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TAGB Tae Kwon-Do
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Find a School
About Us
TAGB Shop
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TAGB History
The Tae Kwon-Do Association of Great Britain (TAGB)
The Tae Kwon-Do Association of Great Britain (TAGB) is a nationally recognised Tae Kwon-Do organisation.
It was formed in 1983 and has since become the founding member of the British Tae Kwon-Do Council (BTC) which is recognised by the United Kingdom Sports Council.
TAGB instructors are highly qualified, accredited individuals with many years' experience in teaching mixed classes which often include young children and disability groups.
Training in Tae Kwon-Do can start at any age.
TAGB members start as young as five and recently one of our members gained his fifth dan black belt on his 70th birthday!
Because of its high-kicking, fast-paced style Tae Kwon Do is a thoroughly modern way of getting fit.
The TAGB is a great advocate of fun and fitness at an early age and TAGB instructors often work with local schools to teach self-defence.
As the largest martial arts organisation in the world the TAGB has over 25,000 accredited members, 600 schools, and organises seminars with World Masters, demonstrations, and national, regional and international championships every month of the year.
The TAGB is not just concerned with its own development, this is why it has played a leading role in the reunification of British Tae Kwon-Do into one body. In 1988, the TAGB helped found the British Tae Kwon-Do Council (BTC), this being the only governing body of Tae Kwon-Do to be recognised by the Sports Council.
The TAGB also helped found Tae Kwon-Do International, the object of which is to bring together Tae Kwon-Do practioners throughout the World.
Tae Kwon-Do International is non-political and it doesn't ttempt to dictate to member countries how they must run their affairs.
Since its foundation in 1993, Tae Kwon-Do International has grown to become one of the biggest World Tae Kwon-Do bodies.
Its World Championships are amongst the largest and best organised and it draws its participation from every contingent.
Tae Kwon Do training is about learning to discipline your mind as well as your body and TAGB instructors always include elements in their teaching which help their students to develop mentally as well as physically.
With schools throughout the country the TAGB is the ideal organisation for learning a martial art that has evolved through a 3,000 year history to become the newest Olympic Sport.
National Tournaments
The Next TAGB Tournament is
The Scottish Championships
Click Here for Pack
TAGB Calendar
for the TAGB Live Calender


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The Diva asks us to tangle like no-one is watching, relax, no plans. I had actually just finished fife for our Facebook group Square One: Purely Zentangle, felt relaxed and with thoughts of just playing with more fife. The house was quiet so I could hear the magpies out in the garden and with spring sunshine beaming through my window fife grew and grew, blossomed and flourished.
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School is nothing like real life, but for younger people it is their reality. Small things seem to matter more, and bigger issues fade into oblivion as younger people fail to realise how important they are. For a student, it may appear that exams, coursework and term papers are all there is to life.School is nothing like real life, but for younger people it is their reality. Small things seem to matter more, and bigger issues fade into oblivion as younger people fail to realise how important they are. For a student, it may appear that exams, coursework and term papers are all there is to life.
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First of all, I only had one mug in my house that I thought I could bake in, and it was way too big for a cupcake, and I started off with the idea that I was going to make my own popcorn flour, but my food processor didn't grind it into a powdery flour like I had hoped. I still used the "flour" that I made, but I couldn't substitute all of the flour for the popcorn flour like I wanted to (to really incorporate the popcorn into the cupcake). Of course, I think cupcakes are best eaten warm - especially with this being a hot cocoa cupcake and all, but although I would love to eat warm cupcakes all the time that's not always the case. So, I decided to add my own "hot" to hot cocoa by adding a little chili powder. I searched several recipes and finally found one from Cupcake Villains Strike Again that I could adapt into my own Popcorn Hot Cocoa Cupcake or as I like to call them
"Hot" Popped Cocoa-cakes
The texture of these is so light and fluffy and they are so moist... when they were warm it was almost like eating a cup of hot cocoa! Then I added the frosting, and whipped cream so I had to refrigerate them. They were just as good, no, BETTER when I ate them straight from the fridge. I REALLY enjoyed these cupcakes and I will be making them again!
Here is the recipe I used.
Makes 12 cupcakes
1 C. granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 C. 2% milk
1/4 C. coconut milk
1/4 C. vegetable oil
1 t. vanilla extract
3/4 C. all purpose flour
1/3 C. popcorn flour
1/3 C + 1 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 C. hot cocoa, prepared, boiling (make a mug of your favorite hot cocoa, add some popcorn, enjoy, but save 1/2 cup for the recipe - straining out the popcorn kernels and boiling it before adding it to the batter)
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 standard cupcake pans with liners, or coat with non-stick cooking spray. In the large bowl, stir together the sugar, eggs, milk, coconut milk, oil and vanilla, until blended.
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, and chili powder, and gradually add to the sugar mixture, until the mixture begins to come together. Be sure to NOT over mix!
3. Very slowly, add the boiling hot cooa, and blend until the mixture is smooth. This batter is VERY runny, I was afraid it wasn't going to set up in the oven, but it did and yielded an AMAZING cupcake!
4. Ladle or scoop the batter into the cupcake tins, filling ¾ full. Bake the cupcakes for 15 to 18 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Filling: Marshmallow Fluff
Topping: A layer of Chocolate Truffle Frosting* to simulate the foam on top of a cup of cocoa, with a dollop of real whipped cream and chocolate-drizzled popcorn to top it off!
*Chocolate Truffle Frosting (this made JUST enough to frost 12 cupcakes)
1/2 C. coconut milk (or 1/2 C. whipping cream) - I just used leftover coconut milk from my cupcake recipe
1 C. milk chocolate chips.
Bring coconut milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Add Chocolate chips and remove from heat. Wait 5 minutes, then stir until well blended. Cover and chill overnight. Beat with an electric mixer for 30 seconds until fluffy and spreading consistency.
VOTE HERE!! (starting 1/21/11)
The winner of January's Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:
- Bake It Pretty; a $5 electronic gift card
- Beanilla; 3 Madagascar, 3 Mexican & 3 Indian vanilla beans
- ExoDesign; a wire whisk charm necklace
- Hello Hanna; a pack of Sweet Stands cupcake stands
- Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
- Simply Caked; 600 brown greaseproof cupcake liners
- Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25
- Tundra Books; a selection 3 very sweet children's books


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Subject: Natasha Noy and Peter Yim keynote speakers at SERES (ISWC), CfP -Semantic Repositories
Ontologies and Linked Data vocabularies are being actively developed and used by numerous applications. Several domains are making their vocabularies available for others to reuse. In addition, good practices when developing ontologies are often followed, particularly for producing reusable modules. The Semantic Web is a modular and highly federated environment of reusable knowledge sources; these provide the meaning so that SW applications change our experience of the web. Within this context, the need for repositories delivering the added value that makes the SW a concrete step beyond our current experience of the web is palpable. SERES addresses issues around semantic repositories within the context of the SW.
The number of ontologies being built and made available for reuse has increased steadily in the last few years. Semantic Web search engines such as Swoogle and Watson currently index several tens of thousands of them; there are also systems specifically designed to support the publication of ontologies, e.g. Cupboard, NCBO Bioportal, and ONKI. Some tools also support editing features, e.g. Neologism, Knoodl. While being a foundation for the Semantic Web, this new environment where ontologies are shared and interlinked online also poses new challenges; fostering thus a number of research projects aiming to understand, amongst others, ontology reuse, storage, publication, versioning, quality control, evaluation, retrieval and modularization. For instance, as part of the EU NeOn project new tools supporting Knowledge Engineering in the age of "networked ontologies" have been developed, while in the EU OASIS project approaches from software engineering and formalization are now also being applied to inter-connect ontologies. Moreover, despite initial efforts, ontology repositories are hardly interoperable amongst themselves. Although sharing similar aims (providing easy access to Semantic Web resources), they diverge in the methods and techniques employed for gathering these documents and making them available; each interprets and uses metadata in a different manner. Furthermore, many features are still poorly supported; for instance, modularization, versioning, and the relationship between ontology repositories and ontology engineering environments (editors) to support the entire ontology lifecycle.
By the same token, there are several domains making available knowledge resources; for instance, digital libraries such as Pubmed Central offer a large collection of biomedical abstracts and, in some cases, open access to the full document. Some researchers are starting to bridge the gap between clinical and experimental data and literature; such connection is being built via ontologies, some approaches have had BioPortal as their ontology repository. Linked Data is also being explored as a means for publishers to expose their content. Knowledge management over documents is actively aiming to make real the notion of self-descriptiveness; being this intrinsically related to various resources over the web providing meaning for atomic component in documents –words, tables, figures, maps, etc. In order for these systems to be successful, it is necessary to provide a forum for researchers and developers to discuss features and exchange ideas on the realization of repositories providing semantics. In addition, it is now critical to achieve interoperability between these repositories, through common interfaces, standard metadata formats, etc. SERES10 intends to provide such a forum.
Questions addressed by SERES10:
· How can semantic repositories support the realization of the SW?
· Semantic repositories, ontology repositories, knowledge repositories, where are the boundaries? How are they interacting? Are they changing our experience of the web?
· How are domain specific knowledge repositories, such as biomedical digital libraries, interconnecting knowledge in meaningful manners?
· How are e-government initiatives using and delivering semantics and knowledge repositories?
· How can ontology repositories support novel semantic applications?
· How can ontology repositories encourage the development of high quality ontologies that are used routinely by relevant communities?
· How can ontology repositories provide semantics for applications?
· How can ontology repositories contribute to the reuse of ontologies across different domains and applications?
· How can ontology repositories interoperate with one another to support scalability, availability and distributed reasoning?
· How can provenance and intellectual property information be managed in and across ontology repositories?
· How can the abundant and complex knowledge contained in relevant ontology repositories be made comprehensible for users?
· How can branching, versioning, mappings, dependencies and configurations/compositions be managed in and across ontology repositories?
· How can ontology repositories interoperate with related applications such as ontology editors, automated reasoners, and rule engines?
· How can modularity be better supported in and across ontology repositories; similarly, how could modularization be formalized?
· How can ontology repositories support distributed reasoning?
· How can ontology repositories support corporate, national and domain specific metadata/semantic infrastructures?
· What measurements for describing and comparing ontologies can we use? How could ontology repositories use these?
Workshop Audience
We want to bring together researchers and practitioners active in the design, development and application of semantic web technology, semantic registries and repositories, knowledge management systems, knowledge repositories, repository editors, modularization techniques, versioning systems and issues around federated ontology systems. As some repository-related tools are already under development, and repositories are a crucial part of business infrastructure, we also address progressive Chief Technology Officers interested in using these technologies.
Program Committee
Natasha Noy, Stanford University, USA.
Li Ding, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA.
John Bateman, Universität Bremen, Germany.
Michael Kohlhase, Jacobs University, Germany.
Raul Palma, Poznan University, Poland.
Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain.
Fabian Neuhaus, University of Maryland, USA.
Aleman-Bonarges Meza, Universidad Politecnica de Victoria, Mexico
Christoph Lange, Jacobs University, Germany.
Sandro Hawke, W3C.
Christopher Baker, University of New Brunswick, Canada.
Nigam Shah, Stanford University, USA.
Peter Haase, Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods, Germany.
Michael Gruninger, University of Toronto, Canada
Leyla Garcia, Bundeswehr University, Germany.
Benjamin Good, USA
Matthew Horridge, University of Manchester, UK
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August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his "War on Poverty" program in 1964.
Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those who had fallen by the wayside, and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions.
The War on Poverty represented the crowning triumph of the liberal vision of society — and of government programs as the solution to social problems. The disastrous consequences that followed have made the word "liberal" so much of a political liability that today even candidates with long left-wing track records have evaded or denied that designation.
In the liberal vision, slums bred crime. But brand-new government housing projects almost immediately became new centers of crime and quickly degenerated into new slums. Many of these projects later had to be demolished. Unfortunately, the assumptions behind those projects were not demolished, but live on in other disastrous programs, such as Section 8 housing.
Rates of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease had been going down for years before the new 1960s attitudes toward sex spread rapidly through the schools, helped by War on Poverty money. These downward trends suddenly reversed and skyrocketed.
The murder rate had also been going down, for decades, and in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934. Then the new 1960s policies toward curing the "root causes" of crime and creating new "rights" for criminals began. Rates of violent crime, including murder, skyrocketed.
The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.
Government social programs such as the War on Poverty were considered a way to reduce urban riots. Such programs increased sharply during the 1960s. So did urban riots. Later, during the Reagan administration, which was denounced for not promoting social programs, there were far fewer urban riots.
Neither the media nor most of our educational institutions question the assumptions behind the War on Poverty. Even conservatives often attribute much of the progress that has been made by lower-income people to these programs.
For example, the usually insightful quarterly magazine City Journal says in its current issue: "Beginning in the mid-sixties, the condition of most black Americans improved markedly."
That is completely false and misleading.
The economic rise of blacks began decades earlier, before any of the legislation and policies that are credited with producing that rise. The continuation of the rise of blacks out of poverty did not — repeat, did not — accelerate during the 1960s.
The poverty rate among black families fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty.
In various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled between 1936 and 1959 — that is, before the magic 1960s decade when supposedly all progress began. The rise of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations was greater in the five years preceding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years afterwards.
While some good things did come out of the 1960s, as out of many other decades, so did major social disasters that continue to plague us today. Many of those disasters began quite clearly during the 1960s.
But what are mere facts compared to a heady vision? Liberal assumptions — "two Americas," for example — are being recycled this election year, even by candidates who evade the "liberal" label.


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Graphic by Christina. Isn't it gorgeous? |
In classic middle-grade book style, the bratty kids all get their comeuppance. This, by the way, is a good thing, because you will hate those annoying brats so damn much. Roald Dahl masterfully builds up your hatred for them and makes you cheer when they meet their deserved end — or do they?
One of my favourite things about Roald Dahl is that the villain's fate is grisly or at least quite horrifying. Here, all the other four kids are just that: kids (if rather whiny). And yet they're 1) sucked into the pipes, 2) turned into a giant blueberry, 3) thrown into more pipes by squirrels, and 4) shrunk down to a tiny size. It's this chilling, disproportionate retribution that really defines Roald Dahl. And it's why to this day, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory still has a special place in my mind.
I know. I'm wacko.
The movie adaptation
Bonus: Lamb to the Slaughter
All right, that's enough from me! What was your favourite part of Chocolate Factory? Did you like the Tim Burton adaptation? And have you read any of Roald Dahl's shorts? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to check out everyone else's #litlove posts:
Topaz Winters: Danny the Champion of the World
AnQi Yu: The Witches
Christina Im: Matilda
Taylor Lynn: The BFG
Love Roald Dahl? Click below to tweet about this post:


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Stay with us for the weekend!
Have a comfortable and amazing weekend while staying in the heart of the city close to all attractions & explore Beirut's touristic destinations, shopping malls & entertainment centers.
This package includes:
Enjoy at a starting rate of US $145 per night!
The above offer is subject to 11% VAT and is valid from Thursday till Sunday and bookable for a minimum on 2 nights. Rotana Rewards members will earn Points when booking the Rotana Escapes packages but discounts that are part of the packages components will not be applicable. Offer is valid until the 31st of December 2018.


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Hack bằng đường phần cứng.
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies
The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America's technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.
In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental's national security contracts weren't the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon's government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA.
To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental's security, according to one person familiar with the process. The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS to take a closer look at Elemental's main product: the expensive servers that customers installed in their networks to handle the video compression. These servers were assembled for Elemental by Super Micro Computer Inc., a San Jose-based company (commonly known as Supermicro) that's also one of the world's biggest suppliers of server motherboards, the fiberglass-mounted clusters of chips and capacitors that act as the neurons of data centers large and small. In late spring of 2015, Elemental's staff boxed up several servers and sent them to Ontario, Canada, for the third-party security company to test, the person says.
Nested on the servers' motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn't part of the boards' original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental's servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.
There are two ways for spies to alter the guts of computer equipment. One, known as interdiction, consists of manipulating devices as they're in transit from manufacturer to customer. This approach is favored by U.S. spy agencies, according to documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The other method involves seeding changes from the very beginning.
One country in particular has an advantage executing this kind of attack: China, which by some estimates makes 75 percent of the world's mobile phones and 90 percent of its PCs. Still, to actually accomplish a seeding attack would mean developing a deep understanding of a product's design, manipulating components at the factory, and ensuring that the doctored devices made it through the global logistics chain to the desired location—a feat akin to throwing a stick in the Yangtze River upstream from Shanghai and ensuring that it washes ashore in Seattle. "Having a well-done, nation-state-level hardware implant surface would be like witnessing a unicorn jumping over a rainbow," says Joe Grand, a hardware hacker and the founder of Grand Idea Studio Inc."Hardware is just so far off the radar, it's almost treated like black magic."
But that's just what U.S. investigators found: The chips had been inserted during the manufacturing process, two officials say, by operatives from a unit of the People's Liberation Army. In Supermicro, China's spies appear to have found a perfect conduit for what U.S. officials now describe as the most significant supply chain attack known to have been carried out against American companies.
One official says investigators found that it eventually affected almost 30 companies, including a major bank, government contractors, and the world's most valuable company, Apple Inc.Apple was an important Supermicro customer and had planned to order more than 30,000 of its servers in two years for a new global network of data centers. Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons.
In emailed statements, Amazon (which announced its acquisition of Elemental in September 2015), Apple, and Supermicro disputed summaries of Bloomberg Businessweek's reporting. "It's untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise, an issue with malicious chips, or hardware modifications when acquiring Elemental," Amazon wrote. "On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, 'hardware manipulations' or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server," Apple wrote. "We remain unaware of any such investigation," wrote a spokesman for Supermicro, Perry Hayes. The Chinese government didn't directly address questions about manipulation of Supermicro servers, issuing a statement that read, in part, "Supply chain safety in cyberspace is an issue of common concern, and China is also a victim." The FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, representing the CIA and NSA, declined to comment.
Read: Statements from Amazon, Apple, Supermicro and Beijing
The companies' denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government's investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon's cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro's hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information.
One government official says China's goal was long-term access to high-value corporate secrets and sensitive government networks. No consumer data is known to have been stolen.
The ramifications of the attack continue to play out. The Trump administration has made computer and networking hardware, including motherboards, a focus of its latest round of trade sanctions against China, and White House officials have made it clear they think companies will begin shifting their supply chains to other countries as a result. Such a shift might assuage officials who have been warning for years about the security of the supply chain—even though they've never disclosed a major reason for their concerns.
Back in 2006, three engineers in Oregon had a clever idea. Demand for mobile video was about to explode, and they predicted that broadcasters would be desperate to transform programs designed to fit TV screens into the various formats needed for viewing on smartphones, laptops, and other devices. To meet the anticipated demand, the engineers started Elemental Technologies, assembling what one former adviser to the company calls a genius team to write code that would adapt the superfast graphics chips being produced for high-end video-gaming machines. The resulting software dramatically reduced the time it took to process large video files. Elemental then loaded the software onto custom-built servers emblazoned with its leprechaun-green logos.
Elemental servers sold for as much as $100,000 each, at profit margins of as high as 70 percent, according to a former adviser to the company. Two of Elemental's biggest early clients were the Mormon church, which used the technology to beam sermons to congregations around the world, and the adult film industry, which did not.
Elemental also started working with American spy agencies. In 2009 the company announced a development partnership with In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA's investment arm, a deal that paved the way for Elemental servers to be used in national security missions across the U.S. government. Public documents, including the company's own promotional materials, show that the servers have been used inside Department of Defense data centers to process drone and surveillance-camera footage, on Navy warships to transmit feeds of airborne missions, and inside government buildings to enable secure videoconferencing. NASA, both houses of Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security have also been customers. This portfolio made Elemental a target for foreign adversaries.
Supermicro had been an obvious choice to build Elemental's servers. Headquartered north of San Jose's airport, up a smoggy stretch of Interstate 880, the company was founded by Charles Liang, a Taiwanese engineer who attended graduate school in Texas and then moved west to start Supermicro with his wife in 1993. Silicon Valley was then embracing outsourcing, forging a pathway from Taiwanese, and later Chinese, factories to American consumers, and Liang added a comforting advantage: Supermicro's motherboards would be engineered mostly in San Jose, close to the company's biggest clients, even if the products were manufactured overseas.
Today, Supermicro sells more server motherboards than almost anyone else. It also dominates the $1 billion market for boards used in special-purpose computers, from MRI machines to weapons systems. Its motherboards can be found in made-to-order server setups at banks, hedge funds, cloud computing providers, and web-hosting services, among other places. Supermicro has assembly facilities in California, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, but its motherboards—its core product—are nearly all manufactured by contractors in China.
The company's pitch to customers hinges on unmatched customization, made possible by hundreds of full-time engineers and a catalog encompassing more than 600 designs. The majority of its workforce in San Jose is Taiwanese or Chinese, and Mandarin is the preferred language, with hanzi filling the whiteboards, according to six former employees. Chinese pastries are delivered every week, and many routine calls are done twice, once for English-only workers and again in Mandarin. The latter are more productive, according to people who've been on both. These overseas ties, especially the widespread use of Mandarin, would have made it easier for China to gain an understanding of Supermicro's operations and potentially to infiltrate the company. (A U.S. official says the government's probe is still examining whether spies were planted inside Supermicro or other American companies to aid the attack.)
With more than 900 customers in 100 countries by 2015, Supermicro offered inroads to a bountiful collection of sensitive targets. "Think of Supermicro as the Microsoft of the hardware world," says a former U.S. intelligence official who's studied Supermicro and its business model. "Attacking Supermicro motherboards is like attacking Windows. It's like attacking the whole world."
Well before evidence of the attack surfaced inside the networks of U.S. companies, American intelligence sources were reporting that China's spies had plans to introduce malicious microchips into the supply chain. The sources weren't specific, according to a person familiar with the information they provided, and millions of motherboards are shipped into the U.S. annually. But in the first half of 2014, a different person briefed on high-level discussions says, intelligence officials went to the White House with something more concrete: China's military was preparing to insert the chips into Supermicro motherboards bound for U.S. companies.
The specificity of the information was remarkable, but so were the challenges it posed. Issuing a broad warning to Supermicro's customers could have crippled the company, a major American hardware maker, and it wasn't clear from the intelligence whom the operation was targeting or what its ultimate aims were. Plus, without confirmation that anyone had been attacked, the FBI was limited in how it could respond. The White House requested periodic updates as information came in, the person familiar with the discussions says.
Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline. Two of the senior Apple insiders say the company reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally. Government investigators were still chasing clues on their own when Amazon made its discovery and gave them access to sabotaged hardware, according to one U.S. official. This created an invaluable opportunity for intelligence agencies and the FBI—by then running a full investigation led by its cyber- and counterintelligence teams—to see what the chips looked like and how they worked.
The chips on Elemental servers were designed to be as inconspicuous as possible, according to one person who saw a detailed report prepared for Amazon by its third-party security contractor, as well as a second person who saw digital photos and X-ray images of the chips incorporated into a later report prepared by Amazon's security team. Gray or off-white in color, they looked more like signal conditioning couplers, another common motherboard component, than microchips, and so they were unlikely to be detectable without specialized equipment. Depending on the board model, the chips varied slightly in size, suggesting that the attackers had supplied different factories with different batches.
Officials familiar with the investigation say the primary role of implants such as these is to open doors that other attackers can go through. "Hardware attacks are about access," as one former senior official puts it. In simplified terms, the implants on Supermicro hardware manipulated the core operating instructions that tell the server what to do as data move across a motherboard, two people familiar with the chips' operation say. This happened at a crucial moment, as small bits of the operating system were being stored in the board's temporary memory en route to the server's central processor, the CPU. The implant was placed on the board in a way that allowed it to effectively edit this information queue, injecting its own code or altering the order of the instructions the CPU was meant to follow. Deviously small changes could create disastrous effects.
Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device's operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.
This system could let the attackers alter how the device functioned, line by line, however they wanted, leaving no one the wiser. To understand the power that would give them, take this hypothetical example: Somewhere in the Linux operating system, which runs in many servers, is code that authorizes a user by verifying a typed password against a stored encrypted one. An implanted chip can alter part of that code so the server won't check for a password—and presto! A secure machine is open to any and all users. A chip can also steal encryption keys for secure communications, block security updates that would neutralize the attack, and open up new pathways to the internet. Should some anomaly be noticed, it would likely be cast as an unexplained oddity. "The hardware opens whatever door it wants," says Joe FitzPatrick, founder of Hardware Security Resources LLC, a company that trains cybersecurity professionals in hardware hacking techniques.
U.S. officials had caught China experimenting with hardware tampering before, but they'd never seen anything of this scale and ambition. The security of the global technology supply chain had been compromised, even if consumers and most companies didn't know it yet. What remained for investigators to learn was how the attackers had so thoroughly infiltrated Supermicro's production process—and how many doors they'd opened into American targets.
Unlike software-based hacks, hardware manipulation creates a real-world trail. Components leave a wake of shipping manifests and invoices. Boards have serial numbers that trace to specific factories. To track the corrupted chips to their source, U.S. intelligence agencies began following Supermicro's serpentine supply chain in reverse, a person briefed on evidence gathered during the probe says.
As recently as 2016, according to DigiTimes, a news site specializing in supply chain research, Supermicro had three primary manufacturers constructing its motherboards, two headquartered in Taiwan and one in Shanghai. When such suppliers are choked with big orders, they sometimes parcel out work to subcontractors. In order to get further down the trail, U.S. spy agencies drew on the prodigious tools at their disposal. They sifted through communications intercepts, tapped informants in Taiwan and China, even tracked key individuals through their phones, according to the person briefed on evidence gathered during the probe. Eventually, that person says, they traced the malicious chips to four subcontracting factories that had been building Supermicro motherboards for at least two years.
As the agents monitored interactions among Chinese officials, motherboard manufacturers, and middlemen, they glimpsed how the seeding process worked. In some cases, plant managers were approached by people who claimed to represent Supermicro or who held positions suggesting a connection to the government. The middlemen would request changes to the motherboards' original designs, initially offering bribes in conjunction with their unusual requests. If that didn't work, they threatened factory managers with inspections that could shut down their plants. Once arrangements were in place, the middlemen would organize delivery of the chips to the factories.
The investigators concluded that this intricate scheme was the work of a People's Liberation Army unit specializing in hardware attacks, according to two people briefed on its activities. The existence of this group has never been revealed before, but one official says, "We've been tracking these guys for longer than we'd like to admit." The unit is believed to focus on high-priority targets, including advanced commercial technology and the computers of rival militaries. In past attacks, it targeted the designs for high-performance computer chips and computing systems of large U.S. internet providers.
Provided details of Businessweek's reporting, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a statement that said "China is a resolute defender of cybersecurity." The ministry added that in 2011, China proposed international guarantees on hardware security along with other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security body. The statement concluded, "We hope parties make less gratuitous accusations and suspicions but conduct more constructive talk and collaboration so that we can work together in building a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative and orderly cyberspace."
The Supermicro attack was on another order entirely from earlier episodes attributed to the PLA. It threatened to have reached a dizzying array of end users, with some vital ones in the mix. Apple, for its part, has used Supermicro hardware in its data centers sporadically for years, but the relationship intensified after 2013, when Apple acquired a startup called Topsy Labs, which created superfast technology for indexing and searching vast troves of internet content. By 2014, the startup was put to work building small data centers in or near major global cities. This project, known internally as Ledbelly, was designed to make the search function for Apple's voice assistant, Siri, faster, according to the three senior Apple insiders.
Documents seen by Businessweek show that in 2014, Apple planned to order more than 6,000 Supermicro servers for installation in 17 locations, including Amsterdam, Chicago, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose, Singapore, and Tokyo, plus 4,000 servers for its existing North Carolina and Oregon data centers. Those orders were supposed to double, to 20,000, by 2015. Ledbelly made Apple an important Supermicro customer at the exact same time the PLA was found to be manipulating the vendor's hardware.
Project delays and early performance problems meant that around 7,000 Supermicro servers were humming in Apple's network by the time the company's security team found the added chips. Because Apple didn't, according to a U.S. official, provide government investigators with access to its facilities or the tampered hardware, the extent of the attack there remained outside their view.
American investigators eventually figured out who else had been hit. Since the implanted chips were designed to ping anonymous computers on the internet for further instructions, operatives could hack those computers to identify others who'd been affected. Although the investigators couldn't be sure they'd found every victim, a person familiar with the U.S. probe says they ultimately concluded that the number was almost 30 companies.
That left the question of whom to notify and how. U.S. officials had been warning for years that hardware made by two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei Corp. and ZTE Corp., was subject to Chinese government manipulation. (Both Huawei and ZTE have said no such tampering has occurred.) But a similar public alert regarding a U.S. company was out of the question. Instead, officials reached out to a small number of important Supermicro customers. One executive of a large web-hosting company says the message he took away from the exchange was clear: Supermicro's hardware couldn't be trusted. "That's been the nudge to everyone—get that crap out," the person says.
Amazon, for its part, began acquisition talks with an Elemental competitor, but according to one person familiar with Amazon's deliberations, it reversed course in the summer of 2015 after learning that Elemental's board was nearing a deal with another buyer. Amazon announced its acquisition of Elemental in September 2015, in a transaction whose value one person familiar with the deal places at $350 million. Multiple sources say that Amazon intended to move Elemental's software to AWS's cloud, whose chips, motherboards, and servers are typically designed in-house and built by factories that Amazon contracts from directly.
A notable exception was AWS's data centers inside China, which were filled with Supermicro-built servers, according to two people with knowledge of AWS's operations there. Mindful of the Elemental findings, Amazon's security team conducted its own investigation into AWS's Beijing facilities and found altered motherboards there as well, including more sophisticated designs than they'd previously encountered. In one case, the malicious chips were thin enough that they'd been embedded between the layers of fiberglass onto which the other components were attached, according to one person who saw pictures of the chips. That generation of chips was smaller than a sharpened pencil tip, the person says. (Amazon denies that AWS knew of servers found in China containing malicious chips.)
China has long been known to monitor banks, manufacturers, and ordinary citizens on its own soil, and the main customers of AWS's China cloud were domestic companies or foreign entities with operations there. Still, the fact that the country appeared to be conducting those operations inside Amazon's cloud presented the company with a Gordian knot. Its security team determined that it would be difficult to quietly remove the equipment and that, even if they could devise a way, doing so would alert the attackers that the chips had been found, according to a person familiar with the company's probe. Instead, the team developed a method of monitoring the chips. In the ensuing months, they detected brief check-in communications between the attackers and the sabotaged servers but didn't see any attempts to remove data. That likely meant either that the attackers were saving the chips for a later operation or that they'd infiltrated other parts of the network before the monitoring began. Neither possibility was reassuring.
When in 2016 the Chinese government was about to pass a new cybersecurity law—seen by many outside the country as a pretext to give authorities wider access to sensitive data—Amazon decided to act, the person familiar with the company's probe says. In August it transferred operational control of its Beijing data center to its local partner, Beijing Sinnet, a move the companies said was needed to comply with the incoming law. The following November, Amazon sold the entire infrastructure to Beijing Sinnet for about $300 million. The person familiar with Amazon's probe casts the sale as a choice to "hack off the diseased limb."
As for Apple, one of the three senior insiders says that in the summer of 2015, a few weeks after it identified the malicious chips, the company started removing all Supermicro servers from its data centers, a process Apple referred to internally as "going to zero." Every Supermicro server, all 7,000 or so, was replaced in a matter of weeks, the senior insider says. (Apple denies that any servers were removed.) In 2016, Apple informed Supermicro that it was severing their relationship entirely—a decision a spokesman for Apple ascribed in response to Businessweek's questions to an unrelated and relatively minor security incident.
That August, Supermicro's CEO, Liang, revealed that the company had lost two major customers. Although he didn't name them, one was later identified in news reports as Apple. He blamed competition, but his explanation was vague. "When customers asked for lower price, our people did not respond quickly enough," he said on a conference call with analysts. Hayes, the Supermicro spokesman, says the company has never been notified of the existence of malicious chips on its motherboards by either customers or U.S. law enforcement.
Concurrent with the illicit chips' discovery in 2015 and the unfolding investigation, Supermicro has been plagued by an accounting problem, which the company characterizes as an issue related to the timing of certain revenue recognition. After missing two deadlines to file quarterly and annual reports required by regulators, Supermicro was delisted from the Nasdaq on Aug. 23 of this year. It marked an extraordinary stumble for a company whose annual revenue had risen sharply in the previous four years, from a reported $1.5 billion in 2014 to a projected $3.2 billion this year.
One Friday in late September 2015, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared together at the White House for an hourlong press conference headlined by a landmark deal on cybersecurity. After months of negotiations, the U.S. had extracted from China a grand promise: It would no longer support the theft by hackers of U.S. intellectual property to benefit Chinese companies. Left out of those pronouncements, according to a person familiar with discussions among senior officials across the U.S. government, was the White House's deep concern that China was willing to offer this concession because it was already developing far more advanced and surreptitious forms of hacking founded on its near monopoly of the technology supply chain.
In the weeks after the agreement was announced, the U.S. government quietly raised the alarm with several dozen tech executives and investors at a small, invite-only meeting in McLean, Va., organized by the Pentagon. According to someone who was present, Defense Department officials briefed the technologists on a recent attack and asked them to think about creating commercial products that could detect hardware implants. Attendees weren't told the name of the hardware maker involved, but it was clear to at least some in the room that it was Supermicro, the person says.
The problem under discussion wasn't just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America's largest technology companies. Early on, Apple, for instance, made many of its most sophisticated electronics domestically. Then in 1992, it closed a state-of-the-art plant for motherboard and computer assembly in Fremont, Calif., and sent much of that work overseas.
Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. "You end up with a classic Satan's bargain," one former U.S. official says. "You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it's secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition."
In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro's motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge. Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. "This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution," one of the people present in McLean says. "You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet."
Bloomberg LP has been a Supermicro customer. According to a Bloomberg LP spokesperson, the company has found no evidence to suggest that it has been affected by the hardware issues raised in the article.


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More actions
The iPhone 4S (later stylised as iPhone 4s) was introduced by Tim Cook at Apple's 'Let's talk iPhone' event on 4 October 2011iPhone 4 (iPhone3,3) (CDMA model). Compared to the iPhone 4 (iPhone3,3), the iPhone 4S contains an updated GOBI GSM/CDMA chip, a SIM slot, and a similar (but redesigned) antenna. It uses the board configuration N94AP and the name used in firmware is iPhone4,1. On 10 July 2013 , Apple started to sell only an 8GB, listed as 4s.
. It is very similar to theApplication Processor
The iPhone 4S makes use of the Apple A5 CPU (clocked at 800 MHz) which can also be found in the iPad 2.
Baseband Device
Latest compatible iOS Version
iOS 9.3.6 (13G37) is the latest version supported on iPhone 4S. iOS 10 and later is not supported.
The iPhone 4S has hardware support for both GPS and GLONASS signals for location determination included with the Qualcomm MDM6610. Apple's online advertising material for the 4S mentions GLONASS support, but as of 20 October 2011 , no further details about this support have been publicly revealed.
- Display: 3.5" 960x640 LED-backlit IPS display at 326 ppi (Retina Display)
- Size: 4.5 inches (115.2 mm) (height), 2.31 inches (58.6 mm) (width), 0.37 inches (9.3 mm) (depth)
- Color: Black or White
- Battery: Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G, Standby time: Up to 200 hours, Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G, up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi, Video playback: Up to 10 hours, Audio playback: Up to 40 hours
- Weight: 140 g (4.9 oz)
- Voice Assistant: Siri
- Rear camera: 8MP with Autofocus and manual focus (Tap to focus), supporting HD 1080p video recording at 30 FPS
- Front camera: VGA photos and 720p videos at 30 FPS, FaceTime Video Calls supported
- SIM Card: Micro-SIM
- Connector: 30-pin


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[2b2k] Sharing the credit when knowledge gets big
The Wall Street Journal has run an article by Robert Lee Hotz that gently ridicules scientists for including thousands of people as co-authors of some scientific publications. Sure, a list of 2,000 co-authors is risible. But the article misses some of the reasons why it's not.
As Robert Lee points out, "experiments have gotten more complicated." But not just by a little. How many people did it take to find the Higgs Boson particle? In fact, as Michael Nielsen (author of the excellent Reinventing Discovery) says, how many people does it take to know that it's been found? That knowledge depends on deep knowledge in multiple fields, spread across many institutions and countries.
In 2012 I liveblogged a fantastic talk by Peter Galison on this topic. He pointed to an additional reason: it used to be that engineers were looked upon as mere technicians, an attitude mirrored in The Big Bang (the comedy show, not the creation of the universe—so easy to get those two confused!). Over time, the role of engineers has been increasingly appreciated. They are now often listed as co-authors.
In an age in which knowledge quite visibly is too big to be known by individuals, sharing credit widely more accurate reflects its structure.
In fact, it becomes an interesting challenge to figure out how to structure metadata about co-authors so that it captures more than name and institution and does so in ways that make it interoperable. This is something that my friend Amy Brand has been working on. Amy, recently named head of the MIT University Press is going to be a Berkman Fellow this year, so I hope this topic will be a subject of discussion at the Center.
Categories: liveblog, taxonomy, too big to know dw


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Evidence Based Medicine
Dr. Akbar Soltani is an assistant professor of endocrinology and internal medicine in Tehran University of Medical Sciences and founder of Evidence Based Medicine Working Team (EBMWT) at the Shariati hospital. His main academic interests are dissemination and culturalization for evidence based medicine among medical students and practitioners and ultimately to generalize this concept among Iranian population.
This web site is dedicated to his students, and every body who is interested in his work, or the PowerPoint Slideshows he has produced and used in his Evidence Based Medicine workshops and classes.
Evidence-Based Culture and our Nation's Future
The future now belongs to the societies which organize themselves for learning. Developing nations should develop policies that emphasize on critical thinking and creative problem solving for all the members, and we name this process as evidence based culture.... more...
Akbar Soltani, M.D. Assistant Professor in Endocrinology and Internal Medicine Endocrinology & Metabolism Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shariati hospital, North Kargar Ave, Tehran 14114, Iran Fax: +98 21 802 93 99
Home :: Site map :: Feedback


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Asthma is a long-term disease of the airways of the lungs. It's often diagnosed in children. But you can get asthma as an older adult even if you've never had it before.
Asthma in older adults may be harder to diagnose. It can be hard to tell asthma from other conditions that are more common in older adults. These include heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These diseases may cause symptoms that are like asthma, such as wheezing.
Asthma makes the airways sensitive to triggers (allergens and irritants). When a person with asthma is around such triggers, these changes happen:
The lining of the airways becomes swollen and inflamed.
The muscles around the airways tighten.
More mucus is made.
All these factors cause the airways to narrow. This makes it hard for air to go in and out of the lungs.
The exact cause of asthma at any age is not known. It's believed to be partly inherited. The environment, infections, and chemicals released by the body may also be involved. These are possible asthma triggers:
Allergens, such as pollen, mold, dust, and pet dander
Irritants, such as chemicals, air pollution, and tobacco smoke
Infections, such as a cold or sinus infection
Some medicines, such as aspirin or those used to treat high blood pressure
Other health problems, such as obesity and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD or heartburn)
Stress or strong emotions
Hormonal changes, such as during pregnancy or menopause
The symptoms of asthma are the same at any age. They are:
Coughing, especially at night
Having chest tightness
Feeling short of breath
Breathing faster than normal
Getting out of breath easily
Feeling tired or weak
These symptoms can be from other lung problems, heart problems, or infections. They can also be symptoms of many other conditions. Talk with your healthcare provider about your symptoms.
It's important to know for sure that you have asthma. That's because the treatment of asthma and other diseases, such as COPD, is very different. Your provider will first ask you about your symptoms and past health. They will also do a physical exam. You may also need some tests.
An important test for diagnosing and monitoring asthma is spirometry. A spirometer is a device that is used to gauge how well the lungs are working. It measures the amount and speed of air exhaled. Other tests may also be done to check for conditions, such as allergies.
Treatment will depend on your symptoms, age, and general health. It will also depend on how severe the condition is.
There is no known cure for asthma. But you can take steps to control it:
Know and stay away from your asthma triggers. These may include things, such as pollen, dander, smoke, and stress.
Take your prescribed medicines. You may need to take medicines by mouth or through an inhaler.
Watch your symptoms and know what to do if they get worse. Experts advise making an Asthma Action Plan with your healthcare provider.
Your healthcare provider may also refer you to a specialist, such as an allergist or pulmonologist (lung expert).
You can better manage your asthma symptoms by taking care of yourself. Be sure to:
Get about 8 hours of sleep each night.
Exercise or be active for about 30 minutes on most days. Talk with your healthcare provider about how to exercise safely if exercise triggers your asthma symptoms.
Stay engaged with family and friends.
Keep up-to-date on your vaccines.
Eat healthy. Fill up on lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. Choose lean meats, fish, and low-fat dairy.
Call your healthcare provider or get medical attention right away if you are having an asthma attack and your symptoms are not getting better after using your asthma medicine. You may be having a severe asthma attack.
Asthma is a long-term disease of the airways of the lungs. You can get it as an older adult even if you've never had it before.
Asthma in older adults may be harder to diagnose. It can be hard to tell asthma from health problems, such as heart failure and COPD.
Asthma symptoms include coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath.
A spirometer can help diagnose asthma.
There is no known cure for asthma. You can control it by staying away from your asthma triggers and by taking your asthma medicine as prescribed.
Tips to help you get the most from a visit to your healthcare provider:
Know the reason for your visit and what you want to happen.
Before your visit, write down questions you want answered.
Bring someone with you to help you ask questions and remember what your provider tells you.
At the visit, write down the name of a new diagnosis, and any new medicines, treatments, or tests. Also write down any new directions your provider gives you.
Know why a new medicine or treatment is prescribed, and how it will help you. Also know what the side effects are and when they should be reported.
Ask if your condition can be treated in other ways.
Know why a test or procedure is recommended and what the results could mean.
Know what to expect if you do not take the medicine or have the test or procedure.
If you have a follow-up appointment, write down the date, time, and purpose for that visit.
Know how you can contact your healthcare provider if you have questions, especially after office hours or on weekends.


text: Long Life Batteries for HP ELITE Serie Laptop Thank you for visiting CanadaLaptopBattery.com! We supply long life replacement HP batteries for your HP ELITE Series laptops. All of our replacement HP ELITE batteries contain Grade A battery cells to ensure longer battery life and durability. And they are engineered to 100% meet or exceed OEM specifications, so that they can keep your HP laptop running longer. The replacement batteries for HP ELITE Series laptops at below list.


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Incremental enhancements. Perpetual improvements. Revolutionary Innovation. When advancements are continuously made to every attribute of every component, the result is overall performance that is simply second to none. And to real cycling enthusiasts, there is nothing more gratifying then achieving the ultimate ride. And the best part is we just keep making it better.
This is what SRAM is all about. Sure, a casual rider will appreciate solid performance, reliability, dependability and all the standard qualities one would expect. But it's the riders who live and breathe bicycles who love us most because bicycles are what we love, too. In fact, they're our only love.
Narrow minded yet forward thinking.
Bike components are all we do - which is why we do them so mind-bendingly well. SRAM, LLC began with the goal of creating the absolute best shifting system and changed the cycling world forever with the introduction of Grip Shift. To support the innovation, we invested in Sachs Bicycle Company and built a state of the art manufacturing facility in Schweinfurt Germany. We had the vision and desire to expand our presence in the industry so we found the best suspension company, RockShox, joined forces with them, creating huge excitement in the global cycling community. Not content to stop there, we knew expanding our line with the best brakes, bottom brackets and cranksets would fine-tune the ride even more. So we teamed up with Avid and Truvativ.
Now that we have achieved total drive train nirvana, we will continue to seek and deploy technological and engineering advancements, as we compulsively refine and redefine the pinnacle of the ultimate ride.


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Contact Arkadium, the provider of these games
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Connect the colors and let there be light! Drag a path through three or more like-colored balls to clear them from the game. Clear the Boss Ball to level up and earn more moves! Don't forget to look up, down, left, right, and diagonal.


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One night, George and the other soldiers were sent on a secret mission. They crossed the river and headed toward Concord. George had no idea that this was the start of the American Revolution.
In this I Can Read Book, Don Bolognese's vibrant pictures capture the drama and humor of Nathaniel Benchley's exciting story.
Nathaniel Benchley was the author of several different types of books, as well as plays, movies and magazine articles.
He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, majoring in English. Shortly after graduation, he married Marjorie Bradford, and they settled down in New York City, where he worked for several newspapers and magazines. In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the U. S. Navy and was later trained to command small PT attack boats. He served in the Navy in the North and South Atlantic theaters and was on his way to the Pacific campaign when the war ended in 1945. He returned to New York and joined his wife and five year-old son, Peter. The next year, they had another son, Nathaniel Robert.
Nathaniel Benchley worked as a freelance writer –and painter- for the next 36 years. He wrote novels, plays, short stories, reviews, movie scripts and a very popular biography of the actor Humphrey Bogart. Much of his material was drawn from his life in New York and Nantucket, MA, where the family had a summer home. He found the small town life in Nantucket was rich in characters and material for adventures. He wrote a book titled The Off-Islanders, which was later made into a successful movie called "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" It was the story of a Russian submarine run aground on a small New England island. Several of his other books were also made into movies.
His sideline as a painter of landscapes led to his participation in many gallery showings.
Mr. Benchley used his fascination with history to create a series of books for beginning and teen readers. His particular interest was in taking a moment in history and examining it through the eyes of a young boy. He told stories about the Vikings coming to what would later be called "America;" Native American Indians dealing with the new settlers in their land ("Small Wolf"); young boys in Colonial America ("Sam the Minuteman" and "George the Drummer Boy") and the movement west; and a young boy who joins the Navy during World War II.
He also wrote a series of books for very beginning readers, many of which were about animals and their special bonds with humans ("Red Fox and His Canoe," "Oscar Otter").
He was always proudest of the letters he got from young readers who had identified with one of his characters and wanted to ask questions raised by their reading. He personally answered every letter he got from his readers.
In 1974, his son, Peter, published his first novel, Jaws, based on his experiences fishing off Nantucket in his youth (and a healthy imagination).
For the last many years of his life, Nathaniel Benchley lived in Nantucket with his wife.
Nathaniel Benchley lived by the motto: "A craftsman is one who does what he is given to do better than others feel is necessary."He died in Boston, MA, in 1981.


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Fancy Hotel of the Week-Villa Chan Grajang. Well, it's not quite a hotel, but an absolutely stunning and very large private villa, but since it comes equipped with its own Thai chef, large staff and the most wonderful housekeeper ever, it feels like you're staying in your very own exclusive boutique hotel and therefore seems to work for the purposes of this ongoing series (which I'm sure none of you remember, it's been so long since I last did a Fancy Hotel post).
One of the reasons I jumped at the chance to go to Thailand for a retreat with life coach Susan Hyatt was the fact that Miz Susan doesn't do anything by halves. When she was organising her retreat she went straight to a website called AwesomeVillas.com which, awesomely, specialises in, you guessed it, awesome villas. Except that the villa we ended up in – the Villa Chan Grajang overlooking Surin Beach – was more than awesome. Stupendous and sensational are superlatives that come to mind, and, judging by the collective intake of breath that occurred when we all arrived, I guess breathtaking would fit the bill too.
As you all know I have a terrible weakness for stunning architecture (an astrologer friend blames it on my moon in Libra), and, after living in Kinfolk in last week's blog post, this was more akin to taking a vacation in Architectural Digest.
I was so happy here. The lines and symmetry of the buildings were incredibly soothing to the eye and to the soul; the saltwater pool was the perfect blue and the perfect length, and the minimalism of the buildings just served to enhance the spectacular planting and views. Everywhere you looked there was a new vista or detail to observe – a reflection, a shape, a shadow or a texture. My eyes were drowning in beauty, yet relishing every moment and it felt almost spiritually uplifting. It was an object lesson in how our surroundings can affect our moods and mental well-being for good or for ill, and one that I need to apply to my own untidy bedroom and office.
Obviously we had to find out who was the lucky owner of such gorgeousness, and after a few judicious moments with Google, Susan worked out that it was the artist Damien Hirst. Which figured, as its cool white lines were not so very different from the cool white lines of his restaurant Pharmacy, which I used to live close to in my Notting Hill days. I don't think I've been so jealous of a person in my life.
Mr Hirst, if I promise never to call you a charlatan again, will you invite me back to your astonishing house?
The beauty of the villa was only enhanced by the tranquil presence of Pom the housekeeper – one of many people I met in Thailand who are beautiful both inside and out – and her wonderful staff. I adored the Thai way of decorating with fresh flowers and little flourishes. The Thais take such pleasure in beautifying the everyday, which is another lesson I need to take to heart.
The view from my bedroom
The food was faintly astonishing too – with mindboggling depths of overlapping spices, flavours and textures, presented again in the most beautiful way. Believe me, the overly salty and sugary Thai food you can find in the US or UK bears little resemblance to the subtle intricacies of the dishes we were served. In my next life I want to come back as someone who has a live-in Thai chef. Surely that wouldn't be too much to ask?
I loved this place. Loved, loved, loved it and couldn't bear to leave. One day I will return. That's a promise.
The villa was even gorgeous in the rain
Did you notice all the beautiful women in this post? My fellow retreaters were some of the loveliest, kindest, most creative, thoughtful and inspirational people you could wish to meet. It was a privilege to get to know them.
The Villa Chan Grajang is available to rent through Awesome Villas. Please take me with you.


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Call for actors to submit headshot + resume to Automatic Arts (automaticartsco.com) for PURE MEDEA, an adaptation of Medea by Euripides conceived and directed by Josh McIlvain. PURE MEDEA takes place during a rehearsal of Medea by a fictitious theater company and involves actors playing both the actors in the rehearsal and characters in Medea. We are looking for actors who can be comfortable with the Medea language, but do not need to be classically trained, nor experienced in "classical" theater. A range of experience, including comedy, is welcome.
As all roles involve both playing the character in the original Medea and the actor playing that role—so the dialogue is a mix of Greek drama and the naturalistic exchange between the actors.
Exact dates to be determined but 7-10 performances over 2 weekends will be between May 1–18.
Rehearsals will begin 5 weeks prior to opening, with a few early workshop/rehearsals in the coming months. We make accommodations as necessary—however, this show must be your priority during the main rehearsal/show time.
Auditions are Feb 10th, we may set up an alternative date as well if needed. Seeking . . .
Jason/Zeke, male, 20s to mid 30s.
Tutor/Aegeus/Randy: Male, late 30s to early 50s, also plays messenger.
Nurse/Danielle: female, 30s, also plays messenger.
These are loose guidelines. We are interested in adjusting the character to the actor.
Please send submissions (headshot & resume) to automaticartsco [at] gmail.com. You will be contacted to set up an audition. Please note the play contains some explicit language. All actors receive a $200 stipend. Non-Equity.
Thank you!


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Using two different approaches to evaluating the dimensionally regularized ($d=4-2\epsilon$ dimensional Euclidean space), equal mass ($x=m^2$), 2-loop vacuum Feynman diagram $$ \begin{align} I(x) &= \int\frac{\mathrm{d}^dp}{\pi^{d/2}}\frac{\mathrm{d}^dk}{\pi^{d/2}} \frac1{(k^2+x)(p^2+x)((k+p)^2+x)} \\\ &= \int _0^{\infty }\int _0^{\infty }\int _0^{\infty } \frac{e^{-x(s_1+s_2+s_3)}}{\left(s_1s_2+s_2s_3+s_3s_1\right)^{d/2}} \mathrm{d}s_1\mathrm{d}s_2\mathrm{d}s_3 \\\ &= x^{d-3}\,\Gamma\left(2-\frac{d}{2}\right)\Gamma\left(1-\frac{d}{2}\right) \,f(d)\,, \end{align} $$ the following hypergeometric identity arises $$ \begin{align} f(d) &=f_1(d) = 2\, {}_2F_1\left(1,\frac{d-1}{2};\frac{3}{2};-\frac{1}{3}\right) -4^{2-d} 3^{(d - 3)/2} B\left(\frac{3 - d}2, \frac{3 - d}2\right) \\ &= f_2(d) = \frac{4}{3} \left( {}_2F_1\left(1,\frac{d-1}{2};\frac{3}{2};-\frac{1}{3}\right)+\frac{1 }{d-3} {}_2F_1\left(1,\frac{d-1}{2};\frac{5-d}{2};-\frac{1}{3}\right) \right)\,, \end{align} $$ where the second term in $f_1(d)$ can be reduced with the identity $B(x,x)=2^{1-2x}B(x,1/2)$.
The identity $f_1(d)=f_2(d)$ checks out numerically and (provided no mistakes have been made in the calculations) it should be identically true. So far I have been unable to find a direct proof of the identity.
Can anyone here prove this identity or suggest a good approach? A computer proof (using human checkable code/steps) is acceptable.
For convenience I've provided the Mathematica InputForm
of the two functions:
f1[d_] := 2 Hypergeometric2F1[1, (d - 1)/2, 3/2, -1/3] -
2^(4 - 2 d) 3^((d - 3)/2) Beta[(3 - d)/2, (3 - d)/2]
f2[d_] := 4/3 (Hypergeometric2F1[1, (d - 1)/2, 3/2, -1/3] +
1/(d - 3) Hypergeometric2F1[1, (d - 1)/2, (5 - d)/2, -1/3])
$f_1(d)$ comes from direct integration using Feynman parameters (my own calculation, I don't know of a reference that includes it).
$f_2(d)$ comes from direct integration using the Mellin-Barnes representation (the result presented above is a version of eqn(33) of hep-ph/9304303, see also references within) .
I just noticed this MO answer that mentions the HolonomicFunctions package for Mathematica. It shows that both functions obey the recursion
$(4+4 d)f_i(d+4)+(4-7 d)f_i(d+2)+(-6+3 d)f_i(d)=0$,
but of course, the integral diverges for integer $d\geq4$ and I need to prove the relation for all $d<4$ (dimensional reduction) or for all complex $d$ (dimensional regularization).
Aside #2: Maybe I've been viewing this problem backwards, and I should not be using hypergeometric identities to check the Feynman integrals, but rather using the Feynman integrals as inspiration for new hypergeometric identities. See the new paper: Finding new relationships between hypergeometric functions by evaluating Feynman integrals


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While the 2005 exercise showcased the latest development, it also exposed some of the underlying weaknesses of the PLA in areas such as rigid command structures, lack of experience in complex mechanized airborne drops, lack of initiative by junior officers to adapt and overall poor communication between service arms. The Russian military also showcased long range bombers such as Tu-22m and TU-95 hoping to land export orders from China, but no deals were made. Overall, it was an expensive dog-and-pony show that exposed weakness rather than strength.
The 2007 show demonstrated the first PLA deployment of the JH-7 and WZ-9 to Russia with a PLA battle- group of 1600 troops in a combined armed maneuver that tested long-distance mobility and logistic support. For many it was considered to be the first such demonstration of power projection outside of China. With a reduced OPOBJ; instead of an island, they assaulted an extremist controlled town, the PLA seemed to perform better than 2005. However, the PLA's Type92—the mainstay of PLA's wheeled APC—was shown to be underpowered in rough terrain, and joint operation planning with the Russians was not well coordinated. Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization also took part in the 2007 show with a total of 6500 troops and 80 aircraft from China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
It will be interesting to see what is in store for this year.
Russia, China To Hold Military Exercises July 22-26 - Report
MOSCOW (AFP)--Russia and China will hold joint military exercises next month, a top Russian military official said Monday, as the giant neighbors work towards tighter cooperation.
"The head of the Russian and Chinese military delegations agreed that 1,300 soldiers from each side would participate," said the deputy army chief Lieutenant General Sergei Antonov, adding 20 Russian war planes would take part.
The massive five-day exercises, dubbed Peace Mission 2009, are to focus on anti-terrorism and will take place on both countries' territories July 22-26, Antonov told the ITAR-TASS state news agency. The two countries are in their third round of talks to hammer out the details of the joint manoeuvres, he said.
Russia and China made a show of their strengthening ties last month when Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Moscow for a major bilateral summit. The friendly diplomacy is a marked change from the later decades of the Cold War era, when the Soviet Union and China clashed for supremacy in the Communist world.
In recent years, the countries have taken great strides to step up trade and put old rivalries behind them, ending a decades-long dispute over their 4,300- kilometer border just last year.
The two held joint exercises in 2005 and 2007 under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group consisting of China, Russia and four Central Asian states.
Russia has also been the main supplier of arms to China since the two countries normalized relations in 1989 - the same year Washington imposed an arms ban on Beijing.
China to launch drill with Russia
english.chinamil.com.cn 2009-03-18
BEIJING, March 17 -- China and Russia will launch a joint anti-terror drill in Northeast China this year, a defense official has said.
"The defense ministries of the two countries are currently discussing details of the drill," Qian Lihua, director of the Ministry of Defense's foreign affairs office, said.
The drill, the second between the two troops, is aimed at promoting bilateral strategic partnership, Qian said.
It will also mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Sino-Russian diplomatic ties, he added.
The first such drill was held in Vladivostok in Russia and East China's Shandong in August 2005.
In 2007, the two countries joined a multinational anti-terror drill that also brought together Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Qian said China will hold more exercises with its neighbors this year, as it is keen on promoting high-level military exchanges. He, however, did not elaborate.
China has strengthened military ties with its neighbors by participating in regional exercises, Qian said.
Since 2002, the country has joined 17 military exercises and four ground training drills with its neighbors.
The country has sent teams to observe military drills in India and Pakistan, as well as "Cobra Gold" drills between Thailand and the United States.
China and Australia will strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism, disaster relief and peacekeeping, Chen Bingde, chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, said yesterday. He made the remarks during a meeting with Australian Chief of the Army Ken Gillespie.
(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)


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Artist Dates
Date of Work
35mm color slide
Identification #
Art & Design Study Collection: James Smith Pierce Collection
Stored: JSPS-07-OE-1
UND Art Collections Repository
Artist Bio
Born in Brooklyn, New York, James Smith Pierce received his PhD in art history from Harvard University. During his career as a professor, Pierce also became an accomplished artist, whose artworks were included in important exhibitions (including a show on land art at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC) and books on contemporary earthworks and site-specific sculpture. Pierce was also a photographer, exhibition curator, and art collector.
Additional Information
About E.M. Bailey:
Born in the small town of Flovilla, Georgia in 1903, Eldren "E.M." Bailey was educated to a third-grade level before leaving home to work on the railroad. Bailey claimed that while passing through Atlanta in his railroad days, he had seen a young girl in her yard beside the tracks and decided to jump off the train and introduce himself. She and Bailey would ultimately marry and spend the rest of their lives in that house next to the train tracks.
In 1942, he started working as a gravedigger and made tombstones. In his free time, Bailey began the construction of an outdoor sculpture garden. As a self-professed "good Christian man", Bailey's first constructed outdoor piece was a 9-foot crucifix that he completed in 1945.
These concrete sculptures acted as a reflection of his values, the trouble of the times, and contemporary historical events.
Many of the sculptures in the garden also reflected African American funerary traditions, as urns, guard dogs, and other traditional symbols were incorporated into this space. Bailey commemorated historical figures such as John F. Kennedy after his death by creating a large sculpture to act as a memorial. Bailey claimed that he wrote the government about a proposed monument and, after failing to hear back from them, he set out to make his own. His final outdoor sculpture was a memorial to Henry Aaron hitting his 715th home run. Bailey finished the sculpture the same night that the historic event took place.
Bailey died in 1987 at the age of 84. A handful of his smaller sculptures are displayed in different museums, but most of his larger works have vanished from public view.
Photograph of a baseball player sculpture next to a large vase sculpture.
Condition Notes
Original slide in very good condition. Digitally preserved 2020.


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Most of us see Thanksgiving day as a time for joy. Making memories is the only thing on our to-do list while we kick off the holiday season with good food and family. However, believe it or not, Thanksgiving is one of the most dangerous days of the year for homeowners. With all that cooking, socializing, and drinking (sometimes too much!) happening in the same place, tragic accidents occur every year on this otherwise great holiday. Keep reading to learn more about how to protect your home when the festivities start.
Prevent Cooking Fires
Nothing stops the festivities cold turkey like a house fire. Unsurprisingly, cooking is the leading cause of home fires on Thanksgiving. Make sure you don't leave cooking food unattended. If you're frying a turkey, make sure to keep the fryer outdoors and away from all structures that can catch on fire. Check your smoke alarms beforehand to ensure that they're in good working condition in case a fire does break out, and keep fire extinguishers and baking soda close by to nip flames in the bud.
Diminish the Risk of Injury
Of course burns are a likelihood on Thanksgiving, but the chances of a scald or burn can be reduced by refraining from wearing loose clothing or dangling sleeves while cooking, and keeping children at least 3 feet away from the stove at all times.
Also be cautious of which family member gets to wield the large carving knife, even if they swear they're the man or woman for the job! Remain aware of who has been drinking, and be prepared to discreetly reduce the flow of alcohol if it appears that some folks have had more than their share. These may sound like obvious warnings, but knife and alcohol-related accidents are two of the biggest reasons for emergency room visits on Thanksgiving!
Secure Your House
Hosts aren't the only ones who need to watch out for their homes on Thanksgiving. Break-ins always increase around the holidays because burglars know that people are less likely to be home. If you have to travel for Thanksgiving, especially if you're gone for several days, be sure to set your burglar alarm, put lights on timers, and let trustworthy neighbors know when you'll return so they can report any suspicious activity to the police.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
These are just a few things to keep in mind before you celebrate the feast of the year. It's important to always practice safety, but a day like Thanksgiving isn't a time for worry; that's what insurance agents are here for. As long as your home is covered with a good insurance policy, you should relax and enjoy the food and fun with relatives and friends!


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LibreOffice 24.2 Help
This function shows the relationship between the current cell containing a formula and the cells used in the formula.
Traces are displayed in the sheet with marking arrows. At the same time, the range of all the cells contained in the formula of the current cell is highlighted with a blue frame.
This function is based on a principle of layers. For example, if the precedent cell to a formula is already indicated with a tracer arrow, when you repeat this command, the tracer arrows are drawn to the precedent cells of this cell.


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You want to remember it all - baby products, kids' breakfast foods, fruits and vegetables, meats, breads, dinner components, cleaning supplies - and renew it all on a weekly basis. What is your strategy for accomplishing this?
For a few years I have been encouraging you to create and utilize a Master Shopping List and even posted my list for you to copy and edit. I advised to check the supplies before leaving for the store, crossing everything you don't need to get, take a pencil with you to the store and check-mark the items as you drop them into a cart. But guess what, I am seriously questioning this strategy now.
It may be the new baby that we got that requires a load extra items; or the frequent long lines in the meat department, but I came to realize that my weekly shopping became an impossibly tedious and dull process that I am always trying to postpone. It takes me about an hour to zigzag the supermarket and efficiently gather all the items on my list. But approximately after 30 min it stops being fun. The pleasures of smelling fresh produce, trying samples, browsing through and discovering new products or combinations, planning the meal in my head - all expire at about 30 min from the store entry and all my senses shut down. I feel like a pawn in a reality show trying to mark off all the remaining items in a least possible time. At about 60 min threshold I get angry and start transferring my anger to the foods in my basket. A very sad beginning of the food as a pleasure process.
I discover that I enjoy short specialized shopping trips much more than I enjoy one long exhaustive food purchase. Biweekly stops at a bakery, weekly order from a fruit and vegetables farm, one or two quick specific visits to the supermarket (breakfast stuff only, dinner products, diary and meat items). I still do shopping lists but not the long master shopping list that I believe turns me into a food soldier. I create short lists of absolutely-do-not-forget products and try keeping the number of items in them below 20. This way I can keep my eyes on the shelves rather than in the list and let me mind explore and discover, noting, touching and smelling the items. I feel that I am adding fun as a new component to my overall shopping puzzle that already included time and money optimization, overall product coverage and product quality. The new strategy is definitely more time consuming but the fun factor makes it much less strenuous.
I think long shopping lists are still great for some people (aka food soldiers) and some situations. If, like my father, all you want is to restock on the items your wife asked without adding any frivolities, you cannot accomplish it without a long list. If you have to assemble an elaborate meal consisting of tens of obscure ingredients, you need the list and the focus on the list. You cannot avoid the long list also when coming back from a vacation. But for the rest of the days I insist on making my food shopping an adventure. What about you?
Image via Flickr, distributed under CCL.