text:
Thirsty diners can choose from three small subcategories on the menu: "Grove-to-Glass," ($10 each) "Barreled-and-Bottled" ($12 each) and "Cool-Weather" ($12 each). See details below:
The concepts driving the program?
"Simplicity combined with the craft of West Coast-, fresh produce-driven mixology," said Karey Walker, who runs public relations for Bacchus Management Group (which operates Mayfield).
She said adding the cocktail menu was "a result of hearing that there were liquor licenses available through a lottery system, and (it) also fulfilled our desire and long-term goal to offer masterfully crafted cocktails and spirits."
Mayfield has had a bar since opening at Town & Country Village in 2009, but brought in Bacchus Management Group bar manager Brandon Clements ? who also runs the bar programs at sister restaurants Spruce, Café des Amis (in San Francisco) and The Village Pub (in Woodside) ? to help shape the menu.
Walker said the barrel-aged drinks, which are made at the restaurant, will stay the same for at least the first year but ? like everything else Mayfield does ? the other cocktails will be seasonal.
"?expect the 'Grove to Glass' section to change with the seasons and in coordination with availability of our local farmers as well as the use of the restaurant and bakery departments," she said. "Spring will likely feature fruits like apricot and cherry, while summer will move into peaches and bramble fruits."
Ten to $12 farm-to-table-style cocktails aren't for everyone, but Mayfield is filling a key void in the city's dining scene. Whereas the craft cocktail movement has swept many major cities, particularly so San Francisco, this is a niche pretty much left untouched in Palo Alto.
Has anyone tried the new drinks at Mayfield? How are they?
Where else do you go for a quality cocktail in Palo Alto (or the surrounding Peninsula area)?


text:
Rebecca Stead
Like A Wrinkle in Time (Miranda's favorite book), When You Reach Me far surpasses the usual whodunit or sci-fi adventure to become an incandescent exploration of 'life, death, and the beauty of it all.' --The Washington Post This Newbery Medal winner that has been called smart and mesmerizing, (The New York Times) and superb (The Wall Street Journal) will appeal to readers of all types, especially those who are looking for a thought-provoking mystery with a mind-blowing twist. Shortly after a fall-out with her best friend, sixth grader Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes, and she doesn't know what to do. The notes tell her that she must write a letter--a true story, and that she can't share her mission with anyone. It would be easy to ignore the strange messages, except that whoever is leaving them has an uncanny ability to predict the future. If that is the case, then Miranda has a big problem--because the notes tell her that someone is going to die, and she might be too late to stop it. Winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book Five Starred Reviews A Junior Library Guild Selection Absorbing. --People Readers ... are likely to find themselves chewing over the details of this superb and intricate tale long afterward. --The Wall Street Journal Lovely and almost impossibly clever. --The Philadelphia Inquirer It's easy to imagine readers studying Miranda's story as many times as she's read L'Engle's, and spending hours pondering the provocative questions it raises. --Publishers Weekly, Starred review

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Tonight marks the end of the road for Franklin & Bash on TNT — at least for the moment. The legal dramedy hasn't been renewed for a fourth season yet. Should it be brought back or, should the cable channel cancel it instead?
Franklin & Bash follows two streetwise attorneys (Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar) who've been hired by the eccentric managing partner (Malcolm McDowell) of a prestigious law firm to help breathe new life into the struggling company. Others in the cast include Dana Davis, Kumail Nanjiani, Reed Diamond, and Heather Locklear.
Season three of the show kicked off in June and the two-hour episode drew just 1.97 million viewers — a series low. Viewership improved as the weeks wore on but Franklin & Bash is still down significantly year-to-year.
It's currently averaging 2.11 million viewers, a decline of 27% when compared to last year (2.88 million). What's more, of the cable channel's summer dramas, Franklin & Bash is easily the lowest-rated. Rizzoli & Isles (5.66 million), Major Crimes (4.87), Falling Skies (3.53) Perception (3.49), and King & Maxwell (3.11) all pull in much better numbers.
Based on the ratings, it seems very likely that TNT will cancel Franklin & Bash after tonight's installment.
If the ratings are any indication, perhaps many viewers have lost interest? Clearly the addition of Heather Locklear to the cast didn't draw many (or any) new viewers to the show.
But, what do you think? Is it time for Franklin & Bash to go? Is the show still worth watching? Should TNT cancel or renew the series for a fourth season?


text:
Data Bear - Receivables Analysis Solution
Is your cash flow suffering from money trapped in your business in the form of unpaid invoices? Our Power BI Receivables Analysis Solution offers a crystal-clear interactive view of expected cash flow, overdue payments and customers who are not good credit risk.Contact partner Watch video
- Gold Data Analytics
The ability to know what to do and when to do it depends on information.
Better information means better informed decisions. Access to accurate real time financial information allows you to make decisions when you need to make them. Running a business without a real-time interactive dashboard is like trying to fly a plane at night without instruments.
Smart business owners run lean, highly profitable businesses because they have access their vital financial information in an easily digestible format. Having the ability to analyse your businesses financial performance from many angles, whenever you need to, at a glance, means you gain time, reduce stress and add profit.
The Data Bear Receivables Analysis solution allows you to analyse your receivables from almost any angle, allowing you to drill down into the information that matters.
- Spot trends
- Identify outliers and analyze profitability whilst drilling down into the underlying details
- Keep your finger on the pulse of your business with our Overview Dashboard
- Monitor and track your purchases and know your data's story
We have designed the Receivables Analysis Solution to help you dramatically reduce the time it takes to access your vital data, significantly reduce the stress you feel when you don't know what's happening in your business and identifiably increase your profits.
Through our custom apps, connecting your data to your solution has never been easier. To see many more of our solutions, visit www.databear.com/solutions.
Want to become a Power BI Partner?
Certified partners are an important part of the team! Find new business opportunities, make connections, and share your company's talents and experience with Power BI users around the world.Sign up
Learn why you should become a partner


text:
This week we are challenging you to add some texture
Touchy Feely
there are many ways that you can add texture to your projects, embossing folders and pastes, 3D flowers, buttons, gems, corrugated card, the supplies that you can use are endless. Whatever you decide to use we will be looking forward to seeing what you create
As always Simon Says Stamp will be giving away $50 voucher to shop at the fabulous Simon Says Stamp Store
Please don't forget to pop by our super talented guest, Anne and the DT's blogs. Everyone has made fabulous touchy feely projects for your inspiration! :-)
I used the corrugated card and burlap from a Tim Holtz Textured Surfaces Pack as the base for her touchy feely card.
I gave a slightly diluted wash of white gesso over the corrugated caed and then added some splashes of colour with the distress paints
I then added more texture with a popped up flower from a Flower Garden Set and a scrunchy Crinkle Ribbon.
I used the distress paints to colour the flower and then used matching distress stains for the ribbon.
I didn't want to waste any of the burlap so I trimmed the edges and used the negative tag as a frame and used it on the inside.
Thanks for looking!
So now it's YOUR turn to get creating!
You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in
Addicted to Stamps. Flowers
Creative Artiste. Anything Mixed Media
Creative Knockouts. Washi Tape
Hope you all have a great week :-)
Happy Crafting
Luv Lols x x x


text:
March 8, 2008
Filters for Google Reader
Google Reader Filter is a Greasemonkey script that lets you define a list of keywords you're interested in and a list of uninteresting keywords. The script highlights the posts that include your favorite keywords in the title and grays out the posts that contain keywords from the blacklist. You can use regular expressions for defining complex restrictions, like dates or long titles.
The script doesn't remove posts, so it's more like an automatic highlighter. Feed Rinse has another approach: add a feed, define a list of simple rules for filtering and you get a filtered feed that can be added to your feed reader. For some reason, I couldn't subscribe to Feed Rinse's feeds in Google Reader, even though they were valid and any other feed reader accepted them. Hopefully, it's just a temporary problem.
You could also use a Yahoo Pipe that lets you define a list of keywords that are potentially interesting. So if you enter gmail, google calendar as a filter, the pipe will obtain a list of posts that contain Gmail or Google Calendar. After running the pipe, click on "More options", select "Get as RSS" and subscribe to the feed. As Yahoo doesn't allow you to change the feed's title, you should rename it in Google Reader.
21 comments:
- AnonymousMarch 8, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Or you can also filter your RSS feeds manually:ReplyDelete
personally, I prefer that, as I cannot enjoy the benifits of greasemonkey while I keep changing computers.
- AnonymousMarch 8, 2008 at 8:55 PM
If you create your own yahoo pipe, you can name it anything you want...ReplyDelete
The question is... why are 3rd party developers more likely to come up with new Google Reader innovations than the Reader team, when it's so obvious it should be done?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMarch 9, 2008 at 12:38 AM
Almost all of my rss feeds are grouped and filtered through yahoo pipes. It makes life so much easier. Especially in my low-importance news feeds. Anything that allows me to filter out any news about Britney and Lohan is good with me ;)ReplyDelete
@Louis Gray:ReplyDelete
* The number of "third-parties" is much bigger than the number of members in the Google Reader team.
* "Third-parties" don't have to integrate a feature or make it scale.
I updated the pipe to support negative restrictions and filtering for the author's name.ReplyDelete
Another great tool for feed readers is Feed43 (Feed for free), which lets you turn any web page into an RSS feed. The feed creation may be somewhat confusing for a novice, but if you know your way around HTML it's great for those web sites that have a 'news' page but don't provide a feed.ReplyDelete
(I'm not associated with Feed43, just a happy user!)
I just started using Feed Rinse and I can confirm that it works fine with Google Reader.ReplyDelete
I can't add any feed from Feed Rinse. Google Reader shows this message: "No feed available for http://feedrinse.com/services/...".
How to customize (links color, background) this kind of page:ReplyDelete
I found css file, but how to edit it?
Feed Rinse works fine with my Google Reader account. I've been using it for a couple of months now to filter out all the Paris Hilton and Britney Spears stories out of my Google Reader. Works like a charm!ReplyDelete
Is there anyway one can prevent, say, posts with embedded videos from either being delivered or (preferably) being delivered with the videos excised? I tried to do so in Yahoo! Pipes a few months back, but couldn't figure out how to use non-textual content-based mechanisms.ReplyDelete
It appears that Google Reader will work with the links from the OPML file (just open in an XML editor and copy out all the "xmlUrl="http://feedrinse.com/services/rinse/?rinsedurl=..." strings), but won't work with reading list link. I suspect the problem is with FeedRinse, since my link is an undifferentiated "http://feedrinse.com/services/readinglist/?mid=".ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMarch 24, 2009 at 3:06 PM
"Blacklist" is an a racially offensive term. You are, of course, free to use whatever language you choose, however you are now aware that this type of negative may offend.ReplyDelete
Anonymous - thanks for giving me the best laugh I've had all month. So applying your logic, any word with "black" in it is racially offensive and should be discarded? If so, that's pretty bad for the Black Forest in Germany, the black sheep of the family or the black tea I'm drinking.ReplyDelete
I use http://www.filtermyrss.com which is a free tool with no sign-in required. It can filter for a keyword or string of keywords.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 6, 2010 at 7:22 AM
This is a feature I've been waiting for a long time Google Reader team to implement, but apparently we only have the third party tools to accomplish this.ReplyDelete
I've been using Yahoo Pipes for a long time now and I'm quite happy with it, I've also tried Feed Rinse and its simple user interface is better suited to the novice user.
However, I see a problem about using any of these third party tools (with the exception of the Greasemonkey script Google Reader Filter): Sharing of filtered feeds is a mess. If I'm following a blog of several authors and I filter to read only a selection of them (filtering on the author filed) I get a different feed then the original one. So, if I share an article from that feed and a friend of mine wants to subscribe to the feed, she will subscribe to the filtered feed and not the original feed, which may be more appropriate for her.
Although filtering is a long missed feature and I manually filter my feeds all the time I would still like Google Reader team to implement it for the sake of its social implications.
To filter feeds by number of "likes" you can use Google Reader Like Filter at http://like-filter.appspot.comReplyDelete
There's no way I'm going over my *hundreds* of feeds and sending them through a third-party filter. This articles misses the point. I need global filters on all my Reader content, implemented by Google.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 25, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Christmas wish - a Reader filter mechanism. Plz!ReplyDelete
Check out JReader, it filters unwanted RSS post and notifies watched items http://jyvee.comReplyDelete


text:
I know you are sweet on me, and you really want me to spend time with you, but your flowers and pink stuff and naked babies aren't going to get you to first base, OK? A model holding a naked baby? What were you thinking?
I know, pink really is my favorite color, but that's for lipstick, not motorcycle gear. Notice my lipstick isn't the same color as my coat. Or my car. Jammies and iPhones, yes; motorcycle stuff, no.
And yes, there are times when I do like flowers, but not on my motorcycle tank. Or fairings. Or track suit. Nothing says, "Pretty fast for a girl" like flowers, and nothing says, "I don't identify with traditional gender roles" like being a girl who really rides a motorcycle. Please, 86 the botanicals, OK?
Speaking of fast women at the track, why aren't you making a bigger deal out of women racers? They are a big deal! Besides bringing serious female competition to a typically all-male grid – we love that. Ask any NASCAR fan...better yet, Google 'Danica Effect'. Then ask yourself if more T&A at the track is really the best way to boost attendance. The only thing separating the Danica Effect from the Elena Effect is two wheels and a league that embraces new market research.
Also, why do you insist on selling-down to me? What makes you think I want anything to do with "a great bike for the ladies." You know what's a great bike for the ladies? The one you rode in on. And that dirt bike over there, and that dual sport, that cruiser, and that super-fast, super-hot, superbike in the corner over there.
What I'm trying to tell you is, that the female riding population wants nothing more than, well, more. More gear, more options, more opportunities for inclusion in a sport we find every bit as exciting and addictive as you do. And I guess by 'more', what I really mean is 'the same'. If I spend the same as the average male rider, you double your profits and I double my fun. Everyone goes home happy.


text:
Aviation Day sets agenda for enhanced Intra-African Connectivity
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Posted: 18 August 2014 | The International Air Transport Association | No comments yet
The International Air Transport Association African Aviation Day emphasized the need for intra-African air connectivity to spread economic and social prosperity across the continent…
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) African Aviation Day emphasized the need for intra-African air connectivity to spread economic and social prosperity across the continent. In particular, IATA noted that the liberalization of air rights for intra-Africa flights could yield significant benefits in both jobs and GDP growth.
Africa is well-placed to enjoy sustained economic growth thanks to a young, expanding and urbanizing population, combined with abundant natural resources. But because intra-African aviation connectivity and the economic health of its airlines are weaker than they could be, opportunities for job creation, business growth and innovation are being lost. African airlines are expected to return a profit of just $100 million in 2014, on a net profit margin of 0.8%, the lowest of all aviation regions.
"Increased intra-African air connectivity is essential if Africa is to seize the opportunities for growth promised by its demographic and resources advantages. Aviation in Africa supports nearly 7 million jobs and $80 billion in GDP, but it faces challenges in terms of liberalization of markets, safety, costs, infrastructure and regulation. Only through industry and governments working hand-in-hand can these challenges be overcome, to the benefit of everyone across Africa," said Raphael Kuuchi, IATA's Vice President for Africa.
Enhanced connectivity
To provide African governments with a clearer view of the benefits of intra-African connectivity, IATA formally launched a report showing that liberalization of air services across 12 African nations would create 155,000 jobs and boost GDP by $1.3 billion. The report by InterVISTAS, an independent consultancy, calculated the positive economic impact of implementing the 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision, which pledged to open up air transport markets within Africa to transnational competition. The 12 nations in the report are: Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda.
"This report is a major step forward in quantifying the benefits of liberalizing air services across Africa. It is absurd that it is possible to travel 13 times a week from Nairobi to London yet impossible to travel directly from Nairobi to Dakar. A potential five million passengers a year are being denied the opportunity to travel, trade, and spread economic and social development," said Kuuchi.
Improved safety
The 2012 Abuja Declaration on African Safety by transport ministers of the African Union set out a goal for African aviation to match the average safety levels of the rest of the world by 2015.
"Safety is the number one priority for aviation. Africa has been closing the gap compared to the rest of the world but there is still a lot of work to do to reach the Abuja Declaration goal. The implementation of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) by all eligible airlines in Africa is mandated through the Declaration, and IATA is working hard to assist airlines to achieve that," said Kuuchi.
IATA has identified 20 airlines for assistance in implementing IOSA. The Declaration also calls on states to create well-resourced and autonomous Civil Aviation Authorities and to implement safety management systems.
Competitive infrastructure and costs
Improved consultation and partnership between industry and government is the key to ensuring Africa enjoys competitive infrastructure and business costs. In many parts of Africa infrastructure needs to improve, but it is important that improvements are funded according to established international principles. Transparency and consultation are critical.
"The foundation of a successful air transport sector is good physical infrastructure coupled with competitive costs. But governments also have a role to play in encouraging air connectivity through appropriate taxation and enabling regulation. If aviation is treated as a cash cow, its ability to be an economic catalyst is compromised. Aviation is ready to play a much more prominent role in the African economy, provided it is able to operate in a policy framework that values its contribution," added Kuuchi.
Tackling the challenge of Ebola
The spread of Ebola continues to be a significant medical challenge in the region. IATA is liaising closely with the World Health Organization (WHO), which is taking the lead in tackling the disease. The WHO has consistently stated that travel restrictions are unnecessary, most recently in their media note of 14 August 2014. The note specifically explains that aviation is "low risk" for Ebola transmission, and that the "WHO does not consider air transport hubs at high risk for further spread of Ebola."
The aviation industry is taking all necessary precautions, such as introducing exit screening at certain airports. Airlines also have well-tested procedures for handling suspected cases of infection, including guidelines for isolation and care for ill passengers, and measures for disinfecting aircraft.
"The WHO is best placed to give authoritative, independent advice on how best to deal with Ebola. They have been very clear that travel and trade bans are unnecessary. Unless this advice changes we hope that countries working hard to eradicate Ebola continue to benefit from air connectivity," said Kuuchi.


text:
Windows 8's touch-centric interface will help to usher in a new wave of laptops with tabletlike touchscreens. To make it easier for users to tap and swipe on even superthin Ultrabooks, laptop makers will break out of the traditional clamshell shape and introduce laptops with more unusual designs.
What will these new Windows 8 hybrid laptops look like? The new operating system will make rotating, sliding, and flipping possible on Windows laptops. Here are a few examples of existing hardware designs that offer a taste of what a laptop with Windows 8 capabilities could do.
Going Beyond the Clamshell
Although laptop manufacturers could simply add a touchscreen to a laptop without changing the traditional clamshell shape, that could pose a few problems, especially in the case of the new category of superthin Windows laptops, Ultrabooks.
When trying to interact with the thin touchscreen panel on an Ultrabook, you could easily end up pushing the screen down. And according to DigiTimes, laptop manufacturers can't just strengthen the hinge to compensate, because that could cause the bottom of the lightweight laptop to flip up when you press the screen. Aside from the physics problem, reaching over the keyboard for extended periods of time with the screen at an angle might not be ideal for users from a usability or ergonomics standpoint.
Thankfully, we've seen many innovative laptop designs that manufacturers could adopt successfully for Windows 8.
Convertible Tablet Design
Convertible tablet PCs, such as the Fujitsu Lifebook T580, have screens that rotate 180 degrees and fold flat to work in tablet mode. Since their introduction about a decade ago, convertible tablet PCs have never really taken off outside of niche business and student circles, owing to their bulky size and high cost.
Windows 8 convertible PCs, however, will likely be not only much sleeker but also much more budget-friendly than previous tablet PCs–ditching optical drives and arcane, expensive pen-optimized displays. Relatively thin Ultrabooks with rotating touchscreens could take advantage of the finger-friendly Windows Metro interface like a slate, but then could transform back into laptop mode.
Fold-Over Design
The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga presents another possible design solution. This 0.67-inch-thick Ultrabook, not yet available, flips back 360 degrees on a pair of double hinges. Propped up on a table like a tent, the Yoga will resist toppling over when you use touch apps, and it will offer an ideal viewing and tapping angle. The Yoga can also flip into other positions.
The Yoga's fold-over design is a newer concept than the convertible/rotating screen. How the fold-over design actually feels and works remains to be seen; the Yoga is expected to be released later this year. Still, it's an innovative and viable option that other laptop makers could adopt.
Sliding Screen Design
Laptops may also take design inspiration from smartphones, with keyboards that slide out from underneath the touchscreen.
One example of a model with a sliding screen was the Samsung TX100, which debuted at CES 2011. This slim tablet PC was reminiscent of the MacBook Air but had a keyboard that slid out from beneath its screen just as the original Android G1 smartphone keyboard did. After its introduction at CES, the TX100 was due to go on sale in spring 2011–in Europe, at least. However, that never happened.
Another example of a sliding design is the Asus Eee Pad Slider, even though it's an Android tablet rather than a laptop. PCWorld's review of the 10-inch Eee Pad Slider found the design to be effective, with the display sufficiently tilted and sturdy for touch navigation.
Docking Station Design
Perhaps the most versatile option is the docking station design, in which tablets slide into a docking station (or connect to one wirelessly) to create a hybrid laptop of sorts.
Android tablets–in particular, the Asus Transformer Prime and the more recent Lenovo IdeaTab K2–lead the way here. While those devices are technically tablets that connect to docking stations to become more laptoplike, you can find Windows tablets with laptoplike specs and docking stations.
For example, the Samsung Series 7 tablet boasts the same hardware specs as Samsung's Series 7 laptops, but in a thin and small tablet form. The Windows 7 slate comes with an Intel Core i3 or i5 processor, a solid-state drive, and 4GB of RAM. The docking station extends the tablet's capabilities with a wireless keyboard and more ports for full laptoplike functionality. A Windows 8 version is in the works.
Windows 8 laptop manufacturers considering incorporating touchscreens could perhaps go this route, offering the best of both worlds by making tablets as powerful as laptops with keyboard docking stations. After all, Microsoft wants Windows 8 to be the "everywhere operating system" for all devices–good on tablets, laptops, smartphones, and everything else, whatever shape or form they come in.
Are you looking forward to Windows 8 touchscreen devices? Let us know in the comments.
Follow Melanie Pinola (@melaniepinola) and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.


text:
Welcome to VinoCities !
The free web site hosting solution for wine professionals.
They trust us
- Château Filhot, grand cru classé de Sauternes
- Château Laplagnotte-Bellevue, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
- Les Vins Dévoilés, wine expert
- content management with simple forms: fields, wines, vintages, news, events, pages, photos, videos, etc..,
- multilingual web site (different domain names if needed),
- integration with the major social networks to automatically synchronize your news and events with your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Viadeo and even Weibo (the chinese Twitter) accounts and soon Google+,
- site compatible with mobile devices (iPhone, Android, etc.)
- syndication feeds available: RSS and Atom feeds for news, iCal for events, MediaRSS for photo albums, vinoXML for vintages, vCard for contacts, etc.
- automatic publication of vintage data sheets in PDF format,
- automatic indexation of wine bottle labels to allow search from photos taken with a mobile phone for example (service provided by LTU Technologies), bar code indexation for quick search from compatible phones,
- automatic generation of QR codes for easy access to the site from mobile phones,
- pages optimized for search engines complying with W3C web standards and WAI accessibility standards,
- create online stores using PayPal online payment solution.
Our business model is based on the right to reuse the contributed contents (not mandatory). The display of such content on our web portal and our mobile applications allows us to offer this free hosting service (excluding any costs of domain names). Of course, if you do not want to share the information from your site, a paying option will be proposed.
An offer of direct assistance by phone or mail will also be available for about € 10 per month.
Where to start?
Simply send us an email with a few elements (text, photos, logos ...) at the following address email@example.com. We will set up your site on VinoCities as quickly as possible.
An email containing the website address and access codes to the administration console will be sent back to you once the site is online.
If you do not want to go further with us, your site will be removed by simple request.
For any further information, please contact us: email@example.com.
Useful links
- Administration console (Compatible with Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers)
- Join our user forum


text:
Stop Crapping on Start-Ups
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.Join For Free
Michael O. Church recently wrote a thought provoking blog post, "Don't Waste Your Time in Crappy Startup Jobs", and the author clearly put a lot of thought into writing the piece. Based on the comments and the retweets, it appears the article hit home for quite a few people. I think the article's title might sway a reader's interpretation a bit, or readers may simply see it as 'Don't Waste Your Time in a Startup'. I'm sure that wasn't the intent of the article, but based on some of the comments, that sentiment seems to be the takeaway for many.
The crux of the article is a list of seven misconceptions that the author chooses to dispel one by one. I'd like to take each of them and see if these are truly problems with start-ups, problems with the engineering industry, or even problems with expectations. (Mr. Church's excerpts are in red, my comments follow)
1. A startup will make you rich. True, for founders, whose equity shares are measured in points. Not true for most employees, who are offered dimes or pennies."
First, I don't think most engineers that join start-ups are expecting to get rich these days, and even founders aren't all expecting to get rich. If you had written this in 1999, I'd agree this is a common misconception. Most employees in my experience see stock options or equity grants as 'lottery tickets', that they realize probably won't pay off – but they also understand that you simply can't win if you don't play.
"Moreover, raises and bonuses are very uncommon in startups. It's typical for high performers to be making the same salary after 3 years as they earned when they started. (What happens to low performers, and to high performers who fail politically? They get fired, often with no warning or severance.) "
I don't see bonuses or raises as uncommon in the start-ups I've worked with. My current client list includes a handful of start-ups that all offer bonus, and historically I've seen employees getting raises and bonuses from start-ups that are on par with some of my larger clients. And low performers being fired without warning or severance? Is that a start-up problem specifically? Low performers or people who 'fail politically' are fired in any sized company, the only difference may be severance. Again, this is not a 'crappy start-up problem'.
2. The "actual" valuation is several times the official one. "In truth, startup employees should value equity and options at about one-fourth the valuation that VCs will give it. If they're giving up $25,000 per year in salary, they should only do so in exchange for $100,000 per year (at current valuation) in equity."
I usually advise candidates that they may want to weigh any equity simply as a chance to receive some additional compensation, and I'd generally advise them not to accept any offer that won't afford them to live a lifestyle that makes them comfortable. If you can't afford a 25K pay cut, don't take one.
3. If you join a startup early, you're a shoe-in for executive positions.
Again, I just don't think engineers are this naive today to believe this, or at least not the people I know.
"Not so. In fact, one of the best ways not to get a leadership position in a startup is to be there early."
I'd love to see if any actual scientific evidence exists to back this claim up, but I wouldn't know where to find it. For every engineer you can name that did not get a leadership spot, I'm sure someone else can name one that did. Again, in my experience I generally see that engineers who join early on are rewarded with leadership roles that they are qualified to do. Being the first or second engineering hire at a start-up doesn't automatically give you the qualifications to be CTO, and if you expect you should be CTO/VP just because you were an early hire you probably need to rethink why you are joining the company.
"Startups often involve, for engineers, very long hours, rapidly changing requirements, and tight deadlines, which means the quality of the code they write is generally very poor in comparison to what they'd be able to produce in saner conditions. It's not that they're bad at their jobs, but that it's almost impossible to produce quality software under those kinds of deadlines."
True on hours, deadlines, requirements, and perhaps the code could be better in ideal conditions. I hear anecdotes all the time from engineers at large companies telling me how much free time they have with their highly reasonable deadlines and fully developed requirements being written in stone. Wait…no I don't! Again, not a 'crappy start-up problem' – it's the nature of the software game overall, just a bit amplified.
"It may have been a heroic effort to build such a powerful system in so little time, but from an outside perspective, it becomes an embarrassment. It doesn't make the case for a high-level position."
From an outside perspective, companies that may hire these engineers down the road will most likely respect the experience those engineers had in building the product under less than ideal conditions. Most hiring managers from outside firms won't know whether the product was some epic flop anyway.
"Once the company is rich and the social-climbing mentality (of always wanting "better" people) sets in, the programmers will be replaced with more experienced engineers brought in to 'scale our infrastructure'… The old engineers probably won't be fired, but they'll be sidelined, and more and more people will be hired above them."
Well that was depressing. I'd say, more likely, once the product is built and the company can hire more engineers, the developers that were there in the beginning now have accomplished their goal and will make the choice to move on. The mentality of this type of engineer is to build something, but they may not want to maintain it. Once that excitement is gone for this type of engineer, they will go voluntarily.
"Frankly put, being a J.A.P. ("Just A Programmer") in a startup is usually a shitty deal. Unless the company makes unusual cultural efforts to respect engineering talent (as Google and Facebook have) it will devolve into the sort of place where people doing hard things (i.e. software engineers) get the blame and the people who are good at marketing themselves advance."
Is J.A.P. a great deal at other companies? There are plenty of established companies that don't pay engineers great salaries, and work them long hours. I think the key point is the cultural efforts to respect engineering talent. My clients tend to love and respect their engineers, which is why I disagree with many of these stereotypes.
4. In startups, there's no boss. This one's patently absurd, but often repeated. Those who champion startups often say that one who goes and "works for a company" ends up slaving away for "a boss" or "working for The Man", whereas startups are a path to autonomy and financial freedom."
No boss? I must admit, in my 15 years of tech recruiting I've never heard this one before. Who are these people that you are talking to? I'd say start-ups are a potential path to financial freedom, whereas working for an established company (with no 'lottery tickets') is probably not going to get you to early retirement.
"People who really don't want to have "a boss" should not be looking into VC-funded startups. There are great, ethical venture capitalists who wouldn't go within a million miles of the extortive shenanigans I've described above. It's probably true that most are. Even still, the power relationship between a founder and investor is far more lopsided than that between a typical employee and manager. No manager can legally disrupt an employee's career outside of one firm; but venture capitalists can (and sometimes do) block people from being fundable."
How did we get from having 'no boss' to extortion by VC's and managers? A manager disrupting an employee's career outside of one firm??? WTF? Lemme guess...the author had a very bad experience?
5. Engineers at startups will be "changing the world". With some exceptions, startups are generally not vehicles for world-changing visions. Startups need to think about earning revenue within the existing world, not 'changing humanity as we know it'."
This might work on a small subset of 22 year old kids, but I think most people know they aren't going to change the world.
"…but people should understand that their chances of individually effecting global change, even at a startup, are very small."
The likelihood of ANYONE effecting global change is incredibly small at a start-up, and probably just as small at a large company. Again, this isn't a 'crappy start-up problem'.
6. If you work at a startup, you can be a founder next time around.
Why not? No, seriously – why not? Working at a start-up doesn't exclude you from being a founder next time, does it?
"What I've said so far is that it's usually a sh*tty deal to be an employee at a startup: you're taking high risk and low compensation for a job that (probably) won't make you rich, lead to an executive position, bring great autonomy, or change the world."
If you assume there is high risk and low compensation for every start-up job, I'd agree. Jobs with established companies don't always pay well, rarely make you rich or lead to an exec position, and almost never allow you to change the world. If that is how you define a crappy job, all jobs are crappy.
7. You'll learn more in a startup. This last one can be true; I disagree with the contention that it's always true. Companies tend to regress to the mean as they get bigger, so the outliers on both sides are startups. And there are things that can be learned in the best small companies when they are small that can't be learned anywhere else. In other words, there are learning opportunities that are very hard to come by outside of a startup."
So you won't necessarily learn more in a start-up, but there are unique opportunities to learning in a start-up. This sounds like a feature, not a bug. Are there unique opportunities in larger companies to learn things that you can't learn anywhere but in the larger company? Perhaps.
"Startups are generally too busy fighting fires, marketing themselves, and expanding to have time to worry about whether their employees are learning."
Fighting fires is a great metaphor here. Do you know the best practice for fighting fires? It's actually fighting fires. Of course, there is danger in that, but engineers learn much more by being in those environments than they do in a completely comfortable setting. It's not about a company that can afford (both time and money) to send you to a training seminar, it's about learning on the start-up job how to build something under tough conditions.
In conclusion, the problem with Mr. Church's article isn't that start-up jobs are crappy. It's that the author feels that many people may have certain unrealistic expectations about start-up jobs. It assumes that all start-ups work you to death and pay you nothing, and that simply isn't the case. It's a stereotypical assumption, and it's dangerous one.
If you take any job and expect that you will absolutely:
1 – get rich
2 – become an executive
3 – have no boss
4 – change the world
5 – found a company within x years
6 – learn more than everyone else
then I can assure you that you will be VERY disappointed, no matter the size or age of your new employer. I sense that people have more realistic expectations than Mr. Church gives them credit for, and the people I know in 2012 certainly do. A more appropriate title for his article would have been 'Don't Join a Start-Up with 1998 Expectations'.
Published at DZone with permission of Dave Fecak, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.


text:
Yesterday, Mojang posted an update on their blog answering some questions about what Minecraft server owners are allowed to charge money for. This upset some server owners even more, as it outlaws many of their current business models. It got players angry enough to start a Twitter campaign called #SaveMinecraft, with the goal of preventing Mojang from changing the way multiplayer games currently work in Minecraft.
If you aren't familiar with Minecraft servers, think of it like going to a theme park. Currently, most large Minecraft servers are designed so that you can enter for free, you're presented with options for rides, and you can pay for certain preferential treatment. As of August 1st, the choice for server operators will be to either charge entry for the whole park and all the rides are free, or build a separate theme park, parking lot, and ticket window for every single roller coaster. Server moderators say this would increase their costs too much to be able to implement at a reasonable price to players, so this may put them out of business.
Some people are taking this as the end of multiplayer in Minecraft, which is why #SaveMinecraft was trending on twitter yesterday:
Gregory Bylos, aka Sterling, is managing director of one of the largest Minecraft multiplayer server networks, Mineplex. He posted "An Open Letter To Notch" which explains in detail why server owners are so unhappy with the enforcement of the Minecraft EULA. The simplest reason relates to how Minecraft was originally released, with a very simple copyright page that states:
Any tools you write for the game from scratch belong to you. You're free to do whatever you want with screenshots and videos of the game, but don't just rip art resources and pass them around. Plugins for the game also belong to you and you can do whatever you want with them, including selling them for money.
Of course, as Minecraft exploded in popularity, they eventually needed to draft "a huge EULA" (as the old copyright page calls it). However, this new agreement was never strictly enforced, until it came up in a conversation with a developer a few weeks ago and caught the Minecraft community's attention.
The biggest issue Mojang is trying to address are the servers that charge hundreds of dollars for gameplay features like equipment or the ability to fly. As Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson said in his post on the topic, which he titled "Literally worse than EA," referencing some of the criticism from this decision:
I don't even know how many emails we've gotten from parents, asking for their hundred dollars back their kid spent on an item pack on a server we have no control over. This was never allowed, but we didn't crack down on it because we're constantly incredibly swamped in other work.
Disallowing this also has the side effect of disallowing servers that have developed mods and games that function on a League of Legends-style model, where you pay money for different classes, but each class is theoretically balanced so no one player can win by paying more.
Not allowing those type of games limits the types of mods that players can develop, but it doesn't affect multiplayer Minecraft servers with other types of games. The reason that everyone is afraid this will kill large multiplayer Minecraft servers, especially those with with user-made minigames, is that some of the clarifications don't allow for even the simplest monetization models, such as charging for access to specific areas that hold different games.
The Minecraft servers in question charge money because they're actually quite large operations. Matt Sundberg owns the Shotbow network, which employs three full-time and five part-time employees, and developed mods like MineZ and Light Bikes. He says:
Large server networks are incredibly expensive to run and are very time consuming. Most large networks run hundreds of Minecraft servers, along with enterprise DDOS protection, databases, dedicated proxies, and web infrastructure. In addition to that, many employ full time staff to manage the hundreds of hours of labor required for server maintenance and plugin development.
As for enforcing these rules, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh told me "I hope we can solve it through dialogue. If that doesn't work, we'd probably need to involve lawyers. That would be sad."
We'll see if anything changes before the August 1st deadline, but for the moment, it looks like the Minecraft multiplayer community will be changing drastically.
To contact me, write to firstname.lastname@example.com or follow me on Twitter @Appleguysnake.


text:
An explosion in mobile malware during the last six months has more than doubled the chance that a user's Android smartphone will become infected, a security researcher said today.
According to Lookout Security, which develops anti-malware software for Android but not for Apple's iPhone, the likelihood of an Android owner encountering malware has jumped by two-and-a-half times since January.
By June, between 1% and 5% of Android users -- the number varies by country -- had been infected by mobile malware, said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder and CTO of San Francisco-based Lookout.
Mahaffey blamed a dramatic spike in malware targeting Android for improving hackers' odds. "In January, we saw only 80 unique pieces of Android malware, but by the end of June we tracked over 400," said Mahaffey.
Lookout used its Mobile Threat Network, which analyzes apps acquired from both official and independent markets, and the malware-detection results from its security software, to come up with its statistics.
The Android malware problem shot into public view in early March, when Google yanked more than 50 apps infected with the "DroidDream" malware from the Android Marketplace, then continued with several more clusters found on Google's official download site and on third-party markets -- particularly those in China.
The rogue app model -- where attackers pirate a legitimate program, add malicious code and then re-release the app into the wild -- will continue to be the biggest mobile malware threat to Android users. "Repackaging [legitimate] apps will remain popular, simply because it's very effective," Mahaffey said.
But malware makers are getting more innovative, added Mahaffey, who declined to use the word "clever" to describe attackers' evolving tactics.
A new distribution channel, dubbed the "upgrade attack" by Mahaffey, has been used by at least one malware family to increase the pool of potential victims. An upgrade attack sidesteps the problem that hackers face when they release an infected app: The relatively small window of opportunity before their work is discovered and the app pulled from the Android Market or other download site.
"We've started to see [attackers] publish a clean app, then wait for a while before offering an update that's infected," said Mahaffey. "Because most people automatically update their apps, there's less time that the malware is on the market before it's installed by a lot of people."
Hackers are experimenting with different distribution models and various ways to monetize their work, Mahaffey observed.
"How do they get onto the device, and then how do they make money ... both are important," he said. "Mobile malware is now in the experimental stage, where attackers try innovative techniques to distribute their malware, and are engaging in experimental monetization."
Lookout has seen several forms of profit-making by smartphone malware, ranging from charging users hidden fees to sending waves of text messages to premium numbers. "The ability to monetize will be what cracks the market," Mahaffey predicted. "When the bad guys are able to figure that out, watch out."
Although Android owners have faced the brunt of the mobile malware threat, iPhone users aren't immune.
"There has not really been any malware on the [Apple] App Store, but iOS is affected by application vulnerabilities and Web-based threats," said Mahaffey, talking about phishing attacks that rely on malicious websites to fool users into divulging personal information.
Based on the prevalence of Web-based threats in June, Lookout projects that 3-out-10 smartphone owners will encounter an unsafe link this year.
It was the release last month of a new iPhone "jailbreak" -- a hack that lets an owner install software not approved by Apple -- that sparked Mahaffey's interest in iOS threats.
"Although the jailbreak was not malicious, it woke up a lot of IT administrators," he said.
The jailbreak relied on a pair of then-unpatched vulnerabilities in iOS that could be exploited simply by steering an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to a special site, essentially mimicking a "drive-by" attack. If criminals possessed similar vulnerabilities, they could hijack an iPhone if they convinced its owner to browse to a malicious site.
Even with the threats climbing, Mahaffey remained cautiously optimistic.
"We're in the startup phase of the mobile malware market, with innovation in distribution and monetization, but I think the threat is manageable," said Mahaffey. "We can have our cake and eat it, too. Yes, there are threats out there, but if people remember that their smartphone is essentially a PC and to be as careful [when using their smartphone] as they are when using a PC, they can be safe."
Lookout's mobile threat report can be viewed on or downloaded as a PDF from company's website.
Read more about security in Computerworld's Security Topic Center.


text:
Browsing TD: 2011 Volume 7 No 1 by Title
Now showing items 10-10 of 10
Thinking processes used by high-performing students in a computer programming task. (North-West University, 2011)Computer programmers must be able to understand programming source code and write programs that execute complex tasks to solve real-world problems. This article is a transdisciplinary study at the intersection of computer ...


text:
So, How'd They Do? Here's Where the Star Couples Ranked on The 'Dancing With The Stars' Premiere
Strap on your dancin' shoes, Dancing With The Stars is officially back! With another highly anticipated season here, we're ready to break down the good, the bad and the downright weird from all the routines from last night's premiere. With a new style added into the mix, you better believe the stars have their work cut out for them.
OK! Exclusive: 'DWTS' Winner Drew Lachey Reveals His Top Pick & Winning Advice
Click through to see how the stars stacked up last night. We're thinking ditch the NBA brackets and line up your favorites in a DWTS bracket instead. You know you want to...
Watch: Peta Spills On Her Dancing Partner, Sean Lowe
Do you have a favorite yet this season? What couples do you think will duel it out for the coveted mirror ball trophy? Who do you want to see sent packing next week? Tweet us your thoughts by tweeting us @OKMagazine!


text:
René Lacoste, "Le Crocodile"
Tennis legend and fashion baron
by Borgna Brunner
Related Links
Grand Slam Wins
French Open
U.S. Open
Jean René Lacoste (1904–1996) was famous for his considerable achievements in two very different arenas. Not only was he once ranked the world's top tennis player, but he designed a novel new tennis shirt that became the cornerstone of a world famous fashion empire. Lacoste, nicknamed "le Crocodile" on the courts, is remembered today primarily for the reptilian logo on his ubiquitous sportswear. Fashion historians believe the crocodile emblem (widely referred to as an alligator) was the first instance of a designer logo to appear on a garment.
1920s Tennis Star
Born into a wealthy Parisian family on July 2, 1904, Lacoste did not play his first game of tennis until he was 15 years old. According to the Tennis Hall of Fame, he was not a natural at tennis—it was his drive, discipline, and strategic intelligence that turned him into a tennis phenomenon. No doubt his father's ultimatum also had something to do with his success: Pere Lacoste agreed to let René to pursue his chosen career path—provided he became a world champion player within five years!
Crocodile and Musketeer
Which is exactly what happened. In 1926 and 1927, Lacoste was ranked the world's top tennis player. He won seven major singles titles in his career: the French Open in 1925, 1927, and 1929, Wimbledon in 1925 and 1928, and the U.S. Open in 1926 and 1927. As a member of the Four Musketeers (along with Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra, and Jacques Brugnon), the formidable French team won the Davis Cup in 1927 and 1928.
Lacoste later explained the origin of his nickname, "le Crocodile:"
The American press nicknamed me 'the Crocodile' after a bet that I made with the Captain of the French Davis Cup team. He had promised me a crocodile-skin suitcase if I won a match that was important for our team. The American public stuck to this nickname, which highlighted my tenacity on the tennis courts, never giving up my prey! So my friend Robert George drew me a crocodile which was embroidered on the blazer that I wore on the courts.
Beating Bill Tilden
No doubt his most important victory was defeating the legendary Bill Tilden in 1927, which paved the way for France's very first victory in the Davis Cup (France would hold on to the title for the next five years). Looking back, Tilden remarked about Lacoste's superb 1927 performance, "This was one of the finest tennis players and tennis brains I ever encountered, and I underestimated him. I saw too late that Lacoste had figured out a way to beat me . . . that he had developed a slice serve just for the purpose of using it against me."
The following year, however, he lost to Tilden in the opener of the Davis Cup. It would be his last international match. His health and tennis game waned, and respiratory disease finally caused him to give up tennis at a youthful 25. He retired in 1929, after winning the French Open.
Revolutionary Sports Clothing
He then went on to his second, and more widely known career as producer of high quality sports clothes. In 1933, he founded La Societe Chemise Lacoste, which began producing a revolutionary new tennis shirt that Lacoste had been sporting on the courts himself: instead of the long-sleeved, stiff-collared shirt that made up the typical tennis outfit, Lacoste introduced a short-sleeved cotton pique polo shirt. According to Richard Martin, curator of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute of New York, "Lacoste created performance clothing long before the word was out."
The Ultimate Preppy Symbol
Lacoste tennis wear gradually influenced what the debonair layman was wearing. His son, Bernard Lacoste, said the company really began to expand when in 1951 it branched out from "tennis white" and introduced a line of color shirts. The Lacoste shirt reached the height of its popularity in the U.S. during the 1970s, when it became the essential preppy accoutrement. Lacoste himself was mystified by the wide appeal of the alligator/crocodile emblem. "There are kinds of things that just don't have any good explanation," he said. "I suppose you could say that if it had been a really nice animal, something sympathetic, then maybe nothing would have happened. Suppose I had picked a rooster. Well, that's French, but it doesn't have the same impact." This famous first logo has spawned dozens of imitators.
The Alligator Becomes Haute Couture
Lacoste's son, Bernard, took over the company in 1964. Today it is a nearly $1 billion international business, selling everything from watches to lingerie. In 2000, French designer Chriisophe Lemaire was hired to give Lacoste a more upscale look, and its popularity has once again surged. Lemaire contends that nowadays "a Lacoste polo assumes different meanings in different contexts. It's a transversal product that is worn at the country club, by a truck driver, or a rap star."
Lacoste ingenuity and creativity led him into other areas as well. In 1960s he designed the first steel tennis racket that became popular with Jimmy Connors and other tennis stars.
Later in life, he enjoyed playing golf. His wife, Simone Thion de la Chaume, was a French amateur golf champion, and his daughter, Catherine Lacoste, won the U.S. Open golf in the 1960s. In 1996, René Lacoste died at the age of 92 in St.-Jean-de-Luz, France, but his famous alligator logo is alive and well, gracing approximately 25 million new items of apparel each year.
Here are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.


text:
Belts PU
Fashionable belts for women
Menga Trading offers a wide variety of belts from practical models to eyecatchers. Have a look at our collection below.
If you order on weekdays before 3PM, you will receive your order within 2-3 days. The minimum order value is €50,- and from €150,- you enjoy our free delivery service. Create your account, to see all our products and prices right away.
The more you order, the more discount you get. Check our discount page for more information!


text:
You are able to get reports about various kinds of activity in Bamboo:
Summary statistics for all users
A list of summary build statistics for all Bamboo users, showing such things as the number of builds triggered, broken and fixed.
See Viewing build statistics for all users.
Build results for an author
Build results summaries for someone who has committed code to projects in Bamboo, including the last 10 builds, the last 10 broken and the last 10 fixed.
See Viewing build results for an author.
Comparison charts for authors
Create comparison charts of build activity for selected authors.
See Generating reports on selected authors.
Comparison charts for plans
Create comparison charts of build results for selected plans.
See Generating reports across multiple plans.
Clover code-coverage reports
See Viewing the Clover code-coverage for a plan.
See Viewing the Clover code-coverage for a build.
Was this helpful?Yes Provide feedback about this article


text:
Rainbows on Titan
Saturn's moon Titan is wet, according to the ESA's Huygens probe, but Titan's "water" is not like Earth's.
To make a long story short, Titan is wet.
Right: River channels and a shoreline on Titan. Credit: ESA Huygens probe. [more]
Christian Huygens wouldn't have been a bit surprised. In 1698, three hundred years before the Huygens probe left Earth, the Dutch astronomer wrote these words:
"Since 'tis certain that Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. This Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its own Waters of such a temper not liable to Frost."
Huygens discovered Titan in 1655, which is why the probe is named after him. In those days, Titan was just a pinprick of light in a telescope. Huygens could not see Titan's clouds, pregnant with rain, or Titan's hillsides, sculpted by rushing liquids, but he had a fine imagination.
Jonathan Lunine, a professor at the University of Arizona, is a member of the Huygens mission science team. He and his colleagues believe that Huygens landed in the Titan-equivalent of Arizona, a mostly-dry area with brief but intense wet seasons.
"The river channels near the Huygens probe look empty now," says Lunine, but liquids have been there recently, he believes. Little rocks strewn around the landing site are compelling: they're smooth and round like river rocks on Earth, and "they sit in little depressions dug, apparently, by rushing fluids."
The source of all this wetness might be rain. Titan's atmosphere is "humid," meaning rich in methane. No one knows how often it rains, "but when it does," says Lunine, "the amount of vapor in the atmosphere is many times that in Earth's atmosphere, so you could get very intense showers."
And maybe rainbows, too. "The ingredients you need for a rainbow are sunlight and raindrops. Titan has both," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley.
On Earth, rainbows form when sunlight bounces in and out of transparent water droplets. Each droplet acts like a prism, spreading light into the familiar spectrum of colors. On Titan, rainbows would form when sunlight bounces in and out of methane droplets, which, like water droplets, are transparent.
"Their beauty [requires] that they be clear...."
"A methane rainbow would be larger than a water rainbow," notes Cowley, "with a primary radius of at least 49o for methane vs 42.5o for water. This is because the index of refraction of liquid methane (1.29) differs from that of water (1.33)." The order of colors, however, would be the same: blue on the inside and red on the outside, with an overall hint of orange caused by Titan's orange sky.
One problem: Rainbows need direct sunlight, but Titan's skies are very hazy. "Visible rainbows on Titan might be rare," says Cowley. On the other hand, infrared rainbows might be common.
Atmospheric scientist Bob West of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains: "Titan's atmosphere is mostly clear at infrared wavelengths. That's why the Cassini spacecraft uses an infrared camera to photograph Titan." Infrared sunbeams would have little trouble penetrating the murky air and making rainbows. The best way to see them: infrared "night vision" goggles.
Below: An infrared rainbow on Earth, photographed by Prof. Robert Greenler. Reference: Science 173,1231 (1971). "A rainbow on Titan might look like this," notes Les Cowley. "It would be larger than the visible methane 'bow' with a radius slightly more than 49-52 degrees."
All this talk of rain and rainbows and mud makes liquid methane sound a lot like ordinary water. It's not. Consider the following:
The density of liquid methane is only about half the density of water. This is something, say, a boat builder on Titan would need to take into account. Boats float when they're less dense than the liquid beneath them. A Titan-boat would need to be extra lightweight to float in a liquid methane sea. (It's not as crazy as it sounds. Future explorers will want to visit Titan and boats could be a good way to get around.)
Liquid methane also has low viscosity (or "gooiness") and low surface tension. See the table below. Surface tension is what gives water its rubbery skin and, on Earth, lets water bugs skitter across ponds. A water bug on Titan would promptly sink into a pond of flimsy methane. On the bright side, Titan's low gravity, only one-seventh Earth gravity, might allow the creature climb back out again.
Physical Data: Liquid methane vs liquid water
liquid water
liquid methane
1 g/cc
0.45 g/cc
|surface tension
70 dyne/cm
17 dyne/cm
1.54 cP
0.184 cP
|index of refraction
Sources: (#1) NIST Chemistry Webbook. Reference temperature: 40o F for water, -290o F for methane. Reference pressure 1.5 atm; (#2) AIChE Journal, Volume 42, No. 5, pp. 1425-1433, May 1996; (#3) Les Cowley.
Back to boats: Propellers turning in methane would need to be extra-wide to "grab" enough of the thin fluid for propulsion. They'd also have to be made of special materials resistant to cracking at cryogenic temperatures.
And watch out for those waves! European scientists John Zarnecki and Nadeem Ghafoor have calculated what methane waves on Titan might be like: seven times taller than typical Earth-waves (mainly because of Titan's low gravity) and three times slower, "giving surfers a wild ride," says Ghafoor.
Last but not least, liquid methane is flammable. Titan doesn't catch fire because the atmosphere contains so little oxygen--a key ingredient for combustion. If explorers visit Titan one day they'll have to be careful with their oxygen tanks and resist the urge to douse fires with "water."
Infrared rainbows, towering waves, seas beckoning to sailors. Huygens saw none of these things before it plopped down in the mud. Do they really exist?
"...there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them."


text:
An Amnesia Patient's Strange Power Of Recall
Micro terror can also come by way of viruses. Consider this story: the extreme of living life in the moment. A 71-year-old German man lost almost all his memory after a viral infection destroyed part of his brain. He remembers nothing of his past life as a professional cellist. He can't form new memories either. The doctors wondered if possibly his musical memory had survived, and if so, to what extent? He wouldn't play for them, but when the patient heard recording from the classical canon, doctors found he could recognize them. Dr. Carsten Finke, a neurologist at Charity University Hospital in Berlin was part of the research team that worked with the patient known to his doctors at P.M.
DR. CARSTEN FINKE: This is an interesting case because we know exactly what kind of music he knew before he got this brain infection. So, therefore, we designed three more musical memory tasks that use short excerpts of classical music and we tested him of these tasks.
CORNISH: What were the pieces of music that you used to test him?
FINKE: We used very common classical pieces but we also used music that was composed after his amnesia, after 2005. So, we presented to him always pairs, and these pairs were matched for instrumental lineup and the musical character. And we matched Antonio Vivaldi's "Winter" with a piece from Peter Schnabel, which is a German contemporary composer.
CORNISH: How did he respond to this?
FINKE: He responded very well. In the first task, he had 93 percent correct and in the second task, 90 percent correct. And he also showed that he could learn new music material. So, we presented to him excerpts of classical music that was composed after 2005. So, pieces that he couldn't have known.
FINKE: And then, we tested him one and a half hours later and he could recognize this music that he had listened to before. And what is also interesting, we tested this same task with former members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and they performed more or less the same. He's a little bit worse than they are but just about 5 to 10 percent.
CORNISH: What did this do to help you understand his brain?
FINKE: What is interesting here is that the medial temporal lobes of his brain are largely destroyed, and these structures are highly relevant for memory of facts and events. And what is interesting to see is that his musical memory is intact, despite otherwise very severe amnesia. And this suggests that musical memories organized independently of other types of memory and organized independently of the medial temporal lobes.
CORNISH: How does this help in this patient's recovery?
FINKE: If their musical memory is intact, this is like a small intact memory island that may be used for rehabilitation. So, one could think of linking a specific tune to something they have to remember, like taking their medication. Or one could think of linking a specific tune to a person that they can then more easily recognize.
CORNISH: Dr. Carsten Finke. He's a neurologist at Charity University Hospital in Berlin. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
FINKE: Thank you very much Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text:
skip navigation
With Bluetooth built-in, you can wirelessly connect your Bluetooth capable mobile phone to listen to calls through your car's audio system. HFP/OPP/A2DP/AVRCP protocols are supported.
USB connection* enables complete control of your iPod including video playback.
Also "Works with iPhone" certified to bring its communication and entertainment capabilities into your car.
* Please visit the Clarion website for iPod models that are compatible with the VZ400.
* Playback of iPod Video requires the optional cable CCA723/748.
Connecting the THD400 lets you enjoy listening to digitally broadcast radio programs with all their superior quality and helpful information. This includes iTunes Tagging capability, so if you hear a song on the radio that you like, you can tag it for later downloading from the iTunes® Store. Save time finding and accumulating the tunes you want.
Connect to any Sirius Direct Connect Satellite Radio receiver without any need for an interface box — and enjoy over 130 channels of music, news, talk shows, sports and traffic information with digital quality sound throughout the U.S.A. and Canada.
VX400 is equipped with two RCA jacks for AV AUX input. In addition to being able to hook-up an external video source for viewing in your car, the inputs also accept video signals from Clarion's rear vision CCD camera which lets you see the area behind your car for safer driving and parking.
USB Connector supports playback of WMA/MP3 files.
The GUI (Graphical User Interface) shows large icons that are highly visible and easily recognizable at a glance. And thanks to the touch panel screen, accessing each function is as intuitive as touching its icon. This very straightforward system lets the driver keep his attention on the road, and enables front seat passengers to use any desired function without the need to "learn" anything. What's more, since the vast majority of functions are controllable from the touch panel, there are only 3 physical buttons on the unit for the most basic and commonly-used functions.
The NP400 hide-away navigation system can be connected to the VX400 directly and controlled through its touch panel. So with this multimedia station, you can upgrade to a car navigation system at any time. Count on voice guidance messages and high-resolution map displays to get you safely to your destination.
With 3 sets of RCA outputs, you are free to add external power amplifiers to create a more powerful, sophisticated audio system. Also, independent volume control is enabled for the subwoofer so you can adjust the level of bass output to your liking at any time, regardless of the output level of the other channels.
Switching on the Low-Pass Filter (LPF) will send only the low frequency range through specified outputs to ensure superb performance with a connected subwoofer. A must if you have or plan to add a subwoofer to your system.
CEA 2006 Power Ratings
S/N 77dB (Ref:1W into 4Ω)
Remote Control included
Return to the top of the page


text: Judging by market share only, Google's Google Apps Web-based e-mail and collaboration suite hasn't begun to loosen Microsoft Office's tight rein on the corporate world.But mindshare is a different story. Google has been ramping up buzz through an aggressive ad campaign and PR efforts to parade a steady stream of customers that have "gone Google".The search giant recently announced that 3 million businesses now use Google Apps.Last week, Google had a high-profile enterprise win with Virgin America Airlines, which decided to move from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. But the bulk of Google Apps most notable migrations are within the public sector \u2014 and now a battle for cash-strapped state government agencies is underway between Google Apps and Microsoft's BPOS (business productivity online suite) cloud service for e-mail and collaboration apps (recently rebranded as Office 365).With tighter budgets than most corporate entities, government agencies have been more apt to move to cloud-based services that allow e-mail and documents to be stored in remote data centers.Google Blindsides Microsoft in LA, then FaltersA year ago, Google pulled the rug out from under Microsoft when it won out in a competitive process to migrate the City of Los Angeles' e-mail system from Novell's Groupwise platform to Google Apps. Yet that migration has been problematic for Google. It missed a June 30 deadline to have all city employees moved to Google Apps and has struggled to meet the LAPD's strict security guidelines.As of now, Google is not saying definitively when the City of LA migration will be finished, but the company maintains that the Google Apps migration will ultimately save Los Angeles taxpayers $5.5 million in cost savings.City of LA stumble blocks notwithstanding, Google is hot in pursuit of state governments, taking lessons learned from LA and applying them to new contracts.Google Gets Back on Track in Big StatesAccording to a Google spokesperson, the company now has Google Apps government customers in 30 states. Last week, Google announced that the state of Wyoming is moving all 10,000 state government employees to Google Apps for Government and will be done with the migration in one year. Wyoming will be the first state in the country to have all state workers using Google, and it estimates the move to Google Apps will save taxpayers $1 million annually."The state of Wyoming's decision is the result of a two-year competitive evaluation process that included Microsoft," says Google spokesperson Andrew Kovacs.Also last week, Google announced that Multnomah County, the largest county in Oregon, has decided to move from Microsoft to Google Apps for Government with the goal of trimming $600,000 annually from the county budget. Multnomah County estimates it will save $100,000 in Microsoft licensing fees.Other major municipalities such as Washington, D.C. and Orlando, Fla., have moved to Google Apps this year to save money and improve communication and states such as Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, New York and Oregon are using Google Apps Education Edition in their high schools.Microsoft Steps It Up in California and New YorkBut if you think Microsoft is going to sit and watch Google take over the government sector, think again. Microsoft has made big investments in its BPOS cloud service that provides access to online versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communicator (now called Lync) and is assertively going after state governments."Today, more than 500 state and local governments in the U.S. trust Microsoft Online Services to deliver the enterprise capabilities, security and privacy they require," says Gail Thomas-Flynn, Microsoft's vice president of state and local government.\n\nSlideshow: Windows Phone 7: Visual Tour of 10 Upcoming WP7 SmartphonesSlideshow: Seven New Windows 7 Tablets: In PicturesSlideshow: Windows 7 Hardware in Pictures: The Latest and Greatest Laptops\n\n\n\nIndeed, October was a good month for Microsoft's government play: the company secured large contracts to provide cloud-based e-mail and productivity apps to government workers in the states of California and New York, as well as Minnesota.Minnesota's move to BPOS concludes an 18-month project to consolidate e-mail systems such as GroupWise, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange to a single cloud-based Exchange environment for 33,000 state employees.Microsoft's deal with the City of New York will consolidate several Microsoft licenses into one license, and allow 30,000 of the city's 100,000 employees to use Microsoft's BPOS cloud services for e-mail and productivity applications. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement that the deal with Microsoft will "save $50 million over the next five years."In California, Microsoft will provide the state's 200,000 employees with cloud-based e-mail services through BPOS, thereby consolidating 130 different e-mail systems into one Microsoft cloud service. Is Microsoft Playing Fair?Google has accused Microsoft of rigging the game for certain government contracts. It protested the way California set up bids for the contract, according to an August 13 Los Angeles Times article, and claimed that the state had arranged the requirements in Microsoft's favor."There's no competition when only one team's allowed to play," Google's Kovacs said in the LA Times article.In an interview today, Kovacs said that the contracts in Minnesota and New York City were not open bidding processes, but rather "renewals of existing Microsoft contracts where Google did not have the opportunity to compete.""When there is an open competitive bid process, like in Los Angeles, Colorado and Wyoming," says Kovacs, "the majority of customers choose Google, and those that go with Microsoft get a great discount." Google is now going to greater lengths to ensure a level playing field. On Nov. 1, the company filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, claiming that the DOI is "unduly restrictive of competition" because its bidding process for a contract worth $49.3 million over five years unfairly benefits Microsoft.Microsoft is not commenting on Google's accusations that Microsoft has received favorable treatment in state government bids.Though Google and Microsoft are in a slugfest in search and mobile, the government sector's movement to the cloud is standing out as the most intense clash between the two tech behemoths of late. Maybe that's because like any exciting election, this government race could be a dead heat. Shane O'Neill covers Microsoft, Windows, Operating Systems, Productivity Apps and Online Services for CIO.com. Follow Shane on Twitter @smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. Email Shane at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Need help?
Follow Us
Enter your e-mail and password:
New customer? Create your account
Lost password? Recover password
Enter your email:
Remembered your password? Back to login
Your cart is empty
Stationary & Organizers
This collection is empty
Shipping Across India
Doorstep delivery of every product, all across India without any minimum order requirement.
Satisfied or refunded
Be completely satisfied or get a complete refund with the easy return & refund policy.
Dedicated Help Center
Get the best online shopping experience with a dedicated team of customer representatives.
100% Safe & Secure Payments
Every online transaction is encrypted and safe. Pay with Debit, Credit, UPI, Wallet, or Net Banking.


text:
Many individuals are interested in purchasing a vacuum cleaner robot, but many consumers will discover that they are not as excellent as we were led to believe. They do carry out completely well but if you are still not sure that you require one in your house, then why not get an inexpensive automatic vacuum cleaner to see the performance of the robotic cleaners for yourself? If I declare that you can purchase an robotic vacuum cleaner for less than forty dollars you would be attracted, correct?
Well the value of the P3 P4920 vacuum cleaner robot is actually less than $40. It is an extremely affordable for an introductory sample to the world of hassle free cleaning. It is an ideal starting point for you to feel the difference between the housework and the sluggish weekends. It might not be as highly developed and smart as the first-class variety but for under $40 it is an totally amazing machine.
It will sweep your flooring, be they rug, wood or tile, no matter how grimy they are. It is extremely silent and has a running time of forty five minutes until it needs to be recharged. This is more than sufficient time to get your floor cleaned in one large room. It comes with rechargeable batteries meaning it is an effortless matter of connecting the vacuum cleaner robot to the power supply; turn on a switch to charge it up for the next day.
Many individuals question how efficient a robot can be, thinking that an machine will not ever be competent to do as good job as a human. While it's easy to recognize these fears, they are absolutely unfounded. These cleaning robots are created to cleanse all types of flooring, including rugs and hard wood. The sensors will also identify the hidden dirty spots and continue to go over that area til it's cleaned.
To use this cleaner robot just choose the default setting for the P3 P4920 and away it goes No more vacuuming for you for that day. The cost of this robot vacuum cleaner makes it the ideal choice for someone wishing to understand just what an mechanical vacuum cleaner equipment can do in an room. At the cost of a some replacement containers for a simple vacuum cleaner it is definitely great value for money to get a robot like this. Try out now this cheap automatic vacuum cleaner to experience the functionality of the digital future.


text:
Here comes the second EP from Loose Shus, direct from San Francisco, CA. Two years in the making, this self-titled EP combines modern funk, cosmic disco, and experimental synth boogie. The instruments used span three decades: from the 80s he used the Oberheim DX, Akai Ax60, Yamaha TX81z, to the 90s Roland JX-305, and onto present day software. The EP enlists the help of a few talented producers —XL Middleton's ripping keyboard solos can be heard on "Saturation" —PLAzA lays in some chilled out textures on "Ladies".
Loose Shus EP will be out on Jan 21st.


text:
FEAR death? — to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall.
Tho' a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the friend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest.
Books on Robert Browning Poetry


text:
|Pettis, Jeffery
|Feldlaufer, Mark
Submitted to: American Bee Journal
Publication Type: Trade Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/15/2006
Publication Date: 5/20/2006
Citation: Collins, A.M., Pettis, J.S., Wilbanks, R., Feldlaufer, M.F. 2006. Survival and function of queens reared in beeswax containing coumaphos. American Bee Journal. 146(4):341-344.
Interpretive Summary: Beekeepers must use a control method in their colonies because of the presence of two parasitic mites in honey bees. The most common controls are several pesticides that kill the mites but not adult bees. However current problems with queens that do not perform well in colonies may be due to residues of the pesticides that are absorbed by the wax comb. By exposing developing queens to known levels of the pesticide, coumaphos, we determined that 1000 ppm prevented larvae from developing into queens, 100 ppm reduced the numbers of queens by 50% and these queens were lighter in weight. When conditions were stressful (very hot and dry), queens exposed to pesticide during rearing were slower to begin egg laying and many mated with fewer drones. For all queens reared successfully, survival in colonies for six months was not different between the several treatment levels. This information will help beekeepers manager their hives.
Technical Abstract: Young honey bee larvae were transferred into wax queen cups containing known concentrations (0 to 1000 ppm) of the organophosphate coumaphos. These larvae were placed in queenless colonies and examined ten days later to determine the rate of acceptance as indicated by a mature sealed queen cell. All but one queen failed to develop at 1000 ppm, and more than 50% of the queen cells were rejected at the 100 ppm concentration. Additionally, queens that survived exposure to100 ppm coumaphos weighed significantly less than control queens. The sublethal effects of coumaphos on developing queens were also investigated. Mature queen cells from the same treatments were placed in small mating colonies for 21 days. Then the queens were collected after being rated for quality. The queens were either introduced to production colonies and monitored for six months or dissected to determine mating success. The queens that had been exposed to the 100 ppm coumaphos during rearing were more susceptible to stress. During an exceptionally hot, dry summer, many of these queens failed to lay eggs within 21 days and a greater percentage of them mated poorly. The rate of loss over six months for queens introduced to production colonies was not statistically different between treatments.


text:
Get the answers you need to help you prepare for your upcoming cruise.
Take a panoramic tour of Viking Astrild and Viking Beyla.
Complement your travel experience with our selection of films highlighting your destinations.
Start learning more about the places you will be visiting with our thoughtfully curated reading list.
Country arrival, ship embarkation and health requirements.
Stay current with special offers, news and destination-focused content.


text:
Hubble unmasks ghost galaxies [heic1211]
10 July 2012Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the smallest and faintest galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. These galaxies are fossils of the early Universe: they have barely changed for 13 billion years. The discovery could help explain the so-called "missing satellite" problem, where only a handful of satellite galaxies have been found around the Milky Way, against the thousands that are predicted by theories.
Astronomers have puzzled over why some extremely faint dwarf galaxies spotted in our Milky Way galaxy's backyard contain so few stars. The galaxies are thought to be some of the tiniest, oldest, and most pristine galaxies in the Universe. They have been discovered over the past decade by astronomers using automated computer techniques to search through the images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. But an international team of astronomers needed the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to help solve the mystery of why these galaxies are starved of stars, and why so few of them have been found.
Hubble views of three of these small galaxies, the Hercules, Leo IV and Ursa Major dwarf galaxies, reveal that they all started forming stars more than 13 billion years ago — and then abruptly stopped — all in the first billion years after the Universe was born in the Big Bang. In fact, the extreme age of their stars is similar to Messier 92, the oldest known globular cluster [1] in the Milky Way.
"These galaxies are all ancient and they're all the same age, so you know something came down like a guillotine and turned off the star formation at the same time in these galaxies," said Tom Brown of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, the study's leader. "The most likely explanation is a process called reionisation."
The relic galaxies are evidence for a transitional phase in the early Universe that shut down star-making factories in tiny galaxies. This phase seems to coincide with the time when the first stars burned off a fog of cold hydrogen, a process called reionisation. In this period, which began in the first billion years after the Big Bang, radiation from the first stars knocked electrons off primeval hydrogen atoms, ionising the Universe's cool hydrogen gas. [2]
The same radiation that sparked universal reionisation also appears to have squelched star-making activities in dwarf galaxies, such as those in Brown's study. The small irregular galaxies were born about 100 million years before reionisation began and had just started to churn out stars at that time. Roughly 2000 light-years wide, these galaxies are the lightweight cousins of the more luminous and higher-mass star-making dwarf galaxies near our Milky Way. Unlike their higher-mass relatives, the puny galaxies were not massive enough to shield themselves from the harsh ultraviolet light. What little gas they had was stripped away as the flood of ultraviolet light rushed through them. Their gas supply depleted, the galaxies could not make new stars.
The discovery could help explain the so-called "missing satellite problem," where only a few dozen dwarf galaxies have been observed around the Milky Way while the computer simulations predict that thousands should exist. One possible explanation for the low number discovered to date is that there has been very little, or even no star formation in the smallest of these dwarf galaxies, leaving them virtually invisible.
The Sloan survey recently uncovered more than a dozen of these galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. These have very few stars — only a few hundred or thousand — but a great deal of dark matter, the underlying scaffolding upon which galaxies are built. Normal dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way contain 10 times more dark matter than the ordinary matter that makes up gas and stars, while in these so-called ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, dark matter outweighs ordinary matter by at least a factor of 100. Astronomers think the rest of the sky should contain dozens more of these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies with few stars, and the evidence for squelched star formation in the smallest of these dwarfs suggests that there may be still thousands more with essentially no stars at all.
"By measuring the star formation histories of the observed dwarfs, Hubble has supported the theoretical explanation for the paucity of such objects, according to which star formation in the smaller clumps would be shut down by reionisation," said Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute, a member of the research team.
The results are published in the 1 July issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
The international team of astronomers in this study consists of T. M. Brown (STScI), J. Tumlinson (STScI), M. Geha (Yale), E. N. Kirby (Cal Tech), D. A. VandenBerg (University of Victoria), R. R. Munoz (University of Chile), J. S. Kalirai (STScI), J. D. Simon (Carnegie Institution), R. J. Avila (STScI), P. Guhathakurta (UCO/Lick), A. Renzini (Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova) and, H. C. Ferguson (STScI)
[1] Globular clusters are tightly-bound spherical collections of up to a few hundred thousand stars. They are known to contain some of the most ancient stars in the Universe. In addition, globular clusters are known to have formed in single events, so all the stars in them have the same age.
[2] The period of reionisation is also the limit for how far telescopes can see: the process is what rendered the Universe's hydrogen gas transparent to ultraviolet light.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and T. Brown (STScI)
Tom Brown
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4902
Email: tbrownstsci.edu
Alvio Renzini
Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
Padova, Italy
Tel: +39-049-829-3503
Cell: +39-347-502-2828
Email: alvio.renzinioapd.inaf.it
Oli Usher
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
Email: oushereso.org


text:
IMF Survey: Global Growth Estimates Trimmed After PPP Revisions
January 8, 2008
- New purchasing power parity estimates released by worldwide statistical project
- As a result, IMF adjusts down global growth estimates
- Emerging markets led by China remain the main driver of recent growth
Based on new statistical calculations of purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates published last month by the International Comparison Program (ICP), the IMF has revised downward its estimates for global growth by around ½ percentage point each year during 2002-07.
For example, the IMF's estimate for global growth in 2007 has been revised down to 4.7 percent from 5.2 percent in the October 2007 World Economic Outlook (see Chart 1).
The IMF will update its forecast for global growth on January 25. The update will take account of these revised PPP estimates.
The IMF uses PPP exchange rates provided by the ICP as the basis for calculating the relative sizes of economies. The ICP revisions imply a substantial reduction in the PPP rates of some key emerging market countries and an upward revision in others (including oil exporters). The changes have implications for both aggregate global growth based on PPP exchange rates and the share of global GDP accounted for by individual countries and groups.
Downward revisions for PPP-based GDP of two of the world's fastest-growing economies, China and India, are mainly responsible for the overall reduction of global growth estimates (see Chart 2). For 2007, China's share of global output is now estimated at 10.9 percent (down from 15.8 percent) while India's share has declined to 4.6 percent (from 6.4 percent). Reflecting the overall reduction in GDP in PPP terms of other countries, the share of the United States in global GDP has been revised up from 19.3 percent to 21.4 percent.
Notwithstanding these changes, it remains true that emerging market countries have been the main recent driver of global growth in PPP terms—led by China, which alone contributed nearly 27 percent to global growth in 2007.
What the ICP does
The ICP project, coordinated by the World Bank, produces PPP estimates based on statistical surveys of price data for a basket of goods and services for 100 developing countries. The Eurostat-OECD PPP program provides estimates for another 46 countries. On December 17 last year, the ICP released preliminary PPP estimates for the 2005 benchmark year, replacing previous benchmark PPP estimates, which date back to 1993 or earlier for most emerging market and developing countries.
Why are PPP exchange rates important?
Purchasing power parity rates are an alternative way of calculating the exchange rate between countries based upon the comparison of prices of similar goods and services in different countries. The PPP rate is defined as the amount of currency that would be needed to purchase the same basket of goods and services as one unit of the reference currency, usually the U.S. dollar. The PPP rate can—especially in the short run—deviate by a large amount from the market exchange rate between two currencies, given the influence of trade, capital flows, and other factors on market exchange rates.
Another well-known but admittedly crude measure of the PPP exchange rate between countries is The Economist's Big Mac index, which calculates the exchange rate at which the eponymous hamburger would cost the same across all countries in the index. (For a fuller explanation, see article in March 2007 Finance and Development magazine, PPP Versus the Market: Which Weight Matters?)
PPP exchange rates are used in estimating aggregate economic activity across the world. Because they adjust for the difference in price levels across countries, they tend to lead to a more accurate estimate of global economic activity than simply using market exchange rates.
For example, developing countries typically have relatively low prices for nontraded goods and services, and a unit of local currency thus has greater purchasing power within a developing country than it does internationally. Whereas PPP-based GDP takes this into account, conversions based on market exchange rates typically underestimate the value of economic activity and output of a developing country relative to an advanced economy.
Even among advanced economies, PPP-based GDP estimates provide a more consistent picture of their contribution to aggregate economic activity as bilateral exchange rates can move sharply and distort individual countries' contributions to global economic activity.
Why are the new PPP estimates better?
The 2003-2007 ICP round that produced the 2005 estimates represents the most extensive and thorough effort ever to measure PPP rates across countries. New and innovative data validation tools were implemented to improve the quality of the data, which were drawn from regional surveys of prices for more than 1,000 goods and services in countries. Furthermore, China participated in the survey program for the first time ever, and India for the first time since 1985.
Why did the global growth numbers change?
The revisions to PPP rates resulted in a substantial reduction in the PPP-based GDP of some large fast-growing economies and consequently reduced their estimated contribution to global growth. The participation of China in the ICP survey for the first time resulted in the downward revision of China's PPP-based GDP for 2005 by around 40 percent. Previous estimates were extrapolated from a bilateral comparison of 1986 prices between China and the United States, which proved to be an inaccurate guide.
Nevertheless, estimates for 2007 indicate that China still ranks as the world's second largest economy, with an almost 11 percent share of world output. India also had a sizable downward GDP adjustment in PPP terms, but it is still the fourth largest economy with over 4 percent of the world total.