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|Jan 15, 2014
World's tiniest drug cabinets could be attached to cancerous cells for long term treatment
|(Nanowerk News) As if being sick weren't bad enough, there's also the fear of frequent injections, side effects and overdosing on you medication. Now a team of researchers from University of Copenhagen, Department of Chemistry, Nano- science center and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), have shown that reservoirs of anti-viral pharmaceuticals could be manufactured to bind specifically to infected tissue such as cancer cells for the slow concentrated delivery of drug treatments. The new research is published in ACS Macro Letters.
|Smaller doses, less injections and fewer side effects
|The findings, from Dr Marité Cárdenas (Copenhagen) and Dr Richard Campbell and Dr Erik Watkins (ILL), came as a result of neutron reflectometry studies at the worlds leading neutron source in Grenoble, France. They could provide a way to reduce dosages and the frequency of injections administered to patients undergoing a wide variety of treatments, as well as minimising side effects of over-dosing. Fats and branches hold medicine for longer
|Marité Cardenas in her lab at University of Copenhagen, Department of Chemistry.
|The attachment of reservoirs of therapeutic drugs to cell membranes for slow diffusion and continuous delivery inside the cells is a major aim in drug R&D. A promising candidate for packaging up and carrying such concoctions of drugs are a group of self-assembled liquid crystalline particles. Composed of fatty molecules known as phospholipids and tree-like macromolecules called dendrimers which have many branches, the particles form spontaneously and have the capacity to soak up and carry large quantities of drug molecules for prolonged diffusion. They are also known for their ability to bind to cellular membranes.
|First treatment close to market
|The first treatments using such particles are close to market through products incorporating a similar formulation called Cubosomes (cubic phase nanoparticles). Developed and commercialized by Swedish start-up Camarus Ab, its FluidCrystal® nanoparticles promise months of drug delivery from a single injection and the possibility of tuning the delivery to intervals of anything from daily to once monthly. However, a key requirement for optimal application of these formulations is a detailed understanding of how they interact with cellular membranes. This was the focus of work involving a collaboration between Dr Marité Cárdenas (Copenhagen) and Dr Richard Campbell and Dr Erik Watkins (ILL). In this experiment the team used neutrons to analyse the interaction of the liquid crystalline particles with a model cellular membrane whilst varying two parameters:
|Detailed surface information with bouncing electrons
|The team utilised a technique known as neutron reflectometry whereby beams of neutrons are skimmed off a surface and the reflectivity measured is used to infer detailed information about the surface, including the thickness, detailed structure and composition of any layers beneath. These experiments were carried out on the FIGARO instrument at the ILL in Grenoble which offers unique reflection up vs. down modes that allowed the team to examine the top and bottom surfaces, alternating the samples on a two hourly basis during a 30 hour sampling period.
|Small changes to charge of molecules could have major effects
|The interaction of the liquid crystalline particles with the membrane was shown to be driven by the charge on the mode cell wall. Subtle changes in the amount of negative charge on the membrane wall encouraged the tree-like dendrimer molecules to penetrate through allowing the rest of the molecule to bind to the surface, forming an attached reservoir. The sensitivity of the interaction to small changes in charge suggests that simple adjustments to the proportion of charged lipids and macromolecules could optimise this process. In the future this characteristic could also provide a mechanism to focus the treatment at targeted cells such as those infected by cancer which are thought to have a more negative charge density than healthy cells.
|Cancerous cells have an imbalance that gives them a different molecular composition and overall different physical properties to normal healthy cells, explains Dr Cardenas. Whilst all cells are negative, cancerous cells tend to be more negatively charged than healthy ones due to a different composition of fatty molecules on their surface. This is a property that we believe could be exploited in future research into delivery mechanisms involving the attachment of lamellar liquid crystalline particles. Our next step is to introduce the drug itself into the reservoirs and make sure it can move across the membrane. This work paves the way for cell tests and clinical trials in the future exploiting our methodology
|Gravity important for floating particles
|In terms of gravitational affects the analysis also showed that the aggregates interacted preferentially with membranes only when they were located above the sample. Similar effects caused by the different density and buoyancy of solutions is already exploited in some stomach treatments and the researchers would encourage future studies into how gravitational effects could be used to optimise these interactions for drug delivery.
|Of course its not new that particles in formulations can sink or float, but such dramatically different specific interactions of these nanocarriers with model membranes of different orientations took us completely by surprise said Dr Campbell. Very small sample volumes are often used in biomedical investigations so the effects of phase separation cannot be seen. Our findings suggest that laboratory researchers may need to re-evaluate the way in which they examine the effectiveness of newly developed formulations to account for strong gravitational effects.
|Source: University of Copenhagen
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The fine art of a perfect cup of coffee
The Irukaya coffee shop has a rigid code of conduct and you only get one shot.
I blew mine just by dialing the number.
Owner Hiroshi Kiyota keeps a blog on which he describes the kinds of people that will never set foot inside his reservation-only shop.
I'd read the website and studied the rules: no photos, even of the facade; no groups larger than two; order at least one drink per hour; no talking to Kiyota while he's making coffee; no smoking; no mobile phones.
I could go on. The website does.
But I'd forgotten one: Don't call outside business hours. It was 1:40 p.m. Irukaya wouldn't open for another 20 minutes.
"Please hang up and read the rules more carefully," said Kiyota, but his tone suggested I needn't bother.
Take two. A month later, a different phone, 2:15 p.m. ... no answer. I tried several more times with no success, then gave up.
About 15 minutes later, my phone rang. "This is Irukaya. Would you like to come today?"
I grabbed a friend and went straight there.
Mission: possible
From the outside, you'd never guess it was a coffee shop. But you'd sure wonder what it was.
There are no windows, there's no sign, just a wooden door and an all-white facade that seem out of place on a greige suburban thoroughfare.
I learned later that the look was modeled on Scotland's Glen Elgin whisky distillery.
It took courage to open the door. I'd heard Kiyota evicts anyone who breaks etiquette. But I'd also heard the coffee was exceptional, perhaps Tokyo's best, so I pushed on.
The room was spare and white with an elmwood counter down the middle and four seats.
Kiyota turned out to be nothing like the tyrant I was expecting. He looked gentle, spoke kindly and was dressed casually in a vintage tracksuit top.
He handed me an unusually detailed menu. Each page described one coffee.
I read about the origin and weight of the beans, the flavor profile, the inspiration of the drink and much more.
He offered three kinds of demitasse hot coffee, which he likened to styles of Scotch whisky.
"Ame-no-oto is like a Highland malt, Yubiksaki is more of an Islay and Mori-no-shizuku is like a Speyside," he said.
I warmed to him. Who wouldn't?
Precise measures
At the end of the counter was a small workstation lit by an old desk lamp.
There were scales, thermometers, measuring beakers and mason jars of coffee beans. It looked like a makeshift caffeine laboratory.
I ordered a Yubisaki blend (¥1,000, US$11), and he plucked beans from the jars, weighed them, adjusted the ratio.
He ground the blend and packed it into a nel drip -- a handheld flannel filter.
He took hot water from a stove and trickled it over the filter. The grounds swelled up like a chocolate muffin and coffee began seeping through the cloth and into a beaker below.
After around 10 minutes, Kiyota poured the coffee into a pan and warmed it on the stove.
Finally, he poured the brew into two cups, alternating so each shared the top, middle and tail of the coffee.
He tasted one cup, then served me the other. "Yubisaki," he said. "Drink it as you would a whisky. It should take around 20 minutes."
As promised, it was deep and powerful with a complex smokiness that Islay whisky drinkers will recognize.
I struggled with the timing. I worked out I was allowed a milliliter every 90 seconds. I had only a splash left when my friend whispered, "You've got another 10 minutes 'til you're allowed to finish that."
Beyond coffee
On paper, the rules look forbidding, but the longer you spend in Irukaya, the more they make sense.
It's not a place you go for a caffeine fix. It's a sanctuary that happens to serve java.
Most of the rules are in place to keep things tranquil.
Kiyota says the two-person group limit is a necessity: "It takes a long time to make the coffee. I'd feel sorry for a third person having to wait 30 minutes for their drink."
Kiyota also has an enviable whisky collection. I counted just over 50 bottles, most of them rare.
There can't be many coffee shops that serve Glen Deveron, Fettercairn or Johnnie Walker King George V.
(Lest the impressive whisky shelf lead you to mistake this for a whisky bar, the rules state that you can't order a malt unless you order a coffee too.)
On my second visit to Irukaya, I tried an ice coffee with a splash of Laphroaig (¥1,400).
Kiyota served it in a champagne flute, topped with a layer of cream. It was a masterpiece.
Whisky can be prickly in coffee, but his was integrated, complex and rolling with flavor.
I discovered why when I tried the coffee without the Laphroaig. It still tasted of whisky.
Kiyota told me he cold brews his coffee, then ages it for up to 10 days, "until it tastes like Glenmorangie."
It's an extraordinary flavor to tease from roasted seeds but he does it and you should try it. If he lets you.
Getting there: Irukaya, 5-7-39 Inokashira, Mitaka-shi, +81 (0) 90 3042 4145; open 2 p.m.-midnight, closed Wednesday; yubisaki.exblog.jp
More on CNN: Japan's most incredible cup of coffee

subset: commoncrawl


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The UN has called an urgent meeting on rising global food prices in an attempt to head off a repeat of the 2008 crisis that sparked riots around the world.
Seven people, including two children, were killed in Mozambique this week during three days of protests triggered
by a rise in the cost of bread. There has also been anger over
increasing prices in Egypt, Serbia and Pakistan, where floods destroyed a
fifth of the country's crops.
The UN's announcement came after
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin extended the country's ban on
grain exports. The ban has been partly blamed for a 5% increase in
global food prices worldwide over the last two months, hitting their
highest level in two years. The price of wheat has had its biggest
monthly rise for 37 years. "In the past few weeks, global cereal markets
experienced a sudden surge in international wheat prices on concerns
over wheat shortages," the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
purpose of holding the meeting is for exporting and importing countries
to engage in constructive discussions on appropriate reactions to the
current market situation."
Agency spokesman Christopher Matthews
said the meeting of the inter-governmental committee on grains will be
held on 24 September, most likely in Rome. He added a large number of
member countries had expressed concern about a possible repeat of the
food crisis two years ago. But agency officials and other experts have stressed that conditions are different from 2008, when high oil prices and growing demand for biofuels pushed world food stocks to their lowest levels since 1982.
The tense atmosphere in developing countries, where food costs up to 70% of family income, erupted in Mozambique this week in three days of riots that left seven people dead, hundreds injured and millions of dollars of damage.
was the worst rioting I have ever seen in my life, people can really
turn very violent and lives are at risk, instead of a peaceful
demonstration," said Felizmina Fabia, a resident of the capital, Maputo.
As violence continued today, with police firing tear gas and rubber
bullets, opposition parties and human rights groups criticised the
government, saying it failed to gauge the anger that would be unleashed
by the 30% bread price increase and hikes in water and electricity
Alice Mabota, head of the Mozambican League of Human
Rights, told Portugal's Lusa news agency: "The government underestimated
the situation and can't understand or doesn't want to understand that
this is a protest against the higher cost of living."
government-imposed price rise took the cost of a bread roll - the staple
of Mozambicans - to 20 US cents (13p) in a country where the average
worker earns around $37 (£24) a month.
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Egyptians have also
protested over food prices in recent months, and analysts have warned
that riots could follow the jump in prices in Africa and the Middle
East. The trend comes after the global recession already put a squeeze on household budgets and intensified the risk of malnutrition.
Mauritania in west Africa, rice prices doubled over the first three
months of the year, according to the World Food Programme. Over the same
period, the price of corn rose 59% in Zimbabwe and 57% in Mozambique.
is suffering severe food shortages and price rises of up to 30%. Save
the Children reported last week that the number of severely malnourished
children visiting its clinics in Niger has gone up fourfold since the
start of the year.
In Russia itself, the price of some essential food products soared 30% in August. Officials have blamed panic buying.
Nicol, a regional spokeswoman for the World Food Programme (WFP),
warned that its operations could soon be affected. "Any food rise means
that donations to the WFP will buy less for the hungry and the poor,"
she said.
In 2007-08, severe food shortages and resulting price
rises led to worldwide demonstrations and violence. But analysts say
global grain supplies are more abundant this time after bumper harvests
in 2008 and 2009.
Daniel Sinnathamby [CORR], regional humanitarian
coordinator for Oxfam in southern Africa, said: "There is food around,
which was not the case in 2000 and 2003 when production failed. Most
countries in the region except Zimbabwe seemed to have had fairly good
"The question is how does it get around and into the
hands of poor people. Governments need to take a look at internal
distribution and see who is poor and marginalised."
In June a UN report
warned that food prices will rise by up to 40% over the next decade due
to growing biofuel production and demand from emerging markets.


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Item #1114
Annual. This dazzling ornamental, grown by Thomas Jefferson, has stunning lilac purple flowers and shiny, dark purple pods that stand out against the purple-green foliage. Twining stems quickly climb a fence or trellis, or will trail across the ground for an attractive ground cover. Can also be grown in containers. Contains toxins - not recommended for eating. See inside for more information.
Seedling Image
Full sun
Blooms summer
6' - 20' vine
Days to Emerge:
Seed Depth:
Seed Spacing:
When to sow outside: RECOMMENDED. 1 to 2 weeks after average last frost.
When to start inside: Not recommended. 6-8 weeks before average last frost. Difficult to transplant - use extreme care (such as the use of pulp pots).
Special germination instructions: To hasten germination, soak seeds in water for 12 - 24 hours before sowing.
Artist: Carolyn Crawford
Item #1114
3.00 grams
These are some simple techniques you can use to extend the life of your cut flowers from days, to over a week.
1) In the morning or early evening,…More…


text:
The waitress's lips were moving but nothing seemed to be coming out. Hundreds of voices swallowed her words as a D.J. pumped out a ticka ticka of dance beats. The happy hour-fueled din rose with it, amplified by tin ceilings and tiled walls.
"I've been getting migraines," the waitress shouted on a recent Thursday night, leaning in to be heard. She said that she woke up with her ears buzzing, and that her doctor had recently prescribed seizure medicine: "It decreases the amount of headaches you get."
The restaurant, Lavo in Midtown Manhattan, is not just loud but often dangerously so. On that night, the noise averaged 96 decibels over the course of an hour, as loud as a power mower, and a level to which, by government standards, workers should not be exposed for more than three and a half hours without protection for their hearing.
Lavo is far from alone. Across New York City, in restaurants and bars, but also in stores and gyms, loud noise has become a fact of life in the very places where people have traditionally sought respite from urban stress. The New York Times measured noise levels at 37 restaurants, bars, stores and gyms across the city and found levels that experts said bordered on dangerous at one-third of them.
At the Brooklyn Star in Williamsburg, the volume averaged 94 decibels over an hour and a half — as loud as an electric drill. At the Standard Hotel's Biergarten in the meatpacking district, where workers can log 10-hour shifts, the noise level averaged 96 decibels. No music was playing: the noise was generated by hundreds of voices bouncing off the metal skeleton of the High Line.
At Beaumarchais, a nightclub-like brasserie on West 13th Street, the music averaged 99 decibels over 20 minutes and reached 102 in its loudest 5 minutes. "It definitely takes a toll," a waiter said.
Workers at these places said the sound levels, which were recorded over periods as long as an hour and a half, were typical when they were working.
One spin class at a Crunch gym on the Upper West Side averaged 100 decibels over 40 minutes and hit 105 in its loudest 5. At a Crunch gym in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the noise level averaged 91 decibels. At the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Abercrombie & Fitch, which has designed many of its stores to resemble nightclubs, pulsating music hit 88 decibels, just shy of the limit at which workers are required to wear protection if exposed to that volume for eight hours.
By way of comparison, a C train hurtling downtown in Manhattan registered at 84 decibels; normal conversation is from 60 to 65 decibels.
Some research has shown that people drink more when music is loud; one study found that people chewed faster when tempos were sped up. Armed with this knowledge, some bars, retailers and restaurants are finely tuning sound systems, according to audio engineers and restaurant consultants.
"Think about places where they're trying to get you in and out as quickly as possible," said John Mayberry, an acoustical engineer in San Marino, Calif., who has railed against what he terms the "weaponization" of audio. "It's real obvious what their intentions are."
Some customers like the loudness. Younger people can withstand loud music longer, while older ones may run from it, helping proprietors maintain a youthful clientele and a fresh image.
But repeated exposure to loud noise often damages hearing and has been linked to higher levels of stress, hypertension and heart disease. Some restaurateurs said they were surprised that their decibel levels were too high, and a few said they were taking remedial measures.
Indeed, employees at noisy places are often the most affected, yet enforcement of existing noise regulations is almost nonexistent at places like these.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for workplace noise, generally investigates only when complaints are made; this appears to happen rarely, if ever, when it comes to restaurants, bars and gyms (the agency said it would take 138 years to inspect every workplace in the United States). In the 2011 fiscal year, all of the 14 noise violations issued by OSHA in New York City went to construction sites or factories; none went to restaurants, clubs or bars. The city has a noise code, but in the cases of restaurants and bars, it applies only to music and thumping that annoy the neighbors.
OSHA requires workers to wear hearing protection if they are exposed to 90-decibel noise for eight hours; at 85 decibels, employers must provide ear protection and conduct hearing tests.
Many hearing loss prevention experts say, however, that people should not be exposed to 100 decibels — the level at the spin class on the Upper West Side — for more than 15 minutes without hearing protection.
"We definitely consider those levels able to cause damage and likely to cause permanent damage with repeated exposure," said Laura Kauth, an audiologist and president of the National Hearing Conservation Association. "They're experiencing industrial level noise."
But at all the aforementioned places, there was nary an earplug in sight.
Hearing experts say ears never get used to loud noise. "Your ears don't get more tolerant," said Dr. Gordon Hughes, director for clinical trials at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. "Your psyche gets more tolerant."
The background noise is too loud, Dr. Hughes said, if a person's voice has to be raised to be heard by someone three feet away. Signs of too much exposure include not hearing well after the noise stops, a ringing sound and feeling as if the ears are under pressure or blocked. None of these symptoms necessarily mean the damage is permanent, though even if hearing seems restored to normal, damage may have been done. Yet hearing loss from noise typically takes months or even years to develop.
One waiter at Lavo, who, like several other workers, did not want his name published for fear of losing his job, said he knew his hearing could be in jeopardy. But, he reasoned, slight hearing loss was inevitable, since he had also played in a band. "When it happens, it happens," he shrugged. "Hopefully by that time they'll have better fixes for it."
Rick Neitzel, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, said full-time employees subjected to the volumes found at Lavo and Beaumarchais for a year or two could easily incur hearing loss. "Restaurants in the high 90s," Dr. Neitzel said, "something really should be done."
Tailoring the Clientele
At the Abercrombie flagship on a recent afternoon, a preteen girl plunged wide-eyed into the darkness as loud beats poured from dozens of speakers. Her mother and her grandmother trailed her. The grandmother, Nancy Hilem, 56, of Bucks County, Pa., said they had been in the shop 10 minutes but it felt as if it had been an hour because of the noise. Normally calm — she works at a funeral parlor — Ms. Hilem found herself jumpy.
"I can't concentrate," she said. "I can't focus on what I want to buy because of the noise. I want to say to her, 'Just find something, I'll buy anything, let's just get out!' "
According to Mr. Mayberry, that is exactly what Abercrombie wants: for loud music to keep out older people while teenagers venture in with their parents' credit cards. "You can control your audience," he said. "If you want young people in there, give them a specific type of sound."
Abercrombie is but one example. Hollister, another Abercrombie brand, and H&M also go after the young: in their SoHo stores, volume levels stretched into the high 80s and often the low 90s.
Brian McKinley, vice president for marketing at DMX, the sensory branding company that creates Abercrombie's playlists, said the goal was to create an "aspirational" environment. Throbbing music and dim lights make youngsters feel as if they are in a club and entice them to stay longer.
"There's a lot of studies out there showing that the more time spent in the store correlates to more items purchased," Mr. McKinley said. An Abercrombie spokesman said in a statement that the company's "unique A&F in-store experience is something that our customer wants."
Several Abercrombie employees admitted to frequent headaches. One said she hid out in the stock room to get away from the noise.
"We can't do anything about it," said a sales clerk, who said she often left work with a throbbing head and a throat scratched raw by shouting. "They want it to be like a club in here."
The Abercrombie spokesman said, "We comply with all applicable laws with respect to maximum sound levels, and we conduct regular readings and assessments to ensure such compliance and that the sound does not have a negative impact on our associates."
Wyatt Magnum, a music designer, slipped into the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square on a recent night and trotted down stairs to the restaurants. Tourists were digging into burgers, fajitas and fish and chips. A rock song was playing loudly — but not deafeningly so.
Mr. Magnum homed in on the tempo, and guessed it to be about 125 beats per minute — about the same as the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up."
It is the perfect tempo, Mr. Magnum noted, for turning tables.
Mr. Magnum designs music programs for restaurants, bars and hotels, and often programs them to increase in tempo and volume as the day goes on, and to peak at cocktail hour, when the profit margins are largest. He counts luxury hotels and chain restaurants among his clients, though he did not want their names published, and sells an Encyclopedia of Beats-Per-Minute to help proprietors perfect tempos.
"It gets louder and faster and causes people to eat and leave," he said.
He learned the art of molding crowd behavior as a D.J., changing songs to rotate people off dance floors and toward the bar. As more club owners enter the restaurant business, he said, they have imported their penchant for loud music — and their savvy about its effects.
"Are we manipulating you? Of course we are," said Jon Taffer, a restaurant and night life consultant and the host of the reality show "Bar Rescue."
"My job," he said, "is to put my hand as deeply in your pocket as I can for as long as you like it. It's a manipulative business."
Not everyone buys it. Ken Friedman, majority owner of the Spotted Pig, the Breslin and the John Dory Oyster Bar, all busy Manhattan restaurants, said calculating beats per minute to speed up turnover sounded like "mumbo jumbo." "I don't think any great restaurants here do that," he said.
But Mr. Magnum said the Hard Rock Cafe had the practice down to a science, ever since its founders realized that by playing loud, fast music, patrons talked less, consumed more and left quickly, a technique documented in the International Directory of Company Histories. While not denying this tactic, Hard Rock said its current approach was "vastly different," with on-site video and guests helping to select the music.
There is research supporting Mr. Magnum's theory. In 1985, a study by Fairfield University in Connecticut reported that people ate faster when background music was sped up, from 3.83 to 4.4 bites per minute. Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, reported in the October 2008 edition of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research that higher volumes led beer drinkers in a bar to imbibe more. When the bar's music was 72 decibels, people ordered an average of 2.6 drinks and took 14.5 minutes to finish one. But when the volume was turned up to 88 decibels, customers ordered an average of 3.4 drinks and took 11.5 minutes to finish each one.
Curt Gathje, a lead editor at Zagat who has noticed New York restaurants' getting markedly louder in the last decade, said, "There's a new generation that instead of going to nightclubs they go to restaurants, and nightclubs have sort of bled into restaurants."
"People don't want to go to a place that seems dead," he added. "Younger people feel they want some action."
Recent changes in restaurant design have also increased sound levels. The trend of making restaurants look like brasseries and bars to resemble speakeasies has bred an abundance of hard surfaces that can reflect and amplify sound: ceramic tiles, concrete floors and tin ceilings. This despite the fact that one of the biggest customer complaints about restaurants, according to Zagat, is noise. Yet those who like noisy places said they were energizing and gave them a sense that they were where it's at.
Maria Vasquez, 22, a design student who spends time at Lavo — home to the 96 decibel levels and migraine-afflicted waitress — said she found the cacophony there fun. Tiffany Trifilio, 26, a fashion analyst who frequents the Standard Hotel's Biergarten, said the din made her feel part of the crowd. And Katherine Gold, 35, who often stays at home with her baby, reveled in Lavo's noise one recent night. "I spend my days in my apartment and at Central Park," she said. "I have enough quiet."
Patrons of spin classes also said the din was part of the draw. The pounding music helped them forget they were exercising, they said, and made them feel they were reliving the club days of younger years.
Yet an hour in a noisy spin class followed by a few hours in a very loud bar could easily put people over their recommended daily noise dose. Especially in New York, where people drown out yowling sirens and screeching subways by cranking up MP3 players, ears often do not get the break they need.
Muffling the Din
Representatives and owners of several New York City establishments where sound topped 90 decibels said they had not known that they might have been breaching federal guidelines.
A spokeswoman for the Standard, where the Biergarten's average decibel levels hovered in the mid-90s, said that the sound level varied by time of day, and that the owners did not know they might be breaking federal laws. "We will look into this independently," she said in a statement, "and center our efforts on this matter and around our staff's well-being, which is of utmost importance to us."
Bill Reed, one of the owners of the Brooklyn Star, said he had no idea that the restaurant's volume might be nearing risky levels. The restaurant would install insulating foam under the tables, he said, and possibly hang sound absorption boxes, too.
Bill Bonbrest, chief operating officer for the TAO Group, which owns Lavo, said no patron or employee had ever complained about the noise. Mr. Bonbrest said he did not know that Lavo might be violating a noise standard, and a few weeks later, he said the company had hired a professional to measure the sound. A hearing conservation program would be put in place, he said, which would include providing hearing protection and employee audio tests.
And Keith McNally, owner of several brasserielike restaurants including Schiller's Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side, which registered 91 decibels, said that the D.J. never played for more than four hours a night, and that volume was kept down before 8:30 p.m. and after 3 a.m. He also said employees were allowed to wear earplugs.
After bringing in an engineer to measure sound, the owners of Catch, a restaurant in the meatpacking district, installed 1,800 square feet of sound panels, noticeably muffling the sound. In the fall, the chef and restaurateur Andrew Carmellini installed $10,000 worth of soundproofing at the Dutch in SoHo: his customers' biggest complaint, he said in a Twitter post, had been noise. And Alex Stupak, the chef and owner of the Empellon taquerias in the East Village and the West Village, spent close to $20,000 soundproofing his restaurants after complaints about the din. "I learned a new word reading the reviews — cacophonous," he said. "You couldn't hear someone across the table."
As for the loud spin classes, Donna Cyrus, senior vice president for programming at Crunch, said that individual instructors set the volume levels, and that each sound system had limits to ensure volumes were safe. Instructors, she added, were not required to wear earplugs.
'A Lifetime Accumulation'
Up to 30 percent of workers exposed to noise levels of 90 decibels or more over their working lifetimes can expect hearing loss, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Few waiters or gym instructors are likely to stay in their jobs that long. But noise exposure is like sun exposure. Different people have different susceptibilities, and too much of it gradually wears on the body until, for some, irrevocable damage is done.
"It's a lifetime accumulation that never goes away," Dr. Hughes of the deafness institute said. "When you have damage, it's permanent."
Some workers admitted that they were pained by the volume. Others said they knew they were being subjected to dangerously loud levels but shrugged off the risk.
Reign Hudson, who teaches spin classes where the volume can top 100 decibels, said she was used to the loudness. Even after learning the levels were potentially dangerous to her hearing, she was unfazed. "It really irritates me if the music is too low," she said. "Usually I'll tell people if you don't like loud music, don't sit near the speaker."
A bartender who has worked at Lavo for a year and a half said she thought her hearing was suffering a little, but she was staying in the job because the money was good. Jeffrey Sullivan, 34, a bartender at the Standard Hotel's Biergarten, said he was surprised that the decibel levels there were so high. He has worked, however, in construction, played bass guitar in a band and surfed, all of which can be hard on the ears. He found the Standard, by contrast, soothing. "It's nothing really piercing in here; it's all loud voices," he said. "It's kind of gentle on the ears."
Yet Nadene Grey, who used to tend bar at the Standard's beer garden, said she had frequently been exhausted at the end of her shift. After learning of the noise measurements there, she said: "It really wears on you. I'm sure it's the physical stress of not just making all those drinks, but the physical stress of the noise."
Hearing loss from chronic exposure to noise starts with the loss of hearing high-frequency sounds, and the damage can go undetected for years, which is what happened to Ian Carson, a longtime bartender.
One weeknight, Mr. Carson assumed his regular spot behind the bar at Campagnola, an Italian restaurant that is an institution of sorts on the Upper East Side. A waiter came up, inhaled deeply and bellowed, "Bloody mary and a cosmopolitan." Mr. Carson reflexively cupped his ear. "What?" he asked, tilting his head.
"Bloody mary and a cosmopolitan!" the waiter hollered back.
Mr. Carson, 66, began losing his hearing 20 years ago. Serving in the Army did not help. Neither did his stint working in discos, nor nearly three decades of working at Campagnola, which has a reputation for getting noisy, though on that particular night it was relatively quiet, averaging 82 decibels.
Sometimes Mr. Carson makes the wrong drinks. A lot of the time he just reads lips and guesses.
And when the background noise picks up, he said, "my ears are only good for hanging sunglasses."


text:
psiloiordinary wrote:Jon is simply pointing out that the arguments are arguments that creationist arguments.
Pretty much word for word, which is quite scary - it seems that certain atheists are happy to interpret Scripture in manner that satisfies their own prejudiced views of another group of people and worse in manner that runs counter to "rational" and "logical" textural analysis. Perhaps I should ask whether they think the Protocols of the Elders of Zion should be read literally?


text:
2019 February 4 S1 & S6
2019 February 4 S1 & S6
Pick-Up and Delivery Options:
Prices above reflect your choice of delivery or pick-up.
Orders for plain pages can be delivered directly to you. If you prefer your page finished as a plaque or framed print ready-to-hang, the order can be delivered within the Hamilton/Burlington area only.
Shipping charges are available at check-out.
Trimming: We do not offer trimming of advertisements or extraneous articles. If you require special treatment for your page, please order the page as a pdf or a plain print and arrange to have it trimmed and finished to your specifications. Note: Advertisements on a newspaper page add historical context for your keepsake. In 10 or 20 years, the advertisement(s) will add interest to your framed or mounted print.
Unframed pages may be ordered and picked up at:
The Hamilton Spectator
44 Frid Street
Plaqued and framed pages may be picked up at:
Sealed Art
89 Gage Ave South
Hamilton, Ontario
Tel: 905 549 1458


text:
This module provides various helpful utilities for dealing with Debian files and programs.
Written by John Goerzen, firstname.lastname@example.com
|Control or Similar File Utilities
|The type representing the contents of a Debian control file, or any control-like file (such as the output from apt-cache show, etc.)
|Version Number Utilities
|Compare the versions of two packages.
|Produced by Haddock version 2.6.0


text:
Marissa Mayer, who is Google Employee No. 20, is the rare executive who has become a celebrity.
Mountain View, Calif.
IN late December, Marissa Mayer was vacationing in Africa when her boss, Jonathan Rosenberg, e-mailed her asking if she was leaving Google.
It wasn't a routine query. As the gatekeeper of Google's home page, and one of the company's most ubiquitous and closely watched public faces, Ms. Mayer controls the look, feel and functionality of the Internet's most heavily trafficked search engine. Rumors of her possible departure had lit up the blogosphere and offices across Silicon Valley.
None of it, she assured Mr. Rosenberg, was true. And Ms. Mayer, who is Google Employee No. 20 and the company's first female engineer, still says she isn't leaving; she says she has gone out of her way to inform Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as the chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, that she is staying put.
"It could not be further from the truth," she says of gossip about her departure. "It made me realize that people don't understand me."
People may not understand Ms. Mayer, but as the "it girl" at one of the world's hottest companies she is very hard to ignore. A popular guest on TV news programs and talk shows, a Google-booster often quoted in print, and a rapid-fire presence on San Francisco's social scene, she is the rare executive who has become — at least in the sometimes cloistered world of computer geeks — a celebrity.
As such, she has invited attention — and in some cases, derision — in the last year for such actions as creating spreadsheets to find the perfect cupcake recipe, attending lavish ballet, art and fashion galas, paying $60,000 at a charity auction to have lunch with Oscar de la Renta, and hosting breezy, dying-to-get-invited-to parties at her $5 million penthouse atop the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco.
Her live-out-loud lifestyle seems so un-Silicon Valley, but at the same time, perfectly in tune with what Google is all about.
"I refuse to be stereotyped," she says. "I think it's very comforting for people to put me in a box. 'Oh, she's a fluffy girlie girl who likes clothes and cupcakes. Oh, but wait, she is spending her weekends doing hardware electronics.' "
Yet, despite whatever frivolity might attach itself to her, Ms. Mayer, 33, plays a pivotal, serious role at Google. Almost every new feature or design, from the wording on a Google page to the color of a Google toolbar, must pass muster with her or legions of Google users will never see it. She is one of the few Googlers with unfettered access to and influence over Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, and Valley wags wonder whether Google's familiar white home page will even look the same if she leaves the company.
"Knowing Marissa, if she were considering leaving Google, she'd do it in an orderly way," says Mr. Rosenberg, who is Google's senior vice president for product management.
Others have a different view. Matt Rabinowitz, a close friend who has known Ms. Mayer since their days on the Stanford debate team in the early 1990s, says he thinks she might move on.
"Her quirkiness aligned beautifully with this moment in history when Google took over the Internet," he says. "If she keeps growing at Google, she will stay there. There is nothing else like it now. She is in a position of leverage."
"That said," he adds, "I don't think she will."
WHEN Ms. Mayer joined Google after graduating with a master's degree in computer science from Stanford in 1999, the company was a shoestring start-up where nobody expected to get rich quick, let alone become billionaires.
She started out writing code and overseeing small teams of engineers, carving out a niche for herself by developing and designing Google's search offerings.
An engineer at heart, she also had something that many of her peers did not during Google's early days: a keen sense of style and design. She adored bold blocks of color against a white background, much like the Marimekko prints that once hung in her childhood home in Wausau, Wis. Her San Francisco penthouse has a similar, but more expensive, aesthetic. It is painted in neutral shades and decorated with fanciful, multihued glass artwork by Dale Chihuly.
Google's home page — spartan white embroidered with splashes of blue, red, yellow and green — mirrors her Wausau home and her penthouse.
"It used to be people would come over to my apartment and say, 'Does your apartment look like Google or does Google look like your apartment?' " she says with a staccato laugh that has earned a following of its own in Silicon Valley. "I can't articulate it anymore. I really love color. I'm not very knick-knacky or cluttery. My place has very clean, simple lines. There are some elements of fun and whimsy. That has always appealed to me."
As vice president for search products and user experience, Ms. Mayer has wedded her personal tastes with an ability to manage her bosses, including a capacity to easily communicate and champion ideas with Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, both of whom are also friends.
Since joining Google, she has introduced more than 100 products and features, many of which have thrived: Google News, Gmail and Image Search, for example. Others, like Orkut, have had a harder time finding an audience in the United States.
"She is a catalyst for winning ideas," Mr. Rosenberg says. "Marissa has been through the evolution of the Google playbook. She is part author. That is very important because she understands the design aesthetic of Google."
In meetings with subordinates, Ms. Mayer comes across as a zealous copy editor or meticulous art teacher correcting first-semester students. With so many new recruits, she reasons, someone has to teach them how Google does things.
On a recent morning, a handful of program managers and other executives huddled around a long table in Building 43 on the Google campus here in Mountain View to review changes to products in development. Ms. Mayer was running late. The first team to present was ready, a Web page outlining their offering projected onto a large white wall.
"You are going to get comments from Marissa on that gray text," a female colleague warns one of the waiting managers. "Be prepared for that."
"I think the gray is unimportant," he replies. "It looks fine."
"I know," the colleague says. "But you will get comments."
Ms. Mayer enters the room a few minutes into the manager's presentation and quickly interrupts him. "That gray-on-gray text is hard to read," she says. "What are we going to do about that?"
"We can change it," the manager concedes.
During a subsequent presentation, she is unimpressed by possible language for a Google Health page that would allow users to share medical information.
"I don't like the words 'invite' and 'view,' " she says. "Those two words are recreational. It feels too informal and lighthearted."
"We used the word 'invite' because it's an action word, so users know they have to do something," a young product manager responds.
Ms. Mayer rolls her eyes. "It's not a party," she says.
She ends up giving the same or similar guidelines to managers for various Google features and products in other presentations that day. The guidelines are devised, she said, from myriad internal experiments to gauge users' preferences. Avoid first- and second-person pronouns. Always write "Google" instead of "we." If you want to make the design on the page simpler, take away one of these: a type of font, a color or an image. Don't switch tenses. And steer clear of italics because they are hard to read on a computer screen.
SHE sighs when asked if she is bored with giving the same directions over and over. Clearly, that question has been on her mind. She and a team of designers are creating a style guide, she says, so she can quit repeating herself.
"The moment I don't say something about the gray, we have a product that is inconsistent," she says. "Once I let up, then something gets by. If we use the word 'we,' then users think we are picking their words for them. You have to try and make words less human and more a piece of the machinery."
Besides, there's a measure of protection for her in guidelines and decisions based on research, not on subjective whims. "Then it doesn't become, 'Who does Marissa like better?' " she says.
Despite such good intentions, Ms. Mayer sometimes appears to allow subjectivity — albeit temporarily — to reign as she helps steer Google along. How she navigates that divide surfaced during a recent kerfuffle over what shade of blue to use for the toolbar on Google pages.
A designer, Jamie Divine, had picked out a blue that everyone on his team liked. But a product manager tested a different color with users and found they were more likely to click on the toolbar if it was painted a greener shade.
As trivial as color choices might seem, clicks are a key part of Google's revenue stream, and anything that enhances clicks means more money. Mr. Divine's team resisted the greener hue, so Ms. Mayer split the difference by choosing a shade halfway between those of the two camps.
Her decision was diplomatic, but it also amounted to relying on her gut rather than research. Since then, she said, she has asked her team to test the 41 gradations between the competing blues to see which ones consumers might prefer.
More often than not, however, Ms. Mayer says she relies on charts, graphs and quantitative analysis as a foundation for a decision, particularly when it comes to evaluating people.
At a recent personnel meeting, she homes in on grade-point averages and SAT scores to narrow a list of candidates, many having graduated from Ivy League schools, whom she wanted to meet as part of a program to foster in-house talent. In essence, math is used to solve a human problem: How do you predict whether an employee has the potential for success?
A scrum of executives sit around a table, laptops in front of them, as they sort through résumés, college transcripts and quarterly reviews. The conversation is unemotional, at times a little brutal.
One candidate got a C in macroeconomics. "That's troubling to me," Ms. Mayer says. "Good students are good at all things."
Another candidate looked promising with a quarterly rating from a supervisor of 3.5, out of 4, which meant she had exceeded her manager's expectations. Ms. Mayer is suspicious, however, because her rating hasn't changed in several quarters.
"She is looking for a way out," Ms. Mayer says.
There are plenty of people for Ms. Mayer to keep her eye on. She oversees 200 product managers who in turn supervise 3,000 engineers, or more than 10 percent of Google's work force. Given her longstanding relationship with Google's founders and Mr. Schmidt, she has become something of a sounding board for other managers, a number of whom routinely gravitate to her office.
At the end of a recent day, she met with two senior executives, Joe Kraus and Sundar Pichai, to discuss the company's social networking projects. Many executives at Google believe that social networking is important to its future. Ms. Mayer was meeting with Mr. Kraus and Mr. Pichai to help them prepare for a meeting the next day with Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page to discuss how the company could leverage information-sharing among Google's many services.
"It's important you pregame Eric or it will be a disaster," Mr. Pichai tells Ms. Mayer about the pending meeting, asking her to seek Mr. Schmidt's support on their behalf.
"I know, I know," she responds. "I will call him or write an e-mail. I want them to see how complicated this will be."
Ms. Mayer e-mails Mr. Schmidt that evening. At the meeting the next day, Mr. Pichai's and Mr. Kraus's ideas are approved.
"Marissa is very good at driving the right conversation," Mr. Pichai says. "If she hadn't done that it would have been a train wreck for us."
Still, students of Google's culture wonder whether Ms. Mayer and her management style would flourish outside the insulated world where her tenacity and curiosity mirror the company itself. "She clearly has what it takes to be a great manager at Google, but I don't know if that translates into being a great manager at Hasbro," said John Battelle, author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture."
Any transition, too, could be particularly challenging, as the reputations of Ms. Mayer and others who were hired early on are so closely intertwined with the company. "You get comfortable being wealthy, getting attention, living in the bubble," Mr. Battelle said. "It will be interesting to watch at which point they declare 'who am I?' by their definition, not Google's."
PICKING at a salad in a conference room at Google's headquarters here, Ms. Mayer says she is vexed by how some perceive her. "I am not a girl about town," she says. "It isn't how I project myself. It is how other people choose to project me."
Perhaps. But it also happens to be true that she enjoys talking about herself. Last summer, in an interview with Yelp, a Web site that tracks restaurants and other local services, she gushed over her favorite dry cleaner and shoe repair shop, and where to find the best pineapple malts in Palo Alto (the Palo Alto Creamery).
She told Yelp that she didn't like odd numbers, had researched how to get the best deal on a San Francisco hotel room using Priceline, and noted that her gay friends demanded invitations to her women-only "Sex and the City" movie screening and birthday party.
Despite her complaints, Ms. Mayer also seems relatively carefree about her privacy. While photographs of her and her fiancé, Zachary Bogue, a private-equity executive, are instant Internet fodder, she says she rarely turns down requests for her picture from Drew Altizer, a photographer she knows and often sees on the party circuit. "Drew is trying to pay me a compliment," she says.
Whatever Ms. Mayer chooses to reveal about herself publicly, Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology and a close friend, says that none of it is self-serving.
"It is not her job in talking to Yelp to get people to know her," he says. "Marissa doesn't care about the chattering classes. She likes shopping, fashion. And she is not going to stop just because people don't like that."
Besides, Ms. Mayer says, there are some things that she hasn't previously revealed about herself and that the media have overlooked. Like her self-described athletic prowess.
"It hasn't shown up anywhere that I am really physically active," she says. "I ran the San Francisco half marathon this year. I did the Portland marathon. I went skiing just yesterday. I'm going to do the Birkebeiner, which is North America's longest cross-country ski race. That just shows you how much there are gaps."


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A Texas school district's ban of Christian "run-through" banners at football games angers students. KBMT's Augustin Garfias reports.
A group of Texas high school cheerleaders is at the center of a spat over religious speech after the school district told them they had to stop using Christian-themed banners at school football games.
The large signs, carried onto the field at Kountze High School, included messages such as "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me" and "But thanks be to God which gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," according to a report by NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
Kevin Weldon, superintendent of the Kountze school district, about 85 miles northeast of Houston, informed the cheerleaders' parents Tuesday that the religious banners would not be allowed, the station reported.
Weldon's decision set off a tempest in the community of about 2,100, but he told the Houston Chronicle that it was based on 2001 Supreme Court decision that keeps religion out of public schools.
"The decision I made is not my personal opinion," Weldon told the Chronicle earlier this week. "I'm a Christian. This puts me between a rock and a hard place."
Weldon reportedly made the decision after receiving a letter of complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that advocates separation of church and state, the Christian Post reported.
Beaumont Enterprise via AP
Kountze High School cheerleaders and other children work on a large sign Wednesday in Kountze, Texas.
But the cheerleaders scored a partial victory on Thursday, when a judge granted a temporary restraining order on enforcement of the ban after parents of the cheerleaders filed a discrimination suit earlier in the week, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Under the injunction, the cheerleaders will be allowed to use the Biblical banners at games at least until an Oct. 4 hearing.
The nonprofit Liberty Institute, which is representing the cheerleaders' parents, argues that it is unconstitutional to censor religious speech in this manner, the Post said.
The Texas Association of School Boards would not discuss its confidential conversations with Weldon, who had sought the organization's advice prior to banning the religious banners, but issued a statement on the case:
"The federal court guidance... draws a distinction between private student speech, including written messages, which enjoys free speech protection under the First Amendment, and school-sponsored speech, which must conform to the Establishment Clause by not endorsing, coercing, or favoring religion," Joy Baskin, the association's director of legal services, said in the statement.
"Whether the display of a religious message by cheerleaders on the field at a high school football game constituted private or school-sponsored speech depends on a number of factors which must be weighed by the district, its counsel, and in this instance, the judge considering the case," Baskin said.
Cheerleader Macy Matthews, 15, argued that no school money was used and the signs weren't made on school property, so they should be allowed. She said she didn't anticipate the ban.
"It was upsetting because it's what motivated the boys each week," Matthews told the Chronicle. "I was shocked, really. I didn't understand why it would be a problem."
A Facebook page promoting the cheerleaders' cause had garnered more than 39,000 members by Friday.
More content from NBCNews.com:
- For first time, gay marriage may win statewide vote
- From sports shoes to bomb shields: the odd detour of a key U.S. military material
- Pennsylvania couple charged with selling neighbor's dog on Craigslist
- Video: Cops, 'yarn bombers' team up to protect art
- Empty chair 'lynchings': Anti-Obama protests gone too far?
Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook


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Apple iPhone 5 full review
The iPhone 5 is more than just Apple's latest high-end smartphone. In a world of huge slabs of phone the iPhone's thin profile makes it different to the Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, BlackBerry Z10, Nokia Lumia 925 and the rest of the high-end phone lineup. For more comparisons see Group test: what's the best smartphone?; iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4S comparison review and Samsung Galaxy S3 vs Apple iPhone 5 comparison review.
In our iPhone 5 review we test the iPhone 5 performance, look at iPhone 5 build and design, and check out the iPhone 5 cameras. We also check out new iPhone 5 features and the iPhone 5's software.
iPhone 5 review: Performance
Confirmed by our lab tests, everything about the iPhone 5's performance has been augmented from its predecessor the iPhone 4S, in this contrarily smaller mobile phone handset.
It's not just a bit faster – it's 100 percent or more quicker in processor speed. Similarly in the graphics room, gamesters or anyone that needs grease-lightning visuals will be beaming from ear to ear at the step-change in sheer speed.
iPhone 5 review: A6 Processor
We can't honestly say that on any day we picked up an iPhone 4 or even 4S and thought 'this is a great phone – but I just wish it could be a little bit faster'. Yet the new-found double-speed action does end up bringing you a device that's really just more moreish to use.
Apple is playing coy in the numbers game for the new A6 chip, although technicians who have dissected the phone are pointing to a much bigger breakthrough than may be obvious.
The A6 appears to be Apple's own in-house chip design, still using the ARM architecture but not as prèt-a-porter as most smartphone makers typically specify. It's still a dual-core processor, like that in the 4S, but memory is double the iPhone 4S' at 1GB.
Crucially, the architecture may be more like the as-yet unreleased ARM Cortex-A15 reference design rather than Cortex-A9 that has been staking out the ground for leading smartphone designs. The graphics engine now appears to be a tri-core processor too.
Clocked at 1.3GHz, the A6 chip may appear old-hat against the 1.4GHz quad-cores required for Android phones to feel slick. But in synthetic benchmarks, it was the fastest mobile chip you could purchase, when the iPhone 5 launched. It remains in the highest echelon alongside the Samsung Galaxy phones, the HTC One and the Sony Xperia Z.
iPhone 5 review: Benchmark Results
Apple says the new A6 processor is up to twice as fast as the A5 in the iPhone 4S. Our benchmarks of processor and memory performance with Geekbench 2 suggested that Apple was being economical with the truth – by understating the staggering increase in speed.
The iPhone 5 scored 1650 points in Geekbench 2, compared to the 4S' score of 632. That's over 2.6 times faster.
When it came to gaming performance, the iPhone 5 ran the Egypt HD test within the GLBenchmark 2.5 test at 38fps, which is exactly twice the framerate of the 4S' which scored 19fps.
Browsing the web was super speedy. When tested for JavaScript rendering speed, we found the iPhone 5 to again be around twice as fast – scoring 903ms in the SunSpider test, against 1891ms for an iPhone 4S; both using iOS 6.
In general use, the iPhone 5 feels incredibly snappy, opening apps and loading websites quicker than ever before. We haven't tried EE's new LTE service yet, but even web browsing over 3G feels appreciably faster.
And in our tests, it was. Not just JavaScript, but 3G cellular is much quicker – almost twice the speed.
We took a series of network speed tests over a short time period from the same location, using the same Three nano-SIM card. The iPhone 4S averaged 7.92 Mbps download, and 2.34 Mbps upload from our office location in London. Peak speed recorded in any single run was 8.78 Mbps.
The iPhone 5 is helped along by not just a faster processor but a more modern RF chipset for cellular data. It averaged 13.3 Mbps download and 2.52 Mbps upload. Peak speed hit a giddy 16.91 Mbps.
We have been seeing in excess of two days' battery life, suggesting that all the extra power is not having a major effect on runtime.
iPhone 5 review: Features
The stand-out outward attribute of the iPhone 5 is its larger screen. Not a huge expanse of space in both directions as Google's hardware friends have uniformly decided is the way to sway tech-loving buyers – notably the Samsung Galaxy S3 with its extravagant 4.8in display. The iPhone 5 raises its screen estate by simply extending the screen's height by 14mm, keeping the width identical.
The new 640 x 1136-pixel display is still IPS, only even richer in colour saturation while still looking more natural than the slightly cloying OLED alternatives. And importantly the Apple iPhone 5's screen still has the pixel-hiding Retina resolution of 326ppi.
Operating the iPhone 5 with its longer screen is a doddle. Unlike the semi-tablet sized phones with 4.5in or larger screens, you really can reach the whole screen to operate it easily still with just one hand. Pick up an iPhone 5 though, and you'll notice a new featherweight quality. Down at 115g against the 4S' 141g, it feels wafer-like, almost too light in fact. Beautifully balanced, its mass is evenly distributed to offset any bias toward top or bottom.
The build quality has been described as jewel-like with reason. Swiss watch is another inescapable analogy, echoed from Apple's sound bite at the iPhone 5's launch.
The move to aluminium construction may be a step in the right direction though; and not just by helping to lose headline grams from the all-up weight. It provides a more handleable object for the fingertips. Hardened glass front and back didn't just lend the iPhone 4 chic obsidian bling – it could make the handset a slippery slab. The iPhone 5 is now built around an anodised aluminium backplate that allows a tad more purchase in the hand. Durability may suffer a little though. In the case of the black model especially, daily use is likely to create small nicks in the anodised coating, so to keep the iPhone 5 pristine a case is as useful as ever.
In white, the iPhone 5 looks less juvenile than the 4S blanc; diamond-polished bevelled edges and a satin aluminium back make it much more unisex now. In black, it's pure stealth bomber, mixing brushed metal slate-anodised back with mirror polished front bevels and gleaming black glass front.
This tech user is not so convinced by the drive for thin though. Given the still all-too short runtime of today's handsets – and that includes the iPhone, despite it out-lasting every average fizzling Android – we would rather keep with something like 9.5mm and 141g if it meant using the space and weight budget wisely, with a battery to comfortably last three rather than two days.
A phone as light as the iPhone 5 also seems to leave no sensation of its presence in the pocket. It's a a matter of taste whether you like this idea or prefer to have some subtle clue that the phone is still there... or not. The iPhone 5 carries the flag for the newly born iOS 6 operating system, and this gently tweaked system creates continuity from the user experience of previous iPhones. Alongside the metal-banded frame, the now-familar interface is a key point of reference for the mainstream audience, copied the world over with varying degrees of accuracy and resulting litigation.
iPhone 5 review: Video
NEXT PAGE: iPhone 5 cameras, Lightning connector, new SIM and Apple Maps >>
- >> Read on…
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Could some one let me know the regular expression to match wild card entries in an Ip address.
Ex:I need to match * also in any of the octets like *.*.*.* or *.121.1.1 or 12.*.*.* or 12.12.*.* or 12.12.12.* etc
The following regex which iam using valides for 0-255 check only for each octet in the Ipaddress.I need to match above pattern too.
+ "([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\."
+ "([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\."
+ "([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])$
Any immediate help reg this is highly appreciated.


text:
NewGRF List
From OpenTTD
NewGRF List
This is an incomprehensive list of NewGRF sets for OpenTTD. The most up to date list can always be obtained from the online content. When adding a new set, please be careful not to break the table format.
Other sources to find NewGRFs:
- Bananas - The content download server.
- GRFCrawler - A database of NewGRFs, which allows you to find NewGRFs by Categories.
- TTForums.net - Particularly the Graphics Releases and Graphics Development forums. This is the center of discussion of most NewGRF development.
- DevZone - Site hosting many projects around OpenTTD. Downloads from its bundles server.
- Simuscape - The latest addition to the TTDLX-family, especially dedicated to the INFRA and INFRA Tycoon sets. Registration required to post and download, step-by-step guide available.


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Dr. Grumpy: "You mean inflamed turbinates?"
Mrs. Snot: "Yeah, whatever."
A Blog detailing the insanity of my medical practice and the stupidity of everyday life.
That reminds me of "fireballs in my Eucharist" (fibroids in my uterus)!
...and another "Family Circus" cartoon is created.
Perhaps she does have tornadoes in her nose... Did you ask her to blow her nose and see if swirling winds of death came spewing out? Hmm? Well Didja? Bet ya'd feel pretty bad when those tornadoes came out and destroyed everything around you...
Either way, gotta love what the doctor SAYS versus what the patient HEARS... can often provide a good laugh.
This is exactly why I think doctors should write down their dx! But then I think about doctors' handwriting and wonder if it would do any good...
At least she didn't have inflamed tomatoes in her nose
Bored Mum - it's a Dr. Grumpy shopping trip!
I did this to my son's allergist's nurse but I warned her up front. She had asked what we were using for the eczema patches on his legs and I told her this wasn't the name of it but I always saw the name as acetone. She knew what I meant right away.
It's really Alclometasone - had to go grab the tube to spell it out. Sort of looks like acetone, right?
Agree with Frank up there.
How WILL you feel if tornadoes DO come out his nose..?? Huh? Huh?
Little Calf Creamery. Delicious homemade ice cream and food in Thousand Oaks!