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President Bush Signs 2003 Medicare Bill
President George W. Bush signs H. R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Dec. 8, 2003. "With this law, we are providing more access to comprehensive exams, disease screenings, and other preventative care, so that seniors across this land can live better and healthier lives," said President Bush. White House photo by Paul Morse.


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Dear Santa,
I know you're busy this time of year getting the sleigh ready and finishing toy production. Rather than getting separate wish lists from a bunch of SQL Server pros, I asked a few of my friends in the SQL Server community what they thought should be on the naughty and nice list for SQL Server pros this year. Here are some of their ideas (in no particular order of importance).
Nice List:
- My 7-year-old son Joseph isn't quite a SQL Server pro yet, but he truly could use two new front teeth. However, I'm pretty sure that's not all he wants. Can you throw in a few Wii games?
- Richie thinks some cool info about the SQL Server appliance strategy will help people find their way without getting mired in the mud. He's pretty sure it will be a big deal next year.
- Tommy RockStar wants solid state drives (SSDs) for all his servers, a true self-tuning database (Tommy, even Santa has his limits), his very own Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) certification, SQL Server code-named "Denali" to ship on time, and, of course, an iPad because Angry Birds deserves to be played on a big screen.
- Geoff the snowman asks for better enterprise features in SQL Azure, such as multi-data center replication, backup, and some useful performance tuning knobs.
- Kevin is on a "Quest" for some shiny new SSDs for his laptop to help with demos, a new high-speed Wi-Fi N router to help with his webcasts, and 4G service in his neighborhood.
- SSIS Andy is tired of Microsoft's elves taking features away from newer versions of SQL Server's development and admin tools. Microsoft can set defaults to whatever it wants, but 'tis the season to have the option to set them back. Don't you trust us, Santa?
- And Julie Lou Who hopes that the world will have more grace by giving bigger hearts to thankless Grinch's whose current hearts are two sizes too small. Fahoo fores dahoo dores. World peace to all, and to all a good night!
Naughty List:
- Little Stacia Lou Who suggested the Microsoft Press book "Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out." Could any SQL Server pro truly be that naughty? I sure hope not!
- Tommy RockStar suggested a new SQL Server engine feature that sends painful electrical shocks to people who issue queries without a WHERE clause.
I've probably missed a few nice SQL Server pros, and I know that I've missed some naughty ones. But I'm not worried. I know you've got your list and will be checking it twice. By the way, is your list in the cloud or on-premises? Is it in SQL Server or are you using one of those trendy NoSQL engines? Either way, I'll have plenty of cookies for you and the reindeer.
Love and kisses,
Brian and all of your fans in the SQL Server community

subset: commoncrawl


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The estate tax laws differ for U.S. citizens vs. non-U.S. citizens. When there is a large estate, this could mean a hefty estate tax liability for a surviving non-U.S. citizen spouse.
So, what exactly is the estate tax difference between a U.S. citizen surviving spouse and a non-citizen surviving spouse?
When a surviving spouse is a U.S. citizen, he or she does not have to pay the estate tax immediately. Instead, the tax can wait until the surviving spouse passes away. However, the same does not hold true if a surviving spouse is not a U.S. citizen.
In that case, the IRS expects to receive the full amount of the estate tax right away.
Obviously, this can have devastating effects on the non-U.S. citizen spouse.
Recently, Life Health Pro offered suggestions on how to help alleviate this estate tax problem in an article titled "2 ways to help protect non-U.S. spouses from estate tax liability."
The first suggestion is to create a Qualified Domestic Trust, known as a "QDOT." This trust allows your spouse to defer the estate tax until his or her own death. Your spouse can receive the income from the trust.
However, your spouse will not be able to receive any principal from the trust except in cases of emergency or hardship. Another downside is that any assets from the trust cannot be transferred outside of the United States.
The other suggestion offered is to purchase a life insurance policy in the amount of the anticipated estate tax. This will make sure your spouse has the money on hand to pay the tax.
If you have questions about these options, contact an estate planning attorney who has experience working with international couples.
Reference: Life Health Pro (March 17, 2015) "2 ways to help protect non-U.S. spouses from estate tax liability."
For more information on non-US spouses, asset preservation and estate planning, please visit my estate planning website.


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Blount International Recalls Replacement Blades Used with Ariens Lawnmowers Due to Laceration Hazard
Blount International Recalls Replacement Blades Used with Ariens Lawnmowers Due to Laceration Hazard
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.
Name of Product: Oregon® Replacement Lawnmower Blades
Units: About 950
Manufacturer: Blount International Inc., of Kansas City, Mo.
Hazard: The replacement lawnmower blades can break during normal use, posing a laceration hazard to the user and bystanders.
Incidents/Injuries: Blount has received seven reports of replacement blades breaking during use. No injuries have been reported.
Description: This recall involves Blount lawnmower replacement blades for Ariens 48-inch lawnmowers. The replacement blades are sold under the Oregon® brand name. Oregon®, part number 91-003 and PA or PJ are printed on the surface of the recalled blades.
Sold at: Independent lawn and garden sales and service stores nationwide from January 2010 through September 2011 for about $20.
Manufactured in: United States
Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using lawnmowers with the recalled blades and return the blades to the store where purchased or directly to Blount for a free replacement.
Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact (866) 685-5449 between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. CT Monday through Friday, or visit the firms website at www.blount.com


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Charter schools are an idea dreamed up by an obscure education professor in the 1970s which have grown into a primary alternative to traditional public schools.
One in 17 Florida students attended a charter school last year, a number that has increased almost six-fold in a decade.
The original charter school model focused on local leaders forming an oversight board and spelling out the school's mission, goals and methodology in a contract or charter. These schools range from non-profits founded by local activists, to schools set up by cities or towns to schools organized by those with professional expertise.
Florida has also had private, for-profit companies managing charter schools since state lawmakers first approved charter schools in 1996.
School districts are beginning to manage charter schools as well, offering a growing third option.
Experts say no particular type of charter school is more successful than another, but each kind of school has particular strengths and weaknesses.
Florida approved its first charter school law in 1996, and that year Liberty City Charter School in Miami became the state's first charter.
Since then the number of Florida charter schools has grown to more than 500 with 154,000 students enrolled during the 2010–2011 school year. Private schools remain the largest alternative to district schools in Florida, enrolling 305,825 students — about 10 percent of all K-12 students — last year.
Last year Florida approved laws setting standards for "high-performing" charter schools and making it easier for good charter schools to expand.


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11 years ago
Henry apologises for swearing at Arsenal fan
LONDON: Thierry Henry has apologised for swearing at an Arsenal fan following his side's 3-2 Premier League defeat at Swansea City on Sunday.
Henry, playing in his second match since rejoining Arsenal on loan earlier this month, admitted losing his temper when an Arsenal supporter insulted him at Liberty Stadium.
"I was really shocked and disappointed on Sunday, and not just at the result," Henry told Britain's Sun newspaper.
"After the final whistle of a very tricky game, I insisted the whole team go and applaud the Arsenal supporters.
"I wanted to tell the fan in question that we need their support not abuse. The sentiment was right but in hindsight could have been better expressed.
"So I would like to first and foremost apologise for using inappropriate language to that particular 'supporter'.
"I didn't intend to be malicious or threatening and am aware that it could have been said in a calmer manner."
The result left Arsenal in fifth place and following leaders Manchester City's 1-0 win at Wigan Athletic on Monday, they are now 15 points behind City and four points adrift of Chelsea in fourth place.
Arsenal face second-placed Manchester United at home on Sunday and in a plea to fans, Henry added: "We need your support in the good times, but more importantly the bad.
"Get behind the team against Manchester United on Sunday and try to get three points to get the season back on track."
Henry, Arsenal's all-time record scorer, fired the winning goal against Leeds United in the FA Cup last week when he came on as a second half substitute, but he failed to find the target at Swansea.
He is due to return to his New York Red Bulls team at the end of next month before the start of the new Major League Soccer season. Text: Reuters


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Coasters are 9cm square , made of hardboard and polyester , They will protect your surfaces from both hot and cold drinks . Wipe clean only , not dishwasher safe .
If you are buying 4 or more you can mix and match the designs by using the drop down menu below .
For example if you would like 4 coasters all different select 1 of a set of 4 on each of the designs you would like and add each one to your basket.
If you want multiples of the same design do the same then simply adjust the quantity in your shopping basket .
Coaster Eight Maids A Milking


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New Scientist
Issue 2488, p. 36
February 26, 2005
Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving
by John Horgan
JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. "I was so fascinated that I did all this research," Halpern recalls. "I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobody's talking about this?"
More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches.
[Many scientists consider MDMA to belong to a specific drug class, the entactogens or empathogens.]
And Halpern is not alone. Clinical trials of psychedelic drugs are planned or under way at numerous centres around the world for conditions ranging from anxiety to alcoholism. It may not be long before doctors are legally prescribing hallucinogens for the first time in decades. "There are medicines here that have been overlooked, that are fundamentally valuable," says Halpern.
These developments are a remarkable turnaround. Scientists first became interested in psychedelic drugs – also called hallucinogens because of their profound effect on perception – after Albert Hofmann, a chemist working for the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz, accidentally swallowed LSD in 1943. Hofmann's description of his experience, which he found both enchanting and terrifying, spurred scientific interest in LSD as well as naturally occurring compounds with similar effects: mescaline, the active ingredient of the peyote cactus; psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms; and DMT, from the Amazonian shamans' brew ayahuasca.
At first, many scientists called these drugs "psychotomimetics" because their effects appeared to mimic the symptoms of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. However, many users rhapsodised about the life-changing insights they achieved during their experiences, so much so that in 1957, British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond proposed that the compounds be renamed "psychedelic", from the Greek for "mind-revealing". The term caught on, and psychiatrists started experimenting with the drugs as treatments for mental illness. By the mid-1960s, more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers had been published describing the treatment of more than 40,000 patients for schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism and other disorders.
A prominent member of this movement was Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, who among other things tested whether psilocybin and LSD could be used to treat alcoholism and rehabilitate convicts. Although his studies were initially well received, Leary eventually lost his reputation – and his job – after he began touting psychedelics as a hotline to spiritual enlightenment. Leary's antics helped trigger a backlash, and by the late 1960s psychedelics had been outlawed in the US, Canada and Europe. Unsurprisingly, clinical research ground to a halt, partly because obtaining the necessary permits became much more difficult, but also because few researchers were willing to risk their reputations studying demonised substances.
But to some brave souls, psychedelic medicine never lost its allure. One of them is Rick Doblin, who in 1986 founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in Sarasota, Florida, and who earned a doctorate from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government after writing a dissertation on the federal regulation of psychedelics. For nearly 20 years MAPS has lobbied the FDA and other government agencies to allow research on psychedelics to resume. It has also persuaded scientists to pursue the work and raised funds to support them. A similar body, the Heffter Research Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1993 by scientists with an interest in hallucinogens.
In the past couple of years their efforts have begun to pay off. Doblin is optimistic that psychedelic research is back for good, and this time it will do things right. "This gives us the chance to show that we have learned our lessons," he says. Halpern, too, is anxious to lay to rest the ghost of Leary. "That man screwed it up for so many people," he says.
With this in mind, Halpern says the first task for him and others is to evaluate the safety of psychedelics. And they are up against an entrenched orthodoxy: a 1971 editorial in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned that repeated ingestion of psychedelics causes personality deterioration. "Only a few of those who experience more than 50 'trips' are spared," it warned.
So Halpern's first big foray into psychedelic research was aimed at risk-assessment. In the late 1990s he launched a study of members of the Native American Church, who are permitted by US law to consume peyote. Halpern examined 210 residents of a Navajo reservation in the south-west US, who fell into three categories: church members who had taken peyote at least 100 times but had had little exposure to other drugs or alcohol; non-church members who abstained from alcohol or drugs; and former alcoholics who had been sober for at least three months.
Halpern tested the subjects' IQ, memory, reading ability and other functions. His interim results showed that church members had no cognitive impairment compared with the abstainers, and scored significantly better than recovering alcoholics. Church members also reported no "flashbacks" – sudden recurrences of a psychedelic's effects long after the initial trip. Halpern believes this study, which he expects will be published soon, shows that contrary to the 1971 editorial, peyote at least can be taken repeatedly without adverse effects.
He is now conducting a similar assessment of MDMA. This drug is sometimes called an "empathogen" because it heightens feelings of compassion and reduces anxiety. Anecdotal reports suggest it has therapeutic potential, and some psychiatrists used it alongside psychotherapy before it was outlawed in 1985. However, anecdotal and scientific evidence have also linked MDMA with brain damage, though the research is controversial.
Ecstasy impact
Judging the true impact of MDMA is complicated by the fact that users often combine it with other drugs and alcohol. To get around this, Halpern recruited a group of American mid-westerners who admitted taking MDMA but said they shunned other substances. He separated them into "moderate" users, who had consumed MDMA 22 to 50 times, and "heavy" users, who had taken it more than 50 times.
Halpern recently reported in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence that, compared with controls, heavy users displayed "significant deficits" in mental processing speed and impulsivity. Moderate users, however, had no major problems. Halpern believes this shows that MDMA's benefits may outweigh its risks for certain patients. And apparently the FDA and the McLean Hospital agree, since both have approved Halpern's plan to test MDMA as an anti-anxiety drug for a dozen late-stage cancer patients. Halpern still needs permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration, but he expects to begin recruiting patients soon.
[Specifically, Dr. Halpern needs to obtain a Schedule 1 license. The DEA does not review the study.]
He is also interested in the p
otential benefits of the true hallucinogens. In 1996, he reviewed almost 100 substance abuse trials involving LSD, psilocybin, DMT and ibogaine, an extract of the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga. Halpern found tentative evidence that the drugs can reduce addicts' cravings during a post-trip "afterglow" lasting for a month or two. Exactly how this happens is something of a mystery. A popular theory is that the benefits stem from the drugs' psychological effects, which include profound insights and cathartic emotions, but Halpern suspects that there may be a biochemical explanation too.
For now, however, Halpern isn't planning to pursue addiction therapy. He is more interested in another medical use for LSD and psilocybin: treating a debilitating condition known as cluster headaches. These attacks appear to be caused by swelling of blood vessels in the brain and are worse than migraines. Sufferers say the pain exceeds that of passing a kidney stone or giving birth without anaesthetics. They affect about 3 in every 1000 people sporadically, and 1 in 10,000 chronically. "There's a tremendous potential need for this," says Halpern, who investigated the problem after being approached by a patient group.
Many patients get little or no relief from painkillers, but some claim that small doses of LSD or psilocybin can alleviate the headaches and even prevent them from occurring. Halpern was intrigued; LSD is chemically related to ergot, a naturally occurring compound that constricts blood vessels, and the derivatives ergotamine and methysergide are commonly prescribed for migraines.
Halpern and his Harvard colleague Andrew Sewell are now gathering evidence to persuade licensing officials – and themselves – that LSD and psilocybin merit a clinical trial. Sewell has gathered more than 60 testimonials from cluster headache sufferers who have treated themselves with LSD or psilocybin.
Another member of the vanguard in the psychedelic revival is Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, and co-founder of the Heffter Institute. After years struggling to get permits, Grob says he is slowly moving forward with a study into using psilocybin to reduce distress in terminal cancer patients. He points out that studies done in the 1960s suggested that psychedelics can help patients come to terms with their impending death. So far Grob has treated three patients, but he hopes to enroll more subjects shortly.
Grob has also led several investigations like Halpern's peyote study, but looking at ayahuasca, the DMT-rich shamanic brew. Ayahuasca often causes nausea and diarrhoea, and its psychedelic effects can be terrifying, but Amazonian shamans nonetheless prize it for its visionary properties. Since 1987 it has been a legal sacrament for several churches in Brazil, the largest of which is Unio Do Vegetal. UDV combines elements of Christianity with nature worship, and claims 8000 members.
In 1996 a team led by Grob reported in the Journal of Nervous And Mental Disease that UDV members who regularly took ayahuasca were on average physiologically and psychologically healthier than a control group of non-worshippers. The UDV followers also had more receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has been linked to lower rates of depression and other disorders. Many of the UDV members told the scientists that ayahuasca had helped them overcome alcoholism, drug addiction and other self-destructive behaviours.
More recently, Grob has found that adolescents who grew up participating in ayahuasca ceremonies showed no ill effects and were less likely to engage in crime and substance abuse than members of a control group. Of course, Grob acknowledges that they could be benefiting from the social effects of membership in a church as well as the effects of ayahuasca itself. Grob plans to publish these results this year.
Several other scientists are quietly pursuing psychedelic research. Since 2001, psychiatrist Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona in Tucson has been testing psilocybin as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychotherapy and antidepressants such as Prozac help many patients, but some have such severe symptoms and are so resistant to treatment that they turn to electroshock therapy and even brain surgery. As with the work on cluster headaches, Moreno's study was motivated by reports from people with OCD that psilocybin relieves their symptoms.
So far, Moreno has given both sub-psychedelic and psychedelic doses of pure psilocybin to nine treatment-resistant OCD subjects, in a total of 29 therapy sessions. His preliminary findings suggest firstly that it is safe to ingest psilocybin, which was a primary concern of the trial. Beyond that, Moreno calls his results "promising", but won't discuss them further, since he plans to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal this year.
Meanwhile in Charleston, South Carolina, physician Michael Mithoefer is carrying out a MAPS-sponsored clinical trial of MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD affects up to 20 per cent of people who experience a traumatic event, and involves distressing symptoms such as nightmares and panic attacks. Conventional treatments typically consist of cognitive therapy and antidepressants, but many patients don't respond to these. In the past year Mithoefer has given "MDMA-assisted" psychotherapy to six treatment-resistant patients, all traumatised by violent crimes; he plans to treat 20 patients in all.
The longest-running psychedelic therapy programme started almost 20 years ago in Russia. Evgeny Krupitsky, a psychiatrist who heads a substance-abuse clinic in St Petersburg, has treated more than 300 alcoholics and about 200 heroin addicts with ketamine. Used primarily in veterinary medicine, ketamine is an anaesthetic that can trigger an extremely disorienting hallucinogenic episode lasting an hour or so. Krupitsky's subjects often emerge from their sessions filled with revulsion for their past lives and determined to change. The therapists encourage these feelings with tricks such as forcing the subjects to sniff a bottle of vodka at the peak of their session; the patients' disgust often persists long after the ketamine's effects have worn off.
In one of Krupitsky's studies, 73 out of 111 alcoholics stayed dry for at least a year after their session, compared with 24 per cent of those in a control group. Yet his programme, which was funded by MAPS and the Heffter Institute, was recently shut down because the Russian government tightened restrictions on ketamine. Although Krupitsky says he and his colleagues "are in the process of getting permission to continue", it may be several years before research resumes.
Although disappointed by this setback, Doblin is encouraged by developments elsewhere. He is lobbying officials in Spain and Israel to approve studies of MDMA for PTSD, and is raising funds for a substance-abuse trial of ibogaine outside the US together with the Heffter Institute. MAPS has also supported Frans [Franz] Vollenweider, a psychiatrist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who has done basic research on the physiological effects of psilocybin and MDMA, and hopes to begin clinical research soon.
Doblin's primary goal is to see psychedelics legally recognised as medicines. But he also hopes that someday healthy people may take these substances for psychological or spiritual purposes, as members of the Native American Church and Unio Do Vegetal do, and as he did in his youth. After all, drugs such as Prozac and Viagra are already prescribed not just to heal the ill but also to enhance the lives of the healthy.
It is still an uphill struggle. Government funds for psychedelic studies are hard to come by, and drug companies have shown absolutely no interest in supporting the research. But there are signs that the wind is changing. Although psychedelics are still classified in the US as schedule-1 drugs, and so are banned for all non-research purposes, in November a US Federal Appeals Court in Colorado ruled that
a branch of the UDV based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, could import ayahuasca for use in ceremonies. Among the research findings cited in the court decision were Grob's studies showing no ill effects from ayahuasca. The Department of Justice is appealing the decision, but if the Supreme Court denies the appeal, UDV members in the US will be able to ingest ayahuasca legally.
Maybe, just maybe, after more than 30 years in the wilderness, this powerful, misunderstood but potentially mind-healing class of drugs is ready to be rehabilitated.
>From issue 2488 of New Scientist magazine, 26 February 2005, page 36
Read about current and future research into therapeutic uses of ibogaine, ketamine, LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, and other substances.
New Scientist published a lengthy and extensive overview of current and planned research into the medical or psychiatric benefits of psychedelic substances, including MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, ketamine and ibogaine, and covernig a wide array of MAPS-supported and Heffter Institute supported studies.. The article contains a history of medical research with psychedelics.


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A new UC Irvine study reveals that the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic was deadliest for people under the age of 65, while those 65 and over had greater immunity due to previous exposure to similar viruses. The revelation was made as the world prepares for what may be the next pandemic strain of influenza virus.
Deaths from flu pandemics tend to skew younger than those from seasonal flu because of "antigenic recycling," or the fact that some parts of flu viruses have already made the rounds. Between 1918 and 1957, all flu viruses in circulation fell into the H1N1 category, so in 2009, older adults had some protection stemming from their prior experience with viruses of this type, said Andrew Noymer, UC Irvine associate professor of public health and the study's co-author.
"The swine flu pandemic was relatively mild in the extent to which flu-related deaths were above normal, seasonal levels," he said. "Excess death rates were highest among 25- to 64-year-olds." The findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.
Overall, there were 53,692 pneumonia and influenza deaths in 2009, of which 2,438 were considered "excess," or above the number expected. In 2010, there were about 50,000 deaths from pneumonia and flu, of which 196 were considered excess.
Researchers obtained mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Flu and pneumonia deaths between January 1959 and December 2010 were arranged by age, sex, month and underlying cause. Final numbers on flu deaths for 2009 and 2010 were released in 2012.
The 2009 pandemic was unusual not just for its excess fatalities but for the timing and age distribution of those deaths, Noymer said. October and November of that year saw the highest flu death rates in people 25 to 34 since at least 1959, when the computerized collection of population statistics began.
"The pandemic definition is based on the novelty of the virus strain and on deaths, but mortality does not need to be enormous for it to be considered a pandemic," he said. "The 2009 swine flu was an excellent example of a virus strain with relatively lenient mortality."
Noymer suggests that public health officials consider targeting pandemic vaccination campaigns to adults under age 65, who are not at the greatest risk in regular, seasonal flu outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention currently recommends annual influenza vaccinations for everyone over 6 months old, but pandemic vaccines may not be available in sufficient quantities for the whole population. Focusing on certain age groups may ensure the best use of a limited resource.
The novelty of the currently emerging bird flu strain, H7N9, is noteworthy, Noymer said, as the virus has not been seen before in anyone's lifetime. Although it's too early to predict the seriousness of H7N9, it does have the potential to be severe at all ages, since no one alive today has been previously exposed to this type of virus.
Source: Eurekalert


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This is an awesome study by John Ritenbaugh that I would urge you to read and reflect on its timely message.
If any term catches the essence of mankind's character at the end of the age, it is "faithlessness." Man is generally faithless to any standard that can be considered as truly godly. In II Timothy 3:1-5, the apostle Paul describes the spirit of people at the end of the age:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
Paul lists nineteen characteristics, with "lovers of themselves" and "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" serving as bookends containing the others within them. How can a person be faithful to God when he loves himself more than God? How can a person be faithful to God when his own gratification means more to him than pleasing God? How can a person be faithful if he is a headstrong, haughty slanderer and traitor who is disobedient to parents, greedy, unloving and without self-control?
When counseling a person for baptism, the ministry almost always takes him through Luke 14:26, where Jesus states unequivocally,
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate [love less] his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Faithfulness hinges upon what we value as important combined with commitment. Humans have a powerful tendency to be faithful to what they think is truly important, be it a family name, spouse, friendship, employer, school, athletic team or even certain things like a make of automobile.
This tendency was an issue when the disciples decided to follow Peter's lead and return to their fishing trade after Jesus' death and resurrection. In John 21:15-17, Jesus pointedly asks Peter three times whether he loved Him. The first time He asks whether he loved Him "more than these," referring either to his fellow apostles or the tools of his fishing trade. The inference is inescapable: Jesus wanted Peter to hold Him of greater importance than anything on earth. Considering Peter's weighty responsibility, he could not be faithful to Jesus without the staunchest commitment to Him as most important of all in his life.
The meaning to us is clear. We must love Christ supremely, or we do not love Him much if at all. If we are not willing to give up all earthly possessions, forsake all earthly friends, and obey Him above all others—including our own carnal desires—to be faithful to Him, our attachment to Him is tenuous at best. Is such a proposition too much? Does not marriage require a similar faithfulness from each spouse? Without it, it is no wonder there is so much adultery and divorce.
Holding true to the course God has laid before us is difficult amid this world's many alluring distractions clamoring for our time and attention. This world is attractive to human nature and bids us to expend our energies in self-satisfaction. Jesus warns all who take up their cross that the way is difficult and narrow, requiring a great deal of vision and discipline to be faithful to His cause. Some have completed the course. Those who held God and His way in the highest esteem in their lives are awaiting those of us traveling the path now. Will we be faithful as they were?
What Does It Mean?
"Faithfulness" does not even appear in the New Testament of the King James version (KJV). However, the idea certainly does in the Greek. In the listing of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, every modern translation renders the word that the KJV translates into "faith" as "faithfulness," "fidelity" or "good faith." In his commentary on Galatians, William Barclay writes, "This word (pistis) is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. It is the characteristic of the man who is reliable" (p. 51).
Spiros Zodhiates states that it means "good faith, faithfulness, sincerity"; being faithful, sincere"; and "all good fidelity" (Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament, p. 1162). The Hebrew word rendered "faithfulness" is emunah, which Strong's says literally means "firmness," figuratively means "security" and morally means "fidelity."
The English usage of "faithful" teaches us much that is practical. A large number of synonyms can be related to it, which give understanding in more specific situations. Webster's New World Dictionary defines faithful as "maintaining allegiance; constant; loyal; marked by or showing a strong sense of duty or responsibility; conscientious; accurate; reliable; exact."
The dictionary then compares "faithful" with its synonyms:
Faithful implies steadfast adherence to a person or thing to which one is bound as by an oath or obligation; loyal implies undeviating allegiance to a person, cause, institution, etc. which one feels morally bound to support or defend; constant suggests freedom from fickleness in affections or loyalties; staunch implies such a strong allegiance to one's principles or purposes as not to be turned aside by any cause; resolute stresses unwavering determination, often in adhering to one's personal ends or aims.
Other synonyms include dedicated, steadfast, devoted, dependable, accurate, true, conscientious, dutiful, careful, scrupulous and thorough.
Faithless means "not keeping faith; dishonest; disloyal; unreliable; undependable; unbelieving." Its synonyms include doubting, treacherous and unscrupulous.
Faithlessness in the End Time
The apostle Paul writes that "evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived" (II Timothy 3:13). People today are no different from when Moses wrote the Pentateuch or Paul his epistles, but the occasion to sin, the incentive to do so and thus sin's frequency and intensity are at their highest levels since just before the Flood. In other words, the environment to commit sin more easily grows ever more amenable, and human nature is taking advantage of it. We have been born into—indeed have unwittingly contributed to creating—an environment in which it is exceedingly difficult to remain faithful.
We live in a world in which self-centeredness is being promoted to its greatest extent in human history. Appealing advertising hammers away at us to gratify ourselves: Why wait, why deny ourselves, why sacrifice, why not go along with everyone else? Constantly we hear, "Indulge yourself because you deserve it."
This world always appeals to moral and ethical standards lower than those of the great God and His way of life. In Technicolor with emotion-stirring music, Hollywood "sells" adultery and fornication as acceptable as long as the couple involved are attractive and somehow oppressed—thus "deserving" of a "better" relationship.
War, murder, lying, stealing, coveting, Sabbath-breaking and idolatry are acts that almost everyone in the world would claim as being wrong, yet most unwittingly commit them to some degree and promote them in our culture. They justify their sin because everybody else is doing it, and they see no good reason why they should not just go along. If they try to swim against the tide, they think they will be taken advantage of.
Not too long ago, a person's word was his bond, and mere handshakes sealed major business agreements. Tales of Abraham Lincoln's honesty over pennies are an almost legendary part of our nation's history. Historians say that faithfulness was such a hallmark of the Roman Republic that not one divorce occurred in its first seven hundred years! But in the last fifty years this nation has seen a calamitous, family-destroying rise in the divorce rate that threatens the very stability of society.
Faithlessness is playing a major role in this destruction. People are without natural affection and traitors to their marital contract. Child abuse is becoming ever more prevalent. Athletes seem to break contracts almost at will. Manufacturers lie about the quality of their products, and workers fudge in the quality of their work.
Faithlessness is rising to its peak because self-centeredness, the father of irresponsibility, is being promoted to its utmost. It is the spirit of this age, but we have cause to resist it by what God has offered us in His revelation. God-centeredness in our lives is the answer to faithlessness and irresponsibility. But God-centeredness is not cheap, and few are willing to pay the price: their lives!
An Overview of God's Faithfulness
As with all the fruit of the Spirit, God Himself is the model we must study for examples of faithfulness to encourage us to trust and to emulate Him. The faithfulness of God is a familiar phrase to those of a religious mind, but its depth and scope are probably not as familiar. God's faithfulness seems to have been a favorite subject of Paul's. He writes of it in his first epistle (I Thessalonians) and again in what may have been his last (II Timothy). Paul had proved it in a thousand dangers and struggles; he found that, when all was said and done, God had never failed him.
Other New Testament writers are equally expressive on this subject. Peter writes, "Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator" (I Peter 4:19). "Commit" is the word Greeks would use for making a deposit with a trusted friend as we would to a bank. Christ committed His life to God all the way to death, and we are to follow His steps (I Peter 2:21). Paul responds with a similar statement in II Timothy 1:12:
For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
Paul adds in II Timothy 2:13, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself."
When we speak of one another as faithful, we mean that we adhere to our word, that we keep faith with men and that we discharge the obligations of our office or position. Because of these things, we are trustworthy. It is much the same when we think and speak of God's faithfulness.
Usually, the first idea that comes to mind when God is called faithful is that He keeps His promises. This, of course, is included in the concept of God's faithfulness, but it is interesting that it appears only twice in the New Testament. In Hebrews 10:23, Paul exhorts, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." Later, he writes that Sarah "judged Him faithful who had promised" (Hebrews 11:11).
Paul's thought in II Timothy 2:13 goes far beyond even this. This verse tells us that we can trust Him all the way to death because "He cannot deny Himself." God's very nature and character constitute a solemn obligation that He is His own law, that He is bound by what He is and that He can never be even in the smallest degree contradictory to or less than the level of His own consistent and uniform self. No wonder James 1:17 exclaims:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
As God, He must be true to the character of goodness and wisdom that His very name implies.
By contrast, a war goes on in us. Contradictory impulses and thoughts flood our minds. "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh" (Galatians 5:17), and we frequently lose the battle because the divine nature does not completely fill our minds. We blow hot and cold and drop below our best selves.
No man is always himself, but God is always Himself! With God it is as the apostle John says, "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" (I John 1:5). There is nothing in God to mar His faithfulness in carrying out His Word or His past acts. Our calling to Christ is one of God's past acts. This means that what God has begun in us He will complete all the way to salvation (Philippians 1:6). When we die, He will have prepared us for a responsibility in His family Kingdom.
God's Faithfulness and Sanctification
I Thessalonians 5:23-24 is a prayer of Paul's in which he makes a bold request on behalf of that congregation. It contains great encouragement for us:
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.
Paul requests their complete sanctification and preservation as holy until they die or God finishes His activities on behalf of the church at Christ's coming.
Sanctification is the part of salvation that deals with our progressive growth in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ—or put another way, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ—or in yet another way, into God's image. God is faithful in carrying out His part in the building of Christian character. God's faithfulness guarantees the progressive perfection of a Christian's life. He is not like men who begin a project, lose interest, run into difficulties, consider it too hard to overcome or become impatient and quit. He does not begin a work and then get disgusted with it and turn to something else. He does not begin and, finding He lacks the resources to finish, give up. Men do this, but God never stops until He is finished. He does not finish until He is satisfied.
Jesus mentions the mocking of people who observe a person who begins to build but fails to finish (Luke 14:30). But the Scriptures say of God working through a man, "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands shall also finish it" (Zechariah 4:9)! There are no half-completed failures in God's workshop. All we need to do is continue to yield. If we do, the cleansing, molding and perfecting of the saints that the patient and persistent Master Artist and Craftsman has begun will be completed.
God's Faithfulness and Trials
With this understanding of God's faithfulness, we can then apply this principle to other areas of Christian life that are of practical and daily importance. By this we can be assured that He will deal with us in a patient, merciful, generous and yet persistent manner.
Very early in the Bible appears a vivid example of God's faithfulness that helped to perfect those undergoing trials: "Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth and the waters subsided" (Genesis 8:1). It is good to first consider that God's faithfulness covers animal life as well as human life. He upholds "all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3). He does not simply create and then leave His creations to their own devices. His obligation to all life and its care and sustenance continues unabated.
Though the words of this verse are few and simple, to those who feel lost in the depth of an ongoing trial a world of meaning lies here: We are not lost to God. Noah, his family and animals were virtually imprisoned in the ark for months, pitching about alone on an endless sea. Nothing broke the skyline. Noah could have easily thought himself as forgotten. Though he could remind himself that God had promised him protection, where was God now—now when the gray days and black nights dragged by and wherever he looked he saw only empty waters and a sky that seemed to hold no hope?
Have we ever found ourselves seemingly cut loose from all moorings, adrift in a sea of problems from which, as far as we could tell, God has vanished? Have we ever begun on what seemed like a great adventure only to be swept away in a flood of sorrow, loneliness, perplexity and disappointment that seems as though it will end only in despair? Perhaps we have felt as Asaph did in Psalm 77:4, 8: "You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forevermore?"
God, however, did not lose track of Noah, and He will not lose track of us! The story of the Flood does not end on a note of hopelessness. The Flood abated. Mountaintops appeared, and the ark came to rest. Their physical survival assured, Noah and his family resumed life on an earth revived and cleansed of sin.
We may never have to face a trial of this magnitude, but God's faithfulness promises another great assurance: It guarantees that all our trials will be in proportion to our strength. God pledges through Paul in I Corinthians 10:13:
No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
David writes in Psalm 103:13-14, "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust."
God will never lay on us anything beyond our power to overcome. He knows how much pressure our hearts can stand. Do teachers give college-level assignments to a first grader and expect them to perform? Men are careful not to overload a truck, horse, mule or ox. Will God be any less merciful and faithful to us, His children He is creating in His image? He clearly recognizes His obligation to the work of His own hands to supply our needs and shape the burdens needed to prepare us for His Kingdom.
God's Faithfulness and Forgiveness
Earlier, we saw that one of God's past acts was calling us to be in Christ. Paul confirms this as an act of God's faithfulness in I Corinthians 1:9: "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." Our calling would go nowhere beyond a meaningless invitation if God was not faithful to forgive our sins. Without forgiveness and cleansing, there is no access to Him, and thus no relationship with Him blossoms and grows. Paul writes in Romans 5:1-2:
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
One can justifiably say that this expression of God's faithfulness is the pivot upon which turns His whole purpose for humanity. God calls and then through His goodness leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). I John 1:9 then adds, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Since Christ has come and died that we might be pardoned and cleansed, God's faithfulness is part of His grace. He would not be faithful to His promises, His past acts in Christ's works, or His calling that has sounded in our ears unless, when we obeyed the call and confessed, He allowed us to enter into the full possession of His pardoning grace. In other words, our forgiveness and cleansing, the receiving of favor from Him, is a product of His faithfulness.
God's faithfulness in these areas has far-reaching, practical ramifications for us. That God is faithful means that His character is unchangingly consistent. The unalterable structure of the universe consists of both justice and forgiveness. God never acts in contradiction of Himself, and in all experiences we may depend on Him to be unalterably just and forgiving toward us. Because He is faithful, He can be the central and most important object of our faith. Could we trust a god if we were never sure what he would do?
What Is Our Responsibility?
Another biblical term has a direct link to God's faithfulness: redemption. The Revised Standard Version renders what David says in Psalm 31:5 as: "Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God." Does redemption come to us without cost or obligation on our part? Is there nothing we must do to prove we have been redeemed? God Himself answers this question many times. Deuteronomy 26:16-19 is just one of them:
This day the Lord your God commands you to observe these statutes and judgments; therefore you shall be careful to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have proclaimed the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statues, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice. Also today the Lord has proclaimed you to be His special people, just as He has promised you, that you should keep all His commandments, and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may be a holy people to the Lord your God, just as He has spoken.
Israel had been redeemed from Egypt, made a covenant with God and been told their responsibility. God makes it very clear that the relationship between Him and man is a two-way affair. Upon us devolves the duty of complete consecration and willingness to obey. We are called to faithfulness to Him and to each other as reflected in our lives by our keeping of His commandments. God on His part grants us access to Him by which He ministers great blessings of His Spirit, giving us the means to be faithful.
Israel failed miserably, being guilty of all manner of faithlessness. So great was their faithlessness that God sundered the relationship. Perhaps nowhere is Israel's faithlessness shown more vividly than in Hosea 2:2-5:
Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; for she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and expose her, as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. I will not have mercy on her children for they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, "I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink."
God calls upon the church to succeed where Israel failed, yet currently, the Church of God is badly divided and so widely scattered that it can almost be called shattered. Surely this derives from the unfaithfulness in attitude and conduct reflected in the past 25 years of the church's existence. Leviticus 26:33 clearly shows that scattering results from faithless commandment-breaking, and a vomiting out of the mouth (another metaphor for scattering) is evidence of inconsistency and instability of attitude. We have not held faith with our covenantal responsibilities!
Jesus proclaims in Matthew 25:1-13 that in the time immediately preceding His return in all the power and glory of God, His church will have gone to sleep and faithlessly allowed its oil to run low. Is that the attitude of faithful stewards of the mysteries of God? We are all guilty because, as the parable shows, all ten virgins went to sleep. But even as all ten slept, it is also possible that all ten can repent.
What is the attitude, or what qualities in us should correspond to the faithfulness of God? Paul writes in Hebrews 10:23, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." Holding fast is the first indication of faithfulness, but our understanding increases when we know the word translated "faithful" is the same word translated "faithfulness" in Galatians 5:22. It is understood as "reliable" or "trustworthy" rather than "fidelity" because it is being fully convicted of the truth of God that engenders loyalty and dependability. Faith in God corresponds to God's faithfulness. As with two tuning forks of the same pitch, when one is struck, the other responds by vibrating also. God's faithfulness should awaken faith in us, so we can respond in submissive obedience. If He is worth trusting, we should trust Him.
Since God is faithful, it has become our responsibility to imitate Him in being faithful by committing our lives to well doing. In II Corinthians 1:17-19, Paul demonstrates from his own life what this means:
Therefore, when I was planning this, did I do it lightly? Or the things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me, there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No? But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes.
Does God speak and not act? Even Balaam understood that when God's Word goes forth, it accomplishes what He sent it to do. There is no ambiguity on this matter; God's promises are sure. He never deceives, and there is never inconsistency or fickleness in Him. He is always true. Jesus called Himself "the truth" (John 14:6), and in Revelation 3:14 His title is "the faithful and true witness."
Similarly, Paul states that his, Silvanus' and Timothy's declarations, their preaching about God, were also faithful, unvarnished, unexaggerated and uncolored. They did not change the truth or shade it in any way. Jesus says He came into this world to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37). Paul felt he was under sacred obligation to do the same and maintain a character of the strictest veracity in every respect. Perhaps our greatest obligation on earth is for us to imitate our Redeemer's faithfulness. It does not become an individual who professes to trust in the faithful God to be shifty and unreliable in word and deed.
This is a very high pinnacle for us to strive for, but we must try, though we know we will not be saved as a result. Perhaps because we know our salvation does not depend on our works, there is a subtle persuasion not to be as careful as we should. Again, Paul gives us direction in this regard:
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)
Jesus says in His prophetic message about the end-time church:
Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods. (Matthew 24:45-47).
Considering the context, this instruction tells us that it is the faithful Christian who will be ready for Christ's coming. He will be ever alert to the times in which he lives and will pattern his life accordingly, making effort to be found faithful. Verse 47 promises God will reward the faithful for these efforts.
Because God is faithful, the strength to be faithful is promised to us. Hebrews 4:16 assures us, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Forgiveness, access to His throne, and the promises of His Spirit and that no trial will be greater than we can bear—combined with His declaration that He works in us both to will and to do—assure us that this fruit of the Spirit can be produced in us when we yield as faithful servants.
© 1998 Church of the Great God
Read more: http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PERSONAL/k/244/Fruit-of-Spirit-Faithfulness.htm#ixzz1CR0dPlzW


text:
Howard Nostrand was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and moved to Hempstead, Long Island in 1932. After graduating from high school, he worked with his father in the antique business for a while. He eventually became an inker on Bob Powell's comics for Harvey and Fawcett in 1948, working in a studio with George Siefringer and Martin Epp on among others 'Straight Arrow' and 'Hot Rod Comics'.
Nostrand left Powell in 1952 and started working directly for Harvey on among others the 3D comics, FLIP magazine and horror titles such as Witches Tales and Tomb of Terror. In 1959, he did the short-lived newspaper strip 'Bat Masterson' with assistance of Neal Adams. Nostrand eventually turned to illustrating.
Nostrand, posing for an illustration


text:
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text:
Browse By PC Games Title:
Phantasy Star Universe
Cheat Codes:
Submitted by: conner54
Extra mode:
Complete Chapter 4 in Story mode offline.
More photon points (multi-weapon):
Go to the shop and buy a lot of the same weapon that you use. Then, add them all to your
palette. Equip all of them with skills, if desired. This trick does not require multiple
skill items.
This saves lots of Meseta because you will not need to buy Photon Charges. This trick is
also very effective for forces because they will not run out of photons nearly as often.
Extra mode cast voices:
Successfully complete the game by defeating all forms of the final Boss to unlock new
voice options when creating a new cast character.
Chapter preview:
Successfully complete the timed missions in a chapter with an "S" rank. You will
hear an audio preview of the next chapter when the current chapter ends.
Extra mode: Easy experience:
The more missions you have completed in Story mode, the more that become available
in Extra mode. From level 1, you may level up your character to level 10 or so by
simply repeating the first mission from the Flyer Base on Parum, "Creature Discomfort".
This will also give you a chance to build up a supply of Synthesis items, Star
Atomizers, and Scape Dolls if you break open the correct boxes. After reaching level
10, go to the shops on the various planets and look for the best items and discs.
If you have already completed the first six missions
of Story mode, you will be in good shape. For Rangers, two Blasters, two Compadri, and two
Ortotore/Bastara Combinations are recommended. As for the Photon Arts, Ice Elements are
recommended, as they are widely effective and Freezing is a useful status, and to switch
the elements for your second weapon according to the situation at hand.
Continue fighting until you reach level 15, then do the mission from the Parum Flyer Base
"Ruler of the Plains" for experience. Have half of your weapons set to Ice and the other
half for Grav if you are a Ranger. All Koltovas and Flying enemies here are weak to Ice,
and the Vahras are weak to Grav. The De Ragan is also weak to Ice. To take him down easily,
Aim for the base of his neck of his head with your weapons. However if you are a Ranger,
an Ice-equpped Blaster or Compadri works best. If you get an "S" rank on this mission,
you will get 1,500 Meseta, 60 Mission Points, and a De Ragan Room Decoration that sells
for 5,000 Meseta. For defeating the De Ragan, you ill receive 1,440 experience points.
Because there are twenty five total enemies in the mission each giving about 40 experience
points, you will end up with about 2,440 experience each trip. Continue this until you
are about level 25. After reaching level 25, upgrade your weapons (either buy new ones
or use Grinder C+3s that sell for 1,500 Meseta from the Items shop on them) for extra
power. With a C+3, there is no chance of upgrade failure for the first two times.
You can safely upgrade all your weapons twice. After this, go back to Parum again. This
time go to the Linear Train Platform in the G.R.M. Shop area. Make sure to Photon Charge
and Save, then take the Cargo Train Rescue mission. This mission is difficult to get
an "S" in, but is also worth it. All enemies are either weak to Ice or have no weakness.
Enemies here give more experience points, and if you successfully find all thirty two
enemies and finish in under seven minutes, you will get an "S" rank. If you get an "S"
rank on this mission, you will get even more Meseta, mission points, and another room
decoration item that sells for 5,000 Meseta, as well as an Extra Slot item for an Armor.
Easy Meseta:
When you get to level five, go to the Burning Plains Mission (I would suggest that you
use Maya, Hyuga and Karen, but any party will do). It doesnt really matter what type
of weapon you use so dont worry about that. Once you are on the mission, make sure that
you purify all the seed and kill all the monsters in under eight minutes. Once you have
completed the mission and done everything above, you should get an "S" rating and some
valuable items to sell off. You can repeat this as necessary.
More photon points:
Go to the shop and buy a lot of the same weapon that you use. Then, add them all to your
palette. Equip all of them with skills, if desired. This trick does not require multiple
skill items. This saves lots of Meseta because you will not need to buy Photon Charges.
This trick is also very effective for forces because they will not run out of photons
nearly as often.
Easy experience:
To start, you must be above level 15, have an Ice weapon, and must be able to do above
200 damage. This will be a good thing because most monsters will have 300 to 400 HP.
Finish this mission with a time less then 9:30 and kill 82 enemies. Once you get through
most of it, there will be a location that you must break open boxes. You must explore
and kill anything. Pick up the things they drop, such as money and weapons. Once you
get through all that you will face three Tengogh. If you kill them, they will drop about
2,400 to 3,000 Meseta. If you complete the mission with 82 monsters and a time less than
9:30, you will earn a Stag Beetle that sells for 25,000 Meseta. Once you get mostly
everything done and sell the Stag Beetle you may end up with 55,000 Meseta.
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text:
Louis Melville Milne-Thomson
Quick Info
Ealing, London, England
Sevenoaks, Kent, England
BiographyLouis Melville Milne-Thomson's mother was Eva Mary Milne, the daughter of the Revd J Milne, and his father was Colonel Alexander Milne-Thomson who was a physician and surgeon. Louis was the eldest of his parents' sons. Milne-Thomson entered Clifton College in Bristol in 1906 as a classical scholar and in his final year at the College he won a scholarship to study mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Entering Cambridge in 1909 he took part I of the Mathematical Tripos in 1911, achieving a First Class, and graduated with distinction as a Wrangler in 1913.
Milne-Thomson was appointed as an assistant mathematics master at Winchester College in 1914. This is one of the oldest of the famous public schools of England, founded in 1382, and is situated in Winchester, Hampshire. On 12 September 1914, shortly after he took up his appointment, Milne-Thomson married Gertrude Frommknecht; the marriage produced three daughters. After teaching for seven years at Winchester College, Milne-Thomson left in 1921 to take up an appointment as professor of mathematics at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.
The most important topic that Milne-Thomson undertook research on near the start of his career was compiling tables. His first publication on this topic was undertaken jointly with an established table constructor, L J Comrie. Their Standard Four Figure Mathematical Tables (1931) was used for many years. A year later he published Standard table of square roots and Jacobian Elliptic Function Tables. The second of these was written in German but it was published in English in 1950. S C van Veen, reviewing the tables, writes:-
The chief problem in using elliptic functions has always been the lack of suitable numerical tables. Therefore the collection of tables, compiled by the author is an excellent manual, which supplies a long-felt want. ... A comprehensive collection of formulae is included, and many numerical examples are given in order to illustrate the use of these tables. The formulae have been carefully chosen with a view to facilitating calculations which may present themselves. Formulae special to particular branches of knowledge are not included, with the exception of some conformal transformations which cover ground common to several sciences.Of course the main mathematical tool used in constructing tables was the method of finite differences and in 1933 Milne-Thomson published his first textbook, The Calculus of Finite Differences, a text in which he set out to explain to students the techniques which he used in table making. He taught these methods to his students in the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and they found his clearly written text a great asset. The book became a classic student text and the original text was reprinted in 1951.
His next text was also to become a classic but it marked a change in direction in Milne-Thomson's research interests. This text was Theoretical Hydrodynamics which was first published in 1938. A second edition of the work appeared in 1950 and contained some additional material, partly based on his own work during the intervening years. He writes:-
Apart from rearrangements and new methods of presentation this edition differs from its predecessor in three important particulars: the introduction of the circle theorem [Milne-Thomson (1940)], whereby the disturbance of a given two-dimensional flow by the introduction of a circular cylinder can be written down without calculation; the corresponding theorem for the sphere [P Weiss (1944)]; the addition of a chapter on the flow of compressible fluids.Three further additions of new material were added for the third edition which was published in 1956, then still more material was added for the fourth edition in 1960 and again for a fifth edition which appeared in 1968. Similarly Theoretical Aerodynamics, first published in 1948, went though a number of editions with the fourth appearing twenty years later in 1968.
In 1956 Milne-Thomson reached the age of sixty-five years and retired from the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. He then took up various posts as Visiting Professor at institutions throughout the world: Applied Mathematics at Brown
University, Rhode Island; the US Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin from 1958 to 1960 where he worked on plane and antiplane elastic problems; the University of Arizona from 1961 to 1970 where he led a very active group of research students; the University of Rome in 1968; the University of Queensland in 1969; the University of Calgary in 1970; and the University of Otago in 1971. By 1971 he had reached the age of eighty and felt that he really did want to retire and went to live in Sevenoaks, Kent.
Let us now look briefly at some papers which Milne-Thomson published between 1940 and his final paper in 1972. In Hydrodynamical images (1940) he finds the flow about any two-dimensional cylinder. In 1948 he published Applications of elliptic functions to wind tunnel interference while in 1957 he wrote a review paper A general solution of the equations of hydrodynamics which M G Scherberg reviews as follows:-
To write a review having at least the brevity of this elegant use of mathematics was not easy. The paper treats compressible or incompressible fluids of constant viscosity and finds the density, velocity and stress distribution in terms of an arbitrary function and a second rank arbitrary tensor.In another paper Some hydrodynamical methods written in the same year Milne-Thomson gives us a flavour of his views on mathematics:-
Mathematics is about the logical consequences of assumed propositions, nowadays called axioms. Thus all mathematics is one. The fancied distinction between 'pure' and 'applied' is a modern and false dichotomy unknown to Euler and Cauchy.Another topic which interested him was stress. For example he wrote Consistency equations for the stresses in isotropic elastic and plastic materials (1942), and Stress in an infinite half-plane (1947). He gave two lectures in Madrid in 1951 on the elements of finite elasticity theory, the first lecture covering the topics of deformation tensors, stress, equations of motion, and energy. He published a monograph Plane elastic systems in 1960 and it was noted in a review that:-
[t]he particular clearness of the treatment as well as the mathematical accuracy are to be noticed.Two years later Milne-Thomson published a sequel entitled Antiplane elastic systems. His final paper Some aspects of antiplane stress was on similar topics. Here is his own summary of its contents:-
Important problems in the linear theory of the equilibrium of beams of isotropic elastic material have usually been approached by the so-called semi-inverse method, whereby a system of stresses or displacements is guessed and subsequently verified. It is, however, possible to look at these problems in such a way that guesswork is eliminated and reliance placed solely on the boundary conditions. Thus in the case of a cylinder suspended with its axis vertical under gravity, the mere fact that the lateral surface and the lower face are unloaded suffices to solve the problem. Again in the case of torsion the presence of a couple about the axis suffices to give the distribution which leads to the solution. In our opinion too much attention has in the past been given to displacements and strain coefficients and not enough to stress. It is stress, not strain, which should be stressed!Milne-Thomson received many honours for his achievements. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 6 March 1933. He was also elected to the Royal Astronomical Society and the Cambridge Philosophical Society. In 1952 he was made a CBE. Finally let us record that he listed sailing and foreign travel as his favourite recreations.
References (show)
- Biography by Mary Croarken, in Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). See THIS LINK.
- Louis Melville Milne-Thomson, The Times (24 Aug 1974).
- Professor L M Milne-Thomson : a biographical note, L M Milne-Thomson anniversary issue I, J. Mathematical and Physical Sci. 7 (4) (1973), i-vi.
Additional Resources (show)
Other pages about Louis Melville Milne-Thomson:
Other websites about Louis Melville Milne-Thomson:
Honours (show)
Honours awarded to Louis Melville Milne-Thomson
Cross-references (show)
Written by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
Last Update February 2005
Last Update February 2005


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School Climate Key to Preventing Bullying
Nov. 25, 2013 — To effectively prevent bullying schools need to understand positive school climate, use reliable measures to evaluate school climate and use effective prevention and intervention programs to improve the climate, a recent paper co-authored by a University of California, Riverside assistant professor found.
Cixin Wang, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education, co-authored the article, "The Critical Role of School Climate in Effective Bullying Prevention," with Brandi Berry and Susan M. Swearer, both of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was published in the journal Theory Into Practice.
"Bullying is a very complex problem," Wang said. "With this research, we're really trying to provide school personnel with some proven steps to address the problem."
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in reducing bullying behavior by school personnel, parents and students. However, educators have remained challenged about how to assess the factors that cause bullying and select evidence-based prevention and intervention programs.
Wang and her colleagues sought to address these issues by highlighting the importance of school climate in bullying prevention and reviewing school climate evaluations and intervention programs.
They found that positive relationships among students and teachers, and negative attitudes toward inappropriate behavior such as bullying are key elements of a positive school climate.
To create a positive school climate, school personnel need to promote and model appropriate attitudes and behaviors, such as caring, empathy, and appropriate interactions among and between teachers and students.
To foster attitudes against bullying, in addition to promoting knowledge and awareness of bullying, teachers need to take reports of any bullying incident seriously and intervene consistently according to school rules instead of ignoring or minimizing bullying behavior.
Adult behavior is also critical foundation for a healthy school climate. Adults should refrain from bullying students and other adults at school. In addition, teachers need to incorporate school climate interventions into the curriculum and use teachable moments to openly discuss topics related to bullying, such as popularity, power and social ostracism.
Finally, bullying is not only a behavior problem, but also a mental health problem. Research has shown that students involved in bullying experience more mental health difficulties and display higher levels of cognitive distortions. Thus, educators need to seek professional help from mental health practitioners for students involved in bullying and experiencing mental health difficulties.