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Why You'll Love This Job
The state of Illinois is offering an incentive program for CNAs based on years of experience! You could earn up to an additional $6.50 per hour!
Learn more here: https://www.petersenhealthcare.net/cnaprogram/
Working under the direction of the staff nurses, the Certified Nurse's Aide (C.N.A.) provides personal care and assistance to residents to assure their safety and comfort. The C.N.A. follows the nurses' instructions to provide treatments and carry out procedures. The observe and report changes in the resident's physical, mental and social status to nurses in order to insure the well-being of the resident
Job Duties and Responsibilities
- Communication
- Verbal
- Communicates pertinent information regarding resident care throughout the tour of duty and at change of shift to the responsible nurse
- Consistently communicates in a manner that demonstrates a positive and cooperative attitude
- Non-Verbal
- Utilizes appropriate and professional body language
- Demonstrates receptivity though active listening
- Written
- Records all nursing procedures and basic care on appropriate forms
- Verbal
- Resident Care Process
- Assessment – Makes appropriate decisions regarding notifying the nurse responsible for the resident
- Planning – Plans organization of assignment in order to complete assignment in a timely fashion
- Implementation
- Executes procedures consistent with interdisciplinary care plan, Petersen Health Care Procedure Manuals and that are within the scope of the role of the C.N.A.
- Carries out basic hygiene measures including but not limited to the following: grooming, shaving, applying make-up, oral hygiene/dental care, cuts/cleans nails, fingers and toes, foot care, skin care, bathing/showering and cleaning incontinent residents.
- Turns and positions residents to prevent pressure areas
- Assists with standing, lifting, transferring and ambulating residents
- Gives and removes bed pans, urinals and performs Foley care
- Measures temperature, radial pulse, respiration and blood pressure
- Distributes nourishments, feeds residents and records % of dietary int
- Assists with admission, transfer and discharges of residents
- Collects specimens – urine, feces and sputum
- Measures and records fluid intake and output
- Maintains appropriate supplies of gloves and other personal protective equipment
- Assists in dressing, buttoning, typing and snaps
- Assists in organizing residents drawers, closets and rooms
- Cleans residents jewelry as needed or upon request
- Verifies that all dentures, glasses and personal items are marked with proper resident's name
- Cleans wheelchairs and Geri-chairs on a regular basis and as needed
- Passes ice water and assists residents with hydrations
- Answers call lights
- Assists the nurse or physician with minor treatments and procedures as assigned
- Provides post-mortem care
- Provides for the safety and security needs of the resident by:
- Making frequent checks on residents and responding to the resident's call for assistance in a timely and appropriate manner
- Giving appropriate explanations
- Maintaining communication devices (nurse call light, TV and telephone and other such equipment)
- Utilizes techniques of infection control such as:
- Frequent hand washing
- Standard precautions and disease specific precautionary techniques
- Provides for the psychosocial needs of residents
- Listens to and hears resident and family anxieties and relays this information to the nurse
- Executes procedures consistent with interdisciplinary care plan, Petersen Health Care Procedure Manuals and that are within the scope of the role of the C.N.A.
- Role Involvement
- Performs responsibilities in a cooperative manner under the guidance and supervision of professional nursing personnel. Uses time constructively and organizes assignments for maximum productivity.
- Maintains current knowledge in present Nursing Practice (in-servicing and continuing education) including the Mandatory Educational Activities as Fire Safety/Evacuation Procedures, Blood borne pathogens and proper body mechanics)
- Demonstrates responsibility for own Standard of Practice
- Reporting for work as scheduled and on time
- Adhering to facility policy regarding absenteeism and sick time
- Avoiding work-related injuries through the application or proper practice techniques
- Assumes responsibility for personal appearance by adhering to the Petersen Health Care dress code
- Integrate cost effective measures nursing practices by:
- Using supplies efficiently
- Being willing to work in a team approach to accomplish goals
- Role Development
- Demonstrates support of the philosophy of Petersen Health Care by adhering to policies, procedures and established Standards of Nursing Practices
- Change Process
- Identifies areas appropriate for change in a manner that demonstrates a positive attitude
- Facilitates change process in a manner that demonstrates a positive attitude
- Adapts to change brought about by external and internal forces in a cooperative and mature way
- Be of legal working age
- Be able to read and follow written directions
- Be able to communicate with residents and co-workers in English
- Must possess the ability to deal tactfully with personnel, residents, family members, visitors, government agencies/personnel and the general public.
- Work overtime as necessary
- General knowledge and understanding of state and federal regulations as they pertain to long term care
- Completion of the Certified Nurse's Aide course or be enrolled in a Competency Training Program leading to certification in less than 120 days from the date of employment
- Must have the current federally required vaccines or proof of a valid exemption.
Type: Full Time (Hourly)
Job ID: 130269


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iPhone 11 Pro (Silver) 64GB - Unlocked - Grade B
iPhone 11 Pro (Silver) 64GB - Unlocked - Grade B
Out of stock
Our Guarantee
- Tested to be in 100% working order.
- No iCloud or Blacklist guarantee.
- Includes USB charging cord and data transfer.
-All items subject to 13% HST.
- All devices are graded based on their cosmetic condition and priced accordingly.
Grade A- Like New
Our highest standard. These devices will show very little to no wear and tear at all. There are no big scratches or dents present on the device, but may show slight signs of use.
Grade B- Good Condition
These devices will show moderate signs of use such as small scratches or dents on the screen and/or housing as a result of wear and tear.
Grade C- Fair Condition
These devices will show high signs of use and may have deeper scratches on the screen and/or housing and dents.
Tempered Glass Screen Protector
An additional layer of glass that is installed onto your device. The surface of the tempered glass has a hardness of 9H and is 0.3mm thick, with an Oleo-phobic coating treatment that helps to resist fingerprints. A perfect solution for those that are rough with their devices.
ProtectionPro Screen Protector
Perfect for all devices, ProtectionPro offers touchscreen protection that won't hinder screen responsiveness. ProtectionPro features patented impact protection that is smooth to the touch, like glass. Enjoy excellent touch sensitivity and screen clarity while protecting your device from scratches. Unlike tempered glass protectors, ProtectionPro is a glass-like film material that wont break or shatter, meaning your device can take many drops, falls, throws, and scratches without compromising the screen protector. View here:https://youtu.be/R0N2yNBSKqE
Each device includes a 90-Day Warranty period against manufacturer defects. Warranty does not, under any circumstance, cover physical, cosmetic or liquid damage of any kind.
1 Year Extended Warranty can be purchased to extend this 90 day warranty to a period of 1 year. Extended warranty covers manufacturer defects and does not cover physical, cosmetic, or liquid damage.
Pre-owned devices have a 14-day return period. All products must be returned with original packaging and accessories and in the same condition as purchased.
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
30 Days

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Elrab Dsr Capsule
By CAPTAB BIOTECH
10 Capsule(s) in Strip
Inclusive of all taxes
Out of Stock
7 days return policyRead More
All the Products are packed and stored Safely
Elrab Dsr Capsule Description
Elrab Dsr Cap contains combination of Rabeprazole and Domperidone, an anti-reflux medicine.
Product Summary
Offer Price | ₹59.50 |
You Save | ₹10.50 (15% on MRP) |
Contains | Rabeprazole(20.0 Mg) + Domperidone(30.0 Mg) |
Therapy | ANTACID AND ANTI-EMETIC |
Check more medicines with composition as Rabeprazole(20.0 Mg) + Domperidone(30.0 Mg)
Uses of Elrab Dsr Capsule
It is used in the treatment of gastrointestinal reflux disease. This condition leads to acid regurgitating from the stomach into the food pipe, causing heartburn, chest discomfort and acidity.
Contraindications of Elrab Dsr Capsule
- If you are allergic to this medicine or any of the ingredient of this medicine
- If you are taking any medicine which might affect the contraction of heart muscle (QT prolongation)
- If you are suffering from bleeding in the digestive system
- If you are suffering from liver or kidney disorder
- If you have serious heart problems like congestive heart failure, heart rhythm problems, electrolyte imbalance
- If you have any tumor of the pituitary gland (Prolactin pituitary tumours)
- If you are pregnant or breast feeding
Side effects of Elrab Dsr Capsule
- Nausea
- Headache
- Lack of energy
- Gas
- Skin rash
- Diarrhoea
- Dry mouth
- Stomach pain
- Sleeplessness
- Back pain
- Throat infection (Pharyngitis)
- Cough
- Vomiting
- Dizziness
- Constipation
- Breast pain and loss of sex drive
Precautions and Warnings of Elrab Dsr Capsule
Can I take Elrab Dsr Cap during pregnancy?
- The components of this medicine might harm your unborn baby
- This medicine should not be used in pregnancy
- Consult your doctor if you are pregnant or think you may be pregnant or planning to have a baby
Breast Feeding
Can I take Elrab Dsr Cap while breastfeeding?
- This medicine passes into breast milk in small amounts and might affect your baby
- Consult your doctor if you are breastfeeding, after assessing the benefits over risks your doctor might change the medicine, ask you to stop breastfeeding or closely monitor the baby
Can I drive if I have consumed Elrab Dsr Cap?
If you experience drowsiness and visual disturbances after taking this medicine, it is advised not to drive or use machines.
Can I consume alcohol with Elrab Dsr Cap?
Drinking alcohol when you are taking this medicine does not affect the way it works. However, you should avoid drinking large quantities of alcohol as it is known to increase acidity and can make your acidity worse.
Other General Warnings
Talk to your doctor if
- You develop watery diarrhoea, fever after taking this medicine
- You experience black stools
- You have a stomach tumour
- You have a history of fractures or have osteoporosis or taking steroids
- You have liver and kidney disease or kidney failure
- You have heart problems and associated symptoms like palpitations, difficulty in breathing, unconsciousness
- You are on this medicine for more than three months. Your blood magnesium levels may drop. Your doctor may perform regular tests for the same
- You develop skin lesions especially in the sun exposed area after taking this medicine
- You are taking medicines to treat HIV
- You should not give this medicine to children of 12 years and below
- You have low levels of vitamin B12. This medicine is known to reduce the absorption of vitamin B12 after long term use. Supplements may be needed
- Taking this medicine for more than one year may increase chances of developing bone fractures
Mode of Action of Elrab Dsr Capsule
How Does It Work?
- A pump called the proton pump in the stomach is responsible for the secretion of stomach acids. Rabeprazole binds to this proton pump in stomach cells, thus blocking acid secretion
- Domperidone increases the motility of stomach and intestines so that acid does not reflux back into the food pipe
Directions for Use of Elrab Dsr Capsule
It should be taken as a whole with a sufficient amount of water (and should not be chewed or crushed), preferably in the morning before food.
Interactions of Elrab Dsr Capsule
Interactions with other medicines
- There is limited information available on the interaction of this combination with other drugs. However, as this medicine contains Omeprazole and Domperidone, any interactions seen with these two components when taken alone may occur with this combination...
- Rilpivirine should never be used with this medicine
- Never take these medicines along with it: Disopyramide, Amiodarone, medicines for mental problems haloperidol, Citalopram, antibiotics like Erythromycin, Levofloxacin, Azithromycin, antifungals like Pentamidine, Ketoconazole and other medicines like Cisapride, Dolasetron, Mequitazine etc....
- This medicine interferes with the action of antiviral medicines like Rilpivirine, Atazanavir and Nelfinavir and antifungals like Posaconazole, Ketoconazole and Itraconazole
- Medicine used to treat heart failure like digoxin may lead to toxicity when taken with this medicine
- Medicines used for mental disorders like Diazepam, Phenytoin
- If you are taking Warfarin, caution is needed as there are chances of increased bleeding
Interactions with food items
- It should preferably be taken on an empty stomach
- There are no known interactions with food or beverages
- However, nicotine and caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate and cola) can increase stomach acid or delay ulcer healing and hinder the treatment process
Storage and disposal of Elrab Dsr Capsule
- Store below 25°C, protected from moisture and light
- Keep the medicine out of the reach of children
Dosage of Elrab Dsr Capsule
- Symptoms of overdose include confusion, anxiety, fits, altered consciousness, sleepiness, etc.
- If you think you have taken too much of this medicine, contact your doctor immediately or visit the nearest hospital
Missed a Dose
- If you missed any dose of the medicine take it as soon as you remember
- If it's time for your next dose, then skip the missed dose and continue with your regular dose schedule
- Do not take a double dose of medicine to compensate for the missed one
Content Details
Dr. Arpit Verma
MBBS, MD (Pharmacology)
Dr. Ritu Budania
MBBS, MD (Pharmacology)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: I am suffering from liver problem. Is Elrab Dsr Cap safe for me?
A: Tell your doctor if you are having any liver or kidney problem. The doctor may suggest an alternative.
Q: I get acidity quite often, what should I do to avoid it?
- Avoid spicy and oily food
- Reduce smoking and alcohol intake as these are known to worsen the reflux
- Avoid carbonated drinks like cold drinks and soda as the carbon dioxide gas in these is known to worsen acid reflux
- Reduce chocolate, mint intake
- Some medicines are known to increase the acidity and worsen the condition such as pain killers like Ibuprofen. You should avoid using these for long duration
Q: I have been taking this medicine for a few months now, what should I look out for?
- Take this medicine only for the duration as prescribed by your doctor. If there is relief in your symptoms, you may visit your doctor for a follow-up, when your doctor may reduce its dose
- This medicine is known to cause fractures, low magnesium levels and vitamin B12 levels on long term use
- You need to be cautious about these and keep checking your blood levels regularly and if need be your doctor may prescribe the supplements for these deficiencies
Product Details
Expires on or After
Health Articles
The information provided herein is supplied to the best of our abilities to make it accurate and reliable as it is published after a review by a team of professionals. This information is solely intended to provide a general overview on the product and must be used for informational purposes only. You should not use the information provided herein to diagnose, prevent, or cure a health problem. Nothing contained on this page is intended to create a doctor-patient relationship, replace or be a substitute for a registered medical practitioner's medical treatment/advice or consultation. The absence of any information or warning to any medicine shall not be considered and assumed as an implied assurance. We highly recommend that you consult your registered medical practitioner for all queries or doubts related to your medical condition. You hereby agree that you shall not make any health or medical-related decision based in whole or in part on anything contained in the Site. Please click here for detailed T&C.
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Houston, we have a problem…the Chattanooga choo choo did not take us home but in fact propelled us to the moon… Not really. But we did have time to visit NASA while we were in residency Rice University in Houston, our third visit to Texas on our Midsummer double-tour.
Christina Keefe met us at the airport and took us to the ominously addressed Hilton, Medical Plaza. As the address suggested, we were in the heart of Houston's hospital district. This would've been an ideal week for any of us to get sick but, alas, none of us did. Typical. This was probably because we were welcomed with open arms by Christina and the professors at Rice. In particular, we had a rapturous welcome from Dennis Huston who is a living legend and, along with the late Alan Grob, was responsible for the long-standing relationship between AFTLS and Rice. We were lucky enough to experience Dennis's hospitality before he retires this year. We also met Alan Grob's wife Shirley Grob and two more generations of the Grob family, Julie and Ava, when they came to watch the show on the Saturday night. It was fantastic to meet and chat with these great patrons of the arts.
We had three performances in Hamman Hall to very warm audiences and a lovely reception after the final show. Thank you so much! Mark helped us with an extremely short and efficient tech (we always appreciate that) and promising students Rob and Catherine ran the show when we were up.
Houston was a great week. The staff and students were excellent, the audiences vocal and intelligent and the weather was warm! There were thundery storms at the beginning of the week but by Sunday we hit the beach at Galveston and took a dip in the gulf of Mexico.
Houston is a brilliant town so there was plenty to do in our down time- in fact there was too much to do so we had to regretfully miss a few things like the rodeo which happened to be in town. We didn't miss NASA though, or the amazing art in the The Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel and the MFAH. Christina also managed to get comp tickets to see 'Around the World in 80 Days' at the newly refurbished Alley Theatre in Downtown Houston. It was a fab show with excellent performances all round. My particular favourite was Jeff Bean, and, like true magpie-like Shakespeareans, moments from their production have made it into ours! One more week to go! Cleveland here we come!
Week Ten: John Carroll University
'Farewell, sweet play fellow.' Our final week of this epic job was at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. Jean Feerick and Bill met us at the airport and took us straight to the University for the education meeting where we met the delightful faculty and staff that we were working with this week. We were invited to many interesting workshops in many different disciplines and we couldn't have felt more welcome.
We had excellent hospitality this week from all members of staff. Jean took us out on Saturday with many faculty staff and we had a fantastic time, a few of us staying up all night to catch our early flights. Earlier in the week Bo Smith and Tom Roache took us out for a wonderful meal and we got to find out about their legendary lives. Bo had trained in London at LAMDA, the same drama school that Claire went to, and Tom's life has taken him all over the world and could probably fill many riveting volumes. On the final performance we all had a hefty gift waiting at our places. It was a signed copy of Tom's The Faerie Queen which had taken him 20 years to write. What a special momento to take away from this job! Thank you so much Bo and Tom!
Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, and we made it downtown to the huge parade. Most of our spare time, though was preparing for the end. Patrick and Chris were going back to the UK, Claire went to LA, Sam to New Orleans, and myself to Hong Kong.
The final performance was emotional. This has been all consuming for the last six months and we have all learned, laughed, and longed at various moments along the way. It has been an absolute joy working with the amazing staff we have met week by week, everyone at Shakespeare at Notre Dame who has made this happen, and, of course, the four other extremely talented actors in the company. The individuals on a job like this are so very important and I am so grateful to these particular ones for producing a piece of work to be proud of and great company to explore America with.
(Blog posts by Ffion Jolly)


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Bad Feminist
I completed Bad Feminist in September 2022.
As described by Google Books:
From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue." In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.


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Via Nebula
Via Nebula
You're looking at an authentic, sealed and brand new copy of Via Nebula!
Designed by: Martin Wallace
Player Count: 2 to 4
Recommended Age: 12 years old
Crafters, builders and carriers — your help is needed to dispel the mists of Nebula! The people of the valley will reward you handsomely if you harvest and exploit our many resources, open paths through the mists, and help our settlers build new structures. Cooperate temporarily with other builders in order to create paths and share goods, but do not forget your own objectives. Will you have a statue erected in your honor on the Nebula City plaza?
A game of Via Nebula starts with a board showing a hexagonal grid, some production sites with a few available resources on them (wood, stone, wheat, and pigs), building sites in various areas scattered over the whole board, and a lot of mist.
Turn after turn, players have two actions at their disposal from these options: They may clear the mist of a hex to create new paths of transportation, open new production sites, open a building site in a city, carry resources from any production site to their own building sites, and, of course, achieve a construction. Resources and paths through the mist may be used by all the players. This initially induces a kind of cooperation, but eventually other players will take advantage of your actions!
To achieve a construction, you fulfill a contract on one of your cards. You start the game with two contracts, and four more contracts are available for all players to see and use on a first come, first served basis — and that's where the cooperation abruptly stops. Additionally, most contracts have special powers that are triggered on completion.
The game ends when a player finishes a fifth building. Opponents each take two final actions, then players score based on the number of cleared hexes and opened production sites and the point value of their contracts, with a bonus for the player who ended the game.
- BoardGameGeek


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My heart goes out to Douglas McGrath. The writer, director and occasional actor was hard at work on "Infamous," telling the story of how Truman Capote researched "In Cold Blood," when he learned someone else was making a movie on the same subject. A movie called "Capote." A movie that would go on to win one Oscar and be nominated for four others, including Best Picture.
Even if "Infamous" turned out to be an outstanding motion picture, it could not possibly compare with "Capote." Coming out a year later and covering the same material, it would look like a copycat. Worse, the public wouldn't be interested. One Truman Capote biopic is enough, thank you very much.
So I feel bad for Douglas McGrath that his movie is overshadowed by "Capote." I feel bad also that even without the comparisons, "Infamous" is not particularly good. Turns out its runner-up status is deserved, regardless of timing.
We begin with an inexplicable scene. It's 1959, and author/celebrity/bon vivant Truman Capote (Toby Jones) is in a swanky nightclub surrounded by other swanky famous types. The singer is called Kitty Dean, though clearly she is meant to be Peggy Lee. She is played by Gwyneth Paltrow. She sings Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?," at first enthusiastically and then suddenly having some sort of emotional turmoil in the middle of it. She stops, clearly distressed, falters a moment, then hops back into the song as though nothing ever happened. Paltrow's performance is riveting. But here's the thing: The scene has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. The singer's torment is not explained. She is never seen or referred to again.
My best guess is that the incident foreshadows the inner turmoil Truman will face over the course of the film. The fey, diminutive gay man — often mistaken for a woman, in one of the movie's running jokes — heads to rural Kansas after a gruesome quadruple homicide there, angling for a story for The New Yorker about how such a grisly crime affects a small town. Accompanied by best friend Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), whose "To Kill a Mockingbird" is just being released, Truman becomes friendly with the imprisoned killers, publicly declaring his devotion to the truth while privately rewriting quotations and manipulating facts to make his book spicier.
This is an angle "Capote" didn't really explore: How much of "In Cold Blood" is accurate and how much is exaggerated? "Infamous" shows Truman recounting his interviews with the killers to his prissy New York socialite pals, reveling in how aghast they are to hear the details, and changing the wording of the murderers' quotations every time. For the book, he chooses the one that sounds best.
He displays a similarly cavalier attitude toward the facts when he gossips with his friends about other friends. Everybody loves him, but does anyone trust him?
This is an intriguing facet of Truman's personality, but the irony is that Truman doesn't seem very conflicted about it. It's just what he does. There's certainly nothing to indicate introspection like Paltrow shows in that opening number.
Toby Jones looks enough like Truman Capote, but his voice sounds like an impersonation, not a performance. It's impossible not to compare: Philip Seymour Hoffman imitated the voice, too, but fleshed out the performance so well that it seemed natural. Hoffman could have not done the voice at all and the character still would have seemed fully realized. With Jones, the voice is all he has.
Far more compelling is the supporting cast, which is impressive in its size and scope. There's Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis, Isabella Rossellini, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Bogdanovich, all playing Truman's wealthy New York friends. Jeff Daniels is endearingly even-keeled as the Kansas sheriff Truman must befriend in order to get access to the killers, and Lee Pace and Daniel Craig are solid as the villains themselves.
The best thing about the movie? Sandra Bullock, believe it or not. Her Harper Lee is intelligent, friendly, full of common sense and gracious manners, instantly likable to all she meets. There are several tantalizing lines about her "next book," which we all know never came to be; "Mockingbird" was it. Bullock's warm portrayal of the reclusive author back before she was a recluse makes me think I'd rather be watching a different movie: a biopic of Harper Lee.
C+ (1 hr., 50 min.; )


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Harbin, China, August 6-10, 2025Countdown
International Saxophone Committee
Welcome to the website of the International Saxophone Committee. Supporting the World Saxophone Congress.
The year 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first World Saxophone Congress, held in Chicago. Originally conceived by Paul Brodie and quickly joined by Eugene Rousseau, six goals were established to help elevate the status of the saxophone. The goals included the commission and performance of new repertoire, the presentation of recital programs and clinics, and the establishment of methods of communication among saxophonists. The past eighteen Congresses have succeeded in fostering the creation of hundreds of new compositions for the saxophone in a wide range of genres. Each Congress has offered outstanding performances and invaluable clinics and master classes by the leading performers and teachers of our instrument.
The Congress has expanded from a one-day gathering in 1969 to the present five-day event. The past fifty+ years have seen a tremendous growth in the enthusiasm for our instrument as evidenced by the many gifted young artists who have performed at the Congresses. Congresses have been held in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Thailand, Scotland, France and Croatia.
Perhaps the most important aspect of these gatherings is the spirit of camaraderie present at each Congress. The performances have often been brilliant and the music remarkable, but for many, an equally important aspect of these meetings is the opportunity to meet with old friends and to make new ones. The willingness of colleagues to discuss their experiences and share their insights has made each Congress extraordinary.
The World Saxophone Congress presents an opportunity to meet saxophonists from many countries, to attend clinics and lectures, and to listen to various concerts and performances by saxophone soloists, chamber ensembles, jazz ensembles, wind ensembles, and symphony orchestras.
Thomas Liley
Author of A Brief History of the World Saxophone Congress 1969-2000.


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Natural Male Enhancement Therapy in Atlanta, GA
A critical component in most healthy functioning relationships is an active and pleasurable sex life. For men, this typically means achieving strong and long-lasting erections during sexual intercourse. Age, stress, performance anxiety and other lifestyle factors can interfere with your sexual performance and lead you to seek male enhancement treatment either at your local drug store or from your healthcare provider. Even for men who consider themselves problem-free in the bedroom, the thought of further enhancing their sexual abilities is often highly desirable.
Regardless of your reason for wanting to improve in the bedroom, there is a natural male enhancement therapy to help you attain more powerful erections. This natural therapy utilizes shock wave therapy to promote new blood vessel growth, thereby increasing blood flow to your penis to help facilitate stronger erections.
To schedule a consultation with a healthcare provider in Atlanta that specializes in natural male enhancement therapy through shock wave treatment, call (770) 674-6311 or contact Dr. Gail Ravello online.
Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT) & Male Enhancement
Extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) is a noninvasive procedure which utilizes acoustic sound waves to stimulate your body's natural healing mechanisms, thereby promoting new tissue and blood vessel growth, and restoring blood flow to the penis. The better the blood flow is to the penis, the stronger the erection you will have.
While the term "shock wave" can be jolting for some, ESWT is in fact gentle; it simply employs pain-free, pulsating sound waves to your penis. ESWT has been proven in clinical trials to help men with a range of sexual complaints—from severe erectile dysfunction to men simply seeking slight performance improvements—achieve and maintain erections they previously thought were no longer attainable.
ESWT is not solely used for male sexual performance; it is also utilized in many other medical specialties including physical therapy, orthopedics and cardiology for its pervasive ability to stimulate healing.
Advantages of ESWT
As an innovative male performance enhancement procedure, extracorporeal shock wave therapy is completed in the comfort of a healthcare provider's office. Shock wave treatment takes only 20-30 minutes and requires no downtime afterwards. With little or no known side effects, ESWT is one of the only male enhancement treatments that is drug-free, surgery-free and proven to work! In fact, the results of your shock wave treatments could last up to 2 years.
Extracorporeal shock wave therapy can help you to:
- Restore proper blood flow to your penis
- Achieve stronger erections
- Increase your stamina
- Reverse erectile dysfunction
- Potentially enlarge your penis
Say Goodbye to the Blue Pill
Whether it be Viagra®, Cialis®, Levitra® or other drug which promises to reignite your sexual abilities, inevitably, you can become dependent on the pill to effectively engage in sexual relations. However, your sex life does not need to be dictated by your medicine cabinet! Contact our offices today to learn more about extracorporeal shock wave therapy, a top male enhancement treatment to revitalize your sexual performance regardless of your age! Call (770) 674-6311 or contact Dr. Gail Ravello online.
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I'm at the second annual Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco. Rudy de Waele of mTrends starts with an overview of Mobile 2.0: an all-IP environment and application mashups are two features. Rudy has been a guest author on Read/WriteWeb before and his Understanding Mobile 2.0 post from December is one of the best introductions to mobile 2.0 that you'll find. Also see: Mobile 2.0 Startup Ecosystem (Sept '07).
Next up is Tomi Ahonen, author and Mobile blogger. His latest book is called 'Digital Korea', about how South Korea established itself as a technology leader. His talk today is about mobile social networking and communities – in particular the business opportunities in Mobile 2.0.
Tomi Ahonen, photo by Rudy de Waele
Tomi calls mobile "7th mass media", which he says "is as different from the Internet as television was to radio" – he's referring to things like user experience and business opportunities. His definitions of mass media: Radio was 4th, TV 5th, Internet 6th and Mobile 7th. He says mobile can do everything the previous 6 media can do, including interactivity and search of the Internet. But mobile is different from the previous 6 — he says mobile is "the first personal mass media", it's always on, always carried, has built-in payment model, it's a creative tool at point of creative impulse and gets the most accurate audience info. He says mobile is "a far superior media experience" than the previous 6 mass medias.
He says mobile apps can be "magical" and discusses an example from Japan – a cameraphone OCR translator. It's from a Japanese company called MediaSeek; the product is called Kamera Jiten, and it allows cameraphone users to turn their device into a translator.
Business Opportunities in Mobile Web
Tomi then outlines some opportunities: e.g. mobile books (M-Books) are an $82M business in Japan. In Japan and South Korea, there are big opportunities for revenue – e.g. 54% of Japanese mobile phone users consume ads – and what's more 44% of them have clicked on interactive ads. Tomi says hat "advertising is becoming content", because it is relevant to mobile users. While he says this isn't a radical new idea (e.g. MTV videos in the early 80's were essentially advertisements of music products), it is something we need to adapt to more in the mobile Web era.
He talks of a new company called Blyk, which launched 24 Sept in the UK. Blyk is a new mobile network for 16 Äì 24s that's funded by advertising – according to the Blyk blog it's "an invitation-only mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that links young people with brands they like and gives them free texts and minutes every month." Tomi says Blyk is a company to watch and emulate.
He says the big brands (Coca-Cola et al) will be present in the upcoming mobile social networks. Cyworld is an early example of this.
Flirtomatic, a UK flirting service from May '06, is another good example of a mobile/social service. It gets half its income from ads, and half from personalization and gifts. Indeed the company abandoned their original subscription fee business model because of those other models. Flirtomatic is now one of Britain's leading florists, according to Tomi.
In summary, an excellent talk by Tomi and I learned a lot about the opportunities in the Mobile Web world. His next book btw is on the topic of the 7th Mass Media – some of the content in his talk today was from that book.


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The Jobs Engine
Carl J. Schramm, author of Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity, introduces a lesson in power and the sources of good jobs from The Coming Jobs War: What Every Leader Must Know about the Future of Job Creation, by Jim Clifton.
Over the past decade, globalization has transformed many aspects of human life, perhaps none so significantly as economic activity. In China, India, the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere, entrepreneurs are among the principal drivers of this transformation, and they are capitalizing on it, too. Today, an entrepreneur in the U.S. can launch a business that is global in scope from the moment of its inception, and entrepreneurs from other countries come to the U.S. to study and start companies, and return home to start still more companies. This "entrepreneurial circulation" benefits everyone. Its full implications, however, have only begun to be understood.
In the excerpt below, Jim Clifton, the chairman of Gallup Inc., identifies what might be the most important consequence of global entrepreneurship: job creation. Without the initiative and energy of entrepreneurs, the job engine sputters. When that happens, Clifton explains, we feel the effects across every sector of society, including education and the military. Thus, entrepreneurial circulation — bringing with it job creation and intensified competition — is the key development shaping our collective economic future.
— Carl J. Schramm
An excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Coming Jobs War: What Every Leader Must Know about the Future of Job Creation
What the whole world wants is a good job.
This is one of the most important discoveries Gallup has ever made. At the very least, it needs to be considered in every policy, every law, and every social initiative. All leaders — policymakers and lawmakers, presidents and prime ministers, parents, judges, priests, pastors, imams, teachers, managers, and CEOs — need to consider it every day in everything they do.
That is as simple and as straightforward an explanation of the data as I can give. Whether you and I were walking down the street in Khartoum, Cairo, Berlin, Lima, Los Angeles, Baghdad, or Istanbul, we would discover that the single most dominant thought on most people's minds is about having a good job.
Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, peace, and freedom more than anything else. The last 30 years have changed us. Now people want to have a good job, and they want their children to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders. Everything they do — from waging war to building societies — will need to be carried out within the new context of the need for a good job.
The word "good" is important. Some job, any job, isn't enough. When people talk about a good job, they mean a job that gives them the amount of work they want. Your cousin may pay you for helping out at his roadside food stand, but that's far from a job in a company that's officially registered with the government and where you have regular work for 30 hours or more a week.
The desire for a good job is the current will of the world, and whether or not you have a good job defines your relationship with your city, your country, and the whole world around you.
A great question for leaders to ask is: "Why is knowing that the whole world wants a good job everything to me?" The answer is: Leaders of countries and cities must make creating good jobs their No. 1 mission and primary purpose because good jobs are becoming the new currency for all world leaders. Everything leaders do must include this new global state of mind or they'll put their cities and countries at risk.
• Lawmakers need to know whether new laws — such as taxes, healthcare legislation, and environmental regulations — attract or repel talented entrepreneurs. If enough talented people are repelled, then the new laws will cause brain drain and undermine job creation.
• Public school superintendents and university presidents need to think beyond core curricula and their graduation rates. Students don't want to merely graduate; they want an education that results in a good job.
• Military leaders must consider good jobs when waging war and planning for peace. They must ask themselves whether military strikes, occupations, or community policing will be followed by a growing economy with good jobs — or not. The opportunity to have a good job is essential to changing a population's desperate and violent frame of mind.
Mayors and leaders of every city, town, and village on Earth must realize that every decision they make should consider the impact, first and foremost, on good jobs.
The evolution of the great global dream is going to be the material for hundreds of Ph.D. dissertations. But it's only the beginning of the story. Shifting the importance humans place on peace, love, food, and shelter — all the things people used to care about more than anything — to a good job suggests a significant change in the evolution of civilization. One of the most important changes is in global migration patterns.
Man and woman probably appeared about 200,000 years ago on the savannah plains in what is now Ethiopia. They fanned out to improve their lives, their tribes, and their families. And they have never stopped walking. The first to move have always been the boldest adventurers, explorers, and wanderers, and that's still true. Until rather recently in human evolution, explorers were looking for new hunting grounds, cropland, territories, passageways, and natural resources. But now, the explorers are seeking something else.
Today's explorers migrate to the cities that are most likely to maximize innovation and entrepreneurial talents and skill. Wherever the most talented choose to migrate is where the next economic empires will rise. That's why San Francisco, Seoul, and Singapore have become such colossal engines of job creation. When the talented explorers of the new millennium choose your city, you attain the new Holy Grail of global leadership — brain gain, talent gain, and subsequently, job creation.
— Jim Clifton
Reprinted with permission from The Coming Jobs War: What Every Leader Must Know about the Future of Job Creation, by Jim Clifton (Gallup Press, 2011).


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Driverless cars rely on lidar, which uses laser light pulses to detect road hazards, as well as sensors such as radar and cameras. There are not, however, any standards on the systems, nor do all companies use the same combination of sensors, and some vehicles may have blind spots.
Queue the music for the human driver – music that drivers often find difficult to hear.
"Humans don't have the ability to take over the vehicle as quickly as may be expected" in those situations, said self-driving expert and investor Evangelos Simoudis.
In the Uber crash last month, the ride services company was testing a fully driverless system intended for commercial use when the prototype vehicle struck and killed a woman walking across an Arizona road. Video of the crash, taken from inside the vehicle, shows the driver at the wheel, who appears to be looking down and not at the road. Just before the video stops, the driver looks upwards toward the road and suddenly looks shocked.
In the Tesla incident last month, which involved a car that any consumer can buy, a Model X vehicle was in semi-autonomous Autopilot mode when it crashed, killing its driver. The driver had received earlier warnings to put his hands on the wheel, Tesla said.
Some semi-automated cars, like the Tesla, employ different technologies to help drivers stay in their lane or maintain a certain distance behind the vehicle in front. Those systems rely on alerts – beeping noises or a vibrating steering wheel – to get drivers' attention.
"Immature Technology"
Duke University mechanical engineering professor Missy Cummings said the recent Uberand Tesla crashes show the "technology they are using is immature."
Tesla says its technology is statistically proven to save lives through better driving. In a response to Reuters on Tuesday, Tesla said drivers have a "responsibility to maintain control of the car" whenever they enable Autopilot and need to be ready to respond to "audible and visual cues."
An Uber spokesperson said "safety is our primary concern every step of the way."
A consumer group, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, says a bill on self-driving cars now stalled in the U.S. Senate is an opportunity to improve safety, quite different from the bill's original intent to quickly allow testing of self-driving cars without human controls on public roads. The group has proposed amending the bill, the AV START Act, to set standards for those vehicles, for instance, requiring a "vision test" for automated vehicles to test what their different sensors actually see.
The group believes the bill should also cover semi-automated systems like Tesla's Autopilot – a lower level of technology than what is included in the current proposed legislation.
Other groups have also put forth proposals on self-driving cars, including requiring the vehicles and even semi-automated systems to meet performance targets, greater transparency and data from makers and operators of the vehicles, increased regulatory oversight, and better monitoring of and engagement with human drivers.
Others want to focus on the human driver. In November, Consumer Reports magazine called on automakers for responsible labeling "to help consumers fully understand" their vehicles' autonomous functions.
Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports' head of automotive testing, said human drivers "are bad at paying attention to automation and this technology is not capable of reacting to all types of emergencies.
"It's like being a passenger with a toddler driving the car," he said.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is doing tests using semi-automated vehicles including models from Tesla, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and General Motors Co. The aim is to see how drivers use semi-autonomous technology – some watch the road with their hands above the wheel, others do not – and which warnings get their attention.
"We just don't know enough about how drivers use any of these systems in the wild," said MIT research scientist Bryan Reimer.
Timothy Carone, an autonomous systems expert and professor at Notre Dame University's Mendoza College of Business, said autonomous technology's proponents must "find the right balance so the technology is tested right, but it isn't hampered or halted."
"Because in the long run it will save lives," he said.
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At North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are checking to see if doctors and nurses are performing a critical procedure: washing their hands.
This Big Brother-ish approach is one of a panoply of efforts to promote a basic tenet of infection prevention, hand-washing, or as it is more clinically known in the hospital industry, hand-hygiene. With drug-resistant superbugs on the rise, according to a recent report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and with hospital-acquired infections costing $30 billion and leading to nearly 100,000 patient deaths a year, hospitals are willing to try almost anything to reduce the risk of transmission.
Studies have shown that without encouragement, hospital workers wash their hands as little as 30 percent of the time that they interact with patients. So in addition to the video snooping, hospitals across the country are training hand-washing coaches, handing out rewards like free pizza and coffee coupons, and admonishing with "red cards." They are using radio-frequency ID chips that note when a doctor has passed by a sink, and undercover monitors, who blend in with the other white coats, to watch whether their colleagues are washing their hands for the requisite 15 seconds, as long as it takes to sing the "Happy Birthday" song.
All this effort is to coax workers into using more soap and water, or alcohol-based sanitizers like Purell.
"This is not a quick fix; this is a war," said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of infectious disease at North Shore.
But the incentive to do something is strong: under new federal rules, hospitals will lose Medicare money when patients get preventable infections.
One puzzle is why health care workers are so bad at it. Among the explanations studies have offered are complaints about dry skin, the pressures of an emergency environment, the tedium of hand washing and resistance to authority (doctors, who have the most authority, tend to be the most resistant, studies have found).
"There are still staff out there who say, 'How dare they!' " said Elaine Larson, a professor in Columbia University's school of nursing who has made a career out of studying hand-washing.
Philip Liang, who founded a company, General Sensing, that outfits hospital workers with electronic badges that track hand-washing, attributes low compliance to "high cognitive load."
"Nurses have to remember hundreds — thousands — of procedures," Mr. Liang said. "Take out the catheter; change four medications. It's really easy to forget the basic tasks. You're really concentrating on what's difficult, not on what's simple."
His company uses a technology similar to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The badge communicates with a sensor on every sanitizer and soap dispenser, and with a beacon behind the patient's bed. If the wearer's hands are not cleaned, the badge vibrates, like a cellphone, so that the health care worker is reminded but not humiliated in front of the patient.
Just waving one's hands under the dispenser is not enough. "We know if you took a swig of soap," Mr. Liang said.
The program uses a frequent-flier model to reward workers with incentives, sometimes cash bonuses, the more they wash their hands.
Gojo Industries, which manufactures the ubiquitous Purell, has also developed technology that can be snapped into any of its soap or sanitizer dispensers to track hand-hygiene.
At North Shore, the video monitoring program, run by a company called Arrowsight, has been adapted from the meat industry, where cameras track whether workers who skin animals — the hide can contaminate the meat — wash their hands, knives and electric cutters.
Adam Aronson, the chief executive of Arrowsight, said he was inspired to go from slaughterhouses to hospitals by his father, Dr. Mark Aronson, vice chairman for quality at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
"Nobody would do a free test — they talked about Big Brother, patient privacy — nobody wanted to touch it," Mr. Aronson said.
He finally got a trial at a small surgery center in Macon, Ga., and in 2008, North Shore also agreed to a trial in its intensive care unit. The medical center at the University of California, San Francisco, is also using Arrowsight's video system, and Mr. Aronson said eight more hospitals in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Pakistan had agreed to test the cameras.
North Shore's study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, found that during a 16-week preliminary period when workers were being filmed but were not informed of the results, hand-hygiene rates were less than 10 percent. When they started getting reports on their filmed behavior, through electronic scoreboards and e-mails, the rates rose to 88 percent. The hospital kept the system, but because of the expense, it has limited it to the intensive care unit, where the payoff is greatest because the patients are sickest.
To get a passing score, workers have to wash their hands within 10 seconds of entering a patient's room. Only workers who stay in the room for at least a minute are counted, and the quality of their washing is not rated. Scores for each shift are broadcast on hallway scoreboards, which read "Great Shift" for those that top 90 percent compliance.
Technology is not the only means of coercion. The Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group, and the health care workers union, 1199 S.E.I.U., train employees to be "infection coaches" for other employees.
In a technique borrowed from soccer, hospital workers hand red cards to colleagues who do not wash, said Dr. Brian Koll, chief of infection prevention for Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, who trains coaches. (Unlike soccer players, however, workers do not have to leave.) "It's a way to communicate in a nonconfrontational way that also builds teamwork," Dr. Koll said.
"You do not want to say, 'You did not wash your hands.' "
Doctors, nurses and others at Beth Israel who consistently refuse to wash their hands may be forced to take a four-hour remedial infection prevention course, Dr. Koll said. But to turn that into something positive, they are then asked to teach infection prevention to others.
Dr. Koll said that he was not aware of malpractice suits based on hand-washing, but that hand-washing compliance rates often become part of the information used when suing hospitals for infections.
A hospital in the Bronx gave out tickets — sort of like traffic tickets — to workers who did not wash their hands, he said. "That did not work in our institution," he said. "People made it a negative connotation." Beth Israel finds that positive reinforcement works better, Dr. Koll said.
Like other hospitals, Beth Israel also uses what it calls secret shoppers — staff members, often medical students, in white coats whose job is to observe whether people are washing their hands. Beth Israel gives high-scoring workers gold stars to wear on their lapels, "hokey as this sounds," he said; after five gold stars they get a platinum star, or perhaps a coupon for free coffee. "Health care workers like caffeine," Dr. Koll said.
There are buttons saying, "Ask me if I've washed my hands," and Dr. Koll said that patients' families did ask because they understood the risks. Especially in pediatrics, he said, "parents do not have a problem at all asking."
To avoid slogan fatigue, Beth Israel has at least five buttons, including "Got Gel?" and "Hand Hygiene First."
Dr. Larson, the hand-washing expert, supports the electronic systems being developed, but says none are perfect yet. "People learn to game the system," she said. "There was one system where the monitoring was waist high, and they learned to crawl under that. Or there are people who will swipe their badges and turn on the water, but not wash their hands. It's just amazing."
Source: The New York Times


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2011 Annual Report: Mimicking the pancreas
News at CIRM
Mimicking the pancreas
Chris Stiehl has already beaten the odds. Living with type 1 diabetes, Stiehl recently celebrated his 62nd birthday. To put that in perspective, when he was diagnosed he was only expected to live to 53. Stiehl is proud of this accomplishment, but it hasn't been easy. Though regular blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections keep him alive, they are no substitute for the 24/7 efficiency of beta cells in the pancreas that would normally give him insulin.
"I'm like a passenger on an ocean liner who falls overboard," says Stiehl. "I have a lifeline—insulin—but I'm still in the ocean. I'm still in danger."
The 3 million people in the U.S. with type 1 diabetes must maintain a delicate balance. For reasons we don't entirely understand, the body's immune system turns on itself, killing off pancreatic beta cells, which monitor blood sugar (glucose) and produce insulin when glucose is high. Insulin tells cells it's time to take in sugar, reducing the amount in the bloodstream. Too much blood sugar can damage nerves, kidneys and the cardiovascular system. Too little can cause coma or death.
Stiehl has to be his own pancreas, a fulltime job. He must constantly monitor his blood sugar, food intake, exercise, even his moods. If he's happy, grouchy, hungry, he must consider the part insulin could play. He checks his blood sugar ten or more times a day, titrating his response based on years of experience. Despite his diligence, he has lost toes, received a kidney transplant and experienced numerous health issues. He uses an insulin pump and twice a pump has failed, nearly killing him.
Insulin keeps Chris alive, but it's no picnic. Like millions of others suffering from diabetes, he wants a better option. He wants a cure.
Diabetes: Progress and Promise in Stem Cell Research
A Two-Part Problem
How do you cure type 1 diabetes? The simplistic solution would be to engineer cells to produce insulin. Unfortunately, it's not enough to produce insulin, you have to produce the right amounts at the right times. Beta cells constantly monitor the blood stream and produce insulin only when blood sugar levels are high.
Beta cell transplants would be ideal, but there are two problems. First, there needs to be a steady supply of cells to transplant. Then, once transplanted, these fragile cells must be protected from the immune system, which still mistakes them for non-self. Immunosuppressive drugs provide some protection, but the risks of inhibiting the immune system often outweigh the benefits. Any potential treatment has to address both issues.
Stem Cells to Beta Cells
CIRM has long recognized that embryonic stem cells would be an excellent source for transplantable beta cells, but the technical requirements have been daunting. Moving an embryonic stem cell through various stages of development to become a beta cell (or a heart cell or a neuron) is a painstaking process. Researchers must mimic the chemical signals found in the body to force the stem cell to gradually become more specialized, until after several steps it becomes a mature beta cell.
In 2008, Evert Kroon and colleagues at ViaCyte, Inc., (formerly Novocell), located on Torrey Pines Mesa in San Diego, succeeded in using stem cells to create progenitor cells, just shy of mature beta cells. These cells could mature in an animal and produce insulin in response to blood sugar. This was a huge step forward, as stem cells could provide a virtually unlimited source of beta cells.
"This was an amazing breakthrough," says Allan Robins, acting CEO at ViaCyte. "We were one of the first groups to take human embryonic stem cells, make pancreatic cells and show they function in animals."
However, technical difficulties remained. Moving progenitor cells to fully mature beta cells proved difficult. In addition, efforts to transplant donor beta cells had been problematic, as mature cells are fragile and don't always survive.
A few blocks away from ViaCyte, Pamela Itkin-Ansari, Ph.D., a researcher with joint appointments at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and UC San Diego School of Medicine, was looking for ways to safely transplant beta cells and overcome the immune response. Because type 1 diabetes often strikes children in grade school—Chris Stiehl was diagnosed at ten—she felt immunosuppression was not an option.
"We were never going to transplant young kids if they were going to be immunosuppressed for the rest of their lives," she says.
"I have a lifeline—insulin—but I'm still in the ocean. I'm still in danger."
Itkin-Ansari became intrigued by a pouch-like device made of polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE), a material akin to Gore-Tex, which is porous enough to allow glucose and insulin through, but fine enough to bar immune cells. The device had been around for a while, but had fallen out of favor because encapsulated beta cells often didn't survive transplantation.
Itkin-Ansari had an idea. What if you transplanted pancreatic progenitor cells, which are hardier than beta cells, inside the protective device and allowed them to mature in the body? Would they become fully functioning beta cells? Would the device thwart the immune system? In research funded in part by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), she set out to answer these questions.
"The results exceeded our expectations," says Itkin-Ansari. "Not only did the cells mature inside the device, but we found no evidence of an active immune response. The cells in the device were invisible to the immune system."
ViaCyte had been investigating the potential benefits of encapsulating insulin-producing cells in a PTFE device for some time. The company and Itkin-Ansari began a collaboration and successfully applied for a CIRM Tools and Technology grant to advance the technology.
A Team of Everyone
In 2009, CIRM continued their support with a $20 million Disease Team loan to ViaCyte, working with researchers at UC San Francisco and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. Groups that had been working separately on the same problem came together to move the research forward.
The loan has had an enormous impact on the research, allowing the team to advance through the so-called Valley of Death, the period between lab discovery and clinical trials where many promising treatments are tabled for lack of funding.
"CIRM has been absolutely instrumental in helping us get where we are," says Robins.
"This type of innovative therapy could revolutionize the way people live with type 1 diabetes."
Now on the last leg before clinical trials, ViaCyte has refined the technology to create an encapsulation device that can be implanted just under the skin. In addition to protecting beta cells from the immune system, it also keeps the transplanted cells sequestered from the body. This is a great advantage. If there is ever a problem, the cells can be easily removed.
With the encapsulation technology verified by labs around the world, the next step is scaling up production.
"Our normal manufacturing is on the order of billions of cells," says Robins. "Now we need to think about trillions of cells. We have shown proof of concept that we can do this in bioreactors. There will probably be some hurdles scaling up, but we won't have to invent anything new."
Based on the CIRM Disease Team's success, JDRF has stepped in to help fund the work as part of the organization's collaborative funding partnership with CIRM.
"This type of innovative therapy could revolutionize the way people live with type 1 diabetes," says Julia Greenstein, JDRF's assistant vice president for Cure therapies.
With academia, biotech, government and patient advocates all coming together to push this therapy forward, Robins anticipates clinical trials should begin sometime in 2013. Chris Stiehl knows there is still a long road to an approved treatment but remains confident.
"When I was first diagnosed, at ten, the doctor took me aside and told me how my life was going to be. He said, 'you're going to die before you're 50; you will be blind and you will be on dialysis before you die.' I have outlived that doctor and his predictions. I'm very excited about this research."


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The housing recovery remains on track. But high levels of student debt threaten to hang over the residential real estate market for many years, acting as a drag on both household formation and higher prices.
At the height of the housing boom, the U.S. was producing 1.4 million additional households every year. That figure plunged to 500,000 in the Great Recession. The number of new households is expanding again but remains stuck at 700,000—half the peak level. One big reason is underemployed new college graduates struggling with student debt and unable to contribute to the economy.
"Three-fourths of the fall in household formation can be directly correlated to student debt," Rohit Chopra, student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said at a conference last week. His comments were reported on Mainstreet.com.
Chopra said he was seeing signs of far-reaching economic drag due to student indebtedness but that "the impact on the housing market is the most troubling part." Many recent graduates don't have the disposable income or the credit score needed to buy a house, Chopra said. So they boomerang back home.
(MORE: Lenovo Is the Only Company With a Chance of Saving Blackberry)
Student loans now top $1 trillion, and 81% of the most burdened borrowers—those with more than $40,000 of student debt—have private loans with interest rates of 8% or higher, according to the CFPB. Unlike federal student loans, private loans not only cost more they offer less repayment flexibility and typically cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Almost all student debt is difficult, if not impossible, to refinance—sticking borrowers with high rates in a low-rate environment and adding to the economic drag.
In the ombudsman's annual report, released Wednesday, Chopra detailed the problems that borrowers have trying to pay down their private loans, and how a seemingly intentionally confusing system often holds borrowers hostage. In the end this takes a toll on their credit score—and on their ability to buy a home or anything else with borrowed money.
"Repaying a student loan should be simple," CFPB director Richard Cordray said in a statement. "When servicers process payments to maximize fees and penalties they undermine the trust of their customers. Student loan borrowers deserve better; they deserve transparency and accountability."
(MORE: S&P 500 Hits Record High After Debt Ceiling Deal)
In the report, Chopra drew ominous comparisons between student debt today and mortgage debt before the housing collapse:
Many of the private student loan complaints mirror the problems heard from consumers in the mortgage market following the wake of the financial crisis…Consumers had difficulty refinancing their mortgages or had problems obtaining a modification of mortgage terms. Improper payment processing sometimes led to improper foreclosure…The similarity between private student loan complaints and problems uncovered in the mortgage servicing industry suggests that many student loan servicers are not taking proactive steps to avoid a similar breakdown.
Little wonder that some have called student loans the next debt bubble. That may or may not be the case. But it seems clear that student debt, and the obstacles to managing it well at the borrower level, will be a drag on the housing recovery and the economy for years to come.


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The Great Smoky Mountains border North Carolina and the Blue Ridge peaks, of Tennessee. I hold these Appalachians dear to my heart. I will forever.
I get a little homesick imagining the cool crisp morning air, the smell of burning oak or pine, wafting through the air. I get homesick thinking of the log cabins, along the trails. Each cabin has a stone chimney, which belches wisps of smoke. I remember the scent of flapjacks cooking and coffee boiling over a wood fire, Mix these memories, with the sounds of the forest and the wildlife wakening, and it as good as heaven.
I have been most fortunate to meet many different people. Each touched me, adding seasoning to my life. None made a deeper impression on me than Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton (1946-2009). He's a storied mountain man, from Maggie Valley, North Carolina.
The mountain people and their way of life are rapidly disappearing. There are still mountain people deep in the bowels of Appalachia, but they don't make much contact, with the outside world. They are getting harder to find, every day.
Popcorn Sutton (above) and his Moonshine are different. Popcorn's been the topic of television documentaries and news coverage, for years. He's the mountain man of Maggie Valley: the one you can find.
A mountain man, in the lore, lives a simple life. Popcorn, for example, uses little modern technology, drives a model "A" Ford, with a still in the back. He lives in a one room shanty, with a wood-burning stove, for cooking and heat.
I laugh, heartily, when I see or hear some of the reports about Popcorn. I know the story of Popcorn Sutton. He's told me some of the stories himself. He's especially proud of his skill with the women and moonshine.
Tourists pay $3 to have their picture taken, with Popcorn. Often, a tourist buys a jug of his home-made Moonshine. They swallow all the stories told about him, too, but the stories don't come back up.
I must tell you, Popcorn Sutton is good as a marketer and self-promoter as I have ever seen. He could teach Madison Avenue a lesson or two. His autobiography, "Me and My Likker," is a testament to that fact. You can buy a copy, of his autobiography, when you stop to have your picture taken with Popcorn.
I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back up, a bit. Certain parts of Southeastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia, historically, are famous for people, events and places other than the beautiful and colourful fall foliage colours or breathtaking mountain views.
Race car drivers, Moonshine and mountain folks were the pop culture stars of mountain lifestyle, in movies and distance memories. I am glad I was able to sample that time before it faded away and became just a memory. Junior Johnson, the race car owner and driver was hauling moonshine liquor at the age of 14. He lived in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina (NC), when I lived a few miles, up the road, in Catawba County.
Wendell Scott was the first Black to race in NASCAR. He ran moonshine on the back roads of Pittsylvania County. When I went to military school, in Chatham, Virginia, during the late 1950s, Scott was our version of the Headless Horseman.
Not far from my military school is Climax, Virginia. Climax is home to the annual Moonshiners Jamboree. When Popcorn Sutton attends the Jamboree, he is the centre of attention. He's the centre of attention wherever he goes.
For those who don't know about moonshine, here's a brief primer. The word moonshine comes from a phrase, common, at one time, in the United Kingdom. Moonshining, of course, meant working at night, usually out-of-doors; working while the mood shines.
The early morning edition, of a newspaper, is the lobster edition, for much the same reason. Typesetters and printers worked through the night, in poor and stark light, to get the early edition published. When they stumbled, out of the press room, around dawn, their eyes were dry and bright red, from rubbing. Passers-by called them lobsters.
Makers, of illegal whisky, worked covertly and usually at night. They were moonshiners. Therefore the term for their product, moonshine.
J R Hafer tells of meeting Popcorn through his brother, Andy. One summer, Andy rented a house trailer from Popcorn. Sometimes, Andy and Popcorn, would sit on the porch drinking and talking. Andy introduced me to the old Moonshiner.
Popcorn Sutton is an artisan. There's no doubt about it, and he's known all over the USA for making of the finest Moonshine. Andy and I visited him a couple years ago. And (left; click for full size), Popcorn and I spent some time reminiscing. Andy and I decided to buy a jar to take home with us. When Andy drank some of it he turned red and said "Whoow" in a husky hoarse voice. I didn't have the courage. I'm older and wiser than my brother.
Popcorn has a volatile temper, too. He always carries a pistol and a couple wads of bills in his bib overalls. He showed us his .38 calibre pistol, so we knew not to pull anything rash. Then he pulled out a thick roll of bills from his overalls. Andy didn't have any money and of course I had to pay for Moonshine. Did I say I was the wiser sibling? Well, maybe no? I never did get my money back.
Popcorn has a scraggily, rat's nest beard. His thin stature gives him the look of an old mountain man. He's 61, according to police records.
Once, years ago, Popcorn was in a saloon, in Western North Carolina. He was telling his tall tales and downing rotgut. The saloon had a new popcorn machine. Sutton staggered over and put his money in the new contraption. The machine ate his money, but did not yield any popped corn. He lost his temper, pulled out his 38 calibre gun, and shot the machine. He had to pay for the damages, to the popcorn machine, and since then has been known as "Popcorn" Sutton.
Moonshine hauling race car drivers have given way to the slick young NASCAR drivers. Most mountain folk have moved to the city. Some bought a condominium in Florida.
Summers, tourists flood the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. State Tourism tells visitors to go to Cherokee, for see the Indian crafts Visit Grandfather Mountain and experience the famous swinging bridge. Linville has a gorge worth the side trip. Oh, yes, go to Maggie Valley and meet Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn is a tourist attraction as sure as is the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Popcorn Sutton is renown for custom-made stills and Moonshine. He lectures anyone about his stainless steel "stills" and his "top shelf" Moonshine. Expect your lecture any time, anywhere.
The recognized senior spokesperson for all the moonshiners in Western North Carolina, Popcorn Sutton is not shy when talking about his work and giving demonstrations of his working still in the bed of his model "T" pick-up truck.
Not long ago, while sitting in his model "T," waiting for a parade to start, Popcorn fired up his still and sold Moonshine, from the curb. Yep, did good business, on the street, in front of God and County. Popcorn is not a man to miss an opportunity.
As you travel, through Maggie Valley, on state highway 74, when you start up the mountain there is an old, oblong shed. It was once was a roadside market. The rusted tin roof sits atop unsound walls. Some boards, of the weather-worn walls, are falling away. The grass is long, growing around the old, rusted metal objects, which are lying around. There is an old two horse wagon, an abandoned car, discarded ploughs and rusted metal barrels filled with trash. There is an old wooden sign nailed to the side of the building that says, "Hav yur pitcher taken with a real moonshiner $5.00." The news media calls Popcorn Sutton's junky old building an "antique store." There are no antiques there and no store.
Popcorn told Andy and me, straight out, that he had to find a large tanker truck to fill an order of moonshine. A large tanker truck can haul 7 or 8 thousand gallons. Now, that's much hooch!
Every community has its characters and clowns. Some character are public facades, others are naturally weird. Popcorn Sutton is the "real deal." Being a mountain man carries a philosophy and a lifestyle as well as the public persona.
Popcorn's philosophy, to hear him tell it, is to make the best whiskey and live the life of a true mountain man; dedicated to that task puts it mildly. He's also dedicated to promoting himself, his book and his documentary film. Oh yes, he has made a good living at it, too.
The local law understands Popcorn Sutton. His ability to attract many tourists, who leave money, in town, to pay municipal bills is an unspoken blessing. When the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) comes calling, as in 1974, 1981 and 1985, it makes an example of old Popcorn. The ATF charge him with, you guessed it, moonshining. The ATF likes to visit around election time.
Popcorn Sutton is smarter than he looks and knows the old mountain saying "Even an animal don't (defecate) where he eats." People take for granted that Popcorn lives in Maggie Valley. Other than the fact he has a post office box and sells his goods in Maggie Valley, that's only an assumption. He lives 65 miles away, in one of the oldest towns in Tennessee.
Parrottsville, Jonesboro and Dandridge are the oldest towns in Tennessee. Popcorn lives in Parrottsville settled, in 1769, by John Parrott, who a tavern. Andrew Jackson supposedly stopped for a drink on his way to his inauguration.
Recently, the local volunteer fire department raced to 324 Upper Road, close to Parrottsville, The fire service responded to an anonymous caller, reporting a blaze in a building, on the property owned by Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton.
When the fire department responds, so does the sheriff's department. Popcorn arrived shortly after the police did. Someone said he was asking them, nicely, not to report what they found in the building.
For years, the Sheriff of Cocke County, which includes Parrottsville, turned a blind eye to many illegal acts. Any trucker, who passed Newport Tennessee on I-40, in the 1960s and 1970s, can tell you about blind justice. Brothels, lining both sides of the road, flourished, immune, it seems, from the law.
The criminal climate changed in Cocke County, in 2008. There's a continuing undercover investigation, by federal law enforcement. The brothels closed. An undercover agent bought 800 gallons of the clear liquid firewater. Seemingly harmless events are no longer ignored.
I think Jason Sandford, of the "Mountain Xpress News," summed up the circumstances best: "So the news of Popcorn's arrest brought with it a tinge of nostalgia and a bit of regret another mountain tradition is coming to an end. Perhaps no other enduring image the mountain moonshiner better embodies these traits: stubborn independence, dogged persistence and a little ingenuity."
Although Popcorn Sutton looks much older from a distance or a passing car, he's 61; not especially old these days. I've heard some talk that he was in his nineties. The rumours feed his myth, well. Where he will spend the balance of his life is now in question.
After the fire, search of the property owned by Marvin Popcorn Sutton turned up many interesting goods. Federal agents found three working stills, a 1000 gallon tank, 800 gallons of finished moonshine and a hundred gallons of corn mash. This was according to a news release by the U. S. Attorney's office. Popcorn Sutton faces possession of firearms charges, which is a violation of his probation for past felony convictions.
Sometime after the above item posted, I received an e-mail from a Grubstreet.ca reader who saw my story about "Popcorn" Sutton, a few years back. He wondered what happened to Sutton, at his court appearance in Knoxville, TN. "Did he have to go to prison or not?"
That e-mail got me thinking, perhaps, I left the readers in somewhat a state of limbo and assuming they had "gleaned" the information for themselves. That assumption may have not been a fair and accurate one. Therefore, the following is an attempt to rectify that oversight:
Nationally known moonshiner, Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, appeared in a documentary about making moonshine; that is, untaxed homemade corn liquor. The film aired on the History Channel and in other media, including magazines and public television, was a world-famous marketer of his way of life, more than his wares. He spent more than three decades building a reputation as one of the South's top makers of white lightning. He's starred in various documentaries about the tradition and penned an autobiography, "Me and My Likker," which is now a collector's item and very hard to get. "
Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton of Parrottsville, Tennessee, with his wife Pam Sutton at his side, waived indictment by a federal grand jury and admitted to charges of moonshining and possession of a gun. Then the news comes to me, by way of a phone call. Our incorrigible rascally moonshiner friend, whose entrenched ways endeared himself, not only to us, but to a devoted following, not just in Appalachia, but all over the USA, in documentaries and across the Internet, "Popcorn has taken his own life, rather than report to federal prison, where he was supposed to18-month sentence.
Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton died March 16, 2009, by his own hand. Just after Marvin died and before I learned he was dead, I received a letter from him telling me to send any book orders I received for his book, to make sure his wife filled the orders. He gave me Pam's address.
Since then, I have had threats from relatives and folks who would not have anything to do with him when he was alive. Popcorn had many buried secrets, but that is a whole other story.
JR Hafer writes from his home in central Florida.
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Board of Trustees
[email protected]
(231) 591-2505
TO: All Members of the University Community 2000:16
DATE: September 2000
Computer Software Policy
(Supersedes 92:06)
The purpose of this policy is to prevent the unauthorized and illegal use of computer software or the use of software in a manner that is designed to disrupt the effective use of any computer, computer system, network or software at Ferris State University.
It is the policy of Ferris State University, that all software used at or on behalf of the University be properly licensed. Any computer software program used in any computer owned or leased by Ferris State University shall be used only in accordance with the terms and conditions of the licensing agreement.
Ferris State University does not approve or condone the unauthorized copying of computer software programs for home or personal business use.
The creation, intentional distribution and/or infection of a computer with a virus or trojan horse is strictly prohibited.
A violation of this policy shall subject any employee or student of Ferris State University to disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal or expulsion. The person responsible may also be held liable for any criminal or civil penalty that might be imposed as a result of their action.
In support of this policy, site licenses for computer software programs shall be administered and managed by Information Services with support from the Network Coordinating Group, Purchasing, and General Counsel. Individual software program licenses should be maintained in the office of the consortium where the computer software program is used and shall be readily available for purposes of auditing and reference.
Richard Duffett, Vice President
Administration and Finance
Contact: Information Services & Telecommunications


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It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
When we've made our previous guide for dual mining BTC and LTC on a Gridseed 5-chip GC3355 ASIC we've only had an earlier revision of the miner that used CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller. Now that we already have a newer revision with the STMicroelectronics Virtual COM Port we have decided to update the guide with information on how to Dualmine on these ASIC devices. Note that we do not recommend using these devices for dual mining mode, but for Scrypt only mode instead, but you are free to decide for yourself. The advantages of using Scrypt only mode are the low power consumption and heat, the ability to overclock higher, including with a voltage modification and a choice of multiple more up to date software miners. Note that the only way for the moment to use the Dual Mining mode on the Gridseed 5-chip GC3355 ASIC devices is to use the special version of cgminer 3.8.5 for BTC mining (SHA-256) along with the special modified version of cpuminer for Gridseed for LTC mining. Due to the way that the Dual Mining mode is realized on these ASICs using a more recent version of cgminer or bfgminer for LTC (Scrypt) mining on these devices along with the cgminer for BTC mining is not possible at the moment.
– Open up Windows Device Manager and go to the Ports (COM & LPT) and note the COM port that is written behind the STMicroelectronics Virtual COM Port driver
– Download and run the latest version of Zadig
– From the Zadig interface select Options and choose List All Devices
– From the Dropdown list of devices select STM32 Virtual COM Port and click on Replace Driver with the WinUSB driver selected
– Download the dualmining package that we have prepared for windows that contains cgminer 3.8.5 for BTC mining and cpuminer for LTC mining
– Edit the BAT files for the two software miners included in the archive with your settings for BTC and LTC mining pools
– In the LTC-START.bat file you will see an option "gc3355=\\.\COM4", here you need to change the COM port number to the one you have seen in the device manager before updating the driver with Zadig to use WinUSB
– First you need to start cgminer 3.8.5 for BTC mining, wait a few seconds until the software starts up and connects to the pool and starts working
– Then start the cpuminer for LTC mining, note that you will need to wait for some more time here before the miner connects and starts working, but it it takes more than a minute maybe something is not right
If you still haven't used cpuminer for Gridseed you should know that the software does not report local hashrate, so the zeroes you see are normal, it is actually working and sending shares. Also note that when in Dual Mining mode you will not be able to overclock the device as high as when only in Scrypt mining mode, so it is normal to be getting lower hasrate. As we've already said, we do not recommend the Dual Mining mode and suggest to use these ASIC devices for Scrypt mining mode only, especially if you want to run multiple devices.
– Download the DualMining package for BTC/LTC mining on Gridseed 5-chip GC3355 ASIC for Windows…
In our article about our first impressions from the Gridseed 5-chip Scrypt Asic earlier this month we were not very happy with our initial experience from the device. It seems we've got one of the earlier builds that were not very well built and the software for using them was also at a very early stage. Today however things look much better, we just got a new unit that we have ordered and it is much better built and uses the STM32 Virtual COM port driver instead of the CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller that our previous unit had.
We have tested the new ASIC device and it works just fine with the STM32 drivers installed with the modified for low power usage cpuminer for Scrypt mining by giving the virtual COM port number of the device. The ASIC also worked just fine when we have replaced the STM32 vitual cOM Port driver with WinUSB using Zadig to use cgminer 3.7.2 for Scrypt mining on the ASIC. We still haven't tried using the new 5-chip Gridseed ASIC device to work in dual mining mode with TLC and BTC mining running at the same time as apparently the dual mining method that have already described for our older ASIC using the CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller is not working for devices with STM32 Virtual COM port drivers, so we'll be getting back with more details on that later on when we figure it out.
For the moment however we are much more satisfied with the newer revisions of the 5-chip Gridseed LTC/BTC ASIC devices, especially when we take into account the improvement of the software support side for them in the last few days.
The 5-chip Gridseed GC3355-based ASIC devices that support Dual Mining for Bitcoin and Litecoin are not that easy to be used in the Dual Mode, because you need to have two different software miners running at the same time. There is a bit of specifics in what and how you need to do in order to mine both BTC and LTC at the same time and after a bit of tinkering we have managed to finally make things work as they should under Windows. You need to download a special modified version of cpuminer for Scrypt (LTC) mining and a modified version of cgminer for SHA-256 (BTC) mining. We have compiled the two software miners and you will find the download links below. You will also need the Zadig software in order to replace the virtual USB to COM driver with WinUSB driver for the cgminer to detect and work with the BTC mining side of the ASICs.
– Download and run the latest version of Zadig
– From the Zadig interface select Options and choose List All Devices
– From the Dropdown list of devices select CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller and click on Replace Driver with the WinUSB driver selected
– If you have multiple 5-chip GC3355 DualMiner USB devices connected you may need to repeat the procedure for all of them
– Download, edit and run the BTC.bat file from the modified cgminer 3.8.5 for the Gridseed ASICs to start the miner working on BTC
– Download, edit and run LTC_ONLY.bat file from the modified cpuminer for Gridseed ASICs to start mining for LTC (check what your COM port is and edit it). You need to add the parameter "dual" (without the quotes and two dashes in front) to the command line in order for the Dual mode mining to start working
It seems that there are some ASIC devices that may be using different virtual USB to COM drivers other than the CP2102 that our unit has (for example ST32 Virtual COM Port), unfortunately we don't have any of those to test with. You can however try to make things work by replacing the other driver with WinUSB, just select the right name from the dropdown box (do not try to rename drivers, it is pointless) and Replace it with WinUSB (you may need to unplug and plug the USB cable to the miner after that). If after installing the WinUSB driver over the virtual USB to COM driver the ASIC does not work with cgminer, you just need to uninstall the driver from the Device Manager and unplug/plug the USB cable to the device for it to install the original USB to COM driver and it should be functioning again with cpuminer (note that this way you may have it running on a new COM port).
This is it, you should have the miner running both SHA-256 (BTC) and Scrypt (LTC) mining withe the two software miners and the total power consumption should be about 60W. Note that you may need to lower the operating frequencies a bit for when mining the Dual BTC/LTC mode as the chips get hotter. If you want to mine only BTC you can stick only with running the modified cgminer, for LTC only you need the modified cpuminer without the dual option in the command line. The most attractive aspect of the Gridseed 5-chip GC3355 ASIC however remains their very low power consumption for Scrypt mining only mode, so think again if you really wan to run them in the Dual Mining more or for BTC only and not in LTC only mining mode instead.