroll say that they plan to move forward with a $12 million civil suit against the county, and the prosecution says that the charges will be refiled.
Simi boy in need of life-saving marrow transplant
Two-year old Pierce and 11-month old Jeremy, both residents of Simi Valley, had one thing in common: Both needed immediate bone-marrow transplants to save their lives.
Jeremy was recently diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and Diamond-Blackfan anemia and Pierce was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), in April. Both diseases are a type of blood cancer for which a marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant are the only cures.
Both of the boys are being treated at the Los Angeles Children's Hospital.
Recently, a donor was found for Pierce, though not from his family. Pierce's donor came by way of Be a Match, a registry of potential donors with whom a patient's DNA is compared. When a match is found, the donor gives stem cells or marrow. In Pierce's case, the boy will receive marrow.
"What makes it so hard is, you're literally trying to find someone who has the same markers — in laymen terms, DNA markers — as you, someone as close to you as a sibling," said Joyce Valdez, community outreach specialist with Be a Match based out of the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte. "Pierce just so happened to find one and Jeremy has not."
Valdez says that donors give by way of either a simple procedure like giving blood or, as in Pierce's case, through a marrow donation that she says patients describe afterward as "falling on their butt with a little bit of soreness," which goes away after about a week, she says.
Beyond mild discomfort, donors are providing hope for patients, says Valdez.
"We have patients that are literally looking for a stranger to give them a second chance in life," said Valdez. "You may be that one person who is called to be a potential match for someone."
To find out more on how to register as a donor, visit www.bethematch.org.


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At Highlands Latin Phoenix, we love the benefits that unity in dress brings to our school. Our uniform policy aims to foster academic focus, the development of our unique school culture, and a feeling of dignity and belonging in each student. The Highlands Latin Phoenix uniform provider is French Toast. Uniform items can be purchased at www.frenchtoast.com using the school code QS5MWDR.
Neatness in outward dress and appearance
reflects inner focus and discipline.
General Guidelines
Hair, Makeup, and Jewelry – Hair should be brushed and arranged neatly. No unnatural colors. Girls can wear subdued-colored nail polish. Pre-K through 6th grade may not wear makeup. Makeup for 7th and up, if worn, should be natural and not detract from youthfulness. Jewelry should be minimal and not distracting.
Uniform – Shirts are to be tucked in at all times. Navy kick shorts or opaque tights need to be worn under the jumper or skirt at all times. When worn, knee socks are to be in place and not scrunched down.
Hair – Hair should be brushed or combed, no unnatural colors. No jewelry or piercings.
Uniform – Shirts should not be oversized. The shoulder seam should sit at the start of the shoulder cap. Shirts are to be tucked in at all times. Pants are worn with a belt and should not be oversized, too long, or worn low. Socks need to be in place (not scrunched down).
*Starred items available from French Toast, no substitutions unless indistinguishable.
Non starred items are also available from French Toast, and are a great value.
Girls | Required
*Shirts: French Toast Short Sleeve AND/OR Long Sleeve Peter Pan Blouse, Light Blue
*Jumper/Skirt: French Toast V-Neck Pleated Plaid Jumper AND/OR Plaid Two-Tab Scooter, Blue and Gold
*Tie: French Toast Adjustable Plaid Cross Tie, Blue and Gold
*Kick Shorts: Navy Blue Kick Shorts, with jumper only (not required with Scooter skirt as it has attached shorts)
Socks: White opaque tights, knee socks, or fold-over socks
Shoes: Matte black leather shoes – Mary Jane, T-strap, or Oxford style (no colored embellishments)
Girls | Optional
*Sweater: Anti-pill Crew Neck Cardigan Sweater with HLS Phoenix embroidery
Hair Accessories: Navy, white or light blue hair accessories
Boys | Required
*Shirts: French Toast Short Sleeve AND/OR Long Sleeve Dress Shirt, Light Blue
*Bottoms: French Toast Flat Front Adjustable Waist (or Pull On) Shorts AND/OR Flat Front
Adjustable Waist Double Knee (or Pull On) Pants, Navy
*Tie: French Toast Adjustable Plaid Tie, Blue and Gold*
Belt: Black leather belt
Socks: Navy blue dress socks
Shoes: Matte black leather shoes: Oxford or loafer style
Boys | Optional
*Sweater: Zip Front Sweater, Navy, with HLS Phoenix embroidery
French Toast often has valuable "percent off" coupon codes available, that can be found through a search on Google.
For questions regarding uniforms, please contact Highlands Latin Phoenix Director, Laura Hall.


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Arrium, Whyalla now close to salvation if state and fed govts work with preferred bidder
Thursday 15th June 2017 0:00
The Australian Workers' Union is calling on the South Australian and federal governments to save Whyalla by working constructively to meet the requirements of the Korean Consortium, which has been announced as the preferred bidder for Arrium.
AWU National Secretary Daniel Walton said that the cooperative efforts of all major stakeholders had brought Arrium and Whyalla to the brink of salvation, but it was up to government to go the last mile.
"As the legal representative of over 2000 Arrium workers I am extremely encouraged by the important step we have taken in settling on a preferred bidder," Mr Walton said.
"Through the continued cooperation of union employees, Arrium's creditors, and the administrator, a positive outcome is now eminently achievable. The Korean Consortium requires government commit to meeting some maintenance costs over a five-year period while the company invests $1.4 billion into building the FINEX steelworks and an off-gas power plant.
"This is a deal our governments should absolutely make. It is the national interest for Arrium's operations, especially in Whyalla, to stay running.
"Australian steel has a viable, prosperous future, and can continue to support thousands of excellent jobs, along with whole communities. But that will only happen if our government is willing to support industry.
"If the SA and federal governments can work together to get us over this final hurdle, they can ensure an advanced steelworks for Whyalla and the nation for at least the next 30 years and beyond."


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David Heinemeier Hansson helped transform 37signals from a consulting company to a product company in early 2004. He wrote the company's first product, Basecamp, an online project management tool. He also wrote companion products Backpack, Ta-da List, and Campfire.
In July 2004, he released the layer of software that underlies these applications as an open source web development framework. Ruby on Rails has since become one of the most popular tools among web developers and won Heinemeier Hansson the Hacker of the Year award at OSCON in 2005.
In July 2006 (after this interview), 37signals president ...
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MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY — The McCracken County Sheriff's Department says Peck's Market on Oaks Road is currently on fire.
They are asking people to avoid the area.
The Reidland and Hendron Fire Departments are responding to the fire.
No word of any injuries at this time.
We will be updating this story.
UPDATE: The video below shows video and sound from the fire, shot and edited by Local 6 photojournalist Chad Darnall. And for more information about the fire and the efforts of first responders to fight it in the snow and ice, click here.


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The exact requirements that need to be met by an individual firm will depend on their specific consumer credit activities and their FCA authorisation status.
See the 'FCA interim permission and authorisation' module for more information.
Beyond the principles of the FCA regime, the Consumer Credit Sourcebook (see also 'Changes to consumer credit regulation' module) sets out the specific Rules and Guidance which the FCA expects firms carrying out consumer credit activities to follow. The distinction between Rules and Guidance in CONC is important for firms as the FCA will fully enforce its Rules, while firms have some discretion to interpret Guidance provided it is in accordance with the FCA's Principles and the spirit of the regulatory regime.
In addition, the FCA conduct regular Market Studies and Thematic Reviews which examine in detail particular products or markets as a whole. For example, in 2013/14 the FCA conducted a Market Study on General Insurance Add-On products. The outcome of the Review were new rules introduced for the sale of GAP insurance which we cover under module 5.


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Sample organization plans and templates can support you develop a skilled document that will serve as an in-depth marketing and advertising tool to convince other individuals of your venture's prospective for good results. The will also be systems that did not meet the ambitions you had set and the plans you had created. So, strategy what is stated, the method, the numbers (sales forecast and so forth), the IP approach, and each and every eventuality. Not only does it guide your organization towards its ambitions and accordingly the strategies are thought of, but even the management of your company relies on the company program. It is enjoyable to be seeking days ahead, and it takes the stress off while you are working your present plan. The opportunity could be connected to driving new organization in a particular nation or probably in a distinct market.
This aids us to measure our progress and strategy for essential events that are critical for achieving our targets. Don't forget the 5 components of a successful company are management, management, management, industry and product (in that order, and not in the reverse order as some inventors and entrepreneurs might like to feel). Because of that, I have to very carefully strategy which expert associations I want to belong to, which courses I must be taking and how considerably income I have to devote on each of these items. Function on the assumption that whoever reads your plan will be completely unfamiliar with your enterprise or project and will be seeking answers to reasonably simple inquiries and crucial troubles, for instance, what will the organization do, will it make cash and so forth. This will stay away from disrupting the flow of the program or cluttering it with excessive detail.
I recognise nonetheless that several little organization start off-ups do not begin with such consideration to monetary processes, and it's primarily for those circumstances that these specific notes are supplied. This is exactly where cities use ways to stretch their indicates by utilizing the very best plan achievable. Although organization improvement plans could vary according to your level of expertise, variety of practice, and other variables, any program must concentrate on your contacts, your practice, and activities geared toward enhancing each. If you are short in 1 or all of these three regions, place your nose to the grindstone and create a program to get where you want to be. The great news is you don't have a million things to concentrate on – there are only 3: money flow, cash and insurance coverage.
Consequently business plans tend very first to appear outwards, at a market place, just before they look inwards, at finance and production, and so forth. Consider formation of a management group or strengthening management as element of the plan. Then finally encouraging what nobel winner Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus calls social businesses " which operate to maximize selected social ambitions while keeping the company lucrative. So the individuals who produce the enterprise could not be the very best people to handle the business. The Export Market place Improvement Grants (EMDG) scheme can reimburse up to 50% of eligible export promotion expenditures above $5,000.
Enterprise Plans Index – A topic guide to sample business plans and profiles for distinct business kinds from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. A clearly written and attractively packaged organization plan will make it less difficult to interest feasible supporters, investors and so on. Each and every entrepreneur has great intentions about receiving plans completed, but months later they nevertheless have not completed all the perform. The Company Improvement and Marketing and advertising section is responsible for company retention and expansion, new organization attraction, and marketing and outreach. We are of the opinion that if following measures are proper earnestly applied, the rate of financial development can go up.


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Ian Provest exhibited 'The Abbee' at ArtHere Exhibition Space in 2013. His stunning new exhibition LIFE STOCK at Gosford Regional Gallery draws on the same location (amongst others) and the same issues of the spirit and the forces of life. It spans the mediums of photography, installation, moving image (The Abbee Illuminations), object and text. It is well worth the drive to Gosford.
Gosford Regional Gallery 36 Webb Street East Gosford Hours 10 – 4 daily.
Artist Talks Saturday March 10 and 28. Contact the gallery for details Ph: 43047550


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You may remember when I posted a little something on the places I go for cheap thrills? This time there will not be maps, because I am not a guide book, and the list is by no means exhaustive. Cool?
Today I'm going to highlight some of the places I like to shop for clothes and accessories when I'm feeling flush, or really have my heart set on something unique. There are a lot of places in Muscat to waste wheelbarrows full of of your husband's money, but these are the best. **
First up is Eye Candy in Jawharat Al Shatti. You may die when you see the prices, but the selection of designer clothes, jewelery, and beauty accessories is fantastic. Local and international botique designers are featured on the racks, and you can expect excruciatingly honest feedback on how things fit you, or how to wear them better. Everything is handpicked by the lady who owns the place, and her taste is really, truly, unbelievably, impeccable. I get more complements on my necklace from there than on anything else I own. Save your pennies, mortgage your house, or sell your children into slavery, and then head on over. You won't regret it. (although your children may miss you)
Next up, believe it or not is MANGO located in Muscat City Center. It is, apparently, not just for teenagers. I shop there occasionally at the sales, and there are occasional gems. I especially like their limited, but always excellent shoe selection. I got these there:
Zuhair Murad for Mango. 25 RO. I love these shoes.
Another little known but truly excellent shop is Wardrobe, located in Al Asfoor plaza in Qurm. Alyona, the proprietor, sells genuine designer handbags and accessories, as well as a changing selection of lightly used designer clothes and accessories. Alyona has very good taste, and real knowledge of the stuff she is selling, plus a delightfully unpretentious attitude. You can look for wardrobe on Facebook, all the details of the shop are there.
Boutique Muscat, located in Madinat Qaboos, is the partnership of a couple of sisters with a penchant for design. They sell their own designs, as well as readymade labels, at surprisingly affordable prices. Much of the design is merging traditional omani patterns and fabrics with contemporary design. Despite some questionable items, most of the designs are really nice, and it's groovy to support local designers.
There is a Second Hand Watch Place in Sabco Center, upstairs to the right of the escalators. The consensus on Twitter is that it is called Future Jewelry, but none of us can remember the name for sure. You can find one of a kind and mass produced designer watches there at a fraction of the new cost, which sadly, is still astonishingly expensive.
There is another place that stocks second hand watches nearby: it's outside Sabco, on the way to wadi Center, and opposite the Panasonic showroom. It's called Diamond Watch, and they also do High-end second hand watches. *thanks to @BigManInOman for the tip!
There is an outstanding fabric ship in Al Ghubra, below and to the north west of the shell station exit. Skip the tacky polyester stuff at the front, and head to the back. Buy yourself some Luxe fabrics, and take them to your favorite tailor. I have had a YSL ball gown in a thousand layers of green silk and tuile copied by a local tailorl. I made a few changes that would make it fit my weird figure, and it looks outstanding. Don't be a dipshit and make it a last minute thing, plan ahead, and have at least 5 fittings if you want it to be perfect. My last dress took 10 fittings, and I paid through the nose for it, but it's perfect in every way. I wish I had somewhere to wear it!
If all else fails, seek out the internet. www.etsy.com sells handmade clothes, ball gowns, and home decor items that you just can't find here in Oman as well as lots of recycled designer originals. You need to have a working paypal account, but you can get stuff that you will be guarenteed nobody else in town can dream of owning.
I got this dress from glamarita on etsy, and I couldn't be happier with the service and fitting.
Later in the week, I have a post planned on household style solutions, because I know you are all sick to death of the same shit from Marina and Home Center. Stay tuned.
** those of you who actually know me in person may question my authority to write about anything style or fashion related since I am Ms.Tshirt and Jeans, and couldn't put together a coffee morning outfit to save my life. This is true. You've been warned.


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Tom Clancy's straight-laced military stories have been fertile ground for video games since 1987, when Argus Press Software (who?) released The Hunt For Red October on ZX Spectrum. However, the series' popularity didn't truly escalate until the original Ghost Recon appeared on PC in 2001, capturing the tense military thrills of the books and marrying them with hardcore tactical shooting. Since then, our Tom has gone from strength to strength in video game form, spawning several established franchises (and a few one-offs) that encompass first-person shooters, flight sims, strategy, stealth and even turn-based battles. The latest – Tom Clancy's The Division – is an MMO shooter, and looks all set to carry the Clancy name into the future. But before that, let's look at the whole series history and pick out the ten best Clancy games of all time.
10. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist
The latest in the Splinter Cell series is… just fine. It picks up the aggressive stealth idea from Conviction and runs with it, but perhaps over-complicates things by adding too many gadgets and combat variables. The true beauty of Splinter Cell is working out each area's shadowy puzzles, and Blacklist simply lets you go too loud if you can't work out the solution. Doesn't help that Ubi ditched Michael Ironside from VO duties too, creating a weirdly less-likeable central character (despite him being, essentially, the same guy). Still, some neat level design and smart set-pieces make this one worth a play, even if the overly dramatic military jargon feels like a parody of itself very early on. Hey, I'm just not a fan, ok.
9. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
The original Advanced Warfighter is a hot mess. While it looked beautiful back in the first year of Xbox 360, the action was shakier than the camerawork in the Blair Witch Project (#contemporaryReference). However, AW2 got its act together and married gorgeous visuals, smart mission design, tight shooting, and some of the sexiest military tech seen in games. Like the gun that could shoot around corners, which totally exists in real life. And a drone that lets you mark targets for allies, and for your own gunny gratification. AW2 hits that sweet spot between reality and near-future tech – the area where Ghost Recon thrives – making it a far more enjoyable experience than the rather silly Future Soldier.
8. Tom Clancy's Endwar
Endwar made fools of us all. When voice commands were still achingly cool, Ubi dished up this strategy game from the Clancy universe that you could play entirely vocally. Obviously that was a recipe for disaster, as frustrated armchair generals all over the world started inserting increasingly strong swears into their orders when the game fudged it all up. However, underneath all that is a fine strategy game with some delightfully well-designed maps to scrap in. Reverting to pad is a far from ideal solution, but it means you get to almost enjoy one of the few RTS titles that actually worked on console. Y'know, before XCOM: Enemy Unknown showed up and everyone just conceded defeat.
7. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars
The Nintendo 3DS is not ideally suited to the strengths of any Tom Clancy series. No fancy presentation like the best Splinter Cells, no robust networking features to truly suit Rainbow Six, and shooters in general have never felt great on Nintendo's handhelds. Ghost Recon Shadow Wars, however, is a freak in the Tom Clancy pantheon. Rather than a slow-paced multiplayer shooter, Shadow Wars is a tactics RPG whose bite-sized skirmishes place you in taut standoffs with a handful of specialists. It handily captures both the succulent tension of a well-executed plan and the brute theatricality of full scale Ghost Recon games, but as a turn-based XCOM-alike. Those XCOM qualities come to Shadow Wars honestly too; it was the last game XCOM creator Julian Gollop turned in for Ubisoft.
6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
Given the rather niche concept of R6 Vegas, it's amazing that Ubi squeezed a couple of games out of it. In fact, it's rather telling that the first of them was the best. While the setting provides the glitz and glamour, the fresh gameplay features make this feel like the first Rainbow Six title truly optimised for console. Regenerating health, a third-person view for blind-firing, and context sensitive squad commands (on the d-pad) all make for a shooty-bang-bang experience that's a little more sympathetic to the less hardcore player. While this undoubtedly softens the series' appeal for some, the whole thing is still tough and military enough to satisfy. Again, though, it was probably a poor idea to bring the second game back to the city of sin without any real improvements. Does it hold up today? Well, kinda, but shouldn't you be playing Siege instead?
5. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (2001)
Ok, so, the original Ghost Recon doesn't really hold up by today's standards. It's a rather slow, rather ugly game where the tactical shooting doesn't quite make up for the visual and presentation shortcomings. But back at the turn of the millennium, this was primo-PC gaming. Didn't matter that the game is half orienteering sim, half shooter – it's wonderfully 'authentic', has some excellent set-pieces, and genuinely rewards patience and smart tactical thinking. Games like Operation Flashpoint and ArmA pushed the painfully-slow military shooter to their zenith, but this was the acceptable face of indulging your spec-ops side.
4. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3
This entry kinda counts twice. Raven Shield on PC is an exceptional game, as is the vanilla Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox. This being a console site, though, let's look at the latter. Each level is a tense squad-based crawl from start to finish – death comes quickly in Rainbow Six, so every door breach and peep around a corner has to be done oh-so-carefully-and-GODDAMN-IT-I'M-DEAD. It's such a refreshing change from other fire-and-forget frag-fests on console, and even the multiplayer has that balanced, super-lethal feel. Oh, and fun fact: this game actually has voice commands, which you can issue to cue squad orders. And they actually work!
3. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction
This was a new breed of sneaking when it finally appeared, battered and bruised from a troubled development cycle, in 2010. Originally pitched as Sam Fisher meets Jason Bourne, the end product wasn't quite as free-flowing and 'murder-a-man-with-a-newspaper' as promised, but the aggressive, fast-paced stealth was unlike anything seen in games. The ability to string together takedowns, increasingly terrifying the remaining grunts, in fluid motions around each self-contained stage just feels so, so good to play. Ok, the story isn't the finest in the series (despite the rather memorable scene where you forcefully attach a man's hand to a tree-stump with your combat knife), but when the action is this smooth that barely matters. And let's not forget the fantastically tense co-op mode, which climaxes in the order to terminate your buddy before they kill you.
2. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
While Siege received several middling reviews and attracted a smaller audience than Ubi might have hoped, time and the amazing communities that have built up around it will testify to the brilliance of this tense, intimate shooter. The core mode – Siege – is so finely tuned, the maps so economically designed, they create a game beautiful through its violent simplicity. Five versus five – one team defends, the other infiltrates. A sprinkling of gadgets and tools add flavour to what is, essentially, a battle of wits and smarts between two teams. But the absolute best thing about Siege is the potential for an epic five vs one finish, with the sole survivor on a struggling team wiping out the entire opposition force by themselves, to the sound of gasps and cheers from their spectating comrades. Those moments are the rarest of gaming gems, and they make this a precious experience, indeed.
1. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
There are so many reasons why Chaos Theory is the best Clancy game out there. For starters, it's maximum Clancy – the plot focuses on a global shadow conflict that threatens to plunge the world into a new war. It's a dark, tense game, with enough plot twists and set-pieces to keep you gripped, and leading man Sam Fisher is more agile (despite being older) than ever, packing enough smart gadgets to give James Bond's Q sleepless nights. However, the star of the show is the Spies vs Mercs mode, which is the most sublime, taut, and thrilling multiplayer you're likely to experience. There's something so wonderfully balanced about it – the third-person perspective of the spies offsetting their relative fragility, while the lethality of the mercs feels sensibly restrained by the first-person view. Spies vs Mercs is responsible for more gasps, fist-pumps, and litres of sweat shed per game than any other online experience. Fact. Ish. Sadly, the game's delightful visuals have aged a little, and Spies vs Mercs can no longer be played on console (the servers have been switched off), but this remains the high-watermark for all Clancy games to date.
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text: The environment the plant is in indoors will determine whether the plant will have the opportunity to thrive and flourish. The "secret" to successfully caring for indoor plants is to mimic the same conditions as their natural habitat. Adequate light is the most important environmental factor in successfully growing plants in our homes.


text: At the heart of Versus is an exploration of conflict, psychological and physical, both with oneself and the world. In the process of making this work, Staib dissected the company's past repertoire and discovered through lines of tension and confrontation. The dancers spent many hours analyzing the implication of touch and the provocations of aggressive behavior. John Ammerman, Associate Professor of Theater at Emory University, contributed his expertise in stage combat to help dancers create and react to combative impulses. With a movement vocabulary that is at times unsettling, at others hilarious, the work delves into absurdity, sensationalism, overt violence, and the glorification of the misery of others.


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Athens based DJ and producer Giganta has developed her own unique style and with it a loyal following of music lovers looking for something different. In this mix for Lost Sounds, she takes us on a deep journey of mellowed out beats and rhymes.Read More
Young Athenian DJ Dirt Form is being hailed around the city as one of the next big things on the techno scene. In this exclusive mix for Lost Sounds he on delivers a blistering set of dirty techno beats.Read More
Shake off the winter blues with this funky, summer house mix by Chris Fotou that includes a blend of old school tunes and modern classics certain to have you dreaming about catching a ferry from Piraeus to one of the many beautiful islands in the Aegean.Read More
There is no one genre or style to classify the many achievements of Kevin Yost. Ever since picking up drumsticks at the age of four, Kevin has been obsessed with creating and performing music. DJ, producer, film composer, drummer..he has consistently thrived and evolved by indulging his passion.Read More
Greek Melbourne beat maker & DJ, Pete Cargo has toured with hip-hop heavyweights MF Doom, Ghostface Killah, Chino XL, Dead Prez and many other international acts.Read More
Greek Australian DJ James Belias has played at some of Australia's and Greece's most famous venues and festivals, including annual summer sets to packed outdoor clubs in Mykonos.Read More
Athens based Greek DJ and producer Mister Kentro loves his music of all kinds and it shows, not only in his multi-genre dj sets, but also in the music he produces.Read More
Athenian DJ / Producer BMSK has been in the game for just over a decade, spinning tunes all over the city and beyond since 2004.Read More