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Home > Featured Items > Bestselling Kids' Readers > Oxford Phonics World > Reader 3 ...
Course: Oxford Phonics World
Reader 3 (Level 1)Oxford Phonics World Reader 3 (Level 1) Media > Books > Non-Fiction > Education Books Now Available
9780194589062 (10-digit ISBN: 0194589064)
Kaj Schwermer, Craig Wright and Julia Chang
- Series Description
- Series Key Features
- Series Video
- Deliver heads-up lessons by bringing easy-to-use digital features to the front of the classroom.
- Capture students' attention with activities that fill the screen so that everyone can participate, even large classes.
- Play audio and video at the touch of a button.
- Feel confident teaching with technology - use the Classroom Presentation Tool offline or online, from your computer or tablet.
- Take it with you to plan your lessons wherever you are, save your web links and notes onto the page and update across your tablet and computer - all with one account.
- Comprehensive syllabus that covers 44 sounds in English.
- Thought-provoking activities teach children to read, not just memorize words.
- Songs, chants and games encourage children to discover connections between English sounds and letters.
- Multi-ROM full of fun interactive activities allows learning to continue outside the classroom.
- Great to use as a phonics course before coursebooks such as Let's Go or Everybody Up, or at the same time as extra support.
A comprehensive international phonics series to get young learners reading, Oxford Phonics World is the first step on your students' journey into English, leading you through all 44 sounds.
Oxford Phonics World by Kaj Schwermer et al. Published by Oxford University Press.
Note: Please contact the publisher directly for Oxford Phonics World Classroom Presentation Tools
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text: My last R/R began fairly concisely, indexed by a sequence of events that conveniently structured a 'beginning'. But the beginning of this ride isn't as simple. It's perhaps even more convoluted than the ending of the last. I'm simply not quite sure where "Coast to Coast with an Italian Supermodel" ends and where "Pacific Northwest with an Italian Supermodel" begins. But I know now that the original journey began long before I hit 'ignite' and it started a fire that has not (and will not) stop burning. Anyone on this site clearly has some ember of a life-time-journey fuming inside, a particular, recurring call-to-adventure that's been smoldering since youth. And I think somewhere deep inside our consciousness a very particular kind of internal development is locked into grips with external exploration, that transforming from who we are into who we want to be requires traveling from where we are to where we want to be; that we know in our bones our development will never be complete until we have finished our own particular journey. The pragmatic, reasonable, rational, sensible mind we depend on so much in our day-to-day life often concludes that this private, internal 'fantasy' makes no sense at all. And even if we allow ourselves permission to indulge, in, say, a pilgrimage to Preston, Idaho or interning for 3 months at the National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin, there are plenty of others standing ready to openly mock such senseless acts. Nothing encourages more disdain than expressing the desire to abandon normal life, especially when it involves indulging a romantic longing that's hard to describe and often impossible to understand. But here's what the naysayers don't calculate: sometimes your normal life can abandon you. Dedicated employees get fired, houses burn, non-smokers get lung cancer, vegetarians get attacked by dogs (and sometimes choke on carrots); dreams turn into nightmares, 4 bedroom, 3 bath houses, to ashes. The possessions and relationships around us—no matter how 'stable' and 'permanent', are anything but. Yes, there are some who sleep well at night and wake up feeling fresh as rosebuds. Fate may smile on these people who rest content, on those who are satisfied, on those who will never fracture their skull dancing at a wedding or unintentionally fart during an interview or have a lotto machine crush their leg while helping an old lady buy a winning Powerball ticket. Despite the odds, there are cheerful assholes out there who may just live their entire life without experiencing unfairness. Or perhaps fate is merely lying in wait until one day, to all of our surprise, their world comes crashing down when they find out their daughter is a much adored internet porn star in Iceland, Greece and Cambodia—and has been since the 8th grade--thanks to the MacBook she got for Christmas and its built-in webcam. What I'm trying to say is what we have and who we have can always be taken away. The ONLY thing we have that's permanent (somewhat) is who we are. As long as we're alive and not insane, we are all we can be sure we have. At the beginning of the first episode I said that my journey was a suicide of sorts and I'm beginning to understand the amplitude of that sentiment. I've ransacked my life to satisfy a strange craving for adventure, to test myself, to test the world. This isn't fiction. It's real, it's happening to me right now and I am the cause of it. Don't ask me how it ends, because I have no idea. And I sure as hell don't have a fucking clue what's comes in the middle. As for the beginning? Hell, I just spent a page talking about the beginning and the 'beginning' hasn't even begun, so clearly this is going to be a long ride indeed. As Version 2 (or maybe just v1.2) commences, I have my doubts. I have fears, I have concerns. I'm not sure of anything except that this is my journey. And I know it's the one I'm supposed to be on. With the preface now out of the way, let's begin....

subset: commoncrawl


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Opinion: The Supreme Court Case Every College Student Should Know About
XIV Foundation CEO Jennifer Gratz on a Supreme Court case that could signal the end of race-based preferences in college admissions. Photos: Associated Press
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... I ... I ... welcome back to Opinion Journal I'm Mary Kissel ... in two thousandsix Michigan voters decided to ban the race based preferences in college admissions ... now the case is going to the Supreme Court ... summing all college students or people wanna go to college ... should pay close attention to actually got the plaintiff in that case Jennifer Pratt's to her joining me now Jennifer welcomed ... um opponents say that this vote to sit and these preferences violated ... the fourteenth amendment the Constitution ... what how when the center ... well they say that that simple and that's that that the voters of Michigan passed to the state of not discriminate against or for preferential treatment to any group or individual ... on the basis of race sex ethnicity ... or on ... national origin any operation of public employment public contact your Publican that education is unconstitutional ... I've that the quality violates the equal protection clause of the US consulate in what is your response ... that there isn't any amount of mental gymnastics that it gets the same person to believe that equality violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment ... also how can anyone challenge the wish of Michigan voters than I thought that ... he had a referendum you decided in the majority here fifty six percent said that we want this ... and how can that be overturned at fifty eight percent ... an ETF that is at sixteen point margin ... I've learned that proponents of race preference as ... other radical groups like by any means necessary is leading the charge and in this case ... I'm arm aims to grow grapes that trend and the University of Michigan the ACLU ... out and double ECP ... that they won't give up that this is ... an insert of religion for them ... hide diversity race preference is the mandate will not give up into first effective or seasick and yes essential okay ... in the Supreme Court weighed in on this kind this particular issue you in a case called fish earlier this year ... I'm in but they didn't eliminate the race based preferences and mission so was he ... what other signals do you think and Kannada meccas has a sign that I had to think that this Supreme Court was not asked for Abigail Fischer's attorneys to many respects conferences ... in this case is not deal directly with race based preferences it deals with voting rights ... as sofa in front of the court today is do ... I Michigan voters have a right to you ... and race preference this ... I hope that ... in some way ... the issue of race preference is Gets Prada and that the attorney general Michigan Attorney General Judy has done a great job ... and that he says that he believes that ... I race conferences are unconstitutional and should be banned permanently ... we've got a couple statistics on the Pope on the screen and on ... about other states ... here they didn't have also been racial preferences eight of them ... on a does that mean I'm just looking at these numbers now ... I ate it does that mean that ... in ... a finding for free or side ... would reverberate far outside of Michigan yes absolutely and finding for the other side that mean that this eight states and all of their amendments would be called into question ... I ran out twenty percent as ... of the population live in states that opposing team and race preference is ... that the Supreme Court the government has not done for them but voters have chosen to stand up for equality stand up collar find government and all of that is at stake in the sixty he'll hear alot about that when you turn the TV eerie read the headlines son is very very recent or ... is this happening offer period decades what's been happening ... since nineteen ninety six California was the first state to and ... race conferences in college admissions back in nineteen ninety ... well okay so that the cases being heard next month it's called shady versus coalition to defend affirmative action and watch closely ... Jennifer Pratt's thank so much for joining us thinking ...


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Hey Beauties!
So as all of you know MAC Cosmetics launched 3 new collections today, In Extra Dimension, Reel Sexy & Tres Cheek! In pure MAC fashion, a lot of things have ALREADY sold out on the MAC website! Crazy I know, but that's how it happens. However there is still hope. Head on over to your nearest MAC Stores or counters and check out the collections for yourself & maybe, just maybe they will still have what you are looking for.
Here is a tip! Try visiting a MAC Department store counter first before hitting up a PRO store. The PRO store always releases things a week before the department store counters. So today, April 5th, is the actual release date at all MAC counters whereas the PRO Stores has had them for a week already and chances are the PRO Store will be sold out of a lot of things!
Below, is a complete listing of all the items that are SOLD OUT on the MAC WEBSITE!
Tres Cheek Collection
- Peony Petal- Available
- Full of Joy- SOLD OUT
- Immortal Flower- SOLD OUT
- Lovecloud- SOLD OUT
- Modern Mandarin- SOLD OUT
- Pink Tea- SOLD OUT
In Extra Dimension
Eyeshadows (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Grand Galaxy
- Blue Orbit
- Young Venus
- Warm Thunder
- Modern Pewter
- Sweet Heat
- Havana
- Lunar
- Rich Core
- Dark Dare
Extra Dimension Highlighter
- Whisper of Guilt
- Glorify
- Superb- SOLD OUT
Reel Sexy
Eyeshadows (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Dynamic Duo 1
- Dynamic Duo 2
- Dynamic Duo 3
- Dynamic Duo 4
Mascara (AVAILABLE)
- Zoom Lash
Eye Kohl (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Heirloom
- Hyacinth
- Resort
- Smolder
Lipsicks (ALL SOLD OUT)
- Reel Sexy- SOLD OUT
- Watch Me Simmer- SOLD OUT
- Pink Popcorn- SOLD OUT
- Heroine- SOLD OUT
Cremesheen Glass (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Private Screening
- Cinestyle
- Star Quality
- Colour Saturation
Powder Blush (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Pink Cult
- Magenta
Mineralize Skinfinish (AVAILABLE)
- Lightscapade
Nail Laquer (ALL AVAILABLE)
- Vivid Effect
- In the Dark…Purple
- Screening Room


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The ongoing tussle between Muddy Waters and Singapore commodities firm Olam International further heated up after the short-seller published a much-awaited 133-page report on Tuesday detailing "shocking" accounting gaffes at the trading firm, prompting Olam to respond with a 45-page rebuttal on Wednesday.
But even as Olam described the accusations as "false and misleading" and stood by its practices, some analysts are now wondering whether there might be some truth in Muddy Waters' allegations.
Muddy Waters' report is "pretty good" and has raised many questions over Olam's accounting practices and finances that the latter will have to answer, Roger Tan, CEO of SIAS Research, told CNBC.
"They (Muddy Waters) have done extensive research into it," Tan said on CNBC Asia's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "They have even gone down to look at some of the investments and what the assets look like. And there are a lot of questions over how they (Olam) value these assets...a lot of questions over whether their profit is true and whether their cash holding is strong."
He added: "There are a lot of questions that Olam has to answer. Given that there's so much detail in the report, I would say that to be fair to them (Muddy Waters), it looks like a pretty good report."
Olam (Singapore Exchange: OLAM.SI), in which Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings has a 16 percent share, refuted Muddy Waters' report in a statement on Wednesday, saying there is no risk of solvency and that it has sufficient liquidity to pursue its current business and future investments.
(Read more: Everyone's Bailing on Commodities: 'Into the Abyss'?)
"We believe that the report's assertions are motivated to distract and create panic amongst our continuing shareholders, bond holders and creditors," Olam said.
It added that its financial statements and accounting policies strictly follow and adhere to the Singapore Financial Reporting Standards (SFRS), and that it intends to claim damages for the "unfounded allegations."
"Our message to Carson Block and Muddy Waters is therefore clear - this time the mud won't stick," Olam said.
On Wednesday morning before the Singapore market opened at 9am local time (0100 GMT), Olam asked for a halt in the trading of its shares, which was lifted once it released its rebuttal to the Muddy Waters' report around 10.05am (0205 GMT). Its shares fell more than 5 percent soon after the halt was lifted, but have since recovered and were trading half a percent higher at 12.15pm (1215 GMT).
Olam has shed about 10 percent of its value since November 19 when Muddy Waters' founder Carson Block criticized Olam's debt levels at an investment conference in London and attacked the company's accounting practices.
(Read more: Singapore's Olam Sues Short-Seller Muddy Waters )
James Koh, investment analyst who covers the stock for Maybank Kim Eng Securities in Singapore, said Muddy Waters' arguments are "pretty strong."
"A lot of the arguments (by Muddy Waters) are suggesting aggressive accounting," Koh told CNBC. "And I think Olam will say that these are all done within rules of law. But I have to say that the arguments that Muddy Waters have presented are pretty strong. They did a lot of work which not many people have been able to do."
He said he will continue to approach the company with caution. "We have always had a hold on Olam, and certainly won't be recommending that investors buy on weakness," Koh added.
-By CNBC's Jean Chua.
Related Stories
- Muddy Waters Report Faults Olam Accounting, Warns on Risks
- Olam Is No Sino-Forest
- Muddy Waters Claims Against Singapore Firm Baffle Pros
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The world's political and business elite headed home yesterday from this year's Davos forum with warnings that while the worst of the financial crisis seems over there is still much to be done.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in the closing moments of the annual gathering in the snowy Swiss ski resort on Saturday that she recommended the "do not relax principle" for the coming year.
Where for the two previous years a sense of crisis had hung over the World Economic Forum, the mood was sunnier at this year's edition as speaker after speaker said they were now cautiously optimistic.
"I feel the circumstances in which I'm addressing you today are very different than 12 months ago," Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said in his opening speech, following a torrid year dominated by the euro crisis.
Meanwhile, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi hailed last year as the year that the troubled single currency was "relaunched," even as others were hailing him as the man who had saved the eurozone from catastrophe.
The Chinese economy's slowdown seemed less serious than a year ago to the participants while the step back from the "fiscal cliff" in the US also eased minds.
However, as the 2,500 world leaders, financial officials, tycoons and journalists departed the picture-postcard Alpine resort, they may have felt a chill that was not just down to the subzero temperatures.
Lagarde said the IMF's forecast of a "very fragile and timid recovery for 2013" was based on "eurozone leaders, the US authorities on the other hand and the Japanese authorities making the right decisions."
"And that's what I mean by 'do not relax' because some good policy decisions have been made in various parts of the world. In 2013, they have to keep the momentum," she added.
The head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria, warned meanwhile that countries had exhausted most room for maneuver in terms of fiscal and monetary policy.
"We should be very worried because the lack of room for some of the more traditional tools has gone and we are left with very few of these tools," he said.
As in previous years the Davos forum was partly hijacked by external events, particularly after British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to hold a referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017.
The move threatened to cause a stir, with Cameron's European counterparts worried about the effect the uncertainty would have on the euro's already fragile recovery, but they left any rows for another day.
The turmoil in the Arab world also took center stage for a time as officials, including Jordan's King Abdullah II, urged "desperately needed" action over Syria's civil war, though none came.
Amid the cocktail parties and lavish luncheons at Davos this year there was sometimes a "mood of complacency," said Axel Weber, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS and former head of Germany's Bundesbank.
"My biggest fear is that 2013 could be a replay of 2012, another lost year," he said. "We shouldn't be complacent, we haven't really fundamentally improved that much."
Many were still worried by the euro. The Deloitte financial group's global chief executive Barry Salzberg told reporters he was "reasonably comfortable, with one exception — and that is what's the impact on the US from Europe."


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Create novelty cakes courtesy of Nordic Ware with seasonal and holiday themes as well as madeleine cakelets, brownie bites and teacakes. Doughnut lovers will enjoy baking twists, holes and cake doughnuts. Choose from Bundt pans in traditional shapes or decorative sandcastles, hearts and swirls. And our classic cake pans create round, square and rectangular cakes as well as springform and angelfood.
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Pizza stones give you the benefit of brick-oven baking by dispersing heat evenly for golden pizzas and breads. We also offer nonstick pizza pans for deep dish and crispy crusts. Select an American Girl pizza set for budding chefs. Remove your fresh baked pizza from the oven with a wood pizza peel, which doubles as a convenient cutting surface for our pizza choppers, cutters and wheels.
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Mourinho and Real part company
EXCLUSIVE Football News
Mourinho and Real part company
Mourinho and Real part company
Last Updated: May 20 2013, 21:37 BST
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez hailed Jose Mourinho as a part of the club's history as he announced the coach's imminent departure.
Perez confirmed at a press conference on Monday evening that Mourinho will leave the club at the end of this season, his third at the Bernabeu.
The controversial Portuguese, who led the club to Primera Division title success last season with a record 100 points and to three successive Champions League semi-finals, has been strongly linked with a return to his former club Chelsea.
Perez said: "I want to inform you all that, after speaking to Jose Mourinho, we have decided to terminate his contract at the end of this season. We both agree that this is the right time.
"It is a sad day, but I wish Mourinho the best. This club will always remember him, he forms part of our history.
"Mourinho has spent more time at this club than any other coach has at the 20 clubs in the Primera Division, which shows it is not easy to last at a club for three years, especially at a club where there is as much pressure as this one.
"Each coach has his own personality, but you cannot doubt his competitive attitude. Has he made mistakes on the odd occasion? Of course, but the level of pressure at this club is not normal.
"On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank Jose Mourinho for the work he has done. We have taken an important step forward in a sporting and competitive sense under him, and we wish him luck in the future."
Mourinho's departure was agreed mutually by coach and club and Perez also confirmed he will receive no compensation payment.
Mourinho will take charge of Real Madrid's final matches of the Primera Division season, away to Real Sociedad on 26 May and at home to Osasuna the following weekend.
"No-one has been sacked, no-one has quit, it was a mutual agreement," said Perez.
"It's not an ideal situation that he is leaving, but after three years we both agree it was the right time to end this relationship.
"He believes the best thing is if he leaves the club and I share his reasons. It's the right decision to start a new project."
Speculation will now surround not just Mourinho's eventual destination, with the 50-year-old widely expected to succeed Stamford Bridge interim manager Rafael Benitez, but also his replacement in Madrid.
Paris St Germain coach Carlo Ancelotti has been touted as the front runner to become the new coach of Madrid, and admitted on Sunday he had met with his current club's president Nasser Al Khelaifi and director of football Leonardo to inform them of his desire to leave the Ligue 1 champions and join Madrid.
Al Khelaifi confirmed that but reiterated the club want the Italian to see out his contract, which expires in 2014.
Perez said: "A few days ago the president of PSG spoke to one of our directors about the possibility of Carlo Ancelotti leaving the club to join Madrid.
"They told us it was not possible and we respect that."
Mourinho leaves Madrid having won one league title, one Copa del Rey and one Spanish Super Cup in a three-year tenure.
Perez defended the coach's record at the club when asked if the Portuguese's time there could be seen as a failure.
He said: "Everything is related to where we came from. We had been eliminated in the last 16 of the Champions League for six years and were not seeded.
"Now we are among the top four teams in Europe, always in the semi-finals or finals. The overall picture is positive.
"If you asked all the clubs in Europe if they'd be satisfied to reach the Champions League semi-finals three years in a row, they'd say yes. For us, it's not enough, because of what we demand. We are always obliged to improve ourselves."
"Right now the club is in the position it should be in. The word failure is not fair, you now need to get 100 points to win this league.
"Last year we were delighted with ourselves, we were playing spectacular football and beat every record.
"This year it has not been enough for us to get to the semi-finals of the Champions League, the final of the Copa del Rey and coming second in the league. That is what makes Madrid such a great club, we are very demanding, our culture is winning."
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FJB Publishing necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 33 diseños de 16 diseñadores freelance.
Publishing Consulting Company that will help self publishers of books (ebook, print, audio book) get their books published.
Desired Color Scheme:
Color scheme optional, submit two versions.
Desired Style:
Open to the imagination
2 or 3 color max - AI format preferred - want more of a horizontal logo so it can be utilized better on the web as taller logos take up too much space
Would also like to see some sort of an Icon that can be next to, or even beneath the wording of FJB Publishing as an optional/additional look. The icon can be fanciful as long as it does not restrict the idea that the company will publish any type of book.
Logo must be professional looking. We want to convey a modern look, a modern take on the publishing industry. While most of our titles will be e-book or audio book, we will also have print titles available as well.
Other things to consider, this logo will be used on business cards, web sites, and possibly other sorts of marketing materials and handouts as well as shirts, hats etc. Need to be able to screen print and also have the logo turn out well on clothing where it is embroidered on. So fine lines and drop shadows need to be used sparingly.Â
We have not determined the final tag line yet for the company, but would like something that we can easily add it too. Feel free to drop something in for filler for now should you develop a design that warrants it.
Open to all ideas and creativity.
This is our first time using this service... but it has come to us highly recommended. If we like the results, there will be much more to come with this company, but others as well. We are just dipping our feet in the pool to see how it goes.
Thank you all in advance!
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
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Use this list to shop for calcium-rich food to help build strong bones and prevent bone loss.
Review Date: Wednesday, December 17, 2014
National Health Information Center - NHICU.S. Department of Health and Human Services
During childhood and adolescence, the body uses the mineral calcium to build strong bones - a process that's all but complete by the end of the teen years.
Review Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2013
The Nemours Foundation
Calcium is a mineral found in many foods. The body needs calcium to maintain strong bones and to carry out many important functions. Learn how to get the right amount of calcium in your daily diet.
Review Date: Tuesday, January 19, 2016
NIH Office of Dietary Supplements - ODS
A clear liquid diet helps maintain adequate hydration, provides some important electrolytes, such as sodium and potassium, and gives some energy at a time when a full diet isn't possible or recommended.
Review Date: Thursday, November 13, 2014
Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is produced by the human body and is necessary for the basic functioning of cells. Learn how CoQ10 has been used, recommended, or studied for numerous conditions.
Calculate your daily nutrient recommendations for dietary planning. Learn your Body Mass Index, daily calorie needs, and recommended vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients, such as carboyhdrates, protein, and fats.
Review Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Food and Nutrition Information Center
What foods provide iron? What affects iron absorption? Does pregnancy increase the need for iron? Read on to find the answers to these, and other, questions you have about iron.
Search this alphabetical list for information on dietary supplements.
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People over 50 need more of some vitamins and minerals than younger adults do. Your doctor or a dietitian can tell you whether you need to change your diet or take vitamins or minerals.
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Learn about drugs, vitamins, and herbs, and how the drugs you take compare with others. Check interactions between two or more drugs and get detailed information regarding potentially harmful drug interactions.
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Browse dietary supplements and herbal remedies to learn about their effectiveness, usual dosage, and drug interactions.
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People who have plenty to eat may be malnourished if they don't eat food that provides the right nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Read about hunger and malnutrition.
Iodine deficiency can lead to thyroid diseases and to mental retardation in infants and children whose mothers were iodine deficient during pregnancy. Read more about this important mineral.
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Iodine is a mineral found in some foods. The body needs iodine to make thyroid hormones, which control the body's metabolism. Getting enough iodine is especially important for pregnant women and infants.
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Too little iron or too much iron changes the way we grow, develop and function. Read more about the body's need for iron.
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The information about magnesium presented in this fact sheet is designed to help you make thoughtful decisions about eating a healthful diet and using vitamin and mineral supplements.
Multivitamin/mineral (MVM) supplements contain a combination of vitamins and minerals, and sometimes other ingredients as well. Find out the risks, benefits and side effects of taking multivitamin/mineral supplements.
Find research on dietary supplements, including vitamin, mineral, phytochemical, ergogenic, botanical, and herbal supplements in human nutrition and animal models. Learn about clinical trials, health and adverse effects, chinese medicine, and more.
Selenium is a trace mineral that is essential to good health but required only in small amounts. Find out what foods are good sources of selenium.
If you are thinking about or are using a dietary supplement, here are five points to consider.
Review Date: Friday, April 03, 2015
NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health - NCCIH
How do you find out whether "what's in the bottle" is safe to take and whether science has proven that the product does what it claims? This fact sheet provides some answers.
Find out which vitamins and minerals older adults need more or less of.
NIH National Institute on Aging
How much zinc do I need? What foods provide zinc? Is it harmful to the body to have too much zinc? Find out the answers to these, and other questions about zinc.
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P16 Department of Revenue (DoR)
Executive Office for Administration and Finance
100 Cambridge Street
Boston, MA 02204
Commissioner's Office: 617-626-2201
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Astro Teller is sharing a story about something bad. Or maybe it's something good. At Google X, it's sometimes hard to know the difference.
Teller is the scientist who directs day-to-day work at the search giant's intensely private innovation lab, which is devoted to finding unusual solutions to huge global problems. He isn't the president or chairman of X, however; his actual title, as his etched-glass business card proclaims, is Captain of Moonshots--"moonshots" being his catchall description for audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do. It is evening in Mountain View, California, dinnertime in a noisy restaurant, and Teller is recounting over the din how earlier in the day he had to give some unwelcome news to his bosses, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and CFO Patrick Pichette. "It was a complicated meeting," saysTeller, 43, sighing a bit. "I was telling them that one of our groups was having a hard time, that we needed to course-correct, and that it was going to cost some money. Not a trivial amount." Teller's financial team was worried; so was he. But Pichette listened to the problem and essentially said, "Thanks for telling me as soon as you knew. We'll make it work."
At first, it seems Teller's point is that the tolerance for setbacks at Google X is uncharacteristically high--a situation helped along by his bosses' zeal for the work being done there and by his parent company's extraordinary, almost ungodly, profitability. But this is actually just part of the story. There happens to be a slack line--a low tightrope--slung between trees outside the Google X offices. After the meeting, the three men walked outside, took off their shoes, and gave the line a go for 20 minutes. Pichette is quite good at walking back and forth; Brin slightly less so; Teller not at all. But they all took turns balancing on the rope, falling frequently, and getting back on. The slack line is groin-high. "It looked like a fail video from YouTube," Teller says. And that's really his message here. "When these guys are willing to fall, groan, and get up--and they're in their socks?" He leans back and pauses, as if to say: This is the essence of Google X. When the leadership can fail in full view, "then it gives everyone permission to be more like that."
Failure is not precisely the goal at Google X. But in many respects it is the means. By the time Teller and I speak, I have spent most of the day inside his lab, which no journalist has previously been allowed to explore. Throughout the morning and afternoon I visited a variety of work spaces and talked at length with members of the Google X Rapid Evaluation Team, or "Rapid Eval," as they're known, about how they vet ideas and test out the most promising ones, primarily by doing everything humanly and technologically possible to make them fall apart. Rapid Eval is the start of the innovative process at X; it is a method that emphasizes rejecting ideas much more than affirming them. That is why it seemed to me that X--which is what those who work there usually call it--sometimes resembled a cult of failure. As Rich DeVaul, the head of Rapid Eval, says: "Why put off failing until tomorrow or next week if you can fail now?" Over dinner, Teller tells me he sometimes gives a hug to people who admit mistakes or defeat in group meetings.
|Illustration by Owen Gildersleeve, Photo by Sam Hofman
Wild concepts must survive rigorous vetting. Here's how one idea--Wi-Fi delivery system Project Loon--progressed.
PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Google X's Rapid Evaluation team bats around lots of issues worth tackling. Project Loon actually started as an idea involving connections between mobile devices. But in June 2011, Rapid Eval head Rich DeVaul decided to shift focus toward increasing Internet access for rural or poor areas.
IDEA DEVELOPED: Lockheed is working on a high-altitude communication airship that can stay in one spot, but keeping such a craft stationary is extremely difficult. DeVaul had an insight: What if an airship floats away but there's another one behind it? In other words: balloons.
SOLUTION TESTED: DeVaul bought some $80 weather balloons online and assembled radio transmitters in a cardboard box that could be attached. Then he launched the contraption at the San Luis reservoir, an hour southeast of Google, and drove along under it in his Subaru.
PROTOTYPE BUILT: X executives commissioned Loon as an official project in August 2011, hiring a team to build a small fleet of prototypes. Xer Mitch Heinrichbegan to work on a Loon antenna; his team built a small house in their shop to see how the antenna might attach to customers' residences.
PRODUCT INTRODUCED: X brought in entrepreneur Mike Cassidy to manage the project's rollout as an actual business. The first step was a pilot program in New Zealand, where Loon went live, temporarily, in June 2013. As X now weighs interest from global telecom providers, the team is considering which business models might work best.
X does not employ your typical Silicon Valley types. Google already has a large lab division, Google Research, that is devoted mainly to computer science and Internet technologies. The distinction is sometimes framed this way: Google Research is mostly bits; Google X is mostly atoms. In other words, X is tasked with making actual objects that interact with the physical world, which to a certain extent gives logical coherence to the four main projects that have so far emerged from X: driverless cars, Google Glass,high-altitude Wi-Fi balloons, and glucose-monitoring contact lenses. Mostly, X seeks out people who want to build stuff, and who won't get easily daunted.
Inside the lab, now more than 250 employees strong, I met an idiosyncratic troupe of former park rangers, sculptors, philosophers, and machinists; one X scientist has won two Academy Awards for special effects. Teller himself has written a novel, worked in finance, and earned a PhD in artificial intelligence. One recent hire spent five years of his evenings and weekends building a helicopter in his garage. It actually works, and he flew it regularly, which seems insane to me. But his technology skills alone did not get him the job. The helicopter did. "The classic definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing," says DeVaul. "And people like that can be extremely useful in a very focused way. But these are really not X people. What we want, in a sense, are people who know less and less about more and more."
Inside the lab, now more than 250 employees strong, I met an idiosyncratic troupe of former park rangers, sculptors, philosophers, and machinists; one X scientist has won two Academy Awards for special effects. Teller himself has written a novel, worked in finance, and earned a PhD in artificial intelligence. One recent hire spent five years of his evenings and weekends building a helicopter in his garage. It actually works, and he flew it regularly, which seems insane to me. But his technology skills alone did not get him the job. The helicopter did. "The classic definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing," says DeVaul. "And people like that can be extremely useful in a very focused way. But these are really not X people. What we want, in a sense, are people who know less and less about more and more."
If there's a master plan behind X, it's that a frictional arrangement of ragtag intellects is the best hope for creating products that can solve the world's most intractable issues. Yet Google X, as Teller describes it, is an experiment in itself--an effort to reconfigure the process by which a corporate lab functions, in this case by taking incredible risks across a wide variety of technological domains, and by not hesitating to stray far from its parent company's business. We don't yet know if this will prove to be genius or folly. There's actually no historical model, no precedent, for what these people are doing.
But in some ways that makes sense. Google finds itself at a juncture in history that has not come before, and may not come again. The company is almost unimaginably rich and stocked with talent; it is hitting its peak of influence at a moment when networks and computing power and artificial intelligence are coalescing in what many technologists describe as (to borrow the Valley's most popular meme) "the second machine age." In addition, it is trying hard to develop another huge core business to augment its massive search division. So why not do it through X? To Teller, this failure-loving lab has simply stepped into the breach. Small companies don't feel they have the resources to take moonshots. Big companies think it'll rattle shareholders. Government leaders believe there's not enough money, or that Congress will characterize a misstep or failure as a scandal. These days, when it comes to Hail Mary innovation, "Everyone thinks it's somebody's else's job," Teller says.
It is worth noting that X's moonshots are not as purely altruistic as Google likes to make them sound. While self-driving cars will almost certainly save lives, for instance, they will also free up drivers to do web searches and use Gmail. Wi-Fi balloons could result in a billion more Google users. Still, it's hard not to appreciate that these ideas, along with others coming from X, are breathtakingly idealistic. When I ask Teller why Google has chosen to invest in X rather than something that might appeal more to Wall Street, he dismisses the premise. Then he cracks a smile. "That's a false choice," he says. "Why do we have to pick?"
Google X is situated at the edge of the Google campus, housed mostly in a couple of three-story red-brick buildings. The lab has no sign in front, just as it has no official website ("What would we put on the website, anyway?" Teller asks). The main building's entrance leads into a small, self-serve coffee bar. The aesthetic is modern, austere, industrial. To the left is a cavernous room with dozens of cubicles and several conference rooms; to the right is a bike rack and a lunchroom with a stern warning posted that only X employees are allowed. Otherwise, there's little indication you're in a supersecret lab. Most of the collaborative workshops are downstairs, in high-ceilinged rooms with whimsical names such as "Castle Grayskull," and are cluttered with electronic paraphernalia and Xers bent over laptops.
The origins of X date to around 2009, when Brin and Google cofounder Larry Pageconceived of a position called Director of Other; this person would oversee ideas far from Google's core search business. This notion evolved into X around 2010, thanks to Google engineer Sebastian Thrun's effort, backed by Brin and Page, to build a driverless car. The X lab grew up around that endeavor, with Thrun in charge. Thrun chose Teller as one of his codirectors, but when Thrun was drawn deeper into developing the car technology (and later into his online educational startup, Udacity), he gave up on overseeing other X projects. That's when Teller assumed day-to-day responsibilities.
There are differing explanations for what the X actually stands for. At first it was simply a placeholder for a better name, but these days it usually denotes the search for solutions that are better by a factor of 10. Some of the Xers I met, however, think of the X as representing an organization willing to build technologies that are 10 years away from making a large impact.
This in itself is fairly unique. Once upon a time, corporate labs invested a chunk of their R&D budget in risky, long-term projects, but an increasing focus on quarterly earnings, and the realization that it can be exceedingly hard to recoup an investment in far-off research, ended almost all such efforts. These days, it's considered more sensible for a company to fund short-term research--or if it wants to think far into the future, to either buy rights to an embryonic idea that arises from university research or a government lab, or to swallow up an innovative startup. Teller and Brin are not averse to doing this; for example, the wind-energy company Makani was recently bought by Google and folded into X. But Google and X have often rejected the conventional business wisdom in favor of hatching their own wild-eyed research schemes, and then waiting patiently for them to mature. Recently, when Page was challenged on an earnings call about the sums he was pouring into R&D, he made no effort to excuse it. "My struggle in general is to get people to spend money on long-term R&D," he said, noting that the amounts he was investing were modest in light of Google's profits. Then he chided the financial community: Shouldn't they be asking him to make more big, risky, long-term investments, not fewer?
Generally speaking, there are three criteria that X projects share. All must address a problem that affects millions--or better yet, billions--of people. All must utilize a radical solution that has at least a component that resembles science fiction. And all must tap technologies that are now (or very nearly) obtainable. But to DeVaul, the head of Rapid Eval, there's another, more unifying principle that connects the three criteria: No idea should be incremental. This sounds terribly clichéd, DeVaul admits; the Silicon Valley refrain of "taking huge risks" is getting hackneyed and hollow. But the rejection of incrementalism, he says, is not because he and his colleagues believe it's pointless for ideological reasons. They believe it for practical reasons. "It's so hard to do almost anything in this world," he says. "Getting out of bed in the morning can be hard for me. But attacking a problem that is twice as big or 10 times as big is not twice or 10 times as hard."
DeVaul insists that it's often just as easy, or easier, to make inroads on the biggest problems "than to try to optimize the next 5% or 2% out of some process." Think about cars, he tells me. If you want to design a car that gets 80 mpg, it requires a lot of work, yet it really doesn't address the fundamental problem of global fuel resources and emissions. But if you want to design a car that gets 500 mpg, which actually does attack the problem, you are by necessity freed from convention, since you can't possibly improve an existing automotive design by such a degree. Instead you start over, reexamining what a car really is. You think of different kinds of motors and fuels, or of space-age materials of such gossamer weight and iron durability that they alter the physics of transportation. Or you dump the idea of cars altogether in favor of a substitute. And then maybe, just maybe, you come up with something worthy of X.
DeVaul is leaning back on a chair in a big ground-floor conference room at X. He's brought me here to demonstrate how the Rapid Eval team discusses ideas. We're joined around an oblong wood table by two of his colleagues, Dan Piponi and Mitch Heinrich. The men are a study in intellectual contrasts. Piponi, 47, is soft-spoken, laconic, British--a mathematician and theoretical physicist and the winner of those Oscars. Even among the bright minds at Google X, he's regarded as freakishly smart. Heinrich, the lab's young design guru, gives off an affable art-school vibe. On his own initiative, he's built what's known as the design kitchen, a large fabrication shop that's stocked with 3-D printers, table saws, and sophisticated lathes in a building adjacent to the primary X lab. He brings a plastic tub stuffed with old eyeglass frames to the Rapid Eval session. "These were some early prototypes for Glass," he explains, randomly pulling out some circuit boards and a few terrifically ugly designs. They weren't intended for the market, he says, but to show his colleagues that what they were conceptualizing could indeed be built.
DeVaul, 43, completes the trio. He has a PhD from MIT and worked at Apple for several years before coming to Google. It is difficult to figure out precisely what he studied in college--after 10 minutes of explaining, it sounds like some mashup of design, physics, anthropology, and machine learning. As such, he can talk a blue streak on a dazzling range of topics: crime, communications, computers, material science, robotics. It was DeVaul, in fact, who came up with the idea for Project Loon, as those Wi-Fi balloons are officially known. He tried desperately to make it fail on technological grounds but found he could not, so he agreed to run the project for about a year before returning to Rapid Eval.
In some respects, watching his group in action is like watching an improv team warm up--ideas are bounced about quickly, analytically, kinetically, in an effort to make them stick or lead toward something better. The team on most Rapid Eval sessions numbers about half a dozen, including DeVaul, Piponi, and Heinrich (and sometimes Teller); they meet for lunch once a week to discuss suggestions that have bubbled up from within X or have filtered in from outside--from their parent company, say, or somebody's acquaintance in academia. Later in the week, one or two of the best suggestions are brought up again more formally for further consideration. Mostly the team looks at the scale of the issue, the impact of the proposed fix, and the technological risks. Will it really solve the problem? Can the thing actually be built? Then they consider the social risks. If we can build it, will it--can it--actually be used?
There's a reason they factor these questions into their early calculus. When you're explicitly trying to imagine products that have no real counterparts in our culture, the obstacles have to be imagined, too. With driverless cars, for instance, there remain unresolved complexities of state laws, infrastructure, and insurance; for Google Glass, there are huge ongoing privacy issues. But if the team believes these kinds of hurdles are surmountable and is still sufficiently curious about a technology by the end of the discussion, they'll ask Heinrich or Piponi to build a crude prototype, ideally in a few days. Once they're satisfied that it can work, they move toward getting the brass to officially commission the project. They will not say how often this has happened, except that it's exceedingly rare. "It's a really high bar to say, 'This is going to be a new Google X project,' " says DeVaul. And that doesn't mean it won't be killed as it evolves. It's a much higher bar to actually launch a Google X project, he points out. "Sometimes the problems at Google X are very easy to frame, such as two-thirds of the world does not have reliable, affordable Internet access." That's what led him to Project Loon. "But some problems are easier to see in the rearview mirror. Imagine how hard it would be to explain to your pre-smartphone self how much this is going to change your life." DeVaul says this is the type of thinking that led to Google Glass. "It's a matter of looking back from the future, where everyone walks around with smart glasses and no one leaves their house without them. And then it becomes obvious: 'Well, of course I want to be connected to information, but in a way that's minimally invasive, and minimally imposes on my attention.'"
He makes it sound quite reasonable. But this is also the point in the conversation when we start talking, quite seriously, about hoverboards and space elevators.
DeVaul is an avid skateboarder, and building a hoverboard is something that he has long imagined. "I just wanted one," he tells me, shrugging. When he brought it up for discussion last year--"If there's a completely crazy, lame idea, then it's probably coming from me," he says--the group actually discerned some practical applications. In industrial settings, moving heavy things on a frictionless platform could be not only valuable but transformative. "Imagine a giant fulfillment center like Amazon's, where all the pallets can levitate and move around," DeVaul says. "Or what about a lab where all the heavy equipment would come to me?"
"Dan, show him the hoverboard you built," says Heinrich.
"Right," says Piponi, sitting up and clearing his throat. In front of him is a small, shiny rectangle, about the size of a hardcover book. On the surface is a tight configuration of circular magnets. "So the first question here relates to the physics," Piponi says. "Can you actually have an object hovering about? And so people try really hard with magnets--to find some arrangement that keeps something hovering." This is the logic behind the superfast magnetic-levitation trains now used in China and Japan. But these "mag-lev" systems have a stabilizing structure that keeps trains in place as they hover and move forward in only one direction. That couldn't quite translate into an open floor plan of magnets that keep a hoverboard steadily aloft and free to move in any direction. One problem, as Piponi explains, is that magnets tend to keep shifting polarities, so your hoverboard would constantly flip over as you floated around moving from a state of repulsion to attraction with the magnets. Any skateboarder could tell you what that means: Your hoverboard would suck.
But that's exactly the sort of problem X is designed to attack. "There are loopholes in this theorem that you have to find," Piponi says. "There are materials that are kind of weird, that don't behave like magnets normally do." Piponi discovered that a very thin slice of a certain type of graphite would actually work well on a small bed of magnets. So he built one for the Rapid Eval team. He pushes his small hoverboard across the table to me, and I try it. The graphite slice, not much larger than a quarter, floats slightly above the magnets, gliding in any direction with the most ethereal push. When DeVaul first saw this, he tells me, he was astounded.
Yet by that point, Piponi had already moved on. As he did the calculations involved in expanding the small hoverboard up to a usable size, the physics suggested that at a certain point the weight of the board would knock it off its cushion of air. Other technologies could conceivably help (you might try using special materials at supercool temperatures), but the team decided that would create huge additional costs and complications--costs that would not be justified by the project's relatively modest social and economic impact. So the Google X hoverboard was shelved. "When we let it go, it's a positive thing," DeVaul says. "We're saying, 'This is great: Now we get to work on other things.'"
Like space elevators, something X was widely rumored to be working on but has never confirmed until now. "You know what a space elevator is, right?" DeVaul asks. He ticks off the essential facts--a cable attached to a satellite fixed in space, tens of thousands of miles above Earth. To DeVaul, it would no doubt satisfy the X criteria of something straight out of sci-fi. And it would presumably be transformative by reducing space travel to a fraction of its present cost: Transport ships would clip on to the cable and cruise up to a space station. One could go up while another was heading down. "It would be a massive capital investment," DeVaul says, but after that "it could take you from ground to orbit with a net of basically zero energy. It drives down the space-access costs, operationally, to being incredibly low."
Not surprisingly, the team encountered a stumbling block. If scaling problems are what brought hoverboards down to earth, material-science issues crashed the space elevator. The team knew the cable would have to be exceptionally strong-- "at least a hundred times stronger than the strongest steel that we have," by Piponi's calculations. He found one material that could do this: carbon nanotubes. But no one has manufactured a perfectly formed carbon nanotube strand longer than a meter. And so elevators "were put in a deep freeze," as Heinrich says, and the team decided to keep tabs on any advances in the carbon nanotube field.
The larger lesson here is that any Google X idea that hinges on some kind of new development in material science cannot proceed. This is not the case with electronics--X could go forward with a device that depends upon near-term improvements in computing capability because Moore's law predicts an exponential increase in computing power. That is why DeVaul's team is confident that Google Glass will get less awkward with each passing year. But there is no way to accurately predict when a new material or manufacturing process will be invented. It could happen next year, or it could be 100 years.
The conversation eventually drifts to how the team had at one point debated the pros and cons of taking on teleportation. Yes, like in Star Trek. As with that show's Transporter, the molecules of a person or thing could theoretically be "beamed" across a physical distance with the help of some kind of scanning technology and a teleportation device. None of which really exists, of course. Piponi, after some study, concluded that teleportation violates several laws of physics. But out of those discussions came a number of insights--too complicated to explain here--into encrypted communications that would be resistant to eavesdropping, a matter of great interest to Google (especially in light of recent NSA–spying revelations). So bad ideas lead to good ideas, too. "I like to look at these problems as ladders," DeVaul says.
At the moment, the Rapid Eval team is watching the work of certain academics who are attempting to create superstrong, ultralight materials.
One Caltech professor, Julia Greer, is working on something called "nanotrusses" that DeVaul is particularly enthusiastic about. "It would completely change how we build buildings," he says. "Because if I have something that's insanely strong and incredibly compact, maybe I could prefabricate an entire building; it fits into a little box, I take it to the construction site, and it unfolds like origami and becomes a building that is stronger than anything we have right now and holds a volume as big as this building." There's a moment of silence in the room.
"I know that sounds completely insane," he adds. But I'm not sure it sounds crazy to him.
At one point, DeVaul asks if I have any ideas of my own for Rapid Eval consideration. I had been warned in advance that he might ask this, and I came prepared with a suggestion: a "smart bullet" that could protect potential shooting victims and reduce gun violence, both accidental and intentional. You have self-driving cars that avoid harm, I say. Why not self-driving ballistics? DeVaul doesn't say it's the stupidest thing he's ever heard, which is a relief. What ensues is a conversation that feels like a rapid ascent up that imaginary ladder. We quickly debate the pros and cons of making guns intelligent (that technology already exists to a certain degree) versus making bullets intelligent (likely much more difficult). We move from a specific discussion of "self-pulverizing" bullets with tiny, embedded hypodermic needles that deliver stun-drugs (DeVaul's idea) to potentially using sensors and the force of gravity to bring a bullet to the ground before it can strike the wrong target (Heinrich's). Then comes the notion of separating the bullet's striker from the explosive charge with a remote disabling electronic switch (Piponi). The tenor soon changes, though. We start talking about smart holsters for police officers, and then intelligent gun sights--something that firearms owners might actually want to buy. They think that idea might even be worth a rapid prototype. But we also debate the political and marketplace viability of bullet technology--who would purchase it, who would object to it, what kind of impact it might have. Eventually it becomes clear that in many ways, appearances often to the contrary, Google X tries hard to remain on the practical side of crazy.
Obi Felten's official title is Head of Getting Moonshots Ready for Contact With the Real World.
Later in the day, I take a walk around the Google campus with Obi Felten, 41, who is the team member who tries to keep the group grounded. In fact, DeVaul refers to her as "the normal person" in Rapid Eval meetings, someone who can bring everyone back to earth by asking simple questions like, Is it legal? Will anyone buy this? Will anyone like this? Felten is not an engineer; she worked in marketing for Google in Europe before coming to X. "My actual title now," she tells me, "is Head of Getting Moonshots Ready for Contact With the Real World." One thing Felten struggles with is that there's no real template for how a company should bring these kinds of radical technologies to market. ("If you find a model," she says, "let me know.") Fortunately for X, not everything has to evolve into a huge source of revenue. "The portfolio has to make money," Felten explains, but not necessarily each product. "Some of these will be better businesses than others, if you want to measure in terms of dollars. Others might make a huge impact on the world, but it's not a massive market."
Later this year, X hopes to announce a top-secret new project that is likely to fall into that latter category. What will it be? There are no discernible clues. In my own conversations, I could only glean certain hints--that they're extremely curious about transportation and clean energy, and that they are especially serious about creating better medical diagnostics, rather than medical treatments, because they see a far greater impact. At one point, I walked through a Google X user-experience lab, where psychologists gain insights from volunteers trying possible forthcoming technologies. A large object, about, oh, the size of the Maltese Falcon, had been wrapped in black plastic. Go figure.
Meanwhile, consider that X has an overwhelming task on its hands already. The organization must move all of its unveiled projects at least one square ahead this year. Project Loon--which has not finalized a business plan yet--has apparently drawn interest from most of the telecom companies in the world, but is still not technically ready for scaling up. (It was unveiled in part because the patents were about to be made public, and Google preferred to disclose it on its own terms.) Google Glass, the X product closest to commercialization, and self-driving cars, which are much farther away, have both sparked extraordinary public interest, yet it is impossible to say if or when they'll succeed as businesses, or whether they'll have that 10-times impact within a 10-year period.
That evening at dinner with Teller, I bring up all of these issues. To me, the fundamental challenge of fashioning extreme solutions to very big problems is that society tends to move incrementally, even as many fields of technology seem to advance exponentially. An innovation that saves us time or money or improves our health might always have a fighting chance at success. But with Glass, we see a product that seems to alter not only our safety and efficiency--like with self-driving cars--but our humanity. This seems an even bigger obstacle than some of the more practical issues that the lab grapples with, but the Xers don't seem overly concerned. Teller, in fact, contends that Glass could make us more human. He thinks it solves a huge problem--getting those square rectangles out of our pockets and making technology more usable, more available, less obstructive. But isn't it possible that Glass is the wrong answer to the right problem? "Of course," Teller says. "But we're not done. And it's possible that we missed. I mean, I know we missed in some ways."
The part of the X process that colleagues like Obi Felten think about, he says, is also meant to be iterative. "It's to say to the world: What do you think? How can we make this better? It's part of us being open to being wrong, because it's way easier, and way cheaper, and way more fun to find out now that we missed than to find out years from now, with an incredible amount of additional expense and emotional investment." Teller says he calls X's ideas "moonshots" for a reason. "If one of Google X's projects were a home run, became everything we wanted, I would be really happy," he says. "I would be overjoyed if it happened with two."
At one point, I mention my own moonshot to Teller, that smart bullet that DeVaul's team had talked through earlier in the day. It wasn't a disaster, I say, but it wasn't much of a success, either. "Well, that's entirely appropriate," Teller says, sympathetically. "Most ideas don't work out. Almost all ideas don't work out. So it's okay if yours didn't work out." He thinks for a moment. "How about instead of a bullet it delivers a deadly toxin that could be reversed in a week?" It wouldn't stop bad guys immediately, he says, but once they were shot, they would have to go turn themselves in to get the antidote. He mulls it over for a moment more. "I don't know," he says, already seeing the obstacles ahead. "I'm just brainstorming."
[Photos by Zen Sekizawa]
ORIGINAL: FastCo


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Local colleges
Colleges and universities are a hotspot for trip requests while school is in session. See the top campuses to drive near in the Pittsburgh area and pro tips for prime times to drive.
When to drive
You can expect trip requests starting when students return back to school through when students depart for the summer. During the semester the busiest times are:
- Thursday nights: 8pm - 2am
- Friday nights: 9pm - 4am
- Saturday nights: 9pm - 4am
- After sporting events, if the school has a big fan following
See the map below for dates of when students return to campus at local colleges where we expect trip requests
Local college campuses
Where to drive in Pittsburgh
Driving near colleges 101
Pro tips
Be on the move
When students first return to campus, many of them might have large bags, boxes, or supplies for the semester. Try to keep your trunk cleared in case your riders need to use it. And, don't feel pressured to help, but riders will appreciate it, and have the option to tip.
Get in the game
Before and after school sporting events will be a popular time for trip requests. Find your local school's athletic schedule for sports that have big stadiums and fan followings, such as football, basketball, and soccer.
Get in the groove
Did you know you can set up Pandora for free in your Uber Driver app? You can make playlists or ask students if they have a particular music station they'd like to listen to. This is especially popular when friends are traveling together.


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This novel neuropeptide, termed 26RFa, belongs to the RFamide peptide family. The primary structures of human, rat, and frog 26RFa exhibit 80% identity, and the C-terminal octapeptide is fully conserved from amphibians to mammals.
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Napa and Sonoma With Kids
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This simple but powerful app offers original content sure to please your entire family. A local mom condensed the overwhelming abundance of opportunities in both Napa and Sonoma Counties into the top 116 sites, with 434 photos, must-do activities, and hidden gems. The visually rich app is full of insider tips for locals and first-time visitors to Napa and Sonoma, including coastal jaunts, redwood hikes, playgrounds and much more. It's worth the two bucks to have the best of the Wine Region at your fingertips. Buy it once and get free upgrades for life.
★ About the Author ★
Michele Bigley turned her wanderlust into a career when she got pregnant with her son Kai. She is the author of Northern California: An Explorer's Guide (Countryman Press, 2009) and Great Destinations Kauai (Countryman Press, 2008). Her San Francisco For Families app is available through Google Play.
★ About Sutro Media ★
This guide is published in partnership with Sutro Media. By enabling local writers to share their expertise on mobile phones, Sutro Media is making it easier and more fun to explore the world!
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Soil testing is the foundation upon which we make nutrient recommendations. Something equally important that is often overlooked is the crop response correlation work that gives those soil test numbers meaning. Together these two pieces are the essential components of making nutrient recommendations to maximize crop production and limit off site movement of nutrients that result in economic loss and potentially affect water quality. The Tri-State Fertilizer Recommendations used by The Ohio State University follows a build, maintenance and drawdown approach to soil fertility management.
The Tri-State Fertilizer Recommendation for both phosphorus and potassium are built around defining a critical level. The authors of the Tri-State define the Critical Level for both immobile nutrients as "…the soil test level above which the soil can supply adequate quantities of a nutrient to support optimum economic growth. Below the Critical Level "… the soil is not able to provide P and K requirements of the crop. Above the Critical Level "… the soil is capable of supplying the nutrient required by the crop and no response to fertilizer would be expected.
The Maintenance Limit is the upper end of the scale. The Tri-State authors define the Maintenance Limit as "There is no agronomic reason to apply nutrients when soil test levels are above the maintenance limit level.
Soil test levels between the Critical Level and Maintenance Limit are define as the Maintenance Plateau Range. In this range, the recommendations are "Designed to replace nutrients lost each year through crop removal. No response to fertilizer in the year of application is expected. And no response to placement technique such as banding or stripping or the use of P and K starter fertilizer…
Chart 1 show the Critical Level, Maintenance Limit and Maintenance Plateau for a 160 bushel corn crop and recommends fertilizer recommendation based on soil test level for 160 bushel corn.
Critical levels for phosphorus are defined in the Tristate Fertilizer Recommendations depending on crop. The critical P level for corn and soybean rotation is 15 ppm (30 pounds per acre) or if wheat and alfalfa are included in the rotation 25 ppm (50 pounds per acre). The Maintenance Limit for a corn and soybean rotation is 30 ppm (60 pounds per acre) or if wheat and alfalfa are included in the rotation 40 ppm (80 pounds per acre).
Critical levels and Maintenance Limits for potassium is defined in the Tri-state Fertilizer Recommendations based on CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity) of the soil and are shown in Table 1.
Three publications that can help farmers looking to develop fertilizer recommendations are:
The Fertilizer Recommendations for Corn, Soybeans, Wheat and Alfalfa can be found at http://agprofessional.com/sites/default/files/tri_state_recs.pdf
Developing Phosphorus and Potassium Recommendations for Field Crops (AGF-515-12) walks through developing a nutrient recommendation and how much fertilizer is needed to meet that need found at http://agprofessional.com/sites/default/files/tri_state_recs.pdf
An Excel Spreadsheet to calculate P, K and Lime Recommendations (Beta Version-11/2012) for 7 fields or zones and a three crop rotation can be found at http://agcrops.osu.edu/specialists/fertility/fertility-fact-sheets-and-bulletins/TriState.xlsm
Other helpful nutrient related publications can be found at http://agcrops.osu.edu/specialists/fertility/fertility-fact-sheets-and-bulletins


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Lebron James Childhood Friend, Rome Travis (Who Was In The Movie "More Than A Game"), Gets Into A Fight During A Game Vs. Maccabi Tel-Aviv! (Body Slams Were Poppin Off)
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SHARON, N.D. -- Chris Johnson has seen double before during spring calving.
But never like this.
Of the 300 cows that have given birth so far this spring on his family's ranch, 50 -- or roughly 16 percent -- have had twins.
Yes, you're reading that correctly.
"It's 50 sets of twins. Fifty cows, 100 calves; all twins, no triplets. I know it's probably a little hard to believe," said Johnson, who ranches with his dad, Keith; uncle, Wayne; and brother, Jeremy.
"We've had twins here before. But nothing like what we're seeing this year," Chris Johnson said.
"There have been days we've gone out and found (newly born) twins. Then, we go back out a few hours later and there's another set of twins. You start asking yourself, 'Is this really happening?'" he said.
Two by two
About 500 Simmental/Red Angus cows will give birth between early February and June this year on the Johnson Stock Farm near Sharon.
Johnson was told by a veterinarian that about 3 percent of beef cows give birth to twins. At that rate, the Johnson operation could expect 15 sets of twins by the end of calving.
So, why all the twins for the Johnsons?
The upturn might be a one-year fluke with no underlying cause, Johnson said.
If there is a reason, "it might be genetics. Or it might be the (excellent) weather last fall," he said.
Another possibility is that the cows are eating dried distiller's grain from the ethanol plant in Casselton, N.D., Johnson said.
"Maybe it's one of those things or a combination. We just don't know," he said.
Sire lines can influence the percentage of twin births, and Simmentals are a breed in which the trait is found, said Bethany Funnell, veterinarian with the University of Minnesota Extension's North Central Research and Outreach Center in Grand Rapids, Minn..
Cows with good body condition also can be more likely to conceive twins, she said.
Dried distiller's grain is high in protein and can help improve a cow's body condition, she said.
There are several potential explanations for the spike in twin births, said Charlie Stoltenow, North Dakota State University Extension Service veterinarian.
The calves that cattle producers keep as replacement heifers sometimes have greater odds of giving birth to twins, a trait of which the producer isn't always aware, he said.
Another possibility is that all the conditions encouraging twinning came together at the right time in the Johnson cows' reproductive cycle.
The big increase in twinning also could be an anomaly, Stoltenow said.
He's not aware of a widespread or regional increase in twin calves born this spring.
Bonus or burden?
In theory, ranchers appreciate twins; there's one more animal to sell. But the reality can be somewhat different.
Calving difficulties are more common with twins, which can cause more dead calves, higher vet bills and extra effort and hassle for the rancher.
Several sets of twins born this spring on the Johnson operation died, as did several individual twins.
Even when both newborn twins are healthy, ranchers face additional work. The twins' mother often can't provide enough milk for both calves, so one must be bottle-fed.
One of the two also could be transferred to a cow that lost her own calf, if such a cow is available. But getting the cow to accept the other calf requires time and effort from the rancher.
"I'd trade twins for one healthy calf anytime," Johnson said. The dry spring and good calving conditions so far are appreciated, Johnson said.
But what he and other family members will remember most about this calving season is the torrent of twins.
"Fifty sets of twins. And there'll probably be some more before we're done," he said.


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Just before dawn on July 26, 1953, Arizona law enforcement launched what has since become known as the Short Creek Raid: the arrest of men and women in an isolated community of Mormon fundamentalists who'd broken away from the church in order to live steadfastly -- and illegally -- in polygamy. According to a LIFE reporter invited to witness the event, "50 state troopers, five police matrons, 12 liquor inspectors, assorted photographers and the attorney general" descended on Short Creek (today known as Colorado City, Ariz.) and conducted the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history.
The raid sent shock waves through other "plural marriage" communities -- and, many people have argued in the years since, led directly to the sort of secretive, insular and insidious polygamist sects (like the one led by convicted child abuser and self-proclaimed Mormon "prophet," Warren Jeffs) that have made headlines in recent years.
Here, six decades after Short Creek, LIFE.com offers a series of pictures -- most of which never ran in LIFE -- made by photographer Loomis Dean during a government raid on a small, isolated religious community.
The day before the raid, the police -- organized into teams -- went over their plan. Accompanying photographer Dean was reporter Frank Pierson, who wrote in the notes that he sent back to LIFE's editors in New York: "Leaving from points as far as 350 miles from Short Creek the groups were to converge on the town at exactly 4 AM Sunday. The Attorney General's office prepared 122 indictments (36 men, 86 women) for insurrection. Officers were equipped with extra John and Jane Doe warrants to provide for the unexpected."
"For all the cloak and dagger work, there was a leak," Pierson's notes continued. "As patrol cars roared into the village three dynamite explosions echoed off the desert cliffs; they were signals to the waiting Short Creekers that the police were coming. In the houses, officers found only women and children cowering. The men were assembled in their Sunday best in the schoolyard. The American flag was flying, and they were singing '[God Bless] America.'"
In its article about the raid, published a few weeks later, LIFE observed, in a tone clearly skeptical of the need for the show of force brought to bear on a tiny community in the middle of nowhere: "It was like hunting rabbits with an elephant gun."
One hundred and twenty-two adults were served warrants. The men were arrested and sent to a jail in nearby Kingman; most of the women were forcibly sent away to Phoenix, and their children were placed in state custody, many given away to foster homes -- some never to return to their families. Though officials consciously made the raid a media event, the resulting photos -- particularly shots of crying children being taken from their parents -- brought an outcry against the arrests.
The raid was also seen as a warning to polygamists elsewhere -- including the Allred family of neighboring Utah, where a terrified little girl named Dorothy was already being taught to keep secrets about her father and seven mothers. Today, Dorothy Allred Solomon is an author who has written several books about growing up in polygamy; she spoke with LIFE.com about the Short Creek raid and its effect on her own life and on polygamist communities throughout the Southwest.
"I just have such a strong emotional response [to these photos]", she told LIFE.com, choking up. "I was a little girl when these things happened, but I was conscious of them, and I was fully aware of the implications that families could be broken up."
In many of these pictures, Solomon recognizes a familiar expression on the faces of the people (primarily the men) being arrested. "There's an earnest look, and a desire to be cooperative, but at the same time, there's total mistrust," she said. "That was our posture -- that was my father's posture -- toward the law." Her dad, Rulon Clark Allred, spent eight months in jail in Utah after being convicted of bigamy. "He tried to be law-abiding in every other way -- he was law-abiding in every other way. We were held to such a high standard of morality and integrity. And yet it came down to whether they would sacrifice a religious belief that they earnestly believed in."
Then, as now, authorities had what appeared to be legitimate concerns about the treatment of women and children living in polygamist enclaves.
"This is a white-slave factory," an assistant attorney general in the Short Creek Raid said in 1953. "No woman has escaped this community for at least ten years. They are forced to submit to men old enough to be their grandfathers." The questionable way in which the raid was conducted, however, undermined a good deal of the legal and even the moral validity those claims may have had, and created an environment of fear and even deeper, bedrock distrust of government authority among fundamentalist Mormons.
"It set back efforts to control what was going on in those communities fifty years," Ron Barton, who has led investigations into the polygamist community of Colorado City in recent years, told People magazine in 2003. For all the families it broke up and all the attention it received, the raid resulted only in probation for the men arrested.
Reporters, photographers, and television crews from NBC and CBS were invited to cover the raid. "An unappetizing affair at best, it was made no better by overtones of publicity grabbing," reporter Frank Pierson noted.
After the raid, fearful polygamists "went way underground," Dorothy Allred Solomon says. "And when people go underground like that, it creates shadows and darkness for people like Warren Jeffs to exploit other people's paranoia. The reason someone like Jeffs could come to power was because of this raid in 1953 — he totally used people's fears." Jeffs rose to power in that very same town (later renamed Colorado City) decades after the Short Creek raid; there he ruled as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Once on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, he is currently serving a life sentence in a Texas prison, having been convicted of two counts of child sexual assault.
The 1953 raid, Solomon notes today, spooked her own family enough to leave their compound in Utah, rather than risk her father going to jail again and the children being taken away.
"That was the catalyst for us scattering to the four winds," Solomon recalls. "It changed our lives forever. And I never really got my family back again in the way I'd had it for the first few years of my life."
In a follow-up story on the raid in September 1953, LIFE reported that 84-year-old community patriarch Joseph Smith Jessop (see slide 7 in gallery) and other male residents returned to Short Creek following their arrests to await trial, but found it desolate, with a great number of the women and children gone. "The shock of the arrest was too much for the staunch old Mormon," the magazine wrote in the article, 'The Lonely Men of Short Creek.' "A month after the raid, heartbroken, he died."


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