text: Factors Associated With Worsening and Improving Urinary Incontinence Across the Menopausal TransitionWaetjen, L Elaine MD1; Feng, Wen-Ying MS2; Ye, Jingjing MS2; Johnson, Wesley O. PhD3; Greendale, Gail A. MD4; Sampselle, Carolyn M. PhD, RNC5; Sternfield, Barbara PhD6; Harlow, Siobán D. PhD7; Gold, Ellen B. PhD8Obstetrics & Gynecology: March 2008 - Volume 111 - Issue 3 - p 667-677 doi: 10.1097/AOG.0b013e31816386ce Original Research Abstract In Brief Author Information Article Outline OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the menopausal transition is associated with worsening of urinary incontinence symptoms over 6 years in midlife women. METHODS: We analyzed data from 2,415 women who reported monthly or more incontinence in self-administered questionnaires at baseline and during the first six annual follow-up visits (1995–2002) of the prospective cohort Study of Women's Health Across the Nation. We defined worsening as a reported increase and improving as a reported decrease in frequency of incontinence between annual visits. We classified the menopausal status of women not taking hormone therapy annually from reported menstrual bleeding patterns and hormone therapy use by interviewer questionnaire. We used generalized estimating equations methodology to evaluate factors associated with improving and worsening incontinence from year to year. RESULTS: Over 6 years, 14.7% of incontinent women reported worsening, 32.4% reported improvement, and 52.9% reported no change in the frequency of incontinence symptoms. Compared with premenopause, perimenopause and postmenopause were not associated with worsening incontinence; for example, early perimenopause was associated with improvement (odds ratio [OR] 1.19; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.06–1.35) and postmenopause reduced odds of worsening (OR 0.80; 95% CI 0.66–0.95). Meanwhile, each pound of weight gain increased odds of worsening (OR 1.04; 95% CI 1.03–1.05) and reduced odds of improving (OR 0.97; 95% CI 0.96–0.98) incontinence. CONCLUSION: In midlife incontinent women, worsening of incontinence symptoms was not attributable to the menopausal transition. Modifiable factors such as weight gain account for worsening of incontinence during this life stage. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II In midlife incontinent women, worsening of incontinence symptoms is not attributable to the menopausal transition but to other factors such as weight gain. Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. From the Departments of 1Obstetrics and Gynecology and 2Statistics, University of California, Davis, California; 3Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine, California; 4Department of Medicine, Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, California; 5School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; 7Kaiser Permanente Department of Research, Oakland, California; 8Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, California. *For a listing of the SWAN clinical centers, National Institutes of Health program office, central laboratory, and steering committee, see the Appendix online at www.greenjournal.org/cgi/content/full/111/3/667/DC1. Supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services, through the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health (grants NR004061; AG012505, AG012535, AG012531, AG012539, AG012546, AG012553, AG012554, and AG012495). Work on this article was also supported by AG027056 to L. Elaine Waetjen, MD. The authors thank the study staff at each site and all the women who participated in SWAN. Corresponding author: L. Elaine Waetjen, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 4860 Y Street, Suite 2500, Sacramento, CA 95817; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. Financial Disclosure The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose. Abstract Data Supplements MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION REFERENCES Cited By Supplemental Digital Content Back to Top | Article Outline Data Supplements Click on the links below to access all the Data Supplements for this article. Please note that Data Supplement files may launch a viewer application outside of your web browser. http://links.lww.com/AOG/A63 The natural history of urinary incontinence in midlife women is not well described. Cross-sectional epidemiological studies have found a higher prevalence in women aged 45–55 years, an age range that coincides with the menopause transition.1 This incontinence prevalence increase in midlife has been explained, in part, by the development of urogenital atrophy associated with estrogen loss around menopause.2 Yet progression through the menopause transition does not appear to increase the risk of developing incontinence.3 Other factors are important in the development of incontinence between ages 40 and 60: age, diabetes, obesity, and a high body mass index (BMI).4 Whether the transition from pre- to postmenopause affects existing incontinence, independently of other factors, is not known. There is little information about how change in factors over time, such as transition through the menopause stages or changes in weight and body distribution, can positively or negatively affect the severity of existing incontinence. Longitudinal studies are needed to provide insight into the natural history of this condition. We aimed to evaluate factors associated with worsening and improving of incontinence symptoms in midlife women during a period of 6 years. Specifically, we examined whether stage of the menopause transition and other factors that can vary over time, such as changes in weight and waist-to-hip ratio affected the frequency of reported incontinence symptoms. We investigated factors associated with worsening and improving incontinence between each year and over the entire 6-year period. Back to Top | Article Outline MATERIALS AND METHODS This is an analysis of data from the baseline and first six annual follow-up visits (1995–2002) of women who reported incontinence during the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). This study is a multicenter, multiethnic, prospective cohort study of midlife women and the menopause transition.5 Each of seven sites (Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; the Detroit area, MI; Los Angeles, CA; Newark, NJ; Pittsburgh, PA; and Oakland, CA) recruited about 450 community-dwelling midlife women, for a total cohort of 3,302 women. In SWAN, African-American, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanic women were oversampled to allow sufficient numbers for the planned analyses by racial/ethnic group. Eligibility criteria were age 42–52 years and self-identification as one of the five racial/ethnic groups to be studied. The exclusion criteria were inability to speak English, Spanish, Japanese, or Cantonese, no menstrual period in greater than 3 months or hysterectomy and/or bilateral oophorectomy before enrollment, and current use of any reproductive hormones. The study was approved by institutional review boards at all sites, and all women gave informed consent. In a self-administered questionnaire at each annual follow-up visit, women were asked "In the past year (or since your last study visit), have you ever leaked even a small amount of urine involuntarily?" Participants listed the frequency of their incontinence as "almost daily/daily" (daily), "several days per week" (weekly), "less than one day per week" (monthly), "less than once a month," or "none." Because we consider incontinence occurring less than once a month not to be clinically significant and to have a higher misclassification rate, we combined this category with "no incontinence" to create the category of no regular incontinence. We categorized type of incontinence as "stress" if participants reported leakage with "coughing, laughing, sneezing, jogging, jumping, with physical activity or picking up an object from the floor" or as "urge" if participants reported leakage "when you have the urge to void and can't reach the toilet fast enough." We defined improving and worsening incontinence in two ways. First, we evaluated change in incontinence reporting from year to year. Incontinence was considered improving if the frequency of incontinence decreased from one annual visit to the next, that is, from daily to weekly or less, from weekly to monthly or less, or from monthly to no regular incontinence. We considered incontinence worsening if the frequency of incontinence increased from one annual visit to the next, that is, from no regular incontinence (after a previous report of incontinence) to monthly or more, from monthly to weekly or more, or from weekly to daily. We defined no change in incontinence as the same reported level of frequency from one annual visit to the next. Second, we evaluated change over the full 6 years of follow-up in the following manner. From one year to the next, a change from less frequent incontinence to more frequent incontinence was assigned a numerical value of +1, a change from more frequent incontinence to less frequent incontinence a value of –1, and no change in frequency, a value of 0. We summed these values of change over the 6 years. Women whose scores were less than 0 were considered to have improved, those whose scores were greater than 0 were considered to have worsened, and those with a score of 0 were considered to have no change. A no-change score could represent either consistent reporting of the same frequency of incontinence from year to year or variable reporting of frequency from year to year that summed to 0. We subdivided this group into "no change with low reporting variance" and "no change with high reporting variance," respectively. Similarly, we determined the proportion of women who only worsened (that is, never reported improvement from year to year) and only improved (that is, never reported worsening from year to year) over the 6 years. Our main independent variables in this analysis were menopause transition category and hormone use determined in the year before the reported change in incontinence frequency. We classified menopause status from questions assessing menstrual bleeding patterns on annual follow-up interview questionnaires as follows: Premenopause was defined as less than 3 months of amenorrhea and no menstrual irregularities in the previous year; Early Perimenopause was less than 3 months of amenorrhea and some menstrual irregularities in previous year; Late Perimenopause was 3 to 11 months of amenorrhea; Postmenopause was 12 consecutive months of amenorrhea with no apparent medical cause. The SWAN study defined surgical menopause as hysterectomy (with or without oophorectomy) or bilateral oophorectomy. Women who started using hormones in pre-, early peri-, and late perimenopause were considered to be hormone users with an unclassifiable menopausal status. We divided post- and surgical menopausal women into those using and those not using hormone therapy when numbers in each category were sufficient for analysis. To account for change in menopausal status between years, we classified women as having transitioned from one menopausal stage to another, started using hormones, stopped using hormones, or as having no change in their status. Finally, from the baseline and year 6 menopause status, we created categorical variables to reflect the change in status over the 6 years: from pre-/early perimenopause to pre-/early perimenopause (ie, no change in status), to late perimenopause, to postmenopause, to surgical menopause, and to unclassifiable menopause status. Weight and waist-to-hip ratio changes were also main variables of interest. Certified staff used calibrated scales and a stadiometer to measure height, weight, and waist and hip circumferences. We calculated baseline BMI as weight in kilograms/(height in meters)2 and waist-to-hip ratio as waist circumference in centimeters/hip circumferences in centimeters. We defined weight gain from year to year as an increase in weight per pound; gain in waist-to-hip ratio was an increase by 0.1 units. Given that a woman's initial reported frequency of incontinence is likely to impact whether her incontinence improves or worsens, we controlled for this effect by treating frequency of incontinence at first report as an independent variable. We estimated socioeconomic status by level of difficulty paying for basics. The SWAN study obtained self-reported medical history and medication use, including hormone use by interview. The study used an adaptation of the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36),6 the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale,7 and the Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey8 and Life Stressors and Social Resources Inventory (LISRES).9,10 Anxiety symptoms were measured by a summed score of days in the past 2 weeks in which certain symptoms were experienced (irritability, feeling tense or nervous, pounding or racing heart, feeling fear for no reason); anxious was defined by a score of 4 or more.11 For these time-dependent covariates, we evaluated whether new onset medical conditions and change in scales and/or events from year to year were associated with change in incontinence frequency. For each time-dependent variable, we also created summary variables describing the patterns of change. We categorized weight gain and loss as a change of greater than 5% from baseline weight at year 6. For waist-to-hip ratio, gain was defined as an increase of greater than 7.5% or loss more than 2.5% from baseline waist-to-hip ratio. For variables whose change could be bidirectional, we accounted for variability in the change over time (eg, weight cycling) by entering the standard deviation of change over the 6 years into our models. Dropouts included continent women who were deceased, discontinued the study, or could not be contacted for two or more consecutive visits. Incontinent women were retained in the analysis as long as they contributed data. When a woman was missing data on frequency and type of incontinence from one or two visits, we imputed values as follows. If one missing value occurred at baseline, we imputed the value from the subsequent visit. If the missing value occurred at year 6, we imputed the value at the previous visit. If the missing values were between concordant values, we imputed that concordant value. If one missing value occurred between two discordant values, we randomly assigned it the value of the previous or subsequent visit. If two missing values occurred in sequence between two discordant ones, we randomly assigned the missing values the previous and subsequent observed values. We did not impute for three or more missing data points. Overall, we imputed incontinence frequency for 808 women at 1,150 visits (5.0% of all visits) and incontinence type for 447 women at 572 visits (2.5% of all visits). When weight or waist-to-hip ratio were missing for one or two visits, the values were imputed as the mean between the two known values (weight: 263 women at 394 visits, 1.7% of all visits; waist-to-hip ratio: 257 women at 374 visits, 1.6% of all visits). We checked each continuous covariate for normality by conducting either a Q-Q plot or a Lilliefors test, an adaptation of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Distributions of incontinence and other important variables for women who remained in (analysis cohort) and who dropped out of (dropout cohort) our study were then compared using the t test or Mann-Whitney U statistic for continuous data and χ2 or proportional tests for categorical data. After selecting candidate variables based on the literature and a priori hypotheses, we used multivariable analysis to examine which factors were associated with improving and worsening incontinence. To build our models, we used backward and forward stepwise processes entering variables based on our hypotheses or based on associations with the incontinence outcome at P≤.10. In our data analysis, we used SAS 9.1 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC). We used generalized estimating equations, a methodology for dealing with repeated measures in longitudinal data, to evaluate factors associated with improving or worsening incontinence from year to year.12 We developed models to compare the following: improving with worsening/no change in incontinence as the reference, worsening incontinence with improving/no change in incontinence as the reference. For women who reported only stress or urge incontinence at two or more visits, we developed models for improving and worsening stress or urge incontinence between those visits. Because our main objective was to evaluate the effect of menopausal status and change in status on incontinence independent of age, we forced these factors into our final models. After checking for collinearity and model stability, including with and without imputation, we chose our final models with imputation based on the lowest QIC (quasi-likelihood under independence model criterion) and the related QICu statistic, which indicate the best fit for generalized estimating equations models.13,14 We also used regression modeling to evaluate factors associated with change in frequency of incontinence over the entire 6-year period using the 6-year summary outcomes and independent variables described above. We assumed that low variance in reporting no change in incontinence would be a stable reference group. We compared odds of high variance in reporting no change in incontinence, odds of improving with low variance no change/worsening incontinence, and odds of worsening with low variance no change/improving incontinence. Back to Top | Article Outline RESULTS Table 1 displays the baseline characteristics of the women in SWAN's inception cohort, of those incontinent women in our analysis (analysis cohort), and of those women who did not report incontinence before being lost to follow-up by the sixth annual visit (drop-out cohort). Women who remained in the study and never reported incontinence are not included in our analysis and are therefore not shown in this table. Women in our analysis cohort compared with the dropout cohort were less likely to be Hispanic, had less difficulty paying for basics, were more likely to have gone to college, had higher parity, had a higher BMI, and were more likely to report anxiety symptoms at baseline. Table 1 Of the 2,415 women who reported monthly or more incontinence during the 6 years, 2,230 (92.3%) contributed information to our analysis. About 30.6% of women reported only stress incontinence, and 9.7% of women reported only urge incontinence symptoms over all 6 years. The remainder reported either or both symptoms from year to year. Overall, 14.7% of incontinent women reported worsening, 32.4% reported improvement, and 52.9% reported no change in the frequency of incontinence symptoms. Figure 1 provides the percentages of women who had remained pre- or early perimenopausal and who transitioned to early peri-, late peri-, post-, surgical, or unclassifiable menopausal status by year 6. It also displays the percentages of women who gained, lost, or maintained weight and waist/hip ratios by year 6. Fig Although few stages of the menopausal transition were statistically significantly associated with increased odds of improving incontinence, most of the estimated odds ratios for improving incontinence in early and late peri- and postmenopause were greater than 1.00 (Table 2). For women reporting any or stress incontinence, early perimenopausal status was associated with improvement in incontinence symptoms. Consistent with this, although not statistically significant, the corresponding estimated odds ratio for urge incontinence also indicated improvement for this status. Advancing in menopausal status was significantly associated with increased odds of improvement for any incontinence, but not for stress and urge incontinence. However, the estimated odds ratios were identical for each of the three categories of incontinence (any, stress, urge), suggesting a consistent effect for stress and urge incontinence. The lack of statistical significance for the association between menopausal status and specific incontinence type likely reflects an insufficient sample size to detect such a departure from the null hypothesis. Hormone use, including either starting or stopping hormone therapy, in the previous year was not associated with improving incontinence in the subsequent year for any and stress incontinence. Meanwhile, starting hormones was associated with improvement in urge incontinence. Table 2 We found several factors that were associated with increased odds of reporting improvement in incontinence symptoms. When a woman's first report of incontinence frequency was daily or weekly, she was subsequently more likely to improve compared with a woman whose first report of incontinence frequency was monthly. Women with no history of smoking were more likely to report improvement in any incontinence. On the other hand, weight gain and increased anxiety symptoms were associated with lower odds of improvement. Although few stages of the menopausal transition were statistically significantly associated with lower odds of worsening incontinence, the estimated odds ratios for early and late peri- and postmenopause were all less than 1.00 (Table 3). Compared with premenopausal women not using hormones, postmenopausal women not using hormones were less likely to report worsening incontinence. The odds ratios for any and urge incontinence were significantly reduced for postmenopausal women not using hormones, and the estimate for stress incontinence was consistent with these odds ratios. Similarly, the use of hormones in the pre-, early, or late perimenopause was also associated with a consistent pattern of estimated odds ratios less than 1.00. Table 3 Weight gain was associated with increased odds of worsening any, stress, and urge incontinence, while an increase in waist-to-hip ratio increased odds of worsening any and stress incontinence. A college degree or higher was associated with lower odds of worsening stress incontinence, while stressful life events increased odds of worsening any and stress incontinence. Hispanic ethnicity was associated with increased odds of worsening stress and urge incontinence. African-American race and anxiety symptoms were significantly associated with higher odds of worsening of any and stress incontinence. Here again, the estimated odds ratios for the association between African-American race and anxiety symptoms and worsening urge incontinence were in a consistent direction with those for any and stress incontinence but were not statistically significant. For women who worsened or improved over the 6 years, 329 (40.0%) worsened without ever reporting improvement, and 218 (29.4%) improved without ever reporting worsening. Of the 470 women who had no total change in their incontinence status over the 6 years, 54.7% reported mostly the same level of incontinence year to year (low reporting variance), while 45.3% reported different levels of frequency from year to year (high reporting variance). Women with a high variance in reporting the frequency of their incontinence were more likely to have a high baseline BMI (odds ratio [OR] 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.00–1.04), have more weight cycling (OR 1.07; 95% CI 1.00–1.16), and report anxiety symptoms at baseline (OR 1.57; 95% CI 1.11–2.23). In our models assessing factors associated with improving and worsening incontinence over the entire 6-year period, we found no association with change in menopausal status. In these models, African Americans (OR 1.64; 95% CI 1.24–2.19) had higher odds of worsening incontinence compared with Caucasians. Women who lost weight were less likely to report worsening incontinence (OR 0.63; 95% CI 0.41–0.96), while women who weight cycled (OR 1.07; 95% CI 1.01–1.14) were more likely to report worsening incontinence. Back to Top | Article Outline DISCUSSION We found few statistically significant associations between natural menopause transition stage and change in the frequency of incontinence symptoms. Being in early perimenopause was associated with improvement in any and stress incontinence, and being in postmenopause reduced odds of worsening for any and urge incontinence. Taken as a whole, the direction and internal consistency of our results suggest a weak positive effect of the menopause transition on any, stress, and urge incontinence. Early and late peri- and early postmenopause were associated with modestly increased odds of improvement and reduced odds of worsening incontinence compared to premenopause. Although our statistical power was insufficient to confirm this observed modest positive effect, our results do not support the belief that worsening incontinence is attributable to the menopausal transition. Women in pre-, early, or late perimenopause who started using hormones in the previous year were less likely to worsen in any incontinence symptoms with the same trend seen in stress and urge types. Previous longitudinal cohort studies15 and randomized, controlled trials16,17 assessing the effects of hormone therapy on incontinence in postmenopausal women have found that hormone use worsens both stress and urge incontinence in postmenopausal women. The effects of exogenous estrogen in pre- and perimenopausal women may be different from those in postmenopausal women due different distributions of α and β estrogen receptors and, thus, actions of estrogen, in the urogenital tract before and after the final menstrual period.18 However, our finding of a negative association between hormone use in pre-, early, and late perimenopause and worsening incontinence is weak. We found no definitive pattern suggesting that hormone use in these stages was associated with improved incontinence. Specifically, using hormones before the final menstrual period did not appear to decrease odds of worsening incontinence, and starting exogenous hormones at any stage was only associated with improvement in urge incontinence symptoms. The majority of incontinent women in midlife experience no change or improvement in their incontinence symptoms. We found few factors other than early perimenopause to be significantly associated with improving incontinence only. Having never smoked appeared to increase odds of improving any incontinence. Good social support was associated with increased odds of improving and having a college education with lower odds of worsening stress incontinence. Women who have never smoked are less likely to have a chronic lung disease, which has been associated with incontinence in some populations.19 Although we could not account for the effect of treatment on incontinence in our models, women with better social support and education are more likely to seek treatment; this may account for the positive effect on stress incontinence. Overall only about 15% of incontinent midlife women reported worsening. Our longitudinal analysis showed that weight gain from year to year and over 6 years was associated with both a reduction in odds of improvement and an increase in odds of worsening incontinence symptoms. An increase in waist-to-hip ratio worsened any and stress incontinence. In cross-sectional studies, high BMI and waist circumference are factors associated with prevalent incontinence4,19; weight gain and increases in waist-to-hip ratio have cogent theoretical explanations for worsening existing incontinence. For example, being overweight, especially with central adiposity increases intra-abdominal pressure and, thus, pressure on the bladder and pelvic organ support structures. African-American women, Hispanic women, and women reporting stressful life events were more likely to report worsening incontinence symptoms. African-American women appear to have a higher odds of developing stress incontinence in midlife for unclear reasons.4 Also unclear is the mechanism for a direct effect of stressful life events. Although psychological stress could increase muscular tension, neurotransmitters, or hormones that impact bladder and urethral function, stress may also increase behaviors that increase incontinence or increase the reporting of incontinence symptoms. We found a few factors associated with both worsening and improving incontinence. Women whose first report of incontinence was daily or weekly were less likely to worsen and more likely to improve. This finding is, in part, due to constraints of our categorical incontinence frequency variables, that is, women who reported daily incontinence could not worsen by the categories of incontinence frequency used in SWAN. However, it is also possible that women with more severe or frequent incontinence are more likely to seek treatment and/or experiment with behavioral strategies such as decreasing fluid intake and increasing voiding frequency to reduce incontinence symptoms. Although women whose anxiety scores increased from year to year were more likely to worsen and less likely to improve in their incontinence, women who developed anxiety over all 6 years were more likely to have a higher variability in their reporting of incontinence over the years of our study, that is, they were more likely to report both worsening and improving over time. Reporting of incontinence symptom frequency may increase or decrease with changes in parallel with anxiety symptoms. Our study had a number of limitations. The SWAN cohort was not assembled specifically to evaluate incontinence. Loss to follow-up or missing data can introduce bias and is always an important problem in longitudinal studies. While over 90% of the incontinent women in this study contributed information toward our analysis, the differences between those in our analysis cohort and those who dropped out limit the generalizability of our results. We attempted to evaluate both short-term (year to year changes) and long-term (change over all 6 years) worsening and improving in incontinence. The short-term changes may represent reporting variance rather than true changes in incontinence frequency, and we have attempted to evaluate and control for this by including factors that could affect incontinence reporting in our models (such as social support) and by assessing the proportions of women whose incontinence reporting varied more from year to year. Our models for long-term change identified few factors associated with either worsening or improving incontinence. Whether our method for summing change over time explains these limited results or whether fewer factors predict longer-term change cannot be assessed. The SWAN study's definition of surgical menopause includes women who had a hysterectomy without reference to removal of ovaries. We do not have data between baseline and year 6 to evaluate longitudinally how treatment of incontinence contributed to improvement of incontinence symptoms in our cohort. Finally, because the questions eliciting the frequency of incontinence did not quantify leakage by type, we had limited power to assess change in the frequency of each incontinence type over these 6 years. Our study also had a number of important strengths. Six years of longitudinal data on incontinence in almost 2,500 midlife women is unique, and SWAN has provided an opportunity to evaluate incontinence in a racially/ethnically diverse, community-based cohort of women over time. Second, the same incontinence questions were asked on an annual basis. Although self-report reflects the symptoms rather than the condition of stress and urge incontinence, the experience of incontinence is of more direct clinical and public health importance than the presence or absence of urodynamic abnormalities. The sensitivity and specificity of self-reported incontinence by type is estimated at 75–86% and 60–79% in validated questionnaires.20,21 Although the incontinence questions in SWAN were not from validated questionnaires, they are similar to such currently validated questions and those that have been used widely in other epidemiological studies.19,22 Many women and clinicians have believed urinary incontinence to be a symptom attributable to the menopausal transition, but our results suggest that the transition from pre- or early peri- to postmenopause has either no effect or possibly a weak positive effect on changes in the frequency of incontinence symptoms in midlife women. Instead, other modifiable factors such as weight gain and changes in weight distribution may account for any worsening in incontinence symptoms noted during this life stage.Back to Top | Article Outline REFERENCES1. Hannestad YS, Rortveit G, Sandvik H, Hunskaar S. 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Postmenopausal hormones and incontinence: the Heart and Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study. Obstet Gynecol 2001;97:116–20. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef 17. Hendrix SL, Cochrane BB, Nygaard IE, Handa VL, Barnabei VM, Iglesia C, et al. Effects of estrogen with and without progestin on urinary incontinence. JAMA 2005;293:935–48. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef 18. Gebhart JB, Rickard DJ, Barrett TJ, Lesnick TG, Webb MJ, Podratz KC, et al. Expression of estrogen receptor isoforms alpha and beta messenger RNA in vaginal tissue of premenopausal and postmenopausal women. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2001;185:1325–30, discussion 1330–1. Cited Here... 19. Jackson RA, Vittinghoff E, Kanaya AM, Miles TP, Resnick HE, Kritchevsky SB, et al. Urinary incontinence in elderly women: findings from the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study. Obstet Gynecol 2004;104:301–7. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef 20. Bradley CS, Rovner ES, Morgan MA, Berlin M, Novi JM, Shea JA, et al. A new questionnaire for urinary incontinence diagnosis in women: development and testing. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2005;192:66–73. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef 21. Brown JS, Bradley CS, Subak LL, Richter HE, Kraus SR, Brubaker L, et al. The sensitivity and specificity of a simple test to distinguish between urge and stress urinary incontinence. Ann Intern Med 2006;144:715–23. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef 22. Brown JS, Grady D, Ouslander JG, Herzog AR, Varner RE, Posner SF. Prevalence of urinary incontinence and associated risk factors in postmenopausal women. Heart & Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study (HERS) Research Group. Obstet Gynecol 1999;94:66–70. Cited Here... | View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef Cited By: This article has been cited 2 time(s). Obstetrics & GynecologyAssociation of Change in Estradiol to Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms During the Menopausal TransitionGopal, M; Sammel, MD; Arya, LA; Freeman, EW; Lin, H; Gracia, CObstetrics & Gynecology, 112(5): 1045-1052.10.1097/AOG.0b013e31818b4cad PDF (228) | CrossRef Obstetrics & GynecologyAssociation Between Menopausal Transition Stages and Developing Urinary IncontinenceWaetjen, LE; Ye, J; Feng, W; Johnson, WO; Greendale, GA; Sampselle, CM; Sternfield, B; Harlow, SD; Gold, EBObstetrics & Gynecology, 114(5): 989-998.10.1097/AOG.0b013e3181bb531a PDF (496) | CrossRef Back to Top | Article OutlineSupplemental Digital Content WAETJEN_07-1270_2-27-08V2_APPENDIX.pdf; [PDF] (11 KB) Back to Top | Article Outline© 2008 The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists


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Alabama & Boise State Kick off a Demanding Big Ten Non-Conference ScheduleJune 8, 2012
Andy Lyons/Getty Images
A review of the Big 10 non-conference schedule shows that there are plenty of marque matchups in the first four weekends of the 2012 college football season.
August 31 & September 1 — Tough openers for Michigan schools
- Boise State at Michigan State—On the last day of August, the Spartans host the perpetual BCS underdog, Boise State Broncos. Despite losing a lot of valuable talent on offense and defense, head coach Chris Petersen (73-6) is a proven winner and will give Michigan State a real battle in the season opener.
- Michigan vs. Alabama—What has Michigan gotten itself into? The Wolverines begin the year against Alabama, the 2011 national champions. Somehow Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas does not seem like a neutral field for Michigan. The Crimson Tide will feature another deep and talented team led by quarterback A.J. McCarron. The Wolverines have the most explosive running quarterback in Denard Robinson, who needs a quick start if he has Heisman Trophy aspirations.
September 8 — Could we see some upsets?
- Iowa State at Iowa—Last year there was no way that Iowa State could win this game, but Cyclones head coach Paul Rhoads beat the Hawkeyes in overtime, 44-41. Funny things happen when these in-state rivals play each other, and it may come down to a quarterback duel between Iowa's James Vandenberg and Iowa State's Jared Barnett.
- Purdue at Notre Dame—The hype is this is Purdue head coach Danny Hope's best team. He has quarterback Caleb TerBush to lead an offense that features running back Ralph Bolden and a defense anchored by potential All-Big Ten tackle Kawann Short. Some experts say once head coach Brian Kelly settles on a starting quarterback, Notre Dame will be fine. But this game would be the perfect opportunity for the Boilermakers to beat the Fighting Irish and show they will be a Big 10 contender.
September 15 — A "prove your mettle" weekend
- Notre Dame at Michigan State—There have been some classic games between these two schools. The Spartans will be seeking revenge after last year's loss, and if Notre Dame still has some issues on offense, Michigan State will make the Irish pay for it.
- California at Ohio State—California should be the first real test for the Urban Meyer-led Buckeyes. The Golden Bears always seem like a Pac-12 contender, but have ended their last two seasons with a thud. California quarterback Zach Maynard needs to be flawless against a tough Buckeye defense. Look for Braxton Miller and the Ohio State offense to do well in this game, because the Bears' defense needs to be restocked for 2012.
September 22 — A "makes you wonder" weekend
- Michigan at Notre Dame—The Wolverines beat the Fighting Irish in The Big House last year, but can they win in South Bend? Notre Dame always seems to find a way to split the games between Michigan and Michigan State. The two Michigan schools may sweep the Fighting Irish this year if their defense cannot contain Wolverine quarterback Denard Robinson.
- Temple at Penn State—It will be an in-state contest with a lot of pride on the line. Temple head coach Steve Addazio has Owls fans excited after a 9-4 finish in 2012. Despite off-the-field events, Penn State played well in 2011. New head coach Bill O'Brien needs to win this game to maintain the Nittany Lions' tradition of success on the football field.

subset: commoncrawl


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Surprise, surprise Insider readers: San Francisco is an expensive place to rent an apartment.
A new study released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition finds that 64 percent of San Francisco residents can't afford a typical two-bedroom apartment, making it the nation's least-affordable rental market.
"There is a popular misconception that the foreclosure crisis has made San Francisco a more affordable place to live, but renters are not out of the woods," said Peggy Lee, acting director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.
The typical rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,905 a month, according to the study. A worker would need to earn $36.63 an hour, or $76,000 a year, to afford a two-bedroom place.
"A San Francisco pre-school teacher who earns a typical salary of $37,000 a year and is the sole breadwinner, would need to hold down another job to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment or commute from far away," Lee said.


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Sonic SN230VRL
This Sonic SN230VRL travel trailer by Venture RV features a front bedroom, an entertainment center, and an 82" sofa that converts to a king bed, plus enough room for your family of five!
As you enter to your left there is a double kitchen sink, two burner range, countertop space, a booth dinette, and overhead cabinets. On the opposite side of the trailer you will find a 82" sofa with overhead storage and a refrigerator. The sofa converts to a king bed for extra sleeping space. An entertainment center is located next to the dinette along the rear wall on the left side for easy viewing from any seat in the combined living and kitchen space.
The private bath is located in front of the entry door. Inside the bath you will find a radius shower, sink, and a toilet.
In the front you will find a bedroom with a 60" x 75" size bed and closets on either side. There is an accordion door to use for privacy.
Storage is not a problem with all of the overhead cabinets inside the trailer and the large exterior pass through storage near the front, plus more!Have a question about this floorplan?Contact Us
Sleeps 5 Length 26 ft 9 in Ext Width 7 ft 6 in Ext Height 10 ft 3 in Int Height 6 ft 10 in Interior Color Black Diamond, Brownstone Exterior Color Ivory Hitch Weight 524 lbs Gross Weight 5200 lbs Dry Weight 3967 lbs Cargo Weight 1233 lbs Fresh Water Capacity 38 gals Grey Water Capacity 30 gals Black Water Capacity 30 gals Tire Size 14" Furnace BTU 20000 btu Refrigerator Type Double Door Refrigerator Size 6.3 cu ft Cooktop Burners 2 Shower Size 34" in Number of Awnings 1 Axle Weight 3443 lbs LP Tank Capacity 20 lbs. Water Heater Capacity 6 gal. Water Heater Type Gas/Electric DSI Awning Info 17' Number of LP Tanks 2 Shower Type Radius
Similar Travel Trailer Floorplans
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Step 1: Slow-roast ham hock in CVap set to 130˚F + 0 OFF for about 3-4 hours. Combine with mustard greens.
Step 2: Fill fish fillet with mousse and seasonings, roll tightly into a roulade and tie the ends. Place in CVap set to 130°F +2 Constant Cook OFF.
Step 3: Cool roulades in ice bath, retie and portion for service. Serve with mustard greens.
CVap® Advantage
Yield: 8-10 Servings
Method:For the Mustard Greens:
In a 1/9 pan, place ham hock and butter. Place in CVap at 130°F +0 OFF for about 3–4 hours, to break down the ham hock. Transfer hock and butter to a rondeau, along with the Vidalia onion and garlic. Cook until onion is lightly golden brown. Add mustard greens, season with salt and black pepper and sweat until greens are tender and liquid is evaporated. Keep warm.
For the White Root Vegetable Batons with Green Apple Mustard:
Quickly heat turnip, daikon and celery root in a light liason of vegetable stock and butter. When warm, toss with green apples and green apple mustard. Keep warm.
For the Horseradish Emulsion:
Infuse fish fumet with horseradish, pass, mount with crème fraiche and season. Warm and froth with immersion blender before using.
For the Artic Char:
On each fillet, trim the head portion to square the fillet; and trim the tail 3" from the end. Dice trim and reserve for fish mousse. Butterfly the arctic char, beginning from the belly side of the fillet and opening it up without cutting through. Reserve fillets in refrigerator while you make the mousse. In the chilled bowl of a Robot-coupe, puree the frozen fish scraps until smooth. Add egg white and then stream in the heavy cream until just incorporated. Pass through a tamis into a chilled stainless steel bowl; set over ice. Season with salt, white pepper and a bit of quatre epices.
Gently sweat minced shallots in a small amount of butter until translucent, deglaze with vinegar and gently cook until all liquid has evaporated and shallots are tender. Set aside to cool. Add German mustard and cooled shallots to the fish mousse. Lay out two pieces of plastic cling film and spread out the open arctic char fillets. Sprinkle lightly with toasted celery seed and spread the fish mousse over ¾ of the fillet. Roll the fillets tightly into a roulade and tie the ends. Preheat CVap to 130°F +2 Constant Cook OFF. Put tempered roulades into CVap for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, let stand for 10 minutes. Gently tighten the roulade and retie; then plunge into ice water to cool completely. Portion, remove plastic and tie for service. For the pickup, gently color the roulade on all sides and heat through. Slice to show cuisson.
To Assemble and Serve:
Serve with mustard greens, green apples and the horseradish emulsion. Garnish with radish, white celery leaves, chives and lemon vinaigrette.
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A couple of weeks ago Duncan Epping and I released a blog article that was an overview of Disaster Recovery for vCloud Director. Today the follow-up more detailed whitepaper was released to VMware.com. You can download the full whitepaper from the Tech Resources site on VMware.com. The paper focusses on one use case to expand on the solution we presented ... Read More »
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Gotcha: vShield and vCloud Director Static – IP Pool Considerations
Some interesting conversation around this topic came up during our Disaster Recovery for vCloud testing, and they also rang true when I visited the vCloud Director Bootcamp at Partner Exchange a few weeks ago. The challenge has to do with how to deal with vApps that are getting IP Addresses from a Static IP Pool within vCloud Director. In turn, ... Read More »
[INFO] How a vCloud Director Export Actually Works
The question of "How does a vCloud Director Export Actually work?" came up yesterday from a fellow VCDX, Mark Achtemichuk. I was pretty sure I had the right answer based on the work I did around the vCloud clone/copy process a couple of months back. However, I did inquire with an engineering contact who not only verified my assumptions, but also provided ... Read More »
Thanks To The Top 25 vBlog Voters
I wanted to take a moment to thank all the voters this year that took the time to vote on the top 25 vBlogs. As always my good friends Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman, and Alan Renouf were tops on the list. When I found out I was nominated I was humbled, knowing I made it into the top 25 was even ... Read More »
How To Change IP Addresses on vCloud Applications
Last week at Partner Exchange Duncan Epping and I presented a little deeper insight into the SRM solution we published earlier in the week. One great question that came up was about the processes to change the IP addresses on the various vCloud infrastructure after the failover happens. We mentioned how Site Recovery Manager can change the IP of some ... Read More »
[INFO] Reactions to the vCloud SRM Solution
Yesterday we recorded a short video with Kenny Coleman, Lane Leverett, and Jason Nash to hear some of their opinions of the vCloud SRM solution. We wanted to see how some attendees reacted to the initial solution overview. We hope to have more details coming out in the near future, but it was good to hear from partners that we ... Read More »
Disaster Recovery in vCloud Director
Note: This is a re-post of the article written for the VMware vCloud Blogs. This article assumes the reader has knowledge of vCloud Director, Site Recovery Manger, and vSphere. It will not go in to depth on some topics, we would like to refer to the Site Recovery Manager, vCloud Director and vSphere documentation for more in-depth details around some of ... Read More »
How To Handle Patch Management in vCloud Director
I have gotten this question a few times and I have seen it on a number of emails. I wanted to take a moment to address this because there seems to be some confusion on just how to manage your deployed vApps, but also the ones in the vCloud Catalogs. For the time being we can leave out the Fast Provisioning aspect ... Read More »
How To Resolve the BackupBuddy HTTP LoopBack Error
This error has been messing with me for some time since installing BackupBuddy on my WordPress blog site. You can find some information on this from the BackupBuddy Wiki, but how to fix it is limited. It basically says call your hosting company, or enable WordPress Alternate CRON HTTP Loopback Connections are not enabled on this server. You may encounter ... Read More »
How To Add CDN to Your WordPress Blog Site
Recently as I have been tweaking, tuning, and pretty much been tinkering with my various blog sites I decided to jump into the realm of Content Delivery Network integration within WordPress. So why is this something you may be interested in? Well I for one tend to write articles with images and graphics. I also have found that the faster ... Read More »
[INFO] Partner Exchange Meet the Presenters
Well it looks like the videos went live this week for the Partner Exchange meet the presenters. Here is a mine, Cormac's and George's. Don't laugh too much, I had to record mine in my house and email it in. Thanks to Julie for her camera work and we only did a single take so it is what it is. ... Read More »
[INFO] Operations Used by the vCloud Transfer Space
Today the question came up on one of Jason Boche's posts about expanding the vCloud Transfer space operations and when that transfer space is used. I dug through some old emails and located a transcript from a conversation I had asking the same question. I got the reply below from someone in engineering. The Short answer: If there's a large chunk ... Read More »


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Sen. Hillary Clinton will headline a fundraiser for the Senate Democrats in Albany on Oct. 7, confirms Democratic Senate Campaign Committee spokesman Austin Shafran.
This is the first time that the senator will weigh in on the fight for Senate majority.
The Senate majority fight has state and national implications – if the Democrats take the Senate and keep it through 2010, the redistricting process will be controlled entirely by Democrats – so those two Congressional seats that New York expects to lose, as well as district lines that determine voter enrollment stats are in play.


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Bandcamp | Twitter | Instagram
Artist Info
Emcee / Droppin' Science Productions / Toronto, ON, Canada
NiLLa is a Toronto based rap artist who has established herself as an outstanding Emcee, an engaging Public Speaker, and one of Canada's top Arts Educators. Growing up in various parts of Canada, this free-spirit gravitated towards Hip-Hop at the age of 13, when she discovered her powerful voice while free-styling in her first cypher. Many years later, her creative drive and dedicated focus manifested in her debut album, "From The Ground UP" which earned her the award for "Best Rap/Hip Hop Recording Of The Year" at the Hamilton Music Awards in 2010.
NiLLa has shared numerous stages with an expansive selection of Hip Hop's finest musical acts including The Alkoholiks, Masta Ace, Jus Allah, WildChild, MiC K!NG, DL Incognito, Grand Analog and Ghettosocks, to name a few. Aside from providing support for a long list of legendary performers, NiLLa has headlined multiple festival showcases and successfully toured with LA based Abstract Rude (Rhymesayers Entertainment).
"If you love Hiphop music, NiLLa (aka Galyn Esmé) is a name you should familiarize yourself with. Forget about the idea that she is Canadian for a second. Don't concern yourself with her status as an independent artist. Do not dwell on the fact that she is in fact a "she". These things do not define skills in the vocal booth… Instead, focus your energy on this – Whether live on stage or in the studio, NiLLa is all HipHop from the beats to the rhyme schemes. These are the only things you need concern yourself with, give credit where credit is due."
– Dennis Lehto, The Program 101.com , CA
In April 2013, an international collaboration with UK label, Ruztik Records, resulted in the creation of a 12" vinyl entitled, "The Adventures of Mr.Rumage & The Fader Fanatics". The record received global distribution and acclaim, soaring into the Top 10 of Bandcamp's Hip-Hop charts within a week of it's release. Most recently, NiLLa has teamed up with one of Hip Hop's elite, Ghettosocks (Juno Nominated Rap Artist), for her next full-length record; a heavily anticipated collaboration by this super duo that is set to leave a world-wide, lasting impression.
Through her current work as an Artist Educator and Program Coordinator with UNITY Charity and P.E.A.C.E. Universal, NiLLa has toured extensively across Canada. From east to west coast and into the extreme northern Arctic (Nunavut), NiLLa has been helping Youth in various communities realize their ultimate goals and passions in life. She is able to engage and empower these young minds by utilizing Hip Hop culture as a vehicle; a common ground. NiLLa has been successfully involved in facilitating multiple after-school programs, heading numerous workshops, and appearing as a keynote speaker at various youth-focused events and conferences. While teaching her art form and sharing her own life experiences with at-risk youth, NiLLa has found much fulfillment in motivating and inspiring others to believe in themselves and their dreams. By encouraging each person to find their artistic expression in life, NiLLa continues to shape her own career and life's work through artistic expression and community improvement.


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Some couples, no matter how hard they try to get on the same page, just aren't compatible. Things usually start off OK because their differing opinions about everything make things interesting and actually create a lot of passion. But eventually, once they want to settle down and start making some real life, adult decisions, their opposite points of view start to cause conflict. Opposites attract to a certain extent, but when it comes to creating a life together, raising children and staying connected, incompatibility can cause more frustration than it's worth and will often be the main factor driving a couple apart.
There really isn't too much to say about this one. Some couples make it through a case of infidelity – while others simply can't. Cheating is often a deal breaker for many people since making a commitment means staying faithful, and if your partner can't do that, how can you trust them? The other issue is that cheating often happens when there's something already going wrong within the relationship, so by the time one person finds their way into someone else's bed, the relationship may already have been on a downhill trajectory.
The bond that keeps every relationship going and moving in the right direction (forward) can end up frayed and tattered as time passes. What began as a strong connection that drew the two of you together doesn't always hold up under pressure. What felt like the ultimate connection between two people at the beginning can end up completely changing. When this happens, you're left staring at someone you've known and loved but who now feels like a stranger. There aren't many couples who can survive growing apart, and usually it just means the relationship has run its course and it's time to move on.
It can be frighteningly easy to mistake lust for love. You want to be with someone (and in their bed) 24/7 so it must be love, right? Not so fast. Many relationships end simply because the initial chemistry wears off and there was no substance backing up the sex, so when one (or both) of you are bored with the physical aspect of what you had, there's nothing else keeping you connected.
This is probably the most frustrating cause of breaking up because even though you might want different things in life, that doesn't mean you don't still love each other. If you want kids but your guy doesn't or he wants to settle down in the suburbs and you want to travel the world – these are tough situations to deal with and when a compromise can't be reached, there's often no other choice but to part ways despite any lingering feelings you might have for each other.
Find value in a failed relationship
4 Signs you're totally over your ex
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COCKE COUNTY, Tenn. (WVLT) -- R & B singer Bobby Brown, formerly married to Whitney Houston, was in a minor car accident in Newport, Tenn Thursday.
Authorities didn't release many details about the accident.
Brown was treated and released at Baptist Hospital in Cocke County for undisclosed injuries.
No one was cited in the crash.
Brown is in Newport filming a reality show where he's running a bed and breakfast with Carnie Wilson and Maureen McCormick.


text:
Ask a Law Question, Get an Answer ASAP!
after 9 days of purchasing the bed I noticed dam so rang the shop and the owner said if I had noticed dam on day one he would have done something but because it was nine days later he would do nothing when I purchased the bed I payed for them to take my bed away and install new bed when bed was delivered it was fully assembled in the back of a van with just a dust sheet for protection so I asked him why no wrapping on bed he said all beds come like this so I asked if he checked bed for damage he said he had and the delivery men had too that is when I realised he gave me the display bed instead of a new bed the bed has little chips on base and a scratch and same on bed post and head rest
It would be helpful if you didn't write in some strange kind ofshorthand because it's very difficult to read.
I assume that by "dam", you mean damage.
You appear to have paid by debit card, not credit card becauseyou refer to chargeback. Please confirm.
Which Ombudsman and you want to help?
What is the damage?
Did you pay full price for the bed or was it discounted?
When did you notice the damage?
How much was it?
Please bear with me this weekend because I am online andoff-line. Thank you


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Looking for male shiny Litleo, offering older event legendaries and shiny Drilbur, Drifblim, Growlithe, Treecko.
Looking for male shiny Litleo, offering older event legendaries and shiny Drilbur, Drifblim, Growlithe, Treecko.
Top 3 favourite pokemon
Sinnoh Anime Fan!
I have Friend Safari Pyroar! Pm offers!
~Disclaimer: Signature very out of date~
~~What I what/can trade is listed here! (My Trade Shop)~~
Looking For:
Shiny Legendaries ()
Event Pokemon
Celebrate /
Shiny Lotad/evolution with ID: 11142 and OT: Jasmine (I can give something good)
Events, Legendaries
5-6IVs: Ask for list
Shiny: Check my Shop for list
Shiny Legends: , Terrakion, and possibly more
Various Legendaries
Other things as well
PM me!
Need I say I only want legit pokemon?
Looking for both Male and Female Litleo Shiny with the Unnerve or Moxie Abilities. Got a couple Shiny Torchics and a dozen other Shiny Pokémon I'm willing to trade for them.
FC: 3909 8252 2284 IGN: Phoenix
"In search of the rarest shiny Pokémon out there since 2001"
i'm looking for a male litleo/pyroar!
offering zoruas, starters, or maybe a shiny luxray.
Looking for Litleo. Offering, all with HA: Mothim, Druddigon, Gible, Espeon, Vaporeon, Luxray, Stoutland, Smeargle, Wigglytuff;\, Magneton, Tropius, Drifloon, Kirlia, Scolipede, Lapras, Cherrim, Houndoom, Marill, Huntail, Pidgeot, Farfetch'd, Exploud, Makuhita, Aggron, Wormadam, Snover, Heatmor, Torkoal, Golett, Lumineon, Wingull, Horsea, Mantine, Seel, Chinchou, Bibarel, Abra, Tentacool, Skarmory, Fearow, Dustox, Murkrow, Staravia, Exeggcute, Diglett, Larvitar, Electrike, Sneasal, Ponyta, Ledyba, Galvantula, Spiritomb, Zubat, Shuppet.
I'm looking for a shiny Litleo, I have multiple legendaries to offer including a Xerneas. I also have several shinies to offer but they've all come through the bank or been traded, not Kalos born.
Shinies: Mareep, Beldum, Riolu, Eevee, Charmander, Japanese Timburr, Milotic, and quite a few others. If anyone is interested please PM me!
Friend Code: 5284-1395-9425
I'll add anyone who PM's me theirs!
Friend Safari: Dark
Inhabitants: Absol, Pawniard and Sandile
I am looking for a shiny Litleo level 1 without any nickname.
I only have two Pokemon to offer for this:
Shiny Dragonite (Level 100)
Shiny Wailmer (Level 1)
Send me a PM if you're interested
Looking for a litleo male timid with at least 5 ivs perfect pm for wat u need
Come on a litleo timid 5 ivs male, i dont care about his ability
Please anyone with a male litleo with rivalry and at least 5 ivs perfect, I have shinies with hidden abilities competitives pokemon from gen1 to gen5 pm for any you need
Kangaskhan, Adamant, Inner Focus, (31/31/31/xx/31/31)
Gible, Adamant/Jolly, Sand Veil (31/31/31/xx/31/31)
Froakie, Adamant, Protean (31/31/31/xx/31/31)
Litleo, Modest, Moxie (31/xx/31/31/31/31)
(5IV Hatched Pokemon)
Spearow, Adamant, Keen Eye, Male (31/31/31/xx/31/31) x1
Mawile, Adamant, Intimidate, Male (31/31/31/xx/31/31) x1
Mawile, Adamant, Intimidate, Female (31/31/31/xx/31/31)x2
Honedge, Adamant, No Gaurd, Male (31/31/31/xx/31/31) x4
Honedge, Adamant, No Gaurd, Female (31/31/31/xx/31/31) x1
(Event Legends & Shinies)
Raikou Lvl 30, Rash, Pressure, OT:GAMESTP (Shiney) x2
Entei Lvl 30, Adamant, Pressure, OT:GAMESTP (Shiney) x2
Suicune Lvl 30, Relaxed, Pressure, OT:GAMESTP (Shiney)
Celebi Lvl 50, Mild, Natural Cure, OT:WIN2011
Dialga Lvl 100, Modest, Pressure, OT: SUM2013 (Shiney) x2
Palkia Lvl 100, Timid, Pressure, OT:SUM2013 (Shiney) x2
Giratina Lvl 100, Bold, Pressure, OT:SUM2013 (Shiney)
Darkrai Lvl 50, Rash, Bad Dreams, OT:2021MAY
Darkrai Lvl 50, Relaxed, Bad Dreams, OT:2021MAY
Melotta Lvl 50, Modest, Serene Grace, OT:SPR2013
Melotta Lvl 50, Quirky, Serene Grace, OT:SPR2013
3DS Friend Code: 5429-7866-6445 IGN:Adrian
Friend Safari Pokemon = Octillery, Gyrados, and Poliwhirl!!
For trade:
Female Litleo 31/x/30/31/31/31 (HP ICE) in Repeat ball.
Looking for other near-perfect Hidden power spreads (mainly fire)
Last edited by Azulart; 2nd June 2014 at 4:52 PM.
Interested in gen7 Multi battles and Battle Royales?
Join our DiscordChannel and MultiBattleFanClub for some jolly coop!
hey I'm looking for a shiny Litleo (male & female) (ut)
FT: Shiny: starters gen 1-5, Absol, Axew, Aron, Trapinch, Eevee, Dratini, Zorua, Porygon, Gangar, Spiritomb, Bagon, Clawitzer, Swablu, Meditite, Togepi, Pichu, Golett, Deino, Metang, Gible, Sableye, Volcarona, Pupitar, Vulpix, Sneasel, Ditto, Snowrunt & Houndour
Shiny Legendaries: Legendary birds, Mewtwo, Legendary Beasts, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Legendary Golems, Latias, Latios, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Uxie, Azelf, Cresselia, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Cobalion, Terrakion, Verizion, Forces of Nature, Kyrurem & Genesect
Non Shiny Legendaries: All (except Diancie)
PM me if you're interested
Two Shiny Litleo.
No special stats or moves; just need to be shiny.
PM me.
Returning player here looking for this Pokemon I don't have any special requests just looking for this Pokemon have lots of "regular" Pokemon for trade


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Jill Clucas
PSL Counsel
April 2012Pensions Alert
The effect on pension schemes will generally be scheme specific and will depend on the provisions of the trust deed and rules. For example, in the recent Danks v QinetiQ Holdings Ltd case, the High Court held that the trustees had discretion as to the basis for calculating indexation and revaluation. Some schemes will continue to have RPI as the measure used for inflation-proofing, where this is required under their rules.
PSL Counsel


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yStats.com releases a Free Report on Global E-Commerce and Online Payment Markets
This unique free report, titled "Global B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment Developments" is a composite of text and graphic charts from reports as published by yStats.com in 2016, with the same authentic, carefully researched information as in the publications purchased by clients of yStats.com, which are sector-leading companies worldwide. The footnotes showing information about the original source are included, reflecting the company's methodology of secondary research from a wide variety of respected, authoritative primary sources to insure reliability of the information for the end users.
The samples in this free report demonstrate the variety of topics covered in publications of the Hamburg-based research firm. Readers can see data on the vertiginous growth of the use of mobile payments in South Korea, the evolving use of omnichannel purchase methods such as click and collect in the United Kingdom and the penetration of cross-border shopping in Canada, among other topics. The charts in this free report represent the wider and deeper coverage in the complete library of yStats.com reports: over 70 markets in all global economic regions.
This free report is an example of the boardroom ready reports that yStats.com has provided to its clients since 2005, containing data to guide informed decisions in this fast-growing field of online retail.
We are pleased to have been providing boardroom ready reports to our clients since 2005. This invitation to request our sample free report conveys our desire to be of assistance to a wider audience in providing data to guide informed decisions in the fast-growing fields of online retail and payments.
The report is available for download after registration here: https://www.ystats.com/product/free-report-2017-global-b2c-e-commerce-and-online-payment-developments/
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Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, yStats.com is one of the world's leading secondary market research companies. We are committed to providing the most up-to-date and objective data on Global B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment markets to sector-leading companies worldwide.
Our multilingual staff researches, gathers, filters and translates information from thousands of reputable sources to synthesize accurate and timely reports in our areas of expertise, covering more than 100 countries and all global regions. Our market reports focus predominantly on online retail and payments, but also cover a broad range of related topics including M-Commerce, Cross-Border E-Commerce, E-Commerce Delivery, Online Gaming and many others. In addition to our wide selection of market reports, we also provide custom market research services.
We are proud to cooperate with companies like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. Given our numerous citations in leading media sources and journals worldwide, including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, we are considered one of the most highly-reputed international secondary market research companies with an expertise in the areas of B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment.
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Ein Fitnessraum mit Höhenluft, das Sofa vor dem Kauf schon virtuell im eigenen Wohnzimmer platzieren – der stationäre Handel ist findig geworden. Denn es gilt, den Käufern ein Einkaufserlebnis zu bieten. Damit könne man die eigenen Online-Shops sinnvoll ergänzen.Weiterlesen


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Mich. teen goes to bat for juvenile murderers
She's filed a court brief saying those with life sentences should get a chance at parole.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Sixteen-year-old Matilyn Sarosi spent the recent spate of snow days off school writing an 18-page paper for which she will get no academic credit.
Instead of a teacher at Father Gabriel Richard Catholic High School grading her paper, Sarosi hopes the justices of the Michigan Supreme Court will give her brief thoughtful consideration.
STORY: Ruling offers hope for Mich. juvenile lifers
STORY: How will states handle juvenile lifers?
Sarosi's amicus, or friend of the court brief, argues that Michigan prison inmates who were sentenced to life for crimes, such as murder, committed when they were younger than 18 now deserve a chance at parole. The legal brief was submitted Friday to the state Supreme Court, which is to have a hearing on the issue March 6.
"I was really kind of shocked at the issue, the injustice of it all, and the magnitude," said Sarosi, an honor student and public speaking events competitor. "I'm a teenager and I know my peers. We make impulsive, immature decisions. We make dangerous decisions. But if you give up hope on our youth and kids, you're giving away our future."
A Michigan appeals court ruled in November 2012 that the U.S. Supreme Court decision ending mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles should not apply retroactively.
Sarosi wrote the brief in support of appeals that lawyers filed for inmates Dakota Eliason, Raymond Carp and Cortez Davis, asking that they be granted a chance at parole in according with the U.S. Supreme Court decision. Eliason was convicted at 14 of his grandfather's murder. Carp and Davis were convicted for participating in murders when they were 16.
To make her case, Sarosi cites a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, legal briefs, the Bible, messages from Pope Francis, scientific research on child brain development, effects of teenage peer pressure and impulsiveness, and the significance of the annual mock election of her Ann Arbor high school's "Most Changed from Freshman Year."
Sarosi's brief states: "It is illogical to give the harshest sentence, a sentence that does not allow redemption, to the ones who may have the greatest capacity for redemption itself.
STORY: No automatic life without parole for juveniles
"We believe all persons have the potential capacity to be sorry for their sins, work to repair their wrongs, restore their worth as a member of society, to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society."
In Michigan, state Attorney General Bill Schuette has said legal precedent calls for the Supreme Court's ruling to only apply to future offenders and doesn't call for current inmates, often called juvenile lifers, to be eligible for new sentences. Schuette has said re-sentencing such inmates would inflict unnecessary pain on the victims' families.
"This is really all about who comes first — the victims and their families or teenage murderers?" Schuette wrote in a recent opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press. And murder convictions are not just limited to the person who pulled the trigger but accomplices at the scene or who drove the getaway vehicle, he noted.
Sarosi said that she is not minimizing the effect of the crimes that more than 350 Michigan juvenile lifer inmates committed.
But she said she recalls the stupid choices that she and her peers have made — from the small to the deadly serious. Sarosi contends that no youngster should be deprived of hope. It struck her as illogical that Schuette doesn't want to apply the U.S. Supreme Court decision retroactively.
In the past few weeks with the support of her parents, a lawyer aunt, the school's administration and chaplain, Sarosi addressed a dozen theology classes to explain the issue to the student body. She sent letters home to parents.
When the brief was submitted Friday, attached were the signatures of 452 students — 85% of the student body.
"We are youth sticking up for other youth. I think it's powerful and beautiful. I'm most proud that we were able to do this and it's from us," Sarosi said. "We connected to them as peers and that faith compels us to do this. We have to believe that deep down we are capable of redemption."
Jon Muth, a Grand Rapids, Mich., lawyer who represents the Father Gabriel Richard students, said Sarosi's effort is remarkable.
"It has great clarity of thought, and soundness of reasoning and a strong passion," he said. "It's a very persuasive piece of writing."
The Rev. Richard Lobert, the Gabriel Richard chaplain for 19 years, said he was thrilled when Sarosi approached him with her idea. Sarosi also presented her proposal to the six-member theology-religion staff.
"She's ripped a page out of Catholic social teaching, and that's pretty exciting when you have a real, live student who is trying to implement what the bishops and the Holy Father … has called for," Lobert said. "We should be champions of the underdog, voices for those who are voiceless, and we should be seeking to promote justice and mercy in any way we can."
Sarosi's mother, Kimm Sarosi, a nurse by training; and father, Michael Sarosi, a radiologist, are proud. Other parents called the couple to tell them how they were impressed with Matilyn Sarosi's letter explaining the issue.
"We teach social justice to our children … but to physically go out and do it is on a different level," Kimm Sarosi said. "I feel blessed Mati had this opportunity."
Michael Sarosi said his daughter opened his eyes to the issue, and she gets high marks from him.
"I have immense respect for her work ethic, her sympathy, her empathy and her lack of intimidation for taking on this huge project," her father said.
Muth wants Mati Sarosi and some of her classmates to be in the audience March 6 when the court will hear oral arguments in the case.
Excerpts from Matilyn Sarosi's brief
"We know from experience that children are immature, impulsive and reckless decision-makers. But give us ten years and we'll change."
She also includes a quote from the Bible and St. Paul's Letters to the Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child: But when I became a man, I put away childish things."
"You don't need science to tell you that teenagers make stupid, impulsive, and often reckless decisions. But it is tremendously helpful to tell you why we do. Many times we don't even know why we did them! As a teenager, this brief's author's best guess is that it's just a spur of the moment, spontaneous gut reaction. We think only about the positive outcomes: how funny it would be, the reactions of our friends, how cool other people would consider us, or being able to feel like we 'fit in.' Not on the forefront of our brains, however, are the negative and harmful effects of who may get hurt, or suffer serious disciplinary action."
"It is important to understand that this isn't because we don't care, or lack all capability to be responsible, but because a mature mindset of responsibility and consideration of consequences are not innate behaviors in adolescents. It is an attitude that we must learn through triumph and tragedy, as the brutal teacher of time softens our attitudes of invincibility. Thankfully, in most aspects of our society, such immaturity is recognized and taken into account when developing laws and policies."


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He made sure to tune out last weekend as actor Ed Harris played him in the HBO premiere of "Game Change " — its movie about former Republican running mate Sarah Palin and his 2008 presidential campaign — but Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says he has a pretty good idea of who should portray him in any future flick.
When ITK asked who he'd like to see fill his shoes in any upcoming film, McCain, deadpanned, "Ben Affleck."
At 39, the Academy Award-winning A-lister, of course, is about half the 75-year-old lawmaker's age. McCain's pick is also a pretty diplomatic choice considering Affleck, a big-time Democratic donor, supported President Obama, and not the Arizona lawmaker, in the 2008 election.
We inquired with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is also portrayed along with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) in a short scene in "Game Change," what he thought of his colleague's choice. Graham said with a laugh, "That works. It would be one of the worst casting decisions in history, but that would be okay."
Lieberman called his longtime friend's selection "good."
The Connecticut Independent, played by actor Austin Pendleton, seemed pretty happy with his own cinematic counterpart, saying, "I'm encouraged by the number of people who told me that I look better and younger than the actor that they had playing me."
As far as whom Lieberman would've cast for the role: "I wasn't hoping for Brad Pitt, but I was kind of hoping a Harrison Ford type character. That would be my choice for me."


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Thanksgiving seems to have creeped up on us this year, but there's still time to purchase a local turkey for your table, fresh from a Maine farm. Here are some southern Maine farms that still have birds available:
61 Ash Swamp Road, Scarborough. 730-9077; [email protected]
Daniel Mays raises certified organic turkeys on pasture. They are processed right on the farm, so you'll be sure to get a fresh bird the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Mays' turkeys sell for $4 per pound, and he requires a $10 deposit. As of last week, he only had two or three left, so if you miss out this year you can always reserve one for next year — yes, he gets orders a whole year in advance. Call or email to reserve.
76 Wescott Road, Gorham, 894-5327
Farmer Carl Anderson sells fresh, free-range turkeys for $3 a pound. This year's turkeys will be in the range of 26 to 35 pounds and available for pick-up on Nov. 19. Call to reserve.
578 Lebanon St., Sanford. 432-0858; [email protected]
OK, so this isn't a farm, but owner Tom Basinger has raised turkeys himself and also purchases them from farmers he trusts who use all-natural grains with no fillers or animal by-products. The turkeys are raised free-range and range in size from 16 to 40 pounds. The price is $3.49 per pound. Call or email to reserve.
140 West Pownal Road, North Yarmouth. 210-7381
The farm is sold out, but you can still buy their turkeys at Rosemont Market. The birds are raised on organic feed and live on three acres of pasture.
209 Mile Hill Road, New Sharon. 778-2889
The Turkey Farm's birds are free-range, and do not receive antibiotics unless they are sick. The cost is $3.49 per pound. The farm has holiday drop-off locations in Portland, South Portland, Brunswick and Orono. To see dates and times for each drop-off location, go to theturkeyfarm.com/products.htm.
Sopers Mill Road, Auburn. 320-1969; [email protected]
Farmer Kathy Shaw says she still has a few turkeys available for sale this year. They range in size from 12 to 20 pounds, most averaging 15 pounds. The turkeys are raised on pasture, supplemented by a mixture of prepared scratch feed and corn when they want it. The birds cost $4.75 per pound. Order by phone or email. Fresh turkeys will be available for pick-up at the Falmouth winter farmers market location at Allen, Sterling and Lothrop on U.S. Route 1 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 21.
87 Standpipe Road, Mechanic Falls. 345-9005
This farm raises organic, free-range turkeys fed a diet supplemented with organic grain and, at this time of year, also some organic cracked corn. The farm still has about 20 turkeys available ranging from 12 to 25 pounds, and they're being sold for $3.50 per pound. The birds will be processed Nov. 16, and will be available for pick-up the evening of Nov. 16 and the morning of Nov. 17. Call to order.
184 Burnett Road, Freeport. 865-4469
Wolfes Neck pasture raises free-range, Bronze Broad-Breasted turkeys on oceanfront pasture. Their diet is supplemented with grain that contains no added hormones or antibiotics. The birds are sold for $4.50 per pound. You can order one online at wolfesneckfarm.org for a Nov. 21 pick-up.
— Compiled by Meredith Goad, Staff Writer


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CLEARFIELD – On May 8, the Clearfield Elks 540 will celebrate local talent and assist with the production of Jean Kerr's play, "Mary, Mary," with the curtain rising at 7 p.m.
This is an expansion of the Community Investment Program through a Gratitude Grant to the Clearfield Arts Studio Theatre Inc. This is help ensure that the CAST's cultural programs continue in the Clearfield area.
The Clearfield Elks wants to serve its communities in ways to raise its profile, to energize its membership, to encourage former members to return and to gain people who want to be a part of an active organization.
The grant gives the Clearfield Elks a wide range of opportunities to meet a local need and to benefit community life enrichment programs. The Elks will be involved as participants in working as ushers, ticket takers and refreshment servers.
With nearly 900,000 members and more than 2,000 lodges nationwide, the Elks are providing charitable services that help build stronger communities across the United States. The Elks National Foundation is the charitable arm of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
To learn more, visit www.elks.org/enf or call 814-765-4474 for ticket information.


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Fragile Finances
Nintendo's financials are in trouble - but the company's losses don't mean it's Game Over
There are still a few months left to run of Financial Year 2011/12, but it now seems certain that this will be the year in which Nintendo marks an unwanted milestone - the first full-year operating loss ever to be announced by the company. Revised financial guidance from the firm points to a ¥65 billion ($843m) net loss for the full year - a harsh turn for a company which only a few years ago was one of Japan's most successful and valuable enterprises.
It's really tempting to try to fit those figures into the industry's general narrative of the moment. It's so neat and tidy to say, hey, Nintendo's made a huge loss - its first ever - just as the handheld and casual markets which have been its bread and butter are swallowed up by smartphones and tablets. The two must be connected, and the link only looks stronger when you consider that Apple's record-breaking sales and profits were announced only a few days before Nintendo's warning.
The Yen has risen so high that it has forced Japanese firms to choose between slashing their profit margins down to the bone, or raising prices and being uncompetitive
As ever, though, the situation is a bit more complex than that. We all know that 3DS struggled on the market at launch, of course, and you can assign various different reasons to that depending on your own biases. Consumers don't want a dedicated handheld when they already have smartphones. Nintendo didn't market and explain the console well enough. The launch software line-up was weak. The price was too high. In truth, the problems sprang from a combination of these factors, and no one factor can be pinpointed as the sole reason for the weak launch.
Therefore, Nintendo had a pretty horrible Q1 and Q2. It was lumbered with a system that didn't sell, forced to accelerate software development and intensify marketing (both of which cost a lot of money) in order to get it moving, and finally forced to accept a serious price drop which shaved its profit margins down to levels that the firm has probably never accepted on a hardware product before.
Those factors alone would have made life hard for Nintendo in 2011/12, but had a sucker-punch like the 3DS' launch flop come at any other time, the company could probably have absorbed it without too much damage to the bottom line. Instead, the 3DS' difficulties came at the worst possible time for the company.
Several factors made the past year a pretty fragile time for Nintendo. Some were internal - most notably, the fact that the Wii is rapidly winding down towards the end of its lifespan, causing a hefty drop in sales (not unreasonably, given that the console is within touching distance of 100 million units sold already) and the requirement to ramp up R&D and manufacturing on the Wii U.
Others, however, were external - most notably, the value of the Yen. Nintendo's financials have historically been extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in the Yen exchange rate, since the firm not only sells a large volume of products overseas, it also holds huge assets denominated in foreign currencies. As a consequence, many of Nintendo's weaker quarters in the past have actually had nothing to do with operational difficulties, and everything to do with vast movements in the value of US Dollar denominated assets which have to be translated into Yen for Nintendo's balance sheet.
This time out, though, the Yen presents a more direct problem for Nintendo - as it does for the entire Japanese export sector. The currency has risen so high, and stayed there so long, that it has forced Japanese firms to choose between slashing their profit margins down to the bone, or raising prices and being uncompetitive. Nintendo has had little choice but to follow the former option, and that's had a critical impact on the firm's profitability.
Want an illustration of how serious the Yen problems are for Nintendo? Right now, US$1 buys you about ¥77 - so a $169 Wii with Mario Kart bundle is worth about ¥13,000 (of course, Nintendo doesn't take that entire $169 back to Japan, but it's a reasonable illustration). At the start of 2010, just two years ago, the exchange rate was more like ¥93 to the dollar, so that $169 bundle would pull in ¥15,700. Back in mid-2008, before the financial crisis hit - but well into the lifespan of the Wii, so pricing and so on had already been planned for ages at this stage - the rate routinely hovered around ¥110, making that bundle worth ¥18590.
Look at a Wii console on Amazon Japan today, and you'll note that the basic Wii bundle (which doesn't include Mario Kart in Japan, but does come with an extra Wiimote and a copy of Wii Sports Resort) costs around ¥18500. Look familiar? That's how much Nintendo expected people to be paying for the Wii - not just in Japan, but everywhere. Currency fluctuations since then haven't just robbed Nintendo's coffers of a cent here, a Yen there; they mean that American consumers are, in effect, paying ¥5,500 less for their consoles than Japanese consumers are - around $71 lost on every single console sold.
With the 3DS off to a good start and the Wii U preparing to launch, it seems very likely to me that Nintendo will be back into profitability for the 2012/13 financial year
It's not just the Wii, of course - this applies to every single piece of hardware (including the already steeply discounted 3DS) and software which Nintendo sells outside Japan, with European prices being even more aggressively impacted by the currency changes than US prices, in some instances. This, more than almost any other factor, is what has made 2011/12 into a horrible year for Nintendo - not least because it denied the company any strategic flexibility. A price-cut for the Wii in light of tough sales was to be expected in calendar 2011, but to Nintendo's bean-counters, the Wii is already selling for $71 less in 2011 than it was in 2008, without any of the sales bump a real price cut would have generated. Ouch.
Of course, while the currency problems explain a lot about the financial figures, the situation with regard to missing hardware sales targets is a separate matter. The Wii was meant to sell 12 million units this fiscal year - it's now projected to manage only 10 million, although again, it's interesting to wonder what would have happened here if macro-economic conditions had allowed for a more flexible price strategy. The 3DS was expected to sell 16 million units, and will instead sell 14 million.
There are two ways of looking at those numbers. The first is that actually, the 3DS numbers are in pretty rude health for a console that was supposed to be on its deathbed only weeks after launch. The installed base right now is 15 million, and will tip well over 17 million by the end of the year. That's comfortably in the realms of being a viable platform, and even if it's not quite up to Nintendo's expectations, it's well on the way to reassuring developers that this is a good console on which to place their bets.
On the other hand, those Apple figures loom ominously over the whole affair. In the past three months, Apple sold the best part of 70 million iOS devices - with record-breaking sales of iPhones and iPads, as well as extremely solid sales of the iPod Touch. In other words, Apple's iOS sales for three months were four times greater than Nintendo's 3DS sales for the entire financial year. Even accepting that many of those iOS devices will never be used to play a game, that's a statistic that lends fuel to the arguments of those who expect dedicated handheld consoles to die out sooner rather than later.
It's not all doom and gloom for Nintendo. The company's partners will no doubt be reassured by the fact that even if the full year results aren't great, the crucial October to December quarter saw Nintendo making a profit - and on the strength of that performance, with the 3DS off to a good start and the Wii U preparing to launch, it seems very likely to me that Nintendo will be back into profitability for the 2012/13 financial year. Most importantly, the Yen doesn't really have any more shocks to deliver - any further rise in value will have to be counteracted aggressively by the Japanese government, if the country wants to retain any export economy at all.
It doesn't fit with the industry narrative, but it's important to see these figures for what they are - a reflection of a macro-economic difficulty that's impacting one of the industry's most successful companies. It's not proof that iOS is killing Nintendo faster than expected, or that the casual games sector has disappeared overnight. Both of those things might still come to pass - but anyone claiming that this week's figures prove the argument one way or another is guilty of twisting unrelated figures to prove their own biases, and nothing more.


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This excerpt taken from the DCT 10-K filed Mar 16, 2006.
Significant Transactions During 2005 and Recent Developments
We have experienced a substantial increase in acquisition activity since we acquired our first property in June 2003. As a result of our investment strategy, we currently own or control 264 operating properties comprising 40.3 million square feet located in 23 markets, including 22 of our target markets. We acquired 158 of these properties for a total estimated cost of approximately $1.2 billion during 2005 using net proceeds from our public offerings, our partnerships private placement and debt financings including the assumption of 19 secured, non-recourse notes totaling $434.1 million.
Beginning on February 2, 2005, and ending on May 13, 2005, we acquired seven bulk distribution properties comprising approximately 3.6 million square feet for a total estimated cost of approximately $132.8 million in connection with our purchase agreement with Panattoni Development Company LLC, an unrelated third-party. We assumed four secured, non-recourse mortgage notes totaling approximately $30.6 million associated with the acquisition of these properties.
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On April 8, 2005, in connection with our partnerships private placement, we issued 424,352 limited partnership units valued at approximately $4.5 million in exchange for certain fractional tenancy-in-common interests we had previously sold in a property located in Memphis, Tennessee.
On May 13, 2005, we entered into an agreement to purchase a distribution facility that is currently being developed in Memphis, Tennessee and will comprise approximately 885,000 square feet upon completion. We currently estimate that the facility will be completed early in 2006 with a minimum purchase price equal to actual development costs. The purchase price may vary depending on certain variables including the status of leasing on the date of acquisition.
On May 19, 2005, we entered into a joint venture agreement with SV Atlanta SouthCreek IV, L.P., an unrelated third-party, to acquire 37 acres of land and to develop a 556,800 square foot distribution facility located in Atlanta, Georgia. Pursuant to the joint venture agreement, SV Atlanta SouthCreek IV, L.P. and we will provide approximately 3% and 97%, respectively, of the required equity capital, which is estimated to be approximately $5.6 million, to fund the development project. Both parties will receive an 8.25% preferred return on their respective capital contributions. We have the right to purchase SV Atlanta SouthCreek IV, L.P.s interest in the venture at anytime after the later to occur of (i) stabilization of the project, and (ii) the date 18 months after completion of the project. We currently estimate that the facility will be completed early in 2006 for a total estimated cost of approximately $16.5 million.
On July 21, 2005, we completed a merger with Cabot Industrial Value Fund, Inc. (Cabot), an unrelated third-party, whereby we acquired all of the outstanding shares of Cabots common stock for approximately $312.6 million. However, after certain equity contributions and distributions, as of December 31, 2005, our investment was approximately $302.4 million. Through our ownership of Cabot, we acquired an approximate 87% interest in Cabot Industrial Value Fund, LP, which, as of December 31, 2005, owned a portfolio of 104 properties with a total historical cost of approximately $654.5 million which is located in 12 markets throughout the United States and had approximately $308.8 million of mortgage debt outstanding. As of December 31, 2005, this portfolio was 89.6% leased (see Note 3Real Estate to the consolidated financial statements).
On October 27, 2005, in connection with our partnerships private placement, we issued 570,950 limited partnership units valued at approximately $6.0 million in exchange for certain fractional tenancy-in-common interests we had previously sold in a property located in Memphis, Tennessee.
On December 9, 2005, we amended our existing $225 million senior secured revolving credit facility such that it is now a $250 million unsecured facility that matures in December 2008.
On December 29, 2005, in connection with our partnerships private placement, we issued 751,751 limited partnership units valued at approximately $7.9 million in exchange for certain fractional tenancy-in-common interests we had previously sold in a property located in Atlanta, Georgia.
On January 4, 2006, we issued $50 million of unsecured, non-recourse debt with a fixed interest rate of 5.68% maturing in January 2014. In addition, we finalized the terms of $100 million of additional unsecured debt to be issued by April 27, 2006. All the notes require quarterly payments of interest only.
On January 23, 2006, we closed the primary offering component of our fourth public offering of common stock. Although we closed the primary offering for the foreseeable future, we have retained the right to recommence the primary offering at any time during the effectiveness of our public offering. In addition, we will continue to offer shares of our common stock through our distribution reinvestment plan.
On February 21, 2006, we entered into a joint venture agreement with affiliates of Boubyan Bank of Kuwait whereby we contributed six properties with an approximate value of $123 million to an institutional fund. We
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retained a 20% equity interest in the venture and our partner retained the other 80% equity interest. The funds day-to-day business affairs are managed by us and all major decisions are determined by both partners. In connection with this transaction, we also issued approximately $95.5 million of secured non-recourse debt with a stated interest rate of 5.53% maturing in March 2012. Pursuant to our joint venture agreement, we act as asset manager for the joint venture and we will earn certain asset management fees related to the properties we manage.