text:
Keep it civil aka don't be a jerk
Discussions often entail topics that we all personally care a lot about and will passionately defend. But in order for discussions to thrive here at GR|MAG, we need to remember to criticize ideas, not people.
So, remember to avoid:
- name-calling
- ad hominem attacks
- Responding to a post's tone instead of its actual content.
- knee-jerk contradiction
Comments that we find to be hateful, inflammatory, or harassing may be removed. If you don't have something nice to say about another user, don't say it. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated.
Always strive to add value to every interaction and discussion you participate in
Before joining in a discussion, browse through some of the most recent and active discussions happening in the community, especially if you're new there.
If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.
Keep it tidy
Help make moderators' lives easier by taking a moment to ensure that what you're about to post is in the right place. That means:
- don't post off-topic comments
- don't cross-post the same thing multiple times
If you see something, say something
Moderators and staff are at the forefront of combatting spam, mediating disputes and enforcing community guidelines and, so are you.
If you see an issue, contact us or flag any comments for review. If you believe someone has violated the rules, report it by flagging the user's profile.
Some additional Guidelines
No self-promotion or spam
A discussion or comment that contains only a link to your blog, a product, or your article on another site will almost always be removed.
Choose your (curse) words wisely
Comments that contain profanity are automatically held for moderator review before being posted. Depending on the context of the comment, it may be removed. Profanity used to insult, antagonize, or inflame will always be removed.
Don't copy and paste
If you didn't write it, or haven't properly cited the article you're quoting, don't post it please.
You may not impersonate others in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others.
No inappropriate profile content
Graphic media containing violence and pornographic content are not allowed. Profile content allowed by Disqus may not be allowed on the GR|MAG community, so please report such profiles to moderators or staff.
No posting personally identifiable information
Examples of protected information: credit card numbers, personal address, phone numbers, email address, social security numbers.


text:
Private Investigators Could Save Your Business
Private investigators could save your business
A company can take years to grow – but sadly, it can take only weeks to fall which is why hiring a Private investigators could save your business . That's why business owners should make sure that they take the best measures to ensure that operations are running smoothly. That's where private investigators come in. Private investigation agencies offer a range of services that can help a company eliminate its weaknesses and become stronger than ever. With this in mind, here are four ways that their help could save your business.
Surveillance can come in two main forms. The first is employee surveillance. This is when you invest in additional measures to keep a watchful eye on the actions of your staff. In the simplest of terms, through this measure you could discover that someone has been using work's time to carry out personal errands.
The second form is digital surveillance. Through this measure you can keep track of the online footprint of your staff. In particular, it could be used if an employee has been sharing sensitive information in cyber space.
In the corporate world, you'll most likely want to monitor how your staff are using their computers. This includes their browsing history and use of illegal downloads. Over time, an understanding of who is using their computer for the wrong thing can help you increase productivity and reduce the risk of heavy fines.
Background checks
Your business could suffer immeasurable damage if you were to hire the wrong person. That's why it's always helpful to gather as much information on an individual before allowing them to join the fold. Following on from what they've said in their interview, you can have perspective staff looked into to reveal whether they're really whiter than white.
Injury claims
An injury claim could spell disaster for a business. Therefore, it's up to you to discover the truth. Private investigators can look into incidents, gathering important information and statements that prove there has been no short falls on your behalf.
What are you waiting for?
Remember, private investigators aren't just for tracing people and catching cheating spouses. Instead, they can be just the thing to help your business become bigger and better than ever.
Call now on 0800 008 9858 / 0773 043 9156 for a Free consultation without obligation or send your inquiry to firstname.lastname@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I made these Paper Dahlias for the baby shower. I got the template and idea on Martha Stewarts website.
I changed it up a little bit – because as much as I wish I was Martha, I am poor. I also don't know how well Dahlia's will do in the New Mexico heat. So instead of putting actual Dahlia buds I used Blow Pops. Martha says fancy plant, I say edible sugar!
Here is where you can go to get directions and the template to cut out the paper flowers.


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It was 1881 when Moses Kinkaid, a young attorney, left Pierre, Dakota Territory and moved to O'Neill, Nebraska to open a law practice. Shortly after his arrival, he was elected to the State Senate for a one year term. In 1884, interested citizens initiated plans and construction of the first brick building in O'Neill, now known as the Moses P. Kinkaid Bank Building.
Kinkaid moved his law office to the second floor of the new building and the Holt County Bank occupied the first floor. The bank failed and closed its doors in 1894. Fearing irate citizens, the banker fled O'Neill during the night of the closing day.
The Elkhorn Valley Bank soon occupied the vacant space. Pat Hagerty, a trusted, sound citizen was in charge of the new bank. In 1904, Hagerty and his friend and accomplice, Bernard McGreevy (school district treasurer), absconded with the bank funds and fled the country. County citizens were astounded when the vault was opened, and one lone dime was all that remained. Many people were financially ruined.
Kinkaid was appointed judge in 1887 of the newly created 12th Judicial District that covered a ten county area of 288 miles east to west and 60 miles north to south. For thirteen years, he held court at least once a year in each county. Most often, Kinkaid traveled by stage coach.
In 1903, Kinkaid became Congressman for a 37 county district, more than on-half of the state of Nebraska. In this capacity, he is best remembered for his effort in changing land laws to benefit homesteaders in the area he represented and set a model for future land laws in the West. The Kindaid Land Act was enacted in 1904.
While in his ninth term in office, Kindaid died in Washington D. C. on July 6, 1922. His funeral and burial were held in O'Neill on July 10. He never married and appeared to be a very private man. No one knew about his family background and his obituary stated, "No one knows the exact age of the Congressman. Perhaps it will always remain a mystery."
After the closing of the Elkhorn Valley Bank, the Fidelity Bank occupied the first floor of the Kinkaid Building. The fourth, and last bank tenant was the Nebraska State Bank. Again, the citizens were financially devastated by the bank closing during the depression of 1930.
In February 1930, Elmer Hagensick purchased the Kinkaid Building. The chain of tenants included a cafe, dentist, attorney, a real estate office, a barber shop and millinery shop. Eventually, all tenants vacated. Weathered and scarred, time had taken it's toll on the old historic building. With courage and determination, the members of the Holt County Historical Society, took action to preserve the Kinkaid landmark. Through membership sales, fund drives and contributions, the Society was able to purchase the building from Hagensick. In 1974, the U. S. Department of Interior designated the building as a National Historic Site in honor of Moses P. Kinkaid.
Financing the restoration project presented a real challenge to the Society. In order to reach the restoration financial goal, members continued a concentrated fund drive in the succeeding years. Through the cooperation of members, citizens, civic groups and the Peter Kiewit Foundation grant, the Society reached their goal. The initial restoration process began in February, 1984 at a cost of $86,000.
The Kinkaid Building's Centennial was celebrated in September, 1984. At that time, it was reopened as the Holt County Historical Museum and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Over a century old, the beautiful landmark preserves the wealth of Holt County history.
The preservation of the Kinkaid Building is not funded by tax money. The Holt County Historical Society welcomes contributions for the maintenance of the building and museum.
Return to main page.
© 1998, 1999, 2002 by Lynn Waterman


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In order to install Nutch on an amazon EC2 Cluster, you will need a good comprehension of Nutch and Hadoop, this is the goal of this post.
We deviced to create this tutorial as we ran into many basic problems for which there was no clear solution documented on the web.
Here we will explain how to install Nutch 1.9 on Debian wheeze, there is no guarantee that the following instructions will work with a different setup. You need to be very careful about getting the right versions, otherwise you may be exposed to lots of incomprehensible issues.
Note : this tutorial works with Nutch 1.10 as well.
In our case we are interested in directly getting the raw HTML from web pages of crawled web sites. We don't need the indexation of pages. Thus our choices have been made with this goal in mind, you will have to decide if this is the best in your case.
Why Nutch ?
If you are interested by why we choose Nutch instead of another crawler / scraper, you can read our post: Choosing a Web Crawler.
Why Nutch 1.9 instead of 2.x ?
Nutch 2.x is rewrite from scratch. The biggest modification is the integration of Apache Gora, which allows to connect to several DB such Hbase, Cassandra, etc. However, Nutch 2.x is slower and has less features than Nutch 1.x.
This is why we choose 1.x.
Moreover, our only goal is to get the html code, thus we will not store it into database, we will prefer to store it directly into files.
Install Nutch 1.9
Java 7
First, you will need to install java 7
Nutch 1.9
Go to http://wiki.apache.org/nutch/NutchTutorial, for the installation.
If you would like to implement a specific behavior in Nutch, such as a custom parsing, it is easier to modify the source code than writing a plugin. On the other hand, you will lose the possibility to use it with other Nutch versions.
For all instructions that follow, do not forget to replace all environment variables by your owns values, specially in the xml code.
If you decided to install from source, do not forget to install and to specify your plugin folder path in
Define the temporary folder into .
It is also possible to configure an adaptive fetch, which will crawl more often the pages which are changing regularly.
You can define url filter in order to crawl only specific websites using
To manage the starting urls, you should create files with one url per line into a directory given as seed to Nutch.
If you would like to get the best performance with your crawler, you can add the following parameters to , but beware that it removes the politeness that Nutch offers !
<property><name>fetcher.server.delay</name><value>0.1</value></property> <property><name>fetcher.threads.fetch</name><value>100</value></property> <property><name>fetcher.threads.per.queue</name><value>100</value></property>
Then edit and change at line 54 to your real number of slaves. You can also increase at line 59 from * 2 to * 10 and the at line 68 from 50 to 100.
If your goal is like ours, that is to only get HTML or text without indexing, you can disable Solr. To do so, comment the Solr operations of the crawl script , and and skip the Solr installation part.
Then compile
ant runtime
Solr 3.4
Be sure to install Solr 3.4 and not 4.6 as explained in the following link.
The following tutorial explain how to install Solr for Nutch.
You will also need to change all occurrences of df text to df content in solrconfig.xml
sed -i 's#<str name="df">text</str>#<str name="df">content</str>#g' $SOLR_HOME/example/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml
Copy the Solr jar into the Nutch lib as follows:
cp $SOLR_HOME/dist/apache-solr-solrj-3.4.0.jar $NUTCH_HOME/lib/.
Then compile Nutch from $NUTCH_HOME
ant runtime
Hadoop 1.2.1
Refer to following pages for the installation, the configuration explanation is below.
Generate a SSH key pair:
ssh-keygen -t dsa -P '' -f id_dsa
Edit to change and add:
export HADOOP_PREFIX=$HOME/hadoop-1.2.1 export HADOOP_OPTS=-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
Edit , to add:
<property><name>fs.default.name</name><value>hdfs://$MASTER_IP:9000</value></property> <property><name>dfs.permissions</name><value>false</value></property> <property><name>hadoop.tmp.dir</name><value>/tmp</value></property>
If you are working with Amazon S3, you will need to define the following in
If you are working with S3n, just replace s3 by s3n.
<property><name>fs.s3.awsAccessKeyId</name><value>$MY_ACCESS_KEY</value></property> <property><name>fs.s3.awsSecretAccessKey</name><value>$MY_SECRET_KEY</value></property>
Edit , to add:
<property><name>dfs.http.address</name><value>$MASTER_IP:50070</value></property> <property><name>dfs.name.dir</name><value>$HADOOP_PREFIX/dfs/name</value><final>true</final></property> <property><name>dfs.data.dir</name><value>$HADOOP_PREFIX/dfs/name/data</value><final>true</final></property> <property><name>dfs.replication</name><value>2</value></property>
Edit to add:
<property><name>mapred.job.tracker</name><value>$MASTER_IP:9001</value></property> <property><name>mapred.system.dir</name><value>$NUTCH_HOME/filesystem/mapreduce/system</value></property> <property><name>mapred.local.dir</name><value>$NUTCH_HOME/filesystem/mapreduce/local</value></property>
Edit to replace by your
Edit to remove and add all your .
Deploy the key and the configuration on all slaves nodes:
scp $HADOOP_CONF_DIR/* "$SLAVE_IP:$HADOOP_CONF_DIR/."
If you installed Nutch from source:
ssh $SALVE_IP "mkdir -p $NUTCH_HOME/build" scp -r $NUTCH_HOME/build/plugins "$SLAVE_IP:$NUTCH_HOME/build/plugins"
Start Hadoop
$HADOOP_PREFIX/bin/hadoop namenode -format $HADOOP_PREFIX/bin/start-all.sh
S3cmd 1.5.2
If you would like to launch scripts to interact with s3, you should install S3cmd.
./s3cmd --configure --access_key=$MY_ACCESS_KEY --secret_key=$MY_SECRET_KEY
S3 looks to be a good idea for saving data, moreover hadoop is able to natively work with S3.
But S3 is slower than HDFS, thus we do discourage you to use S3directly.
We tried to keep the Hadoop tmp file on HDFS in order avoid a performance loss and only put the output on S3, unfortunately, it is not possible, at least for Nutch.
Therefore the solution is to let everything on HDFS and frequently run a script which transfer results to S3.
It exists three methods of S3, S3a looks to be the best, but unfortunately it is not implemented in Hadoop version 1.2.1, thus we decided to use s3 (alias s3b).
S3 Method
- S3n: A native filesystem for reading and writing regular files on S3. The advantage of this filesystem is that you can access files on S3 that were written with other tools. Conversely, other tools can access files written using Hadoop. The disadvantage is the 5GB limit on file size imposed by S3.
- S3 (alias S3b): A block-based filesystem backed by S3. Files are stored as blocks, just like they are in HDFS. This permits efficient implementation of renames. This filesystem requires you to dedicate a bucket for the filesystem – you should not use an existing bucket containing files, or write other files to the same bucket. The files stored by this filesystem can be larger than 5GB, but they are not interoperable with other S3 tools.
- S3a: A successor to the S3 Native, s3n fs, the S3a: system uses Amazon's libraries to interact with S3. This allows S3a to support larger files (no more 5GB limit), higher performance operations and more. The filesystem is intended to be a replacement for/successor to S3 Native: all objects accessible from s3n:// URLs should also be accessible from s3a simply by replacing the URL schema.
S3 Interaction
To interact with your S3 bucket, we used Hadoop tools and S3cmd: http://s3tools.org/download
Here is the S3cmd usage: http://s3tools.org/usage
Run Nutch 1.9
If you disabled Solr into the crawl script, you can set SOLR_URL var to an empty string.
URLS="urls/" CRAWL="crawl" MAX_ITERATION=1000 SOLR_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr/" SOLR_HOME="$HOME/apache-solr-3.4.0" NUTCH_HOME="$HOME/apache-nutch-1.9" cd $SOLR_HOME/example/ java -jar start.jar > ~/solr.log 2>&1 & cd - $NUTCH_HOME/runtime/local/bin/crawl $URLS $CRAWL $SOLR_URL $MAX_ITERATION
Deployed mode
URLS="urls/" CRAWL="crawl" MAX_ITERATION=1000 SOLR_IP=`sudo ifconfig | grep 'inet addr' | grep 'Bcast' | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/addr://g'` SOLR_URL="http://$SOLR_IP:8983/solr/" SOLR_HOME="$HOME/apache-solr-3.4.0" NUTCH_HOME="$HOME/apache-nutch-1.9" HADOOP_PREFIX="$HOME/hadoop-1.2.1" $HADOOP_PREFIX/bin/start-all.sh cd $SOLR_HOME/example/ java -jar start.jar > ~/solr.log 2>&1 & cd - $HADOOP_PREFIX/bin/hadoop dfsadmin -safemode wait $HADOOP_PREFIX/bin/hadoop dfs -put urls/ urls $NUTCH_HOME/runtime/deploy/bin/crawl $URLS $CRAWL $SOLR_URL $MAX_ITERATION
Stop crawling
If you would like to stop the script before the end. You can do it properly at the end of the next segment by creating a file .STOP when the script was launched.
Restart crawling
If you would like to restart crawling, restart where you where and not refetch everything since the beginning. If you stop the script properly (.STOP), basically you just have to skip the Nutch inject command and it will works. If you did not, there are several cases:
If your crawldb is not locked (contains .locked), you can just skip the inject command as well.
If it is locked, you can just try to remove the .locked and skip the inject command again.
If you got any error with the above method, your crawldb is lost. Thus you have to generate it, by running Nutch updatedb on all finished segments and then running Nutch dedup, and, if you are lucky it will hopefully works ! But it will take a while. Personally I never tried that method.
Nutch allow you to directly get back data very easily by launching Nutch readseg. It works for local or deploy mode, you just need to edit the path for you case.
$NUTCH_HOME/runtime/$MODE/bin/nutch readseg -dump crawl/segments/* output/ -nogenerate -noparse -noparsedata -noparsetext
You can easily adapt results of your need by reading the usage of readseg. Basically you can get back everything that Nutch get (metadata, query answer, parsed text, etc).
Put every options expect to get the html.
And put every options expect to get the text.
Backup to S3
For backup crawl data on S3 you should hadoop in order to directly transfer your data from your HDFS to your S3.
hadoop distcp -update "hdfs://$MASTER_IP:9000/user/admin/crawl" "s3://$BUCKET/crawl"
You can cp the segments folder in parallel of Nutch, because segment of one iteration is never use again after the iteration. But the crawldb is updated at each iteration, thus you need to wait crawldb finished to cp before let Nutch do the next iteration.
If you proceed as above, write with Hadoop to s3 (and not s3n), unfortunately only hadoop will be able to read data of your bucket and you are not going to be able to use other tools such s3cmd.
Never use the -p option with distcp command on S3 which preserve inter alias user, group and permission. S3 does not manage any permission in file or directory level. Thus it just slows down the copy for nothing. Moreover if you are doing it in the other direction, from S3 to HDFS, with -p, it will fail at map 100% !
We use the image: ami-7ffae53a, which is a Debian, wheeze, pvm.
We use spot instances in order to reduce the cost.
We use m3.medium type, because t1 and t2 are made for very small CPU usage.
You can use Amazon EC2 CLI to automatically request Amazon instances.


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Smart String Tape Measure
Measure even curved objects with ease.
- Easily measure even the strangest shaped objects with the bend power of string.
- The measurement is displayed right on the screen (so no guessing).
- Can store 3 measurements and use them in the calculator mode.
We're going to make this one quick and easy for you: buy a Smart String Tape Measure for your toolkit right away. Buy one for anyone who has to measure stuff, too. It's a little goofy looking, but it's one fantastic tool. Why? Read on, and learn why the Smart String Tape Measure will quickly make itself your measurement star.
First and foremost, the Smart String Tape Measure is a tape measure - but without tape. It uses string. String can bend around curved objects and around weird shapes. And you don't have to figure out the measurement, either - it displays right on the screen (to 3 decimal places). With the touch of a button you can store the measurement (there's room for 3) and pop over to calculator mode. In calc mode, you can access all your stored measurements for easy calculations. Smash in a level and a flashlight, and the Smart String Tape Measure is one awesome little multi-tool-calculator-measure-ma-bob-thingie. Hear that? That's the sound of a Smart String Tape Measure asking to live with you. If we were you, we'd say, "Yes!"
Smart String Tape Measure
- It looks like a pocket calculator, but pull out the string and see the measurements appear on the screen.
- Being a string measure allows you to bend it for measuring complex and curved shapes.
- Up to 3 measurements can be stored and easily accessed in calculator mode for easy calculations.
- Switch from inches to mm with one button press.
- 50" of string has a test strength of over 20 pounds.
- Integrated level and flashlight.
- Measures to 3 decimal places.
- Batteries: 2 x CR2032 lithium cells (included)
- Dimensions: 3.5" x 2.625" x 0.375"


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Markets Don't Make Bubbles, People Do
A Financial History Of the World
By Niall Ferguson
Penguin Press | 441 pp. $29.95
Big money is intoxicating. During the great bubble of the late 1990s, I escorted one of the newly really rich to be interviewed at CNN, where I headed the financial network. "I just made $400 million today," he boomed, taking the stairs two at a time. The air around him seemed charged with electric good fortune.
Several years later, I saw him again. He was several billion dollars less wealthy. He seemed kind, more thoughtful, a touch fragile. (There are none of us so weak we cannot bear our friends' misfortunes, as the acerbic French epigrammist has it.) The Really Rich man had become merely rich, and his pain seemed palpable. What would it be like, I wondered, to wake up
thinking: I just lost $400 million yesterday?
The curses and the blessings, the seductions and the traps of money give Niall Ferguson the most redolent of subjects for The Ascent of Money, his excellent, just-in-time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis. A lively writer (author of Empire and The War of the World), a professor of history at Harvard and a master of anecdote and aphorism, Ferguson says he took Jacob Bronowski's hymn to human invention, "The Ascent of Man," as a model. Just as Bronowski's 1973 BBC documentaries traced the beneficial impact of science and art, Ferguson shows how promises and paper have lifted humans from subsistence farmers in Babylon to Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.
Among his core arguments is that "poverty is not the result of rapacious financiers exploiting the poor. It has much more to do with the lack of financial institutions, with the absence of banks, not their presence." Money, he contends, is essential to human progress; it is "trust inscribed" on paper or metal, and without that trust we would all be poorer.
But now, right now in the dark autumn of 2008, comes the shadow of mistrust. It may fall over us at different times and places . . . somewhere between the relentlessly down-pointing red arrows on CNBC and the increasingly bitter 401(k) jokes of late-night comedians . . . between the latest Congressional testimony from used-to-be financial wizards and the lineup of bailout candidates winging to Washington, hands out. But who among us has not felt the chill?
The financial system, Ferguson writes, "magnifies what we human beings are like . . . our tendency to overreact" to booms and busts, enriching the "lucky and the smart, impoverishing the unlucky and not-so-smart." In this way, money is a mirror, and "it is not the fault of the mirror," he notes, "if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty."
The pleasure of reading Ferguson's treatment comes partly from the clarity of his explanations of financial concepts but mostly from his pen portraits of the extravagantly gifted and flawed characters who have led money's long rise. He shows us how far we have come since Mesopotamian moneylenders developed rudimentary accounting around 1,000 B.C. and the Medici created elements of modern banking in 14th- and 15th-century Florence. But he also weaves a long series of manias, panics and crashes into his tale. The Medici family's surviving papers, he notes, bear scorch marks from the vengeful reformist Savonarola, who set up a Bonfire of the Vanities to destroy sinful goods and sent the Medici packing in one of the periodic reversals of fortune to hit financial leaders over the centuries.


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Red is one of those movies that, every time you come across it on TV, you just have to stop and watch. (And, yes, the fact that I own a TV makes me perfect for a slot in the Red movies' intended demographic.)
In Red 2 Bruce Willis's Frank has to persuade a clearly unstable Anthony Hopkins to help with a Cold War bomb. Frank is also targeted for assassination by Helen Mirren's Victoria when she accepts a contract from MI6. Catherine Zeta-Jones enters the fray and causes Frank's girlfriend, played by Mary-Louise Parker, to become jealous. Will he choose the one with the hyphenated last names or the hyphenated first names?
Byong Hun Lee and, of course, John Malkovich also star.
Red 2 is directed by Dean Parisot and opens Aug. 2.


text:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Place a rack in the center of the oven.
To make the crust, follow the All-Butter Crust recipe (making one-half of the recipe) and roll out the dough per the instructions.
Gently drape one edge of the rolled-out dough circle over the rolling pin, and revolve the rolling pin to wrap the whole crust around it. Place the rolling pin over the edge of the pie plate or tin, and carefully unroll the dough over to the other edge of the pie plate so the dough circle is centered. Press the dough gently into the bottom of the pie plate and around the sides. Trim the dough edge to a 1/2 to 1-inch overhang beyond the rim of the pie plate.
Go around the pie and use the fold-tuck-crimp method to seal the pie edge: Starting in any spot, use the fingers of both hands to gently press and fold over the overhanging crust and tuck it under at the outer edge of the pie. Then, to crimp, using the forefinger of your left hand and the thumb and forefinger of your right hand, go around the pie edge and press in with the left forefinger and simultaneously outward with the right thumb and forefinger. Or alternately, instead of crimping, after you fold-and-tuck, use a fork and press the back side of the fork prongs into the pie edge all around the rim.
Line the pie crust with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dry beans. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Remove the weights, and let cool.
To make the filling, in a large bowl, with a spoon or an electric mixer, stir together the cream cheese, peanut butter, 1/2 cup of the sugar, the milk, honey, and salt until well combined.
Spoon the peanut butter mixture into the crust and spread evenly over the bottom.
Spoon the jelly onto the peanut butter layer, and spread it evenly on top. 9. In a medium bowl with an electric mixer, whip the whipping cream, the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar, and the vanilla until soft peaks form.
Top the jelly layer with the whipping cream, as thick or as thin as you like (I recommend 1 to 2 inches).
Sprinkle with some peanuts and just a few raspberries (or whatever fruit the jelly contains), for garnish.
Chill until ready to serve, at least 30 minutes.
Note: We use raspberry jelly at High 5 Pie, but you can use your favorite.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and sugar, and mix well. Add the butter to the flour mixture, and mix gently with a pastry blender, a fork, or your hands. The goal is to lightly incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients. The butter pieces should be well coated with the dry mixture and somewhat flattened.
Gradually add the water to the flour mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time, and continue mixing the dough until it comes together and forms pea-sized or crouton-sized crumbs. The dough should look like coarse individual pieces, not smooth and beaten together like cookie dough.
With your hands, gather the dough crumbs together to form 2 patties, gently molding the crumb-like mixture into a patty shape and being careful not to over handle the dough. Wrap each patty in plastic wrap.
Chill the dough for at least 1 hour, or up to 3 days. The dough can also be frozen for up to 2 weeks.
When you're ready to use the dough, let it sit at room temperature for at least 10 minutes to soften it and make it workable. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each of the 2 dough patties to about a 1/4-inch thickness, lightly dusting it with flour, if needed, to prevent sticking, and making sure to roll the dough evenly.
1 double-crust 9-inch pie, 2 single-crust 9-inch pies, 16 Cutie Pies, 36 Petit-5s, 8 Piejars, 10 Flipsides, or 50 Piepops
From Cutie Pies by Dani Cone, Andrews McMeel Publishing


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New 2018 Buick Enclave Avenir FWD
Sale Price $45,560
See Important Disclosures Here
UPDATE since my last review. Sullivan had called me to say they had read my review and now understood my viewpoint of what had happened with the A/C. ...
Bobby was excellent. He is a very kind and caring person. I explained to him that my husband is very sick and that I had some people watching him for ...
Great people, always professional and friendly.
Everyone was friendly and eager to please.
Was there for a basic oil change
Oil change, tire rotation...in and out in less than an hour. Awesome.
Had a great experience with Dealership and my sales lady Johnell jonik was awsome got a brand new Buick Encore
it was fine
Service was quick and efficient. However, I was made aware that a Diesel Terrain is very rare. Also, that the specified diesel motor oil is difficult ...


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Don desires only your conformity and obedience to authority, but LinkedIn itself is more concerned about getting its hands into your wallet. They want your money. As much of it as they can get, and they have learned well from other social media sites. The marketing psychologists of LinkedIn's sale's department know that most of their members are not looking for a job, they are simply looking to have their egos massaged. So LinkedIn has programmed the system to deliver emotional gratification on a pay-per-thrill basis. For example, members may certainly be interested in seeing who is viewing their profile, as that is the entire point of creating it:
Or not. Click to see who they are though, and LinkedIn will still only show you these same three profile perving professionals as a kind of free sample. The rest will be withheld until payment is received. You want to see more, you pay more. The more you pay, the more you are flattered.
Another common practice on board, which is illegal in most of Europe, is charging people money to put them at the top of job application lists or to introduce them to employers. It's called bribery. You or your dad pay money to get your name to the top of the list; thus you avoid the perils and pitfalls of the terrifying terrain of a level playing field.
Badges? We're looking for work and they're selling us badges. This is such an in-your-face rip-off I wouldn't be surprised if you can pay for your badge in nine dollar bills and get change in threes.
Employers used to value our Master's Degrees and our work experience, now we've got to bung a website to get our name on the list, wear badges online, and maybe we'll have to pay $3,000 for phoney "certifications" like these that purport to show we comprehend some snake-oil aspect of the job that takes a whopping two days to learn. The amount of disrespect that LinkedIn shows for authentic professional credentials is further evidenced by their software hampering the displaying of awards significant enough to confer titles or letters to one's name. If you have letters after your name LinkedIn thinks you are a URL. If you attempt to communicate with anybody it will demand you remove them. LinkedIn has determined that the letters "M.Sc" indicate that the candidate may be attempting to spread URL spam – beware. Inducements to sign-up for rip-off $3,000 two-day courses on sale by LinkedIn charlatans, on the other hand, abound (doubtless in large part to the high commissions they can afford to pay). Even the most robust ad-blockers will struggle to keep their spam off your screen. The more you explore this website, the more it sucks.
LinkedIn also offer a thoroughly useless premium mail service for you to contact recruiters and get a "guaranteed response". If you think that means when you apply for a job at MegaCorp you are guaranteed a response from MegaCorp, you're wrong. If, or more likely when, MegaCorp fail to respond (minimum seven days) your premium account will be credited with sufficient funds to send another mail to another recruiter, and you can try again. See if, maybe, NotQuiteSoBigCorp will have you. What the small print really means is, "You can keep on sending a mail a week around different firms asking for a job for three months or until somebody responds whichever is the shorter". So, the service you pay for turns out to be qualitatively the same as the service you'd get if you didn't pay, but for LinkedIn premium users disappointment and rejection come with a free badge and/or a premium icon to cheer 'em up.


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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
A Log Home Christmas
Today I thought I'd share some pictures of my home decorated for Christmas. I love these days when the decorations are up, shopping is about done, and I can play some favorite Christmas carols and enjoy my home in the Christmas spirit.
Welcome and come in! I have tea or coffee ready for you!
My fireplace mantel all decorated for Christmas.
A little vignette behind the love seat.
My corner cabinet filled with my Mother's dishes and a Victorian family I made years ago.
Pictures toward dining room. We got our share of snow and reflection from the Christmas tree.
Some decorations on top of my Grandma's china cabinet. A church I found at a thrift store, silver set I gave my Mom and received back, and my favorite, my Mom's little girl reading a book beside a button tree my cousin Jan made for me.
My Grandfather made the manger and it is so precious to me.
Lastly, a window decoration in my kitchen. My children and I made the tiny houses on the lower window sill back in the seventy's. So many happy memories! And what would be Christmas without making Christmas cookies without the Grandkids! Grandson James and girlfriend Cassidy.
Thank you for taking the time out to visit me during this blessed Christmas season. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
I'll be joining the following parties this week: A Return to Loveliness, Home, Open House, Share Your Cup Thursday, Simple and Sweet Fridays, Home Sweet Home, Feathered Nest Friday, Show and Tell Friday, and Pink Saturday.
33 comments:
- Beth said...
Your log home is so gorgeous! Just love your exposed log walls! I liked looking out your window and seeing the snowy scene outside. Your fireplace is really stunning, and I like how you've deccorated your mantel. Liked seeing your kids making cookies too. Merry Christmas!!!
- December 18, 2012 at 11:16 AM
- relevanttealeaf said...
I loved viewing every single photo, Nancy! Your log cabin home is BEAUTIFULLY decorated for Christmas. Loved seeing all the family mementos that make Christmas extra special. And how nice that your grandson and his girlfriend came to make Christmas cookies. There's no place like Grandma's house!
- December 18, 2012 at 11:18 AM
- Sylvia said...
Beautiful log cabin, I love all the windows and snow too. The fireplace makes it so cozy. Merry Christmas!
- December 18, 2012 at 5:42 PM
- Michele @ The Nest at Finch Rest said...
You have a warm and festive wonderful home - the perfect house for snowy cold Michigan winters with a fire and a nice hot cuppa!
The clock on your mantle is amazing, it is stunning!
Your family baking cookies= priceless!
Thanks so much for visiting me and for your comment- is very appreciated!
- December 18, 2012 at 7:27 PM
- Terri said...
Your home looks so festive and beautiful. Especially your lovely tree all lit up!
And you have such a good collection of holiday decorations. It all look so good.
Love your pinecone dishes!
Hugs and Happy Holidays,
- December 18, 2012 at 8:57 PM
- Pamela M. Steiner said...
Love, love, love this! A Log Cabin Christmas...my dream someday! Beautifully decorated...so peaceful and homey. Thank you for sharing with us. I truly enjoyed this Christmas tour!
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
- December 19, 2012 at 9:44 AM
- Joy said...
So pretty, warm, and welcoming! Love the windows with the view of the snowy outdoors, as well as all the special touches indoors.
- December 19, 2012 at 10:12 AM
- Sandi@ Rose Chintz Cottage said...
Nancy, your home is just gorgeous! I could spend Christmas there easily. Love the fireplace. It reminds me of the fireplace my Daddy built in our first home when I was a little girl. All your decorations are charming and beautifully displayed. Thank you for sharing with us and I wish you and your family a beautiful and blessed Christmas.
Blessings and hugs,
- December 19, 2012 at 4:20 PM
- xinex said...
Your home is so beautiful and so warm. It looks so cozy. I love your Christmas trees. My favorite is the picture with the lit tree and the fireplace....Christine
- December 19, 2012 at 11:45 PM
- Debbie@Debbie-Dabble and A Debbie-Dabble Christmas said...
Thanks so much for your visit and very kind comment!!
I love your Christmas decor especially the Victorian family that you said you made????
They are lovely!!
The pics with the snow outside your window are breathtaking!!
Wishing you and your a very Marry Christmas!!
- December 20, 2012 at 2:22 AM
- Sweet Posy Dreams said...
Everything looks so festive! Love your bottle brush tree collection. I have a very small collection of six, but I just love them. Looks like you also have a perfect Christmas view from your windows of the evergreens and snow. We are expecting our first snow today and are hoping it sticks around for a white Christmas.
- December 20, 2012 at 7:18 AM
- Gabriela Delworth said...
Thanks so much for your kind comment! I love log houses and yours looks amazing!
We have no snow yet. Can you believe it? It's all in the East and West coast right now...
Happy Holidays!
- December 20, 2012 at 9:25 AM
- Rosetta said...
Bellissimo tutto anche il panorama fuori!Baci,Rosetta
- December 20, 2012 at 4:16 PM
- Debra said...
I want to come visit ! Everything is so lovely...and what a tree! Your place is cozy as can be and wonderfully decorated...I love those carolers!
- December 20, 2012 at 4:42 PM
- Carlene @ Organized Clutter said...
Love the thrifted church. The girl with the book is cute too.
Lovely silver and so nice to have the sentimental stable from grandpa.
- December 20, 2012 at 5:03 PM
- kitty said...
Oh my goodness, my dream would be to have a log home!! I LOVED seeing yours and how it's all decorated with treasures! The view outside is just the BEST ever. I loved seeing the cookie baking kids, too.
p.s. Did I ever tell you that we lived in MI for a short time before moving to Texas?
- December 20, 2012 at 5:35 PM
- Magnolia Cottage said...
Thanks for sharing your log home all decorated for Christmas. Looks fabulous!
Merry Christmas,
- December 20, 2012 at 10:15 PM
- Chenille Cottage said...
Merry Christmas, Nancy!
I can't think of anything better than spending Christmas in a log home. The snow outside your windows is beautiful. Everything looks so festive and cozy.
Thank you for sharing and for your kind comment on my blog.
Carolynn xxx
- December 21, 2012 at 3:23 AM
- Micupoftea~ said...
Hello Nancy~ What a warm, inviting home. We do not have white Christmases, so this looks picturesque! We have sun and swaying palm trees and it would be nice if we had a visit from Jack Frost. Happy Christmas- thanks for visiting my blog.
- December 21, 2012 at 4:31 AM
- TracyMB @ Crows Feet Chic said...
What a wonderfully cozy space to decorate! Love your fireplace and collie print, your grandma's china cabinet and your hired cookie help! Visiting from Simple & Sweet Fridays! :)
- December 21, 2012 at 2:26 PM
- Bernideen said...
I love that breakfast window where you see the trees outside - all your decorations are wonderful and especially the old white church - very vintage looking. Thanks so much for linking. I have a clock like yours - but mine is green.
- December 21, 2012 at 5:24 PM
- Denise said...
So enjoyed visiting you this Christmas.Thank you for visiting Me.Your home is lovely,what gorgeous pics.of the beautiful reflection in your living room against the snow.Merry Christmas!
- December 21, 2012 at 6:58 PM
- Denise said...
Oh, it must be your dinning room.Wonderful windows !
- December 21, 2012 at 7:01 PM
- Chubskulit Rose said...
You have such a lovely decorations!
My PINK
Happy Holidays!
- December 21, 2012 at 7:08 PM
- SweetPepperRose said...
You have a lovely log home! I like your collection of tea pots.
- December 21, 2012 at 8:49 PM
- Jann Olson said...
Nancy, now how come I didn't realize until now that you lived in a log cabin? Such charm! I love the view of the frosty trees from your gorgeous windows. You have so many precious treasures. Love the church and the girl reading the book. Thanks so much for sharing with Share Your Cup.
Hugs and Merry Christmas,
- December 21, 2012 at 11:05 PM
- SwedishCorner ~ DownUnder...Pernilla said...
Happy Holidays! Your log home is stunning and Christmassy :) Seasons Greetings from Australia♥ ~Pernilla
- December 22, 2012 at 2:54 AM
- Donna said...
Your cabin is lovely, but I'm looking at that beautiful, snowy view out the windows. :)
- December 22, 2012 at 2:59 AM
- Dru said...
A lovely post - I especially like the photo of your dining area looking out on snow covered trees and your Christmas tree lights reflected in the window. Isn't it wonderful living in the mountains! We too have snow falling ou out trees today and definitely expect a white christmas. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Dru
- December 22, 2012 at 10:57 AM
- Karen Mary Butterfly said...
Beautiful home. I love the feel and had to look three or four times to see if those snow covered pine trees were real outside the window....amazing Christmas setting....what a dream.
- December 22, 2012 at 11:07 AM
- Ruthie Miller said...
Love the views. You have the perfect location for a Christmas setting. You did such a wonderful job decorating. You can feel the warmth and comfort of your home.
Love the little girl in the picture before your grandfather's nativity which is very special too and your cloche is beautiful and displayed with such a pretty scape
Thank you for sharing.
Happy Christmas! Ruthie
- December 23, 2012 at 7:31 AM
- Jody and Stan said...
Nancy, Congrats! You've been featured at Simple & Sweet Fridays for your beautiful Log Home Christmas!
Don't forget to grab a feature button. Have a wonderful holiday week!
- December 27, 2012 at 11:27 AM
- Kathryn Ross said...
Nancy - you live in our dream home! My husband swoons for a log cabin - and your pictures look like an LL Bean catalog setting - especially with that lovely snow out the windows. So many beautiful treasures to dot your Christmas landscape - and I love how they all have sentimental stories, too. Same with me - after so many years collection they all have stories to tell. Thanks for giving us a tour - Joy to you this new year!
- January 1, 2013 at 9:14 PM


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text:
- Updated
- 22/06/2009
|Sydney, Australia, 22 June - LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator, recently invited key commercial air conditioning stakeholders to visit its state-of-the-art factory in Korea.
|LG hosted fifteen consultants and specifiers at its Korean factory, where some of LG's leading experts in this field showcased the benefits and high efficiency of the MULTI V Plus II. The MULTI V Inverter system offers one of the world's largest capacity units, essential for high-rise buildings. It is quieter, more economical and powerful ensuring the highest level of customer satisfaction.
|During the trip, LG was keen to demonstrate to guests, who are also specifiers for commercial projects, that LG has quality air conditioning products to suit all applications.
|LG is committed to strengthening the commercial air conditioning category and commercial applications this year and ensuring its continued growth and success in the Australian market.
|Ian Robertson, General Manager, Commercial Air Conditioning, Australia could see significant benefits for the consultants from experiencing the manufacturing of LG's products first-hand.
|"LG is committed to growing the commercial air conditioning business and is keen to ensure that key stakeholders have the opportunity to see the high level of engineering, design, planning and execution that goes into making LG's commercial air conditioners such as the MULTI V PLUS II."
|"It is clear from this experience that the consultants were impressed to see geothermal application first hand and that LG has significant experience in geothermal applications. This means they can confidently apply this technology to their upcoming projects and be assured of LG's expertise in this area," Mr Roberston continued.
|LG sees a number of opportunities to deliver a superior service to specialist dealers, commercial contractors and consulting engineering partners, and to strengthen its position overall in this market.
|For more information please visit the LG website at www.lg.com.au or call 1800 LG HELP (1800 544 357) for stockists.
|About LG Electronics, Inc.
LG Electronics, Inc. (KSE: 066570.KS) is a global leader and technology innovator in consumer electronics, mobile communications and home appliances, employing more than 84,000 people working in 115 operations including 84 subsidiaries around the world. With 2008 global sales of $44.7 billion, LG comprises of five business units Home Entertainment, Mobile Communications, Home Appliance, Air Conditioning and Business Solutions. LG is one of the world's leading producers of flat panel TVs, audio and video products, mobile handsets, air conditioners and washing machines. LG has signed a long-term agreement to become both A Global Partner of Formula 1? and A Technology Partner of Formula 1?. As part of this top-level association, LG acquires exclusive designations and marketing rights as the official consumer electronics, mobile phone and data processor of this global sporting event. For more information, please visit www.lg.com.
|About LG Electronics Air Conditioning Company
The LG Electronics Air Conditioning Company is a leading player in the global air conditioning market, manufacturing both commercial and residential air conditioners and providing total solutions such as home networking (HomNet) and building management solutions (BMS). From consumer and individual units to industrial and specialized air conditioning systems, LG provides a wide range of products for heating, ventilating and air conditioning. Through innovation in manufacturing, R&D and marketing, LG has broken its own sales record every year since 2000, securing its position as the No. 1 maker of residential air conditioners in the world.
|For further information, images or to organise an interview please contact:
|Nicole Thurston, Burson-Marsteller
Tel: 02 9928 1584 (direct)
Mob: 0401 677 178
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Fax: 02 9928 1557
|Emma Kirkaldy, Burson-Marsteller
Tel: 02 9928 1518 (direct)
Mob: 0423 631 002
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Fax: 02 9928 1557
|Distributed on behalf of LG Electronics Australia Pty Ltd
2 Wonderland Drive, Eastern Creek NSW 2766
Phone: (02) 8805 4000


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You missed this event ?
You want to understand what was said without learning French ?
Don't want to wait for the Techdays webcast ?
You're definitevely Lucky !
I'll post next week an English webcast that present the last version of poshboard with the widgets presented at this Techdays Session. You'll see brand new silverlight widgets in action, learn what "PoshBoard V1" will be like, benefits of PowerShell webservices for Poshboard...
Don't miss this webcast and stay tuned to Devinfra-us !


text: Dog News By Ripley Share 0 Tweet Pin 0 Discover Dogs 2016 recently came to London and showcased over 200 breeds of dogs. One of the favorite dog breeds was the Staffie, with the famous Staffie smile. The favorite Staffie dog was a dog named Louis. Many of the dogs featured were rescue dogs and there was one rescue dog, Honey, who raised over 150 pounds on day one of Discover Dogs. Also featured, were a line of treats designed to give back. Each purchase of a dog treat filled advent calendar supports a mission to raise awareness of animal cruelty on farms. There were well-dressed dogs, friendly and famous humans, doggie brewskies, and of course, many doggie displays. The Best Of Discover Dogs 2016 | 11 Things We Loved


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Primary tabs
Dr Stuart Chalk
Professional Title: Other (please specify)
Other: Associate Professor
Primary domain: Analytical Chemistry
Organization name: University of North Florida
Organization type: Academia/Research
City / Country: Jacksonville - United States
Short Bio
Last comments
I am an Associate Professor Chemistry trained as an analytical chemist with expertise in flow analysis methodology and instrumentation. Over the last 15 years I have morphed into a cheminformatician working on research projects to develop data standards (e.g. the Analytical Information Markup Language - AnIML, Common Standard for eXchange – CSX, Experiment Markup Language - ExptML), electronic laboratory notebooks (E.g. the Eureka Research Workbench), scientific ontologies (e.g. the Chemical Analysis Ontology – CAO), and scientific data representation. My current projects include: REST API development for NIST-IUPAC solubility datasets, chemical property data extraction and annotation from PDF files, scientific data framework (SciDF) development, and the Chemical Analysis Metadata Platform (ChAMP). I have expertise in XML and Markup Languages, XSLT/XPATH/SVG, RDF, JSON/JSON-LD, PHP, Javascript, MySQL, SPARQL, CSS, CMS's, REST interfaces, API design and construction, schema design, ontology development and Fedora-Commons.


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Aircraft: Cessna 172. Injuries: 4 Fatal. Location: St. George, Utah. Aircraft damage: Destroyed.
What reportedly happened: Prior to the flight, the pilot and passengers were at a party, during which time the pilot and all but one passenger (the designated driver) consumed multiple alcoholic beverages.
They left to go to another party and while en route, the vehicle was pulled over by a police officer. During the diversion, the group agreed to instead go to a nearby city to gamble.
The flight departed around 1:20 a.m. An airport video recording that captured the takeoff revealed that the airplane remained either on the ground or in ground effect for over two-thirds of the length of the runway, consistent with the pilot attempting to gain airspeed in the overweight airplane. The airplane then aggressively pitched nose up and climbed out of view of the camera.
Seconds later, the airplane reappeared in a near-vertical descent into the dirt area at the end of the runway, most likely due to an aerodynamic stall during the steep climb.
A review of the pilot's toxicological tests found that the post-mortem blood ethanol level was 0.105%, which is more than twice the FAA limit of 0.04%.
Investigators determined that it is likely that the consumption of alcohol affected his judgment, and therefore contributed to the accident. Additionally, investigators determined that the airplane was 160 pounds over its maximum gross weight.
Probable cause: The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during an aggressive pitch-up maneuver, which resulted in a low-altitude aerodynamic stall shortly after takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment from alcohol and an over-gross-weight airplane.
NTSB Identification: WPR12FA230
This May 2012 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.


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For the past 5 years Mac Daddy's Annual Winter Festival has been an incredible opportunity to meet and greet tons of people from the community, customers and vendors alike. And this year was no exception. New friendships were made and smiles were given, starting from 10 a.m. through lunch and into the late afternoon, Mac Daddy's was booming with family and friends playing in the arcade, challenging each other at the alley, and eating some of the best food on the Crystal Coast. It was easy to see that fun is always served here.
We watched with sheer joy, a mother and son play air hockey, laughing and joking, exchanging friendly competitive jests (The son won by the way). Smiles beamed from our faces when we saw a father teaching his little girl how to bowl, as she held a new hair ribbon that was just purchased from a vendor. We were tempted to join in at the cakewalk; everyone won, so it was hard to resist the fun. The day truly was fun filled and exciting.
The 5th Annual Winter Festival here at Mac Daddy's was a huge hit! Vendors from all over Eastern Carolina came and showcased some really awesome products. The amount of creativity in the building was bursting at the seams. It almost seemed like the windows would shatter from trying to hold it all in, we even had live Celtic music throughout the Festival. Many vendors showcased their handmade products, everything from hair ribbons to sweet treats; it left nothing but excitement for the entire day.
By the end of the day, we were a little sad it was over, but mostly excited for next year. We're always looking for extra reasons and events to have Fun Served Here at Mac Daddy's.


text:
- Research
- Open Access
Early manifestation of alteration in cardiac function in dystrophin deficient mdx mouse using 3D CMR tagging
© Li et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2009
- Received: 14 April 2009
- Accepted: 22 October 2009
- Published: 22 October 2009
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is caused by the absence of the cytoskeletal protein, dystrophin. In DMD patients, dilated cardiomyopathy leading to heart failure may occur during adolescence. However, early cardiac dysfunction is frequently undetected due to physical inactivity and generalized debilitation. The objective of this study is to determine the time course of cardiac functional alterations in mdx mouse, a mouse model of DMD, by evaluating regional ventricular function with CMR tagging.
In vivo myocardial function was evaluated by 3D CMR tagging in mdx mice at early (2 months), middle (7 months) and late (10 months) stages of disease development. Global cardiac function, regional myocardial wall strains, and ventricular torsion were quantified. Myocardial lesions were assessed with Masson's trichrome staining.
Global contractile indexes were similar between mdx and C57BL/6 mice in each age group. Histology analysis showed that young mdx mice were free of myocardial lesions. Interstitial fibrosis was present in 7 month mdx mice, with further development into patches or transmural lesions at 10 months of age. As a result, 10 month mdx mice showed significantly reduced regional strain and torsion. However, young mdx mice showed an unexpected increase in regional strain and torsion, while 7 month mdx mice displayed similar regional ventricular function as the controls.
Despite normal global ventricular function, CMR tagging detected a biphasic change in myocardial wall strain and torsion, with an initial increase at young age followed by progressive decrease at older ages. These results suggest that CMR tagging can provide more sensitive measures of functional alterations than global functional indexes in dystrophin-related cardiomyopathies.
- Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance
- Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
- Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
- Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Patient
- Biphasic Change
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an X-linked severe progressive muscle wasting disease, which affects approximately 1 in 3500 male birth [1, 2]. DMD is caused by the deficiency of a cytoskeletal protein, dystrophin, which is a component of the transmembrane dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC). DGC plays an important role in maintaining the structural integrity of the cells by linking intracellular actin filaments to basal lamina [3, 4]. The disruption of DGC structure due to dystrophin deficiency leads to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) that may occur during adolescence [5]. At an early stage, DMD patients usually do not present clinical cardiac symptoms because of their physical inactivity and generalized debilitation. However, a recent cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) tagging study suggests that abnormal myocardial strain may develop long before the manifestation of global functional deterioration [6].
The mdx mouse carries a nonsense mutation in its dystrophin gene that eliminates the expression of the dystrophin protein. It thus has been a popular animal model for studying the pathophysiology of DMD [7, 8]. The mdx mice exhibit many of the same histological features seen in DMD, including the degeneration and necrosis of myofibers with inflammatory infiltrates, followed by subsequent regeneration. However, disease progression in mdx mice is milder as compared to DMD patients. Only in relatively older mdx mice are the progressive degenerative changes observed [9]. Similarly, mdx mice manifest histological evidence of a cardiomyopathy, but no overt cardiac dysfunction has been found in the young mdx mice. Reduced global cardiac function [10] and dilated right ventricles [11] were only documented in relatively older mdx mice. In the current study, we sought to delineate alterations in cardiac function and structure during the course of DCM progression in mdx mice. Longitudinal evaluation of 3D regional myocardial wall motion, a potentially more sensitive measure of ventricular contractile behaviour, was performed with CMR tagging.
In vivo CMR was performed at the Biological MR Laboratory of Washington University Medical Center. Mdx mice and their age-matched C57BL/6 wildtype controls of 2, 7 and 10 months of age underwent CMR on a 4.7 T Varian INOVA system (Varian Associates, Palo Alto, CA) equipped with a gradient insert (60 G/cm, 10 cm inner diameter) as described previously [12]. A 2.5-cm surface coil was used for the imaging of mice. Briefly, mice were anesthetized with 0.7~1% isoflurane by a nose cone and placed into the coil in prone position. Electrodes were attached to front paws and the right leg for ECG gating and monitoring of vital signs. The animals were kept warm by blowing hot air into the magnet using a blow dryer. The heat flow and anaesthesia level were manually adjusted to keep the heart rate similar to that under conscious conditions. Animals were sacrificed at the end of imaging protocol for histological analysis. A total of 42 mice were scanned. The animal protocol was approved by the Animal Studies Committee of the Washington University Medical Center.
Tagged images of 5 short-axis (SA) slices were acquired from base to apex. The tagging sequence used a SPAMM-1331 sequence applied immediately after the ECG trigger, followed by gradient-echo cine sequence. Repetition time (TR) was adjusted according to the R-R interval of the heart such that a total of 15 frames were acquired during one cardiac cycle. Other imaging parameters were: echo-time (TE), 3 msec; data matrix, 256 × 128; field of view (FOV), 4 cm × 4 cm; slice thickness, 1 mm. Tag resolution was 0.6 mm with tagline thickness ranging from 0.2 to 0.3 mm. The acquired k-space data were zero-filled to yield a matrix size of 512 × 512, corresponding to an in-plane resolution of 78 μm × 78 μm. Two sets of tagged SA images were acquired with tags in perpendicular directions for each SA plane, yielding a grid tagging pattern when the two data sets were combined. Tagged long-axis (LA) images were acquired from four radially distributed LA views spaced every 45°, with the tags perpendicular to the LV long-axis. Imaging parameters were the same as those used for SA images.
Regular cine images that provided better contrast between the myocardium and the blood were acquired for morphological analysis. These images were acquired with the same imaging parameters as the tagged images with a 128 × 128 data matrix. Both the cine and the tagged images were zero-filled into a 512 × 512 data matrix so that myocardial contours traced from cine images were directly used in the analysis of tagged images with minimal adjustment. Total image acquisition time, including animal setup, was ~2 hours.
Image Analysis
Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation. Unpaired Student t-test was used for comparisons between mdx mice and their age-matched controls. Mean values of myocardial strain in septal, anterior, lateral, and posterior segments, or at basal, midventricular, and apical levels, were compared separately by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). If there were statistical differences, multiple pairwise comparisons were performed using Tukey's test with a confidence interval of 95%. P values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
Animal Characteristics and Global Contractile Indexes
Animal Characteristics and Morphological Data.
2 month
7 month
10 month
control (n = 8)
mdx (n = 8)
control (n = 5)
mdx (n = 6)
control (n = 7)
mdx (n = 8)
Age, weeks
8.5 ± 1.3
9.2 ± 1.5
30.6 ± 1.8
33.7 ± 0.7
45.2 ± 2.8
43.5 ± 1.2
Body weight, g
26.9 ± 1.8
23.5 ± 4.1
32.2 ± 5.3
34.2 ± 1.0
30.0 ± 2.9
34.5 ± 2.0‡
Heart weight, mg
141 ± 20
127 ± 13
137 ± 6
158 ± 29
148 ± 12
170 ± 12‡
Heart weight/body weight, %
0.52 ± 0.05
0.55 ± 0.13
0.43 ± 0.06
0.46 ± 0.09
0.49 ± 0.03
0.49 ± 0.03
Heart rate, BPM
466 ± 42
441 ± 40
478 ± 38
481 ± 54
483 ± 29
500 ± 22
LV diameter, mm
5.37 ± 0.18
5.07 ± 0.35
5.43 ± 0.19
5.71+ 0.12
5.73 ± 0.25
5.75 ± 0.08
Wall thickness, mm
0.97 ± 0.16
0.81 ± 0.05
1.02 ± 0.08
1.04 ± 0.09
0.94 ± 0.04
1.04 ± 0.09*
Wall thickness/diameter
0.18 ± 0.03
0.16 ± 0.01
0.20 ± 0.03
0.18 ± 0.02
0.17 ± 0.01
0.19 ± 0.02
LVEDV, μl
42.8 ± 6.7
40.6 ± 7.4
42.1 ± 7.4
48.2 ± 6.7
51.0 ± 7.2
47.8 ± 4.2
LVESV, μl
15.3 ± 5.0
13.7 ± 3.5
18.6 ± 8.4
20.9 ± 5.3
24.0 ± 6.7
24.3 ± 2.9
Stroke volume, μl
27.5 ± 3.1
26.9 ± 4.3
25.9 ± 0.5
27.3 ± 2.3
27.0 ± 3.2
23.5 ± 3.1
Ejection fraction, %
65 ± 7
66 ± 4
63 ± 10
57 ± 5
54 ± 8
49 ± 5
Cardiac output, ml/min
12.9 ± 1.5
11.8 ± 1.6
12.7 ± 0.9
13.4 ± 1.3
13.0 ± 2.2
11.7 ± 1.4
2-month mdx mice
7-Month Mdx Mice
7-month mdx mice had similar regional strain and time course of ventricular torsion as the controls. The maximal torsion of mdx mice was also similar to the controls (2.55 ± 0.25 °/mm v.s. 3.06 ± 0.97°/mm, P = 0.3).
10-Month Mdx Mice
10-month mdx mice had significantly decreased regional myocardial wall strains (E1, E2, E3, Ecc, Err and Ell) by 11~38% throughout the whole left ventricle, with the exception of E1 at base, Ell at midventricle, and Err at both apex and base. The time course of ventricular torsion was significantly altered in mdx mice (Fig. 5C). The maximal torsion decreased from 2.65 ± 0.86°/mm in the control mice to 1.66 ± 0.40°/mm in mdx mice (P < 0.05).
Histological Analysis and Principal Strains in Segmented Regions
In this study in mdx mice, we assessed the alterations in regional left ventricular function at different stages of disease development towards DCM. Despite similar global functional indexes, both young and adult mdx mice manifested significantly altered patterns of regional ventricular wall motion. Consistent with the development of fibrotic lesions, myocardial wall strain and torsion were significantly decreased in 10-month mdx mice. However, the lesion-free young mdx mice had a surprising increase in regional wall strain and torsion, while 7-month mdx mice had similar contractile patterns as the controls.
Cardiac function has been investigated in mdx mice using both CMR and echocardiography. Young mdx mice exhibited normal morphology and global cardiac function [10, 19]. At 8 months of age, mdx mice started to manifest right ventricular dilatation and decreased peak LV filling rate [11]. However, ejection fraction and cardiac output in mdx mice remained normal until 42 weeks of age [10, 11]. While the normal global function in young and adult mdx mice is consistent with these previous findings, our study is the first to observe an early change in regional myocardial wall strain and torsion in mdx mice. Our results suggest that changes in regional wall motion can occur at a very early age in mdx mice before any macroscopic and global functional changes have occurred.
We observed a biphasic change in myocardial wall strain and torsion in mdx mice, with an initial increase at young age followed by decrease at older ages. Since dystrophin disruption renders mdx mice more vulnerable to mechanical stress and workload induced damage [20], the early increase in myocardial contraction may lead to increased ventricular wall stress in mdx mice, thus exacerbating stress-induced damage and triggering the initial remodeling processes that eventually leads to lesion development and cardiac dysfunction. The accumulation of tissue fibrosis leads to progressive decline in regional ventricular function in older mdx mice. As a result, 7-month mdx mice had similar regional ventricular function compared with the controls, while 10-month mdx mice had significantly decreased wall strain and torsion.
Cellular changes in mdx mice have also been investigated. In particular, the impact of dystrophin deficiency on Ca2+ homeostasis has been investigated in both young (2-3 months) and adult (9-12 months) mdx mice by Williams et al [21]. They observed significantly increased Ca2+ transient in both young and adult mdx mice, which was associated with increased expression of ryanodine receptor, the protein responsible for calcium release during systole. As Ca2+ is the central regulator of myocyte contractility, it is possible that our observed functional increase in young mdx mice is attributable to enhanced myocyte contraction due to increased Ca2+ transients. However, further investigation is needed to establish the relationship of calcium transients, myocardial contractile function, and disease progression in mdx mice.
The effects of increased Ca2+ transients on myocardial remodelling have been investigated in other animal models. Increased Ca2+ transients and myocyte hypertrophy were observed in mice with β2-adrenoceptor overexpression [22]. Increase in Ca2+ transients via systemic β-agonist administration has also been shown to cause myocyte hypertrophy and apoptosis, tissue fibrosis, and heart failure [23]. All these studies indicate a possible mechanism leading to myocardial dysfunction via chronic elevation of Ca2+ transients. Interestingly, altered Ca2+ homeostasis was also observed in the skeletal muscle of both mdx mice and DMD patients [24–26]. These observations led to several clinical trials that evaluated the effects of Ca2+ antagonists on DMD patients [27], with the primary focus on the skeletal muscle. In general, no significant beneficial effects were observed on the skeletal muscle function in DMD patients, although reduced muscle degeneration was revealed in several animal studies [28–30]. Only one study reported a significant improvement in muscle strength in verapamil-treated DMD patients, but with a high incidence of cardiac side effects [31]. Since Ca2+ can impact both inotropic and chronotropic state of the heart, the effects of Ca2+ antagonists on the heart need to be carefully examined.
Several studies have investigated LV function in DMD patients in search for early signs of myocardial dysfunction. Using CMR, Ashford et al reported normal LV volume and ejection fraction in young DMD patients. However, CMR tagging revealed significantly reduced circumferential strain in these patients [6]. Similar findings were reported using ultrasound-based methods. Mertens et al investigated a group of young DMD patients with preserved global function by echocardiography [32]. They observed significantly decreased peak radial and longitudinal systolic strain and strain rate, as well as peak systolic and early diastolic myocardial velocities in the anterolateral and inferolateral LV walls. Similarly, Mori et al reported decreased peak systolic radial strain and early diastolic wall-thinning velocity in the posterior LV wall of young DMD patients with normal conventional echocardiographic findings [33, 34]. These studies suggest that DMD patients manifest decreased regional myocardial wall motion at an early age, which differ from the biphasic change we observed in mdx mice. Compare to DMD patients, the expression of disease in mdx mice is relatively milder [35]. One possible explanation for this difference between mdx mice and DMD patients is that a dystrophin analogue, utrophin, compensates for the lack of dystrophin more effectively in mdx mice than in DMD patients. Utrophin is associated with the DGC, and is similar to dystrophin in primary sequence and predicted secondary structure [36]. It can compensate for dystrophin when expressed at high levels. The severity of disease in mice lacking both dystrophin and utrophin is similar to DMD [37, 38]. Further, a recent gene array study has confirmed the up-regulation of utrophin in mdx mice [39].
While the observed biphasic change in mdx mice suggests that tissue tagging is more sensitive for detecting functional alterations than global clinical indexes, functional assessment alone may not be sufficient in delineating disease progression when opposing effects exist. The seemingly "normal" regional wall motion in 7-month mdx mice reflects the balance between increased myocyte contractility and the development of myocardial fibrosis. Because of these counteracting factors, it is important to evaluate other aspects of myocardial remodeling. In particular, late gadolinium enhanced CMR (LGE-CMR) has been shown to detect myocardial lesions in DMD patients [40–42]. The combination of LGE-CMR and tissue tagging will provide more comprehensive evaluation of disease progression in DMD patients.
Despite significant alterations in ventricular torsion and wall strain at both 2- and 10-months of age, mdx mice showed no statistical difference in global ventricular function compared to the age-matched controls. The relationship between regional myocardial wall motion and global ventricular function is complicated because of the intricate 3D architecture of myocardial fibers. While CMR tagging measures the regional deformation of the myocardium, it remains to be elucidated to what extent altered myocardial deformation can be reflected in global changes in ventricular volumes. In general, current findings support the notion that regional alterations precede the manifestation of global functional changes. However, a more quantitative relationship between regional wall deformation and global ventricular function remains to be defined.
Previous LGE-CMR studies have identified the basal inferior and lateral walls as the initial sites of myocardial fibrosis [41, 42]. A recent echocardiographic study also observed decreased radial strain in the posterior wall with relative sparing of ventricular septum [34]. However, such preferential changes were not observed by CMR tagging [6]. These discrepancies and the complicated relationship between myocardial fibre structure and regional function warrant further investigation. In the current study, we observed atypical patterns of lesion distribution and functional alterations in mdx mice. It remains to be investigated which pathogenic processes are responsible for the observed difference between mdx mice and DMD patients.
One limitation of the current study is that different animals were characterized in different age groups because of the requirement for histological analysis, which may potentially increase the variability of strain measurements. Heart rate variation during long image acquisition can be a source of error for the 3D reconstruction of the taglines. In the current study, this error was minimized by maintaining a constant heart rate with 4.1 ± 4.7% fluctuation. The TR was also adjusted according to the R-R interval such that each of the 15 frames was acquired at the same stage during a cardiac cycle. These measures can effectively minimize the errors due to heart rate fluctuation. The strain and torsion values in the control mice were similar to those reported in the literature [16, 43].
Taglines were tracked semi-automatically with HARP-based method and homogeneous strain analysis was used for strain quantification in the current study. While the filtering of harmonic peaks in the k-space reduces the resolution of reconstructed HARP images, the accuracy of tagline tracking is not affected by k-space sampling/undersampling. The accuracy of homogeneous strain analysis was investigated previously using a deformable silicone gel phantom [44]. It has been shown that the error of noise-free strain estimation was within 10% of the model-calculated values, with no bias. With only one adjacent slice, strain quantification at apex showed a larger variation than at mid-ventricle as fewer tetrahedrons were generated. However, average strain values for each experimental group showed comparable standard deviations at apex, base, and mid-ventricle, suggesting that differences among animals were the dominant source of data variation.
Despite normal global LV function, mdx mice had a biphasic change in myocardial wall strain and torsion, with an initial increase at young age followed by progressive decrease at older ages. These results suggest that regional LV function by CMR tagging is sensitive to early signs of myocardial dysfunction than global functional indexes. Therefore, CMR tagging can be utilized to detect early cardiac involvement, as well as to potentially monitor and quantify the effects of novel therapeutic interventions in DMD patients.
The authors thank Dr. Joseph J.H. Ackerman, Director of the Biomedical MR Laboratory (BMRL) at Washington University, for advice and MR resources. The authors also thank Dr. Xiongwei Zhu from Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University for assistance with histological analysis. The authors acknowledge the support of the Washington University Small Animal Imaging Resource, funded in part through National Cancer Institute Small Animal Imaging Research Program Grant R24 CA-83060.
This work was supported by NIH grants R01 HL-73315, HL-86935 (X.Y.). Wei Liu and Jia Zhong were supported by American Heart Association predoctoral fellowships 0215174Z (to W.L.) and 0615308B (to J.Z.).
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