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パートナーに連絡する スロベニア
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Smart Code Razvoj Aplikacij D.O.O
Smart Code is a mobile and Odoo development team that joins highly skilled IT professionals and developers with the newest technology and hands-on experience to create innovative, practical and exciting apps and solutions. We utilize everything these areas have to offer in order to develop solutions that are built on the specific needs of our clients.3 reference(s)
Hermes d.o.o.
Hermes is an experienced and trusted software company dedicated to delivering innovative Business Solutions to all sized businesses across the region. We take the time to understand your business and your needs in order to provide you the most effective solutions. We'll free up your time and streamline your processes, so that you can reduce your costs, focus on your business and achieve your goals faster.1 reference(s)
Get the best out of Odoo with Hermes. ...
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Ascaldera d.o.o.
Ascaldera stands out as a most efficient and creative team of experts who take digital business seriously, and more importantly, it is a company with a big-picture, long-horizon perspective. If you share that vision, get in touch with Ascaldera at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Editor d.o.o.
Editor is an interdisciplinary team of highly skilled professionals with more than 8 years experience in developing tailor-made Odoo solutions and more than 15 years in the area of web-based business solutions mainly on the Slovenian market, but we also work with many multinational corporations.


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Now that you are connected to High Bridge Hills Golf Club, make your next tee time with us!
|You may also call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 908.638.5055.

subset: commoncrawl


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Aquarium plants are more than just "fuzzy green stuff."
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Democratic Presidential Candidate Senator Chris Dodd made internet history today by streaming LIVE through Ustream.tv where he took questions from a variety of internet blogs around the web. It was all LIVE.
The topics ranged from national issues to the Iraq war. Please see the video below of this Ustream.tv LIVE Presidentialcast:
You can learn more about Chris Dodd by visiting his website at www.chrisdodd.com.
Also check out this article called "Dodd Looking To Techies For Edge"
Ustream.tv allows anyone with a video camera or webcam to stream live, interactive video to a global audience. Ustream.tv is building a flexible and easy-to-use platform that allows its users' creativity to flourish.
Already Ustream.tv has seen broad acceptance bloggers/podcasters/vloggers, bands, citizen journalists, and lifecasters. Founded by two West Point graduates, Ustream.tv continues to explode as the fastest growing company of Web 2.0.


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Greek Dressing
Cranberry Sauce
Southern-Style Cornbread Dressing
Smoked Turkey Brine
Apple Crisp
Cooking Methods
Food Storage Times
Pantry Basics
What's In Season?
Apicius refers to the oldest Roman collection of recipes to survive from antiquity.
The site started as a way to catalog and re-digitize my dad's recipes. Over the years, it has grown to include recipes from family and friends, recipes from the interwebs and recipes that I have either come up with or altered.
There are 3


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Your Item Color and Text Color are the Same. Please Select Another Color.
Personalized I Love You Picture Frame - Engraved Love Picture Frame Show how much you love your significant other in four different languages on our Personalized I Love You Photo Frame. Say I love you in English, Spanish, French and Italian. This personalized picture frame makes a great gift for Weddings, Sweetest Day, Valentine's Day or any special occasion.Our Engraved Love Picture Frame can be personalized with any couples names. Personalized Frame measures 12 3/4"x 10 3/4" and holds a 10" x 8" photo. Easel back allows for desk display or can be wall hung. Includes FREE Personalization! Our Engraved Picture Frames make great Personalized Valentine's Day Gift for Her or Him. Express your feelings of love with Personalized Gifts from GiftsForYouNow.com.
Personalized Romantic Gifts make the finest romantic gifts for her on Valentine's Day. Looking for romantic gifts or Personalized Valentine's Day Gifts for your wife, girlfriend or significant other then look no further. We have a large collection of unique Valentine's Day gifts for your special loved one!


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Interesting new research suggests that practicing mindfulness may be helpful in smoking cessation efforts. A recent study indicates that mindfulness alone (absent explicit instructions to stop or information about the dangers of smoking) has the potential to significantly reduce neurological cravings after being exposed to visual smoking cues. Although this research is highly preliminary, this information could prove to be helpful for those with a history of failed attempts at changing behaviors using conventional methods.
This particular study enrolled 47 treatment-seeking smokers into the study who had little or no experience with meditation. Participants were asked to abstain from smoking 12 hours before their study session, at which time they were given a brief training in mindful attention techniques. They were then placed in an fMRI scanner and shown photos of smoking and neutral images. While in the scanner, smokers were asked to either take a passive or mindful attentive stance to the images, followed by a rating assessing the image's impact on subjective cravings.
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Findings suggest that mindfulness significantly reduced neural activity in regions of the brain related to cravings as well as self-reported cravings of the participants. The researchers conclude these findings suggest that the simple act of awareness may naturally curb the desire to smoke for those trying to quit.
Contrast this with prevailing approaches to smoking cessation typically favored by behavioral medicine, which tend to emphasize external self-regulation of behavior and consciously executed attempts to control, reduce, or suppress cravings. Yet willpower-based approaches to health behavior change in this and other areas, such as dieting, have shown limited effectiveness.
Such findings generate hypotheses regarding the potential of yoga and mindfulness to catalyze non-conscious regulation of other health behaviors. If mindfulness/yoga were shown effective, it could considerably shift current treatment techniques. For instance, consider going to the doctor and receiving a prescription for yoga or mindfulness training, covered by insurance, rather than being given a stack of educational materials or assigned a restrictive diet.
Have you found that using medication techniques, you have begun to eat healthier, exercise more, or quit smoking?
Disclosure: YogaBasics.com participates in several affiliate programs. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. When you click on external links, we may receive a small commission, which helps us keep the lights on.


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The study of history trains students to think critically and analytically. In an increasingly volatile job market, this training has proven to be our graduates' most valuable asset. They are men and women who can bring fresh, critical, and creative insights to their work, who can persuade others by good argument, and who can express themselves clearly and intelligently. The study of history develops these fundamental skills through critical readings of the past, close examinations of historical evidence, and studies in the relations among ideas, social life, culture, and politics.
Students learn that good historians are good storytellers, but even more so, they are skilled in the forensic arts—argument and public debate. The word "history" comes from the Greek history (istwr), a word the Ancient Greeks used to refer to a man who settled civil disputes in the days before courts, lawyers, and judges. Historians are rightly thought of as detectives. To discover the truth of things, they listen to and read various stories of the past, weighing the motives of the parties who write or tell these stories. And, like good detectives, they get behind these accounts in order to bring out a new or forgotten truth. accordingly, the study of history has customarily provided a solid preparation for law, journalism, government service, electoral politics, and similar professions.
Our History Program also prepares History majors for graduate study in history and for teaching history in secondary schools. (See the Education Degree Program section of this catalog for information on secondary certification.)


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Your NOOK Color eReader's Custom USB Cable
Your NOOK Color eReader comes with a custom USB cable. Why not just the standard USB cables you can purchase with other electronic devices? First of all, there is a wide variety of possible connectors that can be installed at each end of a USB cable. The large rectangular connector at one end of most cables is called a USB Standard Type A plug. The necessary cable for a NOOK Color has that plug at one end and a Micro USB B connector at the other end, along with non-standard heavier-duty wiring to support the higher power being delivered.
The NOOK Color cable adds a charging indicator light at its small Micro end and is capable carrying the relatively high amperage from the AC adapter but is not intended to be used to recharge the device from the lesser power that comes from a USB port on a personal computer.
In addition, the USB cable provided for the charger is not standard, but it may be possible to find a replacement AC charger and cable from a third party with identical specifications. For the record, the Barnes & Noble BNRP5-1900 adapter outputs 5.0 volts at 1.9 amps, an above-average amount of electrical energy for a small personal digital device.
For more information about the NOOK eReader and its features, explore NOOK eReaders For Dummies, Portable Edition.


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Abby Wambach, Team USA Soccer Player
Abby Wambach talks about her childhood growing up in Rochester, N.Y., becoming a national champion during her freshman year of college, and her career-ending highlight winning the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup.
Martina Navratilova, Champion Tennis Player
Julie Chu, Olympic Hockey Player
Lisa Leslie, Champion Basketball Player
ABBY WAMBACH: If you truly want to be treated like a man, if you truly want equal opportunity, you need to be handled being treated like a man. And if you're not, we deserve to get crushed in the media. I'm like, yeah, bring it on, baby.
I grew up in Rochester, New York. I'm the youngest of seven children. My brothers and sisters treated me like I was just like one of the team. I started playing soccer at 5, and I was a competitive kid and not scared. My first three soccer games I ended up scoring 27 goals. I needed to be challenged. So my parents stuck me on the boys team.
My high school years were amazing because we answered to our coach, yes, ma'am. My mom gave her the go ahead, like, hey, yell at Abby. Give her a hard time. Don't let her develop this overconfident sense of herself. This is high school. We would have done anything to win.
Mia knew that she could tell me anything, and I would listen to her. She was the best in the world. And to be confident with her on the field, we became kind of a dynamic duo.
- Drives it, far side, headed by Wambach, and Wambach has scored. USA leads.
ABBY WAMBACH: It was just such an amazing feeling to be able to win knowing that my idols, Mia, Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy, these women were all retiring. And so, to be able to send them off with a gold medal around their neck, I don't know if I've ever felt more pride in my life.
As a player and as a competitor, you define yourself by not just wins and losses, but with championships. And this was my first attempt to try to win a championship without Mia, without the people that put women's soccer on the map. And we lost embarrassingly to Brazil.
I actually wanted to disappear. Some of my darkest days were after that tournament. It definitely fired me up and impassioned me to ensure that never ever happened again. This is my last shot at winning a World Cup ever. If I want to be happy, if I want to not be pissed off for the next 40 years of my life, we'd better win this thing. It took a lot of checking my own ego at the door to take a step back and let some of these kids take a step forward so that they can grow their confidence and maybe change the course of the game one way or another.
I am a control freak. I'm fine with saying that. I was freaking out like the whole game. When that final whistle blew, I remember kneeling and just having this huge, huge sigh of relief because I knew it was over, that this was the end of my career. It was really nothing quite like putting that crest on and representing your country. I have to be able to feel confident and comfortable with walking away from that and hoping that, not only did I leave the game better than I found it, but the value systems and the ethos that I hope to have instilled will continue that culture. This is what it all means, those years that the blood, sweat, and tears was worth it.
- The idea of running long distance was always considered very questionable for women, because an arduous activity would mean that you're gonna get big legs, and grow a mustache, and hair on your chest, and your uterus was gonna fall out. So, I filled out the entry form. I signed my name with my initials, I signed KV Switzer. When I signed it that way, obviously when the form went in, they couldn't tell it from a guy's. [Announcer] The World's most famous foot race even attracts a leggy lady, Katie Switzer of Syracuse.
- So, there we were with my coach Arnie Briggs and my boyfriend and All-American football player, Tom Miller. When other runners would come by they would say, oh it's a girl, and they were so excited. And Arnie was saying, "yup, I trained her." And all of a sudden, the flatbed truck is in front us and I heard the photographer saying slow down, slow down, slow down, and they were taking pictures of us. On this truck was the race directors. One of them was a feisty character by the name of Jock Semple. He just stopped the bus, jumped off, and ran after me. Suddenly, I turned and he just grabbed me and screamed at me, "get the hell out of my race "and give me those numbers." And then he started clawing at me, starting to try and rip my numbers off, and I was so surprised. And he had the fiercest face of any guy I'd ever seen and out of control, really. I was terrified. And all of a sudden my boyfriend, Big Tom, gave Jock the most incredible cross-body block and sent Jock flying. And all of this happened in front of the press truck. The journalists got very aggressive, what are you trying to prove? Are you a suffragette? Are you a crusader? Whatever that is, and I said what? I'm just trying to run. They finally left, then it got very quiet, snow's coming down. Nobody's saying anything, and I turned to Arnie and I said Arnie, I've gotten you into a lot of mess here, I guess. But I said, I don't know where you stand in this, but I said, I'm gonna finish this race on my hands and my knees if I have to, because nobody believes that I can do this. And suddenly I realized, if I don't finish this race, then everybody's gonna believe women can't do it and that they don't deserve to be here and that they're incapable. I've got to finish this race. I finished in four hours, 20 minutes. That race changed my life. It wasn't until about midnight when we were driving back from Boston to Syracuse University and we stopped on the throughway to get an ice cream and some coffee did we see the newspapers and they're covered front and back of all the different additions with pictures. I realized that now this was very, very important, and this was going to change my life, and it was probably going to change women's sports.
MARIA PEPE: When I was a young girl and people would say, what do you want to be when you grow up? I used to answer I want to be a Yankee.
I think the day that I was given the permission to have the tryouts for the Hoboken Young Democrats, that was probably the most exciting moment, because I knew I was going to make the team. And I was just so looking forward to having a uniform. I was starting pitcher.
Not everyone realized that I was a girl. My hair was short. So you just saw a couple of small curls hanging out of my baseball cap. It took a little while into that first game before some of the other coaches were saying, hey, wait a minute, Jimmy's got a girl on the team. The rule book says that girls aren't allowed to play.
My coach Jimmy Farina tried to argue with the coaches and say look, Maria's just as good as the boys. Little League issued a letter to the town, if you don't remove Maria, we're going to take the charter away from Hoboken.
My coach said to me, Maria you can come to the games and keep score. Well I have to be honest, I did that for one game. And I could not just sit there and take score, because I wanted to be out there.
The National Organization for Women had read about the story and was fuming at the fact that they let me off the team. And so that's when they filed the suit against Little League with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights claiming that I was being discriminated against because I was a girl.
Thank god for Judge Silvia Pressler because she had the wisdom. What she read in her decision was that the institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie. And there's not any reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls.
It was the 30th anniversary of the ruling and Little League headquarters asked if I would come to throw the first pitch at the opening day of the Little League World Series. I remember them asking would you mind going down, Dr. Creighton Hale would like to meet you. Well, you know, I took a deep breath. He approached me. And he shook my hand. And he looked at me, and he said, you know, I just want you to know my granddaughter plays.
That's my gift is that I get to see so many girls actually enjoying it and participating and not being discriminated for it, but actually being encouraged to grow in the sport.
MISTY COPELAND: We all look different. And I think that's something that is important with kind of the growth of where ballet is going. I'm a woman now, and I don't look like a little girl, and I don't think that we should look like little girls.
Ballet was never on my radar. I never thought I would be a dancer. I enjoyed moving, but that's not something I ever thought of as a career. Ballet found me when I was about 13 years old, and I was approached by a teacher who told me that I had something. I looked like a performer. I looked like a dancer. I'd never seen a ballet in my life, so it was all very foreign to me and something I couldn't even fathom doing. So I took my first ballet class at a Boys and Girls Club on a basketball court, and everything just happened so rapidly after that.
My teacher said to me that you have the potential to be in a professional company, but if this is what you want to do, your life has to be ballet for the next four years because most ballet dancers go out and audition for companies by the time they're 16 or 17. At the time, I don't think I was aware of exactly what I was getting myself into, but I felt so happy and at ease when I was doing it. So it was like an immediate yes.
And four years later, I was in New York dancing for American Ballet Theater. And I knew that ABT was the company I was going to dance with from the beginning when I first started dancing. I just had a connection with them, and their history, and the fact that they're so versatile in terms of the types of dancers they have and body types. By the time I was 16, I was offered a contract already with the studio company, which is ABT's junior company, but my mom just thought I was too young. I'd only been training for three years at that point.
My mother pretty much raised all of us kids by herself, and she really wanted me to get my high school diploma. It was hard to hear at the time that I had to turn down the contract, but the following year, I was offered a contract again, and I was also offered an apprenticeship with the company. I was the only black woman in the company for 11 years, and I am preparing for my first principal role with the creation of the ballet "The Firebird."
Being the first black woman to be put in this role in a major company, it's the start of it all, and it's definitely one of the big highlights. Prince reached out to me and he asked me to be in a music video with him. He definitely helped me, I think, to look at what I do in a different way. Being able to perform with him live on stage at Madison Square Garden, I think, is a huge accomplishment being a classical ballet dancer. That's not really our set.
Being one of the few black women in ballet world, just something that I do think about maybe not every day. But when I speak to a young girl who has tears in her eyes and says, you know, thank you for doing what you're doing, that's when I'm most proud.


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Milled Lead Code 5 - 450mm x 3m (18 x 118 inches) 34.5kg
Product Description
Code 5 roofing lead is suitable for all pitched roof jobs and is seen as the most versatile option when it comes to lead flashing. It is also suitable for historic buildings, due to it's thickness and increased resistance to thermal movement.
- BBA certified
- Manufactured to BS EN 12588:2006
- Durable, with good longevity
- 100% recylable
- Malleable and easy to shape
- Helps to weatherproof roofs
- High resistance to corrosion
- Useful for sound reduction
- Will out-perform other building materials
- Chimney flashing
- Apron and cover flashing
- High and ridge flashing
- Weatherings to parapets and cornices
- Parapet, box and tapered gutters
- Bay roofs
- Vertical cladding
- Dormers
- NOT suitable for soakers
Product Specification
|Central Milled
|BS EN 12588:2006 compliant
|Code 5
Delivery, Cancellation & Returns
For our delivery, cancellation and returns policy.
Delivery charges are included in the final shopping basket total and will depend on the basket's contents. Additional shipping charges may apply to orders from the Scottish Highlands and UK islands.
These extras delivery charges are based on certain costs from the manufacturer, distributor or our own couriers. Not all products will be applicable.
If additional shipping fees apply, a member of our team will contact you before processing your order to let you know.
We will do our very best to make sure your delivery arrives by the date required, however manufacturer availability and delivery schedules cannot always guarantee this.
Should your estimated delivery date differ from that displayed on our website, one of our team will inform you by email or telephone
If we cannot make a delivery due to access not being possible, we reserve the right to make a failed delivery charge.


text: After a nasty summer of sliding sales and eroding market share, domestic automakers are planning to lobby the US Congress for $50 billion in low-interest government loans. The companies claim the money would allow them to modernize plants and develop new fuel-efficient vehicles; ordinarily, automakers would have tapped existing lines of credit for the required cash, but rising interest rates combined with debt ratings reduced to junk status have rendered their options severely limited. But, the important thing to note here is that this is NOT a bailout. No sir. Jalopnik Snap Judgment: While we'd rather see the Detroit Three stay afloat on their own, government-backed low-interest loans, properly repaid in a timely fashion, seem to be about the next best option. Particularly when said loans are viewed in the light of subsidies and other assistance quietly offered to foreign automakers by their home governments. And, technically, these government loans would also be available to non-US manufacturers, though most are expected to decline the assistance. We do think that the automakers are going to have to be more honest about what they're asking for: Said Ford's Mark Fields, "This is not about benefiting Wall Street. This is benefiting Main Street, the working men and women. The auto industry is part of the backbone of the U.S. economy." We take issue with two of Fields' inferences: First, that Wall Street isn't part of the backbone of the US economy — it is, like it or not. And second, that a series of government-funded loans benefiting "Main Street" somehow isn't a bailout. It doesn't matter who reaps the benefits; if the gub'ment pumps a bunch of money into an industry to keep it afloat despite market conditions, it's a bailout. [Yahoo; Photo: Markfive]


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NCAA Tournament 2013 West Region — Day 4
With the No. 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 seeds having already lost, the West Region is wide open. Arizona and Wichita State have already advanced to the round of 16.
Tenth-seeded Iowa State lost in the waning seconds to Ohio State, the highest seed still alive in the West, early on Sunday in Dayton, Ohio. Thirteenth-seeded La Salle continued its run against 12th-seeded Ole Miss in Kansas City later in the day.
(13) La Salle 76, (12) Ole Miss 74
Tyrone Garland banked in a floater with 2.5 seconds remaining, and La Salle beat Mississippi, 76-74, in a thrilling third round game of the 2013 NCAA tournament's West Region on Sunday in Kansas City, Mo. The 13th-seeded Explorers had to win two games just to face the 12th-seeded Rebels, who upset Wisconsin on Friday. La Salle's third victory of the NCAAs put them in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1955. They'll face ninth-seeded Wichita State on Thursday in Los Angeles.
Garland finished with 17 points, including the game-winning basket he dubbed the "Southwest Philly Floater" in a post-game interview. Ramon Galloway led the Explorers with 24 points. Marshall Henderson led Mississippi with 21 points. The Rebels shot just 21 percent from 3-point range and were a dreadful 10-for-21 from the free throw line.
(2) Ohio State 78, (10) Iowa State 75
Aaron Craft made a 3-point shot with 0.5 seconds remaining to lead second-seeded Ohio State over Iowa State, 78-75, in a third round game of the 2013 NCAA tournament's West Region on Sunday in Dayton, Ohio. Craft's shot gave the Buckeyes the win and spoiled the upset bid of the 10th-seeded Cyclones, who stayed close all game. Deshaun Thomas scored 22 points and grabbed five rebounds to lead Ohio State, while Craft finished with 18 points and six assists. The Buckeyes advanced to play Arizona in the round of 16 in Los Angeles on Thursday. Korie Lucious led Iowa State with 19 points, while teammate Melvin Ejim had 10 points and 11 rebounds.
UPDATED SCORES: East Region | Midwest Region | South Region | West Region


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A world of Shadows by Aniruddha Guha Sarkar
Street Photo on UPSP
Urban Picnic Street Photography | Street Photographer Community
#upsp #streetphotography #streetphoto #streetphotographer
abstract • Paris • shadows • street
Aniruddha Guha Sarkar has published 46 street photos in UPSP.
Urban Picnic Street Photography
A place to find inspiration, upload your best photographic work and develop ideas based on the street theme. Urban Picnic strives to showcase the best street photography and feature the best contemporary street photographers.


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Popular or Overexposed? Michael Kors Walks Thin Line
Fashion Brand's Sales and Profit Have Soared but Rapid Expansion Worries Wall Street
Luxury is a snob's game, and Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. wants to democratize it.
"Michael and I would find it offensive that someone would be considered beneath owning one of our products," Kors Chief Executive John Idol said in an interview at his office in midtown Manhattan, referring to fashion designer and company founder Michael Kors.


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Michael Brown dies in Florida hospital
Michael Brown, the former Houston hand surgeon, has died in a Miami hospital.
Physicians at the hospital declared Brown, 56, to be "brain dead" on Nov. 7 and on their own volition decided to end life support Friday morning, said David Brown, a Houston attorney representing Michael Brown's wife in the couple's divorce case.
"It's pretty outrageous to me that it would happen without notifying the family," David Brown said Friday.
The attorney said he understood that Michael Brown was taken off life support about 8:15 a.m. Friday, central time.
Michael Brown had appointed a former employee as a medical surrogate and that person was not contacted either, David Brown said.
The attorney said he spoke with officials at the Miami hospital Friday morning to confirm what happened.
A spokesman at Mt. Sinai Medical Center said he couldn't confirm that Brown had been a patient at the center.
"Due to federal privacy guidelines, I cannot discuss whether the individual is or is not a patient at Mt. Sinai," said Robert Alonso. "In general terms, unless we have consent from a patient we don't discuss the care of that patient with the media unless that patient has given written consent."
The former hand surgeon had been unresponsive since suffering a heart attack Oct. 24 at his Miami Beach home.
Brown went from being a prosperous hand surgeon, with a string of carpal tunnel clinics across the country, to being a punchline in 2001 when his third wife, Darlina Brown, sued him and filed a criminal complaint alleging that he beat her with a bedpost while she was seven months pregnant.
Before that, Brown and his family had starred in television commercials advertising the clinics with the tagline, "We treat you like family."
The years of ensuing litigation threw the curtain back on the life of a man embroiled in episodes of violence and self-medication with prescription and illicit drugs.
Born in Galena Park and a graduate from Baylor College of Medicine, Brown founded the first of his hand centers in 1988.
In 2002 Brown was placed on probation by the Texas Medical Board for "concerns he had an alcohol or chemical dependency" and the hair-dragging, bedpost-beating assault.
His medical license was revoked in 2006 after he tested positive for cocaine.
Numerous public records show that he had been treated for narcissistic personality disorder, bipolar disorder and depression and spent time at an addiction rehab center and court-ordered anger management counseling.
Brown's shenanigans made international headlines in 2011 when he went on trial, accused of assault by his fourth wife, Rachel Brown.
Jurors heard about an early morning confrontation in which Michael Brown was sleeping off a night on the town when Rachel Brown began screaming at him.
The argument allegedly turned physical culminating with Michael Brown hurling a humanitarian award he received the year earlier at his wife.
Michael Brown was acquitted of any wrongdoing and cut off his court-ordered ankle monitor just outside the courtroom doors as reporters watched.
Rachel Brown began divorcing her husband before the trial and it had continued, seemingly indefinitely, with episodes of Michael Brown being held in the Harris County jail for contempt of court earlier this year.
It is unclear how the divorce and imminent probate will be resolved.
After hearing about the death, Brown's criminal defense attorney, Dick Deguerin, released a statement praising a flawed man.
"For all his faults, he was a brilliant man and one of the most generous men I ever knew," DeGuerin said. "He loved his children and he will be missed."


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QFE, Only post in this thread if you are submitting a podracer. All other discussion belongs in the thread I linked to. Thanks!Solo wrote:If you have any questions, please use the building tips thread.
This thread is for entry posts only.
- Add the tags "FBTB" and "2009 Podracer Challenge" to a photo of your entry on Flickr and submit it to the FBTB Flickr Outpost.
Note: Your entry picture must be posted on Flickr, tagged with "2009 Podracer Challenge", and submitted to the FBTB group to qualify. If you do not have a Flickr account: you can set one up for free, or ask another member to host your entry picture for you. If it is not in the FBTB pool or tagged appropriately it will not count.
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All Items : Vehicles and Transportation : Pre 1930 item #878161 (stock #T090102)
This Service Salesmanship Chevrolet booklet is in excellent condition considering it is dated Copyright 1928. The booklet is 41 pages. It is sold AS IS AND USED. Any questions please call or email. Please email or call zip code to determine postage, shipping, insurance rates.
All Items : Paper : Transportation : Pre 1970 item #350868 (stock #T041160)
Coats and Clarks Book No. 122 titled Doilies by Priscilla copyright 1961 is available for purchase. The book has lovely patterns to crochet. The book has been used and shows signs of usage. The back cover has some edges missing lower left side. The front cover is beginning to become semi-detached. Charge $2.00 handling/postage USA address. Please email me for any questions.


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With every new technology release, LCD tries to catch up to plasma in the picture quality race, but never seems to succeed. The biggest potential equalizer attached to LCD's engine is LED backlighting with local dimming, a technology first marketed widely by Samsung two years ago that's slowly spread to other brands' flagship LCD TVs since. LG's 2009 entrant is the LH90 series, and it closes the gap considerably compared with the best plasma displays.
The LH90 models evinced superb black-level performance and LG's characteristically accurate color, helped in large measure by the company's best-in-class user-menu adjustments. This is easily the best-performing LG TV we've tested, and despite a few flaws, it's a worthy member of the flat-panel elite.
Series note: We performed a hands-on evaluation of the 47-inch LG 47LH90, but this review also applies to the other sizes in the series, namely the 42-inch 42LH90 and the 55-inch 55LH90. All sizes share identical specs and features and should provide very similar picture quality.
Editors' note: Many of the Design and Features elements are identical between the LG LH90 series and the LG LH55 series we reviewed earlier, so readers of the earlier review may experience some déjà vu when reading the same sections below.
A sleek, rounded, glossy-black frame surrounds the matte screen of the LH90 series, and its curvaceousness extends to a semitransparent, blue-tinted stand stalk that supports the panel above the circular, swivel stand. The extreme edges of the panel are lined in similar semitransparent blue that's subtle enough to retain plenty of sophistication. The only other prominent details are the smallish LG logo, the chrome-edged, illuminated power indicator, and the three letters "L E D" stenciled onto the bottom-left edge. Overall the look is classy and understated, if a shade bulbous in person.
The swivel stand is accented by a silver disc surrounding the stalk.
LG's improved the remote for its higher-end TVs like the LH90, with backlit buttons and more spacing between keys. Buttons are grouped logically and although we didn't like their similar sizes and shapes from an ergonomic standpoint, we did appreciate that most functions were represented by dedicated keys (aspect ratio being the major exception). There's a prominent button labeled "Energy Saving" key that directly accesses said control and a little energy saving graphic to provide enviro-geeks a warm fuzzy. The remote can't control other brands of gear directly with infrared commands.
The menu system is quite extensive, so the easy-access quick menu for aspect ratio, picture, and sound modes, the timer, and other oft-used functions, is welcome. The main menu is laid out the same as last year with the addition of a new onscreen "simple manual" that provides basic setup and function information. One miscue: we'd really like to see explanations of menu items appear onscreen, too, especially since many of them are so advanced.
The big addition with the LH90 series is LED backlighting with local dimming. This LCD-based TV employs groups of LEDs (as opposed to the standard fluorescent lamps behind most LCD screens) that can be individually dimmed or even switched off in different areas of the screen. The system is different from edge-lit LED-based LCDs, such as the 6000, 7000, and 8000 series sold by Samsung, because the LG's LEDs are arranged behind the screen as opposed to, well, along the edges. In general we've observed improved contrast, along with some tradeoffs, with local-dimming technology, so check out Performance below for the full skinny.
One big omission from the LG LH90's spec sheet is Internet-connected interactive capability, which is prominently featured on competing models from Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic for example. LG's only LCD models with that included interactive action is the LH50 series.
The LED-equipped LG does offer a 240Hz refresh rate, which is designed to combat blurring in motion. There are two species of 240Hz and LG employs the "scanning backlight" variety, which augments the usual 120Hz technique of doubling the standard 60-frame signal with a backlight that flashes very rapidly on and off (much faster than humans can perceive) to help reduce motion blur. In our tests the other 240Hz technique, which actually quadruples the standard signal and is used by Sony and Samsung, produced slightly better results than LG's method, which is also employed by Toshiba and Vizio. Unlike Toshiba, which carefully calls the scanning backlight a "240Hz effect," LG's marketing department has no qualms about touting its method as unqualified 240Hz.
LG's implementation of dejudder processing is similar to past 120Hz and 240Hz displays, which force you to engage the smoothing effect if you want to enjoy the benefits of reduced blurring. The 2009 models from Samsung and Toshiba, on the other hand, allow you to separate the two functions, an option we really prefer to have. The LH90 series offers two strengths of dejudder, Low and High, and also offers a separate "Real Cinema" function designed to work with 1080p/24 sources.
Like other LG displays, the picture controls on the LH90 series surpass most of the competition. The company included even more adjustments than last year, starting with a well-thought-out Picture Wizard that uses internal test patterns to help you perform you own basic calibrations of the controls for brightness, contrast, color, tint, horizontal, and vertical sharpness, and backlight. Once you've finished, your settings are saved to the Expert1 picture memory slot for your choice of inputs.
The THX mode doesn't allow adjustment, and it was less accurate overall than previous such modes we've tested.
The LH90 series includes a THX picture preset not available on lower-end models, which supposedly offers improved accuracy. Unlike THX on Panasonic TVs like the TC-PV10 series, THX on the LG cannot be adjusted at all.
Six other picture memory slots are all independent per input, and we appreciated that all of them, aside from the two Expert slots, indicate whether they're in the default settings. A ninth mode, called Intelligent Sensor, reacts to ambient lighting conditions and automatically sets picture parameters accordingly. Advanced controls abound in even the nonexpert modes, with three color temperature presets, settings for dynamic contrast and color, noise reduction, three levels of gamma, a black-level control, wide and standard color spaces, edge enhancement, a room-lighting sensor, and even an "eye care" setting designed to prevent the screen from being too bright (it's disabled in Vivid and Cinema modes).
Those Expert modes, which bear the logo and the input of the Imaging Science Foundation, offer a passel of additional controls. Our favorite, first introduced by LG last year and still exclusive to the company, is a 10-point white-balance system that can really help get a more accurate grayscale. The company upped the ante for 2009, adding the capability to target a 2.2 gamma, internal test patterns, and even color filters for blue-only, green-only, and red-only to help set color balance. A full color management system is also on-tap, and we love the capability to apply Expert settings to all inputs or just one at a time. Of course, most of these settings will appeal only to pro calibrators and HDTV geeks, but either way, LG's 2009 models offer the most complete suite of user-menu picture adjustments we've seen on any HDTV to date.
LG touts the efficiency of this set, and rightly so, according to our tests (see below). In addition to the "home use" and "store demo" initial settings common to the Energy Star 3.0-qualified televisions, there's a quartet of progressively more aggressive Energy Saving settings that reduce the backlight–and thus light output along with wattage consumed. Another setting turns off the screen completely. Engaging the Energy Saving settings disables the standard backlight control.
The LH90 series is missing picture-in-picture but does provide plenty of aspect ratio control, including five modes or use with HD sources and four with standard-def. Two modes are adjustable zooms, and there's a "set by program" mode designed to automatically choose the correct aspect ratio setting based on the signal. We recommend using the Just Scan mode with 1080i and 1080p material, which assures zero overscan and proper 1:1 pixel matching for this 1080p display.
with a USB port for digital photos and music.
Connectivity is fairly extensive on the LH90, beginning with four total HDMI ports: three on the back and one on the side. The back panel also offers two component-video inputs, an AV input with composite video, an RF input for antenna or cable, an RGB-style analog PC input, an optical digital audio output, and an RS-232 port for custom installations. In addition to the fourth HDMI port, the side panel has a second AV input with composite video and a USB port for display of digital photos and playback of MP3 music files. Our one connectivity complaint is the lack of any S-Video inputs.
The LG LH90 series is one of the best performing LCDs overall we've tested, and earned the same rating in this category as the best models from Samsung and Sony. It delivered excellent overall black-level performance and superb color, and video processing overall was very good, but we'd love to see the ability to separate dejudder and antiblur effects. It does suffer from poor off-angle performance and some blooming–issues common to all LED-based LCDs we've tested–but if you sit in the sweet spot the LH90 looks great.
Prior to setup we always measure every picture mode to determine the most accurate for our "Before" (pre-calibration) Geek Box numbers, below, and in doing so we were surprised to find that THX mode on the LH90 was less accurate than on any other THX-equipped TV we've tested in the past. It had the characteristic dimness we've seen (28.7ftl max light output) and gamma was excellent (2.22 versus an ideal of 2.2), but its color temperature was quite blue (8164K average). We ended up using the default Expert 1 settings for the Before numbers instead, which was very slightly more accurate than THX.
Calibration improved things quite a bit, thanks in large part to the LG's excellent selection of user-menu controls. We increased light output to our nominal 40ftl, removed the blue cast from the grayscale and ended up with excellent gamma (2.19), and tweaked the color management system ever-so-slightly.
Setup completed, for our comparison we lined the LH90 up next to a few comparable sets. From the LCD camp we included the local-dimming-equipped Sony KDL-55XBR8 and the Samsung LN46A950 from 2008, the LED edge-lit Samsung UN46B7000, and the standard CCFL-backlit Samsung LN52B750, while the plasma sets were the Panasonic TC-P50V10 and the reference Pioneer PRO-111FD. We used "Watchmen" on Blu-ray for most of our image quality tests.
Black level: Like the other displays in the room, the LH90 evinced a very deep shade of black. The initial scene in the Comedian's apartment at night, for example, was reproduced beautifully, with inky shadows in the background and realistic depth in black areas like the letterbox bars, the black ninja suit of the assassin, and the night sky outside the windows. In fact the LG's blacks were nearly indistinguishable during dark scenes from those of the Samsung B750, A950, and B7000 LCDs, and not quite as deep as those of the Sony XBR8, the Panasonic V10, and the Pioneer–but again the differences were subtle, even in a dark room in side-by-side comparisons.
The LG also delivered very good shadow detail. In Drieburg's walk home after visiting Hollis, for example, we noticed that the LH90 appeared a bit more realistic and closer to our reference when rendering the dark steps of the brownstone than did the B750 or the B7000, and roughly equal to the other LCD displays, although not quite as good as the plasmas.
Differences in black-level performance came out in lighter scenes, however, when the letterbox bars of the LED displays, especially the Samsung B7000 but also the LG, became brighter than they appeared during dark scenes. Darker bars improve perceived contrast ratio, and the Samsung B750 and the plasmas' bars remained constant and darker than the others during the brightest scenes. Between the three local-dimming LEDs, the LG showed the most variation: it had the brightest bars in bright scenes, and it also faded to a darker black than the others between the bright scenes during the opening credits, for example (although it didn't turn off completely and distractingly, as did the B7000). That said, the brightness variations of the LG's backlight as a whole were subtle and didn't impinge on our appreciation of the film.
We also noticed some blooming in certain scenes with white objects against black backgrounds. It appeared as a sort of brighter cloud around the object against the black, and was most obvious in the menu text and onscreen indicators of our PS3 or on credits against a black background, for example. Bright areas on the screen also occasionally spilled over into the letterbox bars. When Rorschach shines the flashlight around the Comedian's apartment, for instance, the bottom bar brightened slightly near where the picture of Nixon and the Comedian was illuminated, then darkened again as the light faded. The effect was more obvious on the LG than on the other two local-dimming LCDs, and, as expected, none of the other displays showed such blooming effects.
Color accuracy: The LG was superb in this category, delivering color accuracy on par with our reference display and better overall than the most of the others. The consistency of the LG's grayscale was a major strength, enabling it to maintain a relatively neutral cast to blacks and dark scenes–without the bluer cast of the Samsung sets, but still not as true as the Sony XBR8 or the plasmas. In brighter scenes we appreciated the realism of the LG's skin tones, seen in close-ups of Laurie in her mom's living room both backlit by the bright window and in the normal room lighting. The green in the plants outside and the red of her sweater vest looked nearly identical to the colors on our reference display. Colors were just a bit less rich and saturated than on the plasmas and the XBR8, but again, the difference was quite subtle even side by side.
Video processing: In terms of blur-reduction, the LH90 performed slightly better than LG's LH55 series of standard-backlit 240Hz TVs we tested earlier. Whereas that series delivered between 700 and 800 lines of motion resolution, the LH90 came in between 900 and 1,000–comparable with the best sets in our lineup, including the 240Hz Samsung, albeit not as good as the Panasonic plasma. Disabling the LG's dejudder processing by setting "TruMotion 240Hz" to Off caused the test to register between 300 and 400 lines, which is typical of a 60Hz LCD. Of course, in our experience the blurring seen in test patterns, despite the large numeric differences in the motion resolution, is quite difficult to perceive in real-world program material. As we noted above, it's impossible to get the improved motion resolution of the LG's antiblur effect without also engaging dejudder processing–one advantage of the Samsung B750 and B7000 models.
As usual, with film sources like "Watchmen" we preferred the look of the picture with dejudder turned Off as opposed to either Low or High–only Off preserves the look of film the director intended–but if forced to choose between the latter two, we'd take Low in a heartbeat. It produced fewer artifacts, as usual, although we did notice some unwanted effects nonetheless. For example, in Chapter 13 we see a taxi pass by the open doorway to Edgar Jacobi's apartment, and its rear half appears to subtly detach as it slides by. We also saw the telltale "halo" occasionally, such as when Dreiberg exits his kitchen and creates subtle trailing ripples in the door and wall in the background. As usual, such effects were worse in High. Comparing Standard on the LG to the same setting on the Samsungs' and Sony's dejudder modes, we noticed a few more artifacts on the LG, and motion looked smoother (and less film-like) on the LG than on the Sony.
We did appreciate the LG's Real Cinema setting, however, which functioned as advertised to preserve the true frame rate of film as long as the 240Hz function was disabled. We set our Blu-ray player to 1080p/24 output mode, turned the Real Cinema setting on, and fed the LG our favorite test clip for evaluating film cadence, the helicopter flyover of the Intrepid from "I Am Legend." The LH90 showed the proper amount of judder without the slight hitching motion characteristic of 2:3 pull-down, which returned when we set Real Cinema to Off.
Finally, the LH90 series delivered every line of static resolution and properly de-interlaced video-based sources, but, like other LG sets we've reviewed (and unlike most other current 1080p HDTVs), it failed to properly de-interlace film-based sources.
Uniformity: Blooming notwithstanding, the LG LH90 was able to maintain a consistent image across the screen, with no brighter areas as we saw on the B7000 and, to a lesser extent, the B750. LED backlighting does seem to provide better consistency in this regard than its standard fluorescent counterpart.
The biggest challenge of LED backlit (and edge-lit) technology we've noticed so far is poor black levels and color fidelity when seen from off-angle, and the LH90 was no exception. The issue was clearest in dark scenes, such as Rorschach's slow-motion walk among the ladies of the night. Sitting just one seat to the right or left of the sweet spot in front of the screen made black levels significantly brighter. Blacks on the A950 and B7000 looked slightly worse when seen from off-angle, however, while the other displays better maintained black-level integrity (and naturally the plasmas didn't change at all when seen from the side). The LH90 also showed more color shift, specifically appearing bluer in dark areas, than did any of the others except for the B7000. Finally, the effects of blooming were exaggerated from off-angle, with the brighter cloud around objects on a dark background even more obvious.
Bright lighting: Like the Sony XBR8, the LH90 is blessed with a matte screen that reflects in-room lighting less intensely than the shiny screens of the Samsungs or the plasmas' glass. As a result it was generally better suited to situations where a light or window was reflected in the screen. The Samsungs did maintain black-level integrity a bit better than the matte LCDs, but the difference wasn't major.
Standard-definition: The LH90 delivered very good SD performance. It resolved every detail of the DVD format, and the grass and stone bridge in the detail section appeared as sharp as we expected. Jagged edges in moving lines and a waving American flag were smoothed-out well, and noise reduction worked properly to reduce or eliminate moving motes in low-quality shots of skies, sunsets, and flowers. It also handled 2:3 pull-down properly, removing moire from the grandstand.
PC: Via digital HDMI, the LG performed as expected, delivering every line of a 1,920×1,080 source with no overscan or edge enhancement. Via the analog PC input, we experienced some slight ghosting along the edges of lines that we couldn't quite eliminate, but otherwise the picture was the same as via digital.
Power consumption: The LG 47LH90 is more efficient than the one local-dimming equipped LCD near its size we tested last year–Samsung's LN46A950–and just a bit less efficient than the most miserly flat-panel we've ever tested, the Samsung UN46B6000. It out-conserves similar-sized standard-backlight LCDs by a couple bucks per year, and of course trounces plasma. In short, it's one of the most efficient HDTVs on the market.


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Why South Dakota Won't Bail Out Maine
Last week, on a trip to New York City from Washington, D.C., I found myself talking about economics with a British intern sitting next to me. He asked a disarmingly simple question: Could the U.S. ever find one state asking others to bail it out, similar to the way Greece or other countries are seeking aid from other nations in the European Union?
My instinct was no — but I had to think about why. As it turns out, two economists in D.C. have written a concise history that helps explain the answer.
The economists are C. Randall Henning, an American University professor of international economic relations, and Martin Kessler, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Their paper, Fiscal Federalism: U.S. History for Architects of Europe's Fiscal Union, walks readers through the interplay between state and federal finance from Alexander Hamilton to the insolvency of Jefferson County, Ala., last fall. It was put out by Bruegel, an economic think-tank in Brussels, earlier this year.
Although they didn't set out to answer the British intern's question explicitly, Henning and Kessler's paper more or less does.
The gist: The federal government long ago made clear that it wouldn't bail the states out; the states have similarly declined to bail out local governments; states almost universally balance their budgets; and — perhaps most importantly — the federal government has sweeping fiscal powers, and knows how to use them.
The longer answer, the economists write, starts with Alexander Hamilton's famous vision for a financial system, which he began pushing soon after the U.S. Constitution was adopted. In addition to establishing a Bank of the United States, he wanted the federal government to take over the accumulated debt of the U.S. states — some $25 million of it, largely built up to fund the Revolutionary War. That amounted to maybe 13% of the country's economic activity at the time.
The U.S. assumed state debt on one other occasion, after the War of 1812. But then it quickly established a "no bail-out" precedent. After a financial panic in 1837, Washington refused to step in when several states defaulted on their own debt — despite pressure for a bailout from foreign creditors like Britain and the Netherlands.
The eight states that defaulted (along with the then-territory of Florida) ultimately repaid their debts after several years. Most subsequently adopted the forerunners of today's balanced-budget provisions. Now, every state but Vermont holds itself to a balanced budget, using various mechanisms, and with varying degrees of strictness. (States do let themselves borrow for capital projects like roads, but commit specific revenues to supporting the debt, from future fuel taxes, for example.)
Strikingly, Henning and Kessler write, the federal government has never bailed out a state since, and only once has a municipality been bailed out by a state. This despite 170 jurisdictions declaring bankruptcy in the two decades leading up to 2009. (Camden, N.J., is the lone exception, though Washington, D.C., was also bailed out by the federal government in the 1990s, under a constitutional clause putting the federal district under congressional authority.)
But the most crucial distinction between Europe and the U.S. may also be its most obvious, the authors say: The U.S. has a central government with broad regulatory, taxing and spending authority, and it has the will to use all three. Much of the U.S. banking system, they note, is already centrally regulated — something Europe is only now attempting.
On the taxation and spending front, meantime, the federal government serves to spread out the cost of helping states when they need it. The stimulus bill passed in 2009, for example, sent $170 billion from Washington over two years to help plug holes in their budgets.
That kind of thing, of course, accomplishes much the same results as having healthy states bail out weaker ones, even if South Dakota — which ended its fiscal year in the black — never has to cut a check directly to Maine (where one projection puts year's budget shortfall at 15% of its budget).
This emergency funding mechanism helps make up for the fact that balancing state budgets often means cutting spending in bad times, just when many economists argue government should maintain or increase spending.
Still, Henning and Kessler warn that these lessons don't necessarily provide Europe with an easy-to-follow blueprint. Much of the success of the U.S. model is probably a function of how the various elements came together over time, they say.
States adopted balanced-budget amendments independently, for example, without outside coercion. That suggests that states my avoid saddling themselves with debt for more fundamental reasons, and the balanced-budget requirements are simple evidence of that fiscal conservatism. By contrast, the euro zone is talking about a complex combination of rewards and punishments imposed on each country by the group as a whole.
"The euro area will not want to replicate US institutions," Henning and Kessler write, "but will want to bear in mind the lessons from US successes and mistakes when redesigning its own institutions."


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On Valentine's Day, people's thoughts naturally turn to hearts, though typically of the chocolate or candy variety. However, this holiday should also serve as a reminder of the importance of the human heart, quietly beating more than 100,000 times and pumping almost 2,000 gallons of blood not just this day, but every day of the year. Unfortunately, unlike love, the heart is not everlasting; recent statistics suggest that this year, more than 1 million people in the U.S will experience a new or recurrent heart attack, more than 400,000 will die from coronary heart disease and bad hearts will total some $300 billion in direct and indirect costs.
However, with increased understanding of how the heart works, these numbers can surely improve. So, in honor of this special heart-related holiday, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is highlighting some of our members who devote their time to heart-related research, looking to make heart defects, disease and failure a thing of the past.
In the arena of cardiovascular research, most scientists fall into one of two camps: those who study the "cardio" and those who study the "vascular." Not many have focused their efforts on the interplay of the two, which Kenneth Walsh finds somewhat unusual.
"In the body, these two systems, heart muscle and blood vessels, are talking to each other all the time," he says, "whether it's in response to physiological stimuli like exercise, in response to some injury or during normal growth, so the heart and vasculature can keep pace with the rest of the body."
The mechanisms behind this inter-tissue communication are the major theme underlying Walsh's lab at Boston University. His methods involve a two-pronged approach, first identifying critical proteins or pathways through bioinformatics (as Walsh says, "mining the cardiac secretome"), then validating uncovered molecules using genetic models.
In several instances, the new molecules have proved to be potential biomarkers for pathological conditions, such as in Walsh's recent work identifying follistatin-like 1 as a factor that may determine the susceptibility of the heart to ischemic injury.
And, Walsh is definitely interested in pursuing diagnostic or therapeutic avenues, because, as he says, "I don't just want to cure heart disease in mice."
Another area Walsh's group currently is exploring— and another overlooked field, in his view— is how metabolic dysfunction, especially associated with obesity and diabetes, affects the heart's activity. As Walsh notes, obese individuals have hearts that are larger than the predicted body-heart size ratio, causing hypertension and other problems.
"It's a big driver of cardiovascular disease, yet, at cardiovascular meetings, you really won't see a lot of metabolic talks," Walsh says. "It's starting to catch on, but, considering the clinical significance of the problem, it's still vastly underrepresented."
That's why Walsh has made the metabolic-cardiovascular connection an initiative not just in his group, where's he's studying the role of the adipose-derived cytokine adiponectin in inflammation and heart disease, but also at the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, which he currently directs.
"It's a very collaborative environment, with a tremendous amount of expertise, and we're still growing," Walsh says proudly of the institute. "And being located in the heart of Boston, one of the best places to do biomedical research, is rewarding as well."
"I think the only drawback right now is that my duties keep me away from the lab often, and I like working with my hands," he continues. "But I think my lab is better served when I am working in my office."
In looking back, though, Walsh sometimes wonders how he reached this point. After all, 30 years ago, he was just a young and headstrong biochemistry student working under Daniel Koshland without much knowledge or interest in cardiovascular research.
Then, when he received his first faculty appointment in the physiology department at Case Western Reserve University, he was surrounded by colleagues who worked in the cardiovascular field, so he started going with the flow, in a manner of speaking.
As for taking on a leadership role, Walsh notes: "I guess I've always been good at two things: chemistry and getting people to work together."
Journal of Biological Chemistry research highlight: Cardiac-specific Deletion of LKB1 Leads to Hypertrophy and Dysfunction. JBC 284, 35839-35849.
It's appropriate that one of Eric N. Olson's favorite tunes to play with his rock band, the Transactivators (in which Olson plays guitar and harmonica), is Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." While each organ in the human body is a complex, fascinating and, in most cases, essential physiological machine, in Olson's view, any discussions as to which organ should be considered the most vital begins and ends with the heart.
"The heart is incredibly unique," he says. "It performs nonstop rhythmic contractions every second, and it's a wonderful model for understanding how genes are coordinately regulated and control organ formation. Plus, adult cardiac cells never divide, making them an ideal system to study the cell cycle."
"Oh, and of course, unlike some other organs, the heart lacks an intrinsic mechanism to repair itself," he adds. "So, cardiovascular disease still remains the No. 1 killer in the United States, while congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects seen in humans: They occur in about 1 percent of all live births."
It's the latter statistic that has been a driving force for Olson's research at UT-Southwestern; since arriving in 1995 from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, his group has been hard at work identifying the genes and transcription factors responsible for forming the heart in developing embryos and analyzing how defects in those genetic networks lead to congenital heart disease.
The work has been a natural progression from Olson's earlier— and continuing— studies into skeletal and smooth muscle differentiation, through which he discovered several transcription factors involved in that process and realized many of them had similar roles in cardiac muscle.
Olson combines genetic and biochemical approaches to discover novel cardiac transcription factors, including mutational studies in Drosophila, which has turned out to be an excellent model organism for studying heart defects. "It may not seem readily apparent, but many key muscle transcription factors were first discovered in fruit flies," he says, noting that the fruit fly heart, a simplistic linear pump, closely resembles the heart tube in early mammalian embryos.
Olson notes that his field has been quite dynamic recently (due in no small part to his efforts, which include the discovery of the transcription cofactor myocardin and the identification of both calcineurin and histone deacetylases as regulators of cardiac hypertrophy). "We've made some dramatic progress this past decade," he says. "We've gone from knowing virtually nothing about the molecular blueprint for heart development to knowing most of the regulators involved, though we still need to tease out how they all fit together."
A new wrinkle in that blueprint, and one that's been a significant focus of Olson's work the past few years, is the emerging role of microRNAs in heart development and disease. From identifying the importance of miR-126 in vascular integrity to miR-133's role in cardiomyocyte proliferation, "we've managed to uncover a treasure trove of new regulators that affect virtually every process associated with heart disease," he says, "such as fibrosis, hypertrophy and atrophy and blood vessel formation."
Combining the potential power of RNA silencing with existing technologies for delivering therapeutics to the heart, Olson is preparing to take these microRNA discoveries to the treatment stage; he even started up a biotech company, called miRagen Therapeutics, to help him with this process.Journal of Biological Chemistry research highlight: Down Syndrome Critical Region-1 Is a Transcriptional Target of Nuclear Factor of Activated T Cells-c1 within the Endocardium during Heart Development. JBC 282, 30763-30679.
In an unusual twist, a run-of-the-mill lecture at a conference became the catalyst for Daria Mochly-Rosen's foray into an exciting new line of research.
In the mid-1990s, Mochly-Rosen showed that different isozymes of protein kinase C were located in discrete subcellular regions of cardiac muscle cells and that shutting off individual isozymes with peptides could make the cells beat faster or slower. This finding confirmed her hypothesis that PKC isozymes have unique localizations in all cells, mediated by binding to isozyme-specific anchoring proteins known as receptors for activated C-kinase, or RACKs.
The identification of RACKs helped explain the mystery of how the many similar-appearing forms of PKC could mediate a range of processes in diverse— and, in the case of heart muscle, even opposite— ways.
"However, when I presented these results at an American Heart Association conference, I noticed a lot of uninterested scientists in the audience," she says. Afterwards her colleague Joel Karliner of the University of California, San Francisco, informed her that cardiologists didn't really care about heart rate, because they had perfectly good ways of managing it.
"So I asked him what cardiologists did care about, and he told me heart attacks," Mochly-Rosen says. However, she was hardly familiar with this area. (A biochemist by training, she had primarily worked with heart cells because their beating was an easy phenotype to observe.) "But then Joel told me not to worry— he would ask one of his cardiology fellows, Mary Gray, to join my lab."
Since then, Mochly-Rosen always has had at least one physician in her lab at Stanford University to help with her research into PKCs role in heart function, and her group has uncovered a lot of valuable information, including the fact that either activation of epsilon PKC or inhibition of delta PKC can protect the heart from ischemia damage. In fact, one of the delta PKC inhibitor peptides she used in her earlier heart rate studies (delta V1-1) is now in phase II clinical trials for heart attack treatment.
"The people at the AHA conferences are a bit more attentive when I speak now," she jokes.
In the past couple of years, Mochly-Rosen has turned her attention to one of the proteins activated by PKC; through a proteomic approach aimed at understanding how epsilon PKC is heart-protective, she identified aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 as an epsilon PKC target. She then confirmed a causal relationship between epsilon PKC and ALDH2 (alcohol dehydrogenase) by developing a small molecule activator of ALDH2 and showing that this activator produced the same cardioprotective effects in rat models as epsilon PKC activation.
Mochly-Rosen and her lab are now looking at exactly why PKC turns on ALDH2 to protect the heart. However, the importance of ALDH may be the key to the complex role of alcohol in relation to the heart, as alcohol consumption has been linked to both beneficial and damaging cardiac effects.
At the least, this new revelation gives Mochly-Rosen her own change in perspective. "I always thought ALDH was a boring enzyme; it was always active and seemed to have a simple function," she says. "But now I know better."
Journal of Biological Chemistry research highlight: RBCK1, a Protein Kinase CβI (PKCβI)-interacting Protein, Regulates PKCβ-dependent Function. JBC 282, 1650-1657.
When Mark A. Sussman completed his doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, he asked one of his thesis committee members on what area of science his postdoctoral fellowship should focus. "He told me to do something completely different than my graduate school research, because my postdoc was my last opportunity to be stupid, scientifically speaking."
So, Sussman put his dissertation on viral immunology on the bookshelf and pursued his interests in the cytoskeleton, first with Velia Fowler at The Scripps Research Institute and then with Laurence Kedes back at USC. He began working on the actin-capping protein tropomodulin and found that the structural protein was expressed in specific subcellular locations in heart muscle, and, when it was over-expressed, it would prevent proper heart contraction and eventually led to heart failure as the organ tried unsuccessfully to remodel.
In the ricocheting world of science, that discovery soon led to a cardiovascular research fellowship, which, in turn, led to Sussman's development of the first mouse model of dilated cardiomyopathy and a long and fruitful career studying heart failure.
However, when the California native returned home to take up a position at San Diego State University, he decided a change of pace was in order. "I had sort of become an expert in making mouse hearts that failed, and I now wanted to see what I could do to keep a heart working properly," he says.
Sussman became intrigued with Akt/PKB kinase, a signaling protein that either helped protect heart cells or caused it to fail, depending who you asked. "It was a big paradox," he says. "Researchers found that if you activated Akt in heart cells, by adding agents like insulin like growth factor to the media, it made the cells resistant to death. But, when they induced Akt in mice by genetic manipulation, the heart responded by remodeling and eventually failed."
The reason for the paradox, as Sussman discovered, was that Akt goes through a specific set of localizations when activated and has specific targets, depending on where it is; in the case of cardioprotective stimulators, Akt ended up in the nucleus.
"So it's not just activity level but where the activity occurs," he says. "Thus, the brute-force approach of simply inducing Akt in the heart was like drinking water from a fire hose: You'll quench your thirst, but a lot of bad stuff is going to happen as well." Once Sussman mimicked the process seen in cell culture and localized Akt to the nucleus, the mice exhibited the expected damage-resistant hearts.
Those studies did present one mystery, though. Many of the important cardioprotective targets where in the cytoplasm; so how did Akt turn them on while trapped in the nucleus? The answer was that Akt turned on another activator protein called PIM-1, which mediates the protective effects.
And PIM-1, Sussman believes, is a key piece for regenerative medicine and stem-cell therapies for the heart. Early work in repairing hearts with stem cells was unsuccessful, because the stem cells did not graft well and died off; but combining stem cells with activation of PIM-1 and the survival pathway might make it work. Just recently, he had success in mouse models, and now he's hoping for similar results using human cells in immunized mice and then large-animal models.
And if all goes as planned, Sussman thinks we might soon see a future of genetically rebuilding hearts after acute stress or chronic injury. "We'll put the surgeons out of business, and I can spend my days on the beach, drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in them."
Journal of Biological Chemistry research highlight: Coordination of Growth and Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Signaling by Regulator of Calcineurin 1 (RCAN1), a Novel ATF6-inducible Gene. JBC 283, 14012-14021.
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How to Reset Your Password
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Resetting the Password for Your TU Accounts
If you have forgotten your password or you cannot log into any one of your TU accounts (Gmail, Blackboard, Hawklink), please try resetting your password by doing the following:
- Copy this link and paste it into your browser's address bar: https://mgt1.thomasu.edu/passwordchange/
- In the first box enter your account name (ex. john.doe).
- In the second box enter the exact same personal email address you used when you set up your TU Gmail account (ex. email@example.com)
- If you entered the correct email address, when you click submit, you should see a message that states, "An email has been sent to 'email@example.com' with instructions on how to reset your password".
- Sign into your personal email address (email@example.com) and look for an email with the subject heading "Thomas University Password Change Request". When you click the link within the email you will be taken to a page where you will enter your account name (ex. john.doe) again in the first box and in the second box you will need to create a new password. Make sure that the password is at least 8 characters long and contains one capital letter and one number.
Please allow at least 20 minutes for your password to sync with all of your TU accounts.
Caution: Do not attempt to use any other method to reset your password as this will break your accounts and create a significant delay while they are reset.


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If it looks fast or feels fast it is probably slow! How to go faster while riding safer and more efficiently.
Ever have that descent on your mountain bike where you felt like you were flat hauling?! At the bottom you were thinking (or telling a riding buddy), "wow, I nearly hit two trees, a big rock and that huge stump! I was flying!". Believe it or not, despite feeling like you were right on the edge of your skill limits that was probably not near as fast as you could ride that descent (with your current skill).
I first stumbled upon this phenomenon as a snowboard racer. I had a super fast training run and asked my coach, "Nick did you see that run? What was my time, that was my fastest run yet!" Nick replied, "that was 30.2, your fastest run so far was a 29.1!" I was shocked and thought Nick was lying and trying make me mad to motivate me to go faster. A few runs later I had what felt like a technically perfect run but it felt kind of slow. "Nick, did you see that run? My hips, knees, and shoulders were perfect! I know it was slow but did you see my form?!" Nick's reply, "slow?! That was a 28.3, you fastest run yet!". I was really confused and didn't really understand why the run that felt fast was slow and the run that felt slow was fast. It wasn't until about 10 years later as mountain bike racer that I figured it out. It all had to do with vision and technique.
With good technique and looking as far ahead as you should riding will feel slow as you stay in you comfort zone and have plenty of time to pro-act to the trail. With poor technique and not looking far enough ahead you have to quickly react to the trail. This does a couple of things to you. First, it feels fast as heck as you are making one neck saving move after another (and probably pin-balling all over the trail, not exactly taking the most efficient line) all these reactions cause the body to go into the fight or flight mode which jacks up your adrenaline and tenses you up. This combined with not looking far enough ahead makes it feel like you are flying when in reality you are not going as fast you could be and not taking good lines down the trail. Ever look down at the dashed white lines when you are doing 75 miles an hour in your car? It feels like you are going 200! Then look up at a mountain a few miles away, it feels like you are crawling. Well the same thing happens on the trail! If you look at rock four feet in front on you, you are going to be there (at the rock) in a fraction of a second, if you see the rock when it is twenty-forty feet in front of you you have plenty of time to go around the rock and you stay calm and relaxed.
So, learn to look much further ahead down that trail! This will make riding much more fun, faster and safer!
This video reminded me of that. Notice how tense you get when the helmet cam is pointed down (you don't know what the trail is going to do next) and how you almost breathe a sigh of relief when the rider looks further down the trail (and you know what the trail is going to throw at him).


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One of two women accepted to enter the law school at the National Defense Management College this fall, Lei Chia-chia (
The use of quotas in school admission and in hiring, by itself, would be highly controversial -- if not downright unconstitutional -- in many democratic countries, be they quotas allocated based on sex or race or any other immutable characteristic. Objective and justifiable admission or hiring criteria formulated to identify individuals capable of rendering and acceptable level of performance are the standard.
So, for example, in the case of a physically demanding manual job, it is permissible to turn down individual women applicants who are not physically fit to perform the required tasks -- on a case-by-case basis. However, it would not be permissible to require that the position must be filled by a man, although a man may be chosen based on his ability to perform the manual tasks. Old beliefs about what each sex can and can not do are disappearing.
It is indeed unfortunate that despite supposed efforts by the government to engage in military modernization, the military still resorts to the practice of imposing quotas to keep down the number of women in active service and military schools.
Now, if there was a quota that set only the minimum number of women that must be admitted each year, then at least it would serve the purpose of encouraging women to apply, who are historically underrepresented in the military. But this is not the case. The college admits only two women applicants into its law school each year -- no more and no less. On the other hand, the number of slots for male students is 12, six times of the number for women. In fact, the ratio of the numbers of slots for women and men in all military colleges and schools this year is 6.33 to 96.
Moreover, the other four departments of the military college -- information management, business management, accounting and statistics -- do not even have any admission slots for women. One cannot help but wonder aren't these fields in which intelligence, rather than physical strength, matters more?
As a result of the ongoing recession, the financial stability and job security, jobs offered by the military have become especially appealing. That has meant that the numbers of applicants for military colleges and schools have surged significantly. In the past, the military has always had difficulty recruiting quality applicants. No such problem exists this year. To deny admission to such an excellent applicant as Chang simply on the account of her sex is preposterous.


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It was 40 years ago Monday that Canada awoke to the grim, gut-punched truth that this hadn't, in fact, been just a bad dream. No, this nightmare was indeed very real.
Our country's best professional hockey players, as cocky as they were skilled, had been destroyed the night before by what smug scouting reports had suggested was a rag-tag squad of outclassed amateurs from the Soviet Union.
And if you were witness to the clinical 7-3 dissection of Team Canada at the Montreal Forum on Sept. 2, 1972, you also remember the Sept. 3 anxiety attack that ran from sea to sea.
Canada ultimately would prevail, if only by the thickness of the friction tape on Paul Henderson's stick, in this landmark eight-game Summit Series.
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But in their mismatched equipment and decade-old skates, the Soviets gave the Canadians all they could handle — and much more — in a series that forever would change hockey's global landscape.
The backbone of the U.S.S.R. squad that romped in Montreal was an unheralded young goaltender who had been dismissed as his team's weakest link.
But by the end of September, Canadians knew a great deal about 20-year-old Vladislav Tretiak. The netminder from Dmitrovo stoned Team Canada shooters on Sept. 2 and in the seven games that followed.
Tretiak made many miraculous saves on the 267 total shots he would face, his .884 save percentage superior to the combined .859 on 227 Soviet shots fired at Ken Dryden and Tony Esposito.
Today, it's likely that Tretiak would be more familiar to passersby in Montreal than would Henderson, whose series-winning goal remains, as the goalie wrote in his 1987 autobiography, "the most maddening of all goals scored on me in hockey."
But Tretiak, since 2006 president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, is a very special case in Montreal. He adores this city, which returns the love generously.
Twice in the past two years, Tretiak has staged gala charity auctions here, in 2010 with Alex Kovalev, then this past winter with Max Pacioretty. Last January, he joined Henderson and Yvan Cournoyer for a ceremonial Bell Centre faceoff to begin 40th anniversary celebrations of the Summit Series; in 2007, he was a special guest of Dryden, his old friend and rival, for the latter's sweater retirement.
There is no more famous athlete in Russia than this elected member of the State Duma whose 60th birthday celebration in Moscow last April was attended by more than 500 people from every walk of life from the breadth of his motherland and from far beyond.
For 17 years, Tretiak's foundation has aided, even saved the lives of countless children in Russia. His work and international influence have provided medical supplies, equipment and incubators for prematurely born infants while bringing North American specialists to Russia for urgently needed pediatric surgeries.
Tretiak and I sat for an hour in his Montreal hotel suite last January to discuss his rich life, the thread of the Summit Series stitching our conversation. If those eight games were the centrepiece of a playing career that includes three Olympic gold medals and 10 world championships, his charity work defines his life.
"I can only respect myself," Tretiak said that day, "when I do things for others."
Had he stopped Henderson's frantic, flailing shot 34 seconds from the end of Game 8 on Sept. 28, 1972, I asked him, would he still be revered in Montreal and throughout Canada?
"Canadians respect and value talent," he replied. "They don't care what country you're from. When everybody today is dead, the next generations will speak about 1972.
"People remember me not just from that series, but from other matches. My visits to Montreal are always very special. Something very emotional happens every time. I deeply value my fans in this city. Nowhere else in the world am I greeted as I am here. …
"It is hard to believe that 40 years have gone by since that 1972 series," Tretiak added. "There were a lot of very special players on both teams. We respected the Canadians, but I didn't feel they respected us. They wouldn't even say hello. But today, I'm happy that we are all great friends."
In his new autobiography, The Goal of My Life, Henderson writes of spending time with Tretiak at reunion functions in the decades since the series.
"[Tretiak] is a classy guy, a consummate gentleman, and I'm a big fan of his," Henderson writes. "I am so glad I got the opportunity to know him better."
Henderson scored seven goals on Tretiak in the series, including Team Canada's second in Game 1. It came at 6:32 of the first period, following Phil Esposito's lightning strike 30 seconds into the match.
"There was so much noise," Tretiak writes in his book of Esposito's goal. "I remember the crowd going crazy; people were roaring, laughing, whistling, yelling. Esposito patronizingly tapped me on my shoulder and said, 'OK.' It was a clear message: 'Don't forget who you are playing against.' …
"When Henderson scored their second goal, the crowd flew into a triumphant rage. The organist played a funeral march."
Who in Canada suspected the mourning that would come a few hours later?
Game 1 of the Summit Series was in fact Tretiak's second game on Forum ice, having played one period in his national team's 9-3 loss on Dec. 29, 1969 against the Montreal Junior Canadiens and a few professionals.
Nine days earlier, the Russians had pounded Canada's national team by the same score in Vancouver. Tretiak, then 17, was in the visitors' net, opposite an overwhelmed amateur netminder named Ken Dryden.
"The first time I came to Montreal [in 1969], I remember it the same as yesterday," Tretiak said two years ago when we met alone for the first time to speak at length, again in his Queen Elizabeth Hotel suite.
"Canada, for us, was a special country. It was very close to Russia on the mental side — we both loved hockey. I remember big cars. Good cars. Oldsmobiles, Chryslers, big Fords. Russian cars were not so big, the design didn't look so good. Here, big streets, big downtown, big buildings. … The first time I went to the Forum — unbelievable, fantastic."
Tretiak followed his brilliant 1972 Summit Series performance with another glittering effort on New Year's Eve 1975, the famous 3-3 tie against the Canadiens. He backstopped the Russians' 4-1 semifinal win and 8-1 clobbering of Canada in the championship game of the 1981 Canada Cup, then turned aside 30 shots in a 5-0 blanking of the Canadiens on New Year's Eve 1982.
A city that detested Tretiak for his Summit Series play by now practically worshipped him. Then-Canadiens general manager Serge Savard even selected him in the seventh round of the 1983 NHL draft, a year before the goalie's retirement, though a transfer deal could never be worked out with the Russians.
To this day, Tretiak is not entirely certain why Canadiens legend Jacques Plante, by then a Toronto Maple Leaf and a French-language TV analyst for the Summit Series, appeared in the Russians' dressing room with an interpreter shortly before Game 1 at the Forum to brief him on a blackboard about the shooting tendencies of Team Canada.
The two had met for the first time a year earlier in St. Louis, when Tretiak was hustled away from the showers by his coach to watch Plante practice. For his attention, Plante gave him a goalie stick.
Tretiak believes that Plante simply didn't want a member of the goaltending fraternity humiliated in what most everyone believed would be a Canadian rout.
"I would like to ask Jacques Plante, but it's not possible," he told me of the late goaler. "Maybe he felt sorry for me?"
To mark his love of his hockey in Montreal and his games played here, Tretiak purchased a brick — soon to be relocated with the rest — in the Canadiens' Bell Centre Centennial Plaza. Its three lines read: "V. Tretyak/Moscou-Montreal/Passion Hockey."
"I don't wish to upset any other city in Canada, but in my opinion Montreal is a true hockey city. Hockey was born here," Tretiak said. "The Canadiens have won the most Stanley Cups, fans understand hockey, and the whole city lives through its team. Some of my best games were in Montreal."
None were more important than his otherworldly effort at the Forum 40 years and one night ago, when Canada learned that hockey was not our game alone.
Montreal Gazette