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While CBD oil won't get you high, it may have real benefits for your skin.
Now that a handful of states have legalized recreational marijuana, cannabis has gotten a whole lot more sophisticated. And the beauty business is not about to miss out.
Cannabis-derived ingredients are trendy, and they may well offer a raft of possible benefits, which beauty brands are quick to tout. CBD oil, specifically, is nonpsychoactive (it won't get you high), and is said to offer relief from pain, anxiety and depression; stimulate appetite; and have anti-inflammatory and anti-acne properties.
There are already devout fans, some boldfaced, who are drawn to CBD topical products largely for their pain-relieving properties. Olivia Wilde recently said that she used it to relieve physical aches during a Broadway run. Fashion stylist Karla Welch, who works with Wilde, Ruth Negga, Katy Perry and Sarah Paulson, uses Lord Jones CBD lotion on her clients' feet when they walk the red carpet.
"It's perfect for long nights in high heels," Welch says. "All my girls love it, and bottles live in my styling kit."
Jessica Richards, the founder of Shen Beauty in Brooklyn, is often a trendsetter in beauty retailing, and she started carrying Lord Jones in December. "I do so much SoulCycle that I have one hip that hurts," she says. "I tried out the CBD lotion. It's not a placebo. It really does work for pain management."
A spate of new products
Lord Jones, which is based in Los Angeles, is not the only brand to market a pain-relieving CBD body lotion.
Seattle's Van der Pop recently added CBD-infused skin-care products to its line of luxe cannabis containers and smoking accessories. Other lines include Cannuka, with topical products containing CBD and manuka honey; Khus & Khus, a skin- and body-care line by ayurvedic specialist Kristi Blustein; and Vertly, a line of lip balm by Claudia Mata, a former W magazine accessories editor.
Beauty lines, including Malin+Goetz and Boy Smells, make reference to cannabis in their products purely for the scent.
For example, Boy Smells has a cannabis-scented candle called Kush. "We're aware that having a cannabis candle is a little provocative, but I personally love the flavor and smell of cannabis," says Matthew Herman, a founder. "It has a wet earth smell that is very attractive."
Fad or actually helpful?
But as CBD oil seeks to go mainstream, it's tough to tell which products hold up to scrutiny. The cannabis plant is complex and studies on effectiveness are limited.
"CBD lotion that also has THC in it, it's going to help you much more with pain relief," says Shereene Idriss, a dermatologist in Manhattan. "But the ones from hemp, are they going to help as much? It's hard to tell because we don't have the data and studies. Also, the problem is you often don't know how much you are getting — it's completely unregulated."
Idriss says there are reports that offer some support to benefits, including one that said CBD can help reduce oil production. "It wasn't a perfectly well-rounded study, but it does have merit," she says. The other study addressed cannabinoids in dermatology in general, including THC, but didn't deal with risks.
"I would need more, a randomized clinical trial, before I could, with full-fledged belief, recommend CBD oil as something more than just offering regular hydration," she says.
ShopNW staff contributed to this story.


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NEW ORLEANS — It's your one-stop shop for all of your Saints needs! Whether you're in the market for custom Choppa cookies or a custom cap… Lakeside Shopping Center has the merch to help you march all the way to Atlanta!
We teamed up three of NOLA's Top Lifestyle Bloggers to show us their game day garments.
First up, Courney Illg (@courtneyillg) is shoulder to toe Buckle in their jeans, cowl sweater, and ankle boots. She's rocking Kendra Scott earrings and a necklace… with the perfect game-day purse from Blink.
Tracey Wiley (@tracey_wiley) is wearing a t-shirt and leggings found at Jean Therapy. Her sneakers are from Journey's with a fun fanny-pack from Carinae. Her bracelets are from Kendra Scott with her earrings by Mignon Faget.
Not to be outdone… Alisha Reed (@iamnolabougie) wears a number 9 necklace from Mignon Faget, along with their black and gold bracelets. Her game-day clutch and Drew tee are both from Jean Therapy. With jeans and boots from Buckle!
Cheers to Drew and Krewe! Thanks so much Lakeside Shopping Center!
Follow Kinsey on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

subset: commoncrawl


text: chris convertible 0 Posted May 3, 2015 Hi, Anyone planning on displaying there car at this? Surely there are some Silvia's out there to put on display.. The following info is cut and pasted from the Rotary Enthusiasts Club of ACT. Cheers Chris Quote: The All Japanese Car and Bike show is happening! SATURDAY MAY 9, starting at 10am, in the carpark of Geoscience Australia, Jerrabomberra Avenue, Symonston. This is a HUGE carpark with lots of room for everyone. Each car will park over two spaces, so there won't be any door-clashing problems, and there will be heaps of room for people to more around. Note that the GA building will be closed. We are investigating the cost of providing food/drink and sanitation facilities. If anyone has hookups, let us know. FAQs: Who is actually organising this thing? The Rotary Enthusiasts of the ACT Inc. (REACT) is the organising club. Who can bring a car/bike? As REACT is a CAMS affiliated club, only members of REACT or other CAMS affiliated clubs are eligible to enter. However, you will be able to buy a single-day membership of REACT in the day for a small amount, so in practice, anyone with an eligible vehicle can attend. Is my car/bike eligible? If your car/bike was made in Japan, or is the same as a car/bike that was made in Japan (r31 skyline, holden gemini), you're eligible. Note that this is really a show for enthusiasts, and that stock mazda 121s, and anything that could be a pickup truck may well be sent to a far corner. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


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Detroit Lions get breather with bye week amid tough stretch going against elite quarterbacks
By NOAH TRISTER
AP Sports Writer
ALLEN PARK — Somewhere in the NFL, there are teams trying to win despite substandard quarterbacking.
That must feel like just a rumor to the Detroit Lions.
The Lions reached their open date this week after facing Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz and Patrick Mahomes in consecutive games.
When they return to the field a week from Monday, they will be at Green Bay, where Aaron Rodgers is off to another fine start. So far Detroit has held its own against this group of prolific passers. It's certainly been a challenge.
"I guess what we've done has been fairly successful," defensive coordinator Paul Pasqualoni said. "It doesn't mean that we're going to continue to go that way. It just means that it's the way we've gone so far. There are so many good quarterbacks and we're seeing another good one here as we come up — a Hall of Fame kind of guy.î"
Through the first four weeks of the season, the Lions (2-1-1) allowed an opposing passer rating of just 80.3. Detroit held Rivers and Mahomes without a touchdown pass. The Lions also went on the road and beat Wentz and the Eagles. Detroit's defense hasn't necessarily dominated — opponents are averaging more than 400 yards a game — but given the competition, there are some encouraging signs.
"We know what we have, and we know that in a sense, we're kind of like a newly seeded plant,î" linebacker Jarrad Davis said. "We're starting to blossom a little bit. But we've got to keep watering, we've got to keep giving ourself that light. We've got to keep just making sure that we pay attention to things that are going to help us grow and get better."
Davis' analogy was an unusual one, but there's no question that the vibe around the Lions feels different than it did toward the beginning of last season, when Detroit seemed to be struggling with its transition to new coach Matt Patricia. The Lions finished 6-10.
They began this season with a tie against rookie quarterback Kyler Murray and Arizona, but then came that tough stretch of Rivers, Wentz and Mahomes. Detroit managed two victories, intercepting Rivers near the end of a 13-10 win over the Chargers, then holding off Wentz and the Eagles 27-24.


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YouTube Music Video
I watch the music video to my favorite song,Roar on YouTube. My favorite part is in the beginning when the guy gets attacked by a tiger. I think the music video is about how she tries to be the ruler of the jungle and communicate with the animals. It's pretty cool. I loved it. It's my favorite song.
A World Without Music
This weeks blog topic is a world without music. It is very hard to even think of a world without music it's like telling a dog to not bark in their life. It's almost impossible. For example without music in the movie Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters then there wouldn't be a lot of tension, you wouldn't be able to tell if it's dramatic scene, and you wouldn't notice their mood or emotion.
Since Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters has a lot of tension when the mechanical bull crashed through the barrier and tried to kill Percy. Without music I wouldn't have known that the bull was coming until it showed up on the screen, so without music that would have changed my experience on watching that part of the movie.
Dramatic scenes are are easy to find if you pay attention to the music. In the movie Tyson, Percy's brother, fell off the cliff during a fight and Percy thought he died so there was dramatic music, but without music you wouldn't be able to get the tell if it was a dramatic scene, happy scene, or a sad scene unless you saw Tyson fall off the cliff . You wouldn't be wouldn't tell the difference.
And lastly and I saw the movie Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters there was a part where the mechanical bull and ran through the barrier and destroyed the place where Percy lives and so after Percy destroyed the bull he looked back at the destruction and there was music and it related to his mood which was shocked. And well with no music I wouldn't have been able to tell if he was sad, mad, angry, or shocked
If there was no music in the movie Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters didn't have any music it would really change the way I saw the movie. To me not having music in movies would really affect the way you see movie. So not having music in movies could really make it kind of boring.
Hi everyone,
This weeks blog is about a drawing website on YouTube with video clips on how to draw . I used this website to learn how to draw cute manga characters. This website shows how to draw cartoon celebrities and movie characters. This lady can draw a cartoon Arriana Grande, Taylor Swift, One Direction, and more. Her name in Mei Yu and her new drawings that are movie characters are the despicable me minion and Pikachu the Pokemon character. These bubble head characters are easy to draw. So check out her website, just type in youtube.com/Fun2draw and remember her name is Mei Yu so if you don't want to type the website in then just type in the search bar "Mei Yu's fun to draw pictures."
The Master
So far I have managed to master quite a bit. For example I have mastered the tri-caster for morning announcements. Also I have mastered how to do the advisory game and how to post blog comments and upload them to the server.
Working camera B for morning announcements is kind of easy. All you do is turn the camera on and cross fade (merge) the two people and line their eyes up to match each other. Then we make sure that the mic and tv is on. So it's kind of simple, isn't it?
Another mastered skill is that I know how to make a advisory game. Right now I am pretty much finished with the advisory game script. I already finished my power point slides. So Annie and I are almost finished.
And lastly I mastered posting blog comments for other people. To upload comments to the CKTV server you press command, shift, 4 to take a screen shot of the comment then you go in to your blog comments folder and then drag the screen shot in to the folder.
So I mastered simple skills but I am hoping that later on in the year I will be able to learn harder things or get better at skills to become better at media.
Obstacles in Media
Hi this is Kelli,
Media is no walk in the park. It's hard work and you have to earn your free time by finishing your work. I have had some trouble with interviews, argumentative essay, and trying to get the radios done.
The biggest obstacle in media is the interviews. I think interviews were a hard obstacle to go around because the two people we interviewed talked for over 3 minutes. One talked for at least 10 minute and the other one talked for at least 8 minutes. On top of that the third interview we did the mic. was turning off automatically, and Annie and I were worried that our interview was not going to be finished that day and we would have to come back. But luckily the person we were interviewing had spare batteries and it turned out that it just needed new batteries.
The second biggest obstacle I had to face is argumentative essay. This is a assignment that we do every week. This usually lasts us almost the whole period so that's one less day we have to use every week. So it makes finishing the project harder than it already is. It's a major set back but I come in after school to make it up.
Since our radios are due 3 weeks from now, my job is to look for the events that are happening the week we are on air whale Annie is doing the scripts for advisory games or working on the project. One problem is that I still need to learn how to make a script and because of the argumentative essay we are falling behind a little at a time.
So does this change the way you see media? Does media still seem easy to you? I know that it is hard for me. But it's a good way to learn about time management.
The iOS 7
Hi everyone this is Kelli,
So you probably heard that the iOS 7 is coming out soon. I cant wait to see what its like. They have made a new app that's called Air play and its only on the iOS 7. This app lets you send videos to friends and it doesn't require Internet connection. I am so exited.
My Favorite Movie
In this blog I'm going to talk about my favorite movie. My favorite movie is Percy Jackson and the sea of monsters. I like this movie because it talks about the Greek gods and their kids with powers. Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon he can control the water, Percy's brother Tyson can control the water too he is also the son of Poseidon but he is half cyclops, Annabelle is the daughter of Athena and has the power of wisdom, Groover is The Lord of the Wild, Clarisse is the daughter of Ares, and Luke the friend that turned on them is the son of Hermes he has the ability to teleport and he is also a master thief. It's a good movie you should go check it out in theaters. There are some parts that are super funny like one of the pictures below Groover dressed up like cyclops with a fake eye so that he wouldn't get eaten by a real cyclops even though Groover is a half blood he is half goat and half human.
In the movie they have some good shots like framing, close-up, and wide. The actors are good at acting and they add a little humor to the movie. I don't know if you would like the movie because you kind of have to know the Greek mythology to understand it better… But I enjoyed it so that's my favorite movie so far. So until next week bye
New Week, New Blog
Its a new week which means a new blog. This week Annie and I are now trying to get our scripts done. Also since we got assigned Friday games we have to finish taking pictures. And lastly we are going to start radios for 4 weeks prior.
I am first going to talk about our first quarter project.Both of us are done with transcribing. So now we get to make our scripts. Since I am a new comer… Annie will teach me how to make a script. We also got some B-roll to put in our video. Two of the people we interviewed gave us some B-roll to use. So our first quarter project is going pretty good.
Secondly I will talk about what we have been planning on doing for Advisory games. Annie and I are planning on doing "name that place in campus". Annie and I started to take pictures of places in school for example… Hupu play court, the trophy in the library, and the bars on the play field. On Tuesday we are planning on finishing taking pictures of the rest of the places in campus. So we are right on track.
Annie and I are starting on our radios for four weeks prior to the due date. This means that we must inform our parents of the due date. Then I meet with Annie to determine our script responsibilities.So sometimes people make it that the experienced person is Monday, the new comer Wednesday and, the experienced person is Friday. After that we check school websites to begin gathering information on what we can use. So I hope we finish in time.
So all our projects are doing good so far. I am so happy that we are starting on our radios and advisory games. For our first quarter project I am exited to start to learn how to make scripts. So I guess this is the end of my blog okay bbbyyyeee!
- Kelli Okayama
I'm so Kelli, you already know me, I'm in Me-dia, from 7th grade to 8th grade oh,
May 2015


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While Strasbourg is a beautiful city and I'm particularly taken with the cathedral, it is all a bit bonkers that once a month the 751 Members of the European Parliament and around 2,000 staff all have to move our place of work 250 miles from Brussels to the capital of Alsace.
The exercise costs €180 million a year and adds an extra 19,000 tonnes of C02 to the atmosphere.
The mayor of Strasbourg has a different view. "The legitimacy of Strasbourg is derived not only from law (the Treaty of Amsterdam agreed by John Major states that the parliament must meet there 12 times per year) but, more importantly, from history.
"As a city that symbolises Franco-German reconciliation, it is the European capital of peace, democracy and human rights."
Last November the democratically elected MEPs voted 483 to 141 to base the parliament in a single location but to no avail as a treaty agreement can only be changed by the unanimous agreement of all member states and France stands ready to veto any such proposal.
The Scottish referendum was much discussed in Strasbourg and Brussels. MEPs from across Europe were full of questions to their British colleagues.
The opinion poll two weeks ahead of the vote that put the Yes campaign in the lead turned a foregone conclusion for the rest of Europe into a a huge 'What if?' conversation, much as it did here at home.
Spanish colleagues were particularly exercised as they contemplated the implications of a massive psychological shot in the arm for separatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque regions.
Some of our German colleagues even wondered if it would revive talk of a Mountain Kingdom involving Bavaria and parts of Austria and northern Italy.
Meanwhile my crash course on the workings of the European Union continues at pace. Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming president of the European Commission, has named his team of commissioners and allocated each of them a role.
At this stage they are all commissioners designate and it is now up to the parliament to vote them in to their roles. Before that can happen we get the chance to question them – or should that be grill them slowly?
Starting this week will be 27 confirmation hearings taking place over six days. As a member of the agriculture and rural development committee I will get the chance to put a question to the proposed commissioner for agriculture Phil Hogan who is the nominee of the Irish government. Better sharpen that pencil.
The parliament's right of veto however is rather a blunt instrument as nominees cannot be rejected individually – rather we would have to reject them all.
This did happen in 2004 when the civil rights committee voted against the nomination of Italy's commissioner for justice because of his conservative views on women's rights and gay rights. As a result the president of the commission Jose Manuel Barroso had to withdraw his line-up, make changes and then re-submit.
At this stage a rejection of the team looks unlikely but that does not mean there won't be some sparky hearings as MEPs ask awkward questions and the commissioners designate are made to sweat a little to gain their jobs.
An outright rejection of the college would probably have occurred if Juncker had put forward a commission that contained fewer women than last time. At eight out of 27 it's hardly great but then Juncker can only work with the names given to him by the member governments, hence it is the likes of the British, German and French governments who are to blame here for putting forward only men.
If our Prime Minister had put forward a woman then I may well have not been involved in a surprising case of mistaken identity, at least I hope not.
Boarding the return flight from Strasbourg I was hailed by the Maltese commissioner designate who I had been introduced to earlier in the week by his daughter-in-law who just happens to be an MEP in the same socialist group as me in the parliament.
We exchanged pleasantries and he introduced me to his two staff members. As I moved on to take me seat he said "Have a good weekend, Jonathan".
This reduced my travelling companion and fellow North East MEP Jude Kirton-Darling to much suppressed laughter as it dawned on us that he thought I was Lord Jonathan Hill, Tory peer of the realm and former Leader of the House of Lords, and none other than Cameron's commission nominee from the UK!


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Foxton run comes to a halt
PUBLISHED: 11:56 11 July 2011
Daniel Wilson
Tucker Gardner Division One
Foxton 119 (32 o.)
Ramsey 121-3 (20 o.)
Ramsey won by seven wickets
FOXTON'S winning run came to a halt when they were soundly beaten by seven wickets at home to Ramsey on Saturday.
After losing the toss and being invited to bat they were soon under pressure losing Gareth Roots to medium paceman David Carlaw in just the second over.
Carlow was ably supported at the other end by Oliver Verral who was giving very little away.
Verral, using the strong cross-wind to his advantage, dismissed Antonnel Atwell (21) in his fifth over and home skipper Lawrence Farnum (16) in his seventh to leave the score at 52-3.
Michael Cafferkey then replaced Verral and in his first over bowled Peter Moor for 22 and had Jeffery Douglas caught behind by James Markland without scoring to leave the hosts wobbling on 64-5.
Foxton's struggles continued with only Max Bowen (21) and Tom Stone (14) contributing with any significance to the second part of the innings. In just 32 overs Foxton were all out for 119 with Carlaw bowling unchanged taking the final wicket with his very last ball to post an impressive haul of 16-5-46-6 ably supported by Michael Cafferkey with 3-30.
With so few runs to play with Foxton were anxious for a breakthrough and were given early encouragement when Stone had Cafferkey caught for four and fellow opener Damian Clarke survived a very confident shout for a catch off Douglas which was turned down.
Overseas player Travis Townsend (28) and Clarke (57*) eased Ramsey home in only 20 overs.
Elsewhere Foxton IIs went down at Chippenham by 79 runs.
Next week Foxton Is entertain St Ives while the IIs visit top of the table Helions Bumpstead.
If you value what this story gives you, please consider supporting the Royston Crow. Click the link in the yellow box below for details.


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- Sea Urchin
Sea Urchin
per item
Beautiful hues of gold and blue showcase the detail on this sea urchin pendant. This urchin was found on my local beach after one of the hurricanes. I was able to lift an impression from it to create this beautifully detailed pendant. I set a 3 mm Blue Sapphire in the center and made a hidden bail for the background. This urchin measures about 3/4" in diameter and comes on an 18" sterling bead chain. An anti tarnish silver bag is included.
This pendant is 99.9% pure silver.
Sold Out


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Bus to Ferry Terminal Won't Run After Sept. 5
2000-08-03 04:00:00 PDT VALLEJO -- The City Council has decided to suspend a popular bus line between Sacramento, Davis and the Vallejo ferry terminal, citing overcrowding on the ferryboats and lack of funding for the service.
The council voted 7-to-0 Tuesday night to end the express Baylink Route 100 service effective September 5, over the objections of riders who said the decision would put them back in their cars and onto congested freeways.
Vallejo began the Route 100 bus service in 1998 hoping it would help fill vacant seats on the city's three ferryboats in the midday, evening and on weekends when ridership was low.
Instead, city officials said, the riders contributed to overcrowding on the city's two high-speed ferryboats, each of which carries 300 passengers. The city has a third ferry that carries 275 passengers.
The Route 100 buses carried 36,000 passengers last year at a cost of $540,000. Passengers pay $20.50 for the bus-ferry service, or $210 for a monthly pass. The city collected $204,000 in fares and had to cover the balance -- $335,000 -- using state transportation funds.
The city will consider resuming the service once a fourth ferry is operating, sometime in 2002, Mayor Tony Intintoli said.


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Major finding: Homozygous and heterozygous KRAS mutant cancer cells have distinct metabolic phenotypes.
Concept: Cells with mutant KRAS enrichment exhibit enhanced glycolysis and sensitivity to glucose deprivation.
Impact: KRAS-mutant tumors are metabolically heterogeneous and may have different therapeutic vulnerabilities.
Activating mutations in one Kras allele are sufficient to induce lung tumorigenesis in mice, but high-grade murine tumors often display relative gain of mutant Kras through loss of wild-type Kras and/or increased mutant Kras copy number, suggesting that there is selective pressure for increased mutant Kras activity. Kerr and colleagues used Trp53-null murine embryonic fibroblasts harboring heterozygous or homozygous Kras mutations to investigate the mechanism by which Kras copy-number gains contribute to tumor progression and showed that although no obvious change in early passage proliferation kinetics was observed, cells with homozygous Kras mutations displayed upregulated glycolytic gene expression and increased glucose uptake, lactate secretion, and glycolytic capacity compared to cells with heterozygous Kras mutation. The enhanced glycolytic activity in homozygous Kras-mutant cells was accompanied by an increase in glucose-derived tricarboxylic acid (TCA) metabolites, as well as glutathione and its precursors, suggesting metabolic rewiring toward increased glutathione biosynthesis. In line with these findings, homozygous Kras-mutant cells were characterized by increased antioxidant gene expression, higher NADPH/NADP+ and GSH/GSSG ratios, reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS), and increased resistance to ROS inducers. Notably, homozygous Kras mutant cells were more sensitive to glucose deprivation or inhibition of glycolysis than heterozygous cells, and combined depletion of glucose and GSH was shown to enhance apoptosis. Analysis of a heterozygous Kras-mutant tumor mouse model known to undergo mutant allele enrichment during tumor progression showed that late tumors were also characterized by a metabolic shift toward glucose-derived TCA metabolites and glutathione, and showed enhanced sensitivity to combined inhibition of glycolysis and GSH biosynthesis. Consistent with these mouse data, analysis of human lung tumor gene copy-number and gene expression data confirmed that KRAS mutation and copy-number gain correlated with upregulation of glycolytic- and glutathione-related gene expression. Together, these data suggest that KRAS-mutant tumors are not metabolically equivalent and may have distinct therapeutic vulnerabilities.
Kerr EM, Gaude E, Turrell FK, Frezza C, Martins CP. Mutant Kras copy number defines metabolic reprogramming and therapeutic susceptibilities. Nature 2016;531:110–3.
Note: Research Watch is written by Cancer Discovery editorial staff. Readers are encouraged to consult the original articles for full details. For more Research Watch, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/early/by/section.
- ©2016 American Association for Cancer Research.


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Wedding Planning
Our Favorite Colorado Wedding Planners
Whether you're planning an event with ten guests or hundreds, these Colorado wedding planners (straight from the pages of mywedding magazine) will turn the wedding of your dreams into a reality.
Hey Party! Collective, Denver
Inspired by all things bold, hip and edgy, Nicole started planning weddings with a vision to bring fun and fresh style to the Mile High City's event scene. Balancing sophisticated and eclectic details, she raises the bar for planning the ultimate non-traditional wedding for couples who want an offbeat twist.
Bluebird Productions, Aspen
One of the greatest challenges in executing a larger wedding is reducing the event's impact on the environment. With this in mind, Virginia and her team strive to create gorgeous mountain weddings using eco-friendly services and sustainable resources from start to finish.
Calluna Events, Boulder
For local couples, or those dreaming of a Colorado destination wedding, these coordinators leverage their vast knowledge of the state to plan intimate events full of rustic charm. Self-described as a team with a "feminine yet modern outlook," their fresh approach is recognizable in the details of their country and urban-inspired events.
Bella Event Design & Planning, Breckenridge
Through sunshine and snow storms, Emily and her team have successfully navigated Colorado's four seasons to create gorgeous outdoor weddings year round. No matter the size of the event, they provide a fully hands-on approach to fulfill each couple's expectations for mountain weddings as majestic as the Rocky Mountains.
Save the Date Events, Denver
Whether it's a small rustic ceremony or a glamorous vintage celebration, Debbie and her team design events with traditional wedding style. Each of their celebrations channel modern flair and elegant sophistication for the classic couple who appreciates simplicity.
Banks & Leaf, Denver
Wide open spaces and tall city buildings can't stop this team from designing the most intimate weddings. They pride themselves on building strong relationships with a vast network of local vendors to fully coordinate each couple's wedding vision. This team also knows exactly how to handle all the behind the scenes details to execute the prettiest city soirees.
Love This Day Events, Denver
The thought of a rustic wedding may invoke visions of dirt and dust, but this team proves that any ranch setting can be transformed into a glamorous celebration. From finding the right vendors to decorating the prettiest aisle for you to walk down, these coordinators won't miss a beat.
Pink Champagne Events, Denver
As a wife and mother, Jessica understands the value of including family in the wedding planning process. She asks all the right questions to help couples find vendors to fulfill their wedding desires, and she masterfully imagines and executes the stylistic details for the big day.
Tandem Events, Denver
This duo's events are full of rustic Colorado charm. Kendra's vast background in event planning combined with a fresh perspective from Amy, who joined the company in 2015, perfectly equip the pair to execute a bohemian chic wedding in any setting.
Ashley Nicole Events, Denver
The grandest of affairs start with Ashley and Nicole, who teamed up to find the best vendors to plan everything from luxury weddings to destination celebrations. Their weddings combine the latest trends and classic wedding style with a hint of glamour.
Pick up the Summer 2017 issue of mywedding at a newsstand near you. For more Colorado wedding planners, start here.


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Better , but there's still a few spots that I spotted when reading through it:
Added in
Wrong tense
Like something out of an anime, it is a fully metallic robot crouched in a hand-to-hand combat stance. The metal creature's joints are too small to be used as armor, giving it away as being animated by the same nanites that were in everything these days.
Though the bottom half is covered in the stereotypical smooth metal mask, a visor right above had two glowing blue lights that must be its eyes. The outer parts of the helmet lack a lot of the ornamentation usually seen, though some paint on the right side just past the visor seems to be marking something.
Getting back up on his feet, the Shepherd launches into a series of attacks again, trying to overpower the robot and end the fight quickly.
Two sentences starting with "As" right after another - Some other wording would be good here:
" As the Shepherd is moved, almost gently, to be spread-eagled on the ground for easy access it seems obvious that the mecha has some means of penetration.
As the robot leans down to the back of the Shepherd, at this angle all you can see is the plates at it's crotch moving aside as a metallic penis slides into position."
A few more thrusts later and he buries his robotic manhood as deep as he can in his defeated lover, holding the furred body close as he obviously releases his metallic cum.


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Dr. Mark DeBrincat | Carolyn Pelloux | Gretchen Gagel
—Episode 23 is all about the "Good News"! Susan Frew is visiting Boost Power Radio again, but this time as co-host with Betsy. Joining them is Dr. Mark DeBrincat & Carolyn Pellow. With a special Sister Stories video of Gretchen Gagel from our partners at, Global Sisterhood Network.
Dr. Mark DeBrincat shares part of his journey in medicine; both his career as a chiropractor and the traumatic incident that left him in a wheelchair for many years and how his resiliency and introduction to alternative medicine therapies transformed his life.
Carolyn Pelloux has been practicing law for 20 years and specializes in all aspects of Family Law, Criminal Defense, DUI, and Juvenile Law. Her office is predicated on the belief that client's needs are paramount, and she is dedicated to the practicing law with empathy and compassion towards her clients.
Gretchen Gagel is a global expert on leadership, team strategy, and organizational agility. Gretchen is currently lecturing to post-graduate students at the University of Denver and the Australian National University. She develops and teaches courses on leadership and ethics, change and agility, strategic human resource management, evidence-based management, and team performance.
Tune in to hear them share their stories!


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Extendable Dining Tables
Below you will find a variety of extendable dining table designs, from oak Monastery tables that extend to seat up to 20 people, to contemporary and traditional designs that are painted with an oak top, these are available in white, grey and ivory. If you prefer light oak or rustic oak, we have those too.
Find out what you could save on our dining table sets.
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The potential of an oak extending dining table
At Oak Furniture UK, we're proud of our large range of extending tables, such as our oak or ash designs. No matter what style of table, there are plenty of options to browse so you get the right extending table for your needs.
When you choose an extending dining table from Oak Furniture UK, you need to consider what you want in terms of shape and size, where it is going to sit in the room, for example, will it be to close to a radiator or in direct sunlight that will effect the colour over time, you will find some hady tips in our Care of Your furniture page. You may also want to think about the extension mechanism to make sure it's going to be easy and convenient for you to use.
Increased seating capacity
An obvious benefit of an oak extending dining table is the ability to have more guests or family members eating together. We can all conjure up an image of a lively, happy meal time that warms the heart and sustains relationships. Even if you have limited space, you can make this vision a reality with an extending table. When special occasions roll around, our furniture rises to the challenge of extra guests.
Changing the look of your room
Committing to a durable material, like oak or ash, means that you know your table will last a long time. Investing in an Oak extending table also gives you the flexibility should you wish to rejig your room plan and position your table in a different area.
There's no rule that says you only have to have the table out when there's company. If it suits you and you like the look of a big table with fruit, flowers, places settings or other accents that complement the look of your room, go ahead. With an extendable dining table, you have more space to get creative. Then when you want a change, just fold it away again.
Space saver
Some of our oak tables have an extension panel that you put in to give you the extra room. Others have a butterfly foldaway mechanism that allows you to lower both wings of the table.
Depending on the option you choose, you can have a lot of scope for storing your table out of the way to open up your space. This also stops it becoming a place that accumulates half-finished projects, stacks of paperwork or children's activities. We all know how much this happens when there's a space going in any busy home.


text: You remain effortlessly marinating inside your being all the time. Outwardly, there may be activities, but internally, you remain the unchanging peace and serenity…. If you are easily set on fire and agitated because of the events around you, you are not sufficiently established in the Self so that others can take rest in your presence or recognize themselves in your reflection. The sage's presence and being is the light of the world. Of course, all this is not your job, it is simply your joy.


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For the living museum we had to give a 30 – 1 minute presentation about
- Our name.
- Our age.
- What our job is / was.
- If you go / went to school or not.
- If you have electricity and plumbing.
For the living museum we had to give a 30 – 1 minute presentation about
For writing I wrote…
I grammar we learned that…
In art we learned…
In music we learned…
There was a girl name Malala who was fighting for girls' rights to go to school and she got shot for going to school. Malala survived and won a Noble Peace Prize. And now girls' in Pakistan get to go to school.
I think human rights are rights for humans.
Why is it important to keep yourself, your clothes and your home clean and how do you do this?
How to keep yourself clean :
How to keep your clothes clean :
How to keep your home clean :
Stereotypes are people that say " Blue is only for boys " or "Pink is only for Girls ".


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Shelf Awareness
Author Neil Gaiman "managed to make the crowd at the New York Public Library fall silent for over an hour on Sunday to hear him read A Christmas Carol, from a special copy that Charles Dickens had edited himself for live performances. (He wore a fake Dickensian beard throughout to help get into character.) Which, considering how many children were in the audience, was a miracle on par with Scrooge's change of heart," the New York Observer reported.
"It's a wonderful time to tell stories about the dead," Gaiman said. "You've got winter. You got the depths of winter. You have the whole peddling around a fireside thing. You have long nights.... What Dickens did that was so interesting was that he took the ghost story, Christmas ghost stories, as a genre, and he wrote a couple really good ones for his magazine."
Artist Sean Von Gorman captured Gaiman-as-Dickens at the NYPL event, which also featured Molly Oldfield, author of The Secret Museum: Some Treasures Are Too Precious to Display..., sharing unique items found in the library's collection of Dickens material in the Berg Collection of English and American Literature.


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Twelve Steps, History and Biblical References
CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 22, 1991
THE HIDDEN GOSPEL of The TWELVE STEPS (partial article)
Understanding the origins of the recovery movement can help
Christians know how to relate to it today.
by Tim Stafford
Psychiatrist Scott Peck calls it the greatest event of the twentieth century: the "founding" of Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, on June 10, 1935. It did not seem auspicious at the time. Two apparently hopeless alcoholics, one jobless for years, the other a surgeon who had needed a drink that day to steady his scalpel, had found each other.
In the 56 years since A.A.'s membership has grown from two to nearly two million. A.A.'s 12 Steps which owe virtually nothing to modern psychology or medicine, are unreservedly embraced by courts, hospitals, and a large number of counselors and psychologists. Beyond A.A., the 12 Steps have become the treatment of choice for a large catalogue of disorders, from sexual addiction to overeating. Author Keith Miller calls the 12 Steps "a way of spiritual healing and growth that may well be the most important spiritual model of any age for many contemporary Christians."
Yet many Christians have an ambivalent view towards Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A.'s 12 Steps recognize not God, but a "Higher Power" who is "God as we understand Him." Thissounds like slippery, New Age language. The "disease concept": of alcoholism – not invented, but certainly popularized by A.A. – seems to remove any moral dimension from drinking.
The spiritual roots of the 12 Steps are complex, tangled between experience-oriented evangelical Christianity and secularizing, psychologizing tendencies of American religious pluralism. Understanding how these sources produced the 12 Steps can help Christians know how to interact with them today.
Bill W.'s hot flash
Bill Wilson (Bill W. in A.A. lore, because of A.A.'s principle of anonymity) was unquestionably the most influential person in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1934 he was a grandiose, loud talking New York City alcoholic. Nearly 40, he was feeding his habit by stealing grocery money from his wife's purse. and sometimes by panhandling. Several times he had been hospitalized, but he always started drinking again, no matter what resolutions he made.
One November day an old alcoholic friend, Ebby Thatcher, paid him a visit. Thatcher was sober and had come to tell Wilson why. He had had a religious experience. Members of an organization called the Oxford Group had visited him in jail, where he had been incarcerated for drunkenness, and he had yielded his life to God. The desire to drink was gone, he said. His life was changed.
After several visits, Thatcher convinced Wilson – who was quite averse to religion – to attend a meeting at a Manhattan rescue mission sponsored by Calvary Episcopal Church, local headquarters of the Oxford Group. Wilson stopped at several bars on the way and was quite drunk when he arrived. He was, however, sufficiently moved by the testimonies to go forward, and testify at length to his own changed heart. This change lasted less than a day: Wilson went on a three-day binge and was hospitalized again.
Thatcher visited the hospital, and at Wilson's request repeated his formula for conversion: "Realize you are licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to the care of God."
Wilson fell into a deep depression after Thatcher left. As he was later to describe it:
"I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, 'If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!'"
"Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind's eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on a bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, 'So this is the God of the preachers.' A great peace stole over me and I thought, 'No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are all right. Things are all right with God and His world.'"
Wilson never took another drink.
Naturally this new convert joined the Oxford Group, attending Sunday night meetings at Calvary Church, pastored by the Episcopalian Sam Shoemaker. Shoemaker was the best-known Oxford Group leader in America. Though he left the movement in 1941, he would continue for decades as a prominent evangelical leader, known for his books, his radio program, and his role in launching the Faith at Work movement. But he made have made his greatest contribution through Wilson.
Wilson would write, "Dr. Silkworth (a physician who introduced the disease concept of alcoholism to Wilson) gave us the needed knowledge of our illness, but Sam Shoemaker had given us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about it. One showed us the mysteries of the lock that held us in prison; the other passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated…. The early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else."
That spring, Wilson went to Akron, Ohio, on a would-be business deal. The deal fell flat. Broke and lonely, Wilson felt sorely tempted to drink. Desperately, he looked in his hotel's directory and called a clergyman, asking for contacts with the Oxford Group. After a long series of unproductive calls he reached Henrietta Seiberling, a Vassar graduate and daughter-in-law to the founder of the Goodyear Rubber Company. Wilson's first words to her were, "I'm from the Oxford Group and I'm a rum hound from New York." He poured out his fear of falling, and she invited him over immediately.
She had a project in mind. For two years she had been working on a surgeon, Bob Smith, through the Oxford Group. Smith was Wilson's opposite in personality: a silent drinker, stern and distant. The group has confessed with him and prayed with him, but his drinking had remained as uncontrollable as ever. Seiberling might have brought Wilson and Smith together that night except that Smith had come home with a potted plant for Mother's Day and fallen into a drunken sleep under the dining room table. The next day the two men met, and they hit it off remarkably.
It would be nearly a month before Smith took his last drink and A.A. was "founded." Wilson stayed on for months at the Smith's home, and the two men had many late night philosophic conversations. Their hopes, of course, were all in the context of regular meetings of the Oxford Group, which had brought the two men together and constituted their only spiritual moorings. Soon the two men had convinced other alcoholics in Akron to join the Oxford Group meetings, just as Wilson had previously done in New York.
Evangelical roots
The Oxford Group (emphatically not the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement associated with John Henry Newman) was the child of an American Lutheran clergyman, Frank Buchman. Beginning in 1908, he spearheaded an informal evangelistic movement dedicated to reclaiming "first-century Christianity." While the Oxford Group (later renamed Moral Rearmament) would ultimately drift away from a solidly grounded faith, they began with a strong evangelical identity.
The Oxford Group tried particularly to reach up-and-outers by avoiding church buildings and traditional Christian language. According to writer Charles Knippel, Sam Shoemaker would urge those who did not yet believe in Christ to "accept God however they might conceive of him, or even to pray 'as if' there is a God." The group's beliefs were orthodox, but they were little interested in doctrine. Their emphasis was on experience, primarily the experience of conversion.
Oxford group meetings were small and informal, emphasizing prayer, mutual confession, the importance of making restitution where you have wronged someone, and "guidance" a Quaker-ish process where members sat quietly and expressed what they believed God might be saying to them. Guidance was always "checked" with other members. The group emphasized the importance of personal witness.
Most of these emphases found their way into A.A. Yet within five years, both the New York and the Akron alcoholics split from the Oxford Group. The basic reason is clear. For the alcoholics, the Oxford Group was too religious, too sure that they knew what alcoholics needed, and most unwilling to let alcoholism be their main subject. They wanted alcoholics to listen, not just talk, and to focus on Christ.
Bill Wilson was developing a very different vision: a fellowship of alcoholics dedicated to helping one another stay sober through a spiritual program – a program that recognized no dogma, no absolutes, and was open to all religious persuasions, including atheism. For the Oxford Group, the goal was Jesus Christ. For Bill Wilson the goal was simple sobriety.
The Big Book and the 12 Steps
In the early years of A.A., converts were few, backslidings many. But the recovering alcoholics, and Bill Wilson in particular, were dogged in their efforts, and their meager results seemed remarkable to them. Gradually they gained insight into what worked and what didn't.
None of the alcoholics knew much about publishing, but they thought a book would be a good way of raising money and publishing their ideals. Wilson began to write in 1938. His drafts were read and argued over by the alcoholics. So was the title: Alcoholics Anonymous. Published in 1939, and soon known as the Big Book because the first edition was printed on such thick paper, the book was to ultimately to make A.A.'s fortune and pay its bills up to the present. It has sold over 10 million copies and currently sells over 1 million each year. It gave the organization its name. Most important it codified the 12 Steps.
The Big Book reads like a man-to-man advice column from an ancient Field and Stream. Its folksy persuasion contains not a shred of sophistication, whether sociological, medical, psychological, or religious. Yet, as A.A. people say, it works. Alcoholics treasure it and are apt to quote it like the Bible, using page numbers instead of chapter and verse.
At its core are the 12 Steps, which are usually displayed prominently at A.A. meetings. Father Ed Dowling, a Jesuit priest who became a close friend to Wilson, thought he saw parallels to the exercises of Saint Ignatius. As a matter of fact, the 12 Steps draw so broadly from Christian tradition that one could find parallels sprinkled throughout Christian history. The steps came directly, however, through the evangelical practice of the Oxford Group. For simplicity, I have paired some of the steps together.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Thatcher's version, when witnessing to Wilson, was, "Realize you are licked." Alcoholics have a hundred excuses why they drink, and a thousand resolutions to quit. Their first step toward recovery is realizing that their schemes for reform are hopeless, that they cannot just make up their minds to do better. They are caught in something more powerful than themselves.
This is what A.A. has usually meant by the disease concept of alcohol. They have always been cautious about staking out a medical claim, such as that alcoholism is genetic. The disease concept of alcoholism is more a metaphor than a physiological explanation. To some, the metaphor suggests a claim that alcoholics are victims of circumstance and not responsible for their behavior. That apprehension is misplaced, as least as far as the A.A. founders were concerned. They were saying, in fact, something very close to what the theologians express in the language of sin.
A person who sins does so because he is caught in a web of sin. How he got there he may not know, but he cannot escape on his own power, and his attempt to do so only catches him deeper in the web. So the conviction of sin – not sins, but Sin, the underlying inescapable power that leads to sins – is necessary for anyone who would accept the grace of God.
Similarly, an alcoholic cannot escape her addiction. Until she recognizes her helplessness, she will be unwilling or unable to turn outside herself for the help she needs. She may never know why she is an alcoholic, but she remains responsible – responsible to recognize her helplessness. This is a recognizably Christian idea.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
The spiritual roots of the second and third steps are simply conversion. Sinners who have recognized their own hopelessness come to believe that God can rescue them and so turn their lives over to this God. The prayer of surrender-on your knees, inevitably-was heavily stressed in the Oxford Group, and in the earliest A.A. meetings.
The root is twisted a bit, however, with the introduction of "God as we understand Him." This language was not invented by Bill Wilson; it came from the Oxford Group. Shoemaker used it to indicate an openness to people in process. He encouraged honest seekers to "surrender as much of ourselves as we can to as much of Christ as we understand." He believed that God would reveal himself more fully to them if they were willing to experiment this way. For A.A., however, the term became more accurately a statement of religious pluralism. As the historian Ernest Kurtz writes, "The briefest statement of the fundamental, primitive Christian message runs: 'Jesus saves.' The fundamental first message of Alcoholics Anonymous, proclaimed by the very presence of a former compulsive drunk standing sober, ran: 'Something saves.'" This Higher Power is often, for the irreligious, simply the A.A. group.
Years later, Shoemaker said that "A.A. has been supremely wise…in emphasizing the reality of the experience, and acknowledging that it came from a higher Power than human, and leaving the interpretation part pretty much at that". He thought A.A. would have been wrecked by any attempt at doctrinal uniformity. This is the explanation that Wilson often gave, too. Alcoholics came from so many religious persuasions and were so cantankerous, they simply would not assent to any statement of orthodoxy. If you wanted to help them, you simply had to leave room for their independence.
However, there is ample reason to think that Bill Wilson himself was the leading independent and cantankerous alcoholic. Though he was close to Christians for the rest of his life, and once took a year of instruction in the Catholic faith from Msgr. Fulton Sheen, he never could reconcile himself to any orthodox expression of faith. His continuing religious search led him to LSD and spiritualist experiments. "God as we understand Him" allows room for seekers – but it also leaves room for those who prefer to define God, rather than to allow him to define them. It is a profoundly ambivalent expression.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
For the fourth step, the Big Book suggests a detailed and probing process of written self-evaluation. It includes listing all people, institutions, and principles that are the object of anger or resentment, and writing down our contribution to all broken relationships. It includes an inventory of sexual issues.
The fifth step, according to Wilson, is the most difficult of all, because it requires humiliation. In A.A. one may confess to a "sponsor," another alcoholic chosen as a guide because of his or her greater experience and personal affinity. Or one may confess to a pastor or some respected person. Self-evaluation and particularly confession were significant parts of the Oxford Group's "first-century Christianity." The Oxford Group cultivated an atmosphere where people could spontaneously say what they were thinking and feeling – an atmosphere much like that of an A.A. meeting.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Steps six and seven carry on the "surrender to God" begun in step 3, applying it to specific flaws discovered in the course of taking personal inventory. Wilson stressed that it was not enough to know oneself, even to confess one's shortcomings. One must humbly ask God for help.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Steps 8 and 9 carry on with the list made in step 4, but now call for outward confession and restitution toward those who have been harmed.
This was standard Oxford Group practice. Shoemaker taught that concrete acts of restitution should follow immediately after conversion. That is why on the "founding day" of A.A., Bob Smith disappeared for several hours, to the alarm of his new friend Bill Wilson. As the Oxford Group had taught him, Smith had gone to make the rounds of people he had harmed, to ask their forgiveness and make amends whenever possible.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Practically speaking, A.A. members never "graduate." Rather, they consider themselves alcoholic for life, even if they have not taken a drink in 30 years. In this sense, A.A. is like a church. It cannot, by definition, be outgrown. It is a lifelong process. The application of this principle may sometimes put A.A. in competition with the church, and thus is unlike a short-term therapy program.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The Christian roots of the 12 Steps are perhaps the clearest in step 11. The focus is on relationship with God himself, not simply on sobriety. While Wilson often stressed the practical benefits of prayer, the eleventh step urges alcoholics to go beyond their own problems and develop a life of conscious contact with God. (Those whose Higher Power was simply the A.A. group, he acknowledged, might find this step difficult.) Wilson suggested that alcoholics begin and end every day with personal prayer and recommended that A.A. members use the resources of their own church, if they had one.
Wilson suggested the prayer of St. Francis (see below). In times of stress, he recommended praying repeatedly, "Thy will, not mine, be done." More common in A.A., though, is the "Serenity Prayer," (see the whole prayer below) often used to close meetings: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." A.A. made it famous.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
In A.A. parlance, "Twelfth-stepping" is witnessing, almost always by giving personal testimony. In the early days, A.A. members paid calls on the alcoholic wards of local hospitals, looking for the worst drunks they could find. They would tell their stories, and if interest was aroused, go on to explain the 12 Steps. Today, witnessing is generally less aggressive. Nevertheless, A.A. maintains Wilson's belief that sharing the A.A. message is a means of maintaining sobriety. Wilson observed, "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail." In other words, A.A. members share their testimony not simply out of concern for others, but also out of concern for themselves.
This emphasis on witness came directly from the Oxford Group, which reflected historic evangelical belief that individual witness is an essential part of Christian living. By "witness" Oxford Group members meant primarily sharing their own stories of conversion. Shoemaker spoke of such witness as "one of the experiences that keeps our own conversion living and burning."
How Christian are the 12 Steps?
Clearly, the 12 Steps originated in Christian traditions, transmitted directly through an evangelical movement. Conviction of sin, conversion, yielding to God, self-assessment, confession, restitution, prayer, witness: these are all classic elements of Christian piety.
Yet as Walther Eichrodt wrote long ago. "The same thing practiced by different people is not the same thing." The 12 Steps are Christian, but A.A. is not. Under Sam Shoemaker's leadership, these 12 Steps would have created a Christian group; under Bill Wilson's they made a group that has a wider appeal, for it takes on the pluralistic religious coloration of our culture.
Wilson detached the discipleship process from its Christian vision and applied it to a lesser goal: sobriety. The Oxford Group's lack of interest in doctrine opened the way for this. They were more concerned with Wilson's experience of salvation than with its doctrinal content. More than tolerant, A.A. is pluralistic, recognizing as many gods as there may be religions, any of which can "work."
A number of Christians have attempted to re-Christianize the 12 Steps, by rewriting them, by using them in a Christian context, and by making clear that the Higher Power is Jesus Christ. There can be no objection to doing this. The 12 Steps are a package of Christian practices. Here is an example:
Following a tradition of the early church and the Wesley revival, the Oxford Group in England systematized a series of "steps" as a process of cleansing one's inner life. These "steps" were later adapted by Alcoholics Anonymous, with much of the Christian basis ignored. They are here re-adapted emphasizing the great Christian base so important to the wholeness sought. Here the center of wholeness is recognized as the Lord Jesus Christ. The "steps" have also been changed to conform to other principles of discipleship and Christian growth. If a Christian will vigorously apply these principles, and make these decisions, that person will move toward "Teleios" – Wholeness in Christ.
(Prepared by Dr. Gary Sweeten and Hal Schell, Equipping Ministries Incorporated, Cincinnati)
1. I now see that I, of myself, am powerless, unable to control (manage) my life by myself.
|Romans 7 and 8Romans 7:18-19
|Psalm 32:3-7
|Romans 3:9-10, 23
2. I now realize that my Creator, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, can restore me to wholeness in Christ.
|Psalm 27:4-5Mark 10:26-27
|Philippians 2:13Romans 8:9
|Ezekiel 36:27
3. I now make a conscious decision to turn my entire will and life over to the care and direction of Jesus Christ as Teacher, Healer, Savior and Lord.
|Joshua 1:8-9Jer 29:11-14Jeremiah 32:27
|John 14:6John 10:30
|Mark 10:27Matthew 28:18 & 20b
4. Having made this decision, I now obey God's call in Scripture to make a fearless, ethical, moral and scriptural inventory of my entire life in order to uncover all sins, mistakes, and character defects, and to make a written list of every item uncovered.
|Psalm 139:23-24Lam 3:40
|Jeremiah 23:24Romans 8:26-27
5. After completing this inventory I now will to "walk in the light, as He is in the light" by admitting to myself, to God, and to at least one other person in Christ the exact nature of these wrongs.
|1 John 1:7Eph 5:13-14
|Psalm 119:9-111 Timothy 1:15Acts 13:38-39
|James 5:13-16Hebrews 9:14Acts 2:37-38
6. Having agreed with God about my sinful behavior, I now ask His forgiveness through Christ and openly acknowledge that I am forgiven according to the Scripture.
|1 John 1:8-9James 4:10
|1 John 2:1-2Psalm 27:13-14
|Psalm 118:18, then 17
7. I now repent (turn away) from all these behaviors in thought, word and deed and ask God to remove each besetting sin, through Jesus Christ.
|John 5:14John 8:10-11Job 11:13-19
|Ezekiel 18:30-32Romans 5:5-6, 6:5-7Romans 12:1-2
|1 John 2:3-62 Corinthians 10:5Colossians 3:17
8. I now make a list of all persons I have harmed in thought, word and deed, and a list of all persons I believe have harmed me, and will to make amends to all of them.
|Eph 4:29-32Hosea 11:1-4Ephesians 5:1-2
|Luke 6:31Matthew 5:43-44Matthew 18:15
|Leviticus 19:17-18Mark 12:31Matthew 5:9
9. I now go directly to these persons to forgive and to seek forgiveness, reconciliation, restitution, or release whenever and with whomever possible, unless to do so would cause further harm.
|Matthew 5:23-24
|Isaiah 1:18-20
10. I now consciously and prayerfully continue to "walk in the light" by unceasingly taking personal inventory of all my temptations and sins, and by keeping a constantly open relationship with God, myself, and other persons.
|Matthew 26:41James 1:13-15Matthew 6:11-13
Colossians 3:13
|Proverbs 30:8-9Ephesians 5:15-18Psalm 4:3-5
|Psalm 55:221 Peter 5:6-7Ephesians 4:22-28
11. I now continue in regular Scripture study, prayer, worship and fellowship to increase God's will in my life.
|Acts 2:42Mark 12:28-33Matthew 6:33
|Psalm 89:15Joshua 1:8
|1 Kings 8:56-61Colossians 3:12-17
12. Recognizing the impact of God in my life, I now intentionally share these principles and their effect with others as God's Spirit leads, and will to practice these principles in all areas of my life.
|Micah 6:8Ephesians 5:8Psalm 40:8-10
|Galatians 5:1Revelation 12:11
|2 Corinthians 3:17Ephesians 6:10-18
This prayer was originally written in the Congregational Church of Heath, Massachusetts, where Dr. Niebuhr spent many summers. The prayer was first printed in monthly bulletins of the Federal Council of Churches. The first paragraph has been adopted as the official prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery support groups.
Prayer of Serenity
God, grant me the serenity,
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking,as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with you forever in the next.
— by Reinhold Neibuhr
Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!
That where there is hatred, I may bring love.
That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.
That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.
That where there is error, I may bring truth.
That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.
That where there is despair, I may bring hope.
That where there are shadows, I may bring light.
That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.
To understand, than to be understood.
To love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
—Saint Francis of Assisi—
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(Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Yeah, I'm thinking it can stay buried.
Artist Joey Spiotto created a 60's style folk album cover for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Now if someone would only make this album for real. I might even listen to it more than the "Once More with Feeling" soundtrack.
(Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who)


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No more letting MONEY causing you stress.
For the past few years, I have been making sure that prior to and during the upcoming Christmas season we are financially ready to handle what the season brings with it.
Is there a better time than now to start thinking about Christmas and the upcoming craziness that comes with it?
If you are the type of person that dislikes the holiday season (not because it's Christmas, but because of the financial strain it leaves you), then this eBook is for you.
I want you to have a wonderful Christmas.
I want you to have a debt-free Christmas.
That may sound impossible, but I know it can be done. I want to help you get there.
After a lot of thought of my previous spending habits, the changes I have made, and the joy that has brought me, I decided to write this eBook to help you have a debt-free Christmas. I want you to enjoy your holiday season the way it was intended.
Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, but Christmas can also be very hard financially for many families.
We seem to be influenced by society, or our children, and we end up overspending. Or, we are just not financially ready when Christmas season makes its way around again.
Is it possible to have a debt-free Christmas?
What if you already have debt? Is it even possible to have a debt-free Christmas if you're already behind on your finances?
The answer is yes.
It is possible to have a debt-free Christmas, even if you do have debt. I believe you can have a financially stress-free Christmas without adding more debt, and this eBook will help you understand how to make that happen for your family.
As someone who has a bit of a spending problem, this was just the eBook that I needed this year! I'm a bit of an emotional spender, so I enjoy a little retail therapy now and then. Sometimes I think I have a tendency to spoil my kids and while I'm sure they appreciate it- they don't need all of the stuff that they have. With Joyce's eBook + workbook, I can now spend without the guilt because I'm in control of my money. And it's also nice to know that I don't have to go into debt just to have a great Christmas.
If you really want to have a Debt Free Christmas, this book will deliver. You'll have to do the work and some of it will be hard, but you'll have a blueprint of exactly what to do. After you've enjoyed your first debt-free Christmas, go through the book again to be debt-free all the time. The book has ALL the tools you need to successfully manage your money no matter how out of control you feel it is.
It's all about having the right mindset, right? Understanding the reason we manage our finances the way we do its important. Why do we spend our money the way we do? How do we change it?
Our dream of having a debt-free Christmas won't happen until we have the perfect plan. Learn how to create a plan that will help you achieve your goals of having a debt-free Christmas.
If creating a budget was easy, everyone will have one. The truth is that many people never even heard of a budget. Learn how you can start creating a budget that works for you.
You will learn everyday strategies many use to increase their income and save more money.
Joyce Marrero - Zahariadis is the writer and creator of My Stay At Home Adventures, a website she started in 2013 to help others with their personal finances. A Latina mom of 4 and a former retail manager for 15 years, Joyce is now a stay-at-home mom who truly enjoys helping others get their finances in order.
From changing her mindset about money and life, Joyce has been able to thrive as a stay-at-home mom, even with less money. Her honest and funny approach to personal finances has led others to trust her with support and solutions to their financial problems.
Need a workbook to motivate you?
We got it! Purchase Merry Debt-Free Christmas today you will receive the accompanied workbook (a $15 exclusive item) for free!
For a low price of $17 you will get step by step guide to help you achieve your goals of a debt-free Christmas!
This is a limited time offer! HURRY!
A digital download wtih over 50 pages (6 chapters) full of information that will help you keep track of your finances and prepare you to enjoy a debt-free Christmas.
You will learn how to:
The Merry Debt-Free Christmas is 52 pages that will help you stay on track of your finances. While you read Merry Debt Free Christmas eBook you can use the workbook to help you write down notes, plans, track your expenses, help you create a budget and more!
For a low price of $17 you will get step by step guide to help you achieve your goals of a debt-free Christmas!
This is a limited time offer! HURRY!


text:
The amount of medical and industrial experience and knowledge is rapidly growing and it is almost impossible to be up to date with everything. The demand of decision support system (DSS) is especially important in domains where experience and knowledge grow rapidly. However, traditional approaches to DSS are not always easy to adapt to a flow of new experience and knowledge and may also show a limitation in areas with a weak domain theory. This chapter explores the functionalities of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) to facilitate experience reuse both in clinical and in industrial decision making tasks. Examples from the field of stress medicine and condition monitoring in industrial robots are presented here to demonstrate that the same approach assists both for clinical applications as well as for decision support for engineers. In the both domains, DSS deals with sensor signal data and integrate other artificial intelligence techniques into the CBR system to enhance the performance in a number of different aspects. Textual information retrieval, Rule-based Reasoning (RBR), and fuzzy logic are combined together with CBR to offer decision support to clinicians for a more reliable and efficient management of stress. Agent technology and wavelet transformations are applied with CBR to diagnose audible faults on industrial robots and to package such a system. The performance of the CBR systems have been validated and have shown to be useful in solving such problems in both of these domains.
Experience is one of the most valuable assets technicians and engineer have and may have been collected during many years and both from successful solutions as well as from very costly mistakes. Unfortunately industry rarely uses a systematic approach for experience reuse. This may be caused by the lack of efficient tools facilitating experience distribution and reuse. We propose a case-based approach and tool to facilitate experience reuse more systematically in industry. It is important that such a tool allows the technicians to give the problem case in a flexible way to increase acceptance and use. The proposed tool enables more structured handling of experience and is flexible and can be adapted to different situations and problems. The user is able to input text in a structured way and possibly in combination with other numeric or symbolic features. The system is able to identify and retrieve relevant similar experiences for reuse.
Industry has to adjust quickly to changes in their surroundings, for example reducing staff during recession and increasing staff when the market demands it. These factors may cause rapid loss of experience, collected during many years, or require experienced staff to spend considerable resources in training new staff, instead of focusing on production. This is recognised as very costly for companies and organisations today and also reduces competitiveness and productivity. Condition Monitoring, diagnostics and selection of efficient preventive or corrective actions is a task that often requires a high degree of expertise. This expertise is often gained through sometimes very expensive mistakes and can take many years to acquire leading to a few skilled experts. When they are not available due to changes in staff or retirements the company often faces serious problems that may be very expensive, e.g. leading to a reduced productivity.
If some deviation occurs in a machine, a fault report is often written; an engineer makes a diagnosis and may order spare parts to repair the machine. Fault report, spare parts, required time and statistics on performance after repair are often stored in different databases but so far not systematically reused. In this paper we present a Case-Based experience sharing system that enables reuse of experience in a more efficient way compared with what is mostly practiced in industry today. The system uses Case-Based-Reasoning (CBR) and limited Natural Language Processing. An important aspect of the experience management tool is that it is user-friendly and web-based to promote efficient experience sharing. The system should be able to handle both experiences that are only in house as well as sharing experience with other industries when there is no conflicting interest. Such a CBR based tool enables efficient experience gathering, management and reuse in production industries. The tool will facilitate the users with an interactive environment to communicate with each other for sharing their experiences. Depend on the user; the security level of the system will be varied to share knowledge among the collaborating companies.
The system identifies the most relevant experiences to assess and resolve the current situation. The experience is stored and retrieved as a case in the collaborative space where experience from various companies may have been stored under many years. Reusing experience and avoiding expensive mistakes will increase the participating companies' competitiveness and also transfer valuable experience to their employees. One of the benefits is also the opportunity and facility to identify people with similar tasks and problems at different companies and enable them to share their experience, e.g. if a technician has solved a similar problem recently and is in the near, the most efficient solution may be to call the expert and ask for assistance. In future, one may access this tool through his/her mobile device via wireless or mobile communications using Global Positioning System, GPS, enables the system to suggest experts nearby, willing and able to share the knowledge and quickly assist in resolve the problem.
Today, the drive in many organizations is to focus on reducing production costs while increasing customer satisfaction. One key to succeed with these goals is to develop and improve both quality and maintenance in production as well as quality and maintenance in early phases of the development processes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how and motivate why research within quality and maintenance development may interact, in order to help companies meet customer demand while at the same time increase productivity. The paper is based on ideas and research perspectives of the newly formed competence group on Quality- and Maintenance Development at the School of Innovation, Design and Engineering at the Malardalen University, Sweden. This paper elaborates on the concepts of Quality and Maintenance, its important integration, and provides some examples of ongoing research projects within the competence group.
Productivity is a key weapon for manufacturing companies to stay competitive in a continuous growing global market. Increased productivity can be achieved through increased availability. This has directed focus on different maintenance types and maintenance strategies. Increased availability through efficient maintenance can be achieved through less corrective maintenance actions and more accurate preventive maintenance intervals. Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is a technology that strives to identify incipient faults before they become critical which enables more accurate planning of the preventive maintenance. CBM can be achieved by utilizing complex technical systems or by humans manually monitoring the condition by using their experience, normally a mixture of both is used. Although CBM holds a lot of benefits compared to other maintenance types it is not yet commonly utilized in industry. One reason for this might be that the maturity level in complex technical CBM system is too low. This paper will acknowledge this possible reason, although not trying to resolve it, but focusing on system technology with component strategy and an open approach to condition parameters as the objective is fulfilled. This paper will theoretically discuss the technical components of a complete CBM system approach and by a case study illustrate how a CBM system for industrial robot fault detection/diagnosis can be designed using the Artificial Intelligence method Case-Based Reasoning and sound analysis.
Experienced staffs acquire their experience during many years of practice, and sometimes also through expensive mistakes. This knowledge is often lost when technicians retire, or if companies need to downsize during periods of reduced sale. When scaling up production, new staff requires training and may repeat similar mistakes. Another issue that may be costly is when monitoring systems repeatedly give false alarms, causing expensive loss of production capacity and resulting in technicians losing trust in the systems and in worst case, switch them off. If monitoring systems could learn from previous experience for both correct and false alarms, the reliability and trust in the monitoring systems would increase. Moreover, connecting alarms to either equipment taking automatic actions or recommend actions based on the current situations and previous experience would be valuable.
An engineer repeating the same task a second time is often able to perform the task in 1/3 of the time it took at the first time. Most corrective and preventive actions for a particular machine type have been carried out before. This past experience holds a large potential for time savings, predictability and reduced risk if an efficient experience transfer can be accomplished. But building large complex support system is not always the ideal way. We propose instead localized intelligent agents, able to either autonomously perform the necessary actions or aid a human in the decision making process by providing the necessary information needed to make an informed and validated decision.
Measurements from products are continuously collected to allow adjustments in the production line to certify a feasible product quality. Case-based reasoning is a promising methodology for this type of quality assurance. It allows product measurements and its related adjustments to the production line to be stored as cases in a case-based reasoning system. The idea is to describe an event of adjustments based on deviations in geometric measurement points on a product and connect these measurements to their correlated adjustments done to the production line. Experience will implicitly be stored in each case in the form of uniquely weighted measurement points according to their positive influence on adjustments. Methods have been developed in order to find these positive correlations between measurements and adjustments by analysing a set of historical product measurement and their following adjustments. Each case saved in the case base will be "quality assured" according to this methods and only cases containing strong positive correlations will be used by the system. The correlations will be used to supply each case with its own set individual weights.
Industrial machines sometimes fail to operate as intended. Such failures can be more or less severe depending on the kind of machine and the circumstances of the failure. E.g. the failure of an industrial robotcan cause a hold-up of an entire assembly line costing the affected company large amounts of money each minute on hold. Research is rapidly moving forward in the area of artificial intelligence providing methods for efficient fault diagnosis of industrial machines. The nature of fault diagnosis of industrial machines lends itself naturally to case-based reasoning. Case-based reasoning is a method in the discipline of artificial intelligence based on the idea of assembling experience from problems and their solutions as "cases" for reuse in solving future problems. Cases are stored in a case library, available for retrieval and reuse at any time.By collecting sensor data such as acoustic emission and current measurements from a machine and representing this data as the problem part of a case and consequently representing the diagnosed fault as the solution to this problem, a complete series of the events of a machine failure and its diagnosed fault can be stored in a case for future use.
Reducing the inherent high dimensionality in time series data is a desirable goal. Algorithms used for classi¯cation can easily be misguided if presented with data of to high dimension. E.g. the k-nearest neighbor algorithm which is often used for case-based classi¯cation per- forms best on smaller dimensions with less than 20 attributes. In this paper we address the problem using a time series case base and a feature discrimination approach incorporating an unsupervised combination of a search function based on statistical feature discrimination and a crite- rion function ¯nding the global maximum of discriminating power in the range the search function. Feature vectors for case indexing is computed with respect to this information. For evaluation, previously classi¯ed cur- rent measurements from an electrical motor driving the gearbox of axis 4 on an industrial robot were used. The results were promising and we managed to correctly classify measurements from healthy and unhealthy gearboxes.
The classification performance of a back propagation neural network classifier highly depends on itstraining process. In this paper we use the domain knowledge stored in a Case-based reasoning system inorder to train a back propagation neural network to classify gear faults in an industrial robot. Ourapproach is to compile domain knowledge from a Case-based reasoning system using attributes frompreviously stored cases. These attributes holds vital information usable in the training process. Ourapproach may be usable when a light-weight classifier is wanted due to e.g. lack of computing power orwhen only a part of the knowledge stored in the case base of a large Case-based reasoning system isneeded. Further, no use of the usual sensor signal classification steps such as filtering and featureextraction are needed once the neural network classifier is successfully trained.
A Distributed Multi-Agent System representing the behaviour of a machine maintenance procedure in a factory production environment is modelled using the BRIC language. The model provides an overview and simplification of the communication in the maintenance procedure. The model involves two distributed factory environments, each equipped with a Maintenance Agent and an Experience Sharing Agent. Maintenance agents can be seen as experts in interpreting local sensor data from the machine being observed. They have some basic domain knowledge about when to bring the findings to the attention of an agent, human or system. An agent is also autonomous and may have the trust to shut down a process. The maintenance agent will ask other agents or humans for assistance if bringing the macine ito working order is beyond the agent's ability. Necessary information about what maintenance actions to perform is provided by an Experience Sharing Agent which has the ability to identify past experience relevant for the current situation and thus beeing able to help the human to make a better and more informed decision avoiding previously, sometimes very costly mistakes.
Purpose – The purpose with this paper is to propose an agent-based condition monitoringsystem for use in industrial applications. An intelligent maintenance agent is described that isable to autonomously perform necessary actions and/or aid a human in the decision makingprocess. An example is presented as a case-study from manufacturing of industrial robots.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is mainly based on a case-study performed at alarge multi-national company aiming to explore the usefulness of case-based experience reusein production.Findings – This paper presents a concept of case-based experience reuse in production. Amaintenance agent using a Case-Based Reasoning approach to collect, preserve and reuseavailable experience in the form of sound recordings exemplifies this concept. Sound fromnormal and faulty robot gearboxes are recorded during the production end test and stored in acase library together with their diagnosis results. Given an unclassified sound signal, relevantcases are retrieved to aid a human in the decision making process. The maintenance agentdemonstrated good performance by making right judgments in 91% of all the tests, which isbetter than an inexperienced technician.Originality/value – The main focus of this paper is to show how to perform efficientexperience reuse in modern production industry to improve quality of products. Twoapproaches are used: a case-study describing an example of experience reuse in productionusing a fault diagnosis system recognizing and diagnosing audible faults on industrial robotsand an efficient approach on how to package such a system using the agent paradigm and agent architecture.
Measurements from products are continuously collected to allow adjustments in the production line to certify a feasible product quality. Case-Based Reasoning is a promising methodology for this type of quality assurance. It allows product measurements and its related adjustments to the production line to be stored as cases in a Case-Based Reasoning system. The idea is to describe an event of adjustments based on deviations in geometric measurement points on a product and connect these measurements to their correlated adjustments done to the production line. Experience will implicitly be stored in each case in the form of uniquely weighted measurement points according to their positive influence on adjustments. Methods have been developed in order to find these positive correlations between measurements and adjustments by analysing a set of historical product measurement and their following adjustments. Each case saved in the case base will be "quality assured" according to this methods and only cases containing strong positive correlations will be used by the system. The correlations will be used to supply each case with its own set individual weights.
In industrial manufacturing rigorous testing is used to ensure that the delivered products meet their specifications. Mechanical maladjustment or faults often show their presence as deviations compared to a normal sound pro-file. This is the case in robot assembly, the selected application domain for the system. Manual diagnosis based on sound requires extensive experience, and the experience is often acquired through costly mistakes and reduced production efficiency or quality loss caused by missed faults. The acquired experience is also difficult to preserve and transfer, and often lost if personnel leave the task of testing and fault diagnosis. We propose a Case-Based Reasoning approach to collect and preserve experience. The solution enables fast experience transfer and leads to less experienced personnel required to make more reliable and informed testing. Sounds from normal and faulty equipment are recorded and stored in a case library together with a diagnosis. Addition of new validated sound profiles continuously improves the systems performance. The system can preserve and transfer experience between technicians, reducing overall fault identification time and increases quality by reduced number of missed faults. The original sound recordings are stored in form of the extracted features to-gether with other experience, e.g. instructions, additional tests, advice, user feedback etc.
Fault diagnosis of industrial equipments becomes increasingly important for improving the quality of manufacturing and reducing the cost for product testing. Developing a fast and reliable diagnosis system presents a challenge issue in many complex industrial scenarios. The major difficulties therein arise from contaminated sensor readings caused by heavy background noise as well as the unavailability of experienced technicians for support. In this paper we propose a novel method for diagnosis of faults by means of case-based reasoning and signal processing. The received sensor signals are processed by wavelet analysis to filter out noise and at the same time to extract a group of related features that constitutes a reduced representation of the original signal. The derived feature vector is then forwarded to a classification component that uses case-based reasoning to recommend a fault class for the probe case. This recommendation is based on previously classified cases in a case library. Case-based diagnosis has attractive properties in that it enables reuse of past experiences whereas imposes no demand on the size of the case base. The proposed approach has been applied to fault diagnosis of industrial robots at ABB Robotics and the results of experiments are very promising.
Today's increased demand for flexible and fast reconfiguration of production systems is seen as one of the key factors for survival by many branches, especially small and medium sized enterprises. To enable adaptable and flexible production, we propose an integrated experience reuse system assisting in setup, operation, maintenance and repair. We present three subsystems that facilitate experience reuse between different engineers and operators working with standardised production modules. It is composed of three separate software components enabling: a) easy programming and control of robot cells, b) monitoring and condition based maintenance, c) distributed experience reuse. The results presented in this paper have been developed within the Factory-in-a-Box project, the ExAct project and the Eken project.


text: C-51 Customs are located in Novato in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jason Steed from C-51 has just finished building this beautiful 1977 Triumph 750 T140. The stunning 5 gallon tank was made by The Tank Shop out of Scotland and took 8 months to receive but "was well worth the wait". Jason told us "The bike was a total tear down and rebuild. The motor is a 750 with a 5 speed, .40 over pistons and everything else on the motor was upgraded. Stock amal carbs with velocity stacks. I switched the heads over to the slip over 650 style pipes with pressed in adapters on the exhaust ports. The frame, hubs and misc brackets were all powder coated gloss black. The wheels are Excel high shouldered aluminium rim with Buchanan stainless spokes. I used a brembo rear slave master cylinder instead of the stock bulky one. Clubman handlebars with magura controls. The electrical system was switched out to Boyer Brandson. The seat was done locally by the Franzini Bros and is actually stock that I shortened to accommodate the fuel tank". These great shots of this classic styled Café Racer were taken by the photographers at Vidola Productions. There's also a video in production which I will post in the next week or so.