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I didn't really know how I would follow up after my incredible 2011, but I believed that I have to use the time where I'm playing the best tennis of my life, says Djokovic
Defending champion Novak Djokovic returns to the Australian Open seeking his third consecutive trophy at Melbourne Park, where memories of last year's gut-wrenching final against Rafa Nadal still linger around Rod Laver Arena's blue centre court.
Last year's record-breaking epic of five punishing hours and 53 minutes secured Djokovic his fifth grand slam title while establishing the 25-year-old as tennis's indisputable iron man.
The marathon match would also serve as a portent for the year ahead for the steely-eyed Serb, who came under siege from his 'Big Four' rivals but emerged from an attritional season with his world number one ranking intact.
If 2011 was the year Djokovic soared into the stratosphere on the back of three grand slam titles and an astonishing 41-match winning streak, he has brought gently back to Earth in 2012.
After winning his third Australian Open, Djokovic would add no further major titles last year, with the spoils shared by Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray.
Federer, who shattered Djokovic's Wimbledon defense in the semi-final on the way to his 17th major crown, would even praise the number one ranking away from the Serb before losing it again less than four months later.
Djokovic would taste further disappointment with a semi-final loss to Briton Murray at the London Olympics, where he was also upset by Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro in the bronze medal match.
Murray, a good friend off the court, would later quash Djokovic's U.S. Open title defense in a grueling five-set final.
Rather than sulk in the shadows with the spotlight trained elsewhere, Djokovic responded by thrashing a succession of opponents to win his next tournament at the China Open.
He then exacted partial revenge for his U.S. Open defeat by edging Murray for the Shanghai Masters title.
Incredible 2011
Federer's failure to defend his Paris Masters title effectively handed the number one ranking back to Djokovic, but there was little debate over whether the Serb had earned it, as he stormed to victory in the season-ending ATP Tour Finals.
The straight-sets win in the final over Federer gave him his sixth title for the season and was all the more impressive amid worries about his seriously ill father.
"I didn't really know how I would follow up after my incredible 2011, but I believed that I have to use the time where I'm playing the best tennis of my life," Djokovic said after winning his career-best 75th match of the year.
"It was a fantastic year, where I've had to face a lot of difficulties off the court as well."
Djokovic suffered a shock loss to young Australian Bernard Tomic when still jet-lagged at the team-based Hopman Cup in Perth last week, and was involved in a freak injury scare when a hoarding holding back autograph-hunters toppled and struck him in the knee.
He has otherwise enjoyed a sound lead-in to the year's first grand slam, winning an exhibition tournament in Abu Dhabi, and helping guide Serbia to within one victory of the team-based Hopman Cup title.
Few would dare discount him at Melbourne Park, where he has reigned supreme for two years and enjoys a boisterous reception from the host city's prominent Serbian community.
There will also be no fear of a rematch with Nadal, the man who drove Djokovic to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion in the final, with the Spaniard pulling out after a virus stalled his recovery from a long-term knee injury.
The Rod Laver Arena crowd can look forward to further moments of pure theatre from Djokovic, however, who muttered prayers to the heavens in the final throes of the Nadal classic before celebrating victory by tearing his shirt off his chest and roaring like a man possessed.
"I love the Australian Open. That court brings back the best memories of my career," Djokovic, who won his maiden grand slam title at Melbourne Park in 2008, said at the Hopman Cup.
"Obviously I know I can work on a few more things and adjustments to get it to the best possible level.
"But I am where I aim to be, where I want to be in this moment."
(For more sports news and updates, follow Ahram Online Sports on Twitter at @AO Sports and on Facebook at AhramOnlineSports)


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Nine years ago, Alexis Cohen spent most of the 13-hour plane ride to Japan hysterically crying.
Nine years ago, Alexis Cohen spent most of the 13-hour plane ride to Japan hysterically crying.
"I thought: What am I doing? I don't speak a word of Japanese and I'm going to be all alone for a year," says the Long Island native who is the NYU's 2012 Commencement student speaker.
The trip was a bold venture, but it was the post-collegiate experience that made the most sense to her—eventually. Fresh out of Northwestern University's film school in 2003, Cohen wasn't interested in the Hollywood dreams that occupied many of her classmates. Instead, she had opted to spend 12 months teaching English in a town outside Tokyo. She landed the job two weeks before the start date, so it all happened in a flurry. But once she settled in, her spirits soon changed.
"It was probably the best thing I've ever done," says Cohen, who became a sort of cultural ambassador in her neighborhood, leading Christmas carols at the local schools (even when she didn't know the words) and answering endless questions about American customs. She also gained new respect for what it meant to be an outsider: "I learned to appreciate what it's like to always be the different one."
That insight has carried her through years of tireless work in global health promotion. And while she graduates today with both a D.D.S. from the College of Dentistry and an M.P.H. from the NYU Master of Public Health Program, her legacy stretches far beyond the confines of any classroom. From advocacy work with the World Health Organization's World Dental Federation, for which she participated in dis- ease prevention meetings at the U.N. General Assembly, to founding Gambatte—an online cultural photo exchange that will soon sell handmade products by African women—Cohen has been managing and administering oral health care for children and adults from Grenada to Ghana to Guatemala.
So how does one get two advanced degrees while regularly traversing the globe? It helps that Cohen only sleeps about four or five hours a night. And she budgeted that extra waking time with expert skill throughout her years in grad school.
"I've become really good at focusing on mini-goals," she explains. "You have to know what the next priority is, and always be working toward that."
Despite her ability to put things in context, Cohen has been challenged by living in between two very different worlds. Dental school, she notes, is an extremely regimented, structured experi- ence, while the global public health realm is often a grass- roots experience, requiring creative solutions at every turn. Her ability to be effective in both spheres has not gone unnoticed. Among her many honors, Cohen received the New York State Dental Foundation Dean's Award in 2011, the ADEA/Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products Preventative Dentistry Award in 2011, and the NYU President's Service Award in 2009. She was president of the College of Dentistry's Student Council Executive Board from 2009-11, and served two years as chair of the school's Student Ethics Peer Review Board.
After graduation—and maybe a few minutes of rest— Cohen plans to travel in Israel and throughout Africa and South America before start- ing a pediatric residency in a hospital or school. Her goal is to develop more preventa- tive programs since, as she notes, serious dental problems are, mostly, avoidable. In the meantime, she'll also con- tinue working with children in underserved areas. It remains her greatest reward to see how improved oral health can affect the general well being of communities.
"The kids were afraid of us when we first started going to Grenada—they thought we were just there to perform extrac- tions," says Cohen. "Now they come running up to us, smiling, when we arrive."

subset: commoncrawl


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Insane Inflatable 5K
- Bader Field
- 501 N. Albany Avenue, Atlantic City, 08401 United States
Additional Information
Gather your family, friends and co-workers and get ready to experience the most fun, wild and insane obstacle run in the world.
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The Insane Inflatable 5K -- a new dynamic and extreme obstacle race, made up solely of inflatable obstacles -- will challenge you, surprise you, and leave you bouncing back for more! We didn't just throw together a couple slides and bounce houses – we took imagination, creativity, and a collection of notes on bar napkins, and went to the leading manufacturer of custom inflatables. We told them, throw out the rulebook, we want to go extreme and INSANE!
- Bader Field, 600 Albany Avenue, Atlantic City, NJ 08401
- Saturday, August 16th
- First wave starts at 9am!
The Insane Inflatable 5k is powered by:
Cumberland Air


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Seven Reasons Why We Should Not Accept Millions of Years
There is an intensifying controversy in the church all over the world regarding the age of the earth. For the first 18 centuries of church history, the almost universal belief of Christians was that God created the world in six literal days, roughly 4,000 years before Christ, and destroyed the world with a global Flood at the time of Noah.
But about 200 years ago some scientists developed new theories of earth history, which proposed that the earth and universe are millions of years old. Over the past 200 years Christian leaders have made various attempts to fit the millions of years into the Bible. These include the day-age view, gap theory, local flood view, framework hypothesis, theistic evolution, progressive creation, and so on.
A growing number of Christians (now called young-earth creationists), including many scientists, hold to the traditional view, believing it to be the only view that is truly faithful to Scripture and that fits the scientific evidence far better than the reigning old-earth evolutionary theory.
Many Christians say that the age of the earth is an unimportant and divisive side issue that hinders the proclamation of the gospel. But is that really the case? AiG and many other creationist organizations think not.
In this short article (which can be purchased as a booklet to share with others), we want to introduce you to some of the reasons we think that Christians cannot accept the millions of years, without doing great damage to the church and her witness in the world. We hope that it will help you think more carefully about this subject and will motivate you to dig deeper into the excellent resources recommended at the end, which thoroughly defend the points made here.
The Hebrew word for day in Genesis 1 is yôm. In the vast majority of its uses in the Old Testament (OT), it means a literal day; and where it doesn't the context makes this clear. Similarly, the context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days.
First, yôm is defined the first time it is used in the Bible (Genesis 1:4–5) in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle.
Second, yôm is used with "evening" and "morning." Everywhere these two words are used in the OT, either together or separately and with or without yôm in the context, they always mean a literal evening or morning of a literal day.
Third, yôm is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, and so on, which everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days.
Fourth, yôm is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.
That these creation days happened only about 6,000 years ago is clear from the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 (which give very detailed chronological information, unlike the clearly abbreviated genealogy in Matthew 1) and other chronological information in the Bible.
This verse gives the reason for God's command to Israel to work six days and then take a Sabbath rest. Yôm is used in both parts of the commandment. If God meant that the Jews were to work six days because He created over six long periods of time, He could have said that using one of three indefinite Hebrew time words. He chose the only word that means a literal day and the Jews understood it literally (until the idea of million of years developed in the early 19th century). For this reason, the day-age view or framework hypothesis must be rejected. The gap theory or any other attempt to put millions of years before the six days are also false, because God says that in six days He made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So He made everything in those six literal days and nothing before the first day.
The evidence in Genesis 6–9 for a global catastrophic flood is overwhelming. For example, the Flood was intended to destroy not only all sinful people but also all land animals and birds and the surface of the earth, which only a global flood could accomplish. The Ark's purpose was to save two of every kind of land animal and bird to repopulate the earth after the flood. The Ark was totally unnecessary, if the Flood was local. People, animals, and birds could have migrated out of the flood zone before it occurred, or the zone could have been populated from creatures outside the area after the Flood. The catastrophic nature is seen in the nonstop rain for at least 40 days, which would have produced massive erosion, mud slides, hurricanes, and so on. The Hebrew words translated "the fountains of the great deep burst open" (Genesis 7:11) clearly point to tectonic rupturing of the earth's surface in many places for 150 days, resulting in volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Noah's Flood would produce exactly the kind of complex geological record we see today worldwide: thousands of feet of sediments clearly deposited by water and later hardened into rock and containing billions of fossils. If the year-long Flood is responsible for most of the rock layers and fossils, then those rocks and fossils cannot represent the history of the earth over millions of years, as evolutionists claim.
Jesus consistently treated the miracle accounts of the Old Testament as straightforward, truthful, historical accounts (e.g., creation of Adam, Noah and the Flood, Lot and his wife in Sodom, Moses and the manna, and Jonah in the fish). He continually affirmed the authority of Scripture over men's ideas and traditions (Matthew 15:1–9). In Mark 10:6 we have the clearest (but not the only) statement showing that Jesus was a young-earth creationist. He states that Adam and Eve were at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning, as would be the case if the universe was really billions of years old. So, if Jesus was a young-earth creationist, then how can His faithful followers have any other view?
Genesis 1 says six times that God called the creation "good," and when He finished creation on Day Six He called everything "very good." Man and animals and birds were originally vegetarian (Genesis 1:29–30, plants are not "living creatures," as people and animals are, according Scripture). But Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam and Eve died spiritually, and after God's curse they began to die physically. The serpent and Eve were changed physically and the ground itself was cursed (Genesis 3:14–19). The whole creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final redemption of Christians (Rom. 8:19–25) when we will see the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21, Col. 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world, when there will be no more carnivore behavior (Isaiah 11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3–5) because there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3). To accept millions of years of animal death before the creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys the Bible's teaching on death and the full redemptive work of Christ. It also makes God into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses (or can't prevent) disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause, but calls it all "very good."
It was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late 18th and early 19th century. These men used anti-biblical philosophical and religious assumptions to interpret the geological observations in a way that plainly contradicted the biblical account of Creation, the Flood, and the age of the earth. Most church leaders and scholars quickly compromised using the gap theory, day-age view, local flood view, and so on. to try to fit "deep time" into the Bible. But they did not understand the geological arguments, nor did they defend their views by careful Bible study. The "deep time" idea flows out of naturalistic assumptions, not scientific observations.
There are thousands of PhD and MS scientists around the world (and the number keeps growing) who believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old, as the Bible teaches. It is simply false to say that creation scientists do not have reputable degrees, do not do real scientific research and do not publish in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. Visit our creation scientist section to read about a few of them, past and present.
Radiometric dating was not developed until the early 20th century, by which time the whole world had already accepted the millions of years. For many years creation scientists have cited many examples in the published scientific literature of these dating methods clearly giving erroneous dates (e.g., a date of millions of years for lava flows that occurred in the past few hundred years or even decades). In recent years creationists in the "RATE project" have done experimental, theoretical and field research to uncover more such evidence (e.g., diamonds and coal, which the evolutionists say are millions of years old, were dated by carbon-14 to be only thousands of years old) and to show that decay rates were orders of magnitude faster in the past, which shrinks the millions of years dates to thousands of years, confirming the Bible.
These are just some of the reasons why we believe that the Bible is giving us the true history of the creation. God's Word must be the final authority on all matters about which it speaks: not just the moral and spiritual matters, but also its teachings that bear on history, archeology, and science.
What is at stake here is the authority of Scripture, the character of God, the doctrine of death, and the very foundation of the gospel. If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of the Bible is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality. I urge you to examine carefully the resources at the bottom of this article. The health of the church, the effectiveness of her mission to a lost world and the glory of God are at stake.
This article is available in an attractive booklet to share with Christian friends, your pastor, or anyone who is compromised or unsure about the age of the earth and who is not willing (or sufficiently motivated to take the time) to read a book or watch an hour-long DVD that would change their thinking. This booklet could be a stepping-stone to encourage them to study this matter further. Together, let's keep calling Christians—and especially Christian leaders—back to the truth of Genesis.
Recommended Resources
7 Reasons Why We Should Not Accept Millions of Years - 99¢
Radioactive and Radiocarbon Dating - $12.99
Why Won't They Listen? - $11.99
[source: Answers in Genesis]


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Three decades after an accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy in 1976, which resulted in exposure of a residential population to the most dangerous type of dioxin, newborn babies born to mothers living in the contaminated area at the time of the accident are over six times more likely to have altered thyroid function than those born to mothers in a non-contaminated area.
The study finding these results is published by Andrea Baccarelli (of the University of Milan) and colleagues from the United States and Italy.
Dioxins are toxic chemicals that are a byproduct of waste incineration and which persist in the environment and accumulate in people. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) – the dioxin released by the Seveso disaster – is the most toxic type of dioxin and in 1997 was declared a class-1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Animal studies and some studies in people have shown that maternal exposure to dioxins can damage the function of their babies' thyroid gland.
To investigate the continuing effect of TCCD on children born in the Seveso area, Andrea Baccarelli and colleagues investigated three groups of child-bearing women. These included 1,772 women who were living very near the factory in Seveso at the time of the accident (the most contaminated area, Zone A) or the nearby area where contamination was less but still high (Zone B), and the same number of women from the surrounding non-contaminated area (Zone Reference).
Altogether these women had 1,014 babies between 1994 and 2005. The researchers measured the amount of thyroid secreting hormone (TSH) in the blood of these children – a common practice at birth in many countries, because high blood TSH levels are associated with a failing thyroid, which can lead to permanent damage to the baby's developing body and brain.
The results show that one long-lasting effect of the Seveso disaster (and potentially of other areas where there have been high environment levels of dioxins) is a deleterious effect on the health of children in the area born decades after the accident. The babies from Zone A - the area most highly contaminated with TCCD after the accident in 1976 - were 6.6 times more likely to have a high blood TSH level than those from the surrounding area that was not contaminated. Those babies born in Zone B had intermediate TSH blood levels. The researchers also studied 51 pairs of mothers and children for whom dioxin measurements were available at the time of delivery, and found that the blood TSH levels were highest in the babies whose mothers had the highest levels of dioxin in their blood.
As the authors conclude, these findings suggest that maternal exposure to dioxins such as TCCD in the environment produces damaging effects on the thyroid function of their babies "far apart in time from the initial exposure." Further studies on the long-term progress of the children is needed in order to establish whether this results in longer term development problems, such as reduced growth and intellectual development.
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"Call Me Irresistible"
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Avon, $13.99
After Meg Koranda convinces her best friend Lucy Jorik to dump her fiancé Ted Beaudine, everyone in Wynette, Texas, is upset with Meg for breaking up the town's golden couple. Now all Meg wants to do is get the heck out of Wynette, but instead she's stuck there until she can get her car repaired. Phillips' deft pairing of a testosterone rich hero with a spunky heroine not only creates an abundance of sexy chemistry between Ted and Meg, but also an engaging plot with fabulously funny moments.
"The Last Letter from Your Lover"
by JoJo Moyes
Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, $26.95
Waking up in a London hospital after a car accident, Jennifer Stirling can't remember anything. It is only after returning home with her husband that she gradually begins to piece together her old life. It isn't until Jennifer stumbles across a hidden love letter written to her by "B," though, that she realizes not only had she been involved in an affair, but she was willing to risk everything to be with her lover.
Four decades later, journalist Ellie Haworth stumbles across one of the letters written to Jennifer while researching an article. Consumed with reuniting the couple, Jennifer begins searching for "B" - never expecting that in doing so she might find the solution to her own romantic problems. With its realistically complicated characters and emotionally complex plot, "The Last Letter from Your Lover" is hopelessly and hopefully romantic.
"The Lantern"
by Deborah Lawrenson
Harper, $25.99
After meeting and falling in love with Dom in Switzerland, Eve is completely stunned when he later asks her to move into "Les Genevriers," the crumbling farmhouse he purchased in the south of France. As the two of them settle into their new home, Eve finds herself not only becoming obsessed with Dom's past - and in particular, his first wife Rachel - but also the fate of one of "Les Genevrier's" earlier occupants, famous perfumer Marthe Lincel. While "The Lantern's" homage to Du Maurier's "Rebecca" is obvious, Lawrenson effortlessly evokes the sights, sounds, and scents of Provence while at the same time delivering a spellbinding tale of danger, deception, and desire.
"Summer Rental"
by Mary Kay Andrews
St. Martin's Press, $25.99
Ellis Sullivan is looking forward to spending a month with her best friends Dorie and Julia in the Outer Banks of North Carolina until she discovers that Ebbtibe, the home they are renting, doesn't exactly live up to its advance publicity. What is even worse is Ty Bazemore, the annoyingly sexy man living in the apartment over the garage at Ebbtibe turns out to be their new landlord! The bright and breezy plot of "Summer Rental" delivers just the right combination of sexy romance and warm friendship.
"Heiress in Love"
by Christina Brooke
St. Martin's Paperbacks, $7.99
If Lady Jane Roxdale's husband Frederick wasn't already dead, she would kill him herself. The late Baron Roxdale left all of his money to Jane, but he left his estate, Lazenby Hall, and guardianship of his son Luke to the notorious rake Constantine Black. Without Jane's money Constantine has no hope of keeping Lazenby Hall afloat, and Jane is equally determined that she will not be separated from Luke. The solution to their dilemmas is obvious: Constantine must marry Jane. The problem is that neither Jane nor Constantine can stand one another. Brooke puts her own clever twist on the classic marriage of convenience plot, and the result is an elegantly written, subtly nuanced romance.
"Making Waves"
by Tawna Fenske
Sourcebooks Casablanca, $6.99
With her freakishly high IQ and short attention span, Juli Flynn's employment history leaves a little something to be desired, but the advantage to being in-between jobs is that Juli can fulfill her uncle's deathbed wish that his ashes be sprinkled over the edge of a boat near St. Johns. When Juli arrives at the Virgin Islands, she mistakes Alex Bradshaw's boat for her charter boat. By the time everything is sorted out, Juli finds herself at sea with the incredibly sexy Alex and his cut-rate crew of corporate pirates. Fenske's wildly inventive plot and wonderfully quirky characters provide the perfect literary antidote to any romance reader's summer reading doldrums.
by Cherry Adair
Pocket Star, $7.99
Of course, the one-time Acadia Gray indulges in something totally out of character – a one night stand with sexy stranger Zak Stark – and it ends in disaster. Before they even get to the awkward morning after part of their encounter, Acadia finds herself being snatched with Zak from their hotel room in Venezuela by an heavily armed (and quite cranky) group of mercenaries. Now held prisoner deep in the South American jungle, Acadia realizes if she ever wants to get out of this adventure alive, it will mean working closely with Zak. Packed with plenty of unexpected plot twists and lots of sexy passion, Cherry's latest testosterone-rich, adrenaline-driven suspense novel is addictively readable.
"Wicked in Your Arms"
by Sophie Jordan
Avon, $7.99
Crown Prince Sevastian Maksimi of Maldania knows his duty: find a wife and produce an heir. But just because Sevastion is in a rush to get married doesn't mean he would settle for someone like Grier Hadley. Despite her sizeable dowry, Grier knows her common origins severely narrow down the list of men willing to marry her. However, all it takes is one soul-searing kiss and both Sevastian and Grier are soon revising their ideas about their mutual marital compatibility. Jordan's latest novel has all the ingredients of a classic romance: a strong heroine with a sharp sense of wit, a sexy hero, and an entertaining, fanciful plot.
"Lie for Me"
by Karen Young
Howard Books, $14.99
When Lauren Holloway's fiance Tucker Kane stumbles across the body of his ex-wife Margot, almost everyone in Houston assumes Tucker murdered her. Despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, Lauren believes Tucker is innocent until he disappears after asking her to provide him with an alibi. Nine months later, Lauren unexpectedly runs into Tucker, who convinces her that he is trying to clear his name. Lauren agrees to help Tucker, but soon she finds herself caught up in a dangerous game of deceit and murder. Fans of Mary Higgins Clark's brand of subtly chilling suspense will definitely want to give Young's latest well-crafted romantic suspense novel a try.
"In a Treacherous Court"
by Michelle Diener
Gallery Books, $15.00
Flemish artist Susanna Horenbout travels to England at the command of Henry VIII. On her journey across the English Channel, Susanna is the recipient of a murdered man's dangerous secret. Now caught up in a web of deadly intrigue, Susanna finds the only person she can trust is the king's man: John Parker. With its richly detailed historical setting and intrigue-filled plot, "In a Treacherous Court" is simply irresistible.
"Missing Persons"
by Clare O'Donohue
Plume, $15.00
As a freelance television producer of crime shows, Kate Conway is used to interviewing suspects. But Kate isn't used to being a suspect herself. When Kate's husband Frank dies suddenly after dumping her for another woman, Kate becomes the Chicago police's top suspect. Now even as Kate takes on a new work assignment – investigating the disappearance of nursing student Theresa Moretti – she takes on the added duty of trying to find out who really killed her ex-husband. A delightfully entertaining heroine with a sharp sense of humor finds herself entangled into two different mysteries in this promising new series by O'Donohue.
"Wedding Magic"
by Patricia Coughlin
Berkley Sensation, $15.00
Wedding planner Sophie Bennett thought the most difficult obstacle in securing "Ange de la Mer" for her client's wedding was going to be the historic home's cranky owner Owen Winters. As it turns out, Owen is fine with holding a wedding there; it's just the estate's resident ghost, Ivy Halliday, who is less than thrilled with another woman being married in her home. Sophie must find a way to make Ivy's own wedding dreams finally come true, while at the same time convincing Owen to take another chance at romance. Coughlin cleverly leavens her wonderfully imaginative, paranormal-flavored plot with just the right blend of dry wit and sexy romance.


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In 2008 the Stanford economist Eric Hanushek developed a new way to examine the link between a country's GDP and the academic test scores of its children. He found that if one country's scores were only half a standard deviation higher than another's in 1960, its GDP grew a full percentage point faster in every subsequent year through 2000.
Using Hanushek's methods, McKinsey & Company has estimated that if the U.S. had closed the education achievement gap with better-performing nations, GDP in 2010 could have been 8% to 14%—$1.2 trillion to $2.1 trillion—higher. The report's authors called this gap "the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession."
The implications could not be clearer: The United States must recognize that its long-term growth depends on dramatically increasing the quality of its K–12 public education system.
How Bad Is It?
By practically any measure, the quality of public K–12 education in the United States is dismal. Of the high school seniors who in 2009 took the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, fully 74% scored below proficient in mathematics, 62% in reading, and 79% in science. Within those sorry aggregate scores lay the familiar disparities among black and Hispanic Americans, who lag behind their fellow students on the exams by as much as 20 to 30 points. Poor K–12 achievement has a direct impact on success in higher education. Even though U.S. students have been getting into college in ever increasing numbers over the past 20 years, the college graduation rate has not risen. Over the past 30 years, nearly every labor-intensive service industry in the U.S. has seen dramatic increases in productivity, while public education has become roughly half as productive—spending twice the money per student to achieve the same results.
While the U.S. stagnates, other countries are pulling ahead. For instance, in 2009 the latest round of comparative international exams administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math, 17th in reading, and 22nd in science among its 34 member nations. Chinese students took the tests for the first time in 2009 and blew everyone away, ranking first in all three subject areas. More than 50% of China's students scored in the top two levels (out of six) in math, while less than 10% of U.S. students did.
In 1990 the U.S. was first in the world in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Today it is 10th and dropping. Meanwhile, the need for those degrees in the workplace continues to intensify. In the recession year 1973, 28% of jobs in the workplace required a college degree. By 2007 the percentage had grown to 42%. By 2018, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that it will be 45%. Where will these degrees come from?
America's Report Card
Forty years of education research confirms that the quality of a student's teacher is the biggest factor in boosting that student's performance. Good teachers make so great a difference that the lag in black and Hispanic children's test scores disappears when they have teachers who, our years in a row, perform in the top quartile of teachers in their school or district. There are 3.5 million K–12 classroom teachers in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, making them the second largest workforce after retail clerks. They are employed by more than 14,000 separately governed school districts. Needless to say, incremental efforts to improve teacher effectiveness, while important, are complex and slow going.
Even in those places that have gone the furthest, progress has been nowhere near fast enough. New York City is a sobering example. The administration and unions there negotiated a contract that ended seniority preferences and gave principals broader hiring power. Years of investment in building a stronger applicant pool have paid off in some six applicants for every open teaching position. The city has invested tens of millions of dollars in better data systems, calculates the value each teacher contributes to student performance, and grades each school relative to other schools and its own past performance. These and other reforms have resulted in NAEP scores that rose 3% annually in math and reading between 2003 and 2011, even as national rates remained flat. But at that pace it will take more than 40 years for 80% of New York City students to reach math and reading proficiency, let alone the level of excellence that Chinese students are already achieving. For the U.S. to remain competitive, its students must go further faster.
What Can Be Done Now
U.S. public schools have been largely impervious to the productivity gains that other sectors have realized from technology, for two main reasons. First, until recently, they hadn't widely adopted technology: Education ranked dead last, a 2002 Commerce Department study reported, in deployment of technology relative to number of employees. Second, when technology was deployed, it wasn't being used to do anything differently—a problem many industries have long since confronted and resolved.
But a number of entrepreneurs and public school leaders have been experimenting with new technologies and new ways to apply them (which I have been studying for six years at Harvard and now at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that show real promise of delivering the kinds of productivity gains that so many other sectors have achieved. A new generation of sophisticated adaptive courseware and schools that blend the best of teacher- and computer-delivered instruction are making personalized-learning approaches feasible and affordable, not as a replacement for teachers but as a way to give them the tools they need to become dramatically more effective.
Personalized learning is not a new idea, and its value is well established: Research shows that individually tutored students perform two standard deviations higher than (or better than 98% of) their traditionally taught peers. Adaptive software makes personalized learning practical through a combination of data analysis and pattern recognition technology—something like a more sophisticated version of Netflix's recommendation engine—which tailors instruction by offering up different content and exercises depending on how students did on the previous one.
DreamBox Learning delivers math lessons for kindergarten through grade three in this way, allowing students to work alone at their own pace while providing their teacher with a dashboard of granular diagnostic information about what they're mastering, what they're missing, and why. Armed with this knowledge and freed from the demands of large-group instruction, a single teacher can tailor his or her efforts to the individual needs of dozens of students. Students who work with DreamBox and Reasoning Mind, a similar program for grades three through seven, are outperforming their peers on both state and independent assessment tests. And teachers report that they have more time for individualized and small-group instruction and for critical-thinking projects.
What Can Be Done?
What's more, a growing number of free resources are becoming available online, the most prominent of which are the 2,700 short video lessons produced by Khan Academy, which the MIT graduate Sal Khan began to record in 2004 in response to requests for math tutoring from his family. Three million unique users access Khan Academy every month, and teachers in 10 school districts are piloting Khan Academy content in classrooms this year, assigning the video lessons for homework and thereby freeing students to focus on deeper learning in the classroom.
Rocketship Education, which runs five charter schools serving 2,500 students in San Jose, California, takes this approach much further in comprehensive programs that blend such software with teacher-facilitated instruction in both math and reading. Its students, 90% of whom come from low-income backgrounds and start out two or three grades behind their more affluent classmates, are now outperforming those in every elementary school in the area and performing at the same level as students in affluent Palo Alto.
And in New York City, some students and teachers have participated in a similarly comprehensive math program called School of One, in which each student receives a unique daily schedule, called a playlist, based on his or her academic strengths and needs. Students in the same classroom receive substantially different instruction every day, often from several teachers, both in person and online. More than 600 NYC sixth-graders of varying academic achievement in three middle schools attended School of One as their sixth-grade math class for the last two months of the school year in 2010. Results were astounding. Students learned 60% more than their traditionally taught peers, which if annualized would come out to about the equivalent of a year and a half's worth of learning. In other words, they did as well as students taught by the top 2% of teachers. The program has spun out into an independent nonprofit to expand the model around the nation. Other districts are beginning to explore ways to launch similar efforts.Such programs offer promise, but they are just a start. By 2018, if today's college graduation rates hold as steady as they have for decades, the U.S. will be short at least 3 million college-educated workers for the projected 101 million jobs that will require a degree. We must give our teachers and students the breakthrough tools they need so that the next generation of Americans will be better prepared to take advantage of those jobs and contribute to a stronger economy.


text: NavGeneral InfoEmail Print Provider World Health Organization (WHO)Microdata access: Request Geography Lithuania (LTU) Coverage type Country Time period covered 01/2000 - 12/2001 Series or system Multi-country Survey Study on Health and Health System Responsiveness (MCSS) Data type Survey: Cross-sectionalHouseholdInterview Summary The WHO Multi-country Survey Study (MCSS) was carried out in 61 countries from 2000 to 2001. The study was an exercise in developing research instruments for assessing the health of individuals, adult mortality, health system responsiveness, and household health care expenditures. The survey modes, which varied from country to country, included in-person individual interviews, telephone surveys, and mail surveys. Lithuania used the postal survey mode. It had a final sample size of 3,498 adults, for a 70% response rate. Keywords Community health clinics, Dental care, Disability, Education, Employment, Family composition, Family size, Health care access, Health care use, Health facility conditions, Health insurance, Health status, Home care, Hospitals, Income, Outpatient facilities, Pain, Pharmacies, Physical therapy, Telephones, Traditional medicine Citation Contributors World Health Organization (WHO) Biomedical Engineering Institute, Kaunas University of Technology Statistics Lithuania Publisher World Health Organization (WHO) Suggested citation Biomedical Engineering Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Statistics Lithuania, World Health Organization (WHO). Lithuania WHO Multi-country Survey Study on Health and Health System Responsiveness 2000-2001. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization (WHO). GHDx Entry last modified on: Aug 5, 2021


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In Vermont we are proud of our woodlands, our mountains and our waterways. In fact, the mission of our Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is to practice and encourage a high quality of stewardship of Vermont's environment by managing forests for sustainable use and by providing and promoting opportunities for compatible outdoor recreation. This mission echos the concern for the environment expressed by John Muir in the late 1800′s as he explored the vast magnificence of the natural wonders of the US west.
John Muir, a Scottish born American naturalist was an early advocate of the preservation of the American wilderness. His many writings tell of his adventures in nature and especially his love of the Sierra Nevada. An outspoken supporter and active defender of nature preservation, his enthusiasm for nature was boundless.
An early advocate of the idea of national parks, Muir petitioned the US Congress to pass the Nation Park bill which, when passed in 1890, brought about the creation of both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Today the name John Muir graces numerous trails, glaciers, camp-grounds and monuments in national park lands. Founded by Muir, The Sierra Club continues to be one of the most active and important conservation groups today.
If you watched the Ken Burns documentary on the National Parks you will remember the first part focuses on the life of John Muir.
Today in the United States, this Scottish born naturalist is referred to as the "Father of the National Parks". Thank a Scot and go out and enjoy a national park this week. April 21-29 is National Parks Week.


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Anu and Naveen Jain
Anu Jain
Anu is the Founder of the Anu and Naveen Jain Women Safety XPrize and President of the Anu Jain Family Foundation. She is also the Co-Founder of InfoSpace and Lavish Life.
She is Vice President of Community Relations at Viome, a company focused on disrupting healthcare with the goal of making chronic illness elective .
Anu recently launched a $1 million XPrize competition to incentivize innovators to design a technology-based solution that sets a new safety standard for women. The winning technology solution will autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert while transmitting information to a network of community responders, all within 90 seconds and for less than US $40 per device. 85 teams globally have registered to compete.
Anu is on the UC San Diego Health board of Advisors and their Science, Technology and Global initiatives committee. She is also a trustee of the board at the X-Prize Foundation, an organization focused on using exponential technology to solve the grand challenges of humanity. She is also a founding member of the investing circle and advisory council member of the UN Foundation Girl Up Campaign that specifically focuses on empowering adolescent girls in the US and around the world and also focuses on STEM programs. Additionally, Anu is a board member of Bellevue LifeSpring, a local Bellevue organization focused on helping children to foster stability and self-sufficiency and is a member of Women Moving Millions.
Anu holds a BA in business administration and economics from SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, and an MBA from Rutgers University in New Jersey. She grew up in Jerusalem and many different countries as a UN child. Some of her favorite hobbies are arts and music and she loves nature and the outdoors. Anu and her husband have three children who are all entrepreneurs and actively involved in positively impacting the world.
Naveen Jain
Naveen Jain is an entrepreneur and philanthropist driven to solve the world's biggest challenges through innovation. He is a founder of Moon Express, World Innovation Institute, iNome, TalentWise, Intelius, and Infospace. He is a regular contributor to the Forbes, WSJ, INC and Huffington Post.
Moon Express is developing a robotic lunar lander to explore and mine the moon for planetary resources that will be the key to securing humankind's future.
World Innovation Institute fosters innovation and entrepreneurship to create scalable and sustainable solutions for many of the grand challenges such as reinventing education to be engaging & effective, affordable and accessible healthcare.
iNome is the first company to create the Information Genome of humanity. Inome allows you to discover the genomics of how we all fit together and to bring each one of us one step closer to our dreams.
Naveen Jain is a member of the Board of Trustees and Vision Circle at the XPRIZE Foundation where he is focused on finding entrepreneurial solutions to address the global challenges in health, education, poverty, agriculture, and clean water.
Naveen Jain is on the board of Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university with the mission to educate and inspire leaders to address humanity's grand challenges through innovative technologies.
Naveen is an advisor to the UK Longitude Prize and a member of the Explorer club.
Naveen Jain has been awarded many honors for my entrepreneurial successes and leadership skills including "Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year", "Albert Einstein Technology Medal" for pioneers in technology, "Most admired Serial Entrepreneur" by Silicon India and "Top 20 Entrepreneurs" and "Lifetime Achievement Award" for the leadership in the technology industry and support of other entrepreneurs by Red Herring.


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Home | Spaceship Earth | Book Reviews | Buy a Book | Bean and Grain Index | Short Stories | Contact | Mud Blog
By Dan Armstrong
A central premise of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project is the exploration of bean, grain, and edible seed varieties that can be added to those that are already grown in the Willamette Valley. The goal is to increase the diversity of staple crops as a way to add resilience to the regional food system. The edible seed of Chenopodium quinoa is a close fit. Successful garden plots of quinoa have been grown in the valley since the early 1980s, but there have been very few efforts to grow quinoa on more than an eighth-acre. Further research and experimentation with multiple-acre plots is advised before advocating commercial production and processing.
The International Year of Quinoa: As part of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization's Year of Quinoa, Kevin Murphy and Washington State University hosted the 2013 International Quinoa Research Symposium, August 12 through 14 in Pullman, Washington. The event brought together some two hundred researchers and growers from all over the world, including France, Egypt, Australia, Denmark, Argentina, Bolivia, Pakistan, Malawi, Chile, Canada, England, Nepal, Rwanda, Morocco, Ethiopia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Senegal, Peru, Italy, Cameroon, Germany, China, and fifteen states from all corners of the United States.
Other partners in the symposium were Brigham Young University, Oregon State University, Utah State University, Seed Matters, the USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, and Earthbound Farm.
Why Quinoa?: Tania Santivañez, Technical Coordinator of the FAO's International Year of Quinoa, was the first of sixteen speakers at the three-day symposium. In her opening address, she stated that the purpose of the Year of Quinoa is "to focus world attention on the potential role of quinoa biodiversity in food security, nutrition, and poverty eradication." Calling quinoa a "climate-proof cropping system," Santivañez accented quinoa's high nutritional value and its remarkable ability to adapt to a wide range of growing conditions. In the simplest terms, the FAO has dedicated 2013 to the promotion of quinoa as an important addition to the global community's effort to combat hunger. In a world with nearly one billion people suffering from malnutrition, the words of Hassan Munir, a symposium speaker from the University of Faisalabad in Pakistan, ring true during these fragile times: "Food insecurity anywhere threatens peace everywhere."
Adaptability: Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is a self-pollinating annual allotetraploid, native to the Andean region of South America. It produces an ancient and sacred grain (edible seed), now increasingly eaten in the United States and Europe. Quinoa can be grown in marginal soils, including soils with high saline content, and has only modest water needs. It can be grown in arid regions and wet regions, at altitudes over 12,000 feet and at sea level, and in hot climates and cold climates. Quinoa is a hearty and resilience plant that when grown out of the Andean region has shown an incredible capacity to acclimate to new conditions.
Nutrition: Quinoa has a high protein content (14-22% with as much as 10% soluble proteins) and includes all nine essential amino acids–isoleucine, leucine, lysine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, cysteine, methionine, threonine, histidine, tryptophan and valine–plus nonessentials tyrosine and cysteine. It also contains several important minerals–zinc, iron, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, and manganese–and is rich in chlorophyll and anti-oxidant flavonoids.
Economic Value: The quinoa seed can be cooked as a whole grain, milled into flour, flaked for a cereal or soup additive, and can even be fermented to make a traditional Andean beer called chicha. The quinoa leaves can be used as greens for salads or as forage for llama, goats, cattle, and rabbits. It has economic value as a source for organic red dye and for saponin, a strong alkaline that can be used in soaps. Chenopodium quinoa is also very colorful and distinctive and makes a lovely decorative plant.
Quinoa has been referred to as a super-food. This is surely an overstatement, however, it is a valuable plant and could answer many of the developing and developed world's needs.
Climate Change: As stated by nearly every speaker at the symposium, the most obvious reason for introducing quinoa to the world is food security. Concern for growing populations in developing countries has increased the need to provide these nations with hearty, nutrient dense crops that can be cultivated in varied climes. Many of these nations suffer from lack of rainfall and/or poor soils–often highly salinated soils. While it is the hope of researchers and the United Nations that quinoa can help combat hunger, the topic of climate change is related to these concerns and provided a strong undercurrent to the symposium conversation.
If the first level of food security is the immediate need of feeding the hungry, the second level of food security addresses anticipating the effects of climate change on world food production. Water shortages and climate variability, issues associated with a warming planet, have already become problematic in many parts of the world, including Australia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malawi, Chile, and Argentina–all countries that had representatives at the symposium. But there is also reason for concern in parts of the world that have not yet felt the full impact of catastrophic weather events, extended drought, or long term soil moisture decreases. Quinoa offers the kind of adaptability and resiliency necessary in an era of uncertain biosphere changes. This was surely no less than a solid second reason for the FAO's Year of Quinoa.
Ownership of the Seed: While the atmosphere of the symposium and nature of the discussion verged on the celebratory, the issue of seed ownership and the transfer and collection of germplasm for research was a topic of contention. The discussion focused on the guidelines for germplasm exchange and the need to create open, global germplasm accessibility. Several researchers voiced frustration regarding their own efforts to get germplasm for their labs and research projects.
This touches on a very fundamental question for these times: Who owns the seed? In the United States, the issue centers around the genetic modification of seed and the patenting of genetically modified organisms. Buyers of genetically modified seed, like Roundup Ready soybeans or Bt corn, are restricted from replanting from its harvest. They must buy a new supply of seed for each planting. Seed produced in university research labs can also come with royalty fees for replanting in the following seasons. In both case, the buyer and user of the seed does not have full ownership of the seed. After twenty-five thousand years of farmers planting and saving their seed, suddenly we have the patenting of life forms and royalty payments on something that has always belonged to the sower.
A related concern arose in the symposium regarding the return on seed research and breeding. Five native Bolivian farmers (photo below left) attended the symposium. They were selected from several hundred Bolivian farmers to represent native Bolivian quinoa producers at the conference. During the discussion of the guidelines for the transfer of germplasm between seed banks and research facilities, one of the Bolivian farmers, Willie Choque, spoke out addressing a variation on the problem.
The quinoa farmers of the Andean region have been breeding and adapting quinoa for millenniums, beginning in the area around Lake Titicaca on the border between Bolivia and Peru. The question posed by the Bolivian farmer was–if the world is now ready to adopt quinoa as a commercial crop, how will the original breeders and their families be reimbursed for their generations of work?
As it stands now, there is no reimbursement for the Andean quinoa farmer. Many would say that it is naive for these farmers to even consider this possibility. However, the parallel to the current research labs is impossible to deny. If a modern lab can produce a seed–through genetic engineering or mutagensis selection or any other breeding technique–and then ask for royalties or a patent on that seed, how is that different than the Bolivian farmers' or really any seed breeder's situation? It may be that the lab or individual researcher did his or her work in five years or maybe ten years, and was supported by large sums of research dollars, a huge, vastly sophisticated technological infrastructure, and strong teams of well-paid lawyers, but who can honestly say that the time and cost of the millennial tradition is not of an equal or even greater value? It is breeding. It is hands-on research and selection. It is essentially the same–if not better because of it's close and generational connection to the environment. If modern researchers get ownership of or royalties from their seed, then clearly so should the Bolivian farmer. However the deeper question argues against both: Who owns the seed? Is it the traditional breeder? The organic breeder? The research lab? Agri-business? Or is it simply that the seed belongs to the grower–to sell, eat, give away, or replant. In a world fighting food insecurity, in a world adapting to a changing climate, restricting ownership of the seed from the sower is simply capitalizing on what has always been a gift from the planet to all peoples of all times.
See article at GoodFood World "Quinoa: The Passion and the Politics" for more on this issue.
Kevin Murphy: Kevin Murphy was the man behind the symposium. He is an assistant research professor in WSU's Crop and Soil Science Department. He has led the quinoa program at WSU since 2010 when he received a grant form the USDA's Organic Research and Extension Initiative. During its four years of existence, the program has looked at more than 800 breeding lines and 25 known varieties, and now engages the work of eight faculty members and twelve graduates students to explore quinoa as a commerical crop for Northwest farmers.
Murphy oversees several quinoa test plots in the Pullman area and many others in the northwest region, including one outside Junction City at the Hunton Family Farm in the south Willamette Valley. Field trips were taken to two of the program's test plots. One was cultivated at a WSU research facility by one of Murphy's graduate students, Hannah Walters. The second was at the privately-owned Clark Farm in Albion, Washington. A third visit was initially planned, but deer crashed the party. This is something to note. Deer will eat the quinoa plant.
Walters used several irrigation schedules as part of her test plot study. The photo below left shows the irrigation gradient–foreground less, background more. It was very clear irrigation increases plant size and yield. Irrigation at planting to simulate germination and at flowering to facilitate seed setting is recommended when water resources are dear.
Concerns were advanced about heat pressure on quinoa planted in eastern Washington. Temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, common in many areas during the Northwest summer, can affect pollen viability. The Clark Farm plots showed decreased seed production likely due to high summer temperatures. Lygus bugs were also a problem at this plot and will be in other parts of the Northwest.
Many thanks to Kevin Murphy for his work with Chenopodium quinoa and for hosting the Year of Quinoa Symposium.
Quinoa Potential in Willamette Valley: Growing quinoa has received a recent surge in interest in the Willamette Valley. One reason for this is the increasing demand in the United States for gluten-free grains. This is especially true in the Northwest where quinoa is a popular side dish. Local organic quinoa could certainly carve out a market niche in western Oregon and western Washington if production and processing could be established.
A second reason for the Northwest's interest in quinoa matches the FAO's–food security through crop diversification. While food security in Oregon is clearly not the issue it is in many of the developing nations, in the wider sense of the relocalization process promoted by the Bean and Grain Project and concerns for food security in the years to come, there is a good argument for exploring quinoa production. Along with its nutritional value and adaptive resilience, quinoa would make an important addition to the diversity of staple crops grown in the Willamette Valley as a premium-priced crop for small growers. It could also provide homestead farmers with an additional protein source with low water demands that can grow in marginal soils and serve as forage.
Quinoa has been grown in small plots and gardens for at least thirty years in the Willamette Valley, though mostly as a curiosity. Frank Morton, the world class seed breeder at Gathering Together Farm in Philomath, Oregon, first planted quinoa in 1983 and was arguably the first to experiment seriously with quinoa breeding in the Willamette Valley. Currently he has five quinoa varieties listed in his 2013 Wild Garden Seed Catalogue and will likely have more in the future. Though certain micro-climates, particularly the foothills on the west side of the valley, are better suited for quinoa, Morton, one of the speakers at the symposium ( see video of Morton's talk), told the audience that he has been working on varieties suited for the Willamette Valley floor. (Kevin Murphy's quinoa program has used Morton as a seed source for several of the WSU plots.)
Harry MacCormack (pictured above) of Sunbow Farm, in conjunction with his friend Mark Stewart, has been growing quinoa in small plots for at least fifteen years. MacCormack, of course, has included quinoa in the bean and grain conversation from the beginning. He has successfully grown quinoa on the valley floor with fairly consistent results and reasonable yields despite the fact that temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit are common after mid-July in the Willamette Valley. (Photo above right is Murphy's test plot in Junction, City, Oregon.)
It is fair to say that quinoa has been grown long enough in the Willamette Valley to verify that quality quinoa seed can be produced in the valley on small, well-managed plots. Expanding this to larger acreages for commercial production, however, has not been thoroughly explored. (A six-acre plot and a four-acre plot of quinoa were grown in 2013 outside Salem as part of the Marion-Polk Food Share project. The final results of this effort have not yet been evaluated.) The experience of small-plot quinoa growers in the valley does provide some guidelines, concerns, and expectations for larger-scale, local quinoa production.
1. Quinoa has a very long life cycle, varying from 120 to 220 days from planting to harvest. The short Willamette Valley growing season is a concern. Even with a shorter life-cycle variety, planting in early April would be optimal. Harvest prior to September 1 is desired. September moisture concerns could bring about seed sprouting in maturing quinoa seed heads.
2. There is data suggesting that quinoa pollination can be affected by heat pressure. Temperatures over 95 degree Fahrenheit can seriously affect yield. (This may be something that years of adaptation can overcome.)
3. Cucumber beetles, which are numerous in the valley, are a problem, particularly in the first month of the Chenopodium quinoa's life. The plant is very small in its first weeks and many young seedlings can be wiped out by one hungry cucumber beetle.
4. Lygus bugs are a major concern. Lygus bugs are plentiful in the valley because of our cultivation of grasses. There have been several instances of lygus bug infestation in plots in the valley–including one of the large plots in Salem and Kevin Murphy's test plot in Junction City. This would be a real problem for organic growers as the lygus bug can cut yield radically if not controlled. (Organic control of lygus bugs could be minimized by smart crop rotations, careful selection of planting locations–not too near areas of large scale grass production–and other standard or invented organic techniques.)
5. Another insect concern are the synphylans common in the Willamette Valley soil. These tiny centipedes are notorious for stunting plant growth by attacking root hairs. Synphylans are a problem for many plants and would need to be considered for quinoa just as they would for several other crops. Crop rotation, particularly one including potatoes, and heavy tilling can help.
6. Aphids are a similar problem, but not as nasty as the lygus bug.
7. Lamb's quarter (Chenopodium album), a very prolific weed in the valley, looks identical to quinoa in the first six weeks of growth. Even a trained eye must look closely to determine the difference. Differentiation becomes easier as the plant developments. Quinoa's red stem, panicle shape, and height vary clearly with the shorter, skinnier lamb's quarter. The similar appearance of these two plants makes weeding incredibly difficult and is a major issue. There is also concern for lamb's quarters and quinoa crossing, as they are both from the Chenopodium genus.
8. Quinoa is susceptible to snowy mildew, something we do see frequently in the Willamette Valley.
9. Yields for quinoa can reach four thousand pounds per acre by experienced growers in South America. Growers in the United States generally do not achieved this level of production. More common are yields in the 600 to 1500 pounds per acre range and would seem a fair expectation for local growers.
10. Harvesting the quinoa is easy enough by hand on a small plot, but there is currently no local equipment that would easily translate to large scale quinoa harvesting.
11. Quinoa needs special processing. The seed is coated with saponin –a strong alkaline that prevents birds from eating it– and must be removed before consumption. There are plenty of ways to remove the saponin, but at a large scale it would involve a significant capital investment. (See more on this below.)
Almost all of these issues are also relevant for the garden plot or homestead producer, but they are more easily managed when the plot is small and detailed care is possible. This said, essential to quinoa production in the valley would be careful variety selection and managed adaptation.
Planting: Quinoa's long life cycle demands planting as early as the weather allows. The beginning of April is suggested and certainly no later than May 15 if the seed head is to be harvested by the first week in September. Seeds are generally planted four to six inches apart or at a rate of four to six pounds per acre. Denser planting can help with weeds and shorten plants, reducing concerns for lodging. The quinoa plant tends, depending on variety, to fill open space with branches. Sulfur (as gypsum) has been found to be a valuable micro-nutrient for quinoa.
Processing: Quinoa processing requires more than simple seed cleaning. The seed has a peel and a saponin covering that must be removed before eating. The process can be done in a variety of ways from traditional to large-scale commerical.
Bioversity International describes the five-step traditional process (see quoted material below) in their publication "Biodiversity of Andean Grains: Balancing Market Potential and Sustainable Livelihoods." Traditionally this work is done by women and involves the following steps:
"1. Toasting the grain on metallic sheets placed over the fire. Depending on how the quinoa will be prepared, this step takes 38 minutes.
2. While the grain is still hot, it is placed in a bowl-like stone called a saruna (quechua) or tiwiraña (aymara), and women tread on the grain, adding whiteclay (pok'era) to improve friction between the grains and enhance flavour.
3. Manual winnowing or removal of saponin dust (el venteado).
4. A second treading of the grain (for some dishes) and a second winnowing.
5. Washing and drying the grain.
The hardest and most time-consuming steps in this process are the treading and winnowing. It takes about 6 hours to process 12 kg of quinoa."
There are large, commercial quinoa processing plants in Bolivia and other quinoa producing countries. The growers bring the quinoa to the plant where it is cleaned, polished, and washed several times to produce a consumer ready product. This scale of processing involves approximately a two million dollar infrastructure investment.
Quinoa is grown and processed at a mid-level scale at the White Mountain Farm in Mosca, Colorado where they have been growing quinoa at production levels since the early 1980s. (White Mountain Farm was represented at the symposium by John McCamant and Paul New. (See video of their talk.) Their processing begins with cleaning the seed with screens and a gravity table. It is then put through a barley dehuller, followed by a run through a rice polisher. Water is not used in this process. White Mountain Farm recommends washing their organic quinoa once before cooking.
Mid to small scale equipment is available out of South America. Quality dehulling (called peeling) and saponin removing machines can be purchased for a cost of $5,000 to $6,000 each. (See flier.)
For the garden or homestead producer, it is possible to clean quinoa with homemade apparatus. The critical piece is a barrel lined with fine sandpaper. The seed is first cleaned with screens and winnowed. (In his seed catalogue Frank Morton suggests 1/8" and 1/16" hardwire screen.) The seed is then placed in the sandpaper-lined barrel (even a Quaker Oats box would work for small quantities) and the barrel is spun, causing the seed to be rubbed against the sandpaper, removing the saponin. The dust is then winnowed from the seed. In one instance, an Australian producer used compressed air, driven into the barrel through a manifold, to spin the quinoa inside a sandpaper-lined barrel. One end of the barrel was sealed, the other end was covered by a very fine (less that 1/16") screen. The same air-flow that moves the seed blows the saponin out through the screen while the seed remains in the barrel. A rinsing and drying would complete the process. It should be noted that this is a very crude process. When done properly, only the saponin is polished off and the seed itself remains intact. This calls for very fine adjustment–something that can be achieved by a rice polisher or a similar device.
Future of Quinoa in Willamette Valley: The future of quinoa or other ancient grains in the Willamette Valley will depend on the consumer. Grains like emmer or amaranth can be grown here, but they are small niche crops and will need farmers with special interest in these grains to produce them. Hummingbird Wholesale in Eugene has shown interest in diverse and ancient grains, but the demand is modest. Growing these grains is a good thing for diversity and for the education of the eating public, but the commercial value has yet to be proven.
Quinoa is a little different. The demand for local organic quinoa already exists in the Northwest. As said above, quinoa production today in the Willamette Valley is very viable on the small scale, on the larger scale it is in the early experimental stages. The concerns for large-scale production are listed above. Most of these issues can be overcome, but growing quinoa consistently as a commercial crop will demand close scrutiny of variety and a dedicated farmer. Trial and error will certainly be part of the process. With yield potentials well over two thousand pounds per acre and the cleaned product selling at around $3.00 a pound (perhaps higher for local organic), there is some impetus to make this work.
Quinoa processing does not exist in the valley right now. Getting that infrastructure in place can be done with minimum capital for small-scale production, but on a larger scale more money is necessary. Before any capital is invested in infrastructure, it will first be necessary to verify that there are growers who can commit to the experiment and a steep learning curve.
In the end, quinoa will test the farmer like any crop new to the valley. We have already seen a niche created for local hard red wheat, lentils, heirloom beans, and garbanzo beans. In all of those instances, it took determined growers to make them work.
Special thanks is extended to The Willamette Farm and Food Coalition and The Ten Rivers Food Web and Hummingbird Wholesale for their continued support of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project.
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Opus Mechan has been an industry leader in this type of pen! Utilizing authentic dials and watch parts, we painstakingly bend all the parts prior to putting them on the carbon fiber based barrel. All of this is done in house and by hand with our own proprietary process to ensure the highest quality. Every writing instrument is one of a kind and 100% handmade!
We proudly use EasyFlow 9000 ink cartridges in this type of pen.
This particular pen features an authentic Rolex dial in the barrel! The process in which we use to perfectly bend these dials without damaging them is one we have perfected over many years in development.
We pride ourselves on using only authentic watch parts for our Chrono Collection pens. We are NOT authorized dealers or representatives of the brand you see displayed on this pen! We do guarantee the authenticity of the watch dial and parts used in making this pen.
- Length: 5-1/8″
- Diameter: 9/16″
- Weight: 47 gm
100% Satisfaction guaranteed or you money back!


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The new training solution by Technogym, launched at the Olympic games in Rio, adds another award to its Palmares
TECHNOGYM SKILLMILL, has been awarded with the German prestigious design prize: "2017 iF Design Award".
Since 1953, each year the iF International Forum Design GmbH organizes one of the world's most celebrated and valued design competitions: the iF DESIGN AWARD. Recognized as a symbol of design excellence around the world, the iF DESIGN AWARD welcomes over 5,500 submissions from 60 countries every year.
The IF award international jury selected SKILLMILL, the perfect solution to train, feel and perform like an athlete. SKILLMILL defines a completely new product category: the only non-motorized product that combines power, speed, stamina and agility training.
SKILLMILL is the ideal training solution for sports professionals and for those every day athletes who are dedicated to their fitness and improving their sporting performance; it allows users to experience the full speed-resistance spectrum by offering the possibility to switch from resistance-free running to an all-out sled push.
As Official Supplier to 6 Olympic Games, including Rio 2016, and partner to some of the world's best performing teams and athletes, Technogym has first-hand experience in the training methods and requirements of thousands of worldwide sports champions in over 100 disciplines. This experience is fundamental to Athletic Performance Training, Technogym's complete training methodology which was created with the Wellness brand's Olympic heritage at its heart.
This completely new and highly effective training discipline, epitomised by SKILLMILL, has been designed to improve the performance of everyday athletes and gym-goers by allowing them to:
Expand Work Capacity – to achieve the most effective results and benefits for the main physical skills of Power, Speed, Stamina and Agility, this principle focuses on using SKILLMILL for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
- Enhance Abilities – this new training discipline also improves the body's ability to carry out complex and difficult movements that require neuromuscular coordination, from basic gradual progression, to advanced fundamental movements.
- Ensure Full Safety – preventing injury and avoiding health risks through poor posture, incorrect form and wrong movements is a critical aspect of the Athletic Performance Training methodology and is embraced by SKILLMILL's ergonomic design. The on-board console also displays vital health statistics.
SKILLMILL is capable of training all the body's energy systems in a single solution, from sprinting to power development, for efficient metabolic conditioning and it is fully integrated within mywellness, the Technogym cloud based training platform. The solution includes a variety of training programs and tools to offer users training guidance, to monitor and track their results. Users can access training programs by scanning Skillmill QR code or by downloading the mywellness app, can monitor training parameters in real time from the on-board console. Alongside the possibility to follow the programs specifically designed, SKILLMILL is ideal for athletic training inspired classes or small group sessions.


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Essential Journal, Black Polka Dot
The Essential Journal is a slim clothbound book finished with an elastic closure, ideal for notes, memories and lists that you want to keep close.
Add a monogram to make it personal.
Personalized products ship separately from our production studio.
Shipping + Returns
Sugar Paper orders are processed and shipped within an estimated 3 business days. Please note that we do not ship on Saturdays, Sundays, or U.S. holidays.
Personalized items do ship separately from our studio and you will be updated with separate tracking information when they ship.
Please allow additional time for order processing during holidays, new product launches and sales.


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Pain Relief Beyond Belief
51 members2 Comments 5 Likes
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Posted on February 26, 2019 at 1:34am 2 Comments 3 Likes
Posted on April 26, 2016 at 3:34am 0 Comments 0 Likes
Ken Foley found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsHa6Xve1Lo
and further described here : http://www.allmusic.com/album/max-roach-and-the-turrentine-brothers-mw0001147385
composition by 'Junior Spencer/Tommy Turrentine'. 'Junior Spencer' is J.Spencer Bey…
Posted on July 17, 2010 at 1:01am 4 Comments 0 Likes
Posted on April 24, 2010 at 4:59pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
Posted on April 24, 2010 at 4:52pm 1 Comment 0 Likes
Thanks Dan,
Hope we will still be there next month. Check out the Jazz Network
every week. Last night was very good.
See you when you can.
Thanks Dan. It's a beautiful place and rich with real musicians and good people. I think I'm going to like it here just fine!
Dan if you can't come to Elizabeth I understand it is your father's day too! You maybe gigging also, and I am between jobs. Take it easy bro, I have some charts I want to get a keyboard player with. Just tunes by known artists that I like and nobody does. Maybe Donna Davis when I catch up to her.- kev
Hey Dan I'm doing a 5-7pm set at the Elizabeth Elks Fathers Day. I hope to be starting a new job in the Mon Valley area also, then I can run into town and sit in again LOL.- Whatcha doin on daddys day> Let me know- kev
Gotta work also and get my truck squared away! I need to talk to you about the school possibly performing an 8piece thing I have.- kev
What is your address? I may come down to little E's and I would love to see Carolyn perform live friday night but I get off 7:30pm and could leave work. I'm off the weekend, do they still have that caberet in Homewood? Hit me up - kev
Hey Dan I will be at the Thunderbird sat hopefully 3-7:30 helping Kevin Amos out with his food drive.Still thinkin about moving closer to the city , I am presently at 155 Polk St in Elizabeth and is very convenient and secluded so we can make some noise. About 4 miles from Century III, just go to get the house in order and it aint happing fast enough!- kev


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LA JOLLA, CA — Controversial new rules aim to transform golf into a real sport
Tiger Woods unveiled his retooled swing at last weekend's Farmer's Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, but it wasn't enough to improve his game or the ratings of professional golf on television. On the verge of negotiating new contracts with broadcast networks, PGA Tour officials have persuaded the USGA to put new rules on the fast track in the hopes of making golf more watchable.
PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, said the changes give golf a testosterone boost, adding the speed of NBA basketball and the aggression of NFL football. To position the improved game in the same class as these elite sports, its name will be upgraded to "Golfball."
The rules will go into effect April 7 at the Master's Tournament—now dubbed, "The Ultimate Master's Tournament"—at Augusta National Golf Club. Officials at CBS, who will broadcast the tournament, were ecstatic at the news. Recent data by Neilsen Media Research indicates that nearly 69% of viewers fall asleep during golf telecasts. It's an open secret within the professional golf community that even the players have difficulty staying awake during matches.
So what does the new Golfball game look like? As in current pro tournaments, golfers will play in groups of three. But under the new rules, all three will tee-off in unison at the firing of the starter's pistol. After two minutes, the next threesome will be released. The winner of a round will be the golfer with the lowest total combination of time and strokes.
To make the game even more challenging, players will be able to move an opponent's ball. "This is key to the new look of the game," said Gene Mybeck who officiated a secret exhibition match last December at TPC Scottsdale. "At the tee-off, Tiger had the longest drive, then on the way to his ball, he ran a slant route to scoop up Phil Mickelson's ball and threw it into the rough—it was awesome."
While golfers will need to get in shape to withstand the rigors of the new game, less athletic pros will be able to compete thanks to the new rule that allows a caddy to defend their golfers' balls. Said Mybeck, "By the fourth hole, golfers were figuring out their strategy. That's when Phil called for his caddy to race ahead and throw a cross-body block on Tiger. From then on, they had their chemistry right, and Phil was able to make up time and win the match."
Purists and senior golfers are up in arms over the new rules that will extend to amateurs at all public and private courses in 2012. But as an unnamed USGA spokesman said, "Golfers who can't hack the new rules should consider bowling or croquet. Face it, golf is gone. Golfball is here, and it's going to be huge."


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How-to: Animated Icons
Jealous of all those fancy moving icons on TeenTalk? Don't worry, here's a super easy tutorial that you can follow.
What you'll need: At least 2 images that you can animate, Photoshop, and ajust a few minutes.
Ask help from your graphic design-savvy friends if you've never used Photoshop before. Send us a link to your profile once you've uploaded a snazzy animated avatar!
DIY: Make Your Own Lightbox
Love taking photos of your shopping finds? Here's a trick in getting the magazine-worthy product shots—make your own lightbox!
What you'll need: illustration boards, cutter (please be careful when handling sharp objects!), ruler, pencil, tracing paper, scotch tape, thick masking tape, 2 desk lamps (when you're ready to shoot), and cartolina (or pretty paper for your background.
DIY: Laced Up Shirt
Got old tees that you want to breathe new life into? Follow this tutorial to get pretty laced up shirts in your closet!
What you'll need: old tees, scissors, and lace
Gather your friends and turn it into a group effort! Make teams of three and conceptualize a design together. It'll make the project even more fun to do! Then, you can have a mini fashion show wearing the shirts after!
DIY: Zipped Up Shoes
Looking for a funky new pair of shoes but don't have enough moolah to shell out for one? Don't fret! Here's an easy trick you can do to jazz up your kicks.
What you'll need: skimmers or sneakers, zippers, acrylic paint, brush, scissors, and fabric glue
You can also use lace trimmings or printed cloth to add your own touch to the design. If you don't have zippers, go crazy with the acrylic paint and paint your own pattern on your shoes. You'll have a super unique pair that no one else in the world has!
DIY: Cool Cuffs
Feeling like a rockstar? Get your glam on tonight at the Adam Lambert concert with this cuff.
What you'll need: trimming/ribbons, velcro, glue gun
You can even use an old shirt that you've never worn since grade school but can't bear to throw out because you love the print so much.
Click on to the next page for Halloween DIY tutorials you can try!


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8 Lessons Learned Help Things That A Mother Thinks They Should Rather Not Think About
One of the hardest tasks that a lady can accomplish in their life is being a mother as there are too many things that one has to think about. Of course there are the normal things which worry every parent such as kids to invite to your child's slumber party and also the matters that will affect the health of your child. Apart from the normal issues that a parent has to worry about there are other thoughts that moms tend to resist. Though tempting, one should never ignore the aspects of motherhood as they shape your child's life and there are several things most moms tend to ignore. 8 Lessons Learned Help
There are any moms who overlook the fact that they need to punish their kids when they behave inappropriately, but it is one the things that will shape your child's life. It is thus advisable to reprimand your kids when they misbehave and also set boundaries for them. Most parents will struggle on how to be stern, but one can take a more positive approach by telling their children what they expect instead of telling the children what they should not be doing. One can also cultivate good behaviors by rewarding their kids when they match the set expectations. 8 Lessons Learned Help
There is no single parent who would think of the idea of having a child with obesity and thus every mom has a task of cultivating good eating habits to their kids and also ensuring that their kids exercise. While obesity is only viewed as a problem to the adults, most of them will have carried the poor feeding habits all along from their childhood only to affect them later in life. It is advisable that a mom sets a plan that will appeal their family but one needs to be careful to ensure that the plans are healthy.
Every parent wants to live in a home that is not only healthy but also free from any pests which endanger the whole family. Of course a mom may lack the tools, the skills, and the experience to help control pests in their homesteads but one should never worry as there are pest control professionals who will help you control pests such as the Go-Forth pest control of Winston Salem. The pest control experts will help one to deal with all kinds of pests including termites, rice, mice and rats, cockroaches, mosquitos and spiders. When you contact the Go-Forth pest control experts they will help you eliminate the pests through the use of non-toxic chemicals. 8 Lessons Learned Help
A good mom is one who plans the future of their child. One should put measures in place that will ensure that the kid grows up such as saving in advance of the child's college needs. 8 Lessons Learned Help


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A School of Prayer: The Saints Show Us How to Pray
A School of Prayer: The Saints Show Us How to Pray
Pope Benedict XVI
Prayer is essential to the life of faith. In this superb book, based on Pope Benedict's weekly teaching, he examines the foundational principles of the life of prayer. Believers of various backgrounds and experience in prayer--from beginners to spiritually advanced--will be enriched by this spiritual masterpiece. Benedict begins considering what we can learn from the examples of prayer found in a wide range of cultures and eras. Next, he turns to the Bible's teaching about prayer, beginning with Abraham and moving though Moses, the prophets, the Psalms to the example of Jesus. With Jesus Christ, Pope Benedict considers not only the Lord's teaching about prayer, but also his example of how to pray, including the Our Father, his prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, and prayers on the Cross. The prayers of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the early Church are also explored. Benedict also draws on insights from spiritual masters, the saints, and the Church's liturgy. He challenges readers to live their relationships with God even more intensely, as it were, at a 'school of prayer'. Although Benedict provides a sweeping survey of great figures of prayer, his discussion centers on Jesus Christ and even invokes him in the study of prayer. It is in fact in Jesus, writes Benedict, that man becomes able to approach God in the depth and intimacy of the relationship of fatherhood and sonship. Together with the first disciples, let us now turn with humble trust to the Teacher and ask him: 'Lord, teach us to pray' (Lk 11:1).
Hardcover 284 Pages
Current supply chain challenges may cause a delay in actual availability. Furthermore, current supply chain challenges, including driver shortages are causing a delay in transit time. Please allow extra time for delivery of your order.


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1st same-sex couples wed at Empire State Building
Feb 14, 2012, 8:41 PM
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) – Two women who met as college students in Alaska and two men who met at a nightclub in Manhattan became the first same-sex couples Tuesday to be married at the Empire State Building.
"I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you," Stephanie Figarelle told Lela McArthur as they exchanged rings in a ceremony at the iconic skyscraper.
"I will always love you forever, with every beat of my heart," said McArthur, who is taking her partner's name.
Figarelle and McArthur were among four couples who won an online contest for a Valentine's Day wedding at the Empire State Building designed by event planner Colin Cowie.
After the ceremonies in a 61st-floor area that is rented out for parties, the couples posed for photos on the 86th-floor observation deck.
Figarelle, 29, and McArthur, 24, met in an anatomy class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Celia Milton, the interfaith minister who married them, said that Figarelle invited McArthur out to see a drag show and McArthur thought she meant a drag race.
"Needless to say she was quite surprised," Milton said.
The two work as personal trainers in Anchorage and are finishing their degrees.
Figarelle was married in a black tuxedo while McArthur wore a strapless white gown with a train.
Figarelle said she hopes the couple's home state of Alaska will legalize same-sex marriage, which became legal in New York last year.
"Equality's a beautiful thing," she said. "Love is a beautiful thing. We don't have enough of it in this world."
New Yorkers Phil Fung and Shawn Klein walked up the aisle to the strains of the Michael Bolton song "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You." The men wore matching brown suits and checkered ties.
They met 18 years ago at the Roxy, a popular nightclub that has since closed.
"You can find true love on the dance floor. It can happen," said Klein, 51, who works in procurement at New York Presbyterian Hospital while Fung, 49, works in the technology department of a financial firm.
The decor for the women's nuptials was "winter wonderland," said Cowie, the host of a wedding planning show on Lifetime TV. The flowers were white, and crystals dripped from a white tree.
The men were married under a jungle-inspired arbor draped with banana leaves and tangerine-colored flowers.
The other two couples were heterosexual: Angela Vega and Lubin Masibay of San Francisco and Paula Cubero and Enrique Catter of Greenwich, Conn.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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- This event has passed.
Practice ACT – Gates [CANCELLED]
July 26, 2018 @ 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Take a official, full length test at the Gates Public Library under proctored conditions, and find out your score as soon as you are done! Participation is free, but you MUST register at least one week in advance by calling (585) 247-6446.
All tests begin promptly at scheduled times. Students should bring pencils, snacks, watches, and calculators. We always administer the full-length test from the most recent College Board or ACT student bulletin. Students who have taken those tests should contact us to discuss other options.
NOTE: We only administer and score the multiple choice portions of the practice test. Students will receive an essay prompt to take home in their test booklets.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are high-quality practice tests so important?
What makes a practice test high quality?
Are practice tests all that is needed for a higher score?


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Native Plants
Welcome to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's collection of 82,857 plant images.
This site is not designed for commercial use
or publication. All images are copyrighted and are the property
of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the photographers. Back to Image Gallery
About the Image Gallery Contribute Images Image Use Policy Image Request Form How to Link to the Images
rate this image
Sphaeralcea ambigua
Sphaeralcea ambigua A. Gray
Desert Globemallow, Apricot Globe-mallow, Desert Mallow, Globe Mallow, Apricot Mallow
Malvaceae (Mallow Family)
USDA Symbol: SPAM2
Image InformationPhotographer: Loughmiller, Campbell and Lynn
State: CA
Accession date: 1994-03-31
Filename: PCD0873_IMG0021.JPG
Slide Index: M4 92-736
Restrictions: Unrestricted
Collection: The Loughmiller Collection
Original Format: 35 MM
Orientation: Landscape
Shot: Whole Plant(s)
Date Taken: 1992
NPIN Image Id: 909
Image VerificationThis image has not been verified. If you can verify this image, please contact the Native Plant Database Manager. Please include the NPIN Image ID in your correspondence.
From the Image Gallery
Additional resourcesUSDA: Find Sphaeralcea ambigua images in USDA Plants
Google: Search Google Images for Sphaeralcea ambigua


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Oh, hey! I almost forgot I have a blog. I wanted to write a quick note about where you can find stuff I write.
- Short and frequent updates! @kumar303
- On the Mozilla Hacks blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/author/kmcmillanmozilla-com/
- On the Mozilla WebDev blog: https://blog.mozilla.org/webdev/author/kmcmillanmozilla-com/
- Modern funk I find on SoundCloud: http://claptracks.tumblr.com/
- Pictures of stuff, mostly album covers: http://instagram.com/kumar303


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Schools are closing across the Maritime provinces as a spring snow storm tracks toward the region.
Environment Canada says between 15 and 25 centimetres of snow is expected in P.E.I., northern Nova Scotia and eastern New Brunswick by Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, southern and eastern parts of Nova Scotia can expect the snow to become mixed with rain and ice pellets.
A slew of schools have been cancelled in P.E.I., Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ahead of the low pressure system's arrival.
The Confederation Bridge is also warning of possible travel disruptions due to high winds.
Environment Canada is calling for up to 30 centimetres of snow in parts of Newfoundland.
The Canadian Press
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