text:
If you're an emerging printmaker who is new to submitting, please consider reading DCimPRINT's handy guide, Printmaking 101: Applying for shows, first.
Other resources:
- Call For Entry.org
- Inkteraction! International Printmakers Network
- Smidgeon Press Calls for Printmakers
List of Printmaking Competitions, Exhibits, Exchanges and Artist in Residence Opportunities
- Bainbridge Open Print Show (London, UK) Entry Deadline: Entries to be submitted by 24:00 on 10 April 2013. Accepted work to be received by 3 or 4 May. Eligibility: not stated, traditional printmaking methods, 3 JPEGs can be submitted, 20£ fee
- WPG National Small Works Show Early bird deadline: April 17, 2013 ($20/4 images). Final deadline: May 18, 2013 ($30/4 images). Eligibility: printmakers age 18+ residing in the continental United States creating traditional, hand-pulled prints under 170 square inches.
- ARTspace Original International Print Exchange & Exhibit, Chatham, Ontario, Canada Deadline: submit from April 17 to May 25, 2013 Eligibility: An open call has been put out to artists, print studios and forums across the globe asking printmakers to create a print with a paper size no larger than 5 inches x 5 inches (12.7cm x 12.7cm) and an image size no larger than 4 inches by 4 inches (10.7cm x 10.7cm) in an edition of ten. Each artist will have one of their prints on display and for sale at the standard price of $75.00 + tax while the rest of the prints will be distributed among other participants, ensuring each artist will receive a suite of different prints.
- Hazelhurst Art Award (Sydney Australia) Entry Deadline: Entries to be submitted by 17:00 on 6 May 2013. Accepted work to be received by 14 June. Eligibility: apparently international, juried, $45 AUD Entry Fee per item.
$15,000 AUD prize plus several smaller prizes - Print People Print Exchange 2013 Entry Deadline: Receive June 1, 2013 Eligibility: Worldwide, cost $15, submit 12 editioned prints of an edition of 12 or more, 6"x8" prints, open theme


text: A blonde with two red ears went to her doctor. The doctor asked her what had happened to her ears and she answered, "I was ironing a shirt and the phone rang but instead of picking up the phone, I accidentally picked up the iron and stuck it to my ear." "Oh Dear!" the doctor exclaimed in disbelief. "But, what happened to your other ear?" "The jerk called back!"

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A woman comes home and tells her husband, "Remember those headaches I've been having all these years? Well, they're gone." "No more headaches?" the husband asks, "What happened?" His wife replies, Margie referred me to a hypnotist. He told me To Stand in front of a mirror, stare at myself and repeat,… "I do not Have a Headache; I do not have a headache, I do not have a headache. It Worked! The headaches are all gone." The husband replies, "Well, that is wonderful." His wife then says, "You know, you haven't been exactly a ball Of Fire in the bedroom these last few years. Why don't you go see the Hypnotist and see if he can do anything for that? "The husband agrees to try it Following his appointment,
The husband comes home, rips off his clothes, picks up his wife and carries her into the bedroom. He Puts her on The bed and says, "Don't move, I'll be right back." He goes into The Bathroom and comes back. A few minutes later and jumps into bed And makes Passionate love to his wife like never before. His wife says, "Boy, that was wonderful!" The husband says, "Don't move! I will be right back." He goes back Into the bathroom, comes back and round two was even better than The First time. The wife sits up and her head is spinning. Her husband again says, "Don't move, I'll be right back." With That, He goes back in the bathroom. This time, his wife quietly follows him and there, in the Bathroom, She sees him standing at the mirror and saying, "She's not my Wife. She's Not my wife. She's not my wife…" His funeral services will be held on Friday.


text:
Greetings, music lovers. Allow us to draw attention to the new slab by the emminent and hirsute Steeltown reprobate, Lee Harvey Osmond, aka Tom Wilson aka One of Three Rodeo Kings aka that large, melodic growling man from the former Junkhouse. This record is called "Beautiful Scars," as in: "Man, that scar is beautiful," or "She has a beautiful scar right here…" or "My scar is beautiful. It reminds me of that time I didn't die." The humanity of the album– produced by Michael Timmins in the intimacy of his Toronto Roncesvalles studio– is like the warmth of blood that rushes to the cut: a sudden jolt in the middle of peril and uncertainty; a suspension of possibility that anything can happen next. Redolent with swooning horns and guitars that bob and weave, LHO's voice– forever the hallmark of his sound, which spans over three decades of work– sounds, here, like a warm hand to the forehead, an arm on the arm of the stricken, a comforting growl at the heart of a screaming world. At once evoking Howlin' Wolf, Mike Scott and Roy Loney, "Beautiful Scars" bends and twists and stretches and squeezes LHO's deep baritone, the producer treating it as if caged in a transistor radio, bathed in echo from above, or sunk in the muck of distortion. The strength of the songs notwithstanding, "Beautiful Scars" is a fascinating vocal journey to rank among the great sonic Canadian records of our time.
Through the truncheon swing of "Loser for your Love" to the haunting balladry of "Come and Go" to the morose beauty of "Burning in My Bed" to the exotic fusion of the album's penultimate track, "Black Spruce," "Beautiful Scars" journeys between the quiet, smouldering, raging, moving and sad. Lyrically, LHO reflects on the mistakes of the singer's past with the resigned perspective of someone coming through the other side. A song like "Hey, Hey, Hey"– featuring a thrilling slide guitar piece by Aaron Goldstein– describes two lovers caught in the throes of personal despair, their "dreams turned to rust," their lives waiting until "the morning comes and sweeps us both away." LHO sings: "The world is fucked up. And so are you and I." It defines an album, and a songwriter, bereft of any choices other than to keep moving for fear of sinking into the mire of a dark past.
This is the 3rd solo album from the Hamilton songwriter– the progenitor of "Acid Folk,"– whose previous two albums, "A Quiet Evil" and "The Folk Sinner" were previously long-listed for the Polaris Prize and nominated for a Juno. It's a dynamic footprint on Canada's song-scape, a deeply personal, but universally affecting, journey across the jagged line of scars and smoothness of skin that surrounds them.
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text:
Orange Frost
This recipe has not been reviewed. Be the first to rate this recipe!
From the kitchen of Tonia Emmons
This recipe has been on northpole.com from the beginning… since 1996! We hope you enjoy this classic North Pole recipe. Let us know your opinion by submitting a review!
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Recipe Details
Total Time: |
not specified |
Tags: | Gluten‑free, Good for parties/potlucks, Kid friendly, Quick & easy |
2 (3 ounce) packages orange Jell-O
2 cups boiling water
2 pints orange sherbet
2 cups Cool Whip
Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water.
Add orange sherbet and cool whip.
Put in refrigerator to chill completely
Easy to make and very good.
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text:
Well folks, it's game time!
Nothing says "Big Game Sunday" like a tableful of game day favorites.
With that in mind, I was sent a little package from Musselman's with some of their wonderful apple butter and the cutest little apple bowl, which is perfect for dips and sauces.
One of our favorite Musselman's Butter recipes is the Monkey Bread made with apple butter....it is to die for. Check out the recipe here.
But the new recipe my family asked to try out, was the Caramel Apple Dip. Perfect for dipping sliced apples.....and also delicious if you heat it up and serve it over ice cream. Yum!
Easiest dip to make ever.
Caramel Apple Dip
1 cup of Musselman's Apple Butter
1/2 cup of Caramel Sauce
Combine ingredients. Serve with fresh fruit or graham crackers.
That's IT! Easy peasy and yummy. Perfect if you have people over.
If you want more recipes you can check out the Musselman's website, or their facebook page.
Musselman's have been kind enough to provide a giveaway gift pack to a lucky reader. The winner will receive a jar of Apple Butter, recipe cards and a matching multi-purpose bowl.
All you need to do is to leave a comment below, and please make sure there is an email where I can contact you if you are chosen as the winner.
Good Luck!!!
Contest will run until Friday the 1st, 2013 and is open to US residents.


text:
Brian Boorman (google)
SET bitnum = frist
True (unregistered)
Yes, Jane looks like someone opposed to healthy diet - wondered why the hate...
someone (unregistered)
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but would using a version control system with branches prevent the issue of _NEW, _PROD and _DEV?
LCrawford (unregistered)
But wait, how can they do clever combination searches without creating a big-big-hugeint from an array of byte first?
someone else (unregistered)
You're correct in theory. The "prc_" prefix indicates a stored procedure (think of this as a custom method attached to the database object) which makes things a bit trickier
Far as I'm aware, the ideal solution would be something like: stored procedure definitions held as text files, controlled by a source control system, with a bunch of clever scripts to roll the repository contents out to the relevant database. Extra cleverness is required to handle any table layout changes, as you can't just store all your data in the CVS.
The additional effort required to set up such an arrangement, and to get one's head around version control in general and database version control in particular, means that a lot of companies basically do their version control on the honour system. Situations like the one here are distressingly common.
Pjrz (unregistered)
You're giving the original developers far too much credit.
In my own inherited codebase, which now uses source control by never used to (though at least they kept backups of main builds), there were tons of functions called SomeFunction_old, SomeFunction_old2, etc.
They remained there for quite some time until they bugged me enough that I decided it was time to purge!
not me (unregistered)
Paranoid hippies? Harsh.
RLB (unregistered)
Harsh, but deserved.
TheCPUWizard (nodebb)
"with a bunch of clever scripts to roll the repository contents out to the relevant database. Extra cleverness is required to handle any table layout changes, as you can't just store all your data in the CVS."
Proper tooling to handle this has been around for about a decade.....
someone (unregistered)
Well, sure. Hence my inclusion of "using", not "having" :)
CoyneTheDup (nodebb)
Later, these numbers are added together so that groups of technical functions effectively have a distinct number, allowing them to be used as a bitmask to search for the additives. "Clever" at its finest.
And this would be searched with a database engine, how? No database engine I'm aware of provides any predicates for searching by bit mask. This is a WTF's WTF, a second-order WTF.
Kashim (unregistered)
I just left a place that believed that the methods that they wrote should be named _v1 and _v2 if they wanted a new method with the same name and different behavior. Thus "GetAbsolutePath_v1" would get the absolute path to a file, but if the path was on another drive, would throw an error and die. Thus, this warranted "GetAbsolutePath_v2" which would properly parse addtional drives.
We had version control. CVS, but still version control. Someone copy and pasted v1 to make v2, then added 3 lines of exception handling at the top. Why? They "didn't want to break the functionality for anyone who was relying on v1 throwing an error." The end result? I find it 3 years later, and v2 has become abandonware, because someone renamed v1 back to "GetAbsolutePath", and everyone used it without worrying about it.
This is along the same lines as wanting to keep old, buggy code in the codebase by commenting out huge blocks of code and then never cleaning them up.
Trust Me I'm Not a Robot (unregistered)
Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Bananafish (nodebb)
That was more "Brilliant" than "Clever"
04012018 (unregistered)
Trust me folks, space aids is real.
I'm going to walk around the block and stand on the corner. Just kill me if it's a problem. Please know that I only did this not for any personal gain or profit, not for any malevolence or ignorance, but for hope for Planet Earth.
For further questions regarding the philosophical or theological ramifications or debate of this Dungeons and Dragons game, and I really do mean that, game, G-A-M-E, culminating in the following:
- March Madness Chinese Prom (dry hump PMS Olympics to promote sportswear fashions)
- Clean Cut Free the NIP Activity Summer 2018
- Advancements in medicine for the human brain to provide invincible human immortality
- A new elementary model utilizing the Laplace Equation
- Send your children to Geh... I mean the Gannon!
For questions, please contact my "colleague", fellow graduate of Gannon University Mechanical Engineering 2004, Gerard Pawlowski. He will happily assist on any theological, philosophical or mathematical questions:
Please also inform him that the meta-exorcism may continue, as long as he proscribes by the Hippocratic oath regarding myself and my family, and he and his brother, who I think is a Monsignor now, is having fun!
Satan must flap his wings, I guess. Probably not. But I'm not Satan, no, and neither is my family.
But for all intentions, Satan works for me now! He may work for you too, if you go to the Gannon! If not, send your kids, especially if they are problem childs! The Diocese of Erie knows how to handle many devil worshipers. Just sell them off to the navy at $5 a head and turn them into drunken sailors!
please consult my colleague, friend and fellow graduate
CowgirlNelly (unregistered)
Yes, everything that's added to food is added for one reason: profit.
04012018 (unregistered)
04012018 (unregistered)
If it's too much, we could also discuss the McBride Viaduct here:
Maybe rename it, and give hospitals a say in what makes ambulances run faster?
🤷 (unregistered)
Nice. The spam posts still get through. The moderation should be held, until those comments have been cleared up.
ooOOooGa (unregistered)
"Paranoid hippies" Seriously? That is ad hominem of the darkest stripe.
Yes. There are many people who don't think that the FDA and other government agencies actually have the public's best interest at heart. Given the track record of recent years I am inclined to agree with them. My aunt suffers from short term memory problems caused by some new drug that her doctor gave her, and my mother-in-law died for several minutes from something her doctor gave her.
How many drugs have been recalled in recent years due to health concerns?
"Paranoid hippies" indeed. Just because people are paranoid doesn't mean that they are wrong.
Kashim (unregistered)
Lol, the Singularity will come in the form of a spam bot that we cannot tell is a spam bot. Does it count as passing the turing test when even humans cannot tell anymore which ones are the spam bots, and which are the real posters?
Yep (unregistered)
In the meanwhile, less than half of my comments are coming through without passing the moderation queue.
Even if my comments were spam, at least I'm not a robot.
W (unregistered)
Evil thought: Could it be that the spammer is an insider that controls the moderation? If this comment is held for moderation at least I will know.
Oliver Jones (google)
Gödel-numbering combinations of food additives? Wow. Just wow.
I Am A Robot (unregistered)
"the bitNum was never used" probably should be "the bitNum was no longer used" - I'll bet anything that someone removed the use of the value while leaving the calculation.
I Am A Robot (unregistered)
And adding DEV, QA, PROD, etc to the end of versions. I'll bet after an incident where development code was run in production someone made a rule saying that all code must have an identifier to say which environment it can run in.
Pedro (unregistered)
I think the moderation detection code is missing a "!" ...
Pedro (unregistered)
edit: I think the SPAM detection code is missing a "!" ...
John (unregistered)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style Lesson 1.
tbo (unregistered)
MySQL has ENUM and SET types, which act behind the scenes as bitmasks, but they have limits.
Really, this information probably should've been in a separate table (or two, if additives can have many functions).
William F (unregistered)
I'm sure there's a lot of WTF fodder in the hand-rolled stored-procedure-management code that's out there...
Jeremy Hannon (google)
Microsoft SQL Sever has supported bitwise operators since the 2008 version. You can use operators such as &, |, &=, |=, ^, ^=, and ~ to perform bitwise queries against integer fields. I have not used them much, so I don't know how efficient they are, but it is possible.
CoyneTheDup (nodebb)
Oh, sure, bitwise operators are in many database engines. But those are not search predicates. Say I want VI bit from the right set to 1, I would need to do something like:
where (col & 64) > 0
But that requires evaluating every row in the table, there is no indexability for performance.
Addendum 2018-04-10 00:18: "6th bit", not "VI bit". It is truly amazing what Chrome thinks dictated text should be translated to.
Abe Z. (unregistered)
Why is this "feature" article and not CodeSOD?
Watson (nodebb)
There are DBMSs that provide for indexing on expressions, and/or computed columns. Of course, you would still need to declare separate indexes for "col & 1", "col & 2", "col & 3".... though you could skip the last one if you asked for "where (col & 1) > 0 AND (col & 2) > 0".
bobcat (unregistered)
I think you've hit the nail on the head. It USED to be set up that way, several revisions and probably even programming languages ago, when the architecture couldn't handle a fancier setup. Someone realized it wasn't necessary, and set up the newer and better method, but never trimmed out the function. Possibly in case they needed to fall back to it.
Just imagining an ancient system that has been clunking along on COBOL since dirt was invented, where that bitmap was a lifesaver in terms of searchable data... Oy.
Just a fan (unregistered)
WTFs from Jane Bailey are my favorite ^_^
04012018 (unregistered)
There needs to be a conversation for it to count as passing the turing test.
Si (unregistered)
I don't see the code doing what it's claimed to do. The exponent is the dense_rank() of any given row within each TechFunctionId partition, with the partition ordered by RowId (which will give the same result as row_number() if RowId is unique across the table or even just each TechFunctionId). So there could be billions of different functions, but >= 63 (int and bigint are signed) RowIds within a function will result in an overflow.
If RowIds represent additives, then I can't figure out what bitNum is meant to be useful for (though it apparently wasn't found in the code...).
From a brief shitty test I just tried, I'd also say that updating a CTE with the result of the power() results in about a 300% increase in memory grant, though I'm guessing at the table definition :s
Scarlet_Manuka (nodebb)
Reminds me of setting up custom processing attributes in a major application from a certain company that we love to hate (but which I might get into trouble for naming explicitly). No joke, for each one you had to assign a unique prime number (starting from enough after the predefined ones to leave room for future predefined ones), and when you set up a processing rule using them, it would compute the product of all the attributes used and store this on the rule. Since prime decomposition is unique, it could then reverse this to identify which attributes were being used.
The UI has been improved to the point that you don't have to physically select the prime numbers yourself now, but it still behaves this way behind the scenes.
It still boggles me that anyone would think this is a good idea. Clever, yes, even ingenious, but GOOD? No.
Si (unregistered)
the phrase I have to come out with more often than I'd like to is "you can build Tetris in Excel if you really want to, but if you actually wanted to play a round of it you'd pick up a fucking Game Boy"
Watson (nodebb)
I'm guessing the decomposition routine wasn't anything special: even if it did verify that the user-selected "prime numbers" really were prime before using them, I'd still be specifying numbers like 123456791 and 9876543211 and 1073741827.
urkerab (nodebb)
Prime number decomposition is only useful if you need to store an indefinite number of integers as an integer; your use case sounds as if the OP's bitmask approach would have sufficed.
jkshapiro (nodebb)
Prime number decomposition is only useful if you need to store an indefinite multiple of each selection as an integer: e.g. five of the first selection, none of the second selection, eight thousand of the third selection, etc. If it's a simple matter of on or off then bitmasks will suffice, and they are always more compact.
This makes a difference in a world where integers have fixed length. With 16-bit integers, bitmasks allow for 16 variables. With prime decomposition, the most you can have is 6, since 2 * 3 * 5 * 7 * 11 * 13 * 17 > 65535.
Addendum 2018-04-18 09:50: Actually,my first sentence is false. Prime number decomposition can only be used for on or off. Five of the first selection ("2") is indistinguishable from two of the third selection ("5"), or for that matter one of each--the result in all cases is 10. So yeah, they really don't have any advantage over bitmasks.
Bl1ngBl1ng (unregistered)
Oh, but they do my friend, they do. I've seen this level of clever by a former programmer at my place of work, consider a table with keys that are powers of two:
1 Frist 2 Brillant 4 True 8 False 16 FILE_NOT_FOUND
Now lets say you have the value 19 which would be 1-Frist + 2-Brillant + 16-FILE_NOT_FOUND. You have, at least in Oracle, the function BITAND at your disposal, so ...
SELECT * FROM table t WHERE BITAND(t.id,19) = t.id;
Et voila, it will return those 3 rows. I don't condone this, the obvious problem of only being able to handle 32 items with an unsigned 32-bit integer, and no, casting to a float when there are more than 32 items will not fix the problem, sure it won't overflow but you won't get the right answer. Why casting to a float isn't a solution is left as an exercise for the reader, understanding how floating point arithmetic works is a handy skill. Hint, float loses integer precision around 2^23, so you can now handle 23 items instead of 32 if you cast first, not the direction one would hope to head towards.
Verence (nodebb)
"Actually,my first sentence is false. Prime number decomposition can only be used for on or off. Five of the first selection ("2") is indistinguishable from two of the third selection ("5")"
Well, actually your first sentence is correct. You just don't multiply the prime with the n, you put it to the n'th power. Five of the first is 2^5 = 32 and very distinguishable from two of the third 5^2 = 25.
Dr. λ the Creator of Variables, Binder of Variables, Applicator of Terms and β-Converter of Redexes (unregistered)
"Someone has to maintain, for example, the database that keeps track of every legal additive to food so that paranoid hippies can call them liars and insist they all cause cancer and autism."
Yet many of those "paranoid hippies" are slim and healthy while you are fat and unhealthy. So clearly they are doing it right and you are doing it wrong. Who's opinions on dieting should people take more seriously? Those of the people who fail at dieting or those of the people who succeed in dieting?
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text:
Press Release
Lightest exoplanet yet discovered
21 April 2009
Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, "e", in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.
"The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone' — a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet's surface", says Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory, who led the European team to this stunning breakthrough.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star – located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ("the Scales") — in just 3.15 days. "With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet", says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory.
Being so close to its host star, the planet is not in the habitable zone. But another planet in this system appears to be. From previous observations — also obtained with the HARPS spectrograph at ESO's La Silla Observatory and announced two years ago — this star was known to harbour a system with a Neptune-sized planet and two super-Earths. With the discovery of Gliese 581 e, the planetary system now has four known planets, with masses of about 1.9 (planet e), 16 (planet b), 5 (planet c), and 7 Earth-masses (planet d). The planet furthest out, Gliese 581 d, orbits its host star in 66.8 days. "Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star," says team member Stephane Udry. The new observations have revealed that this planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. "'d' could even be covered by a large and deep ocean — it is the first serious 'water world' candidate," continued Udry.
The gentle pull of an exoplanet as it orbits the host star introduces a tiny wobble in the star's motion — only about 7 km/hour, corresponding to brisk walking speed — that can just be detected on Earth with today's most sophisticated technology. Low-mass red dwarf stars such as Gliese 581 are potentially fruitful hunting grounds for low-mass exoplanets in the habitable zone. Such cool stars are relatively faint and their habitable zones lie close in, where the gravitational tug of any orbiting planet found there would be stronger, making the telltale wobble more pronounced. Even so, detecting these tiny signals is still a challenge, and the discovery of Gliese 581 e and the refinement of Gliese 581 d's orbit were only possible due to HARPS's unique precision and stability.
"It is amazing to see how far we have come since we discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star in 1995 — the one around 51 Pegasi," says Mayor. "The mass of Gliese 581 e is 80 times less than that of 51 Pegasi b. This is tremendous progress in just 14 years."
The astronomers are confident that they can still do better. "With similar observing conditions an Earth-like planet located in the middle of the habitable zone of a red dwarf star could be detectable," says Bonfils. "The hunt continues."
This discovery was announced today at the JENAM conference during the European Week of Astronomy & Space Science, which is taking place at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. The results have also been submitted for publication in the research journal Astronomy & Astrophysics ("The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets: XVIII. An Earth-mass planet in the GJ 581 planetary system", by Mayor et al., 2009).
The team is composed of M. Mayor, S. Udry, C. Lovis, F. Pepe and D. Queloz (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), X. Bonfils, T. Forveille , X. Delfosse, H. Beust and C. Perrier (LAOG, France), N. C. Santos (Centro de Astrofisica,Universidade de Porto), F. Bouchy (IAP, Paris, France) and J.-L. Bertaux (Service d'Aéronomie du CNRS, Verrières-le-Buisson, France).
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in the Atacama Desert region of Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.
- Science paper
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Michel Mayor
Geneva University
Geneva, Switzerland
Email: email@example.com
Xavier Bonfils
Grenoble Observatory
Grenoble, France
Tel: +33 476 63 55 27
Email: email@example.com
Thierry Forveille
Grenoble Observatory
Grenoble, France
Tel: +33 4 76 51 42 06
Email: email@example.com
Stephane Udry
Geneva University
Geneva, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 379 2467
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
About the Release
Release No.: | eso0915 |
Legacy ID: | PR 15/09 |
Name: | Gliese 581 |
Type: | Milky Way : Star : Circumstellar Material : Planetary System |
Facility: | ESO 3.6-metre telescope |
Instruments: | HARPS |


text:
I've said in the past that I HATE to quilt. Well, I lied! A very prolific quilter told me about this stuff called 505. It's sticky spray that is designed for fabric and eliminates the need for basting. Spray it on, slap the quilt top, batting & back together and VOILA! your quilt is ready to quilt!
Since I tend to buy fabric with no clear idea of what I'm going to do with it, quilting makes sense. I've got lots 'o fabric stashed away and like an addict, I always buying more. When I saw this Hitchcock and blood spatter fabric, I knew I had to make a quilt. I'm never going to be a quilter that sews small pieces into gorgeous patterns - I'm more in-your-face.
Now y'all know why I haven't been around lately.
Mulder and I did attend the Walker Stalker Convention in Orlando this weekend. I'll be posting about that soon!


text:
What he discovered about tooth and bone formation is profound, disarmingly simple, and largely forgotten. I remember going to the dentist as a child. He told me I had good teeth. I informed him that I tried to eat well and stay away from sweets. He explained to me that I had good teeth because of genetics, not my diet. I was skeptical at the time, and rightly so.
Tooth structure is primarily determined during growth. Well-formed teeth are highly resistant to decay, while poorly-formed teeth are cavity-prone. Drs. Mellanby demonstrated this by showing a strong correlation between tooth enamel defects and cavities in British children. The following graph is drawn from several studies he compiled in the book Nutrition and Disease (1934). "Hypoplastic" refers to enamel that's poorly formed on a microscopic level.
The graph is confusing, so don't worry if you're having a hard time interpreting it. If you look at the blue bar representing children with well-formed teeth, you can see that 77% of them have no cavities, and only 7.5% have severe cavities (a "3" on the X axis). Looking at the green bar, only 6% of children with the worst enamel structure are without cavities, while 74% have severe cavities. Enamel structure is VERY strongly related to cavity prevalence.
What determines enamel structure during growth? Drs. Mellanby identified three dominant factors:
- The mineral content of the diet
- The fat-soluble vitamin content of the diet, chiefly vitamin D
- The availability of minerals for absorption, determined largely by the diet's phytic acid content
Optimal tooth and bone formation occurs only on a diet that is sufficient in minerals, fat-soluble vitamins, and low in phytic acid. Drs. Mellanby used dogs in their experiments, which it turns out are a good model for tooth formation in humans for a reason I'll explain later. From Nutrition and Disease:
Thus, if growing puppies are given a limited amount of separated [skim] milk together with cereals, lean meat, orange juice, and yeast (i.e., a diet containing sufficient energy value and also sufficient proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins B and C, and salts), defectively formed teeth will result. If some rich source of vitamin D be added, such as cod-liver oil or egg-yolk, the structure of the teeth will be greatly improved, while the addition of oils such as olive... leaves the teeth as badly formed as when the basal diet only is given... If, when the vitamin D intake is deficient, the cereal part of the diet is increased, or if wheat germ [high in phytic acid] replaces white flour, or, again, if oatmeal [high in phytic acid] is substituted for white flour, then the teeth tend to be worse in structure, but if, under these conditions, the calcium intake is increased, then calcification [the deposition of calcium in the teeth] is improved.Other researchers initially disputed the Mellanbys' results because they weren't able to replicate the findings in rats. It turns out, rats produce the phytic acid-degrading enzyme phytase in their small intestine, so they can extract minerals from unfermented grains better than dogs. Humans also produce phytase, but at levels so low they don't significantly degrade phytic acid. The small intestine of rats has about 30 times the phytase activity of the human small intestine, again demonstrating that humans are not well adapted to eating grains. Our ability to extract minerals from seeds is comparable to that of dogs, which shows that the Mellanbys' results are more applicable to humans than those in rats.
Drs. Mellanby found that the same three factors determine bone quality in dogs as well, which I may discuss in another post.
Is there anything someone with fully formed enamel can do to prevent tooth decay? Drs. Mellanby showed (in humans this time) that not only can tooth decay be prevented by a good diet, it can be almost completely reversed even if it's already present. Dr. Weston Price used a similar method to reverse tooth decay as well. I'll discuss that in my next post.


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A study of triathletes published in the online edition and October issue of Radiology reveals that the heart adapts to triathlon training by working more efficiently.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study using MRI to investigate effects of triathlon training on cardiac adaptations," said lead researcher Michael M. Lell, M.D., associate professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Erlangen, Germany.
Dr. Lell and colleagues conducted cardiac MRI on 26 professional male triathletes (mean age 27.9) and 27 male controls (mean age 27.3), who were recreationally active no more than three hours per week. Triathletes in the study were top national and international competitors with six or more years of continuous training. Triathlons are multi-sport events consisting of swimming, cycling and running various distances in succession.
The cardiac MR images revealed that, compared to the recreational athletes, the triathletes had larger left atria and larger right and left ventricles. The triathletes' left and right ventricles also had greater muscle mass and wall thickness.
"In competitive athletes, it is important to distinguish physiological adaptations as a result of training from pathological conditions such as cardiomyopathy, the most common cause of sudden cardiac death," Dr. Lell said.
In cardiomyopathy, the size of the heart's four chambers and the thickness of the heart wall become asymmetrical, and the heart muscle is unable to pump effectively.
"The cardiac adaptations in the elite triathletes we studied were characterized by a balanced increase in left and right ventricular muscle mass, wall thickness, dilation and diastolic function," Dr. Lell said. "These adaptations reflect the nature of triathlon training, which has both endurance and resistance components."
Dynamic or endurance training includes activities such as running and swimming. Weightlifting is an example of static or resistance training, and cycling is a combination of both forms of exercise. Excessive training in either resistance or endurance disciplines leads to specific heart adaptations, and extreme endurance training is thought to be associated with a predisposition to sudden cardiac events.
"Cardiac adaptations in elite triathletes in our study were not associated with sudden cardiac death," Dr. Lell said.
The triathletes' resting heart rates were also 17 percent lower than those of the control group, which leads to greater cardiac blood supply and more economized heart function.
"The hearts of the triathletes in our study are stronger and able to manage the same workload with less effort," said Dr. Lell.
Journal Reference:
"Atrial and Ventricular Functional and Structural Adaptations of the Heart in Elite Triathletes Assessed with Cardiac MR Imaging."
Radiology is edited by Herbert Y. Kressel, M.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass., and owned and published by the Radiological Society of North America.


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text: Mid-Century modern design is the inspiration for the Homelegance Deryn Collection. Wide, dramatically curved arms rise to the straight back that is synonymous with this classic style. Contrast toss pillows and an additional chair option are featured in a modern teal or grey herringbone pattern to complement the teal, beige and grey seating body covers. Natural tone finished legs support the frame while tailored stitch tufting lends further accent to this thoroughly modern collection.


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One strategy for addressing the world's energy crisis is to stop wasting so much energy when producing and using it, which can happen in coal-fired power plants or transportation. Nearly two-thirds of energy input is lost as waste heat.
Now Northwestern University scientists have discovered a surprising material that is the best in the world at converting waste heat to useful electricity. This outstanding property could be exploited in solid-state thermoelectric devices in a variety of industries, with potentially enormous energy savings.
An interdisciplinary team led by inorganic chemist Mercouri G. Kanatzidis found the crystal form of the chemical compound tin selenide conducts heat so poorly through its lattice structure that it is the most efficient thermoelectric material known. Unlike most thermoelectric materials, tin selenide has a simple structure, much like that of an accordion, which provides the key to its exceptional properties.
The efficiency of waste heat conversion in thermoelectrics is reflected by its figure of merit, called ZT. Tin selenide exhibits a ZT of 2.6, the highest reported to date at around 650 degrees Celsius. The material's extremely low thermal conductivity boosts the ZT to this high level, while still retaining good electrical conductivity.
The ZT metric represents a ratio of electrical conductivity and thermoelectric power in the numerator (which needs to be high) and thermal conductivity in the denominator (which needs to be low).
Potential areas of application for the high-temperature thermoelectric material include the automobile industry (a significant amount of gasoline's potential energy goes out of a vehicle's tailpipe), heavy manufacturing industries (such as glass and brick making, refineries, coal- and gas-fired power plants) and places where large combustion engines operate continuously (such as in large ships and tankers).
"A good thermoelectric material is a business proposition -- as much commercial as it is scientific," said Vinayak P. Dravid, a senior researcher on the team. "You don't have to convert much of the world's wasted energy into useful energy to make a material very exciting. We need a portfolio of solutions to the energy problem, and thermoelectric materials can play an important role."
Dravid is the Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Details of tin selenide, probably among the world's least thermally conductive crystalline materials, are published today (April 17) by the journal Nature.
The discovery comes less than two years after the same research group broke the world record with another thermoelectric material they developed in the lab with a ZT of 2.2.
"The inefficiency of current thermoelectric materials has limited their commercial use," said Kanatzidis, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "We expect a tin selenide system implemented in thermoelectric devices to be more efficient than other systems in converting waste heat to useful electricity."
The material, despite having a very simple structure, conducts heat so poorly that even moderate thermoelectric power and electrical conductivity are enough to provide high thermoelectric performance at high temperature.
The researchers did not expect to find tin selenide to be such a good thermoelectric material.
"Lidong Zhao, the first author of the paper, deserves a lot of credit for looking at tin selenide," said Kanatzidis, who also holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. "He is a good example of the curious people we try to attract to Northwestern."
Zhao, a postdoctoral fellow in Kanatzidis' research group, grew crystals of tin selenide and measured the crystal in three directions, along each axis. He found that the thermal conductivity was "ridiculously low" along the a-axis but also along the other two axes.
"The results are eye-opening because they point in a direction others would not look," Dravid said. "This material has the potential to be applied to other areas, such as thermal barrier coatings."
Kanatzidis and Zhao identified the potential of the material intuitively by looking at its crystal structure. They confirmed its exceptional thermoelectric properties and then turned to Dravid and Christopher M. Wolverton to uncover how the crystal was behaving and why.
"We found that the bonds between some atoms in this compound are very weak and lead to exceptionally soft, floppy atomic vibrations," said Wolverton, a senior author of the paper and a professor of materials science at the McCormick School.
Wolverton, an expert in computational materials science related to energy applications, showed that the accordion-like structure and weak bonds lead to atoms that vibrate very slowly.
"These very weak vibrations are responsible for the inability of the material to conduct heat," Wolverton said. "Our theory provides the scientific basis as to why the material behaves the way it does and also provides us with a new direction to search for even higher-efficiency materials."
"Tin selenide reminds us of that popular TV commercial for a memory foam mattress in which a person can jump on one side of the mattress while a glass of wine a few feet away is unperturbed -- the vibrations do not reach the glass because of the mattress' material," Kanatzidis said.
"Similarly, in tin selenide, heat cannot travel well through this material because its soft, accordion-like structure doesn't transmit vibrations well," he said. "One side of tin selenide gets hot -- where the waste heat is, for example -- while the other side remains cool. This enables the hot side to generate useful electricity."
"Our discovery underscores why the Department of Energy EFRC program works," Kanatzidis said. "A multidisciplinary team, such as ours, can look at a problem from many different angles, with sustained funding increasing the chances of a scientific breakthrough. And we have a special ambience here -- the spirit of Northwestern is interdisciplinary."
The paper is titled "Ultralow thermal conductivity and high thermoelectric figure of merit in SnSe crystals." In addition to Kanatzidis, Dravid, Wolverton and Zhou, other authors of the paper are Yongsheng Zhang and Gangjian Tan, of Northwestern, and Hui Sun and Ctirad Uher, of the University of Michigan.


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Welcome to the website of the DFG Infrastructure Priority Programme 'SPP 1006 - ICDP'
The Coordination Office of the SPP ICDP coordinates and supports the scientific activities that take place at German institutes within the framework of the International Continental Drilling Programme (ICDP). The following pages provide information on active ICDP drilling projects and DFG (German Research Foundation) projects carried out within the framework of the DFG Priority Programme 'SPP 1006 - ICDP Germany'.
!! This website is currently under construction and is temporarily only available to a limited extent. Please use the link below for further information.


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Hampton SC Unemployment Career Center Office
Hampton One-Stop Center 12 Walnut Street East Hampton, SC 29924 phn: 803-943-3291 One-Stop Career Centers | Services: Access to Computers Career counseling Job referrals Resume-writing assistance Testing and training |
Hampton SC Unemployment Career Center Office provide individuals seeking employment all the latest tools to find and keep that special job. Employers will find assistance in recruiting new employees including a national job listing network, applicant screening, and space in the centers to conduct testing and employment interview.
How do I qualify for UI benefits in South Carolina?
To qualify for SC UI benefits you must be:
- Unemployed through no fault of your own
- Or your work hours have been reduced
- Able to work and willing to accept suitable work
- Actively searching for work while getting UI benefits
- Report all earned income during your claim week.
- Complete at least two weekly job searches on SC Works portal
What is the Maximum Unemployment Insurance benefit I can get in SC?
- The minimum UI benefit you can get in SC is $42 a week with a maximum of $326 per week.
- The maximum weeks you can receive SC UI benefits is 20 weeks.
- If you exhaust your maximum benefits, you must wait until the end of the benefit year to file a new claim.
What information do I need to file my UI benefit in SC?
To file for SC UI benefits you will need:
- Your Social Security number.
- Your work history for the past 18 months with salary and employer information
- For non-U.S. citizen, your alien registration number and documentation.
- For military service in the past 18 months, DD-214 Form (Member 4 copy).
- For federal civilian employee, SF-50 (PDF) or SF-8 (PDF) Form.
How do I file my South Carolina UI benefit claim?
- The easiest way to file your SC UI benefit claim is to file online
- You can also call 1-866-831-1724 | Relay 711 for assistance.
What services are available to help me find a job in SC while on UI benefits?
SC Works has many local job source career centers that will prepare you for the job market. Services such as:
- Access to Computers to do job search
- Local Career Counceller's
- Job referral services
- Resume-writing assistance
- Testing and job training programs
How do I file an appeal if I am denied UI benefits in SC?
- You can file an appeal by completing a Notice of Appeal to the Appeal Tribunal Form
- Or write an appeal letter detailing your disagreement of the determination.
- Your appeal must be filed within 10 calendar days of the mailing date of the determination
How do I contact South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce
SC Department of Employment and Workforce
1550 Gadsden Street
P.O. Box 995
Columbia, SC 29202
Phone: 1-866-831-1724 | Relay 711


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Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize the possession of all drugs on Nov. 3, 2020.
Measure 110, a ballot initiative funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group backed in part by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, passed with more than 58% of the vote. Possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon.
Those drugs are still against the law, as is selling them. But possession is now a civil – not criminal – violation that may result in a fine or court-ordered therapy, not jail. Marijuana, which Oregon legalized in 2014, remains fully legal.
Oregon's move is radical for the United States, but several European countries have decriminalized drugs to some extent. There are three main arguments for this major drug policy reform.
#1. Drug prohibition has failed
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drugs to be "public enemy number one" and launched a "war on drugs" that continues today.
The ostensible rationale for harshly punishing drug users is to deter drug use. But decades of research – including our own on marijuana and drugs generally – has found the deterrent effect of strict criminal punishment to be small, if it exists at all. This is especially true among young people, who are the majority of drug users.
This is partly due to the nature of addiction, and also because there are simply limits to how much punishment can deter crime. As a result, the U.S. has both the world's highest incarceration rate and among the highest rates of illegal drug use. Roughly 1 in 5 incarcerated people in the United States is in for a drug offense.
Criminologists find that other consequences of problematic drug use – such as harm to health, reduced quality of life and strained personal relationships – are more effective deterrents than criminal sanctions.
Because criminalizing drugs does not really prevent drug use, decriminalizing does not really increase it. Portugal, which decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001 in response to high illicit drug use, has much lower rates of drug use than the European average. Use of cocaine among young adults age 15 to 34, for example, is 0.3% in Portugal, compared to 2.1% across the EU. Amphetamine and MDMA consumption is likewise lower in Portugal.
2. Decriminalization puts money to better use
Arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people for drug-related crimes is expensive.
The Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that all government drug prohibition-related expenditures were US$47.8 billion nationally in 2016. Oregon spent about $375 million on drug prohibition in that year.
Oregon will now divert some the money previously used on drug enforcement to pay for about a dozen new drug prevention and treatment centers statewide, which has been found to be a significantly more cost-effective strategy. Some tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales, which exceeded $100 million in 2019, will also go to addiction and recovery services.
Oregon spent about $470 million on substance abuse treatment between 2017 and 2019.
Not everyone who uses drugs needs treatment. Decriminalization makes help accessible to those who do need it – and keeps both those users and recreational users out of jail.
3. The drug war targets people of color
Another aim of decriminalization is to mitigate the significant racial and ethnic disparities associated with drug enforcement.
Illegal drug use is roughly comparable across race in the U.S. But people of color are significantly more likely to be searched, arrested and imprisoned for a drug-related offense. Drug crimes can incur long prison sentences.
Discretion in drug enforcement and sentencing means prohibition is among the leading causes of incarceration of people of color in the United States – an injustice many Americans on both sides of the aisle increasingly recognize.
Freed up from policing drug use, departments may redirect their resources toward crime prevention and solving violent crimes like homicide and robbery, which are time-consuming to investigate. That could help restore some trust between law enforcement and Oregon's communities of color.
Risks of decriminalization
One common concern among Oregonians who voted against decriminalization was that lessening criminal penalties would endanger children.
"I think it sends a really bad message to them, and influences their perception of the risks," James O'Rourke, a defense attorney who helped organize the opposition to measure 110, told Oregon Public Broadcasting in October.
But U.S. states that legalized marijuana haven't seen adolescent use rise significantly. In fact, marijuana consumption among teens – though not among college-aged Americans – actually declined in some states with legal marijuana. This may be because legal, regulated marijuana is more difficult for minors to get than black-market drugs.
Research also shows that for some people, particularly the young, banning a behavior makes it more alluring. So defining drugs as a health concern rather than a crime could actually make them less appealing to young Oregonians.
Another worry about decriminalization is that it will attract people looking to use drugs.
So-called "drug tourism" hasn't really been a problem for Portugal, but it happened in Switzerland after officials in the 1980s and 1990s began officially "ignoring" heroin in Zurich's Platzspitz Park. People came from across the country to inject heroin in public, leaving discarded needles on the ground.
The local government shut down Platzspitz Park. But rather than chase off or arrest those who frequented it, it began offering methadone and prescription heroin to help people with opioid use disorder. Public injection, HIV rates and overdoses – which had all become a problem in Zurich – plummeted.
Certain parts of Oregon already have higher rates of public drug consumption, namely Portland and Eugene. Because public drug use is still illegal in Oregon, however, we don't expect a Platzspitz Park-style open drug scene to emerge.
These places should benefit from the expansion of methadone programs and other medication-assisted treatment, which is endorsed by the American Medical Association.
If neighboring Washington state decriminalizes drugs, which it is considering, the chances of drug tourism would drop further.
Upside – and downside
There are risks with any major policy change. The question is whether the new policy results in a net benefit.
In Portugal, full decriminalization has proven more humane and effective than criminalization. Because drug users don't worry about facing criminal charges, those who need help are more likely to seek it – and get it.
Portugal's overdose death rate is five times lower than the EU average – which is itself far lower than the United States'. HIV infection rates among injection drug users also dropped massively since 2001.
These policies show that problem drug use is a public health challenge to be managed, not a war that can be won.
Scott Akins, Professor, Sociology Department, Oregon State University and Clayton Mosher, Professor, Sociology Department, Washington State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


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E-Newsletter November 11, 2005
Landslide victory for IRV
Friday, November 11, 2005
Dear Friend of Fair Elections,
We had an inspiring win for election reform on Tuesday.
In an advisory ballot measure placed on the ballot by a 7-0 vote of the city council in Takoma Park, Maryland, fully 84% of voters voted to use instant runoff voting (IRV) in future city elections. A majority of the city council has already committed to implementing the new system in time for the mayoral and city council races in 2007. IRV has now won by landslide margins in four consecutive city elections.
[ See the campaign website at www.takomaparkforirv.com ]
The same day, San Francisco's first citywide IRV election also went well and will save the city millions of dollars. Right now, a second round of counting has begun for the city Assessor's race because no candidate won a majority of first choices. Rather than mail out 125,000 absentee ballots and hold a low turnout December election, San Francisco now just needs to count the second choices on the ballots cast for the third-place candidate. IRV likely will elect Phil Ting as Assessor-Recorder with a majority of support while not splitting the vote of the two Asian American candidates. It's a real testament to the power of this system to create positive and inclusive campaigns and efficiency for taxpayers.
[ Read more on the Assessor race ]
Cambridge (MA) also held its 28th ranked ballot election for city council and school board. With candidates elected at-large, this choice voting system not only avoids vote splitting, but provides fair representation to the city's diversity.
[ Read more on Cambridge's elections ]
Thanks for reading. I hope you'll visit the following links to learn more about our work here and ask you to consider a donation to FairVote. We played an integral role in the success here in Takoma Park and are moving forward with innovative approaches to provide more voter freedom and equality for all Americans.
Rob Richie
Executive Director
Coverage on the win
Subscribe to the feed! Get Involved:
Final Notes:
Commentary on IRV
ELECTION 2005 ON THE FAIRVOTE BLOGFairVote's comments on the elections were featured in national wire stories, editorials and radio shows like NPR's Talk of the Nation. We highlighted how IRV would have greatly improved the tenor and voter options in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. We bemoaned the low turnout experienced in so many communities, often tied to voting rules and practices that could and should be changed. We talked about how proportional voting methods are the key means to balance the goals of fair representation, accountability of leadership and universal voter choice with state legislative races this year again showing the appalling problems we face in all three of those goals. See fairvote.org for more, including our new blog featuring new comments on lessons for redistricting reformers from Rob Richie. Don't miss...DC Cares hosts VOTING RIGHTS STRUGGLES: PAST AND PRESENT Sat, Nov 12, Washington DC FairVote's Rob Richie will speak, along with Harris Wofford, Jack Nelson and more. Contact Kilin Boardman-Schroyer 202-777-4457 or email@example.com |


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Spice up your campfire tales! Bewitch your audience with creepy creativity! Roll the dice to get your creative juices flowing! Make up stories with your kids at the dinner table!
9 out of 10 zombies prefer Spooky Story Dice over brains!
Great for Halloween storytelling and seasonal writing prompts!
- Universal App!
- High-resolution graphics supporting Retina Display
- Choose number of dice to roll, 1-3.
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- 74 pictograms in dictionary; 23 are unique to this Spooky Edition!
- No reading necessary.
- Optional game instructions included in app.


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Integrated Palette
Great alone. Better together.
Introducing Integrated Palette™ from Haworth
Haworth's Integrated Palette stems from years of research that indicated upcoming changes in how people work, where they work, and evolving organizational cultures. Since that time, in early 2004, we've made a concentrated and continued effort to expand from a furniture provider to a provider of complete interior spaces. By infusing our product designs using seven key design logics, and combining our human, organizational, and facility performance understanding, we created a tremendous differentiator for Haworth—a family of products that are truly more integrated, more adaptable, and more sustainable.
The Integrated Palette offers
design freedom, a promise of integration,
and future assuramce.
Design Freedom: There's no blueprint like your own blueprint.
The Integrated Palette allows for a wide range of Design Freedom—from traditional applications to unconventional, and anywhere in between. Using components from different product lines that integrate creates the ability for the designer to have endless possibilities and true design freedom.
Promise of Integration: Product platforms that integrate and coordinate. Others only coordinate.
Haworth carefully considered the future of building construction, design principles, work styles, and organizational cultures when designing a holistic integrated kit of parts. Each of the variables above must come together in the right way to have a positive effect on worker performance. The Integrated Palette product platforms are engineered across seven design logics, seeing beyond just coordinating, but creating true integration that provides limitless opportunities for new spatial designs, as well as future adaptability with the same products.
Future Assurance: Timeless design and unparalleled quality make for lasting partnerships.
Haworth's Integrated Palette offers not only a sound investment with unparalleled quality, but it also represents a long-term partnership. Haworth's future product development will follow the same product design strategy, assuring your interior assets will serve even more application needs and reconfigurations, saving money, waste, and downtime.
Design logic is the reason
our products work together
so seamlessly.
Visual Logic
Visual Logic relates to the individual products being visually appropriate and complementary, and more importantly, they can be used to create a coherent visual landscape. All products look like they were designed concurrently, while remaining timeless and providing the right mix of mass, scale, and proportion at the floorplate level.
Interface Logic
Interface Logic defines how the products relate to the built environment. Interior architecture elements are considered when our products are developed to leverage the connection to a raised floor and ceiling, or any built structure in between.
Interconnectivity Logic
Interconnectivity Logic defines how the products connect to each other between and across platforms. Shared products have a common connection to ensure easy adaptability across platforms.
Dimensional Logic
Dimensional Logic defines the dimensional consistency between product platforms. Common dimensions ensure furniture, systems, and architectural products are compatible with one another for ease of application. Variation in scale and the progression from one scale to another is critical to make certain the space captures a changing rhythm and visual interest, yet feels consistent.
Planning Logic
Planning Logic defines a consistent, coherent, and intelligent relationship when multiple product platforms are applied together. Features include an open-frame panel for both on-modular and off-modular planning, a wide array of planning configurations by combining various platforms, and the ability to span various elevations.
Materials Logic
Materials Logic defines the continuity of materials between product platforms, clarifying strategic distinctions and overlap. This logic encompasses Design for Environment(dfe) strategies that ensure the degree of sustainability that all products will possess or attempt to achieve. Forward-thinking toward reclaiming/reusing/recycling ensures materials are as sustainable as possible, while retaining superior performance.
Finish Logic
Finish Logic defines the scope and rationale for finish selection and specification. A simplified offering of basic elements like wood, glass, fabric, and laminates can be combined to create a range of visual "moods." Finishes between product platforms are consistent in availability and longevity, and the compatibility of finishes across products eases the specification process.


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This page allows you to search all Central Bank of Ireland registers for a particular financial service provider. To search you simply type in the name or partial name of the financial service provider you are looking for. If you know the business area of the financial service provider or wish to limit the number of results you receive, you can restrict the search using the filters provided.If you are concerned about the activities of a financial service provider or suspect they may be offering investments without authorisation, check to see if we have issued a warning notice against the financial service provider by clicking on the following link. Warning Notices
Tips for a more successful search: Search Tips


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Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Will Smith, Jaden Smith
Year: 2013
It all started with Jaden Smith narrating with a Southern accent. I'm not kidding. I wish I was, because it was perhaps the worst fake accent I've ever heard, with Will Smith's being a close second. I have no idea why they decided to try something so stupid; perhaps it had something to do with the Ranger Corps that saved humanity in the story, but it doesn't matter. Whatever the reason, it was a bad idea, as was almost ever single idea in the entire movie. When I first saw the trailer I was excited. I wanted Shyamalan to get back to directing good movies, I wanted Will Smith to be cool like he used to be, and I wanted an awesome sci-fi movie about evolution/mutation/survival. Well, apparently critics and audiences were right when they slammed After Earth, because it didn't deliver anything I wanted. And I can't even say that I was left wanting more; I was left wanting my money back.
The story begins a thousand years from now. Earth as we know it has changed. Humans destroyed it with pollution and war, creating an inhospitable environment for mankind. So a mass exodus began, and a new planet called Nova Prime was settled and became man's new home. However, they weren't alone. The native alien race there became bent on human destruction, releasing monsters called Ursas that can sense human fear and who's only desire is to kill. General Cypher Raige leads the resistance, as his son Kitai tries to be just like him. On a routine space flight, their ship is damaged and they must crash land on a quarantined planet; Earth. What they find there is a planet that has evolved to be deadly to humans, a dangerous jungle that is almost impossible to survive. With his father injured, Kitai must travel alone across the wild landscape in search of a way home; battling animals, nature, and his own fears in a desperate attempt to get back.
At first I wondered why the story was so juvenile and awful, and then I saw that Will Smith wrote it himself. It was an idiotic premise loosely tied to reality and copied from a thousand other plots. I mean, the main character is named Cypher Raige. Did he steal that from a Warcraft chat room? And all the other details of the story were just as bad: fighting aliens with a lightsaber-like weapon, spaceships that looked like stingrays, computers that instinctively know everything. I know it's a PG-13 sci-fi movie, but shouldn't the plot still be somewhat believable? I never once thought that any aspect of the movie could actually happen. It was silly, sloppy, and had no redeeming qualities that could make you overlook it's flaws. From beginning to end I was constantly frowning and looking around, wondering if every one else just heard what I did and also thought it was crap.
And wow, things got worse when Jaden Smith came to Earth and started carrying the movie. He was as bad an actor as you are likely to find. The accent didn't help, but I doubt it hurt much either, as every line was over-delivered, forced, and amateur. I never believed for a second that he was an actual person running from danger; he always looked to be in a studio waiting for his shot to end. And acting aside, I had high hopes for the plot once the characters starting fighting for survival on Earth. It was hyped as a planet evolved to kill humans, but it wasn't. It was just a place, and the most deadly thing around was the alien they had accidentally released there. The low point was when Kitai befriended a giant bird; at that point I pretty much gave up. The only nice thing about the movie were the visual effects and stunning landscape. Too bad it was the background for a horrible story told by an inept actor. Don't see After Earth unless you are interested in how not to make a movie.
My rating: ✰


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By Mark Curtis
An edited extract from Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World
In the hundreds of media articles on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, there is barely a mention of Britain being a permanent member of the UN security council and in any way responsible for what happened. I recounted Britain's role in my previous book, The Great Deception, so I will not repeat everything here. Since then, however, another book, by Linda Melvern, an investigative journalist, confirms the quite terrible British, and US, role.
After the killings began in early April 1994, the UN security council, instead of beefing up it's peace mission in the country and giving it a stronger mandate to intervene, decided to reduce the troop presence from 2,500 to 270. This decision sent a green light to those who had planned the genocide that the UN would not intervene. A small UN military force arrived merely to rescue expats, and then left. Belgium's senior army officer in the UN peace mission believed that if this force had not been pulled out, the killing could have been stopped. Canadian general Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the UN force in Rwanda, later said that this evacuation showed "inexcusable apathy by the sovereign states that made up the UN, that is completely beyond comprehension and moral acceptability".
It was Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir David Hannay, who proposed that the UN pull out its force; the US agreed. According to Melvern, it was left to the Nigerian ambassador, Ibrhaim Gambari, to point out that tens of thousands of civilians were dying at the time. Gambari also pleaded with the security council to reinforce the UN presence. But the US objected and Britain agreed, suggesting only to leave behind a token force, which became the 270 personnel.
On the security council at the time sat – by chance – Rwanda, as one of the ten non-permanent members. So British and US indifference and their policy of reducing the UN force, as expressed in the security council, was reported back to those directing the genocide in Rwanda. Melvern notes that "confident of no significant international opposition, it was decided to push ahead with further 'pacification' in the south" of the country. This led to tens of thousands more murders.
Romeo Dallaire, who had pleaded for reinforcements, complained that:
"My force was standing knee deep in mutilated bodies, surrounded by the guttural moans of dying people, looking into the eyes of dying children bleeding to death with their wounds burning in the sun and being invaded by maggots and flies. I found myself walking through villages where the only sign of life was a goat, or a chicken, or a songbird, as all the people were dead, their bodies being eaten by voracious packs of wild dogs".
By May, with certainly tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands already dead, there was another UN proposal – to despatch 5,500 troops to help stop the massacres. This deployment was delayed by pressure mainly from the US ambassador, but with strong support from Britain. Dallaire believes that if these troops had been speadily deployed, tens of thousands more lives could have been saved. But the US and the British argued that before these troops went in, there needed to be a ceasefire in Rwanda, a quite insane suggestion given that one side was massacring innocent civilians. The US also ensured that this plan was watered down so that troops would have no mandate to use force to end the massacres.
Britain and the US also refused to provide the military airlift capability for the African states that were offering troops for this force. The RAF, for example, had plenty of transport aircraft that could have been deployed. Eventually, with delays continuing and thousands being killed by the day, Britain offered a measly 50 trucks. Lynda Chalker, then minister for overseas development, visited Dallaire in Rwanda in July. He gave her his list of requirements at the same time as noting that "I was up to my knees in bodies by then". The 50 trucks had still not yet materialised. But later, on BBC2's Newsnight, Chalker blamed Dallaire's lack of resources on "the UN" which "ought to get its procurement right".
Britain also went out of its way to ensure that the UN did not use the word "genocide" to describe the slaughter. Accepting that genocide was occurring would have obliged states to "prevent and punish" those guilty under the terms of the Geneva convention. In late April 1994, Britain, along with the US and China, secured a security council resolution that rejected the use of the term "genocide". This resolution was drafted by the British.
The Czech republic's ambassador to the UN, Karel Kovanda, confronted the security council about the fact of genocide at this time. He said that talking about withdrawing peacekeepers and getting a ceasefire was "rather like wanting Hitler to reach a ceasefire with the Jews". There were objections to his comments, Kovanda said, and British and US diplomats quietly told him that on no account was he to use such inflammatory language outside the security council.
A July 1994 resolution spoke of "possible acts of genocide" and other security council documents used similarly restrained language. A year after the slaughters, the British Foreign Office sent a letter to an international enquiry saying that it still did not accept the term genocide. It said that it saw a discussion about whether the massacres constituted genocide as "sterile".
Linda Melvern was told by UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that during the genocide he had individual private meetings with the British and US ambassadors (the US ambassador was Madeleine Albright, who went on to become Clinton's secretary of state). Boutros-Ghali urged both of them to help stop the killing but said their reaction was: "Come on, Boutros, relax… Don't put us in a difficult position…the mood is not for intervention, you will obtain nothing…we will not move".
Let me summarise the British government's contribution to the genocide in Rwanda. Britain used its diplomatic weight to severely reduce a UN force that, according to military officers on the ground, could have prevented the killings. It then helped ensure the delay of other plans for intervention, which sent a direct green light to the murderers in Rwanda to continue. Britain also refused to provide the capability for other states to intervene, while blaming the lack of such capability on the UN. Throughout, Britain helped ensure that the UN did not use the word "genocide" so the UN would not act, using diplomatic pressure on others to ensure this did not happen. British officials went out of their way to promote these policies and rebuffed personal pleas to help stop the killings from the UN Secretary General and the commander of the UN force.
All this information is publicly available. We do not need to look over the Atlantic to think of trials of those who have acquiesced in genocide. There is a long list of British policy makers who are to some degree responsible – Prime Minister John Major, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker and UN ambassador Sir David Hannay foremost among them. But these people are being protected by the silence of the media and academia as well as the extreme lack of accountability in the political system.
Melvern notes that, especially in the early stages of the genocide, the press insisted on reporting events as "chaos and anarchy", not a systematic campaign well planned in advance by Hutu extremists. In her view, "the media's failure to report that genocide was taking place, and thereby generate public pressure for something to be done to stop it, contributed to international indifference and inaction, and possibly to the crime itself".
There was only one press article I could find that went into any detail on Britain's role on the security council. It noted that Britain's ambassador at the UN was still dealing regularly with the ambassador of the government engaged in state-sponsored genocide.
Neither did the mother of parliaments attempt to address the British role in genocide – either at the time, or since. A debate in the House of Commons did not take place until nearly two months after the slaughter began. According to Melvern, "the Labour party waited until May before putting pressure on the government to act, and then only because Oxfam telephoned the office of David Clark, shadow secretary of state for defence".


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In April, 1911, it was announced that the Joplin Police Department had adopted a "metropolitan police" scheme of equipping the police officers with whistles. Viewed as one more step toward imitating the police departments of large cities, the whistles were thought useful:
"Although it is seldom that an occasion arises in this city when an officer cannot take care of himself, it is thought best to be on the safe side. When an officer hears one of these whistles, which are of a peculiar tone, he is to hasten at once to the scene of conflict, or wherever the sound comes from."
It was thought at the time that the presence of a mere whistle may have prevented some of the deaths of Joplin's police officers up to that point. It's unknown if the whistle dramatically changed the safety of the police in a city with the rowdy reputation of a mining town.
Source: Joplin News Herald


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Is Russia about to invade Ukraine? No one knows for sure including, possibly, Vladimir Putin himself. The U.S. and Russia talked about it for nearly eight hours in Geneva today. And NATO members will meet with Russia on Wednesday. Our next guest has thoughts on how the U.S. might deter Putin and help encourage a prosperous democratic Ukraine to boot. Alexander Vindman is a former Ukraine expert on President Trump's National Security Council.
Colonel Vindman, welcome. Good to speak with you again.
ALEXANDER VINDMAN: Yes, good to speak to you again, too.
KELLY: So, as you know, the U.S. is warning of maximum consequences for Russia if it attacks Ukraine - economic and otherwise. You aren't convinced that is enough to protect Ukraine. Why not?
VINDMAN: Well, maximum consequences in this context is limited to options outside of really the defense and security realm.
KELLY: You mean, if it's sanctions - if that's what they're talking about.
VINDMAN: If it's sanctions. That's exactly right.
KELLY: And you think sanctions won't work why? - because the U.S. has sanctioned Russia for years now, and it has not stopped Russian aggression and militarism toward its neighbor?
VINDMAN: That's right. And also because Russia is actually hardened against sanctions. They've dealt with the world of sanctions - fairly severe sanctions - starting with 2014. And in addition to that, in addition to a hardening against the economic sanctions, in addition to indigenizing technologies and supply chains to Russia, they've also built a massive warchest - $620 billion - that gives them a significant cushion to ride through some of these sanctions. And the last part on the sanctions that should be noted is Russia and China continue to converge. It's far from an alliance, but still there's a high degree of cooperation and interoperability. And the Russians are counting on the Chinese to ease the shock of whatever sanctions the U.S. applies. So I think sanctions by themselves again are not going to be sufficient.
KELLY: OK. So from your perspective, what would work? What's the broader set of policy options you want?
VINDMAN: Frankly, I don't know if there is much that we can do that could work. But I think if things - meaningful things that could have an effect include forced posture changes in Europe. That's boots on the ground in NATO territory. I could definitely see a merit to some U.S. presence in Ukraine, but I think that's unpalatable to this administration. So what I think is - should be palatable is positioning troops in Europe - in Poland, in Romania, in Bulgaria, in the Baltic states - to reassure them that the U.S. will be there and live up to its obligations under NATO Article 5.
KELLY: Although, as you just acknowledged, President Biden has made clear, if anything, he wants to bring American troops home, not send more overseas.
VINDMAN: That's partially true. I think he wants to extract from direct commitments to contingencies to military operations. But that's not necessarily the same as consolidating U.S. military presence in the United States. But one of the cornerstones of U.S. security is our access in basing overseas. That's not the same thing as putting troops into harm's way. That's not the same thing as combat operations. It's a deterrent and a hedge against aggression from other powers.
KELLY: As I said at the beginning, no one knows for sure whether Putin will invade. But based on what you can see now, based on your military expertise, where would you rate the chances - scale of 1 to 10?
VINDMAN: I would say, I'm somewhere at an eight, which is pretty amazing. I - this weekend, as I was thinking about these meetings unfolding, I kind of had the pre-combat patrol, pre-battle jitters of recognizing something really serious was coming.
KELLY: And why? What was it you were looking at that was giving you the jitters?
VINDMAN: Because right now, as far apart as the sides are, Russians have laid out a maximalist position. The U.S. said it's not willing to negotiate on very principled positions - I agree with those positions - on sovereign states determining their own orientation and rolling back the clock on the NATO alliance back to 1997. I don't see - and Russia's main focus here, which is achieving a failed state in Ukraine - how we could overcome these things. There is - the most likely scenario in my mind is a major military offensive in Ukraine. I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I see. The less likely scenario is some sort of diplomatic negotiation with some off ramps, with some face-saving measures, where the Russians can say, well, we are in the midst of negotiations - we might be able to achieve what we want. I find that hard to believe that we'll head in that direction.
KELLY: Did I just hear you say Putin's goal here might be achieving a failed state in Ukraine? Why...
VINDMAN: That's exactly right.
KELLY: why? Why would he want that?
VINDMAN: Well, mainly because he needs a weaker state in Ukraine for two probably - primarily two reasons. The first one is Ukraine as a success makes Russia - the Russian exercise of managed democracy a failed experiment. If Ukraine can transition to a democracy, why can't Russia do the same thing? And two, really there is a deep fear of Ukraine slipping out of Russia's sphere of influence.
KELLY: Alert listeners may recall, Colonel Vindman, that you served on Trump's National Security Council until he fired you after you testified in the impeachment inquiry. I bring it up because among the questions that emerged during impeachment was, what is U.S. policy on Ukraine? Who is running it? Understanding listening to you that you don't agree with every aspect of Biden administration policy on Ukraine, in your view, is it now more coherent? Is it clear what the U.S. policy is?
VINDMAN: It's clear in the way it's been clear over the past 30 years, which is to say that it's still muddled. During the Trump administration, we had a coherent, consistent policy that would look similar to the policy of the Obama administration or the Bush administration in certain ways, except for the chief executive. The president was completely at odds with what we - what the national security community thought was in the best interests of the United States. Now we have kind of a more consistent policy that doesn't really express a broad vision on what Ukraine could mean for U.S. national security. It could mean easing the burden of facing a highly capable, highly adversarial Russia in the long term because where Ukraine goes, I could see Russia following. And that's the part that's really missing from this broader vision on what Ukraine means to U.S. national security. It's a linchpin. There's only probably about a handful of places around the globe that are as meaningful as Ukraine in terms of geopolitics.
KELLY: So...
VINDMAN: So that part is missing.
KELLY: In simplest terms, if I'm hearing you right, your argument would be, yes, the U.S. has a coherent policy on Ukraine now, but it's just not as good a policy as the U.S. could have. Is that where you land?
VINDMAN: That's exactly right. And it's not just from the U.S. side. I think the Ukrainians are only now, after 30 years of independence and trying to come out from underneath the thumb of the Russian Federation, are turning to our understanding the role that they could play in regional security and European security. And that's a healthy thing to see. It just has taken a long time to get here.
KELLY: We've been speaking with retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Colonel Vindman, thank you.
VINDMAN: Thank you, Mary Louise.
(SOUNDBITE OF NILS FRAHM'S "SAYS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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By Terri Moon Cronk
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 23, 2014 - First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, today launched the Veterans Employment Center, the first online one-stop shopping tool for veterans, transitioning service members and spouses in search of employment.
The announcement was made at a third-anniversary celebration for their "Joining Forces" initiative at Fort Campbell, Ky.
Joining Forces mobilizes all sectors of American society to support service members, veterans and their families.
The Veterans Employment Center is designed to connect veterans and transitioning service members with employers and help translate military skills into the public- and private-sector civilian workforce.
"Our service members haven't always had the time or information they needed to prepare their resumes, to plot their career goals, to meet with employers and get the jobs they deserve. And that's simply not acceptable," the first lady said. "As my husband has said, when you've fought for this country around the world, you shouldn't have to fight for a job when you return home.
"Starting today," she continued, "every single service member, every veteran, and every military family will have access to a new online tool that will revolutionize how you find jobs in both the public and private sectors."
The online tool is available at http://www,ebenefits.va.gov.
"Our service members transitioning to civilian life, as well as their spouses, deserve the resources they need to be successful," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a White House news release. "Through this effort, they are getting that help. Our troops and their spouses are proven leaders, highly skilled and hard working. Employers hiring them are getting the best this nation has to offer."
The center is the result of an interagency effort to improve, simplify and consolidate the existing array of employment resources for veterans, officials said. It also will provide a single, comprehensive database of resumes for employers who seek to leverage the skills and talents of veterans, service members and their spouses.
The new online resource is the first interagency tool to bring together a wealth of public and private job opportunities, a resume-builder, military skills translator and detailed career and training resources.
In connection with Joining Forces, DOD and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Labor and Education and the Office of Personnel Management worked with employers to design and develop the site and incorporate features of existing online employment tools within government.
"Veterans deserve an authoritative source for connecting with employers," said VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki. "The online Veterans Employment Center is the single, federal source for veterans looking for new career opportunities, service members transitioning to the civilian workforce, and spouses and beneficiaries looking to connect with job opportunities."
With this tool, employers will be able to search and view veteran, service member and spouse resumes in one location.
Resumes are visible to all employers with an active LinkedIn or Google profile. To prevent spam, applicants' names and email addresses are redacted, and are visible only to employers verified by VA as registered companies with the IRS. The site also is built using open data and an open application programming interface to attract private-sector innovation.
"Improving veterans' employment is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise," Labor Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said. More than 1 million service members projected to leave the military in the coming years.
"OPM's USAJobs program is excited to be partnering with the VA on making this a robust tool for our nation's veterans and transitioning service members seeking federal employment," said Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta.
"It has been more than four years since President Obama established the Veterans Employment Initiative, and in that time, the executive branch hired the highest percentage of military veterans in more than 20 years –- of the 195,000 new employees hired in [fiscal year] 2012, approximately 56,000 were veterans, equaling 28.9 percent of total hires," she added.
"We can continue to honor and show our appreciation for the dedicated and heroic service of America's veterans by ensuring that they have every opportunity to continue their service to this great nation as federal civilian employees, Archuleta said. "The Veterans Employment Center helps us honor these men and women by making employment opportunities available when our servicemen and women lay down their uniforms."
At today's Fort Campbell event, Biden noted the success of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, which began in June 2011 with fewer than 60 companies. Today, she said, the partnership has 228 partner employers, more than 1.8 million jobs posted on the MSEP Career Portal, and more than 60,000 military spouse hires to its credit.
©2013- Veterans Internet Service
Not Affliated with DOD or any Government agency