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Vijay Shekhar Sharma, worth about ₹7,300 crores, is India's richest entrepreneur under 40 according to Hurun's India Rich List for 2016.
Anil Rai Gupta, along with his brother Vinod, has been valued at $2.6 billion by Forbes.
Gaurav Dalmia manages close to Rs 5,000 crore; about half of it is his own money.
The billionaires reveal their life lessons.
Illustrations: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
Three businessmen disclose their success mantras: One belongs to an old Marwari family, another is a second generation industrialist whose father scripted an amazing rags-to-riches story and the third was a professional till one day he succumbed to the charms of entrepreneurship.
'Most young people work for purposes rather than money'
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO, Paytm
When I was about to complete my graduation from the Delhi College of Engineering, I was clear about the career path I wanted for myself.
At the time, I did not have time for an expensive MBA degree and neither did I belong to a business-savvy family. I was going to treat my job like a live training field.
It was with this thought that I went into my job with River Run Software in 1998, one of the highest-paid jobs during that placement season.
It was the heyday of the software industry and perks were aplenty.
I would often wonder why software companies focused on the softer aspects of their work culture.
It was here that I learnt the importance of ancillary functions such as human resources, administration and finance.
River Run is an extremely well-organised company and the administration department took care of the smallest details for us after we were recruited.
The human resources department focused on individuals rather than put all of us in one pool of software engineers.
For instance, I always had a flair for business and the team that recruited me worked with that interest.
When I finally chose to move on from River Run, I could not serve my notice period. But my colleagues told me not to burn bridges with the organisation this way. I gave the finance department a cheque in lieu of the time I had to serve as notice.
With my next stint at Living Media, I acquired knowledge about the media and developed great bonds with my colleagues.
It helped me build a healthy relationship with the media and today, as a start-up founder, there is a trust factor that is associated with my name.
These incredible friendships that one develops during a job are vastly different from those that are a result of business meetings.
At the workplace, the relationships one forms are more honest, grounded and long-term.
This is the culture I wanted for the company I had then hoped to run.
At Paytm, we lay great emphasis on bonding between team members.
Though it may be a cliché, but road trips and offsite meetings go a long way in making a productive workplace.
But the most important learning came when I quit my job in 2000.
Despite being paid a substantial salary, I realised that most young people work for purposes rather than money.
This is something that has stayed with us at Paytm and we often repeat it to our colleagues: Mission and purpose are pious.
It was frustrating to see Indian engineers being treated as cheap software bots.
I had dreamt then that there would come a day when my company would hire the very people who currently hire Indians as mere coders.
This dream came true when Paytm Labs opened in Canada -- technology that powers an Indian mobile wallet for an Indian company being developed overseas.
The other aspect was also of employer branding, where employees could go home and tell their families with pride that they were working for a certain company.
This was an American concept, but we are no strangers to this anymore in India.
'His ways were simple, rich in native wisdom, and they worked -- always'
Anil Rai Gupta, chairman and managing director, Havells India
My father, Qimat Rai Gupta, didn't go to any business school.
In fact, he had to give up studies midway because the family had fallen on bad times and he had to supplement his father's meagre income.
QRG started out selling kerosene on a cycle in the villages of Punjab. Still, through sheer self-belief and hard work, he built Havells, which is now valued at $4 billion.
Much of QRG's innate wisdom owed itself to his formative years in small-town and rural Punjab, the area around Malerkotla.
The sayings he heard left an everlasting impression on his mind. He would find solutions to the most complex problem in those idioms, or QRGisms, as we would say.
In December 2008, we were faced with our worst crisis.
Sylvania, which we had brought the previous year, had run into rough weather.
Advisors said Havells would have to invest $50 million to $60 million into the company every year; if the gamble didn't pay off, the stress would have sunk Havells.
QRG summoned us to his office and said: 'Shikaar ko jab tak khud na maro, woh marta nahin hai (Unless you kill the prey yourself, it doesn't die).'
What he meant was that Sylvania was adrift because we were happy to be just financial investors; he wanted us to get fully involved in running the company.
Would our direct and informal ways work in Europe where Sylvania had the bulk of its business?
'Jo Lahore fuddu, woh sab jagah fuddu (If you can't succeed in Lahore, you will fail everywhere),' QRG said, implying, inversely, the basic principles of business were the same, whether in India or Europe.
We did his bidding and Sylvania turned around soon.
'Okhal mein sar daal diya to mooslo se kay darna? (When your head is in the mortar, why fear the pestle?),' he would often say.
Things needed to be taken to their logical conclusion in spite of the obstacles in the way.
First-generation entrepreneurs are special people, ready to stake everything on an idea.
When in a problem, 'Kothe par chadh kar bolo (Climb to the rooftop and shout)' QRG would tell us.
He would readily seek the opinion of others on important matters, especially in crises, when most try to keep things close to their chest.
Once, on a family vacation at Wildflower Hall, we saw Brijmohan Lall Munjal (founder, the Hero Group).
We had heard a lot about the way he managed his dealers and were keen to learn from him but weren't sure if he would entertain us.
Still, we approached him after QRG intoned: 'Mullah sabak nahi dega, par ghar to aane dega (The preacher may not teach you, but he will let you enter his house).'
Munjal did not disappoint us.
Right from the early 1990s, QRG would insist that we hire the best financial talent for Havells.
'Guru bin gat nahi, shah bin pat nahi (You can't gain knowledge without a teacher and you can't succeed without a banker).' He would say that the CFO was critical to the success of any venture.
QRG did things with a long-term perspective. Factories were built keeping in mind the demand 20 years later.
For advertising, the best agencies were hired. We always worked with the best in the business, even by paying a bit more, because, as QRG would say, 'Jahan satyanash, wahan savasatyanash (When you are doomed, there no harm in being doomed a little more).'
Cutting corners never occurred to him.
You can get ordinary people to deliver extraordinary results through motivation and empowerment.
'Agar koi chhe-foota aapke office mein aaye, use saat-foota ka banake bhejo (If a six-foot tall man walks into your office, he should go out feeling seven feet tall),' QRG would say.
'If you have to send somebody to Connaught Place, just tell him the destination, don't tell him the way -- let him figure the way out.' He was always against spoon-feeding employees.
Transparency was of the utmost importance for him. QRG would often call my mother from office on a speaker phone in the presence of half-a-dozen others.
His ways were simple, rich in native wisdom, and they worked -- always.
'Preference for investment over consumption is the key to wealth creation'
Gaurav Dalmia, chairman, Dalmia Group Holdings
When I was asked to write on what makes Marwari billionaires tick, I was apprehensive.
I was not a Marwari in the true sense: I had been globalised and followed only a few of the core Marwari edicts. And I was not a dollar billionaire, though some of my cousins were.
Nonetheless, the Marwari formula, for whatever it's worth, was alive and kicking in me -- hence this piece.
Let me point out there is no unique Marwari potion. People from many backgrounds exhibit a winning mix.
In the late '90s, Harvard organised a symposium called Culture Matters. The conclusion: However politically incorrect it may sound, cultural values are powerful factors in promoting prosperity.
Sociologist Joel Kotkin's separate research found common characteristics among the five distinct ethnic groups that were rising to prominence globally: ethnic identity, global trust networks and a passion for technical knowledge.
Marwaris share many values with immigrants of all hues.
Yale professor Amy Chua's 'triple package' -- superiority, insecurity and impulse control -- is considered a predictor of wealth and power among immigrant groups in the US.
Marwaris have immense self-confidence about their abilities, yet they are sufficiently insecure to be humble.
Their preference for investment over consumption is the key to wealth creation.
Frugality has character-building implications. Avoiding temptations leads to focus, less dissipation of energy, and provides the grit to persevere.
The Five Factor Model is a robust framework for understanding personality. Its five domains are a reliable proxy for most traits and behaviour.
In my assessment, the Marwari community would score well: A- on openness, A+ on conscientiousness, B+ on extraversion, A on agreeableness, and B on neuroticism -- the only variable where a lower score is good.
Such a scorecard would put Marwaris in the top quartile, though these may not come out as surface characteristics in casual interaction.
Just like the Protestant-Calvinist ethic was an important force behind America's historic ascent, the Marwari mix of Hindu beliefs is influential.
Of the four forms of Hindu religiosity -- Bhakti marg, Gyana marg, Vir marg and Karma marg -- Marwaris are adherents of the latter. This has helped them embrace commerce.
It is not surprising that Marwaris are among the wealthiest in their peer groups, whether one takes a sample in India's metropolitan centres or in small towns in the northeast.
Marwaris have an extraordinary sense of community.
They live by Ratan Tata's famous words: 'If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.'
They make sacrifices for their families, businesses and community.
This has profound ramifications.
Last month, a leading banker was telling me that Tamil-, Gujarati-, and Marwari-owned businesses have less succession challenges and accounting surprises than the average.
Such things compound to create stronger businesses and larger wealth.
With respect to building scale, the Marwari ecosystem is a platform for growth.
This is the same tool Bangladeshi entrepreneurs have used to get 80 per cent share of the Indian restaurant business in the UK, and to break ahead from other groups such as Pakistanis in terms of education levels or monthly incomes.
Political economist Francis Fukuyama has shown that prosperous countries are those where business relations can be conducted on the basis of trust -- informally, flexibly, without much transaction cost -- and with speed.
Extrapolating this to communities, Jews stand out in Europe and the US and Palestinian-Lebanese in West Asia and Western Africa. In India, there are case studies on Gujarati community networks; Marwari networks are a close second.
One could easily substitute the word Marwari with Gujarati or Punjabi or Baniya or Tamil, and one will see similar characteristics amongst the members of The Billionaire Club.
The only differences will be how universal these qualities are in different ethnic groups and the minor cultural nuances. There is no guarantee these values will transcend multiple generations.
The Marwari hold on the super-rich league tables has weakened considerably over the past half century; the list is now populated with a dynamic cross-section of Indian society.
Irrespective of cultural diversity, among the super-achievers, a common thread will be a weak mental correlation between success and material wealth.
For most, money has reached a point of diminishing returns and, at best, they regard it as a form of keeping score.
In that sense, they will tell you that money is far more exciting than anything it buys!
The Billionaire Club
From actors to sportspersons to start-up CEOs, a list of the other rich
Source: Forbes (2016 earnings); net worth all estimates, as of October 2016
Source: Forbes (2016 earnings); net worth all estimates, as of October 2016
NRI businessmen
Source: Forbes, net worth as of October 2016
Entrepreneurs under 35
Source: Hurun, net worth as of October 2016


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Updates & Revisions
Here you will find important updates and revisions to the articles and plans published in ShopNotes magazine.
March 2014
Issue 134
- Swing-Drawer Shop Cart
- Page 35: part K
- The Drawer Bottoms should be 11 1/8" x 11 1/8".
- Page 39: Main Illustration
- The Drawer Bottoms (part K) should be 11 1/8" x 11 1/8".
- Page 36: Figure 1
- The Top (part 'A') should have a clearance hole with the following callout: "Drill 1/4"-dia. clearance hole centered on counterbore." Detail C on page 36 should show this clearance hole as well. Figure 1 should have the following note: "NOTE: Clearance hole allows for removal of the pivoting drawer rod (refer to page 39)."
- Page 37: Top View illustration
- The Top View illustration should show a 1/4"-dia. clearance hole centered on the counterbore.

subset: commoncrawl


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Devils Brush
This photo really demonstrates the impact of depth of field on an image. The subject here is the appropriately named 'Devils Brush' plant, serving as both foreground and background. I used a wide open aperture to focus on a single plant and throw the background plants completely out of focus. This gives the image a nice, almost painted, feel.


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Travie McCoy On Teaming Up With Wes Borland On 'Superbad'
Travie McCoy spoke with ArtistDirect in a video interview, where the Gym Class Heroes singer talked about teaming up with Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland for his solo debut 'Lazarus' on the track 'Superbad'. "When I was younger, I was a huge Limp Bizkit fan! Especially Wes, whenever they threw a show you never knew what that dude was gonna come out on stage in. He was like our generation's Gene Simmons," McCoy said. "He was such a spectacle, so it was awesome to get him on the record." Watch the interview at artistdirect.com.


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War Gamer
What is wargaming? What is the most difficult situation in the middle of one? Barbarella sits down with veteran wargamer C.C. Johnson to find out the (de-classified) information he's able to share. Fun fact: C.C. is Barbarella's father, and before this interview, she never fully understood what it was that he was up to while away during his "games." Another fun fact, because you scrolled back this far and therefore deserve something extra fun for your trouble: this interview was filmed in Barbarella's bedroom, back when she still lived at the Egyptian in Hillcrest. So, now you know.
View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.


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One pot shop in Prince George has a target date to open its doors.
Grasshopper Retail Inc. (non-government owned) tells PrinceGeorgeMatters they have a goal of opening in June, but if that isn't doable, they're hoping Canada Day long weekend at the latest.
Owner and President Sandy Przysieny says renovations, which can be seen from outside, are going slowly but moving in the right direction, including brand new windows, doors being installed, and finishing flashing today (April 18).
She adds the frosting needs to be added on the windows and wall panelling is currently being installed inside.
The company also already has orders placed for a POS system, display cases, and cabinets, which are all on order as well.
Grasshopper Retail Inc. identified the location back in December of 2017 and secured, while also paying a lease since Aug. 1, 2018, at 421 George St.
The company says received 11 letters in support from local businesses in the area.
Grasshopper Retail Inc. was officially given the go-ahead at a council meeting on April 8.


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Podcast 50:45 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment
Dan and Ian have been wanting to share the story behind this week's episode for quite some time.
Justin Cooke is one of the co-founders of Empire Flippers. Empire Flippers is a marketplace for online businesses. Since their inception, they have grown their team to around 60 remote employees, and have helped people buy and sell over $50 million worth of businesses.
It wasn't always like that, though. On today's podcast, Justin is joining us to share the story of how Empire Flippers came about.
You'll hear about Justin's background in the mortgage industry, how he joined forces with his business partner Joe Magnotti, why the market crash in 2008 left them with almost no money, and how they were eventually able to create Empire Flippers.
Listen to this week's show and learn:
- What the team at Empire Flippers looks like. (6:40)
- Justin's first forays into entrepreneurship and how he met his business partner Joe Magnotti. (12:59)
- How Joe and Justin fine-tuned their sales skills in the mortgage industry and what happened when that industry collapsed. (18:08)
- What led to their decision to start a new business outsourcing work to the Philippines. (31:26)
- How Joe and Justin started flipping websites and eventually created Empire Flippers. (42:26)
Mentioned in the episode:
- Before the Exit – Our New Book
- TMBA Masterminds
- Sponsor the TMBA Podcast
- The Dynamite Circle
- The DC Podcast
- Help Us Choose a New Name for the TropicalMBA Podcast
- Dynamite Jobs
- Justin Cooke
- Empire Flippers
- Joe Magnotti
- Baby-G
- The Big Short
- Upwork
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- Amazon Mechanical Turk
- Adsense
- Flippa
- The 11 Most Popular Online Business Models
This week's sponsor:
This week's episode is brought to you by Ahrefs. Many of our listeners already know that Ahrefs is the #1 go-to tool for optimizing SEO traffic results, but it's a whole lot more comprehensive than that. They actually offer an entire suite of SEO tools and act as sort of a "Swiss Army Knife" of SEO. If you want to rank higher in Google and send your search traffic through the roof, visit Ahrefs.com for their $7 trial offer. Even better, Ahrefs is offering one lucky listener of today's show a free Lite annual account, worth nearly $1,000. All you need to do is tweet @Ahrefs and @TropicalMBA, and let us know why you need to win.
Enjoyed this podcast? Check out these:
Listening options:
- Subscribe via iTunes.
- Listen on Stitcher Radio.
- Android users can grab our RSS feed here.
- Right-click and "save file as" for direct download.
- Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.
- Have comments about the show, or ideas for things you'd like Dan and Ian to discuss on future episodes? Our producer Jane would love to hear from you at [email protected] or leave us a voice message using the record button below.
Thanks for listening to our show! We'll be back next Thursday morning 8AM EST. Cheers, Dan & Ian
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Businesses are doing more than ever to reduce the amount of energy and water they use and improve their relationship with waste.
But things tend to get thrown out of the window when we run a business from home or work from home, don't they?
From leaving your phone on charge, to turning up the thermostat, there are several ways you waste energy that you probably don't think about.
To celebrate World Environment Day (which is today, by the way), here are some top tips to reduce your energy, water, and waste while working from home.
Turn appliances off standby
Appliances that are left on standby still consume electricity and cost money to run. An appliance that uses 1 watt an hour on standby will cost you £1.23 a year to run if your cost per unit of electricity is 14p p/kWh.
Older appliances like televisions can consume up to 12 watts an hour on standby. Spread this over three or four appliances, and you could be adding up to £30 to your annual electricity bill without using these appliances at all.
Use a lower washing temperature
You can use less electricity when you run your dishwasher or washing machine by simply choosing a lower temperature.
Washing machines and dishwashers use electricity to keep water hot during a cycle. Less electricity is needed to maintain cooler temperatures.
Set your computer and laptop to snooze during the day
We've all been guilty of leaving our computer and laptop on for hours at a time when we're not using it and wasting electricity in the process.
By setting your computer and laptop to snooze after 10 or 20 minutes of activity, you will ensure you don't accidentally leave them turned on.
A laptop will consume 2 watts of electricity an hour in snooze mode and a computer will consume around 4 watts. Under power, that jumps to 50 watts and 100 watts.
Only charge your devices when you need to
Your smartphone, tablet and laptop each have a battery that allows them to be used for hours at a time without plugging in.
And yet, plenty of people leave their device plugged in during the day. This is especially common with laptops and smartphones (in the case of smartphones, wireless charging has made the problem more prevalent).
This is not only bad for your electricity bill, but it's also bad for your device because batteries need to run regular cycles to stay in good health.
Be smart with your lighting
We all leave lights on by mistake sometimes. Every so often is fine, but remember this is a drain on electricity, and it is completely avoidable.
You should also upgrade to LED light bulbs if you haven't already. LED bulbs consume less power than CFL eco light bulbs and they have a longer shelf life – around 50,000 hours, which is approximately 10 times longer than the equivalent CFL.
Be smart with your central heating
You can save energy with central heating by leaving the thermostat at less than 19°C, or you can make sure it uses no energy at all by putting on a jumper.
Heating isn't a bad thing because we all need to be warm – but excessive heating and turning up the thermostat only wastes energy.
Top tip – did you know you can also save money on your home energy bills by switching to a business energy tariff? If you work from home or run your business from home, you could qualify for micro business status. Read our guide to working from home and business energy to find out more.
Install low flow aerators on taps
Aerators work by mixing water with air to affect water pressure. The result is you will use less water when you wash your hands or wash up.
Aerators are inexpensive (a pair can be picked up for around £5) and they come in universal sizes, offering simple plug and play installation.
Use a dehumidifier (and use the water it collects)
If you have a basement or an area of your home with moisture, such as a utility room, a dehumidifier will collect excess water from the air. You can then reuse this to water your garden or wash your car.
You can also get a similar effect with a condenser dryer – these dryers collect the moisture from wet clothes and store it in a tank.
Run shorter washing cycles
You can significantly reduce the amount of water you use by running shorter washing cycles with your dishwasher and washing machine.
Most washing machines and dishwashers have an 'eco' or 'time saver' mode. Using these modes will help you save a lot of water.
Take a shower instead of bathing
Filling a bathtub requires around 70 gallons of water, yet a 10-minute shower uses only around 25 gallons of water. This simple fact means showers are more efficient, better for the environment and better for your water bill.
Put a plastic water bottle in your toilet tank
Toilet tanks stop filling when they reach a certain level. You can reduce the amount of water used in this process with a 500ml bottle,
Fill a normal 500ml bottle with water and secure it inside your toilet tank. Now, whenever your toilet tank refills, 500ml of water will be saved, and it's completely safe too!
Say no to plastic
Whenever you can, you should say no to plastic. Plastic waste does not decompose over a quantifiable period, and the last plastic bottle you drank from will probably outlast the whole human race if it ends up in a landfill.
Here are some ways to reduce your plastic:
- Use reusable shopping bags
- Give up bottled water
- Use your own flasks and drinking cups
- Carry a travel bottle with you
- When you order a takeaway, ask for eco packaging
Buy a composter
A composter is a bin that you use to breakdown organic material for reuse in the garden. You can throw leaves, garden matter, grass, fruit peel, vegetables and more into the bin and use the compost it creates for your gardening.
Use colour-coded bins
If like most homes you have a black bin and a green bin, you can make better recycling decisions by using colour-coded bins in your home.
These let you separate paper, tins and cans, plastics, glass and food waste. You can then dispose of your waste properly, which is better for the environment.
Buy preloved goods
If you need a table, chairs, new clothes or even a mirror, local charity and thrift shops are great places to find preloved and vintage goods.
By buying preloved, you will reduce your personal environmental impact and not have to deal with all the plastic packaging new goods come in.
Opt-out of paper communication
Whether we're talking about bank statements, clothes catalogues or takeaway menus, paper is unnecessary in this day and age.
Digital documents are the future and it's easy to sort digital communication in email. Going paperless is simply way better for the environment.
If your business also has an office, be sure to also read our guide to reducing business waste in an office.


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The Iraqi army began an operation on Monday to storm Fallujah, ISIL's stronghold near Baghdad, entering it from three directions on Monday
The Iraqi army began an operation on Monday to storm Fallujah, ISIL's stronghold near Baghdad, entering it from three directions on Monday.
A military unit is trying to advance in the city, a military officer told a Reuters TV crew near the front line, as explosions and gunfire could be heard in Fallujah's southern Naimiya district.
The Iraqi forces controlled the building of the police station in Naimiya and raised the national flag over it.
Shiha, Jamila, and al-Alfaf towns in northern al-Saqlawiya were also regained by the Iraqi army.
The Iraqi army, backed by Al-Hash Al-Shaabi popular resistance group, began the operation to recapture Falluja on May 23, first by tightening its siege around the city, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, and has now begun a direct assault.
"Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation and supported by artillery and tanks," Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander in charge of the operation, told AFP.
"Counter-terrorism service (CTS) forces, the Anbar police and the Iraqi army, at around 4 am (0100 GMT), started moving into Fallujah from three directions," he said. "There is struggling from Daesh," he added, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.
Only a few hundred families managed to slip out of the Fallujah area ahead of the assault on the city, with an estimated 50,000 civilians still trapped inside, sparking fears the terrorists could try to use them as human shields.


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Cabrito Majorero
Our recommendation: oven roasted cabrito with a side dish. It's a real delicacy.
You will lick your fingers
Not all dishes in Fuerteventura are based on fish, as the island also offers an important variety of meat and some recipes capable of convincing even the most demanding palates, among which one of the most prized dishes is cabrito. Even though there are countless ways of making cabrito by even serving it in stews or with papas arrugadas (crinkle-cut chips), our personal recommendation is that you taste the traditional version: oven-roasted with a side dish. There are many restaurants throughout the island where you can try it, so it won't be difficult to find. Since it's an animal which has been reared on the land, the quality is assured, so it's practically the same wherever you go, and of course it's a good reason to visit the centre of Fuerteventura, which is the typical area for livestock. For example, the region of Antigua is home to one of the most stunning areas if we are talking about landscapes, as well as numerous restaurants where you can try this meat and others from the island.
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Results for: trepn profiler
Developer of the Month: Jake Weinstein on Paranoid Android
Qualcomm® Developer Network September Developer of the Month is Jake Weinstein. Jake's work centers on the Android Operating System Paranoid Android (AOSPA) project, which is described as "a custom...https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/dom/jake-weinstein-paranoid-android
Developer of the Month: Aryan Behzadi Brings AR Ideas to Life with Qualcomm Technologies
With a world suddenly full of augmented reality enthusiasts thanks to Pokemon Go, can we here at Qualcomm be assume there aren't others out there wanting to create augmented reality (AR) creatures of...https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/dom/aryan-behzadi-brings-ar-ideas-life-qualcomm-technologies
Introducing Trepn Profiler 6.0
Trepn™ Profiler is a great tool for our developers to use in analyzing their apps, and we are pleased to now make it available to a wider audience by releasing it in Google Play. This allows anyone...https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/introducing-trepn-profiler-60
Hanging Sockets and Power Consumption – Basics, Part 3
Continuing our series on mobile apps and their effect on battery drain, I'll pick up where the three guidelines in Wayne Lee's last post left off, especially #3: "Know what your app is doing with the...https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/hanging-sockets-and-power-consumption-basics-part-3


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Gastronomic fiesta of 'enfariñada' - Trabada
09 May 2018
On Sunday 6th May, a new fiesta took place in Trabada. It was designed to celebrate a local speciality called 'enfariñada'. Enfariñada is a pancake like mixture of eggs, flour, salt and water which is poured into hot oil in a frying pan. As it starts to set, it is then chopped up into tiny pieces so that it can be eaten in a bowl with either bacon (savoury) or with honey (sweet).
The ladies of the village lined up behind their cooking stoves and prepared the enfariñada from midday onwards. It was a beautiful day and as the people arrived in their hundreds, they just kept cooking and cooking and cooking. They were still cooking at 4 o'clock in the afternoon! For 4€, you got a special pottery bowl full of sweet or savoury enfariñada.
There was traditional Galician music while people were arriving and eating and then later in the afternoon, there was a 'fado' duo. This music is typical in Portugal and was beautiful on a sunny Spring afternoon. All in all a very successful 'new' fiesta. For more photos of the day have a look here


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How To Find Us
Fisherman of Men Church
3641 Georgia Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20010
The Church is centrally located in Washington, DC.
Send Us a Message
By Car From North:
- Take 295 South Towards Washington, DC
- Merge onto US-50 W/NEW YORK AVE NE toward WASHINGTON (Crossing into DC).
- Turn RIGHT onto FLORIDA AVE NE.
- Turn RIGHT onto GEORGIA AVE NW/US-29.
- End at 3641 Georgia Ave NW Washington, DC 20010-1640
By Subway: Take Green or Yellow to Georgia Ave Petworth Station (Visit http://www.wmata.com)
By Bus: Visit http://www.wmata.com
By Car From South:
- Take I-395 N toward D STREET N.W./NEW YORK AVE..
- Take the exit toward MASSACHUSETTS AVE.
- Stay STRAIGHT to go onto 2ND ST NW.
- Turn LEFT onto MASSACHUSETTS AVE NW.
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- 7TH ST NW becomes GEORGIA AVE NW/US-29.
- End at 3641 Georgia Ave NW Washington, DC 20010


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British artiste K 3U77 (pronounced K BUZZ) marks his return to music scene with a brand new single 'HennyTing Goes', which features Zlatan, known for his work with Burna Boy, Davido & Tiwa Savage.
Produced by BluBlood, the foundations for 'HennyTing Goes' were laid through K 3U77's interest in the viral Shaku and Zanku dances that have popped up in the past few years. The finished product aims to breed positivity, encouraging listeners to 'dance as you like, do as you like, live your life to the fullest'.
K 3U77's precise, energetic delivery and Zlatan's signature animated flow blend with great chemistry over a hard-hitting, lively instrumental, a perfect vibe for the dance floor.
He hails from London, and participated in music from an early age, performing in his church's choir throughout his youth. He also released his first EP 'Power Of Love' in 2008, a project he treasures to this day. He aspires to serve as 'the UK's biggest fusion artist', having already drawn comparisons to Mr Eazi and J Hus.Download


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Is this Your Band?
Shadyside Allstars
General Information
|Artist Name:
|Shadyside Allstars
|rock,jam band,progressive
|Years Active:
|2003 - Present
|Band members:
(Bold indicates
current member.)
|Aaron Manka -- guitar, vocals
Chris Moore -- drums, vocals
Blair Ping -- bass, vocals
Will Spice -- keyboards, vocals
|Related Bands:
Formed in February 2003, the Shadyside Allstars have persistently risen above the stale expectations of music lovers as they offer an inimitable approach to live performance. Their songwriting sensibilities merge melody, technicality and an infectious atmosphere inciting citizens to stand up and take notice. Charles Tidd of the IUPUI Sagamore agrees stating, "The sound is full of rich, warm guitar tones that favor the Allman Brothers and Santana; the three-piece rhythm section drives a thick groove that is tight and relentless." The Allstars shed the myth that inflections captured in the studio need be performed note for note, night after night.
Shadyside employs this proficiency capturing the audiences attention through solid structure and vibrant improvisation. Known for well-rehearsed stage performances, the Allstars simultaneously astonish crowds with unpredicted melodies, harmonies and rhythm-based jams. Kristen Leep of Indianapolis Music.Net writes, "They are a talented, feel-good band that write strong songs, improvise well, but always a have a focus." This funky, jam band momentum sparks rapport with multitudes of enthusiastic, energetic listeners. As spontaneous melodies soar over rooted grooves, the Allstars purpose prevails: a fan base grows.
As attested by their schedule, the Allstars are currently working to promote themselves throughout the Midwest. Whether participating in conferences, charity events or festivals, Shadyside remains diligent in disseminating its merchandise of good times and great music. Please visit our website for more information including performance dates and audio downloads.
Podcast Appearances:
Show #21 (9/24/2007)
Show #58 (10/6/2009)
Show #118 (9/23/2012)


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If you were to look at Samsung's laptops even a year ago, you'd see gorgeous devices crafted with premium materials on the outside and a steep price tag to match – with components that, well, often didn't.
Since then, for reasons that should be obvious, Samsung's vision for its laptops has shifted slowly to focus more on value than an ultra-luxury experience. (Specifically, crafting a luxury experience at a value price.) The Samsung Notebook 9 is a fine example of this.
However, we're not talking about Ultrabooks here, but the often nebulous realm of mid-range multimedia laptops. Meet the 15.6-inch Samsung Notebook 7 Spin, a laptop like the Notebook 9 in its goal to bring a primo-feeling experience and more power to an approachable price point.
Starting at just $899 (about £681, AU$1,206), the Notebook 7 Spin comes packing one of the best and latest Intel processors, gobs of memory and storage, and dedicated Nvidia graphics behind a crisp, 1080p HDR (!!!) screen. Oh, and it's a convertible hybrid – just in case you like those, too.
Yeah, we'd say Samsung accomplished its mission.
That's in no small part thanks to how Samsung employed a serious design sense in molding the Notebook 7 Spin shell while making use of less-than-high-end materials. Not much has changed about this iteration from the previous in terms of design ID, though.
The same subdued, chrome Samsung logo sits flush left on the laptop's brushed aluminum lid, and the aluminum keyboard deck feels just as refreshingly cool to the touch as it has for at least one or two generations now. However, the bottom half of the silver-colored chassis is comprised of a soft touch plastic that's both cheaper and better prevents slipping.
However, back to what's sitting on upper half. Making liberal use of the room that its 15-inch size affords it, unlike some key competitors, Samsung laid out a full set of curved, backlit black keys – including a number pad.
The keys offer a hearty punch when pressed and released, and were effortless to adjust to over the course of our review. The spacious, glass trackpad is centered with the space bar, which we wish was centered with the device instead, but otherwise performs just fine with single and- multi-touch gestures.
And if you just want to touch the screen you can do that or even convert it into an oversized tablet. This editor is generally a curmudgeon when it comes to convertible hybrids, but we don't mind it here as an add-in feature, since the hinge is so strong and sturdy it's barely noticeable.
That said, using this thing as a tablet is just plain silly, even with its neat, curved lip above and below its hinge available to help with grip. Simply put, it's just too heavy and bulky for that kind of use. The tent-like mode is excellent for bedridden movie binges, though.
What you have here is a laptop designed to be attractive and effective without being ostentatiously expensive, and the Notebook 7 Spin's design simply exudes that quality. That said, it is rather hefty.
Source link


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Export 5 results:Author Title [ Type] Year
Filters: Author is Balram, Ajit C. [Clear All Filters]
Journal Article
Z(n) superconductivity of composite bosons and the 7/3 fractional quantum Hall effect, , Phys. Rev. Res., 2 (2020)
Prediction of a Non-Abelian Fractional Quantum Hall State with f-Wave Pairing of Composite Fermions in Wide Quantum Wells, , Phys. Rev. Lett., 123, 016802 (2019)
Parton construction of particle-hole-conjugate Read-Rezayi parafermion fractional quantum Hall states and beyond, , Phys. Rev. B, 99, 241108 (2019)
Parton construction of a wave function in the anti-Pfaffian phase, , PHYSICAL REVIEW B, 98, 035127 (2018)
Fractional Quantum Hall Effect at nu=2+6/13: The Parton Paradigm for the Second Landau Level, , PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 121, 186601 (2018)


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"It takes a group of passionate people to come together as a team to achieve exceptional results."
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Join Our Team
At Stanley Martin, we are driven by our passion for designing great homes and for how people truly live. Whether your interest is in designing, building, or selling homes, analyzing our data, or working with our trade partners, when you join Stanley Martin you are part of the unified team that is committed to driving outstanding results for our home buyers.
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We believe in a flat, open platform of communication and foster a spirit of teamwork and collaboration
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The Transparency in Coverage Rule, issued in 2020 by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and U.S. Department of Treasury, requires health plans to publicly disclose pricing information via machine-readable files. As a self-funded plan sponsor, Stanley Martin Homes is responsible for complying with this regulation.Click here to view the machine-readable files.


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By Roger Tagholm
Last week's International Conference held by the UK Publishers Association in London looked at "New Territories, New Audiences," with a particular focus on the trio of Korea, Indonesia and Turkey.
Korea and Indonesia
A beaming Eric Yang, CEO of Random House Korea (now RH Korea) and incoming President of the Asia Pacific Publishers Association, said he couldn't guarantee the singer PSY at the London Book Fair in 2014, where Korea will be Market Focus, "but we will be bringing ten Korean authors, as well as new technology developments from Samsung and LG."
If he couldn't promise PSY, he did talk about PCIPA, the Publishing Culture Industry Promotion Act — and they are both, in their own way, about the street. The Korean Publishing Association, of which Yang is Executive Director, is concerned about the decline in the number of bookshops — down from 2,042 in 2007 to 1,450 this year — and has proposed an amendment to the Act that will see a return of retail price maintenance to protect the bricks-and-mortar stores in front of which PSY and his countless YouTube imitators might well be seen performing their world-famous Gangnam Style dance.
If PSY is a good ambassador for Korea, Anna Rimba Phoa, MD of online booksellers Mentari Books, based in Jakarta, did a very good job for Indonesia. Making her first international speech, she whistled through an overview of her vast country's publishing scene — 1,009 publishers, 15,000 titles per year, 520 active bookshops, 14 annual book fairs — and said: "There is a good market for international publishers in private schools and in the state schools following the Cambridge curriculum. English language learning has flourished in the last ten years, and the government has pledged $3.3bn for education, which is 20% of our total GDP."
This kind of government support was a notable theme in the conference, not least in Turkey where the Fatih project, which seeks to give some 17 million school children a tablet over the next five years, was described by Tan Caglyan of Caglayan Bookstore in Istanbul, as "the biggest educational project in the world. The government is putting $8.5bn behind this — this is our future and it will change our country. We need it because the levels of English are so low."
Which lucky companies will win these contracts? "Samsung provided 12,500 tablets in 2011 and will provide a further 40 to 50,000 this year. There is a battle between Windows and Google on operating systems." Two Turkish companies — Arcelik or Vestel — are likely to manufacture the tablets.
While the slides of stores like Robinson Crusoe in Istanbul looked impressive, Mehmet Inhan, CEO of Idefix, Turkey's largest online bookstore, said that distribution problems held the industry back. "Distributors are usually started by publishers who have the tendency to push their own books, so there is a demand for independent distribution. We are held back by low information technology usuage. There are no up-to-date catalogue databases and no computer automation. Orders are still mostly placed by fax."
But in part thanks to the Fatih project, digital awareness will grow, he believes, and in 2010 Inhan launched the country's first ebookstore under idefix.com.tr. He followed this with prefix .com.tr, Turkey's first B2B wholesale ecommerce platform, aimed at improving distribution of print titles to booksellers, especially to remote Anatolia.
International is Key, Especially for UK
Nick Baird, Chief Executive of UK Trade and Investment, noted that there was no growth at home at the moment, "so we need to look internationally," and throughout the day there was much talk of power — both economic and political — shifting towards the east. "Western Europe, Japan and the US are all weak," Baird said. "So we need to perform better in emerging markets. Our target for the UK is 40% GDP from exports involving the arts, of which your industry is a part. At the moment it is 30%. There is a huge thirst for education in the emerging markets and we have a massive advantage because of the English language, which is still the international language, the language of business.
"Publishing is one of the most creative and innovative parts of the UK economy, and the creative sector as a whole is worth £4 billion to the UK economy."
Which was a positive pat on the back for the UK publishers listening, although one commented: "It's not so much that emerging markets will save us — it's more a case that this is a long, slow process that may eventually come good."
Which was positive too, albeit in a more tempered way.
DISCUSS: Bribery and the Ethics of Publishing in the Developing World


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For Quora, the Community Is Everything
Charlie Cheever, a co-founder of hot startup Quora, doesn't really like the word "community" that much, for a number of reasons. Whatever he chooses to call it, building one is at the core of what he is trying to do with Quora, along with his co-founder and fellow Facebook alumnus Adam D'Angelo, the social network's former chief technology officer. The startup has raised $11 million from Benchmark Capital (among others), but Cheever said in an interview with me that the company has no real interest in monetizing the community it has built so far around questions and answers. "We're not really focused on making money right now," he said. "I think if we can solve the problem we are trying to solve, we will find a way to make money."
What problem is Quora is trying to solve? Cheever says that while there is a huge volume of information already online — and terabytes more added every day — he and D'Angelo are trying to get at "the 90 percent of information that isn't on the Internet yet, because it's in people's heads." Quora's mission, he says, is to get those thoughts on the Internet "and get it in front of people who care about it." The best way to do that, he believes, is to create "a civil place on the Internet where people can interact" and be able to ask and answer interesting questions.
Other sites are also going after the same prize in different ways: StackExchange is a platform based on StackOverflow, the tech-focused Q&A site, which is being rolled out to address more topics, and is backed by Union Square Ventures (whose most prominent partner, Fred Wilson, spoke highly of Quora in a recent interview with GigaOM). A recently launched legal Q&A site called LawPivot has been described as a "Quora for legal questions," and Kommons is another newly launched startup that wants to crowd-source questions to ask public figures via Twitter and the web.
So far, Quora has been able to do a fairly good job of keeping its interactions high-quality, something the startup paid a lot of attention to while it was in invite-only beta. (It opened to the public in June.) But will it be able to maintain that level of quality as it scales and becomes more widely used? Even Cheever isn't sure — but he says the company is determined to try. One of the ways it's trying to do this is by selecting moderators from the community who can help users and also referee disputes that arise over how Quora's "ideal society" (as Liz called it in an earlier post) should function.
In one recent incident, for example, a Quora user posted a response to a question about whether users of the site were "borderline Aspies" — in other words, showed signs of Asperger Syndrome. Though the response was thoughtful and inoffensive, a moderator deleted it, and Cheever later got involved in a discussion about how moderators and admins do their jobs at Quora. "There are times where things come up that we haven't dealt with before, and we have to figure out with our users how to deal with it," Cheever said. "We want to be as open as possible about what we're doing and what the policies are."
Even Wikipedia — which Cheever says Quora has looked to as a model of how to create a community around "user-generated content" — has had its own growing pains involving its community, and the rules that govern who can edit pages. That kind of backlash is one of the reasons that Cheever doesn't really like the word "community." While it has lots of good overtones of real-world communities, he says, it can also have a more negative connotation: something closer to an exclusive club, where only certain people are allowed in. Within reason, Cheever says that Quora wants to appeal to as broad a cross-section of people as possible. Unlike Wikipedia, which often removes topics because they aren't deemed "notable" enough, Quora wants as broad a selection of topics as well.
A stroll through the site shows questions ranging from thoughtful queries about the inside workings of Facebook and what are some of the hot Silicon Valley startups that are most likely to fail, to esoteric questions such as "What is the best way to track my APM in StarCraft II," which Cheever himself posted an answer to. The Quora founder says he now spends three to four hours a day, not just answering questions on the site, but also, helping guide users and oversee responses in cases like the Asperger question, where policies need to be adapted or developed.
For now, Quora feels like a really fascinating series of conversations you might overhear while wandering through a particularly popular — but very civilized — bar or restaurant in San Francisco or Palo Alto, Calif. The company's real challenge will be to maintain that civil society even as it scales beyond the core group of like-minded users who, until recently, provided the bulk of activity on the site. And what about competitors such as Facebook's own Questions feature, which many took as a direct shot at the startup run by two prominent former employees? "We don't really talk about that much," Cheever said. "I don't even know what Facebook Questions is like, really."
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):
- How to Make Google Matter in Social Media
- Will Games Help Google Figure Out How to Be Social?
- Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Adam Kazwell


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WNGSR provides insight into natural gas markets and the broader economy
Today in Energy features this story explaining the Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report (WNGSR) and a separate story explaining the Weekly Petroleum Status Report (WPSR). Together, these stories describe how EIA conducts surveys and publishes reports on two widely-followed sets of energy market information.
EIA's Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report (WNGSR) measures how much natural gas is available for withdrawal–working natural gas–in the Nation's underground storage reservoirs, by region (see map). The WNGSR, the Department of Energy's only designated Principal Federal Economic Indicator, is closely watched by both natural gas industry participants and those seeking insight into the current condition of the economy.
EIA first released the WNGSR in March 2002, following a request from the Secretary of Energy after resource constraints led a trade association to cease its reporting on weekly storage activity. Data are based on the EIA-912 weekly survey from a sample of storage operators that supply EIA with their regional working gas storage inventories, as of Friday morning of the report week. These data are combined with estimates of non-sampled storage operators and is released to the public on the following Thursday at precisely 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time (with exception of certain weeks with holidays).
Although the EIA-912 only surveys respondents on current inventory data, the WNGSR uses this information in conjunction with the prior week's inventory estimates to provide the implied net storage change, which can be used as a proxy of net injections and withdrawals. The report also includes statistics on the current inventory levels compared with year-ago inventory levels and the 5-year average.
Tags: natural gas, storage


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The world is "Frozen"-obsessed and Cal State Fullerton alum Wayne Unten, who served as animation supervisor for the character of Elsa in the Disney film, doesn't have to look far to realize it.
"You hear all the YouTube clips and people singing the songs and kids singing the songs – I feel like that's where my joy comes from," said Unten, who graduated from CSUF in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in art-entertainment and illustration. In fact, Unten's daughters Emily, 5, and Amelia, 2, are huge fans of the film's hit song "Let It Go."
The film was recently awarded Academy Awards for animated feature film and original song.
"The audience – the people who we make these movies for – they love it," Unten, 34, said of the film. "Winning the Oscar was the confirmation. It was the cherry on top. I was excited that it won."
The animated film has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
Unten worked with a team of artists who created the character of Elsa, the snow queen. During the animation production, he supervised the animation of Elsa.
"They're kind of like your children," Unten said of the characters he and his team worked on for about two years. "You work with them for so long that you know what their expressions are and how they would react to certain situations. You kind of miss them afterward."
Interestingly enough, Unten worked closely with fellow CSUF graduate Joy Johnson on the character of Elsa. Johnson graduated in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in art-entertainment and illustration.
Unten said he requested to work on the character of Elsa because "… the idea of her having this power – she was just so interesting to me. I love how the story evolved and really fleshed out her personality and made her even more likable."
"Elsa has a really unique story; she's a unique character," Unten said. "The whole difference between Elsa and Anna is fear versus fearlessness."
In order to portray this to viewers, Unten wanted Elsa's facial expressions to shine. When she's running from the angry crowd or being attacked by guards, a close look at Elsa's face will show lowered eyebrows and other facial features that enable the feeling of fear to be expressed to the audience, he said.
"There's a moment in 'Let It Go' where there is this release – she can be who she is," Unten explained. "She's coming out of fear. She's been suppressing these powers. It's kind of a celebration song where she's free to be who she is."
"There were some great nominees and it was amazing to see that the Academy had recognized and voted on 'Let It Go,'" he said.
While working on the film, Unten found himself concentrating most on making the character of Elsa appealing. "We wanted to make sure that she drew you in. She's beautiful," he said.
The team also worked on making Elsa's personality as appealing as possible. "You want the audience to engage with her," Unten said. "It's really cool to hear stories of people connecting with the characters."
Unten credits the instructors he worked with and the classes he took as a student at CSUF with exposing him to animation and teaching him how to be a professional.
"But what I really found beneficial," he said of his time at CSUF, "was that there was a group of students that all had the same interest in animation and we could talk about that. We could geek out about animation and learn from each other. It was just a great place for learning."
Unten said being apart of the "Frozen" team was the best experience he ever had working on a film.
"We didn't know that it was going to have that big of an impact on people's lives. This movie has made a difference," he said. "It's awesome to have been a part of something that audiences enjoy on that level."
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There is only a little bit of truth to the widespread advice to drink eight glasses of water per day.
Instead, people should aim to consume an amount of liquids tailored to their lifestyle and personal needs.
How much people exercise and lose fluids through sweat, the medications they're taking (including diuretics) and age are examples of the factors determining how many glasses they should drink per day.
In 2004, the Institute of Medicine came out with guidelines and reassured the majority of the population they can rely on their thirst as their guide, said Megan Ellison, a registered dietitian for Swedish/Edmonds.
The Institute advises men to consume 3.7 liters and women 2.7 liters of fluids per day, including foods as well as glasses of water.
Ellison instructs her patients to drink 1 milliliter of water per calorie they consume. So, for someone who consumes 2,000 calories per day, they should drink 2 liters of water.
For her patients who lead active lifestyles, Ellison says to drink two to three cups of fluid per pound lost.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends reaching for water or milk as healthy options to stay hydrated.
When water just won't do, the USDA advises drinking pop and juices in moderation and avoiding fast food restaurants' super sizes.
Staying hydrated leads to a variety of health benefits.
Drinking water moves waste through one's system, helps the immune system fight off sickness, and prevents such symptoms of fatigue as headache, back pain and dizziness, according to the Live Strong website.
Warding off dehydration with water leads to softer skin, regulated body temperature and helps people who are losing weight quench their thirst without adding calories.
Most people feel thirsty after losing 1 percent to 2 percent of their body weight in fluids, Ellison said. A person is considered clinically dehydrated after losing 5 percent.
Athletes, children and the elderly shouldn't rely on their thirst. Athletes could see a drop in performance. The elderly and children typically ignore thirst cues, and children don't have the cognitive thinking to know the consequences of getting too thirsty.
Ellison teaches her patients to stay in tune with their bodies' needs.
"If we're not in tune with our thirst cues, we think we're hungry instead," she said.
While Ellison recommends reaching for water to ward off dehydration, it's appropriate to reach for a sports drink if you've been exercising for 60 minutes or longer to replace electrolytes. Hydration also can come in the form of coffee, milk, juice and fruits like watermelon and cantaloupe.
In general, 70 percent to 80 percent of fluid intake comes in fluids, 20 percent to 25 percent from fruits and vegetables, and about half a liter is made internally, Ellison said.
Water math
There's no hard-and-fast formula for how much water you should take in each day. Follow your thirst and drink at meals, and you should be OK. If you need some rough guidelines:
START: 11 cups
IF YOU'RE A MAN: Add 4.5 cups
EXERCISING FOR AN HOUR: Add 2 cups
IF PREGNANT: Add 1.25 cup
IF BREAST-FEEDING: Add 4.5 cups
Sickness, heat and other factors also can increase the amount of fluids you need. All sources can contribute to total water needs: beverages (including tea, coffee, juices, pop and drinking water) and moisture found in foods. Moisture in food accounts for about 20 percent of total water intake.
Sources: Institute of Medicine, Mayo Clinic
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Wildcat Athletics
We are first and foremost committed as educators to make sure all students and players graduate. The education of each student is very important and helping prepare them for life after school as well. Our students are encouraged and supported to be active in a sport or physical activity. But they must continue to work hard and achieve their full potential in academics. Some overall improvements seen in statistics and studies on sports and physical activity are listed below. This information comes from Elkin Tribune, by Arwyn Shoemaker and Huffpost, by Wendy Libby.
- Physical activity has an impact on cognitive skills, attitudes and academic behavior. All are important components of improved academic performance.
- Physical activity affects executive functions such as response, thinking and decisions due to increased oxygen flow to the brain
- Helps you to relax, reduce anxiety, worry less and balance school along with everything else in life
- Tend to have increased self- confidence which benefits on the field and in the classroom
- Mentally fit and more confident about themselves
- Leads to overall boost of self –esteem, speaking and interacting with peers, teachers and adults
- Teaches valuable lessons about being successful in life and ultimately how to become a team player and citizen in a world outside of the four walls of high school
- Lessons learned through being student athletes develops habits that will strengthen them in adulthood
- Remember a player wins in the end even when they lose the game


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Kuinam J. Kim, Kyonggi University, South Korea
ISSN: 2445-9992 (Online Version)
Vol: 2017 Issue: 1
Published In: January 1970
Publication Frequency: Continuous Article Publication
Search Available Volume and Issue for Convergence Security
This journal is published in collaboration with the iCatse organization: www.icatse.org
Aims & Scope
Convergence security can be defined as the security created by merging the physical and information security or the combining security with other non-IT technologies. Convergence Security Journal is an open access journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications, and review papers on all areas of convergence security. The primary objective is to publish a high-quality journal with free Internet-based access for researchers and other interested people throughout the world. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to experts within security field. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers.
The scope of Convergence Security is theory, applications, and implementations of convergence security. This includes, but is not limited to:
The address of the iCatse organization
-3001, Intellige 2,
Jeonja-dong, Bundang-gu,
Seongnam-si, Gyenggi-do,
South Korea (463-841)


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Tel-Aviv based MeeMix launches its beta program today. Like Pandora, MeeMix is a community music/Internet radio service for the 15-35 demographic. The idea being that any user can create a highly personalized, taste-based music channel with minimum fuss. The major differentiation between MeeMix and Pandora or Last.fm is the way it goes about forecasting personal taste.
Typically, there are two ways to perform such predictions:
- "Nature" (Pandora) – Decision making is based upon on the compatibility between one song and another—personal taste not being part of the equation.
- "Nurture" (Last.fm) – Decision making is based upon a environmental factors—song compatibility not being part of the equation
Steve Krause wrote a great post about Nature vs. Nurture in the music space.
Like Pandora, MeeMix breaks down each song, artist and user down to an elemental level. Then its recommendation engine analyzes the combination of a user's profile, music selection and behavior to create a customized radio station. In my personal tests, MeeMix's music selection was near perfect.
MeeMix has a rich social networking feature set, including reviews, thoughts (public user postings), secrets (private user postings), etc. The most important of these features in my opinion is being able to listen to the same song as other channel subscribers in real time. And for the egomaniacs in our audience, you can even print off a t-shirt with your channel name and number of subscribers (courtesy of the Zazzle API).
MeeMix was founded in mid-2006 by CEO Gilad Shlang, formerly the User Experience Manager at 888.com, and Dr. Ricardo Tarrasch (Chief Scientist), also formerly of 888.com with a doctorate degree in Biopsychology. The two possess in-depth experience in creating and leveraging user experience and communities based upon algorithmic forecasting. The company is funded by angels and currently employs a team of 9, including the former lead developer of ICQ, musicologists, and a community/SEO specialist.
The business model is currently based on album sales and will expand to songs, ringtones, and ads. Seeing as there's so much algorithmic magic under the hood, I won't be surprised if in a year or two licensing its engine will become MeeMix's core business.
In the mean time, the team is focusing on learning its community and expanding its service both in scale and in application range (embeddable web widgets and a Facebook app).
Try MeeMix
We have 1000 invitations available to the MeeMix private beta here.
This guest post is written by Roi Carthy, an Israeli-based startup consultant. Roi will be covering the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch.


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Something fun to help me recover from a month of reading horror – theatre nerds, Shakespeare, time traveling, a bisexual BFF, and a plethora of cute boys to crush on, gay and straight. What more could a girl ask for?
15-year-old Emma is hoping to forget her freshman year at BHS. She started last year as a soccer star with long red hair and a bright future. But then the Hallowe'en party happened and she quit the soccer team and lost her friends. Life looked pretty bleak. Then Lulu sat at her lunch table one day and asked her to join the drama club, and suddenly life looked up again. She had a new best friend and a purpose.
So sophomore year looks good. Emma has changed her look and she has changed her life. She has a sleek short haircut and a drama appropriate all-black wardrobe, is the assistant stage manager for the school production of Hamlet, the hottest boy in school is directing the play, what could go wrong? Well, how about a fight with her best friend, a sudden promotion to stage manager (a position she has just begun to learn), bad casting for the play, and a hole in the centre of the stage that she trips over and falls through.
And lands in Hell. Otherwise known as the basement below the stage at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Yes, that one. The one in London, in 1601. And the players are preparing to stage Hamlet for the first time. And Emma is mistaken for a boy (how flattering) and as the assistant to the stage manager Mr. Wick, who is known as the book keeper.
Emma is NOT an actor in a story that is set in the theatre. I like that. She is self-conscious and endearing, funny and conflicted, and seems on the edge of losing control at all times. Thrust into the spotlight when the stage manager quits, she has to juggle fragile egos and a disastrous production in the making. Not to mention her no-longer-best friend's life is imploding, and there is nothing Emma can do to help.
Emma (known as Master Allen in the Globe) encounters Shakespeare himself in her travels back to his theatre, and soaks up the atmosphere of the original production and studies his methods and motivations. She brings that knowledge and new-found confidence in her ideas back to her present day production, and back to her relationships.
Every kid in the novel is misunderstood and melodramatic and, therefore, a totally authentic teen. Small things become huge, and huge things actually become easier to handle. Who would have thought that traveling back in time 400 years would actually be preferable to working on a high school drama club production? (I may have just answered my own question there.)
Stanley and Lulu, Emma's two best friends, are gay and bi and possibly two of the best-written characters I have read in ages, if not ever. They are beautifully developed with individual personalities and quirks and jealousies, they are complex and not "token", which I have found so many of the diverse characters in other novels to be lately. And, to top it all off, they are sarcastic and funny, which pretty much made them my favourites.
But all the present-day characters in the novel are strong. I d0n't necessarily like each one, but my reasons for not liking them are because of their personalities, not because they are poorly written. They aren't. They are all so real and familiar to me, I am pretty sure I went to school with at least half of them. (Or, given my age, their parents.) And the characters from Shakespeare's troupe of players and stagehands are exactly how I would picture each and every one, from Will himself to Burbage and Wick. Their humour and egos are spectacular.
The plot is FABULOUS. Author Molly Booth weaves Shakespearean facts and literature throughout the novel, illustrating all the magic that is present in his writing. This isn't a novel that is filled with action, but rather with subtext and stories and growing up and learning all of life's fun and not-so-fun lessons. The drama playing out in Emma's life is mirrored in the theatre, as is the drama in each of her co-workers' and friends' lives. Who can be trusted, who is real, what is their motivation for their actions? It is as hilarious as it is poignant and adventurous.
Booth's world-building showed meticulous research and thorough understanding of the time. Her attention to detail in both the Globe's and the present day's productions is impeccable, making me feel like I was breathing in the sawdust of the old theatre and smelling the rank odors of the costumes and players. 17th century London was full of interesting characters and Em's adventures in that century had me on the edge of my seat.
This is a great novel for anyone with a yen for adventure and romance. And while knowledge of Shakespeare isn't a requirement to understand the story, it certainly adds to the enjoyment. LOVE this one.
Saving Hamlet was published November 1st, 2016 by Disney-Hyperion.


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Prolonged closures at Disney's California-based theme parks and limited attendance at its open parks has forced the company to lay off 28,000 employees across its parks, experiences and consumer products division, the company said.
In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, Josh D'Amaro, head of parks at Disney, detailed several "difficult decisions" the company has had to make in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, including ending its furlough of thousands of employees.
Shares of the company fell less than 2% after the closing bell on Tuesday.
Around 67% of the 28,000 laid off workers were part-time employees, according to a statement by D'Amaro on Tuesday. The company declined to break down the layoffs by individual park locations.
While Disney's theme parks in Florida, Paris, Shanghai, Japan and Hong Kong have been able to reopen with limited capacity, both California Adventure and Disneyland have remained shuttered in Anaheim, California.
"As you can imagine, a decision of this magnitude is not easy," D'Amaro wrote in the memo to employees obtained by CNBC. "For the last several months, our management team has worked tirelessly to avoid having to separate anyone from the company. We've cut expenses, suspended capital projects, furloughed our cast members while still paying benefits, and modified our operations to run as efficiently as possible, however, we simply cannot responsibly stay fully staffed while operating at such limited capacity."
The parks, experiences and consumer products segment is a vitally important part of Disney's business. Last year, it accounted for 37% of the company's $69.6 billion in total revenue.
Click here to read more.
Source: CNBC


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A magnet that consists of three pieces, decorated with gorgeous colors and shining paint. Together the pieces form the original map of Moominvalley. Small details will inspire all the Moomin fans and as the light shines on the map, the colours almost come to life. A great gift idea!
Material is strong metal mixture, so the magnet does not bend easily. Decorate your fridge with this lovely magnet.
- Size: assempled: 10x14xm
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Biking has made a resurgence as people have looked for simple ways to save money, lower their impact on the environment, and get exercise.
A few years ago I decided to sell off my car. I started busing, then made the move to biking to work.
I bike a little over two miles each way to and from work from May through November annually now. I then take the local bus line in the winter months.
And I absolutely love it.
So much so, that no matter where I work in the future I will make sure that I live just a short, bike-friendly route away. Here are 5 reasons why I love it and you probably will too if you just give it a shot.
1. Low Maintenance
Many local bike shops teach free bike maintenance 101 courses. And once you've changed a flat tube, replaced your bike paid or done any other maintenance on your bike, anyone can do it. It pays to have a good local bike shop to buy from if you are buying new vs. buying from a big box store – they put them together better, usually have a number of free tuneups, and are much more knowledgeable.
2. It's Great Exercise
You can burn anywhere from 35-70 calories per mile biking, depending on your weight and how fast you are biking. At my speeds, weight and distance, I figure that I'm burning about 250 calories per day just going to and from work. Calories burned in my car? Probably less than 5. Here is a biking calorie calculator to plug in your own metrics.
In the 15 minutes it takes me to do the trip, I've burned as many calories as I would if I went to the gym to run on a treadmill a few miles. And instead of an hour or more to go to the gym, I've done it in 15 minutes. And it was a hell of a lot more fun. Which brings me to my next point.
3. It's Fun
Remember when the training wheels came off for the first time on your first real bike and you felt like you could fly? Me getting out there again and a mini obsession with the Tour de France (I've watched all 21 stages over the past few years – congrats Cadel!) – has led to me re-discovering that child-like love of biking that I missed for a lot of years in between.
If you haven't ridden a bike in years, that fun factor will hit you again – I guarantee it.
4. It's a Great Stress Relief
I have a high stress, high pressure day job. That stress builds up during the day and by the time I get home, I'm pretty wound up. I really look forward to getting on that bike and going as fast as I can to burn off that stress. By the time I get home, I'm re-invigorated. It works every day. I'm usually not that fun to be around in the winter when I don't have this outlet.
5. It's a HUGE Cost Savings
Minus $6 tubes when you get a flat or $6/pair brake pads, the ongoing costs of bike ownership are almost nothing. Start-up costs are comparatively dirt cheap too. If you don't have a bike, you can get yourself a very nice one for a few monthly car payments or get yourself a "project" on Craigslist for $10 or sometimes free and fix it up.
I've talked a lot about the cost savings of biking vs. driving. I had a relatively inexpensive used car that got over 30 mpg, yet I was able to save over $5,000 a year in making the move to a bike. And I think that's probably on the low end of what most would actually save when you factor in monthly payments, fuel, insurance, maintenance, and parking.
It's one of those things that is hard to put a number on. However, I was recently made aware of an awesome biking vs. driving calculator so you can plug in your own numbers. And believe it or not, over a lifetime, you could literally save $1M or more (no joke) in making the move. That doesn't surprise me – cars are the biggest cash drain of anything you could possibly own – even more than a home if you look at total cost.
Ride a Bike to Work Steps
Get out your bike, tune it up, and give it a shot. Try riding your bike to work once next week to see what you think. Then try twice a week, then an entire week. You might be surprised how much you don't want to give it up. And if it works out – why not sell the car?
Bike to Work Discussion:
- Have you made the move to riding a bike to work?
- If so, how have you benefited?
- If not, what's holding you back?
Related Posts:
- Commuter Bike Gear & Tips
- Lyft All Access Review
- How to Find the Best Commuter Bike for you
- Bike Maintenance 101
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The US Justice Department is again delaying the release of an internal CIA report on the agency's secret detention and interrogation program during the Bush administration.
The report had been expected to be made public two weeks ago but was held back over debates about how much of it should be censored. The government published a version of the report in 2008, but its contents were almost entirely blacked out.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday that the report, expected to be made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, may not be released this week.
The report was written in 2004 by the CIA's inspector general.
The review questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation methods employed by CIA interrogators, such as waterboarding.
That is according to references to the report contained in Bush-era Justice Department memos that were declassified earlier this year.


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Below are examples in MLA style of citations by type.
Artist's last name, first name. Title of art work, in italics. Date of art work. Medium. Institution where art work is housed (if known), city where housed if not already named. Title of printed source, in italics. By Author of printed source. Place of publication: publisher, date. Page or plate/figure/slide number. Print.
Rousseau, Henri. The Ship in the Storm. 1896. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris. By Claire Fresches, et al. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2006. 232. Print.
Artist's last name, first name. Title of Art Work in Italics. Date of art work. Institution where art work is housed (if known), City where art work is housed (if not already named). Database or website name. Web. Day month year accessed.
Cassatt, Mary. Denise at Her Dressing Table. ca. 1908-09. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ARTstor. Web. 18 June 2015. www.artstor.org
Citation includes: Artist. Title of Work. Date of Work. Museum or Collection, City. Database/Web Site. Date Accessed. URL (optional).
Backhuyzen, Ludolf. A Battle at Sea. 1692. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. The Getty. Web. 18 June 2015. www.getty.edu
If known, the collection which owns the image should be included, along with its location.
De Chirico, Giorgio. Soothsayer's Recompense. 1913. Philadelphia (PA) Museum of Art. Grove Art Online. Web. 18 June 2015.
Citation includes: Artist. Title of Work. Date of Work. Medium of Composition. Museum, City where Museum is located.
Atget, Jean-Eugène-Auguste. Boulevard de Strasbourg (Corsets). 1912. Photograph. Art Institute of Chicago.
Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800. Oil on Canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Include the artist's name, title of work (italicized), date, medium, measurements, and the institution which houses the work.
Include the source the image came from, preceded by a statement which declares the source (for example "In;" or "Source:" or "Available from:"). If the source is online, include the URL and the date accessed.
Alice Neel, Nancy and the Rubber Plant. 1975, Oil on canvas, 203.2 x 91.3 cm. The Estate of Alice Neel. From: Ann Temkin et al. Alice Neel. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Plate 64.
Rogier van der Weyden, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. 1430-1432, Diptych panel, 18.5 x 12 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Available from: ARTstor, http://www.artstor.org (accessed June 19, 2015).
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi). The Musicians. Ca. 1595. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org (accessed June 19, 2015).
Thomas Eakins, William Rudolf O'Donovan. 1981, Black and while photographic print, 6 x 8 cm. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Available from: Flickr Commons, http:// https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2547841439 (accessed June 19, 2015)
Friedrich von Schmidt, Vienna Rathaus. 1872-1883. Source: -keka-, Rathaus, Vienna. 2014. Digital Image. Available from: Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/88975201@N05/13891404251 (accessed June 19, 2015)
Author (Role of Author). (Year image was created). Title of work [Type of work], Retrieved from URL (address of website)
Kulbis, M. (Photographer). (2006). Men pray [Photograph], Retrieved from http://accuweather.ap.org/cgi-bin/aplaunch.pl
Note: If you can only find the screen name of an author (such as a photographer on Flickr), that will do as the author's name.
If the screen name is all lowercase, keep the name lowercase in the in-text citation and the references list.
Many images found on the Web are of this category, but you should still look for this missing information: try clicking on the image, and/or looking at the bottom of the image.
[Format and subject of work]. Retrieved from URL (address of website)
[Untitled photograph of a baby chimpanzee]. Retrieved from http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jdtr/struc/chimp3.htm


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"Within the Death Star, a group of Imperial stormtroopers are in hot pursuit of Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca, as they attempt to return to the impounded Millennium Falcon. But the heroic escapees blast away before the shock troops have a chance to return fire."
Throughout the entirety of the vintage Star Wars line, we got exactly one basic Stormtrooper. Just one take on a design that was present across all three of the original films (in the line's defense, the same can be said of Darth Vader and Chewbacca; if the design didn't drastically change, Kenner didn't do a new figure. Only R2 and 3PO got by, largely do to new gimmicks introduced in the later films). For Power of the Force II, the same was almost true. We got the standard Stormtrooper in '95, and that steroid abusing fiend was it for four years. But, just as the line was winding down, we managed to get an honest to god update, which I'm taking a look at today.
The Stormtrooper was released in 1999 as part of the Power of the Force II Commlink assortment which was at stores alongside the Phantom Menace product. The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 13 points of articulation. Yes, you read that articulation count correctly; this guy's probably the most articulated standard release figure that the PotF2 line ever put out. Not only does this guy get actual, proper knees, he also gets cut joints at the elbows, and even a universal joint on his neck. He can look up! It's a long way from the vintage Stormtroopers and their complete lack of neck articulation, I'll tell you that much. This sculpt would end up re-used more than a few times going forward, including for the Marvel Comics-styled trooper I looked at a little while back. While I was a little down on that figure (due largely to it being released 7 years after this one), in the context of the line that spawned it, it's actually quite a nice sculpt, and it's understandable why Hasbro clung to it for so long. The paintwork for the figure is pretty solid, and like the sculpt is generally an improvement over the Stormtrooper that preceded it. It's also an early example of Hasbro experimenting with thermodynamic paint, allowing the figure to take some damage to his armor when dipped in cold water. The Stormtrooper is packed with a long blaster (which, like the Marvel-styled figure, he can't quite hold right) and a weapons rack to store it on as well.
The last assortment of PotF2 figures wasn't one I recall seeing much of (although I did get the Han figure as a kid), so this guy isn't one I had growing up. He was added to my collection during one of my big buying sprees of PotF2 figures in late 2018. He's sort of an odd figure for the line, because he's objectively one of the best, but on the flip side, it means that when later versions replaced him, he didn't have that same nostalgic bend to fall back on. That being said, he's still a cool figure.


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Houston — A bevy of refinery closures are starting to be made in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana as Tropical Storm Laura takes aim at the epicenter of the nation's refining and petrochemical complex.
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Motiva said it will close its more than 600,000 b/d refinery and chemical operations in Port Arthur, Texas, while ExxonMobil is starting to shut down its 366,000 b/d refinery in neighboring Beaumont. Total is closing its 225,500 b/d refinery nearby in Port Arthur on Aug. 25 ahead of the landfall that could come as early as the evening of Aug. 26.
Valero also said on Aug. 25 it will shut down its 335,000 b/d Port Arthur Refinery in advance of Laura.
Earlier in the day, Phillips 66 said it is shutting down its roughly 250,000 b/d Lake Charles Refinery in Louisiana. And Citgo Petroleum also is closing its 425,000 b/d Lake Charles Refinery.
Click here for full-size image
Phillips 66 said it started a "safe and orderly shutdown of the facility" near Lake Charles.
"We are focusing on safety, environmental compliance, and equipment reliability while positioning the refinery for a successful restart once the storm passes," Phillips 66 said in a statement. "We have a reliable, detailed hurricane response plan and procedures. Non-essential personnel have been released from work ahead of the storm."
Just those six closures take off more than 2.2 million b/d in US oil refining capacity.
"Motiva Enterprises is performing shutdown activities for its Port Arthur refinery and chemical plant ahead of Hurricane Laura," Motiva said in a statement.
Motiva also said it is working to "ensure reliable fuel supply in our communities after the storm passes."
More than 50% of US refining capacity is on the coast, with PADD III refining capacity, including condensate splitters, totaling over 10 million b/d, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. Of that, 9.6 million b/d is in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
"Total's Port Arthur Refinery has begun an orderly shutdown of its operations in anticipation of Hurricane Laura," said spokeswoman Julia Boue in a statement.
ExxonMobil spokesman Jeremy Eikenberry said it is preparing for the storm and evacuating non-essential personnel.
"The Beaumont Refinery is operating at reduced rates and has initiated shutdown steps," Eikenberry said in a statement.
ExxonMobil also is preparing for the possible shutdown of its larger Baytown complex near Houston, but operations were continuing on Aug. 25 afternoon. A closure of the 584,000 b/d refinery would bring total refining closures from the storm to more than 2.8 million b/d of crude capacity.
"While our Baytown operations continue to run safely and reliably, preparations include precautionary measures in the event conditions worsen," Eikenberry added.
Valero also has potentially impacted refineries in Texas City and Houston, as well as in Corpus Christi and southeastern Louisiana.
"Our other Texas Gulf Coast operations continue to work through hurricane preparedness protocol that include activities such as assessing refinery operations and potential storm impact, securing equipment and ensuring we have adequate supplies available," said Valero spokeswoman Lillian Riojas in a statement. "We are monitoring the storm's path and will make other refinery operation decisions as necessary."
The refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont were hit particularly hard by flooding three years ago from Hurricane Harvey. While Laura also should have a strong storm surge, it's expected to be more of a wind event than a major flooding storm.
The Phillips 66 closure that began late on Aug. 24 jump started a wave of closures along the epicenter of the nation's refining and petrochemical manufacturing in southeastern Texas and Louisiana.