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Explosive Reports
by Jurriaan Maessen
Scientific publication envisions "a strategic multilateral implementation (of planetary scale geoengineering) through an exclusive 'club' that increases benefits to members at the expense of those excluded."
In a recent publication published by Environmental Research Letters, three scientists have published the results of a computer simulation "game", probing several scenario's on how to best organize a "unilateral implementation scheme" of global geoengineering.
"(…) a sufficiently powerful international coalition might be able to deploy solar geoengineering. Here, we show that regional differences in climate outcomes create strategic incentives to form coalitions that are as small as possible, while still powerful enough to deploy solar geoengineering."
Defining geoengineering as "intentionally reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth's surface through the use of stratospheric aerosols", the authors used climate models (such as the ones used by the IPCC) as the basis for their "gaming" activities- which they describe as "global thermostat setting game":
" The characteristics of coalitions to geoengineer climate are modeled using a 'global thermostat setting game' based on climate model results. Coalition members have incentives to exclude non-members that would prevent implementation of solar geoengineering at a level that is optimal for the existing coalition.", authors Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira point out.
Under "rules and assumptions" the authors explain that "the game takes place in two stages."
"During the first stage players choose their memberships and the winning coalition is formed. In the second stage, the winning coalition acts as a single actor to maximize the benefits of geoengineering to all coalition members. Players outside the coalition do not make decisions in this second stage."
From the assertion that man made climate change will have different results from region to region, the scientists involved in this modeling business factored these differences into their "global thermostat setting game", as a result of which researched different international coalitions that would be most likely to succeed in starting and maintaining a global geoengineering effort:
"(…) If a decision were made somehow to move ahead with the deployment of an intentionally introduced stratospheric aerosol layer, some regions might prefer a cooling or warming relative to the current climate, creating complicated problems in setting the global thermostat. In addition, several modeling studies have demonstrated that if solar geoengineering is used to compensate for rising greenhouse-gas concentrations and is then stopped abruptly, very rapid warming can occur. Thus, if solar geoengineering is ever implemented, stopping suddenly poses a threat."
From this assertion follows a draconian consequence, namely that only a sustained geongineering effort of the earth's atmosphere on the part of an international coalition can do the job. The premise of the paper, supported by their computer simulations, is that an "exclusive club" of nations taking the rein, would be the best way to sustain such a spraying campaign for a sufficient period of time:
"a strategic multilateral implementation through an exclusive 'club' that increases benefits to members at the expense of those excluded. If the option of a global coalition is accounted for in formulating a system of intracoalitional transfers, the game presented here always produces a stable and powerful coalition in which all coalition members benefit from excluding other parties."
The rational behind this seemingly contradictory statement reads as follows:
"Under an exclusive coalitions model of international agreements to geoengineer, if one coalition breaks down, another is ready and eager to take its place. As the potential harm from termination grows (i.e., as the amount of greenhouse-gas forcings being compensated for with geoengineering increases), so too do the incentives to avoid this termination among all potential coalitions."
That the geoengineering efforts by this exclusive club are a thing of the long haul is evident from the authors' assertion that "if the coalition so decides, solar geoengineering can be implemented starting in 2015 and negotiations among club members only will determine the setting of the global thermostat for the next ten years. In each subsequent decade, negotiations begin anew, and determine a new thermostat setting for the next ten years."
After the publication lists the outcomes of their gaming models, they conclude by stating that the "exclusive club" scenario, as opposed to an inclusive one, turns out to be the desired way to move forward:
"(…) the results of our game simulations show the maximum achievable benefits regions can gain by acting strategically to form exclusive clubs; this necessarily imposes damages on non-members relative to their preferences".
The outcomes of this publication are inherently draconian, especially if we take into account the fact that the World Economic Forum in its latest Global Risks report warned that a "rogue nation" or individual could "hijack" global climate change for nefarious purposes. The report mentions several possible scenario's, or X-factors, which could occur in the coming year, among which (page 57) a geoengineering nightmare, according to the report, "in which a country or small group of countries precipitates an international crisis by moving ahead with deployment or large-scale research independent of the global community. The global climate could, in effect, be hijacked by a rogue country or even a wealthy individual, with unpredictable costs to agriculture, infrastructure and global stability."
This is an ironical confusion like only top globalist factions can produce. Where the World Economic Forum warns us about possible "rogue" parties moving ahead with planetary-wide geoengineering schemes, another group of globalist-funded scientists suggest an "exclusive club" shoud take the reins over global spraying efforts to "offset global warming".
In the WEF-report we get the impression that the "rogue" parties described are parties that have not or will not sign onto global agreements presided over by the UN. This, according to the report, "leaves a gap for unregulated experimentation."
"For example", the report states "an island state threatened with rising sea levels may decide they have nothing to lose, or a well funded individual with good intentions may take matters into their own hands. There are signs that this is already starting to occur."
"Recent studies", the report goes on to state, "suggest that a small fleet of aircraft could inject a million tonnes of sulphur compounds into the stratosphere – enough to offset roughly half of the global warming experienced to date – for US$1-2 billion annually."
According to environmental writer Clive Hamilton in a 2010 article for the Guardian "a powerful coalition of forces is quietly constellating around the idea of transforming the Earth's atmosphere by simulating volcanic eruptions to counter the warming effects of carbon pollution. Engineering the planet's climate system is attracting the attention of scientists, scientific societies, venture capitalists and conservative think tanks. Despite the enormity of what is being proposed — nothing less than taking control of Earth's climate system — the public has been almost entirely excluded from the planning".
In the context of the recent modeling tables published in Environmental Research Letters, these words by Hamilton (himself a believer in man-made climate change) have been taken account before they commenced with their "global thermostat setting game". Hamilton wrote in 2010:
"If there is no international agreement an impatient nation suffering the effects of climate disruption may decide to act alone. It is not out of the question that in three decades the climate of the Earth could be determined by a handful of Communist Party officials in Beijing. Or the government of an Australia crippled by permanent drought, collapsing agriculture and ferocious bushfires could risk the wrath of the world by embarking on a climate control project".
Apart from the fact that any planetary scale geoengineering effort would be incomprehensibly irresponsible- and apart from the fact that anthropogenic global warming is in essence a pseudo-science- the fact that scientists are now envisioning an elite club of nations taking the reins in global geoengineering should make the alarm-bells go off all over the place.


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subset: commoncrawl


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The withdrawal of new proposed rules for charity poker games on Wednesday followed the introduction of a new bill that would, among other things, legitimize permanent charity poker rooms in Michigan.Michigan Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, on Tuesday introduced SB 878 to amend the Traxler-McCauley-Law-Bowman Bingo Act, which regulates so-called millionaire parties or charity poker games, among other things. Eleven other bipartisan senators co-sponsored SB 878, including Sen. John Pappageorge, R-Troy, who is chairman of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. JCAR was reviewing the new rules that Michigan Gaming Control Board Executive Director Rick Kalm had proposed for charity poker games. On Wednesday, Kalm withdrew the rules. The bill would provide for the licensing of permanent poker rooms, recognizing them as part of the charitable gaming business, Jones said. It would also codify the licensing of dealers and suppliers assisting charities in running the games and establish that charities are legitimate."It has become very obvious from the remarks from the gaming commission that they intend ... to make it impossible to operate a poker room in Michigan," Jones said. Over the last decade, the poker rooms have sprung up to provide a service for charities, he said. Right now, the state is operating under a set of rules that "the gaming commission feels (it) can just change willy-nilly and destroy these small businesses," he said. "What I want to do is to codify into law what's been going on for the last 10 years: that poker rooms and suppliers can exist and be licensed in the state of Michigan." Jones said he has no problem with the state going after bad actors, but it should be done through a set of rules everyone can follow and not put the rooms out of business. Charity poker games are "the only way charities can raise a substantial amount of money," Jones said. "They cannot do it by bingo or selling cookies ... I don't want to see this source go away." More than 50 representatives of charities, millionaire party suppliers and permanent poker rooms opposed to the rules testified before the committee last week, said Aubree Krause, director of constituent relations for Pappageorge."This became a much bigger issue than we expected," Krause said. The strong opposition and concerns through the House and Senate led the Gaming Control Board to withdraw and potentially revise the new rules it had proposed to regulate the charity games. Kalm submitted the most recent draft of the rules, which represented a softening of earlier proposed regulation that followed a mid-January compromise with Rep. Jeff Farrington, R-Utica. Farrington had introduced HB 4960 in September to expand charity gaming in Michigan but agreed not to seek further legislative action on the bill in exchange for a softening of the rules the Gaming Control Board had proposed. In a joint news release issued in January, Farrington and Kalm said Gov. Rick Snyder's administration opposed the bill. But charities, gaming suppliers and room operators opposed the new proposed rules that would have, among other things, limited the number of games at a single location to no more than one per day and four per week. The absence of a provision for permanent poker rooms in the Bingo Act currently gives the Gaming Control Board no grounds to regulate them, Kalm told Crain's earlier this month. As proposed, the new rules would also have required three representatives from a charity at all games, required charities to have fundraised money outside of the games to establish their legitimacy and established background checks for dealers of the games. They also stipulated that charities would get at least 65 percent of the proceeds from the charity poker games.
Charity gaming rules withdrawn in wake of proposed bill to license permanent poker rooms


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Police officers from neighboring agencies are joining Utica police in increasing patrols in high crime areas of Cornhill, police and city officials announced Monday.
Police officers from neighboring agencies are joining Utica police in increasing patrols in high crime areas of Cornhill, police and city officials announced Monday.
The multi-agency public safety plan is called Operation Safe Neighborhoods, and will focus on enhancing patrols along James Street from Oneida to Mohawk streets and other high crime spots in the city, officials said.
Officers from state and Rome police will help patrol Cornhill, other neighborhoods in East and West Utica and neighborhoods throughout the city that need extra help, officials said.
"We're hoping it's going to help in the short-term," said Utica police Chief C. Allen Pylman.
The area near James and West streets has the most immediate need, officials said.
Four officers from Rome in two cars patrolled Cornhill Monday in addition to the normal Utica patrols.
More Utica officers also will be on the street, including seven new officers in field training and those added from consolidation of job duties within the department.
James Street resident Brenda Fudge said she hopes the enhanced patrol will help keep crime down in the neighborhood.
"I think it will let the kids know that they are not playing," she said. "There is a crime problem here and it can happen at anytime."
The increased patrols come less than a month after the beating of a Utica police officer.
Police officer Dzenan Sabanovic, 24, suffered a broken nose, a minor concussion and several abrasions after he was punched and kicked about 20 times in the head while he was on duty at the corner of James Street and Dudley Avenue.
Three teenagers were charged following that incident.
Five months ago, Officer Thomas Lindsey was shot and killed in Cornhill.
"There's a problem here and we're trying to address those problems," Utica Mayor Tim Julian said.
Julian, who is running for re-election in November, said enhanced patrolling began this weekend.
Democratic mayoral candidate David Roefaro said Julian's plan details short-term solutions for long-term public safety problems that should have been addressed months ago.
Roefaro is crafting a comprehensive public safety plan that includes a decrease of high-ranking positions at the police department through attrition and review of the current schedule of shifts to allow more officers in neighborhoods, he said in a released statement.
Rome Mayor James Brown said Rome is more than willing to help keep officers and the Utica community safe.
"Anything we can do to help," Brown said.


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Conn. insurance site remains open for federal fix
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut consumers will still be able to use the state's health insurance marketplace website while a federal data hub is updated.
Access Health CT, the state's marketplace or health exchange, said they were informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that maintenance on the hub will begin Saturday at 9 p.m. It will conclude on Sunday at 9 a.m.
During this maintenance period, the federal data services hub will be intermittently unavailable. The hub includes Internal Revenue Service data that is used to determine whether applicants qualify for financial assistance to help pay for private insurance or for Medicaid coverage.
Access Health says consumers, however, will still be able to create accounts, shop anonymously for health insurance plans and compare prices.


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X-Men Days of Future Past producer, Lauren Shuler Donner is talking about the next step in the X-Men franchise. They've already announced plans for X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016 and another Wolverine in 2017, but now they're finally continuing what all of comic fans had hoped since the first Wolverine standalone: X-Men Spinoffs.
"There was a regime [at the studio] that didn't see the worth in [spin-offs], and the current people who run Fox understand, embrace it, and we're going to do right by it... I'd like to do Gambit. I'd like to do Deadpool. We'll see. There's a lot of really great characters."While those are some great names, first on the docket might be Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. She's one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood right now, and Mystique has always been a fan favorite (for two obvious reasons).
While I would personally love to see an updated Kitty Pryde and Wolverine movie, that ain't going to happen. What about you?
- Reposted by


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Battery Sizing Basics
Page 1 of 3
Powered by
Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Shanmuga S. Pandian, SOFCON
Tips for sizing battery protection devices and circuit conductors in telecom DC power systems
Because stationary batteries and 48VDC power systems serve as lifelines for telecommunication networks,
the reliability of these systems is of the utmost importance. Many system designers rely on circuit breakers in these battery circuits to serve as the protection and isolating device. For multi-string battery plants, the trend is to provide a disconnect circuit breaker for each battery string, rather than using a common breaker for the entire battery bank. Individual circuit breakers help isolate the faulty string, allowing maintenance personnel to take out one battery string at a time.
Associated with high discharge and charging currents, the batteries in these systems can also generate high fault current. From an electrical design point of view, determining the rating of the disconnect circuit breaker and conductor size in the battery circuit poses a real challenge to the system designer. Proper understanding of the complete DC system is essential in selecting the correct rating of circuit breaker and conductor size to provide a reliable and safe installation.
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a battery-powered DC system.
Configuration of telecom DC power systems
Figure 1 depicts the block diagram of a battery-powered DC system. The main components are the battery, battery disconnect circuit breaker, charger-rectifier, and the distribution board that supplies DC power to the loads, apart from metering and the AC distribution unit. The battery and charger are connected in parallel with the load, meaning they're always online.
Under normal conditions, the battery mode is in standby (secondary) while the prime power source (AC power system) provides electrical
energy to the loads. In standby mode, the battery plant does not discharge its DC energy but maintains itself at fully charged condition by consuming a very small amount of DC current. When the prime power source is severed or the flow of rectifier DC power is interrupted, the battery instantaneously becomes the prime source of power for the loads, allowing no interruption of power to the loads. The battery reserve (backup time) usually ranges from 2 to 8 hours and is user-specified in accordance with the specific needs of the facility.
Due to the recent advancement of battery and charger technology, many plant design variations are possible. Flexibility for future increased capacity requirement (due to increased DC load) with minimal plant modifications is becoming a design requirement.
Battery plant
Vented (commonly called wet or flooded) or valve-regulated (commonly referred to as sealed) lead-acid batteries are normally used as the backup power source for telecom power systems, due to their low operating costs. The battery string is comprised of 24 series- connected battery cells to make 48V. The battery plants are normally designed to support the telecom load to a final battery voltage of
Proper design of a battery system is essential to ensure reliable protection of critical telecom loads. Apart from battery sizing for the load demand, redundancy is important when critical loads are to be supported. A single battery string leaves the critical load unsupported if one cell were to fail. Therefore, a reliable battery system requires building in redundancy rather than simply oversizing the battery.
It's preferable to have a system with two or more equal-rated parallel strings of batteries. Some systems can have as many as 20 parallel strings to support the high steady-state current requirement. The system is designed to allow one string of batteries to be disconnected for maintenance purposes and still support the full load current with a shorter reserve time. However, for not so critical loads, a single battery string may be used, especially when an emergency backup generator is available onsite.
Each battery string is provided with a separate disconnect circuit breaker, which serves to isolate the faulty battery string during overcurrent conditions and prevents problems in the string from affecting the other strings, chargers, circuit cables, and connected DC load.
Battery charger/rectifier
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New compact, modular-switched mode rectifiers in battery chargers provide high capacity in small packages and enable easy upgradeability. For the most reliable system, the charger system is designed to have equally sized parallel rectifiers in N+1 redundant configuration — N of which is adequate to carry the total system load current.
During operating conditions, the parallel rectifiers provide the current consumed by the load, the float current for the batteries, and the additional current for recharging the batteries after a mains outage. A redundant charger-rectifier fills two needs: battery recharging after a mains outage and continued operation if one rectifier fails.
Figure 2(click here to see Fig. 2) shows a typical telecom DC power system with multi-string batteries and N+1 chargers. The operating scenarios with respect to the battery circuit current are summarized in the Table(click here to see Table).
Battery circuit protective device and conductor sizing
The NEC deals with the minimum requirements for sizing the conductors and overcurrent devices to protect the conductors, but not for protecting the battery. The battery circuit breaker is normally installed to provide both disconnect and protection capabilities. The operating philosophy of the DC power system determines the design and type of overcurrent protection used. Knowledge of circuit breakers for overcurrent protection and their ratings that are available for DC application are also essential.
The continuous current rating of the conductor and circuit breaker in the battery circuit are based upon the worst-case current to or from the battery, whichever is higher. This current is determined by analyzing the battery charging and discharging scenarios, as noted in the Table. The breaker trip setting must be greater than the anticipated continuous current. Industry standards suggest increasing this value by 25% to arrive at the protection rating. The conductor ampacity rating is also based on 125% of the continuous current, per NEC Sec. 215.3. However, the continuous current rating of the breaker cannot exceed the final ampacity of the circuit conductor after all the correction factors are applied.
Battery disconnect circuit breaker
For a battery system with two or more parallel strings, when one string is offline and a discharge is initiated, the disconnect breaker for the active strings must be able to support the full system load. Similarly, the disconnect switch must be rated suitably for the charging current when the fully discharged active strings share the full charger output current. However, some designs do not provide for one battery string to be offline for a long period except for a few hours shutdown for routine maintenance, especially for systems with two or three battery strings. In this case, all battery strings are considered "on" for component sizing.
Batteries are considered a finite source of power; however, a shorted battery has the potential to deliver an extremely high current in a short period of time. An 800 ampere-hour battery typically can deliver about 9,000A into a short circuit. The magnitude of short-circuit current at the point of fault in the battery circuit depends on the battery's internal resistance and the external circuit resistance. Often, the peak short-circuit current occurs within 5 to 15 milliseconds. Without a reliable protection to clear the fault, a short-circuit condition can cause permanent damage to the battery and equipment, including the potential for fire. High fault currents can generate excessive thermal and magnetic forces that can cause an under-rated overcurrent device to burn or blow apart. Therefore, for reliable protection, the DC-rated circuit breakers are generally tested to time constants of 10 milliseconds or less.
NEC Sec. 110.9 requires the equipment intended to break current at fault levels to have an interrupting rating sufficient for the current that must be interrupted. Therefore, the battery circuit breaker should have the interrupting capability to clear the fault. The interrupting capacity should be more than the maximum anticipated fault current in the battery circuit. Battery manufacturers have started publishing the prospective short-circuit currents for the batteries in dead short condition — the maximum fault current assuming negligible external circuit resistance. The most conservative method is to select the circuit breaker based upon this current.
The interrupting capability of the protection device is specified as amperes interrupting capability (AIC) and sometimes amperes interrupting rating (AIR). Circuit breakers typically have AIC ratings between 5,000A and 200,000A. For very high AIC requirements, a fuse in series with a standard circuit breaker may be a better option. This gives the convenience of a circuit breaker and the interrupting capacity of the fuses for less than the cost of a high AIC breaker. Note: Because of the recent trend to use many parallel battery strings of small ampere-hour ratings, the circuit breakers are found adequate to protect the battery circuit against short-circuit currents.
The battery breaker shall be double-pole, load break type, rated for use in a DC circuit with overcurrent protection capability. Unlike AC, DC has no zero crossing to help extinguish an arc. As such, DC breakers are typically larger than their AC counterparts of similar amperage. The voltage rating should be greater than the maximum system voltage in the circuit. Most modern overcurrent protective devices used in the telecom industry have a 65V or 80VDC rating, with some as high as 170VDC. But the system voltage will not normally exceed 65VDC for the 48V system, even with the raised voltage of the cells during boost charge.
Battery circuit conductor
The battery circuit conductor selected for the maximum current shall be checked for voltage drop, which is not usually allowed to be greater than 4% per normal design practice. Finally, it shall be ensured that the circuit conductor is protected against the short-circuit current for the duration of fault clearance by the protective device. The cable damage charts and formula provided by the Insulated Cable Engineers Association (ICEA), Carrollton, Ga., are helpful in this area.
Let's look at a few typical sizing examples to help you better understand.
Example No. 1:
The telecom power system at 48VDC has one battery string of flooded lead-acid cells rated 800 ampere-hours at an 8-hour discharge
Page 3 of 3
rate, which equates to a final battery voltage of 1.75V per cell. The system requires four 100A rectifiers to provide 3+1 redundancy. The telecom equipment load is 60A.
The battery discharge current at an 8-hour rate and 1.75V/cell = 100A, per published data of the manufacturer. However, the maximum expected discharge current = 60A (same as the load demand).
The battery charging current after a long period power outage=full charger output (N+1 rectifiers) - (load current) =(4×100)-60=340A. However, the load demand current may be anywhere from 0A to 60A. Therefore, for conservative design, the maximum charging current=4×100=400A (for zero load demand).
From the above, we can determine that the maximum battery circuit current=charging current=400A. The battery circuit breaker sizing current = 1.25 x charging current = 1.25 × 400A =500A. The standard rating of DC circuit breaker is 500A.
The battery short-circuit current, per published data for the battery = 9,050A
Therefore, the recommended circuit breaker in this example=500A, 65VDC, 10,000 AIC.
Moving on to the conductor, we know the cable sizing current=1.25×400A=500A. Therefore, two parallel conductor runs of 250kcmil each can be used, per NEC guidelines. Note: The circuit conductor is large enough to limit the voltage drop and withstand the short- circuit current for the duration of a fault.
Example No. 2:
The telecom power system at 48VDC has four parallel battery strings of flooded lead-acid cells. Each string is rated 2,260 ampere- hours at an 8-hour discharge rate for a final battery voltage of 1.75V per cell. The design provides for one battery string to be disconnected for maintenance, while the remaining strings still support the full load current. The system requires sixteen 100A rectifiers to provide 15+1 redundancy. The telecom equipment load is 700A.
The discharge current of one battery string at the 8-hour rate for a 1.75V/cell= 283A, per published data of the manufacturer. The maximum expected discharge current of each battery string=700A ÷ 3 =233A (same as the load demand).
The battery charging current after a long period power outage=[full charger output (N+1 rectifiers)] - (load current) =(16×100A) 700A=900A. However, load demand current may be anywhere from 0A to 700A. Therefore, for a conservative design, the maximum charging current=16×100A=1,600A (for zero load demand). This current value must be divided among three parallel battery strings (the fourth string is considered OFF). So the maximum charging current of each string=1,600A ÷ 3=533A.
From the above, we can see the maximum battery circuit current=charging current=533A. The battery circuit breaker sizing current=1.25×charging current=1.25×533A=666A. The standard rating of a DC circuit breaker is 700A.
The battery short-circuit current, per published data for the battery=14,750A.
Therefore, the recommended circuit breaker in this example=700A, 65VDC, 15,000 AIC.
Moving onto the conductor, we know the cable sizing current=1.25×533=666A. Therefore, two parallel conductor runs of 400kcmil each can be used, per NEC guidelines. Note: The circuit conductor is large enough to limit the voltage drop and withstand the short- circuit current for the duration of fault.
In summary
As the backbone for modern telecom networks, DC power systems are built of parallel battery strings with multiple parallel-redundant chargers for reliable system operation. Batteries are used to provide backup power in order to continue telecom system operation during commercial (AC) power interruptions.
Design of telecom DC power systems poses new challenges for system designers, as reliability of DC power system is essential for the telecom system to operate without service disruptions. For proper sizing of a battery protection device and circuit conductor, it's necessary to carefully evaluate all the operating scenarios. The circuit components should also be rated to withstand very high short- circuit currents that can be generated in the battery circuit.
Pandian is a project manager for the consulting engineering firm of SOFCON in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
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gfedc Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.
Copyright © Source Interlink Media. All rights reserved.


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How Big Ag Taps Into Taxpayers' Pockets - Twice
Double Dippers: Findings
We the people pay for the water, then pay again for part of the grain and cotton it yields because otherwise there would be too weak a market for them. A man from Mars to whom you tried to explain the system might not understand.
— "Watering the West," editorial, The Washington Post, March 14, 1988
At a time when the federal budget deficit has reached historic levels and California water is increasingly scarce and expensive, taxpayers are providing Central Valley farms with crop and water subsidies that together are worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an Environmental Working Group investigation that calculated for the first time the cost of providing these inherently conflicting subsidies to 6,800 farms in the Central Valley Project.
These "double dippers" not only get federal irrigation water delivered at cut-rate prices. They then turn around and get cash payments from the government for growing subsidized crops they have irrigated with highly subsidized water. EWG's analysis shows that more than one-quarter of all farms in the CVP got double subsidies for at least one year between the period of 1995 and 2004. In some cases these subsidies totaled millions of dollars.
Previously, EWG calculated that CVP farms received $416 million worth of water subsidies in 2002. † [3] For our new analysis we matched farm names and addresses of CVP water subsidy recipients with names in EWG's nationwide crop subsidy database, which compiles USDA records of cash payments made to farmers since 1995. We were then able to identify the more than 1,200 farms in the CVP that got both water and crop subsidies during 2002, and the more than 1,800 farms that received water subsidies in 2002 and crop subsidies for at least one year between 1995 and 2004.
† Based on studies by the Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources of the projected cost of water from proposed new dams on the San Joaquin River. The actual cost of this water could be twice as high as estimated.
EWG found:
- In 2002, 18 percent of farms in the CVP got both crop and water subsidies. These 1,228 farms received water subsidies worth $121.5 million and crop subsidy checks totaling another $122.3 million. Combined, the average subsidy payment was almost $200,000 per farm.
- The pot of gold grows larger when you consider the farms that got water subsidies in 2002 and got crop subsidies for at least one year between 1995 and 2004, as did 27 percent of all CVP farms. These 1,864 farms received more than $152 million worth of water subsidies in 2002. From 1995 to 2004 they also received crop subsidy checks totaling over $891 million. Their total take from federal farm subsidies during this period is at least $1 billion and most likely exceeds $2 billion.
The distribution of crop and water subsidies within the CVP is highly uneven. EWG previously found that the top 10 percent of CVP farms, in terms of total water use, got 67 percent of all the irrigation water delivered by the Project in 2002. Crop subsidies to CVP farmers are almost as unevenly concentrated.
- For the farms that got double subsidies in 2002, 47 percent of the crop payments went to just 10 percent of the farms. The checks going to these 123 farms averaged more than $468,000 each. The top five percent, or 61 farms, accounted for 31 percent of the crop subsidies in the CVP in 2002, for an average payment worth almost $628,000. The top 25 farms accounted for 18 percent of the total, with the average check reaching $884,874.
- For the farms that got water subsidies in 2002 and crop subsidies for at least one year between 1995 and 2004, the concentration figures were even more skewed. Ten percent of the farms accounted for 51 percent of all of the crop subsidies, with the average payment per farm for this 10-year period totaling more than $2.4 million. The top five percent, or 93 farms, got 34 percent of the subsidies; their subsidy checks were worth more than $3 million on average. The top 25 farms got 14 percent of total crop subsidies, receiving an average of $5 million each between 1995 and 2004.
To put these figures into perspective, in 2002 the average crop subsidy payment nationwide was $18,321. The average payment to CVP farmers that year was $99,614, more than five times as much. Still, this figure is probably an underestimate. Since EWG matched up water and crop subsidy recipients by comparing names and addresses, discrepancies between either of these two fields would lead to undercounting.
For example, Hansen Ranches — the third largest double dipper that we identified — is listed as only receiving $1,500 in water subsidies in 2002. Yet in our water subsidies database there is also an entry for "Hansen Ranches/Eric, Phil," that got $210,000 worth of subsidized water that year. Both of these farms had the same contact person listed on their pesticide use permit in 2002: Eric Hansen. Although they are almost certainly the same farm, we chose to be conservative and identify only the first farm as a double dipper. In all cases, we considered to be double dippers only those farms with matches in the name and address fields of our farm subsidies database and our water subsidies database. Our figures should therefore be considered underestimates.
In terms of the total crop and water subsidies that went to double dippers in 2002, 41 percent of the $244 million in subsidies went to ten percent of the farms. The average take for these 123 farms was $810,000 — more than four times the already substantial average combined subsidy of $199,000. The top five percent of farms accounted for 27 percent of the total combined subsidy, and the top 25 farms got 15 percent of the crop and water subsidies in 2002.


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8/27/13 ASHLAND, Ohio – Ashland University has made a bold move in addressing the issues of accessibility and affordability facing higher education. The University has reset its cost structure for full-time undergraduate tuition and financial aid resulting in a cost cut of more than $10,000 for the 2014-15 academic year.
The tuition reset, which will apply to all full-time undergraduate students enrolled in 2014-15, represents a 37 percent decrease from the projected 2014-15 tuition of $30,064, bringing it to $18,908.
"Over the past decade everyone in higher education has danced around the subject of the rising cost of college. Yet few have been willing to tackle the issue and the complications involved," said AU President Dr. Fred Finks. "Ashland University knows the importance of positioning ourselves to meet the rising demand for quality education at an affordable price. We have decided now is the time to act."
Finks called the decision a "bold step," but noted that "our research is showing us that many prospective students and their parents are deterred by 'sticker shock' and not looking at the actual cost to attend Ashland University once financial aid is applied."
Finks said that nothing will be cut or eliminated from the total Ashland educational experience to accommodate the tuition reset. He said the executive committee of the university's board of trustees approved the decrease in June following two years of research and discussion.
"The University completed budget realignment in the spring, which has allowed the institution to undertake an initiative like this," he said. "As we reviewed the alternative, we were uncomfortable with continuing to raise tuition costs and create more student debt year after year.
"Our undergraduate enrollment has been stable over the past few years and we've seen an increase this year in first year students compared to 2011 and 2012, so this is really about becoming more transparent on our pricing structure," Finks said. "We believe this is the best way for us to help both the 'high-need' and the 'low-need' students."
Scott Van Loo, vice president of enrollment management and marketing at AU, said the new full-time tuition price of $18,908 means that prospective students now have the option of getting a top-notch private education at a more affordable cost.
And once students receive their financial aid and see their net costs, Van Loo believes that AU will be among the most affordable four-year private institutions in the Midwest.
"This move means Ashland will reduce, but not eliminate, the dollar amounts for grants and scholarships," he said. "We are seeking to move from a high-tuition/high-discount model to a lower-tuition/lower-discount model, which will actually reduce the net costs for returning students when compared to the typical annual 4 percent increase that they experience under the current pricing and financial aid structure."
Van Loo said that through the use of predictive statistical modeling, AU administrators project that the tuition reset and financial aid changes will help to recruit more full-time undergraduates to the Ashland campus.
"Ashland's new price will better reflect what students actually pay and we believe it will lead to more prospective students considering our university," Van Loo said.
Ashland's room and board costs of $9,502 will remain, and will bring the University's total charges for tuition, fees, room and board for 2014-15 to $29,354.
Ashland University Provost Dr. Frank Pettigrew noted that the tuition reset is just the latest in a number of AU developments in response to student and family financial concerns about higher education costs. He noted that in just the past two years, Ashland University has:
- reduced the minimal number of credit hours needed to complete an undergraduate bachelor's degree from 128 to 120.
- instituted a number of three-year degree programs that allow students to earn a quality private education in less time and for less money.
- established a four-year graduation guarantee program that will help keep college costs predictable for families.
- launched a five-year accelerated accounting degree program that allows students to complete bachelor's and master's programs in less time than it would for separate degrees.
"We have gained a significant advantage in our academic profile by consistently hiring outstanding faculty and recruiting great students," Pettigrew said. "This tuition reset will only improve our ability to recruit academically talented students and strengthen our position as one of America's leading universities."
Those wanting more information about Ashland University or the tuition reset can contact the admission office at 419.289.4142 or 800.882.1548.
Click here to visit our Tuition Reset information site.
Ashland University, ranked in the top 200 colleges and universities in U.S. News and World Report's National Universities category for 2013, is a mid-sized, private university conveniently located a short distance from Akron, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Ashland University (www.ashland.edu) values the individual student and offers a unique educational experience that combines the challenge of strong, applied academic programs with a faculty and staff who build nurturing relationships with their students. ###


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ROCKET I - Randomized Open Label Switch for Cholesterol Elevation on Kivexa Evaluation Trial (ROCKET I)
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00615810
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : February 14, 2008
Last Update Posted : August 2, 2010
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
|Condition or disease
|HIV Infections
|Drug: Atripla Drug: Kivexa plus Sustiva
|Phase 4
This protocol is a Phase 4, open label, randomized, UK multi-center, controlled study to assess the effect on lipid profile of switching from a stable HAART regimen of Kivexa + EFV to once daily Atripla in adult HIV 1 infected subjects with raised cholesterol.
At Baseline, subjects will be randomized 1:1 to one of two treatment groups:
Treatment Group 1: switch to Atripla Treatment Group 2: Continuation of previous stable HAART regimen of Kivexa + EFV Initiation of treatment with study drugs must take place within 24 hours after Baseline visit. At Week 12, subjects in Treatment Group 2 (continuation of Kivexa and EFV regimen) will switch to Atripla. Treatment in both groups will continue through Week 24
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|159 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Parallel Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|A Phase 4, Open Label, Randomized, Controlled Study to Assess the Effect on Lipid Profile of Switching From a Stable HAART Regimen of Fixed Dose Abacavir/Lamivudine (Kivexa) Plus Efavirenz, to Once Daily Atripla in Adult HIV-1 Infected Subjects With Raised Cholesterol
|Study Start Date :
|March 2008
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|October 2009
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|January 2010
Active Comparator: 2
Open label Kivexa (abacavir (as sulfate) 600 mg/lamivudine 300 mg) once daily for oral administration plus Sustiva (efavirenz 600 mg) once daily for oral administration
Drug: Kivexa plus Sustiva
Open label once daily for oral administration
Experimental: 1
Open label Atripla (efavirenz 600 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/tenofovir DF 300 mg) once daily for oral administration to be taken on an empty stomach
Drug: Atripla
Open label once daily for oral administration to be taken on an empty stomach
- Change from baseline in total fasting cholesterol at Week 12. [ Time Frame: 12 Weeks ]
- Change in total fasting cholesterol at Week 24 [ Time Frame: 24 fweeks ]
- Changes in fasting LDL, HDL, triglycerides, non-HDL cholesterol and cholesterol ratios [ Time Frame: 24 weeks ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Equal to or greater to 18 years old
- Plasma HIV RNA less than 50 copies/mL equal to or greater than 12 weeks prior to Screening
- Stable HAART regimen of Kivexa + EFV for equal to or greater than 24 weeks prior to Screening
- Documented confirmed raised total cholesterol greater than or equal to 5.2 mmol/L for last two consecutive tests (at least 4 weeks apart) with the last result less than or equal to 4 weeks prior to Screening
- Subject willing to continue current unmodified HAART for 12 weeks if randomized to Group 2
- Subjects requiring concomitant lipid regulating therapy must be established on a stable dose/frequency greater than or equal to 12 weeks prior to Screening and be expected to remain stable in dose and frequency throughout the treatment phase of the study
- Adequate renal function by calculated creatinine clearance greater than or equal to 60 mL/min according to the Cockcroft Gault formula
- Negative serum pregnancy test (females of childbearing potential only i.e., not surgically sterile or at least 2 years post-menopausal)
- Hepatic Total Bilirubin ≤ 1.5 mg/dL
- Adequate haematologic function of absolute neutrophil count ≥ 1000/mm3, platelets ≥ 25,000/mm3, Haemoglobin ≥ 8.0g/dL
- Women of childbearing potential (WOCBP) must be using two methods of contraception to avoid pregnancy throughout the study and for up to 12 weeks after the last dose of study drugs in such a manner that the risk of pregnancy is minimized. Subjects may choose two (barrier plus highly effective method - see section 7.8 for further discussion) of the birth control methods listed below:
- Hormonal birth control drugs
- Male or female condoms with or without spermicidal gels
- Diaphragm cervical cap with or without spermicidal gels
- Intrauterine device
- Female subjects who utilize hormone contraceptive as one of their birth control methods must have used the same methods for at least 3 months prior to study dosing
- Female subjects who are postmenopausal for less than 2 years are required to have FSH greater or equal to 40 mIU/mL. If the FSH is less than 40 mIU/mL, the subject must agree to use highly effective method of birth control (as described above) to participate in the study
- Male subjects who are sexually active must be willing to use effective barrier contraception (e.g. condom with spermicide) during heterosexual intercourse from screening through completion of the study and continuing for up to 12 weeks after the last dose of study drugs
- Life expectancy greater to or equal to 1 year
- The ability to understand and sign a written informed consent form, which must be obtained prior to initiation of study procedures
Exclusion Criteria:
- Pregnant or lactating subjects
- Previous treatment with emtricitabine (FTC), tenofovir DF (TDF) or adefovir dipivoxil (ADV)
- Known hypersensitivity to emtricitabine (FTC), tenofovir DF (TDF), efavirenz (EFV) or Truvada
- Documented resistance to any of the study drugs (either genotypic or phenotypic)
- Severe hepatic impairment
- Hepatic transaminases (AST and ALT) greater or equal to 5 times the upper limit of normal (ULN)
- Subjects receiving ongoing therapy with any of the medications that are contraindicated with any of the study drugs. Administration of any of these medications must be discontinued at least 30 days prior to the Baseline visit and for the duration of the study period. The full list of disallowed medications can be found in appendix 7.
- Active, serious infections (other than HIV infection) requiring parenteral antibiotic therapy within 15 days prior to screening
- Prior history of significant renal or bone disease
- Any current known clinical or symptomatic laboratory parameter of GSI grade 4. Asymptomatic grade 4 abnormalities will be permitted at the discretion of the Investigator if deemed clinically appropriate (excluding AEs and laboratory parameters mentioned elsewhere in the inclusion/exclusion criteria). Abnormalities deemed insignificant by the Investigator must be discussed with the Sponsor prior to enrollment.
- Malignancy other than cutaneous Kaposi sarcoma (KS) or basal cell carcinoma. Subjects with biopsy-confirmed cutaneous KS are eligible, but must not have received any systemic therapy for KS within 30 days of baseline and are not anticipated to require systemic therapy during the study
- Current alcohol or substance use judged by the investigator to potentially interfere with subject study compliance
- Subjects currently taking part in any other clinical trial using an investigational product, with the exception of studies where the treatment studied has been stopped for more than 1 month
- Any other clinical condition or prior therapy that, in the opinion of the investigator, would make the subject unsuitable for the study or unable to comply with the dosing requirements
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT00615810
|United Kingdom
|Gilead Sciences
|Granta Park, Cambridge, Abington, United Kingdom, CB21 6GT
|Study Director:
|Cham Herath
|Gilead Sciences
|Responsible Party:
|Cham Herath, Gilead Sciences
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|Other Study ID Numbers:
2007-003354-28 EudraCT Number
|First Posted:
|February 14, 2008 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|August 2, 2010
|Last Verified:
|July 2010
non HDL cholesterol
Metabolic parameters
treatment experienced
HIV Infections
Lentivirus Infections
Retroviridae Infections
RNA Virus Infections
Virus Diseases
Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Viral
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Immunologic Deficiency Syndromes
Immune System Diseases
Efavirenz, Emtricitabine, Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Drug Combination
Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors
Nucleic Acid Synthesis Inhibitors
Enzyme Inhibitors
Molecular Mechanisms of Pharmacological Action
Anti-Retroviral Agents
Antiviral Agents
Anti-Infective Agents
Cytochrome P-450 CYP2C9 Inhibitors
Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme Inhibitors
Cytochrome P-450 CYP2C19 Inhibitors
Cytochrome P-450 CYP2B6 Inducers
Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme Inducers
Cytochrome P-450 CYP3A Inducers
Anti-HIV Agents


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Leave the virtual behind and create something tangible!
The success of the Arduino physical computing toolkit has lead to a surge of interest in the world of hardware from both software and non-technical people. This workshop will provide an overview of what physical computing is, how Arduino works and how it can be used to add an interactive element to your projects. There will also be an opportunity to set up and use an Arduino board and software.
No hardware or coding experience necessary! The tutor will guide you through the process of getting started and show you some of what is possible. Once you know the basics you too could be on your way to creating anything from a build monitoring tool to a cuddly navigation device…
Learn how physical computing can change the way you think about the electronic devices you interact with, the software you write and even the problems you can solve and the way you solve them.
Find out what the tutor and others have been able to create with the Arduino.
A laptop (with the ability to install software and drivers), USB cable, Arduino and a small parts kit will be necessary to participate in the hands-on portion of this workshop. NOTE: A limited number of Arduino kits will be available for purchase (approximately $70) from the instructors at the workshop. The instructors will be able to accept Visa and/or MasterCard.
If you participate in the hands-on portion of the workshop you will learn how to install the Arduino IDE, connect the Arduino board, connect buttons & LEDs, use an electronics breadboard and program the Arduino to respond to external stimuli.
While an actual Arduino is recommended other participants have benefited from observing or sharing with others at similar workshops in the past.
The number of participants is limited.
Philip Lindsay (also known as follower from rancidbacon.com ) creates tools to encapsulate the knowledge he gains from exploring and understanding technology in order to help others do their jobs more effectively. He translates technology.
In addition to teaching introductory Arduino workshops Philip has contributed USB and networking code to the Arduino eco-system.
Tim O'Reilly once called Philip a "troublemaker" for his early Google Maps reverse engineering efforts.
Philip has a particular interest in the areas where design, art, craft and technology intersect.
I'm an editor for O'Reilly Media; I cover a number of areas, including Arduino, wireless sensor networks, mobile devices, as well as some Microsoft and Apple topics.
I like to hack on gadgets such as Arduino and the BeagleBoard in my spare time, and I'm also a volunteer system administrator and all-around geek for AS220, a non-profit arts center that gives Rhode Island artists uncensored and unjuried forums for their work.
For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Sharon Cordesse at email@example.com
Download the OSCON Sponsor/Exhibitor Prospectus
Download the Media & Promotional Partner Brochure (PDF) for information on trade opportunities with O'Reilly conferences or contact mediapartners@ oreilly.com
For media-related inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at firstname.lastname@example.com
To stay abreast of conference news and to receive email notification when registration opens, please sign up for the OSCON Newsletter (login required)
Have an idea for OSCON to share? firstname.lastname@example.com
View a complete list of OSCON contacts


text:
Bobby Valentine, who once proved that it takes no more than a fake mustache and a novelty t-shirt to manage a MLB team (provided, of course, that you already manage said team), is in his second year of his second stint at ESPN. This year, the spotlight's shining extra bright on Valentine, who has replaced beloved punching bag Joe Morgan on Sunday Night Baseball.
But that doesn't mean Valentine—who juggles his ESPN gig with his decidedly non-ceremonial position as Stamford, CT's director of Public Safety—can't put his foot in his mouth. Like here, from tonight's SportsCenter, when he says a few things that, uh, surprise.
Valentine kind of argues that because Josh Hamilton is a crazy drug addict, he tried to score when he shouldn't have. Because trying to score on
an error a popup is just like trying to score blow.
But he apparently realizes the inapt reference point, and totally saves the day, by saying that Hamilton can't take drugs now to cure the injury, and that's the problem. But since Skele-Gro hasn't received FDA approval yet, nothing can really cure Hamilton's broken arm.
Then Valentine amends himself again, and says "heal" the injury, although if we want to get picky—and we shall, with our city government officials—painkillers don't heal injuries either. Though drug addicts might think that. And Hamilton's undergone more invasive surgeries before, presumably without incident.
So Valentine says "that might have been dumb on everyone's part," and since the Japanese baseball legend uttered such a pronoun without an obvious antecedent, we'll have to agree with him. Dumb on everyone's part, indeed.
Josh Hamilton Headed to DL [ESPN, h/t reader Barron]


text:
Your most powerful weapon is your mind in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, an action/adventure game that utilizes extensive Psi (mind) powers combined with traditional weapons combat, providing gamers with unique gameplay attributes that clearly differentiate it from any other title in the action/adventure genre.
In order to combat a Psi terrorist movement set to overthrow world order, you, as an elite American Psi-operative soldier, must fight using Telekinesis, Mind Control, Pyrokinesis, Mind Drain, Aura View and Remote Viewing to win a very serious "mind game" against an army of brainwashed terrorist super soldiers and powerful Psi agents.
- An action/adventure game that utilizes extensive Psi (mind) powers including telekinesis, pyrokinesis, remote viewing, mind control, mind drain
and aura view combined with traditional weapons:
- Telekinesis. The ability to pick up people and objects, then move, throw or smash them in any direction.
- Pyrokinesis. The ability to launch a wall of fire that ignites everything in its' path.
- Mind Control. The ability to take control of enemy bodies and use them to solve puzzles, do surveillance or just open fire on other enemies.
- Remote Viewing. The ability to go "out of body" to see through doors to plan your "attack" and/or get information you would not be able to get in physical form.
- Mind Drain. The ability to drain Psi power from enemies which results in death to the victim.
- Aura View. The ability to "see" elements, enemies and clues that aren't visible in the real world.
- Intense, fast-paced action with strategic decision-making and challenging puzzle elements. The emphasis is on action (80%), with tactical decision-making (20%).
- In addition to Psi mind control powers, players have access to an arsenal of traditional weapons. Handguns, automatic weaponry, sniper rifles, flamethrowers, rocket launchers and grenades--which, when combined with unique Psi powers, create an extraordinary and powerful gameplay dynamic.
- 50 Minutes of high-quality FMV tell an exciting and immersive story that reveals the mystery of Nick Scyrer's identity and the origin of his Psi powers while infiltrating the compounds of "The Movement," a powerful Psi terrorist organization.
- Eight huge and immersive levels spread throughout the world add to the intrigue and terrorist theme.
- Adaptive artificial intelligence makes enemies extremely aware of the player's actions and delivers more intense, realistic fighting.
- Multiple methods for solving missions. The non-linear design allows the gamer to conquer the mission in multiple ways, allowing for endless replay value.


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New Orleans UYA opens renovated stadium
The academy will provide free, year-round baseball and softball instruction and other educational services for youth from underserved and urban communities throughout southern Louisiana.
"Major League Baseball is proud to stand alongside the City of New Orleans as we open the New Orleans MLB Urban Youth Academy, which will represent the national pastime's lasting contribution to the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort," Commissioner Bud Selig said in a release. "Our newest Academy, located in one of our nation's most vibrant cities, will impact many young lives by providing significant opportunities on and off the diamond."
"The New Orleans MLB Urban Youth Academy will offer a positive and unique learning environment as it provides young people throughout southern Louisiana with a wealth of opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge on and off the field," MLB executive vice president of baseball development Frank Robinson said. "This state-of-the-art facility will be a benefit to the local community and beyond, and will be a significant component of our effort of giving underserved and urban youth the chance to play baseball and softball. We have been honored to work with the City of New Orleans and contribute to the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort by making this dream facility at Wesley Barrow Stadium a reality."
The new Wesley Barrow Stadium replaces a 55-year-old facility that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The new facility has capacity for 650 fans, with a 200-square-foot climate-controlled press box, a public address system and new LED scoreboard. It also features administration facilities, including two 300-square-foot conference rooms where instruction can be held.
The baseball field also features professional-sized artificial turf with a clay pitcher's mound, while the tee ball and softball fields are natural turf with bleachers. Other facilities include a three-lane batting practice cage outdoors and a two-lane indoor batting practice building.
"We are extremely excited about the opening of the MLB Urban Youth Academy," New Orleans recreation development commission CEO Vic Richard said. "This collaboration with Major League Baseball is proof positive of the strength of partnerships. This project will give our children the opportunity to engage in constructive and worthwhile activities and it gets us one step closer to Mayor [Mitch] Landrieu's goal of becoming the top recreation program in the country."
The New Orleans academy is the fourth, joining ones in Compton, Calif., Houston, and Gurabo, Puerto Rico. Two others have been announced for Hialeah, Fla., and Philadelphia.
The academy in Compton, which New Orleans' is modeled after, opened in 2006 and has had more than 300 student-athletes graduate to participate in collegiate baseball and softball programs. Nearly 140 of those have been selected in the MLB First-Year Player Draft, with approximately 80 signing professional contracts.
Two alumni -- Seattle's Trayvon Robinson and Toronto's Anthony Gose -- were on Major League rosters this season.
"The best tool in improving our economy and reducing crime is by investing in meaningful activities for our youth," Landrieu said. "There is no better partner than Major League Baseball to bring high quality programming to the kids of New Orleans. The new Wesley Barrow Stadium complements our redevelopment efforts in Pontchartrain Park."


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job(redirected from give up as a bad job)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Idioms.
Job(jōb), book of the Bible. The book is of unknown authorship and date, although many scholars assign it to a time between 600 B.C. and 400 B.C. A lament in narrative form, the subject is the problem of good and evil in the world: "Why do the just suffer and the wicked flourish?" In the prose prologue Satan obtains God's permission to test the unsuspecting Job, whom God regards as "a perfect and an upright man"; accordingly, all that Job has is destroyed, and he is physically afflicted. The main part of the book is cast in poetic form and consists of speeches by Job and three friends who come to "comfort" him: Job speaks, then each of the three speaks in turn, with Job replying each time; there are three such cycles of discussion, although the third is incomplete. The friends insist alike that Job cannot really be just, as he claims to be, otherwise he would not be suffering as he is. Nevertheless, Job reiterates his innocence of wrong. The sequence changes with the appearance of a fourth speaker, Elihu, who accuses Job of arrogant pride. He in turn is followed by God himself, who speaks out of a storm to convince Job of his ignorance and rebuke him for his questioning. The prose epilogue tells how God rebukes the three friends for their accusations and how happiness is restored to Job. The author did not intend to solve the paradox of the righteous person's suffering, but rather to criticize a philosophy that located the cause of suffering in some supposed moral failure of the sufferer. The texts are certainly imperfect, and there may be serious losses, corruptions, misplacements, or even additions to the original. Some scholars think that the outer prose sections may have been written separately from the passionate verse of the inner section. The book contains many eloquent passages; among them are Job's declaration of faith in the "redeemer," his speech on wisdom, and God's discourse on animals. Job is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
See N. C. Habel, Job (1985); L. G. Perdue and W. C. Gilpin, ed., The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job (1991); R. P. Scheindlin, The Book of Job (1998); R. Alter, The Wisdom Books (2010); M. Larrimore, The Book of Job (2013). See also bibliography under Old TestamentOld Testament,
Christian name for the Hebrew Bible, which serves as the first division of the Christian Bible (see New Testament). The designations "Old" and "New" seem to have been adopted after c.A.D.
..... Click the link for more information. .
What does it mean when you dream about a job?
Dreaming of being at work while asleep signifies either overwork, overinvolvement in one's job, or a subconscious desire to be more productive in one's professional life.
(computer science)
A unit of work to be done by the computer; it is a single entity from the standpoint of computer installation management, but may consist of one or more job steps.
(industrial engineering)
The combination of duties, skills, knowledge, and responsibilities assigned to an individual employee.
A work order.
1. Same as project.
2. Same as work, 1.
maintains his faith despite severe trials, is finally rewarded by God. [O.T.: Job]
See: Faithfulness
abases self in awe of the Lord. [O.T.: Job 40:3–5; 42:1–6]
See: Humility
underwent trial by God at Satan's suggestion. [O.T.: Job]
See: Patience
lost everything he owned to Satan. [O.T.: Job]
See: Poverty
beset with calamities. [O.T.: Job 1:13–22; 2:6–10]
See: Suffering
tormented to test devoutness. [O.T.: Job 1, 2]
See: Test
Computing a unit of work for a computer consisting of a single complete task submitted by a user
Old Testament
a. a Jewish patriarch, who maintained his faith in God in spite of the afflictions sent by God to test him
b. the book containing Job's pleas to God under these afflictions, attempted explanations of them by his friends, and God's reply to him
job(operating system)
All activities involved in completing any project on a computer from start to finish. A job may involve several processes and several programs.
This term originates from a time when a user would manually submit a job as a deck of punched cards which would typically include source code interspersed with job control language instructions to guide phases of the job such as compilation, linking, execution and printing.
This term originates from a time when a user would manually submit a job as a deck of punched cards which would typically include source code interspersed with job control language instructions to guide phases of the job such as compilation, linking, execution and printing.


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Oscar-nominated writer and director Jason Reitman has bought the film rights to a satirical novel about kids at a high-priced Manhattan high school that was written by a "Saturday Night Live" scribe.
Simon Rich will adapt his own novel, "Elliot Allagash," for the big screen at the behest of Reitman, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rich is a laughably boyish-looking 26-year-old (see his book's teaser below) who has previously written two collections of short stories, "Ant Farm," and "Free-Range Chickens." He's also written a spec script, "When a Stranger Calls a Dude," for Bill Heder and Judd Apatow.
From the official synopsis for "Elliot Allagash":
U.S. & World
Seymour Herson is the least popular student at Glendale, a private school in Manhattan. He's painfully shy, physically inept, and his new nick-name, "chunk style," is in danger of entering common usage. But Seymour's solitary existence comes to a swift end when he meets the new transfer student: Elliot Allagash, evil heir of America's largest fortune.
Elliot's rampant delinquency has already gotten him expelled from dozens of prep schools around the country. But despite his best efforts, he can't get himself thrown out of Glendale; his father has simply donated too much money. Bitter and bored, Elliot decides to amuse himself by taking up a challenging and expensive new hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular student in the school.
An unlikely friendship develops between the two loners as Elliot introduces Seymour to new concepts, like power, sabotage, and vengeance. With Elliot as his diabolical strategist and investor, Seymour scores a spot on the basketball team, becomes class president, and ruthlessly destroys his enemies. Yet despite the glow of newfound popularity, Seymour feels increasingly uneasy with Elliot's wily designs. For an Allagash victory is dishonorable at its best, and ruinous at its worst.
As a graduate of Dalton on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Rich is no doubt well-versed in his topic/target. After high school he went on to be president of the Harvard Lampoon and eventually became the youngest writer ever on "SNL." Not a bad start.
Whether Reitman will direct is unclear, but the guess here -- and that's all it is -- is that he won't. In his brief career he's had a hand in adapting both novels -- "Thank You for Smoking" and "Up in the Air" -- he's brought to the big screen as a director. We'll see.


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CSULB Marine Biologists Featured in Discovery Channel's Shark Week's Premiere Episode July 31Published: July 15, 2011
Southern California ocean waters are a prime breeding ground for great white sharks, who play an important role in the marine food chain and whose numbers are increasing thanks to a state ban on gillnet fishing. But as their numbers grow, they may remain in danger from pollutants.
Christopher Lowe, professor of marine biology at CSULB and director of its Shark Lab, along with a group of his students are researching great white shark nurseries, health and movements. Their work will be featured in the Discovery Channel's Shark Week's premiere program, "Great White Invasion," at 9 p.m. Sunday, July 31.
The episode follows Lowe and his students as well as researchers in South Africa and Australia as they seek to learn more about great white shark populations.
The CSULB Shark Lab has been collaborating with the Monterey Bay Aquarium for eight years on studying young great white sharks, Lowe said. "It looks like in the last 10 years, the number of sharks that are caught incidentally in the fishery is increasing despite the fact that there are fewer fishers out there and there is less fishing than there was back in the '80s and '90s. Based on that evidence, we think the white shark population is increasing in California and you would expect that, if all the conservation and management strategies put into place are working."
CSULB is part of the aquarium's white shark rapid response team. "If a commercial fisher captures a baby white shark in our area, which constitutes basically Santa Barbara to Dana Point, my graduate students go out and meet with the fishermen and assess the shark," Lowe explained. "Then we take measurements of the shark and a few tissue samples and we put tags on the animals, either acoustic tags and/or satellite tags, and then we let them go.
"Over the last eight years, we've tracked almost 20 pups. Then last summer we began our acoustic telemetry study where we've been surgically implanting acoustic tags in these babies. The tags have a battery life of 10 years. We have acoustic listening stations off many of the ocean piers from Morro Bay down to San Clemente and they're constantly listening for these tagged sharks.
"Last summer we tagged four baby white sharks off Malibu and we detected all four of them up into the fall and early winter months," he noted. "Then they all went down to Baja, which is a common pattern that we've seen from most of the sharks that we've tagged over the last eight years. They all tend to hang around Southern California during the summer and fall months, but usually by November and December, they all head south."
The baby white sharks often remain close to shore in the summer, but sometimes move further out into the offshore island channels, he said, but the reasons for these movements remain a mystery.
Although rare events, on occasion young white sharks die in the nets and the fishers give them to the lab for research, Lowe said. "We've also been looking at contaminant levels in the sharks that have died. Because many of these babies are spending a lot of time around the more polluted parts of Southern California waters, which includes the Palos Verdes Peninsula, we've actually found amazingly high levels of contaminants (e.g., DDT, PCBs and mercury) in many of these pups who may only be a couple of months old. We were scratching our heads trying to figure out how these babies could have such high contaminant loads. We've measured some of the highest mercury loads in the muscles of these baby sharks that have ever been measured in any shark anywhere in the world. But these are babies and it doesn't make sense for such young animals to have such high contaminant loads.
"One of our theories is that the moms are probably offloading contaminants to their young. It passes from the food web to the moms, and the moms are eating things that have really high contaminant levels like marine mammals," said Lowe. His wife, Gwen Goodmanlowe, is a full-time marine biology lecturer at CSULB who specializes in marine mammals. She and former graduate student Mary Blasius published a study in 2008 in which they found remarkably high amounts of DDT and PCBs in Southern California seals and sea lions, which likely resulted from massive dumping in the mid-20th century of these chemicals from sewer system outfalls off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Lowe explained that white sharks give birth to live pups who develop as embryos from a yolky egg. The embryos use up their yolk long before they're born, but the mother continue to produce unfertilized eggs which the embryos eat while in the uterus to help them grow. Lowe believes the egg yolks contain contaminants passed along from the mother's food sources.
"This is really the first time that a study of this nature has ever been done," he said. "The shocking part is that despite the fact that the population seems to be recovering from overfishing because of better management, there may be other more insidious things that are affecting the population, like the effects of these contaminants on these young pups. We know how these contaminants affect humans and other mammals. They cause cancers, reproductive failure and suppress immune function, but in sharks, it's not really well understood how these contaminants affect their physiology. While the population may be doing better because of protection from overfishing, we may be slowly poisoning them. We just don't know at this stage of the game."


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When we evaluate rich Internet platforms we tend to focus on the tip of the iceberg, even more so than in conventional software. After all rich Internet applications are about graphics, animation, and other multimedia right? By these measures it it is hard to deny that Silverlight and Flex are very evenly matched - for now. However Flex developers are beginning to notice that Flex lacks a feature that will become increasingly important: Threading.
Retrofitting Flex to make it a suitable platform for multithreaded programming is a very hard problem because of its heritage as a vector animation platform . Assuming that Adobe is willing to go through this painful step the job of making Flex a hospitable platform for multithreaded programing will be far from complete. Why?
Making it possible to do threading is a platform problem. Making it easy is a language problem.
Microsoft made a key decision to develop their own programming languages and they've evolved them in ways that make them extremely well-suited to multi-threaded programming. The results are pretty spectacular. Here are two examples (coming soon to Silverlight):
Parallel Linq is Linq provider that will execute a query in parallel. In some cases parallelizing a query can be as easy as adding "AsParallel" to it like so:
var q = from x in list.AsParallel() where x < 3300 select x;
It just doesn't get much easier than this.
It is interesting to note that it is the programming language that makes this possible. Parallel Linq relies on C# and VB.net's ability to convert Linq expressions into data. The Parallel Linq library then analyzes the expression at run-time and determines the best way of executing it.
F# is an extended version of OCaml. Microsoft research added a feature to the language which makes it incredibly easy to write asynchronous applications. This is important given that Rich Internet applications spend a whole lot of time waiting on IO.
Let's take a look at an example of F# function which synchronously retrieves the HTML of a web page:
let getHtml(url:string) = let req = WebRequest.Create(url) use resp = req.GetResponseAsync() use stream = resp.GetResponseStream() use reader = new StreamReader(stream) reader.ReadToEnd()
You can think of the "let" key word is equivalent to C#'s "var" and the "use" keyword as equivalent to C#'s "using." Now let's take a look at what it takes to make this function asynchronous.
let getHtml(url:string) = async { let req = WebRequest.Create(url) use! resp = req.GetResponseAsync() use stream = resp.GetResponseStream() use reader = new StreamReader(stream) return reader.ReadToEnd() }
Can you spot the differences? The obvious one is the "async." Less obvious is the "!" in from of the use keyword. Whenever a "!" is placed in front of a keyword inside of an "async", the operation is executed on another thread and the rest of the computation is suspended until the operation finishes. When the operation finishes control jumps from one thread to another and the rest of the computation is executed. No threading code necessary.
Once again it's the language that makes this possible. How's it done?
In certain contexts F# allows you to overload language keywords and have a custom function execute them instead of the programming language. This makes it possible to do very complex types of transformations. In this case the execution of "use!" is handled by a Use method on an instance of the AsyncBuilder class. It turns out that"async" isn't a keyword, it is actually just an instance of type AsyncBuilder!
This is somewhat similar to implementing the query pattern in C#.The principle difference is that F# supports many more keywords. To find out more check out Don Syme's talk on asynchronous workflows on Channel 9.
A Blessing in Disguise
A few months ago there was quite a bit of controversy when efforts towards JavaScript standardization fell apart. In retrospect I believe that this is the best thing that could've happened to Adobe. They are now free to extend JavaScript to make it a more suitable language for multi-threaded programming.
The real question is: Will they?
I've been disappointed by the evolution of JavaScript. Many of the features recently added seem to be inspired by Python, which is not surprising given the similarities between the two languages. Although Python is a great language for doing dynamic, imperative development it is certainly not my first choice for doing functional programming, and by extension multi-threaded programming. Unfortunately Javascript seems to have inherited some of Python's mistakes. For example Javascript adopted Python's iterator model which is inferior to that of .NET's Enumerable model but that's another blog post entirely. :-)
In the interest of making multi-threaded programming (and a host of other problems in different domains) easier I'd add two features to ActionScript:
1. Code-to-data transformations (which makes Parallel Linq possible)
2. Monad comprehensions (which F# uses to transform synchronous code into asynchronous code)
If Flex stays a one language platform and Actionscript continues to evolve in Python's direction instead of Haskell's direction I see a grim future ahead for the platform. I hope I'm wrong because competition is a healthy thing :-).


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An absolutely massive sandstorm rolled through Kuwait last Friday, blotting out the sun and transforming early evening into night immediately. Here's eyewitness footage from motorists enveloped by the the roiling sand. You'll want to see this.
In this above clip, the videographer is engulfed by the storm in a matter of minutes. Notes Emirates 247:
The condition started on Friday in South Iraq and North West Kuwait which witnessed low pressure combined with strong winds at 80kmph.
"In view of bad weather conditions, dense dusty storm, and strong winds blowing in the country, all incoming flights were transferred to nearby airports while all outgoing flights were halted until weather conditions improve," Isam Al Zamil, the head of operations at the airport, said, quoted by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).
Earlier, the authorities warned that the dust storm reduced visibility to less than 500 metres and that in some areas, "there is no visibility at all."
According to unconfirmed reports hundreds of people were stuck in malls as dust and sand prevented people from driving.
The condition is due to a dusty storm kicking up northwestern wind at a speed of more than 50 kilometres per hour, KUNA said.
The storm has since cleared, and here's some more amazing footage of Friday's sand tempest:
Hat tip to Sue!


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Company Information
Welcome! Interwest Consulting Group specializes in seamlessly integrating solution minded, highly experienced professionals into the public agencies we serve. We assist agencies by delivering cost-effective, high quality municipal services. Our professionals have held senior and executive management positions with numerous California cities. This background and extensive experience means we understand the complexities of your business and will deliver outstanding service taking into account today's rigid budget constraints and the growing need for transparency and accountability in a municipal environment.
We currently provide more than 230 employees to over 200 public agencies spanning a multitude of disciplines within city engineering, public works, and building departments throughout the western region. Services include:
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AXIS T8144 60 W Industrial Midspan
Robust in industrial installations
- 60 W Power over Ethernet
- Wide temperature range -40 °C to 75 °C (-40 °F to 167 °F)
- Dual DC inputs 20-60 VDC
- Wide compatibility with Axis PoE devices
- Plug-and-play
AXIS T8144 60 W Industrial Midspan is an industrial grade 1-port midspan offering an easy, fast and cost-effective solution for powering network products. With a wide operating temperature, from -40 °C to 75 °C (-40 °F to 167 °F), AXIS T8144 is robust in harsh environments. A typical configuration would be to enable PoE to a non-PoE based system (switch, 3G/4G router, or wi-fi access point) creating a compact and effective solution.
AXIS T8144 is ideal for mounting in cabinets or on DIN rail, has dual DC inputs for power redundancy and offers wide compatibility with Axis PoE devices.


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I'll never understand how Cubs fans and White Sox fans can technically be from the same city. Last night, the Sox had Chris Sale taking the mound as they went for the first sweep of the New York Yankees at home in 21 years. 26,319 people showed up to watch that. That's less than 65% of capacity. More than one third of the stadium was unsold.
I posted on my Facebook page wondering what the hell it takes to get a White Sox fan to the ballpark and I got a lot of reasons from different people. One person suggested that the White Sox base crowd is now largely in the suburbs, so you can't really call them a major urban market team anymore. We got the usual the neighborhood sucks, the ballpark is lame stuff that always gets mentioned by Cubs fans when addressing Sox attendance.
That is all well and good for reasons why people don't flock to U.S. Cellular on a regular basis to watch the White Sox play the A's or somebody like that, but think about if the situation last night was the Cubs. Imagine if 23-year old Chris Sale was a Cub. He's 15-4 so that's the 2nd most wins in the majors. His .789 win percentage is 5th in the majors. He has a 2.65 ERA that is good for 7th. His FIP is 3.11 (12th). His xFIP is 3.22 (8th). His fWAR is 4.2 which is behind only Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, and Johnny Cueto. He is 23 years old. He is going to be the face of that rotation for a long, long time if he doesn't get hurt and the Sox are actually handling his pitching load in a responsible manner without arbitrarily shutting him down for the playoffs like the Nationals are with Strasburg. That is pretty damn exciting. How much would you pay to see this kid in a Cubs uniform?
Wait! Don't answer! We'll also allow you to see him pitch for a team that has been leading its division for most of the year after the consensus was they were too old and overpaid to compete. Adam Dunn is resurrected from the dead, Alex Rios is playing like the guy the Blue Jays signed for a bajillion dollars, Kevin Youkilis has been nails since arriving into town, A.J. Pierzynski is having a career year. They're getting contributions from everyone. They come from behind, they add to leads, they hit huge homeruns, they play pretty good defense! They're a pretty fucking fun team to watch if you're not throwing up in your mouth because you're a Cubs fan. Now how much would you pay?
Wait! Don't answer! We're also going to throw in an opponent that has won 27 World Championships and 40 American League Championships in their history, always has a lineup full of top dollar stars, and until last night had the best record in the American League. And the Sox were going for a sweep. There was a chance to see the White Sox sweep the New. York. Yankees. This would give the team automatic legitimacy if there were still doubters out there, this was a game that could change everything. It was not just a Wednesday night baseball game between a couple of good teams. This was a moment you don't get very often. It was an event.
Again, imagine that is all happening for the Cubs. Is there any price fans wouldn't pay? Is there any location that Cubs fans would not flock to watch it? If the Cubs played the Yankees in that situation in U.S. Cellular, they'd be charging a couple hundred bucks for the last row of the upper deck and people would be buying them. They would be shoving their own mother out of the way for the opportunity to sit directly behind the foul pole.
Sox fans left over one third of their stadium (which they all claim is superior to Wrigley) unsold. This wasn't about the neighborhood. Who cares about the neighborhood for a game like that? You're not hanging out in the neighborhood. You're parking in a security-controlled parking lot and walking for 3 minutes to the gate. You can't do that to watch your Cy Young candidate pitcher go for a sweep of the Yankees? I don't understand at all.
There was literally no problem with last night for a one-time event like that game was. The weather was beautiful. The games before were fantastic games. Game 1 featured two comebacks fueled by HRs by Alexei Ramirez, Gordon Beckham, Dewayne Wise and Adam Dunn. They also fell behind briefly in Game 2, only to tie it up and then have Kevin Youkilis launch a go-ahead grand slam. You can't ask for better lead-ins to a Game 3 sweep attempt.
The Sun-Times' Daryl Van Schouwen addressed this topic in his piece today including a Twitter quote from a Sox fan:
"Most White Sox fans can't shell out a couple hundred dollars on a random weekday for a baseball game,'' Sox fan Eric Galka posted on Twitter on Tuesday night.
The problem is, this was not a "random weekday." Eric acts like everyone is bitching about why the attendance is so low for a game with the Sox playing the Mariners in April or something. This game was a big fucking deal. Do you know how big of a deal it was? I wanted to go to the game just to watch it. I don't like either team, I live on the North Side, and I'm having kind of a busy week at work and I wanted in on that game last night. I would have paid $26 to sit in the Upper Deck just to witness a game like that. Games like that are why we fucking watch baseball at all. If you call yourself a baseball fan and can't get worked up about a game like the Sox/Yankees game last night, you seriously aren't going to get worked up over much.
For games like that involving the team you root for, you don't care about the prices, you don't care about the neighborhood, you don't care about the distance you drive or take the train, and you don't care about what time you have to get up for work in the morning. At least, I wouldn't care. I guess White Sox fans need more than that.
Kudos to the 26,000 that did show up. That was a hell of a game and a hell of series. It must have been an absolute blast to witness it first hand. I guess we'll see the rest of you in the playoffs? Maybe? If you don't have to get up too early the next day and the prices are reasonable, of course.