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No Boyz Allowed by Ni-Ni Simone
Release Date: July 31, 2012
Publisher: Dafina, Kensington Teen
Pages: 218
Source: Publisher
True story: I'm Gem, G-E-M, like a precious jewel, and my life has been nothing like my name. I've been on my own since I was nine and now I'm sixteen. But so what. I'm good, and so is my little brother. So why the state won't let us do our own thing is beyond me. Instead, we've been forced to live with a foster family who wants to love us, but I'm not beat—I'm just trying to do me.
To make matters worse, I've been checking for this guy, Ny'eem. But my new clique has an unbreakable rule—no boyz allowed to come between our friendship—which is forcing me to keep my relationship with Ny'eem a secret. Though not for long. . .because in high school secrets are always exposed, scandals always rewrite the rules, and friendships are never what they seem. . .
Review: I absolutely love how Ni-Ni Simone connects with her readers. Here's an example from this book's dedication:
To the Gems of the world–know that as long as there is God, there is Love, And wherever there is love, there is always hope. And wherever there is hope, there is always the ability to be anything you want to be!
How powerful is that dedication to teen readers? Very. Then she starts the book with a poem about black beauty that was beautifully written.
Gem and her brother have been on their own as long as she can remember. She keeps hoping that her Mom will come along and take them out of the foster system but it hasn't happened yet. Not sure of what's best for her and her little brother, she acts up and gets them thrown out of each and every home that takes them in…until this one.
I laughed so much as the characters in this foster home were introduced. The aunt and uncle were eccentric and weird and gave a lightness to the story that had heavy elements. One night, Gem's little brother climbs into bed with her and convinces her to stop being "mean" so they could stay at one home. It broke my heart knowing that she was a sixteen year old trying to keep their world together and confronting the reality that her mother never would come to rescue them. In fact, when the confrontation took place in the book I cried my eyes out.
Under the protective eye of her foster family brother, Gem goes to a party and gets introduced to some of the students that will go to her new school. One boy in particular catches her eye but the highlight of the party is finding an old childhood friend she reconnects with. As her life finally seems to be coming together, things fall apart again and Gem has to confide in her best friend and her new foster family as she weathers the pain that comes with a breakup.
The story flowed from beginning to end and I didn't have any trouble keeping up with the language nuances, but did feel that some of the elements of being a foster kid were not really explained. For instance, the foster family gives Gem bags and boxes of brand new clothes without really letting us know what they do for a living but the crazy family relatives living in the house more than made up for any little tidbits we didn't know the answer to.
I feel that this author has made a connection with her readers that will draw them to this story.


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Welcome to my Fender Guitar page. My name is Danny and Guitar Players Center is a site committed to distinguishing itself from the pack by providing our readers with real world unbiased, no holds barred guitar and gear reviews, articles and videos. We are not receiving payments or free equipment from manufacturers, we actually beg or borrow ( no stealing ) the latest guitars and gear from our large array of friends, band members, guitar stores, strangers. I play Fender Guitars, Strats in particular.
I have a classical background, however I haven't touched my Gibson Classical guitar, or played classical music since I first heard Jimi Hendrix in 1966. He changed my life in the same manner Fender changed the guitar world. I have not found a guitar that suits me better.
That being said, for more than five decades, Fender electric guitars and amplifiers turned the world upside down and is probably the most influential instrument ever made in association to what we call modern music. While guitarists in the early part of this century played country, folk or blues on acoustic guitars, in the 1930's, jazz musicians experimented with amplifying traditional hollow-body guitars so they could play with other instruments at the same sound level. One problem was that the speakers and pickups tended to generate feedback when played at a high level.
In the 1940's, a California inventor named Leo Fender had made some custom guitars and amplifiers in his radio shop. Eventually, Leo would create the world's very first instrument amplifiers with built-in tone controls. More importantly, though, was Leo's vision of better guitar. With his knowledge of existing technologies, he knew he could improve on contemporary amplified hollow-body instruments . . . and improve upon them, he did. In 1951, he introduced the Broadcaster, the prototype solid-body guitar that would eventually become the legendary Telecaster. The Tele, as it became affectionately known, was the first solid-body electric Spanish-style guitar ever to go into commercial production. Soon to follow the Tele were the revolutionary Precision Bass guitar in 1951, and the Stratocaster in 1954.
Check out The New Fender American Standard HSS Stratocaster Electric Guitar Black Rosewood Fretboard
Check out The Fender American Deluxe Series Telecaster Electric Guitar 3-Tone Sunburst Maple Fretboard
If you enjoyed this article and find it interesting, Guitar Players Center encourages you, our loyal viewers to Share It allowing the guitar community to pick up on this vibe, and please leave a Comment containing your thoughts about this unusual piece of guitar equipment.

subset: commoncrawl


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September 2015 marks the fourth global World Alzheimer's Month, an international campaign to raise awareness and challenge stigma.
Alzheimer's Disease is the most common cause of dementia. It's estimated that there are 665,000 people in England living with dementia and around 21 million who have a close friend or family member with dementia.. In York it is thought there are 2,700 people currently living with dementia; a figure which is expected to rise to 3,200 by 2020.
The theme for World Alzheimer's Month 2015 is Remember Me. People all around the world are being encouraged to learn to spot the signs of dementia, but also not to forget about loved ones who are living with dementia, or those who may have passed away.
Councillor Carol Runciman, Executive member for Adult Social Care and Health, City of York Council, said: "Dementia touches so many people's lives, whether they themselves live with the disease, or are close to someone who does. World Alzheimer's Month provides an opportunity for us all to think about what we can do to make life easier for people living with dementia, whether that's signing up to become a 'dementia friend' or just taking the time to help someone who may be confused whilst out shopping."
The council is one of a number of organisations working together to make York a Dementia Friendly City; a place which is accessible and welcoming for people living with dementia and their friends and carers.
For more information on World Alzheimer's Month visit www.alz.co.uk/world-alzheimers-month. For more details about how to become a Dementia Friend visit www.dementiafriends.org.uk/ or for more information on local support for people with dementia visit www.york.gov.uk


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United Way/Centraide Windsor-Essex County, in partnership with Windsor Star, cordially invites you to celebrate outstanding volunteers from our community at the Volunteers Changing Lives Awards Celebration on Tuesday, April 25, 2017 at Ambassador Golf Club, Windsor.
The purpose of the Volunteers Changing Lives Awards is to recgonize and honour outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to our community through volunteerism. Recognition is given to honour caring, compassionate volunteers within Windsor-Essex County whose efforts, big or small, are improving the lives of others.
2017 Volunteers Changing Lives Awards Recipients
Milica Kulidzan - Changing Lives by Helping Kids Be All That They Can Be
Milica teaches basketball at Leadership Advancement for Women and Sports. She uses her sports expertise and leadership skills to motivate, inspire, empower and positively influence young girls from Windsor's economically disadvantaged areas.
Lorena Shepley - Changing Lives by Moving People from Poverty To Possibility
For over 20 years now Lorena has been an active volunteer and advocate in our community. Her activism stems from her own experiences with poverty. Lorena divides her time addressing poverty on many fronts including homelessness, environmental issues, and through community empowerment.
Oday Al-Taie - Changing Lives by Building Strong Communities
Oday Al-Taie has been actively and consistently involved in the programs of the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County. Utilizing his fluency in English, Arabic, and French, he has countless refugee and newcomer families transition to a new life in Windsor and Essex County. Once a refugee himself, Odai is familiar with the challenges facing newcomers.
Youth Advisory Committee, Windsor-Essex Children's Aid Society - Youth Changing Lives
The Youth Advisory Committee of the Windsor-Essex Children's Aid Society is a group of organized and committed youth in care who focus on, and advocate for, ALL youth in care locally and provincially. Through their participation in provincial projects, as well as the planning and the delivering of many events throughout the year, they raise awareness about what it means to be a child or youth in care.
Roger Dzugan - Retirees Changing Lives
Roger is one of those individuals who are just as busy in retirement as when he was working full-time at Ford. For the last several years he has been extremely involved in the United Way's fundraising efforts. He has been a member of the United Way's Retiree Volunteer Council for the last 5 years and is currently Chairperson. Roger also sits on the United Way Campaign Cabinet.
Windsor Mold Group - Changing Lives through the Workplace
Windsor Mold Group generously supports the United Way through their annual workplace campaign, corporate support and sponsorships and participation in United Way events. Their employees are heavily involved in a multitude of community events and fundraising activities.
Jill Thompson, Art Attack - Windsor Star's Civic Beautification Award
Art Attack Windsor is a project created to brighten up outdoor spaces through the use of murals and installations. This project was started by local art-activist Jill Thompson. By working carefully with artists, local organizations, and businesses, Art Attack Windsor helps build a more vibrant community with beautiful, uplifting pieces of art for the entire community to enjoy.


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text: I just went to the store outside of the Royal Hawaiian not inside the Ala Moana Mall, and I bought this bracelet, I was told is a new design. They have the birkin, the kelly and this design the one I bought. They also have two really nice silver necklaces, I saw them after I asked for the lime chain, which I learned of through another post and was told that they didn't have it but that these were similar. One was thin and the other was thick like a rope design and both were under $200, they also had silver rings with a dangling purse for under $500.


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I always am amazed with what I take away from one of CorningWorks performances. Beth's work is so deep with through-provoking images along with a close association of real life moments. I learn more about her feelings and experiences with each performance and come away feeling like she and I had the same experiences. It is funny and serious at the same time; sort of like life! On another note, Beth is so gracious with her appreciation of her fans along with those in the audience as "first-timers".
In the often transient and frequently banal world of regional dance, Corningworks is a stunning and notable exception. The powerful creative vision of Beth Corning pushes limits while still remaining, at its core, accessible to a full spectrum of audiences. While those steeped in Modern dance will find much to admire, and imitate. The true test of art is its ability to speak to all sorts of people. Ihave sat in the audience at various performances, most recently of her landmark work, What Remains, and have been deeply impressed how transfixed teenagers, twenty somethings, middle aged professionals and non-professionals, elderly people, were. Listening to animated conversations as the audience left, one could hear the excitement of people who witnessed soemthing just a little bit life changing. This nonprofit deserves to get noticed more and more.
Previous Stories
Having watched the evolution of Beth Corning's career as a loyal fan, it has been a privilege to actually serve on the board and see it from an entirely different perspective. I have always know her to be a brilliant choreographer, a powerful performer, but i had no idea of how meticulously she attends to every single detail of the performance: from choreography and music, to costumes, lighting, set direction, the venue, the publicity, the graphic design, to feeding and housing her dancers. There is no aspect of creating a work that she is not completely in control of, a remarkable and impressive feat. Because in the end, the fact she has never lost sight of, is that it IS about the work, about the art. To attend a CORNINGWORKS performance is to witness dance of rare intelligence and narrative force, a performance that does what the best art does: it changes you. It haunts you. It shifts your way of looking at the world, just a little bit. That is what has always been special about Corning's work. And what continues to be special about CORNINGWORKS.


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Tags: adorable · kitty · tig2 Comments - Follow the string
Your adorable kitty picture of the day
December 29, 2009 at 4:32 pm by
Leave A Comment
2 responses so far ↓
That is pretty cute.
So cute!!! U should have a pic on mangus and tiggy together. *which is a rare site* *rarer yet is that i just go an idea for more zombie pics!!!* But im no like my mom i do it digitally ^_^


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Ultra rare roadster made at the tail end of the 70's/early 80's superbike era.
Lovely old school roadster with 140mph on tap - if your neck was ever strong enough, lol.
Had new style piggy back oil cooled shocks as standard and Honda anti-dive/TRAC fork suspension on the front.
Halcyon days before the kids came along
CB1100f Super Bol D'or
Previously Owned Owned by GSD2013


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Behind De Mountain in memory of my late grandfather.
By Omilla Mungroo. De same day Faadah and Ma come back home from de garden, was de same day ol' man Kambo come back from de bush with one set ah gouti and lappe. He and Faadah was long time friends so de ol man bring some wild meat for him. Well they was downstairs conversing about dey old time hunting days, when all ah we sit dong on de ground, round de old hammock what patch up patch up, to listen to de yarns.
"It had ah time," Faadah say, "when me and Boysie did get los' in de bush behind that mountain. Bwoy? Hai ya yai! Was snake, mapipire zanana, centipede long like my foot! Bwoy? It ent nice to get los' in dat forest behind dat mountain nuh. It have ting woss dan snake an centipede up dey oui.
"Boysie and me eh ketch ah gouti, not even ah manicou when night fall. Princess look like she pick up ah scent but not ah ting in sight. Dat night we find weself goin round in circles. I tell Boysie, 'yuh see dis ting, we better pray, because Ma Boysie an my lady eh go be pleased when we come home with no wild meat'.
"Before I look sharp, he disappear. Princess start to wag she tail an was watchin behind my back. So I turn to see if was Boysie. Well bwoy? What I see look like ah man who get los' in de bush for days. De man hair like ah ol' throw away mat, an it long long long. But he smellin' like goat! An was not Boysie!
"…in de bush behind that mountain"
"Well de man watch me like if he ent really watchin me, and arksin me if I have ah cigarette. So I give him de las one I had. He arks for ah light an I light de cigarette for him, yes, because de man makin me feel real uncomfortable. Is when I hear de bush behind me make ah noise, I turn to see Boysie comin. By de time I go to tell Boysie look somebody go help we get outa here, de man disappear same way he come.
"Boysie want to know if I goin mad. He say, 'pardner take ah five.' It eh take a full minute we hear de dog an dem like they pen ah gouti. Dat day we ketch 'bout ten gouti, an we find de track out, an reach home quiet, quiet. We never tell ah soul wha happen in dat bush behind de mountain dem two days."
Ol' Man Kambo watch Faadah an say, "Ent you know was de Papa Bois you give de cigarette to?" Faadah shake he head an smile.
By de time story done my aunty callin me to go upstairs with she to watch de news, an was only 7 pm.
You may also like:
- The One That Got Away – story
- Trinbago language for beginners
- The tourists trap – short story
- Parents, let your children read to you!
February 2014 – Issue 8 www.sweettntmagazine.com


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Albuquerque, New Mexico (PressExposure) March 07, 2011 -- Recently, Missouri State University (MSU) suffered data breach involving around 6,030 students. The data was allegedly leaked by an employee of the University on the Internet. The staff at the University had compiled semester wise lists containing student information for the period 2005-2009 for the accreditation approval process. The information included student names and social security numbers. The breach reportedly took place in the month of November last year, but was only identified last month. The data breach resulted in the exposure of nine lists containing sensitive information of the students on the Internet. All the data pertained to the students who studied at College of Education of the MSU during 2005 and 2009.
Information security professionals of the University are coordinating with Google to remove all the leaked lists from the search engine. Breach of information security may have manifold implications for the affected students. In the recent times, cybercriminals have frequently targeted University databases containing student, faculty and staff data. They scan for weaknesses in the security infrastructure to gain unauthorized access and extract confidential data. In this case, the lists were supposed to be submitted by the concerned staff on a secure server, accessible only by employees of the University involved in the accreditation process.
However, the information was allegedly submitted on an insecure server, making all the nine lists extractable through Google search. Lack of employee awareness is one of the major reasons for security lapses and data breaches. University authorities must educate employees on the security precautions needed to ensure safety of confidential information. online computer degree and e-learning programs may help employees in understanding and implementing safe online computing practices.
University authorities have begun the process of notifying all the affected students. Users must create a fraud alert on their credit reports to prevent unauthorized loans on their account. MSU has decided to pay $7 per each student for consumer identity theft protection insurance. The IT security policy of University must provide for regular evaluation of the IT infrastructure through IT masters degree holders and security auditors. MSU has started punitive action against the concerned employee. Employee activity should be monitored to detect any unauthorized activity.
Security professionals must constantly upgrade their technical skills through online technology degree [http://www.eccuni.us/Academics/MasterofSecurityScience.aspx] programs to deal with the growing challenges in the IT environment. Information security is crucial to maintain the trust among students, internal staff and the general public. Data breach incidents may lead to negative publicity of the concerned University. As such, educational institutions must have appropriate mechanisms to prevent leakage of confidential information related to students, faculty members and internal staff.


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The goal of almost any successful long-term investment portfolio eventually concludes with the desire to generate passive income. In simple terms, passive income is cash that flows into your bank account whether or not you get out of bed in the morning, while you're on vacation with your family, or while you read the latest best-selling novel. Some common sources of passive income are dividends from stocks, interest from bonds, rents from real estate, royalties from unit trusts, distributions from master limited partnerships, payments from annuities, and licensing income from intellectual property.

When you add sources of passive income to your portfolio, in most situations, you should look for these four traits:

Safety of the passive income stream

Growth in the amount of passive income generated each year

Diversification of the underlying assets that are responsible for churning out the passive income

Tax consequences of each source of passive income

In the paragraphs that follow, I'll explain the importance of each of these items individually.

Safety of the Passive Income Stream

When it comes to collecting checks in the mail or seeing direct deposits added to your bank statement, safety should be your number one priority. You want to make sure that if you own a security, property, or another asset, it is going to continue generating greenbacks for you to spend, give to charity, reinvest, or save. The last thing you want is to wake up one morning to find that money you expected is not there.

Growth in the Amount of Passive Income Generated Each Year

A truly great investment becomes valuable over time because the underlying business or property is of such high quality that management is able to raise prices faster than the rate of inflation. You do not want to lose purchasing power. Take an example like The Coca-Cola Company. If you bought shares back in the 1970s, and spent your dividend income over the past 40+ years so that none of that money had been reinvested, you would still be generating far more annual dividend income than you were back when you began cashing those checks. That is because the business itself has grown, profits have expanded, and each share is now entitled to a bigger pile of earnings.

Diversification of the Underlying Assets That Are Responsible for Churning Out the Passive Income

You know that old saying, "don't keep all your eggs in one basket"? Take that advice seriously. If you rely on your portfolio for income, all that counts is the total dollars that are showing up each year. All else equal, it is better for you to generate $50,000 per year from fifty different investments, each of which gives you $1,000, than it is for you to hold two investments, each of which earns $25,000. In the latter case, a problem with one of the two investments would lead to a catastrophic cut in your standard of living. That is not acceptable at the stage in the game when you are in harvest mode, reaping the rewards of a lifetime of saving money.

Tax Consequences of Each Source of Passive Income

Taxes matter. Taxes matter a lot. It doesn't do you any good to focus on the amount of money you earn in isolation because the only thing that truly counts is the amount of money you keep. Not all passive income dollars are equal. A dividend is currently taxed at only 15%, while distributions from a master limited partnership might be treated as a return of capital and owe little, if any taxes, for the first few years. A traditional corporate bond could be as taxed as high as 41% in a worst-case scenario, while a tax-free municipal bond could escape taxation entirely. Complicating matters further, assets held in certain types of accounts, such as a Roth IRA, might not be subject to any taxes unless you fall into a trap, such as the Unrelated Business Taxable Income trigger, or UBTI.

When you put together your list of cash generating assets, make sure you calculate the actual net, after-tax proceeds you receive each year. Sometimes, you can increase your standard of living significantly by shifting the types of holdings you maintain or engaging in a technique called asset positioning. It's free money sitting on the table for you to take. There is no reason not to put in the extra work to study tax law and end up a little bit richer.

Make Sure You Revisit Your Investment Portfolio At Least Once a Year

Set a specific time at least once every year - such as the second Tuesday in February or the day after Thanksgiving - and go through each of your investments. Analyze them and make sure they still offer the four things we talked about - safety, growth, diversification, and good after-tax results. One full day's worth of work is a small price to pay for peace of mind.


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The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is a world-class institution that possesses a dual mission as an art museum, as well as a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. This unique dual mission, along with a major physical expansion of the grounds, prompted the Clark to begin the process of overhauling its brand. As the museum's masterworks went on a two-year world tour, the museum embarked on these defining projects to renew both its physical and digital presence.
The project's goal was to communicate the essence of the Clark Institute's brand, physical presence, and the works of art that are housed within—without words, and in a digital form that would engage and delight visitors. The desire was to break through the clutter of the usual, heavy museum websites, by creating a beautiful and simple user experience.
Along with online access to the museum's extensive art collection, users needed seamless access to the museum's events and ticketing systems. With scattered systems that all needed to be integrated, including Raiser's Edge, Counterpoint, Outbound, and eMuseum, we had our work cut out for us. In addition to the web properties, the museum built a 10-foot LED outdoor pylon and indoor digital signage system to feature exhibitions and programming, which needed to be accounted for when building a content management solution.
In preparation for the opening of the new galleries, ATOM developed an online experience that brought the museum's collection to the web, enabling enthusiasts and researchers to access and explore the prized works at the Clark from anywhere in the world. This was accomplished through a complete visual design implementation, migration to the Kentico CMS, and integration with the Clark's major 3rd party systems. This customized CMS facilitated the control of content on internal and external digital displays along with the website content, enabling the Clark team to manage important web-based channels via one robust and secure portal. Did we mention this had to come together with perfect timing, to launch in concert with the Clark's grand re-opening?
On launch day, we had risen to the challenge, met it, and exceeded it. The collective team's hard work paid off, and the Clark saw an immediate and dramatic increase in site traffic. Prior to the site launch, the Clark site averaged 100,000 visits per month. Soon after launch, the number of visits rose to 150,000 per month. In addition to the rise in traffic, the site saw increased visitor engagement, indicating that site content is now easier to navigate and consume.
The successful launch of the site initiated phase two in the plan: making the site mobile-adaptive. We designed and implemented a plan for a consolidated and minimized content offering, ensuring mobile users would have easy access to the information that is most important to them, buying tickets, museum information, exhibition and event dates. The Clark saw increased and more engaged traffic on the site from mobile devices almost immediately after launch. After just one month, the site saw more overall engagement from mobile visitors than desktop visitors, with 3x more pages per site visit on average.
This overhaul of the museum's physical and digital properties has allowed the Clark to more effectively and actively communicate with its new and core audiences. The updates have also brought to the museum significantly increased membership numbers, helping to bridge the digital divide. With coverage in the New York Times, among other industry praise, the museum is poised to move into the future, bringing the beauty of nature and the visual arts to the masses.


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Rower Lee Ka-man confident of golden success in Incheon
With the experienceof three Asian Games behind her, 27-year-old rower seeks breakthrough
Rower Lee Ka-man believes her experience from three previous Asian Games will give her the edge as she aims for her first gold - and Hong Kong's first gold - in Incheon next month.
Having first represented Hong Kong at the Asiad in Busan in 2002, Lee, now 27, said it was high time to reap the rewards of her vast experience at the Games.
"I have made significant progress against my Asian counterparts over the last two years physically and mentally. I think I am strong enough to challenge for a gold medal now," said Lee, who missed out on a medal in Guangzhou four years ago, but took silver in Doha in 2006.
"In fact, I finished not far behind rowers from powerhouses China, who will be our major rivals in Incheon.
"With the [international] exposure I have gained over the years, I am pretty confident of delivering the goods in Incheon."
Lee may also hold an advantage as there will be 14 rowing events in Incheon but each participating team can enter a maximum of 10.
"It will be easier if I don't meet rowers from China, but this is not my biggest concern," she said.
"We have undergone the best preparation for the Incheon Games with our first-ever altitude training in Yunnan during the winter. That's why I consider a gold medal within my reach."
Lee will take part in two single sculls events in Incheon - the lightweight category and the open class. She is the reigning lightweight Asian champion.
Coach Wu Jining said Lee had improved her power in preparation for her latest Asiad outing.
"She has become more mature and with the improvement she has made, she will definitely be challenging for medals in her two events," said the coach.
Hong Kong is sending a crew of three women and seven men to take part in eight events in Incheon.
The men's lightweight squad of Chow Kwong-wing, Tang Chiu-ming, Leung Chun-shek and Kwan Ki-cheong will be another major medal hope.
"The team that will represent Hong Kong in Incheon is one of the strongest and most experienced in recent years," said head coach Chris Perry, who added a gold medal has so far eluded Hong Kong at the Asiad.
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Air Ambulance Company Serving Patients Traveling to or from Birmingham, AL
If you're trying to decide which air ambulance company can best assist you, a loved one, or a patient in your care who needs to travel to or from Birmingham, Alabama, look no further than Air Ambulance Worldwide We provide caring, compassionate travel assistance to medically compromised men, women, and children who need to travel by air, either privately or commercially. We have been awarded EURAMI certification and are proud to have a gold rating from ARGUS International – two of many indicators that we provide safe, secure transportation and outstanding client service.
As a full-service air ambulance company, we provide several levels of assistance for patients traveling to or from Birmingham, AL, including:
- Private transportation – We have several private aircraft that have been specially outfitted to serve as airborne ambulances. Each flight is piloted by a seasoned aviator, and two members of our highly trained medical staff accompany the patient from bedside to bedside.
- Commercial escort – A member of our team will accompany the client aboard a commercial flight, assisting with medical, hygiene, and comfort needs along the way. This is a comprehensive bedside-to-bedside service.
- Stretcher service – For patients who need to remain prone during international transport, we will make arrangements with a commercial airline to accommodate a stretcher, surrounded by a privacy curtain. A member of our medical team will accompany the patient during the flight to ensure his or her needs are met.
To learn more about the services we provide, contact Air Ambulance Worldwide today. Discover for yourself why so many patients traveling to or from Birmingham, AL, have made us their air ambulance company of choice.


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|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Mar 18, 2008
|Filing date
|Sep 30, 2003
|Priority date
|Sep 30, 2002
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Salih B. Gokturk, Carlo Tomasi, Acar Burak, Christopher F. Beaulieu, Sandy A. Napel, David S. Paik
|Original Assignee
|The Board Of Trustees Of The Leland Stanford Junior University
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (14), Non-Patent Citations (17), Referenced by (25), Classifications (12), Legal Events (4)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
This application is cross-referenced to and claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application 60/415,269 filed Sep. 30, 2002, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention was supported in part by grant number RO1 CA72023 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NCI). The U.S. Government has certain rights in the invention.
The present invention relates generally to medical imaging. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods for differentiating normal and abnormal anatomical shapes through a feature estimation method and a classifier.
Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. American adults have 1/20 chance of developing and 1/40 chance of dying from this disease. There are approximately 150,000 new cases diagnosed each year resulting in 56,000 deaths (See e.g. P J Wingo (1995) in a paper entitled "Cancer Statistics" and published in Ca Cancer Journal Clin. 45:8-30). Previous research has shown that adenomatous polyps, particularly those larger than 1 cm in diameter, are the most likely precursor to subsequent colorectal carcinoma (See e.g. a paper by R F Thoeni et al. (1994) entitled "Polyps and cancer" and published in "Textbook of Gastrointestinal Radiology, Philadelphia. W. B. Saunders, p1160). The National Polyp Study clearly illustrated that colonoscopic removal of all identifiable polyps resulted in a decline in mortality rate between 76% and 90% compared to historical controls (See e.g. a paper by S J Winawer et. al. (1993) entitled "Prevention of colorectal cancer by colonoscopic polypectomy" and published in N. Engl. J. Med. 329:1977-1981). Unfortunately, colon cancer is most often discovered after the patient develops symptoms, and by then, the likelihood of a cure has diminished substantially.
Fiberoptic colonoscopy (FOC) is considered the definitive diagnostic test (See e.g. a paper by D M Eddy (1990) entitled "Screening for colorectal cancer" and published in Ann. Intern. Med., 113 373-384) for the presence of colonic polyps as it affords direct visualization and the opportunity for biopsy or removal of suspicious lesions (See e.g. the referenced paper supra by Winawer et. al.). However, FOC is not feasible as a population screening test due to cost, the small but real risk of complications such as perforation, and due to the fact that there are not sufficient endoscopists in the country to accommodate all patients. Moreover, the majority of colonoscopic examinations performed in the United States are negative for polyps or masses, therefore, a less invasive, more widely available procedure that is also acceptable to patients is attractive.
Computed tomography colonography (CTC) (also referred to as virtual colonoscopy) is a recently proposed non-invasive technique that combines spiral CT data acquisition of the air-filled and cleansed colon with 3D imaging software to create virtual endoscopic images of the colonic surface. The initial clinical results are quite promising, yet the technique is still impractical due, in part, to the time required to review hundreds of images per patient study. This limitation begs for a computer-aided detection (CAD) method to help the radiologist detect polyps efficiently from the acquired CTC data.
Identifying colonic polyps using CAD is challenging because they come in various sizes and shapes, and because thickened folds and retained stool may mimic their shape and density.
Initial studies describing CAD for polyp detection have focused on shape analysis and started from the intuitive observation on the similarity of the polyp shape to hemispheres. Summers et al. characterized the colon wall by computing its minimum, maximum, mean and Gaussian curvatures (See a paper by R M Summers et al. (2000) entitled "Polypoid lesions of airways: early experience with computer-assisted detection by using virtual bronchoscopy and surface curvature" and published in Radiology 208(2):331-337). Following discrimination of polypoid shapes by their principal minimum and maximum curvatures, more restrictive criteria such as sphericity measures are applied in order to eliminate non-spherical shapes. In Yoshida et al. (H. Yoshida et al. (2000) in a paper entitled "Detection of colonic polyps in CT colonography based on geometric features" and published in Radiology 217(SS):582-582) use topological shape of vicinity of each voxel, in addition with a measure for the shape curvedness to distinguish polyps from healthy tissue. Gokturk and Tomasi designed a method based on the observation that the bounding surfaces of polyps are usually not exact spheres, but are often complex surfaces composed of small, approximately spherical patches (See S B Gokturk & C Tomasi (2000) in a paper entitled "A graph method for the conservative detection of polyps in the colon" and published at the 2nd International Symposium on Virtual Colonoscopy November 2000 Boston, USA). In this method, a sphere is fit locally to the isodensity surface passing through every CT voxel in the wall region. Groups of voxels that originate densely populated nearby sphere centers are considered as polyp candidates. Obviously, the clusters of the sphere centers are denser when the underlying shape is a sphere or a hemisphere.
Paik et al. introduced a method based on the concept that normals to the colon surface will intersect with neighboring normals depending on the local curvature features of the colon (D S Paik et al. (2000) in a paper entitled "Computer aided detection of polyps in CT colonography: Free response roc evaluation of performance" and published in Radiology 217(SS)370 and D S Paik et al. (1999) in a paper entitled "Detection of polyps in CT colonography. A comparison of a computer aided detection algorithm to 3-D visualization methods" and published in Radiological Society of North America 85th Scientific Sessions. Chicago, Ill.: Radiological Soc. N. Amer. p. 428). This method is based the observation that polyps have 3-D shape features that change rapidly in many directions, so that normals to the surface tend to intersect in a concentrated area. By contrast, haustral folds change their shape rapidly when sampled transversely, resulting in convergence of normals, but change shape very slowly when sampled longitudinally. As a result, the method detects the polyps by giving the shapes a score based on the number of intersecting normal vectors. This score is higher in hemispherical polyps compared with folds.
While most of the current methods have demonstrated promising sensitivity (i.e. ability to detect positives), they can be considered more as polyp-candidate detectors than polyp detectors because of their large number of false positive detections. Some of the methods incorporate simple intuitions about the shapes of polyps and non-polyps, which leads to false positive detections. For instance it has been observed that polyps have spherical shapes and provided different measures of sphericity. However, polyps span a large variety of shapes, and fitting spheres alone is not an accurate measure. As mentioned supra, polyp recognition is a difficult problem, but so is the manual identification of discriminating criteria between polyps and healthy tissue. Therefore, if an automatic method merely results in identifying polyp candidates, then manual examination of a (potentially large) number of images corresponding to the CAD outputs is required to ensure proper polyp detection. Such an examination is costly, time consuming and inefficient. Accordingly, there is need for new detection methods to recognize polyps in medical images and differentiate these polyps from healthy tissue.
The present invention is a method for detecting and classifying a shape in a medical image. It is based on generating a plurality of 2-D sections through a 3-D volume in the medical image. In general, the present invention is a combination of two steps. The first step is feature estimation to generate shape signatures for candidate volumes containing candidate shapes. The feature estimation method computes descriptors of objects or of their images. The second general step involves classification of these shape signatures for diagnosis. A classifier contains, builds and/or trains a database of descriptors for previously seen shapes, and then maps descriptors of novel images to categories corresponding to previously seen shapes or classes of shapes.
The 2-D sections differ from each other in position, orientation or position and orientation. The main idea here is to develop statistics of information on these sections that represent many variations of the shape. In contrast to previous methods, the method of the present invention does not explicitly make any assumptions about the shape. By choosing reasonable attributes, it captures many characteristics of shapes accurately. Consequently, the approach is applicable to other 3D pattern recognition problem and also to the discovery of any new shapes. The generality is assured by including the new shape samples to the training set of the algorithm, and designing new planar attributes if necessary.
In one exemplary embodiment, the plurality of 2-D sections are a plurality of triples of mutually orthogonal planes, which could also be randomly selected. Feature estimation could be accomplished through the step of determining intensity features or statistics. In one example, feature estimation includes the steps of fitting lines, one or more circles, one or more ellipses, one or more quadratic curves, one or more rectangles, or one or more parallel lines. In one aspect, shape signatures could be obtained via a histogram of a plurality of shape signatures. Shape signatures could also be obtained via vector quantization. The classifier could be a support vector machines classifier, which could be optimized with training data.
The present invention could be utilized as a post-processing method that would refine the results of a high sensitivity, low specificity shape detection method, resulting in an increasing specificity without sacrificing sensitivity. In this case, candidate shapes or volumes containing a candidate shape would be the input to the present method. The present method is, however, not limited to its application as a post-processing method since it could also be used as an independent method without pre-processing identification.
The advantage of the present invention is that it does not make any assumptions about the to-be-detected shape as is common in prior art methods. Another advantage is that if a pre-processing method is used, and method of present invention is used as a post-processing method, then the present method does not have to make assumptions of the pre-processing method. Yet another advantage is that it eliminates the guesswork for obtaining the distinguishing features.
The objectives and advantages of the present invention will be understood by reading the following detailed description in conjunction with the drawings, in which:
Although the following detailed description contains many specifics for the purposes of illustration, anyone of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate that many variations and alterations to the following exemplary details are within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the following preferred embodiment of the invention is set forth without any loss of generality to, and without imposing limitations upon, the claimed invention.
In general, the present invention is a combination of two method steps as shown in
The present method could be utilized as a post-processing method that would refine the results of a high sensitivity, low specificity candidate shape detection method, resulting in an increasing specificity without sacrificing sensitivity. In this case, candidate shapes or volumes containing a candidate shape would be the input to the present method. The present method is, however, not limited to its application as a post-processing method since it could also be used as an independent method without pre-processing identification.
The images are typically digital or computerized images such as, for instance, but not limited to, a CT, an MRI, a digitized X-ray, or any other image application that could be converted or rendered to a digital image. The images could be 2-D images useful to construct a 3-D image or a 3-D volumetric image. A shape that is targeted to be identified or diagnosed is, for instance, but not limited to, a shape that contains pre-cancerous tissue or cancerous tissue. These shapes are of interest to radiologists and are for instance polyps (e.g. colonic polyps), nodules, (e.g. liver and lung nodules), lesions, or the like. In case of colonic polyp, these shapes are differentiated from e.g. non-polyp shapes, tissue or volumes included in the normal colon, thickened haustral folds, and foci of retained stool. Even though the description focuses on CT images of the colon to diagnose colonic polyps, the present method could easily be applied in any type of application where it is necessary to characterize a shape and diagnose whether this shape corresponds to a structure of interest. The following describes in more detail the two general method steps.
1. Random Orthogonal Shape Sections Method (ROSS)
The main idea is that the statistics of information collected over a sufficiently large number of 2-D sections or triples gives a diagnostic and invariant signature of the shape. Because other structures may co-occupy the resulting images, the next step is to segment them to isolate the putative polyp for further processing. We then calculate a set of geometric attributes from each random plane, and generate a histogram of these geometric attributes obtained from each triple as a feature-vector to represent the shape. Accumulating histograms of these attributes over several random triples makes the resulting signatures invariant to rotations and translations. Careful choice of geometric attributes results in robust signatures. Details of the image segmentation and image-based geometric attributes are given in section 1.1 and section 1.2 respectively. This histogram is described in section 1.3.
1.1. Image Segmentation
In each image we first construct a square critical window located in the center of the image, surrounding the suspicious structure and excluding as much of the extraneous tissue as possible. The size of the critical window varies depending on the size and the shape of the suspicious structure in the image. A window is considered good when it contains a shape that is approximately circular and has a small circular radius. Because elongated folds are common in the colon, it was found to be useful to also explicitly rule out elongated regions when there is a circular region in the image. To find a critical window's size, an image is first binarized by intensity thresholding, and the following target function (Equation 1) is computed for each window of size w centered in the middle of the image:
f(w)=a 1 r(w)+e circle(w)−a 2 e line(w) (1)
Here, r(w) is the radius of the circle that best fits the edges in the binarized image, ecircle(w) is the residual to the best fitting circle, eline(w) is the residue to the best fitting line all in the subwindow w, and α1 and α2 are constants. Details of the shape fitting are described in the next section. w could be varied from, for instance, 8 mm to 24 mm and the value of w that yields the smallest f(w) is chosen as the critical window size to calculate the geometric attributes.
1.2. Image-Based Geometric Attributes and Features
Once the optimal critical subwindow in a particular image/section is found, we can extract shape and intensity related geometric attributes (features) in the critical window. For this purpose, we can fit primitive shapes such as one or more lines, one or more circles, one or more quadratic curves, one or more rectangles, and one or more parallel sets of lines to the largest connected edge component, i.e., boundary, of the shape. Each primitive shape could be fit in a least squares manner. The boundary in each random plane could for instance be determined by a 2D Sobel derivative operation (See R C Gonzales et al. (1993) in a book entitled "Digital Image Processing" and published by Addison-Wesley) followed by thresholding. The mathematical details of the primitive shape fittings are described in section 3.
A random slice of a sphere is a circle. Thus, fitting circles is a means of measuring the sphericity of the 3-D shape (
Similarly, the ellipsoidal nature of the shape can be measured by fitting a quadratic to the edges. This way, we can capture the similarity of the shape to a pedunculated polyp (
To extract information on higher order frequency characteristics of the boundary, 3rd order moment invariants are computed as well (See a paper by M K Hu (1962) entitled "Visual pattern recognition by moment invariants" and published in IRE transactions on information theory IT-8:179-187). This gives information on the curviness of the boundary points.
In addition to all of these shape-based features, intensity features are extracted from the tissue part of the image. For this, the tissue part is first separated away from the background by intensity thresholding and, next, the intensity mean and standard deviation of the tissue are calculated and recorded. The intensity-based features are not discriminative features in polyp recognition, therefore, these features could be omitted when used in polyp recognition applications. These features, however, can be useful in another medical shape recognition problem.
All the attributes mentioned so far are calculated for each random triple of images. The three images in each triple are sorted in the order of increasing radius of curvature, and the features above are listed into a vector in this order. The resulting N-vector containing the N attributes from the three planes represents the signature of the shape, relative to that particular triple of perpendicular planes.
2.3. Obtaining the Histograms in High-Dimensional Space
The following step in the method of the present invention is to obtain histograms of feature vector distributions over the randomly oriented 2-D sections or triples. Given enough 2-D sections or triples, these histograms are essentially invariant to orientation and position. An efficient solution, proposed here, represents a histogram by first computing the representatives for the main clusters of features over a large collection of vectors. New feature vectors are then assigned to these clusters, rather than to fixed uniform bins. This method is called vector quantization (For a reference see a book by A Gersho & R M Gray (1992) entitled "Vector Quantization and Signal Compression" and published by Kluwer Academic Press).
In the implementation of the method of the present invention one could suppose that Xij is the N-vector obtained from the jth random triple of perpendicular planes extracted from the ith shape in a training set. One could then obtain Xij's from all of the shapes, and then invoke the k-means algorithm (for a reference see A Gersho & R M Gray (1992) in a book entitled "Vector Quantization and Signal Compression" and published by Kluwer Academic Press) to compute vector clusters. The cluster centers are first initialized to a random selection from Xij's. Subsequent iterations of the k-means algorithm then alternately reassign vectors to clusters and re-compute cluster centers, resulting eventually in the optimum cluster centers.
Once the representative histogram bin centers are determined, a histogram of feature vectors belonging to each particular shape is calculated. When forming these feature histograms, the simplest strategy would be to have each vector increment a counter for the nearest cluster center. This method, however, is overly sensitive to the particular choice of clusters. In the present method a more robust solution is adopted in which each feature vector partitions a unit vote into fractions that are inversely proportional to the vector's distances to all histogram bin centers. The histograms thus obtained, one per candidate volume, are the rotation and translation invariant shape signatures used for classification as described in the next section.
2. Classifier
Given the representative vectors for polyps and healthy tissue, the optimum classifier is computed using training data. Subsequently the optimum classifier is used on test data. In the particular example of CTC, a training set is defined as a collection of candidate volumes that are classified by fiberoptic colonoscopy (FOC) and CT colonoscopy to be polyps or non-polyps.
In general, a support vector machines (SVM) classifier aims to find the optimal differentiating hypersurface between the two classes in the training set (See e.g. V Vapnik (1998) in a book entitled "Statistical Learning Theory, New York). The optimal hypersurface is the one that not only correctly classifies the data, but also maximizes the margin of the closest data points to the hypersurface.
Mathematically, we consider the problem of separating the training set S of points xi∈Rn with i=1, 2, . . . , N. Each data point xi belongs to either class and, thus, is given a label yi∈ {−1,1}. SVM implicitly transforms the given feature vector xi into new vectors φ(x) in a space with more dimensions, such that the hypersurface that separates the x, becomes a hyperplane in the space of φ(x)s. Thus the linearly non-separable data in the original space becomes linearly separable in a higher dimension. Finding the hypersurface is a well-studied optimization problem that maximizes the distance of the hypersurface to the margin points, so called support vectors (See e.g. V Vapnik (1998) in a book entitled "Statistical Learning Theory, New York; B Sch�lkopf (1997) in a book entitled "Support Vector Learning" and published by Munich, Germany; R Oldenbourg Verlag; K Veropoulos et al. (1999) in a paper entitled "Controlling the sensitivity of support vector machines" and presented at the Int. Joint Conf. AI (IJCAI'99), Stockholm, Sweden). Support vectors are essentially the elements that carry the differentiating characteristics between polyps and nonpolyps. In the classification of a test vector x, only the support vector needs to be considered, and the following expression needs to be calculated:
where the constants αi, b are computed by the classifier-learning algorithm, and the xi are the computed support vectors (SVs). K is called the Kernel function, and is used to map the data from its original dimension to higher dimensions so that the data is linearly separable in the mapped dimension (For reference see B Sch�lkopf (1997) in a book entitled "Support Vector Learning" and published by Munich, Germany; R Oldenbourg Verlag). Given the expression d(x), the decision is given based on the sign of d(x):
In other words, in the classification process of a test case, it is checked which side of the hypersurface the element resides. If it is in the polyp side, it is decided that the new case is a polyp, and otherwise, it is a non-polyp. It could also be given a score to each element by looking at its distance from the optimal hypersurface.
In clear contrast with previous classification methods, such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA), or nearest neighbor methods that minimize the empirical risk (risk of misclassification in the training set), SVMs minimize the structural risk, given as the probability of misclassifying previously unseen data, by utilizing the optimal hyperplane between two classes of data. In addition, SVMs pack all the relevant information in the training set into a small number of support vectors and use only these vectors to classify new data. This way, the distinguishing features of the two classes are implicitly identified while the detracting less important points are discarded. In other classification methods such as LDA or neural networks, the classification surfaces are obtained by taking all of the data points into account, which might statistically deteriorate the performance of these methods.
3. Primitive Shape Fitting
Let be a collection of points in the image boundary with image coordinates (xi, yi) with i=1, . . . N. In this section, examples of mathematical details are described to fit primitive shapes such as circle, quadric curve, and line to the collection of points Pi.
A circle is defined by its three parameters: The coordinates of its center (x0, y0) and its radius r. The points Pi satisfy the circle equation
In order to find the three unknowns (x0, y0, r), equations coming from each point are stacked and a linear least-square, solution is obtained. Let A and b be the following matrix and vector:
then [x0y0r2−x0 2−y0 2]T=(ATA)−1ATb is the least-square solution to the best fitting circle. Similarly, the residue to the least-square solution is ecircle=A[x0y0r2−x0 2−y0 2]T−b.
A quadratic is defined by the following equation:
Similar to the circle equations, the matrix A and the vector b are built by stacking the left and right sides of the equation, thus, the least-square solution is given by [{dot over (a)}{dot over (b)}ċ{dot over (d)}ė]T=(ATA)−1ATb. The least-square residue is given by equadratic=A[{dot over (a)}{dot over (b)}ċ{dot over (d)}ė]T−b.
The quadratic equation can also be written in the following form:
where T is given by:
The singular values of the matrix are invariant to rotations of the quadratic shape and, thus, are recorded as quadric invariants.
The equation of a line is defined by a point on the line and its direction. Given a collection of points (xi, yi) for i=1, . . . , N, the best fitting line (in the least-square sense) goes through the central point (x0, y0). The line itself can then be written as:
where v=[vx+vy]T is the direction of the line. Let ({tilde over (x)}i, {tilde over (y)}i)be the normalized point coordinates of Pi.
v is then given as the first singular vector of M, where M is the following matrix:
Given v and (x0, y0) the best fitting line equation is complete. For any given point Pi, the error to this line is given as:
4. Conclusion
The present invention has now been described in accordance with several exemplary embodiments, which are intended to be illustrative in all aspects, rather than restrictive. Thus, the present invention is capable of many variations in detailed implementation, which may be derived from the description contained herein by a person of ordinary skill in the art. For example, in one aspect the choice of kernel function in the support vector machines classification is a parameter that could directly affect the results. One could choose kernel function such as, but not limited to, radial basis functions, exponential radial basis functions, polynomial functions, linear kernel, and histogram-based kernels. In another aspect to expand the differentiation of different 3-D shapes one could use different geometrical properties that are determined from each triple of planes or a combination of 2-D sections. In yet another aspect, related to the training process, the resulting support vectors could give valuable feedback for designing new features for the classifying system. More specifically, the clusters of close by support vectors from the two classes belong to similar shapes in polyps and nonpolyps. These closeby support vectors will help observe the distinguishing features of similar polyps and nonpolyps. In still another variation, the classifier could also be a hidden markov model based classifier, a neural network based classifier, a fuzzy-based classifier, a genetic algorithm based classifier, or any other classifier capable of classifying the shape signature information.
Note that while the present invention has been described in the context of a method, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the method of the present invention is capable of being distributed in the form of a computer readable medium of instructions in a variety of forms, and that the present invention applies equally regardless of the particular type of signal bearing medium used to actually carry out the distribution. In other words, the present invention is also a program storage device accessible by a computer, tangible embodying a program of instructions or means executable by the computer to perform method steps for detection and classification of a shape in a medical image as described supra. Examples of computer readable media include recordable type media such as disks and CD-ROMS and transmission type media such as digital and analog communication links. In addition, the present invention could be implemented and coded in different programming languages and/or packages. All such variations and other variations are considered to be within the scope and spirit of the present invention as defined by the following claims and their legal equivalents.
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|Fujifilm Corporation
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|Tree structure extraction apparatus, method and program
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|Apr 13, 2011
|Fujifilm Corporation
|Structure detection apparatus and method, and computer-readable medium storing program thereof
|Feb 23, 2010
|Sep 10, 2010
|Image processing device and method, and program
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|May 10, 2004
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text:
Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 865858
Potentially unnecessary file opens/closes performed around xattr read/writes
Last modified: 2016-11-08 17:26:54 EST
Description of problem:
The Gluster/Swift plugin code provides wrappers for get/set/removexattr
system calls which perform file open/close systems calls. The open/close
sequence appears to be unnecessary.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Actual results:
Files are first opened, xattr key read/written/removed, then closed for
every metadata key stored (could have multiple keys stored, see
Expected results:
No open or close system call is made around xattr operations.
I created a permanent pastebin link with the output of an strace from a GET on an object.
Lines 222 - 240 are annotated to show where a read_metadata() calls starts and ends, and what do_getxattr() does for a file. Notice that 13 system calls are made. The two calls to fgetxattr in a row are the result of the pyxattr modules' behavior to first find out the size of the xattr value so that it can allocate memory for it and then fetch the full contents of it.
We should be able to remove the extra stat calls as well.
Probably would be helpful to actually include the link to the pastebin ...
Here are the results of the same operation but with a patch applied to remove the extra system calls (from 13 down to 3).
Created attachment 626189 [details]
Initial patch to remove the use of deprecated pyxattr methods.
Created attachment 626190 [details]
Actual fix to remove extra system calls.
CHANGE: http://review.gluster.org/4077 (Refactor to use pyxattr's get/set/remove methods) merged in master by Anand Avati (email@example.com)
CHANGE: http://review.gluster.org/4078 (Fix BZ 865858: remove unnecessary system calls around xattr ops) merged in master by Anand Avati (email@example.com)


text:
Fall 2013
At the end of the Summer issue three months ago, I put out a call for projects and pieces that highlighted your eco-sensitivity and articles came in that highlighted everything from weaving magnetic tape (now mostly destined for land fill) into a sleek and sassy evening bag to a rigorous examination of the feasibility of the Fibershed Project.
We are also starting to publish Guild Histories, This issue celebrates the Golden Gate Weavers Guild, the Grande Dame of Guilds under the CNCH umbrella.
Some of my writers turned out to be sheep–with a little help from their friend. You can also read about what we really want at a conference, a fond thank-you to those who have mentored us, a little peek at what you can expect next April in Oakland and an invitation to go to the Natural Fiber Fair in Arcata this September.
For vibrant color, I have included an article about the Yokayo Guild's surface design challenge and another about a jewel box of a shop in San Francisco that sells only ribbons!
So please enjoy this issue. If August and September prove to be too hot, I'm going to San Francisco and you'll find me in The Ribbonerie.
Judy Fisher, editor
Click here for the next article
Articles in this issue . . . Fall 2013
- A Trek from Trash to Textile
- Celebrating our Teachers and Mentors
- Mary had some Little Lambs
- Fibershed, an Update on the Project
- A Short History of the Golden Gate Weavers
- A Summary 4 Ewe
- Next Year-Branch out with Fibers
- The Yokayo Art Cloth Project
- The Natural Fiber Fair Celebrates its 23rd Year
- The Little Shop of Ribbons
- Endnote 8/13


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The London Breast Care Centre at The London Breast Institute of the Princess Grace Hospital is a comprehensive, multi disciplinary breast clinic and breast care program, offering a full spectrum of breast care services, from screening and diagnosis to treatment and counselling. The centre provides innovative, integrated, high quality and cost-effective breast services to women in a caring and compassionate manner. This involves demonstrable and audited excellence of the three essential components required - medical staffing, diagnostic and therapeutic equipment, and research activity.
The centre has been founded by Professor Kefah Mokbel, an esteemed specialist in the field of breast cancer, and is located in a suite of offices in the Princess Grace Hospital Outpatient Department. Patients who visit the breast centre have access to the most advanced tests and therapies available anywhere.
Since being the first breast unit in the UK to install and use full digital mammography, the Princess Grace Hospital has maintained its leading position in the equipment field and is regularly visited by other UK centres. Platinum levels of required standards have been set for eligibility of staff to work in the unit as well as volume levels of unit throughput to maintain skill and expertise.
With such unparalleled levels of dedicated staff and superior technology, The London Breast Care Centre strives to contribute to the future of breast care by carrying out properly conducted and meaningful research.
The centre provides access to comprehensive care that extends from screening to reconstructive surgery:
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Patients requiring chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy will be treated by internationally renowned breast oncologists in an innovative and patient-orientated environment at The London Oncology Clinic or The Harley Street Clinic.
Professor Kefah Mokbel (MBBS, MS, FRCS) is a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon at St. George's Hospital and Professor of Breast Cancer Surgery at The Brunel lnstitute of Cancer Genetics and Pharmacogenomics. He is also The Lead Breast Surgeon at The London Breast Institute and the founding president of Breast Cancer Hope Charity.
His main clinical interests lie in the field of breast surgery including the early detection of breast cancer, minimally-invasive breast surgery, the sentinel node biopsy, skinsparing mastectomy and immediate breast reconstruction, breast ductoscopy, cosmetic breast surgery (breast enlargement, breast reduction and mastopexy), breast cancer prevention, genetic predisposition and the management of benign conditions such as mastalgia, breast cysts and fibroadenomas.
Dr Nick Perry (MBBS, FRCS, FRCR) is a world-renowned breast radiologist and is The Director of Breast Imaging at The London Breast Institute and has been the Director of the Central and East London Breast Screening Programme from 1993 - 2008.
Professor Mokbel and Dr Nick Perry are supported by a highly dedicated clinical team and several of the staff affiliated with the centre already have major international profiles.


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Product or Service
Profile:Manufacturer - Producer|Ref:PSL152903YH | Country: China | Currency: | Export: No
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