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Off The Peg - The ready to hear collection!
Doris Stokes was a British clairvoyant-medium who made a recording one of one of her meetings in 1984 and included a couple of songs and a poem set to music. The guitarist is Bert Weedon.
01. Doris Stokes - Welcome To My World (1:18)
The stereo test track is from a 1972 Russian album made by Rigonda although the commentary is in English.
02. Rigonda - How Stereo Works (1:58)
Rusty Goffe is a famous dwarf musician-actor (Star Wars, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Willy Wonka) who plays all the instruments on this cute cover of the stage musical classic from circa 1970.
03. Rusty Goffe - The Music Man (3:24)
Larry and Shirley Petersen are a father and daughter singing duo from the Shetland Islands in Scotland. This dates from the early 1970s.
04. Larry and Shirley - The Cuckoo (1:44)
Me, Myself and Me Again is one man human brass band Vivian Fisher, the British Shooby Taylor!
05. Me Myself and Me Again - Blaze Away (2:35)
Mavis Beattie, Eileen Greaves and Peter Lewis' song is from a 1960s four track kids EP with a Christian message. The Stylophone meets the Saviour!
06. Mavis, Eileen and Peter - Open The Door (1:32)
Jethro is a popular West Country based comedian but this early single from 1980 seems to a bizarre stab at a straight pop song. I like the way he looses it at the end and the guitarist tries to drown him out.
07. Jethro - Winds Of Change (3:26)
The Hysterics feature The Just For Laughs Players, Jingle Bells (Laughing All The Way) is from an EP based arounds laughs and belches and sneezes.
08. The Hysterics - Jingle Bells (1:26)
Actor Keith Michell recorded a lot of albums of pop songs and show tunes but here he is in darker territory with a folk-rock medley written by Isle of Man based poet William Bealby-Wright and Jim Parker.
09. Keith Michell - Palaces Of Fun (6:31)
Mike Redway is a successful session singer and songwriter but this is from one of his own albums, check out the bizarre Yorkshire acccent and dubious lyrics here.
10. Mike Redway - Good Morning (3:16)
Nicole is not the German 'Nicole' who won Eurovision with A Little Peace in 1982 but a Dutch teenager, recorded in the mid 70s.
11. Nicole - Helala Holala (1:46)
Steve Bent is actor Stephen Bent who also contributed to the 1980 Showbiz XII charity album (see Day 182, July 01). This is the B-side to his legendary 1976 single I'm Going To Spain (a highlight of Kenny Everett's 1977 Worlds Worst Record Show) recorded at Abbey Road Studios. The backing is by legendary sessioners Alan Parker, Herbie Flowers and Barry Morgan.
12. Steve Bent - Doobie Dow Song (3:30)
Doris Stokes was a British clairvoyant-medium who made a recording one of one of her meetings in 1984 and included a couple of songs and a poem set to music. The guitarist is Bert Weedon.
13. Doris Stokes - Voices In My Ear (1:40)
Paul Webber's 1984 song is the B-side to his one-off single, a cover of Rogers and Hammerstein's Shall We Dance.
14. Paul Webber - Mrs Woman (2:37)
Jed Ford was a Midlands-based C&W singer who played clubs and bars, this is one of his own songs from his San Antone album. On the cover he's posing in a purple and silver floral pattern suit. Nuff said.
15. Jed Ford - Eight Letters (3:21)
Peter Dymond's synth-driven song about a visitor from another planet is really an ET cash-in although legal reasons prevented him from mentioning it on the sleeve.
16. Peter Dymond - The Visitor (3:06)
Spanish singer Tony Ronald had a huge Euro hit with Help in 1971 this is the B-side where the producers have thrown in everything into the production including the kitchen sink.
17. Tony Ronald - Once Upon A Time (3:10)
Betty Lou Mills was a British 'sixties Youth Praise singer who has been strangely described as "the Gloria Hunniford of Christian music". Here fuzz guitar meets faith like never before.
18. Betty Lou Mills - Rock Him (2:51)
The Schneider Sisters were big in Australia in the 1950s. Their songs featured the unique 'Schneiderphone' - a washboard with bell and horn attachments. Today Mary Schneider is a successful yodeller and session vocalist.
19. Schneider Sisters - Washboard Rock 'n' Roll (1:35)
Vroom's 1978 sing-along tribute to stock car racing was written by British character actor Bill Maynard. Apparently they still play this at some stock car race meetings.
20. Vroom - Stock Car Racing Is Magic (2:02)
Bobby George is a British champion darts player who can play darts but can't sing. 180 is the top score in darts which explains the first line but nothing can explain the rest of the song!
21. Bobby George - Bobbys Theme (3:11)
Child singer Tina King was a contestant on a 1970s talent show, New Faces or Opportunity Knocks, and tried to follow in the footsteps of Lena Zavaroni but failed. This was her one and only single.
22. Tina King - When I Grow Up (2:32)
Ronnie-Henry Smith is the world's only underwater pianist, this is his 1981 scuba diving-themed tribute to Princess Diana.
23. Ronnie - Scuba Dooba Di (3:17)
Maltese cabaret singer Amadeo Carmel featured in my earlier London compilation. Here he presents another of his own lovely songs with more dodgy phonetics. Can he really be saying "Strokes patients won viciously, guiding me through tranquil and sublime"?
24. Amadeo Carmel - So Young (4:13)
Obscure group Kasablanka offer their own equally bizarre Pidgin English tribute to Princess Diana.
25. Kassablanca - Diana (3:56)
Nick and Nicola perform what is probably the only song named after a British dessert. And yes a breathless Nicola really does sing: 'I lost my interest in sex just like Tyrannosaurus Rex'!
26. Nick and Nickola - Apple Crumble Mind (3:16)
Robb Shenton also featured in my London compilation, here he invents Dexys Midnight Runners 'celtic soul' sound two years before Kevin Rowland did.
27. Robb Shenton - Is That All There Is (2:53)
Feisty Jo Beecham taps into to '80s nuclear fear with a disco song about cruise missiles. "No need for winter coats just a can of fwuit". Scary stuff!
28. Jo Beecham - Take A Trip On Cruise (2:37)
Images: Front Cover, Back Cover
Here are some tracks I didn't have room for, or time to include, before. Jim Dandy and The Sugar Beat return (sadly sans Patsy's Pickle Patch Choir) with four more great songs from two singles (see Day 115, April 25); also 6 remaining tracks From Ken Wallace's More album (see Day 189, July 08); two tracks from an early single by Joe Cutajar (see Day 138, May 18); plus the 6 remaining tracks from the album Sakura Goes Boom Boom (see Day 295, Oct 22).
Plus (because I didn't know where else to put 'em) a couple of Christmas bonuses: a song by Bill Waddington, veteran star of UK soap Coronation Street, and John Scott Cree's unique rendering of Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer (this was the A-side to the track Palais featured on my London compilation).
01. Jim Dandy - Move It Around (3:11)
02. Jim Dandy - Hot Pants Girl (2:48)
Dadjo PRSD 2180 (1972)
03. Jim Dandy - She's Tuff (2:30)
04. Jim Dandy - Come Together (2:29)
Dadjo 3216 (1973)
05. Ken Wallace - More (Than You'll Ever Know) (3:24)
06. Ken Wallace - I Don't Know Why (2:45)
07. Ken Wallace - Lookin' Back (2:39)
08. Ken Wallace - In The Garden (2:47)
09. Ken Wallace - This Could Be The Dawning (2:21)
10. Ken Wallace - My Tribute (2:45)
11. Joe Cutajar - Ftakar (4:26)
12. Joe Cutajar - Kantaw Maghna (2:36)
Genter RC1028 (Undated)
13. Sakura - Lemon Tree (3:03)
14. Sakura - Aku Kechewa (3:23)
15. Sakura - Zuo Yi Dui Xaio Fu Qi (3:12)
16. Sakura - Morning Town Ride (2:35)
17. Sakura - Huan Le Jin Xiao (2:13)
18. Sakura - Ti Xing Ni (2:21)
19. Bill Waddington - Don't Forget (3:13)
20. Wounded John Scott Cree - Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (2:55)
Image: Cover
- Contributed by: David Noades


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Expert's Rating
- Genius Playlists are surprisingly good, and should just get better
- totally trippy new visualizers sure to be a hit
- Genius Sidebar tends to recommend music you already own
- lack of preference to disable iTunes Store links in library.
Our Verdict
iTunes 8 is worth upgrading to for Genius alone. The refined podcast settings and new visualizers are also welcome additions. Grid view looks pretty, with a properly prepared library, but isn't the most practical way of browsing your library especially in an age when the single is outselling the album.
The last few major updates to iTunes have added everything from new looks to the ability to watch movies and TV shows, download podcasts, and get recommendations for iTunes Store purchases. It would seem that all that could be done to Apple's media manager and player had already been done. But it turns out that Apple still has some tricks up its sleeve with iTunes 8. The latest version returns the sense of fun to listening to music on your Mac (or PC).
Grid view The first thing you'll notice after installing and launching iTunes 8 is a progress bar churning through your iTunes library. This one-time process creates album art for the new default view of iTunes: Grid view. Very similar to Events in iPhoto '08, the Grid view displays your iTunes library as a grid composed of album art. (This view is available for music, podcasts, and videos.)
Think of it as a flattened Cover Flow, the same eye candy with about the same amount of practical use (that is, very little). You start playing an album or video by clicking on the album art. Double clicking on an album takes you to a more traditional list view with the addition of artwork in the first column. To change what view iTunes defaults to when you launch the program, simply change to your desired view before you quit iTunes.
If you're the type who makes sure that all your albums have cover art, and all the genres are applied correctly in the metadata of your media, then Grid view is going to be your new best friend. If you're like me, Grid view is going to serve as a reminder that yet another aspect of your life is out of control. No where is this more evident than in the Grid view sorted by genres. Apple has provided a number of tastefully designed stock art images for genres found in the iTunes Store. When in this view, you can scrub through the albums in each group by dragging your mouse across the artwork, much like Events in iPhoto and footage in iMovie. The problem arises when you have music that wasn't purchased from iTunes. A surprising number of genre name variants crop up, leaving you to either edit the metadata for a cleaner, more organized experience or live with a sloppy iTunes library.
Genius The Grid view is flashy, but the real game changer in iTunes 8 is Genius. Genius comes in two guises, Genius Playlist and Genius Sidebar, and is similar to music recommendation offerings by Last.fm and Pandora. If you choose to use Genius, which is optional, a few things happen. First, it analyses your iTunes library and transmits that data, anonymously, to the Apple's servers. That data is compared to data from countless other iTunes 8 users, and fed into Apple's Genius algorithms. The algorithm then reports the results back to iTunes, which uses it to create Genius playlists of 25, 50, or 100 songs, based on whatever track you select. You can listen to that playlist, save it for later, or hit Refresh and have Genius create another playlist that is more to your liking. Much like Party Shuffle, you can delete songs that you don't want to be included in the playlist, and re-order the songs.
A sample Genius playlist. The new Genius feature does a great job of helping you rediscover music in your library.
After creating countless Genius Playlists, I am a convert. This is a great way to rediscover music that has been hidden away in the depths of your iTunes library, and it groups songs that I would never think of grouping myself ("Veronica" by Elvis Costello goes well with "Debaser" by The Pixies—who would have thought?). Genius did an admirable job of creating playlist after playlist with almost everything I threw at it (including a song by Raina Rose, a folk musician who also happens to be my girlfriend's sister).
When Genius can't create a playlist it pops up a warning, and suggests that you update the Genius data on your Mac. Classical music, in particular, seems to stump Genius. And since this initial version of Genius appears to derive a lot of its data off iTunes Store purchases, songs by artists not in Apple's online store—like, say, the Beatles—can also flummox it. Click on a tune by the Fab Four, and Genius will be unable to generate a playlist. Presumably, as the feature gets more data from more users, issues like these should, theoretically, become moot.
The Abbott to Genius Playlist's Costello is the Genius Sidebar, which marries the iTunes Store's Just for You recommendations to the mini-store interface that was introduced in iTunes 6. The Genius Sidebar takes the currently playing song and, using that fabled Genius algorithm, returns recommendations from the iTunes Store. The recommendations include songs and albums you might be interested in, as well as songs that iTunes believes are missing from your library (for example, perhaps you only purchased one or two songs off of an album). I've found myself losing a number of hours checking out songs that the Genius Sidebar suggested. You can preview songs right in the sidebar, while you have to go into the iTunes Store to check out albums. Both can be purchased with one click in the sidebar, so you should either disable 1-Click purchases or practice restraint.
The Genius Sidebar does have some limitations. It has a propensity to recommend songs and albums I already own (purchased from Amazon MP3 or ripped from CD). It has trouble basing recommendations on more obscure titles (though when recommendations can't be found, the sidebar displays a list of top sellers in iTunes, so you can still spend some money if you are so inclined). Genius does take some time to analyze your library when you launch iTunes 8. It took 28 minutes to analyze my library which contains 35.50 GB of data (7,774 items), though you can still use iTunes to listen to music or watch videos as Genius is analyzing your library and then talking to the cloud.
Other new features The new features in iTunes 8 don't end there. HD TV shows have been added to the iTunes Store at $2.99 a pop from a limited number of networks at the moment. (There are a total of 17 shows from ABC, NBC, and Showtime available for purchase as this review was posted.) The shows look very good at their native resolution of 1,280 by 720, which translates to 720p, though when viewed on a larger television or computer screen, the picture does look a little soft. That said, HD shows look much better than their standard definition siblings.
Sadly, you can't watch the HD files with your iPod or iPhone, but the $2.99 includes both the HD and standard definition versions of the episode. Be careful, though, because file sizes can add up quickly. I downloaded an HD episode of Battlestar Galactica, and both files took up nearly 2GB of disk space.
Another thing to be aware of, as reported in our iTunes 8 first look, is a bug in iTunes 8. If you have "Buy using a Shopping Cart" enabled the iTunes store allows you to add HD episodes to your cart, but when you purchase the episode only the standard definition file is downloaded to your Mac; "Buy and download using 1-Click" works like a charm.
iTunes 8 also gives you more control over podcast settings. Prior to version 8, iTunes would deal with podcasts as a large blob; settings applied to all the podcasts you subscribed to, so you couldn't keep episodes of, say, PodRunner longer than episodes of the Macworld podcast. You can now customize download frequency and retention settings for each individual podcast, in addition to setting a global default.
Finally, iTunes 8 includes new stunning visualizers. I recall sitting for hours watching the visualizer when iTunes was first introduced, and the new visualizers blow the previous iterations out of the water in terms of quality and wow factor. They played back smoothly on my 2.16GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In fact, iTunes 8's interface as a whole was snappy on my Mac, though using my 35GB library, I didn't note any major speed enhancements compared to iTunes 7 during normal operations.
It is clear that with iTunes 8 Apple is hoping you'll find even fewer reasons to venture outside of the iTunes/iPod ecosystem for your music and video needs. The only misstep in iTunes 8 is the removal of the preference to disable the iTunes Store arrows in your library. While there is a Terminal command to disable those grey arrows from showing up, Apple should make it easy for a user to turn off this little piece of visual clutter. On last thing: If you're looking for the Browse button it's now available only though the View menu (select Show Browser).

subset: commoncrawl


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Intersex fish have now been found in three Pennsylvania river basins, indicating that the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals are even more widespread than previously known. It is a problem that extends everywhere – as reported below in 2009 – and scientists have yet to identify a single chemical responsible for causing male fish to become part female. Multiple chemical stressors that are not solely associated with agriculture or wastewater treatment plant effluent may be responsible.
Widespread Occurrence of Intersex Bass Found in U.S. Rivers
Intersex in smallmouth and largemouth basses is widespread in numerous river basins throughout the United States is the major finding of the most comprehensive and large-scale evaluation of the condition, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research published online in Aquatic Toxicology.
Of the 16 fish species researchers examined from 1995 to 2004, the condition was most common by far in smallmouth and largemouth bass: a third of all male smallmouth bass and a fifth of all male largemouth bass were intersex. This condition is primarily revealed in male fish that have immature female egg cells in their testes, but occasionally female fish will have male characteristics as well.
Scientists found intersex fish in about a third of all sites examined from the Apalachicola, Colorado, Columbia, Mobile, Mississippi, Pee Dee, Rio Grande, Savannah, and Yukon River basins. The Yukon River basin was the only one where researchers did not find at least one intersex fish.
Although intersex occurrence differed among species and basin, it was more prevalent in largemouth bass in southeastern U.S., where it occurred at all sites in the Apalachicola, Savannah, and Pee Dee river basins, said Jo Ellen Hinck, the lead author of the paper and a biologist at the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center. The researchers also documented intersex in channel catfish for the first time.
"Although the USGS has already documented the severity of intersex in individual basins such as the Potomac, this study reveals the prevalence of intersex is more widespread than anyone anticipated", said Sue Haseltine, associate director for biology at the U.S. Geological Survey. "This research sends the clear message that we need to learn more about the hormonal and environmental factors that cause this condition in fish, as well as the number of fish afflicted with this condition."
The study, said Hinck, presents the observed occurrence of intersex in a variety of freshwater fish species, but not potential causes. "This study adds a lot to our knowledge of this phenomena, but we still don't know why certain species seem more prone to this condition or exactly what is causing it. In fact, the causes for intersex may vary by location, and we suspect it will be unlikely that a single human activity or kind of contaminant will explain intersex in all species or regions," she said.
For example, said Hinck, at least one of their sites with a high prevalence of intersex—the Yampa River at Lay, Colo.—did not have obvious sources of endocrine-active compounds, which have been associated with intersex in fish. Such compounds are chemical stressors that have the ability to affect the endocrine system and include pesticides, PCBs, heavy metals, household compounds such as laundry detergent and shampoo, and many pharmaceuticals. Yet other study sites with high occurrence of intersex were on rivers with dense human populations or industrial and agricultural activities, which are more generally associated with endocrine-active compounds.
"We know that endocrine-active compounds have been associated with intersex in fish, but we lack information on which fish species are most sensitive to such compounds, the way that these compounds interact to cause intersex, and the importance of environmental factors," Hinck said. "Proper diagnosis of this condition in wild fish is essential because if the primary causes are compounds that disrupt the endocrine system, then the widespread occurrence of intersex in fish would be a critical environmental concern."
Specific river basin results include:
- Intersex smallmouth bass were found in a third of male bass at almost half of the sites examined in the Columbia, Colorado, and Mississippi River basins. The percentage of intersex smallmouth bass ranged from 14 to 73 percent at different sites. It was highest (73 percent) in the Mississippi River at Lake City, Minn., Yampa River at Lay, Colo. (70 percent), Salmon River at Riggins, Idaho (43 percent), and the Columbia River at Warrendale, Oreg. (67 percent).
- Intersex largemouth bass were found in nearly a fifth of the fish examined from the Colorado, Rio Grande, Mississippi, Mobile, Apalachicola, Savannah, and Pee Dee River basins; intersex was not observed in male largemouth bass from the Columbia River Basin. The percentage of intersex largemouth bass per site ranged from 8 to 91 percent and was most prevalent in the southeastern United States. The Pee Dee River at Bucksport, S.C., contained the highest percentage of intersex fish (91 percent), with high percentages occurring elsewhere on the Pee Dee too. Sixty percent of male bass examined at the Apalachicola River at Blountstown, Fla., were intersex, 50 percent in the Savannah River at Port Wentworth and Sylvania, Ga, 43 percent in the Savannah River at Augusta, Ga., and 30 percent in the Chattahoochee River at Omaha, Ga., and the Flint River at Albany, Ga. Lower percent intersex (10-25 percent) were found in bass from sites in the Mobile River in Alabama.
- In addition, relatively high proportions of intersex largemouth bass were observed at three sites in the lower Rio Grande Basin including Rio Grande at Brownsville, Texas (50 percent), Rio Grande at Falcon Dam, Texas (44 percent), and Rio Grande at Mission, Texas (20 percent). In addition, 40 percent of male largemouth bass from the Colorado River at Imperial Dam, Ariz. and at the Gila River at Hayden, Ariz., in the Colorado River Basin were intersex.
Sources and More Information:
- As more male bass switch sex, a strange fish story expands, WashingtonPost, Health & Science, August 3 2014.
- Reproductive health indicators of fishes from Pennsylvania watersheds: association with chemicals of emerging concern, Springer, 10.1007/s10661-014-3868-5, 17 June 2014.
- Intersex fish Endocrine disruption in smallmouth bass, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, PDF, 2014.
- Widespread Occurrence of Intersex Bass Found in U.S. Rivers, USGS, NewsRoom, 9/14/2009.


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An old, creepy piano, left for years untouched in a haunted house. This is what you are listening to. Did I mention that it's strangely playing itself? No, it's not a self-playing piano either. A recorder was left next to the piano overnight, and this is was the outcome. Give your audience a delicate creepy feel with this strange noised piano sounding off in the background.
View my Halloween themed collection, if you dare:


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The Police Command in Kaduna State on Tuesday confirmed the kidnap of the immediate past Minister of Environment, Laurentia Mallam, and her husband, Pius.
The Command's spokesman, ASP Aliyu Usman, told newsmen in Kaduna that the two were abducted along Bwari/Jere axis on Kaduna-Abuja highway on Monday evening.
Usman said the abductors took away the former minister and her husband, but spared their driver unharmed.
He assured that the Police was tracking down the perpetrators and would ensure the release of the victims unharmed.
Sources indicated that the abductors had reached out to the minister's family demanding for ransom.
The command's spokesman, however, said the police was not aware of any demand by the abductors.
Usman said: "All what we are doing is to see that the victims are freed from captivity and returned to their home unhurt."


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NEW ORLEANS (Associated Press) - The Gulf Coast found itself in an odd moment of limbo Saturday: The oil has been stopped, but no one knows if it's corked for good.
The clock expired on BP's 48-hour observation period and the government added another day of critical monitoring. Scientists and engineers were optimistic that the well showed no obvious signs of leaks, but were still struggling to understand puzzling pressure readings emerging from the bottom of the sea.
It's possible the past three days will be only a brief reprieve from the flow of oil bleeding into the Gulf. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the crisis, decided Saturday that after the testing was complete, the cap will be hooked up through pipes to ships on the surface that will collect the oil.
That likely means releasing crude back into the water temporarily to relieve pressure. It still would not be gushing at the rate it had been before BP's latest fix.
It will take months, or possibly years for the Gulf to recover. But if the coast was on edge about the impending decision, it wasn't apparent.
In fact, there were signs that people were trying to get life -- or at least a small part of it -- back to normal.
In coastal Alabama, lounge chairs for rent outside of hotels were full and swimmers bobbed in emerald green water virtually oil-free, save for a few small tar balls.
Calls started flooding into the reservations switchboard at Kaiser Realty Inc. in Gulf Shores, Ala., almost as soon as BP confirmed Thursday that oil had stopped flowing into the Gulf, said marketing director Emily Gonzales.
"Are they what we want them to be? No, but it is far better than it was," she said.
People also were fishing again, off piers and in boats, after most of the recreational waters in Louisiana were reopened late this week. More than a third of federal waters are still closed and off-limits to commercial fishermen.
"I love to fish," said Brittany Lawson, hanging her line off a pier beside the Grand Isle Bridge. "I love to come out here."
Lawson and her boyfriend's family were catching redfish, mullet and flounder, but mostly hard-head catfish, a throwback fish. They planned to keep the catches they could take home.
"It is encouraging. We're getting bites. I mean, it's catfish. But it's bites. It's something," she said.
And even though it was only days since the oil was turned off, the naked eye could spot improvements on the water. The crude appeared to be dissipating quickly on the surface of the Gulf around the Deepwater Horizon site.
Members of a Coast Guard crew that flew over the wellhead Saturday said far less oil was visible than a day earlier. Only a colorful sheen and a few long streams of rust-colored, weathered oil were apparent in an area that was covered by huge patches of black crude weeks earlier. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
Kendra Sanders was buying Creole tomatoes at a produce stand in Jesuite Bend. "At least we still got these. Until a hurricane comes along and blows the oil in here. Then it'll be no shrimp and no vegetables," she said.
The one certainty is this: No new oil has been added to the mess for two days now since BP's experimental cap was holding, at least for now.
BP began Saturday saying they were feeling "more comfortable," though Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, cautioned the evaluation was not over. BP and the government want to make sure the well can stay bottled in case of a hurricane, when ships would have to leave the area.
Wells said engineers glued to an array of pressure, temperature, sonar and other sensors were seeing no evidence of oil escaping into the water or the sea floor. Undersea robots were also patrolling the well site for signs of trouble.
The cameras showed some activity midday Saturday. The robots passed a wand-like object back and forth, and appeared to be digging dirt-like debris out of a pipe. Meanwhile, a glowing globe appeared on the sea floor as bubbles swirled around. BP didn't explain what they were doing, and to a viewer, it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles.
BP shut valves in the cap Thursday, stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf for the first time since the April 20 explosion on the leased oil rig Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet below the sea.
Concern that the cap could cause oil to break out of the well at the seafloor lessened.
Pressure readings Saturday morning were 6,745 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Wells said. The figure was below the 7,500 psi that would have reassured scientists the well was not leaking, but still high enough that it could be all right.
A low pressure reading, or a falling one, could mean the oil is escaping. Wells said pressure continued to rise very slowly.
The most likely reason the pressure is low is more oil has bled out than estimated, experts say. Last week, when an old cap was removed allowing oil to flow unimpeded into the water, the spew wasn't as violent as it had been.
"Depletion is actually pretty normal," said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, Director of Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston. "At first it flowed very powerfully, and when you're producing too much too fast for too long, it takes longer to pull the oil."
Either way, the cap is a temporary measure until a relief well can be completed and mud and cement can be pumped into the broken well deep underground to seal it more securely than the cap. That means the best fix still won't be completed until later this summer.
BP is drilling two relief wells, one of them as a backup. Wells said work on the first one was far enough along that they expect to reach the broken well's casing, or pipes, deep underground by late this month. Then the job of jamming it with mud and cement could take "a number of days through a few weeks."
Until then, the limbo may continue.


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No, I'm going to focus on something much narrower about this movie: its depiction of Angel Salvadore, a relatively minor character in the comics and a supporting character in the film.
I was very surprised to see her in this movie, because 1) she's a very recent character, and wouldn't really belong in a story about the relationship between Professor X and Magneto as young men (not that that's stopped any of the previous movies, where characters from different generations of X-Men have always been thrown together willy-nilly), 2) none of the other characters*, or plotlines, she's involved with make any appearance in this movie, and 3) she's very unphotogenic. She's half-girl, half-fly, and her offensive weapon is super-acidic barf.
Here's what she looks like using that power in the comics:Gross, isn't it?
That's why I was so surprised, before seeing the movie, when I read that she'd be in it. Female characters in movies, especially in comic-book movies, action movies and other movies aimed at a teenage-boy audience, are primarily there as eye candy; when they're allowed to do cool stuff and look pretty it practically counts as a feminist victory, but the look-pretty requirement is not negotiable.
And there's no way to make disgusting green barf look pretty; hence my surprise.
It turns out I underestimated Hollywood's ability to pretty almost anything up: I can't find any video on YouTube that includes this, but when the younger mutants are all showing each other their powers and picking out their X-Men codenames, Angel demonstrates something that looks nothing at all like what's pictured above. She strikes a pose, puckers her lips and releases a smoldering fireball about the size of a Ping-Pong ball, which arcs prettily through the air and lands on the statue's head, where it begins to corrode the metal**.
She uses this power again in a battle near the end of the movie; she's flying through the air breathing fire like a dragon. Less ladylike, but still not gross.
*Except Professor X, obviously, and also Magneto. Though the extent to which Magneto was actually involved in the events of Planet X are debatable ... the character who tried to suborn the Xavier School's "special class" into a reconstituted Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and conquer the world was apparently later revealed to be Not Really Magneto At All. I haven't read the comic where that gets hashed out, though, so I am quite fuzzy on the details. I just know that the whole question of "Does Planet X Count as a 'Magneto Story' or not is very contentious --- see the comment thread on this post.
**For whatever reason, the fireball-spewing part of Angel's power demonstration is missing from all the clips I can find.


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Respondent was convicted of first-degree murder after a jury trial in a Michigan state court, and the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. The Michigan Supreme Court, on review of the record, denied relief. Respondent then obtained habeas corpus relief in Federal District Court, which held that the trial court's jury instruction allowing malice to be implied from the fact that a weapon was used unconstitutionally shifted the burden of proof to respondent and was inconsistent with the presumption of innocence. The District Court also held that respondent had exhausted available state-court remedies, as required by 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Federal Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the exhaustion requirement was met because respondent had presented to the Michigan Court of Appeals the facts on which he based his federal claim, had argued that the malice instruction was "reversible error," and had cited People v. Martin, 392 Mich. 553, 221 N. W. 2d 336 - a decision predicated solely on state law, but in which the defendant had argued broadly that failure to properly instruct a jury violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The requirement under 28 U.S.C. 2254 that the state courts must have been provided a "fair opportunity" to apply controlling legal principles to the facts bearing upon the federal habeas petitioner's constitutional claim was not met here. The "substance" of respondent's federal habeas corpus claim was not fairly presented to the state courts so as to meet 2254's exhaustion requirement. The Michigan Court of Appeals interpreted respondent's claim as being predicated on the state-law rule of Martin, supra, that malice should not be implied from the fact that a weapon was used, and the record shows that respondent's constitutional argument was never presented to, or considered by, the Michigan courts.
Certiorari granted; 664 F.2d 610, reversed and remanded.
Respondent was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed respondent's conviction, People [459 U.S. 4, 5] v. Harless, 78 Mich. App. 745, 261 N. W. 2d 41 (1977), and the Michigan Supreme Court, on review of the record, denied respondent's request for relief. App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a.
Respondent then filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He alleged, inter alia, that the trial court's instruction on "malice" - a crucial element in distinguishing between second-degree murder and manslaughter under Michigan law - was unconstitutional. 1 In particular, respondent focused on the following language from the trial court's lengthy charge:
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 664 F.2d 610 (1982). The court held that respondent's [459 U.S. 4, 6] claim had been properly exhausted in the state courts, because respondent had presented to the Michigan Court of Appeals the facts on which he based his federal claim and had argued that the malice instruction was "reversible error." See People v. Harless, supra, at 748, 261 N. W. 2d, at 43. The court also emphasized that respondent, in his brief to the Michigan Court of Appeals, had cited People v. Martin, 392 Mich. 553, 221 N. W. 2d 336 (1974) - a decision predicated solely on state law in which no federal issues were decided, but in which the defendant had argued broadly that failure to properly instruct a jury violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. In the view of the United States Court of Appeals, respondent's assertion before the Michigan Court of Appeals that the trial court's malice instruction was erroneous, coupled with his citation of People v. Martin, supra, provided the Michigan courts with sufficient opportunity to consider the issue encompassed by respondent's subsequent federal habeas petition.
We reverse. In Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270 (1971), we made clear that 28 U.S.C. 2254 requires a federal habeas petitioner to provide the state courts with a "fair opportunity" to apply controlling legal principles to the facts bearing upon his constitutional claim. Id., at 276-277. It is not enough that all the facts necessary to support the federal claim were before the state courts, id., at 277, or that a somewhat similar state-law claim was made. See e. g., Gayle v. LeFevre, 613 F.2d 21 (CA2 1980); Paullet v. Howard, 634 F.2d 117, 119-120 (CA3 1980); Wilks v. Israel, 627 F.2d 32, 37-38 (CA7), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1086 (1980); Conner v. Auger, 595 F.2d 407, 413 (CA8), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 851 (1979). In addition, the habeas petitioner must have "fairly presented" to the state courts the "substance" of his federal habeas corpus claim. Picard, supra, at 275, 277-278. Cf. Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 518 (1982). [459 U.S. 4, 7]
In this case respondent argued on appeal that the trial court's instruction on the element of malice was "erroneous." He offered no support for this conclusion other than a citation to, and three excerpts from, People v. Martin, supra - a case which held that, under Michigan law, malice should not be implied from the fact that a weapon is used. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a-49a, 51a-53a. 2 Not surprisingly, the Michigan Court of Appeals interpreted respondent's claim as being predicated on the state-law rule of Martin, and analyzed it accordingly. 78 Mich. App., at 748-750, 261 N. W. 2d, at 43.
The United States Court of Appeals concluded that "the due process ramifications" of respondent's argument to the Michigan court "were self-evident," and that respondent's "reliance on Martin was sufficient to present the state courts with the substance of his due process challenge to the malice instruction for habeas exhaustion purposes." 664 F.2d, at 612. We disagree. The District Court based its grant of habeas relief in this case on the doctrine that certain sorts of "mandatory presumptions" may undermine the prosecution's burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and thus deprive a criminal defendant of due process. See Sandstrom, supra; In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). The Court of Appeals affirmed on the same rationale. However, it is plain from the record that this constitutional argument was never presented to, or considered by, the Michigan courts. Nor is this claim even the same as the constitutional claim advanced in Martin - the defendant there asserted a broad federal due process right to jury instructions that "properly explain" state law, 392 Mich., at 558, 221 N. W. 2d, at 339, and did not rely on the more particular analysis developed in cases such as Sandstrom, supra. 3 [459 U.S. 4, 8]
Since it appears that respondent is still free to present his Sandstrom claim to the Michigan Court of Appeals, see People v. Berry, 10 Mich. App. 469, 474-475, 157 N. W. 2d 310, 312-313 (1968), we conclude that he has not exhausted his available state-court remedies as required by 28 U.S.C. 2254. Accordingly, the petition for certiorari and respondent's motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
[ Footnote 2 ] Respondent was represented by counsel on appeal.
[ Footnote 3 ] We doubt that a defendant's citation to a state-court decision predicated solely on state law ordinarily will be sufficient to fairly apprise a reviewing court of a potential federal claim merely because the defendant in [459 U.S. 4, 8] the cited case advanced a federal claim. However, it is clear that such a citation is insufficient when, as here, the federal claim asserted in the cited case is not even the same as the federal claim on which federal habeas relief is sought. See Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 276 (1971).
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN and JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.
Few issues consume as much of the scarce time of federal judges as the question whether a state prisoner adequately exhausted his state remedies before filing a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus. Distressingly, the Court seems oblivious of this fact and takes action in this case that can only exacerbate that problem.
On the merits the question presented by this case is whether a somewhat garbled jury instruction contained a mandatory presumption that required a finding of malice or merely a permissive inference that allowed the jury to make such a finding. 1 The parties seem to agree that if the instruction [459 U.S. 4, 9] is considered mandatory, the respondent's conviction must be set aside under principles that are well settled in Michigan 2 and in the federal courts. 3
The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected respondent's construction of the jury instruction and therefore affirmed his conviction. After the Supreme Court of Michigan denied leave to appeal and after the state trial court denied a subsequent motion for a new trial, respondent commenced this federal habeas corpus proceeding.
The Federal District Court carefully analyzed the difference between a permissive inference and a mandatory presumption and concluded that the Michigan Court of Appeals' construction of the jury instruction was simply untenable. 504 F. Supp. 1135, 1138 (1981). It also considered and rejected the argument that the respondent had not exhausted his state remedies. Id., at 1139.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed, 664 F.2d 610 (1982). That court first carefully considered the Warden's contention that respondent's state remedies had not been exhausted because his federal claim had not been fairly presented to the state courts. After explaining in some detail why the federal claim necessarily presented the very question that the state court had already resolved against the respondent, the Court of Appeals concluded "that the Michigan courts had a fair opportunity to consider the issue encompassed by Harless' habeas corpus petition." Id., at 612. Thereafter, the Court of Appeals reviewed and upheld the District Court's holding on the merits.
I agree with the sensible approach to the exhaustion issue that was followed by the District Court and the Court of Appeals. 4 [459 U.S. 4, 10] I also believe that approach was entirely faithful to Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270 , which requires only that the "substance" of the federal claim (not the form) be "fairly [459 U.S. 4, 11] presented" to the state courts. 5 In this case the only arguable justification for dismissing the petition for failure to exhaust is a possibility that the state court might decide the [459 U.S. 4, 12] instruction issue differently if phrased in terms of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 , rather than in terms of People v. Martin, 392 Mich. 553, 221 N. W. 2d 336 (1974). See n. 4, supra. That possibility is virtually nonexistent. The Court apparently perceives this case as a simple application of Picard; I think it can only be explained as an expansion of Picard. Such an expansion should be accompanied by a more careful analysis than the Court provides in this case, and it should not be undertaken without full briefing and argument.
But even if I shared the Court's analysis of the exhaustion question in this particular case, I would nevertheless take issue with its decision to grant certiorari for the sole purpose of correcting what it considers to be a technical, procedural error. It is not appropriate for this Court to expend its scarce resources crafting opinions that correct technical errors in cases of only local importance where the correction in no way promotes the development of the law. 6
If the Court of Appeals was correct in its appraisal of the merits, the respondent should be given a prompt retrial. If that court was incorrect on the merits, nothing will be gained by requiring the respondent to present his claim to three [459 U.S. 4, 13] more sets of Michigan judges and two more sets of federal judges before this Court decides whether the substantive error merits our review. Cf. Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 545 (STEVENS, J., dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
[ Footnote 1 ] The instruction stated:
[ Footnote 2 ] See People v. Martin, 392 Mich. 553, 221 N. W. 2d 336 (1974).
[ Footnote 3 ] Compare Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140 , with Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 .
[ Footnote 4 ] Because this Court's description of the Court of Appeals' treatment of the exhaustion issue is so abbreviated it seems appropriate to quote in full the relevant portion of that opinion:
[ Footnote 5 ] In Picard, the habeas petitioner had argued in the Massachusetts courts that his indictment had been contrary to Massachusetts law and that, if the procedures used in his case had been in accord with Massachusetts law, then those procedures could not be approved without reference to whether the Fifth Amendment's requirement of a grand jury indictment applied to the States through incorporation in the Fourteenth Amendment. 404 U.S., at 277 . This Court held that such an argument did not give the State a fair opportunity to consider the proposition that its treatment of the petitioner denied him equal protection, in view of the Commonwealth's otherwise universal commitment to grand jury indictments in felony cases.
In this case, the federal courts ordered habeas relief on the theory that the "operative effect" of the instruction quoted above was to cause the jury to use an unconstitutional mandatory presumption of malice. It held that the instruction was therefore inconsistent with Sandstrom, supra. 664 F.2d, at 612. Accord, ante, at 7. In state court, the defendant had argued that the instruction was inconsistent with People v. Martin, supra, because Martin had struck down an instruction that caused the jury to use [459 U.S. 4, 12] a mandatory presumption of malice. See People v. Harless, 78 Mich. App. 745, 749, 261 N. W. 2d 41, 43 (1977). The substance of the argument - that the instruction deprived him of fair jury consideration because it created a mandatory presumption of malice - is the same.
[ Footnote 6 ] In many respects this case is merely a sequel to Board of Education of Rogers, Ark. v. McCluskey, 458 U.S. 966 . In my dissent in that case, I observed:
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text: This is part of our daily series of posts where I show you a collection of inspiring digital art of one designer, I'll tell you their name, where they're from, I give you a link to their portfolio and of course I share their work with you. Every day it's a surprise who is our designer of the day, if you want a chance to be this designer, make sure to have a Behance portfolio, label your work with 'Digital Art' and and make sure you've licensed your work 'free to share'. Today I show you the work of Hoax a designer from Northampton, United Kingdom.


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Imagine you are building a house. You would need a team of specialists, including an architect, a general contractor, carpenters, an electrician, a plumber and many others. Now picture yourself leading an effort to develop a new therapeutic drug or device. For that, you'd need a very different kind of specialized team.
The National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has a research program designed to support this team-based approach. NEI's Translational Research Program (TRP) on Therapy for Visual Disorders provides a lead investigator with up to $1.75 million per year for up to five years in order to assemble a multidisciplinary team, and move—or translate—potential new therapies beyond the research lab and into clinical trials.
In addition to bringing together an expert research team, investigators can use funding from the TRP to recruit experts on navigating the drug and device approval process overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They can also use TRP funds to seek help in patenting new therapies. These steps are no less essential than lab work for bringing new therapies to patients.
"The program enables investigators to assemble multidisciplinary teams that can tackle scientific, technical, and regulatory issues that are beyond the capabilities of any single research group," said Neeraj Agarwal, Ph.D., who oversees programs in research training and workforce development at NEI. The TRP began in 2000, and has funded one or two projects each year since.
Eyeing new drugs for retinal diseases
Krzysztof Palczewski, Ph.D., professor and chair of the pharmacology department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, received a grant (EY021126) through the TRP in 2010. His goal is to develop new drugs for diseases that damage the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye.
Vision begins with cells inside the retina called photoreceptors. Chemicals called retinoids, which are derived from vitamin A, play a key role inside these cells. One type of retinoid, when combined with a protein called opsin, acts as a light-sensitive switch, converting light into electrical signals that are ultimately sent from the photoreceptors to the brain.
This cross-section of the retina has been stained to reveal the two main types of photoreceptors: rods (in red) and cones (green). Credit: Dr. Krzysztof Palczewski, Case Western.
Unfortunately, the supply of retinoids is limited and they need to be recycled. Moreover, the recycling process isn't 100 percent efficient. Dr. Palczewski has found that it can lead to the formation of a toxic byproduct called all-trans-retinal (atRAL), which may contribute to some diseases of the retina, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and Stargardt disease. AMD is a leading cause of vision loss among people age 50 and older. Stargardt disease is a rare genetic disease that begins in childhood but has some similarities to AMD.
Several years ago, Dr. Palczewski began thinking about the prospects of a drug to treat Stargardt and AMD by counteracting atRAL. He reasoned that such a drug would have to be precise in its effects—because a drug that interfered with other retinoids could interfere with healthy vision. In one approach, he's investigating whether drugs that the FDA has already deemed safe for treating a variety of disorders can be repurposed to treat Stargardt disease and AMD. In ongoing experiments, he's been testing these drugs in animal models of Stargardt disease. Because Stargardt is a faster-developing disease, it's an easier first target than AMD, he said.
As a biochemist by training, Dr. Palczewski has ample expertise in drug chemistry. But to test potential drug treatments in animals, he needed help. He recruited experts on biological imaging; on techniques to monitor the health of cells in the retina; and on devices that can be used to release drugs slowly, for long-lasting effects.
"The TRP has allowed us to bring these people together with a common goal, and to push the boundaries beyond what our individual labs can do," Dr. Palczewski said.
In December 2011, Dr. Palczewski and his team reported testing two dozen FDA-approved drugs in a mouse model of Stargardt disease. The drugs are a diverse group, except that they all share a small bit of chemical structure that the researchers predicted would interact with atRAL. Indeed, the researchers found that two of the drugs—an anti-seizure drug and an anti-inflammatory drug—reduced damage to the retina in mice with Stargardt disease.
The group has also investigated the role of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in Stargardt disease. This diverse family of proteins includes rhodopsin and many other proteins found in the retina. The researchers discovered that some GPCRs amplify the toxic effect of atRAL and others suppress it. About one-third of all prescription drugs work by either activating or inhibiting GPCRs. In November 2013, Dr. Palczewski's group reported that several such drugs are beneficial in mice with Stargardt disease. Dr. Palczewski has co-founded a company, Visum Therapeutics, to move forward with developing drugs for Stargardt disease, and to begin testing them in clinical trials.
Targeting drugs to the right place
Dr. Henry Edelhauser. Credit: Emory.
Henry Edelhauser, Ph.D., a professor of ophthalmology at Emory University in Atlanta, was funded by a TRP grant (EY017045) from 2006 to 2010. His project focused on developing new methods for delivering drugs to the retina and other tissues at the back of the eye. Most ophthalmic drugs are delivered in one of two ways: through eye drops or injections into the vitreous gel, a clear fluid that fills the eye. A problem with either method is that the drug can spread throughout the eye, limiting the amount that reaches the retina and potentially causing side effects in other tissues toward the front of the eye.
To develop an effective method for drugs to reach the back of the eye, "we needed to facilitate collaboration between delivery system researchers and clinical researchers," he said. He assembled a team to investigate a wide variety of delivery tools. One part of the team—led by Mark Prausnitz, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology—was tasked with developing very short, thin injection needles called microneedles.
In one approach, the team studied whether a drug injected into tissues surrounding the eye could passively spread into the back of the eye. They conducted a series of experiments on anesthetized animals, spritzing a fluorescent dye near the sclera (the eye's outer white coating), and then tracking the dye's movement. They found that after these injections, the dye did indeed enter the eye, but it moved slowly, taking days to spread across the eye's internal rear surface. During one of these experiments, the injection needle slipped into the eye just between the sclera and the retina, called the suprachoroidal space. To everyone's surprise, the dye spread throughout this space within seconds.
The microneedles developed by Dr. Edelhauser and colleagues are short enough to just enter the suprachoroidal space (pink) without penetrating the retina (yellow.) See the full video at Vimeo. Credit: Clearside Biomedical.
After more experiments to verify this finding, Dr. Edelhauser and his team poured their efforts into refining their microneedles and injection techniques in order to target drugs to the suprachoroidal space. With key input from Dr. Prausnitz at Georgia Tech, the team was able to patent their technology and form a company for further development and testing, called Clearside Biomedical.
"One real key to our progress so far is that we had the right advice to put the patents together, and that came from the TRP award," Dr. Edelhauser said. "Most scientists don't know how to write a patent. It's a unique art."
The first eye disease that Clearside Biomedical will target is non-infectious uveitis, an inflammatory disease that causes swelling and damage to the uvea, a tissue layer in the eye that includes the suprachoroidal space. In a small trial (NCT01789320) that began recruiting in May 2013, the company will test whether microneedle injection of the drug triamcinolone acetonide (Triesence) is safe and well-tolerated by patients. Injecting this drug into the vitreous gel is an FDA-approved treatment option for uveitis, but can increase the risk of glaucoma and cataract. A more focused injection to the back of the eye may reduce this risk, Dr. Edelhauser said.
More projects and opportunities to watch
The TRP supports several other ongoing projects. One project at the University of Pennsylvania focuses on developing gene therapy for retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that causes vision loss during childhood. Another project at Columbia University is geared toward developing gene therapies or small molecules to treat a variety of disorders—including some forms of retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease—that are caused by abnormalities in the ABCA4 gene, which helps support retinoid recycling inside photoreceptors.
Other projects focus on new treatments for neovascular AMD (also called wet AMD), which involves an overgrowth of blood vessels in the eye. Current drug treatments inhibit a protein involved in this process, but may also block the protein's nourishing effects on normal blood vessels. Two separate groups, at Scripps Research Institute and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are investigating small molecules that might act through alternative routes.
"The research community has been enthusiastic about this program," Dr. Agarwal said. "Because many vision disorders are rare, large pharmaceutical companies generally are not motivated to invest in new therapies for them. Even for more common conditions like AMD and glaucoma, the pharmaceutical industry is wary of investing at the earliest, highest-risk stages of therapeutic development. The TRP helps fill this void," he said.
The TRP is supported through an R24 grant mechanism, which is generally used to support projects where diverse expertise and resources are needed. In order to be successful, applicants to the program need to outline a clearly defined path toward bringing a new therapy into clinical trials, Dr. Agarwal said.
NEI has announced funding to support several more projects through the TRP in the next few years. There are rolling application deadlines each January from 2014 to 2016. For more information, interested researchers should read the full announcement in the NIH Guide.
Chen Y, et al. "Systems pharmacology identifies drug targets for Stargardt disease—associated retinal degeneration." Journal of Clinical Investigation, November 2013, DOI: 10.1172/JCI69076. Chen et al Pubmed
Maeda A, et al. "Primary amines protect against retinal degeneration in mouse models of retinopathies." Nature Chemical Biology, December 2011. DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.759. Maeda et al Pubmed
Patel SR, et al. "Suprachoroidal drug delivery to the back of the eye using hollow microneedles." Pharmaceutical Research, published online September 21, 2010. DOI: 10.1007/s11095-010-0271-y. Patel et al Pubmed


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Environmental Health Division
What is asbestos?
Asbestos is the name for a group of minerals that occur naturally in the ground. Bundles of fibers make up asbestos minerals. Three types of asbestos were commonly used to manufacture products.
- Chrysotile, sometimes called white asbestos, is composed of wavy, flexible white fibers and comprises 90 to 95 percent of the asbestos used in the U.S.
- Amosite, sometimes called brown asbestos, is composed of straight, light gray or brown fibers.
- Crocidolite, sometimes called blue asbestos, is composed of straight blue fibers.
Anthophyllite, tremolite and actinolite are three other types of asbestos. They were not commonly used to manufacture products. However, tremolite contamination has been documented in vermiculite attic insulation, and caution should be used when dealing with this material.
Where does asbestos come from?
|Asbestos is mined out of the ground from open pit mines. The mined rock is then taken to asbestos mills where the asbestos is separated from the rock. The raw asbestos is then sold to manufacturers where it has been used in over 3,000 products.
The top asbestos producing countries in 2011 were:
- Russia - 1,000,000 tons
- China - 440,000 tons
- Brazil - 306,000 tons
- Kazakhstan - 223,000 tons
- Canada - 50,000 tons
- Others - 19,000
The top asbestos consuming countries in 2011 were
- China - 638,000 tons
- India - 322,000 tons
- Russia - 251,000 tons
- Brazil - 185,000 tons
- Kazakhstan - 155,000 tons
- Indonesia - 124,000 tons
Why was asbestos used?
Asbestos fibers have special characteristics. Heat or chemicals do not affect them and they do not conduct electricity. Asbestos is also very strong. Pound for pound, asbestos is stronger than steel. Asbestos fibers are also very flexible, allowing them to be woven into cloth-like materials. This versatility is why industry has mined and widely used asbestos to make many different products.
Why should I be concerned about asbestos?
In general, the more asbestos a person is exposed to, the greater the risk of developing an asbestos-related disease. Exposure to asbestos occurs through inhalation of airborne microscopic fibers. Airborne asbestos can be present during renovation and demolition of buildings and building products. Residential and nonresidential buildings can contain asbestos materials. Untrained individuals performing asbestos-related work can expose themselves, other individuals in the building, or their own families by having their clothing or skin contaminated with asbestos fibers.
Where can I learn more about asbestos in Minnesota?
MDH has a wide variety of information available to both homeowners and professionals on this website. Homeowners can learn about asbestos products in their homes and how to deal with them, or learn how to hire an asbestos contractor to remove them. Professionals can find licensing and certification requirements, as well as work practice guidance. All required forms are available electronically through this website.
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UPDATE: New design has been released in Matomo!!!
click here for more information
Over the last 2 years, the Matomo (Piwik) User Interface has not changed much in terms of design.
We are now excited to announce that the time has come to give Matomo a makeover – a new and improved look and feel designed to meet the following objectives:
- The new design should make Matomo more appealing and give it a more modern and professional touch
- The new design should fix the issues with the current UI
Some features are hard to use in Matomo. For example, the calendar and period selector is confusing and the website selector doesn't scale well with hundreds of websites.
With these objectives in mind, Marcin Galecki has been working hard alongside the Matomo team on mock-ups of the design. These mock-ups haven't yet been implemented, as this is still a work in progress and your feedback is important to us.
Note: click on the images to view them full size.
The dashboard mockup displays most new changes on the design:
- New menu
- New controller's style used for the Calendar, Add a Widget
- New style for the website selector and language selector
- New style for widgets: colors, the footer, and tables scrolling to the right when there is too much data to display. We tried to improve the widgets' footer to make it easier to access the other reports that Matomo provides: Advanced view to show all columns, 'Goals' view to see conversions for each segment.
Example 'Referers > Overview' report
This is an example of the « Referers Overview » report using the new styles.
Pages report
This mockup shows the style of the expandable data table, used in the Pages URLs and Page titles reports.
About Matomo message
By default, the message displayed would be short and sweet, and on Hover would display the full message.
Add a Widget selector
The « Add a widget » tool is now better integrated in the UI and re-uses the same styles as other selectors.
Website selector
The website selector currently does not scale if Matomo manages hundreds or thousands of websites and this new design would fix this usability issue. Only the first 10 websites (or 10 most recently used) would be displayed, and you could « Search » for websites (matching names and URLs).
The calendar is a major usability issue in the current Matomo UI. In the dashboard mockups (see above), you can see that the calendar is now more visible. Also, the concept of Periods (day / week / month / year) is now directly integrated within the calendar selector itself, which makes more sense and makes it easier to use.
Icons set and widgets footer
Here are the full set of icons used in the mockups, and a detailed example of how the footers work.
Your feedback!
Matomo is currently used by more than 40,000 users, all with different backgrounds and objectives. The User Interface must accommodate the needs of every user from the most basic through to the advanced.
What do you think about this proposal? What do you like, and what could be improved?
Your feedback is really important to us – please send us your comments and suggestions via the blog or the forum thread and we will gather your feedback and contributions over the next 10 days or so. We will then work with the designer to prepare the final version of the mockups, which will then be implemented.
Thank you!


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Certain destinations stand out. Taking a cruise that navigates around Cape Horn is one example. While savvy passengers can choose from many South American cruise itineraries, I recommend that you find a vessel that has at least one knowledgeable speaker. On a Celebrity Cruise … [Read more...]
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On the other side of this issue are those who believe abortion to be the murder of innocent life. From their view, all abortion should be prevented and all life should be upheld and preserved. While many who take this position do so from a religious basis, not all tie their arguments directly to the Bible or some other religious text. There are compelling arguments based on simply a logical analysis of the material. Dr. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, offers a skeptic's view of abortion using his "quadrilemma" in the following video.
To bring all the parts of this view together, read the following summary from The Humble Libertarian.
The Abortion Debate: A Reasoned, Scientific Pro-Life Argument
In the following essay I will address the issue of abortion and defend the pro-life position unemotionally, in a tasteful manner, and without reference to religious scripture to support my assertions. Plain reason and the evidence of science make the issue clear enough. My only demand of the reader is that you would also suspend your emotional predispositions and genuinely read and reflect on the validity of the propositions I make.
The Argument Outlined
My primary argument takes the following syllogistic form:
IF: 1. Every human being has the right to live, which should be protected by law,
AND: 2. From the moment of conception, the unborn are human beings,
THEN: 3. The unborn have the right to live, which should be protected by law.
If one accepts the first two premises, then the pro-life position stated in the conclusion is inescapable. Surely, few people will have any qualms about the first premise. Human beings have the right to live and if the law exists to protect anything at all, it exists to protect human beings from violent aggression that ends their lives.
But while the first premise is not likely to encounter much opposition, the second one is the target of a number of evasions and obfuscations, and as a whole, the pro-life movement has failed to adequately and clearly address this issue and to do so without referring to Christian Scripture and [sic] thereby immediately ending helpful dialogue with those who don't share its religious premises.
The Central Issue of the Abortion Debate
However, this is the central issue of the debate. All of the other side issues are ultimately irrelevant (though I will address them later). If conception does not create a separate human being, then what a woman does with the byproduct of conception is truly her own business (as what she does with her own tonsils or appendix is her own business).
But if conception does create a human being, and all human beings have a right to live, which should be protected by law, then the debate is over: the government should protect the lives of the unborn by prohibiting abortion. The crux of the issue is the ontological status of the living matter created by the act of conception. What is it?
Is a Human Embryo Alive?
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, life is, "a material complex or individual characterized by the capacity to perform certain functional activities, including metabolism, growth, reproduction, and some form of responsiveness and adaptation." After conception, human embryos exhibit all of these features.
A fertilized human embryo carries out the processes of metabolism, it grows and develops, it responds to stimuli and maintains homeostasis, and it contains the genetic potential for reproduction. While it is not capable of reproducing at such an early stage in its development, neither is a four year old boy; the important issue is that it has reproductive potential, or to be even more accurate, that it belongs to a genus which can reproduce itself as a whole, as not all particular living organisms are fertile.
Someone might counter that the embryo is unviable- that it can not "do all of these things by itself." Actually, a fertilized embryo does carry out metabolism by itself. When people make this objection, they mean that the fetus only processes energy that it acquires from its mother who actively acquires it herself. Yet there are many other organisms which are considered separate, living beings that also live inside the mother (in her skin, digestive tract, and elsewhere) and acquire their energy from her.
All organisms acquire their energy from their environment. And for some organisms, their environment is another organism. Such is the temporary state of the unborn human being until it reaches a transition into the next stage of its life cycle, infancy. The embryo or fetus is getting no "help" in absorbing and processing the energy. It doesn't simply remain passive while energy is actively pushed through it from an external source. By its own power, it actively works to obtain energy from its environment and process it to grow and develop, which it also does by itself.
The mother's womb is not a factory, actively assembling a new organism from passive parts. It is a nourishing environment in which the new organism actively replicates and specializes its cells to grow and develop. The embryo's reproductive potential is also independent from the mother. It exists as a series of codes in the embryo's genes. Lastly, a fertilized embryo does react to stimuli as an independent and fully-functioning organism without being "helped" to do so by the mother.
So clearly it is alive by an objective and scientific definition of what life is. What kind of life is it?
Alive and Human
It is human life. It is not plant life. It is not a chicken embryo. It is a human embryo. A fertilized human embryo has its own unique genetic human signature that is different than that of either of its parents. This shows that it is clearly not additional tissue mass belonging to the mother. The genetic material in each cell of the developing embryo has a unique identity separate from the mother's. Additionally, developing male fetuses have penises, so asserting that they are simply unviable tissue mass belonging to the woman carrying them is problematic, as this would mean that the woman in question has a penis.
As well as being separate and unique, a fertilized embryo is ontologically no different than a human toddler, adolescent, or adult. Nothing is added to or taken from the embryo except food and waste products (which is no different than for any human being). At no point does the embryo undergo any fundamental, ontological change after conception; it simply grows and develops just like a toddler grows and develops, or a thirteen year old girl.
Thus, it is an error to claim, "It's not a human, it's a fetus." That would be like saying, "It's not a human, it's an infant," or, "It's not a human, it's an adolescent." These are category fallacies. The proper answer to these assertions would be, "Sure it's a fetus, sure it's an infant, and sure it's an adolescent. It's a human fetus, a human infant, and a human adolescent." These are simply stages of development in the human life cycle.
A human starts as an embryo, becomes a fetus, is born an infant, develops into a child, grows into an adolescent, matures into adulthood, and eventually dies. Scientifically and philosophically, there is no good reason to believe a human being is created at birth, because nothing is created at birth. At birth, a fetus simply changes location and changes its mode of acquiring food and dispensing waste, but at no point does it become something entirely new or different. Life begins at conception and proceeds through its stages until death. From the moment of conception, the unborn are human beings.
"Pro-Choice" is an Evasion
Having demonstrated that premise 2 of the syllogism is objectively and scientifically true, anyone who also accepts the first one is compelled to accept the conclusion, that the unborn have the right to live, which should be protected by law. Yet supporters of legalized abortion shy from this issue and generally refuse to directly confront arguments about the ontological status of the unborn.
They prefer instead to argue that they don't believe in forcing their values on others, and that people should be free to choose. Rather than address the most relevant issue, which is when a human being comes into existence and whether or not the unborn are human beings, their evasion of this matter is so fundamentally at the root of their stand that they have named themselves after it. They call themselves "pro-choice."
This is an evasion of the issue. If the unborn child is in fact a living human being (as I have shown above), then no one has the right to choose to kill her any more than they have the right to choose to kill a 14 year old girl, and by supporting legal restrictions on abortion, you are not forcing your morality on others any more than you are when you support laws that prevent people from murdering 14 year old girls.
Furthermore, in most cases, this claim is simply untrue, because the person making it will generally have no qualms about forcing their values on others by supporting taxpayer-funded stem-cell research or subsidies for abortions (to name only two examples), in which case they do not believe in the individual's right to choose or not choose to financially support these things. If "pro-choice" individuals were honest or consistent, they would also have no qualms about forcing on others their value of not murdering people.
Additionally, this line of reasoning has frightening parallels to another controversial civil rights issue: slavery.
The Abortion/Slavery Parallel
In an 1860 speech to Congress, Stephen A. Douglas said: "We, in those measures, established a great principle, rebuking [this] doctrine of intervention by the Congress of the United States to prohibit slavery in the Territories." Douglas wanted slavery to remain legal. His argument was not that he liked or believed in slavery, but that he believed in the state's right to choose.
The concept was called popular sovereignty and enjoyed wide support. The "great principle" Douglas refers to is the state's right to choose. How many times have you heard apologists for the Confederacy say that the issue was not slavery, but state's rights? They evaded the issue in the same manner that modern proponents of legalized abortion say that the issue is not abortion, but women's rights.
See the danger and logical flaws inherent in this line of "reasoning"? Nobody has the right to choose to enslave or murder other human beings. So if unborn children are living humans, then we have no right to take their lives. If they are indeed living human beings, this conclusion is inescapable. The only way to ever logically prove that abortion should be legal is to show scientifically that the unborn are not separate and living human beings or to justify the legalization of murder.
Other Objections
Another common objection is that women will be forced to perform back alley abortions if abortions are made illegal. This too, is an evasion of the issue. If the unborn are living human beings, it is wrong to murder them and laws should prevent their murder. If a woman tries to circumvent the law in order to kill an innocent human being, it is not the fault of the law that she risks bearing certain consequences for her actions, and the woman is certainly not being "forced" to do anything.
Besides, this claim is factually inaccurate. Calculated to conjure up images of abortions in filthy alleys, "back alley abortion" is a loaded term for what are more accurately called "illegal abortions" -which happened in clinics. According to Planned Parenthood's own Alan Guttmacher in his 1959 book Babies by Choice or by Chance, "The technique of the well-accredited criminal abortionist is usually good. They have to be good to stay in business, since otherwise they would be extremely vulnerable to police action."
I'm sure there are many other objections, but let me say that all of the ones I have heard evade rather than address the actual issue: where life begins. From a purely objective and scientific point of view, using sound, textbook definitions of life, it is clear that life begins at conception. Sound reasoning then would lead one to conclude that if human beings have a right to life which must be protected by law, then abortion must be outlawed.
A Civil Rights Issue for the 21st Century
This is one of the most important civil rights issues facing modern countries today. Similar to the issue of slavery in the 19th century, there is an entire class of people who are being treated as less than human, and the debate hinges on whether or not they are human. Through the sound application of reason and scientific inquiry, it becomes clear that after conception, the unborn are human beings, and that therefore governments should recognize and enforce for them as it should for all human beings, the rights which Nature grants them.
Let me address one more thing: Some people feel like it is futile to continue to have a discourse over the issue of abortion because people feel too strongly about it and have already made up their minds as to what they think. This is wrong. I've heard this time and again, and I want to stress that it is in fact only people with this attitude toward an issue who will never change anyone's minds about it.
People throughout history have changed their minds on social issues. When the United States was new, there was no suffrage or equal rights for women and racial minorities. Almost universally in the United States today, the general populace recognizes that this was wrong and that women and non-whites are entitled to their basic rights as human beings, and the law recognizes it too.
It took many years and decades of struggle involving emotions just as fierce if not more fierce than those surrounding the Pro-Life Movement in the 21st century. But victories for freedom were won and people did change their minds. That is how change happens. I encourage you to explore and understand this issue and stand ready to defend the rights of all living people, including the unborn. Change can happen, and I believe change will happen, and I will work tirelessly to advocate change for a freer, better world. Please join me.


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Veterinary architect predicts that technology, customized care will influence pet owners' choices.
Kansas City—Generation Y is going to change the world—including how veterinarians will interact with their clients and team members, says Heather Lewis, AIA, a veterinary architect with Animal Arts in Bolder, Colo., who addressed attendees during the Veterinary Economics Hospital Design Conference held in conjunction with CVC Kansas City.
Lewis, a Gen-Xer herself, says the up-and-coming group of clients, team members and veterinarians born between 1982 and 2000 are the first generation to grow up with technology. E-mail is too slow for them. Gen-Yers prefer instant communication, such as texts, interoffice IM and social media posts. Good luck getting them to return your voicemail messages, Lewis says.
"Generation Y likes immediacy or face-to-face communication," she says. "They also like amenities. Gen Y team members may ask, 'Hey, can I come in late?' or 'Hey, can I work from home?'"
So how will this blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, Pinteresting generation change veterinary medicine? Lewis has a few guesses. She predicts Gen Y clients will expect the following services:
• Online consulting with a veterinarian
• Online appointment scheduling
• Online pet prescription refills
• Automated billing
• Text reminders about appointments
Lewis says these clients will also expect patient-tailored care, so veterinarians need to be sure to screen for breed-specific illnesses in their pets and use current technology, like an iPad, to show them all of their options in the exam room. "They'll be impressed with your sophisticated practice and staff," Lewis says.
Lewis also expects that clinics will continue to look less like a hospital and more like a spa. This is good for Gen Y clients because they're looking for a concierge-type relationship with your front desk staff. "These clients will be expecting anticipatory care," Lewis says. This means veterinary staff members need to be aware of each client's needs and greet them by saying, "I can see it's hot outside, can I get you some water?" It's ideal for the waiting room to feature comfy seating and maybe even a dining room table so clients can virtually wait in a living room.
"Clients who can tweet their experience to 500 of their closest friends shouldn't be treated poorly," Lewis says.


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I'm going to midnight mass on December 8th!
Midnight Mass is a novella and a sequel to Priest! Please make sure you read Priest first.
Release Day: December 8, 2015
We are told that God will punish the wicked. That sinful men will reap what they sow. We are told to scourge our souls with prayer and pain to become clean once again.
Well, here I am. Wicked and sinful. Desperate to become clean…even though it feels so good to be dirty.
But even I never expected what came next.
Even I never expected my punishment to come so soon.
***Midnight Mass is a novella and a sequel to Priest. It's intended for mature audiences only.***
Goodreads link: http://bit.ly/1WSCCEx
Pre-Order Link
Amazon - http://amzn.to/1HbtB2C
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About the Author
Sierra Simone is a former librarian who spent too much time reading romance novels at the information desk. She lives with her husband and family in Kansas City.
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The graduate with Grandma and Grandpa.
Classic photo bomb from the little sister. So awesome!
The Silver Fox and his daughter.
Siblings. All good-looking kids!
"Mom, why do I have to wear this?"
A stolen peak over another graduate's cap.
Striding confidently out the door one last time, toward a bright future!
Future Britons! Good luck!


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Oscillators are important in many different types of electronic equipment. For example, a quartz watch uses a quartz oscillator to keep track of what time it is. An AM radio transmitter uses an oscillator to create the carrier wave for the station, and an AM radio receiver uses a special form of oscillator called a resonator to tune in a station. There are oscillators in computers, metal detectors and even stun guns.
To understand how electronic oscillators work, it is helpful to look at examples from the physical world. In this article, you'll learn the basic idea behind oscillators and how they're used in electronics.