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Songs of Insurrection
J.C. Kang
(Daughter of the Dragon Throne #1)
Publication date: January 6th 2017
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Princess Kaiya's voice could charm a dragon.
Had she lived when the power of music could still summon typhoons and rout armies, perhaps Cathay's imperial court would see her as more than a singing fool. With alliances to build and ambitious lords to placate, they care more about her marriage prospects than her voice.
Only the handsome Prince Hardeep, a foreign martial mystic, recognizes her potential. Convinced Kaiya will rediscover the legendary but perilous art of invoking magic through music, he suggests her voice, not her marriage, might better serve the realm.
When members of the emperor's elite spy clan– Kaiya's childhood friend Tian and his half-elf sidekick (or maybe he's her sidekick?)– discover mere discontent boiling over into full-scale rebellion, Kaiya must choose. Obediently wedding the depraved ringleader means giving up her music. Confronting him with the growing power of her voice could kill her.
Not-So-Chance Meetings
If marriage were a woman's grave, as the proverb claimed, sixteen-year-old Princess Kaiya suspected the emperor was arranging her funeral. Entourage in tow, she shuffled through the castle halls toward the garden where General Lu waited. Given his notorious dislike of the arts, the self-proclaimed Guardian Dragon of Hua had undoubtedly envisioned a different kind of audition when he requested to hear her sing.Not-So-Chance Meetings
After all, she was dressed like a potential bride.
She buried a snort. The Guardian Dragon—such a pretentious nickname. The only real dragon, Avarax, who lorded over some faraway land, might make for a more appealing audience. A quick trip down his gullet would spare her a slow death in a marriage with neither love nor music.
And it wouldn't matter what she wore.
The gaudy dress compensated for her numerous physical imperfections, but stifled the only thing that made her special. How was she supposed to sing with the inner robe and gold sash squeezing her chest, in a futile attempt to misrepresent her woefully underdeveloped curves? The tight fold of the skirts concealed her lanky legs, but forced a deliberate pace. At least the short stride delayed the inevitable, while preventing her unsightly feet from tripping on the hanging sleeves of the vermilion outer gown.
At her side, Crown Princess Xiulan glided across the chirping floorboards. Kaiya suppressed a sigh. If only she could move with the nonchalant grace of her sister-in-law, or even the six handmaidens trailing them. She dug her nails into clammy palms. Through this choreographed farce, appearances had to be maintained, lest she embarrass her father, the Tianzi.
Chin up, back straight. A racing heart threatened to ruin her already meager semblance of imperial grace. Eyes forward. Servants knelt on either side of the looming double doors, ready to slide them open. She forced a smile, with her best approximation of feminine charm. If only she'd lived before Dragon Songs had faded into legend, she could've sent the realm's victorious hero fleeing with the song he supposedly wanted to hear.
An aging palace official stepped into her line of sight.
Singular focus on the doors broken, she blinked. Her fluttering pulse lurched to a stop as she blew out a breath.
His blue robes ruffled as he tottered forward with averted eyes and a bobbing head. He creaked down into a bow. "Emergency, Dian-xia," he said, using the formal address for her rank. "The Tianzi commands you to greet a foreign delegation in the Hall of Bountiful Harvests."
Author Bio:
JC Kang's unhealthy obsession with Fantasy and Sci-Fi began at an early age when his brother introduced him to The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Star Trek and Star Wars. As an adult, he combines his geek roots with his professional experiences as a Chinese Medicine doctor, martial arts instructor and technical writer to pen epic fantasy stories.


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An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun. Especially intriguing is the star's unusual composition, which indicates it ingested some of its planets.
"It doesn't mean that the sun will 'eat' the Earth any time soon," said Jacob Bean, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UChicago and co-author of an Astronomy & Astrophysics article on the research. "But our discovery provides an indication that violent histories may be common for planetary systems, including our own."
Unlike the artificial planet-destroying Death Star in the movie "Star Wars," this natural version could provide clues about how planetary systems evolve over time.
Astronomers discovered the first planet orbiting a star other than the sun in 1995. Since then, more than two thousand exoplanets have been identified. Rare among them are planets that orbit a star similar to Earth's sun. Due to their extreme similarity to the sun, these so-called solar twins are ideal targets for investigating the connections between stars and their planets.
Bean and his colleagues studied star HIP68468, which is 300 light years away, as part of a multi-year project to discover planets that orbit solar twins. It's tricky to draw conclusions from a single system, cautioned Megan Bedell, a UChicago doctoral student who is co-author of the research and the lead planet finder for the collaboration. She said the team plans "to study more stars like this to see whether this is a common outcome of the planet formation process."
Computer simulations show that billions of years from now, the accumulated gravitational tugs and pulls between planets will eventually cause Mercury to fall into the sun, said Debra Fischer, a professor of astronomy at Yale University who was not involved in the research. "This study of HIP68468 is a post-mortem of this process happening around another star similar to our sun. The discovery deepens our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems."
Two planets discovered
Using the 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile, the research team of scientists from several continents discovered its first exoplanet in 2015. The more recent discovery needs to be confirmed, but includes two planet candidates—a super Neptune and a super Earth. Their orbits are surprisingly close to their host star, with one 50 percent more massive than Neptune and located at a Venus-like distance from its star. The other, the first super Earth around a solar twin, is three times the Earth's mass and so close to its star that its orbit takes just three days.
"These two planets most likely didn't form where we see them today," Bedell said. Instead, they probably migrated inward from the outer parts of the planetary system. Other planets could have been ejected from the system—or ingested by their host star.
HIP68468's composition points to a history of ingesting planets. It contains four times more lithium than would be expected for a star that is 6 billion years old, as well as a surplus of refractory elements—metals resistant to heat and that are abundant in rocky planets.
In the hot interior of stars like HIP68468 and the sun, lithium is consumed over time. Planets, on the other hand, preserve lithium because their inner temperatures are not high enough to destroy the element. As a result, when a star engulfs a planet, the lithium that the planet deposits in the stellar atmosphere stands out.
Taken together, the lithium and the engulfed rocky planet material in the atmosphere of HIP68468 is equivalent to the mass of six Earths.
"It can be very hard to know the history of a particular star, but once in a while we get lucky and find stars with chemical compositions that likely came from in-falling planets," Fischer said. "That's the case with HD68468. The chemical remains of one or more planets are smeared in its atmosphere.
"It's as if we saw a cat sitting next to a bird cage," she added. "If there are yellow feathers sticking out of the cat's mouth, it's a good bet that the cat swallowed a canary."
The team continues to monitor more than 60 solar twins, looking for more exoplanets. Beyond that, the Giant Magellan Telescope under construction in Chile, for which UChicago is a founding partner, will be capable of detecting more Earth-like exoplanets around solar twins.
"In addition to finding Earth-like planets, the Giant Magellan Telescope will enable astronomers to study the atmospheric composition of stars at even greater detail than we can today," Bean said. "That will further reveal the histories of planetary systems that are subtly imprinted on their host stars."
Citation: "The Solar Twin Planet Search. V. Close-in, low-mass planet candidates and evidence of planet accretion in the solar twin HIP68468," by Megan Bedell and Jacob Bean (University of Chicago); first author Jorge Meléndez, Sylvio Ferraz-Mello, Jhon Yana-Galarza, Leonardo dos Santos, Marcelo Tucci Maia and Lorenzo Spina (Universidade de Sao Paulo); Alan Alves-Brito (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul); Ivan Ramirez (University of Texas Austin); Martin Asplund and Luca Casagrande (Australian National University); Stefan Dreizler (University of Göttingen); Hong-Liang Yan and Jian-Rong Shi (Chinese Academy of Sciences); Karin Lind (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy); and TalaWanda Monroe (Space Telescope Science Institute). The paper is available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09067
Funding: São Paulo Research Foundation, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Australian Research Council

subset: commoncrawl


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Motability Scheme including FREE Insurance, Servicing & Maintenance, Tyre & Windscreen replacements, Annual Car Tax and Roadside Assistance: Motability Scheme vehicles are leased to customers by Motability Operations Limited (Registered Company No. 1373876), City Gate House, 22 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9HB. To qualify you must be in receipt of the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA), the Enhanced Rate Mobility Component of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the War Pensioners' Mobility Supplement (WPMS) or the Armed Forces Independence Payment (AFIP) and applications must be made with participating dealers between 1st July and 30th September 2024. Prices are correct at time of publishing, are subject to availability and may change.
Available at Bedford
Available at Kings Lynn
Available at Northampton
Available at Norwich
Available at Bury St Edmunds


text:
Wyatt Earp John Ringo Curly Bill Brocius Doc Holliday |
This site has been developed by Tombstone researcher Steve Gatto to provide factual information about the old west town of Tombstone, and men like Wyatt Earp and John Ringo, who made the town famous. |
OK Corral Gunfight Testimony Indictment For Killing Frank Stilwell Resignation of Wyatt and Virgil Earp |
Tombstone Historical Live-Chat Room |
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/* Start Quoter Code 'Quoter' Script By: JbA Web Address: http://www.4cm.com/ Email Address: firstname.lastname@example.com Use of this code is allowed, free, and offered as long as you email us with the URL of the page your using it on! It is offered 'AS IS', and 4CM takes no claim (responsibility!) that it will work, or that it won't screw up your system! */ $quote = file("http://data1/hypermart.net/tombstonehistory/quotes.txt"); srand((double)microtime()*1000000); echo $quote[rand(0,count($quote))]; echo "Quote Script By: www.4cm.com"; /* End Quoter Code */ ?> Book Review- The Real Wyatt Earp: A Documentary Biography by Steve Gatto.
Updated April 21, 2001
Thanks for visiting the Tombstone Historical Page.
Created March 1998


text: I found some lupus info recently which might interest some in these newsgroups. This is sort of in response to the message posted today by Mr. Cunliffe... ------------------------------------------- Enzyme Blamed As Cause Of Lupus (The Associated Press) German scientists have provided the first direct evidence that a key enzyme's failure to mop up dying cells contributes to lupus, a potentially fatal immune disorder. http://www.intelihealth.com/enews?284164 -- Bruce, Michigan


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Photo: Rod Loyola nominated as the NDP candidate in Edmonton-Ellerslie. (Source: @JanisIrwin on twitter)
New Democratic Party MLA Rod Loyola secured his party's nomination in Edmonton-Ellerslie on August 28, 2018. Loyola was first elected in 2015, earned 61.5 percent of the vote in this suburban southeast Edmonton district. Loyola currently serves as the chair of the Standing Committee on Resource Stewardship. Before to his election in 2015, Loyola was the president of the University of Alberta Non-Academic Staff Association.
In Drayton Valley-Devon, MLA Mark Smith defeated challenger Andrew Boitchenko in a vote held for the United Conservative Party nomination on August 29, 2018. Smith was first elected in 2015, earning 37 percent of the vote and unseating Progressive Conservative cabinet minister and former Drayton Valley mayor Diana McQueen, who earned 30 percent of the vote.
Nasty UPC nomination race allegedly gets physical
Long-time Calgary Conservative Member of Parliament Deepak Obhrai inserted himself into a contentious UCP nomination race this week. Obhrai held a press conference in his Calgary-Forest Lawn constituency office with local radio and TV host Kumar Sharma, who alleges he was threatened and then physically assaulted by a gang of men after publishing a Facebook post that referenced UCP nomination candidate Happy Mann.
Mann is a two-time Wildrose Party candidate who is now seeking the UCP nomination in the new Calgary-Falconridge district in northeast Calgary. In a statement sent to various media companies, Mann denied any connection to the alleged incident and maintained that the accusations were politically motivated.
Also seeking the UCP nomination in Calgary-Falconridge are realtor Pete de Jong, former Chesteremere city councillor Christopher Steeves, and past Wildrose Party candidate Devinder Toor. Deepak Sharma has been nominated as the Liberal Party candidate in this district.
Here are some more of the latest updates to the growing list of Alberta election nomination candidates:
Calgary-Foothills – Jennifer Wyness has been nominated as the Alberta Party candidate in this northwest Calgary district. Wyness placed second in the Ward 2 contest in Calgary's 2017 municipal election, finishing with 36 percent to incumbent councillor Joe Magliocca's 49 percent.
Calgary-Lougheed – Mount Royal University policy studies student Rachel Timmermans is seeking the Alberta Party nomination in this southeast Calgary district. If nominatied, Timmermans will face UCP leader Jason Kenney in the 2019 election.
Calgary-Mountain View – Becca Polak is seeking the UCP nomination in this district. Polak is the former Vice-President of Communications for the Wildrose Party and served as a member of the UCP interim board from 2017 to 2018.
Calgary-North – Manpreet Sidhu is the sixth candidate to join the UCP nomination in this new north Calgary district.
Edmonton-Gold Bar – NDP MLA Marlin Schmidt is expected to be confirmed as his party's candidate at a nomination meeting on September 20, 2018. Schmidt currently serves as Minister of Advanced Education. Schmidt was elected in 2015 with 68.9 percent of the vote and his crushing 11,205 vote margin of victory, the largest in any district in that election, earned him the nickname "Hurricane Marlin."
Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood – Brian Gratrix seeking the Alberta Party nomination. Also running for the Alberta Party nomination in this district is past city council candidate Tish Prouse.
Edmonton-Manning – Harinder Grewal is the latest candidate to join the UCP nomination contest in this district.
Livingstone-Macleod – Dylin Hauser has been nominated as the Liberal Party candidate, Tim Meech has been nominated as the Alberta Party candidate, and Thomas Schneider has joined the UCP nomination contest. Schnieder is a former Area Sales Representative with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
If you know any candidates who have announced their intentions to stand for party nominations, please send me an email at email@example.com. I will add them to the list. Thank you!


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Former President Barack Obama criticized the Trump administration for once again casting a shadow of deportation over young people who were brought to the country illegally as children.
Obama renewed his call for Congress to grant permanent protection to these so-called DREAMers.
"To target these young people is wrong, because they have done nothing wrong," Obama wrote in a Facebook post. "It is self-defeating — because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel."
The former president rarely criticizes his successor in public. But Obama has weighed in occasionally when Trump acted to reverse one of his signature initiatives, such as the Affordable Care Act or the Paris climate agreement.
Trump's decision to phase out protection for DREAMers, beginning in six months, drew a similar response. Obama rejected the administration's claim that its action was driven by a legal challenge from conservative states.
"Let's be clear," Obama said. "The action taken today isn't required legally. It's a political decision and a moral question."
Obama himself acknowledged back in 2012 that granting DREAMers a temporary reprieve from deportation was an imperfect substitute for legislation.
"This is not amnesty," he said at the time. "This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It's not a permanent fix."
Obama had turned to executive action reluctantly after legislation known as the DREAM Act was stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate in late 2010. One of the bill's most outspoken opponents was then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.
"American people did not vote for an amnesty in this past election," said the Alabama Republican, now Trump's attorney general, who made the policy announcement Tuesday. "It will be resisted with every strength and every ability that I have to do so. Because this is a lame-duck Congress, it will not pass next year, and it's not going to pass this year if I have anything to do about it."
With the DREAM Act stalled, Obama eventually decided to move on his own, granting the DREAMers a temporary reprieve from deportation. Young people who met certain criteria were allowed to apply for temporary legal status and a work permit.
The move was controversial from the beginning. Even as he was announcing the program in the White House Rose Garden, Obama was interrupted by a writer from the conservative Daily Caller website.
"Why do you favor foreigners over Americans?" asked Neil Munro, a question that would foreshadow Trump's "America First" rhetoric.
Roy Beck, head of the group Numbers USA, which favors limited immigration, worried that giving work permits to DREAMers would cost native-born residents jobs.
"Is there anybody in America who believes that the 20 million unemployed or underemployed Americans need more competition?" Beck asked in 2012.
The unemployment rate at the time was 8.2 percent. It's since been cut nearly in half to 4.4 percent, despite the DREAMers' presence.
Nevertheless, Sessions argued Tuesday that Obama's order had "denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs."
Obama rejected that sentiment five years ago.
"It makes no sense to expel talented young people who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans," he said in 2012. ""These young people are going to make extraordinary contributions, and are already making contributions to our society."
Obama echoed that sentiment Tuesday in his Facebook post.
"Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn't threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own," Obama wrote. "Kicking them out won't lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone's taxes, or raise anybody's wages."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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New Horizon Capital is one of the most influential and successful participants in China's fledgling private equity industry. It has billions of dollars under management and a stable of investors that includes Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund. But you would not guess any of that from its central Beijing headquarters.
The company has no nameplate in the lobby of the Golden Treasure Tower, a nondescript building near the Forbidden City, the traditional seat of imperial power. Its simple 12th floor offices are identified only by a small sign inside the door that reads, in Chinese, "New Horizon Growth Investment Advisory Limited".
The company does not need flashy suites as it has one of the most valuable assets in China. He is Winston Wen, an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg business school in the US who keeps a low profile and bears a striking resemblance to his father – Wen Jiabao, premier of the People's Republic of China.
The younger Mr Wen and New Horizon are in the vanguard of a more aggressive generation of taizidang ("princelings") – offspring of senior Communist party officials – who dominate the burgeoning home-grown private equity industry, where huge profits are to be made from restructuring state assets and financing private companies.
In 2009 private equity deals in China totalled $3.6bn, accounting for one-third of all such transactions in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Thomson Reuters. But industry participants say the potential market is far larger.
According to those working in the sector, the princelings' ascendance is squeezing out less well connected operators, including foreign firms, which might have important consequences for two reasons. First, private equity could play an important role in modernising the economy, channelling funds to promising but capital-starved companies – but those benefits will be felt only if the industry is run in a professional and competitive manner.
Second, some in the political establishment fear that princeling dominance of private equity could exacerbate public perception of nepotism and misrule at the top of the Communist party. In an opaque authoritarian system lacking the popular legitimacy of a democracy, such fears are hard to dismiss. A recent online opinion poll by the People's Daily, the party's official mouthpiece, found that 91 per cent of respondents believe all rich families have political backgrounds.
In an interview with the same newspaper, the former auditor-general said the fast-growing wealth of officials' children and relatives "is what the public is most dissatisfied about". Li Jinhua, widely respected as the senior graft-busting official between 1998 and 2008, told the paper this month: "From the numerous cases currently coming to light, we can see that many corruption problems are transacted through sons and daughters."
Many of the elite's children are western educated and, over the past 15 years, dozens have been recruited by western companies and banks hoping to secure an entry into the Chinese market and win mandates to take state-owned companies public in New York or Hong Kong. As most foreign investors know, employing the relative of a senior party leader as an adviser or employee can help cut through bureaucratic obstruction and resistance from local interest groups.
But today those institutions and investors are scrambling to invest in the private equity funds of princelings who would once have been on their payroll. "In the past, the best option for these people with 'background' was to go to the high-paying western investment banks but now the economic strength has shifted," says one person in the private equity industry, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. "Now they're saying to the foreigners, 'Hey, I'm in the driving seat, I have all the deals – so you give me your money and I'll invest it myself and take a big cut'."
Prominent private equity princelings include George Li, a former banker at Merrill Lynch and UBS with an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose father, Li Ruihuan, was one of the country's senior leaders from the late 1980s until 2003. Another son, Jeffrey Li, recently resigned as China head of Novartis, the pharmaceuticals group, to go into private equity, according to people familiar with the matter.
Wilson Feng, who bankers and private equity investors say is the son-in-law of Wu Bangguo – officially second in the party hierarchy – left Merrill Lynch two years ago to launch a fund with ties to the state-owned nuclear energy conglomerate, according to media reports and people familiar with the matter. Mr Feng was key to securing Merrill's mandate to take Industrial and Commercial Bank of China public in Hong Kong in 2006 in the biggest initial public offering in history.
Other private equity princelings include Li Tong, daughter of Li Changchun, the member of the nine-strong ruling Politburo standing committee in charge of propaganda and the media. Ms Li now runs a private equity fund at Hong Kong-based Bank of China International focusing on the media sector, according to three people familiar with the matter. Stanford-educated Jeffrey Zeng, son of Zeng Peiyan, former vice-premier, has also set up a fund affiliated with state-owned financial institutions.
"This is turning into a crucial moment for the financial industry in China," says the head of a foreign bank in Beijing."But we are very worried that foreigners and other skilled Chinese are being shut out by a string of princelings and other very well-connected people trying to dominate [the private equity] market."
The government has been encouraging the creation of a home-grown private equity industry in recent years but approvals to set up funds are tightly controlled and investments often require them from numerous state agencies. Having the relative of a top leader in its management team can help fledgling funds overcome these hurdles.
Princelings have long been suspected of leveraging parental political power for personal gain; the topic was a source of public anger during the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests that ended in a bloody military crackdown. But Beijing political insiders say two men led the way for the ambitious new generation, fostering the modern perception of close ties between money and political power.
Levin Zhu, son of former premier Zhu Rongji, and Jiang Mianheng, son of former president Jiang Zemin, are familiar to many foreign investors, having worked for or set up joint ventures with several large western companies. Their fathers helped push through some of the past two decades' most important market-based reforms, including World Trade Organisation membership.
Mr Zhu has a PhD in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following a stint at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, he returned to China in the late 1990s and orchestrated a virtual takeover of China International Capital Corp, a joint venture in which Morgan Stanley holds about 34 per cent.
Mr Jiang boasts a PhD in electrical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia. Returning to Shanghai in the early 1990s he was courted by foreign investors who saw him as the country's most valuable joint venture partner. Today, he controls Shanghai Alliance Investment Limited, a government investment company operating much like a private equity firm.
With their parents both out of formal office since 2003, the influence of Mr Jiang and Mr Zhu has waned. But as children of the "third generation" of technocratic leaders, they are seen to have paved the way for the current wave of princelings. "Those two really helped create the image of Red families running this country for their own benefit," according to one person who deals closely with many princeling families. "Their actions have given all the younger generation a green light to go out and aggressively build their own buckets of gold, no matter what the consequences for the image of the party or the leadership."
By squeezing out foreigners and other competition, dominance of the private equity sector by princelings will bring few benefits in terms of management skills or financial discipline, some analysts and industry participants say.
"Private equity is a very good area for princelings because with these sorts of connections you can get into companies ahead of their IPOs and make a lot of money in a short space of time," says Professor Victor Shih of Northwestern University. "It is an easy way to make money because everyone will be willing to back them because of their connections. Everyone will do it willingly in order to potentially get favours from senior leaders in return."
People close to several private equity princelings say they often feel they are victims of reverse discrimination; that no matter how smart or hard-working they are, the public will assume their success relies purely on nepotism. However, some important operators in the Chinese sector, while benefiting from family links, are seen in the industry as well qualified in their own right. One such person is Liu Lefei, son of Liu Yunshan, head of the party's central propaganda department. The younger Mr Liu previously managed Rmb1,000bn ($147bn; €109bn; £98bn) as chief investment officer for state-owned China Life Insurance and has taken over the reins of the state-controlled Citic private equity fund.
The Financial Times was unable to reach some of the individuals named in this article or their companies, and those who were contacted refused to comment.
Because it can prompt public dissatisfaction and accusations of nepotism, information about the private lives and business dealings of leaders and their offspring often falls within the scope of vague and wide-ranging state secrecy laws, regularly used to silence critics of the regime. Even the existence of leaders' relatives is usually a well-guarded secret. Internet searches on princelings and their activities are usually blocked in China.
Most live in luxurious gated communities around Beijing and maintain holiday homes around the country and the world. Spouses are almost never seen in public. Younger, less discreet, princelings can be identified in Beijing by their luxury sports cars with military or paramilitary licence plates, which allow them to ignore traffic regulations and avoid being stopped by the police.
But the princelings themselves face a dilemma. If their business activities are too successful or high profile they may damage the political fortunes of their powerful parents, even without specific allegations of inappropriate dealings or special privileges.
Some analysts and industry insiders foresee a situation where the scions of powerful political families use the private equity industry to carve up parts of the economy at the expense not only of foreign investors but also of the older generations of princelings with direct bloodlines to China's revolutionary Communist party founders.
But the constant jockeying for position within the party behind closed doors in Beijing is set to intensify as the next big leadership transition approaches in 2012. Some analysts say the private equity activities of the more aggressive younger princelings could be used by political enemies as a weapon against their parents.
In the case of Winston Wen, "You have to wonder if this will leave Wen [Jiabao] open to some sort of blackmail if his son has such a high-profile position in the financial sector, where all sorts of favours might be offered", says Mr Shih. "What if someone gets some dirt on Winston Wen?"
'Red-blooded 'veterans versus ruthless arrivistes
The term "princeling" was coined to refer specifically to the children of senior leaders of China's Communist revolution – the veterans who joined Mao Zedong on the fabled Long March of the mid-1930s or were members of the inner circle at the time of the 1949 Communist victory.
Today it is used more broadly to include the offspring of later generations of technocratic leaders – but a distinction remains between them and the truly "Red-blooded" revolutionary families.
Beijing political insiders say that distinction is made sharper today by the aggressive business dealings of the newer generation of princelings and their moves into the hot new field of private equity.
None of the most prominent players in the burgeoning domestic private equity sector is from the revolutionary dynasties that include the offspring of such Communist icons as Deng Xiaoping, the late paramount leader, and the children of the "eight immortal" party elders who supported his rule through the 1980s and 1990s.
"The old revolutionary royalty, like the family of Deng Xiaoping, are still untouchable and they regard this country as belonging to them in a very real sense," says one such insider. "They see the newer generation of princelings as more ruthless, and some even go as far as saying that when the eunuchs become powerful it means the end of the dynasty is near."
Some analysts see the private equity activities of princelings as a potential political problem as the government prepares for a leadership transition in 2012, especially since there is a recent precedent of senior leaders cracking down on the business activities of their predecessors' children.
When he was consolidating his power in the early 1990s, Jiang Zemin, former president, shut down companies and arrested a number of business executives with close ties to Deng's children.
After Hu Jintao, the current president, came to power in 2003 he launched a similar high-level crackdown that brought down the party secretary in Mr Jiang's power base of Shanghai and netted prominent real estate developers and businessmen with close ties to his son.
In the jockeying for power and influence that is sure to dominate the Beijing political scene for the next two years and beyond, the new generation of princelings may become pawns in a high-stakes game, just as their predecessors did before them.


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There are a few other sites out there dealing with Cluster Headaches, but no real place to "interact" with other Cluster sufferers. There are a few message boards where you can read posts dealing with Cluster Headaches, but sorting through all the migraine, tension, and other headache posts to find the few about Clusters is enough to bring on a headache! Never again will you have to search, hour upon hour, for information on Cluster Headaches! You now have a place to "hang out" that you can call our very own. You now have a place to "vent" when you wake up at 3 a.m. with a headache, the oxygen tank is empty, and you're out of Imitrex! Finally...a place where you can talk to someone about how horrible your headaches are and know that they really do understand your pain. Welcome to your new home on the internet!
"...I've seen him walk down the hallway (holding onto the
wall for dear life) with his head cocked to one side and walking like a 100-year old man.
I've seen him cry, pull out his hair, and beg me to take him to the emergency room. On one
occasion, I was driving the hospital - in the middle of the night - with 2 daughters in
the back seat and he's practically pushing the dash of the car through the windshield
because I'm not driving fast enough - and he's crying all the way. I know that he will do
ANYTHING - ANYTHING to get rid of this pain. I can't believe that most doctors don't
realize this - maybe they'd like to spend a couple of nights at my house and see what he
goes through !!! - Loretta (wife of a sufferer) "I just gotten over an attack. I've been going 5 weeks now non-stop. 4-6 attacks per day. No sleep. No relief. I'm exhausted. I keep telling myself this hell is going to end soon, but I'm beginning to think that it's not. I can't think. I can't eat. I can't leave my house. When I'm not in pain, I'm in dread of it coming back. The attacks are increasing in intensity everyday and I sometimes think that I will go mad. I try everything to ease them a little and nothing seems to be working. I really don't know how much more I can take. I keep telling myself that I am strong enough to deal with it. I've been doing it for a long time now. But then the next one hits, and I become a wimpering little baby with no strength what-so-ever. My only saving grace is being able to write this down and know that you will understand like no one else can. I'll close my eyes now and hope that maybe I will sleep a little before the next one hits. Thanks for being here." - Marcus "It started about 2am... I was awakened from my
sleep with this burning senstation in my ear and back of my neck, I tried to shift
positions and return to my peaceful sleep, but it wasn't happening. Something in my mind
told me immediately that I was dealing with the same crap I did a couple years ago, and
even though I tried to convince myself that it wasn't the same, I KNEW it was. - Jeff "Its somewhere between 11:00 P.M. and 3:00
A.M., and I wake terrified, hopeful that Im dreaming, and knowing that Im not.
I move quickly out of bed while my lovely wife of fifteen years, the only one who truly
tries to understand, watches helpless; as there is nothing that she can do, she hurts too.
I am careful not to wake the children as I make my way down the stairs. If they were to
witness my nightly cluster ritual, they would never see me the same way again. Their
father, fearless protector, diligent provider, crawling about in tears, beating his head
on the hard wood floor. - Anonymous


text:
Recently a customer brought the contol system for there Glidermatic Roller Door Opener to the workshop for repair. This model operates on 27MHz and is no longer available. The Customer had been told that they would have to buy a new system and the cost was quite high. The Glidermatic Roller Door Opener was repaired and fitted by RadTronix at a fraction of the cost of a replacement system.
Please click on any picture to view it in higher resolution


text:
Introduction to a Signal Integrity Engineer's Companion
- 1.1 Life Cycle: The Motivation to Develop a Simulation Strategy
- 1.2 Prototyping: Interconnecting High-Speed Digital Signals
- 1.3 Pre-emphasis
- 1.4 The Need for Real-Time Test and Measurement
- Conclusion
An engineer's companion is like any other companion: It's a fellow traveler and colleague who offers advice and support, sharing experiences with a friend, in what would otherwise be a solitary journey. Our journey will take us through the endeavors of embedded system design, simulation, prototype development, and test. The dangers are signal reflections, attenuation, crosstalk, unwanted ground currents, timing errors, electromagnetic radiation, and a host of other signal integrity (SI) issues. SI engineering is a relatively new branch of electronics engineering. For the most part, it relates to the analog factors that affect both the performance and reliability of modern high-speed digital signals and systems. In general, integrity has to do with truthfulness. When applied to digital electronics, such as communication and computer systems, it is specifically about signal accuracy and system reliability.
Although it is written for SI engineering professionals, this book is intended to support new engineers and students who have an interest in designing, simulating, and developing modern high-performance digital and embedded systems. Along with the central theme of how to think about SI engineering, this book includes practical guidance on how to achieve and interpret a simulation or real-time test and measurement. In many jobs within the SI industry, a technician, engineer, or designer could be anyone who thinks about the reliability or operation of a modern embedded system. This book aims to address the concerns and uncertainties faced by these people. Because this book was written with a wide audience in mind, each topic is presented with a prerequisite theoretical or practical preamble that supports novice engineers and students and that can often be omitted by practicing engineers. This chapter keeps with the format of this book, in that it follows the development of an embedded system, from its simulation to prototyping and real-time test.
We live in the digital age, in which providers of telephony, computing, and broadcast systems are busily facilitating media convergence. Music, video, and information systems must be transparent to the newly integrated communication and computing systems. Consequently, consumers expect their modern high-performance telephony and computing systems to interactively communicate the latest news and entertainment while providing e-business transactions. Driving forces such as media convergence are challenging digital designers to work in an era of reasonably priced, high-performance, highly dependable digital systems that typically are portable and generally are required to have worldwide compliance. Today the issues of interoperability are paramount where modern systems and components from disparate manufacturers are often required to work together seamlessly. Moreover it's widely documented that communication and computing systems double in computational throughput every eighteen months. This implies that any absolute frequency or data rate quoted in any SI book will be out of date by the time the book is published—and this book is no exception. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that, similar to most of the books in this SI engineering series, the fundamental practical examples, guidance, and underlying theoretical concepts will remain relevant for many years to come. Today's cutting-edge digital interfaces will become the bread and butter of tomorrow's digital systems.
1.1 Life Cycle: The Motivation to Develop a Simulation Strategy
Most signal integrity engineers would agree that the primary motivation for simulating chip-to-chip networks is to maximize the probability that those networks will function flawlessly on first power-up. Another compelling motivation is easy to overlook under the intense pressure of time to market: understanding operating margins (see Figure 1-1). It is tempting to stitch together IO circuit and interconnect models, run the simulations, check the results, and be done with the exercise. This may prove that the network will function under a given set of conditions, but will it continue to function reliably over the range of manufacturing and operating conditions it will encounter during the product's useful life? What are the expected primary failure mechanisms, and how do they interact with one another?
Figure 1-1 Operating margin.
These questions are indeed of primary importance, and it may be possible to answer them given unlimited resources and time. Unfortunately, most signal integrity engineers operate under somewhat different conditions. A contemporary PC board design may have upwards of a thousand nets that belong to two or three dozen different buses. The power spectrum will likely have significant content above 5 GHz. Supplying power and cooling to high-performance processors can place challenging constraints on layout and routing. On top of these technical challenges, the customer may require that the product be ready for manufacturing in a time period that severely stresses the team's ability to carry out the level of analysis required to ensure reliable operation. This is the irony of the business: the relevant physical effects become ever more difficult and expensive to analyze, while the market relentlessly exerts downward pressure on cost and schedule. These two freight trains are running full speed toward each other on the same track.
Given these technical and business challenges, is it still possible to achieve the goal of reliable operation of a system filled with dozens of digital IO buses over the product's lifetime? At times it may appear that the solution to this difficult problem is the empty set. In the heat of battle, the level of complexity can be so overwhelming that it seems impossible to satisfy all the constraints simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is the opinion of the authors that it is possible to successfully manage the signal integrity of a complex contemporary design if the lead engineers keep two important principles in mind. First, the signal integrity engineer must be involved at the very beginning of the design cycle, when the team is making critical architectural decisions and selecting component technology. Second, the team must develop a comprehensive simulation and measurement strategy that applies the appropriate level of analysis to each bus in the system.
1.1.1 The Benefits of Early Teamwork
It must be tempting for those who make weighty architectural decisions during the earliest stages of a new product to avoid addressing implementation details. After all, it is easier to define a product while cruising along at the top of the troposphere. The product must offer innovative, distinguishing features. It must also offer Earth-shattering performance at a lower cost than the competition. Most important, it must be ready for manufacturing before the infamous marketing window closes. If this is a consumer product, this means having the product shrink-wrapped and on the shelves for Christmas shoppers. These are all difficult goals to achieve, even without having to worry about how to manufacture the product and make it reliable.
As any experienced engineer will attest, usually a price must be paid for making architectural decisions without input from those whose job it is to implement the architecture. Probably the worst possible scenario is a product that is marginally functional, because the marginal part does not become apparent until production is in full swing. This is even more treacherous than a product that overruns its budget, misses its milestones, and never makes it to market. Assembly lines come down. Companies—more than one—lose large quantities of money each day. There may be recalls. There will certainly be redesigns under intense pressure. At the end of the whole experience lies a painful loss of reputation. This is certainly a scenario that no Vice President of Technology or Chief Financial Officer would choose to put in motion if the choice were made clear. One thing is crystal clear: the company greatly enhances it chances of success by building a cross-disciplinary team in the project's early architectural phases. A minimum team would include a board layout designer, firmware programmer, and engineers from the disciplines of logic, mechanical, thermal, power, manufacturing, electromagnetic compliance, and signal integrity. A large company may have separate engineers to represent each of these disciplines, while in most other companies one person wears several hats. In either case, it is important that each discipline be represented on the team.
As an illustration of the importance of early teamwork, consider the following fictional scenario that is close enough to reality to be disturbing. Project X took off like a rocket from the very beginning. Conceived in a boardroom behind closed doors, it was already well-defined before anyone in development engineering heard of it. The senior engineering staff voiced their opinions about the unrealistic schedule, especially during a time when other high-profile projects were consuming most of the company's resources. However, commitments to customers had already been made, a marketing plan was in the works, finances were allocated, and the wheels were in motion—the first domino in a sequence of related events.
The second domino was in place before PC board placement and routing began. The Vice President of Engineering had defined a budget that was consistent with the price point that Marketing deemed competitive. This budget called for a four-layer PC board: signal-ground-power-signal. Upon seeing the form factor for the first time, the PC board designer expressed concern about routability in certain areas he perceived to be bottlenecks. The lead signal integrity engineer expressed concern about high forward crosstalk due to microstrip transmission lines and high edge rates in the PCI Express (PCIe) signals. However, neither the board designer nor the signal integrity engineer could prove that a solution did not exist, so the design progressed as planned.
An exceptionally aggressive schedule became domino number three. To meet the schedule, the board design shop had two of their top designers work back-to-back twelve-hour shifts for three weeks, with one day off on the weekends. While it is true that an auto-router can save many hours of human labor, there is no substitute for an experienced designer when channels are fully allocated. The company's design process called for routing constraints to be in place before routing could begin. Again, schedule won the day. Routing began before the signal integrity team could assign constraints to the 800 nets on the board that required attention out of a total of 1,000 nets.
In a remarkable feat of skill and sweat, the design team generated Gerber files on schedule. Much to their credit, they reserved one day for a complete design review, with mandatory attendance by everyone on the team. They even invited a few seasoned veterans who had since gone on to jobs in other parts of the company. One of these veterans spotted the problem: a PCIe differential pair routed next to a Gigabit Media Independent Interface (GMII) clock signal. The edge rate of the 2.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) PCIe signal was clearly defined in the specification as 10 V/ns. The edge rate of the 125 MHz GMII clock was only 1 V/ns, making it vulnerable to crosstalk from aggressors with higher edge rates, but this information was unavailable in the component datasheet. The signal integrity engineer took an action item to acquire an IBIS datasheet for both the PHY chip and the IO controller. She was successful for the PHY chip, but the vendor for the IO controller required the company to sign a nondisclosure agreement before releasing the IBIS datasheet. This legal process took much longer than the one day allocated for reviewing the design, and the team sent the Gerber files to the PC board manufacturer. Domino number four.
The first set of boards came back from assembly and performed admirably on the benchtop. The software team did their job of loading new code, debugging, recompiling, and loading again. The hardware team did their job of measuring thermal characteristics, calculating power draw, dumping registers, and capturing traces for bus transactions on the logic analyzer. Knowing that there was exposure to crosstalk problems, the signal integrity engineer spent a lot of time probing the board, looking for them. She found some quiet line noise on the order of 200 to 300 mV, but the nets had enough noise and timing margin to tolerate it. After several weeks of intense work, the development team gave management the green light for production, and each team member spent a few days contributing to the final report before moving on to the next project.
Unbeknownst to the heroes of our story, the fifth and final domino was starting to fall at a semiconductor manufacturing plant on the other side of the planet. Although the IO controller chip had been in production for two years and the process had remained stable for most of this time, a recent drop in yield prompted the process engineers to make some tweaks that ultimately resulted in slightly lower edge rates. The IBIS datasheet for the IO controller contained edge rate information, but the component datasheet did not. The manufacturer did not feel a need to notify its customers, because all specified parameters remained within their limits.
Shortly after these new components hit the assembly floor, the boards began experiencing high levels of fallout in the form of intermittent failures that were associated with traffic on the PCI Express and Gigabit Ethernet buses. When a few of the boards made it to customer installations, the crisis was officially under way. Management told the team to drop what they were doing and focus on resolving the crisis. One sleepless night, the neurons in the brain of the signal integrity engineer rewired themselves to remind her of the comment during the design review about crosstalk between PCI Express data and the GMII clock. The next day she decided to probe these signals, using a logic analyzer to trigger the oscilloscope when both were active at the same time. This did not happen often, because the two buses were asynchronous to each other. After three days of persistent testing she captured a waveform that showed a slope reversal—double clocking—right in the threshold region of the GMII clock receiver on the PHY chip and coincident with a transaction on the PCI Express bus.
Not many pleasant alternatives presented themselves to the team. It was not possible to slow down a PCI Express signal and still expect the bus to function. While an FET switch would sharpen the edge of the GMII clock signal, the IO controller was in a BGA package, and there was no way to install the FET switch between the pin and the net. In the end, it was decided to stop production and rush a new six-layer PC board through design.
During the lull between releasing the new design and shipping the new boards, upper management held an all-day process review. The veteran engineer from the original design review retraced the trail of circumstances that led to the failure. First and most important, the signal integrity team did not have a representative at the table when the architecture was being defined. He pointed out that a cross-disciplinary design team is the cornerstone of a healthy, solid design process. Second, there was no cost-performance analysis of the PC board stack-up. This is admittedly one of most difficult things any engineer has to do. There was no excuse for the third contribution to the failure; schedule should never trump assigning design constraints unless the risk of nonfunctional hardware is deemed acceptable. Item number four was an unavailable model. This is understandable, because high-quality models are hard to come by, but it is possible to have the necessary models when they are needed by planning ahead. Finally, if a design is sensitive to edge rate, the component specification should call out edge rate as a parameter, because it is not possible to anticipate the evolution of a silicon fabrication process.
The recommendations that came from the design process review were to establish a cross-disciplinary team for all new designs and to develop a comprehensive process for applying the appropriate level of analysis to each net in a PC board or system design.
Most of the time, circumstances do not present themselves to us in such an obvious, logical progression. Only careful retrospection reveals the sequence of events that led to a particular conclusion. To some degree, the engineer's job is to play the role of the prophet who can foresee these circumstances and avoid them without becoming the Jeremiah to whom nobody pays much attention.
1.1.2 Defining the Boundaries of Simulation Space
Avoiding situations like the one just described requires a sound understanding of the physics involved. You also need the insight to know what level of analysis is required for a given net or bus. Although it is certainly possible to acquire models for a thousand nets and simulate every one of them before releasing a design to manufacturing, the company that practices such a philosophy may not be in business very long. It would appear that one of the more critical tasks of designing any digital IO interface is establishing the boundaries of simulation space. These are the criteria you use to decide whether a net needs to be simulated or whether some other method of analysis is more appropriate. Make no mistake: simulation is expensive and should be used only when there are strong economic and technical motivations for doing so. Once this critical question of whether to simulate is answered, you can go about the tasks of actually running the simulations and interpreting their results.
An excellent way to begin the decision-making process is to compile a comprehensive list of all nets in the design and some relevant information associated with each bus. This begs for a definition of a bus, which is a word that is frequently used but seldom defined. For the purposes of this discussion, a bus is defined as a collection of data and control signals that have a common functional purpose and are synchronized to the same clock or strobe signal.
One example of a bus is the traditional 33 MHz PCI bus. It is composed of 32 address-data signals and a set of control signals, each synchronized by a common clock signal that originates from a clock source chip. DDR memory is a source-synchronous bus in which the transmitting chip sends a clock or strobe signal along with the data. The source synchronous bus facilitates faster data rates by eliminating skew between multiple copies of the same clock and transmitter launch time from the timing budget (see Chapter 4, "DDR2 Case Study"). PCI Express is another example of a bus, although it is not necessary for each chip on a given PCI Express bus to share the same reference clock. PCI Express uses a clock-data recovery circuit. This means the receiving chip uses the same low-frequency reference clock as the transmitting chip. It boosts the clock to the data rate and infers the optimum sample point from the incoming data stream.
The analysis decision matrix shown in Table 1-1 allows the signal integrity engineer to view all the relevant electrical parameters of each bus at the same time. The engineer also can decide what level of analysis is necessary to ensure that each bus functions reliably over the product's lifetime. The simplest case might be a bus that a trusted colleague has analyzed in the past and that others have used successfully time and again. In this case no simulation is required—provided that all of the bus's electrical parameters are identical to the ones that were analyzed in the past. The next, more complicated case is the bus for which a designers' guide or specification exists. If a third party analyzed the bus and published a set of rules that, when followed, guarantee sufficient operating margins, simulation is not necessary. The job of the signal engineer defaults to describing design constraints to the CAD system and checking that they are met. Of course, the reliability of the source must be beyond reproach! Some buses may not require simulation but do require rudimentary hand calculation, such as the value of termination resistors, stub length as a function of rise time, or RC time constant of a heavily loaded reset net. Finally, if a bus passes through each of these three filters, it is time to assemble the models and fire up the simulator. The closer this process occurs to the beginning of the project, the higher the likelihood of success. The bus parameter spreadsheet should include the following items:
Table 1-1. Analysis Decision Matrix
Parameter |
PCIe |
Units |
Engineer |
Net count |
Data rate |
Gbps |
IO power supply voltage |
IO circuit technology |
Input setup time |
ps |
Input hold time |
ps |
Input minimum edge rate |
V/ns |
Input high threshold |
Input low threshold |
Output rise time |
ps |
Output fall time |
ps |
Output maximum edge rate |
V/ns |
Output impedance |
ohm |
Output high level |
Output low level |
Pin capacitance |
pF |
System clock skew and jitter |
ps |
Net characteristic impedance |
ohm |
Termination |
ohm |
Maximum net length |
in. |
Number of loads |
It's helpful if the signal integrity engineer and the person who draws the schematics can agree on a naming convention that involves adding a prefix to the net name of each net in a bus. This will facilitate tracking coverage of all nets in a design. Someone who is good with programming can write a simple script that sorts and counts the nets from the "all nets" file, the best source of which is either the schematic entry or layout CAD tool. The goal is to make a decision about each net in each bus in the system: what level of analysis does it require? You can then keep track of the number of nets simulated and constrained and have an up-to-date measure of how close a project is to completion. Totaling the net count column will give you an excellent rough estimate of the work involved at the beginning of the project. Keeping track of who is analyzing each bus prevents unpleasant revelations toward the end of a project, such as "I thought so-and-so was working on that bus!"


text:
As according to Delphi's help,
DoubleBuffered determines whether the control's image is rendered directly to the window or painted to an in-memory bitmap first.
When DoubleBuffered is false, the windowed control paints itself directly to the window. When DoubleBuffered is true, the windowed control paints itself to an in-memory bitmap that is then used to paint the window. Double buffering reduces the amount of flicker when the control repaints, but is more memory intensive.
However, not all VCL's controls work nice with DoubleBuffered. There are at least 2 controls that I am aware of that can't work with DoubleBuffered and would mess up visually.
These two controls are TRichEdit and TToolBar. Any controls that are family of these 2 controls will mostly show expected outcome if using with DoubleBuffered.
You would probably not able to type text visually with TRichEdit if DoubleBuffered is True. For TToolBar, it would show black background. However, you may always place TToolBar in TPanel control to get rid of the DoubleBuffered nightmare.
- Delphi on line help topic: Controls.TWinControl.DoubleBuffered. URL: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/VCL/en/Controls.TWinControl.DoubleBuffered


text:
New CATCH rule to determine need for CT scans in children with minor head injury
- Date:
- February 15, 2010
- Source:
- Canadian Medical Association Journal
- Summary:
- A new tool may help standardize the use of computed tomography (CT scans) in children with minor head injury and help reduce the number of scans, according to a new study.
- Share:
A new tool may help standardize the use of computed tomography (CT scans) in children with minor head injury and help reduce the number of scans, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
More than 650,000 children with minor head injuries resulting in loss of consciousness, amnesia, disorientation and/or vomiting are seen each year in emergency departments at North American hospitals. CT scans are important for diagnosing serious brain injuries but they expose children to the potentially harmful effects of ionizing radiation and significantly add to health care costs. Use of CT for minor head injury in Canadian pediatric emergency departments has increased to 53% in 2005 from 15% in 1995.
There are currently no widely-accepted, evidence-based guidelines on the use of CT scans in children with minor head injuries.
A team of researchers from pediatric institutions across Canada have developed the CATCH rule (Canadian Assessment of Tomography for Childhood Injury) to guide physicians in determining whether a child with minor head trauma should receive a CT scan. The study involved 3866 children aged 0 to 16 years of age from 10 Canadian pediatric teaching institutions.
"We believe an accurate clinical decision rule, like the CATCH Rule, can stabilize or reduce the number of children receiving a CT scan, thereby minimizing both health care costs and exposure to the potentially harmful effects of ionizing radiation," write Dr. Osmond, Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and coauthors. "There is growing concern that early exposure to ionizing radiation may result in a significant rise in lifetime fatal cancer risk."
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Ottawa, University of Alberta, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, CHU Sainte-Justine, McGill University, Columbia University Medical Centre, University of Calgary, Dalhousie University and University of Manitoba.
There is considerable debate when it comes to the use of CT scans. Some support routine CT scanning of all minor head injury patients, while others are more selective.
"Without the support of widely accepted, evidence-based guidelines, physicians are likely to follow the conservative approach of ordering CT scans for most children seen in emergency departments with minor head injury," write the authors.
The authors conclude that the CATCH Rule, made up of 7 simple findings from the child's history and physical exam, has the potential to both standardize the need for CT and reduce the number of CT scans performed in children with minor head injury. They note that further studies are required to validate this rule in other pediatric age groups.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Canadian Medical Association Journal. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Cite This Page:


text:
There are two types of JACKtivities we feature:
#1 Not for Profit
WHO QUALIFIES: Schools, churches, charities, civic clubs, or any one hosting a non-profit event (where as the funds raised are donated to charity or a charitable organization) should submit their information to be included on JACK FM's JACKtivities.
#2 Entertainment/Activities
WHO QUALIFIES: Drama groups, musicians, special church services, club activities open to the public, community sports try-outs, civic organzation membership drives, civic organization fundraising events, school club sales drives, community festivals, car shows, toy runs, and the list goes on and on. Basically, if you have something that's going on in and around Northeast Arkansas, we'd like to know about it.
If you qualify under one of the above guidelines, great! Get ready to send us your JACKtivity!
Here's what we need to know:
WHO: Who is putting on the event?
WHAT: What is the event for? i.e. charity group, school,
WHERE: Where will the event take place?
WHEN: What is the date of the event? Time?
WHY: Make your case of why listeners should support your event! Explain what you intend to do with the funds/items raised at the event. i.e. to raise money for a school trip, to garner donations for a food pantry, to help buy clothing for a family affected by a tragedy such as a fire, etc.
HOW MUCH: How much are you trying to raise? Is there a suggested donation amount? Is there an admission price that will be donated to charity?
Once you get all of your information together, send at least 3 Weeks in advance to firstname.lastname@example.com
Then it won't be long before you see your event featured on JACKtivities!


text:
Er shi si cheng ji
Jia Zhangke
China / Hong Kong / Japan, 2008
Review by Evan Kindley
Posted on 02 June 2011
Source Cinema Guild DVD
Categories Jia Zhangke's Migrations
Like Jean-Luc Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Jia Zhangke's 24 City is a series of semi-fictional character studies strung on the thread of a municipal construction project. The project in question is the conversion of 420 Factory, a government-owned munitions plant in Chengdu, into a new "modern living community" called 24 City (named for a line in an ancient poem: "The cherished hibiscus of 24 city in full bloom, Chengdu shone and prospered"). Early on we are present at a "ceremony for the transfer of land" witnessed by a vast crowd of workers in blue uniforms, each one uniquely expressive and, thanks to the hyper-real capabilities of digital video, perfectly in focus (one senses that, if Jia had had time, he'd have wanted to spend some time with all of them).
Much of 24 City's running time is devoted to establishing the viewer's sense of Chengdu: a task that must have seemed particularly urgent, given that the area was about to be transformed beyond recognition. (This prospective structure suffuses the movie with a strange sense of paradox: 24 City may be one of the few films named for a real place that, at the time of its production, didn't exist yet.) We get very wide establishing shots of the factory and the surrounding land; shots of the interior, both before and after its emptying; and inserts of material documents that link us to the building's past, like factory I.D. cards. Jia sets these off with Godardian intertitles: lines from poems by Ouyang Jianghe, Cao Xueqin, Wan Xia, and W.B. Yeats (Jia's collaborator on the script for 24 City, Zhai Yongming, is a poet herself), and business slogans on the order of "If you have something to do, you age more slowly" and "If the aeronautics factory is like a huge eyeball, the laboring is its pupil." Music is used sparingly, but the occasional saccharine pop song does pop up. (Ironically or not, it's a little hard to say, since irony depends, at least in part, on a shared sense of temporality. Are these songs meant to be out of date?)
For a film about a factory, 24 City has a very non-industrial rhythm: the general affect of the characters that populate the movie is that of people who are slightly uncomfortable at rest. But this is fitting, of course, given that Jia's subject here is the transition from a culture of labor to a culture of leisure, or (in more economic terms) from a production- to a consumption-driven economy. The rhythm is so leisurely, in fact, that it can be hard to pick up; often the subjects speak about nothing in particular for minutes on end before falling sideways into a story. The long unedited takes, with long pauses at the beginning and end of scenes and unexpected black outs, keep us off balance; subjects stare at the camera silently for a long time, as if posing for a still photo.
But the interviews - shot from oblique angles with the speaker usually staring off to the extreme right or left of the frame; often windows give out on the exterior, with street noises audible - are the heart of the film. A former worker describes the tools he used at 420 Factory and speaks respectfully of his supervisor Master Wang; another rides the bus at night and talks about being laid off and the importance of "smiling through your tears" ("Come rain, come shine, you must go forward"). We enter a retired persons' home, where the elderly play mah jong and sing traditional Chinese opera. We meet Song Weidong, a management type whose offices are being converted into a luxury hotel; he plays basketball on the factory court (soon to be leveled) and reminisces about the death of Chairman Zhao. Hao Dali, an older lady who works in an office, is shocked that her young co-worker wears makeup to work. Zhao Gang, a television news presenter, confesses his own intense experience of boredom with factory work at age 16.
Though each of these interviews is presented in more or less the same fashion, four of them are not in fact straight documentary but filmed monologues by professional actors. (Hao and Song are played by the actors Liping Lu and Jianbing Chen; the rest are "real people.") Western viewers not familiar with the Chinese film industry will be forgiven for not noticing the difference, at least until we get to Joan Chen (of Twin Peaks and The Last Emperor fame) who plays Gu Minhua, a beautiful middle-aged women who everyone calls "Little Flower," after the 1979 film starring … a young Joan Chen. This is both the film's most daringly self-reflexive gesture and one of its most emotionally effective: seeing Chen play her own doppelganger, for whom the charmed life of the movie star never arrived, brings home the cruel randomness of Chinese upward mobility. (In her final appearance, she wistfully watches the movie on television.)
Over the course of its running time, 24 City tracks a gradual historical change in two registers: in the demolition of the old factory (which Jia films from a great distance, the cloud of smoke billowing slowly towards his camera) and in the generational progression of its interviewees. The film begins with the oldest characters and moves forward to the youngest, most of whom are not factory workers themselves but their children. This younger generation is noticeably more Westernized in their dress and frames of reference, and they confess a feeling of distance from their parents and grandparents, however much they may respect their experiences. The apotheosis of this forward movement is the film's final sequence, featuring a young woman named Su Na (played by the actress and Jia-regular Zhao Tao) who wears her hair short like Jean Seberg in Godard's Breathless. She went to school in Factory 420 and is now a personal shopper for rich women. Her monologue starts out chatty and casual: "I have a friend from Malaysia," she says, "I met him on a plane" - a statement that it's practically impossible to imagine any of the older characters in 24 City uttering. As the light slowly dims behind her, she becomes more and more emotional, revealing that she wants to make money in order to set her aging parents up with an apartment in 24 City.
Just as we've come to expect our fiction movies to have plots, we're growing increasingly used to our documentaries pursuing arguments, be they political, scientific, historical, or moral. Even Godard, whose work 24 City resembles in so many ways, is guilty of this hortatory tendency: when he blends fiction and non-fiction, especially in films from his high Marxist phase like 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, he aims to convince you twice over, once through drama and once through facts. Jia's technique here is closer to that of a pure observer like Frederick Wiseman: far from being in a hurry to make a point, he seems to want to slow things down as much as possible, to use class and leisure and labor not as tokens in a ritual exchange or weapons in an attack but as actual objects of contemplation. In an era of hyper-charged production and expansion, this slowness and quietness serve as their own kind of protest.
Xiao Wu
1998Unknown Pleasures
2002The World
2007Still Life
200624 City
2008We don't do comments anymore, but you may contact us here or find us on Twitter or Facebook.


text: Wishful Thinking - Seymour Orlando Smooth is hoodwinking the audience members of his new show "Wishful Thinking." When he tricks Violet and TJ into giving him their money, Becky has had enough. She teams up with TJ to bring Smooth down and save the whole city from being tricked. Vocabulary Words: Gleaming, Hoodwinked. Lady Redundant Woman Gets the Blues - Beatrice Bixby is trying to prove a point: she thinks copies are just as good as the original. She helps the character from a painting, Royal Dandy, to become a real life kid and he's the most spoiled child the town has ever seen. WordGirl needs to help Lady Redundant Woman and the city stop his greedy rampage and return the original painting to the museum. Vocabulary Words: Admirer, Greed.


text:
Vestal Blended Potato Vodka
Welcome to our shop. At The Umbrella Project we've always championed local and independent producers, as well as the most traditional and influential products for bar and home use. We've selected the best of the best, made by us and our friends, with also a selection of cocktails, wine and barware sold or used by our sister bars Discount Suit Company and The Sun Tavern.
Click & Collect orders available for collection at The Sun Tavern (E2 0AN), Discount Suit Company (E1 7TB) or our bricks and mortar shop, The Umbrella Workshop, in central Shoreditch (E2 7JD)- just give us a call or email to make sure your order is ready for pick up.
We also ship nationwide and international too, so there's no need for anyone to miss out. For large orders or wholesale enquires please contact firstname.lastname@example.com
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Gargoyles are fantastical beings derived from representations of creatures constructed as water spouts on buildings throughout the ages, particularly medieval cathedrals. The term is derived from the French word gargouille for throat or gullet, but has since been applied to purely artistic decorations. Gargoyles have been found in multiple forms since antiquity and usually take the form of grotesque animals or demonic figures, winged or otherwise, their presence was also thought to ward off evil spirits.
Disney's Gargoyles[edit]
Gargoyles also obtained fame in the Disney series Gargoyles, created by Greg Weisman and aired from October 24, 1994 to February 15, 1997. This series featured a number of gargoyle characters and was targeted at an older audience than usual Disney productions, gaining much critical acclaim and attracting a number of big names for voice acting of the series. A following has arisen around this television series and fan art and fan fiction is not uncommon. An annual convention, Gathering of the Gargoyles, celebrates this series and is a popular event with some furry fans. Many members of this fandom have in turn crossed over to the furry fandom, sometimes with gargoyle fursonas.
Gargoyle fursonas[edit]
Gargoyles in the anthropomorphic fandom are relatively rare, but some do exist both online and off. Korul Al-Wassar is a gargoyle fursuit created by Andrew Pidcock, and on Second Life, the avatar creator Whinge Languish has popularized a gargoyle form so that gargoyle fursonas may exist there.
See also[edit]
- Category:Gargoyle characters
- Gargoyle and Gargoyles at Wikipedia
External links[edit]
This species stub needs improving. |


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The Lord God is raising up men and women living in Asia and Africa to be His ambassadors. These national missionaries have a passion to help the people in their nations understand Christ's love through various ways. They pray for and minister to those who are sick. They provide income-generating gifts to families living in poverty. They clean up dirty villages. They help mothers and fathers value their children's education and future development. They also have a deep burden to help people know and experience the love of Christ—just like they have experienced.
Because national workers were born and raised in the countries where they minister, they have few or no cultural barriers to overcome, so they can readily share the message of Jesus Christ with those who have never heard.
Watch this brief video to see a little of the passion GFA World workers bring to those in Asia and Africa.
It's true that national missionaries face obstacles when they endeavor to share the message of Jesus in communities. But they still have an enormous advantage over their coworkers from non-Asian lands.
Today, more than 85 percent of Asian countries do not allow Western missionaries to minister freely. This restriction doesn't apply to the many men and women the Lord has called to be national missionaries. When foreigners have to leave countries for various reasons, these brothers and sisters can stay and minister without interruption.
In the eyes of the local people, national missionaries do not represent a foreign country or a strange religion because these men and women look and talk the same as them. National workers grow up knowing their country's culture and instinctively know the best ways to communicate the love of Jesus so people around them will understand. They're sensitive to the needs of their neighbors and seek to represent Christ by their lives—showing that even though they are just like them, there's a stark difference because of the hope they have in Jesus.
National workers minister in a variety of places, from slums to rural villages to cities. Wherever they are sent to serve, the Lord shows them specific ways they can tangibly express His love and concern for the people. Sometimes that's by providing Jesus Wells to communities that have no clean water source. Other times that's by providing income-generating gifts to families sinking in poverty. National missionaries want to help their fellow countrymen in need both spiritually and physically, and the Lord often uses these means of expressing His love to offer people a better eternity.
National missionaries live simply. They dwell in homes just like the homes of the local people. They eat the same food. They dress in the local styles. Most are able to live off $120–$360 a month.
Like Christ humbled Himself and became one with the people around Him, these men and women do the same, seeking to glorify Him through their lives.
National workers establish fellowships every day in Asia and Africa. Through their labor and love, we are seeing multitudes experience new life in Christ every year! But none of this has come easily to our brothers and sisters. These national missionaries are paying a high price of suffering, hardship and intense persecution to see people come to know Jesus.
The fellowships established in each culture are truly indigenous in character and they have a goal of becoming self-supporting as soon as possible.
GFA World workers serve in Asia and Africa, part of which is within an area on the globe known as the 10/40 Window. This rectangular region stretches from West Africa to East Asia, from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the equator. In this part of the world, millions live with little or no chance of ever hearing the Good News. Asia, specifically, has one of the highest densities of people living without knowing about Jesus Christ.
Thousands of national brothers and sisters are ready to change that. They just need your help!
You're just as important as our national workers in seeing the multitudes know and understand Jesus.
Without support from Christians around the world, our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa simply would not be able to complete the task of sharing the love of Christ with the many villages and people in their countries.
On average, it takes up to $360 per month to sponsor a national missionary through GFA World. You can help support the work of national missions with a monthly pledge of $30. As a sponsor, you are encouraged to pray regularly for your missionary.
When you become a sponsor, we will send you the photo and personal information of a missionary serving in Asia or Africa. You will also receive exclusive updates about the work being done in the region where your missionary serves. This will help you see how your sponsorship is making a difference.
If you would like to sponsor, donate or make a store purchase, please visit our US office page.


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Cooling Tower Cleaning
Goodway offers a complete line of cooling tower maintenance products. Dirty, scale-filled basins and cooling tower fill are a breeding ground for dangerous legionella, the primary bacteria in legionnaires disease. Plus, dirty water fouls chillers, robs heat exchange efficiency, and drives up energy costs. Goodway cooling tower products help you keep cooling towers clean and meet ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 188-2015, a standard for maintenance and the remediation of Legionella in commercial building water.


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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
It's a good thing I don't gamble.
Last week, I made the bold prediction that Big Tom and Little Tom (L.T.) would win it all on this season of The Biggest Loser.
Turns out, I'm the big loser because they were kicked off the show this week. After the notoriously bad second week of the competition where contestants historically lose little to no weight, Big Tom lost only 3 pounds, which Little Tom negated with his own 3 pound gain.
So they fell below the yellow line and it was between them and the yellow team (Coleen and Jerry). In the elimination room, the Toms were double-crossed by the orange team (Ed and Heba) who wouldn't have even been there to vote this week if the Toms hadn't saved their big butts in last week's elimination.
In the post-elimination interview, L.T. said the funniest thing ever in the history of The Biggest Loser:
"Of course I'm mad. I came on a fat loss show and I gained 3 pounds. That's like going on a makeover show and they make you uglier."
Oh, I wish he was still gonna be on. Maybe someone will give him his own talk show. Or at least invite him on Ellen. Because everyone loves the funny fat guy.
Back to the show...I love it, but it kind of stresses me out, which makes me want to eat.
Mike was on his way home from a meeting while the show was on. I knew he would be driving past Mickey D's and could easily stop and pick me up something. Hmm...
Then I told myself that it would be pretty ridiculous to eat a quarter pounder while watching The Biggest Loser.
So I just had a Happy Meal instead. With a Diet Coke.
Biggest Loser,
Diet Coke,
1 comments:
Good for you for not going for the Quarter pounder...
Since starting Weight Watchers I've had at least one dream about a steaming Mickey D's QP with cheese...mmm..sounds so good! Deprivation can't be a good thing! - September 24, 2008 at 6:37 AM
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Ever since Darwin the fossil record has been an embarrassment to evolutionists. The predictions concerning what evolutionists expected to find in the fossil record have failed miserably. Not only have they failed to find the many tens of thousands of undoubted transitional forms that are demanded by evolutionary theory, but the number of arguable, let alone demonstrable, transitional forms that have been suggested are few indeed. This has placed evolutionists in a most difficult situation, made even more embarrassing by the fact that the fossil record is remarkably in accord with predictions based on special creation.
Darwin and, for about the first century following Darwin, the Darwinists pleaded the poverty of the fossil record. The claim was made that the transitional forms, or "missing links," as the term became known popularly were really there somewhere but had not yet been found. It was also claimed that many of the links were missing either because conditions had failed to result in their fossilization or that they had been eroded away and destroyed subsequent to fossilization. These arguments have now fallen into disfavor among many Darwinian geologists. An intense search spanning 120 years has produced an immensely rich fossil record but has failed to produce the expected transitional forms, and many geologists now realize the impossibility that a combination of geological processes would have miraculously eliminated all the billions of transitional forms while leaving billions of fossils of the terminal forms intact.
How desperate the situation really is was betrayed by Otto Schindewolf, Richard Goldschmidt and others over 40 years ago when they proposed what they themselves called the "hopeful monster" mechanism, which in its most extreme form, as put forth by Schindewolf and Goldschmidt, resulted in the suggestion that the first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.1 They suggested that the major evolutionary advances have taken place in single large steps. They believed that these drastic changes were caused by systemic mutations which affected early embryonic stages, with automatic reconstruction of all later phases in the development of the effected organism. This suggestion was met with open derision by neo-Darwinists (proponents of slow, gradual change). The idea has received support recently, however, from Stephen J. Gould, one of the main spokesmen for evolutionists in the U.S. today. In his 1977 article, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters, "2 Gould not only admits that the fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change, but he also asks the question (asked by creationists ever since Darwin), of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing? For these reasons Gould suggested that eventually Goldschmidt would be largely vindicated.
The hopeful monster mechanism is, however, contrary to the science of genetics, as has been suggested by some of its opponents,3 and furthermore, as Goldschmidt himself admitted, no one has ever seen anything like this happen. Commenting on this idea, Sewall Wright has pointed out that he has recorded 100,000 newborn guinea pigs and has seen many hundreds of monsters of diverse sorts, but none were even remotely "hopeful," all having died shortly after birth or before.4
Now gaining popularity is a less drastic suggestion by Gould, Niles Eldredge, Steven Stanley, and others, dubbed the "punctuated equilibrium" mechanism. They have suggested that little or nothing happens in the life of a species for perhaps several million years (the period of stasis, or equilibrium), and then suddenly out on the periphery of the geographical area of the species a few individuals become isolated and undergo rapid evolution to a new species (the punctuation). The new species then proliferates into a large population which once again persists with little change. This produces a fossil record with no transitional forms between species because the transition occurs rapidly in small populations.
This notion is merely a new scenario but certainly does not provide a mechanism. Left unexplained is how or why such rapid changes occur. Such rapid changes are in fact contrary to what we know about genetics. Furthermore, this notion does not solve the problem of the missing links. This suggestion is only an attempt to explain the absence of transitional forms between species. That is not the serious problem—the real problem is the big gaps between the higher categories, the systematic absence of transitional forms between families, orders, classes and phyla. These gaps, for example, include those between invertebrates and fishes and between fish and amphibian gaps of 100 and 30 million years or so, respectively, on the evolutionary time scale. The idea of punctuated equilibrium makes no pretense of addressing this problem, let alone providing a solution.
Many evolutionists, not content to explain away the gaps in the fossil record, still persist in hopes of finding missing links. This results in a never-ending series of claims concerning the discovery of transitional forms, sometimes sensational. These claims, with passage of time, generally are discredited by further research, although many persist in textbooks long after they are discredited, since once error gets in it is hard to get out.
Just recently one of these evolutionary stories was headlined in newspaper and magazine articles that appeared all over the world. For example, an Associated Press article of April 15, 1983, appeared in the Detroit Free Press with the headline "Missing Link Fossils Tie Whales to Land Mammals." The article reported that scientists say they have discovered fifty-million year-old fossils of a six-foot long, land-dwelling creature they describe as a "missing link" between whales and land animals. The article went on to say that the fossil remains represent the oldest and most primitive form of a whale yet discovered, an amphibious mammal that lived and bred on land and fed in shallow sea waters. One should be immediately suspicious of the term "whale" being given to such a creature, whatever it was, since whales are totally incapable of living or breeding on land.
News of this kind, as tentative and unreliable as it might be, is no doubt most welcome to evolutionists since there is indeed, as is the case with all other mammalian orders, a huge gap between the order Cetacea (this order includes all creatures known inclusively as "whales"—, whales, dolphins and porpoises) and any supposed ancestral creatures. Speaking of whales, Colbert says "These mammals must have had an ancient origin, for no intermediate forms are apparent in the fossil record between the whales and the ancestral Cretaceous placentals. Like the bats, the whales (using the term in a general and inclusive sense) appear suddenly in early Tertiary times, fully adapted by profound modifications of the basic mammalian structure for a highly specialized mode of life. Indeed, the whales are even more isolated with relation to other mammals than the bats; they stand quite alone."5
But what about the material upon which the newspaper articles were based? Can this material be reasonably interpreted as cetacean? The articles were based on interviews with Dr. Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan and an article published by Gingerich, Wells, Russell, and Shah in Science.6 The fossil material consists of the posterior portion of the cranium, two fragments of the lower jaw, and isolated upper and lower cheek teeth. The creature this material supposedly represents was named Pakicetus inachus (one can never be certain, of course, that scattered fossil material all belongs to the same species).
This fossil material was found in fluvial red sediments, or river-produced deposits colored by material leached from iron ores. This formation is thus a terrestrial or continental deposit. The fossil remains associated with Pakicetus is dominated by land mammals. Nonmammalian remains include other terrestrial remains such as snails, fishes (particularly catfish), turtles, and crocodiles. This evidence indicates a fluvial and continental rather than a marine environment as would be expected for a whale or whale-like creature.
The authors state that the basicranium (only the back portion of the cranium was found) is unequivocally that of a primitive cetacean. On the basis of the brief description given in the article (eight lines of the text) one has no way of knowing whether that is true other than the declaration by the authors. It seems highly significant in that respect, however, that the auditory mechanism of Pakicetus was that of a land mammal rather than that of a whale, since there is no evidence that it could hear directionally under water nor is there any evidence of vascularization of the middle ear to maintain pressure during diving.
The teeth of Pakicetus are said by the authors to resemble those of terrestrial mesonychid Condylarthra and also to be similar to teeth of middle Eocene archeocete Cetacea such as Protocetus and Indocetus. Mesonychids are thought to be terrestrial mammals that were hoofed and possibly fed on carrion, mollusks, or tough vegetable matter.7 The authors mention two other "primitive cetaceans," Gandakasia and Ichthyolestes, known only from teeth, as being found in the same formation with Pakicetus. These have been described by West,8 and had earlier been identified as land mammals (specifically mesonychids). West, however, reassigned them to the order Cetacea.
Not a single fragment of the postcranial skeleton of these creatures has been found, so we have no idea what they really looked like. The fact that their remains were found in a terrestrial fluvial deposit with fossils of many other land animals, their teeth were very similar to known land animals, and their auditory mechanism was obviously not that of a whale, would seem to indicate, to say the very least, that the claim that a missing link between whales and land mammals has been found is premature. We are reminded of the admission of Professor Derek Ager (no friend of creationists) that practically every evolutionary story he had learned as a student has now been debunked.9 We suggest that Pakicetus will eventually join the ranks of the debunked "missing links" which include Trueman's Ostrea/Gryphea, Carruther's Zaphrentis, Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Neanderthal Man, and the hominoid collarbone recently identified as a dolphin rib.10
1. R.B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution, Yale U. Press, New Haven, 1940, p. 390.
2. S.J. Gould, Natural History, Vol. 86, 1977, p. 22
3. G.L. Stebbins and F.J. Ayala, Science, Vol. 213, 1981, p. 969.
4. S. Wright, Evolution, Vol. 36, 1982, p. 440.
5. E.H. Colbert, Evolution of the Vertebrates, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1955, p. 303.
6. P.D. Gingerich, N.A. Wells, D.E. Russell, and S.M. Shah, Science, Vol. 220, 1983, pp. 403-406.
7. A.S. Romer, Vertebrate Paleontology, 3rd Ed., U. of Chicago Press, 1966, p. 244.
8. R.M. West, Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 54, 1980, pp. 508-533.
9. D.V. Ager, Proceedings of the Geological Association (Britain), Vol. 87, 1976, p. 132.
10. I.Anderson, New Scientist, Vol. 98, 1983, p. 199.*Dr. Duane Gish is Vice President of the Institute for Creation Research.


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About K&N Engineering, Inc.
K&N Engineering in Riverside California is the world's leading manufacturer of washable performance air filters and air intake systems. K&N invented the reusable high flow cotton air filter in 1969 and has been perfecting the technology ever since. K&N is a world class filtration company selling air filters, oil filters, and air intakes in over 30 countries. K&N sells over 5,000 products designed for cars, trucks, motorcycles, engines, and industrial applications. From their Million Mile Warranty to their Consumer Protection Pledge, K&N stands behind their products and their consumers 100%. The distinctive K&N logo represents performance from one of the original performance companies.


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Kinosaki Marine World in western Japan said Tuesday that all its 19 dolphins have been on a low fat diet since late August, when they started failing to hit jumping targets and keep upright while treading water.
"We were puzzled by their poor performance, then we noticed they looked rounder," said park spokesman Haruo Imazu.
Keepers measured their weight and found all had gotten plumper, some up to 22 pounds heavier just during the summer.
All had the same menu - about 31 pounds of mackerel mixed with some white fish - but keepers found the mackerels had gotten fattier, adding too many calories for the dolphins.
Keepers immediately put them on a weight loss program, feeding them more white fish and less fatty mackerels, while instituting a routine exercise regime, Imazu said.
Less fat and moderate exercise seemed to be working, he said.


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Posted 13 years ago
(1 item)
does anyone know how old this necklace is, i paid to much for it but i dont care one bit. its all made of solid 10-12 k gold and all foil backed rose cut rose diamonds. all of it hand made and carved. was told it could be mid or early georgian, e mail me please if you know or got any ideas. : firstname.lastname@example.com thanks