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way to ours, thanks so much for stopping by today! I'm sharing our living room and
dining room, then on Friday I'll be joining another group and sharing our kitchen
and family room.
group this year and taking care of all the behind the scenes work to pull it all together.
Welcome if you're coming over from Christina's @ Remodelando la Casa, she is darling
and her home decked out for Christmas is always a favorite tour!
our furniture, artwork and accessories around gives our rooms enough of a new
look for me.
~ Living Room ~
I painted our living room blush (Benjamin Moore - Queen Anne Pink) a few months
ago and still love it! A pretty blush poinsettia was perfect with my favorite pillow
I found last fall and my Pottery Barn knock off pillow I made a few years ago.
A little holiday detail adds a festive touch to a piece of artwork.
I brought together a few pieces of milk glass for a simple vignette on my campaign chest.
Do you guys remember this cabinet was an ugly brown Craigslist find that
I DIYed to replicate a pricey one that I loved!
I always hang over our fence and borrow a few pieces of chopped wood from our
neighbor's pile and return them after the holidays. :)
My paperwhites are going strong.
I love the statement they make when they're so tall, these are 30" high from the top of
the pot. I do baby them to keep them from flopping over, turning them every day to
keep them even as they lean toward the sun.
Oh my, that paint!!
Let's focus on the peek of my tree, I'll be sharing it with the rest of our tour on Friday.
My sweet friend Jennifer @ Decorating Delirium, is up next and her style never
disappoints! She's a Craigslist fan too, and always shares her amazing finds!
Thanks again for stopping by, don't miss the other fabulous tours today!


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OPI Announces Brand's First International Short Film
OPI pays hommage to its Culture of Color with the international launch of its first branded film. Set to the French DJ band C2C's "Down the Road," the video features a surrealistic dance-off between four female dancers and a gorgeous Thoroughbred, as trained by equestrian stuntmaster Mario Luraschi.
Named after OPI's classic black nail lacquer, Lady in Black (known as Black Onyxin North America) brought to the film a repetoire of moves including tap steps and dancing en pointe, while showcasing bestselling OPI colors on her hooves.
The film's four featured lacquers – Pink-ing of You, Red My Fortune Cookie, Need Sunglasses? and No Room for the Blues – each represent one style of dance and one overarching theme, illustrating OPI nail lacquer as a means of self-expression.
"I always say that nail lacquer can change your look – and your outlook," explains Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI Executive VP and Artistic Director. "Today, nail color can convey feelings and emotions, expressing on the outside what the wearer is feeling on the inside. In this short film, four women communicate through dance and color. With a trained Thoroughbred who could replicate the dancers' moves with very little digital enhancement, we were able to capture the unique, energetic and creative culture that epitomizes the OPI brand."
The video launches worldwide on October 24, 2012. Please visit OPI onYouTube to view!

subset: commoncrawl


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Saturated thickness snapshots
Data from Haacker et al. 2016
GIF by Lacey Moore
The challenges faced by Ogallala aquifer region producers are not confined by state lines.
Neither are the solutions.
Water. Whether it falls from the sky or is pumped from the Ogallala aquifer, water is of central importance to the High Plains economy and way of life. Groundwater pumped from the Ogallala aquifer (the principal formation of the High Plains aquifer system) has transformed the region from a Dustbowl to an agricultural powerhouse. More than 30% of U.S. crops and livestock are produced in this region, significantly impacting domestic and international food supplies.
Extensive pumping has led to significant depletion of the Ogallala aquifer and declining water quality in certain areas. Careful management of the Ogallala aquifer resource today and for the long-term is critical to communities of this region.
The Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project, a multi-disciplinary collaborative effort funded by USDA-NIFA, is focused on developing and sharing practical, science-supported information relevant to best management practices for optimizing water use across the Ogallala region. Our interdisciplinary team is engaged in research, outreach and cooperative partnerships with a diverse set of stakeholders, working to support current and future generations of producers in the region.
Click to Read/Download: Final Ogallala Water Project Executive Summary


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Pinangat is a filipino dish which originated in Bicol region, the land of chilies, coconut and gabi. Although more popularly for Manilenos this is called Laing. Pinangat is a nice blend of gabi leaves tied with coconut leaves and simmered in coconut cream. Try this bicol version and you will love this!
about 7 to 10 fresh gabi leaves (depending on the number of your guests count 1 to 2 leaves per person)
*never wash your leaves just wipe them to clean them
about one kilo of sliced gabi leaves, stalks and gabi root
about half a kilo of ground pork
1 tablesoon of bagoong (shrimp paste)
1 big onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic pounded
some chilies
1 cup of coconut milk
half a cup of coconut cream (kakang gata)
In a bowl mix well your ground pork, bagoong, chopped onion, garlic, chilies and sliced gabi leaves, stalks and gabi. Pour a quarter of your coconut milk. Get one leaf and put about 2 to 3 tablespoons of your mixture in the middle of the leaf. Close the leaf outwards going inwards to be able to come up with a small package like. Tie them with coconut leaves or simply kitchen threads we use for cooking (tying chicken legs when roasting chicken, etc). Put in a deep casserole your small gabi packages. Pour your coconut milk and let it simmer slowly over medium fire. Add your coconut cream and let it continue simmering. It is done when you sauce becomes thick and coconut oil starts to come out.
Tagged: bagoong, coconut milk, gabi, laing, pinangat


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The bernette 38 is the top model in the bernette 30 series. This computerised sewing machine offers a wide range of functions at an affordable price–leaving nothing to be desired. It offers 394 different stitches, including the stretch stitch for elastic fabrics. This means you can create fantastic T-shirts from jersey fabric, for example. The bernette 38 also has eight different 1-step buttonholes and three alphabets. In addition, it has a memory function, via which you can store various combinations of patterns. The bernette 38 has a useful speed regulator, which can be adjusted on the display. As the top model, this impressive sewing machine also has a bright LED sewing light, a threader and both an automatic and a manual thread cutter. The bernette 38 comes with eight different presser feet (soles) and a large extension table as standard.
- Automatic thread cutter
- Adjustable presser foot pressure
- 394 stitches in total, including 67 decorative stitches and 8 buttonholes
- Three alphabets
- Memory function for pattern combinations
- Extension table included
- Hardcover included
- 8 presser feet included


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Price gouging plagues Texans searching for lodging, necessities amid winter storm
HOUSTON - Hotel rooms for $1,000 a night. Gasoline prices spiking. Even bottled water prices doubling or tripling overnight.
Officials in Texas say the winter storm that knocked out power and water to millions of residents is providing an opportunity for some unscrupulous merchants to take advantage of the situation by charging exorbitant prices for essential supplies.
A system set up Wednesday in Houston for residents to report incidents of price gouging received more than 450 complaints in less than 20 hours, said Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, the chief civil attorney for Texas' largest county.
FILE - People taking shelter at Gallery Furniture store which opened its door and transformed into a warming station after winter weather caused electricity blackouts on Feb. 18, 2021 in Houston, Texas.
RELATED: Abbott blames Texas' power crisis on ERCOT, calls for investigation
"The main types of things we're seeing is hotels setting prices at ridiculous rates," Menefee said. "We've seen allegations of packs of water being sold for two to three times the normal price, or packs of water being divvied up and the individual bottles being sold at excessive prices."
Dashawn Walker, 33, searched for a hotel room Tuesday night to avoid the cold of his powerless Dallas apartment. After finding all the rooms in Dallas booked, he ended up driving to an extended stay hotel in the suburb of Lewisville only to pay $474 for a one-night stay.
"It's crazy," he said. "I mean why would y'all go up on the hotels in the middle of a crisis? Like, dude, come on now. Everyone is just trying to make it and they're capitalizing off a crisis, and that's so unfair to people who really can't afford it."
RELATED: Texas power outages seen from space in stunning before-and-after photos
Such price spikes are illegal under Texas law, which prohibits selling fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials or other necessities "at an exorbitant or excessive price" during a state or federal disaster declaration.
The Texas Attorney General's Office urged residents who suspect they are victims of price gouging to file a complaint with their office. Violators may be required to reimburse consumers and can face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation. Additional penalties of up to $250,000 can be imposed if the victims are elderly.
Dallas hotelier Larry Hamilton said that while there may be legitimate complaints of price gouging, he also wondered if some complaints lacked merit. He said prices at his 193-room Aloft Hotel in downtown Dallas are averaging $94 per night, and that a customer became irate when he was quoted a price of $109.
RELATED: Controlled power outages in Texas end as leaders and lawmakers begin pointing fingers
"He called my general manager and was threatening to report us for gouging," Hamilton said. "Moreover, and this is Economics 101, price is what creates equilibrium between supply and demand, and it's an important regulator. Price is something that fluctuates, and it should."
The hospitality business has taken a financial beating in the last year, in large part because of government-mandated closures and the hesitancy of people to travel during a pandemic. Hamilton, who had to close another boutique hotel in Dallas because of power outages, said hotels in the area have been running at less than 10% occupancy during the pandemic.
"It's been a bloodbath," he said.
In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson said he's asked the attorney general there to investigate complaints of price gouging related to natural gas, which has spiked amid supply problems and the extreme cold snap that's enveloped a wide swathe of central and southern U.S.
RELATED: Houstonians should prepare to boil water through the weekend
"I realize the shortages of whether it's fuel, whether it's natural gas or whatever it might be, but I don't want anybody taking advantage of that either," Parson said, adding he found it frustrating that prices are "skyrocketing" after just a few days of bitter cold temperatures.
"I can't imagine what it's going to be like for sticker shock when a lot of people get their bills. It's going to be a tough environment," Parson said.
In Houston, Menefee encouraged businesses to take a neighborly approach and that "we should be looking out for each other." If not, a visit from a state or local investigator to a company accused of price gouging is usually all it takes for prices to return to normal.
RELATED: Houston Food Bank continues to serve despite struggles; asks for volunteers, donations
"If you're raising prices, you may end up on our list," he said. "If you're raising them at a level that really raises eyebrows, you can count on one of our investigators knocking on your front door."
Murphy reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press reporters Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.


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Man pleads guilty after muzzling dog with electrical tape
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man who wrapped electrical tape around the muzzle of a dog in an incident that attracted international attention has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and faces up to five years in prison.
Local news outlets report that 42-year-old William Leonard Dodson of North Charleston entered the plea to a felony count Monday in Charleston. He will be sentenced later.
Dodson was charged after the dog, since renamed Caitlyn, was found in May 2015 with electrical tape around her muzzle. Prosecutors say Dodson complained the dog was barking too much.
The chocolate Staffordshire mix, now 2 years old, lost part of her tongue and underwent several surgeries.
Charleston Animal Society CEO Joe Elmore says Caitlyn now lives with a new family but continues to suffer from anxiety and stress.


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After a relaxing 10 hour overnight ferry to Newcastle Upon Tyne, Bruce excitedly heads north 3 1/2 hours to Kate & Al's home in Laggan, in the Scottish Highlands! He pulls up in front of the "coffee bothy" store and their home on the right! We spot Kate waving at the window, top left, as we park Bruce out the front!
A relaxing 5 days, enjoying their wonderful hospitality once again.


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Help Desk Software from Help Desk Reloaded , For Free. |
Help Desk Software | Help Desk
Demo: Online :Version: 3.4.9 |
The help desk software is totaly free for anyone's use. He also provide a help desk discussion forum which allows you to contribute to the project by submitting bug fix requests and fixes, requesting features and discussing the software. |
Product Description:
Help Desk Reloaded's free software supports; trouble ticket prioritization,
multiple customer support technicians, help desk search, and many other
features. Help Desk Support SoftwareWe
are confident you will enjoy our help desk support software. The help
desk is cross platform compatible and can be used on almost any OS. We
have tested the help desk software on Free BSD, Linux, Windows 2000 &
2003 and Apple OS X. We
recommend you use the help desk support software forum to contact us. If you would like to contribute to the help desk distribution, and share
your modifications please use the forum to let us know your email address
so that we might contact you. We also have a Help Desk FAQ which you can view. Help
Desk Reloaded "HelpDeskReloaded" is used by many different industries
and organizations. We are very proud of some of the ways the software
has been put to use, such as in educational environments.
Are you a Fan of FreshMeat.net? We always update this applications listing on their site! Help Desk Software Blog 11/20/2010 Posted 02-10-2008 We are in the process of updating the web site. If you have any comments, bugs or suggestions for the helpdeskreloaded.com web site feel free to post them on the discussion forum. We are also working on a number of bug fixes for search, end user regirtration and looking into multiple uploads. Post 9-10-06 We have noticed some bugs with end users and searching the knowledge base. We are working on this problem. Also people are welcome to post requests for new features on the help desk forum. Post 1-23-06 We finished testing version 3.4.7. It includes a new help desk interface. Yes we finally removed the strange graphics. Time Tracking Capacity and Time Reporting. The new version is available for download now! Post 12-17-05
2024 |
Top Free ASP Help Desk Software
Try Free Asp Help Desk


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20.50 Patella
20.50 Patella
by Breg
Between 20° and 50° of flexion, the patella is at risk to abnormal tracking, subluxation, and dislocation. The 20.50 Patellofemoral Brace dynamically supports the patella through this range of flexion by increasing pressure of the bladder and underlying buttress against the lateral border of the patella as the knee moves between 20° and 50°. The buttress is dependent on position of the hinge and frame. When the frame is extended, the straps of the buttress are most taut and offer the most amount of pressure and control against the patella, inhibiting subluxation.
20.50 Patellofemoral
Specifically designed for patients with recurrent patella subluxations and dislocations, the buttress offers the most support between 20° and 50° of knee flexion. This dual upright brace comes prefabricated in a 12" (30 cm) magnesium frame, and can be customized to a 14" (36 cm) aluminum frame.
Dynamic design applies increased lateral pressure between 20° and 50° of knee flexion
Pneumatic air bladder over a trimmable lateral buttress
Lightweight magnesium
Pneumatic patellar pad allows patients to adjust for their desired level of support
Pivoting straps aid in preventing brace migration
Quick-release buckles
Up to 8° of load available on OA versions
Product Details:
- Body Part
- Knee
- Uprights
- Single
- Style
Additional information:
- Base L Code
- Additional L Codes
- Combined Stability
- No
- Available in Custom
- No
For more information visit https://www.breg.com
360 product photography created with Arqball Spin technology visit www.arqspin.com for details.


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Folic acid is already recommended to prevent birth defects, but the supplement could lower risk of autism as well.
In the U.S., grain and cereal makers have been supplementing breads and other products with folic acid since 1998, after studies showed that the B vitamin could lower the risk of neural tube defects in newborns. The latest study, published in the journal JAMA, provides another reason that moms-to-be should consume the recommended daily dose of 400 micrograms of folic acid: it may lower risk of autism in their newborns by up to 40%.
Researchers studied data from about 85,000 Norwegian children born between 2002 and 2008; in Norway, unlike in the U.S. there are no requirements to fortify foods with folic acid, so the researchers tracked the use of folic acid supplements in expectant moms beginning four weeks before they became pregnant to eight weeks into their pregnancy. Women who took the pills were less likely to have children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders than mothers who didn't take folate supplements. By the end of the study, when the children were 3 years to 10 years old, 270 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs); 114 were diagnosed with autistic disorder, 56 with Asperger syndrome, and 100 with pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS).
(MORE: New Study Suggests Autism Can Be 'Outgrown')
"Mothers who took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy had a 40% reduced risk of having children with autistic disorder compared with mothers who did not take folic acid," says study author Dr. Pal Surén of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. There was no drop in risk for developing PDD-NOS, and the number of children with Asperger syndrome was too low to be significant.
Folic acid is the synthetic form of the B vitamin folate, which occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables and is important for generating and maintaining healthy cells. That's why it may prevent neural tube birth defects early in fetal development, and could explain why it also plays a role in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. In a previous study involving the same cohort of Norwegian babies, researchers found that children born to mothers taking folic acid supplements were less likely to show language delays by age three than those whose mothers did not take the supplements. The fact that the protective effect appears only during early pregnancy, further supports the idea that the nutrient may be preventing some of the molecular abnormalities that trigger autism, which seems to develop during the initial stages of fetal development.
"Folic acid appears to have a protective effect, and given that it only occurs when you take it early, that tells you something," says study author Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection & Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "No one really knows precisely when autism comes about. The extent to which it comes early or later isn't entirely clear either. This suggests the protective effect of folic acid for autism is generated early. Although we don't understand the mechanisms, the recommendation is that people should start supplements when they want to get pregnant."
(MORE: Behavior Therapy Normalizes Brains of Autistic Children)
The researchers acknowledge that they were not able to adjust for other factors that might account for the lower risk of autism among the mothers taking folic acid; women who take supplements, for example, are more likely to come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and are able to take advantage of prenatal programs that could improve their health in other ways as well. But Surén and his colleagues also asked the mothers about their use of fish oil supplements, and did not find a similar drop of autism rates among these users, who presumably would be of a similar economic background as the women taking folic acid supplements.
The findings certainly raise an intriguing, and potentially simple way to lowering risk of autism, especially given the rising rates of the disorder in many parts of the world. "We have an explosion of autism worldwide," says Lipkin. "Overall, the rate appears to be much higher than we anticipated. Some people argue the change is from a real increase while others argue it's from more diagnosis. We still want to prevent it. Given that this is such a simple thing to do, it is inexpensive, non toxic, it is an important thing to tell anyone considering getting pregnant to take folate."


text:
BEDS: 3 BATHS: 2 SQ FT: 1740 W X L: 32' 0" x 58' 0"
Hamilton HomebuildersAll sizes and dimensions are nominal or based on approximate builder measurements. Yurezz Home Center reserves the right to make changes due to any changes in material, color, specifications and features anytime without notice or obligation.
Kim Sellers Ware
Powered by ManufacturedHomes.com


text:
Sam Ronson Dog Attack -- The 911 Call
TMZ has obtained the 911 call made moments after Sam Ronson's dog Cadillac allegedly killed a 2-year-old Maltese ... in which the caller tells the operator, "A vicious bulldog killed another dog and bit its owner."
The unidentified caller also claims the attack happened "in the hallway" of Sam's West Hollywood apartment early Monday morning.
At one point, the operator asks the caller, "Is the owner of the dog a male or a female?"
The caller replies, "I believe a male."
As we previously reported, Sam is now the focus of a criminal investigation surrounding the death of Tiger -- a 3-pound Maltese that was roaming the hallway without a leash.
Ronson has since shipped Cadillac to the East Coast to stay with family.


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Columbia Machine's Oldest Palletizer Contest
March 22, 2012
In honor of Columbia Machine's 75-year celebration, a contest is being held to identify the oldest operating Columbia palletizer. The customer that is identified to have the oldest operating Columbia palletizer will receive a $10,000 parts credit as well as a free Columbia customer care visit. In addition, there will be a "participation drawing prize" given for a $7500 parts credit. This will be rewarded regardless of the manufactured date.
The oldest operating palletizer contest began on March 1, 2012 and will run until July 1, 2012. During this period, all Columbia customers are invited to submit their machines into the contest. The campaign will end on July 1, in order to allow enough time to visit the customer location, verify machine details, and confirm the equipment is running. The winning customer will be recognized at the 75 Years celebration at Columbia Machine Inc. on Aug. 18.
For more information, visit www.palletizing.com/oldestpalletizer.
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text:
The Spanish moss in Bonaventure is so well-developed and huge and drapey (it must like being on a bluff by the river) that it became downright overwhelming for me. Maybe creepy. Something about the way it was blowing in the uncertain southwest wind, the constant motion and sighing of the breeze through the endless drapery, made me feel surrounded. There was so much motion all around me I felt as though I were constantly being crept up on. I kept catching waving gray drapery in the corner of my eye and whipping my head around to see what it was. I guess I'd have to get used to that if I lived in Savannah.
A cycad, coming into fruit. This ancient gymnosperm dates back to the Age of Dinosaurs. A bit palmy, a bit piney, a bit bromeliady. It reminded me of Audrey, the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Feed me! (Thanks, Jennifer Hurst!)
Not an angel, but a mourning woman. Or perhaps Corinne herself. Whoever she is, she's very beautiful.


text:
An ancient hunting ritual is making a comeback in modern Spain: the practice of hunting wild boar on horseback with spears — and no guns. The sport dates to Roman times, and was recently approved and added to Spanish hunting regulations.
Just a 20-minute drive from Spain's capital, you're in the dehesa — oak woodlands, where wild boar, deer and mountain goats roam. Madrid's skyscrapers are on the horizon, but in the forest, ancient traditions still reign.
On a recent day, a hunting party prayed in unison before mounting horses and riding off in search of wild boar. This landscape, parts of which are a United Nations biosphere reserve, has gradually emptied of people as Spaniards migrate to cities in search of jobs.
Among those left is Ramiro Maura, whose family established its ranch in the area centuries ago.
"For thousands of years, the only way to get a boar was to chase it with a horse. There was no other weapon," he says. "This has been taking place for 2,000 years."
Perhaps even longer than that: Prehistoric cave paintings in Spain depict primitive man on horseback, chasing wild boar, with spears. It was also popular in colonial India.
Hunting Without Guns
Often hunters chase a single boar all day. And often the animal gets away. It isn't an efficient way to hunt, but Maura says guns — whatever you think of them — make it just too easy.
"From the shotguns to the rifles, and from the rifles to the automatic rifles — and where will we keep going?" Maura asks. "How are you going to protect the ancient ways of hunting, when there's no limit to the capability of mankind to make more sophisticated weapons?"
It takes expert riders to maneuver and finally corner a wild boar, then stab it with the long spears they've managed to lug along while galloping across steep terrain. In this case, the boar uses its tusks to try to attack one the horses and then cries out as a spear pierces its heart.
The animal is then hauled away to be cooked for dinner or exported to Germany — the No. 1 destination for wild boar meat from Spain.
Despite a growing animal rights movement in Spain and the recent ban on bullfighting in Catalonia, there's been no uproar over this sport, which is officially known as "pigsticking."
"It's something that hasn't gotten a lot of publicity, and it's something I think most Spanish citizens are not aware of," says Sharon Nunez, a spokeswoman for the group Animal Equality. "If they were, I'm sure that a great percentage of them would be against this kind of cruel sport."
Cruelty Or Beauty?
Nunez hadn't heard of pigsticking either until it was recently added to hunting regulations. And while she says every effort should be made to uphold traditions, there's a limit.
"It's the same case with bullfighting," Nunez says. "A tradition shouldn't stay or shouldn't remain if it's cruel and it means suffering and death to an innocent creature."
But where some see cruelty, others see beauty. The hunting party this day includes a poet, a novelist and a painter. They exalt in the adrenaline and the emotion. They say "stalking behind an animal" is "beautiful" and "poetic," and compare it to "touching heaven."
The sport's resurgence poses a dilemma for modern Spain — balancing rural traditions against the modern, progressive society it has quickly become.
"It's difficult to reconcile these traditions," says Jose Manuel Calvo, the opinion editor at El Pais newspaper.
"We try to make a distinction between the roots of a culture and customs in the rural world, and the brutality, and things that we in the 21st century can't let go on," he says.
Spain is still trying to negotiate its new identity. In the past 40 years, the country changed from a military dictatorship to a democracy. Millions have abandoned rural life for cities. Wildfires ravage abandoned land each summer. Now less than 20 percent of Spaniards live in rural areas.
To hunter Jaime Patino, it's the thing that makes him the saddest.
"It's my biggest battle," he says. "We are the people that really protect nature, and we are passionate for the countryside — and after that we are hunters and all that. But first of all, we are country people. We've been doing this for centuries. The properties have been a long time in our families, and we intend to continue in this way."
He'll likely be able to do so. Spain's cash-strapped government is selling off some public land to be converted into private hunting reserves.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Here is the preliminary programme for the workshop "Contemporary biomedical science and medical technology as a challenge to museums" (15th biannual meeting of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences), to be held in Copenhagen, 16-18 September, 2010.
The presentations below have been selected by the programme committee (Ken Arnold, Wellcome Collection, London; Robert Bud, Science Museum, London; Judy Chelnick, National Museum of American History, Washington DC; Mieneke te Hennepe, Boerhaave Museum, Leiden; and Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, Copenhagen) in dialogue with the secretary of the EAMHMS (James Edmonson, Dittrick Museum, Cleveland).
Preliminary programme:
Sniff Andersen Nexø (Dept of History, University of Copenhagen):
Suzanne Anker (School of Visual Arts , New York):
"Inside/Out: Historical Specimens through a 21st Century Lens"
Kerstin Hulter Åsberg (Dept of Neuroscience, Uppsala University):
"Uppsala Biomedical Center: A Mirror and a Museum of Modern Medical History"
Yin Chung Au (Planning and Coordination Centre for Developing Science Communication Industry, National Science Council, Taiwan):
"Seeing is communicating: Possible roles of med-art in communicating contemporary scientific process with the general public in digital age
Adam Bencard (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen):
"The molecular body on display"
Caitlin Berrigan (independent artist):
"Improvising Glycoproteins: A case study in artistic virology"
Danny Birchall (Wellcome Collection, London):
"Medical London and the photography of everyday medicine"
Silvia Casini (Observa – Science in Society, Venice):
"Curating the Biomedical Archive-fever"
Judy M. Chelnick (Division of Medicine and Science, National Museum of American History):
"The Challenges of Collecting Contemporary Medical Science and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution"
Roger Cooter (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, UCL) and Claudia Stein (Dept of History, University of Warwick):'
"Visual Things and Universal Meanings: Aids Posters, the Politics of Globalization, and History"
Nina Czegledy (Senior Fellow, KMDI, University of Toronto):'
"At the Intersection of Art and Medicine"
John Durant (MIT Museum):
"Prospects for International Collaboration in Collecting Contemporary Science and Technology"
Joanna Ebenstein (The Observatory, New York):
"The Private, Curious, and Niche Collection: What They can Teach Us"
Jim Edmonson (Dittrick Museum, Case Western Reserve University):
"Collection plan for endoscopy, documenting the period 1996-2010"
Jim Garretts (Thackray Museum, Leeds):
"Bringing William Astbury into the 21st Century: the Thackray Museum and the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology in partnership"
Victoria Höög (Dept of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Lund):
"The Optic Invasion of the Body. Naturalism as an Interface between Epistemic Standards in Biomedical Images and the Medical Museums"
Karen Ingham (School of Research and Postgraduate Studies, Swansea Metropolitan University):
"Medicine, Materiality and Museology: collaborations between art, medicine and the museum space"
Ramunas Kondratas (independent scholar; formerly Division of Medicine and Science, National Museum of American History):
"The Use of New Media in Medical History Museums"
Lucy Lyons (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen):
"What am I looking at?"
Robert Martensen (Office of History & Museum, NIH):
"Integrating the Physical and the Virtual in Exhibitions, Archives, and Historical Research at the National Institutes of Health"
Stella Mason (independent scholar):
"Contemporary Medicine in Museums: What do our visitors think of our efforts?"
René Mornex and Wendy Atkinson (Hospices Civils de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon1):
"A large health museum in Lyon"
Jan Eric Olsén (Dept of History of Ideas, University of Lund):
"The displaced clinic: healthcare gadgets for home use"
Kim Sawchuk (Dept of Communication Studies, Concordia University):
"Bio-tourism into museums, galleries, and science centres"
Thomas Schnalke (Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum):
"Dissolving matters: the end of all medical museums' games?"
Morten Skydsgaard (Steno Museum of the History of Science, Aarhus University):
"Boundaries of the Body and the Guest: Art as a facilitator in the exhibition The Incomplete Child"
Sébastien Soubiran (Jardin des Science, Université de Strasbourg):
"Which scientific world would we like to depict in a 21st century university museum?"
Yves Thomas (Polytech Nantes) and Catherine Cuenca (Université de Nantes and Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris):
"Multimedia contributions to contemporary medical museology"
Maie Toomsalu (Medical Collections, University of Tartu):
"Visitor studies at the Medical Collections of University of Tartu"
Henrik Treimo (Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo):
"Invisible World: Visualising the invisible parts of the body"
Alex Tyrell (Science Museum, London):
"New voices: involving your audience in content creation"
Nurin Veis (Museum Victoria, Melbourne):
"How do we tell the story of the cochlear implant?"
Final titles will be announced after the revised/extended abstracts have been submitted by Monday, 2 August.
The workshop starts Thursday, 16 September at noon and ends Saturday, 18 September at 5 pm.
Sessions will be held at Medical Museion and in the Danish Museum of Art and Design. The two meeting venues are situated close to each other in central Copenhagen.
The format of the workshop is informal. In order to focus on discussion and intellectual exchange, each accepted abstract will get a maximum of 8 (eight) minutes for oral presentation, followed by a longer discussion. Extended abstracts (2-5 pages) will be distributed to all registered participants in late August.
The workshop is open to registered participants only. Due to space limitations, we have to impose a first register/first serve policy for attendance.
For details about registration, bank transfer, hotel bookings, special needs, etc., see http://www.mm.ku.dk/sker/eamhms.aspx.
For inquiries about the academic programme, please contact the chair of the programme committee, professor Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, email@example.com or +45 2875 3801.
For inquiries about the venue, accommodation, registration, bank transfer etc., please contact the secretary of the local organizing committee, Ms Anni Harris, firstname.lastname@example.com or +45 3532 3800.
The workshop is organized by Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (www.mm.ku.dk; www.corporeality.net/museion).


text:
Incremental Istio Part 1, Traffic Management
Traffic management is one of the critical benefits provided by Istio. At the heart of Istio's traffic management is the ability to decouple traffic flow and infrastructure scaling. This lets you control your traffic in ways that aren't possible without a service mesh like Istio.
For example, let's say you want to execute a canary deployment. With Istio, you can specify that v1 of a service receives 90% of incoming traffic, while v2 of that service only receives 10%. With standard Kubernetes deployments, the only way to achieve this is to manually control the number of available Pods for each version, for example 9 Pods running v1 and 1 Pod running v2. This type of manual control is hard to implement, and over time may have trouble scaling. For more information, check out Canary Deployments using Istio.
The same issue exists when deploying updates to existing services. While you can update deployments with Kubernetes, it requires replacing v1 Pods with v2 Pods. Using Istio, you can deploy v2 of your service and use built-in traffic management mechanisms to shift traffic to your updated services at a network level, then remove the v1 Pods.
In addition to canary deployments and general traffic shifting, Istio also gives you the ability to implement dynamic request routing (based on HTTP headers), failure recovery, retries, circuit breakers, and fault injection. For more information, check out the Traffic Management documentation.
This post walks through a technique that highlights a particularly useful way that you can implement Istio incrementally – in this case, only the traffic management features – without having to individually update each of your Pods.
Setup: why implement Istio traffic management features?
Of course, the first question is: Why would you want to do this?
If you're part of one of the many organizations out there that have a large cluster with lots of teams deploying, the answer is pretty clear. Let's say Team A is getting started with Istio and wants to start some canary deployments on Service A, but Team B hasn't started using Istio, so they don't have sidecars deployed.
With Istio, Team A can still implement their canaries by having Service B call Service A through Istio's ingress gateway.
Background: traffic routing in an Istio mesh
But how can you use Istio's traffic management capabilities without updating each of your applications' Pods to include the Istio sidecar? Before answering that question, let's take a quick high-level look at how traffic enters an Istio mesh and how it's routed.
Pods that are part of the Istio mesh contain a sidecar proxy that is responsible for mediating all inbound and outbound traffic to the Pod. Within an Istio mesh, Pilot is responsible for converting high-level routing rules into configurations and propagating them to the sidecar proxies. That means when services communicate with one another, their routing decisions are determined from the client side.
Let's say you have two services that are part of the Istio mesh, Service A and Service B. When A wants to communicate with B, the sidecar proxy of Pod A is responsible for directing traffic to Service B. For example, if you wanted to split traffic 50⁄50 across Service B v1 and v2, the traffic would flow as follows:
If Services A and B are not part of the Istio mesh, there is no sidecar proxy that knows how to route traffic to different versions of Service B. In that case you need to use another approach to get traffic from Service A to Service B, following the 50⁄50 rules you've setup.
Fortunately, a standard Istio deployment already includes a Gateway that specifically deals with ingress traffic outside of the Istio mesh. This Gateway is used to allow ingress traffic from outside the cluster via an external load balancer, or to allow ingress traffic from within the Kubernetes cluster but outside the service mesh. It can be configured to proxy incoming ingress traffic to the appropriate Pods, even if they don't have a sidecar proxy. While this approach allows you to leverage Istio's traffic management features, it does mean that traffic going through the ingress gateway will incur an extra hop.
In action: traffic routing with Istio
A simple way to see this type of approach in action is to first setup your Kubernetes environment using the Platform Setup instructions, and then install the minimal Istio profile using Helm, including only the traffic management components (ingress gateway, egress gateway, Pilot). The following example uses Google Kubernetes Engine.
First, setup and configure GKE:
$ gcloud container clusters create istio-inc --zone us-central1-f
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials istio-inc
$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding \
--clusterrole=cluster-admin \
--user=$(gcloud config get-value core/account)
Next, install Helm and generate a minimal Istio install – only traffic management components:
$ helm template install/kubernetes/helm/istio \
--name istio \
--namespace istio-system \
--set security.enabled=false \
--set galley.enabled=false \
--set sidecarInjectorWebhook.enabled=false \
--set mixer.enabled=false \
--set prometheus.enabled=false \
--set pilot.sidecar=false > istio-minimal.yaml
Then create the istio-system
namespace and deploy Istio:
$ kubectl create namespace istio-system
$ kubectl apply -f istio-minimal.yaml
Next, deploy the Bookinfo sample without the Istio sidecar containers:
$ kubectl apply -f @samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml@
Now, configure a new Gateway that allows access to the reviews service from outside the Istio mesh, a new VirtualService
that splits traffic evenly between v1 and v2 of the reviews service, and a set of new DestinationRule
resources that match destination subsets to service versions:
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
name: reviews-gateway
istio: ingressgateway # use istio default controller
- port:
number: 80
name: http
protocol: HTTP
- "*"
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
name: reviews
- "*"
- reviews-gateway
- match:
- uri:
prefix: /reviews
- destination:
host: reviews
subset: v1
weight: 50
- destination:
host: reviews
subset: v2
weight: 50
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
name: reviews
host: reviews
- name: v1
version: v1
- name: v2
version: v2
- name: v3
version: v3
Finally, deploy a pod that you can use for testing with curl
(and without the Istio sidecar container):
$ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@
Testing your deployment
Now, you can test different behaviors using the curl
commands via the sleep Pod.
The first example is to issue requests to the reviews service using standard Kubernetes service DNS behavior (note: jq
is used in the examples below to filter the output from curl
$ export SLEEP_POD=$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep \
-o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})
$ for i in `seq 3`; do \
kubectl exec -it $SLEEP_POD curl http://reviews:9080/reviews/0 | \
jq '.reviews|.[]|.rating?'; \
"stars": 5,
"color": "black"
"stars": 4,
"color": "black"
"stars": 5,
"color": "red"
"stars": 4,
"color": "red"
Notice how we're getting responses from all three versions of the reviews service (null
is from reviews v1 which doesn't have ratings) and not getting the even split across v1 and v2. This is expected behavior because the curl
command is using Kubernetes service load balancing across all three versions of the reviews service. In order to access the reviews 50⁄50 split we need to access the service via the ingress Gateway:
$ for i in `seq 4`; do \
kubectl exec -it $SLEEP_POD curl http://istio-ingressgateway.istio-system/reviews/0 | \
jq '.reviews|.[]|.rating?'; \
"stars": 5,
"color": "black"
"stars": 4,
"color": "black"
"stars": 5,
"color": "black"
"stars": 4,
"color": "black"
Mission accomplished! This post showed how to deploy a minimal installation of Istio that only contains the traffic management components (Pilot, ingress Gateway), and then use those components to direct traffic to specific versions of the reviews service. And it wasn't necessary to deploy the Istio sidecar proxy to gain these capabilities, so there was little to no interruption of existing workloads or applications.
Using the built-in ingress gateway (along with some VirtualService
and DestinationRule
resources) this post showed how you can easily leverage Istio's traffic management for cluster-external ingress traffic and cluster-internal service-to-service traffic. This technique is a great example of an incremental approach to adopting Istio, and can be especially useful in real-world cases where Pods are owned by different teams or deployed to different namespaces.


text:
New Gestures: Fabricated to be Photographed
Solo Exhibition
11 June - 11 July 2015
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 11 June 2015
Exhibition Closure: Saturday 11 July 2015
The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do.' The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.
1947, László Moholy-Nagy
WHATIFTHEWORLD is pleased to present New Gestures: Fabricated to be Photographed, an exhibition of new work by Nico Krijno.
South-African artist Nico Krijno's works are a vibrating riot of colour, objects and patterns tearing through photography's overpopulated landscape. With a unique and highly stylised vision that finds its form in prints, objects, books and other ephemera, Krijno is a trailblazer exploring the limits of photographic space.
Though concerned with bringing the age-old tradition of the still life into an image-saturated culture, there is nothing still in his still lives. Like unwieldy sculptures built from the fragments left over from the digital explosion that has burst photography open at the seams, they are restless, humming with an impatient energy that suggests they will topple the second after the shutter has clicked. In true contemporary form, they refuse to be bound to any one dimension, any one reality. They are schizophrenic, existing in multiple identities, both online and in print; sometimes they leap out of the frame into sculptures and installations. And yet, we are hardly sure whether they even existed in the first place. And if they did, then why? How? They are unlikely amalgamations of the debris of the everyday, patterns, splatters of paint and at times confused human bodies. They could hardly be further from the traditional still life, with its staid commitment to the real, its desire to last forever and its well-worn symbols.
But what if reality has split into two, 'forever' no longer exists and there is a new language in town? Then, Krijno is a still life artist in the classical sense through and through. Brazenly reshaping the genre in a world that has migrated to a new digital reality, he is a staunch formalist that continues the tradition: registering the spirit of the time, interrogating composition and refining new techniques. Working against a South African backdrop, Krijno is part of a small international wave of artists concerned with developing a new photographic language.
Combatting the pristine nature of the commercial still life – and its stable value system – so prevalent in our visual culture, his humourous approach to the genre embraces the myriad of transformations that the medium has endured in its recent history. Krijno is working within a chaotic artistic framework where the very identity of a photograph is in question, where the material quality of the photograph has mutated from film to unfathomable digital data, where the speed of production and distribution has increased a million-fold in the past decade, where the artist's tools are for the most part intangible. In short, where photography as we once knew it has collapsed. But in its wake a space for experimentation has been born. And it is the experiment that is the 'salvation' of photography. It is within this borderless turmoil that Krijno is constructing his distinct photographic universe.
In unstable times, the process and practice of the artist is reinvigorated. With a background in theatre and experimental video, the notion of performance is at the core of Krijno's work. Logging his research and experiments online and in zines, photography becomes a play divided into acts. The photographic frame ceases to act as a transparent window on reality, instead becoming a means to rearrange it. More inventor than observer, he hunts through his surroundings, amassing rubbish and everyday objects to fabricate a private performance that will unfold in front of his lens. With the addition of paint and any textures he can get his hands on, Krijno 'gets weird', intuitively building up temporary sculptures and situations electric with possibility. Their transitory existence is then captured by the camera; magically odd and improbable encounters arrested in motion.
Krijno's performances juxtapose the natural and the manmade in colourfully awkward and abstract collisions. Influenced by the decontextualised way we have come to filter information, he zooms in on details of the everyday, shaking them loose of their former meaning, cropping and remixing the familiar to new effect. Classical icons are smattered with plasticine, banal junk is doused in decoratively bright colours and bodies are rubbed in paint. With a cultivated disorder, the final images play with each other to create unexpected associations, challenging the way we perceive our surroundings and reflecting the fragmentation of the digital sphere.
The journey to get to these end points is one of experimentation that continually reinvents the artistic process, particularly in the context of photography's new technologies. As the nuances of the traditional photographic print are gradually replaced by the novel incarnations of digital imagery, Krijno employs new modes of exploring materiality through playing in the many dimensions of our new media landscape. Conjuring a new sense of physicality, both in the action of making the picture, and in the aesthetic quality of its contents, is key. Often this happens through the compression of sculptural form into a disorienting 'flatness' achieved through the use of a harsh flash that eradicates the natural shadows of an object, forcing us to centre on the surface of the image. As if driven by a curiosity in the Internet's lack of corporeality, Krijno's works give body to the intangible viewing experience of the screen, slipping in-between flatness and sculptural form, 2D and 3D, virtual and reality.
Krijno's dissection of the photographic surface, explored in his self-published book Synonym Study, shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award 2014, is taken even further in New Gestures. Embracing the tools of the trade, he uses Photoshop without abandon to work into each image. Cloning, erasing, rubbing at reality, new and distorted perspectives emerge as the artist reclaims the mechanics of his craft. Physical attributes chafe against digital ones, background and foreground merge in a tangled embrace; nature becomes a melting desktop background and bodies are caught in flow of scrolling information.
Asserting his role as maker, the processes of creation always remain present. Looking resolutely forward as well as back, Krijno's practice is a frenetic research into how to stretch photography's identity as far and wide as possible.


text:
Irish Government Announces Commitment to Join ESO
11 October 2017
The Irish Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Frances Fitzgerald TD has announced her Government's commitment to begin the accession process to join ESO as a Member State. The Government desires to have the accession completed by the fourth quarter of 2018, after ratification by Dáil Eireann (the Irish parliament) and approval by the ESO Council. Ireland would become ESO's 16th Member State.
The Government's announcement signals the accomplishment of a key policy goal, announced in 2015 as part of Ireland's Innovation 2020 strategy, which identifies the need to strengthen participation in international research organisations, including ESO. This announcement follows many years of informal discussions between the Irish astronomical community and ESO about potential membership, and formal discussions with government officials since January 2016, when the government announced they would begin membership negotiations.
ESO's Director General, Xavier Barcons, explains the significance of this decision: "Ireland would be a valuable and very welcome member of ESO. They have a highly mature but growing research community that is active in all areas of science covered by ESO facilities, and that is united in their desire to join ESO. Furthermore, Ireland has a fast-developing high-tech industrial sector, which would gain access to a range of instrumentation and industrial opportunities as a result of ESO membership."
By joining ESO, Ireland will add to their already rich astronomical history. For several decades in the nineteenth century, Ireland hosted the world's largest telescope known as the Leviathan of Parsonstown — a 1.8-metre reflecting telescope at Birr Castle.
More Information
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and by Australia as a strategic partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
- Press release from Ministry of Business, Enterprise and Innovation
- Ireland's Innovation 2020 report
Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
About the Announcement
Id: | ann17070 |


text:
Not long ago, we learned that last year's high profile LinkedIn hack was much bigger than initially thought. When the hack occurred, the company assured its user base that it was limited in scope to some 6.3 million user accounts (LinkedIn has some 400 million users all told, which made this a serious breach, but not one that impacted a majority of LinkedIn's user base). Then it came to light that the actual scale of the LinkedIn breach was closer to 167 million user accounts, when a database containing the hacked material showed up for sale on the Dark Net.
Now, it's happening again, only this time, Tumblr and MySpace are the victims. Both suffered data breaches in 2012 and 2013, and at the time, company officials estimated the impact to be just a few million records, all told. The same hacker selling the 167 million LinkedIn records has just posted another database containing account details (email addresses, passwords, etc.) for more than 269 million Tumblr and MySpace accounts.
No one is quite sure why the hacker, who goes by the ironic handle "Peace_of_Mind," waited so long before putting the records up for sale, but security experts fear that this might just be the beginning. If these three high profile hacks were so much larger in scope and scale than anyone predicted, how many others might there be, and how many records might actually surface?
At the moment, no one knows the answers to those questions, but security experts are prowling the Dark Web in search of clues and indications. For now, if you use either Tumblr or MySpace (or LinkedIn, for that matter), the first, best thing you can do is to change your password immediately. If you're in the habit of using the same password across multiple sites, you should change all of those passwords as well. If you don't, a hacker armed with your "Master Password" could steal your identity, your money, and do a great deal of other potential harm. It's simply not worth the risk.


text:
I am attempting to take more time for me now that I am beginning to get some semblance of routine back into my life. With work just round the corner an the end of my maternity approaching, I am trying to think more about myself and where I want to go. I don't want baby black to grow up with a miserable mother – just because I carried on doing a 'job' that pays the bills. I want to be a role model for him, to show him if you want something bad enough you can do it, you just have to work hard. So, now I have a fixed laptop, it is time to crack on with my writing course. Incase anyone else fancies themselves a writing course you can find it here.
So my first assignment, and piece of writing I had to do was a piece of descriptive writing. I thought I would share it with you. It was an observational piece, and we had to choose somewhere of interest and describe it. Feel free to comment if you like:
In the distance an aeroplane rumbled, and I strained to find the contrail jutting out of its rear. Unable to see it, I meandered down the twisted wisteria walkway instead. This was the aisle I was meant to walk down on my wedding day. Sighing, I stroked one of the baby branches arching over the walkway and was surprised to find it furry and covered in moss; my fingers tingled at its touch. Its elder looked down watching it grow, bark as wrinkly as a grandmothers.
The gravel crunched under my feet, as I continued down the path. I halted as I glimpsed a hint of the pillar-box red oriental bridge in the distance. Veering off the walkway I headed towards the bridge to stand at the edge of the lake, I heard the quacking of a pair of ducks paddling in the pond, and the roar of a waterfall pounded the jagged rocks surrounding it. Staring at the pool beneath the waterfall, I wondered whether mermaids lived in the murky midnight blue depths.
I stepped around the end of the walkway into a huge open space covered in a blanket of green grass. It felt like I was entering a magical world. A towering pagoda stood peacefully amongst the trees and boulders around it. If you listened hard enough you could almost hear the clip clop of geisha shoes, and the flapping of kimono fabric in the wind. Poised at my feet, stood a single flower flecked with pink ready to battle the first frosts of spring like a samurai preparing for war.
I inhaled deeply, and the sharp air cut my throat as it whipped my fringe into my glasses. I pulled my jacket tighter to protect myself from the chilly air and walked through the dewy grass towards the aged mansion at the top of the gardens. I placed my hands on the filigree garden gate, and shivered as the icy metal bit my fingers. A delicate spiders web quivered in the breeze lonely without its eight-legged owner. The stately gardens behind the gate were pruned to perfection, with chess shaped bushes and neat lines surrounding the majestic fountain centerpiece.
Springs first sunshine kissed the mansions sandy colored bricks. Terracotta turrets bulged out of the roof, and evergreen coloured ivy crept boldly up the walls. I walked away imagining wartime evacuees waving behind the mansions enormous square windows and running through the great rooms inside.


text:
Cholangitis is an infection of the common bile duct, the tube that carries bile from the liver to the gallbladder and intestines. Bile is a liquid made by the liver that helps digest food.
Cholangitis can be life-threatening, and is regarded as a medical emergency. Characteristic symptoms include yellow discoloration of the skin or whites of the eyes, fever, abdominal pain, and in severe cases, low blood pressure and confusion. Initial treatment is with intravenous fluids and antibiotics, but there is often an underlying problem (such as gallstones or narrowing in the bile duct) for which further tests and treatments may be necessary, usually in the form of endoscopy to relieve obstruction of the bile duct.
The following symptoms may occur:
*Pain on the upper right side or upper middle part of the abdomen. It may also be felt in the back or below the right shoulder blade. The pain may come and go and feel sharp, cramp-like, or dull.
*Fever and chills
*Dark urine and clay-colored stools
*Nausea and vomiting
*Yellowing of the skin (jaundice), which may come and go
Physical examination findings typically include jaundice and right upper quadrant tenderness.Charcot's triad is a set of three common findings in cholangitis: abdominal pain, jaundice, and fever. This was assumed in the past to be present in 50–70% of cases, although more recently the frequency has been reported as 15–20%.Reynolds' pentad includes the findings of Charcot's triad with the presence of septic shock and mental confusion. This combination of symptoms indicates worsening of the condition and the development of sepsis, and is seen less commonly still.
In the elderly, the presentation may be atypical; they may directly collapse due to septicemia without first showing typical features. Those with an indwelling stent in the bile duct (see below) may not develop jaundice.
Cholangitis is most often caused by a bacterial infection. This can occur when the duct is blocked by something, such as a gallstone or tumor. The infection causing this condition may also spread to the liver.
Bile duct obstruction, which is usually present in acute cholangitis, is generally due to gallstones. 10–30% of cases, however, are due to other causes such as benign stricturing (narrowing of the bile duct without an underlying tumor), postoperative damage or an altered structure of the bile ducts such as narrowing at the site of an anastomosis (surgical connection), various tumors (cancer of the bile duct, gallbladder cancer, cancer of the ampulla of Vater, pancreatic cancer, cancer of the duodenum), anaerobic organisms such as Clostridium and Bacteroides (especially in the elderly and those who have undergone previous surgery of the biliary system). Parasites which may infect the liver and bile ducts may cause cholangitis; these include the roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides and the liver flukes Clonorchis sinensis, Opisthorchis viverrini and Opisthorchis felineus. In people with AIDS, a large number of opportunistic organisms has been known to cause AIDS cholangiopathy, but the risk has rapidly diminished since the introduction of effective AIDS treatment. Cholangitis may also complicate medical procedures involving the bile duct, especially ERCP. To prevent this, it is recommended that those undergoing ERCP for any indication receive prophylactic (preventative) antibiotics.
The presence of a permanent biliary stent (e.g. in pancreatic cancer) slightly increases the risk of cholangitis, but stents of this type are often needed to keep the bile duct patent under outside pressure
Routine blood tests show features of acute inflammation (raised white blood cell count and elevated C-reactive protein level), and usually abnormal liver function tests (LFTs). In most cases the LFTs will be consistent with obstruction: raised bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase and ?-glutamyl transpeptidase. In the early stages, however, pressure on the liver cells may be the main feature and the tests will resemble those in hepatitis, with elevations in alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase.
Blood cultures are often performed in people with fever and evidence of acute infection. These yield the bacteria causing the infection in 36% of cases, usually after 24–48 hours of incubation. Bile, too, may be sent for culture during ERCP (see below). The most common bacteria linked to ascending cholangitis are gram-negative bacilli: Escherichia coli (25–50%), Klebsiella (15–20%) and Enterobacter (5–10%). Of the gram-positive cocci, Enterococcus causes 10–20%.
You may have the following tests to look for blockages:
*Abdominal ultrasound
*Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP)
*Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP)
*Percutaneous transhepatic cholangiogram (PTCA)
*You may also have the following blood tests:
#Bilirubin level
#Liver enzyme levels
#Liver function tests
#White blood count (WBC)
Quick diagnosis and treatment are very important.Antibiotics to cure infection is the first treatment done in most cases. ERCP or other surgical procedure is done when the patient is stable.Patients who are very ill or are quickly getting worse may need surgery right away.
Cholangitis requires admission to hospital. Intravenous fluids are administered, especially if the blood pressure is low, and antibiotics are commenced. Empirical treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics is usually necessary until it is known for certain which pathogen is causing the infection, and to which antibiotics it is sensitive. Combinations of penicillins and aminoglycosides are widely used, although ciprofloxacin has been shown to be effective in most cases, and may be preferred to aminoglycosides because of fewer side effects. Metronidazole is often added to specifically treat the anaerobic pathogens, especially in those who are very ill or at risk of anaerobic infections. Antibiotics are continued for 7–10 days. Drugs that increase the blood pressure (vasopressors) may also be required to counter the low blood pressure.
Acute cholangitis carries a significant risk of death, the leading cause being irreversible shock with multiple organ failure (a possible complication of severe infections). Improvements in diagnosis and treatment have led to a reduction in mortality: before 1980, the mortality rate was greater than 50%, but after 1980 it was 10–30%. Patients with signs of multiple organ failure are likely to die unless they undergo early biliary drainage and treatment with systemic antibiotics. Other causes of death following severe cholangitis include heart failure and pneumonia.
Risk Factors:
Risk factors include a previous history of gallstones, sclerosing cholangitis, HIV, narrowing of the common bile duct, and, rarely, travel to countries where you might catch a worm or parasite infection.
Risk factors indicating an increased risk of death include older age, female gender, a history of liver cirrhosis, biliary narrowing due to cancer, acute renal failure and the presence of liver abscesses. Complications following severe cholangitis include renal failure, respiratory failure (inability of the respiratory system to oxygenate blood and/or eliminate carbon dioxide), cardiac arrhythmia, wound infection, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeding and myocardial ischemia (lack of blood flow to the heart, leading to heart attacks).
Treatment of gallstones, tumors, and infestations of parasites may reduce the risk for some people. A metal or plastic stent that is placed in the bile system may be needed to prevent the infection from returning.
Disclaimer: This information is not meant to be a substitute for professional medical advise or help. It is always best to consult with a Physician about serious health concerns. This information is in no way intended to diagnose or prescribe remedies.This is purely for educational purpose.


text:
Commission on the Status of Women
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. During its annual two-week session, representatives of UN Member States, civil society organizations and UN entities gather at UN headquarters in New York to discuss progress and commit to further action. The outcomes and recommendations of each session are forwarded to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Commission's parent body, for follow-up.
UN Women supports all aspects of the Commission's work. We also facilitate the participation of civil society representatives. For more information on the Commission's history, procedures, guidelines for participation, and current and past sessions, visit the CSW section of the website.


text:
Your shopping bag is empty
Go to the shopThe Swedish Pimple is a superb jigging lure that has been popular with fishermen since 1955. This type of lure has been widely used in Sweden for over 100 years with exceptional results on both fresh and salt-water fish. Jig it, summer or winter!
1, 1 1/2 and 1 3/4 inch Swedish Pimples include a single hook.
Solid brass lure. Made in America.


text:
Research:Wikimedia Summer of Research 2011/Newbie teaching strategy trends
There is a steep learning curve to contributing productively to Wikipedia. New editors, even those who edit in good faith, often make mistakes when they start out. We were interested in finding out how more established community members responded to these initial edits by new editors:
- do they take the time to tell them personally what they had done wrong, and why?
- Is the criticism they offer specific enough to be constructive, instructive and actionable?
- Do they give them any kudos for the things they'd done right?
- And, most importantly, how have these teaching practices changed over time?
We were interested in various approaches to teaching new editors how to contribute most productively to Wikipedia. We coded messages on new editors' talk pages for moments of teaching/instruction, praise/thanks, criticism, and warning. We noted when these were templated or personalized interactions, and when editors referred to specific edits, types of edits, or editing Wikipedia generally.
By attending to positive and negative, impersonal and personal, and specific and general dimensions of these talk page messages, we expect that:
- there will be a general rise in the overall use of templates over personalized messages between 2004 and 2011
- there will be an increase in the percent of messages that contain criticisms and warnings
- there will be a decrease in personalized messages that attempt to 'teach' new members rules, norms, or effective editing strategies
[edit]How have community strategies for teaching new editors to be effective contributors shifted since 2004?
[edit]We coded a sub-set of the data used in a previous research sprint that analysed the rise of warning templates on new users' talk pages. We adapted the coding scheme used in the previous sprint to focus specifically on identifying messages related to teaching.
Coding categories
[edit]1. Message Purpose
- Teaching: Explanation of how or why to do something: "Please include this stub template when creating a new stub article, it helps to draw other editors attention to the article and encourages them to contribute."
- Criticism: "You did something wrong!"
- Praise/Thanks: "I really liked your last edit!"
- Warning: Something bad will happen: you will be sanctioned/banned, your article/image will be deleted
2. Message Specificity
- Specific edits: directly or indirectly refers to individual actions; such as "don't keep adding that citation"
- Edits to pages: "stop adding unsourced images; thanks for good spellchecking; you've been editing on Canada articles, so join WikiProject Canada"
- Edits to Wikipedia: "Thanks for your contribution to Strawberries, here are 50 rules; your edits to England are unconstructive and have been reverted"
3. Message type
- Templated: Message is template, with little or no personalization.
- Personalized: Message is either a) completely freeform or b) a template that has had some personal message included (besides just a username or article title)
Coder Agreement
[edit]code | % agreement between coders |
teaching | 68% |
criticism | 83% |
praise | 81% |
warning | 94% |
template message | 78% |
personal message | 84% |
Agreement notes:
- each coder coded the first 20 talk page messages for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011, resulting in a total of 60 multiply-coded posts. We assessed our agreement using ReCal a free online tool for computing inter-coder reliability.
- in the interest of time, we only computed inter-coder agreement on some of our codes
- agreement was lower on some categories than others because it took a while for us to come to a common understanding of the definitions of these codes. We are currently working on documenting more precise, detailed definitions of our codes, and expect that agreement will be higher in subsequent coding projects.
Results and discussion
[edit]Total messages coded:
Message features
Personalized versus templated messages
Personal versus templated teaching messages
Teaching messages that contain criticism versus praise
Message specificity
[edit]We found Wikipedian teaching strategies shifting in two significant ways:
- a significant drop in messages including praise and thanks corresponded with an increase in the overlap of teaching with criticism
- a decline in personalized teaching corresponded with an increase in templated instruction.
Future work
[edit]For future work, we would like to chart the subsequent editing behaviors of new editors who received more- vs. less-personalized teaching, as well as users who received multiple templated warnings (for example, deletion notification for articles they wrote or media they uploaded) before they received a single note written by a human and addressed specifically to them.
We are also interested in a couple of trends that we noted anecdotally, but failed to capture in our coding scheme due to time constraints:
- the possible decline of posts that contained task suggestions for the new users.
- the possible rise of templates composed almost entirely of generic link-lists (to policy pages, new user guides, and open tasks), rather than 'teaching templates' that offer richer and more detailed explanations of what and what not to, what Wikipedia is all about, and where to go for help.
Related Research Projects
[edit]- Deletion notifications to new users
- Communication to new editors (2004-2011)
- Alternative lifecycles of new users
- Rhetoric of the welcome message
- New user participation in help spaces
- New user participation in deletion processes


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Advancing Performance
Clients often approach Smart Vikas with a general idea of what they need, and this project was no different. We were able to jump right in with our expertise and really helped the company grow and evolve. Today, their business is doing exceptionally well, and we're proud to have been part of the process.
We approached this project carefully, as it was our very first undertaking of this scale. We studied our client's business to create a focused and effective solution - and then watched it grow. We loved working with this client, and look forward to collaborating together on many more successful projects in the future.
Often times our clients have everything they need to succeed, they just require the resources and support to make a strategic jump. We worked on this project for several months and the end result was truly spectacular. By ensuring consistent and transparent communication, our client was able to progress by leaps and bounds.


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Creeper wall wheelie bin sticker
Creeper wall wheelie bin sticker
- $45.00
- $45.00
- Unit price
- / per
This photo was taken at a castle in the UK.
Grove Wesley Design Art are leading wheelie bin sticker suppliers owned and operated in WA.
These stickers are printed to order in WA on quality vinyl made specifically to adhere to wheelie bins. Don't be fooled by cheaper versions as they will fall off the bin.
Our inks are eco solvent meaning the inks are not harmful to our environment.
We offer 3 different sizes to cater to the majority of wheelie bins in the market.
You can choose from laminated or non laminated vinyl wheelie bin stickers.
By choosing the laminated version, your bin stickers will be coated in a clear laminate film offering longer UV protection.
There is also an option to add your house number within the wheelie bin sticker you have chosen. If you select this option we will add your house number in a colour and position that suits with wheelie bin sticker design.
Our bins stickers are easy to install and you have the reward of great looking bins!
We now offer your favourite wheelie bin sticker designs in our 'Anywhere Art' range. Choose 'Anywhere Art' in the options shown.
Our laminated 'Anywhere Art' signs are printed in high quality gloss material and mounted to aluminium composite panel . These fence art panels are suitable to install inside or outside in the weather.
Size is 820 x 390mm. To install you can glue direct to the surface or drill holes where required and screw mount.


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Agreement Ends Copyright Threats Over Non-Commercial Use of Popular Dance
San Francisco - The man who claims to have created "The Electric Slide" has agreed to call off his online video takedown campaign and to stop threatening people using the popular line dance for non-commercial purposes. Instead, he's making the dance available for all noncommercial use.
The agreement settles a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis, who posted a concert video to YouTube that included a ten-second segment of audience members attempting to do the Electric Slide. Richard Silver sent a takedown demand to YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging he owned the copyright to the Electric Slide and that the video infringed his rights. Machulis's video was removed from the site.
"Mr. Silver's misuse of the DMCA interfered with our client's free speech rights," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "New technologies have opened multiple avenues for artists and their audiences to create, share and comment on new works. We cannot let absurd copyright claims squash this extraordinary growth."
Under the terms of the settlement, Silver will license the Electric Slide under a Creative Commons license -- allowing the performance, display, reproduction or distribution of any recorded performance of the dance in any medium for non-commercial purposes. Silver has agreed to post these terms on any of his current or future websites that mention the Electric Slide so that users are aware of the Creative Commons license.
"Often, 'all rights reserved' copyright is too restrictive and prevents people from being able to legally use and build upon other people's creativity in any reasonable way," said Eric Steuer, Creative Director of Creative Commons. "When that is the case, it makes sense to adopt a more flexible, 'some rights reserved' approach to copyright. We couldn't be happier that Mr. Silver is using a Creative Commons license to make the Electric Slide freely and legally available to anyone in the world to use for noncommercial purposes."
"We are pleased that Mr. Silver has stepped up and recognized fair uses of the Electric Slide," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "Copyright law is meant to encourage creativity. It must not be used to chill free expression."
For more on the Electric Slide lawsuit:
For more on Creative Commons:
Jason Schultz
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Eric Steuer
Creative Director
Creative Commons


text:
Skip to: Main Navigation | Main Content
or try the A-Z Library
14 Dec 2010
A number of factors can affect blood test results.
02 Dec 2010
Exercises aimed at improving your sense of control of ankle movements can help prevent re-occurrence of ankle sprains.
16 Nov 2010
Telephone counselling can reduce women's risk of developing postnatal depression, say Canadian researchers.
01 Nov 2010
A review of 57 studies involving almost a million people confirms obesity increases the risk of early death.
20 Oct 2010
A national health survey has found a significant number of Australians have mental health issues.
06 Oct 2010
Having a partner can be good for you in many ways, including helping to maintain a healthy brain.
21 Sep 2010
Glaucoma is one of the most common causes of blindness. But research suggests the brain may provide clues that will allow earlier diagnosis.
09 Sep 2010
Supervised exercise program can reduce pain in those with arthritis of the hip, research finds.
26 Aug 2010
People use acupuncture for all sorts of things, from insomnia to weight loss. But a core use is for pain relief. And some countries actually reimburse for acupuncture, so it's worthwhile knowing whether or not it works.
22 Jun 2010
A British trial comparing oral with topical NSAIDs has found that the creams and gels are relatively safe and effective compared to tablets.
08 Jun 2010
'White coat hypertension' is when a person's blood pressure goes up when they visit the doctor and down again when they leave. How harmful is it?
25 May 2010
Cough and cold medications are mostly useless, and in children, can be dangerous.
11 May 2010
The largest trial of its kind to date has found that testosterone supplements for older men had no real benefits.
20 Apr 2010
One in three people with daily headaches may have so-called medication overuse headaches - which are due to the very pain relievers they take to kill the pain.
13 Apr 2010
Some experts argue there is an epidemic of heart failure in Australia, but a new analysis of the figures shows that's not the case.
30 Mar 2010
A study compared paracetamol with ibuprofen for fever in young children.
16 Mar 2010
If you have diabetes, regardless of your blood pressure, there's a case for being on blood pressure lowering medications, according to a study.
02 Mar 2010
Breathing exercises can help control asthma symptoms, say UK researchers.
16 Feb 2010
An international review of the best evidence on allergic rhinitis shows that it's a bigger problem than many think and can affect people's lives significantly.
02 Jan 2010
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have looked at how people's social network can influence them to put on or lose weight.


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Operation Shark Fin Launched in Texas
News Release
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
01. March 2013
Operation Shark Fin targets illegal gill netting and long lines along lower coast
AUSTIN — Operation Shark Fin, a four-day, around-the-clock Texas Parks and Wildlife Department law enforcement effort along the lower coast aimed at disrupting trans-national criminal organizations engaged in illegal commercial fishing and other activities in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande, and Lake Falcon has resulted in the seizure of 17,500 feet of long lines, two vessels and 15 citations or arrests.
More than 50 state game wardens and 10 TPWD patrol vessels participated in the intensive operation, which began Monday and concluded at 12 a.m. Friday.
"TPWD game wardens are committed to protecting our natural recourses across the state," said Special Operations Chief Grahame Jones of the TPWD Law Enforcement Division. "Operation Shark Fin focused on the lower coast border region where commercial fishing vessels from Mexico known as "launchas" enter our state and federal waters illegally. The "launcha" crews use gill nets and long lines to catch whatever they can, including many shark species and red drum."
During the special operation, game wardens made contact with 65 vessels, 5 vehicles and 206 people.
Wardens seized two "launchas" from Mexico (one on the Gulf of Mexico and one on Lake Falcon) and the U.S. Coast Guard seized a third vessel on the Gulf. In addition, wardens seized 17,500 feet of long lines in the Gulf, 6,300 feet of gill nets in the Rio Grande and Lake Falcon and 19 abandoned crab traps in the lower Rio Grande.
"In many cases," Jones said, "Mexican waters have been overfished. Because of that, we are now seeing an increasing number of vessels from Mexico illegally fishing in Texas or federal waters."
At one point during the operation, game wardens assisted the Coast Guard, South Padre Island Police and the Cameron County Sheriff's Office in the search for the body of a man believed to have jumped from the Queen Isabella Causeway connecting Port Isabel and South Padre Island. Wardens also assisted one disabled vessel during the operation.
Citations or arrests included four for sport fishing violations; two commercial fishing violations (possession of headed/tailed snapper, fillets seized from shrimp boat); two drug-related arrests; three alcohol-related arrests; and two local warrant arrests. In addition, two juvenile runaways were located.
Fish recovered from illegal long lines and gill net included Atlantic sharpnose sharks, black tip sharks, and red drum.
"TPWD is extremely appreciative of the long-term efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard in combating illicit commercial fishing activities in the Gulf," Jones said, "particularly commercial vessels from Mexico which routinely fish state and federal waters using illegal long lines and gill nets."
Sharks, the most common target of these vessels, are harvested not only for their meat, but also for their fins. Shark fins, used for soup, are considered some of the world's most expensive seafood and high demand for it supports a world-wide black market.
Arrests in gill netting or long line cases are rare. When commercial fishermen from Mexico are caught in the act in Texas or U.S. waters, the only charges that can be filed are misdemeanors punishable by fines. However, the illegal fishing equipment and vessel can be seized.
Marine interests spotting gill nets or long lines in Texas waters are urged to call the Operation Game Thief hotline at 1-800-792GAME (4263), contact a game warden or notify the U.S. Coast Guard.
Source and Photo Credit: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department


text:
Can't help being proud of this game. At the end of Round 4 I felt like doing more was going to be hard, especially as we optimized the shit out of it and we were "done" in terms of the amount of computation we could push on this generation. Champion manages to do much more without computing much more, while also handling a lot more content. It was mostly an achievement of hygiene and understanding rather than optimization and complex techniques. That also left plenty of space for the future...
Round 4


text:
The Xavier University Newswire Student Loans
- No origination fees and no prepayment penalty
- Multiple in-school repayment options available
- Borrower benefits available – like rewards and interest rate reductions
- Rates that reward creditworthy borrowers
- Applying with a creditworthy cosigner may help you qualify and/or receive a lower rate
The Xavier University Newswire Student Loans
Student loans on Uloop provides The Xavier University Newswire students with competitive rates for private student loans for the year, for the semester, or for the quarter. The student loan category on Uloop provides a list of student loan providers and also provides college loans for all majors. In the Uloop Student Loan category, you can find competitive loans for students at The Xavier University Newswire .


text:
Many people listen to loud music without realizing that this can affect their hearing. This could lead to difficulties in understanding speech during age-related hearing loss which affects up to half of people over the age of 65.
New research led by the University of Leicester has examined the cellular mechanisms that underlie hearing loss and tinnitus triggered by exposure to loud sound.
It has demonstrated that physical changes in myelin itself -the coating of the auditory nerve carrying sound signals to the brain — affect our ability to hear.
Dr Martine Hamann, Lecturer in Neurosciences at the University of Leicester, said: "People who suffer from hearing loss have difficulties in understanding speech, particularly when the environment is noisy and when other people are talking nearby.
"Understanding speech relies on fast transmission of auditory signals. Therefore it is important to understand how the speed of signal transmission gets decreased during hearing loss. Understanding these underlying phenomena means that it could be possible to find medicines to improve auditory perception, specifically in noisy backgrounds."
The research, funded by Action on Hearing Loss, and led by Leicester, was done in collaboration with Dr Angus Brown of the University of Nottingham. The research, "Computational modelling of the effects of auditory nerve dysmyelination," is published in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy.
Dr Ralph Holme, Head of Biomedical Research at Action on Hearing Loss, the only UK charity dedicated to funding research into hearing loss said: "There is an urgent need for effective treatments to prevent hearing loss — a condition that affects 10 million people in the UK and all too often isolates people from friends and family. This research further increases our understanding of the biological consequences of exposure to loud noise. Knowledge that we hope will lead to effective treatments for hearing loss within a generation."
In previous research, researchers have shown that after exposure to loud sounds leading to hearing loss, the myelin coat surrounding the auditory nerve becomes thinner. An important property of auditory signal transmission consists of electrical signals "jumping" from one myelin domain to the other. Those domains, called Nodes of Ranvier, become elongated after exposure to loud sound.
Dr Hamann said: "Although we showed that transmission of auditory signals (electrical signals transmitted along the auditory nerve) was slowed down after exposure to loud sound leading to hearing loss, the question remained: Is this due to the actual change of the physical properties of the myelin or is it due to the redistribution of channels occurring subsequent to those changes?
"This work is a theoretical work whereby we tested the hypothesis that myelin was the prime reason for the decreased signal transmission. We simulated how physical changes to the myelin and/or redistribution of channels influenced the signal transmission along the auditory nerve. We found that the redistribution of channels had only small effect on the conduction velocity whereas physical changes to myelin were primarily responsible for the effects."
The research has shown for the first time the closer links between a deficit in the "myelin" sheath surrounding the auditory nerve and hearing loss. "This research is innovative because data modelling (simulations) was used on previous morphological data and assessed that physical changes to the myelin coat were the principal cause of the deficit," said Dr Hamman.
"We have come closer to understanding the reasons behind deficits in auditory perception. This means that we can also get closer to target those deficits, for example by promoting myelin repair after acoustic trauma or during age related hearing loss."
Dr Hamann said the work will help prevention as well as progression into finding appropriate cures for hearing loss and possibly tinnitus developing from hearing loss.
"The sense of achievement comes from the fact that it could help aging people to better understand their relatives on the phone," said Dr Hamann.
The next step is to test drugs that could promote myelin repair and improve hearing after hearing loss.
Source: FARS


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The Hawaiian steel guitar, invented by Joseph Kekuku around 1885 in Honolulu, was a late addition to the line-up of string bands. But, for a short time, Hawaiian Steel guitar playing was a national craze. "It was originally a 6-string wooden guitar built to be a Spanish guitar, but converted to a steel guitar by inserting a metal converter nut (adapter nut) (extension nut) over the nut at the headstock to raise the strings about a half inch off the fretboard. It was originally tuned A Major low bass (1-6) E.C#.A.E.A.E, which has three strings tuned the same as the Spanish guitar." (from http://www.hsga.org/history.htm) Some notable national performers include Don Castro, Lani McIntire, and Barney Isaacs. A donation to the Kentucky Library by the family of Fred Lewis included a Hawaiian Steel guitar and many pieces of sheet music. As more and more people were exposed to many different forms of music, the production and sale of sheet music became big business. Many professional and amateur performers used the sheet music, and people enjoyed not only the scores but also the colorful covers. Many times they featured the performer's photo, as well as an illustration. The Kentucky Library has a very extensive collection of sheet music that is valued not only for the scores but for the historical evidence of the ideas and images of popular culture in the early 20th century.
~ Nancy Richey


text:
Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation Elects New President
DUBLIN, Ohio (Sept. 13, 2023) — Today, the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation is pleased to officially announce Peggy Black Meyer, Vanderbilt, as its next President. Meyer will lead the Foundation Board of Trustees for a two-year term.
Read MoreFederal Judge in Wyoming Dismisses Litigation
On August 25, a federal judge in Wyoming dismissed litigation that had been filed against Kappa Kappa Gamma over the right of a private fraternal organization to choose its members at the University of Wyoming. In dismissing the case against Kappa, the judge ruled the plaintiffs in this case failed to state any plausible claim and that some of the allegations the plaintiffs made were "unbefitting a federal court."
Read MoreIntroducing Your New and Improved Membership Dashboard
Good news: With the improved membership dashboard, all of your resources will soon be in one place. New filtering capabilities will enhance your search process and feature personalized resources. As we work to bring you these updates, all of your resources are still available in the Kappa Cloud.
Read MoreStep Into Six Recently Renovated Kappa Homes
A house is made of walls and beams. A home is made of love and dreams. Kappa homes are filled with love, connection and sisterhood. But after years of good use, it was time for a little TLC or, in some cases, a full refresh. Kappa's House Boards said, "We've got you." Check out the renovations that transformed these Kappa houses into dream homes that alumnae and collegians will enjoy for years to come.
Read More


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shout-out to Tanaaz Currim
Because I have seen her in more movies than any other female star or co-star except Aishwarya Rai, this is a heart-felt "you rock" to my favorite sidekick actor of all time, Tanaaz Currim. This woman has played the "best friend" in several films, for which she has suffered the indignity of being attacked by a lunatic, wearing a really fake-looking wig (if that's her real hair in RHTDM, I want to know what they did to it), being stuck in a bad twist on that short plaid schoolgirl skirt fad that comes around every few years while watching her friend get Hrithik's heavy stares, and raising a kid in New York with a husband who apparently is never home and certainly doesn't come with her to India for her sister's wedding. I love this actor. I honestly think she's quite good - it's hard to play the sidekick at an appropriate level, neither too mousy nor too spastic (Johnny Lever, I'm talkin' to you), neither faceless nor interfering (Kareena's Spice Girls-esque quartet in MPKDH). Just supportive and funny and helpful without getting all up in your business without being asked. Just the way a friend should be.
Update to post (September 22, 2005): See? She totally rocks! And now IndiaTimes knows it too.
Update to post (September 22, 2005): See? She totally rocks! And now IndiaTimes knows it too.


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Science Fiction
Devil's Despair (Chosen Chronicles #2)
Griffin is gone, and the demon that corrupted her has second thoughts... (Straight Romance, Science Fiction)
Devil's Redemption (The Chosen Chronicles #3)
The Chosen must now permanently re-form the Gates, a dangerous task that requires battling against Lucifer's chosen warlock. (Straight Romance, Science Fiction)
At Supposed Crimes, we're hoping to make a name for ourselves in LGBT science fiction publishing (not so much with the fantasy).
Our breakout hit is Under Dark Sky Law, by Tamara Boyens. This apocalyptic thriller has a bisexual female lead, Xero, and takes place in the wasteland of the American Southwest. Scenery might be recognizable from Breaking Bad. But it's now covered by domes, not all of them functional. This is our first book to show up consistently in major book sales in print.
We want to combat the controversy that has surrounded the Hugo Awards in recent years. The anti-diversity sentiment in science fiction is ridiculous and unfortunate. We want to blend our GLBT ideals with speculative fiction--where metaphor to confront social issues is common and important.
Another novel that exemplifies this is Jo Graham's Cythera. Despite Jo Graham's high profile as a science fiction writer, she had trouble finding a publisher open to diverse, bisexual characters. Cythera's exquisite world-building and rich erotic overtones should be celebrated. Tamara Boyens is pushing us farther and Cythera is our cornerstone.
Too often we hear from our writers that publishers have demanded their science fiction stories, where it shouldn't matter, be "straighter." Such is the case with The Wolf Inside, by Tyler W. D. Stewart. It features only a subtextual love story and is mostly an action and adventure apocalypse novel, and because it doesn't fit neatly into one category or another--a reviewer on Amazon says the lesbian element is not strong enough.
Geonn Cannon's Sojourn and The Remnant Fleet are more traditional space operas, and more traditional lesbian stories. We hope they, like all these books, become crossover successes, appealing to science fiction lovers at large, and our LGBT audience, too.
We obviously believe in and love these novels and don't understand why reading or publishing them requires such a leap of faith. It's science fiction, after all!