text:
Two Ruidoso men were detained for allegedly vandalizing one of the new gondola cars at Ski Apache Thursday.
"They were carving pictures into the window," Ski Apache general manager Justin Rowland said.
Ski Apache security officers detained Dennis Short, 19, and John Nuckols, 20, after the operator at the top of the gondola run observed two penis shaped images carved in to the back window of car No. 24.
Lincoln County Deputy Sheriff Matt Christian reported Nuckols told him the operator did not check the gondola car before he and Short boarded it.
"They do usually check the lift before I get on it, but this time they were changing shift and it wasn't checked," Nuckols reportedly told Christian.
The operator in the boarding area refuted Nuckols' claim that she did not check the car before the pair boarded.
Christian reported the system used to check the cars for damage leave little chance for any damage to go unnoticed. An operator checks the car at the bottom of the run and another checks it at the top.
The operator at the top of the lift detained Nuckols after observing the damage to the window. Nuckols reportedly denied any knowledge of the damage. The operator sent Nuckols back to the bottom of the lift where security officers were waiting.
Short was already skiing down the mountain and security officers detained him at his vehicle.
Christian reports neither he nor the security officers found any sharp objects on Nuckols or Short.
Christian reported Short would have had time to dispose of a sharp object at his vehicle, so Christian asked permission to search Short's vehicle. Short agreed.
Christian did not find any sharp object capable of causing the damage readily accessible in Short's vehicle, but did report finding a small amount of marijuana and a small marijuana pipe in the glove box. Nuckols claimed responsibility for these.
Christian gave Short and Nuckols criminal trespass warnings and informed them the warning is for life. Both agreed to not come back to the area.
Security officers had confiscated season passes from both men.
Christian met with Nuckols and Short outside the ski area and asked Nuckols for permission to search his apartment, located in the 400 block of Walnut Street in Ruidoso. Christian reported the fresh smell of marijuana in Short's vehicle led him to believe there may be more drugs in the apartment Nuckols and Short reportedly share.
Nuckols agreed to allow Christian search the residence but when Christian arrived Nuckols said he had changed his mind. Christian informed Nuckols he would seek a warrant for the possession charge.
Charges for the damage to the gondola carr are pending.
"I am waiting for proof of the cost of the window that was damaged," Deputy District Attorney John Sugg said.
Rowland said the windows in the $40,000 gondola cars are over $1,000.
Sugg said that if the damage to the window is over $1,000 the charge will be a fourth-degree felony and will be tried in District Court. If under $1,000, the charge is a petty misdemeanor.
"We will attempt to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law," Rowland said. "If we catch you attempting to deface these gondola cars you could also receive a life-time ban from Ski Apache and the Inn of the Mountain Gods."
Part of a $15 million renovation to Ski Apache, the new gondola began operation Jan. 18.
"We are trying to keep the new gondola beautiful so you can help us out," Rowland said. "If the public sees anybody defacing anything just let us know. We need the public's help as well."


text:
The Michigan State staff has been working very hard recruiting the state of Illinois for the class of 2014. With four players from Illinois already committed, the Spartans are definitely seeing the fruits of their labor and the staff would definitely like to add a few more players from the Land of Lincoln to the class.
Wide receiver Jauan Wesley of Thornton Township High School is on the short list of prospects the staff is focused on.
The 5-foot-10, 170-pound Wesley currently holds eight scholarship offers including one from MSU. Some of the other BCS teams actively recruiting him include Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Purdue and Wisconsin. Wesley is rated a 3-star prospect and the No. 73 wide receiver in the nation by Rivals.com.
Wesley had a strong junior season for his high school team catching 44 passes for over 800-yards and scoring 18 touchdowns. That fact, along with his strong performance at multiple camps and combines this spring, is what has really caught the eye of college coaches.
SpartanMag.com was able to see Wesley at the Rivals Camps Series in Chicago back in May and he performed very well at that event. He was named the top prospect at his position and Rivals.com had the following to say about him:
"The most explosive wide receiver at the Chicago RCS was the 5-foot-11, 170-pound Wesley. He understands how to set up defensive backs with his decoy route, and then has the speed to burn them when they bite. Illinois was the only BCS program to offer Wesley before the camp, but he is headed for more offers this summer."
As far as MSU, Wesley's primary recruiter is wide receivers coach Terrence Samuel. Wesley talked about his time in East Lansing back in June at the Spartans 1-Day Elite Player Camp.
"Michigan State is a very nice school and has great coaching," Wesley said. "They are definitely a school that I am considering. I was able to talk with both the wide receiver coach and the head coach after the camp and that helped me get a better perspective about the school and how they coach the players."
The Spartans have experienced some attrition at the wide receiver spot over the past few months. That attrition has made wide receiver recruiting a bit more important than it seemed after signing day last February. Wesley could certainly be the next Illinois product to make a commitment to plays for the Green and White.
Spartans offer 2015 LB/DE
Earlier this week 6-foot-4, 235-pound prospect Cassius Peat of Corona Del Sol High School in Arizona stopped at MSU. While on campus, Peat received good news when Head Coach Mark Dantonio offered him a scholarship. Peat now holds offers from Arizona State and Michigan State.
Peat comes from a very athletic family. His father Todd played in the NFL for the Cardinals and the Raiders. He also has two older brothers who were high-level football recruits coming out of high school. His oldest brother, Todd Jr., signed with the Nebraska Cornhuskers coming out of high school. His other brother, Andrus, is currently playing for Stanford. The family has Midwest connections as Todd Peat Sr. was born in Illinois and starred for Northern Illinois University back in the 1980s
Matt Dorsey is a recruiting analyst for SpartanMag.com and Rivals.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
1976 South Carolina Code of Laws
Updated through the end of the 2000 Session
Copyright and Disclaimer
The State of South Carolina owns the copyright to the Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1976, as contained herein. Any use of the text, section headings, or catchlines of the 1976 Code is subject to the terms of federal copyright and other applicable laws and such text, section headings, or catchlines may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form or for inclusion in any material which is offered for sale or lease without the express written permission of the Chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Council or the Code Commissioner of South Carolina.
This statutory database is current through the 2000 Regular Session of the South Carolina General Assembly. Changes to the statutes enacted by the 2001 General Assembly, which will convene in January 2001, will be incorporated as soon as possible. Some changes enacted by the 2001 General Assembly may take immediate effect. The State of South Carolina and the South Carolina Legislative Council make no warranty as to the accuracy of the data, and users rely on the data entirely at their own risk.
The Legislative Council by law is charged with compiling and publishing the 1976 Code and it is maintained in a database which may be accessed for commercial purposes by contacting the Legislative Council or the office of Legislative Printing, Information and Technology Resources.
Title 39 - Trade and Commerce
SECTION 39-24-10. Short title.
This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Drug Product Selection Act of 1978".
SECTION 39-24-20. Definitions.
As used in this chapter:
(1) "Brand name" means the proprietary or trade name placed upon a drug, its container, label or wrapping at the time of packaging;
(2) "Generic name" means the United States Adopted Name (USAN) or the official title of a drug published in the latest edition of a nationally recognized pharmacopoeia or formulary;
(3) "Substitute" means to dispense, with the practitioner's authorization, a "therapeutically equivalent" generic drug product of identical drug salt in place of the drug ordered or prescribed;
(4) "Therapeutically equivalent" means the same efficacy and toxicity when administered to an individual in the same dosage form; and
(5) "Practitioner" means a physician, osteopath, dentist, podiatrist, veterinarian, or any other person authorized to prescribe drugs under the laws of this State.
SECTION 39-24-30. Substitution of equivalent drugs authorized.
As provided in Section 39-4-40, upon receiving a prescription for a brand name product, a registered pharmacist may substitute a drug product of the same dosage form and strength which, in his professional judgment, is a therapeutically equivalent drug product.
SECTION 39-24-40. Prescription shall state whether substitution proper; form; consent of patient.
Every oral or written drug prescription shall provide an authorization from the practitioner as to whether or not a therapeutically equivalent generic drug may be substituted.
A written prescription shall have two signature lines at opposite ends on the bottom of the form. Under the line at the left side shall be clearly printed the words "'DISPENSE AS WRITTEN". Under the line at the right side shall be clearly printed the words "SUBSTITUTION PERMITTED". The practitioner shall communicate the instructions to the pharmacist by signing on the appropriate line. No written prescription shall be valid without the signature of the practitioner on one of these lines.
An oral prescription from the practitioner shall instruct the pharmacist as to whether or not a therapeutically equivalent generic drug product may be substituted. The pharmacist shall note the instructions on the file copy of the prescription and retain the prescription form for the period as prescribed by law.
The pharmacist shall note the brand name or the manufacturer of the substituted drug dispensed on the file copy of a written or oral prescription. The prescription label shall contain the brand name of the drug product dispensed or the generic name of the drug product dispensed and its manufacturer, either written in full or appropriately abbreviated, unless the prescribing practitioner indicates that the name of the drug shall not appear upon the prescription label.
Substitution shall not occur unless the pharmacist advises the patient that the practitioner has authorized substitution and the patient consents.
When dispensing a prescribed medication, if a pharmacist substitutes a generic drug for a name brand prescribed drug, the generic drug name must be listed on the prescription label first followed by the words "substituted for" and the name brand prescribed drug or this information must be affixed to the container on an auxiliary label.
SECTION 39-24-50. Retroactive effect.
No provisions of this chapter shall apply to, nor be construed to invalidate, prescriptions issued prior to the effective date of this chapter; provided, that an oral authorization for substitution may be obtained from the prescribing practitioner by the pharmacist on any prescription issued prior to the effective date of this chapter.
SECTION 39-24-60. Out of state and United States Government prescriptions.
This chapter shall not be construed to prevent registered pharmacists from filling, as otherwise provided by law, prescriptions originating outside the boundaries of this State and official United States Government prescriptions issued by authorized governmental officials.


text:
WEST HARRISON, IN Team 125 is bunkering in for 12 days of football practice in The Land That Fun Forgot. We wont say that the conference center at Higher Ground is ground zero for boredom. Well just say that for UC football players, the highlight of the day is the prospect of eating corn fresh from the local cob.
It is the perfect place for Lyle Allen Jones. It is a football terrarium. One way in, Butch Jones says, happily, and one way out. He adds that a lot of cell phones dont work here. The young men get their rest. This also pleases him.
Even the name of the place sounds like a Butch Jones T-shirt slogan:
Higher Ground.
UC Bearcats. Aiming for Higher Ground.
Nothing filters Jones message at Higher Ground. This year, its synergy. He defines synergy as creating a collective energy and consistency. Jones has nearly two weeks to spread his Word. The standards and traditions of UC football are his gospel, he says. We set that tone here, right away.
Its a hopeful tone, because Butch Jones is a hopeful guy. Team 125 the 125th team in the long and storied history of UC football, he explains will not be expected to defend the Big East title it shared last season. I dont believe in defending a championship, Jones says That championship was won by that team, with a lot of guys who arent part of this team. Roles change. Each team has a one-year life expectancy.
This is a crucial year for Jones. It might even be a defining year. Its his third year as head coach. He has had a couple recruiting classes. He has put his vision of Bearcat football front and center. He is working in an industry that does business on a fault line of greed and disloyalty. His own conference is at the epicenter of it all. If you dont know whos playing football in the Big East today, no worries. Itll change tomorrow. Nothing is certain in college football, except money.
Against such a backdrop, how can a big-time football aspirant hope to do better than tread water?
If Butch Jones wins 10 or 11 games this year, will he be here next year? He has a young team. These Bearcats wont play Pitt in their Thursday, Sept. 6 ESPN opener with a veteran, all-conference quarterback or running back. Zach Collaros and Isaiah Pead were not his players. Neither was Derek Wolfe, the defensive tackle Denver took with the 36th pick in the NFL draft. This is really the first team Jones can call his own.
If the Bearcats are better than the experts believe theyre picked fourth in the conference will Jones stay around to keep the ball rolling?
He is closer to the community than any of his recent predecessors. He believes UC can be a player nationally. He is convinced UC football deserves a spot on the same dance card as the Bengals and Reds, when it comes to fan and corporate support.
At times, were undervalued here, Jones says. Sometimes, when you have something so close, you take it for granted.
He hasnt been shy in urging people to buy tickets. He hasnt hidden his disappointment when they dont. Without our community, we cant accomplish what we want, Jones says. The first thing bowl games and conferences look at is attendance.
Jones knows the responsibility rests first with him. Win, then ask for support. It remains a Catch-22. Win enough, you leave. They all do. And then the next guy comes in, saying the same stuff the last guy said.
Jones calls Team 125 a work in progress. All college programs, except those at the very top, could say the same. Problem is, schools and coaches dont often allow enough time for sufficient progress to be made. Everyone is antsy.
Last year, when UC was 10-3 after 4-8 the year before, Jones went from asking for patience to entertaining job possibilities elsewhere. You cant have it both ways. I suggested to Jones that all coaches contracts be for five years, with the requirement that both school and coach honor the deal.
You cant fire him. He cant leave.
That gives a coach enough time to make his mark, and a school enough time to decide if the mark is worthy. As it is, Butch Jones is forced into saying the same things most coaches say. He preaches loyalty, yet will leave for a better job. His school signs him to a long-term deal, but includes buyout provisions.
Its a challenge because as a coach, you love your players, Jones says. You develop bonds. Thats what makes coaching special. But coaches have their own families, too. Its a tussle.
UC has weathered its coachly storms, and stayed competitive. It doesnt always work that way. Maybe Jones and UC each would be best served to listen to something Jones said Wednesday. He was talking about local high school players, choosing to play for UC. Just substitute coaches for kids. `
We have kids now wanting to be Bearcats, and understanding what it means to stay home. Thats very important.
A certain coach might praise the synergy in that.
Doc: Bearcats aiming for Higher Ground
Aug. 9, 2012
WEST HARRISON, IN Team 125 is bunkering in for 12 days of football practice in The Land That Fun Forgot. We wont say that the conference center at Higher Ground is ground zero for boredom. Well just say that for UC football players, the highlight of the day is the prospect of eating corn fresh from the local cob.
Most Viewed
Buy & Sell
Use our mobile site and iPhone apps to keep updated with what's going on around Cincinnati.
- Yesterday, Nov 28
- Friday, Nov 27
- Thursday, Nov 26
- Wednesday, Nov 25
- Tuesday, Nov 24
- Monday, Nov 23
- Sunday, Nov 22
Real Deals
Flip, shop and save on specials from your favorite retailers in the Tri-State area.GET DEALS NOW


text:
Arild Remmereit.
- Filed Under
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra will search for a new music director, following its board's decision to terminate Arild Remmereit's contract at the end of the 2012-2013 season.
The RPO board voted Wednesday to keep him only until August - just two years into his four-year contract. No reasons were given for the sudden action, and it's unclear whether the Norwegian conductor will stay for the entire season.
"Arild has invigorated audiences with his focus on women composers and lesser known works, and his energy and innovative programming will be missed," said board chair Elizabeth F. ...


text:
Contact Us
Explore our businesses and the markets we serve:
Kennedy Information is the parent company of several organizations serving professional markets.
Kennedy Information's businesses consist of:
Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory
— providing market and business intelligence to buyers and sellers of Management and IT Consulting services
— the flagship publication of the consulting profession features the latest information on the people, the profession and the lifestyle of consulting
G2 Intelligence
— providing market and business intelligence to diagnostic laboratory and related healthcare providers
Green Markets
— providing news and spot-pricing data to fertilizer and related commodities manufacturers, dealers and buyers
Kennedy Career Services
— connecting career minded jobseekers with recruiters and career development professionals
Through these disparate divisions, Kennedy Information delivers accurate, meaningful market intelligence through multiple media including: in-person conferences and seminars, research studies, custom research, advisory services, periodicals, online events, databases and proprietary web applications.
The company is headquartered in Keene, New Hampshire with offices in New York as well as several bureaus throughout North America and Europe.
Kennedy's parent company,
Bloomberg BNA
, a wholly owned subsidiary of
, is a leading source of legal, regulatory, and business information for professionals. Its network of more than 2,500 reporters, correspondents, and leading practitioners delivers expert analysis, news, practice tools, and guidance — the information that matters most to professionals. Bloomberg BNA's authoritative coverage spans the full range of legal practice areas, including tax & accounting, labor & employment, intellectual property, banking & securities, employee benefits, health care, privacy & security, human resources, and environment, health & safety.
In memory of our friend and colleague, Philip M. Sbrogna
© 2015 Kennedy Information, LLC
A Bloomberg BNA Business
Phone: 800.531.0140 or +1.603.357.8100


text:
Joey Wall talks to friend Robert Ray (right) about the boat he just bought at H & W Marine in Bossier City.
While some sectors of the economy are still crawling out of the recession, sales of new powerboats are close to soaring, according to numbers provided by the National Marine Manufacturers Association.
Across Louisiana and the U.S., retail sales of powerboats jumped 10.7 percent in 2012 and show no signs of tapering off.
"I've been in this business 21 years and this business has always been steady, but it's currently the busiest I've ever seen," Bayou Outdoors Supercenter general sales manager Ben Clemens said. "We are averaging 70 to 80 boats a month - and we sold 102 last month." ...


text:
Looking for a historical people to study that may help you survive in a changing and increasingly tumultuous world? Scientists studying the histories of Greenland and Iceland say you should check out the Vikings.
The researchers have been able to analyze how well the Norse responded to changes in the economy, trade, politics and technology, against a backdrop of changing climate. They found that some Viking societies were very good at keeping their options open in a changing world. They focused on long-term sustainability by adapting their trade links, turning their backs on some economic options and acquiring food from a variety of wild and farmed sources.
Throughout the middle ages as the global climate changed, the researchers say the Norse in Iceland embraced new economic policies and changed their way of life to benefit from new environmental factors.
The Norse in Greenland, however, failed to adapt to changing weather patterns and continued to operate in the same ways they always had. Eventually, with changes in trade, climate and cultural contact with the Inuit, the Greenland Norse society fell.
The researchers say that modern societies would do well to examine the two Norse societies, as humans having to find ways to adapt to changing environmental factors is nothing new.
Professor Andrew Dugmore of the University of Edinburgh who presented the findings said, "Our future will in part be shaped by climate change, and to prepare for it we can learn valuable lessons from how societies of the past have adapted and even flourished amid a backdrop of difficult conditions. Most importantly we can understand how a combination of climate and non-climate events can lead to a 'perfect storm' and trigger unexpected and dramatic social change."


text:
The Persistent Threat Detection System is a tethered aerostat capable of staying aloft for weeks at a time to provide around-the-clock surveillance of broad areas. (Lockheed Martin)
Anyone watching from the ground in Afghanistan might have stared in astonishment at the strange battle that broke out overhead one day in 2011. A giant teardrop-shaped aerostat 75 feet long was speeding through the sky, out of control, carried by the furious wind. Suddenly, an F-16 fighter jet roared close and then opened fire, mangling the blimp-like dirigible, like blasting a football with a round of buckshot. Gradually, the aerostat slumped to the ground.
The $4 million surveillance platform and the F-16 were on the same side, of course, both belonging to American forces. But the Persistent Ground Surveillance System (PGSS), loaded with cameras and communications gear, had been ripped clear of its moorings and was on its way to wherever the weather took it.
And that was just one of two aerostats lost to a storm that day, according to a Central Command report.
The shootdown was a dramatic reminder of the fragility of the lighter-than-air reconnaissance platforms that have gained in popularity in recent years.
Aerostats proved to be extremely valuable for surveillance and reconnaissance during the war in Iraq, and they are in high demand by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But the Afghan weather is taking a toll and costing the military hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sometimes when an aerostat is ripped free, the only answer is to shoot it down.
They strafe the thing, which tears it to shreds, said Arthur Gallegos, an assistant director at the Government Accountability Office in Denver.
Its not an ideal solution. Not only does it destroy the aerostat, but it diverts the plane from other missions, said Gallegos, who has analyzed military aerostat and airship programs for the GAO.
Strong winds, powerful downdrafts, lightning, rain and even snow are damaging or destroying so many of the spy balloons that, in 2011, the Central Command, which runs the war in Afghanistan, established a Red Team to analyze aerostat mishaps and try to come up with ways to prevent them.
Critics say the losses are a serious problem, more than just the cost of doing business. At what point does it constitute government waste? Gallegos asked.
Aerostats emerged among the few winners of a five-year foray by the Defense Department in lighter-than-air craft. Lighter-than-air flight once seemed an antiquated concept, evoking zeppelins and hot-air balloons. But the technology has indeed advanced.
With two wars underway and defense budgets at all-time highs, the military launched 15 aerostat and airship programs that cost nearly $7 billion between 2007 and 2012, according to the GAO. Many of the programs, including giant unmanned spy blimps and ultra-high altitude airships, have since been abandoned as impractical. But the PGSS and the larger PTDS Persistent Threat Detection System have largely succeeded.
These systems are very effective at what they do, and commanders rely heavily on their capabilities, said Lt. Col. Michael Parodi, the Armys product manager for meteorological and target identification capabilities.
By scanning large areas of terrain for enemy activity, the aerostats provide a clearer picture of potential threats, Parodi said.
Commanders have incorporated aerostats into many of their missions, using them to protect convoy routes, find roadside bombs and sometimes the insurgents who plant them and to provide a real-time perspective of engagements with the enemy, he said.
Begun as rapid equipping programs to meet urgent surveillance needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, PTDS and PGSS are now among the most expensive of the lighter-than-air endeavors. PTDS is budgeted at $3.1 billion through 2016, and PGSS is set to spend $2.1 billion by the end of 2013, the GAO reports. PTDS aerostats, the larger of the two, are 117 feet long, 52 feet in diameter and can lift a payload of 1,000 pounds, according to the Rapid Reaction Technology Office. They carry a mix of sensors and communications gear, including high-definition video cameras, high-magnification thermal imagers, communications antennas that enable Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) transmissions to troops below and laser illuminators for marking targets.
Planning for PTDS began in 2003 and within months, manufacturer Lockheed Martin says, the first one was delivered to Iraq.
The PGSS program began in 2009 specifically to develop smaller, more mobile aerostat systems for use at forward operating bases in Afghanistan. They can lift payloads ranging from 250 to 900 pounds. PGSS aerostats and their mooring and ground stations are small enough to deploy to remote forward operating bases in CH-47 helicopters. Two companies build them, Aerostar International based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and TCOM, in Elizabeth City, N.C.
By late 2012, 59 PGSSs had been delivered to Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. In high-altitude Afghanistan, they are generally flown at 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the ground. The cameras keep an unblinking eye on territory that can extend out about 10 miles in all directions.
The severe conditions of Afghanistan have led to ongoing losses in the aerostat fleet. In February alone, there were 10 major [Persistent Surveillance Systems] incidents out of 99 systems, according to an internal Red Team report. The February mishaps compare with four major incidents in February 2012, when there were 86 aerostats in theater, and four incidents in February 2011, when there were 46 aerostats on hand, the team reported.
Six of the incidents in February involved aerostats that crashed due to wind. One aerostat experienced major damage from small-arms fire, and another was lost after a helicopter clipped its tether. Two other major incidents are attributed to causes unknown.
The Red Team set up by CENTCOM is focusing on both the PGSS, such as the one shot down by the F-16, and the PTDS. Eight of the 10 mishaps in February involved PGSS aerostats.
During Februarys severe weather, the eight PGSS aerostats took the most punishment. Just two PTDS crashed due to wind, the Red Team reported.
PGSS is a smaller platform so its more affected by weather, Parodi explained. Also, PGSS aerostats dont have a lightning grounding system like the PTDS, and theyve just had some bad weather in their areas of operation.
But other aerostat experts say no one knows for sure why PGSS aerostats are more accident-prone. The design modeling remains incomplete, and adequate wind-tunnel testing has not been done.
At $4 million per PGSS and $9 million per PTDS, mishaps quickly become expensive.
However, the Army maintains that the intelligence the aerostats gather and the force protection they provide outweighs the losses.
The aerostats have proven to be a great asset, in Afghanistan, Parodi said. Theyve been referred to by some local commanders as game-changers.
Indeed, by 2011, persistent overhead surveillance was considered so important that one senior Pentagon official predicted the United States will never go to war again without aerostats.
Alex Lovett, a special assistant in Defense Rapid Fielding Directorate, said information provided by these aerostats has reduced injuries and deaths caused by [improvised explosive devices] by 30 percent.
The key thing they can do is loiter and stare, and that ability is really valuable, Gallegos agreed. During a 2012 investigation of military aerostat and airship programs, Gallegos and others at the GAO interviewed a ton of people, and everyone was saying pretty much the same thing they are really valuable and really inexpensive compared to a UAV.
The Defense Department and aerostat vendors frequently emphasize the crafts low operating cost.
Tethered systems cost in the hundreds of dollars per hour to operate, compared with unmanned and manned fixed-wing aircraft, which cost in the thousands of dollars an hour to operate, said Ronald Browning, who heads business development at Lockheed for the PTDS program.
The key is that it requires no fuel to stay up in the air, he said in an interview. Once an aerostat is filled with helium, thats all it needs to stay aloft for weeks at a time. That drives cost efficiency, Browning said.
The Naval Air Systems Command, which runs the PGSS program, said in a 2011 report that the most eye-opening aspect of the PGSS was its low per-hour operating cost, which it estimated to be about 1 percent that of flying a drone.
Others rank it the cheapest platform per operating hour.
Even so, at $4 million to $9 million per system, and with aerostats being damaged or destroyed at a rate of about four a month, the costs can mount.
One early lesson the Army learned: Investigations were catch-as-catch-can.
We found out that there was no independent organization responsible to investigate the crashes, wrote James Sommer, the Army science adviser to CENTCOM. This was the impetus to form a Red Team whose purpose is to study the incidents and recommend corrective action.
For two years, the team, which is manned by volunteers, has combed through aerostat accident reports, examined faulty flight termination systems, analyzed weather and terrain data, begun work on a computer model to simulate aerostat flights in bad weather, studied tether strength and design, held numerous meetings, teleconferences and workshops, and sent investigators to Afghanistan to visit aerostat sites and ask questions.
Still, tethers kept breaking, lightning kept striking and aerostats kept crashing.
Weather is a big thing, said Gallegos, who has followed the Red Teams activity.
But atmospheric conditions are just part of the problem. Inadequate training and doctrine for operating aerostats in bad weather are also a concern.
They have all these aerostats out there, but they have not developed the tactics, techniques and procedures to operate them correctly. Were losing them at an alarming rate.
Better training is probably the best solution, Parodi said. And Im not just speaking of the aerostat crew, which goes through a very intensive training program. Rather, my biggest training challenge is of the operational force the commanders who run Afghanistans operating bases he said.
Because aerostats initially were fielded so rapidly, base commanders received no formal training on aerostat operations, Parodi said. Instead, they learn by trial and, sometimes, error.
We developed a pretty concise set of conditions under which to fly the aerostats based on things like wind speed, temperature, humidity, rain, thunderstorms, etc., Parodi said. But the capability to accurately and reliably forecast weather in the local areas is haphazard at best.
Ultimately, the decision to fly or not is made by the base commander.
He or she makes that decision based on operational requirements, Parodi said. We are there to support the war fighter.
The Red Teams catalog of mishaps suggests there are other elements of aerostat operation that are in need of improvement, as well.
In one incident, an aerostats wind sensor was found to be inoperative, and the crew ignored warnings that bad weather was approaching, the Red Team said: The aerostat was caught in a downdraft and was pushed down nose first 1,000 to 1,500 feet. The aerostat rose swiftly almost immediately after it reached its lowest point.
The result sounds like the scene from The Wizard of Oz, where the hot-air balloon breaks free before Dorothy can climb aboard: The rate of ascent was so great that the mooring platform shook when the tension returned to the tether and the tether separated at the eyelet.
Sometimes downdrafts or vertical winds push aerostats down, causing slack in their tethers. Then the tethers snag on nearby objects, such as the mooring mast or razor wire fences, and are cut.
And then there are dust devils, small, tornadolike pockets of wind that swirl across the Afghan countryside.
Dust devils can literally pop up with no warning and play havoc with the aerostats, Parodi said.
Lightning is another peril. Two PTDS aerostats were hit by lightning this week, [another] PTDS was hit last week, the Red Team noted in one section of its report.
In another entry, the Red Team said, Four PGSS aerostats were hit by lightning. Investigation is ongoing. PTDS has their lightning detectors integrated with the ground control station, while PGSS has portable crew operated lightning detectors. The key point is whether the PGSS crews are using their lightning detectors. Trends show that February is the worst month for major lightning incidents.
The larger PTDS aerostats are equipped with lightning rods and their tethers are designed to conduct lightning to the ground, but that doesnt always work. Lightning strikes sometimes melt the rods, which then burn holes in the aerostat envelope. And lightning can fry the cameras and other electronic equipment onboard and burn the tethers, causing them to break, aerostat experts say.
Helicopters pose another threat.
The mishaps this February include a PGSS lost due to a helicopter tether strike, the Red Team reported. Earlier, the team reported that July has seen helicopters cut tethers on two PGSS systems. The flight termination system functioned on one and malfunctioned on the other.
Gallegos lists helicopter strikes among the weird, dumb things that are causing aerostat mishaps.
It shouldnt be too hard to prevent helicopter strikes, Browning, of Lockheed, said.
Its a matter of providing notification to pilots on the whereabouts of aerostats and making the tethers more visible by putting strobe lights or flags on them, he said.
Thats been done, Parodi said.
We have placed flags and visible light and infrared strobes at regular intervals on the tethers to help improve visibility during daytime and nighttime operations, he said.
Gunfire is yet another problem for aerostats, though most of the time, small-arms fire is not as serious for aerostats as it might seem. They can keep flying despite numerous bullet holes. The pressure of the helium inside the aerostat is only slightly higher than the air pressure outside, so if you get a hole in the aerostat, the helium doesnt come gushing out, it more or less oozes out, Browning said.
Its not uncommon for aerostat crews to winch their balloons back to the ground and discover multiple bullet holes, according to reports from Afghanistan.
Aloft is where the Army wants them to be holding the high ground is always an advantage. Reports from Afghanistan illustrate why.
At Combat Outpost Weikel in Herat province, cameras on an aerostat provided U.S. soldiers with a close-up view as a group of insurgents planted an IED.
We watched them dig the hole, Staff Sgt. Eirik Svare said in a May 2011 report released by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Without [the aerostat], we would have never seen it coming.
We had a patrol going out, they were going to shoot at us, get us to follow them down their route so we would hit that IED, he said. Without this system, we would have lost a truck and who knows how many injured or killed.
To the east, in Ghazni province, soldiers from Task Force Iron Rakkasan credit a PTDS aerostat camera for spotting an Afghan police officer operating an illegal highway checkpoint.
The man hid in a culvert until a truck came by, Army 2nd Lt. Terrance Avery said. Then he would climb out of the culvert, brandish his weapon to stop the vehicle, talk to the driver for a moment and then return to the culvert as he stuffed the money into his pocket.
It was all caught on camera.
A U.S. patrol in the area was directed to the crooked cop, arrested him and turned him and his wad of cash over to Afghan authorities.
Infrared cameras have spotted enemy fighters busily planting IEDs at night. U.S. troops watched as the bombers headed back to their safe houses, inadvertently disclosing the locations and enabling U.S. troops to seize weapons caches and make arrests.
To date, aerostats have provided approximately 750,000 hours of full-motion video in Afghanistan, Parodi said.
Will aerostats last? The Pentagon thinks their use will grow.
As the war in Afghanistan winds down, PGSS will begin transition to other foreign and domestic government agencies, the Rapid Reaction Technology Office said. The persistent ISR capabilities of this system make it viable in a variety of operations, such as border patrol, port and harbor patrol, and more. ■


text:
Having a short story Maduro right now. This is really too cold out to be smoking anything.
Having a short story Maduro right now. This is really too cold out to be smoking anything.
Just lite up a La Casita Criolla and poured me a little OFBB. I LOVE Wednesday nights!
Oh. 70 degrees on the back porch. Spring training all around!
Was out of town for a few days, smoked a few cigars... Tatuaje Miami Unicos, Room 101 Namakubi Papi Chulo, Ortega Mini connecticut, Room 101 Ltd Conjura...
It's finally Friday! Fat pour of FRSiB to go with my fat little Nub Maduro.
Had an AF 858 Maduro earlier tonight. Good smoke.
Last night I unwound with AF Don Carlos #3
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
GBS Member rounding out the top 5
Are you a Whisk(e)y Apostle?
Smoked a CAO Flathead 660 yesterday, a big box pressed rich and fairly strong smoke. Followed it with a Rocky Patel royale.
Curivari Reserva Limitada... Tasty stick. m
FINALLY stumped me, Wack! That's a new one on me.
Headed home to the back porch. Will make a last minute decision, when there.
Sunday afternoon, along with Wednesday nights, is the only designated cigar time
I can get this time of year.


text:
Brown Sugar Ham Bites
1 pkg Hawaiian mini rolls
1/2 pound deli ham
1/2 pound swiss
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2 teaspoons mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
In a small bowl, blend butter, sugar and mustard. Set aside. Fry ham in a skillet in a tablespoon of butter. Remove and cut into squares that will fit the mini rolls. To assemble, spread the butter mixture on the bottom of each roll. Top with ham, cheese, and the top of the roll. Bake at 350 degrees until cheese is melted. The sugar will carmalize, making this extra delicious!!!
Sweet Potato & Apple Hashbrowns
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
3 medium apples, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup brown sugar, saly, pepper to taste
In a skillet, melt the butter. Add onion, potatoes and apples. Saute until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add brown sugar and honey. Cook until sugar carmalizes and coats the fruit and veggies. Serve!
Happy Autumn! Enjoy!


text:
Dan Siegel Offers Therapists a New Vision of the Brain
by Mary Sykes Wylie
In 1999, a few months after child psychiatrist Daniel Siegel's book The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience was published, Siegel received an e-mail, purporting to be from a representative of Pope John Paul II, asking him to come to the Vatican to talk to the Pope. Thinking the e-mail was a prank, Siegel ignored it--why would the Pope invite an expert on the neurobiology of childhood attachment over to the Vatican to schmooze? Nevertheless, one enigmatic detail of the message stuck in Siegel's mind as he deleted it: the Pope, according to the message, wanted very much to know why "the mother's gaze" was so critical to the growth and emotional well-being of a baby.
As it turned out, the e-mail was legitimate. An official letter soon followed from the Pontifical Council for the Family, formally inviting Siegel to be the main speaker at a Vatican conference for church leaders and Catholic social services providers and missionaries, to be followed by a private Papal audience for Siegel and his family. Siegel accepted the invitation with one caveat: he wanted the Pope to know ahead of time that the all-important loving gaze could come from either parent or from another attachment figure--it didn't have to originate with the mother.
What drew the Pope to Siegel's work was apparently the search for some illumination about the small, everyday miracle of that gaze--what novelist George Eliot called "the meeting eyes of love"--that every child yearns for and must have, literally, to survive. Repeated tens of thousands of times in the child's life, these small moments of mutual rapport serve to transmit the best part of our humanity--our capacity for love--from one generation to the next.
While still only 47 and not a formal brain researcher himself--certainly not the originator of the massive, accumulating body of theory regarding the processes of human attachment-- Siegel has displayed a unique ability as a synthesizer, weaving together strands of knowledge from a variety of fields. Through his highly influential book and hundreds of workshop presentations he's given around the globe in recent years, he's tried to bridge the previously disconnected worlds of neuroscience research and clinical practice. "Dan is the right person at the right time," says Pat Love, a noted couples therapist and workshop presenter who's devoted the past several years to integrating neuroscience into her own clinical work. "His work cuts across disciplinary lines to bring together neuroscience, developmental theory, evolutionary psychology, systems theory, psychiatry, medicine, and psychotherapy and point us toward the integrated thinking that will shape the future of our field."
Siegel is by no means the first clinician to have talked about the role of attachment and brain processes in clinical work. For more than 50 years, attachment theory has been a significant feature on the landscape of childhood development research. But until recently, how attachment research might inform knowledge about adult psychology was virtually ignored by psychotherapists. For example, Los Angeles psychologist Marion Solomon recalls traveling with a group of associates to England in the early 1980s to visit pioneering attachment researcher John Bowlby and enthusiastically bringing back tapes of his works. When she returned, however, she found that "no one was interested in considering the clinical implications of attachment theory. They just weren't buying the ideas." According to Solomon, however, "There's something about the way Dan has put this material together that makes the lights go on for people. He's propelled attachment theory and neuroscience beyond the tipping point within the therapy world."
Explaining Siegel's impact, students and colleagues again and again cite the distinctive personal electricity he conveys. "Dan is a born connector," says Marion Solomon, "whether it's one-to-one or with an audience of thousands." His friend Alan Schore, known for his groundbreaking research and theoretical work on childhood attachment, still remembers his first meeting with Siegel 10 years ago at a dinner party. "We just started talking, and before I knew it I was intellectually and emotionally in synch with him," recalls Schore. "The only other person with whom I'd ever clicked like that was my wife."
"Even if you're listening to him in a large audience, you have the sense that Dan is speaking directly to you," adds Schore. That seems to be part of the mesmerizing effect that Siegel's public lectures have. Take the 2003 Psychotherapy Networker Symposium at which Siegel delivered a 45-minute keynote loaded with high-end neurospeak, sprinkled with references to the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cigulate, hippocampus, the intricacies of neural transmission, synaptic plasticity. and gene expression. Clearly, it wasn't the kind of thing calculated to electrify an early-morning crowd. But from the first moments of his talk, when the soft-spoken, boyish-looking Siegel, apparently dressed by L.L. Bean, ambled on stage without notes to address an audience of 3,000, he had the mostly neuroscientifically challenged crowd on the edge of their chairs with enthusiasm.
Hundreds of shoulders in the hall palpably relaxed as he drew a laugh admitting that, as a medical student, the task of trying to remember the multisyllabic names for different brain parts "made me nauseous." Like a class of born-again biology fans, the crowd happily imitated Siegel as he repeatedly referred to his "hand puppet" model of the brain--balled fist, with knuckles representing the prefrontal cortex and the middle of the palm standing in for the brain stem. "Dan can take complicated ideas and put them into everyday language," says Marion Solomon. "He just conveys a driving curiosity that's irresistible to audiences."
It isn't just Siegel's skill as a communicator that enables him to connect so well with an audience, but the message he brings about the nature of the brain. Most of us who had any exposure at all to the human (rather than, say, the frog) brain in our biology classes were taught about the "single-skull" version. Translating his thorny subject for nonspecialists, Siegel enthralls audiences with his vision of the brain as an exquisitely social organ. From birth, it's not the relentless unfolding of a genetic plan that determines the shape of our adult minds, Siegel explains, but what happens between different brains that largely shapes what happens inside our individual brains. He opens up unexplored vistas of a plastic, self-renewing brain, with capacities to rewire itself in response to changing circumstances that go well beyond assumptions about our innate, hardwired limitations prevalent in neuroscience circles until only a few years ago.
For those inspired by the synthesis Siegel offers, his contribution transcends a particular concept or a set of change techniques. "In recent years, the therapy field has been dominated by theoretical eclecticism and a lot of attention to techniques and practical interventions, as if you can believe anything you want theoretically," says Sue Johnson, an originator of Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy, one of the most empirically supported marital therapy approaches. "What Dan Siegel has done is give us a bridge to science and a much clearer idea about the organizing brain structure of relationships," adds Pat Love. "For the first time, Siegel is offering a neuroscientific paradigm for understanding how all kinds of psychotherapy work. He's taking us beyond anecdotes and metaphors and vague theories and 'it-works-because-I-say-so' into a measurable science of human nature."
DSM 'n Drugs
But the ability to connect disparate disciplines didn't come easily. Soon after enrolling at Harvard Medical School in 1978, the young Siegel, still unsure of his own career path, found himself plunged into a professional culture focused on diseases and pathologies. It jarred him to listen to doctors and his fellow medical students refer to patients as isolated body parts--"I saw an incredible kidney today," or "There's a very interesting liver in room 415." He soon found himself regularly being dressed down for spending too much time listening to his patients' stories. "If you want to listen to people's stories, go to social work school--that's not what doctors do!" one irate supervisor told him.
Academic psychiatry during the '80s, it turned out, was exactly the wrong place for someone eager to develop a holistic, integrated view of the mind and brain. An increasingly reductionistic biological (i.e. psychopharmaceutical) psychiatry had just begun its relentless push for dominance. With the advent of DSM III and the torrent of new medications pouring out of the pharmaceutical pipeline, psychiatry grew ever more inclined to define emotional and mental problems as purely medical illnesses reflecting biochemical imbalances in the brain. Diagnosis became a game of parsing DSM categories and subcategories, and treatment a matter of prescribing meds to amp up or dampen down the synaptic exchange of neurotransmitters. The last thing that interested these scientist-psychiatrists was a vaporous, 19th-century concept like mind. "There was no understanding that subjective human experience--feelings--was an objective scientific reality," recalls Siegel. "Psychiatrists were supposed to be experts on the brain, and all they were interested in was knowing how neurons fire--they weren't interested in feelings."
Siegel found the emerging infatuation with the DSM 'n Drugs combo deeply distasteful and a betrayal of what he considered the deeper mission of psychiatry. "I hated to see colleagues and trainees seeing patients for half an hour for a meds check, then sending them off until their next appointment three months later," he says. For him, the self-conscious scientism of the new psychiatry was a crabbed, distorted version of real scientific inquiry: "The only brain mechanisms we ever really talked about were neurotransmitter receptors."
At the time, the psychiatry department at Harvard was a war zone of mutually antagonistic factions, each speaking its own language, sunk in its own pet paradigms (biological psychiatry, psychoanalytic psychiatry, descriptive psychiatry, social psychiatry) who, Siegel recalls, "all bad-mouthed each other." But whatever his feelings about the shortcomings of biological psychiatry, the field of psychotherapy offered little attraction for Siegel. Its most influential models didn't exhibit the barest interest in neurobiology or, in his opinion, even a decent regard for ordinary intellectual consistency. And despite his humanistic inclinations, he still wanted a disciplined, scientifically plausible explanation of the core phenomena therapists dealt with--human personality, emotion, memory, and identity. But none of the "explanations" offered by various psychiatric denominations, or the deceptively-neat DSM taxonomy, actually explained anything to him. Siegel regarded them as "ever more complicated definitions of observations--they all seemed about as substantial as plumes of smoke."
It seemed to Siegel that any explanation worth its salt must incorporate both the biological and the personal; it must somehow include the physical brain, the individual story of the particular human being, and the evolutionary story of the whole species. It had to reflect the tough-minded objectivity of science and the "soft" subjectivity of ordinary human experience. Neither "scientific" psychiatry, which reduced an individual to the ebb and flow of brain chemistry, nor a Tower of Babel of contending psychotherapies, which completely ignored the living brain, even came close to meeting these apparently impossible goals.
No Axe to Grind
During the late '80s, Siegel found something approaching the kind of theoretical connective tissue he was looking for when he discovered attachment theory. In the previous 40-odd years, attachment researchers following the pioneering work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth had built up a formidable body of empirical research to show that a young child's sense of security, safety, and well-being depends largely upon the emotional quality of his relationship with his primary caregivers. And it was this secure base in early childhood, the theory continued, that enabled a child to grow into an emotionally stable adult and become a good parent to his or her own children.
For Siegel, attachment researchers, with their careful attention to measurement and moment-by-moment interaction, "seemed beautifully nonpartisan and unbiased, without any clinical or theoretical axe to grind." He also found in attachment theory something he'd missed in other explanatory models--a rigorously scientific field that focused on something more emotionally compelling than the synaptic vicissitudes of neurotransmitters. Here was a field that posed the most fundamental questions about the small miracle by which we actually become human beings: How does a coherent sense of self emerge from the turmoil of fluctuating sensations that is a baby's mind? How does early experience shape our personalities? How do we learn to love? Why do we tend to treat our children the way we were treated? Why does parenting matter?
In 1988, Siegel heard one of the pioneers of attachment theory, Mary Main, give a talk about her work on what she called "coherent narrative." Main and her colleagues had devised an instrument called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), in which parents were asked about their recollections of their own childhoods. What Main's research indicated was that the way these parents told their own stories--how they made sense of their past lives, or didn't--was the most powerful predictor (85 percent accuracy) of whether their own children would be securely attached to them. If adults could create a reflective, coherent, and emotionally-rich narrative about their own childhoods, they were likely to form a good, secure relationship with their children--no matter how "insecurely attached" they themselves had been as children or how inadequate or even abusive their own parents were. It wasn't what happened to them as children, but how they came to make sense of what happened to them that predicted their emotional integration as adults and what kind of parents they'd be.
Furthermore, the findings on narrative were a real beacon of hope, empirically reinforcing the commonsense notion that people can change--their lives are not determined by their bad beginnings. In fact, according to the attachment researchers, a person can earn her emotional security and ability to create a coherent narrative about her past through personal growth and involvement in positive, healthy relationships with teachers, friends, lovers, mates, and, of course, therapists. "I loved the way attachment research showed that fate (having less-than-perfect parents) isn't necessarily destiny," says Siegel. "If you can make sense of your story, you can change it."
Of course, most therapists share Siegel's interest in the transformative power of narrative, but not his need to ground his beliefs in scientific principle. For him, however, it was as if he'd opened one of a set of nested Chinese boxes--discovering one powerful explanatory system in the connection between narrative and attachment theory--only to come across another, smaller, but even more intriguing box. What, he wondered, were the neurobiological mechanisms that made attachment so important? How does coherent narrative "happen" in the brain?
Of Coherence and Incoherence
The question of how we develop a coherent narrative was becoming clinically relevant for Siegel because he had a number of patients with PTSD, and one of the most striking symptoms of his traumatized patients was their inability to construct a coherent story about their past. If asked to talk about what happened to them as children, they became disorganized and incoherent, couldn't remember major events of their own life histories, and frequently became emotionally distraught just making the effort to recall the past. These patients remembered traumatic incidents while in one state of mind and then had no memory of the same incident when in another state of mind. They confused the past and the present and experienced highly charged, intrusive flashbacks that didn't seem like "normal" declarative memories. To Siegel, there was clearly some connection between their traumatic past--what was called their "disorganized attachment"--and something going on in their brains that prevented them from making sense of their own stories.
As a clinician, Siegel knew that PTSD was assumed to be related to dissociation, but what did that mean? How could clients both not remember enough to tell a coherent story and at the same time remember all too much, all too vividly? Psychiatrists still described these symptoms in the archaic and inadequate language of psychoanalysis--conscious versus unconscious or repressed memory--which was too schematic and narrowly sectarian to make sense of phenomena that, literally, burst the bounds of standard theories and models.
To find some more promising answers, Siegel began studying neuroscience in earnest. While exploring the complexities of memory, he learned from some of the leading authorities in the research world about the fascinating difference between implicit and explicit memory, and the newly discovered role of a horn-shaped region of the brain called the hippocampus. Implicit memory is a form of nonverbal, unconscious memory, present at birth, which lays down neural pathways encoding emotion (via the amygdala), behavioral patterns, and learned habits (like driving), perceptions, and probably bodily memory. We may experience very strong feelings or body sensations triggered by an implicit memory, for example, but have no subjective awareness of consciously recalling anything--we just feel something powerful. About a year after birth, the hippocampus comes online and begins to encode explicit memories, including consciously recalled facts--"Richard Wagner was married to Franz Liszt's daughter"--and the countless past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that make up our awareness of our autobiographical past.
Siegel first publicly floated his idea at a conference in 1992, attended by famous heavyweights from the trauma and neuroscience communities (including Eric Kandel, later winner of a Nobel prize for demonstrating how experience creates new neural connections in the brain). During one session, somebody in the audience asked, "How do you explain traumatic repression in terms of the brain?" Nobody had an answer. Siegel, still considered a junior colleague by many of the prominent figures in attendance, daringly raised his hand. "I was just this punk kid, but I threw out my idea--Is it possible that if the hippocampus is blocked during a trauma, you could be vulnerable to flashbacks and dissociation because, while you'd have the implicit memory of the event, you'd have no explicit, declarative memory of it?' Then I sat down."
At the break, an intrigued mob surrounded Siegel and asked him to amplify on this extremely interesting and radical idea of his. "It was the first experience I ever had of going to the brain to find out how people's mental processes work and coming up with an answer that might pave a way to better treatment," Siegel remembers.
Brain and Mind
Siegel was soon feverishly exploring anything else he could find out about how the brain worked and what light neurobiological research might shed on the problems of his patients. From 1991 to 1995, while the head of training in child psychiatry at UCLA, he led a study group, a multidisciplinary dream-team loaded with experts--anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, linguists, geneticists, psychiatrists, and heavily weighted with neuro-types, including neurobiologists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons. "I was realizing that the brain held the secrets to the mind," he says now.
He decided to try out the theory that integrating brain function could be beneficial therapeutically with clients who had an impoverished sense of their own past and couldn't really feel or express emotion: "I'd worked out a hypothesis that this type of patient might respond to therapy that explicitly stimulated the development of the right hemisphere." And it worked. A lot of the patients, who usually intellectualized their way through talk therapy, responded very well to guided imagery, sensate-body focusing, and practice in using and picking up on nonverbal cues.
Simply telling patients what might be going on in their brains, he discovered, could also be both deeply comforting and therapeutic. He explained to patients with PTSD the difference between implicit and explicit memory and the function of the hippocampus, and they felt less crazy. "You're telling me I'm not nuts," said one greatly relieved patient, who thought she was going insane because of the flashbacks and intrusive images that hounded her. As she put it, "It's just that the bad things that happened to me got fragmented in my mind and were never put together into my regular memory by my hippowhatsis."
Soon, he was spiking his therapy with brief, neurobiological vignettes that helped clients understand why they were so prone to sudden rages, or had such rotten love lives, or felt so anxious all the time. Siegel became adept at explaining the role of the unbridled amygdala, the self-calming talents of the neocortex, the heroically integrative properties of the orbitofrontal cortex, the amazing system of mirror neurons that allows us to pick up and feel the feelings and intentions of others--the remarkable capacity for "mindsight." He even started keeping a chalkboard in his office to draw rough sketches of the brain and its parts, which helped ground discussions of subjective mental experience in the world of physical reality. "Unlike most psychological concepts, the brain is a three-dimensional object that you can hold in your hand," he says. "It's also a visual entity, and we're very visual creatures--a lot of our cortical real estate is devoted to vision. So when I sketch the brain on the board, people can really 'see' it."
At first glance, "self-regulation" is a mildly soporific term reminiscent of the psych lab, but from Siegel's perspective it defines the basic goal of all psychotherapy. "When you think about it, you can understand almost every mental health problem--anxiety, depression, eating disorders, personality disorders, thinking disorders--as an issue of self-regulation," Siegel remarks. Self-regulation, in the Siegel lexicon, is the balanced and integrated "flow of energy and information" through the major systems of the brain--brain stem, limbic circuits, neocortex, autonomic nervous system--and between one brain and another. When we're in this secure, stable state of mind-brain-body equilibrium, we can face life's vicissitudes with some measure of emotional calm, flexibility, self-awareness, and reason. Our relationships are good, and we're "mindful" almost as a matter of course.
For Siegel, therapists are the remedial attachment experts and rescuers of the chronically un-self-regulated, and it is their job to, in effect, help rewire the frayed neural connections, reintegrate (or sometimes integrate for the first time) different areas and functions of the brain--implicit and explicit memory, right and left hemisphere, neocortex with limbic system and brain stem. From Siegel's viewpoint of interpersonal neurobiology, here's how a therapist influences a distraught patient reliving a past traumatic event that hasn't yet been consolidated and turned into an ordinary memory.
Imagine you're such a patient sitting in your therapist's office. She sees that you're not in good shape--pale, shaky, agitated--and knows that your sympathetic nervous system is clearly running in overdrive. She listens to you try to explain what happened and realizes right away that your story isn't coherent--your left brain is struggling to make sense of this past event, but your words are being swamped by waves of intense right-hemisphere emotion. You stutter, forget things, swallow nervously, feel nauseated, and have to keep starting your story all over again. Something about what you're trying to say is still locked in your amygdala, in your implicit memory--still hasn't been processed by your hippocampus so it can become simply part of your explicit memory, and then incorporated into your consciously remembered autobiographical story. How can she help this neural integration happen?
Knowing the brain is an associational organ, your therapist tries to elicit what it was about the recent triggering experiences that might have reminded you of something from the past. She sees how the past event affects you in the present and she joins you in this mental time travel, carefully probing your past and your present life. This helps bring the two into a more stable, integrated relationship with each other--allowing you to put a past event in the past, so you can viscerally distinguish the present moment from it and move forward into the future without fear that it will continue to haunt you. By doing this, she helps you increase neural integration between differentiated areas of the brain--the consolidation of memory via the hippocampus into the neocortex, and the synthesis of left-brain logic and right-brain emotion, so that the past event becomes no more and no less than an aspect of your conscious autobiographical story.
And so it goes. With her as your guide, you go back and forth with her between mind and brain, using your capacity for conscious thought and reflection on the buzzing activity within that neural hive beneath your skull. And as you do so, your immediate experience--your sense of yourself and your story--gradually changes. You begin seeing the past event in the context of other events, other times, relationships past and present, and you can weave it into an ongoing narrative of your life. As the implicit memories from years back are turned into part of a more coherent and inclusive autobiographical story, you feel relieved, somehow lighter. You also feel deep gratitude and affection for your therapist, as you would for someone with whom you've been through a life-or-death struggle and emerged victorious. In a sense, nothing has changed-- the past is still what it was--but everything has changed, because, in concert, your mind and this other sensitive, deeply attuned, intelligent mind have changed your brain. The gradual improvement in your capacity for "self-regulation" hasn't been a solo performance, but a duet sung in counterpoint.
For all his curiosity about the brain and its workings, Siegel professes himself largely indifferent to the subject of therapeutic technique. He doesn't seem to care particularly what methods therapists use, and consistently avoids telling them what they should do in treatment. "You can shape and harness synaptic connections in the brain by giving patients medications or doing therapy," he says. "You can also do it just by teaching them to meditate and get in touch with their bodies, go jogging, play music. Or you might use the fact that the self is defined by interpersonal communication to form reparative attachments with them." He doesn't even try very hard to sell the idea that all good therapists must know about neurobiology. "If you're doing great work, I suppose you probably don't need to know about the brain," he says. In fact, he readily admits that, at this stage, many of the tenets of interpersonal neurobiology remain hypotheses, not scientific fact. Nobody really knows what exactly is going on in the brain during therapy--how a clinical encounter or two or seventy actually affect synapse formation. But he's convinced--and has convinced many thousands of others--that learning about the brain and the power of relationship to create and change neural circuits is the most important challenge the therapy field will face in the years to come.
Forty years ago, family systems theory transformed psychotherapy by forcing clinicians to see beyond the single psyche to the interlocking circles of relationships that also make up the reality of the "individual" self. It might be said that Siegel's system brings into every therapy encounter an even bigger system, which includes the entire psychological, biological, and genetic history of the human species. This awareness of the fact that every human being contains multitudes and carries within him- or herself a lineage extending back to the origins of life on this planet may not immediately change what a therapist does, but it almost certainly will change the way she understands her work and its impact on her patients. And as Pat Love says, describing the way neuroscience has transformed her own work, "Information is intervention."
At this point, what Siegel offers therapists in his synthesis of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and developmental psychology has more to do with a way of seeing than practical clinical advice. To explain the effect of this way of looking at ourselves and others, he likes to describe a walk he recently took on a deserted Oregon beach late one night, with his flashlight turned off. It took his eyes a while to to pick out of the darkness the vague outlines of rocks, the billions of stars, the serpentine border of the sea and sand. Unlike the familiar reality that we see by the light of day, the world revealed to us by this kind of night vision, he notes, can be disorienting, even surreal, possibly menacing, but often magical. We feel our capacities for perception sharpened and transformed as we become more attuned and attentive to the smallest, most subtle, variations of shape and shadow. In some way, by seeing less, we see more.


text:
- Filed Under
WASHINGTON -- As his teammates went through pregame routines, Pistons rookie center Andre Drummond was going through something a bit different Wednesday night.
Drummond stood on the Verizon Center floor, shooting the basketball off the side the backboard.
Whether it was strength and conditioning coach Arnie Kander's latest idea or just boredom, it appears the Pistons will have to keep adjusting to life without him. He has missed 10 games with a stress fracture in his lower back. ...


text:
J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, praised a congressional effort to extend a 1 percent pay raise to blue-collar federal workers. (Colin Kelly/Staff)
For federal agencies and employees, Congresss approval of a massive fiscal 2014 spending package last week was sorely needed: It spares some agencies severe sequester budget cuts and erases the threat of another partial government shutdown through the end of September.
The $1.1 trillion package, which includes more than $90 billion for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations, fleshes out the budget agreement reached last month.
That deal partially rolled back sequester-related budget cuts for the Defense Department and other agencies.
The new bill would tweak one controversial aspect of that deal, which pared cost-of-living adjustments for working-age military retirees.
Under the new measure, medically retired individuals and survivors would be exempted from the reduced adjustments, according to a summary by the House Appropriations Committee.
Were a little late, but we have gotten the job done, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., shortly before the chamber approved the package on the 72-26 vote on Jan. 16.
The measure won House approval by a similarly resounding margin the preceding day.
President Obama plans to sign the measure, but had not done so by press time late last week.
For agencies, the bills spending levels are generally an improvement over what they would have received in the event of another full-bore sequester, but remain relatively austere.
After accounting for inflation, the overall discretionary spending level will be below what it was a decade ago, according to Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the appropriations panel.
The Defense Department, for example, would be spared a fresh $20 billion sequester-related cut, but its $487 billion base budget would be virtually the same as what its getting now, according to the House Appropriations Committee. The figure is also well under the departments original $520 billion request for 2014.
In an explanatory report accompanying the bill, lawmakers warned the Pentagon against a new round of civilian employee furloughs.
Last year, most of DoDs workforce had to take six unpaid days off because of the sequester. It is assumed that passage of the new package will eliminate entirely any need to furlough civilian employees in fiscal year 2014, the report said.
One clear winner is the FBI, where leaders last year warned that they may have to furlough virtually the entire workforce for up to 10 days if the sequester took effect as originally planned in 2014. Instead, the bureaus $8.3 billion slice of the new bill is some $230 million above last years pre-sequester level, the House committee said
But the Housing and Urban Development Department, a favorite target of congressional budget-cutters in recent years, will be whacked again; the $32.8 billion in the bill represents a 2.5 percent reduction from last years enacted level.
The Department of Homeland Securitys budget will be trimmed by almost 1 percent to $39.3 billion, with much of the cut absorbed by the Transportation Security Administration.
Customs and Border Protection, another branch of DHS, is getting a 1 percent increase to allow the hiring of another 2,000 CBP officers to staff the nations busiest ports of entry, the House committee said.
Among other things, the bill:
■ Extends a 1 percent pay raise to more than 200,000 blue-collar wage grade employees not covered by President Obamas executive order providing an identical increase to General Schedule workers starting this month.
■ Continues a ban on A-76 competitions used to determine whether contractors can more effectively do work performed by federal employees.
■ Renews a long-standing provision barring the U.S. Postal Service from ending Saturday mail delivery.
For both the General Schedule and wage grade workforce, the 1 percent raise is the first across-the-board increase since 2010. For wage grade employees, the boost would be retroactive to the beginning of fiscal 2014 in October, or some time thereafter, depending on when their schedules adjust, a spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees said.
At the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service, leaders have been pressing lawmakers for years to drop the requirement for Saturday mail delivery, a step they say would save almost $2 billion annually. But politically influential postal unions are staunchly opposed, and some lawmakers have also questioned the potential impact on service.
In an email, USPS spokeswoman Patricia Licata said that five-day mail delivery while continuing weekend package delivery continues to be a fundamental element in the Postal Services plan for regaining long-term financial stability. ■


text:
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, right, joins second-leading receiver Ryan Swope in the celebration after the regular-season finale Saturday, a 59-29 win against Missouri. / Dave Einsel, AP
While it's true that no freshman has ever won the Heisman Trophy, it's also arguable that the game has never seen a freshman quite like the guy who has the nickname "Johnny Football."
With official ballots due in a week, Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel has taken the lead in the USA TODAY Sports Media Group survey of its 37 Heisman electors. The dual-threat quarterback burst into the discussion by leading the Aggies to victory at then-No.1 Alabama, and he's continued to post lofty numbers that have been impossible to ignore.
RankPlayer2012 statistics1st2nd3rdTotal1Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M3,419
passing yards, 24 TDs;
1,181 rushing yards, 19 TDs 2296902Manti Te'o, Notre Dame
103 tackles, 7 interceptions
Collin Klein, Kansas State
2,306 passing yards, 14 TDs;
787 rushing yards, 20 TDs
2712324Braxton Miller, Ohio State
2,039 passing yards, 15 TDs
1,271 rushing yards, 13 TDs
49175Marqise Lee, Southern Cal
1,680 receiving yards, 14 TDs446Jordan Lynch, No. Illinois2,750 passing yards, 23 TDs
1,611 rushing yards, 16 TDs12Other votes: Ka'Deem Carey, Arizona 1; AJ McCarron, Alabama, 1; Geno Smith, West Virginia, 1.
He made a strong closing statement Saturday against Missouri, throwing for 372 yards and three scores and running for two more touchdowns. Overall, he has accounted for 43 TDs this season, 24 by air and 19 by land, and generated an SEC-record 4,600 yards of total offense. He was named first by 22 voters and appeared on all 37 ballots, accumulating 90 points.
Notre Dame senior linebacker Manti Te'o is second with 74 points and 13 first-place votes. He snared his seventh interception Saturday at Southern California while helping the top-ranked Fighting Irish wrap up a 12-0 regular season.
Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein is in third place in this week's survey with 32 overall points and the remaining two firsts. But unlike the contenders ahead of him, the Wildcats' signal-caller has one more chance to make an impression on voters before the ballots must be cast. K-State hosts Texas on Saturday with a chance to finish 11-1 with an outright Big 12 title.
Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller checks in fourth with 17 points after writing the final chapter in the Buckeyes' 12-0 season. But directing the win vs. archrival Michigan will have to be his final argument. OSU is under NCAA sanctions, ineligible for the postseason, including the Big Ten and BCS title games.
Copyright 2015 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Heisman survey: Johnny Manziel separating from field


text:
Topic: Who do you write like?
This is really cool and fun guys! Feed it some of your writing and see what it says! And you can put in anything, bits from your blogs, stories, fanfic or even song lyrics.
I tried it with 2 of my fanfic type writing and I got:
Raymond Chandler!
Last edited by Baby_Firefly (2010-07-18 05:39:31)


text:
The MD curriculum of the College of Medicine at Chicago, the largest of the college's four programs, provides a solid foundation in the basic and clinical sciences and early exposure to patients.
Our educational program is designed to serve a variety of career choices, allowing students to prepare for careers in medical practice, research, teaching, community medicine, and various disciplines of medical practice. Additionally, emphasis is placed on developing an attitude that's necessary for effective communication with individual patients, individual patients, and society at large
The curriculum stresses rational decision making and clinical problem solving based on an understanding of the basic biological, physical, and behavioral sciences; thus the integration of basic and clinical sciences is emphasized throughout the program.
Teaching hospitals affiliated with the Chicago program are: the University of Illinois Hospital, the Jesse Brown Veterans Administration Hospital, John H. Stroger Jr Cook County Hospital, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, Advocate Christ Hospital, Advocate Illinoise Masonic Medical Center, Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, Adventist Hinsdale Hospital, and St. Joseph Hospital
Copyright © 2015 University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine all rights reserved GuestLogin
If you have questions, comments, or problems accessing this site, please E-mail the webmaster
Privacy StatementPublic Formal Grievance ProceduresHealth Care Industry Conflict of Interest Guidelines
Visit our four campus websites: ChicagoPeoriaRockfordUrbana


text:
ATI launches 2X faster, 1,600-core Radeon HD 5800
updated 12:00 am EDT, Wed September 23, 2009
ATI Radeon HD 5800 official
AMD's graphics label ATI tonight claimed to set a new benchmark for graphics with the Radeon HD 5800 series. The new video hardware is theoretically twice as fast as the 4870 and has an extremely large set of 1,600 stream (visual effect) cores -- enough to calculate 2.72 teraflops per second. Besides handling twice as many rendering tasks at once, the 5800 is also running a sixth-generation engine that shades and tessellates geometry more quickly, more GDDR5 memory bandwidth (150Gbps), and much improved techniques for antialiasing and anisotropic texture filtering.
ATI specifically touts a much higher performance in antialiasing versus NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285 and claims that 3D games run at over 80 percent of the speed of the less demanding 4X mode where NVIDIA's current card often drops off more sharply. General performance is often at least 20 percent faster and in extreme cases up to 260 percent faster.
The technology is equally new in features. It's the first to support the upcoming DirectX 11 standard and will support its new set of programmable effects and geometry, such as improved shadowing and tesselation, as well as DirectCompute, Microsoft's format for general-purpose computing acceleration using video chipsets and similar massively parallel hardware. Accordingly, the new Radeon line will also see many of the added visual features in OpenGL and will be the first to support the Apple-originated OpenCL standard for the same effect.
All the initial cards will support Eyefinity, a technique that merges multiple monitors into single virtual displays on one video card. Up to six display pipelines can, using DisplayPort, create either a single very large display -- currently up to 7680x3200 -- or combinations of smaller arrangements. Smaller configurations can also mix and match DVI, HDMI and VGA.
Peak power use is higher but is balanced by much lower power when the chipset is idle.
Two chipsets start the lineup, both of which are aimed at higher-end gamers. The Radeon HD 5870 has the full feature set with 1,600 cores, an 850MHz engine clock, and 1GB of 1.2GHz video memory; it should cost $380 as a video card upgrade. The Radeon HD 5850 scales back to 1,440 cores, a 725MHz clock speed and 1GB of memory at 1GHz in return for a $260 price point. An eventual Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition will incorporate six Mini DisplayPort connectors for an unknown price.
With the exception of the Eyefinity6, both the 5870 and 5850 should be available today through third parties and will also find their way into pre-assembled computers.


text:
MeLCat Requesting Down until December 11. Click for more information.
This image gallery is part of the Mead Family Collection.
Drag the slider handle below the small thumbnail images to get a sense of the collection. Click a thumbnail image to see a larger version above, along with title and description information, if available. Alternatively, page through each image in the gallery by using the right and left arrow buttons next to the larger image.
To see a full size version of an image, click the large version. It will display in a scrollable popup window. To dismiss the popup window, click the Close link in the upper right, or simply click anywhere outside the window.
Letters between family members, invitations, and many other items are included in the Mead Family Collection. These items provide insight into the daily lives of these individuals and the family as a whole. A small selection of these items have been digitized and made available here. A complete list of the available materials can be found in the Finding Aid (PDF).


text:
CLEVELAND - The month of February was colder than normal across northeast Ohio this year.
Although the groundhog predicted an early spring on February 2nd, brave northeast Ohioans found it hard to believe after the National Weather Service said on Friday that temperatures ended the month 2.6 degrees below normal at 27.9 degrees for a daily mean average.
On the plus side, 17 days had high temperatures above 32 degrees with a range from a high of 50 degrees on February 11th to a bone chilling morning low of 7 degrees on February 17th and 18th.
A review of climatological statistics show February was no where close to setting any temperatures records for the month. The coldest February ever was 1901 and the warmest was in 1998.
On the precipitation side, February was a rather snowy month with 19.8 inches falling at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. This amount was nearly 5 inches above normal. So far for the 2012-13 season, Clevelanders have shoveled 40.7 inches of snow, but 11.5 inches less snow than in a typical northeast Ohio winter.
This year, February's snowiest days occurred on the 4th with 4.9 inches, the 16th with 4.1 inches and 20th with 3.0 inches.
The all time record snowfall in February occurred in 1993 with 39.1 inches.
Elsewhere across the area, most northern Ohio cities saw below normal temperatures and above normal amounts of snow last month.


text:
The scrapbooking for preemie parents support group is for parents that have babies that are in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This group allows parents to have one hour once a week to relax, share, create and have support from the staff and other parents that share similar experiences. Parents will be able to talk about their feelings, emotions and babies. The group is run by an Art Therapist (LCAT) and the NICU's nurse manager. The parents will be able to create their own baby books that is theirs to keep and share with family and friends.
|Upcoming Dates
|Scapbooking for Preemie Parents Support Group
|10 of 10 remaining
|Alisha Rappaport
|Organizer's Phone:
|The group is held on the 3rd floor of the ancillary building in the OBGYN conference room, E3007
Expand Map Get Directions
|Scapbooking for Preemie Parents Support Group


text:
WIFTS Foundation announces honourees
Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema will host the WIFTS Foundation International Visionary Awards on Dec 1 in Los Angeles.
Continue reading – simply subscribe below
It takes just two minutes and you'll immediately gain full access to ScreenDaily.com, PLUS Screen International magazine delivered to your door.
Screen International Subscribers:
If you are a Screen International subscriber please sign in with your email address and click submit:
Not a Screen International subscriber?
Sign up today for immediate and complete access to ScreenDaily.com and Screen International magazine for as little as £19.95 a month!
Find out more about all the benefits of a subscription to Screen International.


text:
CAMO, the Culture Awareness for Military Operations trainer, provides interactive lessons in cultural awareness. (Aptima)
- Filed Under
CAMO, the Culture Awareness for Military Operations trainer, provides interactive lessons in cultural awareness. (Aptima) / Aptima
As the U.S. military shifts its focus away from the Middle East and over to Asia, the Pacific and Africa, it faces a particular quandary: How do you give soldiers cultural awareness when they dont know which culture they will encounter?
Aptimas Culture Awareness for Military Operations trainer, or CAMO, focuses on teaching students how to recognize and assess culture more broadly rather than providing detailed instructions on how to deal with a specific populace.
If there has been one trend, one push, its been towards the development of these general competencies and less on the nuts and bolts of a specific culture, said Alex Walker, Aptimas program manager for the project.
Born from a classroom course for Marines and under development for the Office of Naval Research, the computer-based training is interactive, distributable and aims at higher-level thought processes.
The CAMO course addresses five dimensions of culture: environment, economy, social structure, political structure and belief system. In each category, users go through three kinds of instruction aimed at helping Marines understand second- and third-order effects of their actions.
We need to get them to learn how to think about cultural situations, how to interact with a culture, how to pull out the information they need for their interactions, regardless of the specific context of the situation, Walker said.
It starts with something called problem-based learning, a style often used for teaching complex cognitive skills.
First, users read through case studies describing a certain problem they might face in a new culture. They investigate the problem, make a decision on how to act, and then get feedback. By steeping Marines in a problem before giving them instruction, developers help the user start asking questions, finding common threads, and looking for core problems rather than the surface-level issue all before the portion of direct instruction.
For example, a case study might show a town doesnt have access to clean drinking water, and the Marines choose to help build a well. But the simple solution may not take into account that an economy is established around the transport and sale of water and there could be repercussions.
Its more than just identifying the problem and solving it, Walker said. A lot of it will center around understanding the problem and the context so you can address that problem in a culturally appropriate way.
After the case study and a contrasting case (one that draws on similar principles), CAMO includes a period of direct instruction, which begins to address some of the issues users grappled with in phase one. Instead of pages of text, CAMO developers have included multimedia elements and interactive images, meaning users can click around a scene to uncover more information.
The third phase is deliberate practice. After being briefed with a mission, commanders intent and available resources, users are given a final problem to address using the skills they have learned. For example, they might be given a map and asked where they should rebuild the school, given the mission to maintain stability and a bevy of cultural factors including location, access or safety.
In addition to the hands-on scenarios, there are additional multimedia resources and sections of the course that users can navigate. These will provide additional information, resources, and tips on how to navigate new cultural interactions.
Much of the learning in the operational culture class comes from the guided discussion and interacting with instructors and learning from their experiences. To harness this information, CAMO worked with subject matter experts to collect a variety of scenarios from different cultures and geographic areas including around the U.S.
One of the things driving the need for cultural training is the fact that Marines have to be multidimensional, Walker said. They have to fight, they have to conduct counterinsurgency, but they also have to do things like disaster relief.
Aptima has been working on CAMO for just over two years, and continues to work with Marines on the prototype for other features they would like added. Walker said he hopes that future versions will include adaptive feedback and training. Currently, the feedback is general and allows for self-evaluation, but Aptima has used adaptive training in the past.
We have that capability, but we have yet to substantiate it within the CAMO software, Walker said. Were looking to do that.
Adaptive training could tailor the course to the student and resequence scenarios to best fit their experience level. There is also potential to add natural language processing down the road, meaning students could enter a rationale for why they made a decision, which the computer could assess. Walker hopes that the Marine Corps will use the program and update it with lessons learned, keeping information current and capturing expertise from the battlefield.
We dont want this to be a rigid training structure, he said. We want it to be something malleable, that they can use and evolve with over time.
CAMO could find a home in several locations if the Marine Corps signs off on it. The system could be used as a train-ahead before Marines attend the culture course meaning they could then start the class at a higher level. Alternatively, it could be used for additional practice alongside the course, or as refresher training. And, because it is computer-based, it could also provide train-at-your-own-pace learning.