text:
Centroid Building its Specializations and Renews Platinum Membership
Centroid Building its Specializations and Renews Platinum Membership
Centroid, a national technology firm and provider of Consulting, Managed Services, Cloud Services and Resell of Oracle products, continues to reinforce its Platinum Level status in the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized Program. This recent renewal underscores Centroid's deep commitment to supporting Oracle technologies for customers with numerous specializations across a broad range of Oracle products and industries including finance, biotechnology, entertainment, oil/gas and healthcare.
For nearly two decades, clients have relied on Centroid's expertise to help them realize the benefits of running a suite of Oracle applications, technology and infrastructure. Centroid's FutureProofing concept helps customers adapt Oracle technologies to move as their businesses move.
"We are pleased to have renewed our Platinum Partner status," said Centroid Managing Partner Jim Brull. "We believe the organization has demonstrated unparalleled and notable momentum this FY13, with significant investments in staff, sales enablement and extensive partnering with Oracle to offer deep solutions supporting Oracle hardware, technology, applications and licensing," continued Brull. "Centroid recognizes it is a combination of those investments that have provided extensive benefits and driven growth for the organization, but more importantly for our clients as well."
Centroid has Specializations across the Oracle E-Business Suite including financials, Oracle Fusion financials, BI, extending to Engineered Systems Exalogic and Exadata Database.
"As a Platinum level member," Brull adds, "our clients can be confident that Centroid is positioned to deliver projects with a strong team of diverse Oracle Certified Consultants that hold deep knowledge in the field with solutions that are fully supported by Oracle."
About Oracle PartnerNetwork
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success.
For more information visit http://www.oracle.com/partners.
About Centroid
Centroid is one of Oracle's Top 25 Strategic Partners and a Platinum level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). We are a national technology firm focused on Consulting, Managed Services, Cloud Services and Resell of Oracle products that span the entire enterprise. From Applications to Technology to Infrastructure our Apps-to-Iron capabilities deliver the highest quality services from end-to-end providing our customers with an optimized environment. We focus on extending the value of systems, information, processes, technology and business.
We facilitate greater return on Oracle investments by driving higher performance, integration, flexibility and response from your systems.
Our Technology and Business Services Include:
- Consulting Services that target the core challenges businesses have with technology
- Technology Services that provide system health checks, IT optimization asset assessments, performance & tuning, database administration to engineered systems deployments and infrastructure planning and refreshes
- Managed Services that provide cost-effective solutions to support Oracle database and applications
- Cloud Services that provide full enterprise hosting and disaster recovery and backup plans and extensive coverage for service level agreements
- Resell of Oracle products/licenses
- Business Intelligence (BI) Applications that turn data into real information
- Infrastructure Solutions that ensure your data is completely manageable and secure
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Media Contact(s):
Rebecca Portela
Sr. Director of Marketing | Business Development
Loretta Wagner
Marketing Manager


text:
This information is provided for your convenience and may no longer be valid.
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Be the first OregonLive.com user to add photos or videos of Aristocrafts Experts Engravers
If you need custom jewelry work or an award befitting a king I highly recommend them!
Winn Suzann is located at 230 Richmond Ave SE, Salem, OR. This business specializes in Ornamental Glass, Metal, & Stone.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
You use Group Aggregation to configure multiple Archiver or Concentrator services as a group and share the aggregation tasks between them. You can configure multiple Archiver services or Concentrator services to efficiently aggregate from multiple Log Decoder services to improve query performance on the data:
- Stored in the Archiver.
- Processed through the Concentrator.
RSA Group Aggregation Deployment Recommendations
RSA recommends the following deployment for Group Aggregation.
- 1 - 2 Log Decoders
- 3 - 5 Archivers or Concentrators
Advantages of Using Group Aggregation
Group Aggregation:
- Increases the speed of RSA NetWitness® Suite queries.
- Improves the performance of aggregate queries (Count and Sum) on the environment.
- Enhances investigation service performance.
- Gives you the option of storing data for a longer duration for investigation purposes.
The following diagram illustrates Group Aggregation.
You can have any number of Archivers or Concentrators grouped together and form an aggregation group. The Archiver or Concentrator services in the group divide all the aggregated session between them based on the number of sessions defined in the Aggregate Max Sessions parameter.
For example, in an aggregation group containing two Archiver services or two Concentrator services with the Aggregate Max Sessions parameter set to 10000 the services would divide the session between themselves as illustrated in the following table.
Configure Group Aggregation
Complete this procedure to configure multiple Archiver or Concentrator services as a group and share the aggregation tasks between them.
Plan the network design for group aggregation. The following figure is an example of a group aggregation setup.
Ensure that you understand the Group aggregation parameters in the following table, and create a group aggregation plan.
Set up Group Aggregation
Complete the following procedure to set up group aggregation.
- Configure multiple Archiver or Concentrator services in your environment. Make sure that you add the same Log Decoder as data source to all the services.
Perform the following on all the Archiver or Concentrator services that you want to be part of aggregation group:
- In the main menu, select ADMIN > Services.
- Select the Archiver or Concentrator service, and in the Actions column, select View > Config.
The Device Config view of the Archiver or Concentrator is displayed.
- Under Aggregate Services section, select the Log Decoder device.
- Click to change the status of the Log Decoder to offline if it is online.
The Edit Aggregate Service dialog is displayed.
The Edit Group Aggregation dialog is displayed.
Select the Enabled checkbox and set the following parameters:
In the Group Name field, type the group name.
In the Size field, select the number of Archiver or Concentrator services in the aggregation group.
In the Member Number field, select the position of the Archiver or Concentrator in the aggregation group.
In the Membership Mode drop-down menu, select the mode.
- Click Save.
- In the Device Config View page, click Apply.
- Perform Step b to Step i on all other Archiver or Concentrator services that need to be part of group aggregation.
In the Aggregation Configuration section, set the Aggregate Max Sessions parameter set to 10000.


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Contact UPMC at1-800-533-UPMC (8762).
Go to Find a Doctor to search for a UPMC doctor.
Click the thumbnail below to download it in high-resolution. Photo credit: "Edwards Life Sciences"
Caption: The Sapien transcatheter heart valve was approved by the FDA in 2011 for the treatment of severe aortic stenosis.
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 15, 2012 – UPMC is the first hospital in the region to successfully implant a newly FDA-approved valve in patients suffering from severe aortic stenosis, a debilitating narrowing of the heart's aortic valve that often causes shortness of breath, lightheadedness and fatigue.
Called the Sapien Transcatheter Heart Valve, this new treatment option has been shown to greatly improve the quality of life for those who suffer from aortic stenosis, which affects as many as 500,000 people in the U.S. This condition can interfere with day-to-day activities such as walking or climbing stairs. Traditionally, a patient's only option was to have open-heart surgery to replace the aortic valve, but the procedure was often deemed too risky for elderly patients, who are most prone to the condition.
The Sapien valve is implanted via catheter making the procedure less invasive and more appropriate for patients deemed too high risk or unsuitable for open-heart surgery.
"Unfortunately, we're seeing an increased number of patients who are not good surgical candidates. This is a promising alternative and we're pleased to provide this option to our patients," said Joon Sup Lee, M.D., co-director of the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute.
UPMC cardiologists implanted the valves in two patients last month, including a 91-year-old man with a previous history of open-heart surgery who was considered too high risk for open heart aortic replacement surgery.
"A day after the procedure, he was walking. This is making a real difference in his quality of life," said William Anderson, M.D., an interventional cardiologist who performed the procedure with Thomas G. Gleason, M.D., co-director of UPMC's Center for Heart Valve Disease.
The FDA approved the use of the Sapien valve, made by Edwards Lifesciences, in November 2011.
In addition to offering the Sapien valve, UPMC's Heart and Vascular Institute is also a participating center in the Medtronic CoreValve pivotal trial, which is evaluating the safety and effectiveness of the CoreValve aortic heart valve system. The CoreValve System, which has a similar purpose as the Sapien valve but a slightly different design, is not FDA-approved and is available only to patients enrolled in the study.
Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
Supplemental content provided by Healthwise, Incorporated. To learn more, visit www.healthwise.org
For help in finding a doctor or health service that suits your needs, call the UPMC Referral Service at 412-647-UPMC (8762) or 1-800-533-UPMC (8762). Select option 1.
UPMC is an equal opportunity employer. UPMC policy prohibits discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, sex, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected group status. Further, UPMC will continue to support and promote equal employment opportunity, human dignity, and racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity. This policy applies to admissions, employment, and access to and treatment in UPMC programs and activities. This commitment is made by UPMC in accordance with federal, state, and/or local laws and regulations.
Medical information made available on UPMC.com is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not rely entirely on this information for your health care needs. Ask your own doctor or health care provider any specific medical questions that you have. Further, UPMC.com is not a tool to be used in the case of an emergency. If an emergency arises, you should seek appropriate emergency medical services.
Pittsburgh, PA, USA | UPMC.com


text:
Worst. Show. Ever.
About This Show
You'll probably want to avoid this podcast. It sucks. It's filled with neurotic tales of thieving bears, decoy wallets, and epic Olive Garden rants. It's irreverent and stupid and terrible, and the hosts should really be ashamed of themselves. You can also find archives of this travesty in the "Better Off Undead" podcast, which was just as bad but also had an even stupider name.Read more »


text:
New playlist reports in YouTube Analytics
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This slutty cheating wife had to much wine and she ends up in a room with this bald guy which undresses her, spreads those hot legs and starts licking her shaved cunt making this bitch horny and ready for a cock in her. Look at those big breasts, shaved tight pussy and slutty face that deserves a few slaps because she's such a bad girl. Will he fuck her vagina after licking it and fill her with his jizz abandoning this slut after finishing with her?
- lolamed
- : 4min
- : 14 May 2012
- Exclusive video


text:
620. I should declare my interest as an ex-Chairman
of the Public Health Laboratory Service, having retired from that
post last July. The funding for research in the PHLS, and now
the new HPA, was a very important area, even though the proportion
of total funding for PHLS, and I presume for HPA, was relatively
small from central funds, although larger from external funds.
In the change that is described, there are two sorts of fears
that were expressed in PHLS, and I presume HPA may well have expressed
them to you as well. One is that the funding that was used for
research within the PHLS, using peer-reviewed schemes, might be
relatively neglected in the general pool of funding for the NHS
R&D. That was a fear in the background. I am sure, with you
in charge, it is unlikely to happen in that way, but one can never
tell for the future. The second fear was that much of the research
was done on manyvery manysmall technological advances
in techniques, in how to do tests bettertry this, try that,
which is better? Those sorts of research areas are unlikely to
get high recognition amongst the major areas that you describe,
which are clearly very important. The question is, how does an
organisation like the HPA do that very important work?
(Sir John Pattison) I think one can be reassuring
about both of those, at least to start with, because the reassurance
is based on the assumption that when we look at the portfolio
of work and the forward strategy of the new organisation, which
will be derived from the previous organisations, we will see there
an appropriate portfolio of high-quality work. That is our a
priori assumption. If and when that is revealed not to be
the case, of course, then one would wish to make some changes
to it, and certainly there is no intention to start off by putting
all the albeit limited resource into a general pool and asking
the HPA to fight for it. My personal view of thisand I
stress that simply because this has not yet been formalised into
any agreement between the Department and a body which does not
come into existence until 1 Aprilis that there will be
an alignment between the research that is going on in the bodies
that have come together to form the HPA, and that the likelihood
is that they will be able in any competitive system to justify
that funding, and indeed, they may well be able to justify more
funding than that, in which case what is threatened, if you like,
are the other areas of research that are currently being funded
from the Policy Research Programme and NHS R&D. I suppose
I should also declare the most fundamental principle of the Department
of Health's R&D strategy, which is that it will go out and
secure the best quality research that it can, wherever that may
be, in order to address the questions which it feels to be important.
So in that sense, it is exposing the R&D of the former organisations
to more external scrutiny than has been the case in the past,
but once we have done that in the first instance, it is my view
that we will do it on the quinquennial basis. We will also have
to write it into the contract, which we have considerable experience
of in terms of running the 13 units that we have in the Policy
Research Programme, and that is to have some long-term research
going on at the same time as having call-off contracts whenever
urgent things come up and we require a rapid piece of work, and
I think that model would suit the HPA very well indeed.
621. Perhaps we might go to question number
one now, and that is, to what extent do you believe that the medical
community is aware of the unrealised potential of information
technology for the management of infectious disease?
(Dr Paton) Before getting straight into the answer,
this is actually a very exciting time for IT in the NHS potentially.
It is certainly dramatic, and there is, I think, a tremendous
opportunity to lay some markers down as to what we are looking
for in IT in the NHS, including surveillance, and it will be key
to make sure that certain things are not forgotten as the planning
gets under way. There is a tremendous central drive, much of it
due to Sir John in setting up this national programme for IT for
the NHS. If it delivers its potential, it will, I think, transform
the infrastructure and the equipment that is available on the
ground in hospitals and in general practices. That is the plan.
What is absolutely essential is that some of the clever things
in the thinking and the surveillance and the national aspects
have to be brought along in parallel to that. The medical community,
I think, is very ready for much greater electronic involvement
than there has been in the past. I think many have really been
demanding for a long time the resources to move things on. In
a lot of hospitals and primary care trusts there are champions,
if you like, of clinical IT, who have been very keen to make things
happen, but have been frustrated by what has seemed very difficult
to make this happen over the past years, for various reasons.
The IT experience varies enormously across the country, and even
between parts of the profession, so in managing infectious diseases,
the schemes that involve microbiology laboratories, NHS laboratories
anyway, reporting on various pathogens to regions and then on
to the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, are maturing
very well. The software available is now very much better than
it was, and those in labs and microbiologists are very IT-literate
and aware, and that seems to be moving on very well. When you
move away from the very discrete laboratory side of things to,
for example, notifications in the community, I think that is a
very different story, and although, again, there are electronic
routes and electronic modules available to do that reporting,
the quality of the data and the amount of reporting that is done
is not great. There is a lot that is missed. There are some districts
that do not report at all and so on. So it is a very different
story there when you get to notification. When you move on to
looking at clinical cases of disease and symptoms, patients presenting
to A&E with pneumonia, for example, as soon as you get into
that realm, we have almost nothing; we have almost nothing in
terms of the data being collected within hospitals for example,
electronically by and large, certainly not in a form that is consistent,
that uses a terminology that means the same thing from one hospital
to another, or from one hospital to general practice. There are
great issues there, and there is certainly no electronic system
of surveillance that works automatically, and perhaps I will have
the opportunity to talk through some ways that we might address
that, but across the board, it is a very patchy story, and the
more you get into real clinical diseases and symptoms, the electronic
route of surveillance is very weak indeed.
622. Could I ask a question on that? I must
declare an interest as a former member of the Hammersmith Hospitals
Trust and an occasional adviser to Fujitsu Laboratories (Europe).
You said there was great enthusiasm and a significant degree of
literacy, and that is great, and that is a start. The procedures
by which we manage information in hospitals today were largely
laid down at the time of paper and pencil, and of the typewriter
and the telephone. There can be an enormous danger of simply saying
we will take the same system and implement it using software and
hardware, when really what one should do is say, "What are
we trying to do? What are the end points that we are trying to
achieve?" and see whether one might actually want to do things
totally differently. Would you care to comment on that and the
extent to which you see that being realised?
(Dr Paton) That is certainly generally true, that
when an electronic system goes into place, you need to take a
look at the process and say, "Actually, do we need to continue
with what we have done?" What needs to happen, I think, is
that up front, the clinician who is recording information about
a patient who is in front of them has to feel it makes sense at
that point to record that information, that it is made as easy
as possible, with screens that are guided and menu-driven and
there are pick-lists and so on that force the clinician to go
down certain lines, to record certain items of data that they
might not have thought to record, and that takes a great deal
of intelligent design behind the scenes to make it look as natural
as possible for the clinician to do that. What falls out the other
end, lo and behold, is automatic surveillance information that
is transmitted centrally which includes a core data set for infectious
diseases, but you start at the back end, and say, "That is
what we want to get," and as you say, we want to see that
information centrally. That is really the minimum that we have
to get hold of, but then you have to work forward to the doctor
or nurse in front of the patient and have the screen so designed
that they will answer those questions accidentally rather than
it being an add-on. Some of the experience with the coronary heart
disease data sets, which are very large, 50 or more items to be
collected on a patient with chest pain, is that when these are
added side by side to what a nurse in A&E is already collecting
on a screen, they are not overjoyed, to put it mildly.
(Mr Spittle) If I could respond to the point you made
about the danger of putting into silicon or software old practices
that are no longer relevant or perhaps best practice, it is a
very valid point, and it is one that I think is not just related
to the medical environment, but is one that we see commercially
in all computer systems, and it is one that when you go into any
enterprise what people traditionally want to do is make things
communicate that do not currently communicate. What they then
want to do is to liberate data that is marooned in old applications,
the applications are now out of date but the data is relevant,
you want to take that data and re-combine it in a way that makes
sense, and it is only when you have got to that end pointand
there are stages of discoverythat you actually have to
model what it is that you want to get to, what it is you are trying
to do. Do not try and automate exactly what you are doing today.
So I think you are absolutely spot on the point. There is a grave
danger of going down the route of purely automating what we are
doing. We have to determine the desired state. If I can come back
to the original question, question one, I would like to echo my
colleague's comments. I think this is an amazingly optimistic
time for IT. There is a tremendous amount of work that has gone
on. We are at a point where IT I think can make a tremendous difference
to everybody's lives in a very beneficial way. I personally am
very optimistic, and I know the industry is very optimistic about
what we can do, particularly in this area of what we call bio-informatics
or life sciences. On the one hand, the good news is that we have
a lot of experience about providing IT to make systems better;
on the other, the bad news is we do not have as much expertise
in the medical field as we have in some of the commercial fields.
The third piece of good news is I do not actually see them as
IT-dissimilar projects. I think a lot of the techniques and a
lot of the technology we have today can deliver immediate and
real benefit to almost any project that we would like to undertake.
The key, however, is to think about the projects in totality and
to think about things such as standards and to think about things
such as architectures. One of the things I would observe about
medical projects is, because of the disparate naturethey
are individual islands of excellence or individual islands of
automationI do not see the level of integration, whether
at local, regional or national level, that is typical in commercial
systems. If that were to change, I think there are amazing benefits
that could be had. There is no doubt from the point of view of
analysis, the larger the data set, the better the opportunity
of getting really good answers out of that information, and I
believe that one of the key things that we could do in this country
is to think about the infrastructure that we would need to put
in place, not just to serve one or two applications, but that
actually are of great generic value, which many applications could
actually tap into. If we get this wrong, there is a danger that
we will have a multiplicity of independent databases, which none
of us can query except the person who owns the database. We would
not be able to link across borders with other countries, and particularly
if we are talking about epidemiology and infectious diseases,
that is complete nonsense. So we have a tremendous opportunity
that does not require IT innovation. What we have to have is a
little bit of innovation in our thinking about how we design this,
because the benefits are immense.
623. Can I pursue you on the commercial applications
and perhaps get some examples? Did you have in mind the sort of
thing that supermarkets do with point of sale information, to
enable them to order just in time and to find out the buying pattern
of the purchaser?
(Mr Spittle) No, it is not, but it is not a bad analogy,
because I can see how that would be useful. I actually had in
mind stock exchanges, because I have probably spent a lot of my
time talking to stock exchanges and merchant banks, who put a
lot of investment into IT. What you have here is a phenomenal
flow of information that comes in to the traders, they have to
have lots of information come in, they also have to push information
out, so you have both push and pull of information. You have to
have databases that talk to each other, and you have to run very
high-speed analytical tools that can determine what is actually
going on from the data that you have collected. In addition, you
have to have the ability to send messages 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, up to 10,000 or 20,000 messages a second, that absolutely
must get there, because the information is particularly critical,
in that case from a financial point of view, and obviously from
a medical point of view we are talking about equally critical
information, but they have exactly the same needs from an IT point
of view that I think I could envisage in a medical environment.
624. From where does the Department of Health
get its main advice about information technology? Is it from IBM,
for example?
(Mr Spittle) I am absolutely the wrong person to ask.
This is the first time anybody in government has asked me, in
my development role, about IT for medical. The only thing I would
say is that I do believe that there is a lot that the IT industry
could do to make our value proposition, i.e. to tell you what
we can do; I think we are probably remiss in not showing you what
we can do in an abstract, technological way that is understandable.
(Sir John Pattison) The current programme to develop
IT in the NHS stems from a seminar in Number 10 in February 2002,
at which two of the major suppliers had representatives present
to give us technical advice and specialist advice. Subsequent
to that, because it all had to be linked to resources that are
only going to become available as part of SR 2002, from April
1 of this year we have talked extensively to the supplier community,
and there is a large range of such people, both in terms of where
their corporate headquarters are and also the size of the companies
involved and their previous experience in the health sector. It
is slightly difficult for us at the moment because we have this
year published notices in the Official Journal of the European
Community to procure consortia who will act as the engines
for the installation of IT infrastructure and certain applications
in large parts of the NHS. So we are somewhat limited now in what
we should say in public whilst that procurement process goes along.
We cannot really identify an individual company and take advice
from that because we have to run a fair and open procurement process.
(Dr Catchpole) In respect to question one about awareness
of unrealised potential, I think awareness relates to horizons,
and picking up Lord Oxburgh's point, I think there may well be
a case for re-engineering some of the processes of clinical care,
but more importantly, it is a conceptual leap that needs to be
made, the idea that information becomes locationally independent.
That is the key to unlocking a lot of what we are talking about.
If you are using a palm-top at the patient's bedside, the information
that you put in there could be available not only to the nurses
at the nursing station, to the people ordering the patient's lunch
in the kitchens, but also to the local or regional surveillance
experts at the same point in time. It is the idea that we do not
have to have silos or bunkers of information, and the only way
you can get information from here to here is to transfer it from
this bit of paper to another bit of paper that goes somewhere
else. Having said that, there is a tension, a major tension, between
the benefits that come from sharing and greater access to data
and the real concerns that exist about protecting confidentiality.
The work of the Patient Information Advisory Groupand if
I may declare an interest, I sit on that Grouphas been
very helpful in terms of laying down the statutory instruments
that have allowed us to secure information flows for surveillance
in that respect, but we have to recognise that tension. It is
about freeing up the idea that information is fixed in a particular
625. Could I follow up a little bit on that?
If I could start with Sir John, when would you expect the contracts
to be placed for media procurement?
(Sir John Pattison) Later this calendar year.
626. With a window for implementation?
(Sir John Pattison) We have certain targets which
are in 2004 and 2005, and of course, there is very much more to
do after that as well, but those are the first targets.
627. My point is that this contract is going
to be one of the largest IT contracts placed by any government
department anywhere, and it is going to be some time before anything
of this kind is done again. One really has to look forward as
far as one can, a good 10 or 15 years, at the structure of the
NHS, at the evolution of medicine, the advent or not of tele-medicine,
for example. Do these thoughts come in?
(Sir John Pattison) Indeed, and I think one of the
four main components of this phase of the national IT programme
for the NHS, which lasts until December 2005, is infrastructure,
and to put in a broadband network for the NHS and to procure that
nationally. There is, of course, a discussion going on at the
moment about what is the extent of that network. Currently, the
NHS Net is the backbone wide area network, that is the door to
door network. Inside the door of the surgery or hospital is a
local area network which is left to local procurement. There are
two schools of thought about what we should do about that, and
that remains an unresolved question at the moment. The NHS Net's
current contract comes to an end in 2004, when our aim is to procure
a broadband network in a way that is coherent with the general
government push towards broadband. That is one area in which we
have considerable expertise, at least on a wide area net, the
national network, and one in which I am confident that we can
secure that up-date. In the mean time, it is quite clear that
for heavy users of IT, in trusts or in primary care, the capacity
of the current network is a seriously limiting factor, and so
we have an interim upgrade over the next 18 months which is going
to give 256K to every GP surgery and 2 Megabits to every trust,
ahead of going to that new network, which is called N3, imaginatively.
628. How are we being protected against the
sort of debacle that happened in the Passport Office, when they
instituted a new computer system? The consequences of this going
wrong are a lot more serious than a queue of people shouting for
their passports.
(Sir John Pattison) These are very risky projects,
and the history of them, whether in the public sector, which we
always hear about, or the private sector, which we do not always
hear about, is that the success rate tends to be low; in fact,
the success rate in general terms is 33 per cent, I am told. So
only one in three will succeed. What we have done on that is to
secure for ourselves Richard Granger, who is the Director General
of NHS IT. He comes from the private sector. He has experience
of putting in large computer systems. We can look at the experience
of the Passport Office as one experience; we can look at the experience
of what Richard Granger installed for congestion charging in London
as another experience, and say that we may well have somebody
who is capable of delivering on time and on price something that
works. However, if I may just make a personal comment, I cannot
exaggerate the value of Richard Granger to this programme, and
the likelihood of its success. These are skills and experience
which we simply do not, or have not had up to now in the Department
of Health and the NHS. We are good, and we have introduced somewhere
in the NHS everything that we want to install, but we have never
done it on a scale that is implied as necessary and correct in
order to support the National Health Service. So he is bringing
in people who we would not automatically have brought in and did
not know about, and I think that is increasing the likelihood
of the success of this enormous project.
629. I am aware that this question has been
partly answered, I think by Dr Paton in answer to Lord Oxburgh,
but I am sure there is a lot more to say. We have had a lot of
evidence that suggests that improved use of IT is essential if
we are to have a better surveillance system, and certainly Dr
Paton has outlined in an earlier answer some of the shortcomings
of it, particularly in hospitals. What do you consider to be the
key features of an effective IT system to support surveillance,
and how important is the data coming from the sentinel practices?
(Dr Catchpole) Picking up on something that Dr Paton
mentioned, I think systems should be integrated as far as possible
into clinical operational systems. It should not be that we do
surveillance as well as looking after patients, but that in looking
after patients we are undertaking surveillance. It is perhaps
easy to say that, but apart from avoiding unnecessary duplication
of effort, the other point is that we are likely to get greater
accuracy and speed of accessibility to surveillance data if we
do that; if we do not have to wait for data to be translated from
one system to another. So it benefits not only the people providing
the data, but it also benefits those who receive the data in terms
of speed and accuracy of information. They should be easy to use
and easy to support, and as colleagues have said, new technologies
greatly increase the chances of that. The idea of using new technology
so that we do not have to support 200, 300, 400 systems in 400
trusts, but we can use browser technologies and centralised data
warehouses to manage data, offers great opportunities for the
future. So I think it is about making best use of new technologies.
We need to have robust systems that are secure, so they do not
stop working at the moment we are faced with a major outbreak
or deliberate release episode, for example. They need to be robust;
they need to be secure, and they need to be integrated into operational
systems. Those are characteristics of the systems themselves.
There are an awful lot of other important issues surrounding that
about the need for standards. I am impressed by the documentation
coming out of the Centre for Disease Control in the USA. Their
national electronic disease surveillance system, NEDSS, shows
tremendous vision, but of course, it is entirely based on the
fact that they will have a common coding system in SNOMED and
a common record structure system in HL7, and we need those standards
urgently if we are to be able to harness all the information that
is available across the Health Service. I am sure my colleagues
have many other points to make about what makes a good IT system
for surveillance. On the sentinel side, I think sentinel systems
have an important role in surveillance, although they cannot replace
the need for broader based surveillance systems. We need to be
clear about what we mean by sentinel practices, because they may
either be a representative sample of all practices, which is typically
what GP spotter practices are based around, and they provide us
with a representative picture of what is going on, or they may
be truly sentinel in terms of early warning, in which case they
are purposefully selected to provide an early warning. In the
context of monitoring HIV disease amongst gay men, London genito-urinary
medicine clinics are a suitable sentinel network for picking up
early warnings of problems with epidemiology. I think sentinel
systems are particularly useful for allowing us to collect more
data, better data, on specified diseases, but we need to make
sure that in the spotter practice systems we can link together
the sentinel data coming from the clinical side with matching
laboratory data. So sentinel systems are important, they may serve
a number of different purposes, but they do not replace broad-based
surveillance. Sentinel systems will probably never be as sensitive
at picking up outbreaks of less common infections, unusual sub-types
of salmonella infection, picking up agents that may be the subject
of deliberate release activities, unless your sentinel site just
happens by chance to be in the right place, you run the danger
of missing those events. So sentinel systems are important, and
they certainly add qualitatively and quantitatively to surveillance
630. One of the difficulties with sentinel systems
is in fact that the qualitative assessment of much of this is
based on symptomatology, is it not, and you can only go so far
with that?
(Dr Catchpole) Absolutely. They need not exclude laboratory
data, of course, but it requires investment to link the two together.
We talk about looking five to ten years; one of the issues that
comes up when you look at that sort of timescale is the issue
of near-patient testing, of course, and we have grave concerns
within the Public Health Laboratory Service that near-patient
testing may potentially undermine laboratory reporting, which
is the cornerstone of surveillance in this country. But of course,
near-patient testing may also offer an opportunity, particularly
in the context of sentinel surveillance in general practice spotter
practices, where you could marry together that clinical data with
the information that comes from near-patient testing. We desperately
need to be looking at technologies and systems that will allow
us to capture that information.
631. Mr Spittle, do you have any comments on
(Mr Spittle) Yes. I echo the comment about the data
capture at the end points. Whether that is at a GP surgery or
whether it is a public laboratory, it has to be as automated as
possible. You are going to have to define a template to some extent.
I think you are going to have to be rigorous about the standards.
The system designed must be designed around open standards for
our own protection in terms of procurement and longevity and scaleability.
The scale of the operation must be such that people appreciate
the need to have hugely scaleable databases, which we do not have
in the Health Service today. They are in use commercially, and
people are building them, so this is not invention that is required,
but this is the ability to collect vast amounts of data, whether
it is text or whether it is digits or whether it is imagesbecause
increasingly images are going to be more important. You have to
have the ability to be able to run the latest query tools against
those databases that are available today. I come back to the point
that getting the infrastructure right is so fundamental, because
at the end points, the applications that interface with the infrastructure
are going to have to be bespoke for the purpose for which you
want them to perform, and they have to be as automatic as possible,
and as simple as possible. But there is so much you can do with
a common infrastructure that is going to give you immediate benefit.
The worst thing that could happen is to build new, modern systems
as islands of automation and not link them together. I would urge
everybody to build a very robust infrastructure, that you can
hang systems from and interchange data with. That is going to
be the key here. We are going to have to mandate standards, and
we are going to have to mandate lots of other things that you
need to have successful IT systems. You made a comment earlier,
Baroness, about the implementation: project management is the
key. That is what makes the projects run or not. Very good, qualified
project managers are worth their weight in gold, and that is also
part of this.
632. Can I just come back on this? Robust systems
are all very well, but we also need robust training of all the
people that are going to use it, because they are all human beings
in the end. We have heard anecdotally that if doctors and nurses
washed their hands between all patients, we would need 30 per
cent more staff. How many more staff are we going to need in order
to allow the time it is going to take for the health care professionals
to undergo the appropriate training for these systems?
(Sir John Pattison) I am not sure we have estimated
the precise answer to your question, but the general point is
very well taken. There are recent articles indicating that other
health care systems, such as Kaiser Permanente, are investing
six times the amount in training than they are in the IT systems
themselves, and it will have to be of that sort of order if you
take the true costs into account. We have published our strategy
for the training of information staff, and I stress that in order
to indicate that this is a range of different types of staff,
all of whom are needed to have accurate, high-quality information
entered into whatever system we install. It starts from the data
entry clerks and goes right up to high-quality informaticians.
We have put into our budget thinking, as it were, the need to
provide resources to liberate the staff from their daily work
in order for them to be trained, though in a capacity-constrained
system that is quite difficult, because there are shortages of
many of the key professional staff. Part of the key though is
to provide something which many of those front-line professional
staff really feel is helping them to do their work. It is not
entirely age-related, but there is an age-related gradient, but
we can, I think, bank on some familiarity with computer systems
that we could not in the past, such as keyboard skills, and if
we then provide something which is going to enhance their daily
life, it is surprising how relatively easy it is to get that accepted.
That is going to be one of the things that we have to pull out.
(Mr Spittle) Without wishing to disagree with my colleague,
because everything he said about training is absolutely true,
if we do not implement some of the IT, we are going to have a
critical skills shortage that we will not be able to manage in
any other way. The project I am currently engaged in with Oxford
University on e-Diamond for digital mammography addresses one
of those concerns: we do not have enough skilled radiologists,
and any particular radiologist does not see enough mammograms
in his or her lifetime to be expert enough to diagnose this. The
system we are putting in and trialling this year will give the
very best diagnosis that it is humanly possible to do, so everybody
who is linked into the system can get a much better diagnosis,
and therefore a much better prognosis than we have ever done before.
So longer term, this is going to help skills, this is going to
actually reduce the number of really skilled people that we are
going to need. You do have to skill people to use systems, but
what you are doing is fundamentally altering the landscape here,
if we get this right.
633. My question follows on from what Baroness
Walmsley asked and really relates to the human interface. You
can have the fanciest system in the world, but if people do not
feel that it helps them, or if it seems hostile, it is not going
to work. I would take it for granted that as far as the people
who input the datawho are going to be the physicians and
nurses primarilyrecording information in a way that is
suitable for the system has to be no more onerous, and probably
less onerous, than the system that they are working with at the
moment. They have to see positive advantages in their day-to-day
operation, and that it is going to make their jobs easier rather
than more difficult. I take it that this is something which has
to be a requirement.
(Sir John Pattison) Indeed, and I think there are
certain things happening which are all helping us with that. Firstly,
technology. I will never be able to type as fast as I can write;
it is just not possible; I cannot use a keyboard as fast as I
can scribble on a piece of paper. But we have tended to concentrate
our thinking in the past on desktop devices which have a keyboard
in front of them. Technology is moving on. We do not want in the
future to be confined to desktop, fixed devices. Portable devices
which will take handwriting and convert it into neat typescript
are a reality and are on the market, and are of crucial importance
to community health staff. So that is helping us. The fact that
the rest of the world in a way is encouraging us to put our tax
returns in on line, to order from the supermarkets on line, etc,
all helps us realise that actually, there are great benefits to
filling in an electronic version of something over handwriting
something, making a mistake and wondering what on earth you are
going to be able to do about it. That is helpful. The other helpful
side I think is that the developers are paying particular attention,
it seems to me, to that human/machine interface, and it does seem
to me that it is getting easier and easier for people to relate
to these systems. Primary care, I would have to say, is further
advanced than hospital care in terms of the investment that there
has been in IT in the past and therefore the use that practitioners
are making of it. It is steadily growing. All this is encouraging
and helping us with the user/machine interface.
634. I have to declare an interest, first as
a jobbing clinician, but also as Vice Dean of the University of
Wales College of Medicine. I am going to sound like a dinosaur.
The complexities of clinical practice are enormous, and based
on pattern recognition, and there are huge numbers of things currently
recorded which are very soft qualitative data, recorded in case
notes, which are partly there as defensive practice. There are
two aspects: you are recording it because you want to communicate
it to somebody else, or you are recording it because you want
evidence that you did it or thought it or decided it, which is
very individual, soft data. The example Mr Spittle gave of mammography
is a lovely example, where one thinks IT really must be the answer,
because that is pattern recognition in a single format, always
the same format, just as lab results coming out. But I have to
say, the jobbing clinician's experience of IT is that the server
is down, the system is down, or you just get the hang of it and
the whole thing has got to be upgraded, and it is not compatible
with your portable, and then you go, as I do, between three places
of work and the upgrades are all slightly different, so what happens
is that it does not work anywhere. Are we actually at a time with
computer technology and systems that we should be spending a huge
amount of money on transferring a system which, however imperfect,
worked well for a lot of recording of data or should we simply
be saying computers should be used for developing things such
as the mammography that Mr Spittle outlined or the haemoglobin
and the other results that are there on screen on the ward within
half an hour from going through the auto analyser because all
of that is linked? The bacteria that you have identified, all
the viruses, the form is written anyway, the report is written
and that can be collected centrally. I have a real concern that
IT is being looked at as the all singing all dancing and that
the clinicians are just completely drowning and it is far too
early to say this is actually going to be robust for the next
ten years because, as with anything that needs upgrading between
one or two years, you will have lost the cohort of clinicians.
I am already completely fed up with upgrades and completely brassed
off with fire walls and completely brassed off with emails and
poorly communicating systems that are always down when I want
to get on them.
(Dr Paton) I think you have explained very clearly
why Sir John said this is a risky project. There is a great deal
of money going to be thrown at this and there are some big problems
with that. It is easy to buy computers, it is easy to buy broadband
networks. It is hard to sort out clinicians' views on systems,
cultural change is necessary. It is also hard to design the software
even to do the simple things in front of you never mind linking
it all together. That is not necessarily there or even written
in many situations and that side of things is going to be very
hard. We have talked about core sets and how we integrate them
into the report, that is actually very complicated. It is right
to put the infrastructure in first, but at the same time this
other thinking has got to be done about how we address this. You
are very welcome to come to my hospital any time and have a look
at how people use it. We have a very broad operational system
which looks old fashioned, it is 20 years old and the kind of
screens that we are using look very old fashioned, but it works
with just simple keyboard keys so that every patient care note
made by a nurse or a physiotherapist or an infection control nurse
or a dietician goes straight into the computer and as a microbiologist
I can read absolutely everything that is going on with that patient
and I can have all the results to hand, the blood pressures and
the temperature and hopefully within the next year or two all
the x-rays immediately available to me and all the drugs that
they are being prescribed, it is all there right in front and
it is being used comfortably and with confidence by clinicians.
635. I work with a system like that, it is an
integrated system.
(Dr Paton) And it is down to the kind of software.
The doctors do not write the notes on it, they are all on paper.
Some of that can be structured and some of it is free text and
I would be entirely comfortable with that. I do not think we can
structure medicine or medical thinking. Everything has a specific
term that you have to use for it, so you do not end up writing
notes unless you have to. At least to get doctors to say this
is what is wrong with my patient from an accepted list of terms,
this is what I have just done on this patient from an accepted
list of terms, surely that is not beyond something that can be
delivered and once you have that you begin to be able to analyse
it effectively.
636. But we have lots of wards where there are
not sinks by every bed and there are not individual patient toilets
and individual patient bathrooms and I worry that huge amounts
of money will be thrown at IT and yet we have the NHS functioning
with crumbling buildings and the rudiments of infection control
are not there.
(Dr Paton) I am keen on sinks and computers, we need
to buy both.
637. I am conscious of the time and the fact
that we may have a Division which will destroy our quorum. I hope
Lord Turnberg will excuse me if we go to question four for Sir
John about the overall vision for an effective IT strategy for
infectious disease within the wider national or international
(Sir John Pattison) I think in some respects this
question has been partially answered already. It is our vision
that we are installing something for a variety of general elements
of which the specialist element requirements will be extracted
rather than developing and adding on a whole series of separate
specialist requirements. So our vision would be that we would
install electronic records in primary care and secondary care
and that we would be able to extract from those recordswhich
would be very new in primary care but absolutely essential since
86 per cent of the interactions take place in primary care and
a large percentage of those are due to infectionthe information
that we need in order to populate an integrated care record. Our
vision is one of a series of events happening to people during
their lives in relation to health services and the very rich data
of those individual events will need to be captured and remain
in the GP's surgery, if that is what the event is, or the hospital
if somebody has been admitted for an operation, if that is what
the event is. The vast majority of that data can remain there,
it does not need to populate an integrated care record. For example,
the recordings of the blood pressure in somebody who has had a
period in intensive care are very important during that episode;
by and large they do not need to be transmitted to anybody else
as the patient recovers, moves to the ward and moves out back
to the community. Certain elements of that do need to be placed
in the integrated record which will be, in old speak, the electronic
health record, that is the cradle to grave concept for an individual
citizen or patient. Much of the information for the purposes of
infectious disease control can come out of those systems, we can
link them to the laboratory systems and at the moment we are towards
the end of installing the pathology messaging function between
pathology laboratories, haematology, biochemistry and microbiology
and primary care. I am aware, since Dr Catchpole told me, that
there was some problem about the PHLS laboratories at one time
because they were regarded as being outwith the NHS, but I hope
we have now solved that and we would be able to link electronically
the information that is coming out of the laboratories and going
to whoever requested the results with the clinical data and analysed
in a way that Mr Spittle was mentioning earlier on. So that is
our vision.
(Dr Catchpole) I welcome that enormously. I think
in building on that we need to make sure that we define which
are the right data items that need to go into the integrated care
record. I was struck by the recent consultation exercise where
the data sets were defined for national service frameworks, for
diabetes, coronary heart disease and the others and I feel that
probably what we need is to do a similar exercise for infectious
disease, to define the dataset in the same way as they had done
in the other national service frameworks but for infectious disease,
perhaps health protection more broadly. I also was struck by recent
consultations at the National Patient Record Analysis Service.
I suspect that organisations like the Public Health Laboratory
Service were not foremost in the minds of anybody when it was
thought who should be consulted in that process, but we could
gather a lot of useful surveillance data from those sort of analysis
processes. I think it is about raising consciousness of infectious
disease and surveillance when we approach these activities. The
point that probably needs to be made is that surveillance benefits
individual clinical care not just public health population-based
practices. It is useful to know what the local antimicrobial resistance
pattern is when you are prescribing. For example, we know there
are regional variations in resistance to gonorrhoea. Similarly,
when you are having to treat someone with severe pneumonia it
would be useful to know if there had been a local increase in
micro plasma, it may make a great difference. You would take a
very different approach to treatment and prescribing than if you
did not know that. So surveillance benefits direct patient-based
clinical care.
638. Would you agree with the restatement that
it should rather than does?
(Dr Catchpole) Yes.
639. One of the complaints which we have regularly
picked up from those who supply this kind of information from
what they describe as the coal face is that they feel they are
talking to an empty room, that is this information goes in centrally
and they do not see enough or anything back from it in some cases.
So I think the point you make is in fact very well taken, but
it is vital that the people who put the information in see a return.
(Dr Catchpole) I forgot to mention in response to
Baroness Walmsley's question about what makes a good surveillance
system that the information that goes into it is immediately accessible
to all those who need to know locally, regionally as well as nationally.


text:
If you own a Nespresso machine, chances are that you bought it for a brew that was better than what you'd get from instant coffee, and close to what you'll get with a proper espresso machine. Official Nespresso capsules have come close to that, but now, new kid on the block CRU Kafe have come closer.
This is one of the strangest gastropubs I've been to. Not in a bad strange way, but a truly mixed-bag strange way. Technically, it is a pub, located near Canary Wharf and facing the river. But it is more than that – with its white tablecloths, upscale service, a fine dining menu, and a great river view.


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Meet SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS in 3D
New Korean 3D Dinosaur Feature Debuts this Month, International Release to Follow
Author: Kim Song-ho
Source: Dream Search C&C Inc., EBS, Olive Studio Inc.
Official Website: blog.naver.com/jumbagi2012
The production companies Dream Search C&C, Inc., EBS and Olive Studio, Inc. have jointly announced the release of SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS1 (점박이: 한반도의 공룡 3D, Jumbagi: Hanbandoui gongryong 3D, literal translation "Speckles: Dinosaurs in the Korean Peninsula 3D"), which opens January 26, 2012 in Korea.
SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS is a 3D, computer-animated feature based on KOREANOSAURUS (한반도의 공룡, Hanbandoui gongryong, Dinosaurs in the Korean Peninsula), a 2008 nature documentary that aired on the Korean TV channel EBS (Educational Broadcasting System). The title refers to an as-yet undescribed theropod dinosaur (thought to be similar to the well-known Velociraptor and Deinonychus) which lived in the Korean peninsula during the early Cretaceous. In 2010, a completely separate species of ornithopod dinosaur was officially named 'Koreanosaurus boseongensis'.
The original KOREANOSAURUS television documentary depicted the life of Speckles (Jumbagi in Korean), a fictional Tarbosaurus that lived in Korea in the Cretaceous period (about 70 million years ago). In addition to the Tarbosaurs, the documentary featured many kinds of dinosaurs such as Velociraptor, Therizinosaurus, Protoceratops, Haenamichnus, Tsintaosaurus, Microraptor and Pukyongosaurus. The creatures were fully computer-generated and composited against real-life backgrounds, mainly photographed in New Zealand.
The three-part series (which concluded with a "making-of" special) first aired from November 24 to 26, 2008. It was very well-received by both the viewership and the press, and became the highest-rated EBS-produced documentary ever with a rating of 2.9% (a 1% rating is generally considered a success by EBS' standards). Since then, KOREANOSAURUS has been rebroadcast several times and spawned a wide variety of merchandising, including DVD and Blu-ray discs, children's books, toys and so on.
SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS is a complete reworking of the original documentary, this time as a 3D computer-animated feature, but with a similar theme: the adventure of Speckles in a time when the twilight of the dinosaur era is slowly, but definitely, coming. In the movie, Speckles must protect his family, not only from One-eye (Aekunun in Korean), a violent, vengeful Tyrannosaurus, but also an impending disaster that could change the face of the planet.
Han Sang-ho, the director of the original documentary, returned to helm SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS. The film's visual effects were supervised by Min Byeong-cheon, the VFX whiz and director who made the 1999 Korean thriller PHANTOM THE SUBMARINE (유령, Yuryeong), starring Choi Min-soo and Jeong Woo-seong, and the sci-fi adventure NATURAL CITY (내츄럴 시티, 2003). Min is a co-CEO of Olive Studio, one of the three production companies behind SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS.
The film will be distributed in Korea by CJ Entertainment. International audiences will be able to see SPECKLES in the near future… during the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and the American Film Market the movie was pre-sold to 33 countries around the world, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Benelux and India. The North American theatrical, DVD/Blu-ray, digital, Video on Demand, and television rights for SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS have been acquired by distributor Well Go USA Entertainment.
Character Descriptions
Speckles (Original Korean name: Jumbagi, 점박이)
Born as the youngest male of a Tarbosaurus family, Speckles had a brother and twin sisters. However, his family was killed by One-eye, a savage Tyrannosaurus. Now fully grown up, Speckles must protect his new family, including his mate Blue Eyes and the juveniles, from One-eye's attack and an impending disaster.
Blue Eyes (Original Korean name: Pureunnun, 푸른눈)
Blue Eyes is Speckles' mate. She first became a friend to Speckles when he lost his family and wandered lost and alone. They have now made a family of their own. Evading One-eye, she and her family go on a journey to find 'paradise'.
One-eye (Original Korean name: Aekunun, 애꾸눈)
One-eye is a savage, vengeful Tyrannosaurus. He lost his left eye in a battle with Speckles' mother long ago, and plans to take his revenge on Speckles and his family. One-eye is the main antagonist in the film.
1. In earlier English language promotional materials, the film was entitled TARBOSAURUS and the main character was known as "Spotty". But a representative from Dream Search C&C recently announced that the official English title of the movie (and the lead character) is now SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS.↩
For more information on SPECKLES THE TARBOSAURUS, please see the previous coverage here on SciFi Japan:


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Hal Leonard Vivaldi Concerti Opus 3, nos 6 8 and 9
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Any of a subfamily of zinc metalloendopeptidases of unallocated number within sub‐subclass EC 3.4.24, including tolloid (Drosophila) and bone morphogenetic protein 1 (i.e. C‐proteinase of type I procollagen) (human), involved in differentiation.
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Synthetic peptide derived from beta 2 Defensin.
Our Abpromise guarantee covers the use of ab63982 in the following tested applications.
The application notes include recommended starting dilutions; optimal dilutions/concentrations should be determined by the end user.
|1/500 - 1/5000. Predicted molecular weight: 7 kDa.
|1/500. Perform heat mediated antigen retrieval before commencing with IHC staining protocol.
|Use at an assay dependent concentration.
ab63982 (1/500) staining beta 2 defensin in human tonsil using an automated system (DAKO Autostainer Plus). Using this protocol there is strong cytoplasmic staining of a small population of cells within the tonsillar tissue.
Sections were rehydrated and antigen retrieved with the Dako 3 in 1 AR buffer EDTA pH 9.0 in a DAKO PT link. Slides were peroxidase blocked in 3% H2O2 in methanol for 10 mins. They were then blocked with Dako Protein block for 10 minutes (containing casein 0.25% in PBS) then incubated with primary antibody for 20 min and detected with Dako envision flex amplification kit for 30 minutes. Colorimetric detection was completed with Diaminobenzidine for 5 minutes. Slides were counterstained with Haematoxylin and coverslipped under DePeX. Please note that, for manual staining, optimization of primary antibody concentration and incubation time is recommended. Signal amplification may be required.
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A few weeks ago, I drove down to The Writers Place in Kansas City, Miss., (full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors) to talk to a group of around twenty upper middle-school kids about writing fiction. We ended up talking about race.
I didn't start there. I started with writing process. I talked aboout how I wrote my first novel in ever-lengthening Word documents saved by date and how the novel I'm working on now is coming together thanks to software called StoryMill. How this time I'm writing in scenes, not chapters, because it's totally easier for me that way. Their eyes glazed. I passed around my scene list and long outline for my new novel. They shuffled the paper around the room. I was losing them fast, and I still had the better part of an hour to go.
The group of kids was diverse. There were black kids and white kids and Asian kids and biracial kids. So I threw out a question that has been nagging at me ever since I learned that children's book publishing hasn't kept pace with census data regarding racial demographics. How did the kids feel about a white author writing nonwhite characters?
Credit Image: juhansonin on Flickr
So I asked them that. I told them I had an Asian character in my first novel, but that was about it for diversity -- mostly because my novel was set in small-town Iowa in 1990, and there wasn't a lot of diversity in my experience in that setting. This time, I told them, the new novel is set in present-day Chicago, where there is quite a bit of diversity. Where should my nonwhite characters be in the novel? And did I have any business writing them?
It's a question being raised in the children's book community. On the Lee & Low books blog, School Library Journal blogger Betsy Bird asked:
Finally, we need to officially address how we feel about white authors and illustrators writing books about people of other races. Is it never okay? Sometimes okay? Always okay?
The kids had seen my scene list before I asked them about race but barely glanced at it. Afterward, they were studying it closely. Here are some of the quotes they gave me about a white author writing nonwhite characters that they gave me their permission to share.
"You just need to grow a backbone and put them in there."
"Don't have just one black character. My mom calls that 'blackground.'"
"I read this book where black kids and white kids and Asian kids and Hispanic kids were all hanging out together, and it wasn't even a boarding school. That would never happen."
"Don't describe anyone as having olive skin. Just say what they are."
After discussing my scene list and my character collection, the kids recommended I make one of the main engineers in the power plant that my main character talks to a lot black. They thought that was the most organic place to introduce a character of color. They weren't sure why I cared if there were nonwhite characters in my book in the first place, and I told them I didn't want to be another white author writing only white characters. Clearly, there's a problem of books not reflecting the make-up of the population, and so it's important to me to not be part of that problem. Because the kids told me not to just add one nonwhite character, I'm going to look for other places to add diversity, as well. I don't want to have blackground, after all.
The conversation veered into how race came up in their lives in general and left my work, but that was okay with me. It was a little awkward, and we talked about that, how discussing race can be awkward, can be hard. It is way easier for me to just write white characters, but I don't want to do that. No one in the room seemed mad at me for bringing up race, and nobody's body language was sinking into the floor.
I hope other white authors will share their experiences regarding the race of their characters and the thought process that went into casting their books, whether it's simply dropping in references to all races of people in passing, as Veronica Roth does in the DIVERGENT series, or a conscious development of diverse characters, as Ruta Sepetys does in OUT OF THE EASY. And authors of color -- do you write white characters? Why or why not?
In the end, I asked them to write me if they would like to read how I wrote the characters we discussed. So far, I haven't heard from any of them, but I'm hoping that changes. What do you think about white authors writing nonwhite characters?
Rita Arens is the author of the young adult novel The Obvious Game & the deputy editor of BlogHer.com. Find more at www.ritaarens.com.
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Have you met the Alphabooks by That Company Called If?
It's a precious book in a letter form, with some blank pages to inspire to write you anything you want in them...
It was a present, so they gave me the M, but I am still not sure what to write on it... maybe all the books I read from now on? My thoughts? My next blogs? So many things to choose!
What letter will you buy?
What letter will you buy?


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3 Makeup Looks Inspired by My Favorite Albums of 2016
Since I'm a visual person I hardly ever remember the album title but I just remember what the album art looks like.
Not gonna lie, ya'll. I am an avid user of Urban Decay's Primer Potion, proven by my extensive touting here and with friends. That stuff reached cult status in the beauty world forever ago, and for good reason.
However, I am a reasonable woman who believes in giving everyone and everything a fair chance, and so I've allowed Benefit's new Air Patrol BB Cream Eyelid Primer (debuting on September 1) to grace my eyelids.
Some may feel that Benefit's products are too gimmicky-looking or -sounding, but I personally think they consistently nail their packaging aesthetic. I mean, if that much effort went into the design and the marketing, I'm going to trust that they put as much effort into the actual product formulation. (And just for the record, I'm seldom let down by Benefit.)
A couple things set this eyelid primer apart from others on the market. First, it features a funky, pliable rubber applicator that Benefit's dubbed, "CushionCalm."
I don't know about you, but that name sounds to me like a nod toward current Korean beauty trends. In any case, it does feel soft and comfortable when applied to the eyelid, which is nice. It also blends the product out for you, keeping things sanitary and non-messy.
More importantly, though--and what Air Patrol is all about--is the product's "EnviroDefend complex." Yeah, that's too fancy of a word for me, too, but it basically translates to "wards off gnarly pollutants."
And bonus: it has SPF 20, ensuring your eyelids won't get attacked by the sun. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but have you ever had burnt eyelids? That is not fun at all. A scorching kiss from satan is what that is.
The product formulation is moisturizing, light and is definitely thinner than other primers out there, which I found made for more seamless blending. My one complaint about UD Primer Potion is that sometimes it dries too quickly before I blend it out all the way, but that wasn't an issue with Air Patrol. Also, there's no perfumed smell (scented products on my lids give me the creeps).
Another thing to note is that you can wear this alone, without eyeshadow, to color-correct your lids. I've attempted to do this with regular foundation or BB cream, and I always end up with noticeable creasing.
I know what you're all thinking: "But will my eyeshadow stay put? And will my eyeshadow apply more easily and look more beautiful with this as a base?"
My answer is yes. It does work! It works pretty damn well, actually. The true test is a full day of wear, and I've had multiple full days of wear and I'm proud to report a lack of creasing. GOOD JOB, BENEFIT A+.


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All's Quiet on the Oil Rally
Another choppy, light volume day and if you were not paying close attention, you might not realize that oil is going higher. In fact, led by Brent Crude on concerns surrounding North Sea production and of course those pesky geo-political worries, oil is rising step by step. North Sea blend production is near record lows due to maintenance. Weak Eurozone growth, but in line with expectations and Chinese data, are also keeping hopes and oil high with the belief that China or some other nation will provide some stimulation for the floundering global economy. There is nothing like fear and stimuli to provide support for oil. Yet a hotter than expected U.S. PPI may cool market expectations just a bit.
There is also nothing like politics to try and reinvent yourself. As gasoline prices rise, along with the anger, it appears the Obama administration is embracing more oil production! And you would never guess where! Alaska! Run Caribou! The Wall Street Journal, in a must read, said that, "The Obama administration proposed opening up 12 million acres of Alaska's 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve for oil and natural-gas drilling, while restricting energy production on the rest of the acreage." What?! How could you dare drill in that pristine, mosquito infested natural wilderness? Was this not the same man that vehemently opposed George W. Bush's plan to drill baby drill? The man of the party of high fives when a similar Bush proposal was defeated!
Yet the Journal says that "Secretary Ken Salazar said the proposal strikes "an important balance" between energy production and environmental conservation. The National Petroleum Reserve, a swath of land on Alaska's North Slope, is home to bears, wolves and falcons, as well as caribou herds used by Alaska native villages for subsistence!
Of course the plan is not perfect and, "The plan quickly attracted critics who say the proposal is too restrictive." This decision denies U.S. taxpayers both revenue and jobs at a time when our nation faces record debt and chronic unemployment," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska). Mr. Salazar said the proposal targets areas that hold the majority of energy resources. The areas targeted for oil and natural-gas leasing are thought to hold 550 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of economically recoverable natural gas, the Interior Department said. Stay tuned, this is going to be fun!
On the West Coast the news is not good as it appears that the Chevron refinery will be impacted for many months due to the fire. While other refineries try to make up the difference, the fear is that this is just asking for more trouble. In other California refinery news, Tesoro Corp. agreed to buy BP PLC's California oil refinery and 800 gasoline stations in the Southwest for $1.18 billion.


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How To Clean and Roast Pumpkin Seeds
The real gift of pumpkin season is what's hiding inside: the (all-too-often-discarded) seeds. When toasted in the oven with a little olive oil and some salt, the soft seeds from inside pumpkins turn into the crunchiest, savory snack of the season. They certainly make sticking your hand inside a squishy pumpkin worth the hassle, anyway. Here's the simplest, easiest method for cleaning pumpkin seeds and roasting them in the oven.
How to Clean Pumpkin Seeds
It's not necessary to remove every last scrap of pumpkin flesh from the seeds. Pick the seeds out of the pumpkin with clean hands and move them to a bowl of water. Soak the seeds briefly, working the seeds back and forth to dislodge stringy bits of pumpkin.
Some people hardly bother removing any of the strings and extras from the seeds, stating that it tastes great roasted and adds additional flavor to the seeds; others remove every last shred, which admittedly is a chore. I come in somewhere in the middle. I get most of the flesh and strings off, but I don't get too obsessive about it. If I did, I doubt that I would roast seeds ever again because it can be quite nit-picky!
You've got to read the whisk tip in the comments: The Best Tool for Removing Pumpkin and Squash Seeds
How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds
Take the simple approach and just toss the cleaned seeds in a little oil and salt before roasting. There is also a wide variety of additional toppings you can add, both savory and sweet, to jazz things up. See recipe notes for some suggestions.
Pumpkin seeds are good for you, too: They're high in protein, zinc, copper, and iron. They're a good source of Vitamin E and K. (Here's a good page showing their complete nutritional breakdown.) Some people believe that soaking them overnight in salted water, or boiling them for 10 minutes in salted water, helps to make their nutrition more available and to make them crunchier when roasted. But either way, you're guaranteed a tasty treat.
How to Roast Pumpkin and Squash Seeds
What You Need
A large winter squash such as a pumpkin
Neutral oil such as canola, rice bran, or coconut
(Optional additions: see recipe notes)
- Equipment
Baking sheet
Spoon or spatula
Airtight container
Scoop and clean the seeds: Preheat oven to 300°F. Cut the squash according to how you are going to use it. Scoop the seeds from the cavity and place in a colander. Pinch away all the large chunks of squash flesh and strings. Place the colander under cool running water and remove any additional squash flesh. Shake colander to remove water.
Dry the seeds: Dump the seeds out onto a towel and pat to dry. The seeds might stick to the towel a bit.
Oil and salt the seeds: Place the seeds on a baking tray and drizzle with a small amount of oil, approximately 1 teaspoon for 3/4 cup of seeds. Add a pinch or two of salt.
Toss and bake the seeds: Toss the seeds until they are evenly coated with oil and salt. Spread out so they are in a single layer, though some overlapping is fine. Place the baking sheet into the oven. Roast until the seeds are just starting to brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. If your oven has uneven spots, you may want to stir after 10 minutes.
Remove and cool: Remove the seeds from the oven and let the seeds cool on the tray. Enjoy right away or keep for a few days in an airtight container.
Recipe Notes
Sweet Pumpkin Seeds: Omit or reduce the salt and roast the seeds on parchment-lined baking sheet. Let cool, then toss with brown sugar or a little maple syrup. Not too much, just enough to lightly coat the seeds. You can also add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg or other 'sweet' spices. Toss well to coat evenly. Return the tray to the oven and continue to roast for another 10 to 15 minutes or so.
Sweet-Hot Pumpkin Seeds: Toss the seeds with a little honey and sriracha or chili flakes. A little cumin might be nice, or curry powder. Roast as with sweet seeds.
Savory Pumpkin Seeds: Add herbs such as chopped rosemary, dried oregano and/or spices such as smoked paprika, chili powder, cumin to the seeds before roasting. Check carefully to be sure the herbs and spices aren't browning too quickly. If so, roast at a sightly lower heat.


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