text: Back Rh Typing Does this test have other names? Rh incompatibility, Rh factor What is this test? Rhesus (Rh) typing is used to determine whether you have a specific protein called Rh factor on the outer layer of your red blood cells. If you do not have Rh factor in your blood, you are Rh negative. If you do have Rh factor in your blood, you are Rh positive. Most people are Rh positive, but Rh negative blood types can be passed down from parents to children. Rh typing is important during pregnancy. If you are Rh negative and your baby is Rh positive, you may have an Rh incompatibility. During pregnancy, it's possible that some of your baby's blood could pass through the placenta into your body. Your body may react to the baby's blood as a foreign substance and produce antibodies against it. This can cause a miscarriage, anemia, and problems in later pregnancies. The first pregnancy is usually not affected by Rh incompatibility because the baby is often born before many of the antibodies develop. These risks can be lowered by a shot or shots of Rh immunoglobulin during each pregnancy. Why do I need this test? Pregnant women typically have this test at their first prenatal appointment. You may need this test if you: Are pregnant Are thinking about becoming pregnant Are the father of an unborn baby Are Rh negative and having a baby with a man who is Rh positive Need a blood transfusion Are donating blood What other tests might I have along with this test? If you have an Rh typing test and the results show you are Rh negative, you may need to have another blood test called an antibody screen. The antibody screen looks for antibodies in your blood. This means that you have been exposed to Rh positive blood and developed antibodies to it. You may need multiple antibody screens during your pregnancy and one at the time of delivery. You may also need an amniocentesis if the baby's father cannot or will not have the Rh typing blood test. During amniocentesis, a needle is inserted into the uterus to remove a small amount of amniotic fluid for testing. What do my test results mean? Many things may affect your lab test results. These include the method each lab uses to do the test. Even if your test results are different from the normal value, you may not have a problem. To learn what the results mean for you, talk with your health care provider. Having Rh factor in your blood means you are Rh positive. If you do not have Rh factor in your blood, you are Rh negative. If you are Rh negative and having a baby with a man who is Rh positive, you could be at risk for pregnancy complications. How is this test done? The test requires a blood sample, which is drawn through a needle from a vein in your arm. Does this test pose any risks? The risks are minor. The finger prick or needle may feel uncomfortable or painful. You may experience bruising, soreness, or pain in your hand or arm at the puncture spot. These symptoms usually go away soon after the test is over. What might affect my test results? Nothing is likely to affect your test results. This includes your diet, lifestyle, and medications. How do I get ready for this test? A blood test rarely requires any preparation. You can probably eat, drink, and take your medication as usual, but check with your doctor to be sure. Remember to tell your doctor about any medications or supplements that you take.


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There's a lot of talk about the housing affordability crisis faced by Millennial home buyers. But according to new data from Trulia, today's buyers are actually enjoying a much more affordable market than their parents did 40 years ago.
Trulia recently looked at home affordability across the decades, weighing median home prices and average household incomes for that time period. Despite inventory issues and ever-climbing prices, today's market came out as the most affordable decade in a while.
"Nationally, homes are just about the most affordable they've been in the last 40 years," Trulia's Alexandra Lee reported. "In 2016, the median household could afford a home 1.5 times more expensive than the median home price. In 1980, the median household could only afford about three-quarters of the median home price."
The reason for the jump in affordability despite the market's current issues? Trulia found it was historically low mortgage rates. And though those have seen an increase in recent months, today's rates pale in comparison to those of the 1980s.
"It's not your father's housing market, at least regarding mortgage rates – and that's a good thing," Lee wrote. "In the 1980s, the country was experiencing massive inflation. The Federal Reserve responded by driving up interest rates, which in turn led to mortgage rates in the sustained double digits, up to 16.6 percent in 1981."
And despite recent rising mortgage rates, it seems this trend toward affordability will only continue in the future.
"Recent record-low mortgage rates have created a buffer of affordability that has kept homes in most metros attainable – and at least has pulled in the reins on unaffordability in the nation's priciest metros," Lee wrote. "Mortgage rates would have to increase by 2.5 times over the 2016 rate, to 9.4%, for the median home to become unaffordable nationally."
Contact a Wallick & Volk Mortgage Advisor for financing options for your new home. www.wvmb.com

subset: commoncrawl


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And by "lady persons", I mean real life WOMEN, not a freeze-frame of Jeanie Garth circa 1992. "90% Of The Game Is Half Mental" author Emma Span got part of the way through Bill Simmons' NY Times best-seller, 'The Book Of Basketball', and she might've actually finished the book (length somewhere between Lenny Dkystra's autobiography and "War & Peace") had the ESPN.com superstar not engaged so frequently in bro'-down acts of casual sexism. There's a number recounted by Span, including but not limited to Simmons gleefully recalling a female sex worker's head being shoved into a toilet, analysis of tit sizes (DUDE!), guesstimations of female undergrads' weight and most jarringly (for Span, anyway), the Sports Putz claiming his wife's second pregnancy was the result of his "pulling the goalie" ("usually couples discuss pulling the goalie before it happens¦ unless it™s Bridgette Moynahan. In my case, I made the executive decision to speed up plans for kid number two. This did not go over well. I think I™m the first person who ever had a home pregnancy test whipped at them at 95 mph.") From Span and Bronx Banter :
I assume this is a joke " at least, it™s clearly supposed to be funny, but man did it fall flat with me. œOrnery does not begin to describe my reaction if my husband, who™d very soon be my ex-husband, made an œexecutive decision to stop using birth control without telling me. (Also, what the hell were they using that he could do this without her knowing? A valid question, though not one I care to dwell on).
I could have picked out and transcribed a dozen more examples, but life is short. Taken one at a time, any of these could be shrugged off, but each one piles on the previous instances until they have so much cumulative bulk that they can™t be ignored. I read a lot of books that are written by men and for a largely male audience " in fact that describes many of my favorite books. But this book goes further: it™s not just not coming from a male perspective, it seems to have been written without the slightest hint that any woman could ever conceivably read it. I don™t know what Simmons is like personally, but with this book the Sports Guy persona that he™s constructed for himself has become downright toxic.
Simmons does have a number of female fans, and hey, to each their own. I would have liked to know what the rest of his NBA Pyramid looked like, but not enough to wade through 400 more pages of this stuff.


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This special issue, 169 Best Illusions, contains a smorgasbord of static images that appear to be moving (such as the Hatpin Urchin shown here), "impossible" sculptures, freaky faces, ghostly afterimages and even some edible illusions.
Illusions make great eye candy, but they also serve a serious purpose. When we look at an illusion, we "see" something that does not match the physical reality of the world around us. Scientists take advantage of this discrepancy between perception and reality to gain insights into how our eyes and brains gather and interpret (or misinterpret) visual information. Here's a sneak peek at 10 different types of illusions and what they reveal.
If you're near Naples, Fla., on May 10, head on over to the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts, where the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest Gala will be held starting at 5 PM (Scientific American is a media sponsor). Here, the top 10 illusionists will present their creations and the attendees of the event will vote to pick the top three winners!


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AUDIO: Bo Diddley (1970)
Michael Lydon, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1970
When Bo's not being a boxer, truck driver, gunslinger, lumberjack etc. he's being A Man - a husband and father, dealing with life in the USA. The Gunslinger tells Michael Lydon of record company rip-offs, dealin' with the po-lice and the very meaning of life itself.


text: Tornado Warning Expired Friday, February 28, 2014 | Sacramento, CA Update: 7:11 p.m. - Tornado Warning Has Expired Original post: The National Weather Service says a tornado was seen six miles east of Woodland. A warning has been issued for Yolo, Sutter and Sacramento counties. The warning is in effect until 7 p.m. The National Weather Service urges anyone in the path of the storm to seek shelter in a basement or under a sturdy table or bench. Anyone in a mobile home or car should seek sturdier shelter. Visit the National Weather Service site for current information. 645pm Update: Tornado may still be on the ground, between Karnak and Knights Landing. #cawx pic.twitter.com/b4lZZyLMUG — NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) March 1, 2014 ALERT: Tornado Warning issued east of Woodland until 7PM. Seek shelter if in its path! #cawx pic.twitter.com/HRN2UqCgxd — NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) March 1, 2014 Follow us for more stories like this CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today. Donate Today


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Johnny Cream Hooded Romper
Sale Sold out
Regular price $62.00 USD
Regular priceUnit price per
Sale price
Johnny is a cream ribbed, hooded romper with two buttons on the chest.
This set is sized to fit 12 months.
Some items are ready to ship however, please allow up to 14 days for your order to ship. Items are carefully crafted by hand just for you. If you have a specific date you need an order by, please feel free to contact me.
We work hard to size our items to fit the average baby. Not all items will fit all babies.
Disclaimer: All items sold by Thistlebird Threads are designed to be used as photography props only. They are not regular clothing and should only be used with direct supervision by a professional photographer.


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You may also like
Sew it yourself! Montego 19 Asymmetrical Cruising Spinnaker Sail Kit lets you make your own spinnaker sail. This star-cut kit is made from 0.75oz Ripstop Nylon Sailcloth and features a choice of up to two colors. Computer plotted with seaming and hem lines plotted right on the cloth, this sail kit can be made on a home sewing machine. All panels and patches are computer cut and ready for basting and sewing. Complete instructions and support from Sailrite means there is no guess work!
All supplies to build your sail are included; all you need are scissors and a sewing machine!
Each Sail Kit comes with complete written instructions.
Color Selection Note: When ordering, add your color selections in the Notes box. See below for the list of available 3/4oz Ripstop Nylon. Please include which panels (by number) you would like in each color. Please do not hesitate to give us a call to discuss this with our Sailmaker, Jeff Frank.
Available Ripstop Nylon Colors:
- 0.75oz Ripstop Nylon Sailcloth, patterned and pre-cut (enter color choices in Notes box)
- 4oz White Dacron© Sailcloth, patterned and pre-cut
- White Tex 35 Polyester Thread
- Seamstick Basting Tape
- #16 Hand Sewing Needle
- 5-ply Waxed Twine Bobbin
- Pearl Grey Leather
- Dacron© 2-inch Tape Green (Non-adhesive backed)
- Dacron© 2-inch Tape Red (Non-adhesive backed)
- Dacron© 2-inch Tape White (Non-adhesive backed)
- #0 D-Ring without Bar
- ¾" Polyester Webbing
- Adhesive Sailrite Logo
- Instructions
|21 feet, 6 inches
|12 feet, 6 inches
|20 feet
|224 square feet
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Browser problems are the most common complaints of iPad Air and Fire HDX tablet owners, an online community of troubleshooters said Friday.
San Mateo, Calif.-based Fixya mined 10,000 user-generated reports related to Apple's iPad Air and Retina-equipped iPad Mini, Amazon's Fire HDX and Microsoft's Surface 2, the second-generation tablet that replaced the poorly-received Surface RT of 2012, to come up with its conclusions.
Browser gripes topped the charts of the iPad Air and the 8.9-in. Fire HDX, said Fixya, while the surfing app tied for second on the iPad Mini's top-five-beef list.
Nearly a third -- 30% -- of the reported problems with the Air and 25% of those with the Fire stemmed from the tablets' bundled browsers, Safari and Silk, respectively. On the Retina iPad Mini, 20% of complaints targeted Safari, the same percentage as aimed ire at the paucity of storage space on the least expensive model.
"A relatively common issue with mobile Apple devices, especially those using Safari -- the browser that comes pre-packaged with the device -- is a crashing browser," said Fixya. "Users report that opening certain Web pages (most likely those that use [Adobe's] Flash [Player]) and opening multiple tabs on the browser can cause the browser to crash and kicks users onto the home [screen]."
Famously, Apple has never supported Flash Player on iOS, the mobile operating system that drives the iPad. Before his death, co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs was adamant about banning Flash, going as far as to publicly trash the media software in a 2010 diatribe.
But Safari on iOS is not supposed to crash when it encounters a website that calls on the Adobe software.
Fire HDX owners pummeled Silk with similar laments. "Silk ... has a variety of issues, most notably choppy performance and tendency to crash," Fixya noted.
Only the Surface 2 escaped owners' disgust with their device's mobile browser. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is bundled with Windows RT 8.1, the OS that powers the tablet.
Instead, Microsoft customers tapped a shortage of quality apps as their No. 1 complaint, with 25% of the reports focused on the issue. Users' gripes matched those of analysts who have cited the app issue as the platform's weakest link since long before Microsoft started selling Windows 8.
Fixya recommended that iPad and Fire HDX owners regularly clear their browser's history and delete cookies to keep Safari or Silk as stable as possible. But it had no answer for the Surface 2's app problem. "App support is an issue with the device that ... users can't fix on their own," Fixya pointed out.
Fixya's report is available from the firm's website.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is firstname.lastname@example.com.
See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.
Read more about tablets in Computerworld's Tablets Topic Center.


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Security IssuesEdit this page
Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 3.3, which is no longer maintained.
Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.3 (the current stable version).
Security Issues
This document explains how Symfony security issues are handled by the Symfony
core team (Symfony being the code hosted on the main
symfony/symfony Git repository).
Reporting a Security Issue
If you think that you have found a security issue in Symfony, don't use the bug tracker and don't publish it publicly. Instead, all security issues must be sent to security [at] symfony.com. Emails sent to this address are forwarded to the Symfony core-team private mailing-list.
Resolving Process
For each report, we first try to confirm the vulnerability. When it is confirmed, the core-team works on a solution following these steps:
- Send an acknowledgement to the reporter;
- Work on a patch;
- Get a CVE identifier from mitre.org;
Write a security announcement for the official Symfony blog about the vulnerability. This post should contain the following information:
- a title that always include the "Security release" string;
- a description of the vulnerability;
- the affected versions;
- the possible exploits;
- how to patch/upgrade/workaround affected applications;
- the CVE identifier;
- credits.
- Send the patch and the announcement to the reporter for review;
- Apply the patch to all maintained versions of Symfony;
- Package new versions for all affected versions;
- Publish the post on the official Symfony blog (it must also be added to the "`Security Advisories`_" category);
- Update the security advisory list (see below).
- Update the public security advisories database maintained by the
FriendsOfPHP organization and which is used by the
Releases that include security issues should not be done on Saturday or Sunday, except if the vulnerability has been publicly posted.
While we are working on a patch, please do not reveal the issue publicly.
The resolution takes anywhere between a couple of days to a month depending on its complexity and the coordination with the downstream projects (see next paragraph).
Collaborating with Downstream Open-Source Projects
As Symfony is used by many large Open-Source projects, we standardized the way the Symfony security team collaborates on security issues with downstream projects. The process works as follows:
- After the Symfony security team has acknowledged a security issue, it immediately sends an email to the downstream project security teams to inform them of the issue;
- The Symfony security team creates a private Git repository to ease the collaboration on the issue and access to this repository is given to the Symfony security team, to the Symfony contributors that are impacted by the issue, and to one representative of each downstream projects;
- All people with access to the private repository work on a solution to solve the issue via pull requests, code reviews, and comments;
- Once the fix is found, all involved projects collaborate to find the best date for a joint release (there is no guarantee that all releases will be at the same time but we will try hard to make them at about the same time). When the issue is not known to be exploited in the wild, a period of two weeks seems like a reasonable amount of time.
The list of downstream projects participating in this process is kept as small as possible in order to better manage the flow of confidential information prior to disclosure. As such, projects are included at the sole discretion of the Symfony security team.
As of today, the following projects have validated this process and are part of the downstream projects included in this process:
- Drupal (releases typically happen on Wednesdays)
- eZPublish
Security Advisories
You can check your Symfony application for known security vulnerabilities
using the
security:check command (see How to Check for Known Security Vulnerabilities in Your Dependencies).
This section indexes security vulnerabilities that were fixed in Symfony releases, starting from Symfony 1.0.0:
- Jul 17, 2017, CVE-2017-11365: Empty passwords validation issue (2.7.30, 2.7.31, 2.8.23, 2.8.24, 3.2.10, 3.2.11, 3.3.3, and 3.3.4)
- May 9, 2016: CVE-2016-2403: Unauthorized access on a misconfigured Ldap server when using an empty password (2.8.0-2.8.5, 3.0.0-3.0.5)
- May 9, 2016: CVE-2016-4423: Large username storage in session (2.3.0-2.3.40, 2.7.0-2.7.12, 2.8.0-2.8.5, 3.0.0-3.0.5)
- January 18, 2016: CVE-2016-1902: SecureRandom's fallback not secure when OpenSSL fails (2.3.0-2.3.36, 2.6.0-2.6.12, 2.7.0-2.7.8)
- November 23, 2015: CVE-2015-8125: Potential Remote Timing Attack Vulnerability in Security Remember-Me Service (2.3.35, 2.6.12 and 2.7.7)
- November 23, 2015: CVE-2015-8124: Session Fixation in the "Remember Me" Login Feature (2.3.35, 2.6.12 and 2.7.7)
- May 26, 2015: CVE-2015-4050: ESI unauthorized access (Symfony 2.3.29, 2.5.12 and 2.6.8)
- April 1, 2015: CVE-2015-2309: Unsafe methods in the Request class (Symfony 2.3.27, 2.5.11 and 2.6.6)
- April 1, 2015: CVE-2015-2308: Esi Code Injection (Symfony 2.3.27, 2.5.11 and 2.6.6)
- September 3, 2014: CVE-2014-6072: CSRF vulnerability in the Web Profiler (Symfony 2.3.19, 2.4.9 and 2.5.4)
- September 3, 2014: CVE-2014-6061: Security issue when parsing the Authorization header (Symfony 2.3.19, 2.4.9 and 2.5.4)
- September 3, 2014: CVE-2014-5245: Direct access of ESI URLs behind a trusted proxy (Symfony 2.3.19, 2.4.9 and 2.5.4)
- September 3, 2014: CVE-2014-5244: Denial of service with a malicious HTTP Host header (Symfony 2.3.19, 2.4.9 and 2.5.4)
- July 15, 2014: Security releases: Symfony 2.3.18, 2.4.8, and 2.5.2 released (CVE-2014-4931)
- October 10, 2013: Security releases: Symfony 2.0.25, 2.1.13, 2.2.9, and 2.3.6 released (CVE-2013-5958)
- August 7, 2013: Security releases: Symfony 2.0.24, 2.1.12, 2.2.5, and 2.3.3 released (CVE-2013-4751 and CVE-2013-4752)
- January 17, 2013: Security release: Symfony 2.0.22 and 2.1.7 released (CVE-2013-1348 and CVE-2013-1397)
- December 20, 2012: Security release: Symfony 2.0.20 and 2.1.5 (CVE-2012-6431 and CVE-2012-6432)
- November 29, 2012: Security release: Symfony 2.0.19 and 2.1.4
- November 25, 2012: Security release: symfony 1.4.20 released (CVE-2012-5574)
- August 28, 2012: Security Release: Symfony 2.0.17 released
- May 30, 2012: Security Release: symfony 1.4.18 released (CVE-2012-2667)
- February 24, 2012: Security Release: Symfony 2.0.11 released
- November 16, 2011: Security Release: Symfony 2.0.6
- March 21, 2011: symfony 1.3.10 and 1.4.10: security releases
- June 29, 2010: Security Release: symfony 1.3.6 and 1.4.6
- May 31, 2010: symfony 1.3.5 and 1.4.5
- February 25, 2010: Security Release: 1.2.12, 1.3.3 and 1.4.3
- February 13, 2010: symfony 1.3.2 and 1.4.2
- April 27, 2009: symfony 1.2.6: Security fix
- October 03, 2008: symfony 1.1.4 released: Security fix
- May 14, 2008: symfony 1.0.16 is out
- April 01, 2008: symfony 1.0.13 is out
- March 21, 2008: symfony 1.0.12 is (finally) out !
- June 25, 2007: symfony 1.0.5 released (security fix)


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On how he got involved on Gut Check: "I was working in MCW (Maryland Championship Wrestling) and TNA was doing a house show in Bowie, Maryland, and the agents asked for a list of 10 guys, and I was one of the 10. I was eating breakfast with my wife,and they gave me call saying, we want to use you on some house shows and get a look at you. So I did that, and they called me back about doing this Gut Check."
On the Gut Check Experience: "They told me it's all a shoot, it's all real. It's not scripted stuff or anything like that, and we did that. We went from there, they did the profile thing with me, and then the match with Zema (Ion), which was pretty wild. All day long you don't know anything, its just like a rehearsal type thing. Just stand in the ring and we will go from there. Its all a shoot, they want raw emotion."
The Boy Band Gimmick: "We started that in '99. We weren't really on board with the boy band thing. We were like, man, that's gay. We were trying to be edgy, like every indy wrestler, trying to be cool as hell. We wanted to be called Fourplay, but we ended up being the Badstreet Boys. It worked, we had tons of girls as fans. Kanyon had seen the gimmick and had the idea of getting Shane Helms and Shannon Moore a tryout. Myself and Joey didn't have any idea about this. Then Shane called and said, hey, man, we just got signed, and I was like, did we get signed? And he was like, no, they are gonna give you a tryout, we are gonna do the boy band gimmick with Evan (Karagias). "
On WCW not being around: "I miss the hell out of it, man. I wish it was still around so guys would have a place to work."
First Run with WWF/ECW: "After we got released from WCW we had a no compete clause, 120 days. We waited and we just said, let's go there and try to get on. And we got on, it was pretty cool. They let us do dives and like all kinds of stuff, stuff that unheard of. They were like, just go out there in tear it up. So we did that, and they liked us and stuff, but we looked like kids compared to the cast of characters in WWF at the time. So they said why don't you go to ECW and go there and get over, get seasoned, and then come back here. We got in touch with Tommy Dreamer, and they were already interested in us, so we went there and off we went."


text:
Interdisciplinary. Community. Advocacy. Humor.
25 members7 Comments 1 Like
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38 members16 Comments 5 Likes
Thanks for signing up again with crafthaus. Your active membership is valid through June 15, 2018.
Now that you've successfully re-registered you can get even more involved. This means, you're not just getting the whole crafthaus picture... you are a part of it. Your contributions via blogs, photos, and discussions will enrich our open crafthaus environment immensely, so please let us know what's going on in your art life! Don't hold back!
If there are ever any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to email me via crafthauseditor at live dot com, I will do my best to be of help.
Thanks for being a crafthaus member!
hey meredith!! thx for remembering me! how's the fundraising going? got that fundraiser up yet? i need a link there if you do. anne
I need to get on here more often! Sheesh.
Thanks for asking to be my friend.
Hola Meredith,
Love the brooch you just posted !!!!


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Numerous recent studies have undercut the purported benefits of various herbal supplements. Gingko, echinacea and Saint John's wort, have all been found relatively ineffective against many of the ills they have been claimed to help.
This does not seem to have slowed purchases by U.S. consumers, who spent $14.8 billion on these and other natural supplements in 2007, according to a report released last summer.
It also hasn't stopped many supplement sellers from making the false claims and even recommending potentially dangerous uses of the products to customers, according to a recent investigation conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). To obtain a sample of sales practices, the agency got staff members to call online retailers and to pose undercover as elderly customers at stores selling supplements.
Customers were not only told that supplements were capable of results for which there is no scientific evidence (such as preventing or curing Alzheimer's disease); the advice and information also was potentially harmful (including a recommendation to replace prescription medicine with garlic). Excerpts from secretly recorded conversations are available on the GAO's Web site.
Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found the practices "improper and likely in violation of statutes and regulations," according to the report, which was delivered as testimony on May 26 by Gregory Kutz, managing director of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations at the GAO, to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.
But the potential for harm did not appear to end with marketing and staff recommendations. Following up on previous studies that had found contaminants and other adulterants in herbal supplements—which are regulated by the FDA as food products, not drugs, and thus not subject to pre-market approval or testing—the GAO sent bottles of 40 commonly purchased supplements to a lab for testing.
The lab found 92 percent of the tested herbal supplements (which included pills, capsules and other products derived from plant products but not vitamins) contained trace amounts of lead and 80 percent had at least one other contaminant, such as mercury, cadmium and/or arsenic. The levels (none were more than 0.05 part per million) did not exceed what the FDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently considers hazardous, but, notes Marcus Reidenberg, chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, "ingesting these heavy metals is of no benefit." And the GAO report states that "consuming high levels of the contaminants for which we tested…can lead to severe health consequences, such as increased risk of cancer."
The supplement industry shared the concern raised by the report, Steve Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, one of several supplement trade groups, said in Senate testimony also delivered May 26. But, he noted that "the majority of American consumers who take dietary supplements are using safe, high-quality supplements to maintain and improve their healthy lifestyles," and also pointed out that "pharmaceuticals, conventional foods, medical devices and cosmetics—all regulated by FDA—likewise have accidents and rogue players." Regarding the GAO's findings, he had told The New York Times he did not think they "should be of concern to consumers."
Label liability
Millions of Americans continue to buy herbal supplements based on the belief that they will improve their quality of life. But just what goes into these supplements and what body part or function they purport to help is largely up to the product's manufacturer.
All dietary supplements, including herbal supplements, vitamins, enzymes and other substances, are regulated by the FDA under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which says that only the manufacturers are responsible for making sure a supplement is safe—and recommending how much a consumer should take. It also mandates that only manufacturers need to determine if a supplement can stand up to claims made about its benefits. And, as noted on the FDA's Web site, supplement-makers are not required to present any information to the government about how they arrived at safety and effectiveness conclusions.
As with other food products, the FDA conducts routine monitoring of products and inspections of manufacturing processes, but it does not evaluate supplements before they hit the shelves to see if the ingredients match those listed or that the ingredients—listed or unlisted—are of safe levels. And if a product appears to be causing harm, it is up to the FDA to "demonstrate that the dietary supplement presents a significant or unreasonable risk" before it can be pulled from the shelves, the report pointed out.
In labeling supplement-makers cannot claim a product will cure, treat or prevent a specific condition, as that would make it a drug. Instead, labels can boast of general "body function claims," such as "aids digestion," "improves heart health" or "boosts brain function" etcetera, says Paul Shekelle, an internist at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Healthcare Center and director of the Southern California Evidence-Based Practice Center at the RAND Corp. Although these claims must be followed by a standard, asterisked FDA disclaimer ("This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."), people often do not get the right message, Shekelle says.
"Those distinctions can be confusing to consumers," who often might not have all of the information to separate body-function statements (such as "boosts brain function") from specific treatment indications that they might be seeking (for example, "prevents Alzheimer's"), he notes. And messages can get mixed when a sales associate steps in to do the interpretation for consumers.
Because the FDA is in charge of keeping track of what's on a supplement's packaging, whereas FTC watches for false claims in advertisements, few eyes are turned to the individuals who are selling products and engaging in conversation with a potential customer.
Sales calls
To see just how these supplements were being sold to customers, the GAO sent the undercover staff members to ask questions of 22 storefront and mail-order supplement retailers in 2009 and 2010. The agency focused on consumers over the age of 65 who have been shown to be taking an increasing amount of supplements, 85 percent of whom are on at least one prescription medication a year (with which a supplement could potentially interact). For example, Saint John's wort, sometimes marketed for depression, has been shown to decrease the effectiveness of prescribed antidepressants—as well as some cancer drugs, HIV treatments and anticoagulants, according to the report.
Should an elderly person take gingko biloba with aspirin? Can ginseng cure cancer? What about replacing prescribed blood pressure medication with garlic supplements? All resounding yes's from supplement sales staffs, the GAO found in its undercover investigation—but big no's per the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Taking a combination of gingko and aspirin can increase the risk of internal bleeding. Ginseng has not been proved to cure any diseases, and should be avoided for those with breast and uterine cancers, according to the NIH. Garlic has not been proved to significantly lower high blood pressure—and supplements are not intended to replace prescribed drugs.
The statements by supplement seller staff members amount to "unequivocal deception," Reidenberg says.
Industry representative Mister noted in his testimony that "making false or misleading statements about a dietary supplement in a consumer transaction violates many states' consumer protection, anti-fraud and unfair competition statutes." He also added that he was not sure "whether the retailers in the GAO's investigations are aware that they are breaking the law."
The inaccuracies might not be intentional on a staff member's part, Reidenberg points out. "You don't know what these employees truly believe," he says. And if a sales associate reads a supplement's package without giving proper weight to the FDA's disclaimer, they could conceivably construe a product's stated benefits, such as "improves heart health," as proof of effectiveness in actually preventing or treating cardiovascular disease.
And even for some consumers, sales pitches aside, Reidenberg says, "they just believe in them, and that's that." But he worries that as the amounts of prescription medications and supplements a person takes increase, consumers will eventually become adverse to swallowing the sheer number of pills, as taking a large number of any pill—even placebos—has been shown to create digestive problems. "If someone has eight tablets for necessary medicine and 12 tablets for supplements, then which ones are they going to not take when they don't feel good?" he asks.
Additionally, many of these supplements have side effects that consumers—and some doctors—might not know, or know to ask about. But awareness has been increasing, Shekelle notes. Unlike 15 years ago, he says, at his hospital if someone is planning to get surgery, "we regularly ask if they take gingko because it increases the bleeding time."
The big question, as Shekelle sees it, however, is not whether customers should want to spend their money on products of questionable efficacy, but whether "taking this stuff is not going to be deleterious to their health."
Contaminated goods
Even if the labels of some of these supplements might give consumers—or sales staff—confusing ideas about efficacy, what is not on the labels could be even more harmful.
Of the 40 herbal supplements tested for the GAO investigation, 37 contained trace levels of at least one hazardous compound. These heavy metal levels are down from a 2004 study, published in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, which found dangerous levels of heavy metals in 20 percent of herbal supplements tested. Despite a plea by those study authors for "mandatory testing of all imported dietary supplements for toxic heavy metals," the FDA only requires pre-market evaluation of products containing any "new dietary ingredient" that has not previously been used in a supplement.
Levels of exposure, however, depend on how much of a supplement a person takes, notes Reidenberg, who says some people think that if "a little is good, more is better, and a lot must be great." Thus, "the total dose might be more than anticipated," he says.
The lab also tested the supplements for pesticides and found that 18 of 40 contained traces of at least one formula. Although the EPA sets limits for many pesticides, if a pesticide has not been sufficiently evaluated to have an established maximum level, any amount is considered too much. Sixteen of the supplements thus exceeded the acceptable pesticide levels, and four of the pesticide residues were from formulas not approved for use in the U.S., according to the report.
Although the GAO analysis did not test for other ingredients, such as other herbs or compounds, other analyses have found everything from steroids to active pharmaceuticals in herbal supplements, Shekelle notes.
"This goes back to the presumption that dietary supplements are safe," he says. As food products, supplements are considered safe until proved otherwise by the FDA. But, he notes, "I don't think we have a universal definition of what is 'safe'." He is quick to add that anything can be risky, from water to the drugs he prescribes for his patients. "I prescribe things that have risk all the time, but I do so when I think that the chance of benefit exceeds the chance of risk enough to make it worth it."
Thus, even if levels of contaminants are low, Shekelle wonders "How much risk is it reasonable to ask customers to take on?" And particularly in the realm of herbal supplements with tenuous track records of efficacy, he adds, "If there's no proven benefit, then there shouldn't be any risk at all."
Supplementing safety
To be sure, the contaminants and even the questionable marketing practices are not new to people who have been following this topic in recent years. "There have been examples of this in the literature for a while," Reidenberg says.
But the GAO report adds new weight to the issue. It was released May 26, weeks before an anticipated June Senate debate of a food safety bill. And discussion about the regulation of these products will likely come up. The supplement industry, however, is likely to fight additional regulation, which Mister called "burdensome" in his testimony, noting that the industry associations have stepped up their efforts to improve inspection and regulation of member companies. "More than ever, dietary supplement manufactures have every incentive to produce the best quality products, and real sanctions in place if they don't."
Not everyone has remained unperturbed by this or previous reports of supplement-makers' dubious marketing practices or hazardous contents. "For a product that's assumed to be safe and for which the health benefits are tenuous or unproven, I think that's a legitimate issue," says Shekelle, who would welcome hard evidence to back up health claims. And he is not satisfied with in vitro assays testing isolated compounds on isolated cells: "If it's going to [say] garlic helps high blood pressure, then there better be studies in humans that show garlic helps high blood pressure," he says.
Herbal Supplement Sellers Dispense Dangerous Advice, False Claims
Undercover government employees received consistently false information when shopping for supplements, and analyses show most supplements contain trace amounts of contaminants
Numerous recent studies have undercut the purported benefits of various herbal supplements. Gingko, echinacea and Saint John's wort, have all been found relatively ineffective against many of the ills they have been claimed to help.


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For instance, consider the countywide vote to double the half-cent sales tax for transportation and make it permanent.
The measure won a majority or better vote in every community in Alameda County with the notable exception of Pleasanton and Livermore. Voters in both cities rejected the measure by 52-47 margins. Measure B1 required a two-thirds vote and barely failed at 66.53 percent.
For contrast, Measure B received 55 percent of the vote in Dublin meaning the Livermore Valley cities collectively doomed the measure. It received 81 percent of the vote in Berkeley and 76 percent in Oakland.
When it came to the presidential election, it didn't matter what city, it was only the margin that varied as President Obama easily carried every city. He had the biggest percentage margin in Dublin, pulling in 11,016 votes to 5,484 for Mitt Romney.
The numbers in Pleasanton were 19,175 to 13,240, while Livermore supported the president 20,058 to 13,240.
In the hotly contested 15th Congressional District, Dublin Councilman Eric Swalwell won the three Livermore Valley cities by wide margins and then built up a 2,000-vote margin in Castro Valley and other unincorporated areas there. Swalwell won his hometown 9,281 to 5,482; Livermore 20,537 to 11,053; and Pleasanton 18,779 to 10,265. The shift of Stark's district, which he had held since 1972, to include the Livermore Valley made the difference because the incumbent carried Fremont, Hayward and Union City.
Livermore joined the parade of cities and school districts that have consolidated their elections with the general electionsit saves a good chunk of money, but it results in both a long ballot and higher turnout, particularly during the presidential years.
For instance, in Livermore, voters put Tom McLaughlin back on the school board. Tom, like the defeated Stark, has celebrated his 80th birthday and previously was a school trustee. His chief qualificationretired school teacher. He received 31 percent of the vote, while incumbent trustee Chuck Rogge won re-election with 29 percent and appointed trustee Belia Martinez trailed at 24.
One additional election note: ballots cast by mail totaled 41 percent of registered voters, while 33 percent were cast on Election Day. For campaign professionals, that means turnout is still critical, but the voting period now is a month so it means the barrage of media ads will continue to stretch even longer.


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Lykke 5" Driftwood Interchangeable Tips
Made of strong birch wood, the LYKKE "Driftwood" needles are very smooth and light. With their warm character, these needles are easy on the hands and the eyes - a true pleasure to work with. All LYKKE needles have both US and metric sizes etched on the needles to ensure long-term readability.


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Women, Healthy Fats and Overall Fitness
This blog does not intend to provide diagnosis...
In this article:
- Why Women Fear Fat
- Okay, Convince Me. Why Should I Eat More Fat?
- How Much Fat Should I Eat?
- What Kind of Fat Should I Eat?
If you're a woman who exercises regularly, you have probably heard conflicting messages about the best way to fuel your body, specifically when it comes to fat intake. For many years, low-fat, high carbohydrate diets were recommended for weight loss, general health, and exercise performance.
But what we have learned more recently is that women specifically need more fat in their diet, especially as it relates to overall fitness.
Why Women Fear Fat
Let's just be honest: women are under a huge amount of pressure to look a certain way, especially in a fitness environment. Thinking "leaner is better," many female athletes choose diets that are too low in calories and then wonder why their energy and fitness levels suffer.
Talking about adding more fat into your diet might make alarm bells start going off in your head. Thanks to decades of bad diet advice, we have been taught to fear fat. The problem is, when we don't get enough fat in our diet, we are doing one of two things: replacing fat with sugar and processed foods, or not eating enough calories overall.
Okay, Convince Me. Why Should I Eat More Fat?
As women, we naturally store more fat in our body than men. You can be the fittest woman in the gym and still have more body fat than the man on the machine next to you. While this might seem frustrating, it can actually work to our advantage. You see, our bodies were designed to use this extra fat efficiently as fuel for exercise.
Here's how: women generally have a lower respiratory exchange ratio than men. Women also have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. Both of these things cause our bodies to be much better at burning fat than carbohydrates. So if you are not eating enough fat, you won't have as much stored energy to burn, and you won't be able to exercise as efficiently.
Adequate fat intake is also important in providing fat-soluble vitamins needed for bone health, energy levels, and hormone production.
How Much Fat Should I Eat?
20-35% of your calories should be coming from fat. That means if you are consuming 2000 calories a day, you should be eating 44 grams of fat at the very least.
What Kind of Fat Should I Eat?
Not all fats are created equal. It is important to choose high-quality fat sources found naturally in lean protein foods such as nuts, seeds, nut butters, salmon, fish oil supplements, avocados, and eggs. Avoid trans-fats and highly processed foods.
Here are some simple ideas for adding healthy fats to your diet:
- Add a tablespoon of almond butter to your toast in the morning.
- Make your own trail mix using a variety of nuts, dried fruit, and coconut flakes.
- Add two tablespoons of avocado to your favorite smoothie recipe.
- Add a sprinkle of hemp hearts or chia seeds to a salad.
- Choose a high-quality fish oil supplement and take it daily.
So if you're a woman, don't fear the fat. Start exercising more efficiently by adding these healthy foods into your diet. You were made for this!


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Tshiamo believes in bringing fresh perspectives, creativity and innovation to every new challenge. He is a digital native and a proponent of digital marketing technologies. He is a graduate at Wits University.
Sabeehah Motala is the Director of Strategy at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute. She oversees the Future Leaders Programme at ASRI. She is an avid soccer player, and enjoys cycling, reading, and gardening.
Luthando is currently a Research Associate at ASRI and a Masters Candidate in Development Studies at Wits University. Luthando's research focuses on the experiences and understandings of "Black Tax" for young Black professionals in South Africa. Luthando has an undergraduate double major degree in International Studies & Development Studies from Monash South Africa and an Honours Degree in Development Studies from Wits University. Luthando is passionate about human development, matters pertaining to the youth, the well-being of women's environment as a whole and the protection of human rights. The empowerment of individuals through community engagement, the provision of knowledge and the implementation of rules and policies which will guide and lead in the right direction are of importance to her. She expresses her activism as a Co-Director at the MatibeMalinga Foundation which provides support to women and children in indigent communities across Gauteng.
Imraan Buccus is a Senior Research Associate at ASRI. Over the next year he will be writing a series of opinion pieces that will appear fortnightly in the national media; with the intent of compiling his contributions into a book at year-end. Imraan is the academic director of a university study abroad program on political transformation and concurrently a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at UKZN. Imraan is also editor of Al Qalam. He is a newspaper columnist and is often called upon by television and radio stations to offer political analysis. Imraan is widely published, in academic journals and book chapters, in the area of participatory democracy, poverty and civil society. Buccus is the former editor of Critical Dialogue, a journal of Public Participation in review. He has presented extensively at academic conferences around the world. His last paper entitled, ' Democratic transitions and liberation movements in power: a closer look at the ANC' was presented at the African Studies conference in San Diego, California in December. Buccus was a Ford Foundation PhD Research Fellow at the Centre for International Development Issues, at Radboud University, Nijmegen in The Netherlands. He was Open Society Foundation Media Fellow twice in recent years, and in 2009 he appeared on the prestigious Mail & Guardian list of South Africa's 200 Leading Young South Africans. Imraan has experience in the civil society sector, having served in research and policy NGOs for many years. During this time, he was involved in a number of international research projects and co-authored the National Framework on Public Participation for the South African government. During his time at the Centre for Public Participation, he led an initiative to bring policy making spaces closer to ordinary people and also led a project to assess the state of participatory democracy in Namibia. He has wide ranging experience working with various donor agencies including the Ford Foundation, NiZA, EU, Kellogg Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. In the early 2000's Buccus worked as academic coordinator of the Workers College, a progressive experiential education college for workers from the trade union movement, where he developed a passion for experiential education and its personal and academic developmental potential.
Awarded the Ruth First Fellowship for 2014 at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg – Ebrahim Fakir until recently headed the Political Parties and Parliamentary Programme at EISA [2010-2016]. He was formerly Senior Researcher and Analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg (2003-2009), he worked at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) [1998-2003] at both IDASA's Pretoria and Cape Town offices and he also worked at the first democratic Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (1996-1998) in the Legilsation amd Oversight Division. Before that, he was junior lecturer in English Literature at the then University of Durban-Westville (1994-1996) and continues to teach as a sessional lecturer in contemporary political economy at the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch University. He writes in the popular press as well as academic and policy journals on politics, development, and the state. He is used as a commentator and facilitator by the domestic and international media, business and other organisations. He read for a degree in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg where he was elected on to the Students Representative Council. He was visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (2005/2006) and was a Draper Hills Summer Fellow at the Centre for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, for 2011.
Angelo Fick is the Director of Research at ASRI. Before joining ASRI, he spent nearly half a decade as a resident current affairs and news analyst in the broadcast sector in South Africa. For two decades he taught across a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Applied Sciences in universities in South Africa and Europe. His research is informed by critical 'race' theory, feminism, colonial discourse theory, and post-structuralism. He has written widely on post-millennial post-apartheid South Africa's political economy, and remains interested in broader issues of justice, freedom, and equality. Most recently he taught courses on colonial discourse theory and postcolonial culture in the Department of Visual Culture at the University of Pretoria. He has supervised graduate work on the representation of women politicians in South African media, the figuration of subjectivity in contemporary critical theory, and most recently, an analysis of the relationship between national sovereignty and supra-national organisations in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. In May 2019 he was one of the primary analysts of the South African general elections for South Africa's public broadcaster, the SABC. His work has appeared in the Mail & Guardian, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and English in Africa.


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This guide will walk you through creating an EMDK For Android application that will use some new MX features introduced in EMDK for Android API to perform device configurations. MX represents a suite of Enterprise Features on top of standard, commercially available Android Open Source Project. This tutorial will focus on configuring SD Card by allowing you to Enable/Disable the use of it using SD Card Manager feature of Mx.
So now we will create a tutorial to disable the use of external SD Card and then enable it back using MX SD Card Manager feature through Profile Wizard on your Zebra device.
- Make sure you have an external SD Card in the device
Creating The Project
Note: 1. Provide "SDCardManagerTutorial" as the project name for this tutorial.
- This feature requires Zebra device with Android KitKat 4.4.
Start by creating a new Android Studio project.
Adding The SD Card Manager Profile Feature
Click here to see how to add a specific feature to the Profile Manager.
Provide "SDCardProfile" as the Profile Name for this tutorial.
Note: You can provide any Profile Name but make sure to access it with the similar name in the Android code.
Now, you can see all these MX features on the left hand side of the Profile Editor window. Select the "SD Card Manager" feature from the list and click "Right Arrow".
Provide some name in the "Name" field (Ex. MySDCardManager). The "Name" field is used to identify each feature, which is required when editing features programmatically. You can also keep the "Name" field empty.
So as discussed, we will disable the use of SD Card in the Zebra device using SD Card Manager feature of MX through Profile Manager wizard. So click on "Enable or Disable use of SdCard" drop-down in the wizard and select the option "Disable".
Click Apply to apply the settings we provided
Click Finish and your SD Card profile for disabling the use of SD Card is created.
Click "Close".
Now the "EMDKConfig.xml" is created under "\assets" folder. This file will contain a definition of all of your profiles that you create.
You can inspect the EMDKConfig.xml to see it is reflecting the changes made to the parameters via EMDK Profile Manager GUI earlier. However, it is advised that this file not be manually updated and only be controlled via the Profile Manager.
Enabling Android Permissions
Modify the Application's Manifest.xml to use the EMDK library and to set permission for the EMDK.
You must first enable permissions for 'com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK':
<uses-permission android:name="com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK"/>
Then you must enable the library:
<uses-library android:name="com.symbol.emdk"/>
When done, your manifest.xml should look like:
Adding Some Code
Now we will start to add some code.
First you must add references to the libraries:
import com.symbol.emdk.*; import com.symbol.emdk.EMDKManager.EMDKListener; import android.widget.Toast;
Then you must extend the activity to implement EMDKListener.
public class MainActivity extends Activity implements EMDKListener {
.. .. .. .. .. .. ... @Override public void onClosed() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void onOpened(EMDKManager emdkManager) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub }
We will now create some global variables to hold the profile name as well as instance objects of EMDKManager and ProfileManager with a status variable while applying the profile. Some of the variables are used to hold the name, type and description in case of any errors. These variables would be used throughout the code.
Note: Verify the Profile name in the code with the one created in the Profile Manager. They both should be identical.
// Assign the profile name used in EMDKConfig.xml private String profileName = "SDCardProfile"; // Declare a variable to store ProfileManager object private ProfileManager profileManager = null; // Declare a variable to store EMDKManager object private EMDKManager emdkManager = null; // Contains the parm-error name (sub-feature that has error) private String errorName = ""; // Contains the characteristic-error type (Root feature that has error) private String errorType = ""; // contains the error description for parm or characteristic error. private String errorDescription = ""; // contains status of the profile operation private String status = "";
In the onCreate method, we call getEMDKManager so that the EMDK can be initialized and checked to see if it is ready.
//The EMDKManager object will be created and returned in the callback. EMDKResults results = EMDKManager.getEMDKManager(getApplicationContext(), this); //Check the return status of getEMDKManager if (results.statusCode == EMDKResults.STATUS_CODE.SUCCESS) {
} else {
// EMDKManager object creation success
// EMDKManager object creation failed
So far your code should look like:
Now we need to use the
onOpenedmethod to get a reference to the EMDKManager. The EMDKListener interface will trigger this event when the EMDK is ready to be used. The EMDKListener interface must be implemented in order to get a reference to the EMDKManager APIs. This event will pass the EMDKManager instance and we assign it to the global variable
emdkManagerthat we created in the previous steps. We then use that instance object to get an instance of ProfileManager and assign it to the global variable
profileManager. This is how we will interface with the APIs in the rest of the code:
Note: Rename the argument of
onOpenedmethod from
emdkManagerif required.
// This callback will be issued when the EMDK is ready to use. this.emdkManager = emdkManager; // Get the ProfileManager object to process the profiles profileManager = (ProfileManager) emdkManager .getInstance(EMDKManager.FEATURE_TYPE.PROFILE);
Now that we have a reference to ProfleManager, we use it to install and activate the profile we built earlier using the
processProfilemethod. We could have also performed this action at a different time, say when someone pressed a button, but we chose to do it as soon as the EMDK was ready:
if (profileManager != null) { String[] modifyData = new String[1];
// Call processPrfoile with profile name and SET flag to create the profile. The modifyData can be null. EMDKResults results = profileManager.processProfile(profileName, ProfileManager.PROFILE_FLAG.SET, modifyData); if (results.statusCode == EMDKResults.STATUS_CODE.CHECK_XML) { } else { // Show dialog of Failure AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this); builder.setTitle("Failure"); builder.setMessage("Failed to apply profile...") .setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick (DialogInterface dialog, int id) { } }); AlertDialog alert = builder.create(); alert.show(); }
processProfilemethod returns the result of applying a particular profile that we set using EMDK Profile Wizard in EMDKResults reference. If the profile is successfully processed, it returns the status as
CHECK_XMLand then we go on and parse the response to get further details whether the profile was applied successfully or not. Otherwise we display a Failure message in a dialog.
Note: 1. There is a difference between processing a profile successfully and applying a profile successfully.
Note: 2. If the status is other than
CHECK_XML, we are simply displaying a failure message. You can actually go ahead and check different types of status and display the appropriate message accordingly, which is not in the scope of this sample tutorial.
In case of
CHECK_XMLstatus, We retrieve XML response string from the result using
// Get XML response as a String String statusXMLResponse = results.getStatusString();
Further, we would parse this XML response string using XML Pull Parser in order to get the status and error parameters if any. XML Pull Parser is an interface that defines parsing functionality provided in XMLPULL V1 API (visit this website to learn more about API and its implementations). In the parsing we would be looking for specific status tags (Error Name, Error Type and Error Description) in case of any errors and if found, we would get those values in the respective global variables that we have declared in previous step.
try { // Create instance of XML Pull Parser to parse the response XmlPullParser parser = Xml.newPullParser(); // Provide the string response to the String Reader that reads // for the parser parser.setInput(new StringReader(statusXMLResponse)); // Call method to parse the response parseXML(parser); } catch (XmlPullParserException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
Note: Here we have called the method
parseXMLto parse XML response string. We will declare the method in the next step.
Once the response is parsed, we would display the result of applying this profile in a dialog by calling
displayResultsmethod, which we would declare in coming steps.
// Method call to display results in a dialog displayResults();
Your complete
onOpenedmethod should now look like:
You will see few errors as we have not declared the respective methods to parse the response and display result. Lets do it one by one. In this step, we will create a method
parseXMLthat uses XML Pull Parser to parse the XML string response and set the status and error parameters if any.
In the response, we are supposed to capture
characteristic-errortag in case of any errors.
// Method to parse the XML response using XML Pull Parser public void parseXML(XmlPullParser myParser) { int event; try { event = myParser.getEventType(); while (event != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) { String name = myParser.getName(); switch (event) { case XmlPullParser.START_TAG: // Get Status, error name and description in case of // parm-error if (name.equals("parm-error")) { status = "Failure"; errorName = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "name"); errorDescription = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "desc");
// Get Status, error type and description in case of // parm-error } else if (name.equals("characteristic-error")) { status = "Failure"; errorType = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "type"); errorDescription = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "desc"); } break; case XmlPullParser.END_TAG: break; } event = myParser.next(); } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
Your complete
parseXMLmethod should now look like:
You will still see one error as we need to declare
displayResultsmethod to display the result of profile operation in a dialog. Before displaying the results, we should form the content of the result to be shown first, specifically in case of errors. This could be done by creating
In this method, the error message in case of error is formed using following way:
- Name and description of error if the response contains
- Type and description of error if the response contains
- Name, type and description of error if the response contains both
buildFailureMessagemethod would have following code to match the above mentioned criteria.
// Method to build failure message that contains name, type and // description of respective error (parm, characteristic or both) public String buildFailureMessage() { String failureMessage = ""; if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(errorName) && !TextUtils.isEmpty(errorType)) failureMessage = errorName + " :" + "\n" + errorType + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; else if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(errorName)) failureMessage = errorName + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; else failureMessage = errorType + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; return failureMessage; }
buildFailureMessagemethod should look like:
- Name and description of error if the response contains
In this step, we will add
displayResultsmethod to display the result of profile operation in a dialog. The dialog would display status as
Failurewith corresponding message based on the response of profile operation.
// Method to display results (Status, Error Name, Error Type, Error // Description) in a // dialog public void displayResults() { // Alert Dialog to display the status of the Profile creation // operation of MX features AlertDialog.Builder alertDialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder( MainActivity.this); if (TextUtils.isEmpty(errorDescription)) { alertDialogBuilder.setTitle("Success"); alertDialogBuilder.setMessage("Profile Successfully Applied..."); } else { // set title alertDialogBuilder.setTitle(status); // call buildFailureMessage() method to set failure message in // dialog alertDialogBuilder.setMessage(buildFailureMessage()); } alertDialogBuilder.setCancelable(false).setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { } }); // create alert dialog AlertDialog alertDialog = alertDialogBuilder.create(); // show it alertDialog.show(); }
The method
displayResultsshould look like:
You can see that all the errors are gone.
Now let's override the "onDestroy" method so we can release the EMDKManager resources:
@Override protected void onDestroy() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onDestroy(); //Clean up the objects created by EMDK manager emdkManager.release(); }
Your onDestroy method should now look like this:
That's it!!! We are done with all the coding and configuration part that will let us disable external SD Card using SD Card Manager feature of Mx. Now let's run the application.
Running the Application
Connect the device to a USB port (device must have USB debugging enabled).
Make sure the device is in USB debug.
Before running the application, We need to make sure that we have an external SD card enabled in the device.
Go to device's File Browser -> external, and you would see that SD Card is enabled at this stage.
Run the application.
You can see an Alert Dialog with a success message.
Note: In case of any errors, you will see a Failure status with respective error message in that dialog.
We will now see the status of external SD Card by again going into device's File Browser -> external directory.
You will see an empty "external" directory. It means the SD card has been successfully disabled. Now lets enable the SD Card in order to view the content in "external" directory of device's File Browser. So open the Profile Manager and Click "Edit" button.
Click on "Enable or Disable use of SDCard" drop-down and select option "Enable".
Click "Apply", "Finish" and "Close".
Now Run the application again and this time you will see that the SD Card has been successfully enabled back by checking File Browser -> external directory of the device.
This is how you can Enable/Disable the use of SD Card using SD Card Manager on Zebra devices using Profile Wizard.
Important Programming Tips
Perform the following changes in the application's
//Include the permission for EMDK: <uses-permission android:name="com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK"/> //Use the EMDK library: :::xml <uses-library android:name="com.symbol.emdk"/>
Use DataWedge v1.7.12 or higher version to test the
ProfileManager.processProfile()method for DataWedge profiles.
What's Next
Now that you have learned how to configure the use of SD Card (Enable/Disable) using SD Card Manager on your Zebra devices through applications, let us try to understand and implement some of the other new MX features introduced in EMDK for Android V 3.1. So in the next tutorial, we will concentrate on the "Encrypt Manager" feature of MX and try to explore this feature by creating a tutorial.


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May 15
IN the Decian persecution the blood of the Christians flowed at Lampsacus, a city of Asia Minor. St. Peter was the first who was led before the proconsul and condemned to die for the name of Christ. Young though he was, he went joyfully to his torments. He was bound to a wheel by iron chains, and his bones were broken, but he raised his eyes to heaven with a smiling countenance and said, "I give Thee thanks, O Lord Jesus Christ, because Thou hast given me patience, and made me victorious over the tyrant." The proconsul saw how little suffering availed, and ordered the martyr to be beheaded. But a little later, in the same city, the virgin Dionysia showed a like eagerness to suffer. St. Dionysia gained the crown which an apostate lost, and his history may teach us that those who lose Christ rather than suffer with Him lose all. With the strength that was left he cried out, "I never was a Christian. I sacrifice to the gods." Therefore he was taken down, and he offered sacrifice. But he was possessed by the devil, whom he had chosen for his master. He fell to the earth in a fit, bit out his tongue, and so expired. He escaped a little pain, and instead he went to the endless torments of hell, and forfeited eternal rest. "O wretched man!" Dionysia cried, "why have you feared a little suffering and chosen eternal pain instead?" She was seized and led away to horrible outrage, but her angel guardian appeared by her side and protected the spouse of Christ. Escaping from prison, she still burned with the desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. She threw herself upon the bodies of the martyrs, saying, "I would fain die with you on earth, that I may live with you in heaven." And Christ, Who is the crown of virgins and the strength of martyrs, gave her the desire of her heart.
Reflection.—The martyrs were even like us, with natures which shrank from suffering. They were patient under it because they looked to the eternal recompense, and endured as seeing Him Who is invisible.
Source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/
The above text was published in February 2017.
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One of the Balearic Islands, southwest of mainland Spain in the Mediterranean Sea, Ibiza is known for its incredible weather, white sandy beaches and famous nightlife and entertainment. However, look a little deeper and there is so much more to this Island than its lively resorts. Known as 'The White Island' due to the white washed houses built by its inhabitants, Ibiza is home to hundreds of small coves, quaint villages, and over fifty stunning beaches for visitors to explore. Ibiza is a small island despite being the third largest Balearic Island and has lots to offer a holiday maker; from amazing scenery to delicious Spanish cuisine and much more. No wonder then that it has fast become a desired holiday destination amongst holiday makers.
Ibiza boasts an average of 300 days of sunshine a year, combine that with a gorgeous coastline dotted with long sandy beaches for a perfect sunseekers paradise. Some of the most popular beaches on the island are found in Playa d'en Bossa and Santa Eulalia. Playa d'en Bossa itself is the longest stretch of sand on the island and well worth a visit. Watersports are popular on most of Ibiza's major beaches and can include jet skiing, diving, kayaks, pedalos and much more for visitors to enjoy.
There are also many quieter and more secluded coves around the island - speak to the locals and they'll be sure to guide you to these. Cala Carbo is one of the better known, a popular beach for those who wish to laze all day in the sun with a good book on a sunbed. Most beaches in Ibiza have been awarded Blue Flag status, meaning they achieve a high standard of cleanliness and safe waters for bathing.
Ibiza Town, also known as 'Eivissa' in Catalan, is the island's capital located on the south east coast It's home to a beautiful harbor popular with both locals and holiday makers alike. The harbor is overlooked by the Old Town, known as Dalt Vila, a UNESCO World Heritage site filled with cobblestone streets, castles, cathedrals, canons, and outstanding Renaissance era architecture. In the evening the whole town comes alive as many bars, restaurants and clubs open their doors to visitors.
Ibiza is part of the Balearic Archipelago, and is only one of several islands in this part of the Mediterranean Sea. Ibiza's nearby sister island 'Formentera' is just over 30-minutes by ferry and is famed for its beautiful clear waters. This island has a quiet atmosphere with long stretches of beach backed by dunes and pine trees - perfect for a relaxing day trip.
Back on Ibiza itself there are endless things to do and experience. Experience the ethereal at the Can Marca Caves, a collection of hidden sea caves previously used by smugglers whose the odd rock formations inside are lit in a bright colours creating a visual spectacular. Alternatively, visit Es Vedra a small island southwest of Ibiza; tied to myths and legends, it's rumoured to be home to sirens, sea-nymphs and the Phoenician lunar goddess.
Everything you see on our website is bookable online today or if preferred, our experienced reservation consultants are at hand to help. All hotels we offer are hand-picked by ourselves for their excellent facilities and service, a head start to giving you the best holiday.
Average Temperatures (°C) in Ibiza
Read more about when to visit Ibiza
Essential travel information for your holiday to Ibiza
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text: We have a great selection of gourmet birthday desserts delivered right to your door. Send a birthday cake, birthday cheesecake, birthday torte, and birthday cookie bouquets for delivery to your friends and family. Shop our large selection of gourmet desserts. Once your purchase is complete we will begin the shipping process to have your cake, cheesecake, torte and cookies delivered promptly.


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Open House on Sunday, December 11, 2016 1:00PM - 4:00PM
"Thetis Glen". Brand new homes from only $579,900! The "Austin" offers a great family layout with 3-4 bedrooms, including a large great room upstairs, plus a family room & guest room on the lower level. A great price and lots of space for your family! Thetis Glen is a new development of semi-custom 3-4 bedroom homes offering exceptional value with 9ft ceilings, real gas fireplaces, gas barbecue outlets, on demand hot water, Rinnai direct vent wall furnace, and more, all surrounded by green space and only a short walk to Thetis Lake Park. Choose from our selection of plans, pick your colours and move into your dream home in about 7 months. Showhome open Sat & Sun 1-4


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May 6, 2015
William Kanengiser is an internationally renowned classical
guitarist. A founding member of the award winning Los Angeles
Guitar Quartet.
Join the Guitar Conversation
Join Sergio as he interviews Australian and international guitarists talking with them about their about their story, inspirations and creative processes. Guitar Conversations will explore insights from master guitarists, their tips and tricks, how they practice, overcoming challenges and staying motivated. The podcast hopes to provide the listener with a window into the life of guitarists from a variety of fields including classical, jazz, latin, and popular styles of guitar.
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In his updated account of today's big Spring Training matchup between Tampa and Baltimore, Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times noted that Rays Manager Joe Maddon "had a fan - who was in in Orioles jersey - removed from the stadium after he was making racist comments about B.J. Upton."
There aren't more details since that 4:18 p.m. update, but this isn't the first time Upton and race have been mentioned in the same breath. From DRaysBay.com:
Emotions run high when talking about Upton and there have been discussions here and elsewhere about how some of the anger directed at him might be influenced by racism. Whenever you mention this, though, the discussion immediately becomes polarized and futile. You're saying I hate Upton because I'm a racist? Have you not watched the man play?!!? The discussion becomes black and white (horrible pun, I know), when the real discussion is much more nuanced.
No one is saying that race is the reason people dislike Upton. Obviously there are many reasons why, which we've already listed. My point is that his skin color, whether we realize it or not, influences how we view him.
And from Beyond the Boxscore:
Last Sunday, Evan Longoria and B.J Upton got into an argument over B.J. taking his time chasing down a ball hit to the wall. This confrontation may seem like a small spat between teammates, but may have an unseen racial impact with people that saw it.
Spring game report: Rays vs. O's (9-8 loss) [The Heater]
It's Complicated: BJ Upton and Race [DRaysBay.com]
Racism, Baseball and Unconscious Thought [Beyond the Boxscore]


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"To create a reliable 360 survey," Marcus Buckingham concludes in his recent blog on this site, "The Fatal Flaws With 360 Surveys," all you need do is…ask the rater to evaluate himself on his own feelings." Since you are an expert on your own feelings, your responses have to be solid.
That seems logical, and yet I could not disagree more with this conclusion. In an effort to give equal time to the other side of the story, and to clarify some misconceptions, let me share with you the reasons why not getting 360-degree feedback may actually be fatal. (But here's hoping that in the course of this debate there are no fatalities.)
Leadership effectiveness is in the eye of those who are led. "Rate me on 'Marcus is a good listener' and we learn whether I am a better listener than you," Buckingham writes. But in my work with Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman analyzing the 360-degree feedback from tens of thousands of leaders, that's not been our experience. What we find is: ask me to rate "Marcus is a good listener," and we discover whether I think Marcus is listening to me. That's certainly not objective data. But it doesn't have to be. If Marcus is my boss and I think he's not listening to me, that certainly plays into how effective he is as a leader, no matter how subjective my judgment is.
Subjective 360 data can correlate to objective business results. What I think about my boss wouldn't matter if it had no relation to business success. But our analysis of the data from those thousands of 360s shows that it does, empirically. We have correlated the leadership-effectiveness scores we've collected with a variety of business outcomes — profitability, turnover, employee engagement, customer satisfaction — you name it, we probably studied it. What we've seen is that 360 data are an incredibly reliable measure of business success, frequently showing a lock-step correlation between the effectiveness of a company's leaders, as measured by those subjective 360s, and the company's objective business results.
You don't have to be great at everything. "Most 360s are built on a logical non-sequitur," Buckingham suggests, "namely that since a particular group of exemplary leaders possesses all the competencies measured by the 360, therefore the best individual leader is she who possesses all of them." I agree that's a non-sequitur, and that would be a problem if you used the full range of leadership skills on the assessment as a one-size-fits-all definition of the perfect leader. But our research suggests that's not necessary at all, even if it were possible. When we analyze the most effective leaders in the world, we find that the truly extraordinary ones need only excel at a relatively small number of competencies — three to five. For us, the purpose of taking the 360 is not to see which leadership skills you lack so you can complete the set. Rather, it's to find your best self — that is, the particular leadership skills you should focus on to become uniquely extraordinary.
You are not the best judge of you. Several years ago, while working on my first project with Joe Folkman, I asked him what was the most interesting finding he'd seen in his years of studying 360s. He responded, with a wry smile, "The average leaders don't think they are." Thus we, too, find leaders subject to "benevolent distortion." But we don't find it that benevolent. Our data show not just a gap — but something closer to a canyon — between people's perceptions of themselves and how other people see them. "How could that be?" you might ask: After all, you are the only one there for everything! No doubt. And yet, our data tell us that you are a notoriously bad predictor of your own leadership abilities because it is so difficult to consistently know what impact you are having on others. In that regard, other people are experts at knowing how they feel about your effect on them. Ironically, we find, the best leaders in our database frequently rate their performance lower than their peers, bosses, and direct reports. From the perspective of inner strength and psychological health, it's terrific to have confidence in your own views and convictions. But when considering your strength as a leader, doing so in isolation is, from where we sit, downright, fatal.
I'll be the first to agree that a 360 assessment is no panacea and that the tool can be over-, miss-, and incorrectly used. But in my experience, there's simply no substitute for getting feedback from the people who are the most influenced and affected by your actions, talents, and skills. Applied creatively, a 360-degree feedback process can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you identify your strengths, grant you insight into how you can make them even more effective, and alert you to any behavior that might be severely detracting from your effectiveness. Are the 360 data objective? No. But even so they can help leaders create an objective, personal plan of development. And they're certainly more effective than just asking yourself.


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The f5x5x1 sculpture is a kinetic and luminous framework conceived and realised by LAb[au]. In software development, a framework is a methodological tool based on re-usable chunks of code, code libraries or other software pieces to assist, to develop and to glue together the different components of a software project. In regards to the f5x5x... installation the term 'framework' refers to the installation's constituting elements, a raster of fix and kinetic aluminum frames.
The installation title indicates the resolution instructing the numbers of modules used such f5x5x1 equal one module up to f5x5x3 equal 3 modules and f5x5x5 equal 5 modules.
Further 'framework' refers to the multiple operating modes of the installation, from a low resolution display to a generative and interactive sculpture. Consequently the term 'framework' can be understood as a way to manage conceptually and technically the sculpture's sequential operating modes and the rules by which they switch from one mode to another.
Metalab02 History Navigator (requires the Adobe Flash Player 8+).


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What we're thinking and learning about right now and the news and issues that matter to nonprofits.
Sep 09 2019 | Ning Jun Yuan and Jessica Sáenz
On Friday, September 6, 2019, TSNE hosted a panel of millennial leaders of color who shared their experiences in rising to the top of their organizations and the lessons we can learn to lift up others to create a stronger and more diverse sector. Millennials... → More
Categories: Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership


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This weekend, Saturday November 6th and Sunday November 7th we will be having our in-store Customer Appreciation Sale. Stop by and come in for great prices, free coffee and our famous chocolate chip cookies. We'll even have face painting and balloon animals for the kids, too!
Hours will be Saturday 9am- 8pm and Sunday 10am – 7pm. If you are not from the Chicagoland area, don't fret: our great sales prices can be found online as well. Hope to see you there!


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Job Applicants Made To Dance: 'Like A Scene Out Of The Office'
It sounds like something out of a sitcom; in this case, the original British television version of The Office: job seekers being compelled to dance for a chance at a sales position at a U.K. electronics retailer.
Applicant Alan Bacon, who hoped for a position at a Currys Megastore in Cardiff, was made to do "rubbish robotics in my suit in front of a group of strangers" to the French electronic duo Daft Punk's "Around the World."
Bacon was quoted by The Mirror as saying that "another middle-aged guy looked upset as he danced to a rap song."
"Everyone thought it was a joke. But they were serious," Bacon said.
The applicant said he'd spent the week before the interview researching the company "and looking forward to being able to express myself and talk about what I love doing."
Instead, it might have made more sense for him to hit the nightclubs and brush up on the latest moves.
"It was degrading, but I am desperate for work, so I just smiled and got on with it," Bacon said, adding that he told his father it was "like a scene out of The Office."
Currys Megastore issued a statement Thursday apologizing for the hiring incident:
"We are extremely disappointed that one of the management team at the store in question did not follow our official recruitment processes.
"We are extremely sorry to those interviewees impacted; all are being asked to attend another interview where they will be given a proper opportunity to demonstrate how they can contribute to our business."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Islamabad, Pakistan – At least 85 people have been killed after an Airbus A320 passenger airliner crashed into a residential neighbourhood while on approach to the airport in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, officials say.
At least two male passengers of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight PK-8303 from the eastern city of Lahore to Karachi survived the crash on Friday, a health ministry spokeswoman told Al Jazeera.
There were at least 91 passengers on board the plane, according to an official passenger manifest shared with Al Jazeera by the officials.
Health ministry spokeswoman Meeran Yousuf told Al Jazeera by telephone that 85 people have died, with 53 bodies kept at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi's largest government hospital, and 32 at Civil Hospital Karachi, another major state-run hospital.
Yousuf said the two survivors were being treated at the hospitals in Karachi, while 19 bodies have been identified so far.
At least six people who were on the ground when the airliner crashed into houses in the densely populated Model Colony area of Karachi, adjacent to the city's international airport, were being treated for their injuries, she added.
"Our plane [an Airbus] A320 which was coming from Lahore to Karachi was on final approach," said PIA chief Arshad Malik in a video message released after the crash.
"The last words we heard from our pilot were that there is a technical problem and he was told on final approach that he has both runways available to him to land on. But the pilot decided that he wanted to go around."
The plane then rapidly lost altitude and crashed short of the runway into the Model Colony neighbourhood, witnesses told the local media.
Dense plumes of black smoke rose above houses in the narrow streets of the neighbourhood, with television footage showing several houses crushed from the impact of the aircraft.
Parts of the plane, including the emergency exit door, were seen strewn in the streets.
Wreckage of the PIA passenger plane crash can be seen in a residential area in Karachi [Sabir Mazhar/Anadolu]


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Yep, I think this is very funny :-)
This may sound simple - like people are attracted to like
Is this an example of the same with food? Is this for a family? I bet people actually eat one of these things themselves!
Like minds are attracted to like
Like thoughts are attracted to like
If you are interested, there is more at: NigelPendrigh. Com/Interview
You have to be what you want to attract and that is why there is lots of food and tributes here!
Yep, I think this is very funny :-)


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Jenkins latest Gator to declare for NFL
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida linebacker Jelani Jenkins is turning pro after an injury plagued season, one that ended with foot surgery.
Jenkins missed four games, including the Sugar Bowl, and might not be 100 percent for the NFL combine in February.
Nonetheless, the junior from Olney, Md., announced his decision to enter the NFL on Monday. He joins safety Matt Elam, defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd and tight end Jordan Reed as juniors leaving Florida early.
"Jelani informed me that he wishes to pursue his dream of playing in the NFL," Florida coach Will Muschamp said in a statement. "We wish him the best of luck and encourage him to return to Florida and complete his degree."
Muschamp also had several underclassmen -- including quarterback Jacoby Brissett, running back Chris Johnson, safety De'Ante Saunders and offensive tackle Matt Patchan -- transfer in recent weeks.
Jenkins' decision was somewhat surprising.
He missed two games because of a broken bone on his right thumb and another because of a hamstring injury. His latest injury came in November, when he broke a bone in his right foot against Florida State, had surgery and missed the bowl game.
He finished the season with 29 tackles, two sacks and an interception. His biggest play came in November, when he returned a blocked punt 36 yards for a touchdown with 2 seconds remaining to beat Louisiana-Lafayette.
Jenkins played in 36 games at Florida, including 31 starts, and totaled 182 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, six sacks and three interceptions.


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There is a scramble to find the right big data talent, especially for short-term data projects currently being outsourced to big consulting companies such as Accenture, Deloitte apart from several niche suppliers. According to this McKinsey analysis, the U.S. alone faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to understand and make decisions based on the analysis of big data.
Experfy, a startup bootstrapped out of Harvard Innovation Lab, is launching its talent marketplace for data work today to turn this crisis into an opportunity, similar to how oDesk, Elance and Freelancer did for more generic skills. Founded by Sarabjot Kaur, a digital media entrepreneur and Harpreet Singh, former technology director at Citigroup, Experfy plans to manually screen each and every application from would be big data freelancers before putting them out in the marketplace.
Experfy asks potential freelancers to log in using their LinkedIn profiles, mention their strengths (analytics, machine learning or artificial intelligence, etc.), and wait for 24 hours before their profiles are approved. They are also asked to share their GitHub and Stack Overflow profiles.
For customers, the platform curates this database of experts to find the right talent, but doesn't get involved in price negotiations. However, the startup helps users track milestones related to project and even ensures that bank accounts are linked properly for payments.
"The problem with oDesk, Elance, Freelancer and other generic marketplaces is that they do not have vetted freelancers. They can get away with low-quality resources since they are working with small businesses, who are frequently willing to sacrifice quality to achieve a lower cost," Singh said.
Experfy is betting on its ability to curate high quality data talent, a big concern for many enterprise customers currently working with large IT outsourcers. For its part, the startup has put together a small but powerful team that includes Jothi Periasamy, a big data veteran and former managing director of KPMG, as the chief data scientist.
"From my own experience with such marketplaces is that one has to try out multiple providers until you find the right one. In the context of India, it seems to me, those who are not fortunate enough to get a job at Wipro or Infosys end up working on freelance sites, whether individually or through second- and third-tier vendors," added Singh.
The big challenge for Experfy will be to disrupt the existing business models of consulting and outsourcing companies such as Accenture and even EMC.
"We have huge advantage that a similar high-end big data marketplace does not exist yet. Our real competition is not Freelancer; rather it is the likes of McKinsey, KPMG and Accenture," Singh said.


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Known for explorations of space and light, James Turrell headlines three major museum shows this year, beginning with retrospectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in June. Turrell will then transform New York City's Guggenheim rotunda, above, into a colorful space that will appear to expand and contract with shifting natural and artificial light (June 21–Sept. 25).
Next Year of the Serpenti


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We scored all 50 states on 43 measures of competitiveness developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturersand theCouncil on Competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, we separated those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighting the categories based on how frequently they are cited in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves.
Categories and Criteria
Cost of Doing Business (350 Points)
Cost is a major consideration when a company chooses a state. We looked at the tax burden, including individual income and property taxes, as well as business taxes, particularly as they apply to new investments. Utility costs can add up to a huge expense for business, and they vary widely by state. We also looked at the cost of wages, as well as rental costs for office and industrial space (rental cost information furnished by CoStar Group).
Workforce (350 Points)
Many states point with great pride to the quality and availability of their workers, as well as government-sponsored programs to train them. We rated states based on the education level of their workforce, as well as the numbers of available workers. We also considered union membership. While organized labor contends that a union workforce is a quality workforce, that argument, more often than not, doesn't resonate with business. We also looked at the relative success of each state's worker training programs in placing their participants in jobs.
Quality of Life (350 Points)
The best places to do business are also the best places to live. We scored the states on several factors, including local attractions, the crime rate, health care, as well as air and water quality.
Infrastructure & Transportation (325 Points)
Access to transportation in all its modes is key to getting your products to market and your people on the move. We measured the vitality of each state's transportation system by the value of goods shipped by air, land and water. We looked at the availability of air travel in each state, and the quality of the roads.
Economy(300 Points)
A solid economy is good for business. So is a diverse economy, with access to the biggest players in a variety of industries. We looked at basic indicators of economic health and growth. For the first time in 2011, we measured each state's fiscal health by looking at projected budget gaps (or surpluses) for the coming fiscal year. We also gave credit to states based on the number of major corporations located there.
Education (225 Points)
Education and business go hand in hand. Not only do companies want to draw from an educated pool of workers, they also want to offer their employees a great place to raise a family. Higher education institutions offer companies a source to recruit new talent, as well as a partner in research and development. We looked at traditional measures of K-12 education including test scores, class size and spending. We also considered the number of higher education institutions in each state.
Technology & Innovation(225 Points)
Succeeding in the new economy—or any economy—takes innovation. The top states for business prize innovation, nurture new ideas, and have the infrastructure to support them. We evaluated the states on their support for innovation, the number of patents issued to their residents, and the deployment of broadband services. We also considered federal health and science research grants to the states.
Business Friendliness(200 Points)
Regulation and litigation are the bane of business. Sure, some of each is inevitable. But we graded the states on the perceived "friendliness" of their legal and regulatory frameworks to business.
Access to Capital(100 Points)
Companies go where the money is, and venture capital flows to some states more than others.
Cost of Living(50 Points)
The cost of living helps drive the cost of doing business. From housing to food and energy, wages go further when the cost of living is low.
More Rankings: 2010 2009 2008 2007


text: Wooden bowl: These hand carved wooden bowls will be a great addition to your home decoration! The wood used varies from Acacia to teak root which has been hand rubbed to give a beautiful finish! Each is unique in design and respective to the grain as well. The quality control is done in Kailua, Hawaii ~ Oahu. we support our woodworking artisans. Some earn a living from their creative work, while to some others, it is more of a hobby. In either case we select our artisans based on the quality and uniqueness of what it is they do. Some make many different items, while others specialize.