text: Originally appearing here. A new study suggests that MDMA — the pure form of the drug ecstasy — may be effective in easing the most treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress, when coupled with psychotherapy. The long-term follow-up study by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies — published Tuesday in the Journal of Psychopharmacology — appears to add credence to research published by the California non-profit organization two years ago that found 83 percent of participants receiving MDMA-assisted psychotherapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis two months after treatment. Participants of the initial study, which included one military veteran and multiple victims of sexual assault, were then monitored for approximately 3 1/2 years, an association statement said. Research suggests 84 percent sustained the benefits in the long term. The group is now testing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy on first-responders and military veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD. "With such encouraging data, including evidence of long-term effectiveness after only two or three MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions, there is now no doubt that this research should be expanded to larger clinical trials," the study's principal investigator, Dr. Michael Mithoefer, said in the statement. The 24 police officers, firefighters and military veterans participating in the newest study will be treated by the middle of 2013, said association spokesman Brad Burge. Eleven have already received the treatment; results have been promising thus far. Since the research helped with the progress of some of the most treatment-resistant cases of PTSD, researchers believe the treatment will be especially helpful for servicemembers, who are typically the toughest cases due to their warrior ethos and the stigma associated with seeking treatment, Burge said. Almost one in seven servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from PTSD, according to the association's website. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent about $5.5 billion on PTSD disability payments to some 275,000 veterans in 2011. The cost and number of veterans suffering from PTSD is expected to rise. In the first study of MDMA on post-traumatic stress, 20 participants experiencing acute anxiety, nightmares and avoidance and withdrawal symptoms attended weekly psychotherapy sessions and were given a capsule containing 125 milligrams of some of the purest 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine in their second session, Burge said. Several weeks of therapy later, they were given another dose of MDMA. Some were given a placebo. Researchers found that the drug allowed participants to speak clearly and honestly about their trauma, Burge said. It also reduced the fear associated with traumatic memories and strengthened the alliance between participant and therapist. "It's really not about the drug," Burge said. "It's a tool that is there to help with the psychotherapy." Subjects of the study had suffered from PTSD for an average of over 19 years, and none had responded adequately to existing psychotherapies and treatments, the statement said. "MDMA-assisted psychotherapy helped me move past that feeling of needing to be in control," the statement quoted one subject as saying. "I felt like me, probably for the first time. That was what I'd been looking for: the feeling that I was OK." Of the 19 participants in the follow-up study, one dropped out and two relapsed back into a PTSD diagnosis, Burge said. There was no evidence of harm associated with the drug, and none of the participants developed a substance abuse problem with any illicit drugs as a result, according to the statement. MAPS has also been trying to study the potential benefits of marijuana on PTSD. They proposed a study that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the University of Arizona's Institutional Review Board but were blocked by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and its parent agency, the Public Health Service, which supplies marijuana for research. It is the fourth time the federal government has refused to supply marijuana for FDA-approved research, Burge said. MAPS plans to resubmit its application to NIDA and is suing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for the right to grow their own marijuana for research. Stars and Stripes offers a recap of results from our long-term follow-up research into treating posttraumatic stress disorder with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. The article also highlights our initiative to research medical marijuana as a treatment method for people suffering from PTSD.


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Given all the pressures IT is under, another compliance initiative may seem to be one too many. There is such a mandate: to submit financial reports using XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) tags.
How much will the XBRL mandate add to IT's burden? At first, the burden will be small, but it will increase over time — as will the opportunity to use XBRL for better internal operations, not just for reporting compliance.
The purpose of the XBRL mandate is to make corporate financial information more easily available to stockholders — and to make sure companies are really reporting the same things, the federal government has mandated the use of XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). The Toronto Stock Exchange tested out XBRL in 2003. The US taxonomy could be particularly useful for the 200 largest companies in the country that inter-list on both the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges.
The first SEC deadline for public companies with a market cap of US$5 billion or more to submit financial reports in interactive data, aka XBRL format, is set for Dec. 15, 2008. A year later, most Fortune 1500 companies must provide interactive XBRL data, and a year after that, all public companies will be required to submit the annual 10-K and quarterly 10-Q financial reports as interactive data.
After that, companies should expect the SEC to require more financial documents to be published in XBRL format and for other government agencies to begin mandating its use as well, says Diane Mueller, vice president of XBRL Development for JustSystems, an XML tools provider. John Stantial, assistant comptroller at the conglomerate United Technologies Corp. (UTC), expects to see the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis adopt XBRL as a requirement.
So what must IT do to make its company's financial reporting XBRL-compliant? Initially, XBRL requires just a minimal role for IT Under the SEC's initial reporting requirements, there is not much case for IT involvement, says Mike Willis, a partner at auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers and the founding chairman of XBRL International, a supply-chain consortium representing more than 600 companies.
According to a survey by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, various forms of regulatory compliance will be the leading business and technology issues facing IT managers worldwide over the next year.
Most of the initial XBRL effort is to tag the financial statements with the correct taxonomy, using XBRL markup terms, to describe a particular financial concept or fact in, say, a profit-and-loss statement. That effort is entirely a financial reporting activity, notes David Blaszkowsky, director of the SEC's Office of Interactive Disclosure.
The work can be done in-house or outsourced to a financial publisher.
IT's role in tagging is simply to assist the finance team with the software, an effort akin to helping a user figure out how to get a business card scanner to import the information into Outlook.
UTC, a large conglomerate with almost 250,000 employees, decided to do the tagging in-house when it became one of the first companies to participate in the SEC's voluntary filing program for interactive tagging three years ago. "We did it ourselves. Just a bunch of finance guys, no IT," says UTC's Stantial.
Three years ago, there were just three tools available to help with the tagging, so the self-supporting approach to tagging was a riskier prospect than it is today. Stantial's team chose Rivet Software's Dragon Tag, since its name kept popping up in searches. "At a cost of $300, if we couldn't figure it out, we could just throw it away," he says.
Today, there are plenty of software tools to help do the tagging, notes the SEC's Blaszkowsky, and it makes sense for the financial management and technology management teams to work together to discuss software options.
Although UTC has a large, first-class IT department that could have done the work, Stantial's team decided it should figure out XBRL for itself, especially since they didn't understand how to work in XML, which forms the foundation of XBRL. After all, the tagging needed financial expertise, and the accuracy of the results ultimately belonged to Stantial's group.
IT's role will increase as XBRL usage, complexity grow The initial tagging can be done with minimal IT involvement, but at some point, IT needs to get deeply involved in XBRL efforts. For example, as the SEC XBRL requirements grow more complex over time, it will be critical to understand how the XBRL-compliant reporting software might operate with the company's existing processes and platforms. By then, the decision is no longer a simple one of buying the easiest package to use and being able to "throw it away" if it's not suitable.
In fact, Stantial points out UTC later switched to Fujitsu's XWand, which he says has stellar editing tools for making changes after the document has been converted to XBRL. Of course, the price is much higher: An XWand software license starts at $10,000.
The IT role will grow further as ERP and other financial applications begin to integrate XBRL into their platforms. While it is a financial decision as to how to tag the data and reports, it will be up to IT to understand the implications of the how the software works with data and other applications — especially when a company has multiple ERP and financial systems due to mergers and acquisitions, notes Blaszkowsky. "XBRL is a powerful tool to apply, and it is in part a financial team and a technology team decision," he says.
IT has a role to help automate processes using XBRL Beyond reporting, enterprises can use XBRL to enforce consistent financial processes through its ERP and financial systems. UTC has been exploring this in its quest to achieve a "zero-day" financial close, in which it can issue accurate, up-to-the-minute financial reporting at any time.
Such an effort begins when companies start looking at all of the manual processes used during the "last mile" of financial reporting so that they can understand what might be automated, says PricewaterhouseCoopers' Willis. The automated assembly of reports and collaborative review of documents, along with the aggregation of all notes and MD&A (management discussion and analysis) disclosures are just a few of the areas where XBRL implementations, with the help of IT, can make a huge difference in accessing financial data, increasing collaboration during the report-making process, and reducing the final time to complete a report, Willis says.
It also gives all those involved the ability to drill down to lower-level systems to access information needed to explain changes in the business. For example, rather than doing the traditional linear review in which case documents are e-mailed to a review committee and "some poor sucker has to aggregate all the responses," Willis says, XBRL will allow IT to create a Wikipedia-like structure.

subset: commoncrawl


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- This event has passed.
In Pleasant Company Community Lunch
October 25, 2019 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
MPNH invites community members to join us for a healthy multigenerational social lunch in the East Hall. Please notify us in advance if you have special dietary needs.
Cost: $5 per person for lunch or $20 for 5 lunches (with pre-purchased punch card)
Contact: Mike Volker, Director of Core Programs and Operations, firstname.lastname@example.com, 604.879.8208 ext 128


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Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord.
Deuteronomy 33:29
The person who declares that Christianity makes men miserable is himself an utter stranger to it. It would be strange indeed if it made us wretched; consider to what a position it exalts us!
It makes us sons of God. Do you suppose that God will give all the happiness to His enemies and reserve all the mourning for His own family? Will His foes have laughter and joy, while His home—born children inherit sorrow and wretchedness? Will the sinner, who has no part in Christ, call himself rich in happiness, while we go mourning as if we were penniless beggars? No; we will rejoice in the Lord always and glory in our inheritance, for we "did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'"1 The rod of discipline must rest upon us in our measure, but it works for us the comfortable fruits of righteousness; and therefore by the help of the divine Comforter, we, a "people saved by the LORD," will rejoice in the God of our salvation.
We are married to Christ; and will our great Bridegroom permit His spouse to linger in constant grief? Our hearts are knit to Him: We are His members, and though for a while we may suffer as our Head once suffered, yet even now we are blessed with heavenly blessings in Him.
We have the promise of our inheritance in the comforts of the Spirit, which are neither few nor small. Inheritors of joy forever, we have foretastes of our portion. There are streaks of the light of joy to herald our eternal sunrise. Our riches are beyond the sea; our city with firm foundations lies on the other side of the river; gleams of glory from the spirit—world cheer our hearts and urge us onward.
It is truly said of us, "Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD."


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If you're reading this review and suddenly decide that you want an Xbox 360 this year, it might already be too late. By the time the Xbox 360 goes on sale in North America on November 22, virtually all of the available stock will have already sold out. That is, if you attempt to purchase a bundle (see below) through online retailers, you'll discover that all of their allotted systems are taken and they've halted preorders. If we can pretend for a few seconds that this deplorable situation doesn't exist, there are basically just a few ways to obtain an Xbox 360. You can buy what Microsoft is calling "Xbox 360," which is the core console with a slew of accessories (see below), you can buy the stock Core System (essentially a stripper system with no add-ons; see below), or you can try to buy one of several available bundles, which are massive collections of consoles, games, and accessories offered by retailers (again, see below). These bundles range in price from several hundred dollars to $1000. Yes, seriously.
Actually, there's another way. You could camp out in front of a Best Buy, CompUSA or similar store the night of November 21 and wait for the inevitable midnight madness event that will accompany Xbox 360's release, hoping you can rush into the store fast enough and get a system without having to kill a fellow shopper. It's your funeral.
OK, now that I've dampened your enthusiasm, let's take a look at the various Xbox packages you can get.
Xbox 360 Core System
The Xbox 360 Core System, about $300 in the US, is considered the basic package and is the cheapest way to acquire Microsoft's next generation game console. The Core System includes an Xbox 360 console with a standard white fascia, a single wired controller, and a composite AV cable that will work with virtually all modern television sets. However, the Core System is absolutely broken right out of the box: Because it doesn't come with a hard drive or Memory Unit, there is no way to save games or other data. So you're going to need to spend some more cash to get at least a Memory Unit before this package can be considered more than "better than nothing." Because this bundle is so horribly lacking (see the next section for more information), Microsoft expects the Core System to be outsold by the more complete Xbox 360 by at least a 5-to-1 margin. I agree, and though I appreciate the fact that Microsoft is offering a way to get into the Xbox 360 cheaply, this is like selling a car without tires. If you can, avoid the Core System.
Xbox 360
The next step up is the misnamed Xbox 360. This version includes the Xbox 360 console, but with a premium chrome finish. It also includes a 20 GB hard drive, a single wireless controller, an Xbox Live Headset, a component HD cable (that will only work on modern TV sets with component inputs), and an Ethernet cable. These additional features enable a number of scenarios that are not available to Core System users unless they upgrade their system. For example, having a hard drive means that you can save game data and downloads from Xbox Live Marketplace. But it also means that you can play games designed for the original Xbox: The compatibility data that Xbox 360 requires to play older Xbox games will reside on the hard drive, and updates will be downloaded as needed via Xbox Live. You also need a hard drive or Memory Unit to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold or Silver, by the way.
The Xbox 360 costs $400. If you factor in the cost of the accessories you get with Xbox 360, but not with the Xbox 360, you'll see that it's a tremendous bargain and is the baseline system you should consider. My personal opinion is that every Xbox 360 user should have the hard drive, because of its storage capacity, relatively low price, and the various downloads you'll want to do. Because it's cheaper to get the hard drive with the Xbox 360 package, you should get that, not the Core System.
That said, even the Xbox 360 package is not complete. Most people will want at least one more controller, of course.
Xbox 360 bundles
To capitalize on the buying frenzy caused by Microsoft's new console, retailers are bundling the Xbox 360 with a variety of games and accessories. These bundles are enormously expensive, but they do provide a way to get a slew of Xbox 360 gear in a single package. I can't possibly cover all of the available bundles, but let's look at a representative retailer to see what's out there.
Toys R Us offers two Xbox 360 bundles online (through partner Amazon), both of which cost a whopping $1000. The first, called the Xbox 360 Pro Player's Bundle, includes the Xbox 360 package (not the Core System), an additional wireless controller, a Play and Charge Kit, a Rechargeable Battery Pack, a second faceplate, and 8 game titles: Kameo: Elements of Power, Project Gotham Racing 3, Perfect Dark Zero: Limited Edition, Quake 4, GUN, Call of Duty 2, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and Ridge Racer 6.
The other bundle, known as Xbox 360 Pro Player's Bundle II, offers the same accessories and a slightly different contingent of 8 games: Kameo: Elements of Power, Project Gotham Racing 3, Call of Duty 2, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Need for Speed Most Wanted, NBA Live 2006, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006, and Ridge Racer 6. Additionally, Toys R Us offers two Core System bundles, but I can't find pricing on these at this time, so I'll focus on the pro bundles.
From a cost standpoint, the $1000 price point isn't horrible, assuming you want all those accessories and games. Here's how these items would break down if you bought them separately:
Xbox 360 (includes hard drive): $400
Wireless controller: $50
Play and Charge Kit: $20
Rechargeable Battery Pack: $12
Faceplate: $20
8 game titles: $480
Total: $982
So they're stroking you for $18. But the point here is that most people wouldn't buy such an audacious collection of video game gear at one sitting. Toys R Us, and every other major retailer that is selling the Xbox 360, is really just taking advantage of you. If you can afford such a thing, and simply must have an Xbox 360 this holiday season, a bundle like this might be your only choice. But as I mentioned previously, most places are sold out anyway. Apparently this ploy worked. It's astonishing to me that there are millions of people out there willing to spend $1000 on a video game system, but there you go.
On to Part 9...


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Information about the FDIC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) preserves and promotes public confidence in the U.S. financial system by insuring deposits in banks and thrift institutions for at least $250,000; by identifying, monitoring, and addressing risks to the deposit insurance funds; and by limiting the effect on the economy and the financial system when a bank or thrift institution fails.
An independent agency of the federal government, the FDIC was created in 1933 in response to the thousands of bank failures that occurred in the 1920s and early 1930s. Since the start of FDIC insurance on January 1, 1934, no depositor has lost a single cent of insured funds as a result of a failure. For more information, click the link to access the FDIC's frequently asked questions at FDIC.gov.


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The authors conclude: "Extensive recent preclinical literature suggests that stem cell-based therapies may offer promise; however the impact of compromised internal validity and publication bias means that efficacy is likely to be somewhat lower than reported here."
Dec. 17, 2013 ? A systematic survey of the scientific literature shows that stem cell therapy can have a statistically significant impact on animal models of spinal cord injury, and points the way for future studies.
This question is addressed in a paper published 17th December in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Ana Antonic, David Howells and colleagues from the Florey Institute and the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Malcolm MacLeod and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh, UK.
This new study gets round this problem by conducting a "meta-analysis" — a sophisticated and systematic cumulative statistical reappraisal of many previous laboratory experiments. In this case the authors assessed 156 published studies that examined the effects of stem cell treatment for experimental spinal injury in a total of about 6000 animals.
Spinal cord injuries are mostly caused by trauma, often incurred in road traffic or sporting incidents, often with devastating and irreversible consequences, and unfortunately having a relatively high prevalence (250,000 patients in the USA; 80% of cases are male). High-profile campaigners like the late actor Christopher Reeve, himself a victim of sports-related spinal cord injury, have placed high hopes in stem cell transplantation. But how likely is it to work?
Stem cell therapy aims to use special regenerative cells (stem cells) to repopulate areas of damage that result from spinal cord injuries, with the hope of improving the ability to move ("motor outcomes") and to feel ("sensory outcomes") beyond the site of the injury. Many studies have been performed that involve animal models of spinal cord injury (mostly rats and mice), but these are limited in scale by financial, practical and ethical considerations. These limitations hamper each individual study's statistical power to detect the true effects of the stem cell implantation.
Overall, they found that stem cell treatment results in an average improvement of about 25% over the post-injury performance in both sensory and motor outcomes, though the results can vary widely between animals. For sensory outcomes the degree of improvement tended to increase with the number of cells introduced — scientists are often reassured by this sort of "dose response," as it suggests a real underlying biologically plausible effect.
The authors went on to use their analysis to explore the effects of bias (whether the experimenters knew which animals were treated and which untreated), the way that the stem cells were cultured, the way that the spinal injury was generated, and the way that outcomes were measured. In each case, important lessons were learned that should help inform and refine the design of future animal studies. The meta-analysis also revealed some surprises that should provoke further investigation — there was little evidence of any beneficial sensory effects in female animals, for example, and it didn't seem to matter whether immunosuppressive drugs were administered or not.


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The Canadian Automobile Association is warning their members to take special precautions when traveling internationally — to Florida.
That's because the Sunshine State last year passed a largely unnoticed law that requires foreign drivers to own largely-unused "international driver's permits" from their home country.
The legislation, which went into effect January 1, was intended to make sure all Florida drivers held a license translated into English.
But it also meant scores of snowbirds flew down from the Great White North in 2013 not knowing they were breaking the law.
Florida lawmakers are apologizing to Canadians, British and other English-speaking countries that have been unintentionally targeted as a result of the law, and Florida's Highway Patrol has suspended its enforcement.
Still, there are questions about the impact on car rentals and insurance coverage for foreigners driving in the state. The state's tourism website, Visit Florida, is urging visitors to consult with an "in-country travel professional for guidance."
That's why the CAA, Canada's version of AAA, has on the homepage of its website guidelines for the new law and FAQ on how to obtain an international driver's license, which costs $25.
"Until the law is changed, we continue to recommend Canadians traveling to Florida should consider obtaining an IDP," the site reads.
That change could come soon, as state officials are quickly realizing some of the unwanted consequences of the bill.
"We will work with the legislature to amend the law this year so it does not burden international visitors to our state, who make up an important part of our tourism industry," said John Tupps, deputy press secretary for Florida Gov. Rick Scott, on Tuesday.
Florida state Rep. Ben Albritton, a Republican, introduced the bill with the intention of making things easier on Motor Vehicle employees who regularly deal with identification from foreign lands.
"This one I just missed. I want to tell the people in Canada I am sorry," Albritton told the Tampa Bay Times. "If I messed something up, I am man enough to fix it."
Canada topped all other countries in travel to Florida in 2011 with more than 3 million visitors there. Another English speaking country, the United Kingdom, ranks third on the list with 1.3 million visitors.
Tourism spending in the state totaled $67.2 billion in 2011.
It is unclear when the law will be officially amended.


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By: Tom Eblen
Bill Samuels' speech to the Bluegrass Hospitality Association was a lot like the Maker's Mark bourbon his company produces: smooth with a distinct flavor — and a kick.
Samuels blasted state officials, accusing them of trying to kill the bourbon industry with excessive taxes and unfair sales restrictions. And he signaled that the industry will be fighting back.
"We're not looking for subsidies from our commonwealth," Samuels said. "But we're sure as hell not looking to be thrown under the bus."
The bourbon industry is smarting over the General Assembly's eleventh-hour move earlier this year to balance the state budget by adding the 6 percent sales tax to alcohol.


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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
When Is Spring Here to Stay?
41 comments:
The flowers are out - spring must be just around the corner now!ReplyDelete
Well, being from the Chicago area I am in the middle of it. I just want it to be warm enough where the sun spots actually keep one warm without having to wear a sweater!ReplyDelete
What lovely spring pictures:-)ReplyDelete
Oh no Mother Nature is very, very naughty indeed. Paws crossed it is just a cold spell. Have a wonderful Wednesday.ReplyDelete
Best wishes Molly
Shiner looks beautiful in front of the Petunias. Makes me jealous because mine are nearly finished as we're going into winter now ;)ReplyDelete
It was swimming weather yesterday and by night we had the heat back on! I love those pics!ReplyDelete
At least you have pretty flowers, I hope the cold didn't hurt them! Love DollyReplyDelete
Spring needs to Stay Sprung and NOT keep disappearing! Happy WW, Miss Ann and Shiner.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 16, 2014 at 8:58 AM
Soon...very very soon.ReplyDelete
Hopefully soon, though we went from 80 degrees to 35 in one day!ReplyDelete
We have been wondering that ourselves. Between the scalding heat and now this impeding "cold front" (come on, it's Miami!) we are wondering when we'll get that lovely spring weather.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 16, 2014 at 1:10 PM
Shiner, you're so gorgeous! Titan and I woke up to ICE all over the ground and our deck. We had to tiptoe off the deck so neither one of us fell on our butts. :) I'm so ready for spring but we're having another night of freezing temps again! Only good thing is Titan gets to wear his coat again. :)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 16, 2014 at 1:26 PM
We are waiting for warmer weather in the Dakotas as well. Our pups have horrible Cabin Fever!ReplyDelete
We're asking the same question, sweet Shiner! Hopefully soon. It snowed here a little bit last night.ReplyDelete
Yes, it is time for the Brrrrrr to go away now!ReplyDelete
We woke up to snow and I wanted to cry….after all it was almost 70 the day before. Shiner sure brightens the day….and the snow is already long gone too!!!ReplyDelete
shiner...we iz knot sure wear spring sprung either but we will werk out a deel...furst one ta see it sends it two de other !!!ReplyDelete
Those flowers compliment Shiner very well. Love the photos! It did snow up here yesterday. I hope that was winter's last hurrah. It would be nice to be able to shed some layers of clothing.ReplyDelete
Mother Nature has been playing a cruel joke on us! We had snow yesterday. Though it's mostly gone today...but it's still cold! Spring better come back soon!ReplyDelete
Beautiful pictures! We did get some snow here yesterday. My daffodils look a bit droopy today. I hope they are okay.ReplyDelete
Hope spring decides to stay around! Beautiful pics!ReplyDelete
And here in the Southwest we had no snow! Just a little chilly temperatures lolReplyDelete
Shiner, we're with you!ReplyDelete
We're wondering if spring had to stop and ask for directions, because we're pretty sure he's lost!
Snowy in Minneapolis,
Shiner, I agree. It's like spring came by, teased us with 70-degree weather, and then said, "Nevermind. Not stayin'." Maybe if we all ask real nice, spring will come back and stay this time. ;-)ReplyDelete
--Woofs (and purrs) from Life with Dogs and Cats
Spring has sprung here but the temps sure are down low. We had some freezing temperatures this week too. This is so ridiculous. Lover you pretty flowers Shiner. Have a great day.ReplyDelete
Beautiful pictures, hope the spring weather stays.ReplyDelete
Oh I hear ya!!!!!! the weather is CRAZY this year!!!! Grrrrrrrr!ReplyDelete
ღ husky hugz ღ frum our pack at Love is being owned by a husky!
Three days ago, I was tempted to turn on the air conditioning it was that hot. Today I'm sitting with a sweat shirt and a blanket because we had freezing temps last night... Where is Spring Shiner?ReplyDelete
Yeah we had 4 inches the day before yesterday. Thankfully it is gone, hopefully for good! Love your photos!ReplyDelete
According to the old people, we still haven't had "dogwood winter" or "blackberry winter." (They're interchangeable.) A lot of times those old wives-tales are a bunch of hooey. Other times, like the "winters," they're unfortunately right.ReplyDelete
We're with you....there are always some ups and downs in spring but after such a cold winter, everyone just wants it to come and stay! We got snow here in NH too, and it's been pretty chilly the last couple of days and nights. Hopefully it will improve by the weekend!ReplyDelete
We are hoping starting today. Yesterday was snow, Just 40 mins north of us over a foot yesterday, but now the sun is back and each day will be warmer.ReplyDelete
I hope you'll have your spring soon :)ReplyDelete
Wonderful pictures. We have had a string of warmer days, so we are hopeful!ReplyDelete
That Spring for you boinging around all over the place,xx RachelReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 19, 2014 at 3:39 PM
Beautiful Spring. Have a Happy Easter :) Pawkiss :)ReplyDelete


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Nashua, city, seat of Hillsborough county, southern New Hampshire, U.S., lying along the Merrimack and Nashua rivers. It was settled about 1656 and was chartered in 1673 as Dunstable. It was a part of Massachusetts until a boundary settlement in 1741 placed it in New Hampshire. In 1803 the village of Indian Head, across the Nashua River, took the name of Nashua (allegedly derived from a local Indian tribe). The two settlements merged as Nashua in 1837. The northern section withdrew, as Nashville, in 1842 over a dispute in locating the town hall. They were reunited under a city charter in 1853. Since the closing of the textile mills after World War II, Nashua has developed a diversified industrial base. Its manufactures include computer products, electronic components, chemicals, office equipment, heavy machinery, and plastics. Nashua is the seat of Rivier College (founded 1933; Roman Catholic). A federal fish hatchery is in the city, and Silver Lake State Park is nearby. Pop. (2000) 86,605; Manchester-Nashua Metro Area, 380,841; (2010) 86,494; Manchester-Nashua Metro Area, 400,721.


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After years of debate and study, in 2007 McKinsey & Company initiated a series of business model innovations that could reshape the way the global consulting firm engages with clients. One of the most intriguing of these is McKinsey Solutions, software and technology-based analytics and tools that can be embedded at a client, providing ongoing engagement outside the traditional project-based model. McKinsey Solutions marked the first time the consultancy unbundled its offerings and focused so heavily on hard knowledge assets. Indeed, although McKinsey and other consulting firms have gone through many waves of change—from generalist to functional focus, from local to global structures, from tightly structured teams to spiderwebs of remote experts—the launch of McKinsey Solutions is dramatically different because it is not grounded in deploying human capital. Why would a firm whose primary value proposition is judgment-based and bespoke diagnoses invest in such a departure when its core business was thriving?
For starters, McKinsey Solutions might enable shorter projects that provide clearer ROI and protect revenue and market share during economic downturns. And embedding proprietary analytics at a client can help the firm stay "top of mind" between projects and generate leads for future engagements. While these commercial benefits were most likely factors in McKinsey's decision, we believe that the driving force is almost certainly larger: McKinsey Solutions is intended to provide a strong hedge against potential disruption.
In our research and teaching at Harvard Business School, we emphasize the importance of looking at the world through the lens of theory—that is, of understanding the forces that bring about change and the circumstances in which those forces are operative: what causes what to happen, when and why. Disruption is one such theory, but we teach several others, encompassing such areas as customer behavior, industry development, and human motivation. Over the past year we have been studying the professional services, especially consulting and law, through the lens of these theories to understand how they are changing and why. We've spoken extensively with more than 50 leaders of incumbent and emerging firms, their clients, and academics and researchers who study them. In May 2013 we held a roundtable at HBS on the disruption of the professional services to encourage greater dialogue and debate on this subject.
We have come to the conclusion that the same forces that disrupted so many businesses, from steel to publishing, are starting to reshape the world of consulting. The implications for firms and their clients are significant. The pattern of industry disruption is familiar: New competitors with new business models arrive; incumbents choose to ignore the new players or to flee to higher-margin activities; a disrupter whose product was once barely good enough achieves a level of quality acceptable to the broad middle of the market, undermining the position of longtime leaders and often causing the "flip" to a new basis of competition.
Early signs of this pattern in the consulting industry include increasingly sophisticated competitors with nontraditional business models that are gaining acceptance. Although these upstarts are as yet nowhere near the size and influence of big-name consultancies like McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the incumbents are showing vulnerability. For example, at traditional strategy-consulting firms, the share of work that is classic strategy has been steadily decreasing and is now about 20%, down from 60% to 70% some 30 years ago, according to Tom Rodenhauser, the managing director of advisory services at Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory.
At traditional strategy-consulting firms, the share of work that is classic strategy is now about 20%—down from 60% to 70% some 30 years ago.
Big consulting is also questioning its sacred cows: We spoke to a partner at one large firm who anticipates that the percentage of projects employing value-based pricing instead of per diem billing will go from the high single digits to a third of the business within 20 years. Even McKinsey, as we have seen, is pursuing innovation with unusual speed and vigor. Though the full effects of disruption have yet to hit consulting, our observations suggest that it's just a matter of time.
Why Consulting Was Immune for So Long
Management consulting's fundamental business model has not changed in more than 100 years. It has always involved sending smart outsiders into organizations for a finite period of time and asking them to recommend solutions for the most difficult problems confronting their clients. Some experienced consultants we interviewed scoffed at the suggestion of disruption in their industry, noting that (life and change being what they are) clients will always face new challenges. Their reaction is understandable, because two factors—opacity and agility—have long made consulting immune to disruption.
Like most other professional services, consulting is highly opaque compared with manufacturing-based companies. The most prestigious firms have evolved into "solution shops" whose recommendations are created in the black box of the team room. (See the exhibit "Consulting: Three Business Models.") It's incredibly difficult for clients to judge a consultancy's performance in advance, because they are usually hiring the firm for specialized knowledge and capability that they themselves lack. It's even hard to judge after a project has been completed, because so many external factors, including quality of execution, management transition, and the passage of time, influence the outcome of the consultants' recommendations. As a result, a critical mechanism of disruption is disabled.
Consulting: Three Business Models
Therefore, as Andrew von Nordenflycht, of Simon Fraser University, and other scholars have shown, clients rely on brand, reputation, and "social proof"—that is, the professionals' educational pedigrees, eloquence, and demeanor—as substitutes for measurable results, giving incumbents an advantage. Price is often seen as a proxy for quality, buoying the premiums charged by name-brand firms. In industries where opacity is high, we've observed, new competitors typically enter the market by emulating incumbents' business models rather than disrupting them.
The agility of top consulting firms—their practiced ability to move smoothly from big idea to big idea—allows them to respond flexibly to threats of disruption. Their primary assets are human capital and their fixed investments are minimal; they aren't hamstrung by substantial resource allocation decisions. These big firms are the antithesis of the U.S. Steel of disruption lore. Consider how capably McKinsey and others were able to respond when BCG started to gain fame for its strategy frameworks. But, as we'll see, opacity and agility are rapidly eroding in the current environment. For a glimpse of consulting's future, it's instructive to examine the legal industry.
Lessons from the Legal Field
The legal industry is grappling with legions of disgruntled but inventive clients and upstart competitors. The first significant blow to law's opacity came about 25 years ago, when Ben Heineman, fresh from serving as a general partner of Sidley & Austin, responded to Jack Welch's call to come to General Electric and essentially invent the modern corporate law function, greatly reducing corporations' reliance on law firms. Today general counsel budgets account for about one-third of the $500 billion legal market in America.
No less significant was the introduction, around the same time, of the Am Law 100 ranking of firms by financial performance, which gave clients their first hint of the true costs and value of the services they were buying, along with a real basis for comparison among the top firms. By adding increasingly granular data, such as leverage and profits per partner, the Am Law rankings shone a light on the previously secretive operations of white-shoe firms.
By now corporate general counsel are well along in the process of disaggregating traditional law firms, taking advantage of new competitors such as Axiom and Lawyers on Demand, which reduce costs and increase efficiency through technology, streamlined workflow, and alternative staffing models. AdvanceLaw and other emerging businesses are helping general counsel move beyond cost and brand as proxies for quality through what Firoz Dattu, AdvanceLaw's founder, calls the "Yelpification of law." His business vets firms and independent practitioners for quality, efficiency, and client service and shares performance information with its membership of 90 general counsel from major global companies, including Google, Panasonic, Nike, and eBay.
"The legal market has historically lacked transparency, making it difficult for us to deviate from using incumbent, brand-name law firms," says Bob Marin, the general counsel of Panasonic North America. "Things are changing now. This has greatly helped general counsel be much savvier about where to send different types of work and helped us serve our corporations better." Marin's sentiment reflects a broader trend that David Wilkins, of Harvard Law School, has noted: Today's general counsel increasingly view their fellow corporate executives, rather than outside counsel, as their peer group. They are often hired to bring cost and quality advantages to corporations by working creatively with law firms.
Emerging law firms are innovating quickly to take business away from white-shoe firms. For example, LeClairRyan is a full-service U.S. firm that currently employs more than 300 (full-time and contract) lower-cost but highly trained lawyers in its Discovery Solutions Practice. Clients can unbundle litigation work and "right source" to the firm such projects as large-scale document and data review at a dramatically lower cost. LeClairRyan coordinates this discovery work with the higher-value services of lead counsel, who focus on the less routine aspects of litigation.
Consultants: Are You in Danger of Disruption?
There will always be matters for which, as Wilkins says puckishly, "no amount of shareholder money is too much to spend," but without doubt, the old-line firms are under pressure. An AdvanceLaw survey of general counsel found that 52% agree (and only 28% disagree) with the statement that general counsel "will make greater use of temporary contract attorneys," and 79% agree that "unbundling of legal services…will rise." The legal management consultancy Altman Weil, surveying law firm managing partners and chairs, found that in 2009 only 42% expected to see more price competition, whereas by 2012 that number had climbed to 92%. Similarly, in 2009 less than 30% thought fewer equity partners and more nonhourly billing were permanent trends; in 2012 their numbers had reached 68% and 80%, respectively.
In response, some white-shoe firms have begun to incubate new models. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, one of the UK's prestigious Magic Circle firms, launched Freshfields Continuum in mid-2012 after years of experimentation and debate. Freshfields Continuum employs alumni as attorneys on a temporary basis to meet fluctuations in demand as "a solution for efficient head count management," according to the Freshfields partner Tim Jones.
When Knowledge Is Democratized
Kennedy Research estimates that turnover at all levels in prestigious consulting firms averages 18% to 20% a year. McKinsey alone has 27,000 alumni today, up from 21,000 in 2007; the alumni of the Big Three combined are approaching 50,000. Precise data are not publicly available, but we know that many companies have hired small armies of former consultants for internal strategy groups and management functions, which contributes to the companies' increasing sophistication about consulting services. Typically these people are, not surprisingly, demanding taskmasters who reduce the scope (and cost) of work they outsource to consultancies and adopt a more activist role in selecting and managing the resources assigned to their projects. They have moved more and more work in-house, such as average costing analysis, an exercise that once racked up billable hours.
Companies are also watching their professional services costs, a relatively new development that was triggered by the 2002 recession. Ashwin Srinivasan, an expert on procurement practices with CEB, says that C-suite executives are the "worst offenders of procurement best practices, but when spend is aggregated and they see the full impact of their individual decisions on the expense line, it wakes them up." In other words, cost pressures force clients to abandon the easy assumption that price is a proxy for quality.
Further Reading
Points of Law
Their growing sophistication leads clients to disaggregate consulting services, reducing their reliance on solution-shop providers. They become savvy about assessing the jobs they need done and funnel work to the firms most appropriate for those jobs. We spoke to top managers of Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies who were once consultants themselves; they repeatedly described weighing a variety of factors in deciding whether the expensive services of a prestigious firm made sense. As one CEO (and former Big Three consultant) put it, "I may not know the answer to my problem, but I usually roughly know the 20 or so analyses that need to be done. When I'm less confident about the question and the work needed, I'm more tempted to use a big brand."
This disaggregation is also explained by a theory—one that describes the increased modularization of an industry as client needs evolve. As the theory would predict, we are seeing the beginnings of a shift in consulting's competitive dynamic from the primacy of integrated solution shops, which are designed to conduct all aspects of the client engagement, to modular providers, which specialize in supplying one specific link in the value chain. The shift is generally triggered when customers realize that they are paying too much for features they don't value and that they want greater speed, responsiveness, and control.
Examples of this shift are many. When Clay Christensen first started working at BCG, in the early 1980s, a big part of his job was assembling data on the market and competitors. Today that work is often outsourced to market research companies such as Gartner and Forrester, to facilitated networks that link users with industry experts such as Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), and to database providers such as IMS Health. As access to knowledge is democratized, opacity fades and clients no longer have to pay the fees of big consulting firms. Some of these modular providers are moving upmarket by providing their own boutique consulting services, offering advice based on the research they specialize in gathering.
Clients: Are You Hiring the Right Firm for the Job?
The rise of alternative professional services firms, such as Eden McCallum and Business Talent Group (BTG), is another chapter in the modularization story. These firms assemble leaner project teams of freelance consultants (mostly midlevel and senior alumni of top consultancies) for clients at a small fraction of the cost of traditional competitors. They can achieve these economies in large part because they do not carry the fixed costs of unstaffed time, expensive downtown real estate, recruiting, and training. They have also thus far chosen to rely on modular providers of research and data rather than invest in proprietary knowledge development.
Although these alternative firms may not be able to deliver the entire value proposition of traditional firms, they do have certain advantages, as our Harvard Business School colleague Heidi Gardner has learned through her close study of Eden McCallum. Their project teams are generally staffed with more-experienced consultants who can bring a greater degree of pragmatism and candor to the engagement, and their model assumes much more client control over the approach and outcome. We expect these attributes to be particularly compelling when projects are better defined and the value at risk is not great enough to justify the price of a prestigious consultancy. As BTG's CEO, Jody Miller, puts it, "Democratization and access to data are taking out a huge chunk of value and differentiation from traditional consulting firms."
Eden McCallum and BTG are growing quickly and zipping upmarket. While it's fair to question whether they will need to take on some of the cost structure of incumbents as they expand, their steady growth suggests that they've been successful without doing so. For example, Eden McCallum launched in London in 2000 with a focus on smaller clients not traditionally served by the big firms. Today its client list includes Tesco, GSK, Lloyd's, and Whitbread, among many other leading companies. In addition, some of its contacts at smaller companies have moved into more-senior positions at larger companies, taking the Eden McCallum relationship with them. That dynamic is one that the consulting majors have long used to drive growth.
Modularization has also fostered data- and analytics-enabled consulting, or what Daniel Krauss, a research director at Gartner, calls "asset-based consulting," of which McKinsey Solutions is an example. This trend involves the packaging of ideas, processes, frameworks, analytics, and other intellectual property for optimal delivery through software or other technology. The amount of human intervention and customization varies, but in general it's less than what the traditional consulting model requires, meaning lower expenses spread out over a longer period of time (usually through a subscription or license-based fee). Certain tools can be more quickly and efficiently leveraged by the client, and teams don't have to reinvent the wheel with each successive client.
This approach is most pertinent for consulting jobs that have been routinized—that is, the process for uncovering a solution is well-known and the scope of the solution is fairly well defined. Often these jobs must be repeated regularly to be useful, and many of them deal with large quantities of data. For example, determining the pricing strategy for a portfolio of products is no small feat, but experienced consultants well understand what analytics are needed. The impact of such projects, which involve copious amounts of data, can erode quickly as circumstances change; the analysis must be updated constantly. In such projects a value-added process business model would be most appropriate.
Scores of start-ups and some incumbents are also exploring the possibility of using predictive technology and big data analytics to deliver value far faster than any traditional consulting team ever could. One example is Narrative Science, which uses artificial intelligence algorithms to run analytics and extract key insights that are then delivered to clients in easy-to-read form. Similar big data firms are growing explosively, fueled by private equity and venture capital eager to jump into the high-demand, high-margin market for such productized professional services.
Only a limited number of consulting jobs can currently be productized, but that will change as consultants develop new intellectual property. New IP leads to new tool kits and frameworks, which in turn lead to further automation and technology products. We expect that as artificial intelligence and big data capabilities improve, the pace of productization will increase.
Implications for an Industry
As noted, we're still early in the story of consulting's disruption. No one can say for sure what will happen. Disruption is, after all, a process, not an event, and it does not necessarily mean all-out destruction. We believe that the theory has four implications for the industry:
1. A consolidation—a thinning of the ranks—will occur in the top tiers of the industry over time, strengthening some firms while toppling others.
Winners will be differentiated from losers by their understanding of the evolving pressures on their clients and by their ability to bring clarity and skill to fulfilling clients' new requirements.
However disruption unfolds, a core of critical work will survive, requiring custom solutions to complex, interdependent problems across industries and geographies. As in law, for clients facing "bet the business" strategic problems, paying top dollar for name-brand solution shops will make sense, if for no other reason than that board members won't question the analytics produced by prestigious firms. Such firms will probably remain the only players that can crack enormous problems and facilitate the difficult change management required to address them, and they will continue to command a premium for their services.
Consultancies are shifting from integrated solution shops to modular providers, which specialize in supplying one specific link in the value chain.
But as disrupters march upmarket, armed with leaner business models and new technology, the range of problems requiring strategic solutions should shrink. To stay ahead of the wave of commoditization, firms will need human, brand, technological, and financial resources to deploy against new and increasingly complex problems and to develop new intellectual property. M&A activity, as difficult as that may be, will increase as some firms decide that they don't have the resources or stamina to make necessary changes, and others realize the need to acquire fill-in capability.
2. Industry leaders and observers will be tempted to track the battle for market share by watching the largest, most coveted clients, but the real story will begin with smaller clients—both those that are already served by existing consultancies and those that are new to the industry.
This is so because in consulting, as in every other industry, the unlocked entryway is in the basement of the established firms. While consulting's core apparatus is focused on bigger and bigger client engagements, small customers are unguarded.
3. The traditional boundaries between professional services are blurring, and the new landscape will present novel opportunities.
But a counterforce to modularity is creating many ill-defined interdependencies among the professional services. Thus the first firms to offer interdependent solutions to problems arising at these intersections stand to gain the lion's share of the value.
IDEO, for example, bridges the disciplines of industrial design and innovation consulting. Its unique mix of talent and strength in solving interdependent problems makes it hard to imitate. The legal services provider Axiom has expanded far beyond its roots in contract lawyer staffing to advising general counsel on substantive ways to lower costs while maintaining quality. To that end, Axiom now deploys a mix of lawyers, management consultants, workflow specialists, and technologists. By spanning domains and creating models that are hard to pick apart, these companies are effectively fighting modularization. (We should note that IDEO is attempting self-disruption as well, with its online platform OpenIDEO, which uses crowdsourcing instead of traditional consultants to solve problems. Although the platform today is primarily focused on social issues, we can imagine its applicability in more-commercial settings.)
Further Reading
Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right
Another example is the Big Four accounting firms, which have moved into a diverse array of professional services; like IBM and Accenture, these firms aspire to be "total service providers." According to a 2012 Economist article, Deloitte's consulting business is growing far faster than its core accounting business and, if the pace continues, will be larger by 2017. The other firms in the Big Four divested their consulting services almost a decade ago, after the introduction of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and other U.S. reforms, but are now catching up and starting to stake a claim in the higher-margin management consulting business. Whether they'll attempt to create a disruptive business model or just copy the incumbents' business model remains to be seen.
For leaders of incumbent organizations, this type of threat, which creeps in at the margins from an unexpected source, is particularly worrisome. More likely than not, alarms won't sound until it's already too late in the game.
4. The steady invasion of hard analytics and technology (big data) is a certainty in consulting, as it has been in so many other industries.
It will continue to affect the activities of consultants and the value that they add. Average costing and pricing analysis have been automated and increasingly insourced; now Salesforce.com and others are automating customer relationship analysis. What's next?
We believe that solutions featuring greater predictive technology and automation will only get better with time. What's more, data analytics and big data radically level the playing field of any industry in which opacity is high. Their speed and quantifiable output help reduce, and perhaps even negate, brand-based barriers to growth; thus they might accelerate the success of emerging-market consulting firms such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.
Consider the disruption that technology has already introduced. The big data company BeyondCore can automatically evaluate vast amounts of data, identify statistically relevant insights, and present them through an animated briefing, rendering the junior analyst role obsolete. And the marketing intelligence company Motista employs predictive models and software to deliver insights into customer emotion and motivation at a small fraction of the price of a top consulting firm. These start-ups, though they lack the brand and reputation of the incumbents, are already making inroads with Fortune 500 companies—and as partners to the incumbents.
Consulting firms that hope to incubate a technology-assisted model will want to revisit the lessons Christensen laid out in The Innovator's Solution. (See the sidebar "A Checklist for Self-Disruption.") As he has often said, self-disruption is extremely difficult. The day after you decide to set up the disruptive business as a separate unit, the illogic of the new business to the mainstream business is not magically turned off. Rather, second-guessing about the initiative persists, because the logic is embedded within the resource allocation process itself. That second-guessing must be overcome every day.
A Checklist for Self-Disruption
Indeed, whether McKinsey Solutions is ultimately successful will depend on how the partnership shapes and manages this new offering. Perhaps the knottiest issue it faces will involve dealing with the inevitable, and desirable, competition that arises between the core engagement business and its offspring. Will the partnership blink when a nontraditional client requests delivery of McKinsey Solutions without obligatory use of a full engagement team?
Disruption Is Inevitable
The consultants we spoke with who rejected the notion of disruption in their industry cited the difficulty of getting large partnerships to agree on revolutionary strategies. They pointed to the purported impermeability of their brands and reputations. They claimed that too many things could never be commoditized in consulting. Why try something new, they asked, when what they've been doing has worked so well for so long?
We are familiar with these objections—and not at all swayed by them. If our long study of disruption has led us to any universal conclusion, it is that every industry will eventually face it. The leaders of the legal services industry would once have held that the franchise of the top firms was virtually unassailable, enshrined in practice and tradition—and, in many countries, in law. And yet disruption of these firms is undeniably under way. In a recent survey by AdvanceLaw, 72% of general counsel said that they will be migrating a larger percentage of work away from white-shoe firms.
Furthermore, the pace of change being managed by the traditional clients of consulting firms will continue to accelerate, with devastating effects on providers that don't keep up. If you are currently on the leadership team of a consultancy and you're inclined to be sanguine about disruption, ask yourself: Is your firm changing (at least) as rapidly as your most demanding clients?
Finally, although we cannot forecast the exact progress of disruption in the consulting industry, we can say with utter confidence that whatever its pace, some incumbents will be caught by surprise. The temptation for market leaders to view the advent of new competitors with a mixture of disdain, denial, and rationalization is nearly irresistible. U.S. Steel posted record profit margins in the years prior to its unseating by the minimills; in many ways it was blind to its disruption. As we and others have observed, there may be nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success.


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When planning and configuring your Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c implementation, you will have many infrastructure considerations. One of the most often discussed pieces is the network ports that are used and how to configure load balancers, firewalls and ACLs for communication.
This blog post will help identify the typical default port and range for each component, how to identify it and how to modify the port usage.
Read original post here.


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Seikai no Senki II (Dub)
Type: TV Series
Plot Summary: Due to a lack of ambassadors for the recently-conquered worlds the rapidly advancing fleet of the Bebaus brothers leave behind, Lafiel is appointed Territorial Ambassador of the planet Lobnas II. Upon arriving to the planet Jinto and Lafiel discover that the planet was used by the United Mankind as a prison planet and now has a million prisoners on the only inhabited island. The prisoners are parted in three blocks. The western where women are housed, the eastern belongs to the men and the central is mixed under the restriction that all prisoners living there are sterilized. The women in the western sector want to emigrate from the planet of fear for the men and when they do the men in the east rebel, overthrowing the guards and capturing Jinto to try to stop the emigration of the women. At the same time an enemy fleet heads toward the system forcing Lafiel to abandon Jinto.
Genre: Action, Military, Romance, Sci-Fi, Space
Released: 2001
Status: Completed
Other name: Banner of the Stars II, 星界の戦旗 II


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Fresh from process of Sergio Perez – the director and editor, not the Formula One racing driver – is a brief highlights reel of this year's Formula 3 Grand Prix of Macau.
The video was shot by Perez with Aries Lou Weng Wa and Palmiro Rosário, while the opening scenes were taken by Simon Ma. Production assistants were Ma and Ho Yat Yu.
Coming in at bang on three minutes, the edit was shot on Red Epic, Canon C300, Canon 1DX and Gopro cameras with Canon still lenses.
All depictions of competition (easy to spot due to the granny nature of the footage) were taken from the local broadcast. Commentary was by Alan Hyde supported by WEC racer Danny Watts.
For more of Sergio Perez' material, you can check out his Vimeo channel at this link.


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Financial Tips for Boomers Looking to Retire Abroad
As baby boomers continue to redefine retirement, many are looking to settle abroad to launch the next chapter in their life.
Whether you are seeking a warmer climate, better tax advantages or more adventure, financial planners say retiring to a foreign land can present a number of financial challenges.
To help create a retirement guidebook for boomers looking to leave the country to live out their golden years, I spoke with Michael Ward, CEO of USForex - North America and Europe, who detailed how retirees can preserve their income and avoid losing money when living abroad. Here's what he had to say:
Boomer: How can baby boomers retiring abroad avoid transferred retirement funds being hit by exorbitant bank fees?
Ward: The good thing for anyone looking to transfer money overseas is that there are plenty of providers to choose from. Among these, many low-cost options from reliable non-bank providers are available to convert your U.S. dollars into foreign currency.
The exchange rate for your transfer can and does vary between providers, so be sure to compare the total cost of your international money transfer. Make sure to ask providers beforehand for the "customer rate" and their fees so you can identify the best pricing options for your budget.
Also, ask if you can lock in a binding exchange rate today for a future transfer. If the exchange rate is in your favor that month, the binding exchange rate may save you a little extra.
Finally, it's important to find out how the funds will be transferred. International wires will have intermediary banks take out their respective fees. Retirees should aim to use a provider that has domestic payment capabilities.
Boomer: What are some alternative means of currency exchange?
Ward: The money transfer space has undergone some rapid developments in recent years. Nowadays, international transfers can be done at home, online or over the phone. Non-bank providers offer the best alternatives, charging lower fees and providing better exchange rates. Make sure you select a provider with a strong global presence, good reviews and, if possible, an infrastructure that avoids inconveniences such as lining up at the bank or sending cash for pickup.
Boomer: Can you identify what steps retirees need to take to preserve most of their retirement income when living abroad?
Ward: First, retirees need to figure out what their lifestyle is going to cost them on a monthly basis and then build in a buffer. Often, there are unanticipated recurring costs, like real estate maintenance fees or escalations in property taxes, which must be taken into account.
Next, if they have an account in the US, they need to speak with a currency volatility expert. Anticipating swings in currency exchange rates can save retirees thousands of dollars per year.
Finally, retirees must be flexible in the way they transfer money from the US abroad, meaning if the exchange rate is in the retiree's favor in a particular month, they should consider transferring more than normal for that month or lock in the day's rate for a future dated transfer. It could end up saving them a considerable amount of money.
Boomer: How do boomers learn about limit orders on the currency exchange?
Ward: Although no one can call the market with 100% accuracy, retirees can place market orders to take advantage of currency fluctuations or to get protection. In essence, this allows them to set a target and then place an order to lock in the targeted exchange rate automatically, any time of the day or night without the need to watch the market themselves. It's always best to have a plan for monthly/annual requirements and set some targets. It's also important for retirees to work with a provider to assess their best options.
Boomer: Any other tips you can offer baby boomers on risk management and currency rates abroad?
Ward: Locking in a rate for a future transfer is a good form of risk management. Currency rates can be very volatile and thinking about using some risk management tools to secure an exchange rate today for a future transfer (i.e., Forward Exchange Contract) can help protect retirees from adverse currency movements.


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Episode 22.1 of the VeloReviews Podcast is out
Well whadda ya know – I finally made a podcast!
As mentioned previously, I've taken on a new role over at VeloReviews.com, and part of that is the podcast. As my first podcast produced for VeloReviews, we've got Fitness Editor Al Painter doing some interviews with racers at the Sea Otter Classic.
Fire up iTunes and give it a listen. Or, have a listen to it right here.
And keep an eye on VeloReviews.com – we've already got the recording of Episode 23 scheduled for next week, and we're going to try out a couple of things to try and get the community involved during the recording.


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In this animated short, Oscar® winner John Weldon (Special Delivery) spins a tall tale about young Dorothy and her myriad troubles: absentee parents, bad hair and a menagerie that devours her homework. But when her pet squid rampages through town and people finally realize that the homework-eating creatures aren't a figment of her imagination, Dorothy realizes that it's time to get the situation under control.
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Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...
On Repentance and Remission of Sins, and Concerning the Adversary.
The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins, etc.
1. A fearful thing is sin, and the sorest disease of the soul is transgression, secretly cutting its sinews, and becoming also the cause of eternal fire; an evil of a man's own choosing, an offspring of the will. For that we sin of our own free will the Prophet says plainly in a certain place: Yet I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how are you turned to bitterness, (and become) the strange vine Jeremiah 2:21? The planting was good, the fruit coming from the will is evil; and therefore the planter is blameless, but the vine shall be burnt with fire since it was planted for good, and bore fruit unto evil of its own will. For God, according to the Preacher, made man upright, and they have themselves sought out many inventions. Ecclesiastes 7:29 For we are His workmanship, says the Apostle, created unto good works, which God afore prepared, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10 So then the Creator, being good, created for good works; but the creature turned of its own free will to wickedness. Sin then is, as we have said, a fearful evil, but not incurable; fearful for him who clings to it, but easy of cure for him who by repentance puts it from him. For suppose that a man is holding fire in his hand; as long as he holds fast the live coal he is sure to be burned, but should he put away the coal, he would have cast away the flame also with it. If however any one thinks that he is not being burned when sinning, to him the Scripture says, Shall a man wrap up fire in his bosom, and not burn his clothes Proverbs 6:27? For sin burns the sinews of the soul, [and breaks the spiritual bones of the mind, and darkens the light of the heart ].
2. But some one will say, What can sin be? Is it a living thing? Is it an angel? Is it a demon? What is this which works within us? It is not an enemy, O man, that assails you from without, but an evil shoot growing up out of yourself. Look right on with your eyes Proverbs 4:25, and there is no lust. [Keep your own, and ] seize not the things of others, and robbery has ceased. Remember the Judgment, and neither fornication, nor adultery, nor murder, nor any transgression of the law shall prevail with you. But whenever you forget God, immediately you begin to devise wickedness and to commit iniquity.
3. Yet you are not the sole author of the evil, but there is also another most wicked prompter, the devil. He indeed suggests, but does not get the mastery by force over those who do not consent. Therefore says the Preacher, If the spirit of him that has power rise up against you, quit not your place. Shut your door, and put him far from you, and he shall not hurt you. But if you indifferently admit the thought of lust, it strikes root in you by its suggestions, and enthrals your mind, and drags you down into a pit of evils.
But perhaps you say, I am a believer, and lust does not gain the ascendant over me, even if I think upon it frequently. Do you not know that a root breaks even a rock by long persistence? Admit not the seed, since it will rend your faith asunder: tear out the evil by the root before it blossom, lest from being careless at the beginning thou have afterwards to seek for axes and fire. When your eyes begin to be diseased, get them cured in good time, lest you become blind, and then have to seek the physician.
4. The devil then is the first author of sin, and the father of the wicked: and this is the Lord's saying, not mine, that the devil sins from the beginning : none sinned before him. But he sinned, not as having received necessarily from nature the propensity to sin, since then the cause of sin is traced back again to Him that made him so; but having been created good, he has of his own free will become a devil, and received that name from his action. For being an Archangel he was afterwards called a devil from his slandering: from being a good servant of God he has become rightly named Satan; for
Satan is interpreted the adversary. And this is not my teaching, but that of the inspired prophet Ezekiel: for he takes up a lamentation over him and says, You were a seal of likeness, and a crown of beauty; in the Paradise of God were you born : and soon after, You were born blameless in your days, from the day in which you were created, until your iniquities were found in you. Very rightly has he said, were found in you; for they were not brought in from without, but you yourself begot the evil. The cause also he mentions immediately: Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty: for the multitude of your sins were you wounded, and I did cast you to the ground. In agreement with this the Lord says again in the Gospels: I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Luke 10:18 You see the harmony of the Old Testament with the New. He when cast out drew many away with him. It is he that puts lusts into them that listen to him: from him come adultery, fornication, and every kind of evil. Through him our forefather Adam was cast out for disobedience, and exchanged a Paradise bringing forth wondrous fruits of its own accord for the ground which brings forth thorns.
5. What then? Some one will say. We have been beguiled and are lost. Is there then no salvation left? We have fallen: Is it not possible to rise again? We have been blinded: May we not recover our sight? We have become crippled: Can we never walk upright? In a word, we are dead: May we not rise again? He that woke Lazarus who was four days dead and already stank, shall He not, O man, much more easily raise you who art alive? He who shed His precious blood for us, shall Himself deliver us from sin. Let us not despair of ourselves, brethren; let us not abandon ourselves to a hopeless condition. For it is a fearful thing not to believe in a hope of repentance. For he that looks not for salvation spares not to add evil to evil: but to him that hopes for cure, it is henceforth easy to be careful over himself. The robber who looks not for pardon grows desperate; but, if he hopes for forgiveness, often comes to repentance. What then, does the serpent cast its slough , and shall not we cast off our sin? Thorny ground also, if cultivated well, is turned into fruitful; and is salvation to us irrecoverable? Nay rather, our nature admits of salvation, but the will also is required.
6. God is loving to man, and loving in no small measure. For say not, I have committed fornication and adultery: I have done dreadful things, and not once only, but often: will He forgive? Will He grant pardon? Hear what the Psalmist says: How great is the multitude of Your goodness, O Lord! Your accumulated offenses surpass not the multitude of God's mercies: your wounds surpass not the great Physician's skill. Only give yourself up in faith: tell the Physician your ailment: say thou also, like David: I said, I will confess me my sin unto the Lord: and the same shall be done in your case, which he says immediately: And you forgave the wickedness of my heart.
7. Would you see the loving-kindness of God, O thou that art lately come to the catechising? Would you see the loving-kindness of God, and the abundance of His long-suffering? Hear about Adam. Adam, God's first-formed man, transgressed: could He not at once have brought death upon him? But see what the Lord does, in His great love towards man. He casts him out from Paradise, for because of sin he was unworthy to live there; but He puts him to dwell over against Paradise : that seeing whence he had fallen, and from what and into what a state he was brought down, he might afterwards be saved by repentance. Cain the first-born man became his brother's murderer, the inventor of evils, the first author of murders, and the first envious man. Yet after slaying his brother to what is he condemned? Groaning and trembling shall you be upon the earth. How great the offense, the sentence how light!
8. Even this then was truly loving-kindness in God, but little as yet in comparison with what follows. For consider what happened in the days of Noe. The giants sinned, and much wickedness was then spread over the earth, and because of this the flood was to come upon them: and in the five hundredth year God utters His threatening; but in the six hundredth He brought the flood upon the earth. Do you see the breadth of God's loving-kindness extending to a hundred years? Could He not have done immediately what He did then after the hundred years? But He extended (the time) on purpose, granting a respite for repentance. Do you see God's goodness? And if the men of that time had repented, they would not have missed the loving-kindness of God.
9. Come with me now to the other class, those who were saved by repentance. But perhaps even among women some one will say, I have committed fornication, and adultery, I have defiled my body by excesses of all kinds: is there salvation for me? Turn your eyes, O woman, upon Rahab, and look thou also for salvation; for if she who had been openly and publicly a harlot was saved by repentance, is not she who on some one occasion before receiving grace committed fornication to be saved by repentance and fasting? For inquire how she was saved: this only she said: For your God is God in heaven and upon earth. Joshua 2:11 Your God; for her own she did not dare to say, because of her wanton life. And if you wish to receive Scriptural testimony of her having been saved, you have it written in the Psalms: I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon among them that know me . O the greatness of God's loving-kindness, making mention even of harlots in the Scriptures: nay, not simply I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon, but with the addition, among them that know me. There is then in the case both of men and of women alike the salvation which is ushered in by repentance.
10. Nay more, if a whole people sin, this surpasses not the loving-kindness of God. The people made a calf, yet God ceased not from His loving-kindness. Men denied God, but God denied not Himself. 2 Timothy 2:13 These be your gods, O Israel Exodus 32:4, they said: yet again, as He was wont, the God of Israel became their Saviour. And not only the people sinned, but also Aaron the High Priest. For it is Moses that says: And the anger of the Lord came upon Aaron: and I prayed for him, says he, and God forgave him. Deuteronomy 9:20 What then, did Moses praying for a High Priest that sinned prevail with God, and shall not Jesus, His Only-begotten, prevail with God when He prays for us? And if He did not hinder Aaron, because of his offense, from entering upon the High Priesthood, will He hinder you, who has come out from the Gentiles, from entering into salvation? Only, O man, repent thou also in like manner, and grace is not forbidden you. Render your way of life henceforth unblameable; for God is truly loving unto man, nor can all time worthily tell out His loving kindness; nay, not if all the tongues of men unite together will they be able even so to declare any considerable part of His loving-kindness. For we tell some part of what is written concerning His loving-kindness to men, but how much He forgave the Angels we know not: for them also He forgives, since One alone is without sin, even Jesus who purges our sins. And of them we have said enough.
11. But if concerning us men you will have other examples also set before you , come on to the blessed David, and take him for an example of repentance. Great as he was, he fell: after his sleep, walking in the eventide on the housetop, he cast a careless look, and felt a human passion. His sin was completed, but there died not with it his candour concerning the confession of his fault. Nathan the Prophet came, a swift accuser, and a healer of the wound. The Lord is angry, he says, and you have sinned. 2 Samuel 12 So spoke the subject to the reigning king. But David the king was not indignant, for he regarded not the speaker, but God who had sent him. He was not puffed up by the array of soldiers standing round: for he had seen in thought the angel-host of the Lord, and he trembled as seeing Him who is invisible Hebrews 11:27; and to the messenger, or rather by him in answer to God who sent him, he said, I have sinned against the Lord. 2 Samuel 12:13 Do you see the humility of the king? Do you see his confession? For had he been convicted by any one? Were many privy to the matter? The deed was quickly done, and straightway the Prophet appeared as accuser, and the offender confesses the fault. And because he candidly confessed, he received a most speedy cure. For Nathan the Prophet who had uttered the threat, said immediately, The Lord also has put away your sin. You see the swift relenting of a merciful God. He says, however, You have greatly provoked the enemies of the Lord. Though you had many enemies because of your righteousness, your self-control protected you; but now that you have surrendered your strongest armour, your enemies are risen up, and stand ready against you.
12. Thus then did the Prophet comfort him, but the blessed David, for all he heard it said, The Lord has put away your sin, did not cease from repentance, king though he was, but put on sackcloth instead of purple, and instead of a golden throne, he sat, a king, in ashes on the ground; nay, not only sat in ashes, but also had ashes for his food, even as he says himself, I have eaten ashes as it were bread. His lustful eye he wasted away with tears saying, Every night will I wash my couch, and water my bed with my tears. When his officers besought him to eat bread he would not listen. He prolonged his fast unto seven whole days. If a king thus made confession ought not thou, a private person, to confess? Again, after Absalom's insurrection, though there were many roads for him to escape, he chose to flee by the Mount of Olives, in thought, as it were, invoking the Redeemer who was to go up thence into the heavens. 2 Samuel 16:10-11 And when Shimei cursed him bitterly, he said, Let him alone, for he knew that
to him that forgives it shall be forgiven.
13. You see that it is good to make confession. You see that there is salvation for them that repent. Solomon also fell but what says he? Afterwards I repented. Ahab, too, the King of Samaria, became a most wicked idolater, an outrageous man, the murderer of the Prophets 1 Kings 18:4, a stranger to godliness, a coveter of other men's fields and vineyards. Yet when by Jezebel's means he had slain Naboth, and the Prophet Elias came and merely threatened him, he rent his garments, and put on sackcloth. And what says the merciful God to Elias? Hast than seen how Ahab is pricked in the heart before Me ? As if almost He would persuade the fiery zeal of the Prophet to condescend to the penitent. For He says, I will not bring the evil in his days. And though after this forgiveness he was sure not to depart from his wickedness, nevertheless the forgiving God forgave him, not as being ignorant of the future, but as granting a forgiveness corresponding to his present season of repentance. For it is the part of a righteous judge to give sentence according to each case that has occurred.
14. Again, Jeroboam was standing at the altar sacrificing to the idols: his hand became withered, because he commanded the Prophet who reproved him to be seized: but having by experience learned the power of the man before him, he says, Entreat the face of the Lord your God 1 Kings 13:6; and because of this saying his hand was restored again. If the Prophet healed Jeroboam, is Christ not able to heal and deliver you from your sins? Manasses also was utterly wicked, who sawed Isaiah asunder , and was defiled with all kinds of idolatries, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood 2 Chronicles 33:12-13; but having been led captive to Babylon he used his experience of misfortune for a healing course of repentance: for the Scripture says that Manasses humbled himself before the Lord, and prayed, and the Lord heard him, and brought him back to his kingdom. If He who sawed the Prophet asunder was saved by repentance, shall not thou then, having done no such great wickedness, be saved?
15. Take heed lest without reason you mistrust the power of repentance. Would you know what power repentance has? Would you know the strong weapon of salvation, and learn what the force of confession is? Hezekiah by means of confession routed a hundred and fourscore and five thousand of his enemies. A great thing verily was this, but still small in comparison with what remains to be told: the same king by repentance obtained the recall of a divine sentence which had already gone forth. For when he had fallen sick, Esaias said to him, Set your house in order; for you shall die, and not live. 2 Kings 20:1 What expectation remained, what hope of recovery, when the Prophet said, for you shall die? Yet Hezekiah did not desist from repentance; but remembering what is written, When you shall turn and lament, then shall you be saved Isaiah 30:15, he turned to the wall, and from his bed lifting his mind to heaven (for thickness of walls is no hindrance to prayers sent up with devotion), he said,
Remember me, O Lord, for it is sufficient for my healing that You remember me. You are not subject to times, but art Yourself the giver of the law of life. For our life depends not on a nativity, nor on a conjunction of stars, as some idly talk; but both of life and its duration. Then art Yourself the Lawgiver according to Your Will. And he, who could not hope to live because of the prophetic sentence, had fifteen years added to his life, and for the sign the sun ran backward in his course. Well then, for Ezekias' sake the sun turned back but for Christ the sun was eclipsed, not retracing his steps, but suffering eclipse Isaiah 38:8, and therefore showing the difference between them, I mean between Ezekias and Jesus. The former prevailed to the cancelling of God's decree, and cannot Jesus grant remission of sins? Turn and bewail yourself, shut your door, and pray to be forgiven, pray that He may remove from you the burning flames. For confession has power to quench even fire, power to tame even lions.
16. But if you disbelieve, consider what befell Ananias and his companions. What streams did they pour out ? How many vessels of water could quench the flame that rose up forty-nine cubits high ? Nay, but where the flame mounted up a little too high, faith was there poured out as a river, and there spoke they the spell against all ills : Righteous are You, O Lord, in all the things that You have done to us: for we have sinned, and transgressed Your law. And their repentance quelled the flames. If you believe not that repentance is able to quench the fire of hell, learn it from what happened in regard to Ananias. But some keen hearer will say, Those men God rescued justly in that case: because they refused to commit idolatry, God gave them that power. And since this thought has occurred, I come next to a different example of penitence.
17. What do you think of Nebuchadnezzar? Have you not heard out of the Scriptures that he was bloodthirsty, fierce , lion-like in disposition? Have you not heard that he brought out the bones of the kings from their graves into the light ? Have you not heard that he carried the people away captive? Have you not heard that he put out the eyes of the king, after he had already seen his children slain 2 Kings 25:7? Have you not heard that he broke in pieces the Cherubim? I do not mean the invisible beings — away with such a thought, O man — but the sculptured images, and the mercy-seat, in the midst of which God spoke with His voice. The veil of the Sanctuary he trampled under foot: the altar of incense he took and carried away to an idol-temple 2 Chronicles 36:7: all the offerings he took away: the Temple he burned from the foundations. How great punishments did he deserve, for slaying kings, for setting fire to the Sanctuary, for taking the people captive, for setting the sacred vessels in the house of idols? Did he not deserve ten thousand deaths?
18. You have seen the greatness of his evil deeds: come now to God's loving-kindness. He was turned into a wild beast , he abode in the wilderness, he was scourged, that he might be saved. He had claws as a lion ; for he was a ravager of the Sanctuary. He had a lion's mane: for he was a ravening and a roaring lion. He ate grass like an ox: for a brute beast he was, not knowing Him who had given him the kingdom. His body was wet from the dew; because after seeing the fire quenched by the dew he believed not. And what happened ? After this, says he, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes unto heaven, and I blessed the Most High, and to Him that lives for ever I gave praise and glory. Daniel 4:34 When, therefore, he recognised the Most High , and sent up these words of thankfulness to God, and repented himself for what he had done, and recognised his own weakness, then God gave back to him the honour of the kingdom.
19. What then ? When Nebuchadnezzar, after having done such deeds, had made confession, did God give him pardon and the kingdom, and when you repent shall He not give you the remission of sins, and the kingdom of heaven, if you live a worthy life? The Lord is loving unto man, and swift to pardon, but slow to punish. Let no man therefore despair of his own salvation. Peter, the chiefest and foremost of the Apostles, denied the Lord thrice before a little maid: but he repented himself, and wept bitterly. Now weeping shows the repentance of the heart: and therefore he not only received forgiveness for his denial, but also held his Apostolic dignity unforfeited.
20. Having therefore, brethren, many examples of those who have sinned and repented and been saved, do ye also heartily make confession unto the Lord, that you may both receive the forgiveness of your former sins, and be counted worthy of the heavenly gift, and inherit the heavenly kingdom with all the saints in Christ Jesus; to Whom is the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Source. Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gifford. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310102.htm>.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.


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A-Z Formen- und Maschinenbau GmbH, based in Runding, Bavaria, has been part of Continental since the end of last year. The leading tire manufacturer has integrated into the company one of the most technologically skilled producers of molds required for manufacturing tires. A-Z Formen- und Maschinenbau GmbH includes the plant in Runding, Bavaria, and an additional factory in Meclov, Czech Republic. This year, Continental will expand its capacity for extremely detailed tread designs at the Runding location by building a new foundry. As part of this, the corporation intends to invest €6 million in order to meet the ever more complex requirements on tire molds and production performance. Twenty new jobs will be created at the Runding site.
"The acquisition of A-Z Formen- und Maschinenbau GmbH was another significant step on the way to realizing our long-term Vision 2025 strategy," says Nikolai Setzer, Executive Board member for the Tire division, commenting on this strategic step. "The production of the most sophisticated molds with the highest technological quality is essential for us to able to continue to expand our technological expertise at this level, which is so incredibly important for the product characteristics of the tire. By further expanding our capacity, we are making it possible to keep pace with the ever more exacting requirements on tires and their production as well as to fulfill our goal of manufacturing premium tires while driving research and development forward at the highest level."
A-Z Formen und Maschinenbau GmbH was established in 1965 and currently employs approximately 320 people. It is part of Continental subsidiary ContiMachinery, headquartered at the Hanover-Stöcken industrial park.


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User:Elitre (WMF)
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