text:
The U.S. Justice Department released
the below information:
Attorney General Jeff
Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price,
M.D., announced today the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action by
the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, involving 412 charged defendants across 41
federal districts, including 115 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical
professionals, for their alleged participation in health care fraud schemes
involving approximately $1.3 billion in false billings. Of those charged, over
120 defendants, including doctors, were charged for their roles in prescribing
and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics. Thirty state Medicaid
Fraud Control Units also participated in today's arrests. In addition, HHS has
initiated suspension actions against 295 providers, including doctors, nurses
and pharmacists.
Attorney General Sessions and
Secretary Price were joined in the announcement by Acting Assistant Attorney
General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Acting
Director Andrew McCabe of the FBI, Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Inspector General Daniel Levinson of the
HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), Chief Don Fort of IRS Criminal
Investigation, Administrator Seema Verma of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), and Deputy Director Kelly P. Mayo of the Defense
Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).
Today's enforcement actions
were led and coordinated by the Criminal Division, Fraud Section's Health Care
Fraud Unit in conjunction with its Medicare Fraud Strike Force (MFSF) partners,
a partnership between the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney's Offices, the FBI
and HHS-OIG. In addition, the operation
includes the participation of the DEA, DCIS, and State Medicaid Fraud Control
The charges announced today aggressively
target schemes billing Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE (a health insurance
program for members and veterans of the armed forces and their families) for
medically unnecessary prescription drugs and compounded medications that often
were never even purchased and/or distributed to beneficiaries. The charges also
involve individuals contributing to the opioid epidemic, with a particular
focus on medical professionals involved in the unlawful distribution of opioids
and other prescription narcotics, a particular focus for the Department.
According to the CDC, approximately 91 Americans die every day of an opioid
related overdose.
"Too many trusted medical
professionals like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists have chosen to violate
their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients," said Attorney General
Sessions. "Amazingly, some have made their practices into multimillion dollar
criminal enterprises. They seem oblivious to the disastrous consequences of
their greed. Their actions not only enrich themselves often at the expense of
taxpayers but also feed addictions and cause addictions to start. The
consequences are real: emergency rooms, jail cells, futures lost, and
graveyards. While today is a historic
day, the Department's work is not finished. In fact, it is just beginning. We
will continue to find, arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate fraudsters
and drug dealers wherever they are."
"Healthcare fraud is not only
a criminal act that costs billions of taxpayer dollars - it is an affront to
all Americans who rely on our national healthcare programs for access to
critical healthcare services and a violation of trust," said Secretary Price.
"The United States is home to the world's best medical professionals, but their
ability to provide affordable, high-quality care to their patients is
jeopardized every time a criminal commits healthcare fraud. That is why this
Administration is committed to bringing these criminals to justice, as
President Trump demonstrated in his 2017 budget request calling for a new $70
million investment in the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program. The
historic results of this year's national takedown represent significant
progress toward protecting the integrity and sustainability of Medicare and
Medicaid, which we will continue to build upon in the years to come."
According to court documents,
the defendants allegedly participated in schemes to submit claims to Medicare,
Medicaid and TRICARE for treatments that were medically unnecessary and often
never provided. In many cases, patient recruiters, beneficiaries and other
co-conspirators were allegedly paid cash kickbacks in return for supplying
beneficiary information to providers, so that the providers could then submit
fraudulent bills to Medicare for services that were medically unnecessary or
never performed. The number of medical professionals charged is particularly
significant, because virtually every health care fraud scheme requires a
corrupt medical professional to be involved in order for Medicare or Medicaid
to pay the fraudulent claims.
Aggressively pursuing corrupt medical professionals not only has a
deterrent effect on other medical professionals, but also ensures that their
licenses can no longer be used to bilk the system.
"This week, thanks to the
work of dedicated investigators and analysts, we arrested once-trusted doctors,
pharmacists and other medical professionals who were corrupted by greed," said
Acting Director McCabe. "The FBI is committed to working with our partners on
the front lines of the fight against heath care fraud to stop those who steal
from the government and deceive the American public."
"Health care fraud is a
reprehensible crime. It not only
represents a theft from taxpayers who fund these vital programs, but impacts
the millions of Americans who rely on Medicare and Medicaid," said Inspector
General Levinson. "In the worst fraud cases, greed overpowers care, putting
patients' health at risk. OIG will continue to play a vital leadership role in
the Medicare Fraud Strike Force to track down those who abuse important federal
health care programs."
"Our enforcement actions
underscore the commitment of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and our
partners to vigorously investigate fraud perpetrated against the DoD's TRICARE
Program. We will continue to relentlessly investigate health care fraud, ensure
the taxpayers' health care dollars are properly spent, and endeavor to
guarantee our service members, military retirees, and their dependents receive
the high standard of care they deserve," advised Deputy Director Mayo.
"Last year, an estimated
59,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, many linked to the misuse of
prescription drugs. This is, quite simply, an epidemic," said Acting
Administrator Rosenberg. "There is a great responsibility that goes along with
handling controlled prescription drugs, and DEA and its partners remain
absolutely committed to fighting the opioid epidemic using all the tools at our
"Every defendant in today's
announcement shares one common trait - greed," said Chief Fort. "The desire for
money and material items drove these individuals to perpetrate crimes against
our healthcare system and prey upon many of the vulnerable in our society. Thanks to the financial expertise and
diligence of IRS-CI special agents, who worked side-by-side with other federal,
state and local law enforcement officers to uncover these schemes, these
criminals are off the street and will now face the consequences of their
The Medicare Fraud Strike Force
operations are part of a joint initiative between the Department of Justice and
HHS to focus their efforts to prevent and deter fraud and enforce current
anti-fraud laws around the country. The Medicare Fraud Strike Force operates in
nine locations nationwide. Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare
Fraud Strike Force has charged over 3500 defendants who collectively have
falsely billed the Medicare program for over $12.5 billion.
For the Strike Force
locations, in the Southern District of Florida, a total of 77 defendants were
charged with offenses relating to their participation in various fraud schemes
involving over $141 million in false billings for services including home
health care, mental health services and pharmacy fraud. In one case, the owner and operator of a
purported addiction treatment center and home for recovering addicts and one
other individual were charged in a scheme involving the submission of over $58
million in fraudulent medical insurance claims for purported drug treatment
services. The allegations include actively recruiting addicted patients to move
to South Florida so that the co-conspirators could bill insurance companies for
fraudulent treatment and testing, in return for which, the co-conspirators offered
kickbacks to patients in the form of gift cards, free airline travel, trips to
casinos and strip clubs, and drugs.
In the Eastern District of
Michigan, 32 defendants face charges for their alleged roles in fraud,
kickback, money laundering and drug diversion schemes involving approximately
$218 million in false claims for services that were medically unnecessary or never
rendered. In one case, nine defendants, including six physicians, were charged
with prescribing medically unnecessary controlled substances, some of which
were sold on the street, and billing Medicare for $164 million in facet joint
injections, drug testing, and other procedures that were medically unnecessary
and/or not provided.
In the Southern District of
Texas, 26 individuals were charged in cases involving over $66 million in
alleged fraud. Among these defendants are a physician and a clinic owner who
were indicted on one count of conspiracy to distribute and dispense controlled
substances and three substantive counts of distribution of controlled
substances in connection with a purported pain management clinic that is
alleged to have been the highest prescribing hydrocodone clinic in Houston,
where approximately 60-70 people were seen daily, and were issued medically
unnecessary prescriptions for hydrocodone in exchange for approximately $300
cash per visit.
In the Central District of
California, 17 defendants were charged for their roles in schemes to defraud
Medicare out of approximately $147 million. Two of these defendants were
indicted for their alleged involvement in a $41.5 million scheme to defraud
Medicare and a private insurer. This was purportedly done by submitting
fraudulent claims, and receiving payments for, prescription drugs that were not
filled by the pharmacy nor given to patients.
In the Northern District of
Illinois, 15 individuals were charged in cases related to six different schemes
concerning home health care services and physical therapy fraud, kickbacks, and
mail and wire fraud. These schemes
involved allegedly over $12.7 million in fraudulent billing. One case allegedly
involved $7 million in fraudulent billing to Medicare for home health services
that were not necessary nor rendered.
In the Middle District of
Florida, 10 individuals were charged with participating in a variety of schemes
involving almost $14 million in fraudulent billing. In one case, three defendants were charged in
a $4 million scheme to defraud the TRICARE program. In that case, it is alleged that a defendant
falsely represented himself to be a retired Lieutenant Commander of the United
States Navy Submarine Service. It is alleged that he did so in order to gain
the trust and personal identifying information from TRICARE beneficiaries, many
of whom were members and veterans of the armed forces, for use in the scheme.
In the Eastern District of
New York, ten individuals were charged with participating in a variety of
schemes including kickbacks, services not rendered, and money laundering
involving over $151 million in fraudulent billings to Medicare and Medicaid.
Approximately $100 million of those fraudulent billings were allegedly part of
a scheme in which five health care professionals paid illegal kickbacks in
exchange for patient referrals to their own clinics.
In the Southern Louisiana
Strike Force, operating in the Middle and Eastern Districts of Louisiana as
well as the Southern District of Mississippi, seven defendants were charged in
connection with health care fraud, wire fraud, and kickback schemes involving
more than $207 million in fraudulent billing. One case involved a pharmacist
who was charged with submitting and causing the submission of $192 million in
false and fraudulent claims to TRICARE and other health care benefit programs
for dispensing compounded medications that were not medically necessary and
often based on prescriptions induced by illegal kickback payments.
In addition to the Strike
Force locations, today's enforcement actions include cases and investigations
brought by an additional 31 U.S. Attorney's Offices, including the execution of
search warrants in investigations conducted by the Eastern District of California
and the Northern District of Ohio.
In the Northern and Southern
Districts of Alabama, three defendants were charged for their roles in two
health care fraud schemes involving pharmacy fraud and drug diversion.
In the Eastern District of
Arkansas, 24 defendants were charged for their roles in three drug diversion
schemes that were all investigated by the DEA.
In the Northern and Southern
Districts of California, four defendants, including a physician, were charged
for their roles in a drug diversion scheme and a health care fraud scheme
involving kickbacks.
In the District of
Connecticut, three defendants were charged in two health care fraud schemes,
including a scheme involving two physicians who fraudulently billed Medicaid
for services that were not rendered and for the provision of oxycodone with
knowledge that the prescriptions were not medically necessary.
In the Northern and Southern
Districts of Georgia, three defendants were charged in two health care fraud
schemes involving nearly $1.5 million in fraudulent billing.
In the Southern District of
Illinois, five defendants were charged in five separate schemes to defraud the
Medicaid program.
In the Northern and Southern
Districts of Indiana, at least five defendants were charged in various health
care fraud schemes related to the unlawful distribution and dispensing of
controlled substances, kickbacks, and services not rendered.
In the Southern District of
Iowa, five defendants were charged in two schemes involving the distribution of
In the Western District of
Kentucky, 11 defendants were charged with defrauding the Medicaid program. In one case, four defendants, including three
medical professionals, were charged with distributing controlled substances and
fraudulently billing the Medicaid program.
In the District of Maine, an
office manager was charged with embezzling funds from a medical office.
In the Eastern and Western
Districts of Missouri, 16 defendants were charged in schemes involving over $16
million in claims, including 10 defendants charged as part of a scheme
involving fraudulent lab testing.
In the District of Nebraska,
a dentist was charged with defrauding the Medicaid program.
In the District of Nevada,
two defendants, including a physician, were charged in a scheme involving false
hospice claims.
In the Northern, Southern,
and Western Districts of New York, five defendants, including two physicians
and two pharmacists, were charged in schemes involving drug diversion and
pharmacy fraud.
In the Southern District of
Ohio, five defendants, including four physicians, were charged in connection
with schemes involving $12 million in claims to the Medicaid program.
In the District of Puerto
Rico, 13 defendants, including three physicians and two pharmacists, were
charged in four schemes involving drug diversion, Medicaid fraud, and the theft
of funds from a health care program.
In the Eastern District of
Tennessee, three defendants were charged in a scheme involving fraudulent
billings and the distribution of opioids.
In the Eastern, Northern, and
Western Districts of Texas, nine defendants were charged in schemes involving
over $42 million in fraudulent billing, including a scheme involving false
claims for compounded medications.
In the District of Utah, a
nurse practitioner was charged in connection with fraudulently obtaining a
controlled substance, tampering with a consumer product, and infecting over
seven individuals with Hepatitis C.
In the Eastern District of
Virginia, a defendant was charged in connection with a scheme involving
identify theft and fraudulent billings to the Medicaid program.
In addition, in the states of
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington and
Wisconsin, 96 defendants have been charged in criminal and civil actions with
defrauding the Medicaid program out of over $31 million. These cases were
investigated by each state's respective Medicaid Fraud Control Units. In
addition, the Medicaid Fraud Control Units of the states of Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, New
York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah participated in the investigation
of many of the federal cases discussed above.
The cases announced today are
being prosecuted and investigated by U.S. Attorney's Offices nationwide, along
with Medicare Fraud Strike Force teams from the Criminal Division's Fraud
Section and from the U.S. Attorney's Offices of the Southern District of
Florida, Eastern District of Michigan, Eastern District of New York, Southern
District of Texas, Central District of California, Eastern District of
Louisiana, Northern District of Texas, Northern District of Illinois and the
Middle District of Florida; and agents from the FBI, HHS-OIG, Drug Enforcement
Administration, DCIS and state Medicaid Fraud Control Units.
A complaint, information, or
indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent
unless and until proven guilty.
Additional documents related
to this announcement will shortly be available here:
This operation also
highlights the great work being done by the Department of Justice's Civil
Division. In the past fiscal year, the
Department of Justice, including the Civil Division, has collectively won or
negotiated over $2.5 billion in judgements and settlements related to matters
alleging health care fraud.


text:
I don't really understand the over-the-top contempt/hatred for John Edwards from same people who defended/have forgiven B. Clinton for same.Jonathan Bernstein suggests that there are important differences based on the concept of representation. Clinton was known to be a philanderer and basically just promised to put that aside during his presidency. Edwards, conversely, made family and loyalty to his ill wife a central part of his campaign. His betrayal of Elizabeth was a betrayal of the whole purpose of his campaign.
Let me suggest another important distinction: In 2008, Democrats had the experience of 1998 to reflect upon; in 1998, they did not.
In terms of martial problems, Clinton's nomination and election in 1992 were highly unusual. Certainly, we'd had philandering presidents and presidential candidates previously, but rarely had it been such an open issue in the middle of a contentious nomination battle, and almost never had the purported philanderer not only not dropped out of the race (a la Gary Hart 1988), but actually won the nomination. Having dealt with the issue in the winter probably, as Jon suggests, helped to inoculate Clinton for the fall campaign. And yes, there was an implicit deal that active Democrats would not make a big deal out of this issue and that Clinton, in turn, would keep his pants zipped while in the White House.
Now, when Lewinsky's name became public, yes, Democrats ultimately defended Clinton. The Republicans made that easy by determining that oral sex was an impeachable offense. (Yeah, perjury, sure.) But before the impeachment hearings started ramping up, Democrats, particularly the active Clinton loyalists, were hugely pissed at him. He had broken the contract. They'd taken a chance on him but he'd betrayed their trust. Everything they'd worked for for six years was now in jeopardy, and now they'd have to jump into the breach again, not to elect him or his successor, not to fight for health reform or economic justice, not to protect a legacy, but to save his horny ass. Of course, they did it, and Republican overreach, combined with the fact that Clinton's presidency overall ended up looking pretty successful, made it easy for Democratic activists to ultimately defend him, maybe even to forgive him... but not to forget what happened.
So then 2008 comes around and John Edwards draws the exact wrong lesson from history. He figures that if Clinton could get away with it, so could he. But Democratic activists did not want to go through that again, not if they didn't have to. So they dropped him like a hot potato.
Now, there are some other key differences, as well. Edwards' dalliances became public after he'd already dropped out of the presidential race. No one had to defend him. He was of no value to the Democratic coalition. Yes, when your president is under attack, you defend him, even if you find his behavior disgusting. But when a failed presidential candidate is under attack? Who cares?
Related to this, Clinton already had five relatively successful years as president to point to when Lewinsky's name surfaced. Activists could rationalize, "Okay, he's a dog, but he knows how to govern." With Edwards it was more like, "Okay, he's a dog."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
November 4, 2011
Graded expectations: Research shows diners, operators prefer letter grade system for restaurant inspections
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
Systems to rate local restaurants are widely available: letter grades A, B or C in Los Angeles and New York; the colors red, yellow or green in Toronto; smiley faces in Denmark. But which system do consumers and restaurant operators prefer?
Two years ago, New Zealand, a country of 4.4 million people, partnered with Kansas State University to find out what disclosure system best served that nation.
New research published in the Journal of Food Protection details the New Zealand consumer and food service operator preference for a national inspection disclosure system.
The research suggested a four-tiered letter grade card -- A, B, C or F -- designed to represent a restaurant's inspection result best met consumer and operator expectations. The study suggested cards placed at a premise's principal entrance, at eye level and unobscured by other signage or menus was key in attracting initial consumer attention.
Kansas State University's Katie Filion, a fall 2010 master's graduate in biomedical science, and Doug Powell, professor of food safety, designed the research in collaboration with the New Zealand Food Safety Authority, which is now part of the country's Ministry of Agriculture. Filion spent a year in New Zealand, designing and pre-testing different signs based on a comprehensive review of the literature, conducting 991 consumer intercept interviews and 269 interviews with restaurant operators.
"No one has determined the most effective way to present inspection results to the public, but a good system has several characteristics," Filion said. "It should have clear guidelines about what earns a good or bad grade and should communicate to diners the risk of eating at a particular restaurant."
"Such public displays of information may help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public," Powell said. "People routinely talk about this stuff. We want to improve the systems that are out there."
An abstract of the article is available at http://bit.ly/syrUHN.
According to Filion and Powell, the World Health Organization estimates that up to 30 people of individuals in developed countries become ill from food or water each year. Up to 70 percent of these illnesses are estimated to be linked to food prepared at food service establishments.
"Consumer confidence in the safety of food prepared in restaurants is fragile, varying significantly from year to year, with many consumers attributing food-borne illness to food service," Powell said. "One of the key drivers of restaurant choice is consumer perception of the hygiene of a restaurant. Restaurant hygiene information is something consumers desire, and when available, may use to make dining decisions."


text:
Hi, Knitters,
I'm wishing you all a very happy holiday season. We are looking forward to a few quiet, cozy, family-filled days ahead. There is nothing better in life than that.
Have a beautiful holiday week!
best, susie
p.s. The gathering of sheep in the first photo above was knit by knitnspin (rav id) using my new Wee Sheep pattern. Isn't she a wonderful sheep knitter? I thought Karen's photo of her seven Wee Sheep was so knitterly and festive that I asked and received permission to share it with you. Thank you, Karen.
p.p.s. I was contacted by Sarah and the following is her email to me and her email address to contact her for more information if you are interested in making snowflakes for the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sarah was asking about the 3D snowflakes that TC has made this season (click here for a tutorial on 3D snowflakes), but you could make and send any sort of snowflakes for the kids. Thank you, Sarah, for offering to collect and deliver snowflakes for the children.
Here is the email:
Hi Susan,
I am a resident of Connecticut and a long-time lover of your blog. As I'm sure you know, our state suffered a great tragedy last week at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I saw your picture of TC's lovely snowflake on your recent post and was reminded that there is a snowflake drive occuring state-wide. The idea is to hang paper snowflakes from all of the hallway ceilings in the students' temporary new school so that they are greeted with a winter wonderland when they return to school in January.
I was curious if TC received instructions for her snowflake that you could pass along, because I would love to make some for the kids! If any kind readers of your blog are interested in making and sending paper snowflakes of any kind, I would be happy to collect them as well.
Take care and Merry Christmas to you and your family,
Sarah Robbiati
email address: firstname.lastname@example.com |


text:
Today my good friend Jafet asked me: "What do you think about sharing ASP classic and ASP.NET state?". And I told him that there were some projects for helping in this task.
I will mention some of them here.
The first one is NSession. This project provides an implementation that allows you to use the ASP.NET state server in ASP classic. You do not have to change your ASP classic code.
"You need to instantiate one of the COM objects in your ASP classic page before it accesses session state, either:
set oSession = Server.CreateObject("NSession.Session")
set oSession = Server.CreateObject("NSession.ReadOnlySession")
If you instantiate NSession.Session, the session state in the session store will be transferred to the ASP Classic session dictionary, and an exclusive lock will be placed in the session store. You do not need to change your existing code that accesses the ASP Classic session object. When NSession.Session goes out of scope, it will save the ASP Classic session dictionary back to the session store and release the exclusive lock.If you have done with the session state, you can release the lock early with
set oSession = Nothing
If you instantiate NSession.ReadOnlySession, the session state in the session store will be transferred to the ASP Classic session dictionary but no locks will be placed."
The second option is SessionService. This project provides a mechanism for sharing the state between ASP classic and ASP.NET by serializing state data to an SQL Server. The project page provides detailed information on how to setup IIS, how it is used in both platforms.
And the third option is a very interesting one called ASPClassicCompiler. This is a great great project. It provides a mechanism for compiling the ASP classic to .NET. This project is now opensource and we need to thank Li Chen for it.
Great ideas can be implemented thanks to this source. For example Brian Ellis suggested using the VBScript engine to replace the MSScript.OCX. Another great one is an implementation of an View Engine that can be used with MVC and which support ASP Classic.
I really like the ASPClassic project and will be posting some interesting examples soon (as soon as I finish watching some Dr. Who episodes and the last Fringe season :) )
I was looking for a ".net" way of detecting the CapsLock state, but almost all the references pointed to pinvoke code like:
<DllImport("user32.dll")> _ Public Shared Function GetKeyState(VirtKey As Integer) As Integer End Sub
And I finally found two ways:
1) You can call methods from the System.Console class:
You can use the System.Console.CapsLock property and if you want the NumLock state use: System.Console.NumberLock
2) You can call make an instance of Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices.Keyboard. (For this if you are in C# you need to add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll)
For example:
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices.Keyboard key = new Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices.Keyboard();
and use properties like:


text: I've been lurking. For some reason I have had several months of lucidity during which posting to BF seemed like a complete waste of time. That episode seems to have passed. Oh, and I went for another bike ride today. I did not land on my head. Weird, eh?. . .We must be in synch at the quantum level. I too have had several months in which I was sane enough not to waste my time on here. But all good things come to an end. And in the intervening period, I too have managed to avoid falling off. Banged my head on a low beam while coming downstairs, though, I really ought to be more careful.


text:
Refine your results
Your search values are listed below. You can edit them and search again.
Printing options are at the bottom of the page.
All of these words
ALL words entered here MUST appear in a provider's profile for that provider to turn up as a search result. 100 characters maximum.
Any of these words
If any one of the words entered here appears in a provider's profile that provider will turn up as a search result. 100 characters maximum.
Physical Location
If you specify a physical location the provider must be physically located in that area to turn up as a search result. This is typically useful for people in rural settings who need to find providers nearby.
Note: You may only specificy one type of location (zipcode OR city OR county OR state), not a combination.
ZIP code (five digits)
Areas Served
If you specify an area served the provider only needs to offer service in that area to appear as a search result. The provider is not required to be physically located in the area specified. For example, a suicide hotline will be physically located in a single building but can serve multiple areas.
Volunteer Opportunities
Each provider profile contains a unique field for listing volunteer opportunities. Words entered here will be matched against that field.
Each provider profile contains a unique field for listing wishlist items. Words entered here will be matched against that field.
Target Populations
If you need services for a particular group of people you can select that group below. Providers who turn up in search results are specifically identified to serve the selected group.
Note: If you receive too few search results consider running a broader search. Other service providers still might be able to help even though they do not especially serve a specific group.
Service Codes
Enter taxonomy codes here. Separate each code with a comma.
Note: If you combine taxonomy codes with keywords a provider will only turn up in search results if it contains both.
Separate codes with a comma.
No results were found for your search.
Try expanding your search by using fewer criteria.
Or try using different, more general keywords.
Click here to view or edit your current search parameters.
Click here to start a new Advanced Search.


text: The Prodigy Disc FX-2 packs a punch in our fairway lineup, bringing speed to its class as it fits in between our F Series and H Series. Created in collaboration with 2-time Disc Golf Pro Tour Champion Chris Dickerson, the FX-2 is overstable with dimensions specific to Chris' desires in a disc. The FX-2 has a profile that provides a comfortable feel for both backhand and sidearm throwers. Crank on it as hard as you want and get a fast, straight flight with a medium finish or scale back the power for controlled hyzers. No matter how you throw it, you'll be surprised how far it flies. Not to mention, it's Robot Chicken approved. The FX-2 brings a new brand of fairway driver to the table with more to come.


text:
How does one correctly implement optimistic locking in MySQL?
Our team has deduced that we must do #4 below or else there is a risk that another thread can update the same version of the record, but we'd like to validate that this is the best way to do it.
- Create a version field on the table you want to use optimistic locking for e.g. column name = "version"
- On selects, make sure to include the version column and make note of the version
- On a subsequent update to the record, the update statement should issue "where version = X" where X is the version we received in #2 and set the version field during that update statement to X + 1
- Perform a
on the record we are going to update so that we serialize who can make changes to the record we are trying to update.
To clarify, we are trying to prevent two threads which select the same record in the same time window where they grab the same version of the record from overwriting each others if they were to try and update the record at the same time. We believe that unless we do #4, there is a chance, that if both threads enter their respective transactions at the same time (but have not issued their updates yet), when they go to update, the second thread that will use the UPDATE ... where version = X will be operating on old data.
Are we correct in thinking we must do this pessimistic locking when updating even though we are using version fields/optimistic locking?


text:
Deliver Kosher
Gourmet Chocolate Covered Pretzel Baby Bottle - Baby Girl - Assorted Chocolate
An elegant, over-sized baby bottle filled with gourmet chocolate-covered pretzels and cookies. The perfect gift for a soon-to-be mother if she's expecting a girl.
Product Features:
*Each bottle comes filled with individually wrapped chocolate covered pretzels and cookies. Available in your choice of milk chocolate, dark chocolate or an assortment of both.
*Chocolate covered pretzels are topped with either white or pink sprinkles. Chocolate covered cookies come adorned with a special "It's A Girl!" emblem.
*Bottle comes with a slot opening in the top, so when all of the pretzels have been eaten, you can re-use the bottle as a coin bank.
*All ingredients are sourced to ensure the finest quality and have been Certified Kosher - Parve.


text:
You are here
Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche teaches through verse, pointing out the essence of a teaching. Enjoy the quotes.
Mastery of the View
Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche
Quote of the Week
November 11, 2011
Mastery of the View
Commentary on "Eight Kinds of Mastery," a song by Milarepa
When appearance and emptiness are inseparable,
This is mastery of the view.
(Song Version: Not separating appearance and emptiness
This is view as mastered as it can be.)
The spacious expanse of space, which is without center or end,
Contains the worlds and so forth, which have neither top nor bottom,
As well as all the appearances of the environment and beings.
In the same way, the expanse of mind-itself, which is beyond all elaborations, contains all phenomena.
"Mind" refers to consciousness, but "mind-itself" refers to the abiding nature of mind that is beyond all conceptual elaborations. Being existent or nonexistent, being permanent or being annihilated, being a thing or a nonthing - such conceptual elaborations have no limit or end. Because the true nature of mind is beyond all conceptual designations, it is spacious, open, and expansive like the center of space. Even if we have not realized the view, if we have a very strong certainty about it, our minds will be very spacious and open. Once we have realized it, we will experience a spontaneous spaciousness and openness. "All phenomena" refers to whatever can appear or exist in samsara and nirvana. There is nothing that is not included within the expanse of mind itself.
Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, Songs of Definitive Meaning, Karme Choling, Summer 1998, P. 26, translated by Elizabeth Callahan.


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Curator Lindsay Howard frames her current online-only exhibition at Art Micro-Patronage, "C.R.E.A.M.", by pointing to the elephant in the room: "Over twenty years have passed since net art first appeared on the screen," she writes, "and we still don't have an established system for buying and selling it." It's a huge issue, because it's awfully hard to make decent art as a second job. Without an established market, there's little potential for supporting any more than a handful of net artists in the long run; without net artists, it's tough to have net art.
Most of the obvious solutions have been tried; I made a Google Doc with a partial list to give an idea. So far as anybody's been able to figure out, none of them have worked very well. Plenty of ideas have made money at some point, but none have the wide appeal of physical things, and few have ever paid anyone's bills with regularity. It remains tough convincing collectors, even collectors who made their money online, to buy something immaterial.
The solution to the problem, it must be said, probably won't come from a single brilliant business model. It's far more likely that the combined efforts of dealers and curators will, over time, convince some small but reliable minority of art collectors to accept the precept that code or digital images have financial value in proportion to their aesthetic value, regardless of their openness or reproducibility. Even if a perfect model were found, one suspects that net art—wherein messing with the market status of your work is a fairly common strategy—would be slow to climb onboard.
Still, that doesn't stop the search. Art Micro-Patronage, as a platform, is in this way a neat fit for the show. AMP is a temporary exhibition venue that bases its approach on "donorship, not ownership", and lets viewers pledge small amounts of money to specific works in a show, with the proceeds being divided between artist, curator, and platform (Kyle Chayka's piece on ArtINFO is an excellent primer on the site). It's an interesting model, reminiscent of the successful Humble Indie Bundle approach in PC games, that takes advantage of the broad base of potential net art enthusiasts willing to chip in to support artists. It is not, however, a solution on its own; "C.R.E.A.M.", as one of the more successful AMP shows, has earned a mere $191.24 so far. AMP will need wider reach if it wants to make micropayment-funded net art a practical reality.
Not all of the works in "C.R.E.A.M." attack the issue so directly; some, like the work of 0-Day Art or Aram Bartholl, instead serve to point to ideas at the periphery of the market, or to frame the environment in which net art has to work. In the next three pages, I'll be looking at, and disassembling, each piece in "C.R.E.A.M.", one by one. It'll be excessive, on purpose. Since the exhibition is arranged linearly—you enter at JODI's Goodtimes and leave at 0-Day Art's Art Micro-Patronage Season One, Complete—I'll start from the beginning. Let's get down to business.


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By Pritpal Kaur
This past weekend was a typical weekend for me. I was traveling to teach in a Level 1 Aquarian Teacher program. What was unusual were the circumstances of my travel. I was flying from Albuquerque to Chicago where an usual Arctic storm was bringing temperatures of 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and wind and snow to the area. After many hours of delays, I arrived in Chicago 9 hours later than expected.
When I arrived at the airport there was a sea of people waiting in the airport. After my long journey, I was filled with gratitude. I was truly grateful to be arriving in time to teach the next day and at that time to be a Kundalini Yoga Teacher and not a Southwest Airlines Employee. As a Kundalini Yoga Teacher, being grateful is a gift I always carry in the folds of my turban. Years ago I learned this lesson from Yogi Bhajan, "appreciate your misery and it will run away" and it is a gem I always carry with me.
Being an Aquarian Teacher can mean many things. For me, it translates into these powerful words of Yogi Bhajan:
"Wherever you are, whether you are one person, or whether you are two, three, four, five, twenty, a hundred or a thousand persons, you represent a consciousness of hope."
What does it mean to be the embodiment of an Aquarian Teacher? Here are the sutras that guide me as I walk this path:
- How kind and compassionate can I be?
- Can I smile in the face of adversity?
- Can I let go of my fears, insecurities and limited thoughts?
- Can I have the discipline and courage to reach the wonderland of consciousness?
- Can I relax, forget my own problems and reach out to help others?
This is a time when we are all going to be spun and churned. As teachers we can guide and serve as examples of those who can sit in the center of the pair of opposites and not be affected. Most importantly, we can remind all we see, touch and hold dear that the soul is touched through the access point of the heart, not the head. In order to access this point we must let go of our logic, argument, fantasies, planning, scheming and worrying.
"The Age of Aquarius is coming in and its going to blow up everybody mentally so fast you can't believe it. Insecurity will be all around us. Duality will be our best friend. There is no need for it. Just trust your soul. It will save you. Learn this as an art. Dive deep to your soul. That's all you have."
-Yogi Bhajan
A few hours before I was to teach this weekend, I was relaxing at a friend's home. I was speaking with someone on the phone for almost an hour. During the call I asked my friend if I was disturbing her and if I should go to another room. Her response was, "No, please. I love having you in the room because I am uplifted just from hearing your conversation. Your words and responses are teaching and inspiring me." As Aquarian Teachers, we are not just teachings on the teaching bench, but we do our teaching from many platforms.
I often think of those times when I was with Yogi Bhajan. Every moment of his day he was teaching. Even if it were to give the prayer inauguration at the opening of the Legislature for the State of New Mexico, he would pause in the parking lot to ask the parking attendant how his wife was doing because he knew she had not been feeling well. No one was ever high or low in his eyes.
He never missed an opportunity to poke, provoke, confront and elevate. Sometimes, at a dinner with the state's political leaders, he would tell one of the Senators they should be eating mung beans and rice every day and that their wife should be taking cold showers. He was always the teacher.
As Aquarian Teachers we hold the soul of the student in the cocoon of our consciousness. The person has not come in our presence to love us or even to have us hold their hand. We are always there to stand perpendicular to the ego. Our eyes, our words, our presence and our silence must penetrate to arrive at the destination of elevation and awareness. As Aquarian Teachers we bow to the technology of Kundalini Yoga, Meditation and Shabd Guru and we serve this platform with reverence. It is an honor and privilege for which I am ever grateful and I am sure it has taken 8.4 million lifetimes to arrive at this destination.
Pritpal Kaur Khalsa has been a teacher of Kundalini Yoga, Meditation and spiritual awareness for over 35 years. Her passion for assisting others on their road to excellence and fulfillment, and her wealth of experience as a teacher, healer and mentor bring a depth of joy and wisdom to her workshops, classes and coaching practice. Pritpal incorporates her vast knowledge of Yogic and Meditative techniques and a deep understanding of spirituality and a healthy lifestyle into her work with individuals and groups. She is a Personal and Professional Coach, a Sat Nam Rasayan Yogic Healer, Pilates Instructor and a KRI-certified Senior Teacher Trainer of Kundalini Yoga, and the CEO of 3HO. For further information: www.pritpalkaur.com


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Posts Tagged 'Daniel Alcheh'
Sony Classical has recently added two brand new music releases to the international music giants impressive all-star list of global recording artists.
The first new release from Sony Classical is an original motion picture soundtrack entitled The Trouble With Bliss, a movie score written by composer Daniel Alcheh.
The Hollywood, California based cinematic music composer Daniel Alcheh, in addition to his own esteemed career as a film composer, has worked with a number of famous cinematic film score composers, including Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, and John Williams.
The Trouble with Bliss Soundtrack has contemporary orchestrations performed by distinguished Greek artists. The animated movie score achieves a wonderful ethnic feel by the inclusion of accordion, bouzouki, clarinet, mandolin, saz, and a variety of guitars and stringed instruments.
The warm, upbeat music rhythms on The Trouble With Bliss Soundtrack is the perfect background setting for the romantic comedy-drama that is a recipient of several best motion picture awards.
Sony Classical Label's second new release entitled Viva Brazil was made available on May 15, 2012. The live recording Viva Brazil (Live) features topnotch artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Kathryn Stott, Sergio and Odair Assad and Joseph Gramley. The new release Viva Brazil is available at major digital retail outlets, and find Viva Brazil Live at iTunes. Sample or purchase The Trouble with Bliss digital music downloads at Amazon. Photo is courtesy sonymusic.com.


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Organic Research Centres Alliance (ORCA)
The Organic Research Centres Alliance (ORCA) intends to internationally network and strengthen existing institutions with scientific credentials and empower them to become centers of excellence in transdisciplinary organic agriculture research. The objective is to ensure that environmental, economic, and social benefits accruing from organic research are shared worldwide. The ORCA concept is designed following a research paradigm that heavily draws on traditional knowledge, improves it with scientific investigation and shares it widely. Research centres may be physical laboratories or "institutions without walls," formed through alliances between producers and scientists, as well as twinning between developing and developed countries' institutions.
The ORCA concept has been developed jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy), Tufts University (USA), and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (Switzerland) in 2008. Subsequently, scientists and individuals in civil society and private industry all over the world have engaged in advancing the ORCA concept and creating a critical mass of institutions aiming to take forward organic agriculture research and development.
While donor funding is still awaited to empower emerging ORCA networks to create consortia and undertake collaborative on-farm research, ORCA partners hereby seek to share information related to organic research on this website. Therefore, this ORCA portal offers information on organic research topics and related resources.


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Bleecker's Design Fiction slideshow, from the Shift08 version of his presentation, appears below.
(Those interested may compare it to the earlier version given at Design Engaged.)
The general burden of his argument (quoting from the introduction -- see Slideshow Transcript, Slide 2) is that design can be considered or used
as a kind of story-telling practice, crafting material visions of different kinds of possible worlds and through those visions doing more than presenting an inert, lifeless object. Rather, design can turn ideas into material, but also insert that material into a larger setting with broader social contexts and consequences, and through that create a compelling story about a possible future. In this way, the design object becomes an important property of the world. And its [sic] this notion of a property in a larger narrative-based context that I will ultimately highlight in this talk. A prop, to borrow from film and theater production — that helps move a story forward.
In his presentation Bleecker references the work of David A. Kirby, a lecturer in Science Communication at the University of Manchester, who offers a very interesting way of framing the real-life usefulness of sci-fi movie props:
for Hollywood technical advisors cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually "diegetic prototypes" that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology's need, benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies exist as "real" objects that function properly and which people actually use.
[From Kirby's forthcoming paper, "Screening Technology: Technical Advisors, Diegetic Prototypes, and the Cinematic Creation of the Future", quoted at Material Beliefs blog, 21 May 02007.]
The notion of diegetic (in-world) prototypes rhymes with much of the thinking at this blog around communicating alternative futures, and in particular the importance of diegetic integrity as expressed in our experiential scenario mantra, Don't break the universe.
I agree completely with Bleecker about the use of design "to create a compelling story about a possible future". Storytelling through concept design can be so effective that in fact to provide a literal narrative set in the future to go with it may actually be unnecessary, if the in-world design elements properly invite immersion in their own right. Such was the case with architect Bryan Boyer's provocative thesis project of redesigning the U.S. Capitol building.
"Design fiction" sits at the intersection of storytelling and design. From a design point of view, it makes sense to recruit storytelling techniques to render a design more compelling. But the relationship can work in the other direction; indeed the point of film props is that they help tell the story. It seems useful to admit that from a designer's point of view, design fiction is principally a way of extending engagement with a design problem space, while for a futurist, by contrast, the same tools are regarded as a means to a larger end; namely, to help people (usually their clients) explore the various "worlds" (or contexts) in which they may find themselves several years or decades, or longer, from today.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are in tension. Not long ago, I oversaw a project in which our team was producing future-images -- say, two to ten years out, for argument's sake -- for a client developing a prototype application (details of which we won't go into here). The agreement was that we would use visual "artifacts from the future" to suggest how the world could eventually look to a user blessed with the functioning app. We found that, having iterated on the design once or twice, and upon delivering a completed scenario-exploring image, the client would (as hoped and expected) identify a range of second- and third- order design issues that had not been on the table until the initial image became available to "think with". One curious finding was that to evoke the social and personal impacts of a relatively distant-future application, at a general level of abstraction helpful to investors and project managers for instance, tended to require a certain suspension of disbelief; the use of an evocative artistic licence at the expense of literal "accuracy". Subsequent iterations, which the client requested to address more of the concrete, granular design and engineering issues, became less clear and impactful; though they were more useful for the day-to-day project implementation level, they were also somewhat more prosaic in their details.
So, design fictions (or diegetic prototypes) intended to advance technical implementation and those oriented to advancing systemic or social understanding are not quite the same species. In the case described above, we found ourselves doing what designers usually do (assuming a range of continuities to enable and elaborate a single preferred scenario for the product), rather than what we as futurists were more accustomed to doing (systematically exploring possible discontinuities in order to produce a more robust strategic stance).
For a futurist, or at any rate for me and my colleagues, future artifacts themselves are like so many forward-facing MacGuffins, heuristic devices carefully crafted to help tell engaging stories. They enable and animate deeper exploration of the various relationships and values at stake in a particular future scenario, and (I argue with monotonous regularity, from various angles, in this space) their value for that purpose is multiplied many times over when artifacts "from" different future worlds can be devised and explicitly brought into conversation with one another (as in our postcards intervention, among others). This blog contains abundant testimony to the process of futurists discovering that this exploratory function (traditionally abstract -- verbal, textual, and statistical) can be carried out much more effectively when an immersive, experiential, radically multimedia approach is adopted.
From the design side, too, the same connection is being made. For instance, Adaptive Path's Peter Merholz recently described the gradual integration of futures thinking into their company practice. Last month we learned about experience designer Nathan Shedroff's take on futures thinking. Similarly, Bleecker's Near Future Laboratory colleague Nicolas Nova has spotted the connection between their work and that of FoundFutures, our series of multimedia public art interventions to make alternative futures experientially available to people in their everyday lives ("guerrilla futures").
Yet despite these promising signs of mutual discovery and learning, there remains something of a disconnect between design and futures discourse. In part this arises from the fallacy of monofuturism (held not only by many designers, but plenty of others also, including some self-described futurists). I am referring to the fundamental yet distressingly widespread misconception that engaging the yet-to-be means trying to predict "the future" rather than exploring alternative futures. (See for example the slideshow from Nova's recent Design Engaged presentation; "inflated deflated future(s), or... why futurists fail to predict futures".†) To use Bleecker's imagery, it's my observation that almost all design tacitly assumes a single, linear future, and evinces nothing remotely like the complexity of Latour's manifold conception of imagined futures. (Gibson's "unevenly distributed" aphorism is often misused as a stand-in for a more multi-dimensional theory of how change happens -- i.e., the future is X, but not everyone catches on at the same time -- a mere variation on the monofuturist's theme).
To bridge this gap, as I picture it, would probably involve designers mastering the foundations of futures studies,∞ and collaborating with futurists in experientially manifesting genuinely diverging future scenarios, on an ongoing basis, both for instrumental design-improving purposes and for broader world-exploring ones. Futurists ought to learn as much as they can about design, too -- but let me be clear. Good storytelling is a necessary precondition for good design: with or without the involvement of designated "futurists", the rigorous elaboration of alternative futures is the sine qua non of meaningful choice.
As we've seen above, "design fiction" sits at the intersection of storytelling and design. Turning this theory object over in our contemplation, we see that not only can storytelling help designers (as suggested by the design fiction story in Sterling's 02006 collection, Visionary in Residence), but also, flipping it around, that design can be deployed in the service of stories addressing bigger topics, such as future scenarios for our industries, communities, cultures, and planet.
The values-laden, story-driven, aspirational design and pursuit of alternative futures among which we may choose more wisely is among the most urgent challenges we collectively face.
[Updated Sept 19, 2015 to fix embedded slideshow.]
Related posts:
> Don't break the universe
> The MacGuffin Library
> Future-jamming 101
> Architectural time travel> Findability features FoundFutures
† Nicolas Nova presentation via Overmorgen.
∞ If the existence of a field of study called futures is news to you, dear reader, then futurist and political science Prof Jim Dator's article "The future lies behind! Thirty years of teaching futures studies" may be a useful starting point.


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Courtenay, B.C. has an entry in the latest Ripley's Believe It Or Not publication – Out Of The Box – thanks to a notorious Christmas ad that ran in the Comox Valley Record on Nov. 21, 2019.
The infamous 'Pictures With Satan' ad made headlines across the country, and beyond - even meriting a mention on the NBC television show Late Night With Seth Meyers.
VIDEO: Newspaper's 'Photos with Satan' ad appears on late-night TV
Just when we thought the gaffe had been forgotten, along comes Ripley's.
The entry was brought to our attention by Facebook follower Bo Waite.
"My son found this entry in this year's Ripley's Believe It or Not," said Waite, and attached the photos.
The entry reads "MEET SATAN - A spelling mistake in a newspaper for a Christmas fair in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada, accidentally invited people to take photos with Satan!"
The original ad prompted thousands of comments, shares, and likes on social media channels such as Twitter, and even spurred a few local residents to dress up as the devil himself for the Christmas parade that year.
Well this is awkward. pic.twitter.com/yDwTqQs4G9
— Nicholas M. Pescod (@npescod) November 21, 2019
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter


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Can timber buildings become mainstream?
The branch-on-every-corner model has evolved, and mobile, digital and other automated models are forming the front line for banking operations.
Timber is not a common sight in the modern urban environment, which leans towards the sharp lines of glass, the strength of steel and the durability of concrete.
But what started off as a few niche projects in a small number of cities across Europe and North America, is rapidly taking off with a growing number of 'plyscrapers' in the construction phase. These use engineered wood such as spruce, larch or pine which is industrially dried and treated to give it increased strength and fire-resistant properties.
One of the best known mass timber buildings is Brock Commons, a high-rise student accommodation block at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Opening to students in 2017, it is the world's tallest building to use cross-laminated timber in its structure, standing 53 meters high over 18 floors. It was also completed four months faster than a comparable steel-concrete project thanks to prefabricated components which were slotted into place on the building site.
Also vying for the title of the world's tallest timber building will be Vienna's HoHo, an 84-meter-high multiuse project that aims to highlight the positive properties of wood when combined with state-of-the-art technologies. It is due to open in 2018.
In Hamburg, another student accommodation complex called Woodie is made of timber units stacked like containers, inspired by the metal versions that populate the city's harbor. More recently, projects have become increasingly ambitious and focused on the city core. London's Oakwood Tower is planned to rise 300 meters, breaking all altitude records for timber constructions.
A new material for a new era
"If you want to build cost-effective building today, you can't ignore wood as a building material," says Martin Hofmann, Head of Project & Development Services, JLL Germany. "It's a renewable product that's easy to process and efficient to use."
Yet such projects are not made from engineered wood alone; more accurately described as hybrids, the incorporate elements of steel and concrete.
In Stockholm, however, Anders Berensson Architects plans to build the city's tallest building: a fully-timber high-rise, including a wooden stairwell and elevator shaft.
Building with wood come with key design benefits says Konstantin Kortmann, Head of Residential Investment JLL Germany. "As a building material, wood is natural, aesthetically pleasing and creates a comfortable room climate. We're seeing increased demand for it."
Plus, with environmental factors gaining significance in the industry, and a growing recognition of the benefits of natural materials in workspace design, wood is winning out. In the Norwegian city of Bergen, the world's previous tallest timber building, the Tree, used wood from sustainable forests.
Sustainability has become the standard in project developments both for the construction of buildings and how they're used," says Stephan Leimbach, JLL Germany's Head of Office Leasing. "When it comes to productivity, psychological aspects are also important. A wooden workplace answers employee demand for natural elements."
Coming soon to a city near you?
Despite promising signs, timber still has some way to go before it enters the mainstream. "The examples remain isolated cases, and are mainly in countries that already have established timber construction," says Kortmann. "In Germany, for the most part, wood only plays a part in interior design and we still rely on reinforced concrete for load-bearing structures."
"What hinders larger wooden buildings is not so much the technical aspects as the legal requirements imposed by authorities," adds Hofmann. Combustibility is a particular concern, he says: "In Germany, a commercial property of 100 percent wood is not yet possible due to such regulations."
Hofmann emphasizes that fireproofing treatments exist to overcome these challenges. Yet it could still take some years to change habits and norms within the industry.
In the meantime, we can gradually integrate wooden elements. "Thanks to its lightweight qualities, wood is the ideal material to use for flooring in existing buildings, for example," he concludes. "But it has the potential to be used much more. I see it gradually becoming a more common material for both the structure and design of building."


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Madam Speaker, I have not yet had the opportunity to attend a committee meeting, but I can say with absolute certainty that the Liberal Party will continue to respect Quebec's jurisdiction over immigration and other matters.
House of Commons Hansard #67 of the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was code.


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I treat my hearing aids a lot like my car, maybe better actually. Both are routinely treated to cleaning rituals and maintenance tune-ups. And while my car may only get cleaned once a month, I make sure I dry and clean my hearing aids daily, regardless of how long I wear them each day.
But while my day-to-day hearing aid care routine is great, I still make sure that I take my hearing aids into my hearing professional for a full, professional clean at least once a year! Why? Here are my reasons.
- I don't have the tools or the knowledge to do a safe, deep clean that removes all the built-up wax, debris and oil without damaging the receivers or microphones.
- I am always pleased with the improved audio quality a professional cleaning provides. You'd be shocked at how the wax or debris I can't get at impacts the quality of speech and music.
- My hearing professional is also able to inspect my hearing aids for any signs of damage and suggest or provide repairs.
- Professional cleaning helps my hearing aids run better, longer.
If professional hearing aid cleanings are not already part of your annual hearing health program, I highly suggest you add them! I am even going to start doing professional cleanings more often now, especially as sweat and wax buildup accumulate faster during the warm, humid summer months.
This blog was originally written by a Starkey hearing aid user and was originally published on www.starkey.com.


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Wing Commander Saga Released
The long-awaited Wing Commander Saga fan mod is finally available for download! The story takes place in the same timeframe as Wing Commander III, but you play as a rookie pilot on the TCS Hermes. Saga is a standalone game that runs on top of an updated Descent: Freespace 2 engine. If you'd like to know more about the decade-long development cycle, Shotglass recently ran a cool feature on it.
Update: wcsaga.com is currently overloaded. Read the release notes here. Scroll down for download links.
Wing Commander Saga is currently available for Windows (Mac and Linux versions are coming soon), and has rather modest system requirements. The installer weighs in at a hefty 3.4 gigabytes, so we recommend some kind of download manager that can resume paused or failed transfers. Older Windows editions may have trouble unpacking a zip file of this size. If you experience any difficulties, use 7zip to extract the package. Here is the current list of mirrors:


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Studies associated with effort
Title | Authors | Journal | Loading |
Term-based meta-analyses: Frequently Asked Questions
This page displays information for an automated Neurosynth meta-analysis of the term effort. The meta-analysis was performed by automatically identifying all studies in the Neurosynth database that loaded highly on the term, and then performing meta-analyses to identify brain regions that were consistently or preferentially reported in the tables of those studies.
What do the "uniformity test" and "association test" maps mean?
For a detailed explanation, please see our Yarkoni et al (2011). In brief, the uniformity test map displays brain regions that are consistently active in studies that load highly on the term effort. Voxels with large z-scores are reported more often in studies whose abstracts use the term effort than one would expect them to be if activation everywhere in the brain was equally likely. Note that this is typically not so interesting, because it turns out that some brain regions are consistently reported in a lot of different kinds of studies (again, see our paper). So as a general rule of thumb, we don't recommend paying much attention to uniformity test maps.
association test maps are, roughly, maps displaying brain regions that are preferentially related to the term effort. The association test map for effort displays voxels that are reported more often in articles that include the term effort in their abstracts than articles that do not. Most of the time this a more useful way of thinking about things, since association test maps tell you whether or not there's a non-zero association between activation of the voxel in question and the use of a particular term in a study.
Note that these two maps were previously referred to as forward and reverse inference maps, respectively, which was a mistake. We don't show true forward and reverse inference maps on the website (for reasons explained in the FAQs), but you can generate them via the Python core tools.
How do you determine which studies to include in an analysis?
For all term-based meta-analyses visible on this website, we consider a study to load on a given term if the term is used at least once anywhere in the article abstract. We have applied various other modeling approaches in the past (e.g., increasing the cut-off, using continuous-valued weights, and using the full-text of articles rather than just the abstract), but there is generally surprisingly little effect on results within a fairly broad range of parameter variation.
Are these maps corrected for multiple comparisons?
Yes, they're corrected using a false discovery rate (FDR) approach, with an expected FDR of 0.01.
I need more details! How exactly were these maps and data generated?
If you want to know exactly how things work, we encourage you to clone the Neurosynth python tools from the github repository and work through some of the examples and code provided in the package. Everything you see on this page was generated using the default processing stream, so you should be able to easily generate the exact same images (unless the underlying database has grown or changed) for yourself.


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Brink, Geoffrey | |
Casler, Michael |
Submitted to: American Forage and Grassland Council Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings Publication Acceptance Date: 11/30/2012 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Rotationally-stocked, perennial cool-season grasses are often utilized at a vegetative stage of maturity. We compared the yield and forage quality of leaves, stems, and total forage of meadow fescue, orchardgrass, quackgrass, reed canarygrass, smooth bromegrass, EF (endophyte-free) and EI (endophyte-infected) tall fescue, and timothy in the spring, summer, and fall in Wisconsin. Total forage production of all grasses was greatest during the spring, as expected. Leaf yield differences in spring, however, were relatively small (mean of 1090 lb/acre), except for smooth bromegrass (1430 lb/acre). Tall fescue (EF and EI) produced the greatest leaf yield during the summer (mean of 1420 lb/acre) and fall (mean of 920 lb/acre), and quackgrass, smooth bromegrass, and timothy (mean of 640 lb/acre) the least. Significant leaf crude protein (CP) differences occurred during the spring, summer, and fall, but leaf CP of all grasses exceeded 16% and would likely have little effect on animal performance. Lowest neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and greatest NDF digestibility were measured in the leaves and stems of meadow fescue and timothy. A producer's perception of the value of a grass may be biased by annual yield estimates because spring yield constitutes a large proportion of annual yield and stems constitute a significant portion of the total yield. The greater nutritive value of grasses like meadow fescue must be balanced against slightly lower productivity. |


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Washington, DC, September 08, 2017 –(PR.com)– As thousands of dialysis patients in the Texas Gulf region face the reality of being stranded without access to vital health care treatments, Kidney Care Partners and its community of dialysis providers, patient advocates, physicians and product manufacturers are working to provide immediate, essential care to those impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
Members of Kidney Care Partners – a coalition of patient advocates, dialysis professionals, care providers and manufacturers dedicated to working together to improve quality of care for individuals with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) – are drawing upon previous partnerships amid natural disasters to ensure the thousands of dialysis patients in the Texas region continue to receive routine, life-sustaining care.
"After coming together during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and in subsequent large-scale natural disasters, the dialysis community has learned how to work quickly and efficiently to make care available where it's needed most, help patients access it, and put financial resources where they can truly help," said Frank Maddux, Chair of Kidney Care Partners. "Our patients don't have the luxury of missing their scheduled treatments as Houston and surrounding areas recover from this storm. Without dialysis, their bodies will not function properly."
In addition to the heroic efforts of individuals – like Dr. Michael Braun, chief of the pediatric nephrology center at Texas Children's Hospital, who worked with the National Coast Guard to save dozens of dialysis patients who were stuck in the storm and unable to seek treatment – the larger dialysis community has joined forces.
Two of the country's largest dialysis providers, Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) and DaVita (DVA), have undertaken coordinated efforts to keep as many facilities open as possible, and to assist with patient transportation.
Fresenius Medical Care, with 48 clinics in the Houston area, rented boats, duck boats and high water vehicles for transporting medical supplies and supplies for displaced employees, as well as rescuing patients and making sure they are able to get to a treatment center. They also brought in fuel tankers and generators and rented RVs and vehicles for their employees. From across the country, FMC employees came together to support patients and colleagues in the Texas Gulf region, on the ground to provide direct patient care, at the multiple command centers and coordinating resources.
With more than 100 facilities serving 7,500 patients in the Houston area, DaVita engaged its Village Emergency Response Team (DaVERT) last week to bring generators, water tank, and medical supplies to affected facilities. To date, 98 of 106 clinics are now fully operational. More than 500 DaVita employees traveled to Houston to help local teams locate and treat patients during the days of flooding.
Patient advocate groups, like the American Kidney Fund (AKF) and the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), have established disaster relief resources, call centers, and emergency funds. Any donations made to AKF's rapid-response Disaster Relief Program or to NKF's Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund will be used to provide dialysis patients with transportation to clinics, medications, shelter, utilities, food, clothing or any other urgent needs.
Some of the organizations among the kidney community who have contributed to the AKF's Disaster Relief Program include the National Renal Administrators Association (NRAA), American Society of Nephrology, Amgen Foundation, DaVita, U.S. Renal Care, Keryx, American Renal Associates and OPKO. AKF has so far been able to distribute nearly $100,000 in emergency aid to more than 400 dialysis patients across the Texas region, while continuing to receive dozens of new requests for assistance each day. AKF is also leveraging its large social media network to provide patients and caregivers with resources for how they can help.
Members of the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology in the region kept in close contact with patient families to ensure approximately 33 area children with kidney failure – from babies to young adults – were able to receive their dialysis care. Texas Children's Hospital and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, both located among the hardest-hit areas, worked closely with the Coast Guard and the Texas Department of Emergency Management to create a map of Houston that pinpointed the location of each child, then coordinated with emergency teams to reach pediatric patients and get them to dialysis. One such rescue involved a medevac helicopter landing in a flooded neighborhood to reach a young girl who was in desperate need of dialysis care.
Manufacturer Baxter, who makes dialysis products, continues to reach out to those affected in Texas by supporting employees on the ground who are working tirelessly to deliver life-saving products to local hospitals and renal clinics. The Baxter International Foundation has also made a financial contribution to several relief organizations, including the American Red Cross, Americares, and Direct Relief to address all recovery needs.
"In spite of the storm's devastation across the area, dialysis patients have found hope and relief thanks to the quick and coordinated efforts of the kidney care community," concluded Dr. Maddux. "Without the tireless work of thousands of volunteers and caregivers in the region, including the coordination of call centers and the allocation of emergency funds and resources, none of this would be possible. I am awestruck by our community's dedication to providing care – no matter the barriers – to the patients we serve. We must continue to come together and dedicate our attention and resources in the face of future natural disasters. I am confident our community will rise to these challenges for the benefit of our patients."
Contact Information:
Schmidt Public Affairs
Sarah Ann Rhoades
Contact via Email
Read the full story here: http://www.pr.com/press-release/729346
Press Release Distributed by PR.com


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Gabe's Chemo Duck Program™ is a unique educational program offered by Gabe's My Heart, a nonprofit organization that supports children and families living with cancer. Created by a mother for her son Gabe when he was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, Chemo Duck is a soft, cuddly companion that provides huggable hope and alleviates fear and anxiety. Developed with the help of child life specialists and medical professionals, the Chemo Duck Program helps introduce children and families to their new life and encourages healing through the power of play therapy.
Looking for a Duck across the pond?
If you are a hospital or parent looking for a Duck in the United Kingdom visit our friends at The Give A Duck Foundation.
Fly Now


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Supplying Stamped Concrete to Hackettstown NJ Residents
Serving Andover, Sparta, Hackettstown, Ledgewood, Randolph, Flanders, Dover, Morristown, and the surrounding areas.
North Warren Stampcrete supplies the decorative concrete industry with the finest products and equipment in the industry. We continue to strive on providing you the most innovative products to satisfy your requests to our utmost ability by staying on the leading edge of technology. The Stampcrete system meets the needs of the residential, commercial, architectural and municipal markets as the jobs you will see within our site.
We would like to thank all the Residential and Commercial Contractors who have used our decorative concrete systems. We invite you to accept only the best and to see what Stampcrete can offer you.


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Find out why a Claflin education is more than a means to a degree.
Office of the Registrar
The best way to get a feel for Claflin is to visit us.
Claflin students work with the best leaders in their fields.
You'll find endless opportunities here to get involved.
There is always something happening at Claflin!
Claflin is #1 in alumni giving among all HBCUs, thanks to you.
Panther Alert is a mass notification system that enables University students, faculty and staff to receive alerts and updates as text messages on cell phones, through email and voicemail.
Participation by the University community is voluntary. It is powered by Regroup.com. No advertisements or non-university alerts will be sent. Your information is not shared with or sold to third parties.
If you are a student, faculty or staff member of the University, you have already been signed up. Since this is a voluntary service, you may choose to opt-in or opt-out of the service at any time.
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