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At first glance, the idea of "machine to machine" communication seems like a social network for cyborgs. But it's actually a very practical way for devices to exchange data in service to humankind.
I learned a lot about "M2M" last week during a visit to Sprint's M2M Collaboration Center in Burlingame. The facility, which opened in October, is where the company and its partners test out and show off all sorts of devices that are interconnected via the company's cellular data network.
Examples range from ATM machines or vending machines that use the network to validate financial transactions to storage tanks that phone home when they need to be filled or serviced. I saw a bathroom scale and blood pressure monitor from Ideal Life with built-in cellular modems so that they could automatically report data to a health care provider or loved one. There were a couple of electrical smart meters on hand that send usage data back to the utility company and even an electrical charging station from Blink that uploads usage data to a Web page.
In an interview, Wayne Ward, vice president of Sprint's Emerging Solutions Group, said that many M2M systems in the business sector are designed to collect information about "the health and welfare of their machine," such as alarm information, statistics, utilization and power consumption. Also, some GPS-enabled devices can report their location, which is not only important for portable assets (like vehicles), but as a security tool for stationary machines to make sure they haven't been moved or stolen.
Ward also mentioned "digital signage" that changes depending on time of day, products being promoted and even who is looking at the screen. The facility has a large high-definition screen with a camera on top that attempts to figure out who is looking at the screen. It doesn't try to recognize you by name, but attempts to record your gender and approximate age. In addition to keeping records, it could also push specific products. I can imagine these at grocery stores analyzing the girth of customers and recommending low calorie foods for some.
Examples of consumer M2M products include gaming devices, tablets, laptops and e-readers. In other words, "anything that is not a phone." Some versions of the Amazon Kindle e-reader use Sprint's network to transfer books from Amazon's servers to the device.
There are also automotive products. Greg Bott of Trimble Navigation said the company has tens of thousands of modules connected to the Sprint network that inform fleet operators in real time about how their vehicles are being operated. I don't know what cellular network it uses, but Inthinc offers a product called Tiwi that helps parents monitor where and how their kids are driving by reporting through a Web portal, email and text messaging. Parents can even set up a "geo-fence" to find out if their child is driving outside of a designated area.
Even though Sprint was the first U.S. carrier to roll out phones with higher speed 4G technology, not all of its systems use its fastest network. There are 4G systems for use with video and other high-bandwidth applications, but there are also 3G and old 2G systems that are much slower than 3G and 4G.
Many M2M applications, said Ward, only send a few bytes of data, so there is no need for high speed communications. Older "2G" systems are not only cheaper to operate but cheaper to make, smaller and more energy efficient. I was shown one 2G data modem that's small enough to imbed in a large wristwatch, which is more than fast enough for systems like alarm monitoring, application control, blood pressure monitors, asset tracking or other applications where only a small of amount of data is being exchanged.
Depending on how you define M2M, the market could eventually be bigger than "P2P" (person to person) because there are more machines in the world than there are people.
Sam Lucero of ABI Research said there were about 22 million M2M connections in the United States in 2010 and 88 million worldwide. By 2015, he projects the market to grow to 90 million domestically and 364 million globally. Lucero, however, is only counting devices with cellular connections that enable "largely automated connections between the remote device and a back-end infrastructure for the purposes of monitoring and control." Other definitions include a much wider range of devices, such as e-readers where the connection and the service plan is embedded in the device and invisible to the user.
Also, there are ways for machines to connect besides cellular, including Wi-Fi, hard-wired Ethernet and even old fashioned telephone modems.
And, of course, there is no reason why machines can't help facilitate human communications. In the future, you'll be able to arrange meetings with friends and colleagues by asking them to "have your machine call my machine."
Contact Larry Magid at email@example.com. Listen for his technology chats on KCBS-AM (740) weekdays at 3:50 p.m.
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If you watch or read about local news, you've likely heard the buzz about Issue 1 on the Arkansas ballot. Its popular name is "An Amendment Concerning Civil Lawsuits and the Powers of the General Assembly and Supreme Court to Adopt Court Rules."
Although a Pulaski County judge ruled in September that Issue 1 be removed from the ballot, his ruling has been appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. We are currently waiting on a final ruling.
This proposed amendment would make the following changes to the Arkansas Constitution:
- Cap contingency fees (fees charged by attorneys if they win a case) at 33.3% of the awarded amount.
- Cap punitive damages at $500,000 or three times the compensatory damages awarded.
- Cap non-economic damages at $500,000.
- Allow the legislature to pass laws of pleading, procedure, and practice.
Do you see the red flags? While there are many, today we'll limit our focus to one: the erosion of separation between the legislative and judicial branches of government. This separation of powers is one of the founding principles of our government. It helps protect the right of every American to a fair trial by jury.
The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that "In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
How does Issue 1 threaten this right?
The writers of Issue 1 tried to combine several changes into one amendment. One of those changes, as mentioned above, would allow Arkansas legislators to control procedures in courtrooms across the state. These procedural rules impact the day-to-day workings of the court.
By allowing the legislature to pass laws that change courtroom procedures, these two separate branches of government – judiciary and legislative – are no longer quite so separate.
Arkansas legislators are elected by their constituents, and they are accountable to their constituents. It's their job to work for the benefit of their voters. Legislators are also routinely lobbied by big businesses and commercial interest groups who want to see laws passed that would be to their benefit.
In contrast, judges and juries have the job of protecting the constitutional rights of every person. They ensure that people receive the due process and fair trial that our Constitution guarantees for every citizen. Their job is to apply the law fairly and impartially.
Laws and courtroom proceedings should never be determined by a special interest group or the person who makes the largest campaign donations. We must protect citizen-juries and their ability to give impartial verdicts in court. The power of the judiciary branch should never be muddied by the politics of legislators.
You can help stop this government overreach and keep politics out of the courtroom! Vote NO on Issue 1.
Taylor King Law has advocated for the rights of Arkansas injury victims for more than 20 years, and we won't stop now. We believe that people deserve protection and that big business should be held accountable for their actions. We will continue to fight any laws that would infringe on the rights of citizens and threaten separation of powers in government. To learn more about Taylor King Law visit our website at taylorkinglaw.com or call today at 1-800-CAR WRECK (227-9732).

subset: commoncrawl


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Great composers produced operas and concerts just for the theatre. Verdi, Bellini, Prokofiev, Britten and many more! Disaster struck in 1996 when it burnt down, but international donations enabled a €90m reconstruction! You should seriously consider a ballet, opera or classical performance in this gold-gilded jewel from the golden age of opera.
Highlights: The opulent Baroque architecture in the auditorium and the Royal Box.
Booking not essential, but guided tours available here.
Time to Explore: About 1 hour if not on a guided tour.
Top Tips: When you arrive, consider the 'Promenade through the Theatre' tour for €39.00 + VAT. It includes a guide and a Venetian aperitif in one of the Apollonian Halls. Also, shorts and sleeveless shirts are not allowed at performances. Dress to impress!
What's Close? The Galeone Venezia, the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Giglio, the Museo della Musica. In fact, the Piazza San Marco and the Basilica San Marco are only a five-minute walk away!


text: City of Sanctuary Sheffield (COSS) has been recognised by the Duke of York's Community Initiative award. This is a Royal Award, given to community groups in Yorkshire that demonstrate 'real value to the community, are well run and an inspiration to others'. COSS was visited by two assessors from the Award, who said they were "impressed with all they saw and heard" about COSS' work for asylum seekers and refugees. The award will be presented at a ceremony at Sheffield Cathedral in April, by HRH Prince Andrew.


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Director, Studio Vieta
Gabija Grusaite is a curator, art director and a writer with more than 8 years of experience in a field. Her achievements include transforming run down bus station into a leading contemporary art center – Hin Bus Depot (Penang, Malaysia), managing artist Ernest Zacharevic and catapulting him into international fame as well as being among few people who turned Penang into an art capital of Malaysia. Gabija has participated and worked on numerous art festivals such as Vilnius Street Art (Lithuania), Memorie Urbane (Italy), NuArt (Norway), before launching her own brand Urban Xchange that has gained a worldwide recognition and featured star artists such as Vhils, DalEast and Twoone. Her project The Star, a large scale light installation by Malaysian artist Jun Hao was awarded Best in Light 2015 by Vice and shortlisted among 10 best installations in the world 2015 by Designboom.
Gabija specializes in curating public art and cutting edge contemporary art, performance, video and installations.


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Episode Summary
The Pastors kick off the advent season by asking an important question: what does advent mean and why do we celebrate it? Most people don't think about their Christian traditions and simply go along with the flow of the holiday season. Tune in to hear about the very important history behind Christ's birth and what it means for us today.
About Gospel for Life
Four Treasure Valley pastors – all committed to showing that the Gospel is not just for the religious part of your life. Rather, it is for all of life. You never graduate from the Gospel. Josh Bales, Russell Herman, Phil Moran, and Jonathan Van Hoogen host The Gospel For Life every Monday through Friday at 8 AM MST.
For more information about this group, please visit their website atreformationboise.com.


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AG magazine (in print)
Online magazine (pdf)
Online articles (html)
Literature- and poster projects
of the real lizards, family Lacertidae
Podarcis hispanicus (STEINDACHNER, 1870)
Lacerta oxycephala var. hispanica STEINDACHNER, 1870
Podarcis hispanica ENGELMANN et al, 1993
Podarcis hispanica hispanica GENIEZ, 2001
Podarcis hispanica virescens GENIEZ, 2001
Podarcis hispanica Sierra Nevada type MONTORI et al, 2005
Podarcis hispanicus BÖHME & KÖHLER, 2005
Podarcis hispanicus Galera type MONTORI et al, 2005
Podarcis hispanicus hispanicus SPEYBROECK & CROCHET, 2007
Podarcis hispanica sensu stricto PINHO et al, 2008
Common names:
Iberian Wall Lizard (English)
Spanische Mauereidechse (German)
Lagartija Ibérica (Spanish)
Syntypes: NMW 16087:1,2, NMW 16088:1-11
Terra Typica:
Mount Agudo, near Murcia (SE Spain).
Relevant taxonomic literature:
Steindachner, F. (1870) -
Caeiro-Dias, G. & Brelsford, A. & Kaliontzopoulou, A. & Carretero, M.A. & Crochet, A. & Pinho, C. (2018) -
The process of speciation is often equated to the acquisition of reproductive isolation. This is a process typically envisioned as being correlated to divergence time: as time progresses the more likely it will be for diverging taxa to experience restrictions to gene exchange. This correlation has been tested and verified in a wide range of taxa; however, other aspects of differentiation, such as ecological divergence, have also been shown to correlate with reproductive isolation independently of divergence time or genomic differentiation. Characterizing reproductive isolation in multiple pairs of closely related taxa that are in different stages of the divergence process is a way of addressing these questions and disentangling the factors are more importante as engines of reproductive isolation. Wall lizards of genus Podarcis, particularly those belonging to the Iberian and North African group, are an appropriate model for this type of evaluations since they comprise various differentiated species with that establish a variety of natural contact zones. In this study we sampled and characterized patterns of hybridization in 9 contact zones between different species pairs using RADseq data. We found a generally low proportion of hybrids and contact zones were strongly bimodal in all cases, but with measurable differences in levels of gene flow among contact zones. Using data available from previous studies on this complex and in a multivariate statistical framework, we compared the level of hybridisation in each contact zone with several predictor variables: nuclear and mitochondrial genetic divergence, distribution overlap, and morphological, ecological and physiological distances between species. Our results show that, despite the general trend in other taxa, the level of hybridization in Podarcis contact zones does not seem to be correlated to divergence time. We discuss how other mechanisms may have influenced this pattern.
Caeiro-Dias, G. & Luis, C. & Pinho, C. & Crochet, P.-A. & Sillero, N. & Kaliontzopoulou, A. (2018) -
Niche divergence among closely related lineages can be informative on the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in differentiation, particularly in the case of cryptic species complexes. Here we compared phylogenetic relationships and niche similarity between pairs of lineages included in the Podarcis hispanicus complex to examine patterns of niche divergence and its role in the organization of current diversity patterns, as allopatric, parapatric, and sympatric lineages occur in the Western Mediterranean Basin. First, we used ecological niche models to characterize the realized climatic niche of each Podarcis hispanicus complex lineage based on topographic and climatic variables, to identify important variables, and to test for niche conservatism or divergence between pairs of lineages. Variables related to precipitation generally exhibited the highest contribution to niche models, highlighting the importance of rainfall levels in shaping distributions of Podarcis wall lizards. We found that most forms have significant differences in realized climatic niches that do not follow the pattern of mitochondrial divergence. These results lend support to the hypothesis that genetic divergence across Podarcis hispanicus complex most likely occurred in allopatric conditions, mostly with significant niche divergence. Competition after secondary contact is also suggested by the common occurrence of niche overlap between lineages that exhibit strictly parapatric distribution. The almost continuous distribution of Podarcis lizards in the study area appears to be a result of a combination of complementary suitable niches and competition, which seem two important mechanisms limiting geographic distributions and restricting the existence of extensive contact zones.
Podarcis hispanicus: 306 references
Southeast Spain "Wild" pictures (19)
Podarcis hispanicus © 2010 Sven Becker
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As rated by The World Bank in 2016, Singapore ranks second in the world for its ease in doing business, and second by the World Economic Forum's The Global Competitiveness Report 2016 – 2017. However, in the context of business, the World Economic Forum also referred to creativity as being the third most essential skill in the workplace by 2020. Having said that, it comes as no surprise that Art World Forum, a new art business conference provider anchored itself in Singapore.
Recently having hosted its inaugural forum Navigating The Global Art Markets on Tuesday 18th October at the St. Regis Hotel, the event welcomed 150 speakers and delegates from 13 countries including Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, South Korea, Philippines, France, the United States and more. The proud sponsors of the inaugural forum were TWG Tea who hosted the very exclusive speakers' dinner, and Skyline Club & Lounge who hosted the closing cocktail reception. Alongside a selection of various media partners, the corporate partners supporting the event included the Singaporean European Chamber of Commerce and the Swiss Business Association of Singapore. The 150 delegates and experienced guest speakers varied in expertise from the art and business sectors respectively, both locally and internationally.
In line with its objective to build valuable networks between art professionals and business leaders, and address pressing issues within the art market, Art World Forum curated a high quality and informative full-day agenda which consisted of a selection of presentations, interviews and panel discussions.
To start the day, Professor Timothy Van Zandt, Dean of faculty and research & Professor of economics at INSEAD, focused on how aspects of economic game theory and technology may contribute to the art world. "There are both opportunities and risks with any technological change. The first step is to identify things that won't change." With references to price, matching, marketplace, transactions, and disruption, the art market was labelled as a special one compared to most other markets, with complex matching due to the diversity of works and their intrinsic value which, to the most part, is driven by subjectivity. "This knowledge [of matching] is impossible to quantify and replace by a simple algorithm".
To pick on the aspect of matching, Serge Tiroche, co-founder of The Tiroche DeLeon Collection, referred to his own startup, Art Runners – a logistics company which matches clients with specific capabilities of service providers to promote efficiency. In an era which is embracing the innovative spirit with the help of technology and making way for emerging platforms, there is plenty to be learnt in the cross-over between the art world and the business sector. "Startups have been making a sustainable business out of the arts for decades, it's not just in the technology era. I do think though that technology will have a huge impact on art. There are so many interesting ways to use technology to expand the way the art world works."
To state the obvious, technology has assisted companies across all industries to have a greater reach, to expand their networks, promote exposure at an affordable price and has specifically contributed to the consistency in sales of the online art market. However, not to be misled by this increasing trend, viewing such successes in isolation is only focusing on a mere portion of the greater whole. To contextualise slightly on the habit of collecting, the private collectors panel started with a very interesting fact. "12% of collectors start collecting out of love; 6% of collectors say they do it purely for investment; 72% is a mixture of appreciation and passion for the arts with some inclination of investment… That gets you to 90%. The remaining 10% of collectors don't know why they do it."
That being said, with the expertise of Thomas Galbraith, partner of The Petraeus Group, it is younger collectors, who are cyber savvy and the online literate that are contributing to the growth of the market while responding to the question 'Why would I not buy art online?'. In that respect, surely it is to be expected and considered more of a leap for the older generation collectors, the more established, who are perhaps more familiar with the physical space. Galbraith made the point to note however that despite the positive inclination in the sales department, the younger demographics may not have the same purchasing power as older generations, and therefore are targeting lower priced sales.
The so-called millennial generation was then referred to again in the presentation based on the Deloitte art and finance report by Mohit Mehrotra, partner at Monitor Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting, which clearly demonstrated that a significant change, particularly within Asia, was the transfer of wealth from first generation to second. In the younger demographics' ability to diversify their interest across markets and even regions, it is this transition that is paving the way for newer emerging markets. From the day's sessions, notable locations stated were Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, as the new key geographies which are contributing moreso to their overall art communities. The trend seems to be "local for local".
The report also found that non-financial assets (largely concerned with fine arts, jewellery, antique furniture, coin collections, wine collections, precious metals etc) display double-digit numbers in the charts, a majority being in Asia and a selection in other emerging markets. The numbers reflected on how the capital market in such areas has evolved and is a demonstration of how people are gearing towards such passion investments who have a greater interest in owning artworks and collectibles as a portion of a broader wealth offering.
"This may seem like a fascinating opportunity for wealth managers to explore this particular space, but when you go through the league tables of the majority of private banks, and try to decipher what the proposition is in the passion investment space, you don't find sizeable desks of talent, especially in Singapore. So there may be a sizeable chunk of interest in passion investment hitting our region but when you look at the finance side of the story there isn't enough supply sitting in these private banks catering to this particular space."
It was then stated that despite the 50-50 chance of making just as much money in the capital market, client engagement took priority in this exploratory space.
However, regardless of the listed creatively booming hubs, and the collector-based advice – for any risk-averse people to buy artwork now, the question of whether Asia is ready to take the plunge into a dynamically growing art market persisted. Prerna Suri, senior producer for Channel News Asia posed the question "We need more organic growth in terms of artists and ecosystems but can we actually, given the infrastructure challenges, given perhaps the mindset challenges – that art is mainly for private consumption; is Asia ready for having such organic ecosystems?"
The answer remained relatively open-plan. Primarily drawing on the fact that the inaugural Art World Forum did not see the support or attendance of several key players of the local art scene including the art museums, a large percentage of art galleries, and the government-led agencies in favour of culture, the arts and tourism, perhaps a little more time is needed.
From the list of experienced guest speakers and delegates including investors, collectors, dealers, insurers, academics, practitioners and overall art enthusiasts, an estimated 70% of the overall attendance was represented by professionals of the private sector, 10% by the public sector, an additional 10% by the nonprofit sector, while art collectors and professionals in the midst of career transitions represented the remaining 10%.
Art World Forum closed their inaugural forum with a round of applause and is currently in the process of looking to expand its reach to other geographies. In coherence with their mission to continuously engage the global art business ecosystem they will be hosting two or three international forums in 2017. Hong Kong may be considered and a venue in Europe. As a closing note with a particular emphasis on the relationship the arts have with the corporate sector, and perhaps to add to the business slogan 'Bridging Art and Business', as a buyer, how much is the art world worth to you?


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|July 1, 2011
|Uncovering Clues to Chart Future Environmental Trends
|July 1, 2011
|The Art and Science of Giving
|July 1, 2011
|Health Impact Award Winner Supports Higgins Fund
|July 1, 2011
|For the Love of Physics
|July 1, 2011
|Cybersecurity Center Draws on Expertise of CMNS
|July 1, 2011
|Simon Levin - Uncovering Nature's Hidden Patterns
|June 30, 2011
|Honors College Launches Sixth Living-learning Program: Integrated Life Sciences
|June 28, 2011
|Nearby Galaxy Boasts Two Monster Black Holes, Both Active
|June 27, 2011
|Helping Md. Municipalities Go Green to Save: New UMD Initiative
|June 16, 2011
|UMD-Led EPOXI Science Team Publishes Latest Comet Findings in Science
|May 19, 2011
|Distinguished Physicist Named UMD Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences Dean
|May 11, 2011
|Comet Hopper, a UMD/NASA Goddard Proposal, Moves to 'Final Round' in NASA Selection Process
|May 2, 2011
|Computer Science and Biology Come Together to Make Tree Identification a Snap
|April 28, 2011
|UMD and UCLA-Led Teams Study Asteroid Collision With Swift and Hubble Telescopes
|April 25, 2011
|University of Maryland Announces Winners of First Mobility Programming Contest
|April 19, 2011
|Maryland Faculty Gates, Rudnick Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
|April 18, 2011
|UMD Chemists Pioneering Lab Instrument Training for Students
|April 12, 2011
|University of Maryland Names Its Four Best Inventions of 2010
|April 4, 2011
|Neutral Atoms Made to Act Like Electrically Charged Particles
|April 4, 2011
|The First Non-Trivial Atom Circuit: Progress towards an Atom SQUID
|March 16, 2011
|Public Health Risks from Japanese Radiation
|March 14, 2011
|UMD Wins CyberWatch Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
|March 10, 2011
|U.S. Navy Needs to Prepare for Climate Changes says Report Co-Chaired by UMD Climate Scientist
|March 8, 2011
|Now, It Can Be Told - How UMD Scientists Helped ID 'Amerithrax'
|March 4, 2011
|JQI Physicists Demonstrate Coveted 'Spin-Orbit Coupling' in Atomic Gases


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In another week, Joshua will be 7 months old. Time is going by too fast!
Once Joshua turned 6 months old, it feels like I am counting down the day that I have to go back to work, and I am dreading it. 6 months signifies that half a year is over, and half of the time I get to be with him full time is over. The last few weeks really made me sad that the maternity leave is so short.
Some days I sit and watch him play with his toys, or watch him nurse, or watch him sleep, and I just want the universe to stop and the clock to stop ticking. I want to savour every moment that I have with my sweet little boy. The desire for the world to stop spinning is so strong, that I literally want to yell out my window, STOP! STOP everything! I don't want to leave my little boy and go back to work! I don't want to face the world outside of the safety of our home. I don't want to play political games anymore or sell my soul to the job anymore. I wish I can stay with my son at home.
The cruelty of time is that it treats everyone the same. We all have the same 24 hours a day to spend. I just wish I get to spend all of mine with my little boy for a LONG time.


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Among other things, Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is a hymn to the creative and destructive power of female beauty. The heroine is a young woman of such transporting physical allure that on seeing her men fall instantly and insanely in love, heedless to the ensuing dangers. Wherever could he have come by the idea?
'Ridiculously beautiful, comically beautiful' was how he once described Padma Lakshmi, the woman who became his fourth wife. But in fact, Rushdie insists, he had the concept of the novel before he met the Indian-American model, actress and cookbook author. Still, that piece of chronology won't prevent many readers from glimpsing the shade of Lakshmi in the 'slender' and ravishing 'banquet for the senses' that is Qara Koz, a woman 'meant for palaces, and kings'.
To be fair to Lakshmi, she seemed more at home at premieres than palaces, but then celebrity is the new royalty. From a distance, or more specifically through the prism of gossip columns, she looked like trouble from the very start, someone who was unlikely ever to provide a happy ending, at least in the conventional narrative sense.
According to Rushdie, the irony is that not only did she not inspire the book, she was very nearly the cause of its demise. 'To put it bluntly,' he says, 'I had to write it in spite of her. Because what happened to me last year when I was writing this book was a colossal calamity.' By this he means the end of his marriage. In January of 2007, Lakshmi asked for a divorce.
'It was like a nuclear bomb dropped in your living room when you're trying to work,' he says. 'I really feared for a time at the beginning of last year that I'd lost the book. I was in such a state of turmoil that I couldn't work. I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk. And I got scared because I thought, if I lose this, I've lost everything. Genuinely, I think it was the biggest act of will that I've ever been asked to make, including after the fatwa, just to pull my head back together.'
We meet in the Bloomsbury offices of his agent, Andrew Wylie, lined with copies of Roth, Eggers, Amis and, of course, Rushdie. It has to be said that he looks, head and all, remarkably together. He's dressed down in jeans and a casual yellow shirt, but everything else about him seems up. He's pleased with the novel, a fabulous interweaving of fiction and history across two continents, though his critics would say this is nothing new. Rushdie has a longstanding reputation, unfairly or not, for being pleased with himself. There is, however, no sign of smugness or superiority about the man across the desk from me. The famous mandarin hauteur is gone. What he emanates is relief.
He says there was a period, after Lakshmi left him, that he worked eight or nine hours a day for six weeks and produced 'about three pages'. But at the end of this block, he refound the story. 'And from then the book saved my life really. It just wrote itself. Voom. I would go to my desk every day and I was having more fun in there than I was having outside. It became joyful to write and I think some of that feeling of pleasure is there in the text.'
Indeed one of the pleasures of the book is the sense of delight that the prose takes in conjuring seductive myths from the solid foundations of history. 'A lot of it is true,' he says of the historical detail. 'All kinds of stuff that I suspect people will assume is magic realism, isn't.'
Rushdie has obviously done his homework, going by the six-page heavyweight bibliography included at the end of the book.
'Oh that's not the show-off bibliography,' he says with a smile that hints, but only hints, at self-mockery. 'There's one that's about four times as long, but you know you read a lot of books and not all of them are useful to you. So I just put in the ones that really helped.'
The story concerns a young European traveller who arrives at the court of the 16th-century Mughal Emperor Akbar, and beguiles his host with tales of Qara Koz, a legendary beauty who entrances powerful men. One of these men, the Shah of Persia, is so full of self-love and vanity that 'he did not consider the autonomy of her great beauty, which no man could own, which owned itself, and which would blow wherever it pleased, like the wind'.
Again, it doesn't require a literary detective to sniff out the pungent aroma of experience in this passage. But what's notable about it, and indeed the whole of the book, given the circumstances of its creation, is the impressive lack of bitterness or rancour. Instead it's almost a celebration of male amour fou.
The other major theme of the book is an old one for Rushdie, namely the mutual suspicion, mistrust and misunderstanding that has long existed between the East and the West. It's an issue, of course, that has seldom been more pertinent. At first he is reluctant to expand on the parallels. 'I'm just going to let the reader decide about that. My view is that I didn't want to put great big neon signs in the sky saying this is really about the 21st century.'
But while Rushdie handles the subject with imaginative subtlety, there is no getting away from the current relevance of subjects like foreignness, belonging and group loyalty. In one sense, he is an old-fashioned humanist, drawn to the stripped-down commonality of man. 'One of the things that I came to feel more than before, while writing the book, and it's not a very complicated truth, is the idea that human nature really is constant. And that the way in which human beings behave is just the way we behave, no matter what age we live in, and what our technology is, and what our particular political relations at the moment might be.'
In other words, it's our similarities, rather than our differences, that are our defining characteristic. But at the same time, he is pessimistic about the future of East-West relations. 'I do worry about it. If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them. I hope I'm wrong but the best-case optimistic argument I can make is that if you look at the phenomenon of Islamic extremism, the places where it's most hated are the places where it's most powerful.'
Early in his career, he approached global affairs from a classic post-imperial perspective, which placed the burden of responsibility for geopolitical tension and cultural discrimination firmly with the wealthy West.
Having graduated from Cambridge in 1968, his politics were not untypical of his generation and class. There was an implied, and often explicit, criticism of western hegemony in his work. In The Satanic Verses, he writes of 'the Coca-Colonization of the planet' and refers to New York as the 'transatlantic New Rome with its Nazified architectural gigantism, which employed the oppressions of size to make its human occupants feel like worms'.
Rushdie still has his criticisms of America, where he lives for much of the time in the architectural gigantism of New York, but they are now moderated by a keener appreciation of the freedoms and advantages of western democracy. He remains a committed multiculturalist. 'I couldn't exist were it not for that transcultural movement. So obviously I'm biased. I do think, still think, there's a lot to celebrate about this mixture. If you live in a city like this or New York it's not possible to imagine it as monocultural. So in a sense it's clearly an enriching aspect of our daily lives.'
But he now has reservations about the direction that cultural diversity has taken. 'What I worry about and don't like,' he says, 'is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has declined into cultural relativism. I think that's very dangerous. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, for God's sake, says that you can't have one law for everybody... that's stupid.'
Rushdie would argue, with some justification, that he was never a proponent of cultural relativism. Nevertheless the event that made him an outspoken opponent was the fatwa on his life issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini on Valentine's Day in 1989. It was a defining moment in the cultural wars that have grown dramatically more political in recent years. Two hundred years after the Enlightenment, an author was under sentence of death for writing fiction. Suddenly all those beliefs, such as freedom of expression, that seemed so basic to literary and liberal life that no one bothered mentioning them were put to the ultimate life-and-death test.
And a number of writers, among them Germaine Greer, John Berger and John Le Carré, came down on the cultural relativist side of the argument. Their feeling was that, in not showing sufficient cultural sensitivity, Rushdie was the author of his troubles. Meanwhile Rushdie found himself in the strange position of having to rely on the support of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and agencies of the establishment - Special Branch and the intelligence services - of which he had been stern critic. Did this affect his feelings towards the establishment?
'Yes,' he says, 'sort of. I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinarily intelligent she was. You really had to be on your game otherwise she'd make mincemeat of you.'
He developed not just an admiration, but a fondness for many people he came to know within the security and intelligence services. 'I've met a lot of Special Branch officers both at the everyday and higher levels and, with one or two exceptions, I liked all of them. I still have, improbably, quite a lot of friends in the British Special Branch.'
The only unkind words he has are reserved for the Foreign Office, which he found untrustworthy. 'I've always been able to handle anything as long as people are straight with you,' he says. 'Deviousness I can't deal with. That's not to my taste.'
He says that his access to this covert world, as well as to presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers, makes him - or a bit of him - want to write a spy thriller. If he did, I say, it would be sure to be reviewed by John Le Carré (some observers suggest that Le Carré's unsympathetic stance on The Satanic Verses was prompted by a poor review Rushdie had given one of his books).
'I think that's all right now,' laughs Rushdie. 'The truth is I hate literary feuds. Life's too short. I admire so much of his work... I don't want to fight him. We had a disagreement. Fair enough, I have no hard feelings.'
He ascribes this spirit of forgiveness to the passage of time, and in particular the passing of the edict. It's been a decade since the Iranian government withdrew their support for the fatwa, effectively allowing Rushdie back into civilian life. He says it now feels like something that happened to him in the past.
There was a brief reprise last year when Rushdie was awarded a knighthood. A few opportunists in Pakistan, and clowns like Lord Ahmed over here, tried to generate a firestorm of protest, but it came to nothing.
Though it did produce one golden vignette on Question Time, when Shirley Williams argued that the knighthood was 'not very clever' because Rushdie had 'deeply offended Muslims in a very powerful way', and he had 'been protected by the British police for many years at great expense to the taxpayer'. The Liberal Democrat Baroness was then taken apart by Rushdie's friend, Christopher Hitchens.
Others were simply surprised that Rushdie had accepted an award that seems inseparable from Britain's class-based and, even colonial, past. He says that he was simply delighted to be 'honoured in the same way as William Golding and VS Naipaul and Kingsley Amis and VS Pritchett. I'll be in that club, I don't mind.'
But people look at your history coming from the left....
'Yeah,' he interrupts, 'well frankly I don't give a fuck about that.'
Since 2001, he's been joined in the political arena by a number of fellow authors, some of whom have taken up a more prominent, and sometimes more controversial, position than Rushdie.
'I think, fair enough,' says Rushdie. 'It's a big subject that everybody's thinking about. I don't agree with all Christopher Hitchens's views but that doesn't stop him being my friend. And I don't agree with everything Martin [Amis] said, but he's entirely entitled to say it without being abused in the way that he was.'
VS Naipaul may find that comment a little rich. In a 2002 article attacking the massacres of Muslims in India, Rushdie said that in supporting Hindu nationalism, Naipaul 'makes himself a fellow-traveller of fascism and disgraces the Nobel award'.
The point for Rushdie, however, is that he and his friends remain on the progressive side of the argument. 'My instincts are completely liberal, but I do think we live in a very weird world and we do need to realise that the world has changed. And when Martin, Ian [McEwan] and I say that we get called conservative. But,' he emphatically adds, 'we're not conservative.'
It's the one moment of annoyance he shows. A lot of the interview is spent discussing politics, everything from the debate on strengthening British anti-terror laws ('I'm somewhere in the middle, really') to the authoritarian actions of the Bush administration, but Rushdie insists he wants to get away from the subject. He resents being recruited to positions he does not hold, a legacy, he thinks, of the fatwa.
'I was always a writer who was interested in politics, and then I think I had an overdose of it - be careful what you wish for. And one of the effects on my sensibility is to make me want to back away from public discourse. I just want to stay at home and write stories and send them out every couple of years. That's why I got into the game, not to be some major public spokesman on political issues.'
The next book he wants to write is another children's book, a sequel of sorts to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. 'When I wrote Haroun,' he explains, 'my then only son was 10. Now I've got another 10-year-old who is busily saying, "Where's my book?"'
He considers this for a second, and then demonstrating his new-found equanimity, adds with a smile: 'That seems like a fair question.'
Rushdie redux
Personal life
Born 19 June 1947 in Mumbai. Educated at King's College, Cambridge, where he read History. Married four times, he has two sons - Zafar, with first wife Clarissa Luard, and Milan, with third wife Elizabeth West.
1974 Grimus, his first novel.
1981 Midnight's Children, widely regarded as his masterpiece. Won that year's Booker Prize and 1993's Booker of Bookers prize.
1983 Shame, a fictionalised account of Pakistani politics. Narrowly missed out on the Booker Prize.
1988 The Satanic Verses, famously the subject of a fatwa by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Forced to go into hiding when a reward was offered for his death.
1995 The Moor's Last Sigh, winner of the Whitbread prize.
2005 Shalimar the Clown, nominated for the Whitbread prize.
June 2007 Awarded a knighthood, an act that was condemned by Muslims around the world, including governments of Iran and Pakistan.
He says: 'When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.'
They say: 'To Indian people, he's as large as Faulkner or Hemingway' -
Padma Lakshmi
The Enchantress of Florence is published by Jonathan Cape at £18.99. To order a copy for £17.99 with free p&p, go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885


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Read Carol's article for great help decorating the dorm room Check out some great ideas to decorate the dorm room #college #DormDecor @univmiami
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Nobody wants to kill her own mother by accident. Luckily, mine pulled through.
As teachable moments go, this one was huge. I learned that once you or someone you know hits age 65, it's time to learn which drugs can increase the risk of dementia when taken for long periods. And which, for people who already have dementia, can make them psychotic.
I call them the drugs of fog, and I saw firsthand what these seemingly innocuous pills did to my mom. A pill that might make a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old slightly sleepy made my 95-year-old mother, Ceil Zubrod, into someone I had never seen. Known for her easy smile, great style and a crazy-early bedtime, she morphed in less than five hours into a hallucinating, night-walking, screaming basket case, all thanks to one anti-itch prescription pill I gave her for her eczema.
Ignorance is never a great defense, but it's the only one I have. The nightmare began after I gave her that pill at around 9 p.m. as she went to bed. At roughly 2 a.m., she whacked me awake with her flashlight and ordered me to help her pack a suitcase so we could walk to her childhood home in New York, about 1,000 miles from our place in Tampa.
After she tried to flush my underwear down the toilet, I threw on a raincoat and began looking for my car keys to drive to the emergency room. In that minute, she tried to climb over our balcony. Fortunately I happened to look up and pried her hands off the railing. Her face was so tormented I barely recognized her. At the ER, they took blood, did an MRI and — of course, given her age — ordered up a urine test.
When the result came back, the ER doc demanded, "You gave you mother a Benadryl — at her age?" As the exhausted caregiver who'd ingested my share of Benadryl over six decades for occasional allergies, I was clueless because this was not what my mom was taking. The doctor who had prescribed her anti-itch pill never mentioned that it was the equivalent of a giant Benadryl.
And if he had, I wouldn't have understood why that was so terrible.
One of the many secret aspects of aging is that physical symptoms can mutate like aliens, which plays havoc with all we think we know about healing ourselves or our loved ones. For example, once we hit our 70s or 80s, symptoms of urinary tract infection that most women recognize — fever or a burning sensation when urinating — give way to something known throughout Florida — the state with the nation's highest percentage of the elderly — as "acting strange."
During this entire episode I naively assumed my mother might have a really bad urinary tract infection, but Ceil's mercifully well-informed ER doctor understood the possible terrifying side effects of pills that adult children give their aged parents. Which is probably why he acted as if I'd fed my mother rat poison.
"Do not give her ANY more anticholinergics," he practically snarled while signing her discharge papers.
I made him spell it while praying he wouldn't cite me for elder abuse. Once Ceil was asleep in her own bed at our home, I researched what other medications came under that heading.
A Harvard medical health blog told me: "Anticholinergic drugs block the action of acetylcholine. This substance transmits messages in the nervous system. In the brain, acetylcholine is involved in learning and memory. In the rest of the body, it stimulates muscle contractions. Anticholinergic drugs include some antihistamines, tricyclic antidepressants, medications to control overactive bladder, and drugs to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson's disease." And then it pointed to "mounting evidence that anticholinergics aren't drugs to take long-term if you want to keep a clear head, and keep your head clear into old age."
I moved on to actual studies. What was news to me had already been well studied around the world. In England, a 2011 study of 13,400 people age 65 and older found that the use of medication containing anticholinergics was linked to an increase in the risk of cognitive impairment — and mortality within two years.
Similarly, researchers in the United States followed 3,434 people 65 and older for more than seven years. None had dementia or Alzheimer's disease when the study began, and all drugs they took were carefully tracked. The findings of this study were as scary to me as the outcome of the overseas research: Those who took anticholinergic drugs — either over-the-counter or prescription-strength formulations — for an extended period had a greater risk of developing dementia.
Anticholinergics include all kinds of mass-market remedies beyond Benadryl (which is known generically as diphenhydramine), such as Nyquil, Sominex, Advil/Tylenol PM, the bladder-control prescription drugs oxybutynin (Ditropan) and tolterodine (Detrol), and neck and back pain drugs such as Flexeril. These are all worthwhile medications — for younger people.
My 95-year-old mother's accumulation of daily prescriptions were classic textbook material, beginning with pills for overactive bladder that she had taken from age 69 to 94. A doctor had prescribed that medication years before — without her even being incontinent. Why, I recently asked that doctor, and I got this response: "Overactive-bladder issues are common in women over 70. They don't like to talk about it." Actually, my mother never brought it up because it was never a problem. I'm pretty sure she didn't realize what the prescription her doctor renewed faithfully was intended to treat.
Ceil is now down to a single baby aspirin each day. She happily watches her favorite on-demand sports programs — tennis and ice skating — before she goes to sleep. She takes a daily one-mile walk, loves going to a nearby Trader Joe's for flowers and regularly gets a manicure.
So I had been feeling home free after our ER visit until I saw amitriptyline recently on a list of anticholinergics. It had been prescribed as a sleeping pill for me, and I had been taking it nightly, and happily, for almost two years. No more.
Back in my hippie days, "you are what you eat" was a mega mantra. (People were far more forgiving of mind-altering drugs.) These days, I'm more inclined to say, "The older you get, the more you need to keep up with anticholinergic research."


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Epiploic appendagitis
Citation, DOI & article data
Epiploic appendagitis is a rare self-limiting ischemic/inflammatory process involving appendix epiploica of the colon and may either be primary or secondary to adjacent pathology. This article pertains to primary (spontaneous) epiploic appendagitis. The term along with omental infarction is grouped under the broader umbrella term intraperitoneal focal fat infarction 9.
On this page:
This condition usually affects patients in their 2nd to 5th decades with a predilection for women and obese individuals, presumably due to larger appendages 6. Its frequency is approximately 1.3% of cases with abdominal pain and its incidence is around 8.8 cases in every 1,000,000 yearly 10.
Clinical presentation
Patients typically present with abdominal pain and guarding. It is essentially indistinguishable from diverticulitis and acute appendicitis (depending on location) and, although an uncommon condition, it accounts for up to 7% of cases of suspected diverticulitis 1. Since there is focal peritoneal irritation, pain may be more localized than with other causes of acute abdominal pain.
Epiploic appendagitis merely denotes inflammation of one or more appendices epiploicae, which number 50-100 and are distributed along the large bowel with variable frequency 3,4,6:
- rectosigmoid junction: 57%
- ileocecal region: 26%
- ascending colon: 9%
- transverse colon: 6%
- descending colon: 2%
The pathogenesis is thought to be due to torsion of a large and pedunculated appendage epiploica, or spontaneous thrombosis of the venous outflow, resulting in ischemia and necrosis 3.
Radiographic features
Ultrasound evaluation of the patient's area of maximal tenderness may reveal a rounded, non-compressible, hyperechoic mass, without internal vascularity, and surrounded by a subtle hypoechoic line 5. They are typically 2-4 cm in maximal diameter.
They typically exert local mass effect but are not usually associated with bowel wall thickening or ascites 5.
The CT appearance is usually characteristic:
- a fat-density ovoid structure adjacent to the colon, usually 1.5-3.5 cm in diameter 2
- thin high-density rim, known as the hyperattenuating ring sign (1-3 mm thick) 5,6
- surrounding inflammatory fat stranding, and thickening of the adjacent peritoneum
- a central hyperdense dot (representing the thrombosed vascular pedicle) 6
- adjacent colonic wall thickening is not usually associated, but if present is usually minimal and the amount of fat inflammation is out of proportion to colonic wall thickening
- the inflamed appendage is classically located on the anterior aspect of the sigmoid or descending colon, but it may be located anywhere along the circumference of the colon, as seen in the atypical Case 22
Chronically, an infarcted epiploic appendage may calcify and may detach to form an intraperitoneal loose body (peritoneal 'mice').
It may rarely involve the vermiform appendix epiploic appendages as so-called "epiploic appendagitis of the vermiform appendix" 8, mimicking appendicitis both clinically and potentially on CT.
Although uncommonly used in a setting of acute abdominal pain, MRI features are also characteristic 6:
- T1: often shows a rounded high signal mass with slightly reduced signal compared to normal fat, due to inflammatory stranding; hypointense 2-3 mm rim
- T2: often seen as a high signal mass which attenuates on fat-suppressed sequences; hyperintense 2-3 mm rim with surrounding high signal stranding; central low signal vein
- T1 C+ (Gd): shows vivid rim enhancement
Treatment and prognosis
Epiploic appendagitis is a self-limiting disease, and thus correct identification on CT prevents unnecessary surgery 2. Although it sometimes mimics acute abdominal diseases for which surgery is required, treatment options for epiploic appendagitis often do not include surgery; it usually responds well to NSAIDs.
History and etymology
Epiploic appendagitis was employed for the first time by Lynn et al. in 1956. The first CT description occurred in 1986 by Danielson et al 2.
Differential diagnosis
Imaging differential considerations include:
- acute appendicitis: if right-sided
- diverticulitis
- mesenteric panniculitis
- omental neoplasms e.g. exophytic angiomyolipoma, atypical liposarcoma
- omental infarction occurs close to ascending colon and is typically larger than 3 cm
Quiz questions
- 1. Singh AK, Gervais DA, Hahn PF et-al. CT appearance of acute appendagitis. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2004;183 (5): 1303-7. AJR Am J Roentgenol (full text) - Pubmed citation
- 2. Singh AK, Gervais DA, Hahn PF et-al. Acute epiploic appendagitis and its mimics. Radiographics. 25 (6): 1521-34. doi:10.1148/rg.256055030 - Pubmed citation
- 3. Boardman J, Kaplan KJ, Hollcraft C et-al. Radiologic-pathologic conference of Keller Army Community Hospital at West Point, the United States Military Academy: torsion of the epiploic appendage. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2003;180 (3): 748. AJR Am J Roentgenol (full text) - Pubmed citation
- 4. Thomas JH, Rosato FE, Patterson LT. Epiploic appendagitis. Surg Gynecol Obstet. 1974;138 (1): 23-5. Pubmed citation
- 5. Rioux M, Langis P. Primary epiploic appendagitis: clinical, US, and CT findings in 14 cases. Radiology. 1994;191 (2): 523-6. Radiology (abstract) - Pubmed citation
- 6. Almeida AT, Melão L, Viamonte B et-al. Epiploic appendagitis: an entity frequently unknown to clinicians--diagnostic imaging, pitfalls, and look-alikes. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2009;193 (5): 1243-51. doi:10.2214/AJR.08.2071 - Pubmed citation
- 7. Rao PM, Novelline RA. Case 6: primary epiploic appendagitis. Radiology. 1999;210 (1): 145-8. Radiology (full text) - Pubmed citation
- 8. Purysko AS, Remer EM, Filho HM et-al. Beyond appendicitis: common and uncommon gastrointestinal causes of right lower quadrant abdominal pain at multidetector CT. Radiographics. 2011;31 (4): 927-47. doi:10.1148/rg.314105065 - Pubmed citation
- 9. Coulier B. Contribution of US and CT for diagnosis of intraperitoneal focal fat infarction (IFFI): a pictorial review. JBR-BTR. 2010;93 (4): 171-85. Pubmed citation
- 10. de Brito P, Gomez MA, Besson M, Scotto B, Huten N, Alison D. Fréquence et épidémiologie descriptive de l'appendicite épiploïque primitive par l'exploration tomodensitométrique des douleurs abdominales de l'adulte [Frequency and epidemiology of primary epiploic appendagitis on CT in adults with abdominal pain]. J Radiol. 2008 Feb;89(2):235-43. French. PMID: 18354354. doi:10.1016/s0221-0363(08)70399-8


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Hacker breaks into jailbroken iPhones, asks for $7
Sent by Balaji via Google Reader:
This is a screenshot of the SMS the hacked iPhone users received.(Credit: Tweakers.net)
A hacker in the Netherlands broke into some jailbroken iPhones and sent text messages to the owners asking them to pay to find out how to secure their phones, according to postings in a Dutch forum called Tweakers.net.
One of the victims posted a screenshot from his iPhone of the SMS received. It said: "Your iPhone's been hacked because it's really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files."
The URL provided now displays a message indicating that it was reported for spam or phishing abuse and has been deactivated.
Ars Technica reports that before the page was removed, it asked that victims send 5 euros ($7.36) to a PayPal account and then await an e-mail with instructions on how to secure the phone. The fix probably would involve restoring the factory settings, according to the Ars Technica post.
"If you don't pay, it's fine by me," the hacker's page said. "But remember, the way I got access to your iPhone can be used by thousands of others--they can send text messages from your number (like I did), use it to call or record your calls, and actually whatever they want, even use it for their hacking activities! I can assure you, I have no intention of harming you or whatever, but, some hackers do! It's just my advice to secure your phone."...


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Send Video to your PC through USB port.
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More than just watching the video on the laptop or desktop PC, you can also record the full motion video or take a snapshot/still frame image from different devices such as the DV Camcorder, VCR/DVD player, video monitoring with your existing security surveillance systems or play video games on PC for various video entertainments
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The colors deviation might differ due to different monitor settings.


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The New Yorker, January 13, 1968 P. 26
Herman Gombiner, a bachelor of almost 50, is a very sick man. A Jewish refugee whose entire family was killed by the Nazis, Herman is a vegetarian who loves all God's creatures and a mystic who has experienced numerous apparitions, telepathic incidents, clairvoyant visions and prophetic dreams. He corresponds with mystics the world over whose names he has gleaned from occult magazines. When the Jewish publishing house where he works is closed down, Herman becomes increasingly ill and seldom leaves his small West Side apartment. He is alone and dying of pneumonia when one of his correspondents, Rose Beechman of Louisville, Ky. comes to pay him a visit. Mrs. Beechman, a widow, is in frequent contact with her dead grandmother, who has recently told her a man in N.Y. would alter her existence. She nurses Herman back to health at which time her grandmother advises her to stay and take care of him if he will let her. Herman is happy and as he looks around his room bathed in the early morning light, it has all the quality of a revelation.


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Cassie, Oregon State University's bipedal robot, makes historic 5K run using machine learning
A 53-minute 5K may not sound like a feat, but for engineers at Oregon State University it was historic.
Cassie, the first bipedal robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain, ran five kilometers untethered around the Oregon State University campus in just over 53 minutes on a single charge.
"It's the first time a robot has learned to walk and run, and successfully do that outside over human terrain, normal terrain," Jonathan Hurst, an OSU robotics professor and founder of Agility Robotics, told KGW.
Hurst and a team of engineers developed Cassie with the help of a 16-month, $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Since Cassie's introduction in 2017, OSU students funded by the National Science Foundation have been exploring machine learning options for the robot.
Since then, the robot has made huge steps, graduating from being able to merely walk around the campus to jogging.
Cassie, with knees that bend like an ostrich's, taught itself to run with what's known as a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, according to the OSU College of Engineering release.
Running requires dynamic balancing — the ability to maintain balance while switching positions or otherwise being in motion — and Cassie has learned to make infinite subtle adjustments to stay upright while moving.
Related:UO, OSU tuition reimbursement lawsuits still in early stages
"It's real-world environment, it's not in the lab kind of thing on a treadmill," Hurst said.
Hurst said walking robots will one day be a common sight — much like the automobile, and with a similar impact. The limiting factor has been the science and understanding of legged locomotion, but research at Oregon State has enabled multiple breakthroughs.
ATRIAS, developed in the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, was the first robot to reproduce human walking gait dynamics. Following ATRIAS was Cassie, then came Agility's humanoid robot Digit.
"In the not very distant future, everyone will see and interact with robots in many places in their everyday lives, robots that work alongside us and improve our quality of life," Hurst said.
Read more:UO, OSU strategically reducing landscaping water usage during drought
In addition to logistics work like package delivery, bipedal robots eventually will have the intelligence and safety capabilities to help people in their own homes, Hurst said.
"Over time the robots are going to get better at interacting with people and being completely safe," Hurst said. "To help us age gracefully in our own homes and help us our around the house."


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Iraqi singer Kathem El Saher, who was recently granted the Qatari citizenship, will be filming his new song "Ethibini" (You Will Love Me) in the form of a video clip in three different Arab countries. El Saher will be working with the Jordanian producer Hussein De'abis who is now working on the scenario for the new clip.
According to the Qatari daily Al Raya, El Saher has chosen to film the video clip for the new song in Dubai, Beirut and Doha. El Saher is continuing to work with the Jordanian producer Hussein De'abis, where De'abis has produced "Ini Ohibok" (I Still Love You) with the Syrian actress Solaf Fawakhrji, "Ahibini" (Love Me) with Egyptian actress Hanan Turk, "Hareb" (The Run Away), and "Libnaya" (The Little Girl).
The new song which was written by the late poet Nizar Qabani and composed by El Saher will be the first song from the new album "Yamoyat Rajol Mahzoom" (Days of a defeated man) which was released last month. The second version of the new album will be released in the upcoming few days where it will have a new song added to it "Nai". The song was written by prince Bader Abd El Muhsen and composed by Muhammad Shafeeq.
El Saher has removed the song from the first version because he thought that the late singer Talal Malah sang it few years back; however, El Saher found out that the late singer did not include in any of his albums only sang it at a gathering.
The Iraqi/Qatari singer has received invitations to sing at both Jarash and the Carthage Festivals; however, he did not say whether he will or won't accept the invitations.
Aside from being a Canadian citizen El Saher has received the Qatari Citizenship just few weeks ago.
© 2000 - 2022 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)


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"My job is complete."
Morbark, LLC, announced today that our President, James W. Shoemaker Jr., has retired after 13 years with the Company.
"My job is complete," said Shoemaker. "When I became President, I had a mission — to regain market share and increase profitability for Morbark, and then to prepare the Company for sale. The team at Morbark reacted splendidly, and we successfully regained market share and enhanced our profitability. My intention all along was, once the Company was sold, to retire and let the new management take charge, and that's what I'm doing."


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The Shisha Garden
The Shisha Garden is a weekend only Shisha Lounge based in Edware, based in an idyllic Garden, if you are looking for something original then this is a must-visit.
It offers customers an exclusive chance to relax is an exotic setting with a unique ambience.
Looking for an exclusive night out then this lounge is the one for you, now down to business:
The Shisha
4 starts, use good coals and the smoke is smooth
The Service
3 Stars – Staff are attentive but could be a bit more attentive
5* Review
The banc delivers the best shisha in london
5 stars – Beautiful
Traveling to The Banc
88 Whitchurch Ln, Edgware HA8 6QN


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History continues for the NWHL and the New York Riveters as season two of the league begins this weekend. With a major roster overhaul in the offseason, it may be hard to decipher what their lineup can do against the other three members of the league, but one thing is for sure – they will surely have more offensive firepower. Only eight players return to the team (two of which are practice players, for now), which easily makes them the team with the biggest turnover among the players.
The Riveters added some dynamic players to their lineup, both on offense and on defense as well as adding a completely new crew in net. Just like last season, the Boston Pride are the team to beat, and the reigning Isobel Cup champs haven't lost a game since January. The Rivs will get their first crack at the Pride on opening weekend during a neutral site game in Buffalo (October 8) which kicks off the second season of the NWHL.
Our regular season schedule has been released! Check it out! (then go buy tickets at https://t.co/i5LHbTp3cn) pic.twitter.com/XFw2NC0ObR
— Metropolitan Riveters (@Riveters) August 15, 2016
The biggest addition to the team is obviously the dynamic and dazzling Amanda Kessel, who not only gives the Riveters a superstar, world-class talent – but it also brings them some instant name-recognition in a league that is just beginning to settle their footprints on the professional sports landscape. She was by far and away the biggest addition to the league this offseason. Kessel will be considered a rookie this season, but she is no ordinary rookie. She wins, a lot, and it shouldn't be long before the league starts to be wary of her game-changing and take-over abilities.
Other big additions include two more NWHL rookies – Rebecca Russo (Boston University), Miye D'Oench (Harvard) as well as Tatiana Rafter who played with the Buffalo Beauts last season.
Here's what the lines likely will look like (via one of the players) as the season gets underway.
Miye D'Oench – Amanda Kessel – Janine Weber
Alexa Gruschow -Morgan Fritz-Ward – Bray Ketchum
Madison Packer – Rebecca Russo – Tatiana Rafter
The Riveters defense only returns two holdovers from season one, but they added so much talent on the blue line that by the end of the season they could have the most dynamic defenders in the league. They also added a lot of height, which will likely be crucial when trying to defend against taller players like Boston's Hilary Knight, Buffalo's Shiann Darkangelo and Kelly Babstock from the Connecticut Whale.
Though they will be technically sporting three NWHL rookies on the back end, don't expect any growing pains for these talented women who join the league as highly decorated collegiate players.
Here are the likely pairings (again via one of the players) as season two begins.
Kaleigh Fratkin – Michelle Picard
Milica McMillen – Courtney Burke
Ashley Johnston – Kiira Dosdall
The biggest question mark, or x-factor, heading into the new season will be the goalies for the Riveters. With Jenny Scrivens, Chelsea Laden, and Nana Fujimoto all out of the NWHL now and one of their offseason additions – Jaimie Leonoff – injured for likely the entire campaign, the Rivs will turn to two rookie puck stoppers/virtual unknowns in net. Having said that, competition is always a good thing and it should be fun to see who takes the reigns – we all know how much a hot goalie can carry a team.
Here are the two netminders that will start the season as the last line of defense for the Riveters.
Katie Fitzgerald – Sojung Shin
Practice Players
Just because they aren't starting the season in uniform doesn't mean they won't have an impact; Last season Buffalo's Kelley Steadman was fifth in points (20) and third in goals (13). This season the practice players for the Riveters will be:
Sarah Bryant – Goalie
Gabie Figueroa, Rebecca Morse – Defense
Julia Herr, Taylor Holze – Forwards
You Heard It Here First!
Last season the Riveters finished last in the league in the standings as well as a lot of other categories, so there is room for improvement for sure and it would be a major shock if they finished fourth again. Expect a much better season for them this season, and in fact – don't be too surprised if it ends up being New York v Boston for the 2017 Isobel Cup.
Dan Rice is in his 9th year of reporting for THW & has covered NJ Devils home games for 15+ years at various websites. He began his journey working for legendary broadcaster/writer Stan Fischler from 2002-04 & completed an internship at the ECHL; he also has been writing features for the NWHL (nwhl.zone) website since 2016.


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What follows is a Magewood.com Sneak Peek into IA Mullin's novel Mystillion (Redsands Book 1).
Chapter 5 Excerpt
Marilana perched carefully in the tree with an arrow nocked to her bow. She had gone out early that morning on her daily patrol armed with her short sword in addition to her normal bow and dagger. Normally, she would have finished her patrol and reported to Lady Annabella's estate for sparing practice, but not today. She had been scouting the forest west of the South Road when she had heard the sharp trill. She made her way carefully toward the sound, and that's when she saw the bandit scout, a sleek orange and black tiger, slipping from tree to tree staying in the shadows. Carefully drawing her bow, Marilana shot the tiger in the neck, dropping him like puppet without strings.
Moments later, Child arrived on the scene, and together they hid the body and removed any signs of their presence.
"I've been following a bandit raiding group of about sixty men, some mounted and some on foot," Child had told her. "They are angling toward the farmlands on the southwest of Mystillion."
"This is not good news," Marilana had said. "Continue tracking them. I'll make my way as carefully and quickly as I can to the East Road and report what you've seen."
Marilana had reached the road just as Captain Branth was returning on horseback from his own morning patrol. She swung up behind him on his saddle and they had galloped flat out to Lady Annabella's estate. The guards on the wall saw them and sounded the alarm.
Lady Annabella and Captain-General Zariff met them at the castle steps, and Marilana immediately informed them of the situation. Lady Annabella then sent her back out to scout south of the estate. Marilana spent two hours scouting the forests and found two bandit scouts attempting to prevent anyone from discovering the tracks of the raiders. She struck fast and didn't bother to hide the bodies since they probably would not be found until after the raid. She then followed the raiders' tracks and quickly found them turning north toward the West Road.
Marilana hurried back and met Captain-General Zariff at the rally point. After hearing her report and equipping her with two full quivers, Zariff sent Marilana into town to sound the warning.
Now, from her current position in the forest west of town, she could see a portion of the meadow surrounding the town and a long stretch of the West Road.
She wished once again that Mystillion had better defenses. Its buildings sprawled from its center in an orderly network of streets like a spider's web. The school was placed almost exactly in the center with several blocks of merchant shops between it and the market square to the north and the Chapel of the Goddess and the courthouse to the south. While the layout made expansion easy and kept the town orderly, it also made the town easy for raids and difficult to defend without a wall. She could see the town guardsmen and a number of merchant guards hunkered down behind the barricades on the main road and larger side streets. Archers had been stationed on several of the taller rooftops. Everyone was tense, waiting for the impending attack.
Just then, the slightest movement from the forest floor caught Marilana's attention. She saw a bandit creeping toward the underbrush at the edge of the meadow. He appeared to be alone, so Marilana drew her bow and released an arrow. Even before the arrow had impaled the bandit squarely in the back, Marilana was already nocking her bow with a second arrow. She spotted a second bandit, this a burly black bear, a moment later as he tried to ease back behind a tree. She aimed and released, her arrow striking the bandit dead center of his left eye. The bear went down in a heap, but the sound of twigs breaking drew several more bandits into her view. She released four more arrows in quick succession, but gritted her teeth in annoyance as the fourth man managed a warning cry an instant before her arrow found its mark in his neck.
The rest of the bandits broke from cover at the sound. Yells rang out all along the meadow as men charged toward the smaller streets, the ones without barricades. Marilana loosed arrow after arrow dropping tigers, deer, bears, and many others as they emerged from the cover of the trees. The archers on the roof tops opposite her began raining arrows across the short expanse of grass. Guardsmen drew back from the barricades and ran further into town making for the cross streets and smaller lanes in an attempt to cut off the bandits' advance into the town.
Marilana paused with her next arrow as a rumbling sound began to build on the road. Turning on her perch, she grimaced as a group of ten mounted bandits rounded the turn in the road and galloped straight toward the main barricade. With the defenders spread too thin, the horses would be able to jump the barricade and race through the town. Marilana drew her bow and released her arrow. The lead horse cried out in pain as her arrow pierced its chest. It stumbled and fell. Three of the horses running behind it crashed into their leader and the sickening snaps of their breaking bones echoed among the growing tumult. The horses screamed in pain and thrashed about. One of the bandits was crushed beneath their weight, while the other three were thrown off the road. The six bandits remaining, managed to guide their horses around their downed comrades, and continued toward town. Marilana picked off three more in a matter of seconds just as Captain-General Zariff and his mounted troops emerged from the north. The bandits on foot sent up a signal shout and began retreating into the forest. Captain-General Zariff and his horsemen set out in pursuit of the three mounted bandits racing south along the meadow.
Marilana stood guard as the soldiers routed the last of the bandits. Then she watched as members of the town garrison cautiously entered the meadow and began to check the bodies. Marilana slid quietly from her perch. She crouched on the forest floor for a long moment and scanned the area. Seeing no movement, she raised the hood of her cloak and began silently tracking the retreating bandits who had turned south.


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Incoming custodial firm faces a stink
Some county bathrooms won't be cleaned until 2010
Edward M. Aprahamian Jr. has a mess to clean up.
Aprahamian, the owner of a West Allis janitorial firm, inherits the job of cleaning the Milwaukee County courthouse complex and other buildings as the county privatizes its custodial staff. It's a move County Executive Scott Walker has long sought and the County Board resisted.
Walker won the privatization fight in the 2010 budget, as one of a number of measures used to help plug a large budget shortfall. The county last week awarded MidAmerican Building Services a $1.2 million contract for cleaning the courthouse and nine other Milwaukee County buildings, picking it over about 10 other firms.
MidAmerican officially takes over Jan. 18 and will be paid $97,793 a month, according to its contract with the county. The company also will get paid about $50,000 to handle a reduced level of cleaning under a temporary contract covering the next month. County department heads have been warned that only large public bathrooms and hallways will be cleaned until MidAmerican gears up with a full-time crew for the county work.
County staff custodians were laid off as of Friday, though many began calling in sick once word filtered out two weeks ago that their jobs would end soon. Just four of about 20 custodians assigned to the courthouse complex showed up for work Friday, said Jack Takerian, the county's interim public works director.
With complaints about the custodial service already being made and supervisors continuing to question the janitorial outsourcing, Aprahamian will have his hands full.
Aprahamian, 49, the president and owner of MidAmerican and a partner in a political consulting firm, has a long history of political donations, most of them to Republicans, state and federal campaign records show.
He is a longtime supporter of Walker, including his most recent $1,000 donation to the county executive and Republican candidate for governor that was made in late June, around the time Walker's administration laid plans for privatizing custodial services for 2010. Aprahamian also has donated to Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, both Democrats. Barrett also is running for governor.
Aprahamian did not respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment about the county contract and his donations.
Supervisors last week complained they were cut out of the process to select private firms to take over custodial services for the county, a move that resulted in about 90 workers being laid off. Walker used a standard procurement process for picking the companies rather than a professional service contract method, which would have required County Board approval.
Supervisor John Weishan Jr. called the move "an abuse of our procurement process." He has called for the board to attempt to assert authority to review the custodial services outsourcing contract. A county lawyer said, however, that Walker was within his authority to issue the custodial contracts as simple procurements without County Board input.
Supervisor Peggy West said it was unfair that the board was shut out of details about the custodial services outsourcing. She said poor quality cleaning of the county's Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center, 1220 W. Vliet St., by another private service demonstrated the folly of outsourcing the task.
She called the Coggs Center "disgusting. It's gross, it's not sanitary," she said.
John Barrett, county clerk of courts, said courthouse cleaning already had suffered in the move toward privatization. Barrett said he'd been warned bathrooms used by 300 court workers won't be cleaned until mid-January.
"I think people deserve clean bathrooms," Barrett said.
Donations not a factor
County officials said the company was picked based on an objective review that included quality of work, work history and price.
"I did not have anything to do with it," Walker said in an e-mail reply to questions about the contract.
Aprahamian made $3,000 in donations to Walker since 2005, including his recent $1,000 gift.
Takerian, the county's interim public works director, said there was no political influence involved in the selection of MidAmerican.
Aprahamian's cleaning company has a 40-year history in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana and does $5 million a year in business, according to MidAmerican's contract proposal to the county. MidAmerican also cleans three public works buildings for the city, for which it was paid $269,000 last year. The firm will be paid about $128,000 this year to clean the Milwaukee State Office Building downtown.
Records show Aprahamian gave Doyle $5,000 in 2002, when Doyle first ran for governor, and $2,000 in 2003. Aprahamian also gave Barrett $2,000 in 2005 and $1,000 in 2007.
MidAmerican has done work for the city since at least 1999.


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Pick the room you would like to rent on our homepage and fill out the booking form that is on the right side. Our Customer Support will contact you shortly and confirm your booking. You will have to fulfil a booking form with your details. You will receive the Lease Agreement from us, which makes your booking definite. Shortly after you will receive the first invoice that includes the first rent and the security deposit.
Yes, the bookings should be made in advance.
Room prices depend on the size of the room as well as on the location of the flat. Prices start from 110 euro/month per room excl. utilities.
No brokers fee. You only pay the security deposit and the monthly rent.
No, the fixed utilities (water, heating, electricity, wifi, cleaning common areas and administration costs) will be added to the price. The monhtly fixed costs for the utilities are 50 EUR per month.
If you move in before the 15th of the month you have to pay for the whole monthly rent. If your move-in date is after the 15th of the month you need to pay for the half of the month.
Please inform our Customer Support as soon as you know your arrival date and time. You will receive the contacts of our Property Manager who will meet and greet you at the flat. After which you will sign the Lease Contract and receive the keys from him/her. Please note that the move-in times should be between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. If possible, please plan your arrival on a weekday.
You have then 5 days to complete the payment.
Yes. Before moving in, we issue the security deposit fee which is equal to one-month rent + utilities
Yes, if the room is undamaged and tidy after you leave it and you have no debts with us.
Unfortunately, no refunds will be made if you cancel your booking.
Kitchens are equipped with oven, kettle and fridge. Tenant have to provide the cutleries by themselves. You can always ask recommendations from our Customer Support where to get them.
Yes, as our aim is to make our tenants' life as comfortable and simple as possible - we do provide brand new blankets, sheets and pillows for the extra fee of 60 euros. Please let our Customer Support know that you're interested so that we can prepare them and send them to your room before your arrival.
No, 1Home is a private company offering affordable quality housing options for (foreign) students and interns.
If you lose your key, you are required to pay the fine of 50 euros. We recommend you to have the contacts of your flatmates for any case to be able to access the apartment.
No, smoking in the apartments is strictly prohibited! Fine for doing that is 100 EUR.
According to our houserules, we do not accept overnight guests. You can have visitors during the daytime but not after 11 p.m.
Yes, all rooms come with elementary furniture. There is a bed, a desk, a chair and a wardrobe in all rooms. The common area has the necessary items too: oven, fridge, washing machine and in some cases even a dining table and chairs.
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Men vs Women - How are men and women different?
Question: Are men and women the same of are they different? You often hear Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, actually it is the title of a book written by American author and relationship counselor John Gray, but what is it about men and women.
I like these phrases by Mark B. Kastleman regarding the differences between the male and female brain:
Men can narrowly focus their brains on specific tasks or activities for long periods of time without tiring. Women are better equipped to divide their attention among multiple activities or tasks.
Men are able to separate information, stimulus, emotions, relationships, etc. into separate compartments in their brains, while women tend to link everything together.
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Serial no.: Kirsten Kjaer Larsen-2019-016
owned by Kirsten Kjaer Larsen
- Style: Figurative
- Color: Other
- Material: Wood
- Thickness: Above 2 mm
Dreams I
A collage-artmoney. My paintings, - here pictures cut from my little brochure - with découpage varnish glue put on blackpainted wood.
Price: 200,00 DKK
Shipping fee: 25,00 DKK