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You have either made the decision to start photography as a hobby, or you just desire to become a better photographer than you already are. This is the perfect time to consider it! Listed below are just some of the tips that will get you that much closer to your photography aspirations.
Move in closer to your subject to take a better picture. This will help you frame your subject, and block out disruptive backgrounds. When you are photographing people, this makes it easier to hone in on facial expressions, as well. This ability is important for anyone who wants to take portrait shots. Small details are easily overlooked when the subject is a good distance away.
Choose how much of your subject you would like to view in your photo. A great photo will be like you are looking at your object through a little window. Don't focus on too many different things. In fact, sometimes it's better altogether if you take multiple photos of a subject instead of struggling to get that one illusive shot of perfection. This works especially well when you're trying to capture the essence of something.
It is important to give your photos depth when capturing landscapes. Establish a sense of scale by placing an object within the foreground of your picture. Giving sharp focus to your photos can be as simple as changing your settings. Apertures less than f/8 for digital cameras, and f/16 for full framed SLR cameras, will give you the image you really want.
For professional photos, get a professional camera. A DSLR takes the best photos so investigate purchasing one of these. These cameras are used by professional photographers because they provide quality photographs. If you want the same type of photos, use the same.
Experiment a bit with the feature that allows you to adjust levels of whiteness. Often, incandescent bulbs commonly found in homes and businesses result in a yellow tinge to photographs taken indoors. By changing the white balance feature on your camera this will be reduced and you will notice a whole different quality to your photographs. By following these instructions, your photos will appear more professional.
A dSLR is required for all serious photographers. This digital single lens reflex camera can help you see the subject when you take the photo. If you want the largest image sensor, as well as the most highly detailed images, choose a full-frame DSLR.
In terms of great photography tips you can use, here is one that's very underrated. Learn the basics about different types of shutter speeds. A camera comes with a variety of settings. P,M,A and S are some of those options. The "P" on the camera represents program mode. The program mode allows you to set up the shutter speed and the aperture automatically. If you are not sure what you will shoot, use the "P" setting.
Spend some time playing with the features on you camera, especially the manual balance white. While taking shots indoors, sometimes you get a yellowish color due to the light bulbs. Instead of changing the lighting of a room, adjust the white balance on your camera to get a whole different atmosphere. Your photos will almost instantly appear more professional.
Photography is one of the most exciting and creatively stimulating hobbies one can do. Make sure to always keep it exciting, and don't ever let it overwhelm you. Pictures should serve as a reminder for a particular moment that you would like to capture forever and be able to look back on in the future. Have a good time while you take your shots and you'll find that the joy you feel comes through in the pictures you take.
Shutter Speed
Take some notes as you are snapping photos. While sorting through your photos afterwards, there may be so many shots that you find yourself having trouble remembering exact details or emotions during that moment. Use a notepad to record brief descriptions of shots as you take them and note each picture's number next to its description.
Experiment with you camera's shutter speed settings. You need to experiment with shutter speeds. Your camera will have setting indicators for S, M, A, and P modes. P is for program mode. This is the fully automatic setting of your camera, and it sets the aperture and shutter speed automatically for you. If you do not know what you will be taking a picture of, have the "P" setting on.
Try pre-focusing your camera and then moving so that your subject is not right in the middle of the lens. Centering is generally expected and not that interesting in a photo. You may create more interest by focusing on what wouldn't normally be considered the subject in your photograph.
You should pack your photographic gear with some thought whenever you're going on a trip. Be sure to take all of the lenses that you will need, as well as spare batteries, a tripod, extra memory cards, and any cleaning accessories. Never pack more than you need. Think about which items will be convenient for taking on your trip.
If you like the old style that is associated with using a camera that uses film then you should pick one up from a secondhand store and see how you like it. Try getting some black and white film that has a ISO 200 rating; it is the best for all situations. After getting the film developed, consider having prints made onto a variety of papers, including fiber-based papers.
Don't miss the perfect shot because you don't have any charged batteries. Because digital cameras drain their batteries pretty fast, it's important that you start the day with a full charge. You should also carry spare batteries so that you can avoid missing a photograph opportunity.
Composition is an important factor that every beginning photographer should consider and educate themselves on. If composition is lacking, your photograph as a whole will feel as if it's lacking something. For better shots, practice different ways of composing your photos.
Memory Card
Fluorescent lighting requires a lower white balance for indoor photos. You will notice that fluorescent light highlights the blue and green light spectrum and will require post processing in order to balance your tones.
Perhaps the best way to get high quality photos is to take a lot of pictures, so it's important that your camera has a big memory card. If you have a memory card that is large enough, you will never worry about being able to store additional photos on your card. A great part of larger memory space is that you can use the RAW format. This allows greater flexibility in editing.
Consider sending along some advance advice on how your subjects will want to dress when you are setting up a group photograph. Although matching outfits aren't necessary, having your subjects clothed in complementary shades of color can enhance a photograph. Suggest neutral shades or warm colors, as they will blend with natural environments. If they prefer bolder shades of color, then recommend adding black to the mix in order to blend multiple hues.
Take down notes on different experiments you perform while taking your photographs. When you look at the hundreds of pictures you took, it might be hard to remember where you took all of them, or how you felt at that moment. Bring a notebook with you and write down a description of every photograph you take with the corresponding number.
Your photos should be edited by you. There are lots of different editing software programs you can use. Find a software that you can edit your photos, however you want. You should use a program you feel comfortable with.
To make photos look more distinctive, play a bit with with perspective, scale, and expectations. If a mundane subject is situated to make it appear out of place or out of proportion with its surroundings, the resulting picture will be especially intriguing. Experiment with your compositions to bring a unique perspective to an ordinary object.
When you find a brand that you like, that gives you great results, stick with it. You need a quality brand, if photography is going to be a hobby that you pursue for a lifetime. The brand name is not as important as the features available on the camera.
When going somewhere new, get an idea of what things you ought to be taking pictures of. To get more tips on how to start, go to a postcard rack. These photos contain ideas of things people really feel strongly about.
Even a dull subject can be made visually interesting if you make the right camera adjustments, shoot from a different viewpoint, or change the lighting. Experiment with theses different attributes before you arrive on location, so that you have a better idea of how each one can transform a shot.
If you want to take better pictures, start by reading the instruction manual that came with your camera. Manuals are often bulky and thick. People tend to place them at the back of drawers or they get thrown away. Actually spend some time reading your manual instead of tossing it. You will avoid simple errors and improve your skill.
It is possible to use your camera's built-in features as valuable resources for setting up your shots. Using a more shallow depth of field is a great way to blur your backgrounds out, and to help draw more attention to the subject matter in the photo.
Take the time to learn how the ISO on your camera functions, or you could find yourself taking bad photographs because of it. Remember that the higher you turn the ISO, the more you can see, and thus print, grain on your photo. If this is not an effect you are consciously aiming for, visible grain can make your photo look awful.
When you are using a film camera, you should consider what brand film you want to use. Every photographer has their own preference as to which film is the best film for them personally. It mostly comes down to personal preference; no brand has additional features that make it necessary to get if you prefer another brand. Once you have found the right film format, film brand is up to you.
Try creating a silhouette in your photo. You can even try taking silhouette photography using the sunset environment, or another beautiful setting. If the background is more illuminated than the subject, a silhouette will form. Create a silhouette shot by putting your subject in front of a sunny window or by setting up a flash off-camera, behind the subject. However, be aware that the silhouette image may call attention to a less-than-flattering aspect of your subject.
Use a tripod if you want to take pictures of a landscape. You don't want a perfect landscape shot to be ruined because the camera jiggled at the wrong moment, so make sure your camera is resting on a steady base.
Your camera is a tool, and should be used as such for your shots. You can blur backgrounds out to focus attention on the photo subject by applying a shallower depth of field.
Make sure you use optical zoom instead of digital zoom for macro shots. A lot of cameras let you zoom closer than the optics alone can handle, but image quality starts deteriorating when digital features are enabled. When you are using digital zoom, many cameras are set up to interpolate pixels, while adding them to your image. This will result in a decreased image quality. If it is possible to disable this zoom feature, ensure that you do. Your manual should give directions for this.
Sometimes, you are not able to get the perfect lighting when you are taking landscape photos. Other times, you may have issues with getting your image to have uniform lighting. So, what are your options? See if a computer program, like Photoshop, can help you adjust the lighting after the shoot.
Knowing how to correctly hold the camera is a very important tip that photographers should understand. Stable imagery is not even possible without the camera being held the right ways. Make sure that your arms remain next to your body while the cameras lens is supported by your off hand.
You should now have a better understanding as to how photography works. If you already thought you were prepared, you should now know everything there is to know. These tips can give you some solid advice for taking better pictures, so apply them to your photography.
If you are going to take pictures of a person, always hold your camera at their eye level. By shooting from this angle, your photo will naturally draw people's eyes to focus on the subject. When you are taking pictures of children, be sure to crouch down to their height rather than looking down on them.


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Dent Time is our name and big dents is our game. Fixing the most challenging dents in San Diego is how we built our reputation. Doing the job right the first time is our #1 priority.
Performing paintless dent repair on large dents in San Diego is our passion. Big paintless dent removal requires the utmost skill without creating poke marks and harming the factory finish. Our customers know when they choose Dent Time, they will be getting a superior repair that just can't be matched. Since 1991, our experience has established long relationships with each customer by exceeding their expectations and gaining their trust through exceptional quality.
A few benefits about choosing Dent Time is we restore your vehicle back to pre-accident condition without repainting. Compared to a traditional body shop, our paintless dent removal service is proven more cost effective, faster and superior. Here's why:
- No loosing your factory or custom finish.
- Our PDR service sustains your resale vehicle.
- You'll avoid making a claim.
- No risk being reported to CarFax (vehicle history report).
- No down time away from your vehicle, we come to you!
- Most PDR repairs are completed within 1-3 hours.
- 1/3 – 1/2 the cost of a body shop with better results!
We are excited about what we do as a service and we believe you'll feel the same. Remember, paintless dent removal isn't just our job.. It's an ART!

subset: commoncrawl


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One can understand why Charles Koch would be uncomfortable with the story about how one of his high pressure gas lines immolated a couple of teenagers who's mistake was trying to report the gas leak. Numerous other safety violations, including connections to the Freedom Industries coal ash spill in West Virginia.
There are many names by which the Koch's wiki activities are known, There whitewashing, vandalism, fraud, and the dark foreboding of a cosmocidal cephlopod with pathological narcissistic delusions and compulsive control behaviours. But, we'll get to Cthulhu later.
Meanwhile Kim Davis, is released from custody. Mike Huckabee is flogging her case for all the political capital it is worth, Or perhaps is just high, It is hard to tell. Saying "God appeared in the form of and elected democrat named Kim Davis." Which a truly remarkable feat, because at last report God was passed out under a mess table 300 metres from the beer volcano, and the serving wench he was snogging got bored and went dancing with the new guy, Leonard Nimoy. We checked, God is reportedly still under the table, hugging a table cloth like it is hugging him back. It is reported by (slightly tipsy) authorities, that he still experiences trauma from realizing that he's not in control of everything but "that he is working through it". Eventually they hope to "help Cthulhu embark on a similar journey of self discovery".
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.The Jesus character endorses Mosaic law in Mathew 5:17-18, So, under biblical law, Kim Davis with her four marriages is liable to stoning for adultery. And that's before having kids with husband #3 while married to husband #1. Husband #4 is of course a real snappy dresser ready for any occasion, especially a photo op with a sitting congressman.
13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
All of this theatre is of course arranged by Cthulhu to confuse the unwary into thinking stupidity is smart destruction is creative, and Justin Beiber is here to save the planet from evil reptile overlords.
Tony Abbott even played his part by offering 12,000 beds in concentration camps and factory rape processing lines to Syrian Refugees heading to Europe.
All in all, this is a fine display dystopian theatre put on to hide the next phase of Cthulhu's plan to destroy the world, green coffee bean enemas.
The role of the Kochs in this scheme is unclear, but it is thought they have been promised dibbs on any wookies found in the bottom of the Canadian tar sands pits. So, Keystone XL is really important to them. Also note Drilling rigs are headed to arctic waters to find the lost wedding ring of CEO Ben van Beurden, keep it quiet his wife doesn't know yet.
See Also
Koch's implicated in multi year white washing scandal
Tony Abbott says Australia will accept 12000 more refugees


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Busty Mature Whore Claudia-Marie Gets Her New Juggs Worked Out
when you have complete loose missile kind of girl going out of control, than things can get pretty fucking crazy.. and the fact that huge titted sex loving housewife from the South, mature porn whore, Claudia-Marie, just got another boob job recently (3rd one in last few months as far as I could count), tells you how serious things are over @ Claudia-Marie.com.. and straight after she basically got basketeball size implants in her already huge knockers, this mature slut got into raw fuck action.. as soon as she took off the bandages, she got her still sore, swollen juggs grabbed and slapped by a rough playing busty nurse slut, Rebecca Love, and ended up eating her juicy pussy in front of Claudia-Marie.com cameras.. after she was done with her, dirty nurse called in the doctor, and this sick bastard just couldn't pass on a chance to fuck such giant titted fuck doll.. he basically threated her like a big titted piece of meat that she is, and covered her mega juggs with his Doc load, leaving her all messy and crying, but still, ready to take more.. a LOT more:
Im telling you, if you thought big titted Claudia-Marie was dirty, and ready for anything, Im kind of scared to think about all the things she can, and WILL do with her new, enormous fake melons @ Claudia-Marie.com.. damn, this woman loves being threated like a reusable sex object, and she'll do whatever it takes to have as many men as possible have a go at her.. we're talking ULTIMATE whore next door, that's also a genuine sweety as well – on Wed I watched her getting fucked live on cam @ Claudia-Marie.com (she's hosting regular cam shows for their members every Wed), and when she noticed that Im online, and watching her, she grabbed the Boobster top I sent her (it was next to her the entire time she was getting fucked the entire time, and I LOVED that!!!), and said hi to all the Boobster fans watching her.. Claudia-Marie, you fucking RULE!!!
BooB ON!
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2.1. Blake's 7: Scimitar
Released November 2014
Behind the Scenes
Trevor Baxendale's Top 5 Blake's 7 moments
It's difficult to come up with a Top 5 moments in Blake's 7. There are too many to choose from, for a start. And Blake's 7 changes all the time. No two series are completely alike, and no one thing and no one person is indispensable, as proven in Star One and Terminal - and, of course, Blake. But there are important touchstones throughout the four year run, and a few in particular came to mind as I sat down to write first my novel Criminal Intent, and then the audio play Scimitar...
1. Trial - I love the Travis story in this. Nowhere in Blake's 7 is it made more clear that Travis sees himself as the hero. He's a soldier, an enforcer, a warrior. He is brutal and single-minded, certainly, but he is also courageous and - apart from his long, final fall from grace - completely loyal to the Federation. He sees Blake and his followers as criminals and terrorists. Travis's fight is therefore a war on terror - he sees himself as protecting the order and stability of his society against dangerous insurgents. I wanted to tap into this remarkable form of self-awareness in Criminal Intent, and consequently Travis is quite the anti-hero rather than out-and-out villain.
2. Duel - another great story for a different Travis. Stephen Greif is my fave Travis and his very personal contest with Blake, a microcosmic representation of Federation's struggle against rebellion, is a highlight. But the most arresting parts of this story are the scenes between Travis and his mutoid assistant, Kiera. Why has he taken the trouble to find out her original, pre-mutoid identity? Why does he then tease her with it? What is his fascination with Kiera? There's more to Travis than meets the eye...
3. Rumours of Death - because you can't talk about Series C of Blake's 7 without mentioning this episode. Chockfull of grit, menace, drama (and melodrama, because it's Blake's 7) this is a standout piece of television: one of its greatest strengths is its brutally taut storytelling and this is in no small way helped by starting the episode in the middle of the actual story. A swaggeringly confident script and production.
4. Powerplay - another taut and influential story, especially when I came to write my audio play Scimitar. All the scenes on the Liberator are so wonderfully tense, and a typical Blake's 7 situation when everything is in flux: Blake missing in action, the crew scattered, everyone trying to survive on their own terms. They're all survivors, but with Blake gone it's Avon's story that becomes the most compelling. The insertion of Dayna and Tarrant into the regular crew via their own unique and compelling introductions works so well. In Scimitar, Dayna is missing and Del Grant is a recent addition to the crew, so this episode from the TV series certainly felt relevant.
5. Series D - It's not fair to pick out a single episode from this, which, despite everything, remains my favourite season of Blake's 7. The final five episodes are a terrific run showing that the series could still produce outstanding scripts and was showing no sign of fatigue. That it ends everything on one of its finest, bleakest episodes, Blake, while still on a confident high and in the manner it does is one of the many, many things that makes Blake's 7 unique.
Designing the Cover
As the short animation below shows, artist and designer Grant Kempster started with an original sketch and then 'built' the Scimitar in Photoshop, using pictures of retro objects such as the Tomytronic 3D gaming device and a Sega Light Phaser gun controller. To these, Grant added photos of various model kits, combining them all to create the Federation's newest warship.
Before long, the Scimitar began to take shape. When completed producer Cavan Scott immediately told Grant that he loved it, but it needed "roughing up as much as possible!"
Building the Scimitar


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Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thematic Photographic - Cloudy
Cloudy skies above a small town in East Texas. Dynamic and moving, while the town is in a kind of stasis.
11 comments:
- mo.stoneskin said...
That looks exactly as I would imagine a small Texan town!
- June 29, 2009 at 12:27 AM
- Gilly said...
Are all small towns spread out like that? I suppose Texas has more space than we have, though!! And fewer people living there!
Still, that's given me an idea for a post when I come back from Hospital tomorrow!
- June 29, 2009 at 2:34 AM
- Beverly said...
I could sit and watch the sky for hours. I find it interesting the way it can tie to the moods of many.
- June 29, 2009 at 5:00 AM
- Crystal said...
I just sent my daughter off to Texas to spend a few weeks with my mom. I can imagine that the town she's going to looks exactly like that. She's going to Happy, TX. Population(as of 2007): 609
Yeah, that's six hundred and nine - not missing any commas or zeros. ;)
- June 29, 2009 at 11:45 AM
- g said...
This is the same little Texas town where I found these pickles last fall:
Flying Pickles
And yes, Crystal, it's about the same size.
- June 29, 2009 at 2:51 PM
- Tristan Robin Blakeman said...
This looks like the town where the play "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean" takes place.
- June 29, 2009 at 6:55 PM
- cactus petunia said...
I love the contrast between all the wires and lines and man-made stuff and cloudy sky.
- June 29, 2009 at 7:48 PM
- Life with Kaishon said...
Oh, I just love this picture. I was thinking today that so far, if I had to put this summer into words, beautiful skies, would be right up there on top! : )
- June 29, 2009 at 8:22 PM
- phd in yogurtry said...
Those small towns, yes, statis is the word.
- June 29, 2009 at 10:10 PM
- PastorMac's Ann said...
Sometimes in a town like this, feels like the clouds are the only things that move. (not speaking from experience or anything...ahem)
Nice choice.
- July 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM
- August 21, 2009 at 6:35 AM


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Awarding organisation
Awarding Body: IMI
Qualifications on offer: Level 3 Diploma in Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Repair
Summary of course
The Level 3 Diploma is a vocational course that completes the three year training programme for practical vehicle mechanics. All units are assessed and graded and an overall grade for the qualification is awarded.
The pattern of attendance is three full days per week. The course is made up of six core and one specialist units. The specialist unit enable you to study particular area in depth.
What will I study?
The units you will study are likely to include:
Core Units:
- Customer Care
- Vehicle Systems
- Electronics
- Fault Diagnostics
- Science
- Maths
- Light Engines
- SI Electrics
- Ancillary Equipment
- Fuel Injection
- Transmission
- Braking
- Steering and Suspension
- Engine Maintenance Systems
All units are subject to change and may be withdrawn.
For further information about the course and the units you will study, please read the awarding body specification by clicking on the link below:
How is the course assessed?
The assessment of is made up of three components which are set by IMI:
- practical tasks
- online testing
- written assignment/coursework
Your Study Programme
If you are aged 16-18, you will join a Study Programme. We will make sure you are working at the right level on your core qualification and are challenged to achieve the highest level of qualification you can. All students will continue to improve their maths and English and if you don't have a grade 4 (C) at GCSE, we will work with you towards achieving that goal (subject to specific entry requirements for particular courses). Work experience will be part of your study programme and complement your college study and prepare you for employment. You will also get involved in activities to help you develop life skills and to build your confidence so you can make progress in your career. Weekly timetables will include tutorial support which may comprise of full group activities or one to one sessions to discuss individual progress or support needs.
Who is this course for?
The course is ideal for you if you have an interest in developing your practical and theoretical skills to enable you to work in the motor vehicle industry and wish to gain a Level 3 qualification in vehicle maintenance.
Progression and Career Opportunities
- Motor Vehicle Apprenticeship
Entry Requirements for new students
|Entry Requirements
|Entry and Foundation:
|GCSEs mainly 2-1 (F/G) grades. Satisfactory school reference*
|Level 1:
|Four GCSEs at grade 2 (E) or above
|Level 2:
|Four GCSEs at grade 3 (D) or above
|Level 3 BTEC Courses or equivalent:
|Four GCSEs at grade 9-4 (A*-C)
|Level 3 A Levels:
|Five GCSEs at grade 9-4 (A*-C)
|Level 4/5:
|A Level 3 qualification such as: A Levels, BTEC Level 3, Access to HE, Advanced Apprenticeship
|Specific Course Requirements:
|GCSE English and Maths at grade 4 (C) and an IMI Level 2 Diploma in Vehicle Maintenance and Repair
*All applicants will be invited in for interview.
Equivalent qualifications will be considered except where English has been studied as a second language and is required at GCSE grade 9-4 (A*-C).
In exceptional circumstances, applications which do not meet the formal entry criteria may be considered on an individual basis.
Interview Requirements
You must bring your interview letter to your appointment and arrive 15 minutes before your interview is due to take place.
All applicants are screened for Numeracy and Literacy.
Please bring evidence of qualifications and/or expected grades.
General Info (materials required for the course)
You will need to supply safety boots and overalls for workshop activities.


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Jimmy performing aboard the Mandalay during his annual Parrish Heads in Paradise vacation.
Island Time
This video was filmed on location in Marsh Harbour, Bahamas in the summer of 2012. Also in the video is a little island hopping at Nipper's on nearby Great Guana Cay and across the Sea of Abaco in Hopetown. This tune is featured on the Act of Piracy CD.
Opening for Kenny Chesney
Jimmy and the band was crowned Northeast Florida's Next Big Star and opened for Kenny Chesney in August of 2008 at the Jacksonville Arena. This is the live video from the concert.
The Coast
Jimmy and the band performing an original tune off their 2010 album, Act of Piracy.
WJXT Jacksonville Promo Commercial
In the summer of 2011, Jacksonville's local television station WJXT Channel 4 featured Jimmy and the band in their commercial promoting The Morning Show. It was filmed at Billy's Boathouse Grill in Jacksonville Beach.
Grapefruit Juicy Fruit
Here's an acoustic performance of Buffett's Grapefruit Juicy Fruit filmed at the Nav-A-Gator in Lake Suzy, FL in 2010. Notice former band members Dusty Barber and Richard Phillips going Hawaiian-style, sporting the ukuleles.
Guitars and Tiki Bars
One of our favorite all-time venues, the Palm Pavilion in Clearwater Beach, FL was the setting for this 2009 sunset show. This is a truly tropical rendition of Kenny Chesney's Guitars and Tiki Bars.


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We will be closed from 25th December until 2nd January.
Normal service will be resumed on Wednesday.
Welcome to Pauls Flowers
We have been established for the past 22 years offering flowers for all occasions; birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and funerals.
We have fully qualified staff and we deliver within the Nottingham area. We have a large range of fresh cut flowers. If we do not have the flowers you require we will do our very best to get them for you the next working day if you order by 10 am. If you need to speak to us to discuss your order, do not hesitate to call us on 0115 840 0084.


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About us
We are an experienced and highly skilled team who care for individuals who have psychosis and co-morbid disorders.
These are individuals who have experienced multiple admissions, persisting symptoms and poor functioning in different settings. They may not have engaged with treatment in the past and present with risks of harm to self or others, as well as self neglect.
Our philosophy is to support these individuals on their road to independence, working with them towards their self defined goals to enable them to improve their quality of life.
Quick facts
- Our multi-professional team is highly experienced and focused on a recovery pathway
- We have 20 beds in our unit in Lambeth
- We offer adult inpatient psychiatric rehabilitation for men and women
- We work in collaboration with service users to develop their recovery plans and build upon personal skills
- In 2013/14, 54% of our service users were discharged to independent living
- Our length of stay is below average for similar settings
Quality Assurance
New evidence-based practice is adopted into in routine clinical practice
Strong training and supervision structures for staff
- Good CQC ratings and outcomes


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I think we've all made these at some point in our childhood, but I just remembered to bring them back this Halloween. They're a quick and easy festive treat to make! And cheap, we like cheap.
What You Need:
- round lollipops like Charms Blow-Pops or Tootsie Pops
- tissues
- yarn cut into 6" pieces
- black pen/marker
What You Do:
- On flat surface lay two unfolded tissues flat on top of each other at an angle so that all 8 corners show.
- In the center of your tissues, hold the top of the head of the lollipop down so the stick stands straight up. Pull up the corners of the tissues and twist them around the base of the head so they drape around the stick when turned over.
- Tie a yarn tight around the neck at the base and tie a bow.
- With the black pen, draw a face. Done!


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Mandy Ainslie
My journey with yoga has been incredibly blessed, blissful, and full of surprises. I've been practicing for more than ten years, but it was in 2010 that I decided to journey to South-East Asia to deepen my study, initially with Agama Yoga in Thailand. Since then it's been a whirlwind of travel, training with incredible teachers, discovering a more authentic me, and finding my voice as a teacher.
In my experience, yoga brings more love into life – what an honor to be teaching Love! I've had the pleasure of studying with veteran teacher Tara Judelle of Lila Yoga, as well as Anusara-Inspired teacher Elizabeth Linton, and I completed a 200-hour teacher-training with Ashton Szabo and Emma Warmington at the Virajati Yoga School. I've also been a Birth Doula since 2004, having completed extensive training at Seattle Midwifery School. I consider it a profound gift to assist women during pregnancy and labor.
Prenatal yoga is a beautiful bridge between my passions, and I love helping women to find deeper levels of trust, strength and surrender within themselves. I feel tremendous gratitude for the training and guidance I've received from Colette Crawford at the Seattle Holistic Center. I aim to bring playfulness, love, and compassion into my classes, giving my students a safe place to find grace and empowerment through breath and movement.
I'm excited to teach Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, also known as 'tapping') for Pregnancy at the Seattle Holistic Center, to bring energetic and emotional healing to the entire journey of pregnancy, labor and postpartum.


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News and Releases
Spiritual Journaling Workshop - Cancelled
Cancelled Workshop - Unfortunately TRAHC has cancelled this workshop due to lack of students.
Want to record your journey of faith this Lenten season? Or maybe you want to meditate on your place in the universe? Bring your favorite quote or bible verse to create a framed mixed-media piece with artist Agnes Tirrito. In this stress-free environment, you'll have a chance to play around with art materials by stamping, collaging, mark-making, and more. No experience required; all you have to know is how to cut and paste! Make it a night out with friends and bring your own wine. Give yourself permission to have a little fun and sign up today.
Call 903-792-8681 to register!
Spiritual Journaling Workshop with Agnes Tirrito
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Thursday, March 8
Cost: $40
(Registration required)
About the Teaching Artist:
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Bison phylogeography constrains dispersal and viability of the Ice Free Corridor in western Canada
Edited by Francisco J. Ayala, University of California, Irvine, CA, and approved March 16, 2016 (received for review February 6, 2016)
The Ice Free Corridor has been invoked as a route for Pleistocene human and animal dispersals between eastern Beringia and more southerly areas of North America. Despite the significance of the corridor, there are limited data for when and how this corridor was used. Hypothetical uses of the corridor include: the first expansion of humans from Beringia into the Americas, northward postglacial expansions of fluted point technologies into Beringia, and continued use of the corridor as a contact route between the north and south. Here, we use radiocarbon dates and ancient mitochondrial DNA from late Pleistocene bison fossils to determine the chronology for when the corridor was open and viable for biotic dispersals. The corridor was closed after ∼23,000 until 13,400 calendar years ago (cal y BP), after which we find the first evidence, to our knowledge, that bison used this route to disperse from the south, and by 13,000 y from the north. Our chronology supports a habitable and traversable corridor by at least 13,000 cal y BP, just before the first appearance of Clovis technology in interior North America, and indicates that the corridor would not have been available for significantly earlier southward human dispersal. Following the opening of the corridor, multiple dispersals of human groups between Beringia and interior North America may have continued throughout the latest Pleistocene and early Holocene. Our results highlight the utility of phylogeographic analyses to test hypotheses about paleoecological history and the viability of dispersal routes over time.
A central question in New World biogeography and archaeology has been the role of an "Ice Free Corridor" along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in facilitating biotic exchange between Beringia—unglaciated Alaska and Yukon—and southern interior parts of the Americas (1⇓⇓–4). Of central importance is the potential role for the corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets in defining the pattern and timing of the initial entry of humans into the New World (Fig. 1). Early geological models from western Canada suggested that the ice sheets did not coalesce during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (5) and implied that the corridor was a viable route for dispersal throughout the late Pleistocene (∼125,000–11,500 y ago). This view gained support from numerous, misleadingly "old" radiocarbon ages from bulk deposits in the corridor region (6). The suggestion of an open and viable corridor throughout the LGM gave rise to its prominence as the most likely pathway taken by the first people to colonize the Americas from Beringia (3, 4, 7). Eventually, this notion of a corridor became tightly linked with the "Clovis First" archaeological model, in which widespread fluted projectile point technology, often found in association with remains of Pleistocene megafauna, was believed to reflect initial human dispersal into the Americas (8).
More recent geological interpretations indicate that the Laurentide Ice Sheet coalesced with the Cordilleran ice sheet along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains by ∼21,000 calendar years before present (cal y BP, with present defined as C.E. 1950) (9). Ice sheet coalescence would have formed an impenetrable barrier to terrestrial dispersals between Beringia to the north and interior North America to the south that lasted at least until glaciers retreated near the end of the Pleistocene. As the ice sheets receded, a corridor formed that opened a route between Beringia and the continental interior, with its most likely route running through Yukon Territory along the rapidly wasting Cordilleran Ice Sheet or perhaps along the Mackenzie valley (1). A gap in the regional vertebrate radiocarbon date record in Alberta (10) and genetic evidence of a strong barrier to gene flow within large mammal populations to the north and south of the ice sheets during this time interval (11) both support the geological interpretation of coalescence of the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.
As geological and paleoenvironmental evidence mounted that the corridor was not available during the LGM, a hypothesized Pacific coastal route emerged as the more likely route to account for the earliest people in southerly regions of the Americas (4, 12). This hypothesis was coupled with the suggestion that, even if an early deglacial corridor existed, the landscape was probably ecologically unproductive and unable to support large mammal or human populations, perhaps for millennia following the retreat of glaciers (4). The Clovis First model lost favor as sites south of the LGM ice sheets, such as Monte Verde (Chile), the Gault locality (Texas), Manis (Washington), and Paisley (Oregon), provided archaeological evidence that humans were present in the Americas at least a millennium before the appearance of Clovis technology (13). At the same time, genetic analyses suggested that New World founding populations began dispersing from Beringia ∼15,000–20,000 cal y BP (14⇓–16).
Despite its importance in North American paleoecology and archaeology, interpretations of the corridor are based on data from a sparsely studied, vast region that was impacted significantly by glacial processes. Questions remain about the precise timing of the postglacial opening of the corridor (12), its biological carrying capacity following deglaciation (4), and when, if at all, it could have served as a viable route for the movement of people and animals between Beringia and the rest of the Americas. Available archaeological data demonstrate that human populations were present near the southern end of the corridor just before deglaciation (1, 17). Unfortunately, the limited and often perplexing archaeological evidence from the corridor region itself makes it difficult to assess directly when people, technologies, or both traversed the corridor after deglaciation (1). More recently, archaeological interest in the corridor has focused on its potential as a route for northward postglacial dispersal, most notably to explain the appearance of fluted projectile point technology in Alaska (13).
Bison Phylogeography to Infer the Chronology of the Ice Free Corridor
Advances in paleogenetic approaches and DNA sequencing technologies have enabled the recovery of large datasets of populations sampled over time (18). Although DNA preservation and the chronological range of radiocarbon dating have limited ancient DNA studies largely to the last ∼50,000 y, this temporal interval spans two events that were undeniably important in shaping the present-day distribution of biodiversity: the transition into and back out of the LGM, which reached its peak ∼26,000–19,000 cal y BP (19), and the global expansion of human populations (20). Although some genetic signal of both of these events is retained in living populations, paleogenetic data provide temporal snapshots of phylogeographic structure that may not be otherwise detectable (21). For example, paleogenomic data from ancient Europeans has revealed present-day Sardinians to be more closely related to the ancestral human population in Europe than to any other present day population, which probably reflects a genetic replacement associated with the expansion of agriculture (22, 23). Paleogenetic data have also been used to test hypotheses about the influence of humans on the phylogeography of other species, for example, via domestication (24, 25).
Bison (Bison sp.) are an ideal taxon for assessing when the corridor was open and available for biotic dispersals. Although bison taxonomy is complex, with up to several dozen species named based largely on skull and horn morphology (26, 27), the first bison to enter North America from Asia during the Pleistocene are generally referred to as the steppe bison, Bison priscus. Bison are one of the most abundant large mammals recovered from faunas within the western interior of North America, although previous studies have provided only limited radiocarbon and mitochondrial data from the corridor region. Bison are one of the first species for which ancient DNA data were used to reconstruct changing patterns of population structure spanning tens of thousands of years at continental scales (11). In addition, unlike many of their Pleistocene counterparts such as mammoths (Mammuthus), horses (Equus), and lions (Panthera), bison survived the extinction event at the end of the Pleistocene and persist in North America. Bison genomes, however, contain the signature of a genetic bottleneck at the end of the Pleistocene that can be used to test hypotheses about how ice age environmental changes affected their distribution and abundance (11).
Previous work using radiocarbon and ancient DNA data demonstrated that bison mitochondrial genetic diversity (but not necessarily their morphological diversity) (26) is phylogeographically partitioned across North America and has been since the LGM (11). Although bison survived the interval of glacial coalescence both north and south of the continental ice sheets, population bottlenecks and barriers to gene flow affected their mitochondrial diversity. By the time the glaciers began to retreat, bison populations that had been isolated to the south of the continental ice sheets were mitochondrially distinct from their contemporary northern counterparts in Beringia. A mitochondrial clade of southern bison, including the two present-day bison subspecies in North America, the plains bison (B. bison bison) and wood bison (B. b. athabascae), shares a common ancestor dating to the period of glacial coalescence ∼15,000–22,000 cal y BP (11). Thus, the identification of bison from this southern clade within and north of the corridor region can be interpreted as reflecting northward dispersal. Likewise, the appearance of bison from a Beringian mitochondrial clade further south in interior North America can be interpreted as southward dispersal.
Here, we report new radiocarbon dates and mitochondrial haplotype data from fossil bison recovered from the corridor region and adjacent areas in Beringia (Fig. 1, Table 1, and Dataset S1) and use these data to assess when the corridor opened and was available as a dispersal route. In addition to resolving the chronology for when the corridor was open, we use a Bayesian phylogeographic approach to infer the timing and directionality of dispersals for ancient bison between the north and south. The specific evolutionary history of bison mitochondria make this an ideal genetic marker to assess the timing and viability of the corridor and thereby provide insights relevant not only to bison, but also to other species, including humans, that may have used the corridor to disperse between Beringia and interior North America during the late Pleistocene.
Results and Discussion
A Refined Chronology for the Opening of the Postglacial Corridor.
To infer the chronology of the corridor linking Beringia and interior North America, we generated radiocarbon dates from 78 North American bison fossils, 49 of which were recovered from the corridor region (Table 1 and Dataset S1). Sites included Clover Bar and Charlie Lake Cave in western Canada (Fig. 1), both of which previously yielded dates in the time frame of interest (11,500–13,500 cal y BP) (10). The Charlie Lake Cave fossils were also associated with archaeological materials (28). We generated mitochondrial haplotypes from 45 of these dated fossils, including from 18 of the 22 from Clover Bar and Charlie Lake Cave that fall within the time frame of interest. We then used these and previously published haplotypes to estimate a mitochondrial genealogy for a total of 192 late Pleistocene, Holocene, and present-day North American bison, including 37 from the corridor region and within the time frame of interest (Fig. 1, Fig. S1, Table 1, and Dataset S1). To facilitate discussion, we divide the mitochondrial genealogy into two major clades, clade 1 and clade 2, which are based on the most deeply diverging lineages within the mitochondrial tree. We also highlight several well-supported subclades within these two major clades.
Our recovered genealogy is similar to previously published mitochondrial genealogies for bison (11, 29), in which the most striking feature of the tree is the clustering of all present-day bison into clade 1a, with a maternal common ancestor that postdates the LGM (Fig. 2A). The increased density of new postglacial bison included in our analysis refines the pattern of extinction of clade 2, within which the latest surviving lineages tend to cluster together both phylogenetically and geographically (Fig. 2A). Clade 2a comprises a late-surviving population of bison that appears to be geographically restricted to southern Yukon and interior Alaska and includes a fossil that dates to as recently as ∼325–490 cal y BP. Clade 2b is geographically isolated to the region of the postglacial corridor and includes a skull recovered from Banff National Park that dates to ∼305–430 cal y BP (Dataset S1). This increased phylogeographic clustering during postglacial times, compared with before the LGM, probably reflects a trend toward physical isolation of bison populations as open habitats were largely replaced by spruce forest and increasing paludification across northwestern Canada (30).
The pattern of bison dispersal into the postglacial corridor provides increased resolution of both the timing of establishment of an ecosystem that can support grazing herbivores and the capacity for the animals to traverse this region. Previously published dates for a horse from Vauxhall, Alberta (10), and a bison from Tsiigehtchic, Yukon (29), indicate a postglacial corridor route had begun to form at both the northern and southern ends by at least 13,500 cal y BP. Bison from clade 1a were present in the southern corridor near present-day Calgary by 13,430–12,875 cal y BP, and bison from clade 2b were in northeastern British Columbia by 13,175–13,045 cal y BP. The postglacial corridor was fully open for dispersals by 13,000 cal y BP, when multiple overlapping radiocarbon dates belonging to bison from all three late-surviving clades (Fig. 2; clades 1a, 2a, and 2b) are found at the Clover Bar site (Fig. 1 and Table 1). The fact that bison from all three late-surviving clades are present during this same interval is crucial; although we cannot determine with confidence the direction of dispersal of bison from clade 2b, our analyses indicate a northern origin for bison from clade 2a (Fig. 2B). Bison from clades 1a and 2b were present in stratigraphic subzones IIb–d at Charlie Lake Cave for ∼1,000 y before the end of the Pleistocene, from ∼12,500 to 11,500 cal y BP (28) (Fig. 1 and Table 1). These corridor bison were part of a diverse megafaunal community that included American lion (Panthera leo atrox), horse, western camel (Camelops hesternus), caribou (Rangifer tarandus), tundra muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus), helmeted musk oxen (Bootherium bombifrons), and mammoth (1, 31), further supporting the notion that the area was productive habitat at the end of the Pleistocene. Based on present understanding of the biogeography of many of these mammal taxa, there is a general hypothesis that, apart from the clade 2a bison, most of the taxa that recolonized the corridor region came from the south, including horses, lions, camels, and muskoxen (10).
Data presented here and elsewhere demonstrate the critical role that continental ice sheets and the postglacial corridor played in biogeographic patterning among species and populations. For many mammalian taxa, paleontological and genetic data reveal distinct separation of populations north and south of the ice. Intriguingly, despite our conclusion that bison disperse into the postglacial corridor from both the north and south, we find only limited evidence of dispersal beyond the region of the corridor. In fact, the only evidence of dispersal completely through the corridor is the occurrence of a bison from clade 1a at Liard River, Northwest Territories, at 12,390–12,035 cal y BP, which corresponds to a northward dispersal (Fig. 2B and Table 1). Similarly to bison, several other taxa with Eurasian origins, such as caribou and American lion, probably traversed the corridor region before the LGM and established populations in the southern interior of North America (10). However, the responses of these species to deglaciation and environmental change at the end of the Pleistocene varied. For example, although bison from the south dispersed as far north as the Liard River, there is no mitochondrial evidence of further northward expansion into Alaska and Yukon during the Holocene. In contrast, mitochondrial data suggest that all present-day wolves (Canis lupus) in the North American subarctic and arctic are descended from a population that was south of the continental ice sheets during the LGM and that dispersed northward during the postglacial period (32).
These results have two key implications for the role of the postglacial corridor as a pathway for biotic exchange between Beringia and interior North America. First, the opening of the postglacial corridor may have favored south to north, rather than north to south dispersal. Detailed biome reconstructions indicate that southern and central portions of the deglaciating corridor in this time range featured potentially more productive grasslands, open spruce woodlands, and boreal parkland, whereas northern portions of the corridor were marked by alpine, herb, and shrub tundras (30). Southward dispersal may also have been limited for biological reasons, for example, if southern bison were better adapted than northern bison to the expanding grasslands within the corridor region (27). Second, the interval of time during which it is feasible to transect the corridor may have been limited. For bison, the barrier to further dispersal may have been the relatively quick replacement of grasslands at the northern end of the corridor by increasingly closed spruce forests, which are difficult for grazing herbivores such as bison to transect (26, 33).
Consequences of the Postglacial Corridor Chronology for North American Human Prehistory.
The expansion of bison into the corridor region provides proxy evidence for when this route was viable for human populations and, in doing so, allows further refinement of New World human settlement scenarios. Human genetic and archaeological evidence indicate that eastern Beringia and parts of the Americas well south of the ice sheets were populated by 14,000 cal y BP, suggesting that migration out of Beringia probably began more than 15,000 cal y BP ago (15, 34⇓–36). Our chronology for the opening of the postglacial corridor indicates that a fully habitable corridor connected Beringia and interior North America by ∼13,000 cal y BP. This timing precludes the postglacial corridor as a southward route for initial human dispersal into the Americas, the corollary being that the first indigenous peoples leaving Beringia probably took a coastal route or potentially moved through western North America before glacial coalescence (37, 38).
We find that a bison belonging to the northern clade (2a) reached the Edmonton area by 13,000 cal y BP. It is therefore possible that established northern human populations also reached the central corridor by this time. Evidence from the archaeological record supports this hypothesis. For example, Alaskan archaeological sites including Swan Point, Mead, Broken Mammoth, Tuluaq, and Dry Creek, which were occupied from ∼14,000 to 11,500 cal y BP, feature a variety of projectile technologies, sometimes associated with microblade industries (39). Similar microblade technologies are present at Vermilion Lakes (Banff National Park) and Charlie Lake Cave by ∼11,500 cal y BP (28, 40, 41). In addition, human genetic data from Upward Sun River, Alaska, show founding New World mitochondrial haplotypes B2 and C1b in Alaska at ∼11,500 cal y BP. Small, isolated groups of people may therefore have continued to disperse from Beringia to interior North America well after the corridor region opened (14, 16, 41, 42).
Our bison data also suggest that biotic conditions favored northward rather than southward movements through the corridor, paralleling archaeological data involving fluted point technology (13). Bison clade 1a, which originates south of the ice sheets during the period of coalescence, predominates in our corridor sample, with one instance occurring as far north as the Liard River by ∼12,200 cal y BP. The oldest recognizable Clovis complex sites in North America are estimated to range from 13,000 to 12,600 cal y BP (8, 36), which slightly postdates our chronology for the opening of the southern end of the corridor. The Anzick child burial in Montana that dates to ∼12,600 cal y BP (43), and slightly earlier evidence for human hunting of western camels and horses at Wally's Beach, 420 km north of the Anzick site (17, 43), document the presence of people at the southern end of the corridor. Fluted point density maps indicate that this technology diminishes in frequency from the south to the north in the corridor region, consistent with the northward spread of this technology (1, 12, 42). By 12,500 cal y BP, fluted points are present at Charlie Lake Cave in British Columbia (along with clades 1a and 2b bison) and in sites in Alaska (13, 28).
Over the last several decades, phylogeographic research has evolved from being largely qualitative in nature to benefitting from a diversity of statistically rigorous approaches to detect evolutionary structure over both geographic space and, with the addition of paleogenetic technologies, over time. Here, we demonstrate the power of this approach to address a longstanding question in New World biogeography, specifically whether and when an ecologically viable corridor linked Beringia and interior North America during the late Pleistocene.
Until now, much of the research concerning the corridor region has focused on whether or not the corridor was the initial pathway for early human inhabitants of the New World. Our data from fossil bison help shift scientific attention to a different first: the LGM coalescence of the ice sheets marked the first time in the Quaternary that the corridor did not exist as a biogeographic pathway. Once the corridor opened, bison populations that had been isolated for millennia, in Beringia and in interior North America, entered the deglaciated region from both its northern and southern ends. Human populations in eastern Beringia and interior North America had similar possibilities to re-engage. In the human case, this involved the added cultural complexity that would accompany societal interactions in an era where exotic raw materials and technological ideas began to circulate widely in the Americas. Increasing genetic and archaeological evidence continue to support the idea that the corridor was a route for dispersal in both directions, with consequences for biological and technological diversity on both sides of the receding ice sheets.
Materials and Methods
Radiocarbon Dating.
Collagen was extracted from bone and tooth samples using ultrafiltration methods outlined in ref. 44 and radiocarbon dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the Keck laboratory–University of California (UC) Irvine (UCIAMS), the Center for AMS (CAMS) at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory, or Beta Analytics (Table 1 and Dataset S1). AMS dates were calibrated using the IntCal13 calibration curve (45) in OxCal v4.2 (https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/oxcal/OxCal.html) and are reported with 1 standard deviation (SD). For samples that were redated at UCIAMS (SFU 1848, SFU 1849, SFU 3429, and SFU 15004; Dataset S1), we used only the new dates for the calibration. All dates reported in the text are in calendar years before present, unless otherwise noted.
DNA Extraction, PCR, Cloning, Library Preparation, Target Enrichment, and Sequencing.
To facilitate comparison with previously published data from bison, we isolated ∼600 bp of the hypervariable portion of the mitochondrial control region (CR) from 45 Canadian bison bone and tooth samples, dated to the late Pleistocene and Holocene (Table 1 and Dataset S1). We performed DNA extraction, library preparation, and PCR setup in dedicated ancient DNA facilities at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) that were physically isolated from modern molecular biology research. Depending on the sample, we extracted DNA from 100 to 250 mg bone powder using one of two methods that are highly optimized for the recovery of ancient DNA molecules (46, 47), performing one negative extraction control for every five to eight processed samples.
To generate CR sequence data, we used a mixture of four approaches: (i) direct Sanger sequencing of PCR products, (ii) Sanger sequencing of cloned PCR products, (iii) Illumina amplicon sequencing of PCR products, and (iv) mitochondrial target enrichment followed by Illumina sequencing. For approaches i–iii, we amplified the target CR fragment either in a single PCR amplification or as a series of overlapping fragments, depending on the preservation of the sample (primer combinations are provided in Table S1) (11). We performed PCR in 25-μL reactions with the following components: 20 μg rabbit serum albumin, 0.25 mM dNTPs, 1× High Fidelity buffer, 1 U Platinum Taq High Fidelity (Life Technologies), 2.4 mM MgSO4, 0.4 μM of each primer, and 1 μL DNA extract, with the following cycling conditions: 12 min at 94 °C, 30 s at 94 °C, 45 s at variable annealing temperature (Table S1), 45 s at 68 °C, and 1 min at 68 °C, with the middle three steps repeated for 50 cycles. We cleaned PCR products using either Millipore μ96 plates or Sera-Mag SpeedBeads (ThermoScientific) in 18% (wt/vol) PEG-8000, the latter of which followed the bead-based reaction clean-up protocol of ref. 48.
For approaches i–iii above, we then used one or more of these approaches to assess the accuracy of the resulting PCR amplicon sequences: (i) bidirectional direct sequencing on AB3730xl genetic analyzers at the PSU Genomics Core Facility or the UC Berkeley DNA Sequencing Facility, using BigDye v3.1 chemistry (Life Technologies); (ii) cloning PCR products using the TOPO-TA cloning kit (Life Technologies) according to the manufacturer's instructions, followed by selection and PCR amplification of six to eight colonies following ref. 11; and/or (iii) pooled sequencing of barcoded PCR products using the Illumina MiSeq platform, in which PCR products derived from the same sample were pooled in equimolar ratios and turned into Illumina DNA libraries using ref. 49 with modifications from ref. 50. These indexed libraries were then pooled in equimolar ratios and sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform using v2 150-bp paired-end chemistry, following the manufacturer's instructions.
For the fourth data generation approach described above, we constructed Illumina DNA libraries as above directly from the DNA extract. We then enriched these libraries for the whole bison mitochondrial genome using biotinylated RNA baits (MYbaits v2; MYcroarray), following the manufacturer's instructions. These enriched libraries were then sequenced on the MiSeq as described above, but using v3 75-bp paired-end chemistry.
Consensus Sequence Construction.
For data generation approaches i and ii, we assessed sequence quality manually and called consensus sequences using Lasergene v9 (DNASTAR) or Geneious v6.1.6 (Biomatters). For approaches iii and iv, we binned the short-read data by index, and then removed adapters and merged paired-end reads using SeqPrep (https://github.com/jstjohn/SeqPrep). For approach iii, we removed primer sequences from merged and remaining unmerged reads using in-house scripts and mapped each read to both Bison bison (GenBank: NC_012346) and B. priscus (AY748705) CR reference sequences using BWA v0.6.1 (51), resulting in two datasets per sample. We called consensus sequences using Geneious with the base agreement threshold set to 75% and the minimum coverage set to 50×. For approach iv, we aligned merged reads to the reference B. bison mitochondrial genome sequence using an iterative assembler MIA (52). We called bases that had >3 times coverage and >67% agreement. For analysis, we then trimmed the resulting consensus sequence to the ∼600-bp target. We combined data from all four approaches to create robust consensus sequences for each sample. If we identified conflicts between sequences resulting from the different approaches, we either performed additional analyses or coded conflicting sites as ambiguous. Unsequenced regions are considered missing data.
Phylogeographic Analyses.
We aligned the 45 new CR sequences to a dataset of 147 previously published, radiocarbon dated or present-day, North American bison CR sequences (Dataset S1), using Se-Al (Sequence Alignment Editor; v2.0a11). We performed a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis using BEAST v1.8.3 (53). We assumed a generalized time-reversible evolutionary model, with gamma distributed rate variation and a proportion of invariable sites (GTR+G+I), a strict molecular clock with a rate calibrated using the median calendar ages of each radiocarbon dated specimen, and the flexible skygrid model of the coalescent process (54). To infer the timing and directionality of movement between Beringia and interior North America, we adopted the discrete phylogeographic model described in ref. 55, assigning each sample to either the North or South population based on whether the sample originated to the north or south of 60° N, which archaeological data and simulation studies indicate was the final barrier to a corridor (56). To simplify interpretation of the results, the two present-day bison that were sampled at locations just north of this cutoff (at 60° and 61.4°) were classified as southern.
To learn about ancestral movements between north and south, we estimated the posterior distribution of the time of north-to-south and south-to-north movements using Markov Jumps (57). This technique exploits dynamic programming and tricks from numerical analysis to efficiently compute the expected number and timing of specific transitions within a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) that conditions only on the directly observed end states at the tips of phylogenetic tree on which the CTMC acts. The resulting posterior distribution of transition times naturally incorporates uncertainty in the tree and estimated CTMC rates. We ran two MCMC chains for 50 million states each, sampling the posterior states of all model parameters and trees every 5,000 states. We discarded the first 10% of samples from each run as burn-in, combined the remainder using LogCombiner v1.8.3, and computed posterior means, posterior SDs, and 95% highest posterior density intervals in Tracer v1.6. We summarized the combined set of posterior trees and identified the maximum clade credibility (MCC) tree using TreeAnnotator v1.8.3, which we visualized using Figtree v1.4.2.
Data Availability.
The input BEAST file is available as Dataset S2. Novel control region mitochondrial DNA sequences have been deposited in GenBank, with accession numbers KU705765–KU705809. All fossil specimens used in this study are curated in the repositories listed in Dataset S1.
We thank James Cahill and Andrew Fields for technical assistance, Mike Waters for providing samples, and two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript. P.D.H., A.E.R.S., and B.S. were funded by National Science Foundation (NSF)-Applied Research Center Grants 1203990 and 1417036 and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant GBMF3804. D.F. was funded by the Canada Research Chairs program and a grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. J.W.I. was funded by the Landrex Distinguished Professorship. M.A.S. was funded by NSF-Division of Mathematical Sciences Grant 1264153 and National Institutes of Health Grant R01 HG006139.
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: duane.froese{at}ualberta.ca or bashapir{at}ucsc.edu.
Author contributions: D.F. and B.S. designed research; P.D.H., D.F., A.E.R.S., B.L., M.S., and B.S. performed research; T.D.A., J.C.D., E.H., P.G.H., C.N.J., G.M., J.R.S., M.A.S., and B.S. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; P.D.H., D.F., J.W.I., A.E.R.S., G.D.Z., R.W., and B.S. analyzed data; and P.D.H., D.F., J.W.I., G.D.Z., and B.S. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This paper results from the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences, "In the Light of Evolution X: Comparative Phylogeography," held January 8–9, 2016, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, CA. The complete program and video recordings of most presentations are available on the NAS website at www.nasonline.org/ILE_X_Comparative_Phylogeography.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. KU705765–KU705809).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1601077113/-/DCSupplemental.
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The Academy would like to thank all the beautiful, kind, thoughtful and intelligent followers who kindly left a comment on my last post.
The ballots were certified by Price Waterhouse and the envelopes sealed. Spice Girl please step up to the podium and select a winner.
|Spice Girl is the white dog - she was here this past Sunday in Virginia, walking out with her cousins two Irish wolfehounds, a greyhound and a wolfehoundmix
The 2 winners are:
The Hattatts
The prize: 2012 Plein Aire Cottage Artists Calendar and a copy of the duPont REGISTRY
Congratulations to Jane & Lance Hattatt and Anita at Castles Crowns and Cottages
Have you won a prize?


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All items > Knives > Custom Knives > Brad Zinker (Custom)
- Overall Length:8.25"
- Blade Length:3.875"
- Cutting Edge:3.625"
- Blade Thickness:0.13"
- Blade Material:CPM-154
- Blade Style:Clip Point
- Blade Grind:Hollow
- Finish:Bead Blast, Stonewash
- Edge Type:Plain
- Handle Length:4.375"
- Handle Thickness:0.49"
- Handle Material:Carbon Fiber
- Color:Black
- Frame/Liner:Titanium
- Weight:2.16 oz.
- User:Right Hand
- Pocket Clip:Tip-Up
- Knife Type:Manual
- Opener:Flipper
- Lock Type:Liner Lock
- Brand:Brad Zinker
- Model:T
- Country of Origin:USA
- Best Use:Everyday Carry
- Product Type:Knife
This Model T Flipper has a polished carbon fiber handle with titanium liners, lock and pocket clip. The blade is stonewash/bead blast finished and opens with a tang flipper using your thumb. It's a sleek design and feels fantastic in hand.
Brad Zinker is a member of the Knifemaker's Guild and the Florida Knifemaker's Association. It's always a pleasure to meet up with Brad and the knives he makes are first-class in every way!


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sucrase is a valid word in this word list. For a definition, see the external dictionary links below.
The word "sucrase" uses 7 letters: A C E R S S U.
Direct anagrams of sucrase:
arcuses causers cesuras saucers
Words formed by adding one letter before or after sucrase (in bold), or to acerssu in any order:
a - caesuras b - subraces c - accusers d - crusades e - surcease f - surfaces h - chasseur l - recusals seculars o - carouses p - scaupers s - sucrases
Shorter words found within sucrase:
ace aces acre acres ae ar arc arcs arcus are ares ars arse arses as ascus ass assure aures car care cares caress cars carse carses case cases casus cause causer causes cess cesura crases crass cress crus cruse cruses cue cues cur cure cures curs curse curses cuss cusser ear ears eau ecru ecrus ecu ecus er era eras ers es escar escars ess race races ras rase rases re rec recs res rue rues ruse ruses sac sacs sae sau sauce saucer sauces scar scare scares scars scaur scaurs sea sear sears seas sec secs ser sera serac seracs sers sucre sucres sue suer suers sues sura suras sure urase urases urea ureas ursa ursae us use user users uses
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I am now using the Zyto daily (was able to purchase my own) and now what is coming up for me is Ashwaganda, an ayurvedic herb.
Looking it up, this page on the Weston Price Foundation site has a comment that mentions its usefulness for fibroids -- and also has some other great information including about usefulness of vitamin A, paleo diet (which I have been doing), etc.
This page discusses how Ashwaganda is good for the thyroid, which we know can be helpful for fibroids. This page discusses how it's useful for symptoms of estrogen dominance. This page also discusses its usefulness for fibroids. So let's see how it goes!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Ashwaganda and fibroids
Posted by Fibroid Shrinker at 10:38 AM
Labels: Ayurveda
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We will be attempting to launch our new website this afternoon! Hopefully everything will go smoothly and the website will be up soon. There will be an official announcement when that happens.
However, during this transition between the old and the new website, there may be server disruptions that can possibly affect our emails as well. Hence, it is possible that we may not be able to receive your emails this afternoon.
If you need to get a hold of us, call us!
Our phone lines will not be interfered by the transition. DUO phone number: 416-504-6429
Look out for our new website!


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Tuesday, June 17, 2014 | 2:07 p.m.
Richard Dunn All By Myself
Celine Dion
Until now, the story of Celine Dion's husband Rene Angelil's long and exhausting battle against cancer has remained almost untold.
Only last week when he relinquished full-time management of his wife's career did it become clear that Rene had successfully fought the illness but wanted to cut back on his workload in order to enjoy more time with his family.
Rene first began his personal war on cancer in April 1998 when doctors in Dallas confirmed that the lump in his neck was malignant. He underwent surgery as Celine was booked for her Texas concert.
Reliable insiders say that's when Celine decided she would give up her career to be by his side throughout his hoped-for recovery, although he believed that the cancer would cause his death. Rene was unable to swallow or eat for a time, and Celine, too, believed that he would die.
But after two years, the couple decided to renew their 1994 Montreal marriage vows here at a Las Vegas wedding chapel on Jan. 5, 2000. Their first son, Rene-Charles, was born a year later on Jan. 25, 2001.
Her first major run in March 2003 at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace was extended from three years until late 2007, when the "Taking Chances" world tour got underway. In October 2010, she gave birth to twin sons Nelson and Eddy and decided to return to Caesars in 2011 for a three-year deal of 70 shows per year.
Rene has told me that Celine and he would like that to now extend through 2019, and tonight she celebrates the 200th show in her current run. But earlier this year, I was told that Rene had to shuttle back and forth to cancer specialists in Los Angeles to treat the illness in his throat yet again. Celine has told friends that she went with him for more than 130 radiation treatments.
He underwent serious surgery in December, and miraculously doctors even replaced part of his tongue to assist in his ability to speak properly. The couple went to the Bahamas for rest and relaxation and to plan their future.
"The surgery was successful, and Rene has made a full recovery," one of his business associates told me. "Celine was as strong as they come looking after him through the most difficult, painful moments. He had unimaginable strength that maintained her faith in his recovery."
But more than ever before, Celine treasures each day they have together and that led to the decision for Rene to turn over her management to longtime friend Aldo Giampaolo that I reported here last week. It's also the reasoning behind the couple's decision to live full time here in an expanded estate rather than at homes in Canada and Florida, which are now for sale.
Celine, who has been constantly at Rene's side through the ordeal, has told friends: "Life is good again, but no one knows for how long. That's why at the start of every single day, I tell him that I love him. He is still my best friend, and I trust my life to him."
Tonight as always, Rene will be content on the sidelines watching his wife celebrate her 200th performance for another sold-out crowd of fans and supporters unaware of the illness he's now overcome a second time this year.
We congratulate Celine on the 200th show of her second residency and wish Rene a full, total recovery and good health from now onward.
Meantime, Richard Dunn's McCarran Airport video of his version of Celine's "All By Myself" has amassed more than 1 million views, and Celine's response with her own video on YouTube to him has surpassed 250,000 views.
I learned that Celine's team reached out to him with an invitation to attend tonight's celebration, but it looks as if Richard will accept one of her Fourth of July weekend shows. We'll have more details about that unexpected "duet" here at Vegas DeLuxe on Wednesday.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world's premier platinum playground.
Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.
Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.
Follow Sun A&E Senior Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.
Transport yourself to the opulent and excessive Roman Empire at Caesars Palace. But the ever-changing Caesars Palace is far from ancient. The hotel and casino is constantly raising the bar for what visitors can expect in a Vegas resort experience.
Caesars Palace features 3,348 rooms and suites in five towers, including the new luxury boutique Nobu Hotel and Restaurant, which opened Feb. 4, 2013, in the totally remodeled Centurian Tower. Caesars features 129,000 square feet of gaming space, including the Strip's largest poker room and a 250-seat sports book. Other amenities include about two dozen restaurants, a four-level shopping mall, four pools, a spa, Pure and Poetry nightclubs and Pussycat Dolls.
Dining options include restaurants from world-renown chefs Guy Savoy, Wolfgang Puck, Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay and, on Feb. 4, 2013, Nobu Matsuhisa.
You never know what characters you'll run into at Caesars with regular performers like Jerry Seinfeld, Bette Midler, Elton John and maybe even the emperor himself.


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I hope your week has been super fabulous! It's been chilly here in Washington! Not sure I'm quite ready for fall, even though it's my favorite time of year. Just doesn't feel like we really had much of a summer. But alas, it's here anyhow!
Today at Sami Stamps we are doing a Think Pink showcase! This means that each image that the DT has used will be half off for the week! These are some super cute images, and with October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, they will all work perfect for any project!
I decided to reuse an image I had created something for a long time ago. This Butterfly for a Cause image is really sweet and I wasn't totally happy with my first go around with it.
Share Joy and Creative Inspirations have a bingo board this week, so I pulled lines from both to make my card.
I started by using some distress inks and blending them out into a striped background. I started with Squeezed Lemonade, then moved to Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Abandoned Coral, and ended with Tattered Rose. I overlapped them just slightly in each stripe so that they had a nice flow between them.
For some extra detail and fun, I took my white gel pen and a sparkle pen and went back over each stripe to add some dots. I tried to concentrate a lot of dots on the top left side of each stripe and then scattered them to the bottom of the stripe. It kind of gives a fun burst feel to each color.
Then I started on my image. I did some super quick coloring with this by creating a mask and used the same colors from the background to blend the color on! It was fast and still looks awesome! To finish it off, I did a little light stippling around the image with some super soft blue colors. I may have gone a little crazy with the dots on this card...but it was too much fun to stop!
The sentiment is from the WPlus9 set Sending Hoping Wishing. I white heat embossed that onto some vellum and then trimmed it out into a double flagged banner. There are some Sparkling Clear Sequins scattered around the card to pull it all together!
Be sure to stop by Sami Stamps to see the wonderful DT creations!
I'd like to enter this into the following challenges:
Creative Inspirations #258-Bingo (white, distress, dots)
Fussy and Fancy #173-My Favorite Things (distress inks and sparkle!)
Incy Wincy Designs-Things That Fly
Share Joy Challenge #55-Tic Tac Toe/Sketch (ink sponging, orange, sequins)
Simon Says Stamp-Anything Goes
Word Art Wednesday #250-Anything Goes
Thanks for visiting!
<3 Emily


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February 1, 2000
Greenspan Ranked Top In Market Impact Poll
Story Utilities
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan had the greatest impact on the markets in the last twelve months of the 20th century, according to a poll of traders conducted by the Security Traders Association. Greenspan received the endorsement of 63.5 percent of the 427 respondents.
Ranked as the least influential on a list of eight of the most influential market players was Big Board Chairman Richard Grasso who scored 0.2 percent. The person ranked as having the second greatest impact was the day trader' who scored just over 28.3 percent. The STA poll was conducted from Dec. 23 through January 2000.
Four other candidates received the following scores, in descending order: Charles Schwab (1.2 percent); Frank Zarb (0.7 percent); Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin, (0.5 percent each). The remaining respondents (5.2 percent) ticked off don't know'/no opinion.'.
Elsewhere, the conversion of price quotes from fractions to decimals, slated to start on July 3, is the one area that could have the greatest potential impact this year, according to more than one-third of the respondents.
Nearly half of all traders polled would like to see one independent regulatory body for all major exchanges. On the future direction of the major stock indexes, nearly 70 percent of respondents anticipate the Nasdaq climbing to 5,000 or higher this year. Almost 65 percent expect to see the Dow Jones break at least the 13,000 barrier this year.


text:
Brett Heppner
Real Estate Specialist865.621.2540
Brett was born and raised in Batesville, Indiana but has called East Tennessee home since 1993. He earned a finance degree from Franklin College and a MBA from the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He then spent 20 years in the banking and lending industry before the economy caused him to consider a career change and, in 2011, he obtained his real estate license.
Brett and his wife, Jennifer, have 3 children: Mary Kate, Caroline and Will. The Heppner family lives in one of Maryville's prestigious historic neighborhoods in a home built in 1886 that they restored themselves. Brett loves older homes and is a self-taught carpenter, electrician and plumber. To date, he has been involved in the renovation of 2 homes that the family has owned.
In addition to real estate and home renovation, Brett is a strong advocate for our community. He is currently a Deacon at First Baptist Church Maryville and a member of their Finance and Young Life Committees. Brett is presently serving as the President of the Maryville High School Parent Teacher Student Organization.


text:
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text:
A genus of very large nematode worms infecting the kidney.
[L. fr. G. dionkoō, to distend, + phyma, growth]
Dioctophyma/Di·oc·to·phy·ma/ (di-ok″to-fi´mah) a genus of nematodes, including D. rena´le, the kidney worm, found in dogs, cattle, horses, and other animals, and rarely in humans; it is highly destructive to kidney tissue.
A genus of roundworms found in dogs but rarely in humans.


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On June 1 2014, the long-awaited Foreign Exchange Administrative Provisions on Cross-Border Security and its implementation guidelines (collectively the New SAFE Regulations), released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange of the People's Republic of China (SAFE), took effect.
The New SAFE Regulations bring substantial changes to the previously existing cross-border security regime (also known to some as the foreign security regime) and supersede a series of regulations previously issued by SAFE. These changes are likely to impact how cross-border financings involving the PRC are structured.
A number of the previous restrictions on PRC onshore entities providing guarantees and security over their assets to support debt incurred outside of the PRC by offshore debtors (内保外贷 – neibaowaidai), and on entities outside of the PRC providing guarantees and security over their assets to support debt incurred within the PRC by onshore debtors (外保内贷 – waibaoneidai), have been removed.
However, certain conditions imposed by the New SAFE Regulations, in particular those on the use of funds benefitting from neibaowaidai, are likely to limit the impact the New SAFE Regulations may have in opening up ways in which PRC offshore financings may be structured.
This article focuses on the impact the New SAFE Regulations may have on the use of onshore security to support debt provided from offshore. The debt from the offshore creditor and which benefits from onshore security may be one that is provided to an offshore debtor (which would fall within the neibaowaidai regime – Diagram 1), or may be one that is provided to an onshore debtor (Diagram 2).
For a fuller discussion on the subject, click here to be redirected to our client bulletin published on 22 May 2014.
For the purpose of this article, security includes both proprietary security and guarantee, and security provider shall be construed accordingly. Onshore means mainland China; offshore means outside mainland China.
What are the changes?
Before the New SAFE Regulations came into effect, PRC onshore entities providing onshore security to support debt incurred outside of the PRC by offshore debtors (neibaowaidai) required SAFE pre-approval, were subject to quota limitation and financial tests on the debtor, or were allowed only if the security provider was a parent of the offshore debtor, depending on circumstances and in addition to other conditions.
The most commonly seen cross-border credit enhancement tools for offshore debt were limited to standby letters of credit (SBLC) issued by an onshore bank in favour of offshore banks providing offshore credit to offshore borrowers (which are subject to a quota imposed on the SBLC issuer bank) or downstream guarantees provided by PRC parents (often state-owned enterprises) in favour of offshore creditors supporting offshore debt incurred by their offshore subsidiaries (which are subject to SAFE pre-approval or quota).
There were no implementation rules on the registration of security given by PRC individuals to support offshore debt, and security granted by onshore individuals was expressly allowed only under very narrow circumstances. Without registration, the value of any such onshore individual security would be limited (see below), although creditors have taken individual guarantees with a view to potentially enforce against any offshore assets of the individual guarantor and for it to be used as leverage on enforcement.
After the New SAFE Regulations came into effect, the requirements for pre-approval, quota and other conditions on the debtor and shareholding have been removed. Onshore financial institutions qualified to engage in security provision business and onshore corporates are all free to provide neibaowaidai. Onshore individuals are also now expressly allowed to provide neibaowaidai.
Registration is required within 15 business days of signing. Post-enforcement, the onshore security provider must undertake an overseas credit registration in respect of its subrogation claim against the offshore debtor. Enforcement of any properly registered neibaowaidai would, subject to very limited exceptions, no longer require prior SAFE verification.
According to a Supreme Court's Interpretation to Security Law, failure to register with SAFE onshore security supporting an offshore debt would not only prohibit the beneficiary's ability to remit offshore proceeds from the security offshore. The guarantee or security itself would also be invalid. The New SAFE Regulations, now specifically provides that failure to register with SAFE no longer invalidates the onshore security, although remittance of proceeds from enforcement would continue to be blocked if the onshore security is not registered with SAFE.
Under the old SAFE regime, security interest arrangement was not a common option under an ISDA Master Agreement between offshore entities and onshore counterparties, due to difficulties in registering this with SAFE. The SAFE registration required that a secured amount be specified; the mark-to-market nature of the onshore counterparties' exposure meant that a secured amount could not be specified. The New SAFE Regulations provide that cross-border security arrangements that are not neibaowaidai or waibaoneidai are not subject to SAFE registration. Security interest arrangements created under a CSA entered into between an onshore entity and an offshore counterparty (the structure under Diagram 2) would be categorised as such.
A new dawn?
Will these changes revolutionise the way in which offshore financings of PRC underlying credits can and will be structured? The potential impact of these changes needs to be considered in light of certain remaining conditions under the cross-border security regime, described below.
The removal of quota or approval requirement for neibaowaidai is certainly a welcome change in the context of an offshore bond issuance, as a direct guarantee by the onshore parent of the offshore issuer would be a much cleaner solution than the current market practice of obtaining keep-well letters from the onshore parent. However, it remains to be seen whether the restriction on the usage of funding to a particular project (rather than for general corporate purposes, as is more commonly seen in current offshore bond issues) would reduce issuers' appetite to adopt this structure. Another question is also whether or not loan-style privately placed structured notes, issued offshore, would be caught by these additional conditions imposed on bonds.
The extent to which a transaction is deemed to be repatriation for these purposes has been the focus of much of the discussions amongst providers of offshore loans since the New SAFE Regulations were released in May 2014. The new regime benefits those credits, the proceeds of which are applied towards acquisitions of pure offshore assets, where lenders can now be protected by upstream security provided from onshore subsidiaries. The new regime does not benefit those credits the proceeds of which are applied towards capital injection back into the PRC. As to the extent to which past repatriation could be linked to a current financing benefitting from onshore credit support and therefore offend the repatriation restriction (eg to what extent neibaowaidai could support credits that refinance previous rounds of debt raising, or equity investments, into PRC assets or to fund dividends from those investments), this remains a grey area for which the New SAFE Regulations do not provide guidance, and on which views will continue to be formed.
SAFE will impose a monetary penalty (up to the amount of the offshore financing proceeds which are considered by SAFE to have been repatriated from offshore to onshore) on the onshore security provider if the repatriation restriction was breached. It is reasonable to expect also that remittance of proceeds from enforcement of onshore security, used for offshore debt in breach of the no repatriation rule, may be blocked. Financial institutions are likely to take a conservative approach until there is further clarity on the extent of prohibition on repatriation.
The road ahead
Financing structures will evolve to accommodate or take advantage of the New SAFE Regulations. While the New SAFE Regulations are focused on waibaoneidai and neibaowaidai, as mentioned in the context of derivatives above, the new regulations do not lay out prescriptions on any other forms of cross-border security. It can be reasonably concluded that, from SAFE's perspective, all onshore entities are free to provide or accept other types of cross-border security, such as the structure shown in Diagram 2 above. Onshore borrowers borrowing from offshore lenders but granting security over its own assets to support the debt, and being supported by security granted by a third party onshore entity, would fall within this category. While cross-border lending with onshore borrowers has inherent limitations – for example, foreign debt headroom would continue to apply, and parties will need to consider withholding tax – this structure may attract more interest as a result of the New SAFE Regulations.
Also read about the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Click on the link here.
To discuss the New SAFE Regulations in more detail, please feel free to contact the any of Allen & Overy's lawyers listed below.
Matthew Bisley
Yvonne Ho
Jane Jiang
Cindy Lo
Roger Lui
Agnes Tsang
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