text:
General terms of use and data protection provisions
Version 2.0 dated 25/05/2018
The publication platform on www.fundpublications.com is aimed exclusively at persons with a place of residence or registered office in one of the countries that can be selected in advance.
The correct designation of the investor category is the sole responsibility of the user of this platform.
It is expressly stated that none of the information contained on the publication platform constitutes a recommendation, an offer or an invitation to purchase or sell a financial instrument.
A. General terms of use
1. General
ACOLIN InfoTech AG ("the Operator") headquartered in Zurich (Switzerland) is the owner of this internet platform www.fundpublications.com ("FundPublications"), and also performs further services that are independent of FundPublications within information and communication technology for third parties. FundPublications is an electronic platform recognised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) as defined in Art. 39 CISO.
These terms and conditions of use and data protection provisions apply for the entire contents of FundPublications and its use by visitors to the platform ("users"). They are valid in the current version from 25/05/2018 and supersede all previous information. Persons who access the information on FundPublications or use it (for their own purposes or for a third party), declare themselves in agreement with the following conditions.
2. Availability, accuracy and currency of information
FundPublications is used solely for information purposes. It is a platform that publishes information, data and documents provided by third parties regarding funds, but the platform does not check content.
The Operator takes the greatest reasonable care to ensure that the information is correct at the time of publication. The Operator cannot, however, provide any assurance or guarantee with regard to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the published information or that said information is up to date.
The information published on FundPublications can be changed at any time without prior notification. Information published on FundPublications should therefore not be understood in such a way that circumstances have not changed since publication, or since disclosure to the supervisory authorities, or that the information is still current after its publication. The Operator recommends updating your internet browser each time you visit the platform so as to ensure that you are accessing the newest version of the website each time.
3. No investment advice
The information on FundPublications and the data, information and documents available on FundPublications in no way constitute an offer to purchase or sell or a prompt to subscribe of securities or financial instruments. In addition, the information does not constitute a decision-making aid for economic, legal, or tax reasons or any other consulting matters and can also not replace such a decision-making aid. The data, information and documents obtained through FundPublications do not take into account the specific or future investment objectives, financial or tax situation or the individual needs of the individual recipient. Advice from a qualified expert is recommended in all cases. Special attention is to be paid to the risks associated with the respective investments in terms of fluctuations in value and earnings in particular.
4. Disclaimer of liability and warranty
To the extent legally possible, the Operator shall not be liable for damages caused by actions taken based on information or documents published on FundPublications. Furthermore, in accordance with applicable statutory provisions, no liability is assumed for the accuracy and completeness of the content of the platform. In addition, to the extent legally possible, the Operator cannot assume any guarantee or liability for the permanent and fault-free availability of the platform, the information contained on the platform or its functionalities (e.g. favourites function).
The Operator is therefore, to the extent legally possible, not responsible for direct, indirect, special or accidental damage, consequential damage or other damage of any kind and or any cause in connection with the use of the platform www.fundpublications.com or in reliance upon the information available on the platform www.fundpublications.com, including business disruptions, lost use, data loss, lost profits or other pecuniary losses, even if the Operator was informed about the possibility of said damage.
5. References and links
The FundPublications website may contain hyperlinks which link to third-party websites. These links are outside the influence of the Operator, since these are added by various data suppliers of the Operator or the fund providers of the corresponding investment funds themselves in their documents itself to be published (external information). As a pure information service provider, the Operator does not check the hyperlinks and is not required to review linked content. Therefore, the Operator assumes no responsibility of any kind for the accuracy, completeness and legality of the content of such third-party websites, as well as for any offers and services contained thereon.
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The users of FundPublications are not permitted to take the following actions without the prior written consent of the Operator:
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• make the data or documents published on the platform available for a fee;
• create links to FundPublications.
7. User information
The users of FundPublications must state their personal investor type (e.g. in Switzerland: qualified or non-qualified investor) and country of domicile when visiting the platform. The range of information and documents subsequently available on investment funds is intended exclusively for users corresponding to the respective investor type. Providing an incorrect investment type can lead to the display of information and documents of investment funds not intended for the user. Users are obliged to provide the correct investor type. The Operator cannot be held liable for damages or inconvenience arising from the user providing an incorrect investor type.
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Users can use the following functions after successfully registering on FundPublications:
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Users can create a list of favourites with sub-funds by selecting the option "Add to favourites". In their accounts, users can also view the list and edit it accordingly if required.
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In order to do this, users must add the relevant funds to their favourites list and activate the notification in their account settings.
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Past performance is no indicator of current or future performance. Investments in foreign currencies may also be subject to currency fluctuations and therefore may involve higher risks.
FundPublications may contain statements that focus on future developments or circumstances that have not yet occurred. Even if these forward-looking statements reflect the opinion and future expectations of the respective fund providers, a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors may mean that the actual developments and results deviate considerably from the expectations of the respective fund providers. The Operator is not required (and expressly excludes any such obligation) to check, update or amend forward-looking statements made by the respective fund providers, be that based on new information, future events or for other reasons.
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The entire contents of FundPublications are protected by the copyrights of the Operator, the various data suppliers of the Operator or the fund providers of the corresponding investment funds. Saving or printing individual pages and/or sub-areas of FundPublications is permitted, provided that neither copyright notices nor other legally protected names (e.g. trademarks) are removed.
All property rights relating to the content or the platform itself remain in each case with the Operator, the various data suppliers of the Operator or the fund providers of the corresponding investments funds and no licensing or ownership rights of any kind are granted to the user.
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FundPublications includes information and documents about investment funds and is not intended for persons subject to a legal order that prohibits the publication of or access to the platform (due to the nationality of the person concerned, their tax residence or for other reasons). Persons who are subject to such local restrictions are not permitted to access FundPublications.
Individual country-specific or person-specific sales restrictions may apply for the products published on FundPublications. Investors have to observe the corresponding products conditions of the issuer at their own responsibility.
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Users can close their account at any time by sending an email to email@example.com or following the instructions in their profile settings.
The Operator reserves the right to close a user's account in the case of violations of the existing terms and conditions of use or data protection provisions on the part of the user. With the exception of gross violations, users will be given a deadline to secure their data before the closure is complete.
B. Data protection provisions
13. Principle
The data protection provisions show which personal data the Operator collects, uses and handles and how this is done.
The Operator shall comply with the applicable data protection legislation and protect the user data as well as possible.
The responsible body is ACOLIN InfoTech AG. For more information, please refer to the legal notice. If you have questions or comments about these data protection regulations, you can contact us as follows:
ACOLIN InfoTech AG
Leutschenbachstrasse 50
8050 Zurich, Switzerland
Email: email@example.com
Telephone: +41 44 396 95 00
Unless otherwise stated, these terms are governed by REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data, on free data communications and repealing directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation, hereinafter "GDPR").
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When visiting FundPublications, the following personal data of the user can be stored temporarily:
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The Operator collects the personal data of users primarily for the purpose of operating a publishing platform subject to all statutory requirements and to ensure the optimum operation of the platform with all functions.
The legal basis for the processing of personal data using log files is Article 6 (1) lit. f GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 1 and 2 DSG (Federal Data Protection Act, Switzerland).
The collected data will be deleted after three months at most. The right to observe conflicting statutory storage obligations or official instructions is reserved.
If the user creates an account on FundPublications, the following personal data will also be stored:
• First name, surname
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Further data can be saved using cookies (see the following sections).
The data is processed in order to set up and maintain the user account and to be able to perform the associated services.
The legal basis for the processing of personal data using log files is Art. 6 (1) lit. b and f GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 1 and Para. 2 lit. a DSG,
The personal data will be deleted within 14 months if a user account is closed. The right to observe conflicting statutory storage obligations or official instructions is reserved.
The personal data can only be forwarded within ACOLIN Holding AG and its subsidiaries ("ACOLIN") for the stated purpose. Please note that any data transfer to ACOLIN InfoTech D.O.O., based in Belgrade, Serbia, is covered by a contract based on the EU standard contractual clauses.
The Operator does not make the personal data collected accessible to other third parties, unless this is required to fulfil its statutory or contractual obligations arising from the operation of the platform (e.g. platform hosts or data centre operators). In such cases, the Operator requires the contractual assurances from these third parties that they will treat personal data as confidential or the information will only be transferred in an anonymous and/or encrypted form. The Operator points out that the servers of the platform host used and/or the data centre are located in Germany, a country which has a level of legal protection equivalent to that of Switzerland.
Exceptions also arise if such a disclosure is prescribed by law or ordered by law enforcement agencies or supervisory authorities. In all other cases, the Operator shall disclose the personal information of users only with their prior express consent.
15. Google Analytics
This website and/or platform uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service of Google Inc. ("Google"). This makes it possible to assign data, sessions and interactions across multiple devices to a pseudonymous user ID, thereby analysing the activities of a user across devices.
Google Analytics also uses cookies (see paragraph 6 above).
The information generated by the cookies about your use of our websites (such as web browser used and web browser version, the user's operating system, the domain name of the user's internet provider, referrer URL, shortened IP address) are generally transferred to a Google server in the US and stored there.
We only use Google Analytics with IP anonymisation activated. This means that the IP address used will be shortened by Google within member states of the European Union or in other signatory states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases is the full IP address transferred to a Google server in the USA and truncated there. This means that ACOLIN is no longer able to produce a reference to a particular person. Google uses this information on our behalf to evaluate your use of the website, to compile reports on website activity and to provide other services related to website and internet usage to the website operator. The IP address provided by your browser to Google Analytics will not be combined with other Google data.
If you do not wish this to be done, you may prevent the collection of the data generated by the cookie and relating to your use of the website (including your IP address) by Google, as well as the processing of this data by Google, by using the link below to download and install the available browser plug-in: Browser add on for deactivation of Google Analytics: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.
You can also prevent the storage of cookies by setting up your browser software accordingly; however, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use all the features of this website to their fullest extent.
More information on this can be found here (general information on Google Analytics and data protection).
The collected data will be deleted automatically after 14 months at most.
The legal basis for the use of Google Analytics is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 1 and 2 DSG, as the Operator relies on the information obtained for the purpose of improvement and only uses anonymised data.
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The Operator uses other cookies in order to ensure the seamless use of the platform. These are predominantly "session cookies". They are automatically deleted after the end of the user's visit. Some elements on our website require it to be possible to identify the accessing browser even after the page has been changed. "Permanent cookies" remain stored on the device until they are deleted manually by the user. These cookies enable the Operator to recognise the user's browser during the next visit.
Upon their first visit to FundPublications, the user is asked to select their country of residence and investor category (e.g. in Switzerland: qualified or non-qualified investor). The FundPublications website creates a cookie on the user's computer or device so that this selection can be carried over for the following pages and the user can be shown the desired content.
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The legal basis for the processing of personal data using cookies is Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 2 DSG, as they contribute significantly to the operation of the website in accordance with its purpose.
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Users have the following rights if the legal requirements exist:
Users may request information on the relevant data collection and processing from the Operator at any time. In addition, users may refuse the processing of their personal information or may demand the deletion of their personal information. Users may also request restrictions on the processing of their personal data. It should be noted, however, that in this case, users will no longer be able to use the full functionalities of FundPublications. Of course, users will also be given a right to correct their personal data. The assertion of these rights is subject to any statutory obligations to the contrary on the part of the Operator.
In order to protect the above-mentioned rights, the user can send an email with a copy of proof of their identity (passport or ID) to email@example.com or send a written letter to ACOLIN InfoTech AG, Leutschenbachstrasse 50, 8050 Zurich.
Lastly, depending on the applicable law, user will have the right to complain to a supervisory authority, in particular in their state of their residence, their place of work, or location of an alleged infringement, if they are of the opinion that the processing of their personal data violates the GDPR.
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The Operator shall take appropriate measures to ensure the security of the users' personal data. For example, steps shall be taken in particular to prevent unauthorised access to or the disclosure of or changes to the user data (e.g. firewalls, password protected systems, physical access restrictions).
19. Forwarding to third parties in general
The Operator forwards personal data only as described in these terms and conditions. This is performed as far as possible using encryption. However, an unencrypted transfer may take place within ACOLIN Holding or the Operator may pass on all data to its affiliate companies for processing, although this must in all cases be associated with the specific purpose.
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A contact form will be provided, which can be used for electronic communication. If a user decides to use this option, the data entered in the input screen will be transferred to us and saved. This data includes:
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When the message is sent, the following data is also saved:
• The IP address of the user
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Alternatively, it is possible to contact us using the email address provided. In this case, the user's personal data transmitted by e-mail will be stored.
In this context, there is no disclosure of the data to third parties, with the exception of the aforementioned disclosure within ACOLIN Holding. The personal data from the input screen is used exclusively for processing the contact and the conversation. The other personal data processed during the sending process serves to prevent misuse of the contact form and to ensure the security of our information technology systems.
The legal basis for processing the transmitted data is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 2 DSG, because the contact cannot be handled and answered without processing. If the email contact is aimed at concluding a contract, then additional legal basis for the processing is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. b GDPR and Art. 13 Para. 2 lit. a DSG.
Users may revoke their consent for the processing of personal data at any time. If users contact the Operator by email, they may object to the storage of their personal data at any time. In such cases, however, the conversation cannot continue. All personal data stored in the course of the contact will be deleted in this case. Without revocation, the data is deleted as soon as it is no longer required. The aforementioned legal provisions are reserved.
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By using FundPublications, the user declares their agreement with the existing data protection provisions and the data processing described therein.
C. Common provisions
22. Transfer of the contractual relationship
By agreeing to these provisions, the user expressly agrees that the Operator may transfer the execution of each activity associated with the operation of the FundPublications platform or contractual relationships and the and provisions contained in this Disclaimer and in these terms of use to a third party at any time without prior notification.
23. Severability clause
If individual the provisions prove to be invalid, ineffective or unsatisfiable, this should not affect the validity, effectiveness and satisfiability of the remaining parts of the existing provisions.
The parties undertake in this case to replace the invalid, ineffective or unsatisfiable clause with a valid, effective and satisfiable provision, which most closely reflects the content of the original intention of the parties.
24. Legally binding version
Only the German version is legally binding.
25. Changes to the provisions
ACOLIN InfoTech AG reserves the right to make changes to the terms contained in these provisions at any time. Users who have previously agreed to the provisions will be requested upon their next visit to the platform to accept the amended provisions, otherwise they may not continue to use the FundPublications platform.
26. Jurisdiction and applicable law
The place of jurisdiction for disputes arising from these provisions is the registered office of the Operator. Swiss law shall apply (unless opposed by mandatory conflict-of-law rules). The application of the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is excluded.


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Today is an exciting day for me! As you'll read in KnitBits #307, Booklet #290 Vintage™: Arts and Crafts is my very first complete collection. When we planned the fall collection, we talked about the need for a book of designs for young, preteens and yes, "tweens," a cutesy word for a really underserved demographic in the knitting world.
Since I was the closest thing to a tween on staff, the task fell up on me to design for this age group. Knowing that some tweens grow faster than others, we decided to include sizes that go all the way up to a ladies' large. The lovely model wearing Miroux is my size (5'8″, around 34B):
I confess, I was a bit nervous designing for tweens. I spent hours looking around websites, trying to get a feel for what that age group wants to wear. I remember being insanely particular which probably drove my mother crazy. As long as I was WARM, it didn't matter what color or brand or whatever I was wearing…I, of course, felt differently!
One lucky day, Mary, one of our sample knitters, stopped by with her beautiful daughters and their friends in tow. I seized the opportunity for a little market research and asked them to draw some sketches of the sort of things they would like to wear. I was delighted when they brought in their sketches–they were TOTALLY in line with what I'd been working on! Simple, earthy colors with touches of bright, stripes, blouse-y shapes, comfortable details like pockets, hoods and handwarmers, all tween approved =)
I had so much fun styling this photoshoot. I sourced some awesome jewelry made from recycled materials (the tweens also noted that they were way into being green, which thrilled me). The model above is wearing some necklaces made from recycled magazines and the models below are wearing pins made from soda cans!
ETA: OK, so it wasn't as hard as I thought! Glad so many of you know the film (rent it if you don't, it's very crafty!!) I'll pick a winner from ALL the comments. But enough about the patterns, it's PRIZE TIME! Tell me in the comments what inspired the names for these patterns. Next week I'll pick 1 lucky winner from the correct entries who will win these accessories , a copy of Booklet #290 Vintage: Arts and Crafts and Vintage yarn to knit Diorama!
Okay, over and out everyone, have a great weekend!!

subset: commoncrawl


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Previous version Rayman Adventures 1.5.1 apk for Android will help you to downgrade or install older app easily. This is one of the best Adventure apps.
You will be able to experience an exciting mix between action and exploration. It will challenge your skill to win every challenge. In other hand, you also will have the competition to grow the tallest tree. It will be an interesting competition with your enemy. This game also has the amazing visualization to ease your boredom.
Before installing the Rayman Adventures in your phone, let us see the additional information of it. Yes, it will help you to have the smooth running in playing this game. Here, this game is available for the 4.1 android versions and up. You need to check the type of your OS first. Actually, this game is free to download but for the special equipment, you need some payments on it. Just try to read the permission to know more detail about it. Well, we arrive to the conclusion now. After reading the explanation above, you can list the game as the one of your favorite game. Don't forget to keep the app update in order to find the new stunt and new equipment to make your adventure more interesting! Yes, go to the Google Play and download it as soon as possible.Features of Rayman Adventures APK 1.5.1
- Experience an exciting mix between ACTION and EXPLORATION
- SEEK OUT and COLLECT all of the Incrediballs and bring them home
- Unleash the POWER of the Incrediballs to conquer epic adventures!
- CARE for the Incrediballs: feed them, play with them and even MAKE MUSIC together
- GROW the tallest TREE in the world and soar above the COMPETITION!
- Set off on a gorgeous adventure with AMAZING VISUALS
Developer: Ubisoft Entertainment Version: 1.5.1 Requirement: 4.1 and up Price: Free


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• fandango •
fæn-dæng-go • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A lively Spanish dance in 3/4 time, accented by castanets and boot-thumping, performed by a man and a woman as a courtship ritual. 2. (Southwest regional) A ball or dance party with lively dancing of any sort. 3. Mischief, trouble, tomfoolery.
Notes: This word is so un-English that it hasn't developed any derivative forms. The noun may be used as a verb, as 'to fandango the night away' with a kindred soul. The dancers, however, are just fandango dancers. Do not confuse this dance with the Spanish flamenco, a dance usually in 12/8 time, accompanied by clapping rather than castanets. The flamenco is also performed by one dancer in the style of Andalusian gypsies. The plural of fandango is fandangos.
In Play: This Good Word seldom escapes its original meaning: "Dinner at the new Spanish restaurant was spiced with the clicking of the castanets and boots of the fandango dancers." The third sense of this word mentioned above has remained rather peripheral, seldom included in dictionaries but still used, particularly in the southwest US: "Johnnie Pickle went to Mexico to dance but got in some fandango with the Mexican police, who threw him out of the country."
Word History: The only clear aspect of this word's history is that it comes from Portuguese. One possibility is that the Spanish adopted and altered Portuguese fado "sad song, lament" into fadango, later copying the middle N into the first syllable. Fado is what Latin fatus "fate" became in Portuguese. That is possible but there is no evidence of the word fadango in Spanish or Portuguese. The other possibility is that fandango is a reduction of Portuguese Esfandangado "discordant, out of tune", the name of a popular song in 17th century Portugal. Again, however, we have no evidence of the intervening steps that led to such a drastic reduction. (Let's not dance around thanking Chris Berry for suggesting today's Good Word, but get straight to it without any fandango.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!
Come visit our website at <http://www.alphadictionary.com> for more Good Words and other language resources!


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Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who authored The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America and who prodigiously writes for the National Review Online and Pajamas Media, spoke yesterday at the National Press Club in D.C. The topic was the Muslim Brotherhood and U.S. policy.
In addition to his prepared remarks, Mr. McCarthy fielded a good many questions. (Full video including Q & A here.) At one point, he was asked about the purging of 'Islamophobia' from U.S. government training and vernacular. Here is that exchange:
He was also asked about the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda:
The Muslim Brotherhood is out to subvert liberty, to convert the world to their brand of Islamist totalitarianism, and supports terrorist organizations — including al Qaeda — towards that end.


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FAO Director-General vows new approach in ending hunger
Highlights role South-South Cooperation can play in Asia and Pacific
Hanoi, Viet Nam, 21 March 2012 – Vowing to take a new approach to ending hunger, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva has called for sustainable increases in farm production and fairer and more inclusive food and agricultural systems.
Intensifying agriculture in harmony with the environment is the centrepiece of the new approach urged by FAO, he told the Organization's Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific in Hanoi, which took place from 12-16 March with over 300 delegates from 39 countries attending.
"Our first global challenge is to eradicate hunger and improve food security. That means that we need to have better access to food and also increase the production of agriculture, forestry and fisheries while ensuring sustainable ecosystem management, adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and building on the many promising examples that already exist," he said.
During the Conference, FAO members requested the Organization to coordinate the development of a regional rice strategy and support them in addressing the key challenges of increasing agricultural productivity, promote value chain development and reduce post-harvest losses, manage natural resources and respond to food price volatility.
"I am confident that we can gain ground rapidly in the fight against hunger," added Graziano da Silva, who also called upon countries to put in place national policies to address food security and improved nutrition.
South-South Cooperation
Intra-regional South-South Cooperation could play an important role in responding to the challenges faced by the Asia and the Pacific countries, said Graziano da Silva. He said that there were valuable experiences to be shared in areas such as production of rice and other crops, blue economy and the sustainable use of marine resources and addressing climate change.
Speaking at the opening of the Ministerial Session of the Regional Conference, the Prime Minister of Viet Nam, Nguyen Tan Dzung, offered his country's support to South-South Cooperation. Noting his country's success in increasing food production and reducing poverty, the Prime Minister said Vietnam was "willing to share our experience and cooperate with other countries in the cause of agriculture and rural development."
So far, seven countries from the Asia and Pacific region have provided South-South Cooperation support through FAO, mobilizing over 1 350 experts and technicians from in 47 host countries, including in the islands of the Caribbean and the Pacific. Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines and Viet Nam have been among the providers of South-South support.
Regional Conferences
Part of the Organization's governance structure, the Regional Conferences discuss policy and priority actions at the regional, subregional and country levels and contribute to priority-setting at the global level. The 31st FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific was the first in a series of regional conferences that will take place this year.
The 32nd Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 26-30 March.


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I gave him exactly a year, and if I decide it's not working I'll leave," said the young woman walking behind me, naming the date she would leave and indicating that she would just walk out without explaining. Talking loudly enough to be heard on a crowded sidewalk, speaking in a brisk hard voice, she listed her demands, which included feeling completely satisfied with the arrangement and a high degree of personal autonomy to pursue her own goals.
She'd clearly conducted an impressively hard-nosed slash-and-burn job negotiation. She gave no details of her demands but made clear that she would get everything she wanted and to the degree of perfection she required or she would bail out and not look back. (I think that's a mixed metaphor, but let it go.) Her friend made "way to go" type noises.
As we got to the corner, she and her friend walked in front of me, and the friend said, nodding her head slowly, "Living together is a good way to test a relationship." I hope the poor sap being tested is not forking out for a dozen long-stemmed roses for his new roommate on Valentine's Day, thinking they had begun a romance, but being a male, he probably is.
This young woman, who looked to be about thirty, knew what she wanted, though maybe she was just trying to act as if she did. In either case, her coldly contractual approach to romantic relationships does not seem to be the dominant one, even among people who are not restrained by a traditional sense of morality. Most people expect, if the popular magazines and the highest grossing Hollywood "rom-coms" present their hopes and dreams accurately, that they may do what they want with anyone they like, until—still at an age to have children—they find the One for them.
But it usually doesn't happen like that in real life, which is one reason so many single women complain that all the good men are taken, judging from the cover story for the Valentine Day's week issue of The Village Voice. The Voice is one of the propaganda organs for the world the sexual revolution created—nine of its 68 pages consist of ads for "escorts," for example, and half a page in this article is given to an ad for a store selling sex toys—and yet even it now questions the way that revolution has worked out.
But they don't question it fundamentally. "There was (and still is), something wrong with me," and with women like her, writes Jen Doll, one of the weekly's staff writers, in "The Plight of the Single Lady" (an interesting editorial choice, the title "lady"). "We don't know what we want. And so we want a little bit of everything, over and over again. . . . We're free and 'grown up' and independent; we can do what we want, sexually and otherwise. Which is part of the problem, if you're going to call it that." She continues:
If you're like me (and I think a lot of us are), you might say you can't stand drama and that all you want is a nice, stable relationship with someone who loves and treats you well, but "nice" and "stable" have hardly the appeal of words like "exciting" or "passionate" or, well, "drama." Our status as single, independent, financially solvent New York City women in the year 2011 has us sitting on a mountain of unprecedented options.
Options: Those are exciting. So we want all the options, bigger and better and faster and shinier, or taller or sexier or stronger or smarter, and yet somewhere also different and completely our own. We want the tippy-top of what we can get—why shouldn't we?
Not surprisingly, as she notes, "Somewhere along the way, 'settling' became a dirty word." Admitting that you married not for "love" but for a practical reason, like wanting to have children, will make people look at you "with a horror akin to what you might bestow upon a person admitting to murder."
There is a cost to wanting the tippy-top, even Doll admits—beyond the decreasing likelihood of having children, which so many women of her sort still want. The problem "is about having all of these options, and not knowing how to choose from among them, or whether we even want to. It's about the years of being told we can have it all, and suddenly being deeply afraid to admit that that house of cards has been a sham all along because no one really gets to have it all."
Doll's answer is to keep going the way she's been going, because she still (she seems to be in her late thirties or early forties) can't decide what she wants, and though she's written as if she and her peers had been going in the wrong direction. "There is nothing wrong with taking your time and sampling liberally from the buffet." Every man "has a place in your dating life. Don't regret them." And most of all,
Once you know what you want, narrow the options, make your choices, and go for it. But until you do, embrace not knowing. Make new York your playground and stop complaining about how single ladies have it so hard in this city.
She sounds so common-sensical, so realistic, so hopeful. And I suppose she is, within her way of looking at the world, in which marriage is closer to something you acquire than something you do. It is a life-style option, not a vocation. It is not the channel for sexual intimacy but one among many applications of such intimacy, and not one you would choose for any reason but personal desire.
If you think of marriage this way, you might as well stay outside playing games on the playground rather than go inside for the dull casserole and the dreary homework and the oppressive chores, since you have no parents to make you come inside and set to work. You might as well wait till you decide what you really want to do—keep open those exciting options—because you can always decide tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, or next month, or next year, or just keep going till you decide without actually deciding.
But of course those who stay on the playground don't learn what they would have learned had they gone inside. They remain essentially alone, no matter how many "relationships" they have, because they have chosen a very bad imitation of marriage over both marriage and the fruitful life of celibacy. They do not do the great thing they could have done.
This life does not build. That's the problem with the imitation marriage made up of serial and short-lived commitments. You start one house and after putting up a few bricks, or maybe even a wall or two, maybe even a few walls and a roof, abandon it to go start another.
Marriage is a gift of addition, of multiplication, of construction. You begin with a couple who make the wild and dangerous commitment to each other till death do them part, and on that commitment build a family, a small community, the village it takes to raise a child. In marriage you create something permanent, something eternal, because you give up the exciting options, which aren't nearly so exciting as the bet you make when you say "I do."
David Mills was formerly Deputy Editor of First Things. His previous "On the Square" articles can be found here.
David Mills' Choosing Love and Making Life.
Mary Eberstadt's The Will To Disbelieve and What Does Woman Want?.


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Used to be, the most customization you could squeeze out of your lighting was how warm or cool you wanted it to be. Not anymore. With the Philips Hue home lighting system, you can control every light in your house down to its color, saturation, and brightness—right from your phone.
What Is It?
Philips' app-controlled mood lighting system.
Who's it For?
People for whom On and Off are insufficient.
The system is composed of three Wi-Fi connected light bulbs, a network gateway slightly larger than a hockey puck, and an iOS app that communicates with the bulbs (through the gateway).
Using It
Plug the bulbs into their respective sockets (either spreading them around the room in multiple lamps or concentrating them in a single fixture), plug the gateway into a spare port on your wireless router, install the Hue app on you iOS or Android device, connect the app to the gateway and you're all set.
The app (at least the Android version that I tested) comes with 17 pre-loaded "scenes," each a colorful image with a trio of pins that sample the underlying color and adjust each bulb's output and brightness accordingly. You are also free to create custom scenes of your own with an image you actively capture or ones from your photo gallery. Philips also offers additional scenes through the app as well. You are also free to adjust the color of each light individually using a color wheel if none of the pre-loaded scenes suits your taste.
The Best Part
Each bridge supports up to 50 light bulbs, so you could theoretically control every light in your house directly from your phone.
Tragic Flaw
The lights and the phone that controls them must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and the app will ensure that connection every time the phone wakes by popping a No Connection error message. Every. Single. Time. Update: The system can be controlled over the Internet after registering the device on the MeetHue.com website but is not available natively out of the box.
This Is Weird...
And while the "same Wi-Fi" requirement is good for preventing digital intruders from messing with your lights, it makes remotely turning my lights on and off while out of town an impossibility. This system definitely needs a timer function. Update: The system does have a timer system too, it's just an iOS exclusive.
Test Notes
- The lights will revert to their neutral just-out-of-the-box color if you turn the light switch that controls it off and back on. Helpful when you stumble upon a garish combination of colors and need to reset.
- Sign up for a Hue account and you'll be able to share custom scenes with other Hue users as well as mirror your personal collection across all of your devices.
- I want this to be able to sync with the movie I'm watching and adjust the lighting color to match the on-screen scene.
Should You Buy It?
Depends on how much you want to recreate the Willy Wonka-boat scene in your foyer. Between $200-$300 to start and more than $50 a bulb after that is tough to swallow. But the Hue system is insanely cool and, in the hands of a skilled interior designer, could be used to turn every room in your house into a light-flooded canvas.
Philips Hue Specs
• Bulb Output: 600 lumen
• Bulb Type:LED
• Bulb Weight:7.2 ounces
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi
• Bulb Dimensions: 5.3 x 4.2 x 2.8 inches with an A19 socket base
• Price: $270 for the starter pack (3 bulbs and the gateway), additional bulbs are $90 each. They're also available at the Apple Store for $200 and $60 for the starter pack and individual bulbs, respectively.
Scene: Laila
Scene: Taj
Scene: Deep Sea
Scene: Feet Up


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It happened recently. The 20th anniversary of the death of stock car racer Davey Allison. Maybe you remember him. Maybe you don't.
But I shall never forget him.
The first time I met him was when he won an ARCA race at the track then called Atlanta International Raceway. I was a sports writer covering the event. He was happy but his joy was marred by the death of another driver that day. The next time I saw him was a couple of years later in Talladega. Never have I seen anyone as happy, just bursting with unbridled joy, as Davey was that day.
Neil Bonnett, part of the Alabama gang that included every racing Allison there ever was and a short tracker named Red Farmer, had been injured the previous week and was unable to drive his Junior Johnson-owned Chevrolet. He suggested Davey, who had never driven in the big leagues but knew every short track turn in the Southeast by memory.
Junior agreed and what was resulted was public relations mania for everyone involved. After all, what is a better story than a hometown boy making his debut on the world's fastest super speedway, filling in for a man who is like an uncle to him, racing against his own father, Bobby?
Though I'm prone to overstatements, it is not one when I say that I have never seen anyone shimmer with such happiness. I'm grinning now just recalling how that tall, scrawny kid with that familiar Allison shoulder hunch did not quit smiling all weekend.
Those few races where he filled in for Bonnett paid off. By the time the next season rolled around, Davey had a full-time ride with a top notch team and wealthy sponsorships. He won the pole for the Daytona 500 and put the sport on notice: An up-and-coming superstar had arrived. In the next Daytona 500, the Allisons ran one-and-two with Bobby winning.
We became good buddies in those youthful days when life was unblemished by worries, and we, like too many kids, thought we were invincible and immortal. Remember those days? Remember when laughter rang brightly and we thought nothing of throwing all caution to the wind?
Sometimes Davey would sidle up to me in the garage, elbow me, then, with that twinkle in his brown eyes inherited from his dad, would tease about one of many somethings. He often strode up behind, pulled my hair then stepped out of sight when I turned around.
"I think," he said one day, grinning, "that that guy over there likes you." He pointed to the fence that separated the garage from the infield. There hanging onto the fencing was a pot-bellied, shirtless man who was far past three sheets in the wind. Davey winked. "He asked me to get your number for him."
There were many things he teased me about including a prank that Bobby had once played on me. I turned the tables on him one day when he had won the pole in Darlington by telling a story that Bobby had told me about Davey's first race in Birmingham and all the caution flags he brought out. Davey, usually good-natured, did not laugh when I told that one to the entire press room.
And then he died. It ended there at Talladega where it all started. He crashed a helicopter, landing to see Bonnett test. Three months earlier another friend, Alan Kulwick, had died in a plane crash.
My spirit was so dark that I wondered if I would ever laugh again. Less than a year later, the amicable Bonnett died, too, during practice for the Daytona 500.
It's been 20 years without Davey Allison and I, at last, am able to laugh at his antics rather than recalling just the sorrow. And there are the lessons, too, that he taught.
Like we're not invincible. And, importantly, use every day to seize that which makes you bubble with happiness.
[Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of "My Life in The Pits." Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her weekly newsletter.]


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Casual Outfit Juliet Starling (Lollipop Chainsaw) – Cosplay of the Day
We here at Arcade Sushi believe that variety is the spice of life. And because of this, we've opted to showcase an alternate costume for one of our favorite characters to see cosplayed, Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw!
What you see before you is Juliet in one of many alternate costumes from the game. This simple little number is called the Sexy American Casual suit and is comprised of nothing but Daisy Dukes, a pink halter top, and some kickin' accessories. As always, we like to find the beauty in simplicity, and while this outfit certainly leaves nothing to the imagination, it also leaves us breathless.
Here's cosplayer Alexa Karii, a cosplayer and artist who's got a penchant for dressing up in some rather fetching versions of famous characters. She's taken Juliet's bubbly charm and infused it with her own sexiness. Those sparkles around the chainsaw might as well be part of the magic spell she's casting on us!
Check out her female Ezio Auditore costume and her badass Harley Quinn outfits on her Facebook page!
Want your Cosplay to be seen? Send your info to firstname.lastname@example.com and we may feature you in our Cosplay of the Day!


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I am a pretty adventerous person. I like to try new things. But the ocean has always scared me
I don't remember all the details, but basically it comes down to this: if you are with a master diver, you can take a brief training session and go scuba diving without becoming scuba certified. I was shaking when I jumped in the water the first time and demonstrated the necessary skills. My heart was pounding so I focused on the breathing and repeating the instructions over and over again in my head.
And then I was scuba diving.
I thought that the mask, tank and breathing apparatus would make me feel weighed down and claustrophobic, but the amazing thing about scuba diving is that it is freeing.
It is difficult to describe the feeling of scuba diving. I felt empowered as I did something that should be impossible for the human body to do, but tiny as I experienced how small and fragile I am. I was weightless. It was beautiful to experience the ocean by being in the ocean. I felt like I became part of the environment that surrounded me. It is simultaneously silent as all noise of the world disappears, but loud with the sound of your own breath.
Simply stated, it was one of the most amazing experiences that I have ever had. I felt free. I was at peace.


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16 Piece Wooden Track Expansion Pack
Expansion Wooden Track Pack Intermediate - BRIO
Expand your wooden train world and track layout possibilities with this 16 piece pack of assorted track sections. This 16 piece assortment includes various lengths of straight and curved track and 2 special switch tracks.
These wooden track pieces are compatible with:
Our Thomas and Friends, Maxim Enterprise, Melissa & Doug, KidKraft and Brio compatible toy trains and train set accessories are painted in beautiful vibrant colors from nontoxic materials and go through US labs testing to conform to ASTM-963 and CPSC Directives. The paint used for our products conforms to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and are truly toys that both you and your child will treasure for years to come.


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submitted by George Sophios on 19.05.2013
The Municipal Library of Kythera is located just off the central road through Kythera. If you take the Ayios Ilias turn off, it is the first building you see on your right hand side. Within 50 metres on the right hand side of the road you will come to the newly opened Municipal Library of Kythera.
The Municipal Library of Kythera is located near the centre of the island.
MAP Location of Municipal Library of Kythera
To gain a clearer picture download a .pdf of the map here:
MAP Location of Municipal Library of Kythera Lib.pdf
The opening of the Library has been a great source of pride for residents of the island, as well as those living in the Kytherian diaspora.
Dimitris Koutrafouris, Spokesman for the Library, and Manager of the National Bank of Greece, Hora, Kythera. Long term vision for the island, and a deep thank you to the volunteers
It is always a shame when a school is forced to close. But there is always a sense of triumph when a school, like the closed Primary School in Kontolianika, finds an "adaptive re-use", and reopens. Over the month of May 2013, all the necessary preparations for the establishment and operation of a Public Library on Kythera were completed. After a long period of prevarication, a firm commitment was finally made to establish of a large public library in the centre of the island. That has been achieved as a result of persistent and optimistic efforts of various political and cultural entities on the island, as well as individuals associated with those entities. The Library, in addition to promoting the love of books will perform broader educational missions. This cultural coalition has effectively combined their efforts, powers, intentions, desires, skills and resources for the benefit of the island.
The Library had been administered from September 2012, by the municipal clerk Calliope Kasimati, from the Graduate School of Management of Cultural Resources at the University of Peloponnese. Her appointment was a temporary one. During her tenure she was assisted by an informal and ever-expanding group of volunteers. They arrived unsolicited and 'magically" grew in number. Working together, these volunteers will ensure that the Library will stay open, irrespective of national and local economic developments, and municipal affairs.
The volunteer's first task was to organise the seven thousand volumes which occupied the large, single classroom, as well as numerous forgotten books still packed away in boxes. These had come into the possession of the municipality from 14 November 2011, after the Children's and Adolescent Library in Livadi closed down. They had been packed away properly, and have been rescued from the ravages of moisture, dust and rodents. The losses have been reduced to a minimum.
The volunteers have already completed the registration, sorting, restoration and classification of books. This has been achieved by "working overtime", including performing extra work every Saturday. The work has been undertaken with big dreams, unexpected improvisations, and with the enthusiastic assistance of volunteers, teachers and children.
Other students in advanced countries with a rich educational and cultural heritage enjoy the privilege of libraries as a 'given', and a right. They benefit greatly as a result of having access to public libraries. We, in the circumstances that we find ourselves in, on our favourite little island, have had to struggle to achieve the same privileges. This need to build up the Library 'from scratch' has made us appreciate what we have achieved so much more. Working together we will find a way to turn previous shortcomings into creative power. It is not often that people are given the opportunity to become a pioneers, patrons and participants in the birth of such an exalted and beautiful institution.
Fall 2013
for the Group of Volunteers
The Municipal Library of Kythera
Dimitris Koutrafouris
See also, April 2013 Report by George C Poulos. George is an Honorary Member of the Friends of Kythera Library
The exterior of the Library needs a good makeover and landscaping.
Download a .pdf of the landscaping plan here:
SXOLEIO KONTOLIANIKA.pdf
The courtyard as it exists as of April 2013, is inadequate. The design depicted has been created pro bono by architect Elias Vassiliadis.
Re-design of the Courtyard
One of the "finishing touches" that needs to be completed is the re-design of the external (back) courtyard. Architect Elias Vassiliadis has very kindly drawn up - free of charge - a plan drawn for the library grounds. The cost estimate for the work is approximately 11,000 euro's. The Library Committee and overseas friends hope to secure the money, fairly quickly, so they can put this work out to tender.
The design is elegant. There will be two alternative specifications for the covered area at the back, (6), one calling for a lightweight wood and bamboo pergola, and the other for a more substantial tiled roof; this will require two alternative cost figures. One substantially higher than the other. In either case, the covered area will be open at the front and sides.
The curved wall (1) will be of roughly dressed stone with a smooth upper surface, 50 cm high, so as to provide extra seating. Between this low wall and the boundary wall will be an area for planting, as will be area (3) alongside the access path.
Area (2), under the pergola and in front of the steps leading up to the library, will be smooth concrete, probably with some stone and terracotta decorative elements. Likewise the approach path, (4).
The main area of the courtyard, (5) will be fine gravel over a base layer of coarse gravel. Not only is this a lot cheaper and more environmentally friendly than concreting everything, it also allows for natural drainage. If, instead, we were to concrete or seal the entire area, we would also have to provide for underground drainage. Insulated electrical outlets and water points will be provided along the perimeter wall.
The Library Committe, and overseas Friends have also asked for estimates for the provision of guttering for the main building, including buried drainage of the runoff.
A Municipal Library. Considered critical infrastructure in most countries in the world.
The new municipal library is planned to open in Kondeleanika, Kythera. It is fully refurbished, and ready to be "fitted out" to fulfill its purpose - to become the first accessible lending library on the island of Kythera for 6,000 years.
The problem seems to be that Municipality of Kythera, has run out of money to equip it properly.
In Greece, Provinces (States) and the National government take no economic responsibility for local Libraries. This is a tragedy.
In 'western' countries such as Australia, America & Canada, and most countries in Europe, Asia, North & South America, all small communities and all small townships maintain a Local Lending Library. There is no town with a population of 3,300, the population of Kythera, that does not have a well established and equipped library, in place.
The citizens of a town of this size would not tolerate not having an operational Library. It would be considered unacceptable, and prejudicial to their children's future.
The Americans enter the campaign:
A group of Americans, under the leadership of Cynthia Cavalenes-Jarvis of Alhambra, California which is located in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, were inspired by Kythera's Mayor, Theodore Koukoulis to provide shelving for the library. Cynthia, her two sisters (Candace Weiss and Toni Cavalenes) and her cousin (Kendra Rosner) met the Mayor in September 2008 while visiting in the Municipality of Kythera building. This meeting was arranged through George Poulos, Public Relations Officer of the Kytherian Association of Australia, and Trustee of the Kytherian World Heritage Fund. At that meeting Cynthia inquired what the needs of Kythera are and the Mayor responded "bookshelves" for the proposed library.
Cynthia organised the financing for the Bookshelves Project in the USA, and George Poulos, under the auspices of the Kytherian World Heritage Fund, organised funds in Australia. By May 2009, Cynthia could report "that we have come a long way in the fund raising. If everyone that committed funds comes through we have raised $6,460. That leaves us with a need for $1,540 more for shipping plus the cost of the container, $2,500. I have no doubt we will get there. We still have some fund raising events up our sleeves, but I haven't had time to work on them just yet".
By the end of the Bookshelves Project she could report with some pride: "This project certainly does qualify as "great." If it did not, we would not have had so many people and organizations supporting it. We have had eight organizations (and their members) including Soroptimist International of Alhambra-San Gabriel-San Marino, Rotary International of Alhambra, KAA, KSOC, KSNY, AHEPA, Daughters of Penelope of Santa Barbara, two companies (providing in-kind assistance) and over fifty individuals (including a film/television celebrity) who have donated to this cause. I think as a grass roots project, that speaks volumes."
Just days after returning from her first visit to Kythera, Cynthia found the inspiraation for this project. During the ribbon cutting ceremony for the City of Alhambra's new municipal library, she realized that the City (where she works) may no longer need the bookshelves that remained in the decommissioned old library and that there could be an oppotunity to obtain some of them for Kythera's proposed library of which Mayor Koukoulis had spoken.
Photographs of the shelving in situ in California
Although locating bookshelves and obtaining them may appear to be an easy task, the bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining property belonging to a municipality can be quite daunting. In January 2009, Cynthia reported: "I just received a message from the Director of Public Works who states that used bookshelves do not have much value on the auction market and are only worth about $120 per ton for the recycled steel, minus the agents commission. The shelves will have to be declared surplus and of no significant value, at which time I will be able to obtain them for Kythera for the suggested price of $1 per shelf unit. I accepted that price without hesitation. It might only cost about $100 to purchase the shelves.
I have a tentative February 10th presentation date with the Rotary to see if they will assist in this project. Also, since I am a member of the Soroptimists of Alhambra-San Gabriel-San Marino, I might be able to convince them to help with the project. The shipping might cost about $10,000 and the soroptimists' help in fundraising will be invaluable. I'll know more after the presentations.
The City is anxious to mobilize removal of the shelves, so as I expected, I am under a tight timeframe to move them out of the old library."
Cynthia also faced numerous additional logistical challenges.
A. How to remove the shelving units from the old Alhambra Library, and where to store them?
In August 2009 Cynthia reported "We don't have the container yet. Half the shelves are stored indoors at a warehouse that belongs to a Rotarian and half are stored in my backyard (It's summer here so it's alright & they are covered). But they have to be moved before the rains come.
The City didn't want volunteers to dismantle the shelves in the City owned library building for liability reasons, so City staff moved them out of the library, but they cannot be stored on City property. It took a crew of six people a week to dismantle and bundle the components for the shelves. They transported them to Al's Towing in Alhambra where they are stored until we can shiip them.
It took a huge effort to get the shelves dismantled and into storage and it was very chaotic. I left someone else in charge who's concept differred from mine. Once I inventoried the equipment, I found that we didn't have the proper number and size of shelves to go with the respective frames so another work party was dispatched (2 more days) to go back into the old library to gather the pieces we were missing. The second batch was transported to my backyard. Another tricky piece of the puzzle - now that the shelves are out of the old library, City staff can't be used to load the container. A local church that has offered help from their youth group, but volunteer labor can be unpredictable and I am worried about the continuity of the project. Although many of the staff that have been working on this project might offer to volunteer to load the container, as the director of the department for which they work I can't allow that because it could be perceived as coercion from me. So the Soroptimists will provide a stipend to them (funded through the fundraising effort) for their work. One of the staff happens to also work for a shipping company. He has experience organizing the loading of containers. I have asked him (on behalf of the Soroptimists) to be the lead person in the task of loading of the container. So between the City staff who are familiar with the project and the volunteers from the church the container will be properly loaded.
I won't lie, it's been a difficult project. I've lost a lot of sleep over the whole thing. The nice thing is that all of these people really are dedicated to the project, so I know they will come through. I am trying to get the shelves shipped in the next couple of weeks, but I can't bring the container into the warehouse until we are ready to ship because of the inconvenience it will cause the warehouse owner. Now that I am telling the shipper I'm ready to move forward, I am getting frustrating information from them."
B. Will it be better to own the shipping container the shelves are to be sent in, or just use the one provided by the shipper?
One of Cynthia's contacts advised her that "most people don't own the container. I think there is more paperwork involved and it might be more work to pass through Customs. So I think shippers don't want to deal with that and try to discourage it."
Although there would be no additonal charge to use a container provided by the international shipping company, once the container arrived in Pireaus the load would have to moved to another container (at a cost to the project for the labor to do so) because the international shipper did not service Kythera and for liablity reasons could not allow their container to be loaded onto another vessel. The cost of shipping from Pireaus to Kythera would be $1,500 U.S. Once the container arrived on Kythera it would have to be immediately unloaded and returned to the vessel. Any additional time on the island would result in a rental charge for the container. The transport of the emplty container back to Pireaus would cost an additional $1,500 U.S. After extensive research, Cynthia located a "sea worthy" container with the appropriate inspection certificate at a cost of $2,500 U.S. Determining that the cost of transferring the load in Piraeus, potentially paying rent while the container was on Kythera and shipping the container back to Piraeus could be just as costly and possibly more costly, than purchasing the container outright, Cynthia decided purchasing the container was the better choice.
C. Can a free or inexpensive location be found to store the shelves until they could be shipped?
If storage space had to be rented it would prove costly. Ultimately space in a warehouse in Alhambra was donated by Rotarian, Al Pavone, owner of Al's Towing which had limited indoor space that could be used to store the shelves. This saved a tremendous amount of money since the shelves were in storage for approximately six months before they could be shipped. "We are finalizing our inventory to see what components we still need to get from the old library before we ship. We have been authorized to go back into the building and take whatever we still need. We are in really good shape. It looks like we have about 30-eight foot long wall sections, about 25-eight foot long free standing double sided sections, and 2-eight foot long display/counter units. The next hurdle will be weight. these bookshelves are steel. They are HEAVY!!! Hopefully we will be able to send the whole lot.
I can't tell you how many people have asked if they could go Kythera to help reassemble the bookshelves on the island. I told the staff that disassembled them that I'm sure they would be welcome, but they would have to fund their own way there. I'm attaching a photo of the crew with some of the dismantled shelves in the background.
Everyone is really excited about this project!"
Vikki Vrettos Fraioli posted an extended report on the Message Board, 31.05.2009.
The Shelving project was reported in the kythera-family Newsletter in June, 2009 , and July, 2009
John Stathatos acts as the Kytherian connection
John Stathatos is a great advocate for Hellenic and Kytherian culture on the island. He is the Director of the Kythera Cultural Association. John has been engaged in numerous cultural Projects, such as Photographic Encounters, and the restoration of the Fatseas collection of photographs, which were featured in a Benaki Museum exhibition.
He is a great advocate for the Municipal Library.
In October 2009, he wrote to Cindy and George advising / asking that:
1. You may add my name to any document. My address is Strapodi, Chora, Kythera 80100.
2. The container will be unloaded alongside or behind the new municipal library in Agios Elias, Kythera.
3. There is equipment on the island to unload the container. I will try to find out the cost, and can probably get it done for free, but I obviously need a few days to get the details.
4. Has Tina (Anoni) chosen a haulage company to carry the container from Piraeus to Kythera? If not, I might be able to get a discount rate from a local trucking company. Again, I would need till Monday or Tuesday to confirm this.
5. I saw the mayor today and brought him up to date.
6. Do we have even a very rough ballpark figure for arrival on Kythera?
On the 12th January, 2010, the shelving arrived on Kythera, and was unpacked on the same day, and packed away safely in the Library at Kontolianika.
John Stathatos announced:
"As it happened, the right crane to offload the whole container was out of commission. Fortunately work had finished on the inside of the library, which is nice and dry, so I got the municipality to provide some labour, and we got everything unloaded in a couple of hours.
Above, are couple of photos; we'll take more when it comes time to assemble the shelves. (See below).
Congratulations on completing the final lap of your grand project!"
The Project was written up in the December 2009 issue of Kytheraismos newspaper
Cynthia sent an excited email to her many Shelving Project supporters:
"This is so coool! See article below regarding bookshelves project. It was run in the local Kytherian newspaper, Kytheraismos, and is posted on the kythera-family.net website. I know most of you cannot read it so once I get the translation, I'll send it along.
Gay (Kinman - a fellow Soroptimist)! you made the paper!!!! Aren't you glad you showed up that cold morning for the loading of the container?????
Organisations mentioned (that I can recognize - I don't speak or read Greek) - Alhambra, Soroptimist International, Rotary, Kythera Society of CA, Kythera Association of AU, Kythera Association of NY."
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10cc - Taxi! Taxi! lyric
Ringtone: Send Taxi! Taxi! Ringtone to your Cell Phone!
10Cc -Taxi! Taxi!
The hands on the clock seem to stick to the face
But the seconds are turning to minutes
And minutes to days
I try not to look at the grin on it's face
But I know that it knows that I gotta get out
Of this place
Time to close the day
Time to lock the door
time to greet the street
I'm so happy I'm walking on air
People staring but I don't care
Taxi, call a taxi, yellow taxi, taxi taxi
Don't take the subway don't go that way
'snot a safe way don't go that way
Gotta cross town don't want trouble
Got to get there on the double
She'll be waiting I'll be running
She'll be thinking I'm not coming
I can't wait to talk to you
Tell you what I'd like to do
We'll find a little restaurant
A little vino for the ambiance
In the candlelight we're holding hands
Time flies when you really
Don't want it to
The waiters are staring at me
But I've only got eyes for you
Leave us alone we don't wanna go home
Put your chairs on the tables
We can let ourselves out when you've gone
Time to take your home
Time to say goodnight
We don't wanna part
Let's be together tonight
Let's be together tonight
Taxi, call a taxi, yellow taxi, taxi taxi
Don't take the subway don't go that way
'snot a safe way we'll go our way
Gotta cross town back to my place
Pull the shades down screw the rat race
We're alone now undercover
Hang the sign out don't disturb
Now I'm really close to you
Tell you what I want to do
I wanna take you to a tropical place
Beneath the stars I'll see the love in your face
In the pale moonlight
We're holding hands
Following the footprints in the sand
It's been a hell of a day in the city
Now it's time to get away
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Melissa McCarthy is breaking her silence about Rex Reed, the New York Observer critic who described her as "tractor-sized" when he reviewed her No. 1 comedy Identity Thief in February. Though many other stars came to the actress' defense, the 42-year-old had not publicly addressed Rex's cruel comments until a June 13 interview with The New York Times.
In his scathing and widely reviled critique, Reed called Bridesmaids' breakout star "a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success." In a soft voice, McCarthy said her initial reaction to the piece was "Really?" She then asked, "Why would someone O.K. that?"
Taking the high road, McCarthy added, "I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate. I just thought, that's someone who's in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs."
Had this occurred when she was 20, McCarthy said, "it may have crushed me." But now that she's raising daughters Vivian, 6, and Georgette, 3, in "a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia," she said reviews like Reed's "just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, 'That doesn't reflect on me.'"
"That makes it more true," said McCarthy, married to actor Ben Falcone since 2005. "It means you don't actually look good enough."
The pressure is on for McCarthy to deliver when The Heat (costarring Sandra Bullock) hits theaters June 28. Given their strong fan base, however, it's likely that the buddy-cop comedy will perform well at the box office. And if it doesn't, McCarthy told The New York Times, she's O.K. with that. "I've been trying to play old-lady parts since I was in my 20s," she said, "so I look forward to all of that."


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John Owen Haley is an internationally recognized scholar of comparative and Japanese law. His 1991 book, Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox, and his article, "The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant," are considered leading works in the field. His most recent books include two casebooks: a new edition in two volumes (2010 and forthcoming) of The Civil Law Tradition: Europe, Latin America and East Asia (Charlottesville: Michie Company, 1994) and Fundamentals of Transnational Litigation: The United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union (New Providence, N.J.: LexisNexis, 2012, 2nd ed. 2014). His other most notable publications include Legal Innovations in Asia: Judicial Lawmaking and the Influence of Comparative Law (Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), edited with Toshiko Takenaka; Antitrust in Germany and Japan: The First Fifty Years, 1947-1998 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), the first comparative study of German and Japanese antitrust law in English; and The Spirit of Japanese Law, (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998, paperback ed. 2006). His most recent publication is Law's Political Foundations: Rivers, Rifles, Rice, and Religion (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016).
In addition to introductory courses on Japanese and Korean law, he has taught comparative law (focusing on France, Germany, Italy, and Spain in Western Europe, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico in Latin America, and Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand in East Asia), transnational litigation, contracts and administrative law. Before joining Vanderbilt's law faculty, Professor Haley retired from Washington University's law faculty, where he was the William R. Ortwein Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies from 2002-07. Before joining the law faculty at Washington University, he had served as the Garvey, Schubert and Barer Professor of Law and International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has taught and lectured internationally in Australia, Colombia, China, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.


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Editor's Note: Mariane Pearl, an award-winning journalist, is author of "A Mighty Heart" and the managing editor of Chime for Change, a campaign to empower girls and women around the world. This piece was written in association with UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report Team. Follow UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report on Twitter: @EFAReport
Story highlights
UNESCO releases a report that shows education can radically transform people's lives
Mariane Pearl: Education is the most efficient weapon to combat world's pressing problems
She says if all women had a primary education, child mortality could fall by a sixth
Pearl: It is education that makes life worth living; we should all never stop learning
One hot summer morning in Monrovia, Liberia, I came across a group of young men who had been snatched from their classrooms by paramilitary groups and turned into child soldiers. They had been drugged and forced to rape, torture and kill people. At the end of our talk, they said: "We just want to go back to school." The oldest was 16. Educating these youths meant more than imparting knowledge.
Information alone wouldn't satisfy the thirst of these war victims-turned perpetrators. Their faith in education was immense. They thought it would bring meaning to their lives. They wanted to understand what humans are made of, they wanted ethics and wisdom and skills to master acceptance or apply compassion.
In short, they wanted their dignity back. And besides crucial economic, peace and health factors, this is what education is all about.
Education is the most efficient weapon with which to address the world's most pressing problems. And as a new analysis released by UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report Team demonstrates, education's transformative power knows no boundaries.
Investing in education, especially for girls, result in substantial benefits for their health and productivity. It also increases democratic participation and empowers women, according to the UNESCO report, "Education Transforms Lives."
The research reveals that if all women had a primary education, child marriages and child mortality could fall by a sixth and maternal deaths by two-thirds.
With a visceral instinct to protect their children from harm, mothers work miracles every day to provide their children with education.
One day in Uganda, a woman who was dying from AIDS because of an unfaithful husband, told her eldest daughter that she had made her choice. Rather than buy medicine to save her own life (this was before anti-retroviral drugs were widely available and affordable), she would spend her money to send her daughter to school. She asked her child to become a doctor and help save her people from this devastating disease.
Julian Atim, whom I met after her mother had passed away, indeed became a doctor. She created the first alliance of Ugandan health workers to fight HIV in a country where professionals tend to leave in droves and practice abroad for economic reasons.
Julian went on to study at Harvard University before returning to the war-torn rural area of northern Uganda, where for the longest time she was one of two doctors serving a population of 300,000. She didn't only study medicine; at 35, she's also an expert in advocacy and human rights. There are countless mothers like Julian's out there, and they are everywhere – mothers for whom education doesn't merely prepare one for life, education is life.
Yet 57 million children are out of school. This means we are yet to make free and compulsory education a priority. The world leaders who are about to meet at the U.N. General Assembly should do everything in their power to meet this goal now and look at this effort as the safest investment into our common future.
Beyond all the conflicts tearing the world apart, it is the human aspiration to learn and grow that might hold us together. Education is our guiding hope.
You can't change your life if you don't know how.
Education saves lives, averts hunger, promotes tolerance and gives purpose. People overcome impossible odds thanks to education. For example, if all women had secondary school, they would know how to feed their children. They would know the hygiene rules that they should follow. And they would have a stronger voice in the home to ensure proper care.
This change would save more than 12 million children from being stunted – a sign of early childhood malnutrition.
Learning gives us the means to lead meaningful lives and a proper education will awaken the desire to benefit others. The difference between a primary and secondary education can improve tolerance towards people of another race by 50%, according to the UNESCO report.
Arguing that we should all get better educated to become better people doesn't mean that the need for basic education isn't dire.
Recently, on Chime for Change, I published an astonishing story brought to me by journalist Veronique Mistiaen and her colleague, photographer Fjona Hill, about the practice of trokosi in rural Ghana.
The trokosi practice calls for virgin girls to be sent to the shrines of fetish gods to pay for crimes committed by one of their relatives. They become living sacrifices, protecting their families from the gods' wrath. Some stay at the shrines for a few years; others for life. The young girls become slaves to the priest. They live with a rope tied around their neck, fighting hunger and working from dawn to dusk.
The Ghanaian government outlawed the practice in 1998 and over the years about 3,000 of the trokosi slaves have been liberated, but many more have been brought to more remote shrines. A young woman named Millicent Thenkey tried to defend herself but learned the hard way that the law wasn't enough to protect her.
She had been allowed to go to school while preparing to take her final initiation at Kilkor shrine in Ketu South district. There, she learned that the practice was a violation of human rights. She reported her initiation to the police and took her parents to court – something no one had dared to do before. But her parents refused to attend the hearing and the police didn't force them, so the case was thrown out of court and Millicent became a slave.
As she pursued her investigation, interviewing priests and families, Mistiaen met a priest who told her: "We just heard that trokosi was against the law and that women were human beings and needed to be treated as equal. We hadn't ever heard before that women needed to be treated as equal." This is how deep the need to educate is.
But there is a school now in the area, and the priest admits that education will succeed in eradicating slavery even where the law has failed.
"The new generations are learning new things, reading about the world. I don't think they will be interested in sitting behind the shrine wearing this hat of mine," he said.
Aristotle thought that an uneducated man was as good as dead. Julian's mother chose her daughter's education over her own life. Torgbi Abiaeu, the priest in Ghana, reluctantly admitted the defeat of tradition by education.
In all these cases, the conclusion remains the same. It is education that makes life worth living and the best I can wish to anyone is to never stop learning.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.
Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mariane Pearl.


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Feb. 1, 2013. GAFFNEY, S.C. — Senior Daniel Sepokas (Illawong, Australia) poured in a game-high 28 points on Thursday evening, becoming the seventh player in program history to surpass the 1,100-point plateau, as the Limestone College men's basketball team placed five players in double figures en route to a 90-73 victory over Lees-McRae College in Conference Carolinas play.
Limestone (12-6, 8-4 CC) posted a field goal percentage of 48.4 percent in the contest, including an even 50 percent in the second half, while holding Lees-McRae (1-17, 1-11 CC) to a 34.4 percent clip on the night. The Saints won the battle on the glass by a 44-36 margin, including a 33-22 advantage on the defensive boards, as Lees-McRae converted 13 Limestone miscues into 19 points.
Sepokas led the way for the Bobcats with a game-high 28 points on 9-of-16 shooting, knocking down 3-of-5 three-pointers while converting 7-of-10 attempts at the free throw line. Asad Lamot (Mebane, N.C.) added 12 points, as Aaron Bluitt (Indianapolis, Ind.) chipped in a career-high 10 markers. Juan Urbina (Barquisimeto, Venezuela) posted a team-high five rebounds for the Bobcats.
Charles Blue and Joe Raga each paced the Saints with a double-double, as Blue poured in 15 points and Raga pulled down a game-high 11 rebounds. Blue also added 10 boards, while Raga chipped in 12 markers with a 7-for-11 night at the charity stripe. PJ Foster turned in game-highs of 16 points and six assists, as Ryan Bogdan tallied 15 markers on 5-of-8 shooting from behind the arc. Jamal McNeil nearly added a double-double with 10 boards and eight points.
The Bobcats started off strong, answering an early 8-2 Saint run with a 10-2 spurt of their own, claiming an 18-15 advantage on a Sepokas jumper with 12:36 to go in the first half. Limestone countered with a 34-18 surge over the final 12 minutes, taking a 49-36 lead into the intermission after the Bobcats closed out the half with a 6-1 spurt.
Lees-McRae carried the momentum into the second half, opening the period with back-to-back buckets from Sepokas and Kyle Burton-Harper (Charlotte, N.C.) to cut the lead to 50-40 with 16:57 to play. Limestone answered with a 16-7 run, pushing the advantage to 66-47 following a Bogdan triple at the 10:44 mark.
The Saints would maintain a double-digit lead for the remainder of the contest, closing out the win with an 11-6 spurt over the final minute to equal the final margin of 90-73.
Lees-McRae returns to the court on Saturday when the Bobcats host Pfeiffer University in conference play at 4:30 p.m. in Williams Gymnasium.


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The Descent was one of our favorite horror movies of recent years, so we were automatically excited about director Neil Marshall's new movie, Doomsday. And that was before we found out Doomsday was going to be Mad to the Max. In Doomsday, the government walls off Scotland to contain a deadly plague... only to send a team into the shattered country 30 years later. We talked to Marshall about strong women, genre confusion, and why Doomsday has no monsters.
The Descent and Doomsday both focus on women venturing into perilous situations. Do you think it's important that the heroes in your films are women? Do you write women characters differently, or are they just heroes who happen to be women?
It's certainly not some kind of career plan to have my heroes be women, it's just turned out that way. I actually wrote the story for Doomsday several years before I made The Descent. It was one of 3 scripts I tried to get made in the wake of The Descent and it was the one that Rogue Pictures chose to back, so it's really just a coincidence that my new hero is also a woman and I saw no reason to change the character into a man just because of what I'd done previously.
I try to write women as authentically as possible. Above all things, no matter how tough and rugged I make the characters, they should never lose their femininity.
The thing that seems most intriguing to me about Doomsday is that it seems to straddle genre lines, including horror, scifi, medical thriller, etc. Do you think this is true? Are you consciously trying to blend genres?
I love to blend genres. Taking the best elements from different inspirations and throwing them all into the mix is what makes it fun. Besides, I think the lines between genres have often been blurred at best, and that's no bad thing.
Most post-apocalyptic movies nowadays feature monsters (28 days, I Am Legend, etc. ) Are you consciously trying to reclaim post-apocalyptic movies from the monster-movie genre?
Absolutely! It's like there's an unspoken rule in movies now that virus = zombies! Well that's not what post-apocalyptic movies are about for me. It should be about human survival, because the day the next big global pandemic arrives, there won't be any zombies running around, I can promise you that. This is real, terrifying stuff, just as real as nuclear war was when the last great post apocalyptic movies (like The Road Warrior) came out. And that's the kind of gritty, savage world I'm trying to revisit with this movie.


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|PostgreSQL 7.4.30 Documentation
|Fast Backward
|Chapter 37. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language
|Fast Forward
PL/pgSQL can be used to define trigger procedures. A trigger procedure is created with the CREATE FUNCTION command, declaring it as a function with no arguments and a return type of trigger. Note that the function must be declared with no arguments even if it expects to receive arguments specified in CREATE TRIGGER --- trigger arguments are passed via TG_ARGV, as described below.
When a PL/pgSQL function is called as a trigger, several special variables are created automatically in the top-level block. They are:
Data type RECORD; variable holding the new database row for INSERT/UPDATE operations in row-level triggers. This variable is null in statement-level triggers.
Data type RECORD; variable holding the old database row for UPDATE/DELETE operations in row-level triggers. This variable is null in statement-level triggers.
Data type name; variable that contains the name of the trigger actually fired.
Data type text; a string of either BEFORE or AFTER depending on the trigger's definition.
Data type text; a string of either ROW or STATEMENT depending on the trigger's definition.
Data type text; a string of INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE telling for which operation the trigger was fired.
Data type oid; the object ID of the table that caused the trigger invocation.
Data type name; the name of the table that caused the trigger invocation.
Data type integer; the number of arguments given to the trigger procedure in the CREATE TRIGGER statement.
Data type array of text; the arguments from the CREATE TRIGGER statement. The index counts from 0. Invalid indices (less than 0 or greater than or equal to tg_nargs) result in a null value.
A trigger function must return either null or a record/row value having exactly the structure of the table the trigger was fired for.
Row-level triggers fired BEFORE may return null to signal the trigger manager to skip the rest of the operation for this row (i.e., subsequent triggers are not fired, and the INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE does not occur for this row). If a nonnull value is returned then the operation proceeds with that row value. Returning a row value different from the original value of NEW alters the row that will be inserted or updated (but has no direct effect in the DELETE case). To alter the row to be stored, it is possible to replace single values directly in NEW and return the modified NEW, or to build a complete new record/row to return.
The return value of a BEFORE or AFTER statement-level trigger or an AFTER row-level trigger is always ignored; it may as well be null. However, any of these types of triggers can still abort the entire operation by raising an error.
Example 37-1 shows an example of a trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL.
Example 37-1. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure
This example trigger ensures that any time a row is inserted or updated in the table, the current user name and time are stamped into the row. And it checks that an employee's name is given and that the salary is a positive value.
CREATE TABLE emp ( empname text, salary integer, last_date timestamp, last_user text ); CREATE FUNCTION emp_stamp() RETURNS trigger AS ' BEGIN -- Check that empname and salary are given IF NEW.empname IS NULL THEN RAISE EXCEPTION ''empname cannot be null''; END IF; IF NEW.salary IS NULL THEN RAISE EXCEPTION ''% cannot have null salary'', NEW.empname; END IF; -- Who works for us when she must pay for it? IF NEW.salary < 0 THEN RAISE EXCEPTION ''% cannot have a negative salary'', NEW.empname; END IF; -- Remember who changed the payroll when NEW.last_date := ''now''; NEW.last_user := current_user; RETURN NEW; END; ' LANGUAGE plpgsql; CREATE TRIGGER emp_stamp BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON emp FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE emp_stamp();


text:
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COLLEGE STATION – The Cotton Chair Advisory Council meeting at Texas A&M University recently yielded several research presentations and demonstrations showcasing the latest in cotton and related engineering work.
The Cotton Chair Advisory Council advises Chair and Regents Professor Dr. Calvin Parnell as well as faculty in the department of agricultural and biological engineering at Texas A&M.
The advisory council consists of 10 founding organizations: Case IH, Cotton Foundation, Farmers Cooperative Compress, Farmers' Co-op of El Campo, John Deere Inc., Lummus Corporation/Beltwide, Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, Texas Agricultural Cooperative Council, Texas Cotton Ginners' Association and Cotton Industry Support Group.
Parnell provided an overview and demonstration of the fluidized bed gasifier that takes gin trash from cotton and creates energy that can be used to produce electricity.
"Some would ask, 'why are we doing this?'" he told the group. "We've got plenty of natural gas here across the country. Do we really have enough electricity, though? Half of our electricity today comes from coal, and it's not easy for power producers to switch from coal to natural gas overnight."
In Texas, power grids are under heavy loads during summer and sometimes during winter, especially in rural markets. Parnell envisions "taking gin trash delivered to the gin with the seed cotton and producing electricity.
"Gins located in rural areas may not have a high priority if we have limited supplies of electricity in the future," Parnell said. "If we have the ability to take gin trash and generate enough electricity to operate the gin during the ginning season, and possibly put the excess back on the grid, that would be an advantage."
Fellow engineer Wayne LePori and Parnell obtained a patent that went idle for 20 years "without anyone using it. Later, Dr. Sergio Capareda joined our faculty from the Philippines as he had been one of the graduate students who had worked on the research that resulted in the original patent. He applied for and received a provisional patent on this technology."
Parnell reported that he and his graduate students have constructed a gasifier with a 6-inch bed. He said there are limits on the energy-loading-rate, such as how much fuel the gasifier can be fed; the fuel-to-air ratio to maintain the reaction in gasification mode; and bed and gas temperatures.
"The new reactor is 6 inches in diameter and is constructed of stainless steel, otherwise it would melt," Parnell said. "The size of this research unit facilitates testing a wide range of biomass fuels and conditions that will play a role in the engineering and construction of a system that can produce 1, 2, and 3 megawatt power plants. These are the size of power plants that are needed for 20, 40 and 60 bale-per-hour cotton gins."
Two different feed stocks have been tested. Horse feed contains approximately 6,700 Btu per pound, while gin trash contains approximately 6,600 Btu per pound.
"The output of the reactor is a bio-gas with sufficient energy to operate a generator," Parnell said.
The goal of the project is "not to just come up with the best quality and maximum quantity of gas from gin trash, but to maximize removal of the particles that are leaving the bed so the gas can be put directly into an internal combustion engine and generate electricity," he said.