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What is the Cost of a Milk ATM Machine?
Are you looking to start a milk ATM business? If that's the case then one question you must have asked yourself is what is the cost of a milk ATM machine? Saset being a leading supplier of milk ATMs in Kenya should be your top choice. We have been manufacturing milk vending ATM machines for five years now so you can depend on us.
So what is the cost of a milk ATM machine in Kenya?
A common question we get from customer inquiries is how much does a milk ATM cost in Kenya? It can be tricky to give an outright answer considering the different factors involved like capacity and type of parts used and other features that the customer might want. But thing you should note is that a big capacity milk ATM machine saves you on the additional cost you would have incurred of buying more storage facilities like a freezer or fridge.
All the same, a top quality milk ATM machine from Saset will start from Ksh 90,000. The cost is mostly determined by the capacity of the machine. The prices can go to as high as Ksh 250,000 for bigger milk vending machines.
What is the ideal capacity of the milk vending ATM machine?
For a starter we recommend someone to start with a milk vending machine with a capacity of 100 liters if you are in a low traffic area. This will ensure you do not run out of milk too early before you get more stock from your supplier.
On the other hand if you are located in a high traffic area where there's high consumption of milk then you will definitely need to invest in a bigger capacity milk dispensing ATM machine. This will ensure you don't miss out on business from all the clients because milk will not run out quickly.
Factors that we consider to determine what is the Cost of a Milk ATM Machine
When determining the cost of a milk ATM we put the following into consideration:
Capacity- The capacity of the milk tank is one of the factors that determine how much it will cost. As a rule of thumb, the higher the capacity the higher the cost. However this has it's own advantage in that it enables you to store more milk and ensure you run longer without running out quickly. Also saves you the cost of additional external storage you might need like a freezer.
Cost of cooling unit- the cooling unit cost is the other factor that determines the cost. The more expensive the unit the costlier the milk ATM will eventually be. However there's a standard unit that we prefer so as to make prices uniform.
Are you interested in buying a milk ATM machine? Get in touch with us today for a quotation or to get more information.
We also make other dairy equipment like Milk Pasteurizers and milk cooling tanks.
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text: "I first worked with Eli in 2008 to find an office space, his integrity and dedication to the task found us a great place that let our company grow. Three years later I called him back and he lead us through another exhaustive search until we found the perfect space. He did not give up until we had something that worked out well for us, brought us through the negotiations and did so while being straightforward, supportive and realistic. I cannot recommend him highly enough as an agent to help you find your next space"

subset: commoncrawl


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SONIK | Gravity XFW Rods
What you see here in front of you is the result of two years of working with some of the best materials from around the world to create a rod that is not only a beautiful long range caster but is also a great all-rounder too. Having been associated with Sonik for some time now, Frank Warwick had the opportunity to design a bespoke range of rods, resulting in the birth of the Gravity XFW Series Carp Rods. Frank was a big fan of Sonik's Gravity X and wanted his own to resemble the same attributes in terms of wonderfully consistent casting performance, while also being a superb fish playing tool too.
With his benchmark set there were particular components that were required for the build, including lightweight black SiC guides. The reason behind this is European fishing often requires robust kit and the SiCs are extremely robust. Another durable and important part of the rod is the ALPS reel seat, which not only has a double winch fitting, securing any big pit on to the blank, but also has a beautiful aesthetic. The reel seat provides unrivalled grip in order to help with casting to extreme ranges when needed.
Amazingly on his very first outing using the initial batch of the Gravity XFW Rods, Frank was able to make a cast of 200 yards. This was his first cast with 12lb line, a 4.5oz lead and a shockleader and clearly proved this rod was going to be something very special.
The actual rod range has been kept very small; however, being a specialist tool it doesn't need to have various lengths and test curves available. Instead there is a choice of two, whether that is the 12ft or 13ft version, both of which have a 3.5lb test curve.
To achieve such outstanding characteristics a high quality carbon blank is required and the new Gravity XFW uses a low resin carbon blank with a 1k carbon weave throughout, thus aiding performance and creating a breathtaking piece of kit that any angler would be more than happy to have sitting on their rests! The quality of the blank used will also curb any degradation of performance, which some more affordable carbon blanks can show after a number of years. So, while a substantial cost, these finely crafted tools should be seen as an investment for years to come.
Frank has clearly used his many years of carp fishing and casting experience to good effect here and together with Sonik has arguably created its best rod yet. The 50mm butt rings featured on both rods in the range will see heavy leads or even solid bags fly towards the horizon with relative ease. The understated finish is found throughout, including that of the minimal detailing and full Japanese shrink rubber handle finished with an anodised laser etched butt cap.
A really nice touch also included with the purchase of every rod are neoprene butt, guide and tip protectors, ensuring the preservation of the rods and keeping them in as good a condition as when they were first purchased. It goes without saying that the Sonik Gravity XFW rod is going to be a future classic!
While at the Sonik Trade show, the editor was lucky enough to join Frank 'in the field' for a bit of casting and it's safe to say both he and Frank were impressed, sending leads eye-watering distances with a rod that felt flexible and comfortable to use.
RRP: 12ft £389.99 – 13ft £399.99
WEBSITE: www.soniksports.com
"I'm very pleased, it's an honour to have a rod with your name on – there's not many people who have done that. As I'm well known for casting everyone expected it to be an out and out casting rod, but I wanted it to be a capable all-rounder. I like to use one set of rods for pretty much all of my fishing and I want these to become an extension of my arm.
"If fish are showing at range, I want to be able to really wind the rod up and launch a single to the horizon, but equally if the fish were close in, I wouldn't want to be overgunned. It's no good if you can't fish accurately and comfortably at short range if that's where the fish are.
"I also wanted the rods to be user friendly so that they are a pleasure to play fish on – in my mind that's one of the best parts of catching a carp. Finally, rod cosmetics are a personal thing, but I think you'll agree these are a sexy looking set!"


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It's that time of year again! You know, the time for getting festive, visiting with the ones we love, and giving…a lot.
We know it can be daunting to find something perfect for everyone, so we've round up a complete list of favors that are the perfect memento of your affection. Whether you are looking for a little something for event guests, to stuff in stockings, or just to surprise someone special, we know you there is something on this list to inspire you!
1. Sugar, spice, and everything nice! Who doesn't love a gift they can enjoy with all their senses?! Consider the classic candy, a local fav, or seasonal jam for the foodie in your life. Bonus points if it's homemade!
Photo by Amanda Wei Photo
Photo by Augie Chang Photography
Photo by Ivory Sky Media
2. We may be in sunny California but these winter months still get chilly! Why not warm up with someone you love by gifting a pashmina or a pair of socks in their favorite color?
Photo by Augie Chang Photography
Photo by Russ Levi Photography
3. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but statement jewelry says it all. What statement do you want to make? Maybe it's a personalized note you choose include, either way we know this gift will get the message across.
Photo by Duke Images
4. Get scrooge in the mood with a Christmas cheers! Everyone loves a pour of their favorite adult beverage so why not step it up a notch by personalizing the packaging? Don't forget any additional tools needed to enjoy the holiday spirits!
Photo by Bellalu Photography
Photo by Augie Chang Photography
5. Think outside the box…literally! The holiday season is the perfect time to get creative with gift giving and make a memory together. Try something new like henna tattoos, or take that special someone out to an intimate dinner. The possibilities are endless!
Photo by Wedding Documentary
Photo by Wedding Documentary
We hope this list has filled you with so many ideas for the holiday season. No matter what direction you go, remember that it's always the thought that counts! So, what are you gifting this season?


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California WOW – Have they just figured out it's a scam?
I'm actually a member of this fitness chain, why? Because it's incredibly cheap and I know value where I see it!! But my membership cost me THB 10k up front and after 3 years an annual payment of THB 3,000 (this was negotiated back in 2009) we knew that this company wouldn't be able to continue its existence for a long time. To the company's credit they have brought about a fitness boom in Thailand and allowed individuals who previously were unable to afford memberships at hotel gym's the opportunity to exercise in a proper gym but when a business is based on selling as many memberships upfront as possible and then still has to maintain operating expenses in rent, staffing, and leases, this is no surprise. Now why is it a scam? A quick google search of other california fitness chains around the region (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia) will show you exactly what I'm referring to, in each of these countries the California Fitness gyms went bankrupt. So if you're a thinking of becoming a member in the new countries where they are operating (Vietnam and China) don't fall for the lifetime membership option, take the cheap annual fee and realise that one day the gym may not continue. Oh and btw check out Eric Levine's, the founder of CaliWow, "little house" in Phuket http://homesoftherich.net/2010/04/eric-levines-65000-square-foot-supersized-thailand-beach-house.html
Sucks, now I may have to look for another gym.
There have been consumer complaints about the company, which sells lifetime memberships but regularly closes facilities. Members have also complained about below standard services and breach of contract details, according to the Office of the Consumer Protection Board (OCPB).
Source: Bangkok Post


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Minutes before she was brutally finished by Amanda Nunes in the main event of UFC 224, Raquel Pennington tried to tell her corner that she was done.
Pennington suffered a TKO defeat at 2:36 of the fifth round to Nunes, the reigning UFC women's bantamweight champion, on Saturday night in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Prior to that though, in the time between the fourth and fifth round of a fight she was soundly losing, Pennington told her coaches, "I'm done. I want to be done." However, Pennington's pleas were ignored, as she was sent back out to face Nunes for the final round, igniting a debate within the MMA community about the responsibility of a cornerman.
Video of the exchange can be seen above, courtesy of BT Sport.


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February 12, 2019
For folks who frequent fitness classes or work out with a personal trainer, you've probably heard the term "make sure your core is engaged" at least twice in every class you've ever taken.
While these words are coming most often from an inevitably ripped instructor, there's a good chance you have no idea what that means or how to do it. There is good news: just being able to stand means you almost definitely have enough muscle to engage your core upon request.
But before we delve into how to engage the core, it's important to define the core. Because, no, it's not just abs — whether they're visible or not.
The core is your abs and back muscles working together to stabilize your torso during movement, Popsugar explains. It helps transfer power from your lower body to your upper body and back again.
RELATED READ: What the pros want millennial women to know about getting fit
While that sounds pretty straightforward, what's going on inside your body is rather complex.
Per Popsugar:
You have four layers of abdominal muscles, and the deepest layer, the transversus abdominis (TVA) wraps around your waist like a cummerbund. Or you can think of it like a muscular corset connecting the ribcage to the pelvis. On top of the TVA, you have your internal and external obliques, which criss-cross your torso, kind of making an X; these muscles also help with twisting. The final layer is your rectus abdominis, aka the six-pack muscle, which helps bend your upper body forward, also known as flexing your spine.
Weightlifting is a good example of when keeping the abdominals contracted is of paramount importance. Performing heavy lifts can wreak havoc on your back if your abs are not contracted, Livestrong explains. Conversely, runners should keep their abs contracted during a sprint to help prevent compression in the lower back from all the impact, Livestrong adds.
According to Popsugar, the easiest way to find your TVA is by getting on all fours, a position that will help gravity work your muscles.
In this position, focus on keeping the torso still as you pull your abs to your spine as you exhale. Keep your abs pulled away from the floor and keep breathing. This is the sensation you want to take into almost all exercises.
But you can also practice engaging your core while doing squats, according to Livestrong. You'll want to stand tall and slightly tuck your pelvis. Inhale, then exhale, contracting your abdominals. As you inhale again, begin to lower down into a squat, bending at the knees and hips and sending your butt out behind you, like you're sitting down on a chair. Maintain this abdominal contraction as you rise and lower with each squat.
For some extra tips and visual instruction, check out this video demonstrating how to engage your core in nearly every exercise:


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WhatsApp has finally released the Messenger Room integration to WhatsApp but it's only on the Web version of WhatsApp. This feature is not in the beta version, it is available to everyone using the WhatsApp web. You can create it right now and here is our step by step guide to use messenger rooms in WhatsApp Web.
The WhatsApp and Messenger Rooms integration is also available on the WhatsApp smartphone app but it is in beta right now. This could be a hint that WhatsApp will bring this feature to smartphones too in the coming weeks.
Steps to Use Messenger Rooms in WhatsApp Web
- Open a browser on your PC and navigate to web.whatsapp.com. login to the WhatsApp Web using the QR code.
- Open any chat and then click the attachment icon on the top right of the chat and select Rooms from there.
- It will ask you to go to messenger to create rooms, click on Move to Messenger.
- Now you will be able to see the messenger login screen and once you log in, you can create the room.
- Then you will be able to invite more people and use the Messenger rooms as you do before.
Wrapping up
The room feature on WhatsApp web is not in beta or anything, anyone can use this feature right now. This feature is also going to be introduced to the WhatsApp smartphone app so it might be a hint that it is coming in a few days. This is how you can use the WhatsApp web room feature on your PC. For more tips and tricks, follow us on social media accounts.


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Sónar 2014: Getting there and getting around
Your quick guide to public transport that will get you to and from the Sónar 2014 venues, and special shuttle service between Sónar by Day and Sónar by Night
Sónar by Day is at the Fira de Montjuïc, which you can get to by underground to Espanya station (L1 and L3), train (FGC) to Plaça d'Espanya and by bus (H12, V7, 9, 13, 23, 27, 37, 46, 50, 65, 79, 91, 109, 150 and 165). On Friday, the Metro is open until 2am, and on Saturday there is non-stop service all night long.
Getting between between the venues for Sónar by Day and Sónar by Night is made easy with the festival's shuttle bus service that costs €2.50 per journey. Sónar by Day (Av. Rius i Taulet) to Sónar by Night (Fira Gran Via de L'Hospitalet: Friday and Saturday from 8.30pm to 11pm. Line 2 offers non-stop service between Plaça de les Drassanes and Sónar by Night on Friday and Saturday from 8.30pm to 8am.
Another option to get to the Fira de L'Hospitalet for Sónar by Night is by FGC train, getting off at Europa Fira station. The last departure from Plaça d'Espanya is at 2am, and the first train back leaves at 5.54am.
Bus lines with service during the day (H12, V3, 9, 37, 46, 65, 79, 109, 125) and at night (N1, N15, N16 and N17) will also get you to Sónar by Night.
And there's always the option of flagging down a taxi. It's more expensive, but with the bonus of door-to-door service.
Discover Time Out original video


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Chest tightness and hypertension, pleuritic chest pain. Breathless on exertion. Troponin elevated. ?Pulmonary embolus.
Patient Data
Ascending aorta appears dilated (allowing for AP projection)
No pulmonary embolus.
Arch of aorta dilated with suggestion of intramural hematoma.
Pericardial effusion or hemopericardium.
Small right pleural effusion
Dissection flap involving ascending aorta. Intramural hematoma evident on non-contrast imaging.
Type A aortic dissection.
Case Discussion
Type A aortic dissection, which was initially suspected on CTPA, and confirmed with subsequent non-contrast/CTA aorta protocol imaging.
Non-contrast imaging is important to assess intramural hematoma, which may be difficult to appreciate on CTA images.


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A second worker at a poultry plant in Blumenort, Man. has died from COVID-19 , according to the union representing workers at the plant.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 832 announced the death of the worker at the Exceldor Plant on Sunday.
"This Member had previously contracted COVID-19 and was sent home to self-isolate," president Jeff Traeger said in a statement.
"We want to offer our sincerest condolences to family, friends and fellow union-members working at Exceldor. When someone loses a family member or a close friend, it's a stark reminder about how devastating this virus can be."
A cluster of COVID-19 cases at the plant was announced in October. As of October 30, there are 52 positive cases among union members at the plant. Of those cases, 35 are active and 17 people have recovered.
On Oct. 11, a 42-year-old employee at the plant died from COVID-19. The company said the employee contracted COVID-19 outside of work.
Since the pandemic started in March, 75 Manitobans have died from COVID-19.


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- Original research
- Open access
- Published:
Brain perfusion CT compared with15O-H2O-PET in healthy subjects
EJNMMI Research volume 1, Article number: 28 (2011)
Regional cerebral blood flow [rCBF] measurements are valuable for identifying angiogenically active tumours, and perfusion computed tomography [CT] has been suggested for that purpose. This study aimed to validate rCBF measurements by perfusion CT with positron-emission tomography [PET] and15O-labelled water [15O-H2O] in healthy subjects.
RCBF was measured twice in 12 healthy subjects with15O-H2O PET and once with perfusion CT performed over the basal ganglia. Matching rCBF values in regions of interest were compared.
Measured with perfusion CT, rCBF was significantly and systematically overestimated. White matter rCBF values were 17.4 ± 2.0 (mean ± SD) mL min-1 100 g-1 for PET and 21.8 ± 3.4 mL min-1 100 g-1 for perfusion CT. Grey matter rCBF values were 48.7 ± 5.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for PET and 71.8 ± 8.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for perfusion CT. The overestimation of grey matter rCBF could be reduced from 47% to 20% after normalization to white matter rCBF, but the difference was still significant.
RCBF measured with perfusion CT does contain perfusion information, but neither quantitative nor relative values can substitute rCBF measured by15O-H2O PET yet. This, however, does not necessarily preclude a useful role in patient management.
Quantitative measurement of the regional cerebral blood flow [rCBF] is a fundamental physiological parameter for characterizing the status of the brain tissue. RCBF measurements have important clinical implications in defining tissue ischemia [1, 2], in diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases [3], and in locating and monitoring angiogenically active tumour tissues [4, 5]. Positron-emission tomography [PET] measurements using a freely diffusible tissue tracer, oxygen-15-labelled water [15O-H2O], is regarded as one of the rCBF gold standards [6–8]. This cumbersome technique requires on-line tracer production from a cyclotron and continuous arterial blood sampling. It is expensive, technically demanding, and traumatic for the patient, and is rarely found outside specialized hospital units. An attractive alternative to PET would be dynamic contrast-enhanced computed tomography [CT] or perfusion CT. Perfusion CT methodology has improved profoundly in recent years. It is now a practical technique for the clinical environment due to the development and broad introduction of fast multidetector row CT systems, increasing computer power, new image acquisition protocols, and commercially available perfusion softwares [1]. It is also relatively cheap, easy, and rapid to perform. Furthermore, in many acute medical and surgical conditions, such as stroke, head injury, and subarachnoid haemorrhage, and in radiotherapy planning, cerebral CT scanning is often the primary imaging modality of choice. This makes perfusion CT particularly applicable for additional tissue characterization [9]. Another interesting application has arisen with the advent of hybrid imaging techniques such as PET/CT and single photon emission computed tomography/CT. In the same examination, and with only minor additional scan time, perfusion CT can be considered as an adjunct to further visualize the vascular physiology of relevant lesions. This complements and extends the physiological tissue information obtained by PET, e.g. the glucose metabolism using18F-fluorodeoxyglucose [10] or hypoxia using18F-fluoromisonidazole [11].
However, the underlying kinetic models for rCBF measured by perfusion CT and PET with15O-H2O differ fundamentally. Perfusion CT is based on the dynamic behaviour of an intravascular contrast agent, while15O-H2O PET models a freely diffusible tissue tracer. To investigate this further, we compared the rCBF measurements of the two techniques directly in the same healthy subjects on the same day within a few hours.
Materials and methods
Seventeen healthy volunteers were recruited to the protocol and scanned from August 2008 to April 2009. All subjects underwent a structured interview of health history. The exclusion criteria were a known neurological disease, migraine, reduced renal function, pregnancy, and a known allergy against iodinated contrast media. All subjects gave oral and written informed consents according to the Helsinki II Declaration. The plasma creatinine levels of all subjects were measured within 2 weeks before the scan and were all within a normal range. One subject was excluded because of a technical failure in the CT iv-contrast power injector; two subjects were excluded because of failure in the arterial blood sampling during PET scanning; one subject was excluded as the arterial catheter could not be placed correctly; and in one subject, the rCBF PET kinetic modelling failed. Consequently, 12 volunteers (nine females, three males) were available for analysis with a median age of 24 years (range 20 to 26 years). The protocol was approved by the Committee on Biomedical Research for the Capital Region of Denmark (protocol number H-A-2008-055).
PET protocol
A dedicated brain high-resolution research tomograph PET scanner (CTI/Siemens, Knoxville, TN, USA) was used for all PET scans. This scanner has an axial field of view of 25 cm and a near-isotropic resolution of 2 mm.
PET tracer
An 800-MBq15O-H2O was produced on-line and injected intravenously in an antecubital vein via an automatic water injection system [AWIS] (1997, Scansys, Værløse, Denmark). AWIS delivered a 16-mL bolus over 10 s with both pre- and after-flush of an inert saline solution [7]. Each volunteer had two tracer injections. A short indwelling catheter was placed in the non-dominant radial artery under local anaesthesia for blood sampling.
Image acquisition
During scanning, the subject's head was rested in a foam-cushioned headrest, and a head strap was used to minimize head movement. Initially, a 6-min transmission scan with a rotating137Cs single-photon point source was performed for attenuation correction. The 7-min emission scans were acquired in a three-dimensional [3D] list mode and initiated immediately before tracer injection. The interscan interval was at least 10 min to allow for isotope decay.
For kinetic modelling, arterial blood was sampled continuously during the scans using an automatic blood sampling system [ABSS] (Allogg, Mariefred, Sweden) set to draw arterial blood at a constant speed of 8 mL/min with its activity measured every 0.5 s. The inner diameter of the tube connected to the arterial catheter was 1.0 mm. Immediately after the scan, 2 mL of arterial blood was drawn for blood gas analysis to evaluate the physiologic respiratory state of the subjects. The samples were analysed for arterial partial pressures of oxygen [PaO2] and carbon dioxide [PaCO2], saturation level of oxygen [sO2], and haemoglobin concentration [ctHb] (ABL 700 Series, Radiometer Medical, Copenhagen, Denmark). The detectors in the ABSS and the PET scanner were cross-calibrated against an independent dose calibrator so that all data could be reported in radioactivity concentration (in becquerel per millilitre).
Image reconstruction
Dynamic images were reconstructed using a 3D-ordered subset expectation maximization algorithm with correction for the measured point spread function into 40 frames per scan with durations of 1 × 30, 18 × 5, 9 × 10, 10 × 15, and 2 × 30 s. Each frame consisted of 207 image planes in a 256 × 256 matrix with an isotropic voxel size of 1.22 × 1.22 × 1.22 mm3. The first 30-s frame was designed to accommodate the tracer delay from injection to the brain tissue. All images were corrected for dead time and scatter and filtered with a 3D Gaussian 5-mm filter.
PET CBF calculation
Using a commercially available software package, PMOD 3.0 (PMOD Technologies, Zürich, Switzerland), the dynamic images of the first 210 s following the arrival of activity to the brain and the delay- and dispersion-corrected arterial input functions [12] were fitted by Alpert's one-tissue compartment model [13] according to Equation 1:
where C t(t) denotes tissue activity concentration (in becquerel per millilitre), C a(t) is the measured arterial input function (in becquerel per millilitre), f is the rCBF (in millilitre per minute per 100 g), and Vd (in millilitre per gram) is the fitted volume of distribution. ⊗ represents the convolution operation. This generated the parametric images of rCBF.
Radiation dose
The dose equivalent following PET transmission and emission scans was in a total of 1.6 mSv: 0.1 mSv for the transmission scan and 0.74 mSv for each emission scan [14].
CT protocol
A Biograph 40 TruePoint PET/CT scanner (Siemens, Knoxville, TN, USA) was used.
Contrast media
A preheated iso-osmolar iodine contrast medium OptiRay 350 (Ioversol 350 mg/mL, Tyco Healthcare, Neustadt an der Donau, Bayern, Germany) was injected intravenously by a power injector (OptiVantage DH Injection System, Liebel-Flarsheim, Cincinnati, OH, USA) as a short bolus of 40 mL (8 mL/s) through a catheter in the antecubital vein followed by 20 mL of saline solution.
Image acquisition
In nine subjects, PET scanning was performed before CT, and in three subjects, CT before PET. A lateral scout scan at the angle of the meato-orbital plane was performed followed by a non-enhanced low dose CT (120 kVp, 40 mAs). This guided the selection of four contiguous transaxial slices at the anatomical level of the third ventricle and through the basal ganglia, which is the level most frequently used in perfusion CT stroke evaluations. The orbits were not in the field of view to avoid unnecessary irradiation to the lens. The contrast medium was injected 4 s before the initiation of the dynamic scan. The dynamic scan consisted of 160 images: one image for 40 s over four slices of 7.2-mm thick at 80 kVp and 120 mAs. The arterial cannula from the PET scan was kept in place and used to draw arterial blood for blood gas analysis immediately after the scan.
Image reconstruction and rCBF calculation
Each slice was reconstructed into a 512 × 512 image matrix using a H30s medium smooth kernel. Voxel dimensions were non-isotropic 0.44 × 0.44 × 7.2 mm3. The rCBF was calculated in a semi-automated manner using a commercial software, Syngo Neuro Perfusion CT 2006A (Siemens, Knoxville, TN, USA). After segmentation and removal of an extra cerebral tissue, a circular reference region of interest [ROI] was defined automatically in the occipital part of the superior sagittal sinus. Maximum intensity projection [MIP] CTs were reconstructed to enhance areas of high radiodensity that are useful for identifying vascular structures. Regions with larger vessels were excluded in the rCBF assessments by thresholding the MIP CT image by 15% of the maximal value corresponding to a regional cerebral blood volume [rCBV] threshold of 14.4 mL/100 mL. The arterial input function was derived from the time-attenuation curve from ROIs comprising both anterior cerebral arteries in cross section, and the rCBF (in millilitre per minute per 100 mL) was calculated using a deconvolution approach. By dividing with the brain tissue density of 1.04 g/mL, the rCBF values were converted into units per weight tissue as for rCBF PET.
Radiation dose
The effective dose equivalent was 2.9 mSv for the CT perfusion protocol.
Data analysis
Image co-registration and ROIs
Using PMOD, rCBF PET, rCBF CT, and MIP CT images were co-registered to the low-dose CT scan of the head to a final voxel size of 0.5 × 0.5 × 1.5 mm3. This was done to insure that all ROIs referred to and included an identical tissue composition across techniques. On the MIP CT images, 14 ROIs were drawn in symmetrical areas over the grey matter in the head of the caudate nuclei, putamen, frontal cortex, temporal/parietal cortex, occipital cortex, and anterior and posterior white matter (Figure 1, top). By using a masking technique on the rCBF CT images, values below zero inside ROIs were excluded from analysis. In one subject, the putamen could not be drawn because it was only partly included in the scanned area. Finally, the 14 ROIs were projected onto identical areas of the masked parametric rCBF PET and rCBF CT images for quantification. The tissue volume in the ROIs ranged from 109 to 407 mm3 (average 247 mm3). We then calculated the volume-weighted average white and grey matter values based on the selected ROIs.
Statistical methods
The statistical analysis was conducted using MATLAB (MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA, USA). Paired t tests with a two-tailed significance level of α = 0.05 was used to evaluate the blood gas data. A similar method was used for the analyses between rCBF CT and the average of two rCBF PET scans for white and grey matter ROIs.
In the quantitative assessment of rCBF using PET, CT, and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], it is recognized that the global variation in CBF may have a significant impact on the regional variation [15–18]. We, thus, repeated the comparison of grey matter values after normalization to the volume-weighted average of the four white matter ROIs. The two-tailed significance level for the paired t tests was at α = 0.05, but a Bonferroni correction was applied for multiple non-independent comparisons. Thus, the thresholds were p < 0.0036 (14 comparisons) and p < 0.005 (10 comparisons) for the quantified and white matter normalized analyses, respectively.
The Bland-Altman test [19] was used to assess the agreement between corresponding grey matter measurements. The mean difference, standard deviations, and the 95% limits of agreement were calculated and plotted. The rCBF measures were plotted against each other for each subject individually using linear regression analyses; the linear slopes were determined; and the coefficient of determination [r2] between the two methods was calculated.
Blood gas analyses
Air bubbles in one syringe and malfunction of one arterial catheter left a total of 11 subjects for this analysis (Table 1). There was no significant change in blood gas levels and haemoglobin concentration between the first and the second PET scan. However, when comparing the averaged blood gas levels of the two PET scans to the gas values measured immediately after CT, there was a modest, but significant drop in PaCO2 of approximately 0.3 kPa or 2 mmHg. At the same time, there was a slight, but non-significant (p = 0.07), increase in PaO2 of approximately 1.0 kPa or 7 mmHg. The data indicate slight hyperventilation during the performance of perfusion CT and confirm that no discernable effects of the approximately 100-mL blood drawn during PET scanning could be found in the haemoglobin concentration.
RCBF measures
There was no significant difference between the two rCBF PET measurements. The absolute measurements are summarised in Table 2. The average volume-weighted rCBF PET measurements were 17.4 ± 2.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 (mean ± standard deviation) for the white matter and 48.7 ± 5.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the grey matter with a between-subject regional coefficient of variance [COV] in the 10% to 17% range. In all regions but one white matter ROI, the absolute rCBF measurements with perfusion CT were significantly higher than the PET measurements even after a rigid Bonferroni correction. The average volume-weighted rCBF measurements with perfusion CT were 21.8 ± 3.4 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the white matter and 71.8 ± 8.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the grey matter. The COVs were higher than the rCBF PET measurements in 11 of 14 ROIs ranging from 11% to 28%. The mean increase compared to rCBF PET was 4.4 ± 3.3 mL min-1 100 g-1 in the white matter and 23.1 ± 8.5 mL min-1 100 g-1 in the grey matter (Table 2). The lower and upper 95% limits of the grey and white matter changes from PET to CT rCBF were -8.0 and 43.4 mL min-1 100 g-1, respectively (Figure 2). The overall mean volume-weighted grey matter/white matter ratio was 2.78 ± 0.25 for rCBF PET, and it was significantly higher for perfusion CT, 3.34 ± 0.48 (Table 3). On the regional level, the ratios were significantly higher in the right caudate nucleus, in the frontal and parietal cortices, and in the left parietal cortex. Interestingly, compared to the absolute measurements, the regional COVs were reduced in seven out of ten regions for rCBF PET, but increased in eight out of ten for rCBF CT. Thus, normalization to the white matter reduced the volume-weighted grey matter COV for rCBF PET from 10.4% to 9.1%, while it was increased for rCBF CT from 11.2% to 14.3%.
The Bland-Altman plots demonstrated a bias for rCBF CT that increases from lower to higher mean grey and white matter values (Figure 2). The linear slopes between the two methods when including both white and grey matter values were significantly different from zero in all individuals with an average r2 of 0.89 (range 0.82 to 0.96) and an average slope of 1.56 (range 1.20 to 2.17; Figure 3). When only the grey matter regions were analysed, the slopes were only significant in 4 of 12 subjects. These four subjects had r2 of 0.40 to 0.50 and slopes between 0.5 and 1.75.
In this study, we have compared the quantitative rCBF values that can be obtained by two imaging techniques,15O-H2O PET and perfusion CT. To date, studies that directly validate perfusion CT in healthy subjects have been very scarce. The majority of studies concern patients with cerebrovascular disease, and validation has been against either the stable xenon-CT method [20, 21] or15O-H2O PET [22]. Although rCBF can be derived from the non-ischemic hemisphere in stroke patients, the design is suboptimal. It is quite possible that regional perfusion in the undamaged hemisphere is influenced to some degree by either a subclinical tissue pathology, a generalised micro- or macrovascular disease, remote functional effects of neural damage (diaschisis), or a co-morbidity (cardiac function, pulmonary disease). Particularly the quality of the bolus input gives errors in the rCBF determination, e.g. bolus buffering in the lungs. Therefore, a reduced cardiac output will systematically decrease rCBF [23]. Similarly, in patients with carotid occlusion, selection of a single arterial input function will cause increased delay and dispersion of the contrast agent to the ischemic areas and thus, underestimate rCBF by 15% to 20% [24].
As the greater part of the validation studies is aimed at cerebrovascular diseases, the regions used focus on the major cerebral artery territories or whole hemispheres. Thus, the rCBF measures are a heterogeneous mixture derived from both the white and grey matter tissues, vascular volumes, and cerebrospinal fluid spaces, but the relative weights of the individual tissue components are unknown [21, 22, 24–26]. This will render direct comparison between our quantitative grey matter rCBF CT values and these studies difficult.
In studies where the white and grey matter rCBF CT values are available, these range from 14 to 30 mL min-1 100 g-1 and 40 to 70 mL min-1 100 g-1, respectively, with a COV of 25% to 30% [6, 20, 23, 27]. Although mostly derived from patient studies, these results are quite similar to the results we found in normal healthy subjects. We found average volume-weighted rCBF CT measurements of 21.8 ± 3.4 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the white matter and 71.8 ± 8.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the grey matter. The relative regional between-subject COV ranged from 11% to 28%. The rCBF CT values were significantly larger than the average volume-weighted rCBF PET measurements by 25% in the white matter and 47% in the grey matter. The absolute values were 17.4 ± 2.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the white matter and 48.7 ± 5.0 mL min-1 100 g-1 for the grey matter with a COV in the 10% to 17% range. Our findings correspond to the values previously reported in the literature using this technique [7, 8, 13, 28, 29]. In a larger Japanese study encompassing 70 healthy subjects spanning 11 institutions, the overall average rCBF for cerebral cortical regions were 42.7 ± 6.3 mL min-1 100 g-1 with a COV of 14.6% [30].
When normalizing to the white matter, the relative regional grey matter COV was nominally lower with PET compared to CT in 10 of 14 ROIs. One explanation for the lower COV with PET was that we used the average of two measurements. This was not done for perfusion CT to keep the radiation dose within acceptable limits. To our knowledge, a test-retest study of baseline rCBF CT has not been reported on healthy subjects.
In the study design, we have tried to limit the variation between the two techniques further by performing same-day measurements within 1 to 2 h. A further source of variation, which has not been considered in previous validation studies, is the impact that changes of the pre-scan arterial blood gas status might have on rCBF [29]. The PaCO2 decreased significantly by 2 mmHg from PET to CT scanning, suggesting slight hyperventilation. Hyperventilation decreases rCBF by washing out PaCO2 by approximately 2% per millimetre of mercury [31, 32]. This would decrease the rCBF CT measurements by 4% and further increase the difference between techniques if corrected for. The hyperventilation itself may have been caused by anticipatory anxiety in the CT scanning session possibly associated to the procedure itself. Mood states in scanning sessions have been investigated by Matthew et al. [28], and a trend was found for anticipatory anxiety to be lowered from the first to second scans. This may have been forestalled by letting the subjects rest in the CT scanner for several minutes before scans and maybe even perform a 'sham-scan' before scans.
The bias between techniques was not constant, but increased with the increasing rCBF value (Figure 2), which indicates a logarithmic influence. It is possible that there are global effects in a measurement that influences the regional values. This could be between-subject differences, physiological fluctuations, or methodological errors pertaining to the measurement of the input function and the involved corrections [32, 33] or in the selection of the venous ROI and the arterial input function in perfusion CT [23, 34]. One strategy is to normalize the rCBF to the tissue that systematically co-varies with the global fluctuations and is not affected by isolated pathological processes. We examined this hypothesis using the white matter as a reference tissue. For the overall grey matter, the normalized rCBF in perfusion CT was only 20% larger than that for PET. Thus, more than half of the difference between techniques can be explained by global fluctuations affecting both tissues alike, but there is a residual effect manifest as a larger contrast between the white and grey matter tissues in perfusion CT. Interestingly, normalization to the white matter reduced the grey matter COV in PET, but increased the COV in perfusion CT, indicating that there are individual grey/white matter differences to be considered. Thus, prior to the use of tissue normalization in a clinical setting, it is essential that effects of bias and noise are well understood.
One aspect that also needs to be examined is the effect of differences in resolution, the partial volume effect [PVE]. The PVE will of course affect not only PET values, but also PCT values, as the resolution of both methods is insufficient to accurately quantify the rCBF in the cortical grey matter. The object of the paper, however, was not so much to measure 'true' cortical rCBF, but to compare two methods under clinical conditions. So the strategy was to have the PVE affect the two methods to the same degree, rather than to introduce a new level of complexity and potential bias by PVE correction through e.g. tissue-segmented MRI. This was done by securing comparable image resolutions and an accurate image registration between the two imaging modalities. Thus, any error caused by tissue heterogeneity in a given ROI would affect the sampled values to the same degree. We do not believe that the differences between methods can be related to image resolution.
The two methods,15O-H2O-PET and perfusion CT, are inherently different since perfusion CT relies on the dynamic behaviour of a non-diffusible intravascular iodine medium, whereas15O-H2O-PET relies on a tracer that is freely diffusible into the tissues. Strictly speaking, the term 'rCBF' should only be reserved to denote the volume flow rate of blood though a functional tissue that has the ability to exchange nutrients and waste products, thus, the capillary blood flow. However, a purely intravascular tracer, as iodine contrast, will distribute to all vascular segments. Thus, a fundamental flaw with perfusion CT is the presence of high-contrast signals in regions without a functional tissue and a capillary bed such as the choroid plexus, arteries, arterioles, venules, veins, and sinuses. An example can be seen in Figure 1, where a draining vein in the left occipital region has an rCBF signal increase on perfusion CT without any discernable signal on15O-H2O-PET, indicating the absence of a functional tissue. The most common strategy is to eliminate vascular pixels in the CT images before calculation of rCBF. A simple regional rCBV threshold of 8 mL/100 g has been suggested as the most accurate [6]. This threshold, however, was not feasible in our study as large and irregular sections of the brain parenchyma were excluded from analyses. We, thus, chose a threshold of 14.4 mL/100 g that respected tissue integrity and kept the rCBF CT images legible for clinical use. The grey matter rCBV has been measured to 3 to 4 mL/100 g [30, 35], so both thresholds are somewhat above the normal tissue rCBV level. In the ROI definitions, we carefully omitted obvious larger vascular structures, but there is definitely a contribution from smaller non-capillary vessels and probably also from a PVE from larger vessels. We regard that the blood volume influenced the signal as the dominant error source in the overestimation of rCBF CT values, in the increased contrast between the white and grey matter, and as an important regional noise contribution. This has been recognized previously as well [6, 36, 37].
Although biased, we found that the rCBF CT does correlate with rCBF PET for each individual over a broad range of values from the white to the grey matter (Figure 3), but poorly if only grey matter rCBF values were considered. Previous studies in patients have found r2 ranging from 0.5 to 0.8 with significant linear regression slopes of 0.7 to 1.4 [20, 22, 38, 39] and in healthy subjects, r2 from 0.4 to 0.9 with slopes 1.0 to 1.55 [6, 25]. The significant correlations signify that rCBF CT does deliver a perfusion-weighted signal, but with a tendency to overestimate the values particularly for highly perfused regions.
Although perfusion CT is an attractive, widely available, relatively cheap, rapid, and easily performed method, we have not been able to confirm some of the previously published reports of high accuracy performed mainly on patients with cerebrovascular disease. Perfusion CT is not accurate enough in the current setting. In healthy subjects, perfusion CT does deliver a perfusion-weighted signal, but with a tendency to overestimate the values particularly for highly perfused regions. The average overestimation of rCBF in the grey matter of 47% is unacceptably high. Neither with respect to absolute quantification nor perfusion distribution can rCBF CT measures substitute rCBF PET, primarily because of the confounding effects of blood volume. This does not exclude a useful role in patient management, which must, however, be evaluated in separate investigations with the normative data in mind.
cerebral blood flow
computed tomography
15O-labelled water
positron-emission tomography
- rCBF:
regional CBF.
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Authors' contributions
IL conceived the study. JG, LH, and IL participated in the design of the study. JG and IL coordinated the study, and JG carried out the scannings. RP performed the statistical analysis. All authors drafted the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript.
Julie Marie Grüner, Rune Paamand, Liselotte Højgaard and Ian Law contributed equally to this work.
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Grüner, J.M., Paamand, R., Højgaard, L. et al. Brain perfusion CT compared with15O-H2O-PET in healthy subjects. EJNMMI Res 1, 28 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-219X-1-28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-219X-1-28


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Suddenly folks are steaming over a newly-posted synopsis of the live-action adaptation of Akira, with Screen Rant, ComicBook, CBR, Heroic Hollywood, and Bleeding Cool all stoking the fires of fandom ire over a description published in Production Weekly.
When a young man's telekinesis is discovered by the military, he is taken in to be turned into a super weapon and his brother nuts [sic] race to save him before Manhattan is destroyed by his powers. Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother Tetsuo is abducted by Government agents lead by the Colonel. Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City 30 years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous, but after facing his brother again is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers. Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy. Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo's mind, Kaneda clashes with the Colonel's troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira, but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island as he did thirty years ago.
Had even just one of these pop culture writers taken sixty seconds on Google, they'd have learned that this synopsis dates back to August 2011during an earlier phase of Hollywood trying to make the Akira production happen. It resurfaced that November with purported casting information.
Instead, pop culture sites and Twitter are awash in claims not only that this is a new synopsis but that it's specifically Taika Waititi's synopsis–one claim being false and one claim having no evidence.
While the worldly impact of cable news obviously can be worse than that of any constellation of pop cuture websites, this is a perfect example of what used to drive me crazy when I blogged regularly about pop culture: the jouralistic practices of pop culture websites are absolutely, resolutely terrible.
I don't even care about Akira, especially. But I am–and this annoys me as much as it probably does you–like a dog with a bone when it comes to garbage pop culture reporting.
This is what happens when pop cuture websites and their writers behave as little more than third-party publicists: it's about making sure you're sharing whatever's out there about this or that product as quickly as you hear something, and almost never about making sure what that you're telling people is true.


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The playground equipment brings much joy, fun, and adventure for the children. With the development of this industry, there are many different suppliers. Many investors feedback because they are short of experience. It is really difficult to distinguish and judge the playground quality from so much playground equipment. As a novice, how to choose a good playground equipment supplier?
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As a new investor, you can judge the supplier reliable or not from the internet, or local real project, you can see whether the brand awareness and reputation of the supplier is good or not.
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If possible, you can go to the supplier's factory to check their production line and quality. The kid's playground equipment should be safety and health, check with them if their product reached the CE, GS, SGS…
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Because playground equipment is complicated from choosing the site location to good operation, a supplier which have a good after-sales service system will give you much product support, the direction of use, management guidance.
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A wonderful and reasonable design will help a lot in the playground equipment project. So it depends on whether the supplier design team have good production technology, rich imagination, and a perfect solution.
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It is very important to choose a playground which is keeping up with the market trend closely. If it is welcomed by the kids with fashionable elements.Congratulations!Your project will be popular and run a good business for a long time.
Playground equipment is very important to children. Therefore, you need to be cautious when choosing the playground equipment supplier.
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Turquoise Chart
Here's a fun turquoise chart showing both rough stone and cut and polished cabochons. The turquoise mines are listed next to each stone. It's so fascinating to see the variety of colors that can be produced by different turquoise mines in the Southwest!
Learn More:
Click the links below to view jewelry with turquoise from these particular mines:
2 comments
I have always wanted to learn about all Native American Indians how they lived how they made clothing jewelry cooked I've always loved turquoise every since I was little mom said my great great grandmother was full Chareekee I just think the silver and turquoise is the most beautiful jewelry ever made
I would like to learn more about the history of turquoise and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. I am a Mojave Indian.


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Three widely used tests for assessing autism measure trait severity equally well in girls and boys, according to the largest study addressing this question to date1.
The tests — the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) — show small differences in how they rate autism traits in girls compared with boys, but those differences should not keep the tests from routine clinical use, says lead investigator Somer Bishop, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
Researchers have questioned if diagnostic tests miss autism traits in girls and contribute to the condition's sex ratio of four girls for every boy. Previous studies have suggested that some tests underestimate the severity of traits in girls. Most, however, are too small to control for intelligence, age, language ability and other factors that can influence a child's scores.
The new study included almost 9,000 autistic children, which is large enough to account for these factors, Bishop says.
The results unambiguously show that the three tests perform similarly in boys and girls, at least for children whom clinicians can diagnose using these tests and established methods, says Lauren Kenworthy, director of the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study. "This is a gift to the field."
Minimal differences:
The researchers identified 7,522 boys and 1,463 girls, aged 1 to 20 years, who had received care via the Autism Treatment Network, a group of 17 medical centers in the United States and Canada, or who had participated in one of seven large research studies.
Clinicians evaluated all of the children via at least one of the three tools: using the ADOS to observe them directly, the ADI-R to interview their parents or the SRS to review the parents' responses on a survey. The clinicians diagnosed all of the children with autism, drawing in part on the test scores.
When the researchers controlled for the site of diagnosis and the children's intelligence, verbal ability and age, they found small differences in how the three tests measure autism traits in girls versus boys. The results were published in April in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Overall, the ADOS and the ADI-R rate girls of all ages as having less severe repetitive behaviors than boys, the researchers found. This echoes findings that other researchers published in 2018.
By contrast, they found that the SRS rates adolescent girls as having more severe repetitive behaviors and social difficulties than adolescent boys — a difference also identified in a 2017 study2.
"The effects are small, but the effects are there," Bishop says.
Despite these differences, clinicians can use the tests to accurately assess autism traits in girls and boys alike, she says.
New tools needed:
Although the findings are clear, important gender differences still might lurk in the ADOS and ADI-R tests, says Meng-Chuan Lai, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was not involved in the study.
Some questions on those two tests do not contribute to a child's diagnostic score and were not included in the new work's analysis. But those questions might differ in how well they pick up autism traits in boys versus girls, Lai says.
Also, the children in the study all received autism diagnoses at least in part because of their scores on these tests. The study does not address whether the tests overlook some girls or gender-nonconforming boys, whose autism may manifest differently, Kenworthy says.
"We [as a field] defined our autism criteria in terms of boys," she says.
To identify children these tests may miss, the field will have to devise new tests, looking closely at the wording of each question to make sure "that it's measuring the same thing for girls and for boys," Bishop says.
Bishop and her colleagues are not working on this question directly, but they are trying to account for possible gender differences as they design measures of social skills that can be used in autistic children with a wide range of developmental abilities.


text:
În fiecare zi oferim GRATUIT aplicații și jocuri Android licențiate pe care altfel ar trebui să le cumpărați.
This giveaway offer has been expired. NPC For Hire is now available on the regular basis.
NPC For Hire is a story driven aid for GMs that allows you to generate, build, and manage NPCs paired with beautiful hand drawn portraits. GMs will be able to spin up a story that is not only compelling, but will immerse players in a fantasy world with ease.
NPC For Hire includes 58 beautiful human portraits that you can use in your campaigns for free. Additional portraits (including other races) can be purchased to diversify the NPCs that your players come in contact with.
Don't know where to start? Generate an NPC and use it as a launching point to craft a unique and memorable personality for your players.
Already have an NPC in mind? Head to the builder and whip them up and help your players see the NPC as you do.
Knights of Vasteel
Books & Reference
Everyone 10+
4.4 and up


text:
FavoriteMiniGames > Shooting > Colorful Shooter: Bullet Hell
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-> Search (Ctrl+F) this game name in Flashpoint game list and if it is found, install Flashpoint app.
Colorful Shooter: Bullet Hell
20 achievements, 20 different ships, 2 game modes, 3 difficulty levels, 85 upgrades. Thousands of bullets.
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text:
Easy way to delete unused local branches in Git —16 February 2014
If you use a new feature branch for every new feature you develop,
you'll end up with a lot of unused local branches.
The laziest way to delete all unused branches safely except master
git checkout master
git branch | xargs git branch -d
This is safe, because git branch -d
only deletes branches that have been merged into another branch,
and it won't delete the current branch, in this case master
But it's lazy,
because it will produce error messages for every branch that cannot be deleted,
and for the * master
line in the output of git branch
error: The branch 'cool-feature' is not fully merged.
error: branch '*' not found.
error: Cannot delete the branch 'master' which you are currently on.
If you want to be more accurate,
you can exclude branches that have not been merged into master
git checkout master
git branch --merged master | xargs git branch -d
And if you want to be really accurate,
then you can exclude master
git checkout master
git branch --merged master | grep -v ^\* | xargs git branch -d


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Product ID-EXT-UHD600-1SC
The Gefen EXT-UHD600-1SC is a compact and high-performance solution for extending uncompressed, full-bandwidth HDMI 2.0 audio/video with HDR, up to 200 meters (660 feet), over a single strand of SC-terminated 50/125 µm OM3 or better multi-mode fiber-optic cable. It supports 18.2 Gbps of bandwidth and 600 MHz TMDS Clock frequency, the highest specified under the HDMI 2.0 standard. Full bandwidth support allows the Gefen extender to accommodate resolutions up to 4K Cinema-DCI (4096 x 2160 up to 60 Hz 4:4:4), and 4K Ultra HD (3860 x 2160 up to 60 Hz, 4:4:4) along with HDR (High Dynamic Range). HDCP 2.2 and the legacy HDCP 1.4 are both supported. The EXT-UHD600-1SC also supports 1080p Full HD, WUXGA (1920 x 1200), 3DTV, and Deep Color (up to 1080p resolution). Highest performance multichannel digital audio including 7.1 channels of LPCM and HBR (High Bit Rate) digital audio formats, such as Dolby Atmos®, Dolby® TrueHD, DTS:X™, and DTS-HD Master Audio™ are passed through to the HDMI outputs. There is full electrical isolation between the Sender and the Receiver, meeting the stringent safety and EMC requirements for critical applications. This extender can be powered from sources and displays featuring powered USB ports, or by using external power supplies.
Maximum TMDS Clock: 600 MHzTotal Signal Bandwidth/Data Rate: 18.2 GbpsVideo Input connector: (1) HDMI Type A 19-pin femaleVideo Output connector: (1) HDMI Type A 19-pin femaleLink connector (Sender/Receiver): (1) Type SCLink Indicator (Sender/Receiver): (1) LED, greenPower Supply connector (Sender/Receiver): (1) 5V DC 3.5mm barrel/1.3mm pin  Power Consumption: Sender: 3.2W, Receiver: 2.8WOptical Power Budget: 6.5 dBOperating Temperature: +32 to +122 °F (0 to +50 °C)Operating Humidity: 10% to 85% RH, non-condensingStorage Temperature: -4 to +158 °F (-20 to +70 °C)Storage Humidity: 10% to 85% RH, non-condensingMTBF: 50000 hoursDimensions (W x H x D, Sender/Receiver, not including connectors):1-3/4� x 7/8� x 3-1/8� (45mm x 22mm x 79mm)Net Weight (Sender/Receiver): 3.2 oz. (0.1 kg) eachShipping Weight: 2.5 lbs (1.2 kg)
* Features and specifications are subject to change without notice.


text:
TikToker Emma Watkins (@emmaa.watkins14) shared why she is "never using Airbnb ever again" in a now-viral clip that delineates a "nightmare" series of events that ruined a vacation she had planned months in advance. She says she will never use the home-sharing company again after the way the brand handled the situation.
@_emma_watkins For anyone thinking of using AirBnB in the future, don't x #fyp #airbnb #airbnbexperience ♬ original sound – emmaa.watkins14
In the clip, she starts by describing just how ideal the location of the Airbnb was. Watkins says she and her mother, who are both from the U.K., booked the apartment in the South of France back in March 2022. However, when they arrived for their vacation in the summer, she says they realized the lovely apartment had one glaring safety issue.
"So we arrived at this apartment and we were greeted by someone who wasn't the owner but was obviously employed by the owner to do the check-ins," she says in the clip. "He was taking us around the apartment explaining everything to us and we got to the balcony door and he said, 'this doesn't lock it's broken.' And I tried to close it and it wouldn't. It wasn't that it wouldn't just lock, the thing wouldn't close."
Watkins says despite the apartment being on the second floor, she was concerned since it faced a busy main road and the balcony wasn't that high above the ground.
"So obviously we turned around and said, 'we can't stay here. It's not safe,'" she says.
Watkins says they immediately got in contact with the owner in order to try and work something out.
Watkins claims the owner offered to contact Airbnb directly since he didn't have any other available units. She adds that he didn't seem to be making "an effort to fix the problem" as he couldn't "guarantee" whether or not he would be able to get someone to come and fix the door.
Eventually, Watkins says an Airbnb support representative reached out to the TikToker through the mobile app and let her know that they've been communicating with the host. The support rep allegedly claimed the host told her that a "window is broken" but there are "other windows that serve the same purpose" and as a consolation, the company would "reduce the rate for" her.
Watkins says she explained that it wasn't a window, but rather a balcony door that not only wouldn't lock but wouldn't close, making it unsafe for her and her mother to stay at the location.
In a follow-up clip, Watkins says that after not responding for a while, the employee claimed their shift was over and for Watkins to contact some other rep. The TikToker decided to fill out a complaint form on Airbnb's app instead and flagged the listing as "unsafe."
"Bearing in mind a significant portion of time has passed since we arrived and it's getting dark, and we are two ladies in a foreign country without a safe roof over our heads," Watkins says.
She says she finally connected to another Airbnb rep, who was purportedly extremely apologetic and said that he would work to find them "alternative accommodation."
@_emma_watkins Part 2!! #fypシ #airbnb #airbnbexperience ♬ original sound – emmaa.watkins14
Once again, Watkins expressed her concerns that they will be unable to find a similar Airbnb within the same location, quality, and price point as the one they booked. The Airbnb rep then purportedly gave her a 30% "above value" coupon for a stay which would allow them to book something with the same quality of accommodations as the original booking.
The rep allegedly instructed the TikToker to look for some alternative places in the area and he would do the same while working on obtaining the 30% off coupon. She says she sent him "a couple of listings" but didn't hear a response from the rep, nor did he follow up about the coupon or get back to her with any alternative listings either. She started to get the feeling that she was being ghosted, and wanted to ensure that the application would pay the difference for the listings she sent over to him.
After not hearing back, Watkins and her mom decided to book a hotel for the night while they waited on Airbnb's response.
@_emma_watkins Part 3 im so sorry to be that gal xx #fyp #airbnb #airbnbexperience ♬ original sound – emmaa.watkins14
Apparently, the customer service rep did not provide any alternative listings and as for the "coupon," the TikToker says she was "completely misled" about the value she would be receiving, as it was only good for 300 euros.
"Airbnb [is] responsible for their hosts at the end of the day," she says in the last clip and couldn't understand why the company didn't work harder to rectify the situation.
In the end, the TikToker and her mother decided going back home was their only option as the coupon would not be enough for a week's stay and every other decent place was too expensive.
"This was not what we had envisioned for our holiday," Watkins says.
However, she says there were no flights available to the U.K. that day on top of Airbnb canceling their original reservation without notifying them. They ended up paying "extortionate" prices for flights back home because they were "so done with the situation."
While she was refunded for the booking, Watkins says she felt she was entitled to reimbursement at the hotel and for her and her mother's flight back home.
The TikToker says that her concern was passed around to "four or five" different people who basically told her "to piss off and that it's not their problem."
Responses to the TikToker's videos were divided. Some folks said that they've never had a problem booking with the company before, while others encouraged her to take legal action to recoup some of her costs. Others said that while they stayed at Airbnb listings, their own places were broken into via the balcony, so Watkins was right to not stay there.
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment and Airbnb via email for further comment.
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Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we're up to by signing up here.
Kelsy Parkhouse graduated from Pratt last year. In that time, her label Carleen has caught the eye of style bloggers (Natalie Joos wore a Carleen dress to Paris Fashion Week), fashion critics (like Cathy Horyn of the New York Times) and buyers (she was already picked up at Bird in Brooklyn).
The busy designer took time away from her two jobs—she still works full-time in production in NYC's garment district—to talk to Racked in her studio/apartment about being a young designer, the importance of comfort, and how she uses stress as motivation.
· Carleen [Official Site]
· How Designer Kelsy Parkhouse Went From Pratt to Bird [Racked NY]
· Designers of Breakout Chicago Brand Remi Canarie Talk Post-College Reality Checks [Racked]
· Khai Khai's Haim Medine Counts His Mother, Sister as Muses [Racked]


text:
Spectrum | ||
Spectrum was founded in 2067 by the World Government to tackle the problem of terrorism still faced by an almost-unified Earth. Headed by Colonel White, a former admiral of the World Navy, it comprises of an elite group of officers known only by their colour codes, and lower ranking agents who retain their own names. There are Spectrum bases all over the world, but their headquarters is not on land at all: it is 40,000 feet in the air. This floating aircraft carrier is known as Cloudbase, and is home to the highest ranking officers, including Captains Scarlet, Blue, Ochre, Magenta and Grey, and Colonel White's able assistant, Lieutenant Green. The base also houses Spectrum's team of elite fighter pilots. Known as the Angels, they are a ruthless and deadly fighting force to be reckoned with - and are all female. Although Spectrum's primary objective is to deal with terrorism, they are drawn into the war with the Mysterons by the actions of one of their own agents, Captain Black, and continue with the fight, shielding the world from the terrible truth about these powerful aliens. |


text:
What is 'El Paso'? Times Our City Was an Answer or Clue on Jeopardy!
Recently, our city was namechecked on Jeopardy! The 4/8/21 episode of the syndicated quiz show included the category "Places in Texas."
Contestants were given a question (sorry, answer) about the famous river that separates us from Mexico. For $200 contestants had to name the river that "the 'Good Neighbor Bridge'" that crosses "from Juarez, Mexico to El Paso"
The correct answer (sorry, question), as I'm sure you know is, 'what is the Rio Grande' even if, as I, you had no idea we even had a 'Good Neighbor Bridge'. (We do, but we locals don't call it that. You'll find out more than you'll ever want to know about our bridges in this article.)
That was not the first time our city has been acknowledged on the quiz show. Per a searchable archive of Jeopardy! episodes, El Paso has been an answer or clue on Jeopardy! 19 times since 2010.
The topics honestly haven't been all that diverse. Think geography, the Rio Grande, and the Marty Robbins song. That pretty much covers the extent of the question writer's knowledge of our little corner of the desert, it seems.


text:
It's true: There is water on Mars
After weeks of testing the soil in the Martian arctic, NASA's Phoenix lander has for the first time confirmed through chemical analysis the presence of water on another planet, scientists said Thursday.
Several weeks ago, Phoenix uncovered convincing visual evidence that it had landed on an ice field when it set down on Mars' northern plain May 25.
Pictures beamed back to Earth across 200 million miles showed white streaks in the lumpy soil around the lander, and a tool on the lander's robotic arm had shaved off chunks of the material that scientists were certain was ice.
On Thursday, the Phoenix team -- consisting of scientists from NASA and the University of Arizona -- presented evidence that material baked in one of Phoenix's eight tiny ovens was indeed water, the first time any spacecraft from Earth had tasted the life-giving substance on another world.
The evidence came from a mass spectrometer on Phoenix's thermal and evolved-gas analyzer, or TEGA. When heated, the targeted material in the soil melted at the expected temperature, which Phoenix scientist William Boynton called definitive proof.
"The fact that it melted at 0 degrees centigrade leaves very little doubt" that it is water, said Boynton, speaking at a news conference in Tucson.
For Phoenix scientists, the challenge hasn't been finding the ice but getting it into one of the testing ovens.
The ovens are only about the width of a pen cartridge. Getting soil in there was difficult because it proved to be clumpy. Scientists finally got one sample of soil in an oven several weeks ago by dribbling it in.
Getting the ice in was even harder. It tended to either vaporize or stick to the scoop on the robotic arm.
Over recent days, the scientists had grown so frustrated with the failure to transfer bits of ice into the oven that they gave up and decided to put another soil sample into a second oven. When they performed the first of four heat tests on the material, the mass spectrometer on the instrument detected a change at the melting point of ice.
"We've gotten an ice sample into TEGA," said a smiling Boynton. "It tastes very fine."
The amount of ice in the soil sample is tiny, probably about 1% of the total, Boynton said. In the next few days, the TEGA instrument will gradually heat the sample to a temperature of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, testing the gases given off along the way for the presence of organic chemicals, the building blocks of life as humans understand it.
It could be weeks before the Phoenix team is finished with the analysis. In the meantime, the scientists will try to perfect the ice delivery method to obtain a larger sample.
Also Thursday, NASA said it was extending the Phoenix mission by a month beyond the 90 days previously announced. The mission has completed 65 sols, or Martian days.
It is high summer on Mars, but in a few months winter will set in, covering the lander in a thick coat of carbon dioxide ice, snuffing out its life.
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text:
Fairfax County officials are looking to create more affordable housing and workforce dwelling units (WDUs) as the coronavirus pandemic increases housing hardships.
At the county's Transportation Committee on Tuesday, staff from the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) presented new proposals.
While the staff noted conflicts between advocates and developers, several of the supervisors pushed for the county to do more.
"Whenever we deal with this topic, it's difficult," Barbara Byron, the DPD director, said. "We have some advocates who feel we are never doing enough and then we have developers who say we are doing too much."
Workforce Dwelling Units
County staff gave the supervisors an overview of the Workforce Dwelling Unit Task Force's recommendations that would "still place Fairfax County very much place at the forefront of being the leader of affordable housing in Northern Virginia," Tom Fleetwood, the HCD director, said.
The county's WDU policy is a proffer-based incentive to encourage workforce housing in mixed-use centers like Tysons. The countywide policy was created in 2007, followed by the one for Tysons in 2010.
So far, the county has roughly 1,600 units — almost all rental — constructed for incomes ranging from 60% to 120% AMI, Kelly Atkinson, a DPD planner, told the supervisors.
The task force was created in 2019 to analyze the WDU rental program, which was been in place since 2014.
Now the task force is recommending that changes to the policies because the WDU policies are currently benefitting units at 80% AMI and below. "The WDU Rental Program rents at the 100 and 120 percent income tiers are at or above market rent," according to the presentation, which added:
- The current Countywide Policy only realizes 4 percent of new residential construction as WDUs affordable to households at 80% AMI.
- The current Tysons Policy only realizes 10 percent of new residential construction as WDUs affordable to households between 60% and 80%.
The recommendations would replace the policies with new percentages for the number of units at the various AMI brackets to benefit the 100% and 120% tiers and add more options for people between 60% and 80% of AMI.
For example, a 400-unit project would have 80 WDUs (eight at 60% AMI, 12 at 70% AMI and 20 each at 80%, 100% and 120% AMI) in Tysons under the current policy.
With the new policy, the developer would get to choose either 52 WDUs (12 at 60% AMI, eight at 70% AMI and 32 at 80% AMI) or 40 WDUs (40 units at 60% AMI).
Staff noted that the Reston WDU Policy will be looked at separately and that the county-wide policy can offer a density bonus up to 20% with more WDUs.
"While this proposal does reflect the task force recommendations, I would note that the industry and development representatives on the task force were not in support of this recommendation," Atkinson said.
The task force recommends a five-year "look back" on the policies and a Comprehensive Policy Plan Amendment. The plan amendment process would take roughly one year with "extensive outreach to the community," Atkinson said.
Byron said that the financial aspects of the recommendations were vetted by a group at Virginia Tech. "We wanted to be sure they were based in a financial reality rather than numbers we thought might be good ones, that was a big part of this effort," Byron said.
"I understand there's a feeling, 'Can we do more?'" Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith, who chairs the Development Process Committee and has been involved in the WDU discussion, said.
"It's so apparent we need more affordable housing," Smith said, noting that the land use process can take some time. "We needed it at 60%, 70% and 80%."
Still, Smith said that she's very supportive of the proposed ideas.
But Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck remained skeptical that the proposals would be sufficient for the need and said that the county should have taken steps sooner after creating the policies.
"The fact that we've had a system in place that frankly wasn't working for a decade and we're just now getting to the point where we change it is not a good statement on us, but I think it is a statement on what we recognize the problem is and how and what we must do to better address it," Storck said.
Foust said that he and Smith, possibly with the supervisors who represent the Tysons area, will bring a board matter in the future on the plan amendment.
Affordable Housing
After the discussion of the WDUs, Fleetwood then presented the proposed plan for fiscal year 2021 to help the county meet its goal of at least 5,000 new units at 60% of AMI over the next 15 years.
The plan would use up to $20.5 million with $7.5 million coming from the Affordable Housing Development and Investment Fund, $5.2 million from the Tysons Housing Trust Fund and $7.8 million from the Amazon Impact REACH funds. The Tysons funds can only be used for affordable housing in the Tysons Urban Center, Fleetwood said.
According to Fleetwood's presentation, the draft plan would prioritize:
- creating new rental homes for people earning 60% of AMI or less
- keeping "market affordable" rental properties
- creating new permanent supportive housing
- adding accessible housing for persons with disabilities
- offering housing near transit and activity centers
Fleetwood said that it's hard to estimate how many units might result from the $20.5 million because the funding is coming from three pots. "My best guess, my hope is we would get somewhere in the neighborhood of three projects out of it," he said.
In response to a question from Storck about considering non-traditional partners, Fleetwood said that the county wants to make it easier for faith communities that own property to participate.
"We act as the lender in these cases and that's why we focus so heavily on the development partner as sort of the first priority relative to who we choose to move forward with," Fleetwood said.
For-Sale Units
While the presentations mostly focused on rental units, some of the supervisors brought up the importance of for-sale units.
"The county is already making significant investments in affordable homeownership via its ADU program where we have approximately 1,500 for-sale units," Fleetwood said. "We're also making substantial investments in down payment and closing cost programs using our federal dollars as well as additional resources."
Storck noted that homeownership, especially for communities of color, plays a major role in the accumulation of wealth. "There's something more that we can do in here we approach that," he said.
Foust said the county should look more into for-sale units: "It's something we need a policy for, not an ad-hoc type thing building by building throughout the county."
Foust said that he's open to having a separate conversation in the future about the for-sale units and homeownership.
Table via Fairfax County


text:
Friday • October 8th | 8:00pm – 12:00am
The Lounge at Revolution Gallery welcomes DJ Flow for an evening of House music, and dancing among the art. Sights and Sounds provided by Dynamic Storm Productions.
This show is for 21 and over.
Please bring your vaccination card and ID / Excelsior pass – All guests need to be vaccinated to attend this event. We truly appreciate everyone's cooperation and support with this temporary policy. Delta is rapidly spiking in our county, and we need to protect our staff and all our guests. Thank you all for respecting this, and helping to keep our community safe


text:
As everyone, I have a lot of ideas for fics I would like to see and maybe write sometime. I'm going to write here those same ideas (obviously, all of them will be F/F romance, as that is the only thing that I enjoy writting. A lot of these might never be done, so if someone reads this and is interested, go ahead and grab it.
-The Cute, The Pretty and The Hot: Sunset loves Fluttershy, Fluttershy loves Rarity, Rarity loves Sunset. A poliamorous romance fic between Fluttershy, Rarity and Sunset.
-Coco's New World: During the last moment of the Frienship Games, a girl fell into one of the dimensional holes that connected the human world with Equestria. Coco finds herself alone in a new world, afraid of what could happen to her. Coco x Somepony (not sure whom yet)
-This Love is Forever: After a meticulous examination done by Twilight, she finds out that her friend Rarity is Immortal. One pony finds this to be the oportunity she has been wishing for the last thousand years. Rarity x Celestia
-Sorry for making you wait: Sequel to "Would You Wait?" It's been 2 years since Twilight confessed her love for Cadance. Now she's finally 18 year's old, but she's afraid of even trying to ask Cadance out.
-The Model and her Inspiration: What was slowly turnning to be the worst day ever, 6 year's old Fleur meets a girl that changes it into the best day ever. Several years later, Fleur finds that same girl during her senior year in Chrystal Prep, finding herself falling madly in love with her. CocoxFleur.
-Life in Canterlot: One thing in history made everything different. Twilight never left to Ponyville, but Rarity moved to Canterlot, chasing after her dream. RarityxTwilight, SunsetxCadance.


text:
Brenda | San Diego Photographer
January 29, 2013I can't say enough good things about Brenda and her family. She is the organizer of the moms group I'm in and does so much for all of us. A bunch of the other ladies in the group got together and pooled their money to giver her a photos session with me as a way to say thanks.


text:
"He could cure him of his leprosy," said the servant to her master. She knew, because she had lived in Israel before she was captured by the Syrians. She became a servant to Naaman's wife. Naaman was the commander of the army; and he had leprosy.
Naaman was disappointed and angry about the meeting with Elisha. He felt insulted. Elisha didn't bother to meet with him; he sent his servant with a message. The instructions seemed pitiful…dip in the Jordan River seven times. There were much nicer rivers in Syria. Fortunately, for Naaman, his servants convinced him to follow the instructions that were provided by God, through his servant Elisha. [Reflection based on the Bible Reference 2 Kings 5:1-14]


text:
Jim Ross Gives Insight On If Triple H Refused To Lose While Actively Wrestling
Jim Ross Gives Insight On If Triple H Refused To Lose While Actively Wrestling
During the latest episode of the Grilling JR Podcast, Jim Ross talked about Triple H and the fact that he went from 1996-2000 without losing on a pay-per-view clean. Ross said he would've never imagined that would be true, especially since Triple H was never somebody to complain about that stuff backstage.
"I've never heard Triple H refusing to do a job for anybody," Ross said. "He certainly would not tolerate that today if he had talents in NXT or whatever that didn't want to put somebody over. He wouldn't go along with it.
"Sometimes those things are overstated. I signed him to his biggest contract. I believed in Triple H from early on. I just don't know, man, I don't think that was ever a huge issue. If you didn't like Triple H or his relationship with Vince and Stephanie, now you're getting into a whole different area. You're overanalyzing the personal side of this sh** and it's unnecessary."
Ross also talked about the narrative that losing a match is always a negative for a wrestler. He talked about a conversation he used to have with talent back in the day, saying that nobody posts win – loss records, so why do you care so much?
"'Job' has a negative connotation," Ross said. "Like it's a go***mn kiss of death. Somebody should win, somebody should lose. It's all a team effort. I told the talents, USA today has yet to publish the wins and losses of pro wrestling. The only people that are making a big issue out of it seem to be you."
Ross also talked about the infamous Rikishi/Stone Cold feud and how Triple H was revealed as the mastermind behind the entire situation. He mentioned that WWEs pivot from Rikishi to Triple H as the attacker wasn't originally planned.
"I think it might have been a pivot," Ross said. "To eliminate Stone Cold from the premises, it certainly opened the door freely for the heel Triple H to walk through that door and conquer the kingdom. I think it was a pivot somewhere along the way, and I thought it was a good booking idea, a good audible."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Grilling JR with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.