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Friday, 4 June 2010
Floral graphic designs.
Labels: floral, free download, vector
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Here you will find free graphics available for download. These images are free (to the best of my knowledge) for use in personal web sites, blogs or printing, but since there is a chance that there may be copyrights that we haven't found (we do check but images can be stripped of copyright comments, someone else may take claim of ownership and place them in the public domain etc.), use is at your own risk.


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Data mining Mantle at APU 13
Subject: General Tech | November 26, 2013 - 12:46 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, Mantle, apu13
The Tech Report learned quite a bit about Mantle at APU 13, focusing much more deeply on what Mantle is and how it will work. To think of it as a replacement for DirectX is a good start as it is an API but it also changes how your system interacts with your GPU. The briefing delves into to the technical side, describing the context-based execution model which Mantle uses to give you proper access to assign tasks to multiple processors or other resources as the memory interface is also completely revamped. There are four pages describing Mantle for your reading pleasure here and with the strong early adoption it would be worth your time to learn more about it.
"At its APU13 developer conference in San Jose, California, AMD invited journalists and developers to listen to hours worth of keynotes and sessions by Mantle's creators and early adopters. We sat through all of it—and talked to some of those experts one on one—in order to get a sense of what Mantle does, how it will impact performance, and what its future may hold."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Revealed: How Microsoft DNS went titsup globally on Xbox One launch day @ The Register
- Understanding M.2 NGFF SSD Standardization (Or The Lack Of) @ SSD Review
- The TR Podcast 146: Cyril gets cranked on cold medicine and talks AMD
- Top 10 Linux-Based Gifts for 2013 Under $400 @ Linux.com
- Have 100GB Free? Host Your Own Copy of Wikipedia, With Images @ Slashdot
- Nokia Lumia 2520 price, release date and where to buy @ The Inquirer
- Xbox One @ The Inquirer
- Avermedia Game Capture HD 2 @ Rbmods
- Meet the BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android' @ The Register
- SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2014 Release @ NGOHQ
AMD Mantle Deep Dive Video from AMD APU13 Event
Subject: Graphics Cards | November 13, 2013 - 09:54 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, Mantle, apu13, amd
While attending the AMD APU13 event, an annual developer conference the company uses to promote heterogeneous computing, I got to sit in during a deep dive on the AMD Mantle, a new hardware level API first announced in September. Rather than attempt to re-explain what was explained quite well, I decided to record the session on video and then intermix the slides presented in a produced video for our readers.
The result is likely the best (and seemingly first) explanation of how Mantle actually works and what it does differently than existing APIs like DirectX and OpenGL.
Also, because we had some requests, I am embedding the live blog we ran during Johan Andersson's keynote from APU13. Enjoy!
AMD Releases 2014 Mobile APU Details: Beema and Mullins Cut TDPs
Subject: Processors | November 13, 2013 - 05:35 PM | Josh Walrath
Tagged: Puma, Mullins, mobile, Jaguar, GCN, beema, apu13, APU, amd, 2014
AMD's APU13 is all about APUs and their programming, but the hardware we have seen so far has been dominated by the upcoming Kaveri products for FM2+. It seems that AMD has more up their sleeves for release this next year, and it has somewhat caught me off guard. The Beema and Mullins based products are being announced today, but we do not have exact details on these products. The codenames have been around for some time now, but interest has been minimal since they are evolutionary products based on Kabini and Temash APUs that have been available this year. Little did I know that things would be far more interesting than that.
The basis for Beema and Mullins is the Puma core. This is a highly optimized revision of Jaguar, and in some ways can be considered a new design. All of the basics in terms of execution units, caches, and memory controllers are the same. What AMD has done is go through the design with a fine toothed comb and make it far more efficient per clock than what we have seen previously. This is still a 28 nm part, but the extra attention and love lavished upon it by AMD has resulted in a much more efficient system architecture for the CPU and GPU portions.
The parts will be offered in two and four core configurations. Beema will span from 10W to 25W configurations. Mullins will go all the way down to "2W SDP". SDP essentially means that while the chip can be theoretically rated higher, it will rarely go above that 2W envelope in the vast majority of situations. These chips are expected to be around 2X more efficient per clock than the previous Jaguar based products. This means that at similar clock speeds, Beema and Mullins will pull far less power than that previous gen. It should also allow some higher clockspeeds at the top end 25W area.
These will be some of the first fanless quad cores that AMD will introduce for the tablet market. Previously we have seen tablets utilize the cut down versions of Temash to hit power targets, but with this redesign it is entirely possible to utilize the fully enabled quad core Mullins. AMD has not given us specific speeds for these products, but we can guess that they will be around what we see currently, but the chip will just have a lower TDP rating.
AMD is introducing their new security platform based on the ARM Trustzone. Essentially a small ARM Cortex A5 is integrated in the design and handles the security aspects of this feature. We were not briefed on how this achieves security, but the slide below gives some of the bullet points of the technology.
Since the pure-play foundries will not have a workable 20 nm process for AMD to jump to in a timely manner, AMD had no other choice but to really optimize the Jaguar core to make it more competitive with products from Intel and the ARM partners. At 28 nm the ARM ecosystem has a power advantage over AMD, while at 22 nm Intel offers similar performance to AMD but with greater power efficiency.
This is a necessary update for AMD as the competition has certainly not slowed down. AMD is more constrained obviously by the lack of a next-generation process node available for 1H 2014, so a redesign of this magnitude was needed. The performance per watt metric is very important here, as it promises longer battery life without giving up the performance people received from the previous Kabini/Temash family of APUs. This design work could be carried over to the next generation of APUs using 20 nm and below, which hopefully will keep AMD competitive with the rest of the market. Beema and Mullins are interesting looking products that will be shown off at CES 2014.
AMD Kaveri's Fast... But Less Than Expected.
Subject: General Tech, Processors | November 12, 2013 - 06:50 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: Kaveri, apu13, amd
AMD will deliver its latest round of APUs (Kaveri) on January 14th. These processors, built on a 28nm process, will combine the Steamroller architecture on the CPU with HSA-compliant Graphics Core Next (GCN) cores on the GPU. Together they are expected to bring 856 GFLOPs of computational performance.
Thomas Ryan at SemiAccurate, however, remembers that AMD expected over a TeraFLOP.
Of course Kaveri has been a troubled chip for AMD. At this point Kaveri is over a year late and most of that delay is due to a series of internal issues at AMD rather than technical problems. But now with the knowledge that Kaveri missed AMD's internal performance targets by about 20 percent it's hard to be very positive about AMD's next big-core APU.
The problem comes from a reduction in the clock rate AMD expected back in February 2012. Steamroller was expected to reach 4 GHz but that has been slightly reduced to 3.7 GHz; this is obviously a small impact from a compute standpoint (weakened by just under10 GFLOPs). The GPU, on the other hand, was cut from 900MHz down to 720 MHz; its performance was reduced by a whole
25% (Update: 20%. Accidentally divided by 720 instead of 900). Using AMD's formula for calculating FLOP performance, Kaveri's 856 GFLOP rating corresponds to an 18% reduction from the original 1050 GFLOP target.
But, personally, I am still positive about Kaveri.
The introduction of HSA features into mainstream x86 processors has begun. The ability to share memory between the CPU and the GPU could be a big deal, especially for tasks such as AI and physics. AI especially interests me (although I am by no means an expert) because it is a mixture of branching and parallel instructions. The HSA model could, potentially, operate on the data with whichever architecture makes sense. Currently, synchronizing CPU and GPU memory is very costly; you could easily spend most of your processing time budget waiting for memory transfers.
856 GFLOPs is a definite reduction from 1050 GFLOPs. Still, if Kaveri (and APUs going forward) can effectively nullify the latencies involved with GPGPU work, an Intel Ivy Bridge-E Core i7 4960X has an instruction throughput of ~160 GFLOPs.
And before you say it: Yes, I know, Ivy Bridge-E can be paired with fast discrete graphics. This combination is ideal for easily separated tasks such as when the CPU prepares a frame and then a GPU draws it; you get the best of both worlds if both can keep working.
But what if your workload is a horrific mish-mash of back-and-forth serial and parallel? That is where AMD might have an edge.
More Details from Lisa Su
The executives at AMD like to break their own NDAs. Then again, they are the ones typically setting these NDA dates, so it isn't a big deal. It is no secret that Kaveri has been in the pipeline for some time. We knew a lot of the basic details of the product, but there were certainly things that were missing. Lisu Su went up onstage and shared a few new details with us.
Kaveri will be made up of 4 "Steamroller" cores, which are enhanced versions of the previous Bulldozer/Trinity/Vishera families of products. Nearly everything in the processor is doubled. It now has dual decode, more cache, larger TLBs, and a host of other smaller features that all add up to greater single thread performance and better multi-threaded handling and performance. Integer performance will be improved, and the FPU/MMX/SSE unit now features 2 x 128 bit FMAC units which can "fuse" and support AVX 256.
However, there was no mention of the fabled 6 core Kaveri. At this time, it is unlikely that particular product will be launched anytime soon.
AMD Planning APU13 Developer Summit In San Jose, California
Subject: General Tech | May 1, 2013 - 07:08 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: hUMA, hsa, apu13, APU, amd, AFDS
AMD announced its third annual Developer Summit last week. Dubbed "APU13," the upcoming summit is the AMD equivalent to NVIDIA's GTC and is an annual event that brings together industry analysts, researchers, programmers, academics, and software/hardware companies pursuing heterogeneous computing technologies.
In previous years, the AMD Developer Summit has been the launchpad for C++ AMP and the HSA Foundation. This year's Summit will continue that trend towards heterogeneous computing as well as look back over the year and provide updates on where the various HSA member companies are at as far as goals to move towards standards-based heterogenous computing.
In addition to keynote speeches from AMD and some of its partners, expect a great deal of presentations and workshops from researchers and programmers that are working on new programming models and hardware solutions to efficiently use CPU and GPU processors. More information on hUMA is one of the likely topics, for example. Discussion about upcoming hardware, process nodes, and products may also be on the table so far as it relates to the HSA theme. Considering the summit is called "APU13," I also expect that AMD will reveal additional details on the company's Kaveri APU as well as a look into its future product road map.
AMD is currently asking for presentation proposals from researchers in a number of HSA and technology-related fields including heterogeneous computing, cloud computing, web technologies, programming languages, gaming and graphics technologies, and software security. The lineup of presenters for the summit is still being worked out, and proposal papers will be accepted until May 10th with the winners being notified over the summer.
In all, AMD's APU13 should be an exciting and intellectual event. Last year's AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) was an interesting and fun event to cover, and I hope that APU13 will keep up the same momentum and interest in heterogeneous computing that AFDS started.

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South African Journal of Education
versión On-line ISSN 2076-3433
versión impresa ISSN 0256-0100
S. Afr. j. educ. vol.28 no.3 Pretoria ago. 2008
Narrative experiments and imaginative inquiry
Noel Gough
Foundation Professor of Outdoor and Environmental Education at La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include research methodology and curriculum studies, with particular reference to environmental education, science education, internationalisation, and globalisation. He is a widely published author and the founding and current Editor of Transnational Curriculum Inquiry. E-mail: email@example.com
In this semi-autobiographical essay I explore the representation and performance of imaginative inquiry practices in educational inquiry and other disciplines, with particular reference to 'thought experiments' in the natural sciences and comparable practices in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. I share a number of experiences of writing as a mode of educational inquiry, with particular reference to narrative experiments inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's figuration of the rhizome a process characterised as rhizosemiotic play and demonstrate the generativity of intertextual readings of selected fictions in catalysing them.
Story and narrative theory
The Left Hand of Darkness is a critically acclaimed novel by Ursula Le Guin (1969) and is often referred to as one of the first major works of feminist science fiction (or SF,1 to use a term I prefer). The novel's first-person narrator is an envoi from a galactic federation to the planet Gethen, and he begins by stating: 'I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling' (Le Guin, 1969:9).
I begin with this brief quotation from one of my favourite storytellers because it (and the story it introduces) encapsulates some of the key concepts that have informed and guided my practice as a curriculum scholar and educational research methodologist for more than two decades, namely, story, imagination, and fiction (with particular reference to SF and the ambiguous relations of 'fact', 'truth', and fiction). I will briefly explain how I think about and use each of these concepts before demonstrating in more detail how I have most recently performed narrative experiments in educational inquiry by deploying imaginative reading and writing practices that I characterise as 'rhizosemiotic play'.
The elemental significance of stories in human experience is succinctly conveyed in two brief lines from Muriel Rukeyser's (1968:115) poem, The Speed of Darkness:
The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.
In other words, for many purposes in social (and educational) inquiry, the worlds we inhabit (perceptual, existential, phenomenal, imagined, virtual, etc.) can usefully be understood as being made of stories. The idea that the universe is made of atoms is just one of those stories.
I should emphasise that my methodological interests in story and narrative diverge from what Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin (1990) call 'narrative inquiry' an approach to teacher education and teacher professional development that focuses on personal storytelling and that has become popular in many countries, especially Canada and the USA. Connelly and Clandinin argue that much of what we claim to 'know' in education comes from telling each other stories of educational experience, and 'narrative inquiry' is thus concerned with analysing and criticising the stories we tell and hear and read in the course of our work children's stories, teachers' stories, student teachers' stories, and our own and other teacher educators' stories. My initial enthusiasm for Connelly and Clandinin's conception of 'narrative inquiry' was relatively short-lived, principally because I found their silence on the implications of poststructuralism and deconstruction for narrative-based research to be indefensible. This silence persists in their subsequent work (see, for example, Clandinin and Connelly, 2000).
The uses to which I have put concepts of story and narrative in educational inquiry are more aligned with the 'narrative turn' in the social sciences from the mid-1970s onwards, during which narrative theory migrated from literary studies to many other disciplines (see, for example, Mink, 1974; Polkinghorne, 1988; Richardson, 1990; Rorty, 1979; Stone, 1979). As Kenneth Knoespel (1991:100-101) writes:
Narrative theory has challenged literary critics to recognize not only the various strategies used to configure particular texts within the literary canon, but to realize how forms of discourse in the natural and human sciences are themselves ordered as narratives. In effect narrative theory invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a story.
My initial response to this invitation was to examine the ways in which the discourses of curriculum areas in which I have a special interest environmental education and science education are configured as stories, with particular reference to poststructuralist questioning of narrative authority in the sciences and other disciplines. Many of these inquiries were framed by my practical interests in appraising the adequacy of the conventional narrative strategies used by science and environmental educators in their work and with exploring possible ways of expanding their range and variety (see, for example, Gough, 1991; 1993a; 1993b; 1994b).
Fictions, 'facts' and 'truth'
These initial inquiries led me to explore ways in which the types of stories we usually classify as fiction and the modes of storytelling that produce them might inform reading and writing in educational research (see, for example, Gough, 1994a; 1996; 1998; 2001; 2002). The question at issue here is whether it is possible, at least in principle, to establish intersubjectively reliable distinctions between 'fiction' on the one hand and particular constructions of 'reality' that we can call 'factual' or 'truthful' on the other. Although it is defensible to assert that reality exists beyond texts, much of what we think of as 'real' is and can only be apprehended through texts. For example, most of what we call history is inaccessible to us except in textual form. Furthermore, much of what we call 'direct' experience is mediated textually and intertextually (see Gough, 1993c). What is at issue here is not belief in the real but confidence in its representation. As Richard Rorty (1979:375), puts it, 'to deny the power to "describe" reality is not to deny reality' and 'the world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not' (Rorty, 1989:5).
In other words, the conventional binary opposition of reality and fiction and other binaries implied by this opposition, such as fact/fiction and real/imaginary does not mean that it is possible to distinguish clearly between textual representations of the world 'out there' and other worlds constructed in texts. My own doubts about the referential adequacy of such binaries do not constitute an antirealist position but, rather, contribute to my distrust of storytelling practices that seem to be motivated by what Sandra Harding (1993:193) calls 'the longing for "one true story" that has been the psychic motor for [modern] western science'. Desires for 'one true story' have driven the construction of narrative strategies in which fact and fiction are mutually exclusive categories and particular kinds of facts, such as 'scientific facts' and 'historical facts', are equated with 'reality' claims to ontological status for the worlds that scientists and historians imagine.
Fact and fiction are much closer, both culturally and linguistically, than these narrative strategies imply. A fiction, in the sense in which it derives from fictio, is something fashioned by a human agent. The etymology of 'fact' also reveals its reference to human action; a fact is the thing done, 'that which actually happened' (OED), the Latin factum being the neuter past participle of facere, do. In other words, both fact and fiction refer to human performance, but 'fiction' is an active form the act of fashioning whereas 'fact' descends from a past participle, a part of speech which disguises the generative act. Facts are testimonies to experience and, in Linda Hutcheon's (1989:57) words, are 'events to which we have given meaning'. Thus, historical facts are the testimonies that historians make from their experiences of using disciplined procedures of evidence production and interpretation to construct meaning to produce events that are meaningful within their traditions of social relationships and organisation. Similarly, scientific facts are testimonies to the experiences of scientists as they use their specialised technologies to generate and inscribe data. Donna Haraway (1989:4) demonstrates how closely fact and fiction can be related in her description of biology as a narrative practice:
Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts 'discovered' from organic beings. Organisms perform for the biologist, who transforms that performance into a truth attested by disciplined experience; i.e. into a fact, the jointly accomplished deed or feat of the scientist and the organism Both the scientist and the organism are actors in a story-telling practice.
Performing educational inquiry as 'actors in a story-telling practice' means, in part, seeing fact and fiction as mutually constitutive recognising that facts are not only important elements of the stories we fashion from them but also that they are given meaning by the storytelling practices which produce them.
Therefore, I argue that the binary opposition of fact and fiction is itself a fiction a story fashioned to rationalise the strategies used by modernist researchers in the sciences and social sciences to produce facts. Rather than thinking in these terms, I suggest that there may be some virtue in reconceiving all the stories we tell in education as fictions as stories fashioned for particular purposes especially those that most resolutely proclaim that they are 'factual'. As Le Guin (1989:44-45) writes:
Fiction in particular, narration in general, may be seen as an active encounter with the environment by means of posing options and alternatives, and an enlargement of present reality by connecting it to the unverifiable past and the unpredictable future. A totally factual narrative, were there such a thing, would be passive: a mirror reflecting all without distortion but fiction does not reflect, nor is the narrator's eye that of a camera Fiction connects possibilities and by doing so it is useful to us.
If we think of all stories of educational inquiry as being fictions, we may be less likely to privilege without question those that pretend not to be, and more likely to judge each story on its particular merits in serving worthwhile purposes in education.
Thought experiments
The academic curricula and research protocols that predominate in most education systems and institutions in modern, western, industrial nations (and in systems and institutions modelled on them) tend not to teach learners that 'truth is a matter of the imagination', despite the crucial roles that imagination (literally the ability to produce images in one's mind) has played in the development of many disciplines. For example, thought experiments have been particularly significant in the history of the physical sciences. The term 'thought experiment' came to the English language in the late-19th or early-20th century through translations of papers by the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1897; 1905) in which he used the mixed German-Latin word Gedankenexperiment (literally, experiment conducted in the thoughts).2 Some philosophers now use the term in a relatively narrow sense. For example, Roy Sorensen (1992:255) defines a thought experiment as 'an experiment that purports to achieve its aim without benefit of execution', which might be because circumstances preclude physical testing procedures. Other writers, such as James Brown (2004:1126), prefer a looser characterisation:
It's difficult to say precisely what thought experiments are. Luckily, it's also unimportant. We know them when we see them, and that's enough to make discussion possible. A few features are obvious. Thought experiments are carried out in the mind and involve something akin to experience; that is, we typically see something happening in a thought experiment. Often there is more than mere observation. As in a real experiment, there might be calculating, some application of theory, guesswork, and conjecture. The best way to get a grip on what thought experiments are is to simply look at lots of examples.
Some of the best-known examples of thought experiments are those performed by the innovative physicists who pioneered what we might now call postmodern physics in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As Aspasia Moue, Kyriakos Masavetas and Haido Karayianni (2006:61) note, these experiments were often the subjects of conversations or correspondence with each other, and were used to get their points across and to dramatise the revolutionary and/or paradoxical aspects of their theoretical discoveries or explanations. Erwin Schrödinger's cat (quantum mechanics) and Albert Einstein's elevator (general relativity) and train (special relativity) are now understood as significant 'events' in the histories of these disciplines. Since 'thought experiment' entered the English language, the term has been applied retrospectively to similarly significant speculations in physical science, including James Maxwell's demon (thermodynamics, ca 1871), Galileo Galilei's free fall experiment (disproving Aristotle's theory of gravity, ca 1638), and Simon Stevin's inclined plane (geometry and physics, ca 1583).3 These scientific thought experiments are a species of fiction stories fashioned along the lines of 'let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens ' (Le Guin, 1979:156) and they thus work in the way that Le Guin characterizes fiction above: they connect possibilities and by doing so are useful to us.
Despite the ubiquity and utility of thought experiments in the history and philosophy of science, science education textbooks and curricula rarely foreground their significance and, where they do, tend to diminish their imaginative dimensions. Recent studies in the UK (see, for example, Gilbert & Reiner, 2000; Reiner, 1998; Reiner & Gilbert 2000) suggest that school and university physics textbooks tend to conflate thought experiments with thought simulations. In simulations, the behaviour of a physical phenomenon is illustrated rather than tested, theory is taken for granted and embedded rather than being tentative and emergent, and the outcome is assumed rather than anticipated (this distortion of an important concept in science is similar to the distortion that many science teachers and textbooks reproduce by persistently representing demonstrations of physical phenomena such as heating a bimetallic strip until it bends as 'experiments').
It should be clear that thought experiments are not only the province of science. As Le Guin (1979:156) points out, many SF stories can be read as thought experiments. Thus, for example, in Frankenstein Mary Shelley (1992/ 1818) writes: 'let us say that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory '. In Dune, Frank Herbert (1968/1965) writes: 'let us say that massive desertification threatens a planet very like Earth '. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin (1969) writes: 'let us say that humans are androgynous '. Le Guin (1979:156) also insists that such thought experiments are neither extrapolative nor predictive their form is not, 'if this goes on, this is what will happen' but, rather, are attempts to produce alternative representations of present circumstances and uncertainties; within stories so conceived, 'thought and intuition4 can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment':
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future indeed Schrödinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the 'future,' on the quantum level, cannot be predicted but to describe reality, the present world.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive (emphasis in original).
Thought experiments in science and literature are not only comparable imaginative practices, but also in some circumstances at least may be complementary in other ways. For example, in Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science, Katherine Hayles (1990:xi) examines the late-20th century preoccupation with nonlinear dynamics in both literature and science and demonstrates how different disciplinary traditions may simultaneously be informed by 'isomorphic paradigms':
different disciplines, sufficiently distant from one another so that direct influence seems unlikely, nevertheless focus on similar kinds of problems [at] about the same time and base their formulations on isomorphic assumptions . Different disciplines are drawn to similar problems because the concerns underlying them are highly charged within a prevailing cultural context. Moreover, different disciplines base the theories they construct on similar presuppositions because these are the assumptions that guide the constitution of knowledge in a given episteme. This position implies, of course, that scientific theories and models are culturally conditioned, partaking of and rooted in assumptions that can be found at multiple sites throughout the culture.
More recently, David Butt (2007) has shown that Ferdinand de Saussure and Albert Einstein were engaging in similar epistemological projects at around the same time, with Saussure introducing the principle of relativity of sign systems just as Einstein was introducing the principle of relativity of time and space. Butt also demonstrates that the texts of certain modernist poets (e.g. Wallace Stevens, Kenneth Slessor) and novelists (e.g. D.H. Lawrence) enact similar linguistic thought experiments to those conducted by Einstein and other theoretical physicists of his era.
During the past 45 years I have become more aware of the similarities between thought experiments (in science and literature) and the 'narrative experiments' I have attempted to perform and represent in educational inquiry. In the remainder of this essay, I will demonstrate some of the imaginative reading and writing practices that have been generative for me (and, apparently, for my peers).
Narrative experiments and rhizosemiotic play
My approach to any question, problem or issue of educational inquiry is now shaped by my methodological disposition to produce texts of the kind that Laurel Richardson (2001) calls 'writing-stories' and that I call 'narrative experiments' (Gough, 2004a). Richardson (2001:35) argues (persuasively in my view) that:
Writing is a method of discovery, a way of finding out about yourself and your world. When we view writing as a method, we experience 'language-in-use,' how we 'word the world' into existence And then we 'reword' the world, erase the computer screen, check the thesaurus, move a paragraph, again and again. This 'worded world' never accurately, precisely, completely captures the studied world, yet we persist in trying. Writing as a method of inquiry honors and encourages the trying, recognizing it as emblematic of the significance of language (emphases in original).
Like Richardson (2001:35), 'I write because I want to find something out. I write in order to learn something that I did not know before I wrote it', and I increasingly find it generative to bring objects of inquiry into intertextual play with Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophy and 'fictions' in the broadest sense of the term. I use the term 'essay' here both as a verb to attempt, to try, to test and as a noun. In theoretical inquiry an essay can serve similar purposes to an experiment in empirical research a methodical way of investigating a question, problem or issue although I find more appropriate analogies for my work in the experimental arts than in the experimental sciences.5 Both 'essay' and the related term 'assay' come to English speakers through the French essayer from the Latin exigere, to weigh. Thus, I write essays to test ideas, to 'weigh' them up, to give me (and eventually, I hope, my colleagues) a sense of their worth.
In order to demonstrate how I go about writing 'to find something out' I will focus on a process that I have deployed in three narrative experiments inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) figuration of the rhizome a process that I characterise as rhizosemiotic play. My 'reports' of these experiments are available elsewhere (Gough, 2004b; 2006; 2007), and my intention here is simply to demonstrate some textual strategies that I use to perform such experiments, with particular reference to the generativity of intertextual readings of selected fictions in catalysing them.
Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophy
Deleuze and Guattari (1994:5) map the 'geography of reason' from pre-Socratic times to the present, a geophilosophy describing relations between particular spatial configurations and locations and the philosophical formations that arise in them. 'Philosophy', they say, 'is the discipline that involves creating concepts' through which knowledge can be generated. As Michael Peters (2004) points out, this is very different from the approaches taken by many analytic and linguistic philosophers who are more concerned with the clarification of concepts.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) created a new critical language for analysing thinking as flows or movements across space. Concepts such as assemblage, deterritorialisation, lines of flight, nomadology, and rhizome/rhizomatics clearly refer to spatial relationships and to ways of conceiving ourselves and other objects moving in space. For example, Deleuze and Guattari (1987:23) distinguish the 'sedentary point of view' that characterizes much western philosophy, history and science from a nomadic subjectivity that allows thought to move across conventional categories and move against 'settled' concepts and theories. They also distinguish 'rhizomatic' thinking from 'arborescent' conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically articulated branches of a central stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations. As Umberto Eco (1984:57) explains, 'the rhizome is so constructed that every path can be connected with every other one. It has no center, no periphery, no exit, because it is potentially infinite. The space of conjecture is a rhizome space'.
In a world of increasingly complex information/communication/knowledge technologies, the space of educational inquiry is also becoming a 'rhizome space' that is more hospitable to nomadic than to sedentary thought. Rhizome is to a tree as the Internet is to a letter networking that echoes the hyperconnectivity of the Internet. The structural reality of a tree and a letter is relatively simple: a trunk connecting two points through or over a mapped surface. But rhizomes and the Internet6 are infinitely complex and continuously changing.
I began 'RhizomANTically becoming-cyborg: performing posthuman pedagogies' (Gough, 2004:253) as follows:
Make a rhizome. But you don't know what you can make a rhizome with, you don't know which subterranean stem is going to make a rhizome, or enter a becoming, people your desert. So experiment (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:246).
So I shall. This paper is a narrative experiment inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) figuration of the rhizome. It is a textual assemblage of popular and academic7 representations of cyborgs that I hope might question, provoke and challenge some of the dominant discourses and assumptions of curriculum, teaching and learning.
Emboldened by Deleuze's penchant for inventing new terms for his figurations,8 I have coined the term 'rhizomANTic' (sometimes 'rhizomantic') to name a methodological disposition that connects Deleuze's rhizomatics, ANT (actor-network theory), and Donna Haraway's (1997:16) 'invented category of semANTics, diffractions' (my caps.).9 Diffraction is 'an optical metaphor for the effort to make a difference in the world', which Haraway (1994) also represents by the activity of making a 'cat's cradle' a metaphor that imagines the performance of sociotechnical relations as a less orderly and less functionalist activity than the word 'network' often conveys. As my reference to Haraway's work suggests, my engagement with ANT leans towards those aspects of the theory that John Law (1999) characterises as 'after-ANT'. In an annotated bibliography on Law's ANT Resource Home Page, he refers to Haraway's (1997) Modest-Witness@ Second-Millennium. FemaleMan©-Meets-OncoMouse as 'the best-known example of the different and partially related radical feminist technoscience alternative to actor-network theory. The 'after-ANT' studies in this resource in many cases owe as much or more to Haraway as to ANT itself'.10
I also use the term rhizomantic because much of this essay is about ants.
Why ants? Ants came to my rescue when I was struggling to expand a hastily written abstract into a presentable conference paper. My abstract, titled 'Becoming-cyborg: performing posthuman pedagogies', did little more than point to the proliferation of cyborg bodies and identities in sites of educational practice and signal my intention to draw on theoretical frameworks provided by Deleuze and ANT to explore the pedagogical implications of this proliferation. I wrote (with unwarranted confidence) that my paper would 'demonstrate how a becoming-cyborg teacher might deploy popular and theoretical conceptions of cyborgs as heuristics in educational work', but I had very few ideas about how I might do this.
In searching recent literature on cyborgs and education I found 'A manifesto for cyborg pedagogy?' by Tim Angus, Ian Cook and James Evans (2001), an account of teaching a university course that was explicitly grounded in ANT. I was impressed by the authors' thoughtful theorising of cyborg pedagogy but I was curious as to how Deleuzean (con)figurations might 'add value' to their approach. That was when the ants appeared from several directions simultaneously. In retrospect, I can only surmise that my frequent reading of the acronym 'ANT' brought them out of the recesses of my memory into the forefront of my consciousness.
I recalled the theoretical ants in Deleuze and Guattari's (1987:22) recollections of writing A Thousand Plateaus 'we watched lines leave one plateau and proceed to another like columns of tiny ants' and in Patricia O'Riley's (2003:27) description of rhizomes as being 'like crabgrass, ants, wolf packs, and children'. I recalled my son's fascination with the game SimAnt in the mid-1990s and the giant mutant ants from movies such as Them! (1951) and Empire of the Ants (1977). But the ants that clamoured more insistently for my attention were those that populated some of my favourite fictions, such as H.G. Wells' (1905) The Empire of the Ants, Bernard Werbers' (1991) Les Fourmis trilogy, Philip K. Dick's (1991/1969) short story, 'The electric ant', and Rudy Rucker's (1994) novel, The Hacker and the Ants.
The most generative fictional ant came from Jerry Prosser's (1992) graphic novel, Cyberantics, which purports to be an annotated version of an illustrated children's book written by an eccentric cyberneticist as a report of his achievements in building (and setting loose) a cybernetic ant. Cyberantics is an ingenious (and very amusing) metafiction, a story that, in Patricia Waugh's (1984:2) words, 'draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality'. As a metafiction Cyberantics functions as a complex system generating multiple interpretations and displays the properties that contemporary science calls chaos and complexity. Thus, it explores and illustrates, in a form accessible to children and adults alike, an important correspondence between postmodern science and literature. As Peter Stoicheff (1991:85) writes, 'metafiction and scientific chaos [and I would add scientific complexity] are embraced by a larger revolution in contemporary thought that examines the similar roles of narrative, and of investigative procedure, in our "reading" or knowledge of the world'. Cyberantics can therefore be understood as an alternative representation of a postmodern science education text. It embeds stories of modern science, a delightful children's story, and a satire suitable for children and adults, within a complex and complicating metafiction that inhabits a conceptual space shared by much postmodernist science and poststructuralist cultural theorising.
I realised that Cyberantics exemplifies what is missing from Angus et al.'s (2001) manifesto for cyborg pedagogy: their work is cyber without the antics, that is, it lacks the art, paradox and humour that might motivate us to imagine and invent maps of networks that experiment with the real rather than provide mere tracings of it. It is rewarding to note that the authors of this manifesto have also found this critique generative (James Evans, Ian Cook & Helen Griffiths, 2008).
Without Cyberantics I doubt that I would have coined 'rhizomantic' or appreciated the interpretive possibilities of this neologism. As soon as I wrote 'rhizomantic' as 'rhizomANTic' I realized that it signified concisely my suspicion that ANT cannot wholly be accommodated by rhizomatics it fits, but it sits a little awkwardly and uncomfortably. I was then able to demonstrate the extent of this fit by comparing Haraway's and actor-network theorists' approaches to writing cyborgs with each other and with the implications of Deleuze and Guattari's work.
Fictions as catalysts of rhizosemiotic play
It is beyond the scope of this essay to describe the two other examples of rhizosemiotic play to which I refer above. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that 'fictions' in a broad sense were again crucial. 'Shaking the tree, making a rhizome: towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education' (Gough, 2006) was inspired by Peter Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour's (1989) song, 'Shaking the tree', which celebrates the women's movement in Africa, and led me to imagine rhizomes 'shaking the tree' of modern western science education by destabilizing arborescent conceptions of knowledge. Other 'fictions' animating this essay include Salvador Dali's witty sculpture, Homage to Newton, and Amitav Ghosh's (1997) The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium, and Discovery, an SF thriller that imagines a counter-history (and counter-science) of malaria. This essay too has evidently been generative for my peers (see, for example, Somerville, 2008).
Similarly, 'Changing planes: rhizosemiotic play in transnational curriculum inquiry' (Gough, 2007), was inspired by Ursula Le Guin's (2004) collection of linked SF stories, Changing Planes. Le Guin's pun ('planes' refers both to airplanes and to planes of existence) helped me to 'play' with Deleuze and Guattari's argument that modes of intellectual inquiry need to account for the planes of immanence upon which they operate the preconceptual fields presupposed by the concepts that inquiry creates. Curriculum inquiry currently operates on nationally distinctive planes of immanence, and I speculate that the internationalisation of curriculum studies might, therefore, require curriculum scholars to be able to change planes to move between one plane of immanence and another and/or to transform their own planes.
Each of these essays takes seriously Deleuze's (1994:xx) assertion that a philosophical work should be 'in part a kind of science fiction'. However, as I hope I might have demonstrated here, taking Deleuze 'seriously' does not prevent a writer from having a little fun.
A pause in the middle of things: rhizosemiosis and rhythm
Deleuze and Guattari (1987:25) explain that rhizomes have no beginnings or ends but are always in the middle: beginnings and ends imply a linear movement, whereas working in the middle is about 'coming and going rather than starting and finishing'. I agree with Elizabeth St. Pierre (1997: 176) that
we must learn to live in the middle of things, in the tension of conflict and confusion and possibility; and we must become adept at making do with the messiness of that condition and at finding agency within rather than assuming it in advance of the ambiguity of language and cultural practice.
Thus, I have no desire to 'conclude' this essay but will simply pause 'in the middle of things' to reflect briefly on my 'finding agency' within the ambiguities of language and cultural practice represented and performed by thought experiments, narrative experiments, and rhizosemiotic play.
To reiterate Brown's (2004:1126) comments on thought experiments in science, it is 'difficult to say precisely what thought experiments are', and I would say the same for the narrative experiments I perform. But some of the features of thought experiments (in science) to which Brown refers are also apparent in my narrative experiments, which 'are carried out in [my] mind' and 'involve something akin to experience'; that is, I 'typically see something happening' (rhizomes shooting, ants roaming), but 'there is more than mere observation'. As in a scientific experiment, there is usually 'some application of theory, guesswork, and conjecture'. I agree with Brown that 'the best way to get a grip on what [narrative] experiments are is to simply look at lots of examples', and I invite readers to peruse in further detail those I have referred to here, among others.11
Some of the finest and most inspiring examples of narrative experiments are those performed by great novelists, and their reflections on their own writing processes can be illuminating. For example, Virginia Woolf (1980:247) wrote to Vita Sackville-West in 1926:
Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year.
At present I could say that ants created a wave that broke and tumbled in my mind and I made words to fit it but no doubt I too shall think differently next year (or even sooner).
This essay is an expanded version of an invited keynote address presented to Imaginative Practice, Imaginative Inquiry, the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education, Canberra, Australia, 2931 January 2008.
1. I follow Donna Haraway (1989:5) in using the signifier SF to designate 'an increasingly heterodox array of writing, reading, and marketing practices indicated by a proliferation of 'sf' phrases: speculative fiction, science fiction, science fantasy, speculative futures, speculative fabulation'.
2. Some authors (e.g. Cohen 2005:55) credit Mach with coining Gedankenexperiment, but Johannes Witt-Hansen (1976) clearly establishes that Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted used the term in 1811.
3. See Brown (1991) for descriptions of these and other thought experiments in the natural sciences.
4. See Elke Brendel (2004) for a discussion of the role of intuition in scientific thought experiments.
5. For example, in a 1950 interview, the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was asked: 'Then you don't actually have a preconceived image of a canvas in your mind?' He replied: 'Well, not exactly no because it hasn't been created, you see. Something new it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them' (quoted in Pinar, 1994:7). Richardson (2001:35) makes a parallel point about writing as research: 'I was taught as perhaps you were, too, not to write until I knew what I wanted to say, until my points were organized and outlined. No surprise, this static writing model coheres with mechanistic scientism, quantitative research, and entombed scholarship'.
6. See, for example, the Burch/Cheswick map of the Internet available at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v1/n2/images/nphys162-f1.jpg, accessed 10 April 2008.
7. I use the terms 'popular' and 'academic' to register my perceptions of difference across sites of cultural production, not to inscribe a binary distinction.
8. Rosi Braidotti (2000:170) argues that 'the notion of 'figurations' in contrast to the representational function of 'metaphors' emerges as crucial to Deleuze's notion of a conceptually charged use of the imagination'.
9. Drawing attention to the ANT in semantics is gratuitous, but if I don't someone else will.
10. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/css/ant/antres.htm, accessed 10 April 2008.
11. Preprints or proofs of most of my narrative experiments can be accessed at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/oent/Staff/gough-noel.htm
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Gough N 2001. Learning from Disgrace: a troubling narrative for South African curriculum work. Perspectives in Education, 19: 107-126. [ Links ]
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text:
Other Sides of HIV: People Taking HIV Meds Share Stories About Side Effects
Many types of medications can save or improve lives, but they can also have unintended consequences. For some people living with HIV, taking meds (whether for HIV or some other condition) can be a complicated cycle -- and for others, a Sunday stroll. Medication side effects can be mild or life altering, horrible or even pleasurable; some people living with HIV never experience any at all. And many remedies to relieve side effects can end up causing other side effects. But whether you've dealt with side effects or are just worried about them, it seems like everyone's got a story about them. What's yours?
Want to share your "Other Sides of HIV" story about dealing with side effects, good or bad? Write out your story (1,000 words or fewer, please!), or film a YouTube video, and email it to email@example.com. In the coming months, we'll be posting readers' "Other Sides" stories here in our Resource Center on Keeping Up With Your HIV Meds.
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Tools and Utilities
DU Speed Booster丨Cache Cleaner« Personalization & Tools « Downloads
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|19 times
|Personalization & Tools
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Premier League: Liverpool's Daniel Agger says he is not going anywhere
Daniel Agger has insisted he has no plans to leave Liverpool and is fighting to get back in the team quickly.
Last Updated: 29/10/13 10:59am
Agger has been left out of Liverpool's last four Premier League games as Brendan Rodgers has kept faith in the three-man central defence of Kolo Toure, Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho.
The 28-year-old remains under contract at Anfield until 2016 and has previously insisted that he will honour his deal despite reported interest from Barcelona in the summer.
And Agger has again moved quickly to reassure fans that he is happy at Anfield and does not want to leave, after fresh speculation surfaced about his future.
He tweeted: "Please stop all the tweets about me leaving! I'm not going anywhere! Will be back in the team soon."
The latest reports emerged after Agger was quoted as telling television station TV3 Sport in his native Denmark that he was frustrated at not playing and may have to consider moving on.
Asked what could make him leave Liverpool, the 28-year-old said: "First of all, if I don't play. If the manager doesn't think I'm good enough, that could make me leave Liverpool.
"I'm here to play football, nothing else. So if I don't play football, then I don't want to be here anymore."
Agger lost his place in the side due to injury and manager Brendan Rodgers has insisted he will continue to pick the team on merit, saying Skrtel is well suited to the current formation.
"The three at the back plays to his strengths," said the Northern Irishman.
"It allows him to defend and it allows him to simplify things when he has the ball.
"I think in the run of games he's had he's gained confidence and that's meant I've acknowledged and recognised that he's playing at a really good level.
"I've always tried to show my fairness with players. People say 'you don't like this player' or 'you don't like that player' but it's about performance level.
"If you are playing well, you'll play. If you're not, you'll be in and out of the team.
"I've got an international captain sitting on the bench but that's because I like to think I'm fair and if people are playing well they play. Martin has been outstanding."


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This homework covers Optical Absorption, Excess Carrier Concentration, Steady State Carrier Generation, and Quasi-Fermi Levels.
The homework material presented here was part of Illinois ECE 440 course taught by Professors:
- K.C. Hsieh (course director)
- Eric Pop
- Matthew Gilbert
- Logan Liu
- Jean-Pierre Leburton (course director)
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:


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Regarding the Error 90000 IssueWe apologize for the delay in getting all of you an update on the Error 90000 issue.We have made adjustments to the database server on the backend and the issue has been addressed.For those who were unable to participate in the Beta Test due to this issue, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience. We ask for your continued support in Early Access and the official launch of the service.Regarding the Error 3102 IssueAgain, we would like to apologize for our delay with the update on Error 3201 issue.The issue has been resolved after the maintenance that was performed during the Beta Test and we have confirmed that the issue has been fully addressed.We have corrected the character data for all the characters that were affected by this error, and you'll be able to participate in both Early Access and the official service without any problem.Once again, for those who were affected by this issue, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your support in both Early Access and the official launch of the service.
Greetings,Since we've seen a multitude of threads on this question, we would like to again confirm the situation.As we have announced previously, there will be no wipe for Beta Test phase 4. That is still the case, and progress from the last test will carry over into early access and launch.
It does make me wonder if everyone who tested phase 4 on PS3 has automatic early access due to having the client. The preorder website just spit out a 12 digit code that I redeemed, but there was no logging into my Square Enix service account at all.
I haven't received any email from SE.No email about this registering.No email about the code.No nothing =/


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A rotating schedule of overnight and early morning store openings significantly checked the Black Friday crowds at the regions major retail destinations, producing a much calmer scene compared to years past.
That's because back then, Black Friday was still confined to early morning store openings, attracting huge crowds of pre-dawn deal-seekers. But this year, with major retailers pushing their opening times further into Thursday territory, the onslaught of shoppers was spread out, leaving relatively normal conditions for those who arrived later in the morning on Friday.
In Burbank, police were deployed to Best Buy and Target overnight Thursday as the first few hundred customers were given wristbands for midnight access. Hundreds more customers, meanwhile, waited in lines that snaked around buildings and into parking lots.
But by 9:30 a.m., the crowds at the Empire Center had subsided substantially. In Target, 11 of the store's 20 check-out lanes were open and the lines weren't exceptionally long.
And that suited some customers, like Elisa Corral, just fine. She started shopping with her daughter, Claudia Corral, at 7 a.m.
"It's not worth it to stay here in the middle of the night," Elisa Corral, said, adding that she plans to spend less money this holiday season.
Claudia Corral said she preferred the smaller crowds.
"This is just perfect for us," she said. "I hate shopping and this seems safe."
Meanwhile, the nearby Best Buy store, which opened at midnight, was packed with lengthy check-out lines.
Brandon Masiel and his girlfriend, Courtney Yancey, were initially in a line outside a store at midnight in Porter Ranch, but they opted not to wait.
"We decided to go home, go ahead and go to sleep and get up early and get out here," he said as they left the Target store.
At the region's other retail juggernaut, the Glendale Galleria, the staggered opening times had a significant impact on the crowds.
The difference wasn't lost on Eva Hermano, who was shopping with her daughter, Leslie, at the Galleria at 6:30 a.m.
"I said to her, 'Where are all the people?'" she said.
Many of them had done their early bird shopping at Target, which opened at 9 p.m. Thursday, and Macy's, which opened its doors at midnight, depleting the typical Black Friday crowd before the rest of the mall had even opened.
"There certainly appear to be people who are shopping earlier and probably finishing their shopping around 2 or 3 a.m.," said Brent Shoenbaum with consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. "The earlier openings draw people in sooner and they leave earlier than the morning shift that typically emerges at 6 a.m."
Follow Mark Kellam on Twitter: @LAMarkKellam.


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Dan Walters
Dan Walters: Drought ramps up pressure on Legislature to write water bond
The water squeeze is on. A few sprinkles fell on the Capitol Monday as the Legislature reconvened, but they didn't relieve either a severe drought or pressure on members to respond.
Having procrastinated for years, politicians now may have no more than a week to fashion a new water bond for the Nov. 4 ballot to replace one that many fear is doomed because of its size – $11.1 billion – and obviously gratuitous pork.
Very soon, officials must begin printing ballots and other election material so they can be distributed to overseas voters, including troops in Afghanistan.
That may force a compromise, although panicky, last-minute legislating has backfired in the past.
Or it may force Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators to choose between leaving the current bond on the ballot and postponing it for a third time, thus offering voters nothing on water.
The issue's politics are complex.
The 2009 bond was a bipartisan compromise. Many Republicans, believing that drought changes its dynamics, would just as soon leave it on the ballot because it contains $3 billion for new reservoirs.
They have some leverage because at least a few GOP votes are needed to pass a new bond issue. But Democrats contend only a simple majority vote is needed to delay the 2009 measure again, even though two previous postponements were urgency bills with two-thirds votes.
Beyond partisan maneuvering, the two biggest variables are the size of the bond and the specific projects it would finance.
Brown has proposed $6 billion, while other proposals floating around the Capitol range upward to the $11.1 billion pending measure.
Initial financing for two new storage reservoirs, the big Republican priority, doesn't sit well with some environmentalists while Democrats want the bond to be "tunnel-neutral," meaning it would not be tied to Brown's highly controversial plan to bore two huge water tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Until drought hit, Brown was reluctant to have any water bond, in part because he didn't want it to be a referendum on his tunnels as he was seeking re-election. Given the nature of water storage and conveyance, however, it may be impossible to write a truly tunnel-neutral measure.
There are, meanwhile, an infinite number of proposals that may, or may not, be included, such as conservation, watershed rehabilitation, drinking-water quality improvement and wastewater reclamation.
For instance, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins' local water agency, the San Diego Water Authority, wants money for its ambitious desalination plans.
And on top of everything else, water bond politics are intertwined with new efforts to impose first-ever state regulation on pumping from underground water supplies, which desperate farmers have used – and probably overused – to offset the drought's shortages.


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Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express.
N'Diaye set for Sunderland
Sunderland have agreed a fee with Turkish side Bursaspor for France Under-21 midfielder Alfred N'Diaye, Press Association Sport understands.
Black Cats officials flew to Turkey with an improved offer after their initial bid, said to be in the region of £2million, was turned down.
Combative 21-year-old N'Diaye started his career with French club Nancy before moving to Bursaspor in July 2011.
N'Diaye is believed to be flying to the north east for a medical and to discuss personal terms. If confirmed, he will become boss Martin O'Neill's first signing of the January transfer window.


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New Emmy nomination – just in!
"When The Mountain Calls: Nepal – Tibet – Bhutan," KHET 11
THOMAS VENDETTI, Producer/Director; ROBERT STONE, Producer;
BLAISE NOTO, Associate Producer; ANN MORTIFEE, Narrator;
RICK CHATENEVER, Writer; CHRISTOPHER HEDGE, PAUL HORN, Musical Composition/Arrangements
For more on the film: www.whenthemountaincalls.com
When the Mountain Calls Emmy Nomination!
May 3, 2013 by


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Natal Sharks 18-25 Western Province, Currie Cup Final
Western Province end Currie Cup wait
ESPN Staff
October 27, 2012
Western Province celebrate capturing the Currie Cup crown following their victory over Natal Sharks in Durban
© Getty Images
Western Province ended an 11-year Currie Cup drought with a 25-18 upset victory over Natal Sharks in the title decider at King's Park in Durban on Saturday.
The visitors notched the only try of the game with centre Juan de Jongh's score just before half time proving the decisive moment in an entertaining contest. Fly-half Demetri Catrakilis weighed in with 17 points with the boot to steer Western Province to the South African crown for the first time since their victory over the Sharks in 2001.
Catrakilis opened the scoring before the Sharks took control with four penalties from fly-half Patrick Lambie. Replacement Joe Pietersen reduced the arrears with a long-range penalty before De Jongh pounced for his try. The Springboks international cut an inside line off a Catrakilis pass and beat three defenders to score under the posts. Catrakilis slotted the extras and added later added a second penalty to give Western Province a 16-12 lead at half-time.
The Sharks rallied after the break with Lambie slotting one penalty to close the gap and then another to edge his side ahead once more. But back came Western Province with an outstanding display from lock Eben Etzebeth helping to lay the foundation for a battling comeback that saw Catrakilis kick two more penalties and a drop goal to keep his side out of reach and on course for a famous win.
Sharks: (12) 18
Western Province: (16) 25
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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Setting up an internal grind for complex bores or threads is a time consuming activity. Shops all across metalworking are looking for ways to reduce the non-metal cutting time.
Bore grinding and internal thread grinding are especially challenging because the machinist must be skilled and careful when locating internal features. Unlike OD grinding, ID work is generally done blind because the operator is unable to see the actual grinding wheel to part contact.
For some time now, grinding machine manufacturers have used acoustic sensors to determine wheel to work contact. These systems are generally referred to as "gap eliminators" because they reduce the amount of air grinding time when approaching the part.
Drake Manufacturing (Warren, Ohio) has taken this use of acoustical technology in a different direction. It has placed a wide frequency acoustic sensor directly into the high frequency spindle of an internal grinder.
Called Smart Spindle, this system effectively automates the traditional touch method of setting up ID grinding. The company says using this technology can reduce setup time on internally ground parts by as much as 90 percent.
Acoustic emission technology works by sensing the difference in sound between a cutting and non-cutting event, with varying degrees based on acoustical signatures and digital filtering. Once a wheel touches a workpiece, the sound triggers an immediate CNC response.
In this way, the system works as an automatic detector and, because the sensor is located in the grinding wheel spindle, the wheel itself, in effect, becomes a probe capable of locating internal part features. The sensor also serves double duty by providing touch sensing during the dressing cycle. The sub-micron sensitivity of the system keeps the amount of dressed material to a minimum and makes sure the entire wheel surface is optimally dressed.
Key to making this system practical is the software developed to process the data. It uses signals from the acoustical sensors, in both the grinding and dressing modes, to make "smart" decisions. Drake calls this software programming package Part Smart.
It is pre-program menu entry, application specific software coupled with million-count servo encoders and glass scales for positioning feedback—with resolution of 4 millionths of an inch—all designed for quick response processing of the acoustical data.
An interim step in the development of the Smart Spindle technology was acoustic touch dressing capability. It featured a sensor equipped wheel dresser system capable of detecting the sound of the superabrasive wheel contacting the diamond roll during dress.
The touch dress provided precise control of the entire dress process and eliminated guesswork as to how much material to remove, which saves precious superabrasive material. It was the touch dress capability that was refined into the Smart Spindle package using acoustic sensor technology in the grinding spindle and integrating it with the CNC and machine movement.


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A welcome splash of vibrant and colorful local art awaits at Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd., where a cornucopia of tropical island images delights every taste.
Pioneers in digital printing on canvas and dye infused aluminum, their art is both affordable and durable. They print on premium canvas with HP Vivera inks, which are guaranteed not to fade or shift for 100 years!
Besides their world class photographers, Mark and Shayla Middleton and Todd Kawasaki, the gallery is the exclusive North American representative of the works of New Zealand artist Simon Williams, whose oil paintings are featured on the three section covers of this magazine.
Lahaina Dining Art Shopping Magazine offers a complete array of fabulous restaurants, world-class art, Hawaiian luaus, and unique shops from Lahaina to Kaanapali to Kapalua. West Maui is blessed with an abundance of sandy beaches, lovely resorts and condominiums, plus prized golf and tennis courses. The quaint town of Lahaina is steeped with history: from early Hawaiian, missionary, whaling, plantation days, to the present. With informative articles, reviews, maps, and event calendars, this magazine is all you need to start exploring this popular destination.
Pg. 22
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Copyright © 2019 Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.


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» Next Couzon Collection:
Canteens For Flatware
flatware, stainless, steel, france, french, knife, knives, fork, spoon
The Couzon company was founded in 1934 by Mr Jean Couzon. After having started producing stainless steel flatware and holloware in 1946, the company quickly delvelopped into one of France's undisputed market leaders. The trading brand ' Jean Couzon Orfevre' , adopted in 1971, was soon recognised on the market thanks to clever advertising - and, obviously, fine product quality. In the late ... Read more about Couzon »
We offer the full product catalog from Couzon


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Category Archives: potty problems
Potty Training Tips: Using a Doggy Diaper
Within two weeks, I had Zoye potty-trained using this method, and you can do it, too, with a good diaper, a consistent schedule, a little patience, and minimal cleaning supplies. Good luck! Continue reading
Trainer Tip: Crate Training Calamity
At Happy Tails Books we've got some great training resources, and by golly, I'm going to use them! That means that you, our reader, can send in training questions through our website, and we'll post answers for you here. Look … Continue reading
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Global Trade in Elephant Ivory Fuels Killing Spree
"Buying this piece is a good investment", a sales woman unlocked a cabinet to take out a ball with multiple moving layers carved into it, sitting on a platform held by the heads of a dragon and a phoenix. "Ivory is like white gold!
On a bitterly cold Saturday in January, I went to the antique and curio markets in Beijing looking for elephant ivory.
With the approaching of the Chinese New Year, the big shopping season much like Christmas in the west, the market was crowded.
It didn't take me long to find a variety of products carved from elephant ivory. A pair of figurines and a Chinese chess set on the ground in the outdoor market; piles of bracelets, necklaces and cigarette holders in shops. Entire tusks elaborately carved with scenes portraying people in "harmony" with their environment, lined the windows in larger government certified stores.
"Buying this piece is a good investment", a sales woman unlocked a cabinet to take out a ball with multiple moving layers carved into it, sitting on a platform held by the heads of a dragon and a phoenix. "Ivory is like white gold! If you had bought this last year, your investment would have gained you 40% in value now".
Her words sent a chill down my spine. Looking at this creamy white "investment", my mind's eyes couldn't help seeing it covered in red, stained with the blood of innocent elephants slaughtered thousands of miles away.
In April, poachers gunned down 30 elephants, an entire family, in Chad, and hacked off their tusks. In the same month, three large shipments of ivory were uncovered in Thailand, China and Vietnam. In total, 1076 tusks confiscated in these three law enforcement actions alone represented the lives of over 500 elephants.
The unrelenting demand in Asia is fueling another killing spree much like the one in the 1970s and 80s which wiped out more than half of the elephants in Africa. Yet, today the situation facing elephants is much more precarious.
The areas for elephants to roam free has shrunk as human population has grown. Technological advances have made it easier to track and kill elephants as well as smuggle and trade their ivory globally.
In their current issue, Vanity Fair ran a feature piece called "Agony and Ivory". In it they say "the previous slaughter was driven by Japan's economic boom. This new crisis is driven by China's Bao Fa Hu (the "suddenly wealthy)."
The phenomenal economic growth in China has created a middle class with disposable income and ability to globe trot. Chinese travelers caught smuggling contraband ivory across international borders far outweigh any other nationality.
When all elephant populations were listed on CITES Appendix I and all international ivory trade was banned in 1989, ivory price plummeted.
When there was no monetary value attached with ivory, elephant poaching decreased and breeding stopped. However, the peace for elephants was short-lived. Just as elephant populations stabilized in many parts of Africa, Japan was allowed to import stockpiled ivory from Africa in 1997.
Since then, ivory price never came down again, skyrocketing to new highs each time CITES meet, in anticipation of ivory trade decisions. CITES indeed approved the 2nd "one-off sale" in as many decades, allowing Japan and China to acquire over 100 tons of ivory. Although the CITES decision was only to allow trade between a few southern African countries with two Asian countries, the message reverberating through the global market place was simple: "ivory trade is allowed".
Biologically, elephants simply can not support an economic model of supply and demand. With the fast growing human population, economy and consumerism, no wildlife can sustain this type of commercial exploitation, let alone a long-living, slow growing, slow-breeding species like the elephant.
The only way to stop the bloody onslaught is to break every link on the trade chain—from supply to trafficking to demand. In China, the largest ivory market in the world, our campaign to reduce demand have resulted in online shopping websites banning ivory trade and consumers pledging to reject ivory products.
Seeing the International Fund for Animal Welfare's heart wrenching PSA "Mom, I've Got Teeth", a former ivory carver wrote: "I used to carve ivory objects for sale. Your ad has enlightened me about the truth behind elephant ivory. From now on, I will never use ivory for carving again. Thank you!"
We can only hope that our continued efforts have the same effect on the remaining consumer markets.


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Eastland Women's Brown Falmouth Camp Mocs
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For decades, Eastland Shoe Company has crafted footwear with classic American heritage-inspired style. These Falmouth Camp Mocs are made from genuine leather with hand-sewn moccasin construction for a classic look and feel. These striking shoes feature shock-absorbing natural rubber outsoles and Eastland Exclusive Active Memory Foam comfort insoles that support and conform to the curves of your foot. Walk with style and sophistication in shoes from Eastland Shoe Company.


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67:03 minutes (15.35 MB)
In the first half of this weeks episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had an inspiring conversation with Katherine Schulten editor of The Learning Network at the New York Times. Our theme for this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers was about increasing teacher voice in public debates. Katherine suggested how we might use The Learning Network for that.
In addition, we were joined by:
- Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley
- and Andrea Zellner a leader at the Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan State University's site of the NWP.
Andrea and many o
thers in the chat room during the webcast gave witness to why we want to maintain federal funding for the NWP to continue -- an example of a time wh
en we need to get our voices to be heard!
"It's been a heady week for teaching and learning discussion on the Times site," writes Katherine Schulten, our first guest on this podcast. One of Katherine's jobs as an editor of the New York Times Learning Network is to moderate the comments that come in on education-related articles.
- By this last weekend (3/7/2010), the article, "Building a Better Teacher, had 313 comments on it, and had been one of the top most-emailed on the Times site after it went online last Wednesday.
- For several days the article about Diane Ravitch's about-face on NCLB was right up there too.
- And this article, "Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets," which is about teaching Darwin and Global Warming got over 1000 comments.
A Student Opinion post from earlier this week, "Where Do You Stand on Unconcealed Handguns? "received many lively responses from "students 13 and older," who "are invited [to the Learning Network] to comment on questions about issues in the news."
If you just clicked on those links, your head is probably spinning: so many issues so little time! That's what it feels like to have a conversation with Katherine Schulten, who before she became an editor for the Learning Network was a NYC teacher and a consultant for the New York City Writing Project. Katherine was worried that she was talking too much, because she is so excited about managing the Learning Network.
We'll turned Katherine loose, then we interrupted her with a few questions. We think you'l learn a lot about the New York Times Learning Network on this podcast:
Currently, they are offering these features:
- Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
- Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
- Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
- 6 Q's About the Newss — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
- News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
- Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.
The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, they re-launched it as a Times blog.
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.