text:
The eight men, beards trimmed, explosive belts fastened, pistols and grenades concealed in their clothing, waited until nightfall before stealing across the flat, porous Iraqi border. They navigated the berms and trenches along the frontier, traversing two-way smuggling routes used to ferry cigarettes, livestock, weapons — and jihadis to enter the northeastern Syrian province of Hasaka. It was August 2011, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and Syria was five months into a still largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Their leader was a Syrian emissary from the al Qaeda affiliate forged in the bloody conflict next door. He called himself Abu Mohammad al-Golani, and the young fighter, about whom little is known for sure except that he is a veteran of that war against the Americans in Iraq, had been authorized by his boss, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and al Qaeda's central command to set up a Syrian offshoot of the notorious group. His mission, made clear in subsequent public statements, was nothing less than to bring down the Assad regime and establish an Islamic state in its place. No one knew it at the time, but that trip across the border would turn out to be a crucial turning point in the Syrian civil war, a key factor in the metastasizing of an internal conflict into a regional conflagration that now threatens the regime in Iraq as well as Syria.
Story Continued Below
Before Golani's nighttime trek from Iraq into Syria, al Qaeda was looking increasingly like a spent force. Osama bin Laden had been killed a few months earlier. His successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had bin Laden's passion but little of his charisma, and the Middle East was still in the throes of the so-called Arab Spring, experimenting with peaceful protests rather than violence as a means to bring about change.
But over the next few years, at times even aided by the cynical Assad regime, Golani would rejuvenate the al Qaeda brand and establish a firm base in Syria. His group, called Jabhat al-Nusra l'Ahl as-Sham (meaning Support Front for the People of the Sham, an Arabic term encompassing Damascus, Syria and the Levant), would create a whole new generation of jihadists from around the Islamic world, fighters who have become a crucial force in a Syrian civil war that has claimed well over 140,000 lives and displaced nine million Syrians, both internally and into neighboring countries.
Just as dangerously, Nusra's very success would create a massive rift with its jihadist parent organization, the al Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic State of Iraq. By April of 2013, that group would rebrand itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL , a new name that indicated its transnational ambitions. By this June, ISIL (also known as ISIS) had become so powerful that it would brazenly undertake a blitzkrieg-like advance across northern and western Iraq, rapidly capturing the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit and underscoring the seeming irrelevance of Zawahiri and the old al Qaeda leadership, somewhere in hiding off in South Asia, far from the newest jihadi battlefields.
Now, as a result of ISIL's victories, U.S. President Barack Obama, a man who campaigned on extricating the United States from "dumb" wars in the Middle East, finds himself potentially embroiled in another one. He is sending a small contingent of special forces to work with the Iraqi military, but many in Washington are urging him to take more decisive action against the ISIL militants sweeping across Iraq, seizing territory and oil facilities and threatening to sow chaos in Baghdad and beyond.
This was not inevitable. The Syrian revolution—and the hesitant, confused international reaction to it—paved the way for the resurrection of a militant Islam that would turn vast regions of Iraq and Syria into borderless jihadi strongholds and inch closer to redrawing the map of the Middle East—in practical terms if not on paper. This is the story, pieced together over several trips into Syria and rare interviews with highly placed jihadi commanders on the front lines, of how it happened.
It began, in mid-2011, with the Syrian regime's suspicious release of hundreds of jihadis from prison—a move that served Assad's strategy of presenting the uprising at once as a plot by Islamist extremists, agents of Israel and the West and a small number of disillusioned citizens with legitimate gripes who had fallen prey to "foreign conspirators." It also played, unwittingly or not, into Golani's hands.
The truth was that al Qaeda had never really been an established presence in Syria. Historically, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and its more violently sectarian offshoot, the Fighting Vanguard, were the country's most prominent Islamist organizations. In the mid-1970s, they were at the forefront of a radical Sunni insurgency against the secular government of Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad. But by 1982 they had been effectively extinguished in Syria, after the February massacre of as many as 20,000 people in the central city of Hama. Membership in the Brotherhood was made a capital offense, prompting most of those who survived the purge to flee overseas. Several hundred were tossed into the notorious Sednaya military prison, some 20 miles north of the capital Damascus, and forgotten.
Syria's main association with al Qaeda came later, when it served as a key transit route for jihadis entering Iraq to fight coalition troops after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. According to a cache of al Qaeda in Iraq personnel files captured in 2007 in the Iraqi border town of Sinjar, every single one of the 600-plus foreign fighters in the records had entered Iraq from Syria. Some, including top U.S. officials, have concluded that the Syrian government was complicit in the movement of these men through its territory, and that in so doing it achieved two objectives—domestically, it (temporarily) rid itself of potential threats from homegrown Islamists, and regionally, it would help hobble an American force that might turn its attention to Syria next.
In 2004 and 2005, some of these battle-hardened Syrian jihadis started returning home. Their arrival coincided with a spate of small bombings and shootouts with security forces, which continued over the next few years. Many of those who were captured were placed in the three-story Sednaya military prison. The Brotherhood men who had been detained in the '70s and '80s were on the second floor. The 400 or so more recent jihadis lived in isolation on the third floor, in an area the inmates termed "the black door" because the men behind it were so cut off from other inmates.Their jailers called it the al Qaeda wing. On March 15, 2011—the date widely considered the start of the Syrian revolution, when thousands took to the country's streets to call for greater freedoms—another 300 Islamists were transferred from a detention center in Damascus to Sednaya.
Faced with what had become a burgeoning nationwide protest movement, Assad had offered some reforms, mostly cosmetic, in hopes of averting full-blown revolt—while also allowing his security forces to shoot into crowds of demonstrators, beating and detaining thousands. The Syrian regime also issued new laws to permit several general prison amnesties, including Decree No. 61 in May 2011, which covered "all members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other detainees belonging to political movements," another in June, as well as Decrees No. 161 and 53, which ended the country's years-long state of emergency and abolished the Supreme State Security Court, respectively. Sednaya housed pretrial detainees nabbed under the state of emergency laws, awaiting sentencing, and those on whom the court had passed judgment. Many incarcerated Islamists were released—men like Abu Othman, a senior shari'iy, or Islamic legal scholar.
Abu Othman is a stocky but not muscular man in his late 30s with a bulbous nose, small, honey-colored eyes and a chest-length red-tinged beard. I met him in Kassab, a Syrian border town close to Turkey, in mid-April 2014, just a few weeks after Islamist rebels had captured the town. (By mid-June, regime forces had won it back.) He is now a senior shari'y in Jabhat al-Nusra. When he's not fighting, he provides religious instruction to his unit's men and serves as a judge in sharia courts.


text:
Tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA)
dissolves blood clots.
Tissue plasminogen activator can be
used to treat some people who are having a
stroke caused by a blood clot (ischemic stroke). It is
given in a vein (intravenously, or IV) and in some cases may be given directly
into an artery.
The medicine works best if it is given right away after
stroke symptoms begin. Strict criteria must be met in order to use the
medicine. The medicine can be used to prevent disability after a stroke.
T-PA works best to help people with strokes caused by clots (ischemic strokes) when it is given right away after stroke symptoms begin.1, 2
T-PA does not decrease the chance of having another stroke in
the future.
All medicines have side effects. But many people don't feel the side effects, or they are able to deal with them. Ask your pharmacist about the side effects of each medicine you take. Side effects are also listed in the information that comes with your medicine.
Here are some important things to think about:
Common side effects of this medicine include:
See Drug Reference for
a full list of side effects. (Drug Reference is not available in all
Tissue plasminogen activator
should be given right away after the first symptoms of stroke
start. The person and/or family members need to provide as much information as
possible about what symptoms the person had and when they began. This helps
determine whether giving t-PA would be helpful. If it has been too long since the symptoms started, the medicine is unlikely to benefit the person. Other strict
criteria also must be met before the medicine can be given.
Follow-up care is a key part of your treatment and safety. Be sure to make and go to all appointments, and call your doctor if you are having problems. It's also a good idea to know your test results and keep a list of the medicines you take.
Complete the new medication information form (PDF)(What is a PDF document?) to help you understand this medication.
CitationsHacke W, et al. (2008). Thrombolysis with alteplase 3
to 4.5 hours after acute ischemic stroke. New England Journal of Medicine, 359(13): 1317–1329.Del Zoppo GJ, et al. (2009). Expansion of the time window for treatment of acute ischemic stroke with intravenous tissue plasminogen activator: A science advisory from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. Stroke, 40(8): 2945–2948. Also available online: http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/40/8/2945.full.
Last Revised:
January 3, 2013
Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine & Karin M. Lindholm, DO - Neurology
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subset: commoncrawl


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Each morning I wake and open my eyes to a new day filled with things I can't see. I've even grown to appreciate how much the unseen makes its presence felt throughout our daily lives. It has been this way since the dawn of time, but modern science has opened the doors to understanding the unseen worlds that crowd into our own and even allows us to manipulate some of them for our own ends. An endless silent babble of radio waves, massed armies of insects, long-gone planet-girdling ice sheets, endemic microbes, rivers of wind, and more all leave their stamp on the shape of my life in the course of 24 hours. Determined, I set off to unravel the mystery of my invisible day.
The Demons Within
8 a.m. I could pretend that I shoot out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for another day at DISCOVER. But the truth is much blearier, an important part of which is the eradication of the first invisible presence of the day: morning breath. My mouth feels less than fresh as I yawn my way to the bathroom.
Morning breath comes mostly from bacteria that live in the mouth. More than 500 types of oral bacteria have been identified in people so far, and "we keep on identifying more," says Patricia Lenton, an oral malodor researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry and a "calibrated breath odor judge." While we are sleeping, the flow of saliva in our mouths decreases, leaving the bacteria alone "back there, just producing things, lots of sulfur gases," Lenton says. These orally produced sulfur gases—with names like hydrogen sulfide, methylmercaptan, and dimethyl sulfide—plus some other miscellaneous by-products of bacterial metabolism, account for 90 percent of bad breath that can't be traced to an outside cause. Meanwhile, foods such as garlic and onions release sulfur compounds as they are digested in our intestines. Some of these compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream and pass into the air in our lungs. As we exhale, we breathe them out.
It's also through the lungs that changes in blood chemistry caused by disease can affect the odor of our breath. "Diabetes is a good example. When people have uncontrolled diabetes, they can have a really sweet, fruity smell in their breath," Lenton says. Researchers are even working to develop tests for breast cancer and organ transplant rejection based on the bouquet of a patient's breath.
Most odor-producing bacteria live on the tongue, not the teeth, so I give my tongue a few good scrubs with my toothbrush before continuing my morning routine.
Scrutinizing the Jet Stream
9 a.m. I'm ready to leave, checking out the window for the effects of that all-time-classic invisible entity, the wind. I'm not looking for the effects of just any old gust of air. The specific wind that is going to determine whether I'll have to put on a jacket is one that weather watchers didn't even know existed a century ago.
It's called the polar jet stream, and as it writhes eastward across the North American continent, it can bring storms in its wake or herald an unseasonable change in temperature—north of the jet stream lies cold, Arctic air, while to its south are warmer conditions. In summer months the polar jet stream flows mostly across Canada. During the winter it dips as far south as the U.S. Gulf states.
Jet streams occur at very high altitudes—30,000 to 40,000 feet—which is why they were not definitively identified until World War II, when pilots noticed intense headwinds during long-distance military missions. The heart of a jet stream is a relatively narrow band of strong wind a few hundred miles wide that can reach speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. Jet streams draw their energy from the rotation of the earth and the difference in temperature between the equator and higher latitudes. Without jet streams, "it would be a pretty boring place," weatherwise, says Klaus Weickmann, a meteorologist at the Earth System Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado.
Small changes in the jet stream as it passes overhead can create stormy weather at low altitudes. For example, "if you have a low-pressure area aloft, then you will tend to produce low pressure at the surface ahead of it," Weickmann explains. "That particular [atmospheric] structure is very efficient at extracting available potential energy and converting it into kinetic energy." This kinetic energy manifests itself in the kind of high winds and rains that can turn a day into a washout. From what I can see out my window though, the weather appears to be pretty calm, so I decide to leave my jacket at home and gather my things. I open my building's front door and look up at the slight hill I have to climb to my subway stop.
Glacial Moment
It's not much of a slope, but this hill, and others like it, are evidence of the ancient forces that ultimately brought me and more than 8 million other people to live in New York City. At the peak of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, right outside my front door was a frozen glacier wall that rose as high as 300 feet, the southern edge of a vast ice sheet that covered Canada and the northern part of the United States. "Glaciers act as a plow, pushing stuff ahead," says Sidney Horenstein, a geologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The edge of America's ice sheet—marked by a line of rubble called the terminal moraine—ran along Long Island. When the earth warmed and the glacier receded, the rubble was left behind as a series of low hills. Look at a map of New York City and in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens (located on the west end of Long Island) you can see that chilly history encoded in the names of today's neighborhoods: Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Forest Hills. Southeast of where I live, water from the melting edge of the glacier flowed over the landscape, depositing layers of sand and silt and leaving behind areas with names such as Flatbush and Flatlands. "The community names have meaning," Horenstein says.
But the biggest impact on New York's destiny came from the glaciers' ability to erode, not build, landforms. A glacier "acts as sandpaper because it has rocks embedded in its base…so as the glacier moves, it's deepening valleys and smoothing off the tops of hills," Horenstein says. As the glacier moved south toward the future location of New York City, it widened and deepened the Hudson River valley. "The Hudson is the southernmost fjord in North America," Horenstein says. When the first Europeans explored the river in 1609, they found in it an ideal trade route that penetrated into the continent. The glacier's deepening of the Hudson also made New York Harbor a snap for trans-Atlantic shipping to navigate.
These geologic advantages—a terrific natural harbor and an easy transportation route into the interior—allowed an active trading outpost to be established on Manhattan Island by 1625. Over the next four centuries, this blossomed into the international financial and cultural powerhouse that is New York City today—one that still draws people from all over the world to settle here.
Magnetic Attraction
It's only a few minutes' walk up the hill to the subway, and I descend the steps and enter the realm of magnetism. Magnetism is what gets 5.4 million passengers around New York City's subway system every day, starting with the MetroCard I swipe at the turnstile to enter the system. My MetroCard has a stripe made from a slurry of barium ferrite particles painted onto the card. The stripe encodes a couple hundred bytes of data in magnetized patterns. The data are read by the subway turnstile, which decides whether I have paid for the trip. The turnstile also keeps a record of the card's unique identification number and the time and date the card was used, regularly uploading this information to the New York City Transit Authority's central computers. (The local police have found this inconspicuous record-keeping handy in implicating or exonerating suspects in criminal cases and have even used it to trace notorious fugitives such as Peter Braunstein, who sexually assaulted a woman after pretending to be a fireman checking for smoke damage in her building, according to newspaper accounts.)
But where magnetism really reigns supreme is in the motors that drive the subway trains. The New York City subway system supplies power to its trains via a third rail charged with about 625 volts of direct electric current (DC). A device called an inverter turns this into alternating current (AC), which is fed to the motors underneath each car. Inside the motor, the AC electricity flows through coils that surround the rotating core of the motor. The alternating current creates a constantly changing magnetic field and, through some clever engineering, magnetizes the core of the motor as well. Magnetic attraction pulls the rotor toward one coil and then to the next. The changing magnetic field ensures that the rotor will never come to rest, and its strength—thousands of times more powerful than a typical refrigerator magnet—provides the necessary push to keep the train moving.
Iron Lungs
Driven by its motors, my train rumbles into the station, clattering along the tracks. It's about a 35-minute commute to my stop at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and from there a five-minute walk to DISCOVER's offices. There's often a lot of worry in New York City about what we might be breathing into our lungs while we're commuting and otherwise out and about. As is common around the country, New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation routinely monitors the levels of ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates in the air. Together these measurements give a pretty good snapshot of the health of the air, known as the Air Quality Index (AQI). Anyone can get a real-time report on the AQI in his or her area by visiting airnow.gov. But I was interested in finding out what else I might be breathing, so I borrowed an air sampling pump from Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at Hunter College in New York City.
Fortunately for me, I'm in no danger of metal poisoning—nearly all the elements we tested for, including lead, arsenic, and chromium, weren't present at detectable levels. But two were detectable—iron and calcium. The iron comes from my time in the subway, generated from "wear and tear on the wheels and on the tracks," which produces tiny iron particles in the air, Richmond-Bryant explains. The calcium comes from aboveground: There is "a decent amount of calcium in concrete," she says. The concrete gets ground up "when people drive over it or when construction is going on," and small amounts of it are released into the air. But New Yorkers needn't worry—iron and calcium are not considered hazardous air pollutants by the EPA.
Radio Free New York
As I stroll along 14th Street to work, I'm also wandering through an invisible electromagnetic bedlam. Indeed, if I could see radio waves, the top of the Empire State Building 20 blocks north of me would be lit like a kaleidoscopic flare, illuminating the entire city. The Empire State Building is host to an array of antennas that are taking advantage of the building's 1,454-foot height—to the top of its lightning rod—to broadcast a bevy of radio and television stations.
But it's not just radio and TV signals that are in the air. Cell phones, Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, walkie-talkies, and more are all adding to the bedlam. To prevent transmissions from interfering with each other, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration tightly regulate the use of every radio frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum. With a device known as a spectrum analyzer, it's possible to visualize just how the spectrum is being used. I borrowed one that could detect signals from 100 kilohertz (kHz), just below the frequency of long-wave radio stations, up to 3 gigahertz (GHz), somewhat above the 2.4 GHz portion of the spectrum used by Wi-Fi connections (see "Radio Ways," below). If you have a Wi-Fi-enabled computer, you can create your own poor-man's version of a spectrum analyzer. You'll need a piece of software like Kismet or KisMAC, which you can find free online. This software taps into your Wi-Fi card's radio and displays all the signals from nearby Wi-Fi base stations, along with the frequency, or channel, that they are broadcasting on. This can come in handy if you've noticed a slowdown in your wireless connection speed—it might be that neighbors have set up a new Wi-Fi base station that is using the same channel as yours, resulting in interference. If you spot an unused channel with Kismet or KisMAC, you might want to adjust your base station so that you are connecting without interference.
Software Shock
Once I finally reach DISCOVER's office, around 10 a.m., the first thing I do (after fixing myself a cup of tea) is fire up my computer and check my e-mail accounts. The difference between a computer that is useful and one that is an expensive paperweight is, of course, software. A piece of software is essentially a list of instructions that tell a computer what to do. And these days, computers, along with their software, are everywhere.
If you've ever struggled to understand how a piece of software works, you are not alone. In fact, simply checking for new e-mail triggers a cascade of activity so complex that no human being could ever completely understand all of it. Subsystem interacts with subsystem as electrons surge and flow through microchips that operate according to the dictates of semiconductor physics. How is it, then, that every time you log on to the Internet, there's a cool new Web site that seems to work just fine, despite not being programmed by a crack squad of Nobel laureates?
The key to making it all work is the concept of layers. The top layer is the application that you're using at the moment—a word processing application like Microsoft Word, say. The word processing application talks to your operating system, like Vista, a lower layer that handles requests to do things like save a file. In turn, the operating system talks to the hardware, such as your central processing unit, which has the responsibility for actually storing the file. And each one of those layers is composed of many sublayers. "It's layer upon layer upon layer.…To me, the most marvelous thing about it is that all this stuff is transparent," says Warren Harrison, a professor of computer science at Portland State University in Oregon. What Harrison means by "transparent" is that each layer makes the messy details of what it's doing invisible to higher levels. This approach means that your word processor can just say "save this file" without worrying about the low-level details of how to organize the bits on your computer's hard disk. Transparency also "gives us division of labor. So I can specialize in writing network software, and I don't have to worry about knowing how to write a good user interface. Or, conversely, I can specialize in writing user interfaces and I don't have to worry about network software," Harrison says.
This principle of transparency extends to the Internet. Whenever I check the online weather report or my Facebook profile, the request passes from computer to computer until it reaches its destination. Yet as I sit at my computer, all these computers hide their presence as best they can, so it looks as if I have a direct computer-to-computer connection with the Web site of my choice.
Rocky Foundations
1 p.m. Lunchtime. I go out to grab something at a gyro stand down the street. I'm surrounded by buildings that are rather on the short side for Manhattan, rising only 10 or 11 stories. North of 33rd Street and at Manhattan's southern tip, buildings that are over 40 stories high are common, giving the city's skyline a saddlebacked appearance, as building heights drop sharply between the two clusters of towers. Another quirk of geology is to blame. The city's bedrock, formed through a cataclysmic series of tectonic collisions 550 million years ago, rises close to, or even pushes through, the surface in some parts of the city, creating the perfect foundation for very tall buildings. In other parts—such as near 14th Street, where I am standing, waiting for my lunch—the bedrock is covered by up to several hundred feet of dirt and gravel. This looser material can't support as much weight as the bedrock, resulting in more squat buildings.
The Microbial Manifest
Lunch in hand, I return to the office. The rest of the day is spent in meetings and working at my computer. Six o'clock rolls around and I descend again into the subway. The train is usually pretty crowded, so I often have to stand and hold on to a metal railing for the trip. It's when the railing is still warm and slightly greasy from an earlier passenger's hand that my thoughts turn to the subway's microbial population. Vincent LaBombardi, director of microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, is reassuring, though: "Most organisms that you find are not pathogenic; they're typical environmental bugs that you would not be terribly surprised to find, like corynebacterium species and bacillus species." LaBombardi does note that also to be found is "the cold virus and other types of the adenovirus and whatnot—but that is no different from anyplace else."
Just to make sure, I swabbed a subway car handrail and had it checked for two bugs that are often in the news lately, E. coli and staph bacteria, as well as for a general measure of bacterial activity, known as the standard plate count, or SPC. The E. coli and staph test came back negative, and the rail's SPC count of 480 compared favorably with the SPC of 200,000 that was obtained from a swab taken at a water fountain in a park near DISCOVER's offices.
On the less reassuring side, LaBombardi says that in New York City tropical diseases are common: "We have a lot of people who travel, and they bring back souvenirs. So we see malaria; we see many parasitic infections." But his big worry is drug-resistant bacteria. New York has "more strains that are resistant to antibiotics" than do other parts of the United States. For "some of these bugs [such as enterococcus] we have no drugs left," he says. "They're totally resistant to everything now." Hand-sanitizing gels do not get rid of spores such as those belonging to Clostridium difficile, "a big pathogen" that can cause diarrhea and inflammation of the colon. But old-fashioned hygiene makes a good defense—LaBombardi recommends simply washing hands regularly with soap and water.
Picture Platters
Once home, therefore, I make sure to wash my hands before fixing dinner. My wife, Annie, and I settle down to watch a DVD. DVDs—like CDs before them and the Blu-ray discs that will eventually replace them—are a form of optical media. Beneath the plastic surface of the DVD, tiny pits and level spots called lands are arranged in a spiral with a 0.74-micron pitch about the size of an average bacterium. These tiny pits and lands encode digital zeros and ones. The DVD player spins the disc, and as it rotates, the spiral is scanned by a laser beam, which acts much like the needle in an old record player. The laser light used in DVD players operates at a wavelength of 650 nanometers (nm), which means it has a visible red color. Blu-ray discs squeeze more information onto the same size disc as a DVD—up to 50 gigabytes on a typical disc, compared with about 8 gigabytes for many movie DVDs—by using a data spiral with a pitch of just 0.32 micron and a 405-nm laser beam. Although 405 nm corresponds to a violet color, it is referred to as blue—hence the name of the format.
The Arthropod Army
Soon enough it's midnight and time for my eight hours of shut-eye. I climb into bed, not thinking of the extensive colony of tiny arthropods lurking in my pillow and mattress. These arthropods are dust mites, and unless you've taken exceptional measures, they're in your pillow and mattress too. Dust mites "need places to hide, and they like places with higher humidity," says Jason Rasgon, an assistant professor of microbiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "They'll definitely be in mattresses and pillows; they'll be in the carpets. They can be pretty much everywhere." Dust mites feed on organic detritus: "Household dust is made up of dirt and shed skin cells, and they like that kind of stuff," Rasgon says. Male dust mites live for about a month. The females live about twice that and lay about 30 eggs in their lifetime. Both sexes are less than 420 microns long and look like specks of dirt to the naked eye. There can be as many as 19,000 dust mites in three-hundredths of an ounce of dust (but a few hundred is more likely).
Dust mites are a subject of increasing health concern because they can be highly allergenic. According to Rasgon, people can react not only to the mites themselves but also to their exoskeletons, which are shed as the mites molt during their life cycles. And then there's frass, which, Rasgon helpfully explains, is "mite poop." Dust mite allergens can trigger serious asthma attacks and other allergic reactions. Some severe sufferers have to cover their mattresses and pillows with impermeable material.
For me, though, it's head down and off into the realm of sleep. Exactly what happens inside our skulls when we are dreaming is still an area of active debate, but my nighttime visions are anything but invisible to me as I slumber, resting and gathering my forces for another day.
For more information please read The Invisible Things That Give a Hometown Its Flavor.
Discover Magazine


text:
Few things are more American than a PB & J sandwich. However, jelly itself has been a staple all over the world since antiquity, when someone figured out that even quince (a fruit that looks like an ugly apple, and that's too hard to be eaten raw) could taste delicious when slow-cooked with honey (incidentally, the word Marmalade derives from the Portuguese Marmelo (quince). Unlike our American children, spoiled by constant sugary snacks, it seems that people back then actually PREFERRED fresh fruit, because they didn't attempt to make jelly with anything other than quince for centuries!
It was the Persians or the Arabs, who had been producing sugar from cane, who finally came up with the idea of syrup and started using it to manufacture various preserves, experimenting with pectic fermentation and creating the first citrus fruit marmalades. With the conquest of Spain, Portugal and Southern Italy, the Arabs introduced all their confections, changing the European palate forever, much to the joy of children and… dentists.
Preserving fruit or vegetables in syrup, just like drying or pickling, also prolonged their shelf life; this became critical in the Age of Discovery, starting in the 15th century, for the sailors, merchants and pirates (!) who had to spend months at sea with no access to fresh produce.
However, jam makes me think of far more familiar adventures, such as climbing up my grandmother's fig, apple and peach trees as a child. I didn't mind a scraped knee if I could feel that I was part of our little production line: I picked the fruit, nonna stirred the jam, my mom (the pharmaceutical chemist) jarred it, and my dad kept stealing spoonfuls from the pot.
- 3 pounds small (Japanese) eggplants
- 3 small golden delicious apples (or 2 large)
- 1 medium orange
- 1 organic lemon
- 6 cups sugar
peel the eggplants, cut them in 2-3 pieces each, and pierce them with a fork. Place them in a bowl of salted water for 1 hour. Rinse and cover with fresh, unsalted water. Let rest for another hour. Drain and lace in a large (it will froth up like crazy) copper or stainless steel pot, with the peeled and sliced apples, and the orange and lemon juice and zest. Add the sugar and 2-3 tbsps water,bring to a boil, and cook on low heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. remove from the heat and pass through a food mill or sieve 9even a potato masher will do!). return to the pot and simmer for 30 more minutes, or until it has thickened. Pour into sterilized glass jars and close them tightly. Store in a cool, dark place.


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Central Technology Center
Campus Locations
|Drumright Campus
3 CT Circle
Drumright, OK 74030
(918) 352-2551
|Sapulpa Campus
1720 S. Main St.
Sapulpa, OK 74066
(918) 224-9300
|Business Center: Drumright
201 N. Settles Dr.
Drumright, OK 74030
(918) 352-4517
Projects and Unique Attributes
Central Technology Center provides excellence in technical education to high school students and adults, as well as customized business training. CTC empowers individuals to succeed and elevates the workforce through various economic development collaborations.
CTC's commitment to excellence is verified by its recognition as a Gold Star School since the award's inception in 1990 and a placement rating of 93%.
In addition, a cooperative alliance agreement with several colleges and universities allows students to earn college credit and choose from 120 career majors. CTC also provides academic courses in math and science necessary for high school graduation
Each year, CTC serves 27,000 students and provides customized business and industry training to more than 500 businesses. Specialized training includes safety, pipeline, operator qualification (OQ), welding, machine tool and many others.
Recently, CTC added a Paramedic to RN Bridge through a partnership with Tulsa Community College and completed the construction of a Pipeline and Safety Training Center to better serve business and industry and meet workforce needs.
District Population and Partner Schools
District population is 107,075 based on 2010 census data. School districts served are Allen-Bowden, Bristow, Cleveland, Cushing, Davenport, Depew, Drumright, Gypsy, Hominy, Jennings, Kellyville, Kiefer, Lone Star, Mannford, Milfay, Mounds, Oak Grove, Oilton, Olive, Pretty Water, Ripley, Sapulpa, Stroud and Yale.


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Did God create light in transit? Was the speed of light faster in the past? Does this have anything to do with the 'big bang'? See how God could have created the universe and Adam and Eve would have seen distant starlight on the sixth day of creation week.
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Fashion exhibitions at museums, like the "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" show that set attendance records at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, are more popular than ever. Here is a selection of what's on now and what's coming soon, in the U.S. and abroad.
Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland | Dedicated to the style and passion of the late fashion icon, editor, traveler and Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute curator. Vreeland also worked as a special consultant to the museum from 1972 to the time of her death in 1989, setting the international standard for costume exhibitions. This show includes pieces of her personal wardrobe by Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and Givenchy; theatrical costumes; and art objects. At the opening this month, her grandson Alexander Vreeland explained to Women's Wear Daily that Diana Vreeland "made the relation between fashion and art possible. This is standing on her shoulders. For important fashion to be seen in a museum, she forged that territory. And it's often the most lucrative part of a museum."
Through June 25 at the Fortuny Palace, Venice, Italy, https://www.visitmuve.it.
Charles James: Genius Deconstructed | Celebrates one of the few American designers to have worked in the tradition of the French haute couture, whose work continues to inspire half a century after his death. It features 15 of his most memorable looks.
Through April 16 at the Chicago History Museum, chicagohistory.org.
The Total Look: The creative collaboration between Rudi Gernreich, Peggy Moffitt and William Claxton | Explores the collaboration between Los Angeles-based designer Gernreich, an innovator before his time; his muse Moffitt and her late husband Claxton, who photographed many of Gernreich's designs, bringing them to life. Includes dozens of Gernreich's body-conscious looks, as well as film footage and photographs.
Through May 20 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, https://www.moca.org.
The Sea | The influence of the romance of the sea on fashion design. Featuring clothing and accessories from the 19th century to the present, from fashion houses including Chanel, Emilio Pucci and Emanuel Ungaro.
Through July 15 at the Phoenix Art Museum, https://www.phxart.org.
Louis Vuitton-Marc Jacobs | The story of Vuitton, who founded his trunk business in 1854, with a "specialty in the packing of fashions," and Jacobs, artistic director since 1997, who helped design and market Louis Vuitton, turning it into a global fashion powerhouse.
Through Sept. 16 at Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris, https://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr.
Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective | Includes more than 200 garments tracing the arc of Saint Laurent's career, from his first days at Dior in 1958 to his final runway collection in 2002. The show is organized with the Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent; this is its only U.S. stop.
March 25 to July 8 at the Denver Art Museum, denverartmuseum.org.
Herb Ritts: L.A. Style | Retrospective of the late photographer, whose aesthetic emerged in the 1980s, including images of fashion models and his anti-glamour style portraits of celebrities, many of which were recently acquired from the Herb Ritts Foundation.
April 3 to Aug. 26 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, https://www.getty.edu.
Christian Louboutin | Showcases the shoe maestro's design process and some of his finest work, from sneakers to stilettos, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his brand.
May 1 to July 9 at the Design Museum London, designmuseum.org.
An American Legacy: Norell, Blass, Halston & Sprouse | Highlights the achievements of Norman Norell, Bill Blass, Roy Halston Frowick and Stephen Sprouse, all of whom hailed from Indiana, and how they contributed to the definition of American style over 50 years of fashion history.
May 4 to Jan. 27, 2013, Indianapolis Museum of Art, https://www.imamuseum.org.
Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations | Explores affinities between Italian designers Elsa Schiaparelli, who died in 1973, and Miuccia Prada, who entered her family business in 1978, with "conversations" orchestrated between them to suggest new interpretations of their work and an emphasis on their shared fascination with the Surrealist art movement.
May 10 to Aug. 19 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, https://www.metmuseum.org.


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Imagine me huddled in a small circular room, trying desperately to squeeze into a corner that doesn't exist. I'm trying to avoid a squidgy mass of grey in the middle of the space, a confusing lump of moral ambiguities and disappointment that threatens to ooze all over me.
The most I can do is poke at the squidgy mass with the pointy end of a broken pool cue to try to uncover the odd speck of true black or pure white that my woefully inefficient brain can hang onto as a tiny scrap of hope.
That's the best way I can describe how I feel after this episode, which replaced the joy of a righteous death with the skin-crawling discomfort of Watching Characters I Like Do Things Which Are Valuable To The Narrative But Still I Do Not Approve.
Why, Jaime, why did you have to ...? And The Hound ... bad Hound! Bad Hound! And Sam Tarly… aww, don't do that. Ygritte, don't you know anything? Tyrion, don't make him go ... And Littlefinger I will tear your spleen out with my thumbnails if you touch a hair on her head, you just see if I don't...
Mind you, anything that ends in a pissing contest can't be too bad, so perhaps what's required is to flop out my analytical brain for another Raven On Game of Thrones recap.
Reminder: spoilers will be included below, so only read on if you've seen the episode. We're discovering the storyline through the TV series (reading the books after each has finished), so no dropping important future plot points in the comments, or we'll eat your parents.
Yup, the keen teen queen seen green screen Meereen peen. From a respectable distance, of course. You've got to show a Khaleesi some modicum of dignity, even while you're detangling your todger from its gritty sling in order to prove your superiority as a warrior. Because the penis mightier than the sword, apparently.
Thankfully Daenerys had faithful lapdogs/bloodhounds queuing up to take on the Champion of the slave city Meereen in her honour.
For a moment she was Goldilocks, telling the three bears Grey Worm, Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah why they were just not right - ie, too valuable for her to risk.
Then Maario volunteered, and it was like, "Yeah, works for me, if you die, sorry (not sorry)."
Maario proceeded to kick the champion's ass (and horse) like a boss, which I guess made him Bowser, so Maario now gets a one-up and Dany is officially Princess Peach.
Despite having no PA system or even a crackly loudspeaker, the Mother of Dragons then delivered a stirring and completely audible speech to the slaves of Meereen positioned high above the gates of the city.
She accused their masters of spreading lies about her, and proved her army was mostly freed slaves by trebucheting their broken shackles at the city walls. OH YOU IN BIG TROUBLE NOW POSH DUDES IN SILKS.
I revel in Dany's episode-concluding epic PR stunt because it was a moment of kick-ass glory that contradicted the rather gloomy timbre purveying the rest of world this week.
I mean, you would've thought life post-Joffrey might be fun for at least ten minutes before his twincestuous parents do something unspeakably GROSS right next to his carcass.
That's right, Jaime decided to throw away any goodwill we'd built up for him by … well, you know what he did. And it was horrible, it was rape, it was clear-cut, but it was also icky as hell and complicated and I am NOT defending the indefensible but I am just arghgghgh not good not good not good oh please Clementine Ford is going to hate me.
As an aside, Cersei referred to Joffrey as "our baby boy", while imploring Jaime to kill Tyrion in revenge. Now I was under the impression that Jaime didn't know he was daddy as well as unky; he's never acted in a way that suggested to me he's been in the know. He never seemed to care any more than any relative would; Cersei's always been his focus.
But Cersei's cries didn't surprise him, so he must've known. I can't remember anything from Books 1 or 2 (which I read, of course, after the TV seasons aired) that confirmed this, but I must have just missed it. Any pointers welcome.
Despite the AWFUL GROSSNESS, that scene did deliver a wonderful exchange between Tywin Lannister and Tommen, his grandson and the new king.
Tommen is a calm, sensible child, who showed more nous in three minutes than Joffrey showed in the previous three seasons. Tywin cleverly guided the boy through the politics of kingship, handily concluding that he is wisest when listening to his advisers. Oh golly gosh I hope Tommen doesn't stay under the golden thumb for too long.
Meanwhile Sansa has found herself in the Bermuda Triangle of Blackwater Bay. Spirited away from the wedding feast by Ser Dontos before the Lannisters could arrest her, she finds herself climbing into not only a ship, but the arms of PETYR EFFING BAELISH THAT SNEAKY PSYCHO BASTARD.
I mean, I'm glad she's safe from Cersei for now, but nothing involving Littlefinger ends well. Look at the way he dispensed with Ser Dontos. OK, he wasn't one of nature's heroes. OK, he did it for money. OK, it's GoT, people are dispensable. But still, he was sweet, and I don't just say that because I'm a sucker for slightly tubby men with rosy cheeks.
Sam and Gilly have the sweetest little crushing on each other scene up at Castle Black. It's all big eyes and shy smiles and goose plucking. But Sam believes Gilly is in danger from all those rapists that seem to get recruited by the Night's Watch, so decided to stash her and baby Sam in a brothel in nearby Mole's Town.
I don't know why Sam thinks it might be safer, given within four seconds of arrival she met Captain Jack Sparrow, who's decided to eschew the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean to get freaky in a dungheap just south of The Wall.
"No other work!" Sam firmly tells the madam, before seeing Gilly settled in her new quarters, decorated in true shabby chic with full Abu-Ghraib finishes. The wildling is understandably peeved at Sam for this, and while I know he's acting out of genuine love for Gilly, he really is naive and I will grab his chubby cheeks and giving him a good telling off, oh yes I will you big cutie pie oh I can't stay mad at you.
Someone else still racing in the naive stakes is Arya Stark, who is outraged over the Hound's disgraceful treatment of a kind farmer who took them in, fed them delicious rabbit stew, then offered The Hound fair work for fair wages. After a night's rest, The Hound declared them dead anyway, beat up the farmer and took their remaining silver. It's a brutal take on economic self-sufficiency so convincing, he could be insert topical political joke here.
It's enough to rile Arya right up, but the Hound responds with "I just understand the way things are. How many Starks do they have to behead before you figure it out?".
OK, he makes a point. But I still Disapprove.
Nobody seems to be doing much disapproving in Oberyn and Ellaria's whoredello. I'm beginning to understand why it's taken so long for Inigo Montoya to extract revenge for his sister Elia's death - he keeps getting distracted by earthly delights of all sorts.
Tywin's coitus interruptus was glorious: invited by Oberyn to sit on his bed, Tywin's "No" was polite, but if you pause, you can just see a split second where he throws up in his mouth.
Tywin offers Martell the role of third trial judge on the panel that will pass sentence on Tyrion, in exchange for handing Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane over to the Dornish prince. Now I sense a classic piece of Tywin plotting here… I'll wager Tywin and Mace will vote for Tyrion's guilt, but Oberyn, being knowledgeable in the art of poisons, will have reason to doubt. Tywin hates Tyrion for sure, but if he wanted him dead, he'd be dead. So a hung jury (well hung it seems in Oberyn's case) could provide Tywin with an outcome in which he saves his son from death, but keeps Cersei happy.
Over on Dragonstone, Stannis's inability to pursue his claim on the Iron Throne is leaving him as frustrated as a leech on a skeleton. Ser Davos knows they need money to raise another army, but it's not until a reading session with lovely Shireen (it's "knight" not "kah-niggit"!) that he has a light bulb moment and decides to write to the Iron Bank of Braavos. The same Iron Bank that the Westeros treasury is in debt to, you ask? Why yes, I believe so. The plot thickens ...
Finally, the Wildlings brutally ambush and slaughter a nice little village not far from The Wall. The first shot was fired by Ygritte, which made me remarkably angry for some reason. At least she isn't as bad as those horrid Thenn warriors, who sent a little lad off to warn the Crows while they feasted on his dead parents.
And so it was that the Night's Watch came to weigh up the pros and cons of leaving The Wall to hunt down the wicked wildlings, with Jon Snow looking especially broody in his furs. So much weight on those muscular shoulders, if only he would let me give him a gentle massage with coconut oil and my face ...
No sooner had the Black Brothers decided that their place was on The Wall, a few of their fellows made a surprise return, having escaped the crazy Crows who killed Craster and confiscated his keep. J-Sno realised that if Mance Raydar were to extract the truth from them about the piddling numbers of Crows currently protecting the south, they'll be more boned than the White Walkers. Hurrah! J-Sno is going back over The Wall.
Yay! Best Moments
There's been some hate for the new Daario, aka Faabio, aka Maario, but I must admit I'm warming to him for three reasons. One, the line "Let me kill this man for you". Oooh, blush, giggle giggle, you had me at "Let me kill this man for you". Two, the wink at Dany. Tee-hee-hee. And three, the turn of the head to softly kiss his trusty blade. RAWR.
Granted, I could've done without the victorious public urination but I went to a private school so it rolls off my back. The macho territorial posturing, I mean, not the urine. That stuff gets everywhere.
Zing! Best Lines
Olenna, Olenna, Olenna. That whole scene with Margaery, nervous about her place now she's lost two husbands before any physical, ahem, alliance, was comedy with class.
"You did wonderful work on Joffrey. The next one should be easier."
Oh, Diana Rigg, don't ever leave me.
Eww, gross
Jaime. Cersei. Meatsack Joffrey. AWFULNESS.
Tyrion is the most beautiful, honourable sonofabitch there ever was. Did you see him send Pod away? Did you see the pain it caused both of them to acknowledge their alliance could critically endanger Pod's life? I wanted Tyrion to recant, I wanted Pod to defy him, I wanted there to be a great moment of passionate brotherhood followed by them slaying the guards, escaping King's Landing and going on the run like Robin Hood and Will Scarlett Pimpernel. Or whatever the literary reference is.


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CHICAGO (Reuters) - When the SARS outbreak arrived in Toronto on February 23, 2003, carried by a woman traveling from Hong Kong, the disease quickly spread to hospital workers and patients in area hospitals, ultimately infecting 257 individuals and killing 33 people.
It's a memory that hangs fresh in the mind of Dr Michael Bell, deputy director of the division of healthcare quality promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Atlanta-based federal agency last week sent a team of infectious disease experts to Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana, to attend to the first confirmed U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS.
"We take this very seriously," Bell told Reuters in an exclusive interview. "In a worst-case scenario, this could spread rapidly."
MERS is caused by a coronavirus, a family of viruses that includes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which emerged in China in 2002-2003 and killed some 800 people.
"If you recall the SARS experience in Toronto, that was something that managed to be transmitted into the healthcare facility, leading to severe illness and death," he said.
"This is not something that we want to take lightly."
State health officials in Indiana report the man is in good condition and improving daily. Hospital personnel who may have been exposed to the virus are being kept in home isolation and watched daily for the emergence of pneumonia-like symptoms. Generally the incubation period of MERS is 14 days.
The patient is a healthcare worker who on April 28 was admitted to the hospital just 30 minutes south of Chicago after having worked in healthcare in Saudi Arabia, the center of the MERS outbreak that began in 2012. So far, 262 people in 12 countries have had confirmed infections that have been reported by the World Health Organization, and another 100 MERS patients have been confirmed by other ministries of health. So far, 93 people have died.
U.S. health officials are now checking airline manifests and contacting patients who may have been seated near the man who took a plane from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to London and then to Chicago, where he then took a bus to an undisclosed city in Indiana.
To keep the infection from spreading within the hospital, the man is being treated in an isolation room from which air is expelled through a filter, preventing it from being shared in the hallway.
"It's not because we have proof that this virus spreads easily through the air, but we don't want to take any chances," Bell said.
People who enter the room wear a respirator, a type of filtering mask that keeps them from breathing in any airborne particles in the room.
And because MERS is in a family of viruses called coronaviruses that can also be spread through contact with the patient's stool, the team is taking measures to keep all possibly infectious materials from leaving the room.
"You put on gowns and gloves before you go in the room. You take them off before you leave. You pay a lot of attention to washing your hands afterwards with alcohol gel or soap and water," Bell said.
Finally, because tear ducts in the eyes are connected to the throat, healthcare workers wear goggles or face shields to prevent any droplets from entering the eyes.
All of these measures are part of standard hospital protocols for treating various infectious diseases. People with tuberculosis are placed in airborne isolation rooms. With diarrheal diseases, healthcare workers use contact prevention measures.
"None of this is different from what the hospital is already accustomed to doing. We're just making sure the implementation in this case is absolutely meticulous," Bell said.
Bell said current hospital control measures became common practice during the HIV epidemic, when hospital workers had to assume anyone coming in the doors could be infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
"I think it's safe to say every healthcare worker, even in an outpatient setting, understands that whatever comes in the doors, they could be exposed to something infectious," Bell said.
"That ranges from something as common as seasonal influenza, or, if you work in a pediatric facility, there any number of diarrheal diseases," he said.
Despite the best efforts, however, hospitals remain a major source of infection. In March, the CDC reported that roughly one of every 25 U.S. hospital patients contracts an infection during their stay.
Standard procedures for patients walking into the emergency department with a fever and respiratory complaints, as the MERS patient did in Indiana, are to put a mask on the patient and place them in room with a closed door.
"My understanding is the patient was placed in a private room very quickly," Bell said of the Indiana patient.
As for treatments, there are no specific drugs that can treat MERS, but there are basic treatments that can help the patient fight off the infection, including oxygen, which can reduce the burden on the lungs.
In addition to disease prevention experts, the CDC has sent a team of virologists to the hospital to study the MERS virus, which is still poorly understood. Although the virus first surfaced in 2012, its presence in the United States will give U.S. scientists the opportunity to study it up close.
Currently, it is not clear how the virus is transmitted, but it is clear that it can pass among individuals who have close contact with infected patients.
"The good news is that it's a group of viruses that have a very delicate envelope or membrane on the outside. Because of that, the virus tends to be rapidly inactivated by disinfectants," Bell said.
Since March of 2014, there has been a spike in the number of cases reported in Saudi Arabia. Bell said it is not clear whether that represents a change in the virus that makes it easier to spread, or an increase in the number of cases being reported to health officials.
"That is completely unknown at the moment. It's still rather early in terms of the viral characterization. Since this has all been happening outside the U.S., it's not something we've had a lot of time to work on."
At this point, the CDC has not issued any restrictions on air travel, but Bell said the case makes clear just how easily infections can spread. He recommends that people traveling through airports try to limit what they touch, and wash their hands frequently.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)


text: BEIJING (AP) - Beijing is tightening control over trade in information that can help companies find their way through China's secretive business world. On Tuesday, police announced the arrest of two corporate investigators, a Briton and an American who work in Shanghai, on charges of improperly selling personal information about Chinese citizens. Peter Humphrey and Yingzeng Yu, a married couple, are part of an industry of investigators who help corporate clients screen potential partners and employees or watch for embezzlement and other employee misconduct. 'The opaque nature of the investigation and detention of the Humphreys is troubling at best and puts a serious chilling effect on legitimate efforts to investigate even benign, public information,' said James Zimmerman, managing partner of the Beijing office of the law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. Chinese leaders want the prosperity that comes from free-market competition but see control over information as a tool to protect the Communist Party's monopoly on power. The government operates an extensive surveillance network to track China's public and limits access to data on companies and individuals. Since last year it has further narrowed what can be obtained. Other companies that supply information already are under pressure. In January, four Chinese employees of a unit of Dun & Bradstreet Corp. were sentenced to prison on charges of improperly buying personal data of Chinese citizens. A string of Chinese companies have been hit by disclosures by investigators about possible financial misconduct that caused their share prices to plunge. Possibly in response to that, regulations issued in February 2012 prohibit government agencies from disclosing financial or commercial information about a company without its permission. That made it harder for companies to investigate potential partners or acquisition targets to find liabilities or conflicts of interest. Known as 'due diligence,' it is a common practice in other countries. Several dozen reports prepared by Humphrey and Yu for corporate clients contained information that 'seriously violated the legitimate rights of citizens,' the Shanghai police department said in a statement. It said they were formally arrested on Aug. 16. That included home addresses and information on family members, real estate and vehicles, the statement said. It said they were sold to clients including manufacturers, law firms and financial institutions. Such information can reveal links between people and establish who controls a business. That can be essential in a Chinese business world dominated by behind-the-scenes personal connections. Also last year, communist leaders were embarrassed by news reports that disclosed details of the family wealth of Xi Jinping, the new ruling party leader, and retiring Premier Wen Jiabao. Humphrey's and Yu's firm, ChinaWhys Ltd., says on its website it 'specializes in discreet risk mitigation solutions, consulting and investigation services' aimed at 'walking multinationals through the labyrinth of opportunity, risk and unfamiliar cultural environment.' Humphrey, a former reporter for the Reuters news agency, has worked as an investigator for the past 14 years in Asia, focusing on white-collar crime prevention, fraud investigation and crisis mitigation, according to the website. It says Yu has worked for or advised companies in the United States, Hong Kong and China in technology, medical products and other industries over a 25-year business career. Humphrey and Yu are accused of paying 800 to 2,000 yuan ($130 to $320) per item of personal information, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A report about the case on the state television midday news showed two people in handcuffs with their faces blurred. 'To obtain this information, I sometimes used illegal means,' said the man, a Westerner, speaking in Mandarin. 'I want to apologize to the Chinese government.' The latest case could mark an escalation in enforcement against foreign as well as Chinese investigators. People of Chinese ancestry have been prosecuted in the past on charges of industrial spying or other corporate misconduct but Humphrey appears to be the first non-ethnic-Chinese to face such treatment. In January, the four former executives of Dun & Bradstreet's Shanghai Roadway D&B Marketing Services Co. were sentenced by a Shanghai court to up to two years in prison. The company was fined 1 million yuan ($160,000). The British Embassy in Beijing confirmed last week that Humphrey was arrested but gave no details of charges. The embassy said it was providing unspecified consular assistance to his family. The American Embassy in Beijing said earlier that diplomats visited Yu on July 16. A spokesman said Tuesday he had no additional information. The detentions coincided with the announcement in July of an investigation into possible bribery of doctors by employees of pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. That prompted suggestions their case might be linked to Glaxo, but Tuesday's announcement made no mention of that. Glaxo declined Tuesday to comment. The announcement said Shanghai police are investigating 126 people on suspicion of improperly gathering personal information and have detained 35. Chinese companies have reacted angrily to disclosures of information by investigators. In the highest-profile case, a U.S. firm, Muddy Waters Research, accused Chinese forestry company Sino-Forest Corp. of exaggerating the value of its assets. Sino-Forest's shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange plunged in value. Canadian police launched an investigation of the company, which filed a lawsuit accusing Muddy Waters of defamation.


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Andhra Jyoti also spelled as Andhra Jyothy (Telugu) is a Telugu daily newspaper published in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. KLN Prasad started the Andhra Jyothi newspaper in 1945. It is edited by K. Srinivas. Vemuri Radhakrishna is its Managing Director. It covers Anantapur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Rajahmundry, Tirupati,kadapa, Andhra Pradesh Guntur, Nellore, Kurnool, Warangal, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, Mahbubnagar, and Nalgonda within the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, but is also published in the state of Karnataka at Bangalore, and the state of Tamil Nadu at Chennai.
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Former Goldman Sachs Indian-American board member Rajat Gupta, convicted of insider trading has been fined $13.9 million to settle related civil charges of feeding inside information to his friend, a billionaire hedge fund boss, Raj Rajaratnam.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the fine on Wednesday against Gupta, who was also permanently barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company. Gupta, a former chief of global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., was one of the biggest catches for the federal government in its five-year crackdown on insider trading that has brought about 70 criminal convictions.
Gupta was sentenced in October to two years in prison for passing confidential information gained from his position as a Goldman director to Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon group of 14 hedge funds. Gupta, who also had been a director of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, was also ordered to pay a $5 million criminal fine.
Prosecutors said that Rajaratnam, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, illegally reaped as much as $75 million through his trades, including about $11 million from the information provided by Gupta. The case revolving around Rajaratnam and the Galleon funds has been called the biggest insider trading prosecution in US history. Rajaratnam was fined $10 million in his criminal case and ordered to forfeit $53.8 million. He also paid a record $92.8 million civil penalty levied by the SEC.
Gupta's attorneys noted at his trial that he earned no profits from the scheme. Prosecutors accused Gupta of "above-the-law arrogance" in passing inside tips to Rajaratnam between March 2007 and January 2009. The advance information concerned a $5 billion investment by billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in Goldman and Goldman's financial results for the second and fourth quarters of 2008.
"The sanctions imposed today send a clear message to board members who are entrusted with protecting the confidences of the companies they serve," George Canellos, co-director of the SEC's enforcement division, said in a statement.
Gupta's conviction marked a spectacular fall from grace for the Harvard-educated businessman, who was born in Kolkata, India. More than 400 letters were written on his behalf to the federal judge hearing his case, including documents signed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
With AP inputs


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MiLK.TnC Veteran Tea Tuesday 01/08/2006, 19:35
Maybe its obvious, but to me its not. how does it determine whether you are 'novice' 'master' etc.? i was novice, then suddenly master... can someone explain?? the only thing i can refer to is possibly the percentage of battles i have won... but then someone level 1 could be master?
Fraggle Imperator HK's fox on typewriters Wednesday 02/08/2006, 06:46
Your rank is based on your collection. Each distinct card you've got gives your points. Just hover on the "?" in any ranking to get
more explanations.
MiLK.TnC Veteran Tea Wednesday 02/08/2006, 07:38
Lonith Hero Wednesday 02/08/2006, 18:00
Here is the exact answer you need so you can refer to here.
Each character you own to exclude duplicate cards get you respect points calculated using this formula:
Points = level * number ov evelutions (Card's lvl)
If you have a Fifty lvl 1 and lvl it to lvl 2 you will get 8 respect points for that card.
the point break down for each lvl is:
lvl 1 gets you 4 respect points
lvl 2 gets you 8 respect points
lvl 3 gets you 12 respect points
lvl 4 gets you 16 respect points
lvl 5 gets you 20 respect points
Rank starts at Novice and goes up to Titan.


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For the most part, 'ubiquitous computing'--the growing trend of imbedding computers in our everyday surroundings--seems to encourage connecting with things we enjoy or need (or the things marketers think we enjoy and need) and avoiding pretty much anything else. iPods allow us to walk around in our own imaginary music video and GPS navigation systems in cars take you directly from point A to point B on the most direct and efficient route. But this tendency to isolate social experience within the known and familiar is not going unchallenged. Many designers, engineers and artists are creating other uses for the ubiquitous networks of communications devices being built around us--uses that attempt to focus attention outward rather than inward. 'The Interactive City,' one component of next year's ISEA and Zero One festival, will feature projects that expand participants' knowledge and experiences of their surroundings. Set in San Jose, CA--the 'Spirit of Silicon Valley'--organizers are currently looking for submissions for 'urban-scale' works that foster novel relationships between the city and its inhabitants. The deadline for proposals is 22 April. - Ryan Griffis
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Whether you're aiming to achieve Medical Device Directive Requirements for Class I, Class II or Class III Vascular Medical Devices, as an experienced Vascular Notified Body we have the knowledge and expertise to help you achieve compliance and get your products to global markets faster.
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Devices that are used to correct conditions affecting the CCS are considered High Risk or Class III devices and are subject to Notified Body review. The reviews are typically done through a Design Examination of the manufacturer's technical documentation and must demonstrate that the resulting device is safe, performs as intended, and meets the Essential Requirements of the Medical Devices Directive (MDD).
Arteries and veins not included in the definition of the CCS are considered to be part of the peripheral vasculature. In general, devices used within the peripheral vasculature are deemed as lower risk and are usually classified as Class IIa; if the device is a long-term implant, however, it is categorized as Class IIb. In these cases, the manufacturer "self-declares" conformity to the MDD and maintains a technical file that demonstrates the device meets Essential Requirements of the MDD. The technical file is then reviewed by the Notified Body on an audit basis per the Directive.
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|Research and Conservation
|Public Programs
|About the J. Paul Getty Museum
|Museum Home Research and Conservation
Dates: Friday and Saturday, September 24 and 25, 2010
Time: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. each day; reception to follow on Friday until 6:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Villa, Auditorium
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Art of Ancient Greek Theater and the staging of Sophocles' Elektra at the Getty Villa, this symposium considers the artistic evidence for dramatic performance in ancient Athens as well as Greek and local settlements in southern Italy.
Drawing on objects featured in the exhibition, distinguished international scholars investigate the historical context for theatrical performance and its relation to the creation of some of the most vivid art from the ancient world. Choral, tragic and comic performance inspired a diverse and iconographically complex reaction from vase-painters in Athens and south Italy from the middle of the sixth century to the third quarter of the fourth century B.C. At the same time, vases and marble reliefs fashioned as devotional markers of distinction provide a view into the social context of performance in antiquity, while the production of bronze and terracotta masks and statuettes offers unique insights into the spread of comedy from Greece to Rome.
Topics include the analysis of theatrical iconography; the relationship between workshops that produced theater-related imagery in Athens and southern Italy; the dissemination of vases from Athens and the Greek colonies to Italic settlements, where most have been found; ancient methods of staging and the depiction of props; and the nature of masked acting. The symposium concludes with a conversation about the Getty Villa's production of Sophocles' Elektra with director Carey Perloff of the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, and Helene Foley of Barnard College, Columbia University, New York.
Confirmed speakers:
- T.H. Carpenter, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
- Helene Foley, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York
- Hans R. Goette, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, and the University of Giessen, Germany
- Barbara Kowalzig, Royal Holloway, University of London, England
- Ralf Krumeich, Institute for Art History and Archaeology, University of Bonn, Germany
- François Lissarrague, Centre Louis Gernet, Paris, France
- C.W. Marshall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
- Carey Perloff, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco
- Martin Revermann, University of Toronto, Canada
- Jeffrey Rusten, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
- H. Alan Shapiro, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
- Oliver Taplin, Magdalen College, Oxford, England
- Michael Walton, University of Hull, England
Schedule as of August 26, 2010 (31 KB)
For information, please e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
Sophocles' Elektra
Date: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, September 9-October 2
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Villa, The Barbara and Laurence Fleischman Theater
One of the poet Sophocles' most elegant and haunting works, Elektra celebrates the human desire for justice and the costs exacted upon those who seek it. The world-premiere of this newly-commissioned translation by celebrated playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker is directed by Carey Perloff, artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater. Learn more.
How to Get to the Getty Villa
The Getty Villa is located at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, California, approximately 25 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. See Hours, Directions, Parking for directions and parking information.
Event Information by E-Mail


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modern toys
bounce + lounge
rock + roll
wooden toys
playmats + hideouts
rattles + teethers
outstanding tents
vitra miniatures
rock + roll
rocking zebra
rocking sheep
rocking lamb
emu enu rocking sheep
firstbike basic
firstbike racing
firstbike limited
firstbike street
firstbike cross
wishbone flip
wishbone bike special edition
wishbone bike 3-in-1
wishbone bike 2-in-1
early rider lite 12
early rider classic 12
early rider evolution 14
flap toddler walker
harry rocking stool
olga rocker
max push car
lorette trailer
troll stroller
schorsch walker
flix push car
sulky ricksha
peak sled
share chairs
happy horse
crash car
deluxe saab roadster
saab roadster
rocking rabbit
rocking horse
strida sx folding bicycle
strida lt folding bicycle
bobles elephant
bobles fish
bobles fish
bobles worm
bobles crocodile
bobles chicken
rock + roll
rocking sheep
Povl Kjer studied at the Kolding School of Arts and Crafts in 1974-76 and at the �rhus Kunstakademi in 1976-78. In 1981, he completed his apprenticeship as a wood carver, and since then he has worked with most aspects of the trade, including ornaments, sculptures, moulds, models, reconstruction and restoring.
Povl Kjer works mainly in wood and often has assignments for museums, exhibitions and companies. Among other things, he has designed exhibition mannequins for the Carlsberg brewery. For the Hans Christian Andersen Museum he did a sculpture of Hans Christian Andersen and wooden figures for illustrating the fairytales. Kjer has also worked with Lego and designed a knife series for the restaurant A Hereford Beefstouw. In his knife designs, form plays a key role, and he seeks to both challenge and accommodate the requirements of the hand and the eye.
Povl Kjer�s works are rooted in Nordic culture and nature, and he carefully selects materials with an emphasis on quality.
The Rocking Sheep is a rocking animal designed primarily as a toy, which is also a unique crafts product that fits into any setting as a piece of furniture with a wide range of functions, including serving as a footstool. The Rocking Sheep is made in varnished pine, padded with foam rubber and upholstered in lambskin.
The first Rocking Sheep was a gift to Povl Kjer�s niece as a humorous reminder of her parents� rural background. The Rocking Sheep are handmade in small series to preserve the high level of quality.
� handmade in Denmark
� varnished pine, padded with foam rubber and upholstered in lambskin
� available in white, black, brown, icelandic brown and grey
Sheepskin is a natural product, so every skin will be different of shade and structure. All skins, except pink, are natural colors.
� measures 9.8w x 33.5l x 23.6h inches with 15.7h seat
� leadtime is 1-2 weeks
leadtime for "Icelandic Grey" is 1-3 weeks
rocking sheep
pink long wool
white dense wool
white long wool
black long wool
brown dense wool
brown long wool
icelandic grey long wool
oversized (+100)


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Product Description
Gerald Ford was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977. Here is your opportunity to own or to gift the "GERALD FORD - 1913-2006 - 38TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES" colorized JFK Kennedy Half Dollar U.S. Coin, which has been enhanced with a beautifully colorized image by the Merrick Mint. Each coin comes in a premium coin capsule with a full color Certificate of Authenticity. This Legal Tender United States coin has been colorized with an application of special inks directly to the surface of the coin, using a unique and painstakingly multicolor coin process, which achieves a level of detail, color saturation, and durability that is #1 in the coin industry. The result is an everlasting colorized coin collectible of ultra-high quality. The Kennedy half dollar is a U.S. fifty cent coin with coin year and mint marks chosen at random.