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By Tom Haunert
Oracle's Inderjeet Singh discussed how Oracle's integrated cloud platform can benefit retailers—and others.
Oracle's cloud services are more effective tools for customers when taken together as the sum of their parts, according to Inderjeet Singh, Oracle executive vice president for Oracle Cloud Platform and Oracle Fusion Middleware, speaking during a general session at Oracle OpenWorld on Monday, October 26. "We provide an integrated cloud platform. We provide valuable and innovative options for our on-premises products. And we offer flexibility of deployment on premises and in the cloud."
Singh demonstrated this principle through a series of connected demos featuring multiple personas: Anna the shopper, a store associate, business users, and "citizen developers" working at the retailer. The demos showed the connections—and integrations—between personas, business, and technology, and all of the demos leveraged platform integrations between different Oracle SaaS and PaaS services.
A demo focusing on "Anna the Shopper" demonstrated the IT complexity that businesses are facing.
The demo of Anna's experience included a mobile app, multiple SaaS services, a physical store, beacons, location information, promotions, cross-selling, and an awards program—the IT version of complexity that businesses are wrestling with.
The new Oracle Application Builder Cloud Service is designed to enable citizen developers (power business users) to publish their own applications—either extensions of SaaS applications or new custom applications. Oracle Application Builder Cloud Service provides browser-based application development and hosting. There's no integrated development environment (IDE) to install, and there's no coding required. Again, that helps retailers focus on doing what they do best rather than having to work with IT on complex development cycles.
Oracle Cloud Platform delivers on the business need to secure, deploy, and manage the technology...
—Oracle Executive Vice President Inderjeet Singh
Singh noted that different types of integrations used to connect sales and marketing efforts can be handled using Oracle Integration Cloud Service. "Oracle offers a best-of-breed application integration platform for on-premises to cloud, cloud to on premises, cloud to cloud, Oracle to Oracle, and Oracle to non-Oracle," he said.
Singh also said Oracle Cloud Platform delivers on the business need to secure, deploy, and manage the technology that Anna the Shopper interacts with, because "Anna can't tolerate one second of downtime. She wants performance. She wants accurate information. Anna trusts the retailer with her personal information. Any betrayal of that is the end of the story. She has too many other retail choices."
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Fastening/Assembly Technology
Low-Profile Automatic Nut Feeder
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Friday, January 1, 2010
Dengensha America, Bedford, OH, has introduced a low-profile automatic nut feeder that promises to save space and improve light and visibility on the floor, with a low initial cost and minimal maintenance costs. Downtime reportedly is minimized with the automatic feeder because parts are stocked in the United States and available throughout North America.
Dengensha America: 440/439-8081; www.dengensha.com
See also: Dengensha America Corp.
Related Enterprise Zones: Automation

subset: commoncrawl


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Hello and Welcome to another Brown Sugar Challenge!!Thank you to all who participated in last weeks challenge! All of the entries were great. We encourage you all to play along this week. If you are uploading your project to an online gallery, please use keyword BSCB-243(eg. splitcoaststampers, paper craft planet, etc.)
Star Stampz
Store - https://www.etsy.com/shop/StarStampz
Prize - 3 digi images of winners choice
Prize - 3 digi images of winners choice
Here is some inspiration from our Design Team A:


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Give our public colleges a helping hand
Why the state's second-class treatment of its 29 public universities and colleges is bad for our economy and our future.
Richard Freeland looks as if he's running for something.
Full of energy, Freeland stands in a sport jacket and tie at the front of a worn-out ballroom in a Hyannis hotel less than half full of equally tired-looking union leaders in pastel-colored golf shirts and sensible shoes. It's the last morning of the summer conference of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. The weekend awaits, and the people in the room have so far seemed more attentive to their coffees than to the speakers.
But Freeland is very good at making pitches like the one he's come here to deliver. It's a skill he honed in 10 years as a university president, a job that requires as much tact and persuasion as any political office. He piloted Northeastern University out of a downward spiral in enrollment that threatened its existence, aggressively marketing the school at a time when the rest of academia looked down its nose at such a thing, pulling off the seemingly impossible feat of moving the onetime commuter school to its new rank among the nation's most selective private universities.
That's not what Freeland has come here today to talk about, however. He has a new cause. This one is much, much tougher. In political terms – and this is nothing if not political – he's the underdog again.
Richard Freeland is here to sell these politically connected labor leaders, and eventually everybody else in Massachusetts, on not one, but 29 universities and colleges. The state's public universities and colleges, to be specific. The Rodney Dangerfields of Massachusetts higher education. Afterthoughts. Schools that, even in this brainy, blue corner of the country, saw their budgets cut in the years leading up to this recession. The fact that almost no one noticed is a reflection of just how little respect they get.
Freeland has been tapped to raise the profile of, and public and political support for, all of these schools, whose brand has fallen to a level lower than Northeastern's ever did. Safety schools, for the most part, in one of only two states in the nation (the other is Rhode Island) where more students attend private universities than public. A patchwork of institutions mistrustful of one another that have hoarded their shares of shrinking state budget allocations in a system that encourages competition over collaboration. Choices of last resort for students who don't have the grades or test scores or finances to go anyplace else – including, increasingly, talented middle-class kids priced out of Massachusetts private universities, some of which now charge tuition greater than the median annual American household income. Of the students admitted to the flagship Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts, only 22 percent enroll, down from 31 percent 10 years ago.
"I want young people who go to these institutions to feel good about them – that they're first-class institutions," Freeland, the state's commissioner of higher education, says in his Beacon Hill office a few days after his AFL-CIO speech. "The students tend to doubt that now." Massachusetts needs to decide whether it will feed its next generation a higher-education diet that is more akin to steak than macaroni, he says. Today, he says, it's macaroni.
Other states in far worse economic shape have managed to catalyze public and political support for state-run universities, largely by making an argument that they can help drive economic recovery, and by mobilizing influential business interests and angry middle-class voters who are paying escalating tuition to make up for public budget cuts. The crisis speaks to the very question of why public higher education exists, and who should pay for it. It's a moment Richard Freeland is determined to seize. But first, he has to prove that the state's long-suffering public colleges are worth the investment. He has to persuade politicians. He has to persuade prospective students. He has to persuade employers. And he has to persuade you.
Would you buy a Massachusetts public higher education from this man?
* * *
It's a hard sell. That's because, from the outside, Massachusetts public colleges look as if they're doing great. Students are pouring in. UMass Amherst had a record 31,000 applicants this year for 4,500 seats in the freshman class. Even with fewer admitted students choosing to enroll, the overflow is spilling onto other UMass and state campuses. Community colleges, in particular, are so crowded that, at Holyoke Community College, students park on what used to be the tennis courts. Bunker Hill Community College famously started offering two courses last year that begin at 11:45 p.m. and has added five more this semester to make room for students who can't get into crowded daytime classes or who work full time.
The reason for all the applications is simple: Despite years of increases in fees to make up for cuts in state appropriations – Massachusetts public colleges get an F for affordability from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education – public colleges here remain much cheaper than private ones. Private Northeastern, for example, costs $49,452 per year in tuition, fees, and room and board, while UMass Amherst charges $20,545 and Bridgewater State $16,935. At the community colleges, tuition and fees total about $3,800.
The problem is that this flood of enrollment comes after a decade during which the Legislature's appropriation for higher education fell 7 percent – 18 percent accounting for inflation – according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. It would have been far worse but for federal stimulus funding that runs out next year, threatening an even more drastic plunge in support. Those crowded campuses are crumbling. More than 70 percent of the buildings at UMass Amherst alone need to be repaired or replaced, at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion.
There are a lot of reasons for this neglect. One is that, other than by making public higher education seem like a relative bargain, the presence of all those private universities really doesn't help. "The influence and power and clout in this state come from alumni of the private universities, not the public ones," says Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at UMass Amherst and author of Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education. "The privates suck the oxygen out of the political atmosphere."
Elsewhere in the nation, says state Senator Stan Rosenberg, who attended UMass Amherst, most legislators who are college-educated are products of public systems. "So they have a loyalty and can understand and connect to that," he says. In Massachusetts, a comparatively low 38 percent of legislators went to a public university or college here.
Sometimes private universities' antipathy to publics has been overt. Fearing competition, some private colleges helped stall for a decade the contentious construction of the UMass Boston campus and exile it to what was then considered a remote location on the site of a onetime garbage dump. Ditto a public medical school, banished ultimately to Worcester.
Separate from Freeland's campaign to bring attention and resources to the public universities, an advocacy group called PHENOM, for Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts, is working to marshal the faculty, staff, and students at state schools. But progress has been painfully slow. There is longstanding mistrust between students, faculty, and staff on the one hand and administrators on the other. Plans to force a debate among the gubernatorial candidates about higher education came to nothing.
"College administrators have not used the potential power of students, alumni, or students' families to advocate for public higher education," says Ferd Wulkan, PHENOM's organizing director. One result? Politicians, says Freeland, "cut into cities and towns, and the phone rings off the hook. They cut into the State Police, and the phone rings off the hook. They cut higher education, and nobody calls."
Elected officials, after all, know that public universities can get their money somewhere else: by continuing to raise the price charged to tens of thousands of students and their parents. Average tuition and fees rose 77 percent in the last 10 years at Massachusetts community colleges, 104 percent at UMass schools, and 114 percent at the other state colleges and universities. Tuition and fees in the UMass system exceed the national average for public four-year colleges by 36.5 percent.
"Legislators are cowards, by and large, and so they avoid cutting things that have real consequence [for them] as much as they can," says David Waymire, a political consultant in Michigan who has many public-university clients. "If you can cut university spending and the university just gets it back by raising tuition, even though that still impacts taxpayers, then who cares? And that's exactly what is happening."
Nor have the public colleges done much to help themselves. Thanks to a structure they encouraged, there is one UMass president and board, and each state college and community college has its own, too. Each competes against the others for money, facilities, and programs. Each has its own line in the state budget, and there's another for the UMass system. Max Page, who teaches architecture at UMass Amherst and serves as higher-education representative on the executive committee of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (though he notes that his opinions are his own), calls it "the circular firing squad of public higher education. It's the community colleges against the state universities against UMass, and within UMass, the flagship against the other campuses. So when you have declining resources, you have people fighting over the scraps."
After Freeland proposed his plan to finally get more for everyone, it took him a year of patient diplomacy just to line up the 29 Balkanized schools behind it – even though it's meant to be in their collective interest. He calls it the Vision Project. And when you read it, he says, "You say, 'Duh.' " That's because, from the first line, it's breathtaking in its obviousness: It will demonstrate, the plan says, "that public higher education can act in a unified and focused way to ensure the future well-being of the Commonwealth, and that we are ready to hold ourselves accountable for results to the people of the state."
Freeland is asking the schools to make a bet. "Let's put some energy into showing the public that we're first-rate and the money will follow," he says. "We have spent so much time fighting among ourselves and so much time fighting between the public and private sectors that we haven't organized as an industry. And it's an immensely powerful constituency – if we can get our act together."
* * *
An energetic 69, Freeland is unpretentious and approachable in ways many university leaders are not. It's a helpful characteristic in his new line of work, considering that his largely policymaking job of commissioner, to which he was appointed at the start of 2009, relies more on persuasion than on any real power. All of 5-foot-8, he's a man-of-the-people kind of guy who favors sport coats over business suits and forgoes expense-account lunches for microwaved soup in the office. Freeland seems equally comfortable working a room of burly union bosses or patiently reassuring suspicious academics. Though he was born in New Jersey, he went to Amherst College, worked as a professor at Clark and as an administrator at UMass and Northeastern, and has what colleagues call a Yankee sensibility. His personal cachet makes even the most skeptical observers parse their words when asked if what he seeks to do is feasible. So does his track record. "People's personal respect for him curbs their belief that they think he has an impossible job," says Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a public-policy think tank in Boston.
Freeland pulled Northeastern out of its nose dive by, among other things, setting the unheard-of public goal of cracking the top 100 in the all-important U.S. News & World Report college rankings, a score card other universities – publicly, at least – deride. He also advertised, another practice other schools disdained, including on the right-field wall at Fenway Park in 2004, which, as it turned out, put Northeastern's name before a television audience of millions during the Red Sox' victorious World Series run.
Controversial though these and other measures were among some faculty and others on the campus, applications nearly tripled, squeezing the acceptance rate from 85 percent to 38 percent today and making Northeastern more selective than Boston University. The proportion of students from out of state has jumped from a little more than half to more than two-thirds. And by the time Freeland stepped down, Northeastern had shot from 162d to 98th in U.S. News.
Freeland's newest task is even more monumental, and he's painstakingly lining up support. He says he has no dollar figure in mind for how much more he'd like to see the Legislature spend on higher education. One step at a time, he says. Among other things, he wants to prove that universities can save money, not just spend it. The announcement last month that UMass Amherst would offer an accelerated three-year degree, cutting the cost for students by at least a year's worth of tuition, is one example.
So far, people vital to his plans are mostly watching from the sideline. They've seen it all before. The state's public higher-education system was restructured twice between 1980 and 1991. Governor Mitt Romney tried unsuccessfully to do it again in 2003, when he attempted to close or consolidate campuses. "We have failed to create a comprehensive vision that we stick with," legislator Rosenberg says. "We either don't make a plan, or we make a plan and then we make a new one a few years later."
* * *
Massachusetts legislators aren't the only lawmakers to slash funding for public higher education. California, Florida, and New York have made enormous cuts to universities. But some states have taken the opposite approach.
One is Maryland, which has the same high levels of education and income as Massachusetts. Its state universities had become among the most expensive in the country. But a highly sophisticated crusade by higher-education advocates that aimed at the 2006 governor's race and beyond maneuvered gubernatorial candidates to make the quality of public colleges a campaign issue, appealing to voters stung by 40 percent tuition hikes with commercials showing, among other things, a child reaching in vain for a diploma sitting on a mantelpiece. By the time the election was over, says the eventual winner, Martin O'Malley, residents had become convinced of "the connection between quality education, affordable colleges, and the strength of the economy." The universities kept up the momentum, charming the General Assembly by finding more than $100 million in savings. The result has been state funding that, among other things, allowed tuition to be frozen for four years, despite the economic downturn.
Ohio, which, like Massachusetts, has largely independent, fiercely competitive public colleges, also has made public higher education a financial and political priority on the grounds that the state schools can attract new businesses, train workers, and develop industries to replace vanishing manufacturing. "There is an unbreakable connection between economic growth and prosperity and educational achievement," Governor Ted Strickland says. "Those states, and I hope Ohio is one of them, that have protected education and nurtured education will be the states that lead the new economy." If any of his fellow governors were to ask him why he's been so supportive of the universities, "I would tell them it's entirely out of selfish motivation," he says of this ongoing effort.
Strickland and others, frustrated by the unwillingness of the Ohio colleges to change – each operates under a separate board with its own lobbyists, and many have built empires of branch campuses with overlapping programs – prodded the schools by promising them increased funding as a reward. Newspaper editorials also egged them on. The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the schools "must put away the daggers and one-upmanship." The Columbus Dispatch said that they had to "become team players in a way that they haven't before."
That's the kind of public consensus Freeland wants to create in Massachusetts. He's been canvassing the state to bring his message to whoever will listen, from chambers of commerce to high school guidance counselors. "We're trying to build a broad movement," Freeland says. So far, "the reaction is often, 'You're right and we agree with you, but we've heard it before and not much has changed.' " To that, he responds that no one thought Northeastern could be turned around, either.
Freeland's principal argument is that Massachusetts needs public colleges to supply its workforce. "We need jobs at all levels of the economy," he says. "Of course we need doctors, but we also need nurses." Besides, he says, more public-university graduates stick around and work in Massachusetts than private-university graduates – 85 percent, compared with 50 percent from BC, just over 30 percent from BU, and 18 percent from Harvard – boosting the economy and more than paying back the state's investment in them. (Private-university officials are skeptical of the public universities' statistics, and even of their own, pointing out that many students likely leave the state without bothering to update their addresses with the alumni office.)
Business interests agree – in principle, at least. They're crucial to Freeland's plan. It's business that has helped push support for public universities over the top in other states. "What we need is a qualified, educated workforce with the kinds of skills that are taught at public universities," says Gary DiCamillo, a partner in the business consulting firm Eaglepoint Advisors and chairman of the Education Task Force of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable. "IT, middle management, middle-level financial services – those are the kind of people we're short of in Massachusetts." Trouble is, he says, the public colleges aren't producing enough of them. "They matriculate, but they don't graduate."
He's right. Lots of students may come in, but it takes them forever to get out. That's true for colleges nationwide, and Massachusetts is no exception. Slightly more than half who are admitted to UMass Amherst graduate within four years, and a third still haven't finished after six. And the numbers are worse at other public colleges and universities in the state – more than half of students fail to finish within six years. At the community colleges, only 17 percent receive their degrees within one and a half times the traditional completion periods.
Business people say they need that to change before they can wholeheartedly support the public universities. Nor has Massachusetts public higher education shown that it can quickly respond to workplace demands, they say. When Fidelity Investments failed to find a Massachusetts public college to train financial-services professionals for mid-level jobs, it teamed up with Bryant College (now Bryant University) in Rhode Island. "Why wasn't it possible to get our act together to make sure that stayed here?" asks the Pioneer Institute's Stergios. "I think business would be excited by Freeland's vision, but there's also a history where they haven't seen the benefits they'd like to see. In practice, [the universities] have been all thumbs."
Freeland promises results. To prove his schools' value to politicians, business leaders, families, and others, his Vision Project requires the universities and colleges to regularly report their progress in seven areas, including graduation rates, degrees produced in key professions, graduate-school exam and professional-certification results, and income from the licensing of products developed from research.
Work on figuring out how to measure all of these things got under way at a conference last month. (The statistics will be provided for each of the three levels of public higher education collectively – community colleges, state universities and colleges, and the UMass schools – not for every campus separately, which insiders say nervous presidents vehemently opposed.) Freeland has also set up a committee to look for savings that can come from joint purchasing and similar collaborations, as well as new ways to make improvements without big budget increases that the recession makes unlikely for the moment. As he liked to say at Northeastern, "Before you tell your story, you have to have a good story to tell."
By some measures, he already does. Some top students turn down invitations to prestigious private universities in favor of the UMass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College. UMass Lowell's engineering program is a pipeline to
Freeland wants to bring perception in line with what he says is the reality of what public colleges can offer, and support for the schools in line with expectations. "We can't ride along on the strength of Harvard and MIT anymore," he says, "in a state that lives and dies by its brains, dependent on its knowledge economy. This is a state that needs all the home-grown talent it can get. So where's the brainpower going to come from? It's going to come from public higher education. Everybody agrees the state has an obligation to provide public higher education to its citizens. The question is, is it going to be steak or macaroni?"
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of presidents and boards at the University of Massachusetts.
Correction: Because of an editing error, this story incorrectly describes the administrative structure of the University of Massachusetts. It has a president and a board of trustees.
Jon Marcus is a Boston-based writer who covers higher education, including as US correspondent for the Times Higher Education magazine in the United Kingdom. Send comments to email@example.com.


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State's ranchers hit by Midwest drought
FARM BILL As feed prices keep rising, relief stalled by political bickering
Washington -- California ranchers may be hit harder by the drought in the nation's heartland than farmers in the corn belt.
Most corn farmers have subsidized crop insurance, a program so generous that farmers who lose their entire crop could wind up making more money than if there were no drought at all.
Cattle ranchers across the country, however, are seeing the price of corn, hay and other feed skyrocket as a result of diminished yield, forcing many of them to slaughter their animals now rather than later. Corn has gone from about $5.50 to $8 a bushel, and hay and other grains are following.
The drought "has a tremendous ripple effect," said Jim Warren, owner of 101 Livestock Market, a cattle auction in Aromas (San Benito County). In the last three weeks, the price of young steers waiting to be corn-fattened has plunged from $1.40 to $1.10 a pound, Warren said, mirroring the rising cost of feeding them.
"The cattle market is really dropping," said Kevin Maloney, owner of Fallon Hills Ranch in Tomales. "We're grass fed, so grain prices aren't affecting us, but we're already at historically high hay prices, and the drought is so bad that it's tightening the supply of hay."
Forty percent of U.S. counties have been declared disaster areas as the worst drought in a half-century blankets the Midwest. With ranchers and grain farmers sprinkled liberally throughout GOP-leaning regions, some of which, like Iowa and Colorado, are critical to the fall elections, the drought has wreaked havoc for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Food stamp debate
Boehner lacks the votes in his own party to pass a farm bill that would address the drought, even as Congress prepares to recess for the summer. Conservatives don't like the farm bill's nearly $1 trillion 10-year price tag, most of it for food stamps. Democrats don't like its cuts to food stamps.
Boehner might allow a vote this week on a disaster aid package for livestock only. That could become a vehicle for the five-year farm bill that the House Agriculture Committee and the full Senate have passed.
Even before the drought, cattle numbers were dwindling after years of droughts and herd liquidations, Warren said. "Nationally, we have 31 million cows and we should have 38.5 million," he said.
Bay Area ranchers produce an estimated $100 million of beef a year. Cattle ranches cover 20 million acres of California, preserving the landscape of the coastal mountains and Sierra foothills.
Corn farmers, while seeing their fields shrivel and die, have access to taxpayer-subsidized insurance that protects their revenue. On average, taxpayers subsidize about two-thirds of the premiums of all crop insurance. Cattle ranchers do not have insurance and never participated in traditional subsidies.
Midwest corn farmers widely insure their revenue per acre at the harvest price. As the drought drives up corn prices, it drives up the insurance payout.
"The amount of dollars per acre that the taxpayer is guaranteeing the producer goes up if crop prices go up, which is exactly what's happening in this drought," said Craig Cox, director of the Iowa office of the Environmental Working Group, which opposes commodity subsidies.
Farmers who insured their corn last spring for $5.68 a bushel may wind up collecting insurance at $8 a bushel, Cox said. That means farmers who lose their entire crops could earn more from insurance than if they had sold a full crop at normal prices.
But David Friedberg, chief executive of Climate Corp. in San Francisco, which uses weather modeling to sell unsubsidized crop insurance to cover deductibles and other losses not covered by federal programs, said he thinks that is unlikely.
'Farmers are suffering'
"I don't see very many people actually making money from the drought, given how bad yields are," Friedberg said. "Most farmers are suffering."
Even if Congress passes extra aid for livestock, many Bay Area cattlemen doubt they'll take part.
David Evans, founder and chief executive of Marin Sun Farms in Point Reyes, raises cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, ducks and chickens. Only the poultry and pigs naturally eat grain. The ruminant animals are grass fed, which he said would be a better long-term solution for cattle ranchers than disaster aid.
"One of the reasons why we specialize in 100 percent grass fed is because we believe it helps build a more sustainable food model," Evans said. "Herbivores should just eat grass, and this is one of the reasons why feedlots right now are losing hundreds of dollars per head. It's because they're invested in feeding cattle grain."
Most Midwest corn is fed to cattle, Evans said. "If we would return cattle to pasturelands, and fatten them on pasturelands, pasturelands are more resilient to drought than monoculture crops."
Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent. E-mail: email@example.com


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One Direction: 3D Movie Coming!
Posted in One Direction: 3D Movie Coming!
About Photo #509706: One Direction get their dance on while performing on The Today Show in New York City on Tuesday morning (November 13). The guys -- Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles,… Read The Post Here
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In Taipei, small clubs come and go faster than foreigners. But tonight, Korner celebrates survival with a one-year anniversary party featuring German underground techno house phenomenon Steve Bug. Resident Advisor casts a dazzling limelight on him, calling him Berlin's best tastemaker, trendsetter and mover-shaker extraordinaire. With three ongoing record labels, a mile-long production catalog and a DJ career dating back two decades, the description is fitting.
This is a party for underground music heads, as Korner's dark and dingy vibe might scare off your typical club goer. This is a good thing; it only attracts the cool cats. Over the last year, Korner has come to define itself as the one place capable of generating an eclectic and eccentric atmosphere that cannot be found in a 1000+ capacity club. It's worth every penny of the taxi ride.
"I think what defines Korner is the vibe," said James Ho (賀捷明), booking manager for Korner and The Wall, on why he thinks the place does well.
"The consistency of good underground music and the absolute freedom for DJs to play what they want. It is a good gathering spot for DJs, musicians and artists. I remember Brian Eno wrote about the key to keeping a good scene is to create a common ground for musician and artist, and to make sure they get a free drink to keep them happy. After all, these are the people that make the underground scene vibrant. So I would say it is the community of creatives that keeps Korner going."
■ Steve Bug plays tonight at Korner inside The Wall (這牆) from 11:30pm to 5am, B1, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Tickets are NT$900 at the door.
It was a chance encounter that put John Digweed in the same club as Sasha (real-name Alexander Coe) in 1993, but 20 years later it's more about sheer talent than any sort of lucky break. It's only lucky for us in Taipei, as we get to experience what had sparked the New York City underground rave scene, and what is responsible for the plethora of electronic music movements thriving today.
Digweed's set tomorrow night at Neo Studio may be reminiscent of the energy and the passion that went into 10-hour sets at New York City's legendary club Twilo, but it won't be a throwback set of old-school house music. Digweed says that even since those days, his sets have been 80 to 90 percent new music.
"It's so much more rewarding to get amazing reactions from the crowd when you are playing tracks that they have not heard before rather than playing the same 20 tracks that everybody else is," said Digweed in an interview with the Taipei Times.
"I very rarely play the same tracks after a month or so," he continued. "I don`t really fit into that group of DJs playing all the big hits to get a reaction. I find it very lazy to just churn out the same set week after week, for me each gig is different and you should be presenting each crowd a set that you are performing just for them. Not something you worked out a month ago."
In a small world oversaturated with too many DJs and only one sound, this is why Digweed stands out even after two decades. Deejaying is not just about going through the motions, he says, but it's more like a two-way street where the crowd should also see a DJ passionately get behind every track he plays.
Following this formula is how Digweed stays current and far away from the EDM scene, which other DJs have felt pressure to join. He doesn't have hard feelings for the scene, however. He's just happy that people have so much choice within the electronic dance music scene, and thinks that EDM has a place within it, just like techno, house and dubstep.


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News Release 13-105
STEM Graduate Education Challenge Prompts Hundreds to Offer Ideas for Improvements
Challenge launched by National Science Foundation reveals desire to reshape graduate education according to today's increasingly global and interdisciplinary practice of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
June 13, 2013
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.
Today the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the winners of the Innovation in Graduate Education Challenge, launched in February 2013 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The challenge invited graduate students from across the nation to submit innovative ideas to prepare them for tomorrow's opportunities and challenges. Entrants were encouraged to submit ideas with the potential to improve graduate education and professional development. Ideas could be oriented to students, faculty, departments, institutions, professional societies, and/or federal agencies. Participation in the challenge was limited to currently-enrolled STEM graduate students. They were invited to submit by April 15, 2013, a 1,000- to 1,500-word response to this challenge.
The challenge was launched at a time when graduate education in STEM could be considered to be at a crossroads. Several reports have recently raised concerns about graduate education in STEM and the need to better prepare students for a range of career options in an increasingly global and competitive world. The challenge specifically asked for students to voice their ideas in the broader discussion of graduate education.
The challenge, developed and administered by NSF's Division of Graduate Education, offered cash prizes to first-, second- and third-place winners, selected by a panel of judges of current and recent STEM graduate students as well as experts in higher education in two rounds of judging. In addition, the public at large was invited to vote for their favorite submission from among 53 finalists to select the Community Choice winner, who also won a cash prize.
More than 500 teams submitted entries to the challenge, representing more than 700 STEM graduate students, 155 universities/institutions and 47 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
"We were very excited about the level of participation in this challenge," said NSF Acting Director Cora Marrett. "Not only did we hear from students from all fields of study and from institutions across the country; we also had a tremendous range of ideas offered for improving graduate education in STEM."
Ten percent of the entries advanced to the final round of judging and were eligible for Community Choice voting. Over 3,000 votes were cast for Community Choice.
The winners are listed below. Pictures and a more detailed description of their work are available at the Graduate Education Challenge website.
The contest illuminated a number of key areas cited by participants that can inform the preparation of STEM graduate students, including educators, institutions, and federal agencies:
- Career development: Contest participants cited a need for better preparation of transferable skills for careers within and beyond academe.
- Science communication skills: Participants knew the importance of science communication skills to convey the relevance and value of their research to funders, the media and the public.
- Collaboration: Participants wanted to identify and connect with potential collaborators and to avoid being isolated.
- Curriculum reform: Beyond their specific area of study, in an era of increasing interdisciplinary work, participants wanted access to education in fields such as business, statistics, and programming
- Mentorship: Participants valued quality mentors and wanted better networks to identify and work with them.
Winning individuals and teams and their topics follow:
First Place--$3,000 prize
Opening the Doors of STEM Graduate Education: A Collaborative, Web-Based Approach to Unlocking Student Pathways
Kevin Disotell, NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering at The Ohio State University.
Second Place--$2,000 prize (two winners)
The Scientists with Stories Project
Clare Fieseler, founder of the Duke/UNC Scientists with Stories Project and PhD student in Ecology at UNC Chapel Hill.
Retaining Women in STEM Careers: Graduate Students as the Building Blocks of Change
"Parasite Ladies:" Dara Satterfield (team leader), Sara Heisel and Sarah Budischak, Ph.D. students in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia
Third Place--$1,500 prize (four winners)
Communicating Science to the Public: A New Graduate Course and Practicum
Eric Hamilton and Melanie Bauer, graduate students in plant biology and psychology (respectively) at Washington University in St. Louis
Beyond the Academy: Enhancing STEM Education through External Graduate Assistantships
External Graduate Assistant Program: Sebastian Heilpern (team leader), Courtney Stepien, Benjamin Krinsky, Robert Arthur, and Colin Kyle, evolution and ecology graduate students at the University of Chicago
A National Online Platform for STEM Graduate Student Career Exploration and Professional Development
Liza Shoenfeld, Ph.D student in neuroscience at the University of Washington
Creating a Cooperative Environment for Graduate Studies and Career Preparation
David McDonald, PhD student in Genetics & Genomics at Duke University in the University.
Community Choice Winner--$1,000 prize
RELATE: Researchers Expanding Lay-Audience Teaching and Engagement
"Future Ira Flatows": Elyse Aurbach (Team Leader), Katherine Prater, graduate students in neuroscience at the University of Michigan
First-place winner Kevin Disotell, Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering at The Ohio University
Credit and Larger Version
Second-place winner Clare Fieseler is a Ph.D. student in ecology at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Credit and Larger Version
The "Parasite Ladies" are grad students in the Odum School of Ecology at the University o
Credit and Larger Version
Elyse Aurbach and Katherine Prater are grad students in neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Credit and Larger Version
Media Contacts
Maria C. Zacharias, NSF, (703) 292-8454, email: email@example.com
Related Websites
The Commission on Pathways Through Graduate School and Into Careers: http://pathwaysreport.org
Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation's Prosperity and Security: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/bhew/researchuniversities/index.htm
Advancing Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences: http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2020, its budget is $8.3 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 50,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards.
Useful NSF Web Sites:
NSF Home Page: https://www.nsf.gov
NSF News: https://www.nsf.gov/news/
For the News Media: https://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp
Science and Engineering Statistics: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Awards Searches: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/


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PUSH-UPS, CRUNCHES, COFFEE, TRANSLATION — it's all a part of the new morning regimen. By 7 am I'm sitting sleepily in front my laptop, arms sore as the screen glows with headlines from Yonhap. A notebook on my desk and pen in hand, I scribble down unfamiliar Korean vocabulary.
I flip quickly between browser tabs; article, dictionary, article.
And I think to myself: I should have been doing this for years. I'm struggling now because I've let my second language get rusty — let myself be overwhelmed by daily demands and excuses. This is the great re-focusing, a test of self-discipline.
(Silently, I worry if it's sustainable.)
A great daunting mass of foreign words has stood between my actual language abilities and true fluency for some time. The grammar, the basics, even the colloquialisms feel well ingrained by now — but I'm still drowning in an ocean of vocabulary. What I don't know could (and does) fill a book.
So this is my recipe for fluency, I hope:
Read one Korean-language news article — aloud, twice. List every word I don't know, then look it up. Listen to one Korean-language news broadcast — twice. Identify names, numbers and unknown words. Make flash cards for all new words. Take a break. Review flash cards. Speak as much Korean as I can (even to myself). Go to work. Eat. Blog. Sleep. Repeat.
As my anticipation for moving abroad grows, it's all I can do to resist regretting the time I didn't spend working towards this goal. Willpower takes time to forge, I tell myself, and learning the intimacies of any language is a process that takes years. And so I keep on keepin' on, sewing meaning to sounds, sounds to letters — sticking words in my head and hoping that they'll stay.


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Computer simulation saved more than $100,000 dollars in the design of a new coal preheating technology for low NOx burners by making it possible to get the design right the first time. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a NOx reduction process under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy to provide a cost effective, combustion-based alternative to selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Development targets include NOx reduction to below 0.15 pounds per million Btu, reduced CO2 emissions, and a 55% electricity cost reduction compared to SCR. The technology combines GTIs Methane de-NOX reburn technology with a pulverized coal (PC) preheating approach developed for utility pulverized coal combustors by the All-Russian Thermal Engineering Institute (VTI). Many variations of the initial burner design were evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), making it possible for engineers to determine an optimized design concept. As a result, the initial prototype met the design objectives, eliminating the need to build and test additional prototypes at a cost that would have probably run into six figures each.
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text: You've seen the fantastic images the cruise companies take of their ships, and now you can view the holiday shots taken by real cruise lovers! It's a great way of getting an idea of the day to day life aboard each ship. If you wish to upload photos you have taken, please make sure they are directly relevant to a cruise. Any irrelevant or offensive photos will be immediately removed.


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I have heard of the ministry for bug reporting but don't know how to get there. When I log in to transcendence. kronosaur. com and click on "Report Bug" all I get is a refresh of the same page. The only thing I can think of is if my browser is old and not really compatible and this is causing the problem.
Any tips on how to report a bug? Otherwise I'll post them here. TIA
report bugs bug?
Found a bug in the game? Post it in one of the applicable sub forums depending on the version you are using. Tech support is also available in the Tech Support subforum.
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3 posts • Page 1 of 1
- AssumedPseudonym
- Fleet Officer
- Posts: 1136
- Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 5:18 am
- Location: On the other side of the screen.
…Huh. So it does. You may actually want to report that one. The link to the Ministry is: https://ministry.kronosaur.com
Mod prefixes: 0xA010 (registered) and 0xDCC8 (miscellaneous)
My mods on Xelerus: Click here!
Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the least. (I'm having a lot more fun without it!)
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3 posts • Page 1 of 1


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health insurance
health insurance, prepayment plan providing services or cash indemnities for medical care needed in times of illness or disability. It is effected by voluntary plans, either commercial or nonprofit, or by compulsory national insurance plans, usually connected with a social security program.
Sections in this article:
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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National Monuments within 100m of the mapped planning point
Is this Planning Point is within a National Monument Zones of Notification? (Section 12 National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2004)
NIAH Locations within 100m of the mapped planning point
National Roads & Motorways within 500m of mapped planning point
By creating a PlanningAlerts.ie account you get regular email alerts for any planning application that impacts you. You also access a range of additional features, including full information on each planning file.
Create Account
It's all free for the first 60 days.No card details are required, so you can decide if this if for you without having to pay.


text: Xtreme Power Solution For Extreme Performance 8+1 Phase Power Design AMD 140W CPU Support True SATA 6Gb/s & USB 3.0 support ATI CrossFireX™ Technology Support EPU ASUS Express Gate Shop Modal header AMD Socket AM3 ; Phenom™ II/Athlon™ II/Sempron™ 100 Series Processors This motherboard supports AMD® Socket AM3 multi-core processors with unique L3 cache and delivers better overclocking capabilities with less power consumption. It features dual-channel DDR3 1333 memory support and accelerates data transfer rate up to 5200MT/s via HyperTransport™ 3.0 based system bus. This motherboard also supports AMD® CPUs in the new 45nm manufacturing process. AMD 770 chipset AMD 770 Chipset is designed to support up to 5200MT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0 (HT 3.0) interface speed and PCI Express™ 2.0 x16 graphics. It is optimized with AMD®'s latest AM3 and multi-core CPUs to provide excellent system performance and overclocking capabilities. ASUS EPU The ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit) provides total system power management by detecting current PC loadings and intelligently moderating power in real-time. It automatically provides the most appropriate power usage to save power and money! HyperTransport 3.0 Suport Provides 2.6 times more bandwidth than HT1.0 that radically improves system efficiency for a smoother, faster computing environment Dual-Channel DDR3 1800(O.C.) This motherboard supports DDR3 1800(O.C.) that provides faster data transfer rate and more bandwith to increase memory computing efficiency, enhancing system performance in 3D graphics and other memory demanding applications. PCIe 2.0 support This motherboard supports the latest PCIe 2.0 devices for double speed and bandwidth which enhances system performance. True USB 3.0 Support Unique PCIe x4 Bridge Chip for Ultra PerformanceExperience ultra-fast data transfers at 4.8Gbps with USB 3.0--the latest connectivity standard. Built to connect easily with next-generation components and peripherals, USB 3.0 transfers data 10X faster and is also backward compatible with USB 2.0 components. True SATA 6Gb/s Support Unique PCIe x4 Bridge Chip for Ultra PerformanceSupporting next-generation Serial ATA (SATA) storage interface, this motherboard delivers up to 6.0Gbps data transfer rates. Additionally, get enhanced scalability, faster data retrieval, double the bandwidth of current bus systems. ATI CrossFireX™ Technology ATI´s CrossFireX™ boosts image quality along with rendering speed, eliminating the need to scale down screen resolution to get high quality images. CrossFireX™ allows higher anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, shading, and texture settings. Adjust your display configurations, experiment with the advanced 3D settings, and check the effects with a real-time 3D-rendered previews within ATI Catalyst™ Control Center. 8+1 Phase Power Design To fully unleash the AM3 CPU´s potential, the ASUS M4 Series motherboards have adopted a brand new 8-phase VRM power design. It delivers high power efficiency and supreme overclocking ability. Furthermore, high quality power components can effectively lower system temperature to ensure longer component lifespan. This series also features an extra 1 phase power dedicated to integrated memory/HT controller. SATA on the Go The motherboard supports hard drives based on the Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gb/s storage specification, delivering enhanced scalability and doubling the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval and saves. The external SATA port located at the back I/O provides smart setup and hot-plug functions. Easily backup photos, videos and other entertainment contents on external devices. Turbo Key ASUS Turbo Key allows the user to turn the PC power button into an overclocking button. After the easy setup, Turbo Key can boost performances without interrupting ongoing work or games - with just one touch!! High Definition Audio Enjoy high-end sound system on your PC! The onboard 8-channel HD audio (High Definition Audio, previously codenamed Azalia) CODEC enables high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output, jack-sensing feature, retasking functions and multi-streaming technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations. You can now talk to your partners on the headphone while playing a multi-channel network games. All of these are done on one computer. Gigabit Lan This capability ensures rapid transfer of data from WAN to LAN without any added arbitration or latency. ASUS Express Gate 0 to Internet in Seconds!Express Gate™ is an ASUS exclusive OS that provides you with quick access to the Internet and key applications before entering Windows®. ASUS Q-Fan ASUS Q-Fan technology intelligently adjusts CPU fan speeds according to system loading to ensure quiet, cool and efficient operation. ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 The ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 allows users to restore corrupted BIOS data from a USB flash disk containing the BIOS file. This utility saves users the cost and hassle of buying a replacement BIOS chip. ASUS EZ Flash 2 EZ Flash 2 is a user-friendly BIOS update utility. Simply launch this tool and update BIOS from a USB flash disk before entering the OS. You can update your BIOS only in a few clicks without preparing an additional floppy diskette or using an OS-based flash utility. C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall) When the system hangs due to overclocking failure, there is no need to open the case to clear CMOS data. Just simply restart the system, the BIOS would show the previous setting and then users can amend the CPU setting again. MyLogo 2 You can convert your favorite photo into a 256-color boot logo for a more colorful and vivid image on your screen. S/PDIF-out on Back I/O Port This motherboard provides convenient connectivity to external home theater audio systems via coaxial and optical S/PDIF-out (SONY-PHILIPS Digital Interface) jacks. It allows to transfer digital audio without converting to analog format and keeps the best signal quality. Uses 100% All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors! This motherboard uses all high-quality conductive polymer capacitors onboard for durability, improved lifespan, and enhanced thermal capacity. GreenASUS The motherboard and its packaging comply with the European Union´s Restriction on the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This is in line with the ASUS vision of creating environment-friendly and recyclable products and packaging to safeguard consumers´ health while minimizing the impact on the environment.


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Bradley Law, LLC, formerly Bradley Berkland Hagen & Herbst, LLC is a law firm located in Woodbury, Minnesota in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. The firm also has an office in Waseca, Minnesota. The firm was founded in 1998, by Mike Bradley, who has worked in private practice for over 20 years. The firm has developed a well respected practice both locally and nationally. Nationally, the firm represents clients in cable and telecommunications matters. Locally, in addition to cable and telecommunications, the firm represents clients on a wide range of matters including V.A. Disability Benefits, estate planning and probate, employment, business, and real estate.
Our approach is simple and successful. We leverage our experience by listening to and collaborating with our clients and then working hard to achieve their desired results. By doing this, we are able to discuss risks and develop options to approach client challenges. We understand the importance of communicating with our clients so that they understand the complexity and cost involved for services performed on their behalf. We also strongly believe in the importance of giving back to the community and participating in various civic organizations and events.
Licensed in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington


text:
Why Fran Drescher Says "I Live to Talk About Cancer"
The actress is so determined to spare women the agony of a cancer diagnosis that she's started her own advocacy group and lobbies Congress for new laws. Here, her journey from cancer patient to health activist.
Fran Drescher, star of TV Land's Happily Divorced, may be known for her New York accent and witty humor, but she wants to be remembered for something else: her advocacy for women's health. Last year, the 55-year-old actress traveled to Washington, DC, to lobby Congress for the Carcinogen-Free Label Act of 2012, a bill that would allow qualifying consumer products to be labeled as carcinogen-free.
It's not the first time she's tried to make a difference in public health. In May 2005, Fran testified at a hearing on gynecologic disorders and helped pass the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act. The legislation mandates a national campaign—complete with written materials and public service announcements—to boost awareness of gynecological cancers. "It's gratifying to know a person can speak at a Senate hearing and actually make a change," says Fran, who is best known for producing and starring in the CBS hit comedy The Nanny.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of State appointed Fran to the position of Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women's Health Issues. "I speak with our allied nations and military on health care and taking control of your body," explains the actress, who has traveled to Romania, Hungary, Kosovo, Poland and other countries to promote awareness and early detection of women's cancers.
Fran's passion for helping others take charge of their health stems from her own medical crisis. About 15 years ago, she began experiencing worrisome gynecologic symptoms and saw eight different doctors to pinpoint the cause. "The doctors were saying I was experiencing an early menopause," she recalls. "I went on several different hormone replacement therapies." Ultimately, she was diagnosed with Stage I uterine cancer. "I was watching TV when the doctor called [to tell me]," says Fran. "I literally dropped to my knees and wept."
Fran had a hysterectomy (surgery to remove her uterus), which led to a clean bill of health. She didn't require any additional treatment and has been cancer-free for about 13 years. "I got famous, then I got cancer, and now I live to talk about it," says Fran. "Sometimes the best gifts come in the ugliest packages."
A mission to empower women
In 2002, Fran wrote a book, Cancer Schmancer, to share her experience and raise awareness of the importance of early detection. While on her book tour, she realized other women had had experiences similar to her own. "I realized the book was the beginning of a life mission to improve women's healthcare in America," she says. So in 2007, she launched the nonprofit Cancer Schmancer organization to promote the importance of prevention and early detection of cancer. "We need to take control of our bodies and become greater partners with our physicians," says Fran. "We want to empower ourselves—and the women we love—to become medical consumers. [We need] to listen to our bodies, ask the right questions and seek second opinions."


text:
Nate Berg
Nate Berg is a freelance reporter and a former staff writer for CityLab. He lives in Los Angeles.
With thousands of cars whizzing around, it's hard not to feel a little anxious. They zip around tight corners and down sloping, curving overpasses, creating a buzz that is noticeably louder than the thoughts in our own heads. Watching them can make one dizzy, and trying to follow them as they pass is almost impossible.
That these are only toy cars in a large and elaborate kinetic sculpture is at least partially comforting. That they are also a vision of a maybe-not-so-absurd future is a little worrying.
Metropolis II is the new installation opening this weekend at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Created by artist Chris Burden, the piece is a massive mini-city of towering buildings interwoven and surrounded at all heights by tiny street-like tracks that carry 1,100 toy cars quickly and noisily around, like blood cells in a network of veins.
Taking up about 500 square feet and climbing at some points nearly ten feet in the air, the sculpture is part machine, part momentum and part dystopian vision of the future of car travel. The tiny cars are pulled up three six-lane conveyor belts to the top of the sculpture and then let loose to drive down the curving streets, zipping around bends and turns of roadway that under- and over-pass each other in a frenetic weave of movement.
It's an engine-like mass of movement that always seems on the edge of calamity. But it operates in a smooth and ultimately efficient flow. LACMA director Michael Govan calls it "an epic effort." A sign of its complexity, the sculpture will only run on Fridays and weekends in hour-and-a-half sessions – with a human attendant on hand to prevent any major blockages.
The sculpture has been in the works for five years, and its sheer scale is impressive. This film by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman give a feeling for the mass of the sculpture, then still in Burden's southern California studio.
Somewhat like a large-scale Erector set construction site, the steel frame of the sculpture holds onto 18 roadways that loop around, joining and splitting and circling back to the center of the piece, where the custom-made cars are once again collected in three six-lane conveyors that slowly drag them, bumper to bumper, upward to run the course again. The cars speed above a few comparatively quaint train sets and around tall models of buildings and at what, in scale, is the equivalent of cars on our freeways zooming by at 240 miles per hour.
"When you're stuck in traffic, think of this sculpture," Burden said at a recent preview of the sculpture.
Burden is well-known for an artwork he did in the 1970s in which he had a friend shoot him in the arm, and more recently for his 2008 work Urban Light – a gridded display of 202 restored street lights in front of LACMA. Metropolis II expands on a similar idea explored by Burden in Metropolis I, another smaller kinetic sculpture interpreting urban mobility. With this new sculpture, Burden builds out a vision of the city as it could be.
"It's a hopeful future," Burden says. "Cars will have an average speed of 240 miles per hour as soon as Google gets all their cars up and running. Because the future of automobile transportation is that there won't be drivers anymore."
This is a familiar brand of utopianism – of fast-paced and extra-efficient mobility systems – that we've been feeding ourselves for decades. Burden's is a practical step down from the flying cars of so much science fiction, but still a prediction that envisions a sort of cartoon future.
That the sculpture is in Los Angeles is sure to draw some connections in people's minds. It's location here is – depending on your bias – totally appropriate, a warning, a capitulating admission of the city's fate, a sign of its status in the art world or an honor heralding it as the birthplace of this new future.
To take the sculpture as a comprehensive prediction of the future of this or any city is, at the very least, a stretch. But watching it function unavoidably brings to mind some self-reflection on at least this city if not others, launching thoughts of what could potentially be.
Photo credit: David McNew / Reuters
If you misplace your phone or wallet in Tokyo, chances are very good that you'll get it back. Here's why.
Cartographers are mapping the coronavirus in more sophisticated ways than past epidemics. But visualizing outbreaks dates back to cholera and yellow fever.
At the UN's World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi, attendees toured Masdar City, the master-planned eco-complex designed to show off the UAE's commitment to sustainability.
Streetcar, bus, and metro systems have been ignoring one lesson for 100 years: Service drives demand.
13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise. Researchers are starting to predict where they'll go.


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This was a week when grant writing for the library won out over column writing for the Observer. Here's a repeat from March 30, 2005. It's a little hard to believe that just seven years ago I was worrying about Maddie driving to Adrian and back. Now I get to worry about her hitch-hiking in New Zealand.
By Colleen Leddy
I'm surprised that nobody has said out loud, at least not to me anyway, how horrible I must be to live with. OK, 16-year-old Maddie hints at it on a regular basis. It's true; recently, I've been in a heightened state of obnoxiousness. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I am aware of my shortcomings—so aware, in fact, that I can even give warning, "Look out!" I say. "I'm a witch with a capital B!"
Other times, I'm just plain disconnected with reality, and I put my poor youngest through the mill.
Maddie went to Adrian Saturday night, driving there without a grown-up in the vehicle for the first time, and I made her call me when she got there, when she left the first store, when she got to the mall, when she left the mall, when she got to the next store, when she left that store and then when she arrived back in the Morenci area at her boyfriend's house.
She had insisted before leaving town that I was nuts for wanting her to call so much, but she did as she was told—over and over, all seven times. I think she was trying to teach me a lesson—after about the fourth call, I realized I was indeed nuts and jokingly said, "Quit calling so much!"
But that doesn't concern me as much as this really weird psychosomatic thing I've got going on. Now in the past, (OK, I still do it.) I've read articles of a medical nature and when I read all the symptoms, I'm usually ticking them off in my head: yup, got that, got that too, uh huh, that sounds like me, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. David has seen me through heart disease, stroke, diabetes, lupus, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, fibroid tumors and a host of other ailments that I think, for a moment, have stricken me.
"It's a wonder you're not dead," he said the other day when I read aloud the symptoms of yet another condition.
That's nothing compared to what's been happening lately. Maddie mentioned that her knee hurt after running at track practice. Later, she was chatting online with Rozee who was talking about the pain from her floating knee cap and whether she would be able to run track for Berea College this season. Not two minutes later, my knee started hurting.
And then, after David had been X-rayed for a frozen shoulder, my shoulder started to hurt.
Maybe it's the full moons, maybe it's pre-menopause, maybe it's mid-life crisis, but I know that I'm going through a...well, let's hope that's all it is...a phase. It's not just being way over-protective with the baby of the family or mirroring the pain of my family members—there's my diminished mental capacity all around. But at least I'm going down in good company.
A couple of weeks ago, David was looking for a needle to sew a button on a favorite shirt. It's a ratty looking shirt, not worth repairing in my estimation, but I guess he likes it enough to go to the trouble of fixing it. I think it's just a reflection of my stressed out state that plants me firmly as a member of the throwaway society. I don't really want to be associated with that contingent of Americans, but I find that I am making some really poor choices lately.
OK, I confess. It's not just lately. For example, I've been secretly throwing away tomato sauce jars for some time now rather than washing them out and placing them in the recycle bin. But in our house, a jar of sauce sits awhile in the fridge before it's totally consumed—long enough that it accumulates dried tomato matter around the rim, like stuff on a ketchup bottle. I just can't get up the gumption to swipe the sponge around that goop. So when David isn't looking, I toss the offenders in the garbage.
This is a major digression here, because I really was just going to mention how, when David was looking for the needles, I was only vaguely aware that he was going from room to room downstairs, looking in the likeliest needle havens and coming up empty.
"I think there are some noodles upstairs," I said, completely unaware that I had substituted the word noodle for needle.
"I don't need any noodles now," David said without skipping a beat and headed upstairs.
He responded in a matter-of-fact way, as if perhaps, at some point in time he might be combing the house for noodles, but just not now.
It's quite heartening, because when my dementia really sets in, David won't be fazed at all.
I just hope that's a phase he never outgrows.


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- Introduction
- Getting Drugs Through the Skin
- Getting Drugs Through Mucous Membranes
- Drug Delivery and HIV
The promise of drug delivery strategies is in their potential to improve current treatments and create opportunities for experimental therapy. Drugs that are absorbed through the skin or the nose instead of taken as a pill could help people reduce side effects and improve adherence. Drugs that are injected daily could instead be given through an implant once a year or through skin patches. Time release technology might allow for drugs now taken three or more times a day to be taken once a day or even once a week.
These methods are already being used to treat other conditions. Many companies probably feel that it's cheaper and safer to spend money on developing drugs that don't rely on experimental drug delivery. However, the next leap in treating HIV disease will likely require that researchers and drug makers think beyond the status quo.
HIV is not the only disease where people must take medicines exactly as prescribed for long periods of time. Diabetes and tuberculosis are two other conditions where strict drug schedules often present challenges. Until recently, however, drug makers basically offered only two ways to take most medicines -- as a pill or a shot.
Because most people prefer taking a pill over an injection, research in HIV and most other diseases has focused almost solely on developing drugs that are taken by mouth, usually as a pill. Only when a compound can not make it through the digestive system have companies considered making drugs that need a direct route to the bloodstream. Often, such drugs weren't developed at all as companies feared patients wouldn't use them.
People living with HIV are all too familiar with the shortcomings of current anti-HIV drugs. All of them demand near perfect adherence. Some cause hard-to-manage side effects like nausea, vomiting and diarrhea because of how they affect the digestive system. Also, the size of pills and the number that must be taken are a barrier for many, even those who do not find these strict pill schedules troublesome.
As is true with many drugs in pill form, most anti-HIV drugs require that people take a larger dose of the drug by mouth than is necessary by injection. This is because only a small percent of what starts out in the stomach makes it into the blood.
Recent advances offer exciting alternatives to the handfuls of pills that many people now take. One area of intense focus is the search for needle-free devices. More and more medicines are now delivered to the bloodstream less intrusively, through skin patches, gels and creams, inhaled products, nasal sprays and small patches that attach to the gums in the mouth. In the future, consumers may be given things that look like pens, or a sort of air gun. Both use air pressure to shoot a dose of medicine through the skin without a needle.
Getting Drugs Through the Skin
Creams and gels that are rubbed into the skin have been used for years to deliver pain medication and infection fighting drugs to an affected site of the body. These include, among others, gels and creams for vaginal yeast infections, topical creams for skin infections and creams to soothe arthritis pain.
New technologies now allow other drugs to be absorbed through the skin (transdermal). These can be used to treat not just the affected areas (for example, the skin) but the whole body (systemic). A growing number of medicines are now available as transdermal patches.
Patches usually have an adhesive rim that sticks to the skin, while the center is coated with a film of the active drug. The drug is slowly absorbed through the skin making its way into the bloodstream. Examples include patches that contain testosterone, estrogen, pain relievers and nicotine (to help people quit smoking). Other patches deliver anti-seizure medication like gabapentin (Neurontin).
Controlled release of the medicine is one of the greatest advantages of patches. In some cases, the active drug is mixed with another substance that controls how quickly it's absorbed through the skin. Also, a thin net-like layer of material can be placed between the drug and the skin to control absorption. This allows most patches to be worn continually for at least 24 hours. Some can be worn for several days.
Another form of transdermal drug delivery includes devices that use air pressure to inject a small stream of medicine through the top layers of the skin. Air pressure guns have been used for several years to give vaccines to children. Small, disposable pen-like devices are also available for diabetics who take insulin daily. Researchers working on HIV gene therapy have experimented with this technology to inject genetic material through the skin or into muscle.
Getting Drugs Through Mucous Membranes
Many drugs, when delivered to the lungs or inside the nose, are quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. Inhaled drugs now in development include a broad range, from pain relievers to an array of vaccines. In what could be a major advance in treating diabetes, an inhaled form of insulin is now being tested.
Also, expect to see other new products that are absorbed through mucus membranes (thin layers inside the nose, mouth, vagina and rectum). These include nasal sprays, buccal patches and suppositories. Butorphanol (Stadol), a pain reliever, is now available as a nasal spray. Several recent papers indicate nasal sprays may be an ideal way to deliver some peptide-based drugs that cannot be taken as pills.
Buccal patches are small patches that stick to the inside of the cheek. They slowly release medicine over time through the mucous membranes in the mouth. Buccal patches are now used to deliver antifungal and heart medicines. Buccal forms of anti-asthma and pain relief medicines are also being studied.
An ideal place to deliver drugs is through the rectum with suppositories. The lining of the rectum is porous and can absorb drugs quickly into the bloodstream. Drug makers have been slow to develop suppositories because they fear that most people are unwilling to use a drug that's put into the rectum.
However, nurses have long used them to care for infants and adults who are unable to take pills. Suppositories are used most often with anti-nausea and anti-asthma drugs, as well as hormones. Recently, researchers began to see their potential and are now developing new drugs to be given this way.
Drug Delivery and HIV
There are currently limitations to the technologies described above, particularly with regard to current anti-HIV drugs. Most are made of molecules too large to pass easily through the skin or mucous membranes. For some drugs, the quantities that must be given for each dose are far too large to be made into patches or suppositories. However, these obstacles may not be insurmountable.
Researchers have already found chemicals that help larger molecules pass through the skin. Other chemicals cause drugs to stay in the body longer or to make it into cells more easily. The substantial improvements in treating hepatitis C with pegylated interferon is just one example of success in this area.
While much of this research is new, it demands our attention. It's not difficult to imagine the benefits of using anti-HIV drugs in small doses only once a day or even once a week by a patch or inhaler.
While these treatments do not exist today, the technology to create and test them does. Dozens of companies are developing and improving them. These are genuinely exciting developments. They have the potential to greatly ease the lives of people living with HIV, if not today then certainly in the future -- as long as people living with HIV and their advocates push for them.
Back to the Project Inform Perspective July 2004 contents page.


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(Reuters) - Former Illinois Governor George Ryan was transferred to home confinement on Wednesday after spending five years in federal prison, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman said.
Ryan, a Republican, was convicted in 2006 of racketeering, fraud and other offenses involving favoritism and kickbacks for state contracts and property leases. He was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in jail.
Ryan, 78, was released from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and reported to a halfway house in Chicago, Bureau of Prisons spokesman Ed Ross said. Shortly afterward he was put under house arrest.
"I can confirm that he has transferred to house confinement today," Ross said. He did not say where Ryan was to be confined.
Ryan's release date is July 4. House confinement calls for a prisoner to remain at his home during non-working hours, Ross said.
Ryan's successor in office, Rod Blagojevich, in March began serving a 14-year sentence at a Colorado prison on corruption charges.
Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Neil Stempleman and John Wallace


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To a socially conscious filmmaker like Hector Babenco (an Argentine-born Brazilian filmmaker who, before he took Hollywood and Oscar with 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman, made more or less directly activist narrative features in Brazil), it must have seemed like the right time for Ironweed. It was 1987, the "trickle-down" (or, more accurately, "leech-up") Reagan era; William Kennedy's 1984 Pulitzer prizewinning novel had harked back to an even rougher time -- the Great Depression -- for American workers; and Kennedy himself had adapted his novel into a screenplay just waiting for a director with the right sensitivity. In Babenco's hands, Kennedy's tale of Francis, a middle-aged bum wracked with guilt and pushed ever lower into the dregs of society, and Francis's girlfriend, Helen, a faded singer facing a similar shuffling, homeless, alcohol-dazed plight as times go from bad to worse circa 1938, should have been something that left a mark on your soul, opening up floodgates to buoy your consciousness. Instead, it's a respectable but oddly quiescent affair, and one can't help feeling that it's the big-studio milieu in which it was made, and the very high-profile great-actor stars (Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep) on board, that robbed the film of too much of its soul for it to achieve what it could have.
It's certainly not that Nicholson or Streep purposely or willfully hog the spotlight, grandstand, or showboat; each of them seems physically and spiritually immersed in their characters in the self-effacing way of actors committed to their craft above and beyond any fame or acclaim they've attained or hope to receive. It's easy to see what drew them to the project: Streep's Helen is sad, defiant, sickly, and drunk the entire time; Nicholson's Francis is more lucid but also an alcoholic and humbled beyond repair by a checkered life of misfortune that only continues in the same way; and these are catnip-challenges to famous and successful Hollywood actors who want to understand and embody, from the inside out, people who are in no obvious way like themselves (plus, they get to appear alongside true-American-eccentric singer/songwriter/actor Tom Waits (Down by Law, Bram Stoker's Dracula, who plays Francis's even more tragic, terminally ill down-and-out pal). But Kennedy's tale is much, much more a character study than a "drama" with a very long plot arc (Pauline Kael, who disliked the film in no uncertain terms, perplexedly wrote "that's it" of its grim, minor-key, minuscule plot, which can accurately, if not completely, be summed up as: Depression-victim down-and-outers, at least the ones that don't actually die of their poverty, become inexorably more down and out over the course of the film's two and a half hours) and that doesn't seem to have meshed well with the milieu in which it was made -- which is to say under the auspices of the more prestigious but still big-studio, big-budget, profit-and-Oscar driven Columbia/Tri-Star -- or the undeniable star presence of its two hard-working leads, who here bear the unfair but very real brunt of that double-edged sword that gets unsheathed when you're a bona-fide Serious actor who becomes celebrated and bankable to their degree.
Thus, as we follow along through a few days' episodes meant to show us who Francis and Helen are and how they came to be that way -- their humanity, shown rather than told, so that we can understand and care for them without insulting them through oversimplification or sentimentality -- there's no egregious descent into bland convention, no sudden bursts of tear-jerking, no sudden moment where the film veers into shrug-worthy territory when it should, by dint of its subject, story, and the skill involved, be riveting all the way through. There's more of a very gradual, imperceptible slide, so that what looks in the film's opening sequences like it could be a stylistically well-considered and consistent, intimately devastating digging into the historical and personal layers of the Depression becomes, almost accidentally and in spite of itself, about the Moments -- the Moment where we cut to a close-up of Nicholson so he can deliver his killer line, the Moment where Streep can bust out her renowned versatility...the Moments where the director, script, cinematography/editing, everything seem to conspire against their best intentions and force them to become Nicholson! and Streep! instead of just plain ol' pitiful Francis and Helen, which shatters the spell that's supposed to have been cast by the film's sort of formalist rendering of Neorealist thematics and real-location-exteriors style (Lauro Escorel's lighting/camerawork, and the production/art design by Jeannine Oppewall and Robert Guerra, generally make for a subtly convincing and rich look), violating the terms the picture sets for itself (unlike Terms of Endearment or Postcards from the Edge, much more savvily set up from their very inceptions to integrate and use, respectively, the Nicholson/Streep star personae to their advantage, and therefore much less serious but notably more successful pictures than Ironweed). It's as if Babenco felt (perhaps rightly, on economic if not artistic terms) beholden to the studio and his undeniably Big stars to put in that close-up, to dwell more and more on the showy/heartstring-pulling moments (or to make subtle, ill-advised choices in an attempt have it both ways; the wobbly staging and tonal skittering of a scene wherein Francis visits the family he's abandoned make it a professional-looking, shapeless mess), or to allow otherwise fairly well-evaded hokeyness to creep into Francis's flashbacks (particularly the ones involving Nathan Lane, in an early role, as the ghost of a scab that a young union-activist Francis accidentally murdered during a strike).
There's plenty nice to say about the film, too, however; if this review betrays the reviewer's ultimate disappointment in what is still, when all is said and done, a worthy if too-mixed effort, it's only because those bits that do work (the period detail, for example, actually does strike a nice balance and sticks to the plainspoken, un-showy, utilitarian heart of the film, and of course there are numerous moments where Nicholson and Streep are allowed to affect us just by being their distressingly lost, unheroic characters, whose specialness and particular goodness have to be hidden, kept safe from the brutal socioeconomic and natural elements, and will likely never see the light of day again) set a high standard and encourage optimistic expectations, which are then slowly half-betrayed as the film just gradually peters out, falling into the blah rhythms and maneuvers of a sort of sad-important-story default mode; it seems like it might be something special, might stick to its guns and deliver something that gets you in the deep places, but then it holds back and doesn't, after all. The harsh but true insight the film has to offer is less about the slow physical and spiritual decay of humanity when improperly nurtured and supported in unkind economic times, and more about how tough and stubborn and self-critical and hypervigilant you have to be to allow a project to give voice to its whatever true, distinct qualities it has. There's a marked difference between actual, rigorous, active restraint and indecisive, middle-of-the-road docility, and it's in the vacuum between those two poles that Ironweed comes to a slow stop and rests in respectable-enough stasis, without the vision, power, or follow-through one might have hoped for from the all-around highly intelligent and talented creative team that made it.
The widescreen transfer -- which very slightly modifies the film from its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 to a new one of 1.78:1 -- is fair to quite good, with nice fidelity to both the film's mostly muted color palette and its rarer reprieves of color and light, and little in the way of aliasing or edge enhancement/haloing to be discerned. However, there are numerous, very brief and barely noticeable "pops" on the screen (isolated, very small, less than one-second-long lines or dots somewhere on the screen) to suggest that the print was less than perfect and not very extensively repaired. And, though there is a healthy amount of fine grain to clue us in that the film's celluloid texture hasn't been completely scrubbed away, a certain slightly bleary over-smoothness to some scenes suggests that someone went a little too far over to the digital noise reduction (DNR) side when making the transfer. Still, it's a decent job overall, with no flaws so distracting that they break your concentration.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack is quite good; even though it's labeled as only 2.0, my system, at least, channeled the sound to all five speakers, with the film's dialogue, music, and important ambient sounds all fully, clearly present and sonorous, without any distortion or imbalance at any point. When the characters speak, or when a train goes by in the movie, it's like it's happening right in your living room; it's really surprisingly good sound.
After his more interesting literary adaptation, 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman, director Hector Babenco pretty well completed his transformation from activist-filmmaker in his home country of Brazil to feted Hollywood artiste with this 1987 slice of awards-bait, but it's not so bad as all that: The film is too well-designed, too self-consciously period-rific for its own good, yes; and try as chops-showcasing stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep might, there was no way that the Hollywood rules of starpower were ever going to let them not gun for that spotlight in ways that are discordantly out of step with this very somber, very low-key story taken from William Kennedy's 1984 Pulitzer prizewinning novel (Kennedy also adapted the script). But neither is the film just a wet rag of timid pity and sentimentality. Babenco and Kennedy do manage to bring to the screen rich stretches of the stoically heart-wrenching, Depression-era toughness innate to Kennedy's compact but deep tale of a washed-up, guilt-ridden, drifting bum (Nicholson) and his similarly unmoored, sickly ex-singer girlfriend (Meryl Streep) as, over a few bitterly cold, unsheltered winter days in hard-hit Albany, New York, they drunkenly, inevitably wind their way down the no-going-back spiral that the haunting memories and disappointments of their lives, enmeshed indistinguishably with the literally deadly economic times, has set them on. It's a tug-of-war between the predictable conventions of "serious" acting-showcase Hollywood prestige pictures and the true, genuinely un-glamorous and soberly humane power of Kennedy's uncompromising vision, and the film becomes six of one and a half-dozen of the other, left with a reasonable amount of interest and dignity but pulled curiously flat between the opposing approaches. Just because it's not as profoundly engaging and moving as it could have/should have been, though, doesn't mean it doesn't work at all; it may occupy a gray zone between real art cinema and "artistic" cinema the way Hollywood tells it, but enough of the story's observational drama and well-integrated historical/social consciousness still shine through to make it a worthwhile watch and a respectable potential addition to one's Blu-ray library. Recommended.


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A Dictionary of Dentistry Quick reference
Over 4,000 entries
This first edition of A Dictionary of Dentistry provides over 4,000 definitions covering all the important terms and concepts used in dentistry today. Entries are written in clear and concise English without the use of unnecessary dental or medical jargon, and many entries are supplemented by detailed line drawings.
The dictionary defines terms in a broad range of dental specialist areas including primary care, anatomy and comparative anatomy, biochemistry, radiography, orthodontics, restorative dentistry, oral surgery, pharmacology, ethics, and oral medicine. For completeness, some drugs, techniques, and instruments of historical interest have been included. It also includes a number of biographies of those who are considered to have made a highly significant contribution to dentistry.
An essential guide for dental practitioners and dental students, it is also an invaluable reference source for all members of the dental team, medical practitioners, lawyers involved with members of the dental profession, and the general reader.


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Karachi: Former Pakistan captain Moin Khan has advised experienced all-rounder Shahid Afridi, who is struggling for form, to take a break from the game.
Known as a supporter of Afridi, Moin said that he did not agree with suggestions that it was time for the flamboyant all-rounder to call it a day from international cricket.
"I don't think he should retire. I sincerely believe he can still serve Pakistan cricket for a few more years. All he needs to do now is take a break from the game, spend some time with his family and come back before the India tour fresh and confident," Moin said.
Afridi, a popular cricketer in the country, has come in for sharp criticism after he struggled for form in the recent World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka. Some former players and critics have even blamed his poor form as a primary reason for Pakistan's failure to qualify for the final.
"I don't agree with this notion. Afridi is clearly short on confidence while batting and this is affecting his overall performance. He needs to take a break and regain his focus because he remains a valuable player for Pakistan," Moin said.
Moin also backed seasoned all-rounder Abdul Razzaq who has been issued a show cause notice by the Board for making comments about captain Mohammad Hafeez.
"Perhaps what Razzaq said about Hafeez was not appropriate but I think he was frustrated and upset at not being picked for the semifinal and there is no doubt it was injustice not to play him in such a big match," Moin said.
"I think the Board needs to take a lenient view of the incident as a senior player like Razzaq is more frustrated when he sits on the sidelines in a big match knowing he can do a lot for his team."
Moin said Hafeez's decision not to play Razzaq was not a sensible one, given the experience of the all-rounder.
The former wicketkeeper-batsman also questioned the role and contribution of foreign coach Dav Whatmore.
"Tell me, what improvement has the team made since Whatmore took over nearly six months back. He needs to be questioned," said Moin.
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I'm trying to change a GUI element before preforming a lengthy function (little icon to show its busy), but I'm not too sure how to do it.
If I make the change then start the task, GUI doesn't update until the function is finished.
I can make the GUI changes then start the task in a new thread, but I want to lock all user input too, and disabling every component seems a bit tedious.
So far, the most promising solution seems to be:
1) change GUI
2) set flag indicating long task is running (user input functions check this flag before doing anything)
3) start thread with task
4) when done, change GUI back, reset flag
I'd like to know if there's a better way before continuing.