text:
The reason that these years have been the best is that I think that I might have had a somewhat positive impact on your lives and perhaps your understanding of what cancer is and what it can do, to both those of us that it has personally attacked and those of us who know someone who is going through it. -Eric McLean
Eric's Journal
A written and video journal kept by Eric McLean, the man L.I.F.E. was created in honor of.


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2013-14 Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog
Social Work
Rebecca Hoffman, Brenda Mack, Emily Paine, Sue Rickers
- Social Work, B.S. major
- Chemical Dependency minor
- Chemical Dependency Certificate For Licensure cert
- School Social Work Preparation and Licensure cert
Department of Social Work
Phone: (218) 755-2880
Fax: (218) 755-2822
School Social Work Preparation and Licensure cert
Minnesota recognizes the bachelor's degree in social work from a Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) accredited institution (the BSU Social Work program is accredited by CSWE through 2008) as preparation for school social work licensure by the Department of Education (Board of Teaching).
The requirements to practice school social work licensure in Minnesota are:
A baccalaureate degree or a master's degree in social work from a Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) accredited program;
Licensure from the Minnesota Board of Social Work;
Licensure from the Department of Education as a Teacher/Related Service.
Social Work students should contact the Records and Registration Office at BSU during their senior year for a Board of Teaching licensure application. This application should be completed and submitted with the graduation plans to the Records and Registration Office.
The Social Work faculty encourages students to take additional courses in education along with SOWK 3790 Social Work in the School System to be well prepared for school social work practice.
For information about the Board of Teaching application for school social work licensure, contact Ms. Michelle Frenzel, Records and Registration Office, BSU: Phone: 218-755-2020; Email: email@example.com
For information about school social work licensure, contact
Department of Education
1500 Highway 36 West
Roseville, Minnesota 55113-4266
Phone: 651-582-8691; Fax: 651-582-8809
Email: email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Bio1851. Schoenenwerd, Switzerland. In this quiet Swiss hamlet located in Switzerland's north-west, idealist Carl Franz Bally and his brother Fritz began manufacturing hand-made leather shoes.
Unknowingly, they are setting the foundations of a brand that will become one of the first ever international luxury shoe brands. More than 160 years later, the name Bally resonates throughout the world for authentic Swiss excellence.
Bally combines an evolutional mix of age-old techniques and state-of-the-art technology enabling the manufacture of high-quality products in fine leathers. Renowned for being both aesthetically beautiful and functional, Bally leather goods speak of a Swiss heritage that is based on fine materials, attention to detail and quiet elegance.
Site: www.bally.com/Index.aspx
Bally hasn't created any collections... yet


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Hi everyone!
I love tennis - I play for fun and exercise, looking for people to hit with in the Rockville area.
I'm a 2.5 - high 3.0 when I'm in shape, but I'm out of shape after a foot injury last year and spending the summer and fall in a boot.
Last year I played regularly with a guy who was 3.5 - 4.0+ and he said it was a good workout for him... I also played beginners and people at my level. This year I'm just working my way back, have hit against the wall to test out my foot and it's been sore but fine so far.
Views: 173
Replies to This Discussion
Thanks for writing back. What time are you available to play in the evenings... what time on weekend mornings? Are you willing to play in Rockville?
Why is your email wongalex? :) Just curious.
Hi, Im in the North Bethesda area. Im always up for tennis. I dont know my rating (probably around 3.0). let me know whenever you want to hit.
I never got this message... are you still available to play? I'm pretty rusty but would love to get out on the court and just hit around.
I love tennis also. I had a tennis partner that moved to Atlanta so I am searching for another one.
I would love to hit
Hi, thanks for responding - I never got the message! :) Are you still available to play? I'm pretty rusty but would love to get out on the court and just hit around for a while.
I would be willing to hit with you. I used to play a lot, but took a LONG break. I am still about a 3-4 kind of player. Feel free to let me know when you get a chance.
Many thanks! --tom
© 2019 Created by Mark / The Mayor. Powered by


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That race was great for two reasons. You usually don't see that many passes among the front runners during a race and the race was more exciting because of there only being 4 runners. A lot of races now are clogged up with 15 runners when everybody knows only 1 or 2 have a chance to win and it is usually just set up to try and break a record.
Bring Back the Mile wrote:
Debbie's RW story will make you laugh and cry and cry and laugh. And the stirring race video - wow - two kicks; beyond incredible.


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- Research article
- Open Access
Probabilistic model for individual assessment of central hyperexcitability using the nociceptive withdrawal reflex: a biomarker for chronic low back and neck pain
© Biurrun Manresa et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013
- Received: 15 May 2013
- Accepted: 1 October 2013
- Published: 3 October 2013
The nociceptive withdrawal reflex (NWR) has been proven to be a valuable tool in the objective assessment of central hyperexcitability in the nociceptive system at spinal level that is present in some chronic pain disorders, particularly chronic low back and neck pain. However, most of the studies on objective assessment of central hyperexcitability focus on population differences between patients and healthy individuals and do not provide tools for individual assessment. In this study, a prediction model was developed to objectively assess central hyperexcitability in individuals. The method is based on statistical properties of the EMG signals associated with the nociceptive withdrawal reflex. The model also supports individualized assessment of patients, including an estimation of the confidence of the predicted result.
up to 80% classification rates were achieved when differentiating between healthy volunteers and chronic low back and neck pain patients. EMG signals recorded after stimulation of the anterolateral and heel regions and of the sole of the foot presented the best prediction rates.
A prediction model was proposed and successfully tested as a new approach for objective assessment of central hyperexcitability in the nociceptive system, based on statistical properties of EMG signals recorded after eliciting the NWR. Therefore, the present statistical prediction model constitutes a first step towards potential applications in clinical practice.
- Nociceptive withdrawal reflex
- Chronic pain
- Biomarker
- Machine learning
- Pattern recognition
- EMG classification
Chronic pain states are associated with changes in the nociceptive system that may lead to hypersensitivity, i.e., pain after innocuous stimulation or exaggerated pain after low-intensity nociceptive stimulation [1]. Patients with chronic pain syndromes, such as whiplash, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, basal ganglia disorders, migraine and tension-type headache, endometriosis or chronic low back pain may display such pain hypersensitivity after stimulation of healthy tissues, most likely resulting from increased excitability in the central processing of sensory input [2, 3].
The assessment of these conditions may be hampered by the subjective and unreliable nature of self-report based instruments. The establishment of objective, affordable and reliable measures of pain hypersensitivity would advance the understanding of neural mechanisms behind chronic pain, provide a basis for improved clinical management of pain, and establish much needed objective measures of treatment success or failure [4].
In this regard, the nociceptive withdrawal reflex (NWR) is a potential biomarker that has already been proven useful in the assessment of physiological, chemical and pharmacological modulation of nociceptive transmission/processing [5–9]. Moreover, it has been shown that the NWR is a valuable tool in the objective assessment of central hyperexcitability in the spinal nociceptive system that is present in many chronic pain disorders [7, 9]. However, most of the studies on objective assessment of central hyperexcitability focus on population differences between patients and healthy individuals and do not provide tools for individual assessment [7, 8].
The aim of this study was to develop a method to provide objective and individual assessment of central hyperexcitability using a biomarker derived from the NWR. In order to accomplish this, data from chronic low back and neck pain patients and healthy subjects was used to construct and test a prediction model based on statistical properties of the NWR signals. The methods and results of this model are presented and the relevance of such biomarker is discussed in the context of individual assessment of central hyperexcitability in clinical settings.
Data from 280 subjects was collected and divided in two groups. One group contained data from 140 patients (70 males and 70 females) with chronic low back pain or chronic neck pain. Inclusion criteria for chronic pain patients were: daily pain of at least 6 months duration and pain at the time of testing with an intensity of at least 3 using a 10-cm visual analogue scale (VAS), whereby 0 = no pain and 10 = worst pain imaginable. Exclusion criteria for chronic pain patients were: radicular pain (as defined by leg pain associated with a magnetic resonance imaging finding of herniated disc or foraminal stenosis with contact to a nerve root); peripheral or central neurological disorders, diabetes mellitus, insufficient knowledge of the German language, pregnancy (as ruled out by pregnancy test), breast feeding, intake of oral contraceptives or hormones, intake of opioids and antidepressants during the previous 2 weeks, and intake of other analgesics during the 48 hours before testing. The second group contained data from 140 healthy subjects (70 males and 70 females). Exclusion criteria for healthy subjects were the same as for the patient group, plus any pain at the time of testing or history of chronic pain syndrome of any nature. Both groups were evenly distributed with respect to gender and age. The age of the subjects ranged from 20 to 80 years with a mean age of 50 years. Both groups were tested using the same experimental setup for the recording of the NWR. All subjects were recruited at the University Hospital of Bern, Inselspital. The dataset was originally collected in order to establish reference values for the NWR and reflex receptive fields (RRF, the area from which the NWR can be elicited) in healthy subjects, and to determine if there are population differences compared to chronic pain patients (for further details, please refer to [9–12]). Written informed consent was obtained prior to participation and the Declaration of Helsinki was respected. The study was approved by the local ethics committee of the Canton of Bern (KEK 147/04).
Electrical stimulation
During testing, participants were lying in a bed, in a quiet room. A leg rest was placed under the knees to obtain a 30º semiflexion during electrophysiological testing. Ten surface stimulation electrodes (15 x 15 mm, type Neuroline 700, Ambu A/S, Denmark) were non-uniformly mounted on the sole of the foot and a common anode (5 x 9 cm) was placed on the dorsum of the foot, which are subsequently denoted as sites 1,2,…,10. Each stimulus consisted of a constant-current pulse train of 5 individual 1-ms pulses delivered at 200 Hz (Noxitest IES 230 stimulator, Aalborg, Denmark). This stimulus is perceived by the subjects as a single pricking/pinching stimulus, and potentially evokes a single ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion withdrawal reaction (depending on the stimulation site). A computer-controlled stimulator delivered a stimulus to one electrode at a time in a randomized order, with a random inter-stimulus interval ranging from 10 to 15 s. For each electrode site, the lowest stimulus intensity that evoked pain (i.e., the pain threshold) was assessed using a staircase procedure, and a stimulation intensity of 1.5 times the pain threshold was selected for eliciting the NWR [13], in order to ensure that a NWR response was evoked by most of the stimulations. Each electrode site was stimulated 4 times.
Signal recording
Prediction model
Data preparation
Data was divided into three disjoint subsets: training set (TR), validation set (V) and test set (TE) [15–17]. The training set TR contains the data from which the model was derived. The validation set V was used to adjust and find the optimal model. Finally, the test set TE was used to assess the performance of the optimal model. Data was split as 70%-15%-15% of the whole dataset for TR (200 subjects), V (40 subjects) and TE (40 subjects) sets, respectively.
Data preparation
Feature selection
Several features were derived from the EMG recordings of the NWR in order to perform an initial exploratory analysis of their discriminative capacity. Preliminary tests showed promising results using the EMG amplitudes of the NWR, in line with previous investigations [18–21]. Specifically, the exploratory analysis showed some differences between the probability distributions of EMG amplitudes between patients and healthy subjects, so it was hypothesized that those differences could be used for classification purposes.
Prediction scheme
X i was assigned with a label L i = h if X i was a healthy subject and L i = p otherwise. When a query subject was sent to the prediction model to be classified as a patient or a healthy subject, the decision was made based on nearby training subjects with respect to the query subject. This approach is known as the k-nearest neighbour (kNN) [23]. kNN is an efficient algorithm in machine learning, showing comparable classification performance to more complex algorithms [16, 24]. Briefly, when given a query subject, the kNN algorithm searches in the training set for the k subjects that are closest to the query, based on some predefined criterion to measure closeness (e.g. Euclidean distance). The query subject is then assigned to the group which has the majority among k subjects. Regarding the value of k, there is no specific approach for selecting an optimal value, as this strongly depends on the data structure [25]. Using leave-one-out cross-validation [22], a k value of 5 was finally selected.
Where k training subjects with smallest distance were considered, and represents the size of each classification feature (i.e. the 30 bins of each histogram). If the majority of these k training subjects had label h then the signal F qj was labelled as healthy, and vice versa. Therefore, X q had four predicted labels, one for each of the four signals F qj . The final prediction result for the unknown subject X q was decided based on a voting mechanism, where the majority of votes was chosen to classify the subject as belonging to a patient or a healthy group. With four signals, there were cases where voting result was equal, i.e. 50:50 prediction results. From a clinical perspective, it is better to minimize the chance of missing any potential patients. Therefore, in case of equal voting, the unknown subject X q was classified as a patient.
Individual assessment
Model validation
When < 100, more than one combination among training subjects to select a subset were available. For the model validation, 10 combinations were randomly chosen for each case. It should be noted that all combinations should obey the even distribution restrictions. Therefore, for each set of values , 10 training sets were collected, namely . The same validation set V was used in all cases to test the prediction model.
Model evaluation
Where denotes the number of healthy subjects which were correctly classified and denotes the number of patients which were correctly classified. M h and M p are the total number of healthy subjects and patients for validation or test, respectively.
Model validation
Stimulation site evaluation
Average prediction rates at each site with different numbers of training subjects
Best performance
Site 9
Site 10
Site 3
Site 8
Site 1
Site 5
Site 2
Site 7
Site 4
Site 6
The best performance at each site over different number of training subjects is displayed in Table 2. To decide which sites should be discarded, a threshold of 75% for the prediction rate was used. From this, 3 sites were selected whereas the remaining 7 were discarded (see Figure 1.B for an illustration of the locations of selected and eliminated sites). The final results on stimulation site evaluation suggested that signals recorded by stimulation of sites 3, 9 and 10 should be chosen for further evaluation.
Site combination
Average prediction rates with different numbers of training subjects
Best performance
Sites {9,10}
Sites {3,9,10}
Site 9
Sites {3,10}
Site 10
Sites {3,9}
Site 3
Training set selection
Comparison of the best performances between different numbers of training subjects
(N h ,N p )
r h
r p
Model evaluation
Results revealed differences among misclassified subject based on both factors. There were 7 female subjects misclassified . The age factor also showed rather strong influence on the prediction result: meaning that 6 out of 8 misclassified subjects were from the elder age group (age > 50 years).
Comparison with current methods
Critical values to assess widespread central hyperexcitability using the NWR and RRF have recently been published [10]. In particular, estimates of 95th, 90th and 75th percentile values of the distribution of the test responses have been obtained (named p95, p90 and p75, respectively) by computing quantile regressions for the each assessment method (e.g. NWR thresholds, RRF areas). More extreme values (e.g. p95) are more likely to lead to the correct identification of patients, but could leave out a number of subjects that could also potentially be at risk, whereas critical values that correspond to more central percentiles of the distribution (e.g. p75) would include more subjects potentially at risk, but at the cost of misclassifying more healthy subjects as presenting hyperexcitability.
With the present dataset, it was possible to compute individual RRF areas for chronic pain patients and healthy subjects (for details, please refer to [27]), and compare them to these critical values to obtain equivalent classification rates r p , r h and r using the same test set TE. The classification rates for the most restrictive conditions (p95 and p90) were r p = 0%, r h = 100% and r = 50%, whereas for the least restrictive condition (p75) the classification rates were r p = 20%, r h = 95% and r = 57.5%. This means that the distribution of RRF areas of patients and healthy controls largely overlap resulting in criteria that is too restrictive for detecting central hyperexcitability, as evidenced by the very low classification rates for patients obtained with this method.
Experimental and clinical studies in diverse cohorts of patients (e.g., whiplash, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, musculoskeletal disorders, headache, and neuropathic, visceral and post-surgical pain) have shown that these pathologies share common features, which are likely to reflect alterations in central nociceptive processing [28, 29] leading to exaggerated pain sensitivity. It has been previously established that changes in central nociceptive processing can be detected by electrophysiological tests, such as those based on the NWR. In the past, the NWR has been widely used as a biomarker in the assessment of the state of the nociceptive system [5, 6, 30], and it has been proposed as a key tool in the research of central sensitization mechanisms, which are believed to be linked to the development of chronic pain [5, 7, 8, 31, 32].
In this regard, a number of studies showed that several patient groups present lower NWR thresholds compared to control groups of healthy volunteers [7, 8, 33, 34]. Moreover, it was also demonstrated that chronic pain patients (endometriosis, chronic low back and chronic neck pain) present larger RRF compared to pain free subjects [12, 31]. Lower NWR thresholds and enlargement of RRF are objective signs of central hyperexcitability, which could be a consequence of increased number of responsive spinal neurons or an expansion of the receptive fields of spinal neurons as a result of increased synaptic sensitivity [35, 36]. In the light of these facts, there is clear evidence that groups of patients with different chronic pain conditions display on average altered central pain processing. However, the next translational step in this field involves the definition of diagnostic criteria in individual patients, in order to develop treatments that are tailored to detect individual disturbances in central pain processing [29].
In this study, a set of features derived from the NWR of chronic low back and neck pain patients and healthy volunteers was used as input to a prediction model, in order to test the hypothesis that the NWR contains specific information that would allow individual classification regarding the condition of the test subjects. Several features derived from the NWR have been used in the past for detection or quantification purposes: NWR latencies, raw EMG amplitudes, mean and peak EMG values, EMG probability distribution, EMG root-mean-square (RMS), z-scores and RRF area size, among others [6, 27, 32, 37–41]. Additionally, other EMG features have also been used in classifications tasks in other fields (most notably myoelectric control systems), such as number of zeros crossings, slope sign changes, spectral moments, as well as frequency domain and time-scale features [42–44].
A preliminary analysis showed that, among these variables, EMG probability distributions showed the most promising results in terms of discriminating potential for classifying between patients and healthy volunteers. Thus, they were selected for further development of the prediction model. However, the EMG signals showed a rather large range, thus requiring a high number of bins for their histogram representation. In order to overcome this, a new range was defined, restricting the original range around one standard deviation of the mean, In this way, less bins were required for the representation (as a simple method of feature selection), effectively reducing the number of features to be fed to the prediction model.
The evaluation of stimulation sites for eliciting the NWR revealed that EMG signals recorded after stimulation of electrodes located in the anterolateral (site 3) and heel (sites 9 and 10) regions and of the sole of the foot presented the best prediction rates. This is in accordance with previous research showing that the RRF in chronic low back and neck pain patients are expanded compared to healthy volunteers, precisely towards these regions [31, 45]. On the other hand, EMG signals recorded after stimulation of sites located at or around the arch on the sole of the foot resulted in the worst prediction rates. These locations often have thin skin layer which lead to higher pain sensitivity and large reflexes regardless of whether they are patients or healthy subjects [46].
The final model evaluation showed an average prediction rate of 80%. For that particular choice of model, there were no differences in the misclassification rates between healthy subjects and patients. A more detailed analysis of the results focusing on the demographics of the two groups, revealed that women and elder subjects are more likely to be misclassified using the selected model. To date, there are no studies describing age or gender differences in EMG signals recorded from chronic pain patients compared healthy volunteers in relation to the NWR, since most of the research is focused on other biomarkers, most notably the NWR thresholds to single and repeated stimulation (temporal summation), and the RRF areas [9, 26, 32]. In this regard, there is still no agreement on the effects of age and gender on the NWR, although most of the evidence seems to point towards generally lower NWR thresholds in women and elderly subjects, most likely due to reduced endogenous analgesic mechanisms [6, 10, 47, 48].
To date, only population differences have been reported between chronic low back and neck pain patients compared to healthy volunteers, showing an enlargement of the RRF in patients [12]. More recently, however, reference ranges for the NWR and RRF have been established for healthy subjects [10]. These ranges establish critical values for several parameters derived from the NWR (e.g. NWR threshold to single and repeated electrical stimulation, RRF area), above which an individual subject can be considered to present widespread central hyperexcitability. Results using this method with RRF areas as the classification parameters showed lower average classification rates (r = 57.5%) and very low classification rates for patients (r p = 20%) compared to the prediction model. This is most likely due to the large inter-individual variation of the RRF areas and the high overlap that exists between the probability distribution of RRF areas in patients and healthy subjects.
Limitations and future work
This work focused on the assessment of central hyperexcitability in individual chronic low back and neck pain patients using the NWR. Although the quantification of the NWR does not rely on subjective self-reports of pain sensation, it is subjected to supraspinal modulation. External factors involving affective and cognitive processes or other ongoing nociceptive processes (e.g. endogenous pain modulatory mechanisms) can affect the NWR characteristics [6, 24], so these factors have to be carefully controlled for in order to provide reliable outcomes. Further tests in other patient groups should be conducted in order to test if this model could also be used to characterize other pain conditions.
Furthermore, this is the first known attempt at individualized classification between healthy subjects and chronic pain patients based on the assessment of central hypersensitivity provided by the NWR. As it is common in classification tasks, there are several variables that require a careful selection, such as the choice of features to be used as input to the prediction model (in this case, the EMG probability distribution), the parameters of the classifier (for kNN, the number of neighbours), the size of the datasets for classification, validation and test, and the number and location of stimulation sites selected. Some of these variables were chosen based on prior knowledge and/or empirical tests, so whereas the proposed statistical model is able to achieve high prediction rates, future research could focus on the application of more advanced signal processing methods, e.g. alternative methods for feature generation and selection, adaptive histograms, adaptive kernel density estimators and optimal parameter selection for the classifier, among others.
A prediction model was proposed as a new approach for objective and individual assessment of central hyperexcitability in the nociceptive system. The model was developed using statistical properties of EMG signals recorded after eliciting the nociceptive withdrawal reflex. The model supports individualized assessment of patients, including an estimation of the confidence of the predicted result. Evaluation was carried out using an independent test set of healthy subjects and chronic pain patients and a high prediction rate of 80% was achieved. Therefore, the present statistical prediction model constitutes a first step towards potential applications in clinical practice.
This research was supported by The Danish Research Council for Technology and Production Sciences (FTP).
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- Sterling M: Differential development of sensory hypersensitivity and a measure of spinal cord hyperexcitability following whiplash injury. Pain. 2010, 150 (3): 501-506. 10.1016/j.pain.2010.06.003.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Cook AJ, Woolf CJ, Wall PD, McMahon SB: Dynamic receptive field plasticity in rat spinal cord dorsal horn following C-primary afferent input. Nature. 1987, 325 (6100): 151-153. 10.1038/325151a0.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Dubner R, Basbaum AI: Spinal dorsal horn plasticity following tissue or nerve injury. Textbook of Pain. Edited by: Wall PD, Melzack R. 1994, Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 225-241. 3Google Scholar
- Andersen OK, Spaich EG, Madeleine P, Arendt-Nielsen L: Gradual enlargement of human withdrawal reflex receptive fields following repetitive painful stimulation. Brain Res. 2005, 1042 (2): 194-204. 10.1016/j.brainres.2005.02.039.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Arendt-Nielsen L, Sonnenborg FA, Andersen OK: Facilitation of the withdrawal reflex by repeated transcutaneous electrical stimulation: An experimental study on central integration in humans. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 2000, 81 (3): 165-173. 10.1007/s004210050026.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Biurrun Manresa JA, Jensen MB, Andersen OK: Introducing the reflex probability maps in the quantification of nociceptive withdrawal reflex receptive fields in humans. J Electromyogr Kinesiology. 2011, 21 (1): 67-76. 10.1016/j.jelekin.2010.09.003.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- France CR, Rhudy JL, McGlone S: Using normalized EMG to define the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) threshold: Further evaluation of standardized NFR scoring criteria. Pain. 2009, 145 (1–2): 211-218.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Rhudy JL, France CR: Defining the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) threshold in human participants: A comparison of different scoring criteria. Pain. 2007, 128 (3): 244-253. 10.1016/j.pain.2006.09.024.PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
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- Neziri AY, Manresa JB, Jüni P, Arendt-Nielsen L, Andersen OK, Curatolo M: Expansion of nociceptive reflex receptive fields in patients with low back and neck pain. Eur J Pain Suppl. 2011, 5 (1): 109-110.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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The Home of Fashion Film and Live Fashion Broadcasting
Report by Lou Stoppard on 8 January 2013.
Androgynous models curled up together amongst overflowing black bin bags, each trussed up like a homeless male Miss Havisham. Historical menswear classics like the frock coat and Breton striped tee shirt were clashed with anti-fashion items like sports socks and gauche costume jewellery.
Rubbish at Meadham Kirchhoff. Literally. Great despairing tramp-cum-revolutionary vibe http://t.co/CNgXoc4O
The Meadham Kirchhoff show smells amazing - @PenhaligonsLtd Hammam Bouquet couldn't suit the collection better!
Total degenerate elegance at Meadham Kirchhoff. Surrounded by binbags. AMAZING http://t.co/NW7dRAQp
WOW Meadham Kirchhoff set the bar so high with their presentations - completely evocative music and fragrance as well as a great collection
We have Matty and Troy in Meadham Kirchhoff http://t.co/ILRbQ8Dl
#meadhamkirchhoff #lcm #menswear ⛪😍 http://t.co/3S6osveo
Crickey, Meadham Kirchhoff is the hottest ticket in town today .
Meadham Kirchhoff show space littered with black sacks and burning candles. #LCM http://t.co/iZvuSpjj
The Catherine Deneuve hair results at Meadham Kirchhoff #LCM http://t.co/ozJCPVyU
Long hair's going nowhere - here are the #MeadhamKirchhoff boys at #lcm
Incredible Penhaligon's whiff in the #MeadhamKirchhoff presentation #LCM
Just waiting for the Meadham Kirchhoff show to take off, we mean, start... #LCM http://t.co/KOhJKHIo
Matty backstage #MeadhamKirchhoff spied by @Matthew_Josephs http://t.co/8uDmauGW
Aaaahhhh #MeadhamKirchhoff at 4.30pm I'm just interested too see what will come next, last year was pretty awesome #LCM
Hair at Meadham Kirchhoff at #LCM inspired by Catherine Deneuve, with @jamespecis backstage for @FUDGEHAIR. http://t.co/98XczRps
#meadhamkirchhoff today i cant contain myself!!!


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How to Make a Genealogy Newspaper with Paper.li
August 22, 2010 by © Joan Miller - Luxegen Genealogy.
Filed under genealogy, Technology
Read All About it! Drowning in information overload? Alltop featured a great idea on how to make a newspaper on your favourite topic on Paper.li Basically what you do is integrate your twitter feed for any hashtag into a newspaper. These are the steps: 1. Add the Alltop Genealogy feed to your twitter stream using [...]


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EDEN PRAIRIE, MN — First quarter 2007 brought with it 32.6 percent revenue growth for Life Time Fitness, the Eden Prairie, MN-based health club company. First quarter 2007 revenue was $153.1 million compared to $115.4 million in the first quarter last year.
Net income grew 35.5 percent to $14.1 million, or $0.38 per diluted share. This compares to net income of $10.4 million, or $0.28 per diluted share, for the same period last year.
As of the end of the quarter on March 31, the company operated 60 centers in 13 states. The company will open eight centers this year, four of them in the second quarter, says Bahram Akradi, CEO of Life Time.
Year over year, memberships grew 23.7 percent to 474,364. In-center revenue grew 35.8 percent to $43.9 million during the first quarter. These numbers were primarily driven by membership ramp, targeted marketing programs, and new products and services, Akradi says.


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Webmasters just starting to learn search engine optimization often asked a lot of repetitive questions in SEO forums that can often be answered accurately and precisely by Google Webmaster Tools.
More often, webmasters or bloggers who do not have a Google Webmaster Tools account for their own website or blog end up asking a lot of questions or become confused when diagnosing technical website/SEO-related issues. This free tool created by Google can provide more information — more than you can imagine — and can often answer both basic and advanced frequently-asked questions (FAQ) in SEO.
This article covers some advanced and new Google Webmaster Tools features that were not discussed in a previous article about the five most important things you can do with Google Webmaster Tools. If you are ready, let's get started.
Google has not indexed my website. Why?
You need to log in to your Google Webmaster tools account for your website. You need to confirm these following items:
Step 1: Look on the Google Dashboard front page. Did you see the message "Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page"? If yes, then your home page is indexable. Proceed to the next item to check for further troubleshooting. See sample screen shot below:
Step 2: Go to Dashboard -> Diagnostics ->? Crawl Errors and then click the "Web" tab. Under "Show URLs:" click "Restricted by robots.txt." Does it include pages in your website that should be crawled and indexed? If yes, then you may have accidentally blocked those URLs. In addition, you can also see "unreachable," "not followed" or "not found" for details. Some pages are not crawled because all links pointing to that page might have the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Step 3: Did you submit an XML sitemap? If yes, you can go to Site configuration -> Sitemaps and find a column labeled"URLs Submitted." If the number of "Indexed URLs" are substantially less than "URLs Submitted," then you may have problems with your internal navigation menu and site crawlability. You can use the data provided in Step 2 to help you further troubleshoot crawling error-related issues.
Step 4: There are some websites with inconsistent navigation menus; for example, they have 30 links in the home page navigation menu pointing to category pages, but the category pages lack a substantial amount of links pointing to other, deep product pages, which can affect the number of pages indexed on your website. Remember that links are one of the ways used by Googlebot to find new pages on your site.
To diagnose, go to Dashboard -> Your site on the web -> Internal links, and you will see the list of URLs in your website vs the number of internal links found pointing to that page. If you have a fairly consistent navigation menu, you will observe that the number of links are about the same. If you see some pages which do not receive internal links or are not listed there at all (because there is no internal link pointing to it), you can click and examine the actual page, to see if rel="nofollow" has been implemented on the pages. As noted earlier, that can affect crawling. Other things to check include pages with a meta noindex tag.
{mospagebreak title=Does my site appear relevant to Google for my targeted terms or niche?}
Go to Dashboard -> Your site on the web -> Keywords. You will see the list of words which reflect the subject matter of your website. For example, I have a website focused on PHP development, so I expect the main theme to be around PHP programming. Checking the list of keywords, this is what I see:
It says that the word "php" is the most significant term found by Google on my website. So my content is directly relevant to my targeted terms and niche. However, this is not yet conclusive, because you will still need to examine the anchor text of the backlinks pointing to your website.
Go to Dashboard -> Your site on the web -> Links to your site, and then click the "Anchor text" tab. It should show anchor text that is somewhat related to the content of your website. For example, below is a sample result:
It shows that my anchor text is consistent with my website content. So by that check point alone, you can say the website performs pretty well on relevance. But more goes into your ranking on Google than you site's relevance; a lot of factors can come into play. One of these is how trustworthy and authoritative the domain is, the age of the domain, the site's overall link popularity…all of these can play a role, not just relevance based on content and links. This makes ranking in the Google search engine pretty challenging for newly-established websites targeting competitive niches, because it takes months to years of hard work to earn a Google search engine ranking reputation.
For an analysis of "Top search queries," which is also an important assessment of your content, refer to this article.
{mospagebreak title=Why am I not getting clicks from Google?}
To be specific, this will answer the question "why I am not getting clicks from Google despite my good ranking?" All you need to do is compare two columns, Impressions and Clickthrough. If your most popular term in impressions is not the most popular (or number 1) under "Clickthrough," the snippet chosen by Google from your content is not that attractive to search engine users.
This is where relevant and substantial content is important. You need it for Google to associate highly-related snippets with your site, which can improve clickthroughs. You can try searching in Google to see what snippet it shows.
Try to judge if the snippet is good enough. If not, a lot of techniques can be applied, which you can learn from Google.
{mospagebreak title=Other important webmaster-related questions}
Does the website contain a malware hack?
Google is adding a new section in their webmaster tools, called "Labs." In that section you can click and see "Malware details." You will know if Googlebot found malware in your website.
Does the website load fast compared to other websites?
Again, you can look at "Site performance" which is under "Labs." Under performance review, you will know fast in seconds (on average) your pages load. Google will then make some standard comparison with the rest of the websites in terms of percentage.
Ideally you should make your website load as fast as possible, to avoid loss of visitors due to slow website loading. This can affect sales or getting traffic to your website.
Am I cloaking or do I have hidden text in the form of hacked content?
Cloaking based on a user agent can be difficult to check (for example, if your site is hacked, and then hackers configure your website to show the hacked content ONLY to Googlebot while showing the normal content view to visitors, including you). To determine whether your website has this form of hidden text/cloaking problem, you can use "Fetch as Googlebot," a new feature added under Dashboard -> Labs
Take the following steps:
Step 1: Type in the URL you need to analyze, or leave it blank if is the home page you are analyzing.
Step 2: Click the "Fetch" button.
Step 3: It may take some minutes; reload the page again, and if you see the "success" link, click it. What you will see is the HTML source code as fetched exactly by Googlebot user agent (not the usual browser visitors use to view your content).
Copy and paste the source code, starting with <!DOCTYPE html Public… until </html> to a notepad file and save as test.htm.
Open it in a browser. It should look exactly like the one as intended for public viewing. If you see some spam (keyword stuffing or a tremendous amount of spammy links), or something which is not seen by your usual visitors but only search engine bots, then you have been hacked. You can read more about this from Google.


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Code Snippet Markers
More Insights
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- Building and Managing an IT Security Operations Program
- Why We Need an Efficient Navigation System for Networks
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WebcastsMore >>
Assume you want to test the legality of 10 statements. If you put them all in the same program, you face the following difficulty: If the program can be compiled with no errors, then you infer that all 10 statements are syntactically correct. But if the compilation generates errors, it is difficult to ascertain which of the statements are syntactically incorrect. It could even be that all the statements are correct when considered one at a time, but their coexistence in the same program is incorrect.
A better method would be to:
- Prepare the source code of a syntactically correct program that doesn't contain the statements to test.
- Create 10 copies of this program, inserting into every copy one of the statements to test, obtaining in this way 10 different programs.
- Separately compile the 10 programs. The wrong statements are the ones that made the original program no more suitable to compilation.
This approach is effective, but laborious for users. Therefore, it is convenient to automate it.
For such purposes, you can insert the 10 statements in the same program, and submit the source code to a utility that generates the 10 versions of the source code, one for every statement to test. Of course, to let the utility know which statements to test, those statements should be adequately marked. In fact, they generally aren't simple statements but code snippets containing one or more statements.
In addition, such marking must specify whether the pointed-out code snippets are declared as legal or as illegal. Listing One is an example of a static-check program containing four code snippets. Three markers are used (nesting is not allowed):
- @
LEGALmarks the beginning of a code snippet declared as legal.
- @
ILLEGALmarks the beginning of a code snippet declared as illegal.
- @
ENDmarks the end of the current code snippet.
The example program includes statements common to every test. After these statements, there is a block of two statements declared as legal, the declaration of a vector of complex numbers, and a call to the
min function with two integer numbers as parameters. These statements are actually legal.
Listing One
#include <complex> #include <vector> #include <algorithm> #include <iostream> int main() { @LEGAL std::vector<std::complex<double> > v; std::min(2, 3); @END @ILLEGAL std::vector<std::complex<double> > v; sort(v.begin(), v.end()); @END @ILLEGAL std::min(2, 3.); @END @LEGAL int i; std::cout << i; std::vector<int> vi; vi.push_back(3); vi.push_back(-2); vi.push_back(0); sort(vi.begin(), vi.end()); @END }
Afterwards, there is a block of two statements declared as illegal. In fact, only the second statement is illegal, as it tries to sort complex numbers. The
v variable is declared twice. This is not an error, as when the first code snippet is active, the second code snippet is inactive, and vice versa; therefore, the two declarations do not coexist.
Next, there is a code snippet containing a single statement that is declared as illegal. It is really illegal because it tries to compute the lesser between an
int value and a
double value.
Finally, there is a code snippet of seven statements, declared as legal. Actually, this code snippet does not contain syntax errors, but the second line prints the value of a variable that has never received a value. In such a situation, many compilers emit warnings if the needed compiling options are set.
This raises another issue: If a code snippet declared as legal causes the compiler to emit a warning, is the test to be considered successful or failed? And if a code snippet declared as illegal causes the compiler to emit a warning but no errors, is the test to be considered successful or failed?
In a way, in both cases the test is partially successful. Consequently, there is a third possible outcome of a test: In addition to failure and success, there can be a warning.
A Static Testing Utility
I present here a utility that implements static testing automation. The utility is a standard C++ program that retrieves from the command line the paths of the files containing the static testing programs, and accesses some configuration environment variables. (The source code is available here.)
The program reads the files to process, and for each one (and for every marked snippet contained in the file), it generates a new source file whose syntactic correctness is then checked.
To check the syntactic validity of a statement, the most efficient technique would be to use a library providing a compilation service or a static-analysis service. Such libraries do not exist for C++ (or they have little popularity). Alternatively, a compiler can be launched. If a compilation is successful, the process usually sets the return code to zero; if it fails, it sets the return code to another value. So, it is enough to execute the compiler, passing to it the desired options and the source code to check, wait for the completion of the compilation, and check the return code of the process. This is what this utility does.
Some compilers allow an option that lets you perform only a syntax check on the code without generating the executable code, thereby speeding up the compilation. A further speedup can be obtained by disabling code optimization. Yet, some warnings are not output if a simple syntax check is performed or if code optimizations are disabled. Therefore, it is advisable to actually generate the optimized executable program, even if it is never executed. Additionally, there isn't a standard technique to launch a compilerevery compiler has its incompatible options. Therefore, I put the dependencies from the compiler and the platform into environment variables.
Included with the utility's download package are two scriptsone for the Windows command interpreter (CMD.EXE) that tests the program with the Visual C++ and GCC compilers, and the other for UNIX/Linux shells that tests the same program with the GCC compiler. Figure 1 is the execution output of the script for Windows.
==== Visual C++ test ==== Processing test file 'example.cpp' Running "cl /nologo /GX /Za /Ox /W4 /WX _test1.cpp 2>NUL >NUL" OK: Compilation with no errors nor warnings, as expected. Running "cl /nologo /GX /Za /Ox _test2.cpp 2>NUL >NUL" OK: Compilation with errors, as expected. Running "cl /nologo /GX /Za /Ox _test3.cpp 2>NUL >NUL" OK: Compilation with errors, as expected. Running "cl /nologo /GX /Za /Ox /W4 /WX _test4.cpp 2>NUL >NUL" Running "cl /nologo /GX /Za /Ox _test4.cpp 2>NUL >NUL" *** WARNING: Compilation with no errors but some warnings, while a compilation *** with no errors nor warnings was expected. Failures: 0, warnings: 1, successes: 3 One test file processed. .......... Total failures: 0, total warnings: 1, total successes: 3.
Figure 1: Execution output of the script for Windows.
Carlo is a CAD/CAM software developer in Bergamo, Italy. You can contact him at c[email protected]


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Deal of the Day
We feature new half-off certificates each day. There is a limit to the number of certificates an individual customer can purchase within a 30-day period, based on the value of the certificate.
Certificates may be picked up at The News-Gazette or shipped via USPS. Please note which shipping option you choose during checkout and that certificates are available for pickup two business days after purchase.
All sales are final.No exchanges or refunds. Prices are subject to change. Shipping & handling fees may apply. We are not responsible for closed establishments.
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150 - 150 Main ST W, Hamilton - Postal Code
Blocks from 150 to 150, at Main ST W in Hamilton, Ontario (ON) Province have a unique postal code
150 - 150 Main ST W, Hamilton Area Code is 289/905 and Time Zone is Eastern (GMT -05:00).
Remember you have 2 kinds of blocks: even or odd. In this case you are matching Even numbers for this block
150 Main ST W Postal Code
Hamilton Postal Code contains Forward sortation areas + LDU (Local Delivery Units).
The first letter of an FSA code denotes a particular "postal district", and the last three characters denote a Hamilton (ON) local delivery unit (LDU). An LDU denotes a specific Hamilton single address, like 150 to 150 Main ST W street block or range of Main ST W addresses, which can correspond to an entire small town, a significant part of a medium-sized town, a single side of a city block in larger cities, a single large building or a portion of a very large one, a single (large) institution such as a university or a hospital, or a business that receives large volumes of mail on a regular basis in Ontario.
The postal code from addresses 150 to 150, applies to residential houses, business, buildings, and every property with Even numeration in this range. Average elevation for this area is 112 meters.
150 Main ST W, Hamilton, postal code, Even block, is valid to this street addresses:
- Main ST W 150
Street View 150 - Hamilton Main ST W
150 Main ST W Street View
Next one, is the 150 - 150 Main ST W, Hamilton Google Street View. This view is created by the Google Team for Main ST W in Hamilton, Ontario - Ontario, CA.


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Megan Fox has clarified comments she made while comparing Lindsay Lohan to Marilyn Monroe, insisting she never meant to "criticize or degrade" the "Mean Girls" star.
The "Transformers" beauty likened Lohan to the tragic icon as she talked about removing a Monroe tattoo from her arm, admitting she didn't want to be reminded of the late actress' shortcomings.
She told Esquire magazine, "I didn't want to visualize something so negative. … She (Monroe) wasn't powerful at the time. She was sort of like Lindsay. She was an actress who wasn't reliable, who almost wasn't insurable. … She had all the potential in the world, and it was squandered. I'm not interested in following in those footsteps."
The remarks were seen by some as a harsh critique of Lohan, but Fox is adamant she was trying to make a "factual comparison" and did not intend to offend.
In an open letter posted on her Facebook.com page, she writes, "In the newly released article that I did for Esquire, there is a reference that is made to Lindsay Lohan that I would like to clarify before it snowballs into something silly.
"The journalist and I were discussing why I was removing my Marilyn Monroe tattoo, especially since, in his opinion, Marilyn was such a powerful and iconic figure for women. I attempted to draw parallels between Lindsay and Marilyn in order to illustrate my point that while Marilyn may be an icon now, sadly she was not respected and taken seriously while she was still living.
"Both women were gifted actresses, whose natural talent was lost amongst the chaos and incessant media scrutiny surrounding their lifestyles and their difficulties adhering to studio schedules etc.
"I intended for this to be a factual comparison of two women with similar experiences in Hollywood. Unfortunately it turned into me offering up what is really much more of an uneducated opinion. It was most definitely not my intention to criticize or degrade Lindsay. I would never want her to feel bullied, as she does not deserve that. I was not always speaking eloquently during this interview and this miscommunication is my fault."
Lohan worked with Fox on 2004 teen movie "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen," and she also has her own tattoo tributes to Monroe.


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While traveling is a welcome luxury most of the year, it can be a hair-puller during the holidays. The affluent don't care. More of these wealthier folk are saying, ''tis better to travel than to stay put' this year. That's according to the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker survey of 1,511 adults across income classes, which breaks out data among the wealthy sector.
Of Amex's "affluent" subset, defined as having a minimum annual income of $100,000, 45% of the Louis Vuitton crowd will be traveling for the holidays, up from 39% in 2011. They expect to spend $1,044 on travel plans per person, up from $927 last year. And fewer people will refrain from traveling "off peak," that is, non-holiday traveling between November and December. Last year 40% pledged not to travel off-peak. This year the figure dropped to 28%.
While the same percentage of people as last year will make a family or friend's house their holiday destination (58%), more respondents plan to take more exotic trips, like the 25% who will take a beach vacation (up from 17% last year), the 23% who will spend the holidays touring a major city (versus 19% last year), or the energetic 18% who will visit a theme park (as 11% did last year).
Further evidence of the lively holiday spirit is the fact that folks are looking to treat themselves by spending more on their 2012 holiday travel: 28% are taking a longer trip, up from 23% last year; 20% are traveling with more people – bringing extended family and friends along, for example – versus 14% last year; and 14% are flying first or business class, up from 8% in 2011.
This more sybaritic inclination seems to go hand in hand with better planning – and shopping hard for good deals. The majority (69%) said they would offset the cost of travel in some way, like researching travel deals online (37%) and using loyalty or reward points to help pay for travel (25%).


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The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study gathers a wide range of data related to computer and Internet access in U.S. public libraries – including the number of computers, barriers to high-speed Internet access, Internet services and trainings available, and funding for technology.
The Study research team develops and publishes topical briefs related to issues affecting communities' access to technology in our public libraries. These documents are not intended to be comprehensive but rather to share key findings from the largest and longest-running study of Internet connectivity in libraries.
After each annual survey, selected existing issues briefs are updated and posted on the current survey website. The remainder of the issues briefs are archived here to continue to be available as a resource.
Archived Issues Briefs, 2008-2011
Job-Seeking in US Public Libraries page (updated June 2011)
More employers – from grocery stores to casinos to state governments – require people to apply for jobs online. Americans are depending on libraries not only for free access to computers and the Internet, but also for the assistance and training library staff offer every day.
The Job-seeking in U.S. Public Libraries page discusses the range of library resources available to job seekers and challenges to maintaining these services, along with related links to outside sources.
U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services ( .pdf; updated June 2011)
U.S. public libraries are the front lines of connecting people with essential government resources – including unemployment benefits, federal and state emergency assistance, tax filing and more.
"U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services" describes the increased use of online government information and services, the critical role of public libraries in helping provide access and assistance using these resources and the challenges that must be addressed to improve e-government at the local, state and federal level.
A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget Cuts Threaten Library Services at Time of Increased Demand (.pdf; published in January 14, 2010. Revised March 4, 2010)
In the grip of one of the most severe recessions since the Great Depression, more Americans are turning to their libraries not only for free access to books, magazines, CDs and DVDs, but also for a lifeline to technology training and online resources for employment, continuing education and government resources.
Initial findings in this brief suggest a "perfect storm" of growing community demand for library resources converging with budget cuts closing library doors and reducing the staff available to assist library patrons.
Supporting Learners in Public Libraries ( .pdf; updated October 2009. Published March 2009)
The public library is a key agency in supporting the educational and learning needs of every person in the community. Libraries offer vital resources for early literacy development, homework help, homeschool families, continuing education and lifelong avocations.
"Supporting Learners in U.S. Public Libraries" outlines many of the technology resources public libraries provide learners of all ages, challenges libraries face in meeting growing demand, and describes how sustained funding enables public libraries to offer increased assistance and services to their communities.
Internet Connectivity in U.S. Public Libraries (. pdf; updated October 2009. Published April 2008)
Today's public libraries are thriving technology hubs that millions rely on for Internet access. In addition to providing free access to computers and the Internet, the majority of public libraries offer Wi-fi access, digital reference and downloadable media. As online services and programs become more sophisticated, the need for higher Internet access speeds for libraries grows.
"Internet Connectivity in U.S. Public Libraries" describes the varied opportunities and obstacles facing libraries in acquiring and providing high-speed Internet access in rural, suburban and urban libraries.
More issues briefs are available from our research partners at IPAC.
Contact the Office for Research & Statistics for questions about content on this page.


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Ben Lowy: War Photographer via The New Yorker Photo Booth
War photography is easy. A colleague once called it 'sports photography.' You're shooting sports as it happens in front of you and you're just there to take the picture. If you have the bravery, or some might call it foolhardiness, … Continue reading


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Closing argument made for Padilla
In baseball, especially, you generally get what you pay for, which in the case of the Red Sox is a closer with a history of injuries. Andrew Bailey is gone for months, not weeks, and even then there is no assurance that he will be able to stay on the field whenever he comes back.
In his absence, the Sox need to find a closer while keeping the rest of their bullpen generally intact, a task that might be easier than many would like to believe.
So, here's a candidate for you:
Vicente Padilla.
Now 34, Padilla went 1-0 with one save and a 3.29 ERA in seven appearances covering 13 2/3 innings for the Red Sox this spring. He struck out 11 and walked one. Spring numbers mean relatively nothing, of course, and they are offered here solely as some indication that Padilla threw the ball well during camp. In a March 13 appearance against the Yankees in Tampa, Padilla struck out four and did not walk a batter in three hitless innings, at times looking dominant.
Give him the ball in the ninth, Bobby V. See how it goes. If Padilla blows a couple early, you always can switch to a more traditional plan. But trying Padilla in the closer's role makes sense on so many levels that it's worth a roll of the dice.
By now, we all know that closers are frequently made, not born. Many of them are converted starters. Dennis Eckersley, John Wetteland, Joe Nathan, and John Smoltz are just a handful of names on the list of those who made the transition near or after the age of 30. More than anything else, closing takes a combination of stuff and mind-set, a pairing Padilla seems to possess based on how he threw the ball this spring.
Here's another thing a closer needs: control. Late in games, particularly, walks are a killer. For the most part, Padilla has had decent control during his career, at times throwing the ball with good precision.
Now the obvious question: Why Padilla over Mark Melancon or Alfredo Aceves, the former of whom had 20 saves for the Houston Astros last season and the latter of whom was named Wednesday as the closer and has been borderline brilliant since the Red Sox acquired him? Because the Red Sox bullpen sets up better if Bobby Valentine can leave each in his current role. Melancon had a poor spring, which would be meaningless if it were not for the fact that many doubted his ability to close to begin with. (Some of us doubted whether Melancon was truly cut out for the eighth inning, believing he is better suited for the sixth or seventh.) And Aceves has such great versatility that he is invaluable anywhere from the sixth through the eighth, possessing the ability to pitch as many as all three on any given night.
By most accounts, Valentine could go with any combination of Melancon, Aceves, and Padilla in the final three innings. On some level, all three would make sense. No succession of those pitchers is necessarily wrong. But putting Melancon first and Padilla last allows Valentine to maximize the abilities of all three, assuming Padilla is up to the task.
Here's the one major concern with Padilla: lefthanded batters. Historically, Padilla has had trouble with lefties, largely because he is a fastball-breaking ball pitcher with nothing that runs toward the third base side of home plate. Of course, the same could be said of Daniel Bard, whose development and implementation of his changeup may be the key to any success he has as a starter.
In short relief, Bard often got away with two pitches. Maybe Padilla can do the same, particularly given an intense disposition that borders on craziness - Aceves is similar in some ways - which could make him the perfect candidate for the job.
On a grander scale, let's understand how the Red Sox got themselves into this mess, something they have not really experienced since Jonathan Papelbon took over for the deteriorating Keith Foulke in the earliest stages of the 2006 season. Papelbon finished that year on the disabled list, but it was the only time during his six full seasons in Boston that he went on the DL. (Bailey couldn't even get out of his first spring healthy.) Add Papelbon's departure to a list of factors that included a self-imposed payroll restraint thanks to dead money - thank you, John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Bobby Jenks, and Theo Epstein - and the Red Sox were put in the unenviable position of needing both innings (in their rotation) and a new closer.
So, how did the Sox solve it? They took the most cost-efficient way out. They moved Bard into the rotation and acquired Melancon and Bailey (combined salaries: about $4.5 million) by trade, all before shedding the contract of Marco Scutaro to make the numbers work.
Now, the biggest acquisition of general manager Ben Cherington's inaugural offseason already has gone poof, thrusting the Sox into a relative fire drill before having played a game.
Fine. Stuff happens. But if the Sox had just invested, say, in someone like Hiroki Kuroda on a one-year deal - something they have indicated they were always willing to do - they still could have Bard (with Melancon, Aceves, and others) in the bullpen and their rotation intact. Instead, the Sox are now so committed to Bard in a starter's role that they are intent on keeping him there (the right move - at least for now), which leaves the bullpen in a rather unsettled state.
Again, it is important to remember what Cherington's approach was over the winter. Rather than signing one starter for $10 million or so, the Sox went out and secured, among others, Padilla, Aaron Cook, and Carlos Silva on low-risk contracts, hoping one of them would pan out if and when there was a need in the rotation. By all accounts, a rehabilitating Cook is not quite ready. Silva barely made it into spring before he broke down. Bailey now looks like yet another acquisition in a lot of damaged goods, all because the Red Sox opted to buy in bulk.
And we haven't even mentioned Chris Carpenter, the broken pitcher whom the Sox received as compensation for Epstein.
Just wondering: Did the Sox invest in any, um, healthy pitchers?
OK, so that's a jab. But you get the idea. Suddenly, Padilla looks like one of the few healthy pitchers (for now) that Cherington picked up during the offseason, the only real man on the Opening Day roster for whom the Sox did not have a preassigned role. Bard, Felix Doubront, Melancon, and Aceves were all expected to fill specific roles, as was Bailey, who is now out of the mix until roughly the All-Star break.
Rather than shuffling bodies throughout their pitching staff then, the Sox should have just placed Padilla in the closer's role for now and see how it goes. If it failed, they will merely be back in the same situation.
But if it works, they will have seamlessly replaced the injury-prone Bailey without tinkering with their entire staff or bullpen.
Tony Massarotti can be reached at email@example.com and can be read at www.boston.com/massarotti.


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Just a quick test to see if wfw can get netscape to work on here!
Answering myself!!! RL2.JPG
aka nKoDengar
Find me on...
Battle.net - Fusion#1273, PSN, Steam, Xbox
Going back to the basics ol' man?
Irondead - Retired.
Ironsteel - Retired.
Ironlight - Retired.
Originally Posted by Ironman
Going back to the basics ol' man?
In a way, I just wanted to know if it was possilbe to use Windows 3.11 (aka wfw) on the internet. Damn thing took me hours to even get working on modern hardware!
Christ, you must've been bored!
Forum Rules


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Himsel '85 Uses Court Cases to Teach Lessonby Howard Hewitt • September 30, 2010 Share:
Professor of Political Science and private attorney Scott Himsel '85 delivered Thursday's Chapel Talk focusing on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that can teach a lesson to all Wabash men.
His talk was titled, "Should we make it a crime to teach a terrorist not to be a terrorist?" He used two Supreme Court cases to show how questions are not always as easy as they first seem. He brought it home by noting how close-minded some people can be when it comes to watching today's news and politics.
"We have too many people who listen only to Glenn Beck and Fox News," he said. "We have too many people who listen only to Keith Olberman and MSNBC. We have too many people who listen to Sarah Palin. We have too many people who only listen to President Obama."
Each time the collection of Wabash students, faculty, and staff responded with a smattering of applause.
"We have too many people who only want to listen to people with whom they already agree," Himsel said. He then urged Wabash men to approach controversy, tough questions, and problems differently by listening to the other side.
"Are we courageous enough to read before we criticize? Are we courageous enough to believe we might be wrong? You will never have more freedom of speech than you have right now. We need you right now."
Himsel challenged the students by walking through a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding U.S. charitable efforts potentially affecting two alleged terrorist groups in Turkey and Sri Lanka. He cited the Supreme Court ruling, which he didn't initially understand, until he read the entire legal opinion. He compared the recent ruling to a somewhat similar ruling in 1919 in the case of a woman supporting the California Communist Party's charitable efforts.
The point both times was reading the entire case, the varying Justice's opinions, and then trying to decide what was right and what might be wrong.
The moral to the story he wove Thursday was to challenge students to be open-minded. "Even questions that sound easy aren't easy."


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Genevieve S. Brown: Urban Revitalization Pioneer
Brown on growing up with parents who taught her to "rise above her own circumstance" and how she applied that lesson to revitalize the Bronx.
Genevieve S. Brown
Urban Revitalization Pioneer
Brown on growing up with parents who taught her to "rise above her own circumstance" and how she applied that lesson to revitalize the Bronx.
Genevieve S. Brown has been called "one of the architects of the New Bronx." She was a driving force behind the urban revitalization that helped rescue the borough from the violence, arson, and blight that made it internationally notorious in the 70s and 80s. Brown grew up in Anderson, South Carolina, raised by parents who, although of modest means, taught her self-esteem and the imperative of helping others. By the 1960s, Brown was living in Bronx, New York, in a diverse neighborhood of middle-income professionals. In the next decade, however, the area would crumble to drugs and violence and see hundreds of thousands of its residents flee and its housing deteriorate. Determined to not be run out of her own neighborhood, and impatient with landlords and city officials who wouldn't act, Brown took it upon herself to do something. Going door-to-door, she organized a block association to clean up the streets and started the Seabury Day Care Center. As conditions deteriorated further, and arson became rampant, she brought together a coalition of churches and civic groups to form the Mid-Bronx Desperados (MBD). At first, "the Desperados," were simply determined to lobby city agencies for restored services. But within a few years, MBD incorporated as community housing corporation, with Brown as its Executive Director. Working with the city, private developers, and other non-profits, MBD has built or rehabilitated over 2,400 units of low and middle-income housing, and leveraged millions of dollars in commercial reinvestment, job creation and infrastructure renewal in the Bronx. Among its successes is the Charlotte Gardens project, which transformed the very street visited by Presidents Carter and Reagan as a symbol of urban decay, into thriving community of single-family homes. In 1990, Brown, then Genevieve Brooks, was appointed Deputy Bronx Borough President, the first woman to hold the post. In 2000, she moved back to Anderson, SC, where she became just as involved local community groups, serving on the board of the Westside Community Center, Senior Solution, and the AARP South Carolina Executive Counsel. She has also served on the boards of the Local initiatives Support Corporation, the Bronx Boys and Girls Club, the Committee for New York, The Bronx Council on the Arts, Model City Planning Board, Neighborhood in Action Committee, South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve, Advisory Councils of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac), and Cornel Cooperative Extension System. Brooks has received numerous community service awards which include: Bronx Community College, the National Council of Negro Women, the New York Metropolitan Chapter of the American Planning Association the Network Organization of Bronx Women and the Brooks Russell Astor Award from the New York Public Library and David Rockefeller.


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Useful Material
The REACCESS summary report is available here.
Please download the Agenda from here.
The photos are available here.
REACCESS Risk of Energy Availability: Common Corridors for Europe Supply Security
The REACCESS project aims to build tools suitable for EU27+ energy import scenario analyses, able to take into account at the same time the technical, economic and environ-mental aspects of the main energy corridors, for all energy commodities and infrastructures.
This web site is the information portal for the project and acts as a constant node for the dissemination of information about REACCESS activities and results. In addition, it will act as a communication forum among all interested parties.
Please do not hesitate to register in order to have access to the portal's forum and to project results. We will not resell, distribute, or share your personal data with third parties. We confirm that your personal data will be handled in fully confidentiality and you will NOT receive newsletters and OR other information, spam etc. YOU will decide if any informative material will be sent to you or NOT.
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- 1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 6 large eggs, separated
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup sliced blanched almonds, ground fine in an electric coffee or spice grinder
- For the orange filling
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
- 3/4 cup fresh orange juice
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 1/2 pints strawberries, reserving 11 whole berries for garnish and the remaining ones chopped fine
- 1 cup well-chilled heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
- Line the bottoms of 3 buttered 9- by 2-inch cake pans with rounds of wax paper, butter the paper, and dust the pans with flour, knocking out the excess. Into a bowl sift together the flour, the baking powder, and the salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer cream together the butter and 3/4 cup of the sugar until mixture is light and fluffy, add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, and beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and the milk in batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating well after each addition, and divide the batter among the prepared pans, spreading and smoothing it.
- In the cleaned bowl with cleaned beaters beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they hold soft peaks, add the remaining 1 cup sugar, a little at a time, and beat the meringue until it just holds stiff peaks. Fold in the almonds gently but thoroughly. (Do not beat in the almonds.) Spread the meringue over the batter, smoothing it, and bake the layers in the middle of a preheated 350°F. oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Let the layers cool in the pans on a rack. Run a knife around the edges, invert the layers onto rack, and discard the wax paper. The cake layers may be made 1 day in advance and kept wrapped in plastic wrap.
- Make the orange filling:
- In a heavy saucepan whisk together the sugar, the cornstarch, and a pinch of salt. In a bowl whisk together the zests, the juices, and the yolks and whisk the yolk mixture into the sugar mixture until the mixture is combined well. Bring the mixture to a boil, whisking, boil it gently, whisking, for 2 minutes, and let it cool, whisking occasionally.
- Arrange one of the layers, meringue side up, on a serving plate, spread half the orange filling on it, and spread half the chopped strawberries on the filling. Arrange another layer, meringue side up, on the strawberries, spread the remaining filling on it, and spread the remaining chopped strawberries on the filling. Arrange the remaining layer, meringue side up, on the strawberries. The cake may be assembled up to this point 6 hours in advance and kept covered with plastic wrap and chilled.
- In a bowl with an electric mixer beat the cream until it holds soft peaks, beat in the confectioners' sugar, and beat the cream until it holds stiff peaks. Transfer the cream to a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and pipe a circle of it decoratively around the top edge of the cake. Pipe another circle of cream 1 inch inside the first circle, pipe a rosette in the center, and pipe another circle of cream around the base of the cake. Quarter lengthwise 10 of the reserved strawberries, arrange them decoratively inside the concentric circles, and arrange the remaining strawberry on the rosette.
Related Video
Nutritional Info
- Calories291
- Carbohydrates35 g(12%)
- Fat15 g(24%)
- Protein4 g(9%)
- Saturated Fat8 g(40%)
- Sodium88 mg(4%)
- Polyunsaturated Fat1 g
- Fiber1 g(2%)
- Monounsaturated Fat5 g
- Cholesterol109 mg(36%)


text: Chin up, little teethers, here is a fashionable way to keep your collars dry! Made from 100% soft cotton with a waterproof inner layer and now in color-coordinated packs of two, this bib is a must-have baby accessory. The adjustable snap closure allows these bibs to grow with Baby, sizing up to 9 months. Machine washable. Bibs measure approximately 9 inches across and 5.25 inches from the neck down. BPA, PVC, vinyl, phthalate and lead free. Designed in Arizona, responsibly made in China.Product Features


text: Hello everyone! I have question about this tutorial (cluster creation): http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-a-web-email-and-mysql-database-cluster-on-debian-6.0-with-ispconfig-3 If master server goes down - the slave is get his functions after failture? Or in this case we need to reconfigure the router to route ports to another IP? If it is, can we use a heartbeat package with ISPConfig3? Big thnks.


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Emerging Markets Profits, Banking Point to More Slowdown
Emerging markets are still the future, just maybe not so much the immediate future.
Emerging markets have been on a bit of a roll lately. The commonly traded iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEARCA:EEM) has gained 11% since July 1, when the first wave of global Fed taper panic began to subside. That outstrips a 9% rise in the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) over that period. The wise men and women of the financial chatterati are suggesting it might be time to buy a little EM again.
But news flow over the past week suggests a dead-cat bounce rather than a sustained rally for developing-world economies and stocks. Two marquee global corporations that depend on emerging markets for growth, Unilever (NYSE:UL) and Heineken (OTCMKTS:HEINY), reported underwhelming results thanks to slowing demand for their soap powder, mayonnaise, and beer. Unilever's sales growth in emerging markets contracted to 5.9% in the third quarter from 10.3% in Q2, and chief executive Paul Polman sees no reacceleration any time soon. "The reality is that the global economy is not in as good shape as some would like to make out," he pronounced on the post-earnings conference call.
Heineken CEO Jean-Francois van Boxmeer issued an official warning that full-year 2013 profits would fall short thanks to disappointing sales in markets from Russia to Mexico. "Heinekin now expects full year net profit (BEIA) to decrease in the low single-digits, on an organic basis," a company statement read. Whatever that means exactly, investors did not like it. Shares dropped by 5% following the Oct. 22 announcement, and have languished there.
Even China has started complaining about the slowdown in emerging markets. The No. 2 economy's exports actually shrank slightly (by 0.3%) in September from August, and a commerce ministry spokesman was quick to blame customers elsewhere in the developing world. "Many risks, such as capital outflows, currency depreciation, and rising inflation pressures exacerbate the economic slowdown in emerging countries," the Beijing functionary said.
But the most forward-looking and comprehensive recent bear indicator for emerging markets is a quarterly bankers' poll published by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington. The Q3 edition of the Emerging Markets Bank Lending Conditions Survey shows developing world lenders in a distinctly crabby mood, tightening lending standards and finding liquidity tougher to come by themselves.
Like many confidence surveys, the IIF's works on a 100-point scale, with values under 50 indicating a worsening outlook. The overall score compiled from 134 different emerging markets banks was 48.3 this time, down from 49.5 in the second quarter. In other words, finance on the ground has been getting tighter for six months now, after a bit of an uptick in the previous two quarters.
By sub-sector, emerging markets bankers are hitting the brakes hardest on consumer lending. Fully 25% of all respondents said they were tightening standards for retail loans, against 15% who are loosening. That will inevitably cramp the historic expansion of the developing world middle class, at least for the moment.
Geographically the hardest-hit region is all-important Asia, whose IIF index number has sunk below 45. "Bank lending conditions in emerging Asia deteriorated further, led by a sharp tightening in funding conditions, particularly local funding," the report concludes. Bankers in Latin America, the other key region for emerging market investors, are also feeling few animal spirits, though their index is closer to the global average of 48.
Financiers are feeling more cheerful in the Middle East and Africa, but these regions offer relatively few instruments for international punters. The most telling contrast in the IIF report is between emerging markets and the US, where credit standards for both corporate and consumer loans have been loosening strongly and continuously since 2010. Both these indices are cruising comfortably above 55. American bankers have been considerably more cautious with mortgage lending, though, moving into a moderate loosening mode only over the past year.
Capitalism is called capitalism because its heart is the deployment of capital. This vital function is largely performed by banks, particularly in developing countries where securities markets are shallower. If the banks are retrenching, the heart will beat more weakly and a new growth spurt will remain on hold.
It is important to remember that all these signs of gloom are relative. Quarterly sales growth of 5.9%, as Unilever achieved in its emerging markets business, is hardly a mark of crisis. China, for all the talk of its export story being over, recorded a current account surplus of $214 billion last year. Its sales to the rest of the world will certainly grow again after an unaccustomed month of stagnation. Emerging markets are still the future, just maybe not so much the immediate future.
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