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Antarctica's ice discharge could raise sea level faster than previously thought
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"If greenhouse gases continue to rise as before, ice discharge from Antarctica could raise the global ocean by an additional 1 to 37 centimeters in this century already," says lead author Anders Levermann. "Now this is a big range — which is exactly why we call it a risk: Science needs to be clear about the uncertainty, so that decision makers at the coast and in coastal megacities like Shanghai or New York can consider the potential implications in their planning processes," says Levermann.
Antarctica currently contributes less than 10 percent to global sea level rise
The scientists analyzed how rising global mean temperatures resulted in a warming of the ocean around Antarctica, thus influencing the melting of the Antarctic ice shelves. While Antarctica currently contributes less than 10 percent to global sea level rise and is a minor contributor compared to the thermal expansion of the warming oceans and melting mountain glaciers, it is Greenland and especially the Antarctic ice sheets with their huge volume of ice that are expected to be the major contributors to future long-term sea level rise. The marine ice sheets in West Antarctica alone have the potential to elevate sea level by several meters — over several centuries.
According to the study, the computed projections for this century's sea level contribution are significantly higher than the latest IPCC projections on the upper end. Even in a scenario of strict climate policies limiting global warming in line with the 2°C target, the contribution of Antarctica to global sea level rise covers a range of 0 to 23 centimeters.
A critical input to future projections
"Rising sea level is widely regarded as a current and ongoing result of climate change that directly affects hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers around the world and indirectly affects billions more that share its financial costs," says co-author Robert Bindschadler from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "This paper is a critical input to projections of possible future contributions of diminishing ice sheets to sea level by a rigorous consideration of uncertainty of not only the results of ice sheet models themselves but also the climate and ocean forcing driving the ice sheet models. Billions of Dollars, Euros, Yuan etc. are at stake and wise and cost-effective decision makers require this type of useful information from the scientific experts."
While the study signifies an important step towards a better understanding of Antarctica in a changing climate and its influence on sea level change within the 21st century, major modeling challenges still remain: Datasets of Antarctic bedrock topography, for instance, are still inadequate and some physical processes of interaction between ice and ocean cannot be sufficiently simulated yet.
Notably, the study's results are limited to this century only, while all 19 of the used comprehensive climate models indicate that the impacts of atmospheric warming on Antarctic ice shelf cavities will hit with a time delay of several decades. "Earlier research indicated that Antarctica would become important in the long term," says Levermann. "But pulling together all the evidence it seems that Antarctica could become the dominant cause of sea level rise much sooner."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- A. Levermann, R. Winkelmann, S. Nowicki, J. L. Fastook, K. Frieler, R. Greve, H. H. Hellmer, M. A. Martin, M. Meinshausen, M. Mengel, A. J. Payne, D. Pollard, T. Sato, R. Timmermann, W. L. Wang, R. A. Bindschadler. Projecting Antarctic ice discharge using response functions from SeaRISE ice-sheet models. Earth System Dynamics, 2014; 5 (2): 271 DOI: 10.5194/esd-5-271-2014
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "Antarctica's ice discharge could raise sea level faster than previously thought." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140813182259.htm>.
To that end, an NIH-led team of scientists has mutated the powerful anti-HIV bNAb called VRC01 so that, once infused into monkeys, it lasts three times longer in blood than unmutated VRC01, collects in rectal mucosal tissue, and persists there more than twice as long as unmutated VRC01. Concentrating anti-HIV bNAbs at mucosal surfaces of the rectum and vagina, the subject of additional study, is critical for blocking sexual transmission of HIV.
In addition, the scientists found, a low-dose infusion of mutated VRC01 protected monkeys against SHIV infection more effectively than a low-dose infusion of unmutated VRC01.
The mutation works by enhancing VRC01's ability to bind to a cellular protein that prevents the antibody from degrading inside cells and influences how frequently the antibody reaches mucosal surfaces and stays there, the researchers report. This finding may inform antibody-based prevention strategies against not only HIV but also other viruses that invade the body at mucosal surfaces, including rotavirus, poliovirus, norovirus and influenza virus.
Next, the researchers will test infusions of mutated VRC01 in people to learn if it concentrates in mucosal tissues and persists there and in blood for an extended period.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Sung-Youl Ko, Amarendra Pegu, Rebecca S. Rudicell, Zhi-yong Yang, M. Gordon Joyce, Xuejun Chen, Keyun Wang, Saran Bao, Thomas D. Kraemer, Timo Rath, Ming Zeng, Stephen D. Schmidt, John-Paul Todd, Scott R. Penzak, Kevin O. Saunders, Martha C. Nason, Ashley T. Haase, Srinivas S. Rao, Richard S. Blumberg, John R. Mascola, Gary J. Nabel. Enhanced neonatal Fc receptor function improves protection against primate SHIV infection. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13612
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Scientists boost potential of passive immunization against HIV." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140813132118.htm>.
Trapped atmospheric waves triggering more weather extremes: Trend expected to continue
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"The large number of recent high-impact extreme weather events has struck and puzzled us," says Dim Coumou, lead author of the study conducted by a team of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "Of course we are warming our atmosphere by emitting CO2 from fossil fuels, but the increase in devastating heat waves in regions like Europe or the US seems disproportionate." One reason could be changes in circulation patterns in the atmosphere. By analysing large sets of global weather data, the researchers found an intriguing connection.
Rossby Waves: meandering airstreams
An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes normally takes the form of waves wandering around the globe, called Rossby Waves. When they swing north, they suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US; and when they swing south, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic. However, the study shows that in periods with extreme weather, some of these waves become virtually stalled and greatly amplified. While a few warm days have little impact, effects on people and ecosystems can be severe when these periods are prolonged.
"Behind this, there is a subtle resonance mechanism that traps waves in the mid-latitudes and amplifies them strongly," says Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the study to be published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Using advanced data analysis, the new study shows that when certain resonance conditions are fulfilled, the atmosphere tends to develop anomalously slowly propagating waves with large amplitudes, typically associated with extreme weather on the ground. An important finding is that this phenomenon is occurring more often: After the year 2000, it has been almost twice as frequent as before. "Evidence for actual changes in planetary wave activity was so far not clear. But by knowing what patterns to look for, we have now found strong evidence for an increase in these resonance events."
The Arctic factor: warming twice as fast as most other regions
Why would these events be on the rise? Both theory and the new data suggest a link to processes in the Arctic. Since the year 2000, the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the globe. One reason for this is that because the white sea ice is rapidly shrinking, less sunlight gets reflected back into space, while the open ocean is dark and hence warms more. "This melting of ice and snow is actually due to our lifestyle of churning out unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, co-author of the study and director of PIK. As the Arctic warms more rapidly, the temperature difference to other regions decreases. Yet temperature differences are a major driver of the atmospheric circulation patterns that in turn rule our weather.
"The planetary waves topic illustrates how delicately interlinked components in the Earth system are." Schellnhuber concludes: "And it shows how disproportionately the system might react to our perturbations."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Dim Coumou, Vladimir Petoukhov, Stefan Rahmstorf, Stefan Petri, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. Quasi-resonant circulation regimes and hemispheric synchronization of extreme weather in boreal summer. PNAS, August 11, 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1412797111
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "Trapped atmospheric waves triggering more weather extremes: Trend expected to continue." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811170106.htm>.
For people already in the know, here's the advance in a sentence: The team of researchers at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania mapped the specific ways that the recombination proteins in the machines bridge separate sites along the DNA of the host and the virus. But for everyone else, to understand what that means is to appreciate the evolved "ingenuity" of the lambda virus that has made it the subject of 50 years of intriguing study. Thankfully Lambda is benign, although it has medically nasty cousins that work much the same way.
Lambda, said co-corresponding author and Brown emeritus biology Professor Arthur Landy, is not one of those devil-may-care viruses that just smashes and grabs a host cell for immediate reproduction. Instead it senses the physiology of its E. coli host and waits for the cell to be healthy before striking, perhaps several generations of cell division later. To execute this more refined strategy it assembles a n ensemble of proteins, or a " machine" to insert its DNA in a precise location in the DNA of the host (to ensure that its DNA will persist for many generations of host cells), and another machine to extract the DNA when the chosen moment of ideal host health arrives.
"The viruses make a 'decision' when they infect a cell as to whether or not this is a good time to lyse the cell and make more virus or whether it would be more propitious to integrate their chromosome into the E. coli chromosome, turn off their genes and sit there for generations," Landy said. "Then when things look good again they use a different but related pathway to excise their chromosome, in order to make more virus and kill the cell."
The way Lambda senses the health status of the host is built right into the machines. The machines incorporate key DNA-bending proteins that are made by E. coli to regulate expression of its own genes. Therefore the levels of these proteins also reflect the physiological state of the cell, Landy said. While some recombination proteins bind to just one site in each DNA, Lambda and its ilk go through the trouble of latching on to two distant sites in the DNA. The reason is to make the whole reaction depend on the presence of these key DNA-bending proteins to bend the sites into closer proximity. Without those proteins, the machines can't work.
""It makes the system gratuitously dependent on the proteins of the cell which serve as reporters of how well the cell is doing and where it is in its life cycle," Landy said. "This makes it exquisitely sensitive to the physiology of the cell."
Mapping Bridges
Biologists already knew all this, but they had never quite figured out how the recombination proteins in the machines bridge the two DNA sites,(i.e.,which sites were bound or bridged by the same recombination protein). Therefore they couldn't really figure out what the whole machines looked like. Direct imaging tools such as crystallography never worked on the whole machines because it has too many forms, Landy said, and nuclear magnetic resonance never worked because it was too hard to make enough of the machines in a high enough concentration.
So the team did a couple of other experiments to figure out the bridging. One used chemicals and the other used genetics, but in each case they were essentially tagging different pairs of locations on the proteins and the DNA to see if any of those pairs, upon being connected, would produce a tell-tale effect: in the case of the chemistry the tell-tale was a change in the structural properties of the complex; in the case of the genetics it was a successful integration or excision reaction
It's a bit like trying to wire a battery into a light bulb circuit where there are many pairs of loose wires, but only two that actually connect to the bulb. When one finally connects (or "bridges") the right two loose wires with the battery's electrodes, the light bulb lights and then one has mapped where those correct two wires are.
They combined their new mappings, including distance measurements within the protein-DNA complexes using fluorescent tags, with all of the other biochemical and structural information biologists have learned over the last 50 years, into a computer model to render the overall depictions of the machines.
They confirmed in further research that the models they generated explained and agreed with much of the observed behavior of the machines.
So now, long after they began to understand how worthwhile the Lambda virus was to study, researchers can finally see what these model DNA insertion and removal machines look like. That information will serve to make Lambda an even more powerful model for research and teaching, Landy said.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Brown University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Wenjun Tong, David Warren, Nicole E. Seah, Gurunathan Laxmikanthan, Gregory D. Van Duyne, and Arthur Landy. Mapping the {lambda} Integrase bridges in the nucleoprotein Holliday junction intermediates of viral integrative and excisive recombination. PNAS, August 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1413007111
Brown University. "Elusive viral 'machine' architecture finally rendered." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811170153.htm>.
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To our friends and colleagues, ON TARGET is taking a short vacation to recharge some batteries and will be back after Labor Day (US). As we leave, we would like to share 2 recent highlights: one is the recognition in the August 2014 issue of PharmaVOICE, of Dr. Jules Mitchel, President of Target Health, as one of the 100 top inspirational and motivational individuals in the pharmaceutical industry in the category of entrepreneurs; the other is that Dean Gittleman, Sr. Director of Operations will be presenting on the topic of how to "Achieve eSource Data Compliance and Minimize the Need for Paper."at the eSource Data in Clinical Investigations meeting in Philadelphia this month.
PharmaVOICE – Jules Mitchel, President of Target Health Designated as One of the 100 Top Inspirational and Motivational Individuals in the Pharmaceutical Industry in the Category of Entrepreneurs
PharmaVOICE Magazine has announced the 2014 PharmaVOICE 100 and Inaugural Red Jacket Award. Target Health is very pleased that Dr. Jules Mitchel, President of Target Health, has been designated as one of the 100 top inspirational and motivational individuals in the pharmaceutical industry in the category of entrepreneurs. The article can be found In The News section on our website (www.targethealth.com), and the entire edition of can be found on the PharmaVoice website (http://www.pharmavoice.com/content/digitaledition.html?pg=76).
eSource Meeting
Dean Gittleman, Sr. Director of Operations at Target Health will be presenting at CBI's eSource Data in Clinical Investigations Forum, taking place August 20-21 in Philadelphia. Dean will speak on how to "Achieve eSource Data Compliance and Minimize the Need for Paper." The conference will provide industry case studies and applications of eSource data. Attendees will obtain insights into strategies for eliminating unnecessary duplication of data, ways to reduce transcription errors and pathways for real-time review of trial data. Attendees will be able to move beyond theory and hear practical applications and implementation strategies from industry pioneers as we as an industry collectively make the FDA-recommended shift toward the more efficient and reliable eSource Data. If you Register by 12 August 2014, you can save $500 off the the registration fee as a valued colleague of Target Health. Mention promo code ESRCTH when registering.
Speakers from pharma include:
1. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals (Raj Bandaru)
2. Bayer Healthcare (Johann Proeve)
3. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (Debra Lounsbury)
4. CSL Behring (Susmita Gupta)
5. Eisai Inc. (Peggy Siemon-Hryczyk)
6. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (Samar Noor)
ON TARGET is the newsletter of Target Health Inc., a NYC-based, full-service, contract research organization (eCRO), providing strategic planning, regulatory affairs, clinical research, data management, biostatistics, medical writing and software services to the pharmaceutical and device industries, including the paperless clinical trial.
For more information about Target Health contact Warren Pearlson (212-681-2100 ext. 104). For additional information about software tools for paperless clinical trials, please also feel free to contact Dr. Jules T. Mitchel or Ms. Joyce Hays. The Target Health software tools are designed to partner with both CROs and Sponsors. Please visit the Target Health Website, and if you like the weekly newsletter, ON TARGET, you'll love the Blog.
Joyce Hays, Founder and Editor in Chief of On Target
Jules Mitchel, Editor
Writing in the August 7 early online edition of Neuron, lead scientist Paul Lu, PhD, of the UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences and colleagues said the human iPSC-derived axons extended through the white matter of the injury sites, frequently penetrating adjacent gray matter to form synapses with rat neurons. Similarly, rat motor axons pierced the human iPSC grafts to form their own synapses.
The iPSCs used were developed from a healthy 86-year-old human male.
"These findings indicate that intrinsic neuronal mechanisms readily overcome the barriers created by a spinal cord injury to extend many axons over very long distances, and that these capabilities persist even in neurons reprogrammed from very aged human cells," said senior author Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of Neurosciences and director of the UC San Diego Center for Neural Repair.
For several years, Tuszynski and colleagues have been steadily chipping away at the notion that a spinal cord injury necessarily results in permanent dysfunction and paralysis. Earlier work has shown that grafted stem cells reprogrammed to become neurons can, in fact, form new, functional circuits across an injury site, with the treated animals experiencing some restored ability to move affected limbs. The new findings underscore the potential of iPSC-based therapy and suggest a host of new studies and questions to be asked, such as whether axons can be guided and how will they develop, function and mature over longer periods of time.
While neural stem cell therapies are already advancing to clinical trials, this research raises cautionary notes about moving to human therapy too quickly, said Tuszynski.
"The enormous outgrowth of axons to many regions of the spinal cord and even deeply into the brain raises questions of possible harmful side effects if axons are mistargeted. We also need to learn if the new connections formed by axons are stable over time, and if implanted human neural stem cells are maturing on a human time frame — months to years — or more rapidly. If maturity is reached on a human time frame, it could take months to years to observe functional benefits or problems in human clinical trials."
In the latest work, Lu, Tuszynski and colleagues converted skin cells from a healthy 86-year-old man into iPSCs, which possess the ability to become almost any kind of cell. The iPSCs were then reprogrammed to become neurons in collaboration with the laboratory of Larry Goldstein, PhD, director of the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center. The new human neurons were subsequently embedded in a matrix containing growth factors and grafted into two-week-old spinal cord injuries in rats.
Three months later, researchers examined the post-transplantation injury sites. They found biomarkers indicating the presence of mature neurons and extensive axonal growth across long distances in the rats' spinal cords, even extending into the brain. The axons traversed wound tissues to penetrate and connect with existing rat neurons. Similarly, rat neurons extended axons into the grafted material and cells. The transplants produced no detectable tumors.
While numerous connections were formed between the implanted human cells and rat cells, functional recovery was not found. However, Lu noted that tests assessed the rats' skilled use of the hand. Simpler assays of leg movement could still show benefit. Also, several iPSC grafts contained scars that may have blocked beneficial effects of new connections. Continuing research seeks to optimize transplantation methods to eliminate scar formation.
Tuszynski said he and his team are attempting to identify the most promising neural stem cell type for repairing spinal cord injuries. They are testing iPSCs, embryonic stem cell-derived cells and other stem cell types.
"Ninety-five percent of human clinical trials fail. We are trying to do as much as we possibly can to identify the best way of translating neural stem cell therapies for spinal cord injury to patients. It's easy to forge ahead with incomplete information, but the risk of doing so is greater likelihood of another failed clinical trial. We want to determine as best we can the optimal cell type and best method for human translation so that we can move ahead rationally and, with some luck, successfully."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of California – San Diego. The original article was written by Scott LaFee and Jackie Carr. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Lu et al. Long-Distance Axonal Growth from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells After Spinal Cord Injury. Neuron, 2014 (in press)
University of California – San Diego. "Dramatic growth of grafted stem cells in rat spinal cord." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140807121719.htm>.
Now, MIT researchers have found an alternative: They have shown that a gene-editing system called CRISPR can introduce cancer-causing mutations into the livers of adult mice, enabling scientists to screen these mutations much more quickly.
In a study appearing in the Aug. 6 issue of Nature, the researchers generated liver tumors in adult mice by disrupting the tumor suppressor genes p53 and pten. They are now working on ways to deliver the necessary CRISPR components to other organs, allowing them to investigate mutations found in other types of cancer.
"The sequencing of human tumors has revealed hundreds of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in different combinations. The flexibility of this technology, as delivery gets better in the future, will give you a way to pretty rapidly test those combinations," says Institute Professor Phillip Sharp, an author of the paper.
Tyler Jacks, director of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the David H. Koch Professor of Biology, is the paper's senior author. The lead authors are Koch Institute postdocs Wen Xue, Sidi Chen, and Hao Yin.
Gene disruption
CRISPR relies on cellular machinery that bacteria use to defend themselves from viral infection. Researchers have copied this bacterial system to create gene-editing complexes that include a DNA-cutting enzyme called Cas9 bound to a short RNA guide strand that is programmed to bind to a specific genome sequence, telling Cas9 where to make its cut.
In some cases, the researchers simply snip out part of a gene to disrupt its function; in others, they also introduce a DNA template strand that encodes a new sequence to replace the deleted DNA.
To investigate the potential usefulness of CRISPR for creating mouse models of cancer, the researchers first used it to knock out p53 and pten, which protect cells from becoming cancerous by regulating cell growth. Previous studies have shown that genetically engineered mice with mutations in both of those genes will develop cancer within a few months.
Studies of such genetically engineered mice have yielded many important discoveries, but the process, which requires introducing mutations into embryonic stem cells, can take more than a year and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's a very long process, and the more genes you're working with, the longer and more complicated it becomes," Jacks says.
Using Cas enzymes targeted to cut snippets of p53 and pten, the researchers were able to disrupt those two genes in about 3 percent of liver cells, enough to produce liver tumors within three months.
Many models possible
The researchers also used CRISPR to create a mouse model with an oncogene called beta catenin, which makes cells more likely to become cancerous if additional mutations occur later on. To create this model, the researchers had to cut out the normal version of the gene and replace it with an overactive form, which was successful in about 0.5 percent of hepatocytes (the cells that make up most of the liver).
The ability to not only delete genes, but also to replace them with altered versions "really opens up all sorts of new possibilities when you think about the kinds of genes that you would want to mutate in the future," Jacks says. "Both loss of function and gain of function are possible."
Using CRISPR to generate tumors should allow scientists to more rapidly study how different genetic mutations interact to produce cancers, as well as the effects of potential drugs on tumors with a specific genetic profile.
"This is a game-changer for the production of engineered strains of human cancer," says Ronald DePinho, director of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who was not part of the research team. "CRISPR/Cas9 offers the ability to totally ablate gene function in adult mice. Enhanced potential of this powerful technology will be realized with improved delivery methods, the testing of CRISPR/Cas9 efficiency in other organs and tissues, and the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in tumor-prone backgrounds."
In this study, the researchers delivered the genes necessary for CRISPR through injections into veins in the tails of the mice. While this is an effective way to get genetic material to the liver, it would not work for other organs of interest. However, nanoparticles and other delivery methods now being developed for DNA and RNA could prove more effective in targeting other organs, Sharp says.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Anne Trafton. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Wen Xue, Sidi Chen, Hao Yin, Tuomas Tammela, Thales Papagiannakopoulos, Nikhil S. Joshi, Wenxin Cai, Gillian Yang, Roderick Bronson, Denise G. Crowley, Feng Zhang, Daniel G. Anderson, Phillip A. Sharp, Tyler Jacks. CRISPR-mediated direct mutation of cancer genes in the mouse liver. Nature, 2014; DOI:10.1038/nature13589
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Gene-editing technique offers new way to model cancer." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 6 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140806142213.htm>
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Promotions at Target Health
MR. YONG JOONG KIM has been promoted to Executive Director at Target Health. Yong Joong has been a key member of the Target Health team since May 1999. Yong Joong will continue to run the Data Management Department and work closely with Joonhyuk Choi, Leigh Ren and Glen Park to support their department's activities. Yong Joong will also be a key member of the newly established Executive Committee at Target Health which includes Dean Gittleman, Glen Park, Mark Horn, Joyce Hays and Jules Mitchel. The Executive committee will help guide the growth of Target Health as we champion the paperless clinical trial.
MR. JOONHYUK CHOI, who joined our company in July 2001, has been promoted to Sr. Director, Software Development. Joonhyuk will have the software programmers, testers and IT reporting directly to him. Joonhyuk will be responsible for the development of new software products at Target Health as well as all operations requiring programming and support for Target Health's software products.
View From Greensboro, North Carolina
Our friend and colleague, James Farley, Clinical Data Manager at TransTech Pharma LLC and subscriber to ON TARGET newsletter, is sharing some wildlife from Greensboro, NC. He tells us that Believe it or not, the Green Heron lives at a pond which is in walking distance of our TransTech office!
Green Heron, Greensboro, NC ©JFarleyPhotography.com
ON TARGET is the newsletter of Target Health Inc., a NYC-based, full-service, contract research organization (eCRO), providing strategic planning, regulatory affairs, clinical research, data management, biostatistics, medical writing and software services to the pharmaceutical and device industries, including the paperless clinical trial.
For more information about Target Health contact Warren Pearlson (212-681-2100 ext. 104). For additional information about software tools for paperless clinical trials, please also feel free to contact Dr. Jules T. Mitchelor Ms. Joyce Hays. The Target Health software tools are designed to partner with both CROs and Sponsors. Please visit the Target Health Website.
Joyce Hays, Founder and Editor in Chief of On Target
Jules Mitchel, Editor
QUIZ (Fill in the Blanks)
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Ebola Virus
Electron micrograph of an Ebola virus virion
The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on this planet is the virus, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Joshua Lederberg once wrote. There is no bomb, no poison, no plan of attack with the potential to do as much damage.
Ebola virus disease (EVD) or Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) one of the most dreaded human diseases, is caused by the ebola virus. Symptoms typically start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever, throat and muscle pains, and headaches. Following the first symptoms, there is typically, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, along with decreased functioning of the liver and 1) ___. At this point, some people begin to have problems with bleeding. The disease is usually acquired when a person comes into contact with the blood or bodily 2) ___ of an infected animal such as a monkey or fruit bat. Fruit bats are believed to carry and spread the virus without being affected by it. Once infection of a human occurs, the disease may be spread from one person to another. Survivors may be able to transmit the disease via their semen for nearly two months. To make the diagnosis, typically other diseases with similar symptoms such as malaria, cholera and other viral hemorrhagic fevers are first excluded. The blood may then be tested for 3) ___ to the virus, or the viral RNA, or the virus itself, to confirm the diagnosis.
Prevention includes decreasing the spread of the disease from infected monkeys and pigs to humans. This may be done by checking these types of animals for infection and killing and properly disposing of the bodies, if the disease is discovered. Properly cooking meat and wearing protective clothing when handling meat may also be helpful, as is wearing protective clothing and washing 4) ___ when around a person who has the disease. Samples of bodily fluids and tissues from people with the disease should be handled with special caution. There is no specific treatment for the virus. Efforts to help persons who are infected include giving them either oral rehydration therapy or intravenous fluids. The disease has a high mortality rate: often between 50% and 90% of those who are infected with the virus. It typically occurs in outbreaks in tropical regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1976, when it was first identified, and 2014, fewer than 1,000 people a year have been infected. The largest outbreak to date is the ongoing 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, which is affecting Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The disease was first identified in the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Efforts are ongoing to develop a vaccine; however, none exists as of 2014.
Manifestation of Ebola begins abruptly with a sudden onset of an influenza-like stage. Respiratory tract involvement is characterized by pharyngitis with sore throat, cough, dyspnea, and hiccups. The central nervous system is affected by the development of severe headaches, agitation, confusion, fatigue, seizures, and sometimes coma. Cutaneous presentation may include: maculopapular rash, petechiae, purpura, ecchymoses, and hematomas (especially around needle injection sites). In general, development of hemorrhagic symptoms is indicative of a negative 5) ___. However, contrary to popular belief, hemorrhage does not lead to hypovolemia (decreased blood volume) and is not the cause of death (total blood loss is low except during labor). Instead, death occurs due to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) due to fluid redistribution, hypotension, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and focal tissue necroses. The average time between contracting the infection and the onset of symptoms is 13 days, but can be as long as 25 days.
Bushmeat being prepared for cooking in Ghana, 2013. Human consumption of equatorial animals in Africa in the form of bushmeat has been linked to the transmission of diseases to people, including Ebola.
The natural maintenance hosts of ebola viruses are unidentified. Primary infection may not necessarily be preventable in nature. Fruit bats are thought to be the natural hosts, as well as other wild animals. Thus, to avoid EVD, risk factors such as contact with bats, nonhuman primates, and 6) ___ meat should be avoided.
The cytosol is a crowded solution of many different types of molecules that fills much of the volume of cells. The cytosol or intracellular fluid (ICF) or cytoplasmic matrix is the liquid found inside cells. It is separated into compartments by membranes. For example, the mitochondrial matrix separates the mitochondrion into compartments.
The ebola virus life cycle begins with virion attachment to specific cell-surface receptors, followed by fusion of the virion envelope with cellular membranes and the concomitant release of the virus nucleocapsid into the cytosol. Endothelial cells, mononuclear phagocytes, and hepatocytes are the main targets of infection. After infection, a secreted glycoprotein (sGP) known as the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) is synthesized. Ebola replication overwhelms protein synthesis of infected cells and host immune defenses. The GP forms a trimeric complex, which binds the virus to the endothelial cells lining the interior surface of blood vessels. The sGP forms adimeric protein that interferes with the signaling of neutrophils, a type of 7) ___ blood cell, which allows the virus to evade the immune system by inhibiting early steps of neutrophil activation.
These white blood cells also serve as carriers to transport the virus throughout the entire body to places such as the lymph nodes, liver, lungs, and spleen. The presence of viral particles and cell damage resulting from budding causes the release of cytokines, which are the signaling molecules for fever and inflammation. The cytopathic effect, from infection in the endothelial cells, results in a loss of vascular integrity. This loss in vascular integrity is furthered with synthesis of GP, which reduces specific integrins responsible for cell adhesion to the inter-cellular structure, and damage to the liver, which leads to coagulopathy.
One ray of hope, for the management of this terrible disease, is the knowledge that, Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1) appears to be essential for Ebola infection. Two independent studies reported in the same issue of Nature showed that Ebola virus cell entry and replication requires the cholesterol transporter protein NPC1. When cells from Niemann-Pick disease, type C1 patients (who have a mutated form of NPC1) were exposed to Ebola virus in the laboratory, the cells survived and appeared immune to the virus, further indicating that Ebola relies on NPC1 to enter cells. This might imply that 8) ___ mutations in the NPC1 gene in humans could make some people resistant to one of the deadliest known viruses affecting humans. The same studies described similar results with Ebola's cousin in the filovirus group, Marburg virus, showing that it too needs NPC1 to enter cells. Furthermore, NPC1 was shown to be critical to filovirus entry because it mediates infection by binding directly to the viral envelope glycoprotein. A later study confirmed these findings, and also showed that the second lysosomal domain of NPC1 mediates this binding. In one of the original studies, a small molecule was shown to inhibit Ebola virus infection by preventing the virus glycoprotein from binding to NPC1. In the other study, mice that were heterozygous for NPC1 were shown to be protected from lethal challenge with mouse adapted Ebola virus. Together, these studies suggest NPC1 may be potential therapeutic target for an Ebola anti-viral drug.
Because Ebola 9) ___ are highly infectious as well as contagious, governments and individuals respond quickly to quarantine the outbreak areas; while the lack of roads and transportation in many parts of Africa helps to contain the outbreak of the disease. Airline crews are trained to spot the symptoms of Ebola in passengers flying from places where the virus is found. Crews are told to quarantine anyone who looks infected. During the summer of 2014, some international airlines have already halted flights to and from affected areas in Africa.
No Ebola virus-specific treatment exists. Treatment is primarily supportive in nature and includes minimizing invasive procedures, balancing fluids and electrolytes to counter dehydration. Administration of anticoagulants early in infection may help to prevent or control disseminated intravascular coagulation. After the disease has taken hold, administration of procoagulants late in infection, is used to control hemorrhaging, to maintain oxygen levels, to manage pain. The administration of antibiotics or antimycotics are given to treat secondary infections. According to Doctors Without Borders, early treatment may increase the survival chance, since there is no known cure. Their treatment focuses on replenishing fluids, maintaining proper blood pressure, replacing lost blood, and treating related infections.
In late 2012, Canadian scientists discovered that the deadliest form of the virus could be transmitted by air between species. The scientists managed to prove that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them, leading to fears that airborne transmission could be contributing to the wider spread of the disease in parts of Africa. Researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases found that FDA-approved estrogen receptor drugs used to treat infertility and breast cancer (clomiphene and toremifene) inhibit the progress of Ebola virus in infected mice. Ninety percent of the mice treated with clomiphene and 50% of those treated with toremifene survived the tests. The authors of the study concluded that given their oral availability and history of human use, these drugs would be excellent candidates for repurposing efforts to treat 10) ___ virus infection in remote geographical locations, either on their own or together with other antiviral drugs. Now, human clinical trials are needed.
ANSWERS: 1) kidneys; 2) fluids; 3) antibodies; 4) hands; 5) prognosis; 6) bush; 7) white; 8) genetic; 9) viruses; 10) Ebola
Filed Under History of Medicine, News | Leave a Comment
David Baltimore MD, PhD (1938-Present)
David Baltimore: In 1975, at the age of 37, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
David Baltimore MD, PhD, an American virologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, is considered one of the world's most influential biologists. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the President Emeritus and Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech. He also served as president of Rockefeller University from 1990 to 1991, and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. Dr. Baltimore has profoundly influenced international science, including key contributions to immunology, virology, cancer research, biotechnology, and recombinant DNA research, through his accomplishments as a researcher, administrator, educator, and public advocate for science and engineering. He was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1999.
Dr. Baltimore was born to Gertrude (Lipschitz) and Richard Baltimore in New York City. Raised in the Queens neighborhoods of Forest Hills and Rego Park, Queens, he moved with his family to suburban Great Neck, New York while he was in second grade because his mother felt that the city schools were inadequate. His father had been raised as an Orthodox Jew and his mother was an atheist. Dr. Baltimore observed Jewish holidays and would attend synagogue with his father through his Bar Mitzvah. He graduated from Great Neck High School in 1956, and credits his interest in biology to a high-school summer spent at the Jackson Laboratory's Summer Student Program in Bar Harbor, Maine.
He earned a BA at Swarthmore College in 1960, and received his Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in 1964. After postdoctoral fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a non-faculty research position at the Salk Institute, he joined the MIT faculty in 1968. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. In 1975, at the age of 37, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco. The citation reads, for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell. At the time, Baltimore's greatest contribution to virology was his discovery of reverse transcriptase (RTase or RT). Reverse transcriptase is essential for the reproduction of retroviruses such as HIV. Working independently, Baltimore and Temin discovered reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that synthesizes DNA from RNA. Baltimore also conducted research that led to an understanding of the interaction between viruses and the genetic material of the cell. The research of all three men contributed to an understanding of the role of viruses in the development of cancer. Baltimore and Temin both studied the process by which certain tumor-causing RNA viruses (those whose genetic material is composed of RNA) replicate after they infect a cell. They simultaneously demonstrated that these RNA viruses, now called retroviruses, contain the blueprint for an unusual enzyme – a polymerase called reverse transcriptase – that copies DNA from an RNA template. The newly formed viral DNA then integrates into the infected host cell, an event that can transform the infected cell into a cancer cell.
In 1975, Baltimore was an organizer of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA. In 1982, Baltimore was appointed the founding director of MIT's Whitehead Institute, where he remained through June 1990. In 1981, Baltimore and Vincent Racaniello, a post-doctoral fellow in his laboratory, used recombinant DNA technology to generate a plasmid encoding the genome of poliovirus, an animal RNA virus. The plasmid DNA was introduced into cultured mammalian cells and infectious poliovirus was produced. The infectious clone, DNA encoding the genome of a virus, is a standard tool used today in virology. Other important breakthroughs from Baltimore's lab include the discovery of the transcription factor NF-?B and the recombination activating genes RAG-1 and RAG-2.
Baltimore became president of Rockefeller University in New York City on July 1, 1990. After resigning on December 3, 1991, Baltimore remained on the Rockefeller University faculty and continued research until spring of 1994. He then rejoined the MIT faculty.
Dr. Baltimore's present research focuses on control of inflammatory and immune responses, on the roles of microRNAs in the immune system, and on the use of gene therapy methods to treat HIV and cancer in a program called Engineering Immunity. He has become Director of the Joint Center for Translational Medicine, an activity that joins Caltech and UCLA in a program to translate basic science discoveries into clinical realities and where an active clinical program is under way. Baltimore has several outstanding administrative and public policy achievements to his credit. In the mid-1970s, he played an important role in creating a consensus on national science policy regarding recombinant DNA research. He served as founding director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT from 1982 until 1990. An early advocate of federal AIDS research, Baltimore co-chaired the 1986 National Academy of Sciences committee on a National Strategy for AIDS and was appointed in 1996 to head the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee.
Baltimore served as a member of the Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine until 2007 and on the Board of Directors for both MedImmune until 2007 and Cellerant until 2008.He has played an important role in the development of American biotechnology since his involvement in the 1970s in the formation of Collaborative Genetics. He helped found other companies such as Calimmune and Immune Design and most recently s2A Molecular, Inc. He presently serves on the Board of Directors at several companies and non-profit institutions including the Broad Foundation and Broad Institute, and Amgen and Regulus Therapeutics. He is a member of numerous Scientific Advisory Boards, including the Broad Institute, Ragon Institute, Regulus Therapeutics, and Immune Design. He is a Scientific Partner to the venture capital firm, The Column Group, and until recently, he was a Director of the Swiss investment company BB Biotech.
Baltimore's numerous honors include the 1970 Gustave Stern Award in Virology, 1971 Eli Lilly and Co. Award in Microbiology and Immunology, 1999 National Medal of Science, and 2000 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, and is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of both the Royal Society of London and the French Academy of Sciences. He is past-President and Chair of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (2007-2009) and was mostly recently named a Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He has published 680 peer-reviewed articles.
Baltimore has influenced national policy concerning recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic. He has trained many doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, several of whom have gone on to notable and distinguished research careers. Baltimore is a member of The Jackson Laboratory's Board of Trustees, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors, the National Academy of Sciences USA (NAS), the NAS Institute of Medicine (IOM), Amgen, Inc. Board of Directors, the BB Biotech AG Board of Directors, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Vaccine Research Committee (AVRC), and numerous other organizations and their boards.
Baltimore is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
During Baltimore's tenure at Caltech, United States President Bill Clinton awarded Baltimore the National Medal of Science in 1999 for his numerous contributions to the scientific world. In 2004, Rockefeller University gave Baltimore its highest honor, Doctor of Science (honoris causa).
Baltimore remains the Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech and is an active member of the Institute's community. He is married and has one child.
The Baltimore Classification of viruses is based on the method of viral mRNA synthesis.
Among huge accomplishments, David Baltimore, devised the Baltimore classification system. The ICTV classification system is used in conjunction with the Baltimore classification system in modern virus classification.


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Parents! Your voice is needed Soon (TBD) at SFUSD School Board for a new neighborhood school!
|March 5, 2017
|Posted by jamie under Kids
Comments off
If you never have time to participate in managing your local government and school district, you must make time for a date TBD upcoming meeting to attend the San Francisco Unified School District's Commissioners Meeting (at 555 Franklin Street at McAllister) because they are considering a resolution submitted by Commissioners Matt Haney and Hydra Mendoza-McDonnell to kick-off planning to build a new school in Mission Bay.
This is critical for everybody in the community because it will help families connect with other families – and hopefully community members without kids will also volunteer and share their knowledge and skills with the classrooms built in Mission Bay. It is such a fantastic location in the midst of our technology and biosciences research and corporate core of San Francisco.
According to a January 17, 2017 report published by the San Francisco Planning Department titled Housing for Families with Children, there are 870 kids in Mission Bay, 1,502 along the Embarcadero (includes South Beach, Rincon Hill, and Barbary Coast), and another 1,458 kids in Centra/Western SoMa.
We know that even more kids will be living in these areas soon because the affordable housing components are intended for families and they are getting built after the market-rate developments in Rincon Hill (as part of the Transbay Redevelopment Project along Folsom Street) and in Mission Bay (in Mission Bay South in particular where the school would be built).
While some folks are lucky enough to have an extra $25,000 or more to send their kids to private schools, most families cannot spare $25,000. A school in Mission Bay is the solution for Rincon Hill kids, South Beach kids, Mission Bay kids, and hopefully kids connected to Mission Bay via the T-Third line or by bike on the Blue Greenway who want to go to a school located in the epicenter of where JOBs are being created in San Francisco – SoMa/Mission Bay!
So, please take a couple hours off of work if that's what needs to happen on the TBD meeting date to make it over to the SFUSD Administration building at 555 Franklin Street at McAllister Street to speak up – especially if you are a current or expecting parent – in support of SFUSD moving forward to start planning a school at a site where they have free land already designated for a school (but that option runs out if nothing gets built by 2026).
From www.MissionBaySchool.org :
Your voice is important! The Board of Education needs to hear from you. Please join us to provide public comment in support of the school via email to the commission members today (scroll down for the email addresses for the 7 Commissioners and SFUSD's Superintendent).
If all goes well, we will celebrate as a community at the ribbon cutting ceremony for a new SFUSD school in Mission Bay in about 5 years.
Board of Education Commissioners
- firstname.lastname@example.com
- email@example.com
- email@example.com
- email@example.com
- email@example.com
- firstname.lastname@example.com
- email@example.com
Please spread the word to other families in the area by sharing a link to this webpage: www.MissionBaySchool.org

subset: commoncrawl


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Wilson's big second half leads Penfield past Mercy 53-48
It's arguably the best girl's basketball matchup we'll see all season.
Unless, of course, we see it again in Sectionals.
Trailing by as much as nine in the first half, the Penfield Patriots came back to beat the Mercy Monarchs 53-48.
Mikaila WIlson finished the game with 27 points, scoring 19 of those in the second half.


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Kushal is the eldest and he has one younger brother and a sister. They live with their parents in an estate house which is poorly built with wattle and sticks.
Though suffered with hearing impediment, Kushal aim to serve people like him.
The challenge behind his future aim is the lack of physical materials and economic support for his further study.
The quick and better remedy that brings hope and optimism towards his life is the support from the people like you.
MR. Kushal Chaulagai
5 yrs
MS. Smriti Lama
8 yrs
MR. Anuskar Basnet
MR. Awon Sinjali Magar
6 yrs
MR. Sijan Thapa Magar
4 yrs
MR. Yogendra Chalise
2.5 yrs
MR. Sandesh Tamang
MS. Miss Grace Lama
Our story is twenty five years old. My inspiration is as new as it was then. Of the Board of Trustees, Mr Anang Man Serchan, Dr. Laxmi Narayan Prasad and Dr. Nabin Chandra Rai ...
Read More»
Copyright © 2014 B.P Eye Foundation.
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Superlark Team Rules
Grand Meadow Football Team Rules
1. Anyone who loses their eligibility for any reason during the football season will not be eligible for any post season awards. This includes lettering, all conference or honorable mention all conference. This also includes the Grand Meadow team awards that team members vote on during the end of season meeting. Anyone who is ineligible will run 4 Viking Drills each day of practice while he is ineligible.
2. Anyone who is chosen as a team captain will have this title revoked if they lose their eligibility at any time, whether it is during the football season or not. Captains are expected to be team leaders and losing eligibility at any time of the year does not demonstrate leadership.
3. Requirements for lettering will be based on multiple factors. The amount of quarters played will be considered; however, the status of the game at the time will carry more weight. This means if a player was on the field for significant playing time while the outcome of the game was still in jeopardy this will be judged more important than if a player is on the field while GM is either winning by a lopsided score or losing by a lopsided score.
A second factor to be considered in lettering of sophomores and freshmen would be a player's time spent playing on the JV team. If the coaches hold a player out of a JV game due to his importance to the varsity this will increase his probability of lettering. The rationale is that if the player is withheld from the JV game because the varsity coaches are concerned with his getting injured then he must be important enough to the varsity that he will generally receive a letter.
A third factor to be consider in lettering of underclassmen is how much did the individual help prepare the varsity during practices. If the individual was an extremely valuable member of "the scout team" this would assist his chances of earning a letter, even though he may have lacked significant varsity playing time.
4. Anyone who earns a detention will earn 2 Vikings drills as punishment for the detention. Each subsequent detention the punishment will double.
5. Anyone who has an unexcused absence from practice will be given 2 Viking drills. Anyone who misses 2 practices during the week will be withheld from Friday night's varsity game and/or the following JV game. If the coach holds a player out of practice due to injury or extenuating circumstances the player will be allowed to play on Friday night and/or Monday night.
6. All freshmen are expected to help get out and put away equipment, before and after each practice and game. They are not expected to tolerate any hazing of any kind and should report any such behavior to the coach immediately!
|Contact: Gary Sloan


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Symptom Checker
Step 4: Read and complete the decision guide to learn more about your symptoms.
Fever in Adults
Good. That makes heat-related conditions, such as heat stroke, unlikely.
Does it hurt or burn when you urinate?
Yes, I have pain or burning with urination.
- General Health
See also
- Anxiety
- Blacking Out, Fainting, or Loss of Consciousness
- Blood Magnesium Test
- Daytime Drowsiness
- Depression
- Diffuse Muscle Weakness
- Diffuse Pain
- Fever in Adults
- Forgetfulness Memory Loss
- Gout
- Helping Dry Skin
- Hot Flashes
- Imbalance
- Insomnia
- Itching Without Rash
- Jaundice in Adults
- Numbness or Tingling
- Positive ANA
- Positive Rheumatoid Factor
- Raynaud's
- Unexplained Weight Gain
- Unintentional Weight Loss
- Start over
Disclaimer: This content should not be considered complete and should not be used in place of a call or visit to a health professional. Use of this content is subject to specific Terms of Use & Medical Disclaimers.


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NOVATO, Calif. - The SMART Railway announced a 'soft opening' later this week, with free preview rides beginning on Thursday.
That's good news for residents of Sonoma and Marin Counties. First estimates had the half-billion dollar commuter railroad opening in November. Then, after discovering an engine problem, it pushed the opening back to early June.
Now, it's almost July. SMART expects final approval from the Federal Railroad Administration very soon. Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt says, "Two weeks."
Meantime, SMART continues to deal with local push-back. Of the railroad's sixty-four crossings, none have been more troublesome than the one in Penngrove, where residents worry about a tight, blind curve, inadequate crossing arms, cars staling on the track, and now, a fence that has squeezed the sidewalk to just thirty inches. "They have been responsive at the point of a gun," said William Fishman. "SMART has not consulted us to find out what our community needs are."
SMART installed the fences to keep people from crossing the track in its right-of-way. Penngrove residents complain that the new fencing pushes them into traffic. "As far as I am concerned, they are on notice, right now, for their liability if a pedestrian gets hit," said Melinda Moreaux.
SMART insists the crossing is safe, despite installing flagmen who work the crossing all day. "The flaggers are here as a safety precaution and serve as extra eyes and ears for SMART," said the railroad's chief of police, Jennifer Welch.
And yet, SMART has announced it will be putting in additional gates, plus adding other safety measures.
Sonoma County, meantime, will spend $2.25 million to improve pedestrian and automotive safety.
Supervisor Rabbitt notes that nothing is likely to perfect when building a half-billion dollar railroad from scratch. But, we had to ask, why didn't SMART get this right the first time?
"It is going to be much better," said Rabbitt. "Should it have been done right from Day 1? Absolutely."
It appears that while railroads run on strict timetables, that building them does not
Click here for more from Wayne Freedman on Facebook.


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The Mentor Program assists with welcoming incoming families to the Owl Parent Association at FAU. Current families in OPA serve as mentors to incoming families as they transition into the collegiate years with their student. The mentors strive to offer guidance and assistance to their students' campus experience. Through the mentoring program we have been able to assist parents with questions that arise after orientation and beyond.
If you are interested in participating in the Mentor Program, please contact email@example.com


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Legal Status
Document Details
Published Document
Office of the Secretary, HHS.
In compliance with the requirement of section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Office of the Secretary (OS), Department of Health and Human Services, is publishing the following summary of a proposed information collection request for public comment. Interested persons are invited to send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including any of the following subjects: (1) The necessity and utility of the proposed information collection for the proper performance of the agency's functions; (2) the accuracy of the estimated burden; (3) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (4) the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology to minimize the information collection burden. To obtain copies of the supporting statement and any related forms for the proposed paperwork collections referenced above, e-mail your request, including your address, phone number, OMB number, and OS document identifier, to email@example.com, or call the Reports Clearance Office on (202) 690-6162. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collections must be directed to the OS Paperwork Clearance Officer at the above email address within 60-days.
Proposed Project: Training Ph.D.s: Faculty Views on Their Role and Their Institution's Role to Promote the Development of Responsible Researchers—OMB No. 0990-New—Office of Research Integrity.
Abstract: Preventing research misconduct and abuse is of paramount importance. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has issued two reports in the last 10 years addressing this concern and clearly states that mentoring is a key factor in promoting the development of responsible researchers. However, little is actually known about the qualities and activities of effective mentors. The proposed project will focus on collecting descriptive information from faculty about their role as advisor and mentor and how faculty members perform these roles in their daily work with PhD candidates. In addition faculty members will be asked to describe how involved their institution is in promoting training or otherwise supporting research mentoring and advising.
The data will come from a random selection of 10,000 investigators drawn from the 2005 and 2006 National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation grant recipients who have supervised doctoral students in the last five years and are faculty in two types of institutions: (1) Medical schools (within universities or stand alone) and (2) all other universities. We are requesting clearance for a one-time web Start Printed Page 70598based survey which will be conduced over one year.
Respondents and Burden Estimates for the Training Ph.D.S Survey
|Type of respondent
|Number of respondents
|Number of responses per respondent
|Average burden hours per response (in hours)
|Total burden hours
|Faculty Survey Instrument
|Faculty who advise a PhD candidate
Mary Oliver-Anderson,
Office of the Secretary, Paperwork Reduction Act Reports Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. E7-24055 Filed 12-11-07; 8:45 am]


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And just in time for the summer wedding season to start!
Are you looking for a special flirty something for that casual outdoor wedding?
Or how about for the fancy formal evening wedding?
Here's a couple of ideas, brand new in the store from Elroy!
Elroy is an FABULOUS Canadian brand, practicing amazing sustainability AND amazing design. check them out here and below
pretty shift dress in pine green pineapple silk
(what the heck is pineapple silk you ask? just look here! scroll to the bottom of the link)
lovely back detail!
comes in black too
pretty pleat detail on the hem
cowl neck dress in black pineapple silk
this dress is gorgeous!
amazing cruelty-free raw silk in shimmery gray
with pockets!
cute (and comfy) og cotton jersey dress
with fabulous shoulder and hip draping
in light sage
perfect little tank in og cotton jersey
with front pleating and keyhole detail
See you soon!


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How To Make Wedding Announcement Wording
Wedding announcement wording is something looks easy but exactly it is quite hard and confusing. Wedding announcement is important that is done after the wedding. By using announcement we can tell everyone that we have got married. Wedding announcement should be sent as soon as possible.
By sending wedding announcements mean that you appreciate another people by sharing your nuptial news with the long distance friends or relatives. So, it is essential to choose the right wording to express what was in your heart on your special wedding day without making anyone feel as if they were not included.
3 Photos Gallery of: How to Make Wedding Announcement Wording
When you decide to send wedding announcement, you have to be careful in wording. If you don't use wording appropriately, it is feared that you will hurt another people. Making another people offended is also very wrong, so you have to be careful in using the word for your wedding announcement. You have to consider the spelling, the word, and the way to write the title of your guest. wedding announcement wording is often confusing.
Sample Of Wedding Announcement Wording
If the announcement is issued by the bride and groom, the wording is usually like this:
Two hearts united forever in love
With Joy and Happiness
Sarah Hills
Andrew White
are pleased to announce
that they were married
in a private ceremony
on Sunday, the sixteenth of April
Two thousand twelve
at the Coliseum
Wichita, KS
If the announcement is issued by the parents, the words are usually like this:
J.R. and Michael Evans
Are pleased to announce the marriage
of their daughter
to Jonathan Willington
on the twenty-fourth of December
Two thousand eleven
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
wedding announcement
There are also some etiquette you should consider in wording the wedding announcement
If you are going to announce to a family, the wording is something like this:
Mr. and Mrs. Your Parents
are proud to announce
the marriage of their daughter
Your Name
Mr. Your Groom's Name
on Sunday, March 4th, 2012
But, if you are going to announce to your friends in your new house (you have moved house after wedding), the wording is something like this:
We were married on
Sunday, March 4th, 2012
Austin, Texas
We're beginning a new life together
in our new residence:
Our Names
1234 Our Street
Reynoldsburg, Ohio 43068
Wedding invitation is important, and wedding annoncement too. We need to inform another people about our happy day.


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DJ Bennett – think twice – bad business ethics
DJ Bennett – The Luxury Sporting Goods Company
DJ Bennett, the luxury sporting goods company, does not pay their employees or contractors. The company is ruthlessly run by Dawn Bennett who also operates Bennett Group Financial Services in the same building in Cheve Chase, MD. I had the misfortune of accepting a contract with DJBennett to conduct major SEO revisions on over 2,200 product pages. The organic results of that project, measured via Google Analytics over an eight-month period, speak for themselves:
DJBennett.com – Before & After
3/22/13 – 4/22/13 (one-month prior to start)
- Organic Site Visitors: 2,820
- Number of pages ranked in Top 10 of Google SERPS 42
- Keywords with greater than 5 visits during this time period 64
- Organic Revenue $5,941
11/26/13 – 12/2613 (after eight-months of on-page optimization)
- Organic Site Visitors: 12,640 (up 448%)
- Number of pages ranked in Top 10 of Google SERPS 765 (up 1,820%)
- Keywords with greater than 5 visits during this time period 156 (up 243%)
- Organic Revenue $21,560 (up 362%)
Now I am a reasonable guy and understand the challenges for any start-up company, but it was a conversation with Dawn Bennett in January of this year that left me with my head shaking. She invented a lie that I had agreed to reduce my hours during the final phase of the project which justified their reduction of my final invoice by $3,200. How convenient! Who thinks like this? My attorney stated to me recently that "Dawn Bennett is essentially judgement proof." The two women who hired me here in CT are not the corporate executives of DJ Bennett they purported to be, but were contractors like me and they too now are owed in excess of $70,000. There is very little corporate information available on DJ Bennett, the sports company, and my attorney now suspects, to my chagrin, that any small claim proceeding in CT will be dismissed and any judgement won in Cheve Chase will prove to be uncollectible. The only thing we have learned so far is that the company owes thousands and thousands to many people. So, I urge you to think twice before giving your patronage to DJ Bennett com. The website is pretty, but the person running the show is quite contemptible.
Update September 1, 2017: Ex-radio host and financial adviser charged with running a $20M Ponzi scheme 'used hoodoo spell to thwart SEC investigators' Article on Daily Mail


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Don't forget to enter for a chance to win the tour giveaway (print copy of the book) and follow the Silver Dagger book tour (for other dates see the link at the bottom of the post).
Sometimes love and luck collide . . .
Wife, mother and really young grandmother, Mackenzie Crowne shares her home with her high school sweetheart husband, a neurotic Pomeranian, and a blind cat. She calls Arizona home because the southwest feeds her soul. Her love of the romance genre has been a lifelong affair, both as a reader and a writer. A bout with breast cancer sharpened her resolve to see her stories shared with others. Today, she's a seven-year survivor, living the dream. Her friends call her Mac. She hopes you will too.


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Seize the Fire
Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of TrafalgarBook - 2005
In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely acclaimed God's Secretaries, takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. Is violence a necessary aspect of the hero? And daring? Why did the cult of the hero flower in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a way it hadn't for two hundred years? Was the figure of Nelson--intemperate, charming, theatrical, anxious, impetuous, considerate, indifferent to death and danger, inspirational to those around him, and, above all, fixed on attack and victory--an aberration in Enlightenment England? Or was the greatest of all English military heroes simply the product of his time, "the conjurer of violence" that England, at some level, deeply needed?
It is a story rich with modern resonance. This was a battle fought for the control of a global commercial empire. It was won by the emerging British world power, which was widely condemned on the continent of Europe as "the arrogant usurper of the freedom of the seas." Seize the Fire not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there; it is a portrait of a moment, a close and passionately engaged depiction of a frame of mind at a turning point in world history.
From the critics
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Note that the term "Battle of Trafalgar" comes last in this title. Cannon fire, dismasted ships, exploding magazines and decks awash with blood don't fill page one. It's not like that at all.
According to Nicolson, the victor of Trafalgar is the result of so many things. A British tradition of seamanship wherein new sailors press-ganged into the navy are actually trained to become sailors; a structure of command where officers are promoted from the rank after demonstrating their competence at a wide variety of seamanship skills; a massive ongoing expenditure of revenue by the British government to build, and even more costly, to maintain this fleet. Britain saw a strong navy as synonymous with a strong economy, vibrant, dependent on trade with many other parts of the globe. Trade, that in part, provided the British navy with a vast supply of war materiel.
Add to that the attitude that all his majesties sailors will do their best. They will all fight to exterminate the enemy and you have a potent brew for success.
The French fleet, on the other hand, has suffered from neglect. The French Revolution devalued the expertise of ships' captains --- they had to kow-tow to the revolutions cadres. As a result, about one third of the navy's officers had gone missing. The navy was inadequately provisioned: the men had not been paid. They wore rags for clothes. Their sailors were poorly trained. And instead of growing their fleet, the French fleet was actually contracting as a result of the lack of maintenance. Initiative was discouraged. Battle plans were kept secret till the last possible moment. Micromanagement was the order of the day. Ultimately, Napoleon, that land animals simply did not value a navy. As he saw it, the war was to be won by armies, on land.
Circumstances among the Spanish fleet were even worse. Promotion in rank had nothing to do with competence but was determined entirely by rank in the nobility. Some leading admirals, in fact, never even set foot aboard their ships.
So there is the prelude to the Battle of Trafalgar.
How does the Battle go? Just as it has in any other Battle of Trafalgar.
But then I'll leave you to read it for yourself, if you can make it to the end. Although I'm and avid reader of History, this book is simply to dense and unreadable to hold my interest. I gave it a good try. But after page 125 it became time to man the lifeboats.
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The Classroom Management page is where you'll find a variety of resources to help you manage instruction and resources in an active-engagement classroom.
The links on this page are divided into several different categories. Below this paragraph, you'll find links to other pages on this site with team management and whole class management tips and strategies. Be sure to check them out!
Below that section, you'll find links to classroom management freebies and resources to make your job a little easier! Enjoy!


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Green & Growin' Education Program | January 15 – 19, 2018 | Sheraton Four Seasons Hotel | Greensboro, NC
Schedule at a Glance
Informational "round-up" that keeps you out of the weeds regarding the education and products you need to control them.
Education Schedule
Check out the complete education lineup – including session descriptions, education tracks, specialty classes & certifications, keynote addresses and more.
Green industry professionals know Green & Growin' is the premiere place to earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) toward various accreditations.
2018 Brochure
View full details of the world-class educational sessions offered during the 2018 event.
Get in touch with us
Phone: (919) 816-9119 | Fax: (919) 816-9118 | Email: email@example.com
NCNLA 968 Trinity Road, Raleigh, NC 27607


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Consciousness is always trying to evolve. We can stay stagnant by not learning through life's lessons, or we can progress via acceptance of the now and embracement of change through regret, confession and positive changes to our thoughts and their consequently attached words and actions. Healing is often about investigating the cause. Doctors tend in many cases to treat the symptoms, rather than investigate the cause. And if they do investigate the cause, a Doctor is unlikely to look at the karma we may have attracted and our mental mindsets based on our formative years, which may well be causing us to resist change in our lives and consequently manifest illness.
The cause of illness manifesting in the physical body can be our stubbornness against the gentle spiritual changes that we are attracting for us to evolve. Nonetheless, Doctors have a great place in society and they should be consulted alongside our inner investigations into how we have attracted this illness – for if we can establish where the blockage may be, we can generally (but not in every case due to karma) accelerate the healing process.
Should healing not occur after such investigations and actual change of mindsets [combined with proper medical assistance], then we must surrender to the deterioration of our body and in some cases embrace death, which is merely a chapter closing – leading us to a place of no more pain and suffering, a place that I have been blessed to see on two occasions, where bright coloured light and love permeate all of our being – where healing is not needed, as "all truly is good and getting better".
This is my thought for today.
With love,
Brent IAm
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Brent IAm is an avid writer when he is not playing with his grandchildren, healing others or working in the workshop painting or creating some crazy contraption.


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Fraction Talks "God-Sized" Thor
|"Thor: God-Sized" one-shot on sale in December
There have been many instances of heroic sacrifice in the Marvel Universe. In 1970's "Amazing Spider-Man #90, Police Captain George Stacy let himself be crushed by falling rubble in order to save the life of a child. In 1988, in "New Mutants" #60, Cypher perished by jumping in front of a bullet meant for his teammate Wolfsbane. To longtime Thor fans, the definitive heroic sacrifice came in 1985's "The Mighty Thor" #362, wherein Skurge the Executioner stood alone against the legions of Hell to protect the escape of his comrades, Thor and Balder, who had journeyed into the infernal realm in order to rescue the trapped souls of a number of mortals.
This December, in "Thor: God-Sized," writer Matt Fraction and a host of artists including Doug Braithwaite, Mike Allred, Dan Brereton and Marko Djurdjevic reexamine Skurge's sacrifice and what it meant to some of Asgard's most prominent inhabitants. CBR News spoke with Fraction about the special one-shot.
Skurge may have died protecting Thor, but when he made his debut 24 years earlier in the pages of "Journey into Mystery" #103, it was as a villain. The Executioner was lead down the path of darkness because of his love for the nefarious Enchantress, who made him a pawn in her schemes.
"Skurge is an outsider and he was always kind of a joke because he's so lovelorn," Fraction told CBR News. "He was always kind of the butt of jokes and that was really my favorite part of Walt Simonson's handling of him."
Simonson of course wrote and drew issues #337-367 of "The Mighty Thor" in the 1980s, and his work with the characters is considered definitive.
|Pages from "Thor: God-Sized"
"Simonson takes [Skurge], this kind of goofy heartbroken lug who was basically just the Enchantress's muscle and her rejection turns him into something else," Fraction continued. "Who hasn't had a bad break up and wanted to go join the army? Only in Skurge's case, it was an army that has to fight the legions of the undead."
Skurge's last stand may have been legendary, but when "God-Sized" begins, The Executioner's fellow Asgardians are finding it hard to correctly remember their fallen comrade. "Basically, Balder realizes he's remembering Skurge wrong. His memory of Skurge doesn't feel right," Fraction explained. "He remembers Skurge as a fat, drunk poet with a lute. So he goes to Thor and asks him what he remembers about Skurge. Thor remembers Skurge as a butcher and that they use to run through his butcher shop and play when they were kids. And Loki remembers Skurge as a woman, a crazy cat lady who lived by a well. So the three of them are aware that something is happening and they're trying to figure out who's screwing with their memories of who Skurge was. And as they're on this quest together we shift perspectives; you get a different narrator each chapter."
Balder and Thor were an important part of Skurge's last stand, so it's natural they would want to find out what's going on, but Loki – who has since the old days become not a god but a goddess – has her own equally important reason for joining Balder and Thor on their quest. "Loki's motive is never trick a trickster," Fraction said. "She's like, 'The only person who hates this trickery crap more than you is me and if I'm getting tricked I want answers!' Which kind of gets back a little more into the Norse mythology where these guys would go from loving to hating each other in between breaths."
|Pages from "Thor: God-Sized"
Naturally, as a kind of sequel to the classic Skurge story, The Enchantress is also a key player in "Thor: God-Sized." "She's in the story and her heartache is a big part of what's going on," Fraction confirmed. "She is basically trying to recreate Skurge because she realizes she loves him and is heartbroken and lonely without him, but as she's crafting this world bending magic to bring him back to life it's disrupting the way things are and causing reality to shift moment to moment."
Like Matt Fraction's other Thor work, "God-Sized" has a healthy supply of action, but The Enchantress's attempts to bring Skurge back to life come with a meta-textual element as well. "I really wanted to pay tribute to the Simonson run and my first reaction to being allowed to touch the toys on the Thor shelf wa, 'I should do a Skurge story!' And the second thought I had was, 'Oh, that would absolutely ruin Skurge's last story because it's perfect!'" Fraction explained. "That kind of became the gist of it. Do we do harm to our legends when we try to bring them back from the dead? And just because you can bring Skurge back from the dead doesn't mean it's such a good idea."
To help bring to life Fraction's tale of Skurge's enduring legacy, editor Warren Simons recruited four different artists, each with their own distinct styles. "Doug Braithwaite and I had such a blast doing 'Secret Invasion: Thor.' It was ridiculous fun and this kind of came up right after so it was like, 'Great. Let's keep it rolling,'" Fraction stated. "Mike Allred can do that neo-retro thing so he's perfect for the sections of the story where we're in a Stan Lee-Jack Kirby style locale. And I worked with Dan Brereton on 'Iron Fist' and we've been looking for something else to do together."
|Pages from "Thor: God-Sized"
"God-Sized" is a tale that lends itself to multiple artists because of the different character perspectives and the way reality shifts throughout the story. "I always try to come up with a story-driven way to have an art switch. So there's different narratives, different narrators and different eras," Fraction said. "It all doubles back on itself and plays into the whys and wherefores of the story."
Matt Fraction has kept quite busy chronicling the adventures of Thor in 2008, with projects like "Secret Invasion: Thor" and the double-sized "Thor: Ages of Thunder" specials he created with artist Patrick Zircher. "God-Sized" closes out Fraction's run on the Thunder God, at least for a while. "I feel like I should take a little break," he said. "It's been an awful lot of fun and I've worked with great collaborations. It's been a joy, but now it feels like it's time to step away from it for awhile."
"Thor: God-Sized" is a completely new-reader friendly tale also designed to appeal to longtime fans of Thor. In fact, Fraction took extra special care in crafting the story because he knows that even though the tale of Skurge's last stand is over 23 years old, it's still as powerful today as it was back then. "I just hope I don't fuck it up," he said. "Skurge had such an epic death. It was handle brilliantly by Simonson both as a writer and an artist. It really punched you. It was an effective, moving death and yet it wasn't even the end of the story! It was just really powerful and really wonderful. Everything I love about Simonson's run is summed up in that one issue, so I'm trying really hard to not fuck it up."
|Pages from "Thor: God-Sized"
"Thor: God-Sized" goes on sale December 17 from Marvel Comics.
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San Diego is known for its wonderful scenery, so while you're visiting, you should take time to enjoy everything this beautiful city has to offer by walking around and absorbing everything. San Diego and the surrounding areas are known for great hiking and walking trails. There are a range of ability levels and types of scenery to choose from, so you have plenty of options. Here are the best walks and hikes in the San Diego area.
Sunset Cliffs – Ocean Beach
Sunset Cliffs is a must-see for anyone visiting the San Diego area. Located just outside of the Ocean Beach neighborhood, the cliffs provide a dramatic vista with great views of the Pacific Ocean. As the name suggests, it's a beautiful place to watch the sunset, but it can be enjoyed at any time of day. There's a long walking trail that runs the length of the park, and if you're feeling daring and the tide is low, you can climb down to the small beach below the cliffs.
Torrey Pines – La Jolla
The Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is located in La Jolla, a beach town just north of San Diego. The area has several trails that you can explore, all of which are located right along the coastline and are surrounded by beautiful wildlife. The trails range in difficulty, but most are fairly easy to do, making this the perfect place for a gentle stroll during your visit. After your hike, you can walk down to the beach and enjoy some sun for the rest of the afternoon.
Cowles Mountain – La Mesa
If you want stunning mountain views, this is the hike to take in the San Diego area. It is fairly long and more difficult than many of the hikes in the area, but that's what makes it so fun and rewarding. When you get to the top of the mountain, you can see for miles, allowing you to take in San Diego's diversity, with views of the desert, ocean, and cityscape. There's little shade on this trail, so be sure to bring some sunscreen, a hat, and sunglasses.
Balboa Park
As one of the largest urban parks in the country, it's no surprise that Balboa Park has plenty of walking trails within its boundaries. The east side of the park has more varied terrain and is better for a more strenuous walk, while the west side of the park is home to many historical buildings, museums, and the San Diego Zoo, which is ideal for gentle strolling and exploring. If you're visiting San Diego and don't want to head too far out of the city to walk, this is an ideal location for you to check out.
Pacific Beach Boardwalk
This path, which runs along the coast through the popular Mission Beach and Pacific Beach neighborhoods, is ideal for virtually any type of workout, whether you want to stroll with the family, go for a run, or even rent a bike. While it does get very crowded, the path has a pleasant waterfront view, and there are tons of places along the way where you can stop for food or a drink.
These are just a few of the many options in San Diego that are perfect for a walk or a hike. If you have access to transportation, there are also plenty of places in North County or East County that have longer, more intensive hikes. The diverse and beautiful scenery is such an important part of San Diego's culture, so be sure to check it out while you are visiting the city.


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Introduction to Photoshop (Basic Tools & Techniques)
Scott Greene
Scott Greene
Beginners will get an introduction to this powerful program covering how to create a document for print and for web, the importance of the Layers Panel, and the use of the most significant tools and settings on the Tools Panel and Options Bar. Students will learn the organizing principles behind the various Photoshop pulldowns, including where to go to to refine and correct photos, and various ways to turn images into artistic styles. Masking and combining images from various sources will be covered, as well as the exporting of working documents for various uses. Work with blending modes, learn the importance of the Mask panel, and cover the hidden secrets of the Brushes Panel and the pulldown menus. Learn to work with one of the most sophisticated adjustments, Curves. Smart Objects and Adjustment Layers will be covered, as well as the use of Layer Styles. Learn to handle the coloring of drawings, compositing images together and retouching photographs.
PC Computer and Software will be supplied.
Scott Greene began his teaching career at Los Angeles' Platt College, specializing in still and motion graphics classes. Later Scott taught similar courses at Mt. Sierra College, and branched out into teaching industry professionals about computer graphics in the IDEAS program at Valley College. He has also edited videos designed as aids for teachers of those aspiring to enter the film industry, and has edited advertising documentaries for LA HiTech. Scott began his artistic career by freelancing character sculpture for the Disney Store and Disney Consumer Products. Later he began working with computers, coding CD-ROM games, developing websites, and creating print and motion graphics peripherals, advertising and marketing for various companies. While attending USC's School of Cinema-Television MFA program, Scott Greene won a Nissan FOCUS award for his work in Film Editing. Since 2002, Scott has taught a variety of graphics programs to students in all walks of life; he is known for taking people with little or no digital experience to their "ah-ha" moment, when the mysterious world inside the computer becomes a little less mysterious.
Registration and Payment Plans
Students must be paid in full prior to the first day of class when enrolled in an Extension Course or Workshop, except those with a payment plan agreement. Please visit the Main Office at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the class, to complete any pending registration issues.
Payment Plans: A 3% Payment Plan Fee will be assessed, with a maximum charge of $35. The Payment Plan Fee, $20 Registration Fee, plus 50% of the total tuition owing must be paid on or before the first day of class. The remaining 50% of the tuition can be paid with a post-dated check (dated 1 month later) or with a signed Credit Card Authorization Form.
There is a $35.00 fee for all checks returned as N.S.F. (Non-Sufficient Funds).
Course Changes or Cancellations
LAAFA reserves the right to cancel any class, limit class size, change class times or substitute instructors for those listed in the schedule.
If a class is cancelled, students will be issued a full refund or may transfer with no fee to another class.
If an instructor must leave after a term has begun, and no suitable substitute is available, the student will be refunded a pro-rated amount.
Refunds and Transfers
All classes, uninstructed workshops, Visiting Artist Workshops and artist demonstrations are non-refundable. You may request to drop for credit (see next paragraph) or transfer into another class.
You have two weeks to evaluate each class and decide whether you want to drop for credit (a dollar amount calculated based on the receipt of request) or transfer into a new class. Requests must be submitted before the start of the third session, via email to firstname.lastname@example.com. A $25 Drop/Transfer Fee is assessed. Credit will be valid for a full year and is non-refundable. It can be applied toward any Extension Course, Workshop or Visiting Artist Event at LAAFA.
All Visiting Artist Workshops and artist demonstrations are non-refundable and non-transferable.
Absences and Make-Ups
One free make-up session is allowed per quarter, per class. Please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com, at least 3 days in advance, with the course and date you wish to attend as a make-up. Make-up sessions aren't transferable to future quarters.
Classroom Etiquette
Uninstructed Workshop Policy
LAAFA Payment Plan
For those students needing extra time during the quarter to pay for their classes, LAAFA offers a payment plan. Pay for half of your tuition cost prior to your class start date and then half-way through pay your remaining balance. Only for a 3% fee!
Student will be unable to continue in the program if all of the payment requirements are not met.
PayPal – Bill Me Later
Students have the option to purchase classes by PayPal. One of the features of PayPal is a "Bill Me Later" promotion that includes: No Payment + No Interest if paid for within 6 months! Subject to credit approval.
Multi-Course Discount
Receive 15% off the total price of $1500 or more for on-campus instructed classes. Promo Code: multi15
New Student Discount
Students who are new to LAAFA receive up to a $50 off toward one instructed class. Please call (818) 708-9232 to receive your coupon for the class in order to take advantage of this offer. (Workshops are excluded.)
Senior Discount
For those 65 years and older, receive up to $50 off toward one instructed class per quarter. Please call (818) 708-9232 to receive your coupon for the class in order to take advantage of this offer. (Workshops are excluded.)
Referral Discount
Refer a new student and once they have completed an instructed class at LAAFA, you are entitled to receive $50 off toward one instructed class in the following quarter, of equal or greater value. Please call (818) 708-9232 to receive your coupon for the class in order to take advantage of this offer. (Workshops are excluded.)
CSATTF Tuition Reimbursement Program
Through this program, members of Art Directors Guild (Local 800), Animation Guild (Local 839), Costume Designers Guild (Local 892), Motion Picture Costumers (Local 705), Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild (Local 706) are able to apply for:
Reimbursement of two-thirds the tuition cost for CSATTF approved classes and workshops.
PLEASE NOTE: Your reimbursement is based on the approved amount from CSATTF. If tuition is lower, you will be reimbursed only up to two-thirds of the actual amount paid. If tuition is higher, you will be responsible to pay the difference and only be reimbursed up to two-thirds of the approved amount from CSATTF.You may visit the Animation Guild website for instructions and forms to submit: http://animationguild.org/grant-classes/
Discount Restrictions
Discounts cannot be combined. Certain classes may be excluded. Other restrictions may apply.
16926 Saticoy Street
Van Nuys, CA 91406
(818) 708-9232
Phone Hours: Mon-Fri, 10AM-5PM
Main Office: Mon-Fri, 9:30AM-5:30PM


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I've been tagged by the fabulous Camilla at Made by Milla.
Here are the rules:
1. open your first photo folder in your computer library.
2. scroll to the 10th photo
3. post the photo and the story behind it
4. tag 5 or more people to continue the thread
Here are the rules:
1. open your first photo folder in your computer library.
2. scroll to the 10th photo
3. post the photo and the story behind it
4. tag 5 or more people to continue the thread
This photo was taken on my mobile phone a couple of years ago. The walls of Celeste's bedroom were, like the rest of the flat, plain white. She wasn't sleeping and who could blame her for not taking to a sterile room, her not yet two-year old imagination unable to make anything of so much bareness. So, Sexy Older Man grabbed one of her "In the Night Garden" picture books and copied the outline of the characters onto the walls with My Girl's black Crayola crayon. Then, darting to retrieve some of the paints he keeps by his own huge canvas down the road in his house-come-studio, he made Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy, The Ninky Nonk and Makka Pakka come alive.
But would she like it? We did! But these five feet plus creatures with big eyes and open arms might be too imposing for a wee one.
The next night she slept so happily, embraced by the trees, next to the flowers, under the watchful eyes of her colourful friends. The mural is still there but not for much longer. The Celestial One is four in July and she may be outgrowing CBeebies. A local woman I've met on our Weston-super-Mum Community, Natasha, came round for a recce last week and sized up the room that she will transform into a bedroom suitable for Lestie's next phase as the little girl who is leaving toddlerhood behind.
She's asked to keep the trees and in place of the blue phallus with the red mohican, the rasta dancer with the inflatable skirt and the stoned soft figure (my words not hers!) will be fairies and flowers and butterflies - a magic woodland. All that remains now for me to do is to paint over SOM's work and prepare the blank canvas for Natasha to create her own Wonderland.
Somehow, though, I can't bring myself to do it ...
I now tag:
Keith Ramsey
Tim Worth
Nickie O'Hara
Victoria Wallop
Heather Sunderland


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Bob's Favorite Links
Find the perfect apparel & accessories to Chillax with!
Simply THE BEST recording studio on the planet.
(inside poop: Doug "Skakey Leg" Thornton from The Electras appears on Bob's CD "Chillax".)
(inside poop: Bob is the Vice President of the club.)
Caribbean Extravaganza Steel Drum Band
(inside poop: Paul Ferrette of Caribbean Extravaganza appears on Bob's CD "Chillax".)


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October 20, 2009 (CHICAGO) --Illness has closed down Saint Charles East High School in the western suburbs.More than 40 percent of the student body is out sick, more than 900 students.
School officials have decided to close Wednesday through at least Friday.
Extracurricular activities will still take place Tuesday, but all athletic and parent night activities are postponed until further notice.
While the school remains closed, teachers will be in contact with students, updating them on the situation.
All homework assignments, tests and projects will be re-scheduled when the school reopens.
School officials say they are not aware of any student who has tested positive for the H1N1 virus.