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Spark Core: Wi-Fi for Everything (Arduino Compatible)
Our Kickstarter campaign has ended, but you can still order your own Spark Core at sparkdevices.com.
The Spark Core is an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform that makes creating internet-connected hardware a breeze.
This little board packs a punch: with a 72 MHz ARM Cortex M3, the best Wi-Fi module on the market, wireless programming, and lots of pin outs and peripherals, there's nothing you can't build with the Core.
We love Arduino, and we love writing Arduino code. In fact, we love it so much that we couldn't imagine the Spark Core without it. That's why we've designed the Core to run Wiring, the same simple code as the entire Arduino platform. If you're like us, the last thing you want to do is learn a new programming language or change your existing sketches.
Set-up steps:
1. Enter your network name and password into the Spark App and press OK.
That was it. Seriously. You're connected.
The Spark Core makes first-time configuration of your devices a breeze for both creators and users. The Core includes a brand spankin' new Wi-Fi module: the CC3000 from Texas Instruments. It features their unique setup process called Smart Config that allows makers and developers to bring their creations online in seconds.
The Core is already Wi-Fi connected, so we've decided to do away with wires altogether.* You can program your new software in our web development environment or in your favorite text editor, and with a single click, Spark Flash delivers updated firmware to your project over the web.
Spark Flash means that your projects stay in their enclosures, out in the field, and in the hands and homes of users, where they belong. It also means that your creations can be easily changed, updated, and improved over time, without worrying about USB ports and programmer pins.
* Of course, you can still program the Core over USB or with a JTAG programmer, but where's the fun in that?
We've benefitted tremendously from the open source community, and we're dedicated to giving back. The Core is a totally open source hardware product. All of our hardware design files (schematic, board design, and bill of materials) and firmware will be open source. The components we're using are available from any major distributor. We're also sticking with open standards (HTTP, TCP, TLS/SSL, Protocol Buffers) for all of our communications. We want to make it as easy as possible to extend and improve upon the foundation we've built.
We made the Spark Core because we love building things — especially connected things. So while the Core is fun enough on its own, it's the projects you can build with Spark that really excite us. Here are just a few examples of what you could build:
These are just a few of the projects that we've imagined and built in the last few weeks. We'll be sharing these ideas, and any others we dream up in the future, through Kickstarter updates and on our community site. We hope you'll do the same!
Imagine if you could create hardware that could be changed and improved with the simplicity and speed of software. That's the idea behind the Spark Cloud, our network of servers that supercharges every Spark Core with a suite of cool software-enabled features:
- Write code on your phone in your Grandma's house, and update projects sitting at home in your garage.
- Program your lights to flutter when your high-school crush changes his/her relationship status on Facebook.
- Send camera and video feeds securely through the web to share with your friends and family
The Spark Cloud makes your projects accessible from anywhere in the world, creates a secure environment, and allows for our simple but powerful REST API. We built the Spark Cloud to make your lives easier, and to eliminate the complexity and limitations of locally connected products. But don't worry — the Spark Cloud is and always will be free to anyone using the Spark Core.
And in case you're worried about privacy or lock-in, we'll be releasing an open source version of the Spark Cloud designed for easy deployment on local machines or your own Heroku dyno, AWS instance, or private server.
Our REST API lets you write software for a smartphone, tablet, computer, or web application that can interact with your hardware projects in the physical world. This makes it possible for your devices for you or any other authorized users to access and control your device in any way you'd like from anywhere in the world.
The API has been designed around great REST APIs like Twilio, Stripe, and Twitter (and in fact pairs well with any of those other great APIs!) We've also made it easy to set up permissions so you control who and what can access your stuff.
For those interested, documentation for our API can be found here. Our API will be constantly growing and improving, so be sure to check back often for updates.
The Core, the Cloud, and the entire Spark development platform is secured with industry-standard AES (on the hardware side) and SSL (on the API side) encryption to keep all your wireless communications in the right hands. This means that only the set of authorized users that you control (and not your neighborhood or its local hacker club) can communicate with your stuff.
Sometimes you want to start a little further along than a blank breadboard. To help, we've designed a few Shields for the Core - complete circuits that can quickly extend the Core into complex projects. Plus, through the Spark Shield Shield, the Spark Core is compatible with Arduino shields, so you can get started with the projects you've already built!
These Shields and accessories can help you kickstart your own connected projects. We're making them available to you to fiddle with yourself, to expand on and improve, or cast aside altogether. These little add-ons have helped us build the first projects with the Spark Core, and we can't wait to see the ones you come up with yourself.
Current Shields:
- Shield Shield - Converts the footprint and pins of your Spark Core into that of an Arduino, making it compatible with all of your existing Arduino shields and accessories.
- Relay Shield - Control any normal outlet or high voltage electronics product to switch your existing electronics on and off from anywhere! Turn your AC on when your close to home. Switch off the lamp in your living room from your couch. Be really mobile and/or really lazy.
- JTAG Shield - For the deeply technical, use the JTAG Shield to flash code directly to the microcontroller on the Spark Core. If you're an embedded software expert, you want this.
- Battery Shield - Wireless projects need mobile power. A simple 3.7V battery connects to this shield for solder-free integration with the Spark Core.
Have an idea for another cool Spark Shield or accessory? Post it in the comments! We'd love to hear from you.
We're a team of engineers, designers, and creatives who wanted to help lower the barrier to creating compelling connected hardware. Many people have been involved in various ways, but the core (sorry) team is as follows:
- Zach Supalla. CEO of Spark, and the designer and creator of the Spark Core. Worked in operations and product development at McKinsey & Co. Loves gadgets, coffee, arcade games, tinkering, and his dog Hunter.
- Zachary Crockett. CTO of Spark, and a professional software developer for 10 years. Making Spark a secure, reliable, and scalable platform every day. Has a Ph.D. in music composition, bikes everywhere, and donates a foot of hair to Locks of Love every 3 years. Ask him about his earWorms.
- Stephanie Rich. Spends every day thinking about you, our community of users and supporters. Worked in international sales and marketing in the film industry. Wrote a book and consistently extolls the virtues of Minneapolis despite the blizzards in April.
- Will Hart. Design engineer. Works tirelessly to imagine great new products with the Spark Core. World-renowned for his vocal licks. Extremely tall.
- Arduino compatible (through custom integration of Wiring libraries)
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
- Easy setup over Wi-Fi
- Developer friendly REST API
- 128-bit SSL encryption
- Wireless software updates
- Breadboard compatible
- 32-bit STM32 72MHz ARM Cortex M3
- 128KB of Flash memory, 20KB of RAM
- Texas Instruments SimpleLink CC3000 Wi-Fi chip
- EEPROM (supplied by the CC3000)
- 2MB of external flash memory
- 3.3V DC supply voltage (with on board power regulator)
- 50mA typical current consumption
- 300mA peak current consumption (during transmit events)
- Can be powered and programmed by USB Micro (cable included in box)
- 8 digital I/O pins
- 4 PWM pins
- 8 analog I/O pins
- UART (Serial), SPI, and I2C peripherals
- Wi-Fi range of 100-300ft
First off, thank you! We hope you're excited about the Core. We hope you'll back our project and help us make our dream of easy embedded Wi-Fi come true.
Special thanks to a number of people that have been an enormous help: Cyril Ebersweiler, Zach Hoeken Smith, Jordan Husney, Andy Warner, Jay Schrankler, Sean O'Sullivan, Bogomil Balkansky, David Recordon, John Strong, Alex Ognev, Justin Grammens, Betsy Ziegler, Jordan Dalton, Satish Nair, Paul Detjen, Bill Brown, Solange Guillaume, Ashley Soloff, and the guy who sells us bubble tea everyday.
Like the music from the end of the video? Check out Finley Knight! They make great tunes. Also, you may have caught a peek of a couple cool open source projects form the HAXLR8R office; keep your eye out for the tabletop CNC mill from Zach Hoeken Smith and the 3D printer Deltabot from Nick Starno.
How does Spark Flash work?
Spark Flash is possible when both your computer and the Spark Core are connected to the internet (although they don't need to be on the same Wi-Fi network). You can write code in our simple web IDE and send it to your project with the click of the button. Once the code compiles successfully on our server, you'll be sent a "compilation successful" notification, and the software on your device will be instantly updated.
We do it this way to make deploying code to your Core as simple as possible. If you want, you can always program your device locally.
How does Smart Config work?
To create the best user experience possible, TI created Smart Config — a one-step and one-time process used to connect the hardware devices enabled by the CC3000 (like the Spark Core) to a Wi-Fi network. Just connect your Wi-Fi enabled phone or tablet to your access point, then enter your network's password into the Spark App, and the setup process completes in less than thirty seconds. This is entirely unique in the current world of Wi-Fi modules that require multiple steps — including jumping between permanent and ad hoc Wi-Fi networks — to configure a device onto a network. Smart Config leverages the standard mechanisms present in Wi-Fi to configure the device on the fly, regardless of whether a user interface is available.
The long story short is that we've used it with the Spark Core, it works, and we think its a game-changer for embedded Wi-Fi.
Do I have to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the Core for it to work?
Nope — our REST API is exposed through the Spark Cloud, our servers that do cloud compilation and pass secure messages around between the Spark Core and everything else. You can access your Spark Core from anywhere!
Wait, the Spark Cloud? Do I have to pay anything for Spark Wi-Fi service or Spark apps?
Nope! The Spark Cloud is and will always be free for life when you buy a Spark Core. However, developers who create apps for the Spark Core or for Spark-powered products may choose to charge for them, by selling those apps through the iPhone App Store, Google Play, or on their own websites.
What if I want to scale the project I build on the Core? Can you help?
Yes! Tight integration between the Spark Core and the Spark Cloud means that Spark is the perfect development platform for 1, 100, or 100,000 of your shiny new connected ideas. Our servers will automatically adapt to the data and back-end needs of any project in any environment — large or small, few or many. If you want to talk shop, shoot us an email at hello [at] sparkdevices [dot] com.
Don't I know you guys from the Spark Socket?
You do... We're back!
Who made your super sweet video?
None other than Paul Detjen of PCD Productions. Paul is a talented videographer, musical visionary, and honorable gentlemen. Hire him while he's still available!
Risks and challenges
There are always significant challenges in manufacturing and delivering any hardware product at scale. Mass manufacturing isn't the same as prototype development; besides making the Core work, we have to make sure they are secure and reliable, and that they can be manufactured efficiently at larger volumes.
Fortunately, we've been living and working in Shenzhen, China for several months now, and have established relationships with manufacturing partners that will help us bring the Core to your doorstep. Plus, the Core does not require the same tooling expenses and long lead times that products with injection molded plastic require, which significantly decreases our fixed costs and delivery timeline.
Of course, there are still risks associated with producing the Spark Core. Unexpected changes in component lead times, availability, and cost are examples of factors outside our direct control that could affect our delivery timeline, but we are working hard to mitigate those risks and plan to be transparent throughout the delivery process.
The other risk with this and any other project that involves physical delivery comes with shipping. There are a number of unforeseen circumstances that can cause problems during the actual physical shipping of the Core. We plan to work with proven companies to help ensure that our Cores and other rewards arrive (in perfect condition) at their delivery destination. Since unforeseen circumstances can sometimes impact the shipping world, we will also make sure to have methods/resources in place to overcome any difficulties.Learn about accountability on Kickstarter
Funding period
- (30 days)


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No Driver's Licenses for Iowa 'DREAMers'
(DES MOINES, Iowa) -- DREAMers -- thousands of undocumented people given a repreive from deportation by President Obama before the 2012 election -- will not be awarded driver's licenses in Iowa.
The state's Department of Transportation announced Thursday that it will not issue licenses or state identification cards to any of the illegal immigrants.
While some states, including California, Florida and Nevada, have said they will issue licenses, others, including Nebraska, Arizona and Michigan, have announced they will not.
Some groups, such as the National Immigration Law Center, have argued that deferred action recipients are eligible for licenses because they are eligible for work permits. But some states have countered that, because deferred action does not confer legal status upon recipients, state law prevents them from receiving licenses.
"The Iowa DOT understands the exercising of this prosecutorial discretion by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not grant lawful status or a lawful immigration path to persons granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status," the department said in a statement. "Rather, it is prosecutorial discretion extended in a blanket fashion to persons who are not lawfully authorized to be present in the United States."
The Department of Homeland Security has said repeatedly that each state is responsible for determining whether to award driver's licenses.
Immigrants' rights organizations have filed suits in several states. In Michigan, several groups, including the National Immigration Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a suit against Republican Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson last week for blocking licenses for DREAMers.
According to the Des Moines Register, some Iowa deferred action recipients have already received driver's licenses. One young man told the paper he was granted deferred action in October and issued a license a short time later after he passed the written and practical exams.
Paul Trombino, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said he knows of only one license and one non-operator identification card that have been issued so far. Those will no longer be valid and will have to be returned, he said.
The deferred action policy has drawn criticism from some Republican lawmakers in Iowa, including Representative Steve King and Senator Chuck Grassley, who have called it an overreach of executive power.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

subset: commoncrawl


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noiseindustries necesitaba un nuevo diseño de botón o icono y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 78 diseños de 25 diseñadores freelance.
App Finder
Apple iPhone and MacOS developer.
All iPhone users that would like to discover cool new apps.
We're looking for three (2) icons for this iPhone App. All icons should be in PNG format. Specific details about each icon are below.
Application icon
57 x 57 pixels with 90 degree corners
No shine; no gloss
Does not use alpha transparency
AppStore icon
512 x 512 pixel version of Application icon
more detailed than Application icon.
For this image, please also provide a layered .PSD alongside the PNG.
The app allows users to see your friends favorite apps, and shares your favorite apps with your friends. The idea is to use your social network (ie their friends) to discover cool apps.
Themes that *could* be used, for inspiration:
- Social Networking
- Friends
- Favorites (maybe the star that is used in itunes etc. to rate stuff)
- Discover cool apps is like finding a needle in a haystack
Something that really stands out would be amazing!
Looking forward to see what you come up with.


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(Re)Covered VII: More covers of Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Britney SpearsAugust 19th, 2008 — 11:15 pm
We're in an indiefolk mood today, thanks to an increasingly large pile of new material flowing in from fan recommendations, the labels, and the blogosphere at large. As such, there's nothing particularly rare here today, just a bunch of great web-scavenged covers, most of which had their coming out party long after we originally featured the songwriters that first made them famous — making them a perfect fit for yet another long-awaited edition of our longstanding (Re)Covered series here on Cover Lay Down.
At the height of her popularity, Cyndi Lauper's strength was in powerful yet simply-stated melody and lyric; in simplicity, however, a song's flexibility is limited, so it was a nice surprise to find not one but two great new covers coming out over the past few months, especially after finding so many covers of so few different tunes for our May feature on the songs of Cyndi Lauper.
This cover from Canadian indiefolkers The Acorn has been making the blogrounds since at least June, most recently ending up on This Morning I Am Born Again, but it bears repeating for the way it transforms what was once a bouncy throw-away theme for the kid-friendly underground pirate adventure flick The Goonies, turning a cinematic bit of eighties cheese into something lo-fi and fragile, full of string undertones and indie half-tension, the post-millenium's high-culture equivalent of the exotic comfort of a warm goat-cheese brie.
Meanwhile, alt-folk trio Girlyman gives a chilling, harmony-rich rendition of Lauper ballad All Through the Night, proving once again that good songwriting will out, even through the worst sappiest power ballad production (see also: Supertramp covers). I posted Girlyman's wonderful version of George Harrison's My Sweet Lord last year as part of a megapost on the solo work of the post-Beatles Fab Four; I certainly would have shared this perfect live cut when we featured Cyndi Lauper songs last month if I had known about it, but the hype for their gigantic live album Somewhere Different Now, also released in May, seems to have gotten lost in the sea of late spring releases and a recent label change-over for the intrepid and outed members of Girlyman. Special thanks, then, to the anonymous tipster who prompted me to track this song down, which in turn led me to an album which perfectly captures the sweet harmonies and raw yet intimate presence that typifies a small-venue Girlyman show.
- The Acorn: Good Enough (orig. Cyndi Lauper)
- Girlyman: All Through The Night (orig. Cyndi Lauper)
Our original exploration of the Paul Simon songbook was large enough to separate into two posts: one on his solo work, and one on his work with that Art guy. But, as I mentioned back then, Simon's influence on music is immense; as such, as musicians new and rising continue to mine the cultural jetsam for songs that have some personal resonance, coverage of Paul Simon's vast catalogue remains vast and evergrowing.
From the recently "released" Bedroom Covers album from The Morning Benders, with its wonderfully hushed and lo-fi versions of many favorite and respectable pop tunes, comes an echoey take on Mother and Child Reunion with shades of Iron and Wine, only played out at a tenor's 45 rpm; Bedroom Covers is a total freebie, and it rocks: we'll surely come back to it down the road for upcoming Covered in Folk features (we're way overdue for a Fleetwood Mac set). Plus two versions of what may well be my favorite Paul Simon composition of all time: a pensive yet hopeful bedroom cover from the recently-featured Mark Erelli, and — for those who lean that way — a great countrygrass cover from Darrell Scott's very promising all-covers "acoustic folk" album Modern Hymns, released just yesterday on the highly credible folklabel Appleseed Recordings, via blazing newcomer blog A Fifty Cent Lighter & A Whiskey Buzz, who also offers up Scott's solid take on oft-covered Joni Mitchell favorite Urge for Going.
- Darrell Scott: American Tune (orig. Paul Simon)
- Mark Erelli: American Tune (ibid.)
- The Morning Benders: Mother and Child Reunion (orig. Paul Simon)
Finally: the "Britney Spears takes over culture" thing is pretty much over, but even after both an All Folked Up feature and a (Re)Covered revisit, her songs continue to crop up everywhere that indie hipsters crave irony. Today's evidence comes from The Portland Cello Project, which finally hit stores this week after months of slow-burning hype. I'm by no means the first to notice The Portland Cello Project, and technically, they're not folk, either — critics are calling the guest-vocalist-with-multiple-cello sound chamber pop; their myspace page lists them as indie/classical/rock. Listen through their whole self-titled debut, though, and you may think you've discovered yet another new folk, akin to the experimentation of, say, Abigail Washburn's Sparrow Quartet project (which also features cellist Ben Sollee).
The album tracks each feature collaboration from the Pacific Northwest indiefolk crowd, including star turns from Loch Lomond's Ritchie Young and indiefolk darling Laura Gibson; I especially like the delicate indietune Under Glass, and Stay, a wonderful, plucked-sting acoustic waltz with guest Anna Fritz. Captain Obvious gets cred for picking the Gibson and Under Glass for sampling. And PCP gets TOTAL bonus points here for a secret, hidden covertrack, which sets the Mario Brothers theme song to a classical ensemble sound, and then slowly buries it in a faux-military drumroll — that no other blogger has mentioned that says what it needs to about how most critics listen to label freebies, sadly.
Whatever you call it, this is surprisingly solid, listenable music, covering a huge range of pleasurable soundscape; though it's among the more upbeat and fun songs on the album, their version of Toxic still comes across as authentic, not just some marching band cover. And since the Britney covers always bring a smile, and given the increasing prevalence of cello in folk music, I'll allow it just this once. With a few other recent Britney covers scavenged from the webs that fall on the edge of folk: Sia's delicate acoustic version of Gimmie More, and French-Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naim's ubiquitous pop-folktronic Toxic, just in case you haven't heard it. And so the trend continues.
- Portland Cello Project: Toxic (orig. Britney Spears)
- Yael Naim: Toxic (orig. Britney Spears)
- Sia: Gimmie More (orig. Britney Spears)
803 comments » | (Re)Covered, Acorn, Britney Spears, Cyndi Lauper, Darrell Scott, Mark Erelli, Morning Benders, Paul Simon, Portland Cello Project, Sia, Yael Naim


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Pre-registration placement 2020-21
Chelmsford, Essex
Closing date: 30/10/2019
Our pre-registration programme is designed to help pharmacy graduates achieve their ultimate goal and become "Independent, Professional, Pharmacist Practitioners" registered with the GPhC. We have over twenty years experience in training pre registration trainee pharmacists and demonstrate an excellent success record.
Application Requirements: Degree in Pharmacy
Annual Leave: 5.6 weeks which includes bank holidays
Cross Sector experience in HospitalCross branch experienceButtercups learning resources and trainers used.Monthly head office training days including two 2-day residential coursesSupport towards accreditation in providing Medicine Use Reviews
Future Opportunities
Excellent: within an exciting rapidly expanding independent family-owned group of pharmacies that is well known for its friendliness..
How to apply
E-mail your CV to firstname.lastname@example.com together with a cover letter stating your preferred location.
Contact details
Contact Paydens Pre Registration Manager: Barrie Smith via telephone on 0783 393 2433.
Paydens ... a Successful formula: C&D Awards
Runner up 2010 Paydens: Retailer of the Year
Runner up 2010 Sally Atmore: Technician of the Year
2011 Sulapha Manaim won Pre-Registration Graduate of the Year
Short Listed 2011 Steve Gabell: MUR Champion of the Year
2011 Dennis Pay won Business Leader of the Year
For information on how we process your data please click here.
Paydens Online Pharmacy accepts the following payment cards:
Online Pharmacy Customer Service: 01303 277590
www.PaydensPharmacy.co.uk© 2005 Paydens Limited.


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The project focused in particular on social and risk factors which may possibly prevent the success of a disease control programme in the region.
The diseases concerned – for example tuberculosis in humans or cattle and other host-specific tuberculosis – are caused by pathogenic bacteria of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC). Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NMT) have not been so frequently documented as pathogenic agents, but they occur widely in the environment. However, more advanced methods of diagnosis and the fact that immunodeficiency disorders such as HIV/AIDS are widespread have led to NTM now being associated with a broad range of diseases. These bacteria also sometimes occur in larger numbers than MTC in tuberculous lesions.
Adrian Muwonge's doctoral research has revealed a wide range of pathogenic and non-pathogenic mycobacteria in the environment of the Mubende region and this gives cause for concern, given the high occurrence of HIV amongst the local population. He has studied the role that non-tuberculous mycobacteria play in the establishment and development of disease, especially since these bacteria are resistant to anti-mycobacterial drugs.
Most of the isolated non-tuberculous mycobacteria come from drinking water and the soil, but animals also play an important role in the spreading of these bacteria in the environment. Humans are exposed to mycobacteria mostly via untreated drinking water from water sources that they share with domestic and/or wild animals.
Pig farming is widespread in Mubende and the pigs are usually kept in a "free-range" system, where they wander around in the surroundings in search of food. In this way, they become infected with mycobacteria from the soil and water while at the same time infecting the environment themselves. The local people eat a great deal of pork and the occurrence of pathogenic mycobacteria such as M. avium and M. bovis in slaughtered pigs is therefore a cause for concern. Mycobacterial infections are easiest to detect in checks carried out on meat, but the quality control procedures at the abattoirs in this region were found to be unsatisfactory.
A study of the occurrence of tuberculosis in humans in the region showed a high prevalence of tuberculosis, especially amongst those infected by HIV and amongst smokers who live in households of more than six persons. Multi-resistant tuberculous bacteria and high travel costs associated with medical treatment pose problems for the efforts being made to control these infections.
The large number of heterogeneous genotypes of M. tuberculosis in Mubende points to a dynamic and complex tuberculosis epidemiology in this area. Typically, tuberculosis patients were found to be infected with more than one strain of M. tuberculosis and this was particularly evident amongst female patients living in urban districts. The occurrence of specific variants of M. tuberculosis in certain geographic areas also indicates that the infection dynamics in urban areas differ from those in rural areas.


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Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum
Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
News Groups / Public Letters
News groups are small in-class groups that share information about current events. News groups may be focused on particular news areas -- such as scientific developments, environmental laws, or technological breakthroughs -- or they may look at a broad range of issues facing a single community.
Teachers should begin by assigning each student to a group and assigning each group a "news beat" to cover. Beats that a group might cover include social movements, the arts, the economy, education, medicine, urban development -- or any item relating to one small community or neighborhood. Teachers should ask students to scan newspapers or other electronic media for stories that relate to their particular beat. This can be done as an in-class assignment in which the teacher distributes different newspapers to the group so that they can look for stories together, or it can be done by each student with the newspapers and magazines they find at home.
Once students have gathered articles relating to their beat, they should list the major issues and trends they encounter, and draw conclusions as a group about where they feel society is heading with regard to their topic. (For example, students looking at medical developments may consider the growing interest in cloning, along with political and religious resistance to the idea. They may conclude that human cloning will happen in the future, or they may predict that human cloning will be outlawed.) Once students have made their predictions, they should produce a report in which they support or oppose the trends they see. As part of this report, students should provide evidence to support their stance from the news articles they've read; they should also produce a timeline in which they demonstrate how our society might reasonably be expected to change over the next 50 years.
Alternatively, teachers can ask their classes to compare their predictions with those of a cautionary science fiction author like Octavia Butler. In this case, students may try to figure out how the trends they see in the news might evolve in such a way as to create a world similar to the dytopian visions in some sci-fi texts. In whatever way students approach the subject, they should be encouraged to see the connection between the political situations brewing today and the world of the future.
Finally, teachers should ask students to take steps to halt, encourage, or alter the progress of the trends they have studied. Using the Internet, students might do research to identify individuals who have the power to shape trends. They can then target a single individual who is in a position to affect the situation at hand, and compose a letter to this person. The letters may use information from newspapers as well as personal arguments to lobby for or against the issue; they may also use basic rhetorical strategies to raise sympathy and awareness. The letter should be sent out, and a copy of it shared with the class.
By focusing attention on a specific area of the news, students become aware of how social and political changes take place on the day-to-day level. They begin to recognize how people can bring about change -- and how people can resist it. Ultimately, this strategy helps students understand that they are responsible for the course of history.
By working together in small groups, students learn to synthesize ideas and reach consensus with their peers. They create persuasive arguments by finding evidence that supports their predictions. By using science fiction as a corollary to their investigations, students come to realize that fictional works also make arguments based on social and political trends.
Finally, by writing letters, students learn to move from analysis to action, becoming familiar with basic rhetorical strategies and skills for incorporating evidence into a written argument. Through the mailing and sharing of these letters, they develop a greater awareness of themselves as powerful, responsible, political citizens.
© Annenberg Foundation 2017. All rights reserved. Legal Policy


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Biochemical networks in space and time
BY SteVen AltsChuler and Alexander Hoffmann
BY SteVen AltsChuler and Alexander Hoffmann
With DNA sequencing costs falling faster than Moore's law, the challenge is less to discover what is in the genome but how the biological molecules interact to produce biological function. Molecular interactions are often multivalent to produce complex networks. Biochemical networks operate in time to determine cellular responses to environmental changes and in space within and across boundaries and organelles, and they are subject to the physical laws that apply to all molecules, including the fundamental stochasticity of molecular interactions and chemical reactions. Given data quantities and the potential for complexity that exceed even well-honed, intuitive reasoning, a hallmark of the systems biology approach is to combine experiment and modeling to formulate and test hypotheses. The sessions below were designed to highlight approaches that derive and reveal behaviors of complex networks on molecular, time and distance scales.
Network assembly
The first session will address novel approaches that allow for assembly of large network models containing many components. Trey Ideker (University of California, San Diego) will describe strategies to combine high-throughput genetic and physical interaction data sets as well as recent work revealing how some aspects of networks change in response to DNA damage and how others do not.
Nevan Krogan (University of California, San Francisco) will describe approaches and insights gained from characterizing the physical interaction network within mammalian cells and how intruding pathogen proteins harness and manipulate it.
Martha Bulyk (Harvard University) will report on innovative high-throughput approaches to understanding the gene regulatory network in quantitative terms, such as interaction affinities between DNA binding proteins and their diverse cognate sequences.
Networks and time
The second session will highlight recent studies of kinetically controlled network behavior. Peter Sorger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Harvard University) will discuss insights gained from quantitatively measuring and modeling the activities of signal transducers that respond to death-inducing stimuli.
Alexander Hoffmann (University of California, San Diego) will report on recent work in applying parallel and experimental and kinetic modeling studies to the pathogen-responsive signal regulatory network and gene regulatory network to develop a "virtual cell" capable of predicting responses to pathogen exposure.
Karla Neugebauer (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden) will address the role of kinetics in cotranscriptional splicing as a means to regulate the generation of alternate mature mRNAs. Thus, a key step in regulating gene expression may be understood only by integrating the biochemical processes of transcription and splicing that were previously studied separately.
Networks and space
The third session will focus on how signal-transduction networks give rise to behaviors in both space and time. Lani Wu (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas) will address the question of how human neutrophils rapidly respond to environmental changes yet ignore irrelevant fluctuations.
Orion Weiner (University of California, San Francisco) will discuss signal-transduction networks in chemotaxing neutrophils and how altering cell geometries can help to identify or rule out mechanisms underlying spatial organization of the signaling components.
Victor Sourjik (Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg) will discuss the assembly and dynamics of signal processing complexes used by bacteria to extract and respond to weak signals from noisy environments.
Networks and noise
The final session will focus on core design principles by which biological networks can reliably give rise to cellular behaviors despite – or because of – the presence of biochemical noise. Steve Altschuler (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas) will discuss how simple positive feedback circuits that lie at the heart of many pattern-forming networks can make use of biochemical noise to create cell polarity and how noise can be used as a biomarker to discriminate different mechanisms of redundancy in protein interaction networks.
Jeff Hasty (University of California, San Diego) will describe how synthetically designed biological circuits, lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices and mathematical modeling can be brought together to understand the complexities of gene-regulatory networks in single cells.
Chris Voigt (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will present recent work on developing a platform for designing biological networks that enable cells to be programmed to perform reliably complex, coordinated tasks.
More from the current issue


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I run a website, which means I constantly check Google Analytics to see which stories are being read and how readers are reaching my site. It's an incredibly useful tool that helps me figure out my audience, what my readers enjoy, and when best to post certain pieces. This type of real-time analytics has been revolutionary for websites, letting media groups find out whether their tweets are making a difference, whether their "tags" are working, and if their highfaluting SEO strategy is working.
Of course, as an author, this might all be gibberish. That is about to change. Hiptype, a young start-up, is looking to bring the wonder of analytics to eBooks. While it's still in Beta and not yet available to all publishing companies, Hiptype represents a new, inevitable approach to gauging the eBook market. By noting when readers make a comment on a section, or share an excerpt, authors and publishers can see what interests and excites readers.
This leads to some interesting dilemmas and the question of privacy on the internet. Many publishers, authors and marketers would like to use this technology to learn more about their readers. There are two ways to look at it: as an invasion of privacy or as a research tool designed to deliver you the most relevant content. Your internet-surfing experience can be tailored to you based on what your browser knows about you (what words you search, what websites you visit, etc.). With this information, advertisers can target specific ads to you based on your interests. For avid readers, this can mean that when you go searching for eBooks, the eBookstore will recommend books that people similar to you have enjoyed.
Likewise, authors and publishers can use this information to target a specific audience with an eBook and to improve marketing efforts. You can also use the information about your primary audience to create more relevant content for them. For instance, let's say that you discover that your books are very popular with veterans. With this knowledge you may decide to include a character in your next book who is a veteran.
This is just another avenue of creative possibilities that has been opened by the internet. We imagine that this type of analytic eBook information will become ubiquitous in the coming years.
As writers, how will you use this information? Will you tailor your books to your audience? Are you interested in knowing who reads your books?
Max Rivlin-Nadler writes for the Lulu Blog – Archived


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Emeli Sande is a Bristish recording artist and songwriter. Her album, "Our Version of Events," peaked at number one in the UK, soon after its release in February 2012, it's become the the best-selling album of 2012 in the UK, with over 1 million sales. This extremely talented and beautiful artist performed in both the opening and closing of the London Olympics. (Wikipedia notes) I hope you enjoy this tutorial. Please fav, show your love, and comment. Thank you all. Peace and love to you.
DragoArt members upload artwork and drawing tutorials! They are also allowed to leave comments on tutorials, profiles, etc. Many more features, as well; it's way better than just being a boring guest! Register Now!


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A.L.S. Photocopy. February 12, [1858]. �Brother Will� Gerdine [William L.C. Gerdine] to �Dear Big Sis� [Emily McKinstry Chapin]. 4pp.)
Athens Feby 12th/ [58]"
Dear Big Sis"
I received your charming little note when I was in Mobile- Was not that a long ways for so small a note to travel? It could not have done it, but for the reason, that it was a sensible note; and if a sensible note, of course, written by a sensible person- I am obliged [illegible word] for your kind reception of my little present; and hope you may be often gratified in a similar way by gifts of more value- Sis, why is it that you will make [mouths] when looking in the glass? Now dont do it- for dont the Immortal Shakespeare say- There was never yet [fair] woman but she made [mouths] in a glass. I suppose this habit accounts for your quiet expression- All practice"


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Children ages 4 through 7 are invited to join us for an exciting 4 week introduction to the great game of tennis. Our Little Hitters Camp utilizes the United States Tennis Association's "QuickStart" format to help kids learn and experience the game in a way that is both enjoyable and rewarding, with lighter racquets, larger low-bounce tennis balls, and smaller court dimensions.
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A lot of the older vines (seven years plus in very vigorous soils) need some significant pruning to shed some old wood that was beginning to be more of a problems than a benefit. So the vineyard is a little more streamlined now and as a result, I think we're going to have a healthier environment for this year's crop. There may be a little less but, if we can keep the mold and mildew at bay, it should be easier to get ripe.
Check out the video posting to enjoy some of the wacky weather the are is enjoying this weekend. It's been a very slow start to the growing season in Langley and in the Okanagan valley.
While I was in Langley I had the opportunity to enjoy a meal at Coza! Tuscan Grill. (They like to add an exclamation point. That will be the last time for me.) The interior is warm and inviting with subdued lighting and jazzy canned music. I was immediately greeted by smiling hostess (Caitlin?) and shown to my seat. Being solo, I sat at the bar and enjoyed the Calgary/Sharks game on a big screen while sipping a well-deserved ale in a frosty sleeve.
I started with the carpaccio. It was one of the best I'd had in some time. The house drizzle across the paper thin beef was a perfect combination. I liked the added garnish which was almost a mini-salad with fresh tomato and a caper berry.
Hard-working men who work long days in the field are entitled to substantial and flavourful food so I rewarded myself with the sirloin treated with gorgonzola butter. The mains come with a choice of pasta or potato so I opted for the Tuscan mashed potatoes. My cut was cooked perfectly to order and everything on the plate was beautifully accomplished. With my bistecca, I ordered a three wine sampler. I had about 50 ml. each of three reds. After some deliberation I decided the Rosemount Grenache-Shiraz blend had enough acidity to provide the kind of counterpoint I think the rich meat dish required.
I'd recommend Coza! if your're looking to break out of the chain store rut and would like some great food, attentive service and an overall welcoming environment. Now that I've scouted it out by myself, I'm ready to return with a group.


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Brussels, 12 May 2010
Mastering economic interdependence: Commission proposes reinforced economic governance in the EU
The recent crises and the risk for the stability of the euro area have underlined vividly the interdependence and exposed the vulnerability of Member States, in particular inside the euro area. The European Union and Member States have taken coordinated and determined action: This included not only short-term measures to stabilise the financial sector, revitalise the economy or ensure the solvency of Greece and the stability of the Eurozone, but it also entailed the setting up of a medium- and long-term vision to put Europe on the path of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth ("Europe 2020"). Now the time has come also to draw far-reaching lessons concerning the way economic policies are dealt with. Therefore, the Commission proposes to reinforce decisively the economic governance in the European Union. The aim of the Communication is to strengthen the functioning of the Stability and Growth Pact and extend surveillance to macro-economic imbalances. It proposes to align national budget and policy planning through the establishment of a "European Semester" for economic policy coordination, so that Member States would benefit from early coordination at European level as they prepare their national budgets and national reform programmes. Finally, the Commission considers it to be a first priority to make the European stabilisation mechanism decided by ECOFIN 9 May fully operational. Based on this experience, the Commission intends in the medium-to-long term make a proposal for a permanent crisis resolution mechanism.
President Barroso said: "Europe has dealt with the immediate emergency. Today, the Commission sets out what we need to do to strengthen Europe's economic governance. By reinforcing the SGP, by addressing the macro-economic imbalances and establishing a robust crisis management framework, we have the core ingredients for a Consolidation Pact for a strong European economy. I am confident that Member States are determined to follow suit on our proposals to reduce the risks resulting from our interdependence for the benefit of our citizens and demonstrate our willingness to protect the euro as a most important asset of the EU."
Commissioner Rehn said: "Coordination of fiscal policy has to be conducted in advance, in order to ensure that national budgets are consistent with the European dimension, that they don't put at risk the stability of the other member states. This can be done in the framework of a European economic semester. For euro-area it means deeper and broader surveillance, in particular with regard to macroeconomic imbalances."
The different elements of the Commission's Communication are:
Next steps
Given the severity of the crisis, the Commission considers it important to make swift progress on the reform agenda laid out in this Communication. Follow-up work will include the preparation of legislative proposals to amend the regulations underpinning the Stability and Growth Pact, to enhance the prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances within the euro area, and to work towards a permanent crisis resolution mechanism. The first European Semester should start with the beginning of 2011.
The financial and economic crisis - a chronological overview - May 2010
EMU@10 - Successes and challenges after 10 years of Economic and Monetary Union, European Economy, No. 2, June 2008:
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Military, Services
By By Andrew Drwiega, Military Editor | January 31, 2012
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The folks at Boeing concerned with rotorcraft have established a pre-AUSA media lunch in Washington, D.C. The aviation and specialist press are invited to hear summaries on the OEM's rotorcraft performance in 2011 and an outlook for 2012 from U.S. Army program managers that participate.
David Koopersmith, vice president of attack helicopter programs, began by saying that 50 aircraft had been delivered in 2011, which includes the first four Apache Block III helicopters to the U.S. Army. He said that manned/unmanned (MUM) teaming had reached Level 4 control from an Apache and that it was now possible to change the sensor direction and waypoints within an unmanned aerial system (UAS) from the Apache. He likened the MUM relationship to a 'hunter-hound' approach.
Col. Shane Oppenshaw, Apache program manager, said that the ongoing aim was to keep the Apache "sustained, ready and relevant." He added that there were now only 18 A model AH-64s remaining in units and that the last one would be withdrawn in May 2012. Oppensham added that the full rate production decision was expected in July/August this year but that he "could not be more pleased with the way it is going."
Leanne Caret, vice president of H-47 programs, reported that at the end of 2011 eight new-build MH-47Gs had been requested for the U.S. Army's special forces. She said that, following the major refurbishment of the factory at Ridley Park in Philadelphia, aircraft production was at five aircraft per month now but ramping up toward six.
At the meeting Caret announced 14 new orders for CH-47F aircraft worth $370 million, seven for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), six for United Arab Emirates Air Force under a previous Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreement and one additional for the U.S. Army. Boeing now has an order book for more than 200 new Chinooks worldwide. In 2011 the UK ordered a further 14 Chinooks (12 additional and two replacements) in an order worth $1.6 billion, which included development and the first five years of servicing. Caret summarized by saying that she expected 65 new CH-47 aircraft to be delivered in 2012.
Col. Bob Marion, cargo helicopter program manager, said that he had visited every deployed unit during 2011. He added that the two most requested improvements, when asked, were for a cargo onload/offload system (which is being developed) and a more streamlined maintenance process which gave greater insight into vibration monitoring. He said that a proposal had been submitted to the Department of Defense (DoD) for Multi-year II funding from 2013 for five years, which would help the U.S. Army further reduce the cost of acquisition of Chinook F models at it transforms to an all CH-47F/G fleet.
"High readiness rates were being reported from Chinook users worldwide," stated Ray Haddad, global service and support director for worldwide support. "We are now talking about affordable readiness—the same readiness at lower cost." He said that the New Equipment Training Teams (NETTs) had been a tremendous success and were popular with operators, as they had taken training on the new CH-47Fs to the unit's home base, allowing crews to spend more time close to home. He said that the 7th and 8th units had been equipped in this way during 2011 and that the 9th and 10th would follow in 2012. He added that the new aircraft modifications facility at Melville worked on 43 aircraft the previous year.
Haddad said the focus moving forward would be on supply chain improvements and also performance-based logistics (PBL) improvements, especially concerning blades. He forecast a 10 percent reduction in costs through increased supply availability. He said that the United Kingdom's Through Life Customer Support (TLCS) had resulted in a 40 percent increase in flying and intended to deliver the same performance capability to the Canadian Air Force fleet of six old CH-47D and then 15 new CH-147F Chinooks.
Mike Burke, attack helicopters business development, stated—as always and with gusto—that much interest was being generated by his 'little Apache' AH-6is. He said that an end of year sales tour around the Middle East had meant 59 flights in five days (Dubai Airshow) and that 2012 could see the launch of the aircraft with two customers. He said that Boeing was planning a technology demonstration in the spring.
Finally, one interloper into the usual line-up was Paul Meyers, an advanced rotorcraft and concepts guy housed at Boeing's Phantom Works. He talked in general terms but gave a brief insight into the fact that Boeing was now focused on its research into Joint Multi Role developments in line with its recent government grants (it got two—one solely for Boeing; and a joint Bell/Boeing grant—the others went to Sikorsky and AVX Aircraft). "Phantom Works was working across the whole rotorcraft spectrum," he said. That's something you can bet your last dollar on!


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Overlooking Kailua Village and Kona's vibrant coastline, Kona Uplands is a gated community offering 5+ acre agricultural parcels with spectacular ocean views. Nearby Holualoa is a small village known for its agricultural heritage and its many art galleries and studios.
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To most of America's founding fathers, the Bible was true from beginning to end, and it was the only source upon which to establish the new, independent nation.
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Sunday, November 30, 2014
Short clip: The making of modern Europe
Simple but, I think, very cool animation: ten ancient genomes analyzed with the Eurogenes K15. More elaborate clips are on the way.
And this is basically the same thing, but restricted to samples from Hungary.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Admixture and migration patterns along the former Silk Road
This Mezzavilla et al. paper is currently up for public comment at bioRxiv. My comment is that we really need ancient genomes to be able to answer the sorts of questions that the authors of this paper are trying to answer. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read.
Background: The ancient Silk Road has been a trading route between Europe and Central Asia from the 2nd century BCE to the 15th century CE. While most populations on this route have been characterized, the genetic background of others remains poorly understood, and little is known about past migration patterns. The scientific expedition "Marco Polo" has recently collected genetic and phenotypic data in six regions (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan) along the Silk Road to study the genetics of a number of phenotypes.
Results: We characterized the genetic structure of these populations within a worldwide context. We observed a West-East subdivision albeit the existence of a genetic component shared within Central Asia and nearby populations from Europe and Near East. We observed a contribution of up to 50% from Europe and Asia to most of the populations that have been analyzed. The contribution from Asia dates back to ~25 generations and is limited to the Eastern Silk Road. Time and direction of this contribution are consistent with the Mongolian expansion era.
Conclusions: We clarified the genetic structure of six populations from Central Asia and suggested a complex pattern of gene flow among them. We provided a map of migration events in time and space and we quantified exchanges among populations. Altogether these novel findings will support the future studies aimed at understanding the genetics of the phenotypes that have been collected during the Marco Polo campaign, they will provide insights into the history of these populations, and they will be useful to reconstruct the developments and events that have shaped modern Eurasians genomes.
Massimo Mezzavilla et al., Genetic landscape of populations along the Silk Road: admixture and migration patterns, bioRxiv, Posted November 24, 2014, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/011759
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Review paper: Human paleogenetics of Europe - The known knowns and the known unknowns
Many of us are waiting impatiently for the new manuscript from the Reich Lab on the genetic shifts in Central and Eastern Europe during the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age, which will apparently include genome-wide data from Bell Beaker, Corded Ware and Yamnaya remains (see here). Rumor has it that it'll appear at bioRxiv within a few weeks.
Meantime, it might be useful to check out this review paper by Guido Brandt et al. on the present state of play in European paleogenetics.
Human paleogenetics of Europe - The known knowns and the known unknowns
It's a thorough summary of almost all ancient DNA results to date from Europe, and includes some very nice maps and other figures that look like updates on the stuff from Brandt et al. 2013 (see here). However, there are a couple of major problems with this paper that drag it down a few notches in my estimation.
Firstly, the authors leave open the possibility that Indo-European languages were introduced into Europe by early Neolithic farmers from Anatolia. Maybe they're trying to be diplomatic and humor those that won't let this failed hypothesis finally die, because otherwise I have no idea why they even considered it?
There are some very good reasons now why this is indeed a failed hypothesis. For one, linguistic evidence shows that all Indo-European languages in Europe include similar loans of non-Indo-European origin associated with farming, like the words for bean, carrot, hemp, oats and pea (for instance, see here).
These words were in all likelihood borrowed by the early Indo-Europeans from someone else as they spread out across Europe well after agriculture had been established throughout much of the continent. So who was this someone else? Probably the non-Indo-European descendants of the non-Indo-European early farmers from Anatolia.
Ancient DNA shows something similar. All ancient European genomes in a farming context sequenced to date from the Neolithic to the Copper Age are clearly distinct from present-day Indo-European speaking Europeans. But they resemble very closely present-day Sardinians, whose ancestors only became Indo-European speakers during the late Iron Age.
The other serious problem with this paper is the suggestion that present-day Northeast Europeans show the highest genome-wide affinity to Pitted Ware hunter-gatherers because the eastern Baltic acted as a refugium during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). It's on page 10 of the PDF.
This must be some sort of oversight, because I refuse to believe that the authors aren't aware of the fact that the eastern Baltic was covered in a big fuck off ice sheet during the LGM. Here's a map from Mangerud et al 2004.
A much more plausible explanation why present-day Northeast Europeans show the highest genome-wide affinity to Pitted Ware hunter-gatherers, and indeed all European hunter-gatherers for whom we have data, is that their ancestors were amongst the last people in Europe to take up farming and Christianity.
Brandt, G., et al., Human paleogenetics of Europe - The known knowns and the known unknowns, Journal of Human Evolution (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.06.017
Thursday, November 13, 2014
TreeMix graphs with Kostenki14 and Ust'-Ishim
First of all, here's a map with some basic info about these two Upper Paleolithic North Eurasian genomes. They're separated by less than 10,000 years and a couple thousand kilometers, so in theory they shouldn't be all that different.
Let's see what TreeMix has to say on the matter. Note that the graphs also include five other ancient genomes: Denisova, Altai Neanderthal, Loschbour, Stuttgart and BR2 (LBA_Hungary).
Admittedly, I'm still learning to use TreeMix. But with that in mind, I'd say the graphs above appear very reasonable, and show outcomes that generally fit with what I've seen elsewhere.
For instance, Denisova harbors something chimp-like that isn't shared with the Altai Neanderthal. This might be a signal of the introgression from an unidentified archaic hominin that has already been reported in scientific literature.
In regards to Kostenki14, the graphs back one of the main conclusions of Seguin-Orlando et al. (ie. the people who first analyzed and published this genome), in that it appears basal to later Europeans. However, the last two graphs suggest that this basal ancestry is not the same thing as the Stuttgart-related Basal Eurasian component described in Lazaridis et al., which, if I understand correctly, is what Seguin-Orlando et al. were saying.
In fact, the basal stuff carried by Kostenki14 seems to be related to the greater part of Ust'-Ishim's genetic makeup. I say the greater part, because Ust'-Ishim also appears to harbor Papuan-like ancestry not shared with Kostenki14.
Is there anything I can do to make these graphs more informative? Perhaps add or take away some samples? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.
By the way, I downloaded the Kostenki14, LBA_Hungary and Ust'-Ishim genomes from Genetic Genealogy Tools. The rest of the samples came from the Reich Lab's Human Origins dataset, available here.
Update 14/11/2014: After looking over the results above and reading the comments below, I made a few changes to the dataset and came up with a couple more graphs that I think are worth sharing. I'm quite certain now that the so called Basal Eurasian ancestry carried by Stuttgart and Kostenki14 can't be lumped into a single component.
See also...
Kostenki14: first genome of an Upper Paleolithic European
Ust'-Ishim belongs to K-M526
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Kostenki14: first genome of an Upper Paleolithic European
At last, we have an ancient genome from pre-LGM Europe: Kostenki14 (K14) from the famous Kostenki Upper Paleolithic site in southern Russia. The paper, Seguin-Orlando et al. 2014, is locked away behind a paywall, but at least the supplementary materials are open access.
K14 is dated at 38,700-36,200 cal BP and belongs to Y-chromosome haplogroup C-M130, a basal and widespread paternal marker that has already been reported in three other ancient European genomes: La Brana-1 from Mesolithic Spain and NE5 and NE6 from Neolithic Hungary. It also belongs to mitochondrial (mtDNA) haplogroup U2.
The shared drift stats of the form f3(Mbuti;K14,X), where X is the test population, reveal that from among present-day Eurasians, this early European is most similar to Northeast Europeans, such as Lithuanians, Estonians and Belarusians, and some Western Europeans, like Basques and Orcadians (ie. people from the Orkney Isles). This is also what we've seen from other indigenous European hunter-gatherer genomes sequenced to date.
As far as Eurasians are concerned, Papuans and Melanesians are the most distinct from K14, somewhat paradoxically so, considering the ancient genome's Oceanian-like Y-haplogroup. The authors speculate that this might be because they carry ancestry from a very basal lineage that went its own way before the split between West Eurasians and East Asians. But I'm wondering whether this result can't simply be explained by the inflated Denisovan admixture among Oceanians (usually reported at around 5%)?
Indeed, there's no mention anywhere in the paper that K14 has Denisova ancestry. However, much like the recently published Ust'-Ishim genome, it shows significantly larger genomic tracts of Neanderthal origin than present-day Eurasians. The implication of this is obvious, and well covered elsewhere, so I won't go into it here.
Arguably the most controversial outcome of the study is that it shows K14 to be partly of Basal Eurasian origin. This is a highly divergent Eurasian clade first described in Lazaridis et al. (see here), and associated with Neolithic farmers. Seguin-Orlando et al. came to their conclusion via two sets of D-statistics and an ADMIXTURE run, which showed K14 to carry a component specific to the Middle East.
If true, then this finding debunks one of the main premises in Lazaridis et al., which is that Basal Eurasian admixture first arrived in Europe from the Middle East with Neolithic farmers. However, it doesn't debunk this paper's model of the formation of the modern European gene pool. Basically, for that to happen we'd need the Basal Eurasian component to show up in pre-Neolithic samples from Western and Central Europe.
Nevertheless, David Reich (one of the co-authors of Lazaridis et al.) seemed so taken aback by the news that he suggested K14 might be contaminated. Or at least, he was reported to have made this suggestion (scroll down to the last paragraph here)
This is interesting because Reich is currently working on a paper that includes ancient genomes from the Samara Valley, which isn't too far away from the Kostenki site (see here). Judging by his reaction to K14's purported Basal Eurasian admixture, we can probably assume that the pre-Neolithic genomes he's analyzed from Russia don't show any signals of this type of ancestry.
In any case, the model devised by Seguin-Orlando et al., set out in the figure below, is actually very similar to the one in Lazaridis et al., with NEOL basically standing in for EEF (Early European Farmer) and MHG for WHG and SHG (Western European Hunter-Gatherer and Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer, respectively).
However, the suggestion that the Yenisei Siberians carry MHG rather than ANE doesn't look right to me. Why would Siberians carry European rather than Siberian hunter-gatherer ancestry? I suspect the problem is that MHG is a composite of WHG and ANE (because, as we know, SHG are partly ANE). Thus, if the Yenisei Siberians do carry both ANE and WHG, because they might indeed harbor some ancient European admixture, then perhaps this is simply being classified as MHG? If so, then I suppose it's not technically wrong, but it does look confusing.
Seguin-Orlando et al., Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years, Published Online November 6 2014, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa0114
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I cannot explain exactly why I get such a rush when I hear them Blue Angels roaring overhead, but
it's definitely something of a peeking at the bounty-beneath "The Tree" on Christmas morning kind of exhilarating tingling --- so full of promise and excitement! Ahh, to be thrust again into that "danger zone" Loggins croons so passionately about, and on my doorstep to boot. This weekend, what with its parade of military might (hardly), its bevy of boisterous sailors (verily) and high-flying boys in blue pulling all the G's they please (yes, please!), is definitely one of the most fun weekends us San Francisco residents can boast of. Plus, it's an excuse to put together a mix of songs you'll only listen to for all of five days or so (again, like Christmas). From Saxon's cover of Christopher Cross's "Ride Like the Wind" to something a little more random like MARRS's "Pump Up The Volume," the sky's the limit when it comes to compiling this year's Fleet Week festive "Need For Speed" mixtape. Check it out:
However, I know that the four days of the Angels stay will be fraught with voices groaning complaints about "the noise," peppered with prolonged soapbox-top denunciations of their "unnecessary" showmanship, waste of resources, etc. And to that I say, place the blame on them fraternal Buckeye bicycle repairmen who, once upon a North Carolina coastline with sense keen enough to follow their curious ideas through countless scientific experimentation and innovation, set the wings soaring on those royal blue F-18 Hornets that ruffled your feathers this afternoon. Blame science. I agree that maybe it's just plain not right for man to travel at the speed of sound, but it sure is amazing to see what 700 miles per hour looks like, even if it sounds like hell's seams ripping. But I feel that we humans, animals that we are, will forever push the limits of our existance to satisfy our needs. As for me, I fantasize that the Blue Angels need the devotion of captivated fans like me, just as much as I need their yearly testosterone-drenched exhibition to remind me that their magic is real. And as any other sailor of serviceman can tell you, being needed feels good.


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Approved in 2001 by the FDA, laparoscopic banding is the safest and least invasive bariatric surgery for patients for patients interested in weight-loss surgery.
The lap band is a small, saline-inflatable band placed around the upper portion of the patient's stomach. The surgery is performed laparoscopically, which means less scarring, shorter hospital stay, less pain, quicker return to full activities, and fewer long-term complications. And it leaves the stomach fully intact.
It works by being placed around the upper part of the stomach to create a small stomach pouch that holds a small amount of food. The band restricts the amount of food consumed, slows the emptying of food from the stomach, and provides a constant sensation of being full. It allows you to finally gain control over your hunger.
Operating time is about 60 minutes and most patients are ready to leave the hospital the following day. Over 200,000 of these surgeries have been performed around the world providing their safety and effectiveness. Most patients can return to work within a week or two.
The lap band is adjustable to fit your particular weight loss needs, which can control the amount of saline in the band with a fine needle through the skin. The average weight loss of lap band patients in a clinical study was approximately 36-38% of excess weight, two to three years after surgery. Most importantly, the procedure is 100% reversible, which means that at any point the band can be easily removed, leaving your body virtually unchanged.
Our bariatric program now accepts patients who wish to pay out of pocket for the lap band procedure. Many of our patients are surprised at just how affordable this option is. Patients often choose this alternative because their insurance carrier may feel that they do not meet their criteria for bariatric surgery or require a 6 month to one year wait before they will allow patients who otherwise qualify to undergo surgery. We are more than happy to discuss this very affordable option with in greater detail at the time of your initial consultation.
Although guidelines vary, bariatric surgery is generally considered when your body mass index (BMI) is 40 or higher and you have a life-threatening or disabling condition related to your weight. You may also be required to fulfill the following criteria: to have been obese for at least 5 years; not abuse alcohol; not have untreated depression or another major psychiatric disorder; and be over 18 years old.
Depending on the type of surgery, most people lose about 30-80% of their excess weight (excess weight refers to weight beyond what is considered healthy for a person of your height, age, and gender).
As effective as modern bariatric surgery is, there are risk factors: some of the weight loss may be regained; some types of surgery may put you at risk for nutritional deficiencies; people who are obese have a higher risk of complications from surgery.
To minimize these risk factors, our comprehensive bariatric program requires you to commit to the following guidelines before surgery. You must have a primary care physician who has been notified of your interest in surgery and is willing to work with you before and after surgery, and also:
4802 Tenth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11219
Appointments: 718-283-2665
General: 718-283-6000
© 2019 Maimonides Medical Center


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mtaus necesitaba un nuevo diseño de papelería y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 82 diseños de 14 diseñadores freelance.
Code Benders
Code Benders is an agile software development and product incubation company. Our management team combines Internet entrepreneurs with world-class software development.
Our company culture prioritizes:
- Quality of life
- Creative outlet
- Having fun
- Building a strong, cohesive team
- Working on worthwhile projects
- Working with excellent people
We've already completed our logo and website designs on 99designs. You can see the winning designs here:
Our target audience includes established businesses and start-ups that are looking for expertise in agile technology and business. We will work with client-partners that are passionate about their work and want a development shop that can help harness that passion in to a functional, marketable product.
Our target client would NEVER pick IBM because it is safe. They seek an agile team that can tap in to current market trends and build elegant applications to disrupt the marketplace.
We are looking for 3 deliverables:
1. Business cards - should be two sided. square or rounded corners are ok - NO other funky shapes or dye-cuts.
2. Simple stationary layout - includes logo, individual name, address and contact info.
3. Proposal layout - this differs from the stationary in that it will include section headers and a more heavily branded presentation. Smaller address and contact info can be included.


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Total Accounts:
Visitors Online:
Total Deposits:
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As a longstanding Bitcoin trading company and British incorporated company(54 Fortune Green Road, London, United Kingdom, NW6 1UJ), Dowoption provides customers with portfolio investment strategy products. You do not need any trading experience to participate in Dowoption 's plans. Experienced a bear market of bitcoin in 2013 and a bull market of bitcoin in 2017, our experts sum up a variety of extreme and simple trading strategies and effectively earned hundreds of millions of dollars. Since the average user does not know how to operate the financial market, many investors like to buy when stock market soars. In fact, the best investment opportunities have often been missed. Many investments do not know when to sell, resulting in the profits returned to the pocket of the market makers.
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I am using rsync for backup about 100GB files and directories. My command is
sudo rsync -azvv /home/path/folder1/ /home/path/folder2
However, the output for each file goes up so quickly and there are so many files, that I worry if there are some errors I cannot catch. So I wonder how you would catch any errors during backup?


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November 2, 1926 - November 24, 2012
Port Jervis, NY
Mr. Harold F. Bullock of Port Jervis, NY and a long time resident of the area died Saturday, November 24, 2012 at Bon Secours Community Hospital. He was 86.
He was born November 2, 1926 in Brooklyn, NY the son of the late John and the late Ruth Moller Bullock. Harold was married to Katherine "Kitty" Brickson Bullock who died April 11, 2008.
Harold proudly served his country in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was a past member of Roosa - Fleming V.F.W. Post No. 161 in Port Jervis. He also was a member of the Tri-State Rod & Gun Club in Port Jervis.
A family statement read: "He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather and brother. He was an avid hunter and gardener. He loved his family who will miss him greatly."
Surviving are two daughters, Cindy Decker and her husband John of Port Jervis, Susan Claisse and her husband, Victor Sr. of Sparrow Bush, NY; one son, Howard Bullock and his wife, Jean of Bethlehem, PA; two brothers, Billy Bullock and his wife, Carolyn of Islip, NY, Kenneth Bullock and his wife, Gail of State of Florida; one sister, Florence of New Jersey; grandchildren: Christine Boniface, David Claisse, Christopher Bullock, Victor Claisse Jr.; eight great grandchildren; also several nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his brother, Wallace Bullock.
A visitation will be held Tuesday, November 27 from 6 to 9 p.m. followed by a memorial service held at 8 p.m. at the funeral home. Cremation will be at H.G. Smith Crematory, Stroudsburg, PA.
Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of Orange and Sullivan Counties, 800 Stony Brook Court, Newburgh, NY 12550.
Funeral arrangements are by the Gray-Parker Funeral Home, 100 E. Main St., Port Jervis, NY 12771. For additional information, directions or to send a condolence note to the family visit www.grayparkerfuneralhome.com


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Over the past few years, many organizations have begun to allow their staff members to work out of their homes. With recent advances in technology, including the Web, email, intranets, modems, cheaper fax machines and voice mail, some people rarely go into the main office anymore. Working out of your home is a mixed blessing, though. There are certain benefits that any worker would love. If you are facing a decision of whether or not to take a job with a 10-second commute, take a look at a few pros and cons of working from home.
- You are free to do as you please.
- There is no commute.
- You can work in shorts and a T-shirt.
- No one looks over your shoulder.
- You can write off a small portion of your home office expenses on your taxes.
- Your employer usually compensates you for incidental expenses.
- If you are married or have children at home, this type of work situation could be especially convenient for you.
- It takes a phenomenal amount of self-discipline to start work when you know you don't have to be at the office by 8 a.m.
- You are the only person around all day, so there is no outside pressure to be busy.
- You must be entirely self-motivated.
- You miss out on the camaraderie that stems from working with others day after day.
- There are no coworkers to go to lunch with.
- You can never escape the office and go home, because you are already there.
- Working from home can be messy and can take up an entire spare room in your home.
- You don't get face time with your coworkers, so it is more difficult to find out about new projects you might be interested in.
- The boss can't see that you are working hard or putting in extra hours, so you are judged more on the numbers than your work ethic and other intangible factors.
- There is a danger of putting in too many hours or overworking. As improbable as this might sound, imagine that it's 11 p.m. and you suddenly have a panic attack about work. It's all too easy to go into your home office and work until 1 a.m.
Tips for Working at Home
Working out of your home can be a great solution for certain people. I have worked in an office and in my own study, and I think it takes special discipline to work at home. You need to ask yourself, "Does this work style fit in with what I want and how I am most effective?"
If you do work out of your home, it is important to remember:
- Maintain a presence at the main office. Report in often and let your boss know you are alive and productive.
- Treat your study (or wherever you work) like a real office. Close the door at 6 p.m. and don't open it until you are beginning work the next morning.
- Get dressed as you would for work and be consistent with your hours. Act like you are at the office and not at home, and you stand a good chance of actually being productive.


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We dump more garbage into the ocean, than the tonnage of fish we take out. We can choose to stop doing that and that will be one less pollutant choking our seas.
Oil spills often come to mind when thinking about ocean pollution. In addition to the short-term impacts, severe long-term problems can also result. The Exxon Valdez, ran aground in Alaska in 1989, but the damage to marine life and waters of Prince William Sound can still be seen today. The Prestige oil tanker, which sank off the Spanish coast in 2002, was an environmental and economic disaster - destroying the local fishing industry and massively affecting local tourism after polluting more than 100 beaches in France and Spain.
But oil spills at sea only account for just a fraction of the pollution problem. Domestic sewage; industrial discharges; leakages from waste tips; urban and industrial run-off, accidents, spillage and explosions; sea dumping operations; oil production; mining; agriculture nutrients and pesticides; waste heat sources; and radioactive discharges are all sources of marine pollution. These land-based sources account for around 44% of all the pollutants in the oceans, while atmospheric toxins add an additional 33%. Ironically, only 12% of ocean pollution comes from activities at sea! In most cases, it is literally in our hands to prevent ocean pollution!
"Creeping dead zones" are created by pollution from sewage discharge, agriculture and industrial pollution which stimulate "blooms" of algae in coastal waters. As these blooms die and decay they use up all the oxygen in the water, leaving it unable to support any living thing. It was NASA that coined the phrase, from watching the areas "creep" across the ocean from space.
While the dumping of radioactive waste as sea has been banned since 1993, radiation contamination is still a problem for our oceans. Most recently fish on both sides of the Pacific Ocean have been found with high levels of radioactive contamination as a result of the Fukushima nuclear melt down in Japan.
The normal operation of nuclear power stations also pollute the sea, but far bigger point-sources of man-made radioactive elements in the sea are the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants at La Hague in France and at Sellafield in the UK. These discharges have resulted in the widespread contamination of living marine resources over a wide area; radioactive elements traceable to reprocessing can be found in seaweeds as far away as the West Greenland Coast and along the coast of Norway.
Toxic pollution can travel through the atmosphere and can be deposited in colder climates, impacting communities and marine life far from its original source. Some of the most serious toxic chemicals are known as "persistent organic pollutants" (POPs). POPs can get into human and animal fat, causing cancers, hormone and immune system disruption and child development problems.
The Arctic Inuit populations are among the most heavily contaminated people on the planet and scientists also suspect that the chemicals have affected the reproduction of some polar bear populations in the Arctic. The blubber of dead whales in some areas is so highly contaminated that it would be classified as toxic waste.
Trace metal pollution from metal mining, production and processing industries can damage the health of marine plants and animals and render some seafood unfit for human consumption. The amount of mercury introduced to the environment by industrial activities is around four times the amount released through natural processes such as weathering and erosion.
Blog entry


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by Tyler Peck, sports information graduate assistant
INDIANAPOLIS - The women's tennis team (9-10, 5-5 PBC) at Georgia College & State University was ranked sixth in the latest NCAA Southeast Regional poll released April 22.
The Bobcats still sit behind five other Peach Belt Conference (PBC) schools. The top 10 teams from each region make the NCAA Tournament in May, with three spots taken by conference tournament champions.
Georgia College awaits the selection for the NCAA Regional Tournaments, which will begin play May 7.
Visit www.GCSUBobcats.com to nominate your favorite former Bobcats and Colonials to the GCSU Athletics Hall of Fame. The GCSU Department of Athletics sponsors 10 varsity athletic programs at the NCAA Division II level. As a Division II program, GCSU prides itself on balancing the life of the student-athlete, evidenced by the Bobcats' multiple appearances in post-season competition as well as documented academic success and community-service involvement. Sign up at Twitter.com username GCSUSID for up-to-the-minute reports.


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Seems like CW is too heartless/busy/lazy for pets.
Posted this before on CS I think, but here it is again. Little kitty we found left outside our station.
As for my bunny - here's one of him looking mildly ********
Leave him out in the open on the terrace nowadays, runs in whenever it rains. Great pet, minimal fuss.
Last edited by Daemon; 27-12-2012 at 04:30 AM.
Tastes like chicken.
Parmi | #1 draft pick | Jake King is **** | Big Bash League tipping champion of the universeCome and Paint Turtle
i hope you drop your iPad in dog poop
Posting on it aws
get a keyboard yet?
Nah the on screen one is surprisingly user friendly. Got a pen though, works well on 'draw something'.
that kitten
Exit pursuing a beerOriginally Posted by Jimmy Neesham
I have a goldfish named Troll.
He shares a tank with my flatmate's goldfish, Daenerys.
Yes, we are very sad.
Soon I will be leaving them though as I can't take it to Wellington. I'd like a dog, my family have always had one, but can't make the committment. I move around too much, work too hard and it wouldn't be fair.
I have a 3 year old Pug, named Tiny
She is a beauty!
- Winner of the 2011 and 2012 CricketWeb AFL tipping competition
- Winner of the 2011, 2012 and 2013 CricketWeb NRL tipping competition
Introducing Tiny
One of her dresses
Pugs are great. Ugly things, but in a really cute way if that makes any sense.
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The end of the road and the start of the Heaphy Track. The car park and DOC station here can be the start of an adventure or merely a day out- take your pick of walking, fishing, biking, camping, picnicing.
there is a real beauty in this area, but if the weather turns against you, be prepared as nature can wipe out plans made by any man.


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Universal preschool raises bar
Consider some of the toughest long-term challenges we face today — growing inequality, parents struggling to balance work and family — and an education system in which too many children are falling behind before they even start school. Though these challenges seem daunting, there's one policy that addresses all of them: universal high-quality preschool. That's why, though other issues may get more attention, President Barack Obama's proposal in the State of the Union and his speech Thursday at a Georgia pre-K center are game changers.
Scores of studies demonstrate that early education can have an enormous impact on a child's cognitive and emotional development, dramatically improving school readiness and academic achievement. And high-quality preschool is a key reason why Finland now scores at the top in international student assessments.
Story Continued Below
But the benefits of preschool extend well beyond test scores. Research shows that an at-risk child who doesn't receive high-quality early childhood intervention is 25 percent more likely to drop out of school; 40 percent more likely to become a teen parent; 50 percent more likely to be placed in special education; 60 percent more likely not to attend college; and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.
Thanks to these kinds of impacts, investments in early childhood education generate very large returns. For example, the National Institutes of Health projects that Chicago's preschool program will produce up to "$11 of economic benefits over a child's lifetime for every dollar spent initially on the program." And the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis calculated that a well-studied Michigan program delivered a real rate of return of 16 percent. Indeed, even after excluding the benefits to the children who participated, the rate of return to the general public still exceeded 12 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, the stock market's annual rate of return from the end of World War II through 2008 was only 5.8 percent.


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Roxas City is a medium-sized city in the province of Capiz, Philippines and the chief port of Northern Panay. Formerly known as the Municipality of Capiz but was named Roxas City after it became a chartered city on May 12, 1951. As of 2010, the city mayor is former city vice mayor Angel Alan Celino who was elected during the 2010 election. The city is famed for its aquaculture production dubbed as the country's seafood capital. The old Capiz Bridge (now Roxas City Bridge) made the city known as the "Venice of the Visayas". The language spoken in Roxas City are Capiznon and Hiligaynon. Based on the 2010 census, the city has a population of 156,157 with a density of 1,542.89/km2 (3,996.07/sq mi)people. And reaching up to 400,000 during daytime due to the influx of people from neighboring provinces from Northern Iloilo, Masbate, Romblon, Aklan and Antique to do business, study, vacation and etc. The abundance of marine life makes Roxas City the "Seafood Capital of the Philippines." This environment-friendly city is home to one of the richest fishing grounds in the country. Being a recipient of the Cleanest and Greenest Component City in Western Visayas Award in the Gawad Pangulo sa Kapaligiran (GPK) Cleanliness and Environmental contest is a clear testament of its people's commitment in ensuring a healthier and brighter future for all its residents and visitors as well. Recently, Roxas City has been a recipient of major awards from various government agencies. The Department of Health (DOH) awarded this city with the Red Orchid Award for being "100 percent tobacco-free." It has also gained the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Seal of Good Housekeeping and lauded the Best Police Station in the region by the Philippine National Police.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxas_City
The Philippines are an archipelago of more than seven thousand islands off the southeast coast of Asia. Only half of these islands have been named and roughly one thousand are inhabited. Look at how beautiful they are! People first arrived here from the mainland around 25,000 B.C. by crossing a land bridge which existed at the time.The name comes from Ferdinand Magellan of Portugal, who explored the Philippines in 1521. He claimed them in service of Spain, naming them after Prince Philip. Spain controlled the Philippines for the next 350 years until the Philippine Revolution of 1896.Here's a picture of Fort Santiago, where the national hero Jose Rizal was imprisoned prior to his execution. He was a poet and novelist who supported peaceful reform, rather than violent revolution, against the Spanish government.This is one of poems in which he describes the creation of the world, as a gift to his mother:"Say they that tell of the world, the first dawn of the sun, the first kiss that his bosom inflamed, when thousands of beings surged out of nothing, and peopled the depths, and to the heights mounted, to wherever his fecund kiss was implanted"Violent revolution broke out anyway and the Philippines changed hands from Spanish, to American, to Japanese control over the next fifty years. Following World War Two they finally became an independent republic.Back to the beautiful ocean! You can dream about the Cafe Del Mar resort next time you find your screen saver kicking in when you're still sitting at the desk staring blankly. There's a series of DJ mixes with this title but I don't know if it refers to the same place. I would not be surprised.Annnnd to really get you buying your plane tickets...the sunset over Borocay White Beach!Text by Steve Smith.


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I'm an amateur photographer and live in Sicily, although I travel a lot for my job .
I like capturing beauty in all its forms and I have not a favourite theme.
I like also experimenting new techniques and postprocessing since it gives me the possibility to create artistic pictures.
Visit also my Flickr website and contact me if you are interested in using a particular photo
I currently use a Nikon D800 and a D7000 although some shots are taken with other cameras
I'm co-host of these groups
Visions of Italy
Italy 500 +
Have a look at my first photographic book
If you have an iphone/ipod, you can also find my photos on iFolio


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She is a Registered Dietitian who does not believe in dieting; She has a Master's Degree in Nutrition but she is not your "I know it all Nutrition Guru!"; She loves food but loves talking about food even more. Her articles are a direct reflection of her personal quest where nutrition science meets real life! Oh, and she is owned by a 3 m.o. naughty kitten 🙂
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Friends, students and teaching associates of Byron Womack, a very popular assistant principal at Port Chester Middle School, have organized a singles bowling tournament in his memory.
Womack was found dead on Feb. 20 at the age of 48 of natural causes.
All proceeds from the bowling tournament will go to the Byron Womack Scholarship Fund. Competition begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 14 at Homefield Bowl, 938 Saw Mill River Road in Yonkers. For more details, call 914-969-5592 . The cost/donation is $50 per bowler.
Womack was assistant principal at Port Chester Middle School for the past eight years.
Womack, son of Willie and Shirley Womack, was born on April 2, 1969. He was the youngest of their three children. The family was raised in South Windsor, CT, and from an early age the importance of being a good person was instilled by his loving parents.
Womack and his siblings were encouraged to participate in sports for the positive impact it had on their character to be part of a team. Byron, in particular, excelled at athletics and was a member of numerous traveling sport teams as a youth. These early lessons reverberated thru-out Womack's life and work. He dedicated his career to uplifting children and arming them with confidence and self-worth. His mantra, which he boldly wrote in his office, was: "It's all about the kids."
Womack participated in sports at South Windsor High School. He was a member of the varsity football team, as well as the track and field team.
As a senior and captain of the football team, Byron rushed for more than 1,300 yards and scored 24 touchdowns, earning a full scholarship to Norfolk State University.
Womack transferred to Iona College in New Rochelle as a sophomore and went on to be named team captain and All-America. He set numerous school records as a running back and an NCAA all-divisions record for kickoff returns for touchdowns in a career with six.
After graduating from Iona College with a degree in social work, Womack was employed with the Guidance Center's START program that was housed at Port Chester High School.
During his tenure with START, he had the opportunity to counsel students and coach numerous sports teams. With the desire to gain practical experience and ultimately have full-time employment within a school district, Womack was hired as a college advisor at All Hallows High School, and then the Young Women's Leadership Network, while working as an assistant athletic director at the College of New Rochelle.
During this time, he also returned to graduate school, earning a Master's Degree in School Guidance and Counseling, which brought him back to the Port Chester-Rye Union Free School District. While working as a school counselor at Port Chester High School, he completed his second Master's Degree in School Administration and Supervision.
He was the executive director of the STEER for Student Athletes, Inc. where he helped young athletes realize and maximize their potential in the classroom and on the field.
In this article by Daily voice, Womack said that he felt "blessed" to be part of the STEER team and to help it carry out its mission.
STEER started out as a pilot program in Port Chester and now is in the Yonkers school district and two schools in the Bronx.
In January 2017, Womack received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Committee's Humanitarian Award, for his dedication to the Port Chester community.
Womack's greatest achievement and the source of his pride was his daughter, Carson. He loved her beyond measure and was a devoted and loving Dad. Byron's impact was wide and far-reaching, much like his bear hugs and his hearty laugh. His legacy lives on in his students, his many friends and colleagues, and in his daughter Carson. Womack is survived by his parents, Shirley and Willie, his sisters Nita Womack-Henderson and Adrena Womack-Cummings, brothers-in-law Robert Henderson and Simon Cummings, and his daughter. He also leaves behind countless cousins, aunts and uncles.
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