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After five rounds of voting that ended on Thursday, the results of Bihar's state elections were revealed last Sunday, handing a surprisingly strong victory to chief minister Nitish Kumar — and a correspondingly disappointing defeat to prime minister Narendra Modi that's caused ripples nationally and ripped the aegis of invincibility from Modi's political cloak.
With 104 million people, Bihar has a population twice that of Myanmar/Burma, whose elections have been received with far more international coverage. Though it's not even India's most populous state (it ranks third), Bihar is home to more people than all but 11 countries in the world. It's here, in one of India's poorest states, that a regional election drew into conflict three of India's most colorful and powerful politicians and where two distinct (and imperfect) visions of India's development have clashed, with a result that will have national implications for India's future.
To understand the real significance of the Bihari election, it's worth taking a step back to understand the decade-long posturing between Modi and Kumar. Bear with me.
A tale of two visions of 'vikaas'
The first of those two visions belongs to Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) so overwhelmingly won national elections in May 2014. That was just as true in Bihar as it was elsewhere in India, where the BJP took 22 of the state's 42 seats in the Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of the Indian parliament. In part, Modi was selling a vision of development and economic progress based on the 'Gujarati model' that he laid claim to after 13 years as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. The Modi approach involved a top-heavy approach to government and economic boosterism that found Modi jetting to China, Japan and the United Arab Emirates to cajole foreign development to his state. Though Gujarat's economy has always been among India's stronger performers, there's no doubt that Modi's zero-tolerance approach to corruption and attention to strong infrastructure, including some of the best roads and power generation in India, has been successful. Despite the Hindu-Muslim riots that left over 1,000 Muslims dead shortly after Modi took office in 2001, Modi's 2014 campaign slogan of 'toilets, not temples' rang true — he was a man more interested in bringing good roads and clean water to his country than giving voice to Hindu nationalism, or at least that was the promise of his campaign.
But there was always another model, and that's Kumar's Bihari model.
Ultimately, it was this model that won the day in this autumn's elections — a five-phase spectacle over the course of nearly a month, between October 12 and November 5. When the results were announced, Kumar's Mahagathbandhan ('Grand Alliance'), a coalition between his own Janata Dal (United) (JD(U), जनता दल (यूनाइटेड)) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD, राष्ट्रीय जनता दल), the party founded in 1997 by former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, won a clear mandate, far larger than anyone had expected in what was thought to have been an incredibly tight race.
The Kumar-led alliance won 41.9% of the vote and 178 seats in the state's 243-member Legislative Assembly, while Modi's alliance won just 34.1% of the vote and 58 seats, far more lopsided than anyone had predicted.
Kumar's story — and his relationship with the BJP — is complex.
Except for a short period between May 2014 and February 2015, when he briefly stepped aside after his party's loss in India's national election, Kumar has served as Bihar's chief minister since 2005, and for most of that time, he was an ally of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Kumar took over a state known as something of an economic basketcase. Even today, Bihar has a far higher poverty rate than much of the rest of the country. When you think of overpopulated and underdeveloped India, you are probably thinking of Bihar or somewhere very much like it. In contrast to Bangalore or Mumbai or even Modi's Gujarat, Bihar's hopes never lied in the kind of sexy development that comes from foreign investment. But over the course of Kumar's tenure as chief minister, he has managed some of the highest GDP growth rates in the country (including an average GDP growth rate of 10.6% between 2005 and 2014) and an 8% reduction in poverty. Like Modi in Gujarat, Kumar focused on infrastructure, including better roads. But he also turned to greater social welfare spending and his record on poverty reduction is far stronger than Modi's Gujarati record.
But perhaps Kumar's greatest governance success came from reversing the sense of lawlessness that characterized Bihar under the leadership of his predecessor (and now coalition partner) Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Becoming chief minister for the first time in 1990, Yadav reigned over what became known nationally as a 'jungle raj,' a state of wild corruption, economic malaise and violent criminals riding roughshod. In 1997, when he was implicated (and eventually convicted) for accepting kickbacks in an animal husbandry scheme known as the 'fodder scam,' he stepped down in favor of his wife, Rabri Devi, who intermittently ruled as chief minister until 2005. At the same time, Yadav founded a new breakaway party form the Janata Dal, the RJD.
The two remained enemies for the better part of a decade and a half. As the RJD became a byword for petty corruption (even today, 49 of the 80 incoming state legislators have pending criminal cases), Kumar promised a new approach that transcended religion and caste, nominally an ally of the BJP, while Bihar's green shoots emerged in the mid-2000s onward.
In 2013, as it became apparent that the BJP and the NDA favored Modi to lead the alliance into the 2014 elections as a prime ministerial candidate, Kumar withdrew from the alliance. He did so mostly because of Modi's role in the controversial 2002 communal violence and riots in Gujarat. Just as the BJP was about to win the most massive victory in Indian history, Kumar walked away from the alliance, in no small part over secularism. One suspects that it also had to do with Kumar's disappointment in not leading the alliance himself. But for years, Kumar has refused to let Modi's campaign in Bihar, and his disapproval of Modi's record had been on record for years.
How the 'Grand Alliance' stole Bihar back from Modi
The 2015 Bihar elections were supposed to be one of the great triumphs on Modi's path to consolidating the BJP's power, and the prime minister campaigned throughout the state early and often at the advice of his chief strategist, Amit Shah.
But something went awry.
In contrast to the 'toilets, not temples' mantra of his 2014 campaign, the BJP got bogged down in an attempt to use communal issues, like eating beef, to fire up its Hindutva base in India, a step that seems to have backfired. Despite Modi's popularity, the BJP might have benefited from grooming a local charismatic figure that could have led the party's efforts in Bihar. Through the campaign, it was never quite clear who would become chief minister had the BJP won the election, unlike the 'grand alliance,' which made clear that Kumar would carry on as chief minister if elected. Unlike Modi, just 18 months into his tenure as India's prime minister, Kumar has a decade of proven results as chief minister. It's not crazy to think that Bihar's voters are sophisticated enough to support Modi nationally and Kumar locally.
Yet one of the reasons that the BJP did so well in the 2014 national elections in Bihar was that the JDU and the RJD were divided. Though the Nitish-Lalu alliance has generated its fair share of wariness, given the 15-year rivalry between the two figures, the coalition between the JDU and the RJD made it much easier to unite Muslim supporters (in a state where over 15% of the population is Muslim) and the disadvantaged Yadav caste.
Joining forces wasn't easy for Kumar, whose good-governance agenda has little in common with the RJD's pocket-lining. But the Indian National Congress (Congress, भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस), previously the governing party of India, engineered the coalition between the two parties and joined up as the third, by far weakest, partner of the alliance in Bihar. Rahul Gandhi may be a ghost when it comes to contemporary Indian politics, and aside from its overrated role in bringing Kumar back together with the corruption-tainted Lalu, has been entirely absent from the Bihar campaign (as in Delhi, where Arvind Kejriwal delivered a whopping defeat to Modi earlier this year).
Lalu, as a politician, is one of India's greatest showmen. He toured every corner of Bihar state, and he used the campaign to attack the hardliners who have dominated headlines in India for their Hindu nationalism since Modi took office. It worked, and his party (the RJD) won more seats than Kumar's JD(U). He'll expect something in return for that victory, and it might be more than just a space in Kumar's next cabinet for his two ambitious sons.
The consequences for Modi's government and the road ahead
There's no doubt that the Bihar electoral rout is the worst political crisis since Modi took power nearly 18 months ago. Modi's enemies in his party, including the old guard that he sidelined two years ago, have now called into question the highly centralized approach that Modi has taken to India's government.
But as much as the Bihar elections represent a loss for the BJP and for Modi personally, it's not fatal. Though it's true that Modi's government has gotten off to a slow start as far as reform goes, he has more than enough time to right the course. The next Indian general election will not take place until 2019. In the meantime, he should double down on reform. Despite the fact that many BJP parliamentarians are protectionsist, he should push full speed ahead with a reform of the national goods and services tax that will harmonize rates and rules across state lines. As far as regulation goes, this isn't a Thatcherite rupture, it's low-hanging fruit. Land reform and steps to reduce graft, make government more transparent and businesses more efficient would be welcome. As far as development goes, Modi would do well to copy Bihar's program of providing free bicycles to girls and incentives for primary and secondary education.
He might even work with Kumar in the weeks and months ahead to merge the best of both models, two sides of the same pro-development coin. Nothing would get Modi's government back on the path of 'toilets, not temples.' That's especially true with a tough set of state elections coming in 2016 and 2017. No one expects Modi and the BJP to sweep Tamil Nadu or West Bengal, where local parties rule supreme. But the 2016 election in Assam is winnable, and the fight for Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous (and still quite impoverished) state in 2017 will be fierce. A loss there will not doom Modi's chances in 2019, but an embarrassing loss just might.


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With the advent of fast food, fast life style there came a silent killer who occasionally made rounds on the daily tabloids. Now we have the whole world talking about it – obesity. People are more aware of it than before and no stone is left unturned to counter-attack it. Most of the common question which comes to us while countering is the way to choose a good path to shred those love handles into six packs or to have a picture perfect summer body.
There can be many ways to lose weight, one can opt for weight training, cardio workouts, circuit trainings but the core ingredients on these paths are dedication, approach, commitment, disciplined lifestyle. Today we look at 5 best secrets that yoga has to offer on weight loss. These tips when put into practice into your regular lifestyle can help you tone your muscles and reduce your weight fast.
Yoga can be considered as a complete package to weight loss as it is not only about yoga poses but about eating habits and considering a good lifestyle for future. Here are the Weight Loss Secrets.
Table of Contents
Toggle1. The world is not enough :
There is a whole new world waiting for you outside your yoga studio. Treat your yoga practices as incentives or perks. The real test lies in your day-to-day activity and what you eat. For this conditioning of the mind is a must. Observe your food patterns and try to cut down on carbs after sunset. Going light on the tummy might help you to wake up fresh and since you didn't include carbs in your last meal, you have actually stopped the process of carbs turning into fat, when your body is resting or at sleep.
2. Don't lose hope, lose weight :
Remember that the layers of fat around the tummy have been added over the years. We tend to loose hope and break away easily from the pattern. The important thing here is to believe in the practice and continuing the practice. Yoga helps to reduce weight over a period of time and not instantly. Our minds are conditioned for quick results these days but we tend to forget that there is no other alternative to sweating it out. Partner with a buddy who can encourage you to work out religiously and vice versa. This will enhance your yoga workouts and they will be more fun.
3. Imagine your body as your bank account :
The no. of calories you intake in a day against the no. of calories you burn in a day gives you the deposit for the day. Try to bridge this gap by reducing the intake and increasing the no. of calories burnt. You require a minimum no. of calories in a day to sustain your life therefore it is not advisable to go on a strict diet. Most of the diets are fads and one tends to put on weight once they are out of it. Hence burning the balanced calories is the way to go. Having meals on time will reduce the pseudo hunger call of the body. Also breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen and dinner should be like a pauper. We tend to reverse the saying which accounts for ample no. of calories unused for the day.
4. Surprise your body :
By doing different yoga poses. For example if you have been doing trikonasana for the abs, try doing the child pose. Working or attacking the muscle from different angles will ensure inch loss. Inch loss cannot be a substitute for weight loss but will help you to get the picture perfect image which we aim to get. Learn new yoga poses for working of same muscle group. Yoga has a variety of poses to offer which can help you add a variety in your workout.
5. Beat the boredom :
With going that extra mile. Many times we tend to get bored with our yoga practices. Thinking that it is not working out or you need a break. Approach your exercises with more intensity and stretch your workout for a longer period of time. This will help you to break the pattern or conditioning of the mind. Make most of the weekends by adding cardio training before your yoga session. Once the body is tuned to your yoga practices, your weight reduction can hit a plateau. These extra long sessions can help to break these plateaus.
These secrets are well known facts but we tend to condition the mind as per our liking and turn a blind face knowing what is best for our bodies. Listening to the body plays an important role, don't go over the board with excessive work outs or strict diets, balanced mind, body and approach will take you long way.
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subset: commoncrawl


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In a letter sent to nearly 60 businesses, the Democratic governor warned that an expected Supreme Court decision could spell the end of the federal protection for abortion, but that New Jersey would ensure reproductive rights regardless.
"We're never going to be a state that looks like Texas or Georgia or other states — Oklahoma — that are going in the direction of taking rights away from people," Murphy said in an interview with NPR. "We are going to expand rights."
Americans continue to await an opinion from the Supreme Court in a highly anticipated abortion case. A leaked draft opinion published by Politico in May indicated support for overturning Roe v. Wade, though that may not be the final judgment of the court.
A number of Republican states have vowed to ban or severely restrict abortion if the Supreme Court allows it, but New Jersey joined some liberal jurisdictions moving in the opposite direction, enshrining the right to an abortion in state law.
"The overturning of a woman's right to bodily autonomy — and the chilling effect this decision will have on your ability to attract and retain top female talent by being located in a state which has refused to recognize women's reproductive freedom — cannot be ignored," Murphy said in the letter.
Murphy's office would not share the names of the companies but said they were in sectors such as digital media and entertainment, financial services, information technology and manufacturing. The bulk of the letters went to companies with headquarters or a major presence in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri and Florida.
Katie Byrd, the communications director for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, said "business is booming" in the Peach State and pilloried Murphy's letter.
"A sitting governor wouldn't be spending his time making this type of desperate outreach if business was already booming in his state," Byrd said in a statement. "He'd be celebrating the announcement of multibillion dollar projects and thousands of new jobs — like Gov. Kemp has had the privilege of doing several times already this year (note Rivian and Hyundai recently)."
A spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas pointed to a Tuesday press release announcing that the construction and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar would move its corporate headquarters from Illinois to Texas.
But the administration notes that businesses are still choosing to move to the Garden State. And, according to Murphy, that's because New Jersey makes more than just business sense.
"My point to those companies is: New Jersey's good value for money. We've got one of the most aggressive, progressive incentives package of any American state, so the math works," Murphy said.
"But also increasingly, to those CEOs, they've got to take into account values — not just value — but values."
Copyright 2024 NPR


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By Ben Hirschler
NEW YORK | Mon Nov 8, 2010 5:29pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Novartis AG plans to seek regulatory approval within 18 months for a pioneering tablet containing an embedded microchip, bringing the concept of "smart-pill" technology a step closer.
The initial program will use one of the Swiss firm's established drugs taken by transplant patients to avoid organ rejection. But Trevor Mundel, global head of development, believes the concept can be applied to many other pills.
"We are taking forward this transplant drug with a chip and we hope within the next 18 months to have something that we will be able to submit to the regulators, at least in Europe," Mundel told the Reuters Health Summit in New York.
"I see the promise as going much beyond that," he added.
Novartis agreed in January to spend $24 million to secure access to chip-in-a-pill technology developed by privately owned Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City, California, putting it ahead of rivals.
The biotech start-up's ingestible chips are activated by stomach acid and send information to a small patch worn on the patient's skin, which can transmit data to a smartphone or send it over the Internet to a doctor.
Mundel said the initial project was focused on ensuring that patients took drugs at the right time and got the dose they needed — a key issue for people after kidney and other transplant operations, when treatment frequently needs adjustment.
Longer-term, he hopes to expand the "smart pill" concept to other types of medicine and use the wealth of biometric information the Proteus chip can collect, from heart rate and temperature to body movement, to check that drugs are working properly.
Because the tiny chips are added to existing drugs, Novartis does not expect to have to conduct full-scale clinical trials to prove the new products work. Instead, it aims to do so-called bioequivalence tests to show they are the same as the original.
A bigger issue may be what checks should be put in place to protect patients' personal medical data as it is transmitted from inside their bodies by wireless and Bluetooth.
"The regulators all like the concept and have been very encouraging. But … they want to understand how we are going to solve the data privacy issues," Mundel said.
A technology that ensures a patient takes his or her medicine and checks that it is working properly should deliver better outcomes and justify a higher price tag.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler. Editing by Robert MacMillan)


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Quote: If you take a book on a journey…Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
"If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it… yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else."
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart


text:
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Rape apologists do nothing to inform and educate the public so I applaud the stand made by many to get those mouths metaphorically taped. Besides, they've all had their damaging turns for far too long. And we need to do more taping of mouths.
(Marama Davidson)
For a start, Voltaire never actually said 'I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.' It was an English writer at the beginning of the last century, presuming to capture the thought of that 150 years-dead philosopher. What's also lost to the people who abuse the phrase, is that it's supposed to have referred – had he actually said it, that is – to an act of violent censorship, namely the state-ordered burning of a treatise on natural science by one of Voltaire's contemporaries.
The Voltaire non-quote has been thrown at me quite a bit this past week, by people who seem about as unlikely to self-immolate as he was. And the notion of free speech, in its liberal, post-Enlightenment understanding, has been brought up by a number of commentators to lament the fate suffered by Willie Jackson and John Tamihere following their disgraceful treatment of a young female guest who dared to challenge the conduct of rapists. Bryce Edwards gave these great prominence on his Friday round-up of the '30 things to read for the week', possibly feeling that it wasn't up to him – a mere political scientist – to critique the claims of the likes of Chris Trotter, Mark Blackham and Karl du Fresne concerning what freedom of speech actually means.
And so it's up to me – an English graduate – to state the bloody obvious.
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from the consequences of speech. Freedom of speech is not a protection against people telling you that your views are hateful. Freedom of speech doesn't oblige other people or organizations to support you in your privileged position as a broadcaster, or journalist, or blogger. Freedom of speech isn't a guarantee of permanent employment when the thing you are selling is your opinion (well put, Keith), nor does freedom of speech compel the public to buy said opinion from you.
Freedom of speech is the right not to be persecuted for your beliefs: not to suffer state harassment or censorship, or be fired from a position with which your beliefs do not interfere.
Oh, and another thing, Karl du Fresne: mobs actually lynch people. They don't force them to take an early Christmas break on full pay.
Karl du Fresne thinks that rape culture is due to our society being 'drenched with sex', because in spite of being – if I had to guess from his writings – roughly one thousand years old, he appears convinced that rape didn't happen, or happened less, in the old days.
Trotter's first argument, in an astonishing (for him) foray into cultural relativism, features the deeply offensive suggestion that Jackson and Tamihere are culturally predisposed to hold retrograde views concerning sex and consent. Then, challenged by Martyn Bradbury (the debates between these two always have a curious Escherian quality, whereby each is somehow wronger than the other), he launches into a turgid 1,000-worder, a veritable tower of bullshit mobilising the Cathars, Arnald-Amalric, the fire-bombing of Dresden and Stalin's purges to prove that we were too darn mean to his radio host friends.
The more prosaic truth is that sponsor boycotts, far from leading directly to gulags and the mass murder of heretics, are a very limited tool that is available to us in the circumstances – likely to be most rare – when events call for it, and most specifically when the issue that is being campaigned around relates to the consumption of hate speech. One of the key aspects that made the Amy interview stand out to the extent that it did is that it was packaged as a podcast, so that the people who didn't listen to the show would be able to access it, and was even included that evening in promos for the show scheduled for the next day (on this point, and the blame that pertains to RadioLive, see Matt McCarten's column). So, far from being something that just happened in the natural course of strong opinions being voiced, and that the station regretted, the segment immediately became a product for sale. It is only at that point that it made sense to attempt to disrupt the commercial side of the arrangement, even if it meant enlisting the help of a bunch of PR departments.
There is a broader issue, here, which also happens to be the flip-side of the freedom of speech argument: namely, that the chain of events that led to the Willie & JT show coming off the air highlighted the mechanisms whereby such shows – and the dispiritingly narrow range of views that they promote – get on the air in the first place. Our information industry is shaped by New Right ideas that are anathema to public service broadcasting. Everyone but Maori Television and Radio New Zealand exists to make a profit, and even the kinds of shows that public funding body NZ On Air was set up to help create often cannot be shown simply because commercial broadcasters – both state and private – refuse to screen them, on the grounds that they are not profitable enough.
This is the waste land that neoliberalism built. And it's in this waste land that free-speech enthusiasts like Karl du Fresne fulminate every other day against left-wing bias on RNZ. Not content with having destroyed the very possibility of critical perspectives in the vast majority of our media, the free market's little helpers go after the very few spaces that maintain a (very limited) degree of independence from its imperatives.
Chris Trotter, for his part, is worried about the precedent. What if the Right is going to use these methods against progressive left-wing commentators? Except Danyl is right: there are none of those. Instead, 'we're doomed to be hectored and talked down to by droves of reactionary bewildered old men'. This is what strict competition in the marketplace of ideas has got us. And this is the state of mainstream free speech in New Zealand: under the near-total control of private corporate interest. But if just once you dare interfere with this mechanism for the delivery of conservative opinion, expect a backlash in the name of liberty and the souls of those slain Cathar children.
All the pictures are from Wellington pavements the day after Saturday's march against rape culture.


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This begs a simple question - What else must be banned?
What else do we ban because some pressure group or other deems, no matter how much of a stretch it might be, that something is somehow derogatory?
Equality is supposed to mean just that. Equal treatment, which includes sometimes seeing things that (whether related to you or not) may not present something you feel is 100% positive.
This was nothing - nothing at all - to do with transgender equality, and everything to do with a demand for publicity and special treatment.
So fine - let's ban the pantomime dames too because they apparently offend a small subsection of a minority. Let's also ban the 'Principal Boy' from pantomimes because that's both insulting to FTM transgender people, of course, as well as (no doubt) cultural appropriation. In fact, let's ban fancy dress altogether lest it offend someone. Let's also ban all forms of drama - I mean, Sarah Bernhardt and Maxine Peake both played Hamlet.
Best ban Pride, too - sometimes there are drag artistes or men dressing in a manner which may be construed as appropriating transgender culture.
For certain we had best bow to the pressure from the book-burning brigade and remove Mark Twain from libraries . My 1901 copy of the 'Imperial Dictionary of the English Language'? Racist in tooth and claw. Onto the bonfire of offensiveness. Shakespeare too - after all, there was cross-dressing in 'Comedy of Errors' and 'Twelfth Night'. And Falstaff would probably be triggering to recovering alcoholics anyway.
In fact, best ban all forms of speech and communication just to be sure. You never know who might be offended by something, and it's better to be safe than jailed.
When did 'equality' become "you can't say or do anything lest it potentially offend someone"? When did equality become 'special treatment'?
Best not show 'Married with Children' - it is stereotyping and offensive to middle-aged shoe salesmen with two children. And any British sitcom prior to 1980 would probably be grounds for the arrest of the writers.
It's bollocks, quite frankly - the whole fucking lot of it. We've gone from people justifiably asking for equality of rights to an ever-more sliced world of people demanding special treatment, even when it doesn't even have anything to DO with them, and screaming the nebulous 'hate crime' canard when they don't get put on a pedestal.
Hate crime is the poor bastard being thrown off a building by ISIS for loving someone of the same sex, or being beaten in the street for being transgender, or being tossed out of your job for your religious beliefs. It is NOT a completely unrelated CHARITY running a fun-run in the theme of a hundred-year-old theatrical tradition, and for pressure groups to even imply that it has any validity demeans the genuine hate, violence and discrimination that people have suffered in search of equality over the years.


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Nickelodeon Barnyard
Bring the Barnyard movie to life! Battle the coyote invaders, tee up for a game of golf, target the bulls eye with your flying chicken and race downhill on your speedy bike. Explore a fully interactive, 3D world and prove they have what it takes to be the biggest party animal of them all.


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Given the complexity of ever-changing tax laws, you need a tax advisor who can ensure that you've complied with the law, and can help you claim valuable deductions and credits you may never have considered. At Ward McCampbell, PC, we continuously monitor federal, state, and local tax law changes to assess their impact on our clients, and we pledge to prepare your tax returns in the best-informed, most ethical manner possible. In addition, we will work with you year-round to plan and implement a tax strategy that can help to minimize your total tax burden.
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At Ward McCampbell, PC, you don't simply bring your taxes and other accounting needs to a random and impersonal staff member. We match you with an accountant with whom you are thoroughly comfortable, so you can count on forming an ongoing relationship with a trusted business advisor.


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[Janne] does freelance animation and wanted something with a bit more CPU to get his rendering jobs done. He picked up an Ikea 'Helmer' cabinet and refitted it to hold six Intel quad cores, six Gigabyte motherboards with 8GB of ram each and six 400 watt power supplies. He seems happy with it – I think it just needs some custom power wiring and an integrated Gig-E switch to achieve perfection. What? I'm not jealous at all.
43 thoughts on "24 Core Ikea Cluster"
The site seams to be running pretty slow, anyone got a recent mirror?
his server is swamped. other than that it looks like a great project :)
plz mirror..
must.. have.. super cluster..
Damn his server is slow, Mirror anyone? If it would of loaded for me i could of mirrored it. Does anyone have a copy of the html and pics email me a .zip or .rar if you do. firstname.lastname@example.com
I am working on a mirror of the site right now. Should be up within the hour. Will re-post or edit when completed.
mirroring should be standard procedure before all us greedy hackaday users destroy sites bandwidths :D
did he use a single psu for this cluster of machines? i'd really like to try this out with a xen vm cluster…
coral caught it! http://www.yxx.se.nyud.net/helmer/
Go Coral!
This seems to have the whole page.
Coral Cache:
Still slow but better than the direct link.
Just put .nyud.net at the end of the domain name of any website. Seriously, look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Content_Distribution_Network -
curses… foiled again ;)
He mounted all 6 psu's so I'm assuming he used them all.
The quoted 400W power draw is most likely all 6 comps combined, at idle of course.
New mirror of site here:
http://helmer.sfe.se/ -
i wonder how much power hes sucking down when rendering stuff.
About 600W when rendering. Fans rev up a bit, but sound level still ok. Sorry for ny slow site. ;)
Janne, did you consider PXE booting the cluster? It would have reduced money, power and noise and increased the neat factor. Does your rendering app need local scratch?
I want one!!!!
Is there any possibility that he will go into more detail about it?
Soooooooo coool -
:O i want one too! thats pretty cool :D
I second the recommendation for PXE boot. I recently set up a cluster and used PXE boot. It turned out to be much easier then I expected. Google for "linux pxe boot". It was a simple matter of adding a few lines to the dhcpd config file, start a tftpd server, and putting the pxelinux (from syslinux) files in the right place.
You know, I wonder how this would compare to the one mini supercomputer that was shown on here before…
This is the exact one, but it's close enough – Microwulf
Sorry about that, user issues…
microwulf – http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/
it isn't the exact thing i was thinking of, but it's close…
"The most amazing is that this machine just costed as a better standard PC"
I think hes trying to say it cost as much as a top of the line rig. And if thats the case I find that hard to believe. just looking at RAM+CPU+Mobos from newegg i have a total of $2,478. I dont know if he got some better deals from the place he got his stuff from but 2.4K is a LOT of money, even for a top of the line rig.
That is really cool. Everybody that does clusters like this make it look easy. As soon as I can get my hands on a few spare computers I suppose I will make a project out of it.
to be fair, a 'top of the line' PC might have a CPU that costs $1000 by itself, and another thousand dollars in video cards.
It's true you COULD build a pretty solid machine for $1000 (I've done it).
Besides, for the amount of power he's got, it seems like a solid investment, even at full retail. He mentioned he got a deal on the CPUs, so it'd be even ebtter.
janne – can you provide some more details on the software setup?
Your use of FreeNAS as a storage space intrigues me, and I am wondering if it might help me with my son's problem.
I'm quite new to rendering. My 11 year old has blender installed on our Windows PC. He just recently purhcased an AMD Dual Core system that I installed Ubuntu 7 on and blender 2.44.
(He's starting to play with lip syncing animations – http://www.flyinglow.ca/matthew)
So, you say that the cluster was cheap to build. Could we have a better idea on the price? Are we looking at $2000? More? Less?
How much did it cost? That's what I'd like to know.
lol i have the same ram sticks xD this is a nice and usefull device
"Render jobs that took all night, now gets done in 10-12 min."With only 6 computers, how does it get a perfomance boost factor of 40-50X?
Is it maybe comparing an apple to an orange?
"Render jobs that took all night (on a 1GHz Celeron), now gets done in 10-12 min."
Great idea and wonderful coincidence that this fits so smoothly into an Ikea file cabinet. Another issue is the PC-type hardware being used. I found standard-hardware to be not as reliable as it should be. With six of these boards fixing, debugging and administration can be quite a headache. I would spend some extra bucks to invest in server-hardware.
Does this mean the SouperComputer lives one?
But I'd have to be certain soupercomputer required much more than 400W of juice. The metal work alone must have taken a week of Sundays to do. -
That's very nice.
Only a matter of time before we all have computers with 64Gb of ram and 24 cores but I want it now.
I can think of more than a few situations where this could come in handy.
Regarding PXE booting or any other network booting. I'm no tech guy, I just need cpu speed, and just did helmer the dumb-but-fast-and working way ;) …and a really wanted a local swap space in case a fill the memory.
Regarding FreenNAS. I used it because it's so easy to use, and works with PC, mac and linux/unix. ..and free :) For a home server, you can get a fan-less VIA-luke nano itx card, with 2 sata ports. Get 2x 1TB drives and you have a very good, low cost zero noise home server. Intel have just released the atom chip, and Im realy eager to see it in real life.
Wow that's kick ass .. I want to make one of those and then mount it on a pedestal that I will pray to every morning and night ! :)
I think the question here is…what are they using all that rendering power for?
Oh – and can anybody say F@H cluster?
29: I'm sure by 'all night' he means when he goes to bed it's going, and when he wakes up it's all done.
I ask myself what power he might get if he overclocks those babys. I think he uses Intel Q6600 Quat Processors these can take a clockspeed up to 4 ghz. Just think about what calculation power he might get – maybe up to 50 Gflops!!!
Should've bought some PS3s
OMG DUDE and your only running linux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow i congratulate you on that one…. i love your computer……..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A friend and I built another version of a 24-core Linux cluster built into a $29.99 Ikea Helmer cabinet. The total cost is $2550.11. The design and implementation is robust and elegant. On my blog, I show how to build it in pictures, breakdown the component costs, talk about air flow, and discuss idle and full speed temperatures. We think our solution is practical and feasible for other people needing a small cluster for specialty applications.
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Well, I've been away from blogging for a month due to various reasons, with apologies to those who follow the blog. And so I'm going to try and get back into the swing of it with this report on my recent trip to San Antonio for World Con. As those who've seen my pictures on Facebook can already tell, I had the trip of a lifetime.
This year's World Con brought my first solo sit down meal with a Big Five editor. My first sit down meal with a Grand Master and writing hero. And my first chance to sit in the front rows at the Hugo Awards. Amongst other things. I met so many people, built on preexisting relationships, laid foundations for new relationships, and explored new possibilities in so many ways.
For me, World Con is the most important business meeting of my year by far. So many publishers, authors, editors, booksellers and others come together in one place that it just creates tremendous opportunities. So I plan my trip accordingly. I arrange meals in advance, focusing mostly on people I want to do projects with, friends or not. I try to get on panels and a reading and signing. But then I leave the rest of time free to just mingle and network.
Although this year's trip started rough with a lost cell phone (a bit of a handicap when trying to meet up with people at a con spread over 3 buildings with 3500 attendees), I quickly shoved it aside and launched into my second day by having lunch with Toni Weisskopf, who was delightful. I remembered chatting with her in 2010 at ConQuest in Kansas City, when she was Editor GOH, but this time we met as publisher and author, as I am coediting an anthology for Baen. We mostly talked about life, ourselves, and anything but business but she did inquire how the anthology is coming and wound up inviting me to pitch another, so I offered two ideas. I'll be more formally presenting them soon. One is an immediate follow up to Shattered Shields, the military fantasy anthology I am editing with Jenn Brozek for Baen right now. (We just closed our Table of Contents and are doing final edits now). The other is a collaboration with the delightful Cat Rambo.
I also got to finally meet Lezli Robyn for lunch. She's been my online friend for ages and we had missed each other completely in Chicago, so we made a point of getting together this year. She's delightful. We sat on a Mexican restaurant's outdoor patio overlooking the River Walk and were soon joined by Kay Kenyon. Two lovely ladies. Such fun.
In between I had done my first panel, a science panel titled "My Favorite Dinosaur" and had fun with Elizabeth Bear and the other panelists, including artist-author Spring Schoenhuth, a paleontologist, and a scientist from Japan. Later that night, I did a panel with the flawed question: "Do SF Stories have Fewer Happy Endings Now?" which the panelists and I basically deconstructed for an hour. When you name panels, narrow questions work best. Broad ones so dependent on people's perspectives, tastes, etc., generally don't work as well, at least for writing panels.
My moderating seemed to go over well, so I was excited for my last panel with Gail Carriger, Robin Hobb and Amanda Downum the next day on "Intricate Worlds." But first, I spent the evening at parties and BarCon, then did a little crit work for my Writer's Workshop session that Sunday.
Saturday I slept in then worked on panel prep and workshop stuff before meeting Dave Farland to get Raygun Chronicles bookplates signed. We had chatted the night before for ninety minutes at the Writers and Artists of the Future panel and wound up hanging and chatting again for a while, with David Brin even stopping in at one point. Dave is a really nice guy who is in two anthologies for me this year, and I am very glad, after hearing about him for years, to finally get to meet and work with him.
Mid-day, JM McDermott took Maurice Broaddus, Django Wexler and I off site for a signing and panel on faith in fiction. We had a small crowd but a great discussion, then Django and I hit the food court for a quick meal before I headed to the worldbuilding panel. The ladies and I had decided in advance to not do the stereotypical worldbuilding panel, so I launched us off with worldbuilding pet peeves and we went for there. In all, I was told, it was a favorite and very helpful panel for many. We covered the under valued areas of worldbuilding, favorite examples and more. And the hour simply flew by. Fun people, and, of course, sitting between Carriger and Hobb, I was fanboying the whole time.
After that I just took a nap and worked on my crits so I could print them, then hit a couple parties. The Baen party was a priority, and due to all the rushing around and walking, wound up being my sole stop for the night, though I did grab dinner for a "date" with my pals Jay Werkheiser and Lisa Montoya, whom I met last year and joke around with now constantly on Facebook. Jay is in Analog a lot as a writer and has generously beta read for me a couple times. Just delightful folks.
Sunday I had my Bucket List breakfast with Robert Silverberg and my roommate, Alex Shvartsman–fellow editor and author, tagged along. Silverberg was a blast, as usual, being funny and a great conversationalist, and soon his wife Karen Haber joined as well, and she is a similar delight. Alex and I both got the All-You-Can-Eat buffet but ate only one plate because we didn't want to go back and miss any of the conversation.
Then it was off to print my crits and lead my two hour Writer's Workshop session. I think at least two of the writers were quite receptive. The third was polite but didn't seem to agree with an assessment all four of the rest of us made of his work. But I hope all of them found benefit in it nonetheless. Time will tell, as always.
At one, I met Patrick Swenson, publisher of Beyond The Sun, John A. Pitts and Brenda Cooper and we had lunch and discussed our mutual book launch at OryCon. These are three of my favorite people in SFF. Normally, I see them once a year at World Con. Excited that I'll see them again, and that working on books has had me in touch with them a lot more this year than normal as Patrick published Beyond The Sun and Brenda and John each wrote stories for others.
The last bit of official duties was to record SFSignal podcast with Patrick Hester, Patrick Swenson and Beyond The Sun contributors, including authors Jean Johnson, Cat Rambo, Jamie Todd Rubin, Alex Shvartsman, Maurice Broaddus and artist Mitch Bentley. It flew by but was fun and I hope brings more attention to our collaboration, a project we're all very proud of. Good reviews keep coming in and Gardner Dozois is reviewing it for Locus next month. Mitch also gifted me an original canvass of his cover art, which was a nice surprise I'll treasure. I've worked with Mitch on four books now and his cover for Beyond The Sun is getting him accolades from Toni Weisskopf, Jack McDevitt, Robert Silverberg and more. Since I do anthologies to help myself and others build our careers, it's nice to see it paying off for friends like that.
The night was taken up with Hugo Awards, where Alex accepted for Ken Liu and we spent the night carrying around a Hugo.
It was delightful to be together with the community and see recent conflicts and kerfluffles not interfere. That was probably the best surprise of all. Even Silverberg had confessed his fear that there would be a dark cloud over the proceedings but I was as warmly received by all as anyone, and clearly those who matter don't pay much attention to rumors based on assumptions and innuendo, thankfully. We all had better things to do than discuss such overwrought unpleasantness. And I was relieved.
I am not naming everyone I met, but I did also meet several fans and Kickstarter backers, as well as other top people in the field. It was just an all around delight, and I wish I could afford to go to London. At this point, it appears World Con will be out for me, but we'll see. It sure is a once a year time of greatness I'd hate to miss. The trip of a lifetime, as I said in the title to this post, and I look forward to many more to come.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and editor of adult and children's speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club's Year's Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. In addition to Shattered Shields, he edited the anthologies Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012), Beyond The Sun (2013) and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age (2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer's Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter as @BryanThomasS.


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(BPT) - With spring officially arriving, Tampa Bay home improvement season is swinging into full gear. Fair warning to homeowners looking to hire a professional, 2018 is predicted to be a record-breaker.
A recent study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University projects home improvement spending will approach $340 billion this year — the strongest gain for remodeling in more than a decade. Among the costliest of projects is roofing, a large expense with serious implications if put off or improperly done.
When you add 2018's remodeling demand with the much-talked-about skilled labor shortage, on top of the recovery from last year's hurricane season, homeowners could be tempted to jump right into major home work, all without doing their homework first. As this could prove costly, consider the following before anyone sets foot on your roof:
1. Check Tampa contractor qualifications
Choose a local, reputable contractor. These contractors should have the best knowledge of local building codes, state codes and required certifications and licenses. Ask the contractor to see their certificate of insurance before stepping onto the roof. Consider going the extra mile and choosing a contractor certified by the manufacturer of the shingle the contractor installs. Improper installation is considered one of the major reasons roofs fail prematurely, so finding a contractor with knowledge and experience in the correct application of a particular product is of the utmost importance.
2. Determine layover or tear off
Many times, contractors will push for a removal of all existing shingles, or a tear off, over adding another layer of shingles on top of an existing roof, a layover. Although a complete tear off is more expensive due to increased labor costs, there are some advantages.
"When you tear off, you get a chance to look at the roof deck and repair any deteriorating wood or substrate," said Rick Taylor, longtime roofing contractor and a trainer for shingle manufacturer TAMKO Building Products Inc.
Typically, doing a layover is more economical, although homeowners need to discuss relevant factors with their contractor, including local building code requirements and implications for the manufacturer's warranty.
3. Research the warranty
It is important to understand the warranty specific to the roof product you have installed. Educate yourself on requirements for installation, including whether a shingle layover is applicable (as mentioned above).
"Some shingle manufacturers won't warranty the roof unless it is a complete tear off," Taylor said. "TAMKO is one that actually does have the option to warranty a laminated shingle applied over one other layer of 3-tab shingles."
Other warranty concerns to consider include proper installation, the required steps to register your roof after installation and the time period allowed for transferring that warranty to future owners of the home.
4. Assess ventilation needs
Inadequate roof ventilation is another major culprit behind premature roof aging. There are a variety of options for roof ventilation; however, it is generally recommended to incorporate proper ventilation into the original re-roof, rather than add it later. The recommended ventilation depends on the size and architecture of the home, but when done correctly, the air inside the attic should be near the same temperature as the ambient temperature of the air outside it.
5. Check the weather
It may seem obvious, but a simple check of the weather before starting a roofing project could prevent a big headache later. Avoid starting a project with wet plywood or underlayment, or when the forecast indicates a strong chance of rain. Also, many manufacturers of asphalt shingles, the most popular form of roofing in the U.S., do not recommend installation in below-freezing temperatures or in excessively high temperatures.
Careful consideration of these steps during your next home exterior project could save you from costly and lengthy rework years later.
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"Police and mourners clashed at the mass funeral on Friday of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid, whose assassination has plunged Tunisia deeper into political crisis," Reuters writes.
According to the wire service, "braving chilly rain, at least 50,000 people turned out to honor Belaid in his home district of Jebel al-Jaloud in the capital, chanting anti-Islamist and anti-government slogans."
Correspondent Eleanor Beardsley, who is at the scene, tells our Newscast Desk that police have used teargas and clashed with young men outside the cemetery. The funeral, she reports, turned into an anti-government, anti-Islamist protest.
Emotions, Eleanor says, are as high as they were during the Arab Spring movement two years ago (which started in Tunisia). Protests then toppled Tunisia's longtime dictator. Now, the Islamist prime minister has dismissed the government and is forming a non-partisan technocratic government to rule until new elections are held.
The Associated Press adds that Belaid's assassination Wednesday "sparked days of rioting by his supporters, who hold the ruling Ennahda party complicit in his death. The nation was largely shut down Friday due to a general strike called by the labor unions in solidarity, and the national carrier Tunis Air canceled all its flights."
As al-Jazeera points out, "Tunisia has a long-established secular tradition which has been countered by the rise of one of the region's most powerful Islamist parties."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Lowering the bar
Written by: Suzanna October 25 2011 I have been a […]
I have been a mother for a little over two weeks now. This is the same amount of time that I have been bereft of even the tiniest shred of human dignity. This is not a coincidence.
Before I went into labor, I had all sorts of notions about what I would and wouldn't do, say, think, and expose during the birthing process. Once hour 16 hit, I had thrown all of my rules out the hospital window—not an easy task considering they're sealed from the inside. I changed my birth plan to include my sister in the delivery room. (Thank the Lord I did!) I didn't bother covering up much during trips to the bathroom, and when the time finally came to get the little guy out, having ten strangers peering down below didn't make me bat an eye. (It did, however, make me question their sanity.)
After it was all over, I thought maybe my dignity had taken a temporary backseat—a result of some sort of pain-induced madness. I was wrong. It hasn't been back since.
While there have been brief moments during my hospital stay and since coming home with baby that I have attempted to keep up with my pre-baby standards—putting myself and my house in Leave It to Beaver-esque order for the sake of visitors—those episodes have been short lived.
Now, I'm happy if I'm fully clothed when folks arrive. (For the record, wearing a nursing gown totally counts as "fully clothed," and a pony tail is a legitimate form of "doing your hair.")
Because I was THAT kid who cried when they got an A-minus rather than an A in grade school all the way to college, this shifting of standards has come as a small surprise to say the least. It's also been a blessing in disguise. Being a mother is a tough enough job on its own. Imposing a set of appearance-centric standards on yourself—standards, by the way, which no one but you cares about—would make it, if not impossible, a heck of a lot harder.
I may have lost my dignity in that labor room, but my mother's intuition tells me it's somewhere keeping my lofty standards company, and, at least for now, I'm totally okay with that.


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New AMBA 4 specification optimizes coherency for heterogeneous multicore SoCs
ARM today announced the latest AMBA 4 interface and protocol specification featuring the AMBA 4 AXI Coherency Extensions (ACE). Cache coherency is essential in multicore computing applications to efficiently maintain the consistency of data stored in local caches of a shared resource. The AMBA 4 ACE specification enables system level cache coherency across clusters of multicore processors, such as the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors and ARM Mali-T604 graphics processors. This ensures optimum performance and power efficiency of complex heterogeneous SoC designs, and is designed to address next generation computing across mobile, home, networking and gaming applications.
Compute performance in screen-based devices has increased over 700 times since the mid 1990's. New technologies, such as high-performance heterogeneous multicore processing, have emerged to help drive this growth in performance. These new technologies have increased demand on System IP, particularly at a memory sub-system, hardware and software level. Challenges that stem from latency, bandwidth, power and performance still need to be addressed. Therefore, effective hardware coherency is becoming increasingly crucial to minimize off chip memory traffic and software cache maintenance, which saves processor cycles.
AMBA is the de facto standard on-chip interconnect methodology and is supported by the vast majority of the digital electronics industry. The direction of the latest specification has been driven by a wide group of leading semiconductor, EDA and verification vendors, including Arteris, Cadence, Jasper, Marvell, Mentor, Sonics, ST Ericsson, Synopsys, Texas Instruments and Xilinx.
"Designers of complex heterogeneous, embedded multi-processing SoCs now require robust specifications, design & verification tools and systems IP. This ensures their devices minimize off-chip memory transactions, while maximizing performance and power efficiency," said Michael Dimelow, Marketing Director, Processor Division, ARM. "AMBA 4 ACE is a major component to enabling the successful development and deployment of future Cortex-A and Mali GPU processor sub-systems- by ensuring the optimum combination of performance and energy efficiency."
he AMBA 4 ACE specification enables system level cache coherency for high-performance multicore processors to manage increased data and cache sharing, more cross component communication and support additional processing engines that access shared caches and external memory. Publishing a standard way of managing cache coherency, memory barriers and virtual memory management will reduce software cache maintenance, saving processor cycles and reducing external memory accesses.
The introduction of memory barriers throughout the memory sub-system enables system architects to ensure optimal instruction ordering, when necessary, to improve system performance. Distributed virtual memory signalling extends memory virtualization, introduced with the latest ARM architecture and the Cortex-A15 processor, to the system MMUs to make more efficient use of external memory and provide the ability for multiple operating systems (OS) to share hardware resources under an appropriate hypervisor.
The latest specification represents the second phase of the AMBA 4 protocol. Phase one of the AMBA 4 specification, launched in 2010, included definition of an expanded family of AXI interconnect protocols. To date more than 4000 engineers from 2500 unique businesses and organizations have downloaded this first phase.
More information: To download the AMBA4 ACE specifications go to silver.arm.com/download/download.tm?pv=1156048
Provided by ARM News RSS Index


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Emerging Companies with Range of Offerings from Platform-as-a-Service to Actuators to 3D Vision Technology
ANN ARBOR, MI – Today the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), the leading global advocate for the benefits of automating and producers of Automate 2017, announced the eight finalists in the Automate Launch Pad Startup Competition. The competition highlights the industry's most innovative young companies in robotics, machine vision, and motion control who are competing for the spotlight at the Automate 2017 Show and a $10,000 cash award. Sponsored by GE and co-produced by Silicon Valley Robotics, the competition provides innovative startup companies with an opportunity to generate awareness of their technology and find new sources of funding.
The eight finalists will compete for the top prize at Automate 2017 on April 5 at 3:00pm in a theatre on the exhibition floor at McCormick Place in Chicago, where they will pitch their technology solution to a panel of judges. All finalists will also be awarded booth space at Automate, giving them the opportunity to engage with over 20,000 expected attendees. The eight finalists were chosen from a field of over 30 contestants offering a mix of products and services.
"Automation is among the most dynamic emerging markets, with venture funding increasing robustly each year," stated Jeff Burnstein, president of A3. "The finalists in the Automate Launch Pad Startup Competition represent the many types of innovation that will transform the manufacturing and services sectors over the next decade."
Automate Launch Pad Competition Finalists
- Andros Robotics – Enabling low cost collaborative robots, and commoditizing force control expertise in custom motion system development market. Robots equipped with CFCM-actuators will have truly collaborative qualities, enabling safety and modes of operation like teach-and-replay, thanks to force feedback and high inherent back-drivability.
- Apellix—Platform-as-a-Service for industrial workers performing critical but dangerous tasks. The patent-pending Apellix Worker Bee robotics system physically interacts with and modifies its environment to move workers out of harm's way.
- Augmented Pixels—Localization and mapping technology (SLAM SDK) optimized for low CPU usage. The company works on the development of an advanced platform for autonomous navigation for drones and robots in GPS-denied environments. It also develops a hardware-optimized solution for indoor navigation for mobile phones and AR/VR glasses with low power consumption.
- HEBI Robotics—Modular series elastic actuator designed to function as full-featured robotic components. The modules quickly create custom robots of virtually any configuration from wheeled robots to collaborative robotic arms with multi-degrees of freedom.
- Kinema Systems—Addresses the depalletizing problem where boxes are picked off a pallet and placed onto a conveyor. The Kinema Pick product combines a custom 3D/2D sensor with 3D vision, deep learning, and motion-planning software to provide an easily configurable solution for end-customers. By design, the Kinema Pick self-learns and does not require extensive individual training before it can start operating.
- Robotic Materials—Integrated tactile sensing and robotic manipulation. The patent-pending sensors and control system is the first and only effective tactile sensing solution designed to improve and expand collaborative robot applications. The combination of proximity, contact, and force sensing enables robots to accurately identify, grasp, and manipulate previously unknown parts, such as changing CNC parts in a manufacturing environment without expensive reprogramming.
- SAKE Robotics—Robotic grippers that are inexpensive, durable, light weight and very capable for use on service robotics. The core technologies include a tendon-based architecture that is low wear, super strong, and very scalable.
- Vention—A machine-design platform, enabling users to build machines from a web-browser in just a few days. The platform is an "AI-enabled" cloud CAD application that integrates an ever-growing library of industrial "Lego-style" modules. Structural, motion, and control parts are fully compatible with one another, saving time typically wasted in compatibility assessment. Upon design completion, users can purchase their design directly from the 3D interface.
Meet the Judges
A distinguished panel of automation industry leaders and investors will select the competition winner. The judges will be participating in a "Fireside Chat" in the theatre on the show floor, April 5, 10:30am – 12pm about their experiences in investing in robotics and automation. Andra Keay, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, will moderate. Below is the list of judges:
- Saman Farid, Managing Partner, Comet Labs
- Oliver Mitchell, Founding Partner, Autonomy Ventures
- Chris Moehle, Managing Director, The Robotics Hub
- Steve Taub, Senior Director, GE Ventures
- Melonee Wise, CEO, Fetch Robotics
Final Round at Automate 2017
The winner of the grand prize will be announced at the end of the competition on April 5. Automate 2017 will be held at Chicago's McCormick Place April 3-6. Attendees may register here. Prospective exhibitors can find more information on exhibition opportunities at the event website.
About Association for Advancing Automation (A3)
The Association for Advancing Automation is the global advocate for the benefits of automating. A3 promotes automation technologies and ideas that transform the way business is done. A3 is the umbrella group for Robotic Industries Association (RIA), AIA – Advancing Vision + Imaging, and Motion Control & Motor Association (MCMA). RIA, AIA, and MCMA combined represent over 1,000 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, system integrators, end users, research groups and consulting firms from throughout the world that drive automation forward. For more information, please visit our websites: A3 – RIA – AIA – MCMA.
Company Contact
Bob Doyle, Director, Communications
Tel: 734-994-6088


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Why Rove's Column Is A Problem For The Wall Street Journal
Written by Ben Dimiero
The Wall Street Journal's failure to regularly disclose Karl Rove's glaring conflict of interest in his weekly column is an ongoing problem for the paper.
Today, several current and former editorial page editors from the nation's top newspapers criticized the Journal for not consistently disclosing Rove's ties to American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two political groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help Republicans in the fall elections.
Though Rove occasionally mentions his involvement with those groups, the connection often goes undisclosed. In his recent columns, Rove is identified by the paper only as "the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush."
By any reasonable measure, Rove's involvement with two political groups spending hundreds of millions of dollars to swing the fall elections is a more important biographical detail than the fact that his public affairs firm counted the Moderate Party of Sweden as a client more than a decade ago.
But in the extended bio WSJ sometimes attaches to Rove's columns online, the latter detail -- along with things like a link to the Amazon page for his 2010 autobiography -- is included, while Crossroads goes unmentioned.
Rove, much like he does in his role as a Fox News "political analyst," often treats his Wall Street Journal column as an extension of his job to get Mitt Romney and other Republicans elected.
Most weeks, Rove's column is about the presidential race that the groups he founded are actively trying to win for Mitt Romney.
For example, earlier this month, Rove wrote a column explaining what he saw as the "good news" for Romney in recent polls, and explained that the Romney campaign can focus on running more positive ads, while "outside groups" can do a better job of "highlighting Mr. Obama's failures." Unmentioned by Rove? That he founded some of the largest "outside" groups running negative attack ads against the president.
Rove's columns also handicap Romney's electoral chances in various states that Crossroads is busy flooding with millions of dollars of anti-Obama attack ads. For example, in a May op-ed, Rove laid out "Romney's Roads to the White House," highlighting a series of states Romney could capture in order to beat Obama in November. The week before Rove's column, Crossroads GPS announced a multi-million dollar ad campaign targeting Obama in ten of the key states highlighted by Rove.
As has been the hallmark of his career in politics, his Journal columns are often infused with dishonesty designed to damage Democrats.
For example, Rove embarrassed the paper earlier this year when he blatantly distorted comments Bill Clinton had made about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Though Rove had previously praised Obama for his handling of the raid, he used his March column to downplay the decision-making involved. In the process, Rove clipped a Clinton quote in half to completely invert its meaning. Clinton had said, regarding Obama's decision on the raid, that, "I hope that's the call I would have made." In his op-ed, Rove removed the words "I hope" in order to support his assertion that "Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation." The paper was forced to post a correction indicating that Rove had provided an "incomplete quote."
More recently, Rove was using his column last week to attack Obama in nonsensical fashion over Medicare, while arguing that the Romney campaign has the advantage on the issue.
Even when Rove does choose to disclose his connections to Crossroads, he's not exactly making the Journal look responsible for running his column. In his August 1 op-ed, Rove mentioned his involvement with Crossroads and used the column space to highlight a series of "problematic" remarks by President Obama. But the supposed gaffes were distorted or misrepresented Obama quotes that had already been called out as such by journalists and independent fact-checkers.
Rove used part of his June 20 column to boast about how Obama had been caught off guard by third-party groups like Crossroads GPS "highlighting the shortcomings of his policies." While that's certainly their stated purpose, ads from Rove's groups achieved that goal by being routinely dishonest.
Rove's conservative history is likely no surprise to most Journal readers. But if the paper is going to give Rove a platform to help his related political groups swing the November elections, the least they can do is be honest with their readers about it.


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Last week's most important story was not the jobs numbers or the heat, but the California legislature's close partisan vote to go ahead with its controversial high-speed rail line, a $68 billion bullet train designed to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours. The mega-project still faces political, logistical and financial uncertainties, but it now has a path to construction—and as I've written, once construction starts it will be tough to stop. That's a big deal for President Obama and the high-speed rail program he launched in his 2009 stimulus bill. (Yes, I know, I'm predictable.) The California project is Obama's last chance to launch real high-speed rail, and having it scuttled would have been an embarrassment as well as a disappointment.
(PHOTOS: The World's Longest Railroad Tunnel)
The high-speed program was mostly about higher-speed rail, not just 200 m.p.h. bullet trains, and it's already promoting faster and more reliable train service in 31 states. But Obama has hyped the program as a chance for Americans to experience the wow machines that are already whipping travelers around Europe and Asia. A planned Tampa-to-Orlando bullet train was supposed to be under construction by now, but Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Tea Party Republican, killed it after taking office. (GOP governors also killed a worthy project in Wisconsin and a dubious project in Ohio.) The California plan is not as shovel-ready as Florida's—the route for the first 130 miles of track through the Central Valley hasn't even been finalized—but it has the support of Democratic Governor Jerry Brown.
Like electric cars, solar power, and other stimulus-funded causes, high-speed rail was once bipartisan; former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is an avid supporter, as are local Republicans like Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearingen. But ever since high-speed rail became an Obama priority, Washington Republicans have turned against it en masse. House Government Operations Chairman Darrell Issa has vowed to investigate the California project, and his fellow California Republican, Jeff Denham, wants to strip its funding. There was no new high-speed cash this year, and there probably won't be as long as the GOP holds the House.
(MORE: Obama's Big, Bold Bet on High-Speed Rail)
But thanks to 21 Democrats in the California Senate, the Central Valley leg will get $2.6 billion in state bond money, along with $3.2 billion in federal cash that would have returned to Washington if the vote had gone the other way. Critics have mocked the initial Madera-to-Bakersfield route as a train to nowhere, but California has to start somewhere, and construction in the flat and sparsely populated Central Valley will be cheaper and faster than blasting through mountains or cities. Starting in the middle also makes it more likely that the project will be completed, since powerful interests in San Francisco and Los Angeles will clamor for more track.
America can only build so many superhighways, and short-haul flights may become prohibitively expensive as the era of cheap fuel ends. High-speed trains are nice ways to travel, and they can reduce road and air congestion as well as carbon emissions and fuel costs. They can also be extremely profitable; the hope is that once government shows a tangible commitment to the project, private companies will help finance the rest of the infrastructure. Of course, high-speed rail projects also create construction jobs—once construction actually begins.
(MORE: A Brief History of High-Speed Rail)
We'll see. There will be lawsuits and hearings and other obstacles. But for now, the California project–and Obama's dream of sleek American bullet trains–is still alive. Last week, that was by no means a sure thing.


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We are about to kick the day for a fresh session of trading in the bitcoin price and things are already looking like we're going to have an interesting session. Price has moved considerably overnight (albeit in a variety of directions) and things are moving pretty fast heading into the late morning out of Europe.
Here's what we are hoping for – some degree of strong breakout (ideally to the upside) with a subsequent, sustained run in the direction of the break (again, ideally to the upside). When we see this sort of action, it gives us an opportunity to not only get in on the break but also to ride out the trade towards profitability as the trade matures.
That's what we're looking for but, of course, just because we're looking for t doesn't mean it's going to happen, which is why we ensure we've always got some strict risk management principles in place on every trade we get into.
So, with all that rambling out of the way, let's try and get some levels outlined that we can use to push into the session today and that we can use to take advantage of any of the sort of action described above, if and when it comes around.
As ever, then, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started so as to get an idea where things stand. It's a one-minute candlestick chart (our standard timeframe) and it's got our primary range overlaid in green.
As the chart shows, the range we've got in our sights for the session today comes in as defined by support to the downside at 10975 and resistance to the upside at 11095.
If we see price close above resistance, we'll jump into a long trade towards an immediate upside target of 11150.
Conversely, a close below support will have us in short towards 10890.
Let's see how things play out.
Charts courtesy of Trading View


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High-ranking diplomats from China and Japan met in Shanghai recently to hold consultations over the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands. Zhang Zhijun, vice minister of foreign affairs, met with his counterpart, Chikao Kawai. Details of the talks were not disclosed, but the continuation of consultations that started in September is important if the two sides seek to maintain stability in the East China Sea.
Just before the talks, however, both sides hardened their stances. A diplomatic solution to the current standoff appears to be fading fast.
On October 19, China held a widely-publicized one-day maritime exercise involving naval and government vessels. Dubbed "East Sea Coordination–2012," the exercise simulated how China would respond to a collision between its government ships and "foreign law enforcement vessels" in which Chinese boats were damaged and personnel injured. Vessels participating in the exercise came from the regional bureaus of the China Marine Surveillance force and the Bureau of Fisheries Administration. In the exercises, naval ships provided protection and medical aid while government ships practiced search and rescue operations. Photos and videos of the exercises, which occurred off the coast of Zhoushan Island in Zhejiang Province, circulated widely through the Chinese media.
In the context of the Senkakus standoff, the purpose of the exercise was two-fold. First, the exercise signaled to Japan China's resolve to defend its "territorial sovereignty and maritime interests" with its diverse maritime assets. Second, the scenario of a hypothetical collision of government vessels invoked the current situation around the disputed islands. The message is clear: any incident involving a Chinese government ship could result in the use of naval forces and thus the escalation of the dispute.
At the same time, Japan has been seeking to build international support. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) posted on its website a pamphlet underscoring two aspects of Japan's position. First, the pamphlet countered China's claims that the 1943 Cairo and 1945 Potsdam declarations dictated the disposition of Japanese territory after World War II. It also underscored that the islands were incorporated into Okinawa in January 1895, before the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and thus not part of Taiwan and territories that Japan was required to relinquish after the war.
Second, the MOFA pamphlet challenged the notion that top Chinese and Japanese leaders had discussed the presence of a dispute over the Senkakus in the 1970s. According to the pamphlet, "in the course of negotiations with China, Japan never recognized the existence of an issue to be solved on the territorial sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands." The pamphlet then provides excerpts from conversations between Zhou and Tanaka in 1972 and Deng and Fukuda in 1978. Interestingly, the excerpts are shorter than those found in Chinese sources (here and here). For example, the Japanese account of the Zhou-Tanaka talks omits Tanaka's response to Zhou that the question of the Senkakus could be discussed after the normalization of relations. As a result, Japan appears to be eliminating the option of using some acknowledgment of these past discussions as the basis of a diplomatic solution to the current standoff.
In sum, the two sides are talking. Nevertheless, they are also hardening their positions. As a result, a diplomatic breakthrough may be increasingly difficult to achieve in the short-term. The dispute is poised to become a long-term thorn in the side of China-Japan relations.
[This original appeared in The Diplomat.]


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There are many elements to keeping our skin healthy and vibrant. For instance, are we giving our bodies enough water each day? Are we eating healthy, organic, whole foods? Are we getting enough sleep? Are we dealing with our daily stressors? All of these things can affect how we feel on the inside and how we look on the outside. But in today's busy society, many rarely take the time to care for themselves. This can show on our faces in the form of wrinkles, dry lackluster skin and even discoloration.
There is hope to fix this, and it's called Gua Sha. Gua Sha may be just what the doctor ordered for attaining healthy skin.
Gua Sha is a technique that involves the quick, repetitive scraping of a flat jade, natural horn, ceramic or metal tool across the skin to relieve tension and pain and stimulate lymphatic drainage. It can be used anywhere on the body, but is frequently used as a part of facial acupuncture treatments.
Facial Gua Sha is gentler than when it is utilized in other areas of the body. When performing Gua Sha on the face, the tool is pulled along the skin instead of the deep scraping used on other areas. Also the tools used on the face are usually made of jade, rose quartz or porcelain, which provides a cooling sensation on the skin surface. The purpose of Gua Sha on the face is to increase lymph drainage and release facial muscle tension.
The lymphatic system relies on movement. We tend to get this vital movement through exercise or massage. But if you're not engaging in regular exercise, the lymphatic system can become sluggish and clogged. This means that it doesn't perform optimally. When lymph fluid is circulating and draining properly, added Gua Sha can reduce inflammation and increase the body's ability to remove toxins and dirt that have built up in the skin. This means less facial puffiness, clearer sinuses and less acne.
Facial Gua Sha can be beneficial for reducing tension held in the face and neck areas too. This may lead to fewer headaches, less jaw tightness and decreased neck pain. For people who clench their teeth, Gua Sha can be a game changer because it releases the tension built up in the muscles.
One more thing that facial Gua Sha provides is exfoliation. The action of gentle scraping on the face improves blood flow and allows for the dead skin cells to slough off more easily and frequently. This can even out facial skin tone, creating a radiant, healthy complexion.
If you are concerned about your skin tone, fine lines and wrinkles or you are experiencing neck and jaw pain, facial Gua Sha might be the extra tool you need.


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Former WWE star Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart dies at 63
WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. (AP) - Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, who joined with brother-in-law Bret Hart to form one of the top tag teams in the 1980s with the WWE, has died. He was 63.
The Pasco Sheriff's Office said Neidhart fell at home, hit his head and "succumbed to his injury" on Monday in Wesley Chapel, Florida. No foul play was suspected.
Neidhart's daughter, known as Natalya, wrestles for the WWE and is a former women's champion. Neidhart made appearances with his daughter in the WWE reality series, "Total Divas."
Neidhart, Bret "Hitman" Hart and manager Jimmy "The Mouth of the South" Hart made up the Hart Foundation stable in the 1980s and 1990s and the tag team won two WWE championships.
"What a great run we had. I couldn't believe how it took off," Jimmy Hart told The Associated Press. "But the reason why was, Neidhart was such a great character back then. Bret was more cool, the girls loved him. Neidhart and myself were kind of the evil twins."
Neidhart married Hart's sister, Ellie, and became part of the famed family wrestling dynasty in Canada. Stu Hart trained his sons, including Bret and former WWE star Owen Hart, as well as Neidhart in the 1970s. Neidhart started his pro wrestling career in Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling promotion and eventually signed with the WWE in 1985.
Hart posted a picture on social media of himself with Neidhart and the WWE tag team belts around their waists with the caption, "Stunned and saddened. I just don't have the words right now."
Neidhart wrestled mostly for WWE from 1985 to 1997 and was known for his pink and black gear, maniacal laugh and goatee.
Ross Hart, his brother-in-law and a former pro wrestler, told The Associated Press that Neidhart suffered from Alzheimer's disease and it was believed he suffered a grand mal seizure on Monday.
"He got up (Monday) morning and went to lower the temperature on the air conditioner and he just collapsed and I think died pretty quickly," Hart said. "I was think this was stemming from Alzheimer's which he'd been battling for some time. It's a struggle he's been going through."
Jimmy Hart said Neidhart seemed in good health when they last saw each other in April on WrestleMania weekend.
"He was witty, he was funny. He seemed sharp as a tack," Hart said.
Neidhart was a shot put start in high school in California in the early 1970s and had brief tryouts for NFL teams before becoming a pro wrestler.
The Hart Foundation started as bad guys in WWE and won their first tag team championship in 1987 with the help of a crooked referee. They won the tag titles again in 1990 but split up not long after their second reign ended. Bret Hart was the wrestling technician of the team while Neidhart brought the raw force and power that made them fan favorites later in their run.
As a singles wrestler, Hart would become one of the biggest stars in WWE history and made the promotion's Hall of Fame. Neidhart foundered for most of the 1990s before aligning again with Hart, Owen Hart, Brian Pillman and the British Bulldog to form a new Hart Foundation and become the top faction in WWE.
Hart is the only wrestler from that incarnation still alive.
"He was very gifted athletically, even though Bret got more of the credit," Ross Hart said. "He was more of the power behind the team but at times he did some incredibly gifted things in the ring. He was like a water buffalo. He was tough to control and tame."
Neidhart wrestled briefly for other wrestling promotions and had brushes with the law and spent time in drug rehabilitation later in life.
But he found a second act as comic relief on "Total Divas" and was filmed going shopping with his daughter and teaching wrestlers how to golf.
Neidhart is the latest in a string of big wrestling names who have died in 2018, including Bruno Sammartino, Vader, Brian Christopher and Nikolai Volkoff.


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Barack Obama was nearly done speaking Tuesday night when he reached the emotional heart of an otherwise bloodless speech. In a chamber packed with powerful people, many wearing green lapel ribbons to honor the fallen in Newtown, Obama made a stirring call to curb gun violence that zeroed in not on the dead children in Connecticut but on a 15-year-old girl from his own hometown. Hadiya Pendleton was murdered two weeks ago in a park a mile from the President's house on the South Side of Chicago. A week before that, she sang at his Inauguration with her classmates. Now her parents sat in the House chamber, a symbol of a scourge that Obama wants to end. "They deserve a vote," he said, and he repeated the refrain as he rattled off the names of communities shattered by mass shootings. "They deserve a simple vote."
It was the rare raw moment on a night where the pageantry seemed ready to swallow the speech itself. This is how it goes, pundits warned: the State of the Union is an occasion for cable networks' countdown clocks and lobbyists vying to win a mention for a cause and Congressmen who spend hours squatting in aisle seats for a few hard-won seconds in a camera frame with the leader of the free world. The speech is rarely memorable. It buckles under the weight of its own hype.
(MORE: State of the Union: No Obama Doctrine on Foreign Policy)
For more than 50 minutes, the pundits seemed wise. Obama offered an expansive vision for economic growth and middle-class opportunity. "It is our generation's task," he said, "to reignite the true engine of America's growth — a rising, thriving middle class." His watchword was jobs, "the North Star that guides our efforts." The economic argument would have been familiar to any voter who tuned in to the President's campaign rhetoric last year. There was no new grand theory, no Monroe Doctrine or war on poverty. The speech was a collection of boilerplate themes, gussied up by the pomp of the occasion.
Billed as a bookend to his second Inaugural Address, the speech called for policies that would boost the minimum wage to $9 per hour, establish universal preschool, combat climate change and increase federal investments in infrastructure and research and development. Obama implored Congress to act on these proposals and said he would take executive action if they didn't. He made a measured case for comprehensive immigration that drew a standing ovation from Paul Ryan. And he name-checked Ryan's old running mate twice, ostensibly in appeals to bipartisanship but also, perhaps, to remind his opponents that he was there and Mitt Romney wasn't.
State of the Union speeches are often laundry lists, and this one was no exception. By the time Obama finished laying out his thoughts on the budget and manufacturing, entitlements and energy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had long since nodded off in the second row. The energy in the room had flagged since the moment Obama entered the House chamber, a little after 9 p.m., and slowly wound his way around the room, pausing in the front row to share an exploding fist-bump with Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican recuperating from a stroke. As Obama checked his boxes, Democrats thumbed their phones or paged through the printed copies of his nearly 6,400-word address. Steny Hoyer pored over the text with a yellow highlighter. Others whispered and fidgeted restlessly.
(MORE: State of the Union: A Feisty Obama, a Frosty GOP)
Republicans, meanwhile, slogged through the joyless ritual of the opposition party: they rose for Obama's encomiums to bipartisanship (including a pledge to embrace "modest reforms" to Medicare) and stared, stone-faced, through his barbs. The State of the Union is a fine instrument for measuring the breadth of opposing members' hostility. On one end were Republicans like Lamar Alexander or Ryan, who were quick to rise for an ovation when they felt it was merited. At the other was Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who passed the night in a near permanent wince, hands clasped in his lap. The veneer of comity began to wear thin.
Then, in its closing minutes, the hour-long speech crescendoed with Obama's call to curb gun violence — the subject of some of the strongest speeches of his presidency. More than two dozen people "whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence," Obama said, were present in the House chamber. There was Congressman Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat who has been a paraplegic since being injured in an accidental shooting at 16. "It's important to put a human face to the issue of gun violence and show the toll it's taking on human lives," Langevin says. Another one of those faces was Gabby Giffords, who clasped her hands and nodded as Obama ticked off the cities and towns riven by mass shootings.
(VIDEO: "They Deserve a Vote")
"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote," the President said. "The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence — they deserve a simple vote," Obama said, as Democrats leaped to their feet with cries of "Vote!" and "Amen!"
It was a peroration that showed off the power of the presidency. But those powers have limits. Obama can call for a vote, but he alone can't determine what the bill contains. He can't sign reforms that can't pass a divided Congress. Already, the ambitious proposals that his firearms task force laid out have taken a back seat to the bitter fights looming over the budget and immigration reform. They are likely to be scaled back dramatically.
Without the support of Congress, the ambitious agenda Obama outlined is going nowhere. He finished with a call for lawmakers to be "the authors of the next great chapter in our American story." As he left the rostrum, Democrats lingered and applauded; Republicans hurried toward the doors.