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A massive wind turbine—capable of turning the breeze into two million watts of power—has 40-meter-long blades made from fiberglass, towers 90 meters above the ground, weighs hundreds of metric tons, and fundamentally relies on roughly 300 kilograms of a soft, silvery metal known as neodymium—a so-called rare earth.
This element forms the basis for the magnets used in the turbines. "Large permanent magnets make the generators feasible," explains materials scientist Alex King, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) Ames Laboratory in Iowa, which started making rare earth magnets in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. The stronger the magnets are, the more powerful the generator—and rare earth elements such as neodymium form the basis for the most powerful permanent magnets around.
In the modern world rare earths go far beyond magnets. Spanning 17 elements—from lanthanum to lutetium, plus scandium and yttrium—they find use in computers, screens, superconductors, oil refineries, hybrid or electric vehicles, catalytic converters, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, light-emitting diodes, lasers, audio speakers and microphones, cell phones, MRI machines, telecommunications, battery electrodes, advanced weapons systems, polished glass, and even the electric motors that run automobile windows. "There is no single military system in use by the Pentagon that does not contain rare earths," King notes, ranging from Abrams tanks to radar systems.
Strong attractor
But, in large part, magnets drive the growth in demand for rare earths such as neodymium—swelling by 15 percent per year, according to an analysis published in Science—and dysprosium. Magnets are the key to generating electricity, of course, and electricity is the key to the use of cleaner sources of energy—whether wind turbines or electric vehicles.
At the heart of those devices sits the most powerful magnet available today—a mix of neodymium, iron and boron, which can produce an energy product of as much as 60 megagauss–oersteds (a unit of magnetic strength). For comparison, a typical iron magnet has an energy product of only four megagauss–oersteds and a refrigerator magnet is typically a mere 0.5 megagauss–oersted. "The stronger the magnet, the smaller the magnet can be," explains Luana Iorio, a manager at GE's High Temperature Alloys and Processing Laboratory.
Fortunately, the elements "are neither rare nor earths," as in soil (although they can be found there), King adds. The name comes from their seeming scarcity when first discovered in the late 18th century in an ore found near Ytterby, Sweden. Unfortunately, "finding reasonable concentrations of them that are economically extractable is quite rarer."
As it stands, 97 percent of the 124,000 metric tons of neodymium, dysprosium—the name means "hard to get"—and other important rare earth elements produced each year come from one place: China. "When demand for neodymium started to rise, driven in part by wind turbines and hybrid autos, the Chinese were the only providers left," King says. And demand for the rare earths continues to outpace supply, particularly as China has implemented export quotas.
So the hunt is on for both better ways to use rare earths as well as better ways to mine and, perhaps more important, cleanly separate the rare earths for use.
A critical pass
Vast waste ponds scar the landscape on the banks of the Yellow River, 190 kilometers from the city of Baotou in China. Visible from space, the Bayan–Obo iron mine in Inner Mongolia is the world's largest source of rare earths, and the Chinese companies supplying them employ acid to dissolve them out of ore rock that often also contains radioactive elements like thorium, radium or even uranium. Intensive boiling with strong acids—repeated thousands of times because the elements are so chemically similar—finally separates out the neodymium, dysprosium or cerium.
Such a difficult production process is one reason why the U.S. no longer mines them. Until the 1990s, the U.S. was the major supplier of rare earths, largely out of one mine in Mountain Pass, Calif., owned by oil company Unocal, now part of Chevron. Unocal shut down that mine—and processing facility—in 2002 because they could not compete with China's purer product that began to flood the market in the 1990s. Unocal "didn't think there would be a need for high-purity products," explains chemist John Burba, chief technology officer for Molycorp, the company hoping to reopen rare earth production at the Mountain Pass Mine.
Plus, the operations were not exactly environmentally friendly. "Back in the 1990s the plant was sending 850 gallons of wastewater per minute down a pipeline into evaporation ponds," Burba notes. "It was a devil's mixture because of the chemistry they employed." In addition, the rare earths at Mountain Pass are mixed with radioactive thorium, requiring special care in handling and disposal.
The whole slew of rare earth elements are a challenge to separate because of their chemical similarity—and they are never found alone. "The challenge with rare earths is they always occur together," GE's Iorio explains. "There are processing costs to separate them out from each other."
Regardless, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) wanted to purchase Unocal—and its California rare earth asset—in 2005, a move the U.S. military blocked, according to Burba. Now Molycorp wants to restart operations by 2012 using a new process, which will require Molycorp to essentially rebuild the entire operation at a cost of $500 million. The process employs a strong acid and a base to separate the rare earths—the so-called chlor–alkali solvent extraction method—but it still will not produce pure rare earths; rather it will yield oxides of cerium, lanthanum, praseodymium and neodymium.
In essence, Mountain Pass will become a chemical plant, sucking up electricity and steam from an on-site natural gas–fired boiler. In addition, the wastewater of the process will be recycled back to produce the strong acid and base necessary to start the process all over again—hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. "Mining is a very small part of our operation," Burba says, noting that mining the ore containing the rare earths is only 10 percent of his company's cost. "The vast majority of what we do is advanced chemistry."
Of course, there will still be by-products—such as the residual ore, or tailings, from the mining and separation as well as calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide from the chemical process, along with that pesky thorium. But the primary salt from the chlor–alkali process is sodium chloride (otherwise known as table salt), which will be recycled back into the process using some of the steam generated on site and use to make new acid and base using a chlor-alkali unit. "It's a big saltwater loop," Burba explains. "Our water consumption is 10 percent or less of what had been done historically at this site."
By next year, the site hopes to produce 2.7 million kilograms of rare earth oxides a year—separating the elements from the ore using a liquid ion-exchange process. By 2015, they hope to be at full production, producing 18 million kilograms of various rare earth oxides a year. "We have greater than 30 years of mining capacity at 40 million pounds per year," Burba says.
But that only represents 6 percent of the present global market, which is still growing. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates it will take seven to 15 years to find new rare earth deposits, build the infrastructure to process them, and make them available to manufacturers. "This is not like going out and panning for gold," Burba notes. "This processing requires a huge amount of chemical processing. You have to have good infrastructure."
Geologists have found deposits in Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Vietnam and even Greenland, and efforts are also underway to begin mining the deposits in the legions of discarded electronics available today. "There is a lot of rare earth material out there in used products; extracting from that urban mine will be viable," argues King of Ames Lab, which also has scientists working on better extraction methods for, say, neodymium from ores or old generators. "Recycling is definitely going to be a big part of the solution to this problem."
But for the foreseeable future China will continue to dominate rare earth production—and it holds the world's largest reserves, nearly twice as much as its neighbors to the north and west in the Commonwealth of Independent States (an organization of former Soviet republics formed after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.) and three times as much as U.S. reserves. And China is the only producer of dysprosium—vital for the heat-resistant magnets favored by the U.S. military and hybrid car–makers.
Materials squeeze
The perils of that dominance became evident to the world this fall when China reportedly shut off rare earth supplies to car manufacturers and other users in Japan as a result of a diplomatic imbroglio. After all, by 2005, all U.S. manufacturers of the neodymium iron boron magnets—invented by General Motors researchers in the early 1980s—had shut down. But even before China flexed its market-dominating power a slew of scientific researchers had been investigating how to use less rare earths—or even none at all—by fabricating better magnetic materials.
Magnetism arises from the electrons orbiting the atomic nuclei of some elements. When atoms align in a certain fashion a strong magnetic field results. Magnetic elements like iron or neodymium typically arrange themselves this way, thus generating a permanent magnetic field.
But by tinkering with that alignment—spacing it out with other materials or embedding it in a lattice composite at the nanoscale (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter)—scientists can potentially exponentially increase the strength of these magnets: The stronger the magnet, the fewer of them you need. "There have been theories around for 15 years that if you had a very controlled nanostructured magnet, you could as much as double" its strength, GE's Iorio says. "If you can double the strength you can use a much smaller magnet and get the same performance—or have the same size and get much more performance." That also means GE could spend less on the metal materials; the company currently spends some $4 billion annually on the purchase of metals and alloys.
GE was awarded $2.2 million by DoE's ARPA–E program to develop bulk quantities of such nanocomposite magnets in a bid to cut by 80 percent the rare earth elements used. The challenge is to make such a tiny microstructure stable—and reproducible on a much larger, bulk scale. But, within two years, Iorio says, "we'll have a magnet big enough to sit in the palm of your hand. Something that's useful [to stick on] your refrigerator."
ARPA–E also gave $4.4 million in October 2009 to a group led by physicist George Hadjipanayis of the University of Delaware to create a nanostructured version of the neodymium iron boron magnet that eliminates the need for as much neodymium. The secret: mixing it with softer magnetic materials that remain magnetic only when exposed to a magnetic field. "Neodymium iron boron nanoparticles are difficult to make because they are very reactive," Hadjipanayis says, in addition to being hard to align within a given nanostructure. "It's very difficult to obtain an aligned magnetic material," he adds. "My challenge is to make larger amounts of these nanoparticles, make sure I protect them, and find a way to assemble them."
At the same time, Hadjipanayis is researching whether more widely available rare earths could serve as substitutes or whether powerful magnets could be made that don't employ any rare earth elements, such as iron cobalt alloys. "Anything that comes out, we'll take," he says of the hunt for an alternative to neodymium, although the only known alloy as strong as rare earths is composed of iron and platinum, which is too expensive to compete commercially. "By the time you find something, it takes five to 10 years to make it commercially. I don't see anything for the next 15 to 20 years that is rare earth–free."
And that means the material challenge posed by rare earths won't be solved anytime soon, particularly as more wind farms cover the land, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and light-emitting diodes proliferate, and greater numbers of hybrid or electric vehicles hit the road. "There are some materials crises, like worldwide demand for chromium, that are easily solved—we just stopped putting chromium on cars," King notes. "This one is not so easy to solve."


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'Thunder Chickens' 'Natural' fit for club
So what confluence of events led to such a successful evening at Arvest Ballpark? A rehab appearance by a Major League superstar? A highly coveted bobblehead giveaway? A postgame performance by the (as of now) theoretical Minor League touring performer dream team of Mr. Belding, Jerry "The King" Lawler and Cowboy Monkey Rodeo?
Uh, no. What happened was that, for one night only, the Naturals changed their name to the "Thunder Chickens." Players took the field in snazzy black Thunder Chickens jerseys, and the intimidation factor was only increased by the "NWA" on the front of their caps (with the "W" in the shape of a splayed chicken foot). The jerseys were auctioned right off of the player's backs after the game -- perhaps they were anxious to get rid of them? -- and a limited edition run of "Thunder Chickens" hats and t-shirts were available in the team store.
This one-night-only foray into the land of the Thunder Chickens was the latest in a promotional phenomenon that has swept through the Minor League landscape in recent years: "What Could've Been" nights. The concept is simple enough and lends itself to all manner of alternate reality theorizing and philosophizing: teams simply imagine "What could've been" if they had been named something else. The Bowling Green Hot Rods originated the concept in 2009, when they took the field as the "Cave Shrimp" (one of the runners-up in their "Name the Team" contest). It was a well received event -- one that went on to win MiLB.com's "Promotion of the Year" -- and, thus, a trend was born.
Like "Cave Shrimp" in Bowling Green," Thunder Chickens" was a runner-up in Northwest Arkansas' 2007 "Name the Team" contest. And if you're moved to ask "Why Thunder Chickens?" perhaps a better question would be "Why not Thunder Chickens?" The name was first suggested on a popular Arkansas Razorbacks message board, whose users soon mounted a vociferous campaign in support of this earth-shaking fowl.
"I think the feeling [on the message board] was that 'We'll vote for Thunder Chickens, and if it actually wins we'll be able to laugh at them,'" explained Naturals general manager Eric Edelstein, who has held his job since the inception of the franchise. "But there were other people who supported it, because that kind of name, that's what Minor League Baseball is all about.
"It's fun to think back about how [Thunder Chickens] would have been received," he continued. "From a personality standpoint, would I be a goofier guy? Would we be predisposed to be a goofier operation?"
Edelstein ruminated on these deep questions before Saturday's ballgame, one night after the "Thunder Chickens" extravaganza. As he spoke, the scene around him at Arvest Ballpark was, more or less, back to normal. A few stray yellow feathers were still gathered beneath a nearby stairwell, likely the remnants of a costume worn by Strike the mascot ("He looked like Liberace as a chicken," said Edelstein). And a few of the fans who had attended the night before were proudly wearing the "Thunder Chickens" gear that had been put on sale in the team store, the only place on Earth in which such merchandise was available.
"We had people calling us, emailing, asking on Twitter 'How can I get a Thunder Chickens hat?'" said Edelstein. "Our response was 'Sorry, you're going to have to find a way to be here. How bad do you want it?'"
The "Thunder Chickens" name has its charms, but most would agree that "Naturals" was a more, well, natural name for this Springdale, Ark.-based team. Arkansas is known as "The Natural State," after all, and as Edelstein points out "the name has a great baseball feel to it because of the movie."
That movie would be The Natural, which, as an added bonus, was filmed in the same city (Buffalo, N.Y.) that the Naturals' ownership group is based out of. So Naturals it is, was, and will be -- save for Friday night's one-time-only promotional exercise, in which the Thunder Chickens defeated the Arkansas Travelers by a score of 5-4.
"After the game, I put out a tweet: 'The Thunder Chickens will never be defeated!,'" said Edelstein. "And immediately I started to hear from fans, 'Wait, you're not going to do it again?' And that got me to thinking."
Here he pauses.
"Well, I guess there's a reality in which we can do it again."
Benjamin Hill is a reporter for MLB.com and writes Ben's Biz Blog.

subset: commoncrawl


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(visited by Rudy Fuentes and Santah Fuentes)
07-Apr-2006 -- Day 2: At 7:00 AM Friday morning we left Boracay and went back to Caticlan. We had a good night sleep because we were so tired walking the long beach strip the previous night and it was amazing how this isolated island can have so much tourist people walking the beach and it was not even the peak days. The peak days will be during the Holy Week, which will be in 4 days. The beach is "sugar white" several kilometers long and it is probably the best beach in the world. I had been to Phuket, Thailand and its beach sand is a far second to that of Boracay. We took our pickup from the private park for 100 Pesos parking fee overnight and started the next leg of our journey for Patnongon, Antique. We took the less traveled western route through Pandan, Culasi and Bugasong and reached Tigrabayan, Patnongon, Antique at about 10:00 AM, After a quick survey along the coast, we found a boatman willing to bring us to the confluence area about 3.5 kilometers towards the China Sea for 500 Pesos. It was an easy find for 11N 122E but somehow I fouled up getting photos of GPS readings. I should have taken effort to verify that all of my shots were blurred probably because of wrong setting. After taking the obligatory shots we went back to the shore & resumed our journey towards Iloilo.
We could not resist stopping at historic Molo Church and had a quick prayer inside. We again traveled for Dumangas. My map was outdated because there is a faster way to get there using the Coastal Road without passing through the town of Zarraga. We reached Dumangas pier at 3:25 PM and waited an hour for the ferry trip to Bacolod at 4:40 PM. We arrived at Bacolod at 7:00 PM and after a quick lunch of "tinowang mamsa" we rushed again to Escalante town, which is about 95 kilometers away. The pier was so quiet & not one passenger soul when we reached the Danao pier at about 9:30 PM and I thought first it was the wrong pier. But when it was about 11:30 PM, when the ferryboat arrived, only then when I realized there were about 6 10-wheelers and a Ceres passenger bus, which must have known by heart the regularity of the boat schedule. The boat left at about 1:30 AM of Saturday.
This story continues to the next confluence visit to 11N 124E at Guadalupe, Bogo, Cebu.


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Enabling Compiz Fusion On An Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200)
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Follow me on Twitter
This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz Fusion on an Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card - I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 here). With Compiz Fusion you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop.
This document comes without warranty of any kind! I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Preliminary Note
I have tried this on a desktop computer with an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. It should work the same way with all other NVIDIA graphics cards.
2 Enabling The NVIDIA Driver
To use 3D effects on an NVIDIA graphics card, we need the proprietary NVIDIA driver which we can install from the Hardware Drivers tool. The Hardware Drivers tool can be started from System > Administration > Hardware Drivers:
The Hardware Drivers tool should tell you that there are NVIDIA graphics drivers available for your system - select the recommended one. To install it, click on Activate:
Type in your password:
Afterwards the NVIDIA driver is being downloaded and installed:
The Hardware Drivers tool should now tell you that a system restart is required to activate the driver. Click on Close to leave the Hardware Drivers tool...
... and then reboot the system:
After the reboot the system uses the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver.
3 Installing Simple Compizconfig Settings Manager (simple-ccsm)
Open the Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager):
Select the package simple-ccsm (simple Compizconfig settings manager) and install it:


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Former Bishop of Diocese of Covington dies
Bishop William Hughes, who the led the Covington Diocese for 16 years, has died.
In a press release Friday, the Diocese said Hughes passed away February 7 at Carmel Manor in Fort Thomas. He was 91.
Hughes served the Roman Catholic church for 66 years and was a bishop for 38 of those years. He was appointed bishop of the Covington Diocese in 1979 and served until 1995.
A mass of Christian burial honoring Hughes' life will take place next Friday at noon at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington.


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The Scepter
TV-PG | 43 min | Aired: 02.22.23
With time running out, Nicky is forced to confront Bo to get information on Xiao's whereabouts before it's too late.
With the Shen family now in the know about Nicky's extracurricular crime-fighting, Nicky is finally comfortable and at peace in San Francisco...that is, until the reemergence of sinister billionaire Russell Tan, and the surprise appearance of Nicky's long-lost cousin, Mia.
Olivia Liang (Legacies)
Kheng Hua Tan (Marco Polo)
Shannon Dang (The Romanoffs)
Jon Prasida (Reckoning)
Eddie Liu (Silicon Valley)
Gavin Stenhouse (Black Mirror)
Vanessa Kai (New Amsterdam)
Tony Chung
Tzi Ma (Veep)
Christina M. Kim (Blindspot, Hawaii Five-0)
Robert Berens (Supernatural)
Greg Berlanti (All American, Riverdale, The Flash)
Sarah Schechter (DC's Stargirl, Riverdale, The Flash)
Martin Gero (Blindspot, The L.A. Complex)
David Madden (Superman & Lois)


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Cleaning & Industrial U.S. Plastic Corp.® carries an excellent selection of spray bottles perfect for cleaning.
This bucket is economically priced, while still featuring premium bucket quality and durability.
Available in a range of sizes these trays have many industrial uses. Other custom sizes of trays, special partitions, flanges, outlets, etc. can be special ordered.
Roto-molded LLDPE with thick walls for superior strength and durability.
We carry carry hose barb fittings in a variety of materials suitable for all sorts of applications.
These Thermo Scientific™ Nalgene™ bottles are lightweight versions of lab-quality bottles and can perform light-duty, general purpose work.
The most widely used member of the vinyl family, PVC is excellent when used for corrosion-resistant tanks, ducts, fume hoods and pipe.
We carry a large selection of American-made Tamco® industrial strength tanks.
This broad range of flexible Tygon® tubing products are engineered to meet many user specifications including chemical resistance, fluctuations in temperature, abrasion, high purity and long service life.
ABS rod is a low-cost plastic rod with outstanding impact resistance and machinability. This rod is typically used in modeling and prototyping, point-of-purchase displays, storage cases, and display bases. The rod can be fabricated by thermoforming, vacuum forming, drilling, cutting-to-size, CNC cutting, routing, pressure forming, shearing, sawing, cold stamping, machine housing, guard, cover, ultrasonic welding, thermo-welding, and chemical bonding.


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One of the pet projects of Ray Kurzweil, genius inventor and futurist, is camera-based reading for blind and learning-disabled people. His original designs were chunky by our standards, a Canon Digital Elph literally strapped to a PDA. Now, working with the National Federation of the Blind, Kurzweil's group has shrunk the knfbREADER Mobile system down into something more convenient: the small Symbian-based 5-megapixel Nokia N82 smartphone.
The system is simple: users take a picture of a printed page using the Nokia's high-res camera, with a voice-guided recognition system steering them to an optimal framing point. Press a button and "most" printed materials will be easily read in "clear synthetic speech."
For people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities who can see, the system serves to enlarge, read, track or highlight printed text on the N82's display. Since many learning disabilities hamper the reader's ability to track text, this allows them to focus more clearly on their reading task.
We've seen many "cellphones for the blind" ideas before, ones with angled keys, speech synthesizers (like the Kurzweil, and today, most other cellphones) and even Braille displays. The difference is, because this is a software enhancement to an existing phone, and because Kurzweil and the NFB are behind it, there's a good chance this one will, uh, see the light of day. [knfbREADER]
First Cell Phone that Reads to the Blind and Dyslexic Released by Joint Venture of Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind
Tiny Device Will Change Lives for Millions
BALTIMORE —(Business Wire)— Jan. 28, 2008 K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc., a company combining the research and development efforts of the National Federation of the Blind and Kurzweil Technologies, Inc., today unveils an exciting product line that will revolutionize access to print for anyone who has difficulty seeing or reading print, including the blind and learning disabled. The company's world-renowned reading software has been especially designed for and paired with the Nokia N82 mobile phone to create the smallest text-to-speech reading device in history. A press conference to demonstrate the Reader Mobile product line, including the knfbREADER and the kREADER, will be held on January 28 at 10:00 a.m. The demonstration will take place in the Columbia Room, Holiday Inn Capitol, 550 C Street, SW, Washington, DC.
This truly pocket-size Reader enables users to take pictures of and read most printed materials at the push of a button. Blind users hear the contents of the document read in clear synthetic speech, while users who can see the screen and those with learning disabilities can enlarge, read, track, and highlight printed materials using the phone's large and easy-to-read display. The combination of text-to-speech and tracking features makes interpreting text much easier for individuals with learning disabilities.
Using the state-of-the-art Nokia N82 cell phone running on the powerful Symbian operating system with its integrated high-resolution camera, the Reader puts the best available character-recognition software together with text-to-speech conversion technology—all in a device that fits in the palm of your hand. The product includes Kurzweil's unique intelligent image processing software to enhance real-world images captured by a handheld device.
Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "The knfbREADER Mobile will allow the blind unprecedented access to the printed word, affording a level of flexibility and capability never before available. No other device in the history of technology has provided such portability and quick access to print materials. The NFB promotes equal opportunity for the blind, and this Reader will make blind people dramatically more independent. The result will be better performance at work, at school, at home, and everywhere else we go. This Reader will substantially improve the quality of life for the growing number of blind people and people who are losing vision, including seniors."
Blind users will have access to all of the functions featured in the most advanced cell phones on the market including video and music playback, GPS, wireless communications, photography, e-mail, text messaging, calendar and task functions, and more. The combination Reader and cell phone weighs 4.2 ounces and can store thousands of printed pages with easily obtainable extra memory. Users can transfer files to computers or Braille notetakers in seconds.
"The knfbREADER Mobile allows me immediate access to printed information, whether it be a menu or a letter," said James Gashel, vice president of business development for K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. and a blind user of the product. "So many people already carry cell phones. This innovation is exciting because it puts all of the functions that users need into one product, eliminating the need to carry multiple devices. The Reader's simple user interface makes it ideal for the growing number of blind seniors."
"Technology that enlarges the printed word or converts it to speech has dramatically improved the lives of millions of Americans with many types of disabilities, enabling them to read and comprehend printed materials to which they never before had access," said Ray Kurzweil, President and CEO of K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. "This innovation has created opportunities disabled people had never considered before due to the large amounts of reading required in certain occupations. The first machine of this type was the size of a washing machine. As optical character recognition technology is integrated into smaller and smaller devices, access to print becomes available almost instantaneously."
About the National Federation of the Blind
With more than 50,000 members, the National Federation of the Blind is the largest and most influential membership organization of blind people in the United States. The NFB improves blind people's lives through advocacy, education, research, technology, and programs encouraging independence and self-confidence. It is the leading force in the blindness field today and the voice of the nation's blind. In January 2004 the NFB opened the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, the first research and training center in the United States for the blind led by the blind.
About K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc.
K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. is a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies, headed by CEO Ray Kurzweil, a thirty-year innovator and pioneer in assistive technologies and the inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind; and the National Federation of the Blind, the largest, most influential membership organization of blind people in the United States. The company's latest products, the Mobile Reader Product Line, which includes the knfbREADER Mobile, designed for blind and low vision individuals, and the kREADER Mobile, designed for use by sighted individuals with reading difficulties, is being launched in January of 2008. The products are distributed in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim. For more information, please visit http://www.knfbreader.com.


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Iran: "The Supporting Pole of the Regime's Tent is Bent"
by Stephen Schwartz
Soutoudeh, now nearly fifty, was sentenced last year to 11 years' imprisonment, and barred from work in the field of law. On appeal, her term was reduced to six years. During her sustained act of defiance, Nasrin Soutoudeh consumed only water mixed with sugar and salts. Her weight fell to 95 pounds; her health became fragile.
She concluded her starvation protest after the Iranian dictatorship acceded to her main demand: that a travel ban be lifted from her 12-year old daughter Mehraveh. Soutoudeh also initiated the fast to dramatize the bad conditions under which she is held. Her husband, Reza Khandan, remains restricted in his movements by order of the regime.
In a statement from Norway, the International Organization to Preserve Human Rights in Iran (IOPHRI) pointed out that official Iranian media has accused local spiritual Sufis of supporting Soutoudeh as part of an alleged foreign conspiracy to subvert the Tehran authorities. IOPHRI warns that on this basis, Sufis are vulnerable to false trials and imprisonment. According to Sufis and human rights monitors, the repressive Iranian institutions consider "having 'compassion' for a Muslim woman in prison to be 'acting against national security,' 'disturbing public order" and 'insulting the Supreme Leader'," a post currently held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
IOPHRI identifies the persecution of Nasrin Soutoudeh and the Sufis with a sinister "think tank," the "Islamic Center for the Study of Religions and their Different Interpretations" located in Qom, the headquarters of theological radicalism in Iran. As one of several such institutions with similar titles and the same goal – penetration of Western academic circles and dissemination of Iranian state ideology – this "Center," through one of its Persian-language publications, Markaz Didban (Center Watch), has attacked Soutoudeh.
According to IOPHRI, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which names the Supreme Leader, has admitted that "the supporting pole of the regime's tent is bent." By this, Kani is said to recognize that conflicts between the personal, doctrinal, and political factions within the Islamist government have undermined its credibility. Entities such as the "Islamic Center for the Study of Religions and their Different Interpretations" harm Iranian stability more than any actions by dissidents by sowing intrigues and fear at all levels of society.
Meanwhile, IOPHRI states, Ali Larijani, Khamenei's "national security expert," and promoter to the world of the Iranian nuclear program, travels daily to Damascus and Beirut to "maintain the status quo" embodied in the bloodthirsty Syrian dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad and the Lebanese government dominated by the terror group, Hezbollah.
IOPHRI has appealed for aid and cooperation from other international institutions; it seems to wish to use the great potential of public opinion outside Iran as a platform for a major global effort to expose conditions in the Iranian prisons. IOPHRI describes Tehran's penal establishments as torture houses and dungeons run by stubborn and self-interested bureaucrats answerable to nobody – not even to the higher strata of clerical power.
The human rights activists and Sufis have praised the example provided by Nasrin Soutoudeh in her deliberate refusal of food. The call of the Iranian dissenters should not go unanswered. Demonstrations and conferences are overdue in Western and other foreign capitals, especially in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The Iranian usurpers should learn that while their internal contradictions and quarrels threaten to bring their tent down on their heads, the world is watching. Inevitably, the doors of Evin Prison and Tehran's other houses of cruelty and degradation must be opened.
Related Topics: Iran, Shiism, Sufism receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free center for islamic pluralism mailing list
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The online extreme sports channel
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Tenaya Mundaka | Outdoor 2016
14th July 2016
14th Jul 2016
Alex Megos presents the all-new Tenya Mundaka at the Outdoor trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This half leather, half synthetic climbing shoe is similar to the Tenaya's flagship model, the Oasi, in shape and feel, but with a softer midsole and provides a more sensitive feel. A stiff front sole provides precise edging on smaller holds, with heel rubber tucked under the rand to brovide excellent heel hooking abilities.


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New Jersey, United States, – The report on the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment Market is the result of intense research carried out by a team of industry professionals. The report briefly covers the products or services in the market and their application. The report also provides information on the technological advancements that have taken place in the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment market, helping the market vendors to increase their business productivity and operational efficiency. The report categorizes the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment market into segments, based on various product or service attributes and characteristics. The analysis and research has been done to help new market entrants understand the vast mixed martial arts equipment market in a more in-depth and easy way. The base year for the research is 2021 and the research would extend to the forecast period 2028.
Our goal is to provide our readers with a report on the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment Market, which examines the industry over the period 2021 – 2028. One of the goals is to present a more in-depth overview of this industry activity in this document. The first part of the report focuses on defining the industry of the targeted product or service in the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment Market report. Next, the paper will study the factors responsible for hampering and enhancing the growth of the industry. After covering various areas of industry interest, the report aims to explain the growth of the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment market during the forecast period.
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The report covers an in-depth analysis of the major market players in the market, along with their business overview, expansion plans, and strategies. The major players studied in the report include:
• Adidas
• Martial arts of the century
• Everlast in the world
• Hayabusa combat clothing
• Special Twins
• International combat sports
• Fairtex
• Professional King
• At the edge of the ring
• Rival boxing
One of the crucial parts of this report includes the discussion of major vendors of Mixed Martial Arts Equipment industry on summary, profiles, market revenue and financial analysis of the brand. The report will help market players to develop future business strategies and find out about the global competition. A detailed market segmentation analysis is done on the producers, regions, type and applications in the report.
Segmentation of the mixed martial arts equipment market
By Product Type, the market is primarily split into:
• Gloves
• Protective gear
• Training equipment
• Sporting goods retailers
• Department stores
• Hypermarkets and supermarkets
• Online retailers
• Analysis at regional and national level
• Mixed martial ar
By application, this report covers the following segments:
• Gloves
• Protective gear
• Training equipment
• Segment by application
• the mixed martial arts equipment market is segmented into
• Sporting goods retailers
• Department stores
• Hypermarkets and supermarkets
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Scope of the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment Market Report
Geographic segment covered in the report:
The Mixed Martial Arts Equipment report provides information about the market area, which is further subdivided into sub-regions and countries / regions. In addition to the market share in each country and sub-region, this chapter of this report also contains information on profit opportunities. This chapter of the report mentions the market share and growth rate of each region, country and sub-region during the estimated period.
• North America (United States and Canada)
• Europe (UK, Germany, France and rest of Europe)
• Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region)
• Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and the rest of Latin America)
• Middle East and Africa (GCC and rest of Middle East and Africa)
Key questions answered in the report:
• What is the growth potential of the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment market?
• Which product segment will take the lion's share?
• Which regional market will emerge as a pioneer in the years to come?
• Which application segment will experience strong growth?
• What growth opportunities might arise in the mixed martial arts equipment industry in the years to come?
• What are the most significant challenges that the mixed martial arts equipment market could face in the future?
• Who are the leading companies in the mixed martial arts equipment market?
• What are the main trends that positively impact the growth of the market?
• What growth strategies are players considering to remain in the Mixed Martial Arts Equipment market?
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E-Voting's Biggest Test
| E-Ballot: An electronic voting machine that will be used to count votes during in the 2008 presidential election.
Credit: Accuvote
As the US heads into a historic and contentious presidential election, concerns over electronic voting technology could be about to stir up controversy over the legitimacy of some results.
Ironically, electronic voting machines were meant to make elections more reliable and secure. After the 2000 presidential election, when spoiled ballots and "hanging chads" sent the disputed result all the way to the Supreme Court, Congress began dispensing billions of dollars to help states replace punch-card ballots with more-sophisticated voting technology. Since then, however, concerns over the trustworthiness of electronic voting system have steadily grown.
Already in several key states, early voting has seen touch-screen voting machines "flip" votes from one candidate to another. Some voters casting early ballots in Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas say that machines have flipped their votes. All were able eventually to correct the mistake, but this has added a sense of urgency to long-held unease over the security and reliability of electronic voting systems.
Earlier this month, a report from Election Data Services (EDS), a Washington, DC-based firm that tracks election administration, said that electronic voting machine usage will drop this year for the first time ever. In Tuesday's election, 32.6 percent of all ballots will be cast using an electronic voting machine, compared to 37.6 percent in 2006, the equivalent of 10 million fewer voters. "Basically, the activists and the political scientists have kind-of won that battle," says EDS president Kimball Brace. "Most election administrators don't find it worthwhile trying to fight the battle and are trying to move on."
Nonetheless, that percentage will still be higher than it was during either of the last two presidential election races: in 2000, 22.0 percent of votes were cast electronically, compared to 29.2 percent in 2004. Also, several key swing states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Nevada, will rely heavily on electronic voting. Ohio and Indiana will use a combination of optically scanned paper ballots and electronic voting machines, while Nevada will rely almost entirely on electronic voting, according to the same EDS study.
Meanwhile, the political situation in Ohio couldn't be more tense. Republicans and Democrats are already wrangling in court about voter registration issues and so, if the race is particularly tight, the state could well be the scene of fierce legal action centered on electronic voting irregularities.
E-voting machines are receiving an unprecedented amount of attention from experts and activists. Grassroots organizations such as Black Box Voting and Video the Vote are urging voters to monitor the election and have already publicized problems with some voting machines, including touch-screen vote flipping.
Many computer security experts have previously raised concerns about the reliability and accountability of these machines, an issue that is complicated, they say, by the fact that they are manufactured by a number of different private companies and make use of proprietary (or undisclosed) computer code. In 2004, Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, Dan Wallach of Rice University, and colleagues published an analysis of an electronic voting machine used in Maryland and concluded that the machine was "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts."
| E-voting: In this year's national election (green) there will be an increase in use of electronic voting systems compared to 2004 (red) and 2000 (blue), according to Election Data Services.
Credit: Technology Review
The manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, now Premier Election Solutions, disputes the conclusion. Nevertheless, in 2007, the Maryland General Assembly voted to move back to paper ballots, although it will still use e-voting machines in Tuesday's election.
More recently, in a review commissioned by the state of California, researchers at the University of California found that electronic voting machines used in that state had security issues that made them vulnerable to vote tampering. The report prompted California to require that all voting machines also produce a paper trail.
Wallach of Rice University says that touch screens can often be poorly calibrated, causing the on-screen image to be misaligned with the touch-sensitive layer of the screen. Even a properly calibrated machine may not work well for an especially tall or short person because of their angle of view, he adds.
Critics' greatest concern about electronic voting machines, however, is that they might be vulnerable to fraud. "I think it's the complexity and the lack of transparency," says Steven J. Murdoch, a computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge. "It's certainly not apparent to the ordinary voter how it works, or whether it can be tampered with."
Murdoch thinks the move towards electronic voting was driven in part by "modernization for modernization's sake. When I was calling this a bad idea, I was being called a Luddite, but I've spent most of my life working with computers."
However, David Beirne, executive director of the Election Technology Council, which represents voting-machine manufacturers, says that electronic systems are designed to solve real problems. He says that paper ballots are expensive, cumbersome, and often "spoiled" by voters who mark them incorrectly.
"Unfortunately, I think the criticisms have reached such a point that no voting system can satisfy the critics," Beirne says. He also complains that critics often present unlikely scenarios, or ones that could easily be defended against with good management practices. And they don't compare the machines against the vulnerabilities of paper ballots.
Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT who has studied voting technology, agrees that paper ballots are also vulnerable to fraud. "Right now, we know a hundred different ways to corrupt paper systems that any idiot could perform. I don't know of anything that any idiot could perform on voting machines," he says. But Stewart also argues that the industry has been slow to address real security concerns that have been apparent for years.
A number of technological schemes have been suggested for fixing security problems related to electronic voting. The most common is to require that each machine generate a voter-verified paper ballot and to audit a sample of paper ballots after an election. Some states (including California) have moved towards this method.
Another proposal is to use encryption to ensure voters and observers that votes haven't been tampered with. In one such scheme, developed by Wallach and colleagues and called VoteBox, when voters completed a ballot, their identity and a record of their vote would immediately be encrypted and posted online. Each machine would also issue an encryption key to voters so that the record could be decrypted to make sure the vote had been recorded correctly.


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Watch this video and see how many passes you count.
Did you see the gorilla?
The point of the video, put together Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris is not the number of passes, but that something like half of people who watch this are so focused on counting that they completely miss the gorilla.
Stefan Dercon showed my class this during a lecture on poverty measurement at Oxford. What on earth does any of this have to do with poverty measurement? Stefan didn't really explain, but my take was that, sometimes, perhaps, if we focus too much on measuring poverty we might not be paying enough attention to something really important, like, development or industrialisation.
All of this is a pretty long-winded way of introducing some of the recent discussions about the new UN Multidimensional Poverty Index developed at Oxford.
Duncan Green (Director of Research at Oxfam) thinks that "It's a step forward on the previous Human Development Index, but only a limited one."
Martin Ravallion (Director of Research at the World Bank), notes that as with the HDI, "The index is essentially adding up apples and oranges … and no consensus exists on how the multiple dimensions should be weighted to form the composite index."
Sabina Alkire (Co-creator of the new Index) responds to Martin by citing Sen: "There is indeed great merit… in having public discussions on the kind of weights that may be used."
Finally, Matt Collin (AidThoughts), notes that "Given that we need to unpack these indices to figure out what's going on, why do we bother to pack them in the first place?"
On balance, I think this is probably a useful data collection/sorting exercise, but would agree with Matt about the limited value of the aggregate index.
Especially given my currently developing obsession. Measuring the impact of an action upon a composite index is not going to be of pretty limited interest.


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The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
call-by-value CBV (CBV) An evaluation strategy where arguments are evaluated before the function or procedure is entered. Only the values of the arguments are passed and changes to the arguments within the called procedure have no effect on the actual arguments as seen by the caller. See applicative order reduction, call-by-value-result, strict evaluation, call-by-name, lazy evaluation.


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My new book, American Nations, was featured in two major Sunday papers today.
The Arizona Republic carried an OpEd with my byline -- "The great divide" --crafted from excerpts of the book. It lays out the central argument that the U.S. is really a federation of disparate "nations" and always has been and notes that it can only function through compromise at the federal level; that's how the deal between the component regional cultures was brokered.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviews the book in today's paper, calling it important if not "easy" reading. The reviewer also seems to have misread the "nations" map in the book: the counties that make up the St. Louis metro area are divided between the Midlands and Greater Appalachia, just as the text in the book notes. (Similarly, Chicago is another "border city" straddling the Midlands and Yankeedom.
Nassau: The Untold Story of the Golden Age of Piracy
6 months ago


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Kent State Researcher to Work on Program to Broaden Participation in Computer Science
Information technology drives our global economy and promises transformational approaches to the world's most serious challenges, including healthcare, education and environmental. Yet a smaller percentage of American high school and university students take computer science courses today than they did 20 years ago.
L. Gwenn Volkert, associate professor of computer science at Kent State University, has been selected to participate in the second phase of a national effort aimed at increasing and broadening participation in computer science.
"One of the big problems in computer science in the United States is that we don't have enough people that are trained for the jobs that are available," Volkert said.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is making a four-year, $5.2 million grant to the College Board's Advanced Placement Program to fund the creation of AP Computer Science Principles (AP CS Principles). The college-level AP CS Principles course will be introduced into thousands of high schools nationwide in fall 2016.
Unlike computer science courses that focus on programming, AP CS Principles has been designed to help students explore the creative aspects of computing while also providing a solid academic foundation for understanding the intellectual concepts and practical contributions of computing.
"For the next decade, 60 percent or more of the jobs in the STEM area (science, technology, engineering and math) are for computer specialists, and we're producing less than half of the people we need," said Robert Walker, director of the School of Digital Sciences at Kent State. "This is an attempt to develop another Advanced Placement course for high schools that instead of focusing on the mechanics of programming focuses on the creative side of computing."
As the only female Computer Science faculty member at the university's Kent Campus, Volkert is passionate about reaching out to underrepresented groups in computer science, including women and minorities.
"They've been piloting this for a couple of years, and now they are rolling it out to a larger number of high schools and colleges," Volkert said. "In this phase, there are 36 high schools and 12 universities and Kent State is one of them."
AP CS Principles includes a curriculum framework designed to promote learning with understanding, a digital portfolio to promote student participation throughout the year, and a course and assessment that is independent of programming language.
Although computing is among the fastest-growing areas of projected job growth, the industry is failing to attract the nation's most talented students. Of the 1.6 million bachelor's degrees conferred in 2009-10, only 38,500 (2.4 percent) were earned in computer science — and only 6,894 (slightly over one quarter) of those were conferred to female students.
"This is an alternative path into computer science and computing," Walker said.
Successful implementation of the course will hinge on the ability to recruit and train qualified teachers with computer science backgrounds to teach the course. Through its CS 10K Project (10,000 computer science teachers in 10,000 high schools by 2016), the NSF has been laying the foundation for an unprecedented, national effort to prepare educators to teach this new material.
In addition, the College Board is building a comprehensive set of online teaching resources and creating professional development curricula for teachers, giving them the support they need to help students succeed in the AP CS Principles course and on the exam. As part of this effort, the College Board will contribute $1.5 million toward the creation of teacher support materials and professional development, and $2 million to develop a platform that will deliver the recommended digital portfolio assessment.
The successful pilots in 2010-11 and 2011-12 have helped to engender widespread enthusiasm for the success of the new AP CS Principles course. In a recent survey of 103 of the nation's top colleges and universities, 87 percent confirmed that AP CS Principles requires the same content knowledge and skills as the related introductory college course, and 86 percent indicated a willingness to award college credit for qualifying scores on future AP CS Principles Exams.
Research shows that students who took college-level AP math or science exams during high school were more likely than non-AP students to earn degrees in physical science, engineering and life science disciplines — the fields leading to careers essential for the nation's future prosperity.
Volkert is hopeful that her effort can make a difference.
"I'm energized that we have some solid ideas and methods to address this important issue,"
she said.
For more information about the project, visit www.csprinciples.org/home/about-the-project.
For more information about Kent State's Department of Computer Science, visit www.kent.edu/CAS/CS.
# # #
Media Contacts:
Gwenn Volkert, firstname.lastname@example.com, 330-672-9037
Bob Burford, firstname.lastname@example.com, 330-672-8516


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Ras Laffan C IWPP
Water and power plants are crucial to serving the growing populations of the Middle East. WSP's environmental and energy experts are leading the way in achieving regulatory compliance for this important sector.
- Qatar
- Mitsui & Co. Ltd (Mitsui) and Suez Energy International (SEI)
Project Status
- Completed
Key Facts
Output2730 MW 2730 MW
Power Generation MethodCombined Cycle Combined Cycle
Volume of desalinated water63 MIGD 63 MIGD


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At the entrance to "The Vault," the most secure room within the most protected building operated by security services provider Symantec, an iris recognition system stands guard as the last line of defense.
Employees who make it this far have already swiped access cards and entered PINs at the building's main door, and then placed their fingers in a biometric reader to move beyond the lobby. But the high accuracy rate of iris recognition technology, which uses near-infrared cameras to take a picture of a subject's iris and then applies specialized algorithms to encode the image and match it to an existing record on file, makes it an ideal access control choice at this point. After all, this high-security area holds the cryptographic keys to Symantec's certificate authority business, which provides e-commerce security services to many organizations.
"We have to make sure that no individual can compromise those cryptographic tokens, [and] iris recognition has higher accuracy and less likelihood of false positives," says Paul Meijer, senior director of infrastructure operations at Symantec's identity and authentication division.
Symantec's use of iris recognition technology for an access control system in a setting where security requirements are high and cost is no object represents a classic application of the technology. But as prices have come down and the systems have become easier to use, the technology has been slowly gaining ground in more ordinary business settings in industries such as banking and healthcare.
"Cost has perennially been an issue with iris, but this trend is quickly changing," as cameras, recognition algorithms and software have all improved, says Ram Ravi, a research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
One reason for the rise in innovation that led to those improvements: the 2005 expiration of a key patent on the mathematical representation of the iris that previously limited what competitors could do. Since that time, open standards have been developed, says Patrick Grother, director of biometric standards and testing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Until relatively recently, iris recognition systems were mostly deployed by governments, not by businesses, partly because they're so expensive. The largest use of iris recognition today is the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project. That initiative, recently recognized by the Computerworld Honors Program, includes iris recognition as part of a national ID system designed to help provide social services for 400 million citizens.
The technology is now making its way to the consumer end of the spectrum. "The use of iris recognition in mobile phones is expected to see a considerable uptake," Ravi says.
AOptix Technologies, a maker of identity verification systems, recently released a software development kit for biometric identification technologies for Apple's iOS mobile operating system. That move, combined with the introduction of fingerprint biometrics in the new iPhone 5S and rumors of a biometric application for Google Glass, will serve to increase interest in all biometrics, including iris recognition, says Nandini Bhattacharya, a senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Apple, AOptix and Google Glass are just the beginning of this trend. Other mobile manufacturers are likely to soon follow," she says.
Under the Lid
Unlike the retina scans you see in the movies, which shine a bright light through the pupil to capture images of blood vessel patterns at the back of the eye, iris recognition uses a camera to take a photograph of the iris -- the colored portion of the eye.
During fetal development, the eye goes through a process called chaotic morphogenesis that gives each iris its unique appearance. "When the optic nerve comes out of the brain, it essentially pumps out the eyeball, which rips and tears. Striations in the iris are the result of that," says Neil Norman, founder of Human Recognition Systems (HRS).
Iris recognition systems are extremely accurate; they're 100,000 times less likely to produce a false match than facial recognition systems, Grother says. Other benefits: The matching process is very fast and, unlike faces, the eye doesn't change much with age.
NIST recently completed a study on the subject of iris recognition. While face photos on passports are generally replaced every five to 10 years, "the iris is good for decades," Grother says. And because each eye has a unique pattern, vendors offer dual-eye systems, such as the one used in Symantec's Vault, for even higher accuracy. "Ten fingerprints are the gold standard for identification. A pair of irises are at least equivalent to eight or 10 fingers, and maybe more," Grother says.
But accuracy also depends on the integrity of the data, he cautions. While iris recognition technology doesn't require physical body contact (which is considered a plus), it does require the cooperation of the individual, and the type of system used can greatly affect accuracy. "If I take the image with a cellphone camera, the error rate will be much worse," Grother says.
Iris recognition systems need to overcome environmental issues such as reflections, bright sunlight, thick eyeglasses, colored contact lenses and eye conditions that may cause dilation or other changes in the iris. Today, "state-of-the-art iris recognition systems can deal with all of these," says Brian Martin, director of biometric research at MorphoTrust, a developer of identity verification systems.
Functionally, iris recognition cameras aren't much different from digital SLR cameras, except that the light filters over the sensors allow near-infrared light to pass through instead of visible light, says Martin.
Iris recognition systems encode the entire eye structure, following an open standard. And because the process doesn't focus on detailed feature points, a grayscale 640-x-480-pixel image is sufficient. That's one reason why the recognition algorithms can speedily process data and respond quickly. "The old VGA format turns out to be all you need. High resolution is not needed, and in fact would slow things down," says Grother.
Sophisticated, high-end cameras capable of capturing images at distances of 2 meters can cost $30,000 or more, but other models suitable for business use that operate at close range may run as little as a few hundred dollars.
Banking by Eye
For Kamal Al-Bakri, who as general manager at Cairo Amman Bank oversaw the installation of an iris recognition system at 80 branches and 100 ATM locations in Jordan, fraud hasn't been an issue. "We've done more than a million transactions since 2009 with zero fraudulent transactions," he says. The bank recently upgraded to more-accurate dual-eye readers from IrisGuard in Buckinghamshire, England, "to sustain our position as a leader" as competing banks start to use similar technology, he adds.
In Amman, people must present a government ID when banking -- a driver's license isn't sufficient -- but not everyone remembers to bring their IDs when they make a trip to the bank. So Cairo Amman Bank gave its customers the option of registering with its iris recognition system and using it at both the teller window and at ATMs. Customers initially had concerns -- some wondered whether the system would somehow affect their eyes, for example -- so the bank issued a flier with answers to common questions. Today half of its customers use the technology.
The system isn't just more secure, Al-Bakri says; it's also more efficient. With iris recognition, the average time per transaction at the teller window is one minute versus four minutes using traditional authentication methods. As more customers opted for iris recognition, the bank found that it could reduce branch staffing levels from four tellers to two.
Speed and ease of use were key reasons why Gatwick Airport in London added a passenger authentication system that uses iris recognition technology a little more than two years ago. The airport has a departure lounge where both international and domestic passengers congregate prior to boarding. "We had to ensure that people who are traveling domestically stick to their flights and don't swap tickets," says David Rees, IT program lead at the airport.
Now users scan their boarding passes at the security gate, and a video system on a "bio pole" tells them where to look as a camera takes a facial photo and an iris image from a distance of up to 2 meters (6.5 feet). Once the self-service process has completed, the gate opens automatically. The system then uses the iris data to authenticate passengers at each gate as they line up to board their flights.
The system handles as many as 3,000 people per hour during peak times, and an average of 30,000 to 35,000 people each day. "It's very effective," Rees says. The airport just completed a revamp of the system, provided by HRS, integrating it with an enterprise service bus that exchanges data in real time with other systems used to check flights and passengers. "It's not just sticking some cameras onto a pole," he says. "There's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be in place."
Security Update
Hacking the Iris
Is iris recognition vulnerable to hacks? While it's technically possible to create scenarios to fool iris recognition systems, Patrick Grother, director of biometric standards and testing at NIST, says pulling it off in the real world would be a challenge.
The possibility of spoofing iris recognition systems was addressed during a 2012 Black Hat conference presentation by Javier Galbally. In his talk (summarized in a story on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website), Galbally argued that iris recognition systems could be fooled by synthetic images that match digital iris codes linked to real irises.
But the process described would require the hacker to steal a template or iris image for the person the hacker wanted to impersonate and then run an iris recognition algorithm against it repeatedly to produce a digital image that would match the eye of the person whose template was stolen, Grother says. "The paper did not address how to [steal] the biometric data or how to then present it to a system successfully," he says.
Another academic researcher, Oleg Komogortsev at Texas State University, argues that it's possible to take a picture of someone's iris from a distance, create a high-resolution printout and successfully present that to an iris recognition system.
Komogortsev advocates for an alternative approach based on tracking eye movements instead of using a still photo of an iris. But Grother says that the cameras themselves have countermeasures designed to detect paper-based photographic images. And under real-world conditions, eye tracking is difficult. For example, pictures often contain reflections from ambient light on the eye, and you get very little detail for people with brown irises, which absorb light. That's why developers of iris recognition systems use specialized cameras designed to use near-infrared illumination instead of natural light, he says.
The cost of cameras for an application like the one at Gatwick can range from $10,000 to $65,000. Gatwick's system uses AOptix InSight models, and the airport has 34 of them, says HRS's Norman.
The system works by automatically locating a passenger's face and capturing the iris pattern while the video offers simple instructions, such as "Please look up" and "Please stand still" and "Please proceed," according to Rees.
At Symantec, Meijer says the closer-range binocular-style cameras used in the latest version of its iris recognition system have also improved considerably. "Before, you had to manually adjust the mirrors to line up with your eye," he explains. "Now it remembers you when you scan your badge. It's more user-friendly."
Iris-centric Law Enforcement
While most organizations use iris recognition as an additional authentication resource, law enforcement agencies in Missouri have made the technology central to everything they do. Missouri was the first state to use iris recognition as the core platform on which to build a statewide law enforcement records management and jail records management system for tracking people as they pass through the criminal justice system, says Mick Covington, director of the Missouri Sheriffs' Association.
The new system, purchased from MorphoTrust and used by sheriff's offices and the Missouri Department of Corrections, starts tracking people the moment they're arrested and booked.
"When someone comes into one of our jails, you get a read back in three seconds that tells you who they are and where they were last," Covington says. Deployed in 55 of the state's 115 counties to date, the system is used by county jails to, for example, identify people, check them in and out for court dates, and make sure medication is delivered to the right person at the right time.
The system will eventually upload iris data to a state repository that will in turn upload the data to the FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) database. The fact that the system doesn't require touching the individual is an advantage in a prison setting, Covington says, and the technology requires minimal staff training. "The quality of the images is much better now," he says. "And the machines are more user-friendly and more durable. They're cop-proof."
Iris recognition technology is continuing to evolve and outgrow its spy novel image, as is the manner in which users interact -- or don't interact -- with the systems. The technology is moving beyond what HRS's Norman calls a "coerced method of acquisition" -- exemplified by the types of systems historically used at border crossings and in prisons -- to a more social technology. "Social is if I go to a store and take a soda from a machine using a biometric," he says. "We're on the edge of moving into a personalization stage and away from this security/paranoia type of application. That's the next phase."
This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an article that appeared earlier on Computerworld.com.
Read more about security in Computerworld's Security Topic Center.


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Restaurant Team Member
- Job Number: 1444432
650 EAST PENN AVENUECleona,PA
- Posted Date: 1/19/2022
Papa John's Team Member:
Attention pizza lovers! Looking to start a career in a friendly environment working with one of life's greatest dinner options? Continue reading to see what PJ Restaurants has to offer our newly hired team members!
The Dough and Toppings
PJ Restaurant Group is a fast-growing Papa John's franchise with over 67 current locations found in PA, MD, DE, WV, and NJ. Our company has tripled in size since 2019, and we are seeking friendly and reliable team members for our restaurants to help fulfill this growth. Career advancement opportunities are available to team members seeking career growth into management. Our employees are our most important ingredient! Love our pizza, love your job with us, and enjoy discounts for you and your family!
· Full time/Part time hours available
· Competitive pay range
· Flexible Schedule
· Meal Discounts
· Advancement opportunities
· Bring a friend and we hire them too you get a bonus
· Learn multiple positions you get a raise, stay awhile and you get a raise
*Sign on bonuses given following continued employment!
- Perform assigned workstation duties including making quality products, preparing ingredients, taking orders, providing quality customer service through positive and professional interaction with customers by phone or in person, and acting with a sense of urgency in everything they do.
- Work as part of a team and assist each other by being on time for their shift, supporting other workstations during their shift and completing all closing duties as needed. Contribute to an atmosphere of teamwork, energy and fun.
At Papa John's, people are always our top priority. Our secret ingredient is YOU!
Our team members are much like our toppings. They're all different, but come together to make the ultimate pizza!
If interested in becoming a Papa John's team member, apply online or in person for same day interviews!


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Setting up a new account with Thunderbird is easy. All you need to do is provide your user name and password for your email provider and your email address. Thunderbird determines connection details (such as ports, server names, security protocols, etc.) by looking up your email provider in a database that contains connection information for all the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs). After determining the provider of your account (as specified after the "@" symbol in your email address) Thunderbird can usually provide the account details.
The first time you open Thunderbird after installing, you are prompted to create a profile. (At this stage close any windows that propose to set up an email service and carry on). Next you will be asked to provide details about your email account in the dialog box shown below. The dialog box is also displayed when you add a new email account (using "Create a new account""Set up an account". Under "Create a new account""Set up an account", click "Email" to display the dialog box shown below.or via the ). Another way to add a new account is to click on an existing account name (the displayed email address). Under the "Accounts" heading there are two options: "View settings for this account" and
When you click, Thunderbird will look up the email provider and attempt to determine the server settings.
In the above case, the provider data has been used to fill in the account details and configure the services offered:
- Incoming mail: IMAP on imap.gmx.net, using Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
- Outgoing mail: SMTP on mail.gmx.net, using SSL
You have the option to choose either IMAP or POP as your incoming mail protocol. IMAP and POP are the standard protocols for retrieving emails. IMAP, the more modern protocol, allows you to store messages on the mail server and on your local machine at the same time. The POP protocol only allows messages to be stored locally. Email providers may provide access by either the IMAP or POP protocol, or may support both. (To get a better understanding of the technical details for both protocols, see Glossary of Terms including types of Accounts and IMAP Synchronization.)
To complete the account setup:
- : Click this button to create a new account.
- : Abort the automatic setup of the account.
- Manual Account Configuration for help.) : Manually configure the account. Thunderbird will create a new account with the details shown and then open the dialog so that you can make further changes. (See
After creating the account, Thunderbird will display the new account:
If your account cannot be automatically configured by Thunderbird, you must manually configure it. This is done via the Account Settings dialog, accessed from the Manual Account Configuration article for full instructions. See the FAQ Changing IMAP to POP article if you need to change the incoming server from IMAP to POP.menu. Your email account provider can provide details on connection information. (The information is probably available from their website.) See the
Adding a new ISP
The Thunderbird team wants to collect server information for as many ISP and webmail providers as possible. You can help! If your email server information is not found when you create your account, you must configure your account manually. However, please ask your email provider to submit their ISP connection information. For more detailed technical information about ISPDB and autoconfiguration, how to use it and add a record to it, see Autoconfiguration in Thunderbird on the Mozilla Wiki.


text:
Piano teachers directory for private music lessons in Grand Junction CO 81504 USA
Private Piano lessons music teachers directory in Grand Junction CO 81504 USA
The above search is a free service maintained by DoReMiWORLD.com for the benefit of private music teachers, as well as music students and their parents. Our goal is to help you locate a private music instructor, for example, a private piano teacher, a private violin teacher, a private voice coach,
online music teacher
or another music education specialist who may offer private music lessons or online lessons to music students
in Grand Junction Colorado.
Private music instruction is considered to be the best way to learn to play a musical instrument. Use this directory to find a private music teacher offering music lessons in your local area (Grand Junction CO) or online lessons around the world. At the moment, our directory is limited to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and New Zealand. This music teachers directory classifies private music instructors by instrument, such as private piano teachers (for private piano lessons), private voice teachers (for private voice lessons), private violin teachers (for private violin lessons), etc. Please use the above search function to find a private music teacher near you.
We welcome the following types of instructors in our Grand Junction Colorado directory: Brass Teachers, Drums Instructors, Woodwinds Instructors, Clarinet Coaches, Mandolin Instructors, Bassoon Coaches, French Horn Educators, Harp Professionals, Trombone Coaches, Voice Professionals, Bass Guitar Teachers, Violin Professionals, Flute Tutors, Lute Instructors, Piccolo Educators, Recorder Tutors, Dulcimer Tutors, Piano Teachers, Oboe Teachers, Acoustic Guitar Instructors, Saxophone Educators, Tuba Educators, Electric Guitar Educators, Cello Professionals, Keyboard Coaches, Electric Bass Educators, Classical Guitar Educators, Double Bass Coaches, English Horn Tutors, Trumpet Teachers, Ukulele Tutors, Accordion Tutors, Bagpipes Professionals, Percussion Instructors, Viola Teachers, Banjo Professionals, Organ Coaches, Bass Coaches, Harpsichord Teachers, Viola Da Gamba Instructors .
WARNING: This game can be addictive


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Today, video game systems are dominated by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. They make big, expensive, state-of-the-art gaming consoles that attract the world's top developers and the most intricate games.
But the fastest-growing video game segment has no use for all those bells and whistles. Smartphone and tablet games are cruder and simpler but are often as fun and innovative, and immensely popular with the average consumer who would never dream of shelling out $500 for a video game console.
What if those casual gamers could play games in the same vein as those smartphone titles, but designed around the living room experience, on a console that costs less than $100? Ouya, a Kickstarter-backed video game project, is betting that people would bite.
The $99 Ouya video game console is a fascinating concept that at times delights with inexpensive, high-quality games. Though it is both crude and temperamental, the little box still manages to win you over with its charm.
Ouya is packed with the same guts as a smartphone or media streamer. It's small and silent.
Related story: Ouya hits store shelves
But then you turn on the console, and chaos ensues. There is no easy way to search for games or even organize the ones you have. There is no central online framework for multiplayer gaming. And for every amazing game, such as the Ouya-exclusive "Towerfall," there's a truly awful version of some Android game.
To cut through the noise, Ouya attempts to spotlight the worthwhile games. Its staff curates a top picks list, and the console displays a list of most-played titles. It's a concept that mostly works.
At its best, Ouya is home to wonderfully fun multiplayer games with stripped-down-but-stylish graphics, and short-but-sweet single player adventures. There are already a half dozen games that are worth paying for, and for a device that video game developers have only had access to for a few months, that's not bad.
The big plan for Ouya is to work with top independent game developers to produce exclusive titles for the console. And big name publishers like SquareEnix and Sega have begun porting over some of their biggest franchises in the form of Sonic and Final Fantasy. It's not enough to for Ouya to fall back on just yet, but it's a solid start.
Most games will fall between $5 and $20 and every game features a free playable demo of some sort.
But even the handful of titles worth paying for aren't always a joy to play. Some of the more ambitious games, especially the 3-D titles running at the highest of high-definition resolutions, tend to fall victim to lag.
Related story: The $99 box that wants to crush the Xbox
The controller, which Ouya has engineered from scratch, is functional and gets the job done. But that's about the best that can be said about it. Although many Ouya games simply don't require the same level of ergonomics, tactile feedback, and responsiveness that a big-budget console game would require, the controller still feels a bit cheap.
The four trigger buttons on top of the controller are too close together, and there is a sporadic lag between button presses and the action on screen. The performance of the touch pad in the middle of the controller is so inconsistent that most users probably are better off just ignoring it.
Luckily, Ouya allows users to connect any USB or Bluetooth game controller, including Xbox or PlayStation controllers -- if a particular game provides the support for third-party controllers. It's part of Ouya's open-source strategy: If the console is theoretically capable of doing something, developers will be allowed to do it. If a developer can write the code for it, Ouya will support any piece of gaming technology under the sun. Ouya has no real rules or limitations.
What will make or break the Ouya, however is the software. It wants to be a destination for game developers to experiment, and a galvanizing product for the emerging indie game space. Whether or not consumers really want that remains up in the air.
The company says it's committed to constantly improving and evolving the Ouya platform to better serve gamers and developers, and this has already been evident in the early updates it has released so far. It's not unreasonable to expect many of the Ouya's issues to be solved via future updates.
For those who are intrigued by the Ouya, it's cheap and promising enough that it's worth buying and tinkering around with. For everyone else, it's probably better to wait.
But keep an eye on the Ouya, because it's hardly a failure.


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Most browser installations use outdated versions of the Java plug-in that are vulnerable to at least one of several exploits currently used in popular Web attack toolkits, according to statistics published Monday by security vendor Websense.
The company recently used its threat intelligence network, which monitors billions of Web requests originating from "tens of millions" of endpoint computers protected by its products, to detect the Java versions that are installed on those systems and are available through their Web browsers. Websense provides Web and email gateway security products for businesses, but it also has a partnership with Facebook to scan links clicked by users on the social networking site for malicious content.
The Java telemetry data gathered by Websense showed that only 5.5 percent of Java-enabled browsers have the most up-to-date versions of the software's browser plug-in -- Java 7 Update 17 (7u17) and Java 6 Update 43 (6u43) -- installed. These two versions were released on March 4 in order to address a vulnerability that was already being exploited in active attacks at the time.
According to Websense, an exploit for that vulnerability has since been integrated into the Cool Exploit Kit, a Web attack toolkit used by cybercriminals to launch mass drive-by download attacks that infect computers with malware when visiting compromised or malicious websites.
Cool Exploit Kit is a high-end attack toolkit that requires a subscription of US$10,000 per month, so there's an argument to be made that not many cybercriminals can afford it. However, Websense's data shows that a large number of Java-enabled browser installations are also vulnerable to exploits used in much cheaper and widespread exploit kits.
For example, the company found that around 71 percent of Java-enabled browser installations were vulnerable to an older exploit that's currently present in four different Web attack toolkits: RedKit, CritXPack, Gong Da and Blackhole 2.0. The exploit targets a Java vulnerability called CVE-2012-4681 that was patched by Oracle in August 2012.
More than 75 percent of the Java-enabled browsers scanned by Websense used a Java plug-in version that was more than six months old, and nearly two-thirds used a version that was more than a year old. Users of those browsers don't benefit from the security controls introduced by Oracle in Java 7 Update 11 that prevent Java applets from running inside browsers without confirmation by default.
The data shows that when it comes to Java, zero-day attacks -- attacks exploiting vulnerabilities that were previously unknown to the public -- should not be getting all of the attention, security researchers from Websense said in a blog post.
Other security experts have said in the past that Oracle should find a way to improve the adoption rate of Java updates, possibly by offering the option of silent, automatic updates like Google or Adobe did in Chrome, Flash Player and Adobe Reader. Silent software updates are not popular in corporate environments, where patches need to be tested for compatibility and stability issues before being deployed on systems, but they would probably help reduce the fragmentation of Java versions in the consumer space if implemented.


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We first got wind of Lord of the Rings: Tactics when the title appeared on GameStop's coming soon list, only to be "pulled" within hours.
It took us a while, but we finally managed to pester our contacts at Electronic Arts into giving us a few details about the game, along with a very brief sneak peek.
As the subtitle implies, Lord of the Rings: Tactics is a strategy-RPG along the lines of games like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. There's the usual RPG style story, which follows the timeline of all three LOTR novels, but the gameplay is turn-based and puts players in charge of a large army instead of the typical 3-4 person party. In fact, if you played last year's Lord of the Rings: The Third Age for Game Boy Advance, you already have some idea of what to expect — except the graphics, audio, and everything else are much better.
The game will include two campaigns. There's a Fellowship (good) campaign, which lets you control hero characters, like Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. The rest of the troops in the Fellowship campaign will be the Gondor soldiers, Rohirrim, and Dunedain that ride along in support of the heroes. Meanwhile, the Shadow (evil) campaign will let you hunt down the Hobbits and the ring bearer by taking control of such baddies as the Witch King and Saruman, followed by the dark legions of the Nazgul, the Uruk-hai, and the Ents.
Right now, the game isn't very far along, so we were only given a few glimpses of actual gameplay. From the looks of things, the character models and terrain have been taken from earlier PS2 Rings games. Movement and attacking happen on a large grid that overlays the terrain, and each character seems to have an assortment of melee and long-range attacks. Terrain works like it does in games of this ilk–you get a defense boost in forests and on high ground, but movement suffers as a result.
Electronic Arts hopes to have the game on store shelves later this fall, in time for the holiday shopping season. The final version should clock in with roughly 30 hours of single-player gameplay, but will also include an ad hoc multiplayer mode that will support as many as four players.